Going Back To New Orleans

When the clock strikes midnight Central time, I'll be back in the Big Sleazy cracking a cold one at Molly's At The Market!


Molly's - where, depending on the time of day/night, the crowd can range from this:


To this:


Our long national nightmare of me not going to Jazzfest and returning with a comical picture diary is over. Thanks to some commission work from MCSmackdown, I'll be frolicking at the Fairgrounds and queasy in the Quarter once again. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

The Super Depressing NBA Playoffs Preview

Alright. It's just basketball. "Super Depressing" is relative. But I'm still wearing green shoelaces in my Stan Smiths to celebrate last year's championship. So I'm sticking with "Super Depressing". We'll have to use a different adverb for things that are really really super depressing. "Superer Depressing"?

Wednesday night, I was thinking about this post and how I was going to break down the Finals against the Lakers. I was hoping that it wasn't going to be a repeat of the 1987 title defense. I was confident of a 5 game beatdown of the Chicago No Defenses, an impressive 6 game series win over the Orlando Paper Tigers, and a hard fought series-for-the-ages 6 game squeaker over the Cleveland LeBrons.

Thursday morning: KG's out for the playoffs. Fuck.


Eastern Conference Preview

1 Cavs v 8 De Troit Bas Ket Ball - Cavs in a sweep. Detroit wasn't going to do anything this year with Chauncey Billups. They'll do less without him. I've always been an Iverson fan and have never been a Pistons fan. It's over for both.

2 C's v 7 Bulls - C's in 5. I don't want to hear it. Chicago is not going to score at will against the Celtics' playoff D. KG or no KG. They'll gut out one win.

3 Paper Tigers v Six Sixers - O in 5. Dwight Howard's a force. Several other Orlando players can shoot three pointers. Philly is scrappy and has traces of talent here and there. The last three sentences will be completely irrelevant after Orlando wins this series.

4 Atlanta Hacks v 5 Miami Dwayne Wade - I love this series. I joke about the Hawks being hacks. They're chock full of grit, talent, and heart. Nothing but respect for these guys. Dwayne Wade is a monster talent playing at the peak of monsternosity. He'll win 3 but home court advantage gets the ATL the WIN. Sorry, NBA fans. No Wade v Lebron.


Eastern Conference Semifinals

1 Cavs v 4 Hawks - I watched a great Hawks-Cavs game this year in which the birds got jobbed by the refs on a LeBron go-ahead basket in the final seconds... and then jobbed by a Joe Johnson last second miss. That's your preview. Add in Cleveland's home court start and 3 games worth of rest, and the Cavs will sweep the Hawks.

2 The World Champion Boston Celtics v 3 The Orlando Magic Kingdom Make Believe Contenders - KG's absence will hurt them in this series, but I'm still not buying what Orlando's selling. Don't be fooled by power rankings or those meaningless last 2 wins by Orlando in the season series. The Celtics are better. But without KG, this might go 7. I'll say 7.

Eastern Conference Finals

Fuck. This sucks. The Cavs really needed to get a karmic adjustment for their regular season hubrisistic celebrations during their victory over the Celtics last week. A healthy KG would have been enough - barely. But now, I just don't see it. I think the C's will make a series out of it, but the Cavs' rest and their home court advantage will likely be enough. And LeBron, which I think is French for The Candy. He's good. Cleveland in 7.

Western Conference Preview

Ah, who fucking cares. Lakers are going to win. They'll beat the Jazz in Round 1, they'll beat Portland or Houston in Round 2, and they'll beat Denver, New Orleans, San Antonio, or Dallas in the Conference Finals. Those other series should be entertaining, but the Lakers will be playing the Cavs in the Finals.


The NBA Finals

I think it's going to be the Cavs. I wouldn't bet a lot on it, but that's my call. The Lakers are great, but LeBron, home court advantage, and that Eastern Conference defense are a little bit greater. Cleveland in 6.

But who cares.








