Some renaissance men of New Orleans

It’s a little too Inferno-like for me to be poking around Los Angeles right now looking for new works of store front art around here, so I’m going to have to take a little mental vacation and enjoy some pieces found in New Orleans by flickr user anthonyturducken. Anthony has been focusing on the works of painter Lester Carey and documenting it in words and pictures, and as a master’s candidate in architecture preservation studies at Tulane, I think Anthony knows what he’s talking about. He’s even encouraged other people to join in with the documentation.

Lester has a huge portfolio, but I think the pieces of his work that I like best are the text-heavy ones. Take a look:

Thanks to both of you for all your work. It’s beautiful.

All photos by anthonyturducken. Used by permission; all rights reserved

It looks like the first one is gonna do it for LA, Bob

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice

Is also great
And would suffice.

- Robert Frost

Time for a tune-up

Take a look at this road-ready licorice stick trio:

The stage show gets a little too Yahoo Serious/fusion for my taste, but it’s still pretty interesting. See what thou hath wrought, Zappa?

found via Neatorama

Hollywood magic

Much better than I expected. Fifty cents!

Word of the day for Wednesday, August 26th

Hello! Good afternoon! I hope your breakfast was

Actually, if you had one, I’m quite sure your breakfast couldn’t have been anything but jentacular. According to Alan Taylor at Luciferous Logolepsy, jentacular means “pertaining to breakfast.” And now it’s time to rustle up some lunch. If anybody knows a word that means “pertaining to lunch,” let me know.

Straight to hell

Once again I get caught up in a copyright quandary. There’s this incredible photo of a “lost” flyer up on Flickr, and the guy who took it has it marked with a © All Rights Reserved mark, not a Creative Commons mark or anything, and even though the revered Bike Snob has posted the image on his site without any attribution, and even though I have a section on my site dedicated to exceptional notices about lost items, I hesitate to post this exceptional flyer here without seeking prior permission.

At my work, I spend all day listening to people say, “But I’m not making any money off it! I gave you credit! It’s just more publicity for you!” when they violate a client’s terms of copyright. It’s tiresome. Those things aren’t really the point of copyright. Control over the dissemination of one’s work is the point of copyright. I get that. I respect it. Often. Not always. But from time to time I do. In certain contexts. Argh. I don’t know. Thus the quandary.

…

Aw, fuck it. I need to share what’s not mine.

Seeing as he didn’t actually make the flyer, but just took a photo of it, I would argue that this flyer isn’t really Yankel Frankel‘s to copyright either. But he just copyrighted the image of the flyer, not the flyer. And the flyer doesn’t have a copyright notice on it, because obviously the guy/girl who made the flyer wanted it to be disseminated as much as possible.

If I could have gotten one of my friends in New York to steal one of these flyers and send the original to me to scan I wouldn’t be violating anybody’s copyright. And if I put a scanned image up of the flyer it would be good for everybody in terms of disseminating its message, even if I did have someone steal the original flyer… off public property, where no doubt it’s not legal to post flyers in the first place. It’s a slippery slope, this idea of intellectual property. Maybe somebody can buy me an ice cream truck so I can stop worrying about this copyright stuff once and for all.

The future is Plastic

I’m sure you’ve seen Whiplash the dog-riding monkey before, and while he cracks me up, his steed always makes me a little sad. That poor dog seems so terrified to have a monkey on his back. I guess I can’t blame him. Nobody wants a monkey on their back, except for maybe the Great Dane in this film:

Of course, the Lonesome Stranger is no ordinary monkey.

Crack train

It’s time for me to go back to work, so I left Benny and the gang at their beach house and hopped on a train back home. There are several advantages to riding a train over taking a plane, but speed is not one of them. You’re going along, getting your nice crabcake dinner in the dining car, guzzling down a nice half bottle of pinot grigio while hearing about the last time your dinner companions took the train and got delayed five hours because the train killed some dope in Santa Barbara chasing after his dog across the station yard, when it happens – the train stops in Simi Valley while the conductor has to push a cow off the tracks. Brother. Isn’t that what those cowcatchers at the front of the train are for?

Funland

We finally made it to the seaside amusement park. The acrobats were a little seedy looking, but overall it was a fine trip. We did not encounter any bears roaming about.

More photos on flickr.

Scamp on the wagon

This is Scamp:

Scamp was a squirrel who made kids in the ’60s pledge not to drink alcohol. Instead of drinking, kids wrote letters to Scamp telling them what they were doing instead of drinking.

Scamp was cute, but kind of a drag. Those kids all sound in desperate need of a drink.

I don’t think Scamp is around any more, so if you write to him, don’t expect a response any time soon.