Grave Reflections: October 2005

Take the Extra Minute, Look Up the Discography!

I'm not usually one to catch errors in the newspaper, but sometimes I find a small but significantly glaring error that just eats away at me. A few minutes ago, we got our papers at work, and I took out the page with the classified, which is also today's teen page. It had a little article asking "How old is too old for Halloween?" The first words printed are lyrics quoted from a song called "Halloween". I couldn't read past the first paragraph, because I realized that the columnist said the lyrics came from an AFI song.
Yes, I'm getting to my point. What I get so pissed off at, is when a monumentally influential band like the MISFITS, who wrote "Halloween", get put completely out of memory in favor of some idiot wannabe fucking punk band that isn't even good at what they do, like AFI. This isn't anything completely new. Nor is it something exclusive to shitty bands. Danzig has gotten credit for writing songs like "The Hunter" (Albert King) and "Trouble" (Elvis Presley). Metallica still gets credit for misfits songs, as well as other covers they did. Some would be surprised at how many songs performed by Johnny Cash were NOT written by him.
But it's the shitty bands that really get my shorts in a bunch. When the White Stripes perform "St. James Infirmary Blues", or when Limp Biskit did their rendition of "Faith" or "Behind Blue Eyes" sans the cool solo which originally helped define the mood of the song, something just shrivels up inside me.
This columnist, Joe Connor, is from West Fargo, home of North Dakota's most prominent music scene (doesn't sound like much, but, again, you'd be surprised what ND can churn out--i.e. Johnny Lang, Shannon Curfman...). I just want to go over there, grab him by the scruff of the neck, and tell him to do some fucking research before he goes quoting a shitty band.
Sorry, I guess that's really all I had to say.

Creepy Link

http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eccaro/mist_or_ghost.html

I got this link off of Jessica Rabbit's website--it might take a minute or two to load the video, but that whole ghost mist thing is really eerie, so it's worth it.

My final torso rendering, which unfortunately ended up late.

You Might Not Know This, But Torso's Are a Part of Everything I've Just Posted

I finally finished my torso rendering after much procrastination. It was supposed to be done by last Sunday, but we had a busy weekend, blah blah blah--anyways I'm done now, so get off my back. I thought it turned out alright, decent highlights, but I could have pushed in the stomach more, but I didn't buy the stupid plaster torso mold that we were supposed to draw from, so keeping that in mind, I think I did just fine.

Movie Stuff:
I have t on good authority from Adam Hagan, contributing writer for the High Plains Reader (okay, I just read his article) that the Fargo Theater is hosting a special 11 p.m. showing of Evil Dead II. I'm not going, but I think it's really cool that they're doing this right around Halloween. The writer was saying that you could casually ask anyone what they consider one of the best movies of all time, and they would say something like "Citizen Kane" or "Casablanca" or "Wizard of Oz". But then if you dosed them with Sodium Pentathol (truth serum) and asked the same question, you would hear "Evil Dead II". And those who don't say it more than likely haven't seen it.
I would venture to say that it is more of a guy thing, as well. The majority of girls might opt for a chick flick. Unless you're Karissa (one of the reasons I love her), your idea of a good love story isn't "Natural Born Killers".
But the Evil Dead movies have always held a special place in me. Kevin introduced me to them, and he, Amadon and I watched all three of them quite a few times at Amadon's place. I used to try to play Evil Dead II for our high school girlfriends, who didn't seem very interested in seeing horror and buffoonery in one movie (I learned from the article that Sam Raimi utilized methods not unlike "Three Stooges" schtick in EDII--now every time I watch 3 Stooges, I'll think of big dead trees and reluctant heroes). I have the special edition Evil Dead DVD with the Necronomicon cover, and made Karissa watch with the commentary on. And, I have the first Evil Dead Game. I haven't been able to get my hands on the new one, or the new, new one, nor will I for a while yet. But reading the article made me happy that there are people out there who outwardly appreciate the Evil Dead movies.
The other day I watched one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Any of you guys who know my family have probably heard about our little contest, running over a decade strong. My brother-in-law Brian brought home one fine summer day back in the early '90's a movie called "Zombie Lake". I can't describe the horror it is to watch this movie. Nazi zombies came from within a lake, yet could be killed by suffocation. Their clothes were dry like 30 seconds out of the water, the acting was terrible, and some of the zombies seemed to "remember" their pasts. It was a '70's movie, what do you expect?
Since my dad uttered the words, "Worst movie EVER", we have decided to try to top it. We have come close so many times, and it's one of the reasons my dad and I used to spend Friday nights watching Mystery Science Theater 3000. So far, the winning title is combined by Jason and me, for "Ankle Biters," a movie about midget vampires. Yes, a movie about midget vampires. I'm not even going to elaborate, it's pretty self-explanatory.
So I was flipping channels looking for monster movies I like. Last 2 weeks in October, all the horror movies come out of the woodwork. April and Karissa will remember our month-long study of Friday the 13th movies (my favorite slasher series) 4 years ago? I hit AMC, and there is a Japanese monster movie on. I'm not really into these movies, but something about the title "Frankenstein Conquers the World" disturbed me.
The Japanese turned Frankenstein's monster and turned him basically into a caveman, leaving the heavy boris Karloff brow ridge. True to Japanese form, they pitted him against a reptilian monster, and the two of them destoryed half of the Japanese countryside, and apparently caused the eruption of a volcano in the process. Frankenstein (I guess, because somehow the people knew who he was and that he had gone to court to legally change his name from Frankenstein's Monster to just Frankenstein, like his daddy) and the reptilian monster perished in the result earth cracking open and lava consuming everything. These are paraphrased from the last lines in the movie, spoken by two men and a women:
Guy on Right Side: He's dead now.
Women: No, his heart will live on forver.
Guy on Left Side: Yes, he's in a better place now...