UPDATE

Damn it. He's pulling me back in. I was out and he's pulling me back in. 1% chance that he's coming back ...

Opening Day 2009

I'm still working on that promised documentary recommendations post, but Opening Day dictates that I leapfrog it with a tip of the cap to the return of baseball. Here's a Yankees video primer from our buddies at NoMaas.org:


Opening Day 2009 from nomaas on Vimeo.

I'm warming up with a nice scoreless Mets-Reds game right now. The first pitch of the Yankees season gets chucked in a little less than 2 hours. The Bronx Bombers had a healthy offseason of purging dead weight and signing big money power players. I'm looking forward to checking out the Big Two - and I mean Big - this afternoon when CC Sabathia throws his first pitch and Mark Teixeira takes his first swing as Yankees. Let's go Yanks! Let's go blue skies in Baltimore!

@VTKountry - State of The Blogging

Looks like it's been nearly two months since I've written a legitimate blog post - one that wasn't a self- promoting repost from Obe Lincoln or a cop-out video post. No wonder my numbers are dwindling. That or maybe the blogosphere is just slipping into obsolescence with the rise of microblogging. I've done the twitter. I do the twitter. But I'm still not really grasping what it is that people love about it. Which is fine. I don't really "get" acrylics either. Why wouldn't you just use oils. But, whatever. Different strokes for different folks. Microblogging probably doesn't really appeal to me because I'm a rambler at heart and 140 characters is just not long enough for me. I understand how sometimes things require only brief mention and not a full blog post. For instance, today I was flipping through this month's Esquire magazine, which I get courtesy of my father's yearly Christmas subscription gift, and I noticed that a full page ad for viagra was opposite an article entitled "The Golden Age of American Meat". Kinda funny. A chuckle. A giggle. Maybe worthy of a brief mention to my efriends, but at 247 characters, it's nearly double the maximum character limit of a twitter tweet. Yet, it also might not be worthy of a whole blog post. If this were a three times daily blog it might fit, but for a 6.5 posts per month blog, it's less fitting. I think microblogging makes sense when it's part of a larger whole, like the facebook status update, or if it's a tool for people to get updates about the progress of a wildfire or something; but twitter on its own - for random webtainment or webformation - just doesn't do much for me. Or maybe I just need to get a cellphone and experience it that way. Maybe it's a side phenomenon of the texting world from which I've abstained. For now, it's back to old-school blogging for me. And it's about time for rusty old VTK. What'll it be, VTKountry? Sports? Politics? A mid-season LOST review? A frank discussion about how much Jimmy Fallon's new show sucks? How about some documentary recommendations? Alright, I'll be back in a bit with some doc recs. Stand by for my next bleet...


[UPDATE: I just microblogged about this blog about microblogging. But you already knew that. You've always known it. Eternal recurrence of the same?]

Timmy Takes on Wall Street

In the latest Obe Lincoln political cartoon, Obe satirizes Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.


There are some great faces to caricature in politics right now.

Also, check out this song about Paul Krugman:

Ricky Gervais and Elmo

Thanks to Gerard for the tip to this video on Receive Bacon:

Can you DIG it?

Dig my painting on the cover of the new edition of Boston's weekly entertainment magazine, the Weekly Dig.


UPDATE: If anyone's interested in a Dig framed print of the cover, you can get them through the site for $20 (Artist gets half). If you're interested in a limited edition print of the actual painting (sans cover text etc), contact me and I can get you sizes/pricing on that. (artist gets 75%).

Happy Saint Paddy's Day.

The Obe Keeps Rolling - Hillary Goes To China

Her first trip as Secretary of State:

What is copyright infringement?

[UPDATED WITH NEW LINKS] In the newest edition of Obe Lincoln, I take on the hot topic of copyright infringement as it pertains to the Shepard Fairey Obama HOPE poster.


