mugwumpian mumbles blog blog blog

It's 7:30 and I've very nearly polished off a bottle of champagne by myself. This temporary working situation makes me more tired and in need of liquor than I'd like. On the positive side, it also makes me more productive. I've done more drawing, more painting, more writing, more digital fuckery, and more film stuff than I did for the first five months of unemployment. Now I'm trying to coordinate volunteering at the Art Institute and a hopeful internship at the MCA in addition to freelancing somewhere on top of everything else.

It's also been an extremely bizarre/awesome freelancing experience. I'm working at Thirst/3st, which is run by Rick Valicenti. I believe I wrote a fawning blog three years ago about meeting him for the first time when he spoke at my college and being invited to go to dinner with him, several faculty and graduate students, and one other undergrad. That other undergrad is my roommate who works for Rick now and whose shadow I am eternally living in. A year ago I ran across Bud (the name of said roommate)'s hairline and hands in Print magazine holding up one of 3st's posters. Two or three years ago John Pobojewski was one of the “twenty under thirty” designers and now I'm sitting with him working on typesetting stuff for Lyric Opera in Chicago. Last Friday the designers of Barack Obama's campaign logo came into the office to share their experiences working on the logo and doing a majority of Obama's television ads. Rick is basically trying to build a design empire in Chicago suitable to his vision. 3st has gone beyond for the most part designing for clients and is now designing for designers. Their primary clients are art institutions and architects. They're doing identities and websites for firms that are building Dubai, the true center of contemporary progress. One of 3st's projects you might have seen was the editorial page for the New York Times a year ago that featured new additions to the lexicon. I remember seeing that, thinking the lolcat was terribly inaccurate, and then noticing that it was done by 3st. Bud, my roommate, did the Lolcat. An interesting tangent to this meandering post is that Bud was the first person I ever met at college. He was in my group at orientation and I thought he was a huge asshole. Then he was in my very first class and sat next to me. Turned out I was bad at first impressions.

Augh. What I'm trying to say is I've been thrust into a situation that seems like it should be beyond my means. It is so confusing that I can enter into this situation and perform well, yet none of the bullshit jobs I have applied to for the past five months have even gotten back to me. This whole adult life is really weird.

I thought I'd written more here. I'm watching the Dark Knight again. It's filmed in Chicago with minor effort taken to hide that fact. Matt (the boyfriend) and Tara (his roommate) are building a K*nex rollercoaster. Tara just said “that's a full circle.”

With that Jess, I end this.

I've finally begun my massive film project. I even came up with a pretentious name! Cinemanesis is a portmanteau of cinema and anamnesis. Anamnesis has a couple different definitions:

1. the recollection or remembrance of the past; reminiscence.
2. recollection of the Ideas, which the soul had known in a previous existence, esp. by means of reasoning.
3. the medical history of a patient.
4. Immunology a prompt immune response to a previously encountered antigen, characterized by more rapid onset and greater effectiveness of antibody and T cell reaction than during the first encounter, as after a booster shot in a previously immunized person.
5. (often initial capital letter) prayer in a Eucharistic service, recalling the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ.

I'm intending cinemanesis to be an imperfect cinematic recounting of the past, a damaged celluloid reminiscence.

This was a quickie experiment. The videos can be enormously boring if you follow the narrative which you can do in numerous videos on my new Cinemanesis channel. I'll be uploading new videos as I transfer them. My dad made one to three videos every Christmas from 1979 or 80 until probably 1998. They are mostly my sister, my cousins, and myself jumping around in an assortment of Halloween masks with the vague assumption of recreating a popular movie. The children, in various states of undress and myself in drag, then must face a monster figure most often played by my father or an uncle in an assortment of masks and costumes.

I think doing an overly pretentious psychological analysis of the videos would be awesome. I'm also going to look into collaborating with some friends to score some mashups of the footage so that I don't always resort to Xiu Xiu, Animal Collective, and Sigur Ros.* At this very beginning point, I'm open to artistic direction/suggestion/damnation.

*Just so you know, it's impossible to take me seriously

Monster Father, originally uploaded by tofu mugwump.

Had my dad been Wes Anderson, I would probably respond to his e-mails more often.

Sometimes you just want to sit inside on a cold November day drinking coffee, listening to Modest Mouse, and thinking about all the shit from high school that seemed so important once but is gone now. And you want that place you're sitting to be the home you grew up in with Thanksgiving around the corner, except the last time you were in that childhood home was three years ago. And that was the weekend when you had to tear down the posters, throw out the stuffed animals, and disassemble the life in the basement you had created to make high school bearable. And by that time you were already a junior in college and had stopped speaking to 75% of the people who had shared that basement with you.

