By now you have no doubt heard that according to astronomers and anthropologists, December 21, 2012 correlates to the “end” of the Mayan calendar. And, despite having repeatedly heard about this for many, many years now, it is also very probable that you still have no idea exactly what this means. The reason is because it’s very complicated. To even begin to understand it you need to look to the Mayan myths of the Sacred Tree and understand their incredibly complex Long Count calendar of tuns, k’atuns, and b’aktuns as well as their concepts of the Great Cycle, the Great Great Cycle, and cycles within cycles. You’d also need to understand astronomical occurrences involving the precession of the equinoxes and the conjunction of the sun at the intersection of the plane of the ecliptic and the Milky Way. You can do all that, or, you can simply read my interpretation of this summer’s Green Lantern movie, which shares the same message as the Mayan mythology. [Read more →]

Tags: movies, religion & philosophy by Marc Oromaner
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10. Cooked 20 three-minute eggs

9. Tried to make sense out of Rick Perry’s words

8. Saw who was the fastest at saying “Irish wristwatch” ten times in a row

7. Shared a bottle of wine, then playing “Irish wristwatch” again

6. Speculated on Rebecca Black’s singing career

5. Watched The Best of Two and a Half Men 30 times

4. Wrote a fan letter to Cloris Leachman

3. Sudoku! Sudoku! Sudoku!

2. Tried to re-set the clock on their VCR

1. Made love to the wife, then took a nap for the other 59 minutes
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: art & entertainment, Bob Sullivan's top ten everything by Bob Sullivan
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I realize that the very nature of writing this post is contrary to my big plan but I’m going to write it anyway; because I don’t think I’m alone when I say, “Enough is enough times infinity.”

Over the weekend, the story broke that Kim Kardashian was getting divorced from Kris Humphries. That “news” is so widespread by now that I didn’t even have to look up how long her marriage lasted to confirm that the union lasted 72 days. It is a number that is burned in my brain thanks to all the Twitter jokes and snide Facebook remarks, the links shared and re-shared, the pithy quotes about how much was made per day in this “marriage for money”, and the countless headlines that abound when you dare to search her name in Google. What makes me pause, though, are the comments written beside many of those shared links: “I am so tired of hearing about these Kardashians.” [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, television by Judi Cutrone
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Well, this is it, friends:  the final edition of “Artistic Unknowns.”  It’s time to wrap it up, I think.  I’ve said the things I wanted to say.  Some readers, I’m sure, will receive this news with a small sigh of relief  — others might even miss participating in the  hashing-out of various problems of art, including the main focus of the column:  challenges and philosophical questions raised by the recurring, situational theme of these articles — living life as an “artistic unknown.”

Despite all that I have talked about here, both in my articles and in the comments with readers, for me, it all really boils down to one conclusion: in order to be happy as an artist, one has to enjoy “the doing” more than the “having done.” “The doing” is elemental; “the having done” is a nebulous collection of questions, in the end. [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo by Chris Matarazzo
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In honor of Halloween, below is an excerpt from the Zombie Kama Sutra, which is sort of like the regular Kama Sutra that we living people all know and love, except that it’s aimed at the Undead. This excerpt features some highly disturbing and erotic images of zombie sexual positions. Please stop reading if the thought of such matter disturbs you.

IN the beginning, the Lord of Beings created men and women, and prescribed therefore about one million rules by which those men and women must necessarily regulate their living existence. Yet, these rules have not applied to the undead. For too long have these wayward, shambling, unholy creatures attempted to engage the acts of courtship, embracing, unions, seduction, and etc.

Death should not be used as an excuse for chaos.

To that end are written these more than one thousand chapters, intended as a guide to those who have risen from the grave by whatever means, be it metaphysical, mystical, biological, or extraterrestrial. These important “rules to be dead by” shall provide to the Zombie the proper knowledge in regards to conducting oneself in all manner of intimate relations. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, ends & odd by Ricky Sprague
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I’ve been writing this column for over a year now.  The reason it is called “Artistic Unknowns” is because my original idea was to focus on the issues surrounding being an unknown artist, yet one who soldiers on in art despite obscurity — an artist like yours truly: busy in a professional and personal artistic context, despite the realities and responsibilities of living everyday life. Sure, the column has branched off into my opinions about the nature of art (some which have been well-received, some, not so much) but the recurring theme has always been folks like me — the busy, if publically unknown, artist. I’ve tried to “write what I know.” [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, religion & philosophy by Chris Matarazzo
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Recent demonstrations by the disaffecteds occupying Wall Street and calling themselves the 99%, coming as they have on the proverbial heels of another populist revolt, the TEA Party, suggest that one thing is clear: people on the left and the right have had it with the status quo in Washington D.C…

…or have they?

Not likely…and I blame The Lion King. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, movies, politics & government by Jay Baldwin
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Tags: movies, politics & government by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
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Like many people I enjoy the music of Kraftwerk and think that their reputation as musical pioneers is entirely justified. Indeed I would choose to listen to Trans Europe Express or The Man Machine over anything by The Beatles any day. Come to think of it, I’d listen to their 2003 album about riding bicycles over anything by The Beatles any day, but that’s another matter. I enjoy their dry humour, their minimalist, retro-futurist aesthetic, their decades-long dedication to pretending they are robots… and of course, their music.

And yet, there is a problem. And if you know Kraftwerk then you will know its name: [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, music, technology by Daniel Kalder
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Shark Night, 3D came out a few months ago, you know. I saw in a preview commercial — just one time. Didn’t go out to see it. What I gathered is this: it is a movie about a night with lots and lots of sharks who come at you in 3D. Oh, and there are girls in bikinis — who, I imagine, come at you in 3D as well, but that is neither here nor there. 

