COURTNEY LOVE


     Just finished reading PEACE, COURTNEY LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING, Debbie Stoller's interview with Courtney Love from the June/July 2013 issue of BUST magazine.
     I'm an unashamed forever-fan of Courtney Love as a cultural anti-hero. Love all her music, love watching her, listening to her, and if there were a 24-hour Courtney channel I'd be glued to it. She's confusing and contradictory and complex. Like most truly great art, it's best to look/listen/watch, rather than judge/analyze/categorize. There's real energy and ideas there.
     I loved the article, and found Courtney's ranting and rambling to be mesmerizing, as usual. I chortled out loud several times, and felt like highlighting a few lines that resonated with me for various reasons. (I refrained, because I'd borrowed the magazine from a friend.)
     I'm also left with a nagging irritation that interviewer Stoller got some things wrong, and left some details blurry.
     For example, on the first page she describes Courtney thusly:

"In her babydoll dresses, combat boots, and smeared red lipstick..."

     When I read that, I looked up from the magazine and asked my husband, "Hey- do you remember ever seeing Courtney wearing combat boots?"
     He was playing Animal Crossing on his Nintendo DS, and was like, "What? I dunno. Why?"
     I read him the above description and was like, "I don't recall EVER seeing Courtney wear combat boots!" My pants were in a serious twist. I even marched in here to the computer and did a Google image search for "courtney love combat boots," and of course found no such thing. "Mary Janes" are the iconic Courtney Love babydoll kinderwhore footwear. Patent leather Mary Janes.


     I realize this all makes me sound like a crazy faggy lunatic, but seriously. If you're going to write about an icon like Courtney, shouldn't you get that kind of detail correct?
     Then, I read the part where Stoller mentions Courtney's forthcoming memoir for HarperCollins and some other projects:

"In addition to writing, she is also working on a fashion line called Never the Bride, and recently had a show of her artwork. (...) She brings out a bound book of her work and leafs through the pages with me. The images look to have been hastily created in watercolor and pencil."

     Stoller doesn't name the show or the book, so I had to do a little digging.
     The show in question must be 'AND SHE'S NOT EVEN PRETTY': THE ART OF COURTNEY LOVE, which I found info on HERE. I wish I knew if the book in question was something produced exclusively for that show. I searched "and she's not even pretty courtney love" on Amazon and couldn't find anything. Maybe Stoller was referring to DIRTY BLONDE: THE DIARIES OF COURTNEY LOVE. That's a big lavish coffee table art book with writings and drawings and photos, the 2006 publication of which was an event to us Courtneyfiles.
     I'm a little surprised that Stoller, co-founder of BUST, and feminist commentator, didn't clarify for us the title and availability of that "bound book" of Courtney's artwork. Is she just fucking with us? 'Cuz she makes a point to mention that Courtney autographed the book and gave it to her for keeps. GodDAMMIT.
     Maybe I should forgive Stoller for these oversights. At least she does tell us two specific song titles from Courtney's new band, which is now just called COURTNEY LOVE, instead of HOLE. The titles are WEDDING DAY and CALIFORNIA.
     In typical Courtney style, she tells Stoller,

"I've been offered money to do an oldies (tour) sort of thing," (...) "It's just not me."

     But on July 27th my husband and I saw Courtney and her COURTNEY LOVE band perform at the Grove in Anaheim and do exactly that. I don't care about the contradictions. I loved every minute of it. (But I do wish they would have played those new songs! Damn you, Stoller!!!)
   
   
   

CRAFT TIME : DIY Wallet

     I've made Duct Tape wallets before, and my last one finally got so grimy my husband insisted I replace it. So I tried something slightly different, using the same basic construction. I took some of my library comic strip art and reformatted it to be the right size and dimensions. After printing in color on photo paper, I laminated it with Contact Paper. Using a combo of clear packing tape and some Duct Tape, I made the wallet you see below.
     There are tutorials/patterns all over the internet. Here are a few:

(Ignore my fat Slovak fingers)
Open, with the exterior showing
The interior
     I used some old discarded library checkout cards to make interior pockets. One of them is from a book called NOBODY ELSE HAS TO KNOW by Ingrid Tomey, and the other is from TROUBLE ON THE TRACKS by Donna Jo Napoli.

The inside and interior are lined with plaid Duct Tape
The library checkout cards form pockets to stash stuff behind, plus there's a clear plastic pocket OVER them, so you can slip something like your Drivers License (or public library card) into it!
Do it!