What the hell?? The women just argued with the first guy, yet said something indicating no disagreement. Then the second guy agrees with the women by saying the exact same thing, only more eloquently, as the first guy?! See, this is why no one takes the Japanese seriously, because some idiots make a movie like this. And just for that, I'm going to have show it to my family. It would be only right. I haven't seen such an insipid concept for a movie since "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians". Plus, the title is wrong. He didn't conquer anything. He couldn't even conquer throwing a rock at the damned monster. How do you conquer anything, when all you did was destroy a bunch of scenery and then die falling into lava like a bitch??

Grinding the Old Axe (NOT Geriatric Sexual Innuendo)

Kevin doesn't like speed metal, so I said I would come up with a list of speed metal songs he does like.
Well, I don't know what he's heard, so I've decided to make a list I think he would like. So here goes.

-Motorbreath (Metallica)
-He's already admitted to this one.
-Blackened (Metallica)
-Creeping Death (Metallica)
-Battery (Metallica)
-All old Metallica, high likelihood that he would like them.
-Ace of Spades (Motorhead)
-Aw, come on, you have to like SOME Motorhead!
-Domination (Pantera)
-He's not a big Pantera fan, but the solo that comes in 2/3 of the way through, plus
that metal riff at the very end, you can't not appreciate that.
-Paranoid (Black Sabbath)
-A lot of people don't think of this as speed metal, but you have to remember that
this is one of those hard & fast songs that set the standard.
-Highway Star (Deep Purple)
-Considered by many the introduction to speed metal. I don't personally believe it,
but it seems like something Kevin would like.
-BYOB (System of a Down)
-Question! (System of a Down)
-Chop Suey (System of a Down)
-Oh hell, tons of System of a Down have elements of speed metal to them. God damnit, Kevin, I win!

Anyway, I had a lot of fun this weekend. We were supposed to practice Friday, but parts been covered in about 3 different blogs by now. I really didn't feel like doing it Saturday, but fortunately I was persuaded to give it a shot, and we covered some good ground. We get started with our usual warm-ups, then started trying some new stuff. We attempted a song called Maelstrom, and I loved how it sounded with my clean natural chords & Amadon's distortion. Kevin and I had a minor intervention with Amadon regarding his choice of distortion tone, and once he got off of the metal tone and just did his own standard one, he sounded great.
We still don't have a bassist, so anyone who is reading this, and is a bassist or knows someone of the low-end presuasion, please let us know. Being into hard rock (more general catagory) is recommended.
The next major song we moved on to was one Amadon wrote, called Heart of Thorns. Kevin had some cool ideas for taking away from the monotonous 4/4 timing uniform fingerpicking, and I think we'll have something better once Amadon hurries up and sends me the tablature for it so I can GuitarPro it. We're going to have a lot more to work on with that song, being as we took over an hour just to get all the intro figured out. That seems like a long time, but seeing as we all don't see eachother every day and we come into practices knowing about as much what we're going to do as anyone else who reads our blogs, I'd say we did pretty damned good. I hope to get up there sooner this time, since there won't be a birth to try to plan around, and hopefully AMADON will get a hold of a babysitter sooner this time? HMMMM???
I know it will be good to get more covers under our belts, if for nothing else than studying technique, or just plain fun, but I like when we can put together originals.

