The Walrus was Paul!?!?!

5.26.2007

No Plugs Today.
Sorry Buckos.

So Malach has realized something about himself.
So, today was yet another beautiful pre-summer day, almost 90 degrees. So, I am out in my studio painting, while the kids are playing in their wading pool and with the hose, with the large double doors open watching them while I paint. My 4 year old daughter keeps coming over to help and give advice. I am playing The Beatles album Love. Get into a conversation with my 5 year old son about the meaning of the song All You Need is Love. So, what does Malach realize? I am closet hippie.

So is the a phrase for a geek/hippie? A Gippie?

Speaking of the new painting.

Since I haven't done a painting since the last commission a few months ago. And since so many people liked following along with the painting and what I think about and do while I paint; I decided to do it with this one. Unfortunately, I did not photo my pre-canvas creation process which I will do next time.

So, at left is what I worked on today for about 2 hours. I wanted to do a painting about my kids, but I got inspired by one of the Beatles songs we were listening too, so this painting is about my 4 year old daughter and will be entitled Livy in the Sky with Diamonds.

First is in kind of hard at this stage to see the textures that were applied to the canvas from some of the junk I keep around my studio. It will be a bit more obvious once I begin to work on the piece and highlight some of it. You will also notice, once again, a strange shaped canvas. This is just two similarly sized canvases, put together, but instead of brackets, like usual, I actually just screwed the top canvas onto the bottom, throught the stretcher bars, so the top canvas is raised from the bottom about 1". I then made this haphazard cover up between the two from assorted pieces of fabric, canvas, plastic, and netting. Also added, a some paper (you can see the fringe hanging off the canvas at the right of the image) a gate handle, a squirt gun, and a few other odds and ends including a dredel.

The first 2 hours of this piece is basically blocking in the image, color and composition, very rough, but you can see the basic form of what I am going for. I use fairly straight forward color for this process. I will be building up the star and diamond patterns, adding more light, and defining the figure a bit more next session.

So, later.

Playing baseball with the boy, the boy's got a pretty good swing for a 5 year old. Using a fairly heavy padded bat, and a practice baseball. Line drive up the middle on the old man. This is the first time I have ever taken a ball in the groin, all the years I played. Luckily he's only 5, and I was back to speed in 10 minutes.

Something is stalking my garbage.

So, I live in the suburbs, on a dead end street, in a semi wooded area. We get skunks, raccoons, possum, rabbits, the occasional woodchuck, and occasional deer and coyote. I have a fairly long yard (about 180' which ends in a fence, beyond that fairly dense woodland, slightly swampy, and the about 200' later the highway.

So last night, something dragged my locked garbage can (the one with two bags of fairly heavy garbage in it) about 75' until the top popped open and went to town on the two bags. Now, I am unsure what could have done this. As far as I know there are no bears anywhere near where I live . . .

You are listening too . . .

Glass Onion, off The White Album. A interesting Lennon composition, said by Lennon as a response to those who dug for meaning in his lyrics. He basically did this song to fool around with those kind of people. The song references other lines from other Beatles songs. It references I Am the Walrus, Strawberry Fields Forever, There's a Place, I'm Looking Through You, Within You Without You, Lady Madonna, The Fool on the Hill, and Fixing a Hole.

The line "The Walrus was Paul" became a huge lynchpin for the later "Paul is Dead" conspiracy that developed in 1969. According to Lennon, "Glass Onion was a throwaway song, much like I Am the Walrus. "I threw the line in—'the Walrus was Paul'—just to confuse everybody a bit more. It could have been 'The fox terrier is Paul.' I mean, it's just a bit of poetry. I was having a laugh because there'd been so much gobbledegook about Pepper—play it backwards and you stand on your head and all that."

Musically the song has a killer Ringo drum rift, and is one of the more experimental songs off The White Album in terms of studios wizardy, and sampling. This song in turn has been sampled numerous times by the hip hop community. It also features strange little song samples from each of the songs it references. I like it alot.

The Mood of Red Sox Nation.

After a long rain delay, Dice-K only pitching 5 cause of a stomach bug, they still won last night. Yanks have lost 2 in a row, and Cashman in now on the hot seat. Of of this moment they are 11 up, and they are up right now 6 - 4 in the top of 6. The Mood: I hate to say this, but the Division in over.

Oh Dana Plato.

OK, what's the over under before Lindsay Hoehan appear in Playboy?

Hehehehe.

Hey, you guys could always try hanging light up signs around Boston.

Malach's Quote/Video of the Day.

I'm not going to deny the fact that I've tried pot. I hated it. But I've never tried cocaine. I've seen my father, I've seen how it messes with families, and, you know, it fucks your life up. If I hadn't experienced that, I may have gone a different route. I don't know. But I've seen how it literally tore my parents apart. - Lindsay "Dana Plato" Hoehan

I am Malach and my groin feels much better thank you.