     Next time, I plan to make one using the actual cover of a discarded paperback novel. The exterior would look like this:


     I like how cheesy that cover is. Of course I'd remove the remains of that barcode label.

SUMMER VACATION : Roswell Museum in New Mexico

This was one of the postcard images available in the museum gift shop.
I added the dialogue. ;)

     On our drive from Carlsbad Caverns to Grand Canyon we stopped briefly at the UFO Museum in Roswell, NM. It was hokey and quirky and I quite enjoyed it. Anthony and I got some good photos of some of the weird exhibits, including the life-size alien landing diorama. His photos are better than mine, but I'll share a few that I took:

Every 20 or 30 minutes the diorama "wakes up," and there are sound effects, the aliens heads move, the saucer whirls, lights flash, and fog gushes out. When we first arrived, the fog machine was going ape-shit crazy, and they had to turn it off. Which meant that we didn't get to take pictures of the diorama with spooky fog. :(

Anthony and me on the alien streets of Roswell

Alien autopsy diorama

Anthony and me in front of the alien landing diorama

Longshot of the museum interior. That horse is glittery, and has newspaper articles about the Roswell incident decoupaged all over its body. Don't see THAT every day.

Poor sad little alien in his cylinder

SUMMER VACATION : Bookstore


     On our road trip we stopped for the night in Tucson on the way to Carlsbad Caverns. I found a nearby used book store that sounded promising, and it turned out to be really cool. Bookmans has tons of used books arranged carefully by genre and author, with little reading nooks with comfy chairs. They also have CDs, DVDs, video games, board games, puzzles, and a weird "gallery" that is really more of a crazy gift shop full of consignment items.
     Their magazine section was huge, and included racks and racks of comic books! And they also had a graphic novel section. I've never seen a used book store with that many comic books/graphic novels.
     Here's what I got:
DEADFALL HOTEL novel by Steve Rasnic Tem
EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT DREAMS... (Sandman comic)
FOUR DEVILS, ONE HELL (Grendel graphic novel)
     Plus I picked up one of their genre reading lists, which are very much like the ones I make for the library I work in!
     As if I weren't already sold on Bookmans' quirkiness and broad range, there were also lots of people there with their DOGS! Really cute. I don't think I've ever been in a dog-friendly book store before.
(NOTE: Anthony and I discussed the missing apostrophe and the ensuing irritation, but I still loved this book store.)

     When we left, this weird, giraffy vehicle had appeared in the parking lot near our car:

     We stayed one night at "The Lodge On the Desert," and it was really nice and affordable. Would totally stay there again if we had a real good reason to be in Tucson, Arizona.

GLOSSARY
Giraffy : Adjective used to describe something that resembles a giraffe.

SUMMER VACATION : Cavern Doodle

"The Wrong Shoes"
pencil on sketchbook paper
Tommy Kovac, June 2013

     I should have paid attention to the pamphlet that said to wear shoes with good traction when hiking in via the natural cavern entrance. But I wore Converse High-Tops (Chucks), and as everyone knows, they have, like, ZERO traction. So I slipped and fell on my ass, then ALMOST fell twice more on our way down. I was unhurt, but shamed.

LEMON THORNS : Ancient Tattoo Technologies

     On March 25th I posted this: LEMON THORNS
     On May 23rd I was contacted by a "Prehistoric Archaeologist" in Tennessee who is researching "ancient and indigenous tattoo technologies." He had stumbled across my blog post, and asked if I'd be willing to prune and send to him a few short branches with big thorns. I agreed, of course, because that's a really unusual request, and sounds like interesting research.

Lemon tattoo
(Not to be confused with ancient tattoos made using lemon thorns as tattoo implements.)

     He is doing experiments replicating and testing non-metal tattoo implements, to create a library of microscopic use wear patterns that tattooing leaves behind on different tools. He hopes to use the data in the future to help identify tattoo implements in archaeological collections.

Tattooed lemon
(Also not to be confused with ancient tattoos made using lemon thorns as tattoo implements.)

     Apparently there are a bunch of indigenous groups in Southeast Asia that historically used lemon thorns to tattoo. Other groups also used buckthorn, black locust, and osage orange. So if you have any of these trees with big thorns, go ahead and try giving yourself a homemade tattoo! Just use ball point pen ink. Isn't that what they use in prison?
     On second thought-- don't do that.
     Anyway, this archaeologist has been unable to assemble a collection of really big lemon thorns, and I will be surprised if he doesn't consider our tree's thorns "big." They're, like, 3 inches long.