Anyway, haha, Kevin, The Vikings now suck slightly less than your Butt-Packers!

Godless, But Not Without Groove

"Clay, of which God, who didn't exist, made man, who did. Such was the paradox of human life: it's creator was fictional, but life itself was a fact."

I got the quote from Rushdie's Fury, and it's probably one of the funniest philosophies I've ever heard from an atheist. I want to frame on my bedroom wall.

I got to hop on the old guitar for a little bit tonight. I figured I should warm up before this weekend. I also took a look at some of our songs, and I think I figured out how to fix Lucid Nightmares. I changed some of the chord progressions, but not so much that it's a different song. I'll have it on Guitar Pro soon. In the meantime, here's a working list of songs to look at this weekend.

-House of the Rising Sun (Animals)
-666
-For Whom the Bell Tolls (Metallica)
-Halloween (Misfits)
-London Dungeon (Misfits)
-Metempsychotic
-Maelstrom
-Creep (Radiohead--acoustic)
-Lucid Nightmares
-Black Sabbath (Black Sabbath)
-Paranoid (Black Sabbath)
-Thirteen (Danzig)

A Jam Session?

Kevin's been whining again about a playdate, so okay, Kevin, I think would try to arrange something IF YOU INSIST.
Anyway, yes, he's right, we need to get together again and practice, because he's not the only one feeling the itch to jam. I tried Amadon's cell phone, but now I'm throwing it onto a blog, just to get it out there. Karissa & I are coming to DL this weekend for sure, but as far as a practice goes? Well, that's kind of up to Amadon & Josie. I know the first couple of weeks with a baby can be really...let's say interesting. So there's always the chance that things would be better if Amadon was to stick around the homefront rather than go play . I don't know. One way or another, I'm bringing some guitars with me.

A Familiar Face

Karissa & I had to go to the mall today to pick up the rest of our picture order from JC Penney, and through some dumb luck, we got ourselves confused as to where the portrait studio was, and accidentally ran into Matt Pearson, aka Puerto Rican. The last time I talked to Matt was over a year ago, at Derek & Tab's wedding. I had plans to try to get a hold of him before our "Dusk Reunion Special", but I didn't (not sure why).
We saw his son Elijah again, who is now 19 months old, and we got to introduce them to Isabella for the first time. I forgot that the two aren't that far off in age (like six months or so).
We talked a bit about our progress is playing, and how we are both doing bandwise, and I finally invited him to come jam with us next time we play. It might get a little crowded in Amadon's basement, but I think it'd be cool, being as we've both evolved along the same period of time, both heard only fragments of how the other plays, and think along a similar (but not too similar) musical spectrum.

A Little Art Instruction, a Little Laundry, and No Way Out...

I'm taking a break from all these baby shananigans. I'm not sick of reading about Josie's baby or anything, so don't go thinking I'm a big jerk--I just felt like turning on to another exit.
I'm also taking a break from drawing. I've been a little slow this week with my assignments, and they're not these time consuming renderings like last time.
I happened to catch Karissa's last comment before posting, so I thought I'd check out the blog she mentioned, and this guy seems pretty cool. He's a professor with a history in comics & animation (after my own heart!), and he has a publication called Draw! which I take this blog to be named after. He's got a lot to say about the comics industry, good and bad, so I thought I'd put up the link here.
www.drawman.blogspot.com
So what am I listening to righ now?
Well, I'm not really listening to anything at the moment. I'm sitting on a bench outside the motel, enjoying a little cool air. I was just in the laundry room, where it got a little too warm, and in there I was listening to my usual mix. One song in particular, though, I've felt like I've had to listen to lately. It's called "My Confession" by Otep. Otep is headed by a female singer who can growl as good as any Phil Anselmo, but contrasts that with a beaten down, tortured whine/wail, kind of like a desperate cry for help before going completely fucking nuts.
Karissa doesn't like this song, because it creeps her out the way this chick screams. I love the song, though, partly because she'll get really quiet at certain points, almost to a whisper, and then she & the band all throw down at the same time, practically killing your speakers.
You'll never catch me giving a line like "this song really speaks to me". I think that's the cheesiest line of thinking and makes the assumption that it is the only song with that kind of melody or lyrical value. Bullshit. About 300 songs speak to me then. My anthem would turn into nothing but a huge bunch of noise as all those songs compete to speak the loudest.
But, I will say that there are songs I can relate to at given times. It's another statement a lot of people make, but this one I believe is true. That being said, there are parts of he song that I can relate to lyrically.
Well, breakfast won't make itself, and pictures won't draw themselves, so I better get back to the grind.

