The Animal Supermarket

Apples, tomatoes, lemons and cheese.....yes, we are on our way to the Animal Supermarket.  As a young lad, I would listen to these 78's by the bed.  Animal Supermarket, Alladin, Big Rock Candy Mountain.  Oh.....the buzzin' of the bees in the lemon drop trees.
Of course, the original Candy Mountain had cigarette trees, but I think I prefer lemon drops to cigs.

My mother and father sang these loud with their great car singing voices, regaling us with many songs from  the Depression.  Hallelujah I'm a Bum, Hallelujah Bum again, Hallelujah give us a handout to revive us again.

Songs of hobos, and bums, and sailors rolling home dead drunk.....by the light of the silvery moon!

My family of seven children were  conveniently numbered with the first three coming badda bing badda boom, then a short gap and the surpise redhead in the crackerjacks, another short gap and bing, bang boom me and my two sisters.

Years later I had the 78's transferred to a cassette.  Now the cassette languishes in a suitcase somewhere in my garage, if it has not already met an untimely demise.

Why do all these memories come back today?  I went to a record collector swap meet today, the first time if I am honest. Scores of Comic Book Guys, and characters.

I picked up some treasures, met some interesting people and here is the song poem from the day's collection:
Some Velvet Morning
Lonely People Do Foolish Things
Look to Your Dreams
She was Poor but She was Honest
My world is cavin' in
What'd I say
What is this thing called Love
Spring can really hang you up the most
On a clear day you can see forever
Everything put together falls apart
Give a damn
I had a dream
I think: therefore I am
Don't say it
I have dreamed
April come she will
The Wonderfulness of you.

It Barely Dawns

Been up since 5 and can barely keep my eyes open


The cars fade in and out as my mind wanders...

In Antarctica, penguins wade through Kotex

Kleenex and our crap and corruption.

On the other pole, an acerbic bear floats on an icecube.

Between these extremes, a soft gooey center where I sit on the edge of my heated seats.

It will take more than coffee, cocaine or courage to get through this day.

Send Deb Dawson to Coney Island!

Deb Dawson's latest cartoon, "Ray Condo's Crazy Mixed Up World" is 'World Premiering' at the Coney Island Film Festival at the end of September. It has also been chosen for programming at the prestigious Ottawa International Animation Festival in October.


This is a labour of love that Deb has been working on since the untimely demise of the legendary Ray Condo.






To see her demo reel, go to http://iliketoanimate.com/

Unfortunately, the way arts are funded in our province, it is very hard for creative people to support themselves, especially in a way that allows them to go to New York, even for a World Premiere!

That is why I am appealing to you. Send your donations to help Deb get her cartoon ass to New York; better yet, acquaint yourself with the artist that is Deb Dawson.  Say Hey!  Does your company or project need a brilliant animator that could use a few paying gigs?

Check out Deb Dawson's website at http://www.iliketoanimate.com/
Or send your cheques payable to Deb Dawson to

Apt C 2404 Guelph Street
Vancouver, BC V5T 3P3

$5, 10, 20, 50, 100- whatever you can spare!  Make the world a better place and hire an artist today!

Fingers on keys

Fingers on keys, resting, waiting for inspiration to move them.  Spell it out, let the thoughts flow from mind to fine motor skills, gently pressing on the keys, but not moving, and then moving again as the thought takes flight.  I keep hearing what sounds like water running through pipes, a release of pressure, the computer itself is percolating like a pot of 60's folgers from the can, the eruption of caffeinated concentration and then the sigh, eruption, sigh; this is the sound that I would awaken to as a child, better than an alarm- alarms don't have aroma, alarms don't imply mother, and father, and two poached eggs on buttered toast, marmelade or strawberry freezer jam.  My mother stretching the food budget with postwar frugality.

And now, hands on keys, fingertips poised to remember, to translate transfer the roar of the rotary phone, the smell of Vitalis on the favorite chair, television that you had to get up out of the chair to change the channel, My Mother the Car, Dark Shadows, It's About Space, The Time Tunnel, Lost in Space, as tv tried to make sense of our increasingly fragmented world.  A time when news was news.  When war was bloody and on television, not sequestered and embedded, but raw screaming bloody children and monks on fire, and assassinations, and rye and ginger, and sliding down a mountain of Montana snow on a flying saucer.

All this and more brought to life again, by the mere placing of fingers on keys.

Shit happens....for a reason

Shit happens.....for a reason.  Shit meaning stuff, meaning bad karma, meaning bad events, meaning cancer?  Because "everything happens for a reason".  Or so I said to my wife in the car, who replied, I don't buy that.  Bad things happen and then people try to make sense of it, by reasoning, it was meant to be.  Or I deserve it, or God knows better than we do, you see, there is a plan!
Or is there?  Our lives are ruled by randomness.  The only guarantee of success is persistence, and luck.
Or birthright.  As we know from looking at all the great talented suicides of even recent history, talent is no measure of success.  Far from it.  It is often a curse in a world that is increasing becoming stupider and stupider by the minute. 
So does shit happen for a reason- well, if that candy makes your life sweeter, or that dream makes the next morning bearable, or that old time religion helps you to screw your neighbor's wife and cheat at business, only to be pious and proud on Sunday, well then shit happens for a reason. 

Decline of the Art of Cake-Baking

A terrific peal of laughter from the others was released by my "Decline of the Art of Cake-Baking." The matter was as follows: for a time giant, larger-than-lifesize cakes appeared to me. Like standing in front of a lofty mountain, the cakes were so gigantic that I could only see part of them. I launched into detailed descriptions of how such cakes were so consummate that it was not necessary to eat them, for they immediately stilled all appetite through the eyes. And this I called "vision bread" [Augenbrot, literally "eye bread"].  http://www.wbenjamin.org/protocol1.html#IX

Last night went to an opening for Rosmond Norbury, and was instructed in a good way by artist Cornelia Wyngaarden on the origins of the word Flaneur, leading me to read up on Walter Benjamin.  And we know, it is all about the Benjamins! 
This great site http://www.wbenjamin.org/ has many of his writings available to read.  Drawn like the proverbial fly on the wall to ....I see that Benjamin and his fellow travellers in thought wrote a book On Hashish, about their experiences with the drug.  

I particularly loved the idea of The Decline of the Art of Cake-Baking and "vision bread", as I have always said "we eat with our eyes", and "never eat anything bigger than your head". 
If the way to a good man's heart is through his stomach, and your eyes are bigger than your stomach, and the eyes are the window to the soul, then close your eyes, dream of diets, and hug yourself, because life is full of crap and cruelty, and every good boy deserves fudge. 
There.  I've finally said it.   It needed to be said, and I said it. 

America is Angry

America will work for food.
America enjoys a smoke.
America needs a drink.
America is angry.

America likes to take drugs.
America wants to sleep with you.
America would kill for a day off.
America is angry.

America likes the bright lights.
America likes the dark corners.
America wants its cake.
America is angry.

America bombs the poor.
America needs to see a doctor.
America is going postal at the workplace.
America is angry.

America likes heavy metal.
America fears God.
America will sacrifice her babies.
America is angry.

America likes having sex with strangers.
America likes blender drinks with bendy straws.
America doesn't want to play today.
America is angry.