Lemon NECK tattoo! Yikes! Why?!!
(Found this while googling lemon tattoos)

MOTHER'S DAY 2013


     Just thought I'd share the little illo I did on my mom's Mother's Day card envelope. That's my mom pulling the wagon. My mom is the very best mom ever. :)
     I needed little boxes for her gifts, and I got crafty. So I'm sharing that, too.

I actually made the box on the left out of vellum card stock. The one on the right is "re-purposed."

Spray paint and doilies!

The bottoms of the boxes turned out really cool, I think.

NOTE TO SELF: There is no way for a guy to use or even mention "doilies" without seeming like a total nancy. I'm okay with that, but it seems like there should be some manlier alternative term for them. 

     Tomorrow morning my husband and I are taking our two wonderful mothers out to breakfast together, all four of us. That's our tradition. We are very lucky to have these two special ladies in our lives.
     Then after breakfast he takes his mom to the movies, and my mom and I go where the wind takes us. Maybe we'll do a craft, maybe we'll go shopping, maybe we'll play a game. We cannot be pinned down.

GALLERY 999 at Bats Day Black Market 2013


Welcome, foolish mortals...

The spooooooky entrance to the gallery

     In case you didn't know, every year there's a semi-official "Goth Day" at Disneyland where all the black-garbed, ratted-haired, and bat-loving people converge on the park. It's called Bats Day At the Fun  Park. There's a small convention held nearby called Bats Day Black Market, where you can buy all sorts of gothy clothes, accessories, etc. I've been there twice with my comic book publisher SLG and it's always fun and friendly.

A longshot of the gallery entrance, with my Aunt Wanda's spoooooky little blond head in the foreground

         This year the originator of the event, Noah Korda, invited me to participate in a group art show called Gallery 999. (Get it? Because the Haunted Mansion has 999 happy haunts. Duh.) Anyway, the idea is to create original artwork in any medium that pays tribute to the Haunted Mansion, which is obviously every good goth's favorite ride. (In my day in my 'hood we called ourselves "Deathrock," and the term "Goth" didn't pop up until years later when everybody's granny became aware of Marilyn Manson)

"VADER & PALPATINE, SITTING IN A TREE..." by yours truly

     Back to the art show. Noah said he wanted to put a twist on the art show this year because the Black Market happened to be the same day as "Star Wars Day." So our goal was to create artwork that paid tribute to the Haunted Mansion AND Star Wars, by somehow combining the two worlds.
     For some reason one of the first ideas that popped into my head was Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine having to share one of the Haunted Mansion "Doom Buggies," and it being all awkwardly cozy. So that's what I went with. Because it kept making me giggle.

"MANSION WOOBIE" an enhanced detail of VADER & PALPATINE, by yours truly

     Then, as usual, I ended up drawing something I really liked way at the bottom side edge of the picture, where you'd almost miss it. Which is why I used Photoshop to isolate and enhance it and make it its own thing. Mansion Woobie!

This thing was walking around on stilts and scared the shit out of me, but I like it. Check out the horned head in the foreground!

     My husband Anthony and I went to the event with our friend Matt, my mom, stepdad, and Aunt Wanda. I'm like Honey Boo-Boo-- I come with a family entourage. But we're not as annoying, and don't have as many chins.

Our friend Matt and a foxy lady

ARTS & CRAFTS


     This is just some in-progress stuff on my art table right now. I liked the juxtaposition of things. I love the fun mess of the process, when you've got all this stuff out and you're still trying to figure out which things to use, which elements to edit out, but for the time being it looks crazy and exciting.

PANTS

     I would like to take a few minutes to discuss my pants. And pants in general.
     I don't like pants, as a rule. If I could get away with it, I'd wear shorts all year 'round.
     Unfortunately for me, my workplace "strongly urges" us to dress professionally at all times, which means I NEVER wear shorts or even JEANS to work. Plus I have to wear a TIE. Shiiiiiit, man.
     My work pants are all wearing thin-- figuratively, and literally. So I finally had to shop for some new stupid unflattering work pants. It was a degrading, depressing experience, which reminded me of all the reasons I hate pants in the first place.

  •      They remind me that I'm FAT.
  •      They're too warm.
  •      I only wear them to work, so it feels like they should be provided free of cost. But they're NOT.
  •      They fit weird. Which reminds me of how weirdly-shaped I am. (Apparently)

     Take the new pair of pants I'm wearing today, for example. They're very snug in the legs and thighs, yet gape like pantaloons around the waist. I'm wearing a belt, but it creates weird sagging and bunching of fabric that I can't figure out how to distribute more attractively.
Do I look like Little Nemo and his clowny friend, in their weird pantaloons?