And really, when you think about it, you had two Modest Mouse CDs in high school but never listened to them. It wasn't until you were a freshman in college that Good News for People Who Love Bad News came out and reminded you of the band. That's when you rediscovered those CDs, courtesy a new friend looking through your CD binder. That's when you really, really liked the song "Float On." It wasn't until the next year, after hearing it play in bars in England five times a night while your 49 new best friends drunkenly sang along that you decided it was a ridiculous album and that you were in for "the old stuff" and you'd just pretend you knew Isaac Brock was an asshole all along even though it really took an awful concert on your 20th birthday to convince you. And after all, don't real purists think Modest Mouse actually sold out when they released the Moon & Antarctica which is your (new) favorite album?

You bought We Were Dead before the Ship Even Sank but never really told anyone about it. By that point in your life all of your friends were listening to the animal collective that didn't have room for mice, regardless of ego ( the Mountain Goats, the bird & the bee, deerhoof, et al). Hell, you skipped that actual Animal Collective show in Minneapolis to partake in other pleasures carnal. It wasn't until Shortbus that you started listening to the band, despite years of Amazon insisting you'd love them. You're still not sure about that Wilco recommendation, and you did skip their two Duluth concerts.

Musical diversions aside, you are not at home. Home is sold and gone. You are in St. Paul in an apartment that has relics of home. The end table that lived upstairs until the renovation in 1996 and then went to college with your sister in 1999. All of the Jeff Noon books, Alice in Wonderland relics, and more that lived on the shelves in your sister's unoccupied room for so long. Last night you slept in a room with the computer desk you built for your sister in Laramie, Wyoming in 2004. The framed print of quotes from her favorite book you made in 2003 was there too, from a time when you really had no idea what you were doing. The photographs from your freshman year photography class are here too. There are also posters from your favorite animes and webcomics, but these aren't yours. They really don't even have anything to do with you. This is the apartment your sister now shares with her boyfriend. The boyfriend that's in the other room discussing a cardgame he's designing over the phone. On the wall there's an embroidered dragon your sister worked on for five Christmases, finally finished. You, however, never seem to complete such long term projects.

There are friends from high school living in this new city now that you'll never call. There are friends from college you're trying to get in touch with. They will probably get back to you. Your life with them is over however, and they might too go the way of the high school friends. It's beginning already. Despite being unemployed in Chicago, you still never see your best friend from college who lives one train stop away. You also rarely see the friend you ditched Animal Collective for and crashed a van after. Like you've said before, you create the meaning.

It is time to push back, but face it, you will never be cool enough to listen to the Mountain Goats. And the coffee is gone. And you just can't stop starting sentences with conjunctions or writing in the third person. Second person. You've been gone from school too long.

(And you sat there…)

Dear god. Getting drunk and looking at profiles on gay dating sites makes me angry.

This is unedited and drawn from something I made three years ago. I just shit out the past three years.

“I am trying to describe the people in our quarter, not for the mere curiosity, but, because they are all part of the story.” George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

Some working titles:
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Topher
-or-
Topher Soup for the Human Soul: A Depressing Ordeal

My mother was a dairy princess and my sister wore combat boots:
Tales of teen angst in South Dakota

BIRTH- family(?) self(?)
conception story – sick child – no speech till five – church vomit – calamitous occasions – deep thoughts (who will bury the last person? who were the grandchildren of adam and eve?) – near death experiences

BLAKE
tiny tot – consciousness formed – hints of personality

JOEY
first -> fourth grade – early depression – death of aunt Shari – death of uncle Dave – Brandi's depression spilling over – Mac's burns down – journal entries and birthday parties

JUSTIN
fifth-six grade – fatness – rob jorenby – Alex/Tucker – Egypt – middle school hell begins

JON
summer after sixth grade – camp – jealousy – Magic the Gathering at Brost's Aquarium and Hobby – unreal expectations – ass-friendship – the folly of the “best” friend – advance and retreat – Brost's – Ben & Jacobsens, false hopes summer before Eight – EUROPE – freshman fallout – Ben & gayness – testosterone -Alexander – sophomore year – English “who raped you?” – TAIWAN – missed opportunity

ALEX
plays & interp – Emma – post-Jacobsens – the first time – the first unrequited obsession – Kelsey & family restaurants – coffee – growth of anger – missed hints of darkness (Laura)

MAREN
journalism – past connections (Shakespeare soph year) – Sonya – X-mas party – Seth – Prom – Josh damnation – TRUTH – realization of mutuality – Valentine's Day – Ty hickey

STEPH
Boy's State/Journalism City – 17th Birthday – Tessa – Truth explodes – Kelsey & Clint – last camp – the beginnings of weight loss – Steph moves to Brookings – Apartmentland – sex, intimacy and co-dependence – the THRUPLE/triary – self destruction – Alex conflict – senior year & journalism – Aberdeen trips & the new self – State interp and Paradise Lost – New Years and Steph's move home

