Sharks are not mammals

Let the people never say that I did not listen to their comments on my blog. Even the anonymous ones. And so, we return to the ongoing Fran Clan exhibition with a piece from François.

If you have been noticing that all the pieces so far have come from just two members of the Fran Clan, I should note that not all members produced pieces at the same rate. However, that does not necessarily mean that some were more creative than others; Francine’s, for example, were just much larger than average. With dimensions of 8.5 by 11 inches, it is easy to understand why he produced only two such works.

But despite being one of many, today’s piece, “Sharks are not mammals” (crayon and pencil, 2002) still stands out. A cake can be seen telling a stalagmite (remember, folks: “g” for “ground”) its true feelings about their relationship. The stalagmite agrees, perhaps somewhat placidly; its response is in lowercase type. The presence of word bubbles demonstrates the pervasive influence of the primary humorous genre of art, cartoons, on the Fran Clan. This is hardly the only piece to make use of word bubbles, as will be seen in the coming weeks.

As is typical for a piece from the Fran Clan school, “Sharks are not mammals” is suffused with irony and humor. The setting, a cave, may be a visual pun on the cake’s apparent desire for a platonic relationship. Can you find another visual pun?

The Strangest Fortune from a Cookie I Have Ever Received

Note: Because of some blogspam (blam? splog? fake posts? what do you call them?) I’ve been getting lately, I have enabled word verification for comments. This will be slightly inconvenient for you, the poster, but I run the ship around here, not some spam-bot. Ironically, word verification can be said to be a kind of Turing Test, since it aims to have a user prove they are human by doing something software can’t. Say for example, reading a distorted series of letters and numbers in a graphic. So any program that could actually do word verification might be judged to be artificially intelligent, by this standard. Hm. Well, it would certainly have to be a clever program.

And let’s not forget: intelligent programs are not the same thing and self-aware or self-conscious programs. And the intelligence of computer programs can still be quite limited, working well only in certain applications. For example, a program could be very good at identifying faces in crowds on surveillance video and other such visual pattern recognition tasks, but not be able to understand patterns in text. Such a hypothetical program could not read a message where all the letters are simply repeated. Which is where today’s title comes in:

“Ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn..”

The Circle of Life

Before we discuss this week’s piece, a few tidbits from what’s actually happening presently in my life. Saw Good Night, and Good Luck last week. It is excellently made and everyone in the cast gives a strong performance. Of course, the subject matter is uncomfortably relevant, I would say. But all of that you could have gotten from any number of talking head reviews. Here’s my tidbit: see if you can figure out which minor character is Alex Borstein, voice of Lois Griffin on Family Guy!
My semester finally started last Friday. Safety will be difficult. The design project will be difficult, but at least that’s basically limited to February. Apologies in advance if I don’t post during that month. Apologies also if you were really itching to hear some more of those stories I foreshadowed in “”FREEDOM!!” I will try to switch it up a little bit and throw some of those in alongside the art exhibition, but the simple fact is that those take longer to write. It’s pretty easy to throw together a paragraph and post some silly drawing, by contrast.
On the grad school front, I have been accepted with full support to the University of Washington (located in Seattle) and Berkeley. Both have graciously offered to fly me out (on their dime… er, thousands of dimes) to tour their campuses. This will happen in February and March, and of course I am excited. I love traveling anyway, and I have not yet visited the great state of Washington.
I also need to mention some kind of a disclaimer. I suspect that the Radisson Hotels would not necessarily like their good name besmirched by this zaniness. So: the views expressed on this blog and in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of Radisson Hotels, its employees, partners, etc. They’re good people; without their little tablets of paper in their rooms, none of this would have been possible. But don’t hold it against them.
OK, today’s piece: “The Circle of Life,” (pencil, 2002) by Francisco. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but if you need something to think about, consider this: it’s not really a circle.

Whoa dude, deep.

Lost Artwork Recovered—by Me!

What would this blog be without self-aggrandizing? I would think there is enough self-deprecating humor thrown in as well to counter-balance it.

Anyway, one time during my senior year of high school, I was on a jazz band trip to Bismarck, ND. We were playing at some university jazz festival, probably the U of Mary, you know, one of those things that high school jazz bands do. I shared a room at the Radisson Inn (which was becoming quite familiar to me by that point from many other trips to various state-level student events and competitions those days) with my good friends Matt Crummy (and check out his music), Josh Killfoil, and Brian Palay. Around 9:27 PM we started to feel a wee bit peckish, so we traipsed over to a nearby Applebee’s. Serendipity dictated that we keep the crayons from our table. And later, someone noticed that our room had little notepads of paper… and a movement was born.

The Apple/Fran Clan school of artistic thinking had few real goals or characteristics, but nevertheless enjoyed relative popularity during 2002. Many visual works of art were exhibited in the hallway of the music wing of Red River High School in the spring, and in the fall, the exhibition moved to the renowned Room #302 Gallery in Stephenson Hall. Poems written in the Apple style also surfaced periodically in this time period.

Defining characteristics of the visual art side of the movement include use of crayon, pencil, pen, and other so-called “primitive” or “elementary” artistic utensils as a medium. In general, the works were relatively small, often about 3”x5”. A variety of subjects were covered, including still-lifes and portraits, with numerous Surrealist tendencies. In a way, the style of the works can be seen as reacting to some of the more esoteric and less audience-friendly aspects of Abstract and Postmodern (PoMo, to you hipsters) art; Apple/Fran Clan art basically always came with a sense of humor, although the poetry could be more serious.

Although the movement was originally thought to be limited to high school students at Red River High School, research by art historians revealed that quite a few celebrities (including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, veteran Democratic advisor James Carville, former NASA administrator Daniel Goldin, and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf) had painted works in this general style for Debra Trione. These have been collected in her book called A Perfect World: Words and Paintings From Over 50 of America’s Most Powerful People.

