Saturday, August 4, 2012

Building (9/10-20/21) 1985-1996


Music television commercials, watch seldom.  The music will run and cleave distances in a decade, opens with pap – memorize lyrics and repeat verbatim in hours of walking to T.G.&Y. to look at, buy, steal, or hide for later purchase Transformers and G.I. Joe action figures.  Obsessive replay of radio songs, commercial jingles, and unvarying stream of consideration, narration, thought, analysis, regret, and dialogue – visualized a blockade formed from the very material halted, a lattice of all that came in, clogged by my support and ad hoc addition – grimacing lonesome struggles.  Adolescent installation and flaunting component car stereo system of crossover, removable face head-unit, amplifiers, CD changer, and oversized speakers in silly-blue teeny-jeep, driving with volume and repetition, the patterns and subtleties hammer past ignore-ance, listen.  At ends, ingestibles laden, synchronized realignment with commercial outlets before Crumbling.  Snobbish intellectuals electrify near admissions that popular/common pieces may split potential: to pander, or to re-ignite smoldering piles of fallen underbrush, critics focusing on proper and limiting entrance – “at what door have you been rapping” – rather than on the spaces opened up to.  Years of no real books, happening upon the first 9 or so John Grisham novels, mocked at college that I wasn’t really reading after boasting, but was off. 
Television constant – patterns of association, language, action, thought, relations, ideas, timing, structure, expectations, beliefs, et cetera - situational/romantic comedy rut – pieces ill fit.  Mike, Growing Pains, truant from school, shocked the world continues on each day without him, as evidenced by his viewing television show of daytime broadcast – he turns power off, on, off, on… finding the show still going regardless of his attention/attendance.  I listen to this show (without images, the studio/home audience view the rear of his television set) and some audio technician has done adequate job starting and stopping the opening song on cue to Mike’s actions, but does not allow sound to continue when off, as in real time broadcasts – instead, when turned on, song picks up where it left off each time.  Mike left marveling at continuation of the world without him, revealed by a soundtrack always waiting for his return to begin again – nothing lost/gained.  Years I watch, and advertisements. 
Dad and mom buy DC Star Trek comic book subscription, based on interest in reruns of series.  By High School, ten long box collection, buy thirty-three more, back stock, three thousand dollars, we became dealers – monthly conventions, buying collections, cherry-picking the valuable, old, interesting, hard to find, unique, of interest, or currently demanded and selling remains to keep whole process moving along – exponential access to the medium.  Decade later, our horde several hundred long boxes, hundreds more passed through our hands.  Those listed particularly memorable; others expected in some far off circumstance of flipping through the boxes, time to visit and note.
Astounded at my intuitive “skill” of duplicating a comic book or cartoon illustration freehand, years of working up exaggerated forms of muscle/frontal poses of my own or costume/weaponry on static figures while concurrently a secondary style of simplified cartoonish line and repetitive/redundant character. 


MUSIC / SPOKEN WORD / SOUNDS
·         Beatles
o   Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
·         Beck
o   Mellow Gold
·         Counting Crows
o   August and Everything After
·         Cream
o   Disraeli Gears
·         Dr. Dre
o   The Chronic
·         Bob Dylan
o   Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits
o   Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume II
·         Nirvana
o   Bleach
o   In Utero
o   Nevermind
·         N.W.A.
o   Niggaz4Life/100 Miles and Runnin’
o   Straight Outta Compton
·         Pear Jam
o   Ten
·         Rage Against The Machine
o   Rage Against the Machine
·         Smashing Pumpkins
o   Gish
o   Siamese Dream
·         Toad the Wet Sprocket
o   Dulcinea
·         Tool
o   Undertow

MOVING / STATIC IMAGES WITH AND WITHOUT SOUND
·         Alfred Hitchcock Presents
·         Aliens
·         Apocalypse Now
·         Bill Cosby: Himself
·         A Brief History of Time
·         Dark Crystal
·         Fargo
·         Fortress (1985)
·         G.I. Joe (1985-86)
·         Hamlet (1991)
·         Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse
·         In Living Color
·         Jacob’s Ladder
·         The Kids in the Hall
·         The Last Emperor
·         L.A. Story
·         Miracle Mile
·         Mr. Bean
·         Read On: Cover to Cover with John Robbins
·         Richard Pryor (comedy specials)
·         Silence of the Lambs
·         The Simpsons
·         Stand and Deliver
·         Star Trek: The Next Generation
·         The Thing (1982)
·         Transformers (Season 1, 2 and 1986 movie)
·         12 Angry Men
·         The Twilight Zone
·         2001: A Space Odyssey
·         2010: The Year We Make Contact

WRITTEN WORDS WITH AND WITHOUT STATIC IMAGES
·         Michael Azerrad
o   Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana
·         Comics Buyer’s Guide
·         Cynthia L. Cooper & Sam Reese Sheppard
o   Mockery of Justice: The True Story of the Sheppard Murder Case
·         Esther Forbes
o   Johnny Tremain
·         Daniel Keyes
o   Flowers for Algernon
·         John Knowles
o   A Separate Peace
·         Harper Lee
o   To Kill a Mockingbird
·         Wilson Rawls
o   Where the Red Fern Grows
·         Anne Rice
o   Interview with The Vampire
·         Richard Shenkman
o   Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of American History
o   (w/ Kurt Reiger) One-Night Stands with American History
·         John Steinbeck
o   Of Mice and Men
·         Bram Stoker
o   Dracula
·         Scott Turow
o   One L
o   Presumed Innocent
·         Mark Twain
o   The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
o   Tom Sawyer
·         Thornton Wilder
o   Our Town
·         Elizabeth Yates
o   The Seventh One
·         Paul Zindel
o   The Pigman