ANDY
X-mas party 2002 – Ty – gay.com – the thirteen year old girl – the friendgroup shatters (let the circle be broken) – Snow White – the extreme naivety of first love online for three months – Brandi, Omaha, Flogging Molly and missed opportunities – Prom & the breakup – carnal needs/return to Alex – dark desire -> lost in Tyrell's kiss -> a brief encounter with a v-belt and Derick! – college

MIKE
a first and only friend – Bud & false impressions – shadowy cyber life/search for confirmation – awkward meetings – Ty and “the open relationship” – new broken records – Maria, the comfort of home – Rainer – the confusion of the new – Halloween – Mike disappears – November was fucked up – Steph moves in with Maria – Ty, Matt, love triangles and French words I can't spell – gay bowling – lesbian cheering section – QSU

JET
sterile x-mas break – glimpses of Maren(?) – V-Day conference in pleather – Rainer obsession – Rape – Spring Break & Medical concerns – Not learning from mistakes / hotornot / Skroller – the Von Dutch hat – Syphilis scare – HIV test in the photo darkroom – Jet, coffee, truth, USUQ – interpretive drag dance – volunteerism

STEPH, ALEX, EMMA
summer – jaunty Alex – Ryan – clean kitchen – celibacy – road trips – the Brookings Register – Maren visit – Duluth visit

MIKE (redux) / ENGLAND
canoe building in the Lake District – quiet obsession – sleepovers – naps – 1st trip to London, alone – Thanksgiving w/Heather in Berlin – Tom fiasco – Selley Sausage – Christmas – familial disconnect – Maren auf Italia – food poisoning and breakup – social maladjustment – Prague Budapest and the pain of Mike – Aarhus – Berlin – Lyn – Spring – solo bon voyage (Rome) – brain dead – revision – memoir – Fred

NATE
Summer of Sylvia Plath – working at the Library – listening to the Decemberists on an air mattress – zine – zombie blood – living with Bud – learning to paint – the Wasteland – melting cows – reconnecting to Matt – “I've never dated someone who wasn't an asshole before” – dating Nate – something worth fighting for – text-message breakup – destroying home for Thanksgiving

CHAD
Christmas in Mound – the townhome – Henrik on Myspace – Witch's Hat / romanticizing the crash – trips to Minneapolis – rushing from the dragshow to the Reindeer Monologues – sleeping with Matt to forget – conquering Art + Design at UMD – job at the Tweed

MATT
21st birthday and getting ditched by everyone but Matt – five days and a new relationship with the past – living with Jill – RT's, Pizza Luce, and learning to drink – cramming everything into three semesters – Art Guild

IAN
balancing friends and a relationship – Ian – a new straight obsession – tacos – dating the devil('s advocate) – Maren's wedding – Amos – hell – choosing Matt – graduation – life after in Duluth – Chicago

CHICAGO
life with Bud and in his shadow, again – unemployment – summer alone – gay.com 2.0 – stan, steven, mark – forgetting to mention Matt – continued unemployment – Matt's move to Chicago – old fights die hard – Cameron – vague attempts to enter adulthood

1. Watched the film version of the amazing Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which I read for the first time three years ago when I was down and out in Paris and London and also reading Down and Out in Paris and London.

2. Watched the Elevator Repair Service perform Gatz, a six hour unabridged and verbatim reading of The Great Gatsby. The play redeemed the book for me after the Robert Redford film ruined my interest in high school English class.

3. Met James Duvall at a horror convention in Minneapolis, naked.

Sort of.

Self-portait of me as a 13 year old girl, meet James Duvall. James Duvall, meet self-portrait of me as a 13-year old girl.

Oh, and tomorrow I start my first (very temporary) freelance gig in Chicago.

and

I should probably start shading more with paint and outlining less. Or just keep going for this. It's cute and cartoony.

In an effort to further practise my paintings, I've decided to paint the people whose journals I read. As practise, I offer no guarantees as to the qualities of the paintings.

More forthcoming.

Be forewarned.

Okay, maybe not beauty. Absurdity in the minimal?

Chainsaw Suit

I have long been a webcomic nerd, and I’ve been noticing somewhat of a trend in where my taste for webcomics is leaning. Stick figures. Either in the realm of the philosophical, as is the case of pictures for sad children, or else the absurd, as is the case of Chainsaw Suit above. Maybe with less focus on drawing there’s a greater time to focus on the writing? There are lots of very beautifully drawn comics out there with terrible writing.

Some other comics in the stick vein are xkcd and Cyanide and Happiness. I’m consistently impressed with these comics. Are my expectations just lower?