The two names associated with the movement have different origins. but are equally applicable. “Apple” refers not to the manufacturer of iMacs and iPods, nor to the Beatles’ music company, but rather to the good ol’ American Pie fruit, which is a common theme in a number of works from the school. “Fran Clan” is a name given to the collective of artists that contributed most of the works: Jason Melin (Francesca), Matt Crummy (Francine), Josh Killfoil (François), Joel Abrahamson (Francisco), and Brian Palay (Francesca the Lesser). As you can see, they all have “Fran” in their names.

After the Stephenson Hall exhibition closed, the location of most of the Apple/Fran Clan works of art was unknown for some time, until I stumbled upon them in an excavation of certain boxes in a storage room in southern Grand Forks, North Dakota. Now, for the first time, these works will be exhibited electronically (at least as fast as I can scan them) at Turing Test THIS!! Prepare for your brain to be challenged and your face to be contorted. From laughter. It is recommended that you keep in mind this disclaimer that was presented with the previous exhibitions: “Don’t ask what anything means, cause we don’t know. No, we weren’t on drugs.”

Our first piece is by François and is titled “Blue stop signs mean go!” (crayon, 2002). I used it as the cover art for my debut album, Joeliosis, released by Harriman Enterprises in 2002.

Oh Yeah: Happy New Year

Just think of this: if you’re on the Julian calendar, it’s not even the new year yet. Same for the Chinese calendar. And obviously, the Jewish New Year is nowhere in sight. So keep these things in mind before you accuse me of being remiss in my electronic New Year’s greetings to the world.

I’m in Grand Forks right now. It has been a most relaxing time. I was the guest organist at my church, organized a sledding/Super Action Ball day with my high school friends, talked to my high school choir teacher, Mr. Sherwood. It was very good to see all of these high school people. Good to know we haven’t totally fallen out of touch or any such thing. I made sushi (twice) with my family’s Japanese exchange student, Kota. I bowled with Kota and my brother and two Swedes at an exchange student Christmas party (if you think this is a bit late, see the first paragraph).

Now, a story. I guess I would be remiss if I didn’t finally explain for the record what exactly Super Action Ball is, now that I’ve mentioned it again. This story begins, oddly enough, with a T-shirt. One day in Stephenson Hall about two years ago, local resident Sir Dennis was walking around wearing this shirt with writing upon it. And lo, the writing upon the shirt said, “I Won at Super Action Ball.” Being naturally curious, I inquired as to the meaning of these strange words. Dennis told me that he had no idea to what primeval sport the shirt was referring, but he had bought a 12-pack of these garments off of the magical marketplace known to most as eBay. I thought that the shirt was quite imbued with the jolly spirits of hilarity, so I inquired to Sir Dennis if he might bestow one upon me. He readily offered it as a gift, and I accepted.

A few days afterward, in a time closer to the present and with less medieval speech, my friends and I decided to take a break from studying from finals and take advantage of the snow that has recently covered our area. It won’t last long, so you must be sure to use it while it lasts. So that evening we left to go sledding on a campus hill, wearing plastic bag suits. See, since Kansans do not have real sleds for the most part, they have to fashion crude substitutes, like plastic bag suits in which you slide down a hill unassisted by a sled. On the way to the hill I spied a laundry basket that appeared to have been used as another such primitive sled substitute. Knowing that the men of Stephenson were bound to find some interesting use for it, I brought it along to the hill. Then, after the first few runs, inspiration struck, and Super Action Ball (as we know it) was born.

Super Action Ball involves any number of teams of two sliding down a hill, not on sleds but rather Super Action Suits (see aforementioned plastic bags). These pairs are attempting to get the Super Action Ball (which isn’t so much a ball as it is that laundry basket or some other non-spherical object; boxes and bottles have also been used) and carry it across the line to score a Super Action Goal Unit (SAGU, if you wish; it sounds pretty good as a South American-style soccer cheer: “SAGUUUUUUUUU!!!!!”) Naturally, tackling is allowed and encouraged, but in order to keep the game moving, if one is tackled, one must throw up the Super Action Ball, preferably to your teammate. Initially, the Super Action Ball was placed behind a Super Action Box (regular, ordinary cardboard box), but now it is customary to place it inside the SA Box. The first time the referee put it inside caused much confusion; it was pretty funny watching everyone, myself included, try to figure out where the Super Action Ball had gone. Now a number of other random items can sometimes be found in the Super Action Box, including, but not limited to, a Super Action Bowl (regular, ordinary metal bowl) or Super Action Frisbees (regular, ordinary plastic Frisbees). Finally, there is the unnecessary tackling rule, which states that whenever a SAGU is scored, as many people must tackle the scorer as possible.

Super Action Ball has been played every winter since then--that is, whenever snow is kind enough to show up in Kansas. And as I mentioned earlier, I recently introduced the game to North Dakota. Still, without official “rules,” the game is flexible. For example, in the last two games people have played the position of Enforcer or Troll. This person attempts to tackle everyone and has no interest in scoring SAGUs, just causing mayhem. The Enforcer certainly makes the game even more fun, although players should beware if a plastic pool is present on your Super Action Slope. The Enforcer may throw it at you.

Some of you may be wondering if I ever followed up on the shirts to discover the true origins of the name of the game. Of course I did. Some quick Google searching revealed that the game is also some sort of gambling thing played at a Reno, NV casino. I guess that would explain the presence of “John Ascuaga's Nugget” on the shirts that started it all.

I would encourage all of you to try this game. It’s really quite fun and a great new take on sledding. And I am proud to say that now the random shirt from eBay is true, because I have won at Super Action Ball many times.