It's No Koan

Kinda makes you think, doesn't it.

Garage Sale Portraits, No. 14

(Artist: "Thos")

Random insult of the week

Dick Cheney wants to go hunting with you.

Simian Humor

Lancelot Link, eat your heart out.

Toys were more fun then

We used to have all kinds of toys that could burn, electrocute, poison, or maim you while using as directed. Creepy Crawlers was one of my favorites.

Too much time on my hands

Don't ask why, but I'll be painting a Russian tank this weekend. I used to love these little bottles when I was a kid. Passive glue sniffing might have affected my grades, now that I think about it.

Zen timewaster No. 344

Teaching chimps the martial arts is of dubious wisdom.

I want one of these

It's a Ford concept car designed by Marc Newson. I first saw it in Architectural Digest at least six years ago -- before the price of oil skyrocketed -- but lo and behold here it is again. Isn't it time for practical, efficient, but attractive cars in America? (The Prius is ugly, folks.)

Ford. Build this car!

Publishing = Pimping

I apologize in advance for this, but I experienced a blast of schadenfreude yesterday when I read William T. Vollmann's NYT review of Exit A, the new novel by Jarhead author, Anthony Swofford. I trust Vollmann, and it's clear from his remarks that this unfortunate book is a sin committed as much by the publishing business as by the writer, who should have known better than to write a "romance" after the critical acclaim of his Gulf War memoir.

It all goes to show that publishing today is all about name recognition and parlaying success into, if possible, a franchise. Once a name becomes recognizable, it will be pimped until it's overcome by other more current names, but in the meantime the author will have whored himself up the ying yang trying to give his publisher what it wants. Swofford, who by all accounts wrote an engaging book about his Marine Corp experiences in the first Gulf War, is now going to have a piece of two-bit entertainment (Scribner, $25.00) attached to his name when he might have carved out a niche for himself as a military anecdotist with a flair for irony. Thanks to Scribner, he'll likely be going down the tubes now. Unless, that is, a major motion picture comes of Exit A, starring Clooney and Ziyi Zhang. (Chinese and Japanese are interchangeable in Hollywood).

As harsh as his review is, Vollmann is trying to help Swofford. Maybe a career can be salvaged. Or maybe, in the end, it's all about the money.

Dive Bar

Car Toon

Zippy's driving his Metropolitan today. Subscribe to daily and Sunday Zippy here.

Random insult of the week

Before you came along we were hungry. Now we are fed up.

Dizzying

San Franciscans, or shut-ins of any stripe, will enjoy a nifty photo site called Vertigo...Then and Now. It compares locations from the Hitchcock movie, Vertigo, with images taken in 2003. Much has changed. Then again, not as much as you'd think.

Here are the shots of Castro and Market at 17th St.

1958

2003

Twisted

Took this today with my brand new Canon A540. Auto exposure, no fancy stuff.

Scary stuff

(From The Pulp Gallery)

Oh my God. When did monsters get guns!?

Training wheels

My father was such a sentimental sap. We always begged for a train set for Christmas, and he finally delivered one, one year: a War Train. Oh, how seasonally inappropriate it was, zooming around and around under the tree. It had a locomotive that shot missiles, a box car that flew into pieces when bombed, another box car whose top opened up and fired a rocket, and a flatbed car with a satellite mounted on it that would go whirling up into the tree when deployed. We obliterated most of our glass ornaments with these yuletide weapons, but the memories live on.

Yum yum eat 'em up

That's right. The fine print says "beef porcupines." I wonder if the spikes hurt going down.

Random insult of the week

The last time I saw a face like yours I threw it a fish.

Zen Timewaster No. 881

The soundtrack is particularly fitting.

Do the mash

I do believe I had every last one of these. Yes, I was a monster geek. I subscribed to "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine. Oh, how I wished I had been born a monster.

Model images via Wes Clark (not the famous one).