The Old "Life-Changing Experience" Bit

With the excitement over the coming addition to Josie & Amadon's family, I was just thinking back to what Karissa & I experienced.
I'm not gonna lie here. There was a lot of emotional confusion within that period. We didn't attend any classes (ever the good students), and we felt we still hadn't read up enough on what to expect or what can go wrong. I read halfway through a "daddy handbook" of sorts before finally discarding it altogether, writing the author off as mildly retarded. Seriously, it's as if this guy didn't even know what a "baby" was before he finally saw one in person. Everyone makes mistakes, but this guy (hopefully) seemed to be playing up the stupidity role for the sake of informing her readers, and it kind of offended me.
Anyway, to understate the experience, it was emotionally intense. Karissa was basically quarantined to a room, while I hopped into the car to get some extra things ( we were packed, but I must have needed other stuff). On the way, I made the calls. I felt extremely akward calling friends & family, saying "It's time!" while trying to hurry back to the hospital.
That afternoon Karissa was in pain and I was playing the mind-numbing waiting game. I can't begin to compare the difference in our comfort levels, but the point is it that when we heard other parents later talk about what a "wonderful" experience the whole thing was, we wanted to punch them. Well, not the baby, just the parents.
I was excited after the birth, but worn out. I felt really bad, because Karissa was pretty much just left back her birthing area, being dosed with Morphine while both our families were celebrating about 40 feet away.
I was the first one to feed Is, and that would have been really cool, except that by this time, I was beginning to feel drained emotionally, and our moms were in there with me, and they talked about how beautiful she is, and how happy they were to be grandmas. All I wanted at that point was to be by myself with her in silence, a little reflecting time with a human being who had no awareness of anything in the world except the fact that she was comfortable, wrapped up, and being fed formula she would probably never have to realize was gross.
I saw Karissa later that night, and she got horrible sleep almost the entire time she was there. Her emotions were drained and confused too, and I didn't help much when I announced that I had just gone home to clean and feed the bunnies only to find Nugget had died the night before. Both of us felt really bad when we realized he might not have been getting enough food, because now we had a little baby to care for. We couldn't even keep a bunny alive! Granted, Nugget was about 3 years old when he died, and Marshmallow might have taken his share (she grew pretty fat around that time and bossed him around).
It was a very shaky time for our collective self-confidence, but we managed to trudge through those first weeks with a baby who had colic, became a miniature sociopath, and who now still has rotavirus & fluid in her ears.
If I had seen any of those situations she would eventually push us through, at the time I would have locked myself into a little room with a loud fan to shut out the horrors I would have to face.
But these days, I don't feel nearly as scared about those things. I don't feel horrified when I see her trip on air and bulldoze the carpet. We even know when she's whining because she thinks she can get away with it. The things that scare us nowadays are things like child molesters and other deviants who seem to possess a disturbing interest in children.
Obviously we're still learning, probably moreso from mistakes than from books. But contrary to what you see in sitcoms, it does get a little better. If the demand for patience, poopy diapers, screaming uncontrollably, or eating everything in sight doesn't kill you, you're silver (I'd say "you're gold," but I don't like gold).

This one was for Analysis of Form. We had to study how cloth drapes...yeah, every minute's a cliffhanger...

My latest assignment for Figure Drawing...