It might have been a great movie (though I doubt it).  [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, movies by Chris Matarazzo
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One of the loose collective of my friends — The Defeatist-Malcontent-Anarchist Slacker Collective and Bait Shop — a Vet who’s trying to get his band going in upstate New York doing kind of boogie rock with metal overtones, spends time he should spend doing something like picking up bottles for the return fee on a Marshall Amp blog, and one of the folks on it posted something about a piece of software that my pal had not heard of. He tossed it out to the collective, and one of the guys explained that it is really kind of an auto-cad system that enables engineers, architechts, and marketing types to overlay everything and walk the customer through the whole bloody thing. He then commented that if he wanted to go back to working for somebody else, he’s take some classes…and then realized what he just said. Commented that he hated his life, and went off to drink copiously in the pine woods of Maine. [Read more →]

Tags: damned lies, music by Mike Farrell
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As a teacher and as a writer and musician, I often find myself in the precarious position of knowing that lessons can be extracted from my life and that those lessons can be shared with some benefit to either students or my audience. The danger is that talking about one’s self can be seen as vanity.  Well, I hope you will see this as I truly intend it: a chance for some readers to learn from an artistic life in progress.  I’m an old-hand in the music game at this point, but I sill keep getting pestered by those pesky life-lessons.

So, more of a meditation than an essay this week . . . [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo by Chris Matarazzo
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Have any of my currently unknown artistic brethren and sistren out there noticed what nifty little curiosities we seem, to our  acquaintances? I mean, if we won big fat awards or sold something for hard cash, we would be seriously interesting — legitimate, even. But until then, we are breathing diversions; we are, at best, refreshing company, because if we are, indeed, forced to cut the grass to make ends meet, we still refuse to stray far from playing in the backyard sandbox.  And, oh, the little castles we can make! Such delights! Such fun! [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, education by Chris Matarazzo
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Is Erica Kane dead? It seems her show is, at least on network television. Yesterday was the last episode of All My Children on ABC, and it ended with a gunshot headed in Erica’s direction, followed by a fade to black. Much like its soap opera protagonists, All My Children will be resurrected from the dead, but online. Now two questions remain: who will be in the new version, and who will watch it? [Read more →]

Tags: television by Robert O'Hara
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I was watching Paul McCartney in concert on TV the other day. He was playing to a festival crowd — maybe eighty-thousand strong. (It was at the Isle of Wight or the Isle of Lucy or something like that.) As he got the end of “Hey Jude,” the crowd, many of whom had been years away from being born when “Hey Jude” was written, joined in, singing the “Na-naaa-na-nanana-naaaah,” part and it occurred to me that success is a bizarre thing. [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, music by Chris Matarazzo
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Being creative, most will agree, is an activity that, simplistically-put, satisfies the creative urge. It satisfies that urge both during the process and after the work is complete: satisfaction through the act and through admiration of the act. This urge drives artists to create. What I wonder is whether that urge is dulled by little “creative” accomplishments in daily life. [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo by Chris Matarazzo
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Part of the description of this column includes the idea that it is geared toward the everyday artist — the artists who keep on doing their thing regardless of relative anonymity. I’m one of them. We walk this world from top to bottom and we keep at it even though nothing seems to be coming of it, especially financially. Still, there must be a reward of some kind, or we would just give up. [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo by Chris Matarazzo
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If it weren’t for Lady Gaga, many of the points I have tried to make in this column would have been so hard to illustrate. She consistently delivers. She constantly examplifies the things that, in my opinion, are the unnecessary and even damaging trappings of art, from the element that I have called “artistic weirdness” to plain-old insincerity. At the recent MTV video awards, dressed up and acting like a dude, as “Jo Calderone,” Gaga physically illustrated the pitfalls of insincerity in art — the problems that are caused when “show” overshadows art. [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, music by Chris Matarazzo
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Robert Crumb was one of the most important of the Underground Cartoonists of the late 1960s-mid 1970s. He became an icon thanks to creations like “Fritz the Cat” and “Mr. Natural,” the original Zap Comix, and the cover of the Big Brother and the Holding Company album “Cheap Thrills.” His artistic skills are among the best in the history of comics.

His work was fantastically personal. The subject matter was usually bleak, and featured caricatures of sexual violence and depravity that were so exaggerated as to be almost quaint. Very often, it read like the fever dreams of a teenage virgin fantasizing about what he would do with an enormous woman with mythical proportions of chest and buttocks. Crumb’s fantasies were, for the most part, specific to himself, and so reading his works is too often like listening to someone tell you about the really weird dream he had last night. Any satirical elements or broader social commentary tended to be superficial at best, and usually accidental. The greatest tension in his work is the dichotomy of artist vs. diarist. And when he ventures outside his “let-me-tell-you-about-the-really-weird-dream-I-had-last-night” comfort zone, he tends to lose focus. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing by Ricky Sprague
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My seven-year-old son, who has once been immortalized in this column for his masterful rendition of a the Jaws poster, informed me last Friday morning that he was planning a puppet show: “Mario Brothers.”

This meant I had work to do.

We went to the computer and printed pictures of the characters (no drawing this time; he wanted precision) and then we went out back to find sufficiently straight sticks to use to hold the cut-out characters. After an hour of box-cutting, stick-taping and theatrical logistics, the play was ready to begin. No script. This was to be improvisational puppet theater. Puppeteering without a net. [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo by Chris Matarazzo
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