I drew the above picture freehand, obviously copying the Shepard Fairey Obama HOPE poster, which copied Mannie Garcia's (or the AP's) photo. I changed the image to add Baxter Orr's SARS mask. I used ink pens that weren't the same color as the Fairey poster, so I put it on Photoshop to adjust the colors to be closer to Fairey's colors (and to deal with the shortcomings of my crappy scanner). Any difference between this image and Fairey's image is a result of my failure to draw it perfectly freehand, not a result of a conscious attempt to make a significant transformation.

So, am I guilty of copyright infringement?

If you haven't been following the AP/Garcia v Fairey copyright lawsuit(s?), then you're missing out. I'm not a lawyer, but it's pretty fascinating stuff in terms of the questions that arise about art, photography, copyright, ownership, access, appropriation, theft, hypocrisy, consistency, ethics, greed, and creation. Not a bad list, eh? Check it out:

AP threatens to sue Fairey.
Fairey sues the AP.
Fairey's Obey Giant website.
Fairey on Charlie Rose.
Hypocrisy? Fairey threatens to sue Orr.
Orr had appropriated and changed Obey Giant with a SARS mask.
A discussion on copyright and fair use law.
The law.
More discussion on the law.
A blogging copyright lawyer weighs in.
Another blogging copyright lawyer weighs in.
The debate is on,
And on,
And on,
And on,
And on.
And then there's parody. One of the landmark cases about parody is Leibovitz v Paramount Pictures, in which the Naked Gun 33&1/3 parody of the pregnant Demi Moore Vanity Fair cover was upheld as fair use.
Here are a few other interesting cases.
And if all that doesn't have you confused yet, check out this article that points out that parody is protected, but satire is not. I hope the writer of that article, Jesse Walker, won't mind if I quote this insightful analysis:

"In the press or the academy, it's considered normal for more than one interpretation of a piece of art to coexist. In a courtroom, only one interpretation will enjoy the blessing of the law, and there's no guarantee that a judge playing critic for a day will agree with [the defendant's] subtle analysis."

VTK's White Whale: Put Herman Melville's House On A US Quarter

Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard fluke- look you, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!

Forget the gold ounce, boys and girls. I've seen the White Whale of the Blogosphere. And it's reward will take the form of a silvery fifth of an ounce, no less valuable to ye sailors of the internet. How so? It is no mere American 25 cent piece; it is a quarter dollar of legal tender that can finally pay proper homage to the author of Moby Dick and the house in which he penned the whale tale - the Arrowhead estate in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Pay homage to the house and pay dividends for your VTK captain.

You may know that I'm from Pittsfield. Some have suggested I'm obsessed with my hometown. What you may not know is that one of my more impressive skills is my ability to get from any statement to a Herman Melville reference in three sentences. Go ahead, try me. As you can imagine, having Arrowhead on the tail side of a US quarter would be invaluable to a word hunter like myself - infinitely more valuable than its stated worth of 25 cents. Whosoever of ye joins with me to flip the white head of the American quarter to put Arrowhead on its tail, he or she shall have that silvery fifth of an ounce, my boys and girls. Doubt me not - I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.

Here's the deal from the mass.gov website: In a successor to the 50 States Quarters Program, the U.S. Mint, in a nationwide program, has asked Governor Patrick to select one preferred and three alternate Massachusetts national sites to be featured on the reverse of a quarter. Beginning in 2010, the Mint will release five new quarter designs annually based on the order in which the selected sites gained federal designation. Governor Patrick is calling on the people of Massachusetts to help with this decision. It's right there in black and white, VTKids. The white head of Washington beckons you to determine the destiny of his tail. Go to the site to vote for "Herman Melville House, Pittsfield", which is under Berkshire County. You can vote as many times as you want. It's going to take more than one harpoon to fell this White Whale.

And if Deval Patrick denies the democratic voice of VTKountry, which will surely be heard in this vote, if he doesn't put Arrowhead on a US quarter, well, God help him. I'll follow him around the Horn, and around the Norway maelstrom, and around perdition's flames before I give him up.