What I'm Seeing and What I'm Hearing

The picture above was my "homework", which doesn't technically make sense, because for one thing, all my work is homework. My classes are online. And for two, I did it at work, not home.
Anyway, I was kind of proud of it, so there it is. I did a pretty good job on shading, and finally got the hair right. The only problem is that I did most of it while the sketch pad was flat on the table, which is a no-no, and now the proportions of the face are off. Her face is slightly narrowed, vertically.
I've decided to start posting what I'm currently listening to. Sometimes, I get bored during my posts, and like to have something recurring to fall back on. Plus, you guys have read some of my tangents on music, and I thought it'd be cool for anyone who might want to check any new bands out. It could be a particular artist, or a band, maybe even just a song or album, I don't know yet.
I have an increasing list of bands I get from watching Metal Asylum, plus whatever else I've found while wandering through websites. I might talk a little about the band, some of their songs/style, I don't really know yet.
Anyway, to start, I'm currently listening to Tom Waits.
Karissa has made fun of me many, many times for listening to him, but I'll continue to take her abusive imitation of "The Piano Has Been Drinking", because I love how odd and offbeat this guy is.
Tom Waits was born in L.A. a few years after my dad, and was into "old" fashions since he was a kid. To look at the guy would be to imagine the Rat pack becoming beatnicks. To hear the guy would be to hear Louis Armstrong or Screamin Jay Hawkins with vocals put through a meat grinder.
Most of the sound he's known for involves his scratchy voice over a piano and/or accompanied by a jazz band. His most recent album (the one I'm listening to), Real Gone, has NO pianos. Most of the guitar was actually played by his son, and many of the beats in his songs come from his own mouth, playing beatbox into a tape recorder in his bathroom. I thought about that, and the acoustics in my own bathroom would be great for recording.
The label he's under, Anti, also houses Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Marianne Faithful, and Merle Haggard, among others (Nick Cave will be showing up on my blog at some point as well).
Some of the songs I can't really listen to much on the album, just because they don't appeal to me. But I do like most of them--here's a list.

-Hoist That Rag -(really strange latin groove)
-Sins of My Father -(a nice, dark tune)
-Don't Go Into That Barn -(just trust him)
-How's It Gonna End
-Dead and Lovely -(reminds me of a film I watched in film class, can't remember the name)
-Trampled Rose -(half the melody is his voice droning over the guitar)
-Green Grass -(I love this song most, I think, kind of a creepy love song)
-Make It Rain -(good bitter break up song, helps the bad mood)
-Day After Tomorrow -(a little Johnny Cash sounding in melody & lyrics)

I'm sure a lot of you guys won't have anything good to say about him if you listen to his songs--he's one of those hit-or-miss kind of artists. One of the things I like about him is his gravelly voice. He can scream and sound like some poor freak out of his cage, or he can sound like the saddest old man on earth. Most of you guys would probably remember his singing from Shrek 2. When the king enters the tavern, and that dude is singing Little Drop of Poison (sounds like a rogue's tango)--that's Tom Waits.
So, now that I've given you something to think about, I'll have to see what else I want to listen to so I can force that upon you guys, too.

It Does NOT MAKE SCENTS!

I just did my first security walk of the night about half an hour ago. Usually, I'll check the side entrance to make sure it's locked, go upstairs and down the hall, coming into the pool area from the second floor landing. After checking the pool entrance, I'll meander down the back wing to check the far entrance before quickly inspecting the Exercise room & making my way back to the front. When I got to the back wing, I opened the door, and was blasted with a potent scent of body odor. Not dead skin & sweat, but that acrid, "didn't shower for three days", "hi, my name is Brueckner" body odor.
Now, I know what you guys are thinking. 'Doug, you're such a stud and you're so smart. But are you sure it was body odor? Someone could have brought onions into their room. Maybe someone got the blooming onion from Applebee's and let the leftovers sit for too long in their room?
No. This was body odor. And it wasn't just by a room. It was the ENTIRE hallway. By the time I made it out of the wing, I was really grossed out. I had to dispose of a dead rabbit after a three day vigilance in a warm garage. Given that, I could probably stand the smell of dead things. But smells of the living who obviously have put in a couple days hard labor without the luxury of a tubby has successfully grossed me out. And now I have to create an attack plan in which I stealthly move in with an entire bottle of Odo-ban and hope to anything I consider holy that it neutralizes the smell. Wish me luck that the smell doesn't imprint itself onto me and I accidentally kill Karissa and Is.

Dead Things, and a Trip to the Hollows...

We've recently come upon the sacred Halloween decorations in our basement, and decided that it's finally time to set up the house. Last year, we were too preoccupied with Isabella, and didn't even think much about Halloween. Honestly, I don't think we even looked at halloween stuff last year.
So this year, I've been looking forward to getting my skulls out. Isabella may not be quite old enough yet to fully enjoy Halloween, but it's a perfect age to expose her to spooky stuff and show her that it's alright.
To add to the spirit, she even helped me put together my zombie arm. Well, no, she really just grabbed the hand and tried to crush it, but at least she got a little interaction with her dad.
My family now has a resting place in the backyard garden, marked by 2 big crosses, and 1 little one.
I call it "Hunter's Hollow".