     This is not even just because of the whole skinny pants craze. I frequently had this same problem BEFORE the skinny pants invasion. It makes me feel like these pants are designed for a different species or something, like trying to wrestle myself into a pair of dog pants or something. Are my legs and thighs so disproportionately huge? And why does the waist droop? The baggy waist makes NO sense, because I am definitely a little fat most of the time. But I don't see how my legs and thighs can be so much FATTER than my waist! WTF?
     I worry about my pants on a daily basis. Are they too tight? Too droopy? Does my shirt bunch funny where it's tucked in? I've gone so far as to position a magnetic mirror on the metal cabinet in my office so that I can surreptitiously check my waist, crotch, and butt, to make sure everything is holding the line. Zipper up, etc?
     It's tiring. I need a vacation from pants.
   

IN THE DREAMHOUSE : Gummi Bear Cell Phone

     I dreamed my friend Laura picked me up on my lunch hour and drove us to the beach, where we went our separate ways, planning to meet up later. We were supposed to stay in contact with our cells, but I had this weird new cell phone that was rubbery, nubbly, and shaped like a big Gummi Bear. The keyboard was sort of virtual, in that there were no real keys, or markings to tell you where each letter was, you just had to imagine a keyboard wrapped around the body of the Gummi Bear and "type" across the surface of it. Obviously, that's very difficult and inexact, and I kept ending up with these totally garbled messages. I had to keep deleting and starting over.
Imagine this about the size of a chihuahua, and nubbly.

     The Gummi phone had a lens in its chest that would project images as holograms in mid-air, but the problem was everyone else could see them, too, and for some reason Laura kept texting me dirty pictures. I was horrified and embarrassed, and kept trying to turn the Gummi device OFF.
     Then I dreamed about a woman with an elephant-themed zine. There wasn't much to that part.
     The best part of the night was a dream in which I was perusing the aisles of a toy store. I have lots of toy store dreams. This one was very Lego-centric, with plastic facades for Lego playsets, such as a castle, and a dinosaur rock mountain complete with rubber dinosaurs and giant insects.
This isn't exactly what the playset in my dream looked like, but it's close.
I would have pooped my pants over this playset when I was a kid!

     Anthony was with me, and for some reason he had these boxes with him that were filled with his own vintage toys, which were fragile and valuable. Some dumb toddler boys kept trying to get into the boxes, and Anthony kept having to very politely remove their hands and get their attention away from the boxes. Their mother wasn't paying any attention to that. Even in my dreams, parents let their stupid kids run rampant.

POSSUM-GO-ROUND

     Last night around 9:30 or so, little Esther the chihuahua started barking all bat-shit crazy in the back yard. And it was her high-pitched "I'm gonna kick your ass!" bark. She was racing back and forth all along the wall between us and our neighbors. Their dog was barking, too, so at first I thought it was just the dogs being bitchy with each other.
     But she wouldn't stop. I went to the door and tried to call her in, but she was in a frenzy. She began concentrating her ferocious efforts in the far corner, underneath an overhang of honeysuckle, where there's a maze of branches by the back fence. Great place for something to hide. I was pretty sure I heard something hissing loudly.
     After calling her repeatedly to no effect, I was annoyed by the sound of my own voice, and imagining our neighbors saying, "Why doesn't that idiot just go OUT there and GET that stupid little dog?!"
     So I grabbed a flashlight and took off toward the far corner of the back yard. I expected to see a cat, but  when I got close I could see it was a gross baby POSSUM Esther had cornered back there. All pale and red-eyed, frozen in silent terror on the lowest crossbar of the wooden fence.
Not the actual possum, but pretty much like it. Imagine this at night,
with an excited chihuahua and a scared homosexual.
     I HATE possums. Not in theory, but in practice. In theory they're just these poor little animals that we've displaced from their natural habitat. In practice they're freaky and alarming-looking, and prone to hissing and scratching and biting. Naked tails, pointy snouts, razor teeth... YUCK.
     I crept carefully into the corner, underneath the twisting honeysuckle branches, trying to hold onto the flashlight and grabbing at the dog, but trying not to spook the dog so much that it chomped the baby possum, and trying not to spook the possum so much that it chomped the dog. God knows what viruses & germs that possum was carrying.
     Most of the time it was so awkward that I couldn't really see the possum as I was grabbing for Esther, the light bouncing around off of snarled branches and foliage. I was terrified that at any minute I would accidentally grab the possum, or that it would leap at my face, or that its MOTHER was maybe hiding in the bush and was about to attack my face or my dog.
     I really hope none of our neighbors were listening to me hyperventilating and saying something like, "Goddammit goddammit goddammit gross-gross-gross godDAMMIT!!!" over and over again.
     I was finally able to snatch Esther up and dash back to the house. She did NOT want to leave her possum post, so it was a struggle. When I got her into the house I quickly closed the back door. So Esther raced straight around into the laundry room and back out her doggy door, and we had to go through the whole thing AGAIN. (Hence the title, "POSSUM-GO-ROUND.")
     Dog barking, possum hissing, me grabbing Esther's hind-quarters and dragging her out of the honeysuckle, lugging her kicking and yapping back into the house, yelling at Anthony to put the cover down over her doggy door...
Imagine this, but with chihuahuas and possums...

