Hello?

The Teeth played the Khyber on Friday. Becky, Jon and I went to check out what was going on upstairs. So we upstairs and Jon is getting a drink and Becky and I are standing talking and Becky goes Oh this is the new Madonna song. And I think I said something about not recognizing it and not listening to the radio really.

And then this girl walks by and goes "It's and ABBA sample, hello?" And Becky and I just laughed. I got fucking called out by some scene girl at the Khyber.

And that's when it felt good to be home.

Merry Christmas Movie House!

Before I left California, I was in the video store and It's a Wonderful Life was playing on the in-store television set. I listened as I browsed. It was at the part where George is getting ready to go on his trip around the world and someone is trying to convince him to stay.

And from behind the counter I hear the two hispanic guys who work there. One says to the other, "Damn right George Bailey don't wanna stay in fuckin' Bedford Falls!" And all of a sudden, I remembered how much I love that movie.

Song About the Southland

At the beginning of Lynrd Skynrd's Sweet Home Alabama, when the lead singer says, "Turn It Up", this is directed at you the listener. This is not a suggestion, this is demand.

Evidence exists that this command should be heeded.

Sweet Home Alabama is not just an over played annoying rock song. Its a call to action to all Georgia Boys, ones sporting unironic trucker hats and confederate flag t-shirts, asking for the head of Neil Young.

Neil Young's song Southern Man, apparently has offended not just Lynrd Skynrd, but the whole south.

In the song, Young attacks the south for the crimes of slavery.

In Skynrd's response, they say,

Well I heard mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don't need him around anyhow

This response is reminiscent of The muslim response to Salmon Rusdie's 1989 novel The Satanic Verses. Upon it's release, Ayatollah Khomeni of Iran announced a fatwa, or death sentence, for Rushdie.

Interestingly enough, Lynrd Skynrd's song to redeem the south has done more to negate any great image it tries to convey.

About This Project

Exercises In Style
By Matt Madden

Exercises in Style was inspired by a work of the same name by the French writer Raymond Queneau. In that book, Queneau spun 99 variations out of a mundane, two-part text about two chance encounters with a mildly irritating character during the course of a day. He started by telling it in every conceivable tense, then by doing it in free verse and as a sonnet, as a telegram, in pig latin, as a series of exclamations, in an indifferent voice... you name it.
The goal of this project is to apply the same principle to comics by creating as many variations as possible on a simple one-page non-story: different points of view, different genres, different formal games, and so on.

One additional variation on the project is that a group of cartoonists have been given a brief script of the one-page piece and asked to create their own version of the comic.

While the project has been floating around as an idea for years, it was galvanized into being committed to paper by the founding in 1992 of OuBaPo, Ouvroir de la Bande Dessinée Potentielle (Workshop for Potential Comics), a comics-oriented offshoot of OuLiPo (Workshop for Potential Literature), an experimental forum co-founded by Queneau himself in 1960.


http://www.exercisesinstyle.com/

Grey Tuesday

At Work

There is dreary eastcoastness going on out here.

Today's Special