happy new year !!

Merry Christmas! CD's for everyone!!!!

Last year's CD's: click here
note: the blogs of all CD's represented are on my sidebar. next batch: red; thursdaynext..

Mute Monday: Role Model

The King of Looney Tunes: the incomparable Charles M (Chuck) Jones. Nobody ripped pop culture better. Oh, you thought the best appropriation of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" was in "Apocalypse Now?" nay, dear reader, nay. Grrrherherherhahaha!



R.I.P. CMJ September 21, 1912 - February 22, 2002.

Friday Dog Post: Dog-in-a-Truck

gratuitous photos of trout placeholding while i make this year's Blogger CD's for my Christmas post. wanna see last year's CD's? click here
Oh and speaking of Christmas: heres what my cards read inside. grrrerhahahahaha

To all my Democratic Friends:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the any of you.


To my Republican Friends:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

trout and otis

added sunday morning: *in the woods with no laptop power cord!! see you monday night*

here's trouty at my art studio having a good time prepping for anonymous boxer's blog party. shot with EL CHEAPO 3 year old nikon cool pix with no sound capability but at least there's Otis to take up the slack. this video is RAW and UNEDITED and in poor quality but hey, it's coming in at a short 2:35 minutes with a view of my studio and a shot on my computer that EVERYONE will recognize. i am taking to the party my hideous cookies, my custom ornaments and my decorated dog....see posts below. im inviting you all to join me at anonymous boxer's party see sidebar or link in cookie

dressed and ready for anonymous boxer's party

eat your heart out William Wegman. grrrherhahahaha

i will never bake cookies again

I wanted to make a batch of cookies for
anonymous boxer's blog party. i chose a recipe i found on the sick twisted site known as "all recipes.com" and found "the best sugar cookies ever" with 40, yes 40 rave reviews. i made the dough and selected 2 cookie cutters in the shapes of a chicken and scottie dog, cause, let's face it, nothing says "christmas" like chickens and scotty dogs.

i made the dough and was worried...4 eggs? its going to be "cakey" not "chewy" but i was committed and trusted in the 40 rave reviews. it said the dough would need to chill for an hour. i put it in the fridge to chill good-n-hard overnight, and went to bed.

i never really slept. i had a horrible headache and wasnt sure if it was the newly installed bionic neckpiece or a sugar hangover from all the raw dough i ate. at 5:15, i gave up and got up, dialed 400 on the oven and got the dough out, head still banging.

the dough was a sticky hideous mess. no amount of flour on the rolling surface or other gimmicks such as rolling between waxed paper or parchment changed the outcome: i couldnt get a cookie cut without prying the dough out of the cutter. and i could only cut one or two before the dough had to go back into the fridge. in 20 minutes i had four cookies worthy of going to the oven. i watched in horror as the chicken shapes spread first into fat turkeys, and then into a blob resembling a teapot with a gopher head sticking out of the top.

the cookies had an ugly mottled surface; crackly and not too appetizing. on the scotties it made sense: just like a real scotty with eczema and a thousand dollar a year prednisone bill. all that was missing from the chicken cookies was salmonella. i frosted the chick with the appropriate surface decoration.



for my effort i had exactly this many cookies..what you see on this plate...before i threw the dough into the trash. i took a painkiller. then came the kitchen clean-up; a collosal chore thanks to the mortar like dryed dough that found its way onto every surface in the kitchen as well as the carpet thanks to trout, who had snuck some dough out of the trash and had gotten all lovey-dovey with it.

but there's always a way to salvage a failed effort. instead of taking cookies to anonymous boxers party, i will offer as my gift new vanilla flavored driveways for everybody!!

Mute Monday: color

Henri Matisse "The Red Studio" 1911





















Georgia O'Keefe "White Calico Flower" 1931

















Pablo Picasso "Green Still Life" 1914





















Marc Chagall "The Large Grey Circus" 1959





















Mark Rothko "Untitled: Orange and Yellow" 1957





















Andy Warhol "Turquoise Marilyn" 1962

















Edgar Degas "Pink Ballerinas" 1904





















Margaret Preston "Brown City" 1940





















Franz Marc "The Blue Horse" 1908
















Frank Stella "Black Abstraction" 1969





















Paul Gauguin "The Yellow Christ" 1889





















my own painting holding the painting above: "me and eva and gauguin" painted while in oaxaca mexico