     An ideal version of myself would have gone back out and tried to rescue the possum, maybe kept it in a shoebox with a little blanky and some water and food until the next day. But the poor little thing creeped me out, and I was scared of its claws and teeth and nakedness.
     I sat there on the couch getting my breath back, and feeling bad that over the course of the night a cat would probably eat that baby possum, because I am NOT the ideal version of myself that would have rescued it.
     Eventually Fox's "Animation Domination" numbed my brain, and I fell asleep.
   

LEMON THORNS


     Did you know some lemon trees have giant wicked thorns? I didn't, until I was rooting around under our lemon tree yesterday, picking up the fallen fruit so our dog wouldn't eat it and barf everywhere. I leaned close to the tree and felt something sharp scrape roughly up my forehead and into my hairline. Got myself a big ol' red bloody scratch. Lucky I didn't gouge my eye out.
     I yelped, recoiled, and peered at the offending branch, noticing for the first time since we moved in 5 months ago the giant obvious thorns. Some of them about 2 inches long. Seriously.
     Anthony hadn't noticed the thorns, either, which made me feel a little less stupid. Usually he notices every detail of everything.
This isn't our actual tree, but this is what they look like. I found this pic online.
I don't want to give our tree the satisfaction of taking pictures of it, since it might like the attention. Stupid tree.

THE DEVIL

     So this morning I was reading THE EXORCIST in the bathtub, in particular this really scary part where the demon is revealing itself to Father Karras, and all of a sudden TWO SHOWER CURTAIN HOOKS CAME UNDONE AND DROOPED DOWN!!!
     They're the S-hook kind, not the ring kind, so the effect was of two curved DEVIL HORNS suddenly gazing down toward me where I lay vulnerable in the tub with my Kindle. And I probably shouldn't even have that near water, but I did. I do.
     Why did those two hooks suddenly disengage and droop down? Was it... THE DEVIL?! Revealing itself to me, the way it was revealing itself to Karras in the book?
     I was like, "Oh my god, what should I do? Should I do something?" But it seemed like it would have taken an awful lot of energy to stand up and fix the curtain, so I opted to just continue lying there with the devil staring at me.
     I soon forgot all about it.

     I'm doing illustrations for a friend's book, plus I'm getting ready to do some artwork for a group show in May (gallery999), so naturally I had to get sidetracked and do some weird stuff that has nothing to do with either of those things.
     First I gave a makeover to a scuffed-up brown outdoor bunny using glitter paint and spray paint:
He is now an indoor bunny.

The pattern on his back allows him to hide, entirely camouflaged, in my art room.

     And then I drew this doodle:

MAYA'S APOCALYPSE

     I wasn't worried about the supposed apocalypse happening December 21st this year, based on the "end" of the Mayan calendar.
     BUT... check this out:
     That's the My Little Pony calendar I have behind my desk at work. The kids love it, of course, even the boys (bronies), and a girl named Maya had asked me if she could HAVE the calendar when the year was over. I said sure, and jotted a note on the calendar, on the last day of work before we leave for winter break, so I'd remember to take it down and give it to her.
     Look at that. Our last day of school before break happens to be the 21st! The day of the Mayan Apocalypse!! And the girl's name is MAYA!!! Is it just a coincidence? I thought nothing of it until recently, when there's been more and more talk about December 21st and the Mayan calendar. I suddenly looked at that date square and was like, "Oh, HELL no..."
     What if "Maya" is really an earthly avatar of the Mayan Apocalypse? What if she's merely masquerading as a student who frequents the library, and I'm the only one who even SEES her?! What if on the 21st she comes into the library like usual, and then sheds her earthly form and turns into a Mayan Goddess of Destruction? Like Kali, only with turquoise and, like, leopards or something?
     Oh, lordy lordy.....