i know i haven’t posted at all since i’ve been “attending” the deep south, but that’s mostly because i’m totally jealous of everyone else. you heard it, i miss you. you win. i thought i could do without, but i can’t. actually, i just haven’t had any good pictures to post and really whats a good post without good pictures? im workin on a G3 here, so photos aint happening.

anyway, I was SUPPOSED to be home today. mother nature had other plans, ladies and gents. yeah, i waited in an airport all day as my flight kept getting delayed longer and longer. well eventually they just gave up and cancelled the flight. when might be the next flight out of this hole you ask?

tomorrow.
tomorrow at 6am.

i just want to be home and see everyone,is that so much to ask, people?.

this time its all about podcasts, people. there has been no bigger aid to my hard-working-woes than podcasts. as i discovered this summer, pretty much the best thing in the world to get you through mind-numbing tasks (like driving cross the country) is talk radio. I hope you guys have made this discovery as well. and guss what?! all this talk radio (or at least the good ones) can be found on your computer for free-ninety-nine! so as a tribute to school being done to the max, here are some of my favorites (currently, i am subscribed to something like 20):

This American Life – of course, everyones favorite, the top podcast on itunes, but they seriously need some new episodes or they will be replaced.

Radiolab – actually my new favorite. well produced, almost always interesting and leaves you feeling a little bit smarter.

Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me – hilarious news gameshow. laugh and get some news! perfect.

A Prairie Home Companion’s News from Lake Wobegon – sorry, chance. sometimes funny, sometimes touching, these are always only about fifteen minutes long, but incredibly well written considering he’s been doing them for so long. if you’re a writer, you could learn from this storyteller.

The Classic Tales Podcast – i thought this one was really creepy at first. old stories performed by one of those theater-y character actors. i still find it creepy, but the stories are just so good to listen to.

Mysterious Universe – mostly x-files stuff: UFOs, conspiracies, Cryptids. Who doesn’t love news about bigfoot?

The Naked Scientists – like radiolab (they sometimes have the same sources), but more scattered an brittish. they answer listener’s questions and talk more about science news.

Astronomy 161 – recordings of an actual introduction to astronomy class. if you cant tell, i like learning while i work. my only gripe is that the proffessor uses a lot of visuals that you miss.

PRI: Selected Shorts and New Yorker Fiction – i get these two confused, but theyre both basically short stories, which i always enjoy.

Grammar Girl – the last one i’ll mention. these are really short, but always have some little writing tip that i may have forgotten over the years without an actual english class.

so yeah, these are some of mine, but what about you guys? as always, im always looking for more stuff to listen to.

these are the large scale drawings i have for sale. they mostly have really fine detail and were really hard to capture digitally. i think youve seen most of them, but they are a narrative, so they go in this specific order:

bare 1
bare 2
bare 3
bare 4
bare 5
bare 6
bare 7
bare 8 squint right down

[edit: i REALLY like how you cant see the whole thing at once, it makes you really have to look for stuff and maybe leads to surprises, #4 is the best example]

there are also two others (even more expensive) that arent in the series, but my digital representation of them is inaccurate to how they really look because of the amount of tiny details on them. i made prints of them though. here they are and some other prints:

i divided this into 4 individual prints and yes those are nudy people
a four point perspective drawing
a silly marker drawing, i divided it into three for the prints
a spread from my book (which you havent seen yet)

there was also one othe, but its an illustrator file and i dont feel like converting it.

art sailing that is. haha that is my little joke. whatever, it keeps me going.

ANYWAY, wow it has been a good while since i have posted anything. want to know why?
ITS ALL JOEL’S FAULT. thats right, joel sucks. mostly, its joel’s art that sucks. really, im just joking, but my computer is so old, that his posts make my browser crash, so ive had to avoid shambot like a fat guy at a salad bar. anyway, ive spent a lot of time getting ready for this here art sale at mcad (at the expense of not working on actual homework). im selling a ton of stuff, all of which had to be documented. in doing so, ive made a lot of stuff that i really want to put on my website in a new section called “fine art.” thats right. i do real art. anyway, heres a piece i did for a class that im selling prints of:

[edit: look, now it should work. you people should use safari, it can see cmyk]

needless to say, it was a bit overkill. they are about 50 inches wide, so kinda huge.
look for this and about a bajillion (thats a one with a gazillion zeroes) other pieces at MCAD’s annual Art Sale in a few short weeks!

peace out.

so this is the new deal.  instead of making a long post about music and why you should listen to it, im just going to post some stuff you may or may not have heard of and you can check it out on itunes and decide whether or not you agree with my correct opinion. this sounds much more manageable to do once a week. So here we go…

Evan’s top 3 albums of the week:

1. Los Campesinos! – Sticking Fingers into Sockets

2.  Caribou – Andorra (they had a show last wednesday and i didnt know about it! pissed)

3.The Detroit Cobras – Tied and True

as always please respond with your picks.

ok so not so new, but i figured if, with the addition of chance’s political newsical updates, we could round out this up-and-coming online newspaper business that is the shambotron. So I’d like to add something I’m interested in, fairly obvious, but let’s talk about current music a little shall we? I’ve been thinking about this all day, having been inspired by the current’s “musicheads” podcast and i want to keep this up as maybe a weekly or bi-weekly thing. this is how its gonna go: I’m gonna talk about something going on in music that I am interested (love, hate, movements,etc.) and you are all welcome to add to the discussion, but i also want to know 3 songs or albums (preferably) that you are diggin right now. lets do this?

So i haven’t prepared for this too much, but i think next time, this is going to be a bit more researched and in-depth. lets start with something small? how about the future of music, for small? Well let’s take on the much discussed angle of The Fiery Furnaces as the face of where fringe music is headed. not that I’m calling it fringe music anymore, what with them dropping their sixth album, Widow City, this month. I’m also sure you all aren’t surprised having accompanied me to their concert on my birthday that this is one of my favorite bands right now. What I find worth discussing here is what they bring to the idea of compostion. The furnaces never settle for anything; stopping, starting, completely changing directions in the middle of songs almost completely at random, Their albums leave you with a since of being off-balance, spastic and ADHD. nothing is allowed to get old or precious and everything is broken.

That isn’t to say that they arent incredibly good at putting out fun poppy and catchy tunes. If that’s what you want, check out EP (not an ep, but an album) but with albums like blueberry boat and dare i say Rehearsing My Choir (in which their grandmother, the source of their lyrics and an amazing storyteller, accompanies most of the vocals) they definitely push the envelope past the breaking point. listen to the lyrics, tales of savage piracy and schoolyard rivalry, the singers often have conversations and sometimes arguments with themselves (not each other). What I ask is “what is this music?” i can’t reall put my finger on it. too loud to be shoegazing or singer-songwriter, too thoughtful to be post-punk, and too rich to be deconstructive, and too scattered to be pop. so yeah, this band rocks. But please, tell me what you think. are there other bands that do something similar, or even better? is this not where music is heading at all? is this even working as an idea?

more things im digging right now:
-band of horses’ new album
-is radiohead still cool (granted, in rainbows is amazing)
-are the yeah yeah yeah’s arty or just pissed for no reason?
-interpol used to be good. period.

and dont forget to tell me what youre digging, give me something to talk about!

so for the past couple of weeks, ive been in this super hero class thing (thats where the re-drawn pages come from). this class has been kicking my ass with the amount of work and quite frankly, i don’t have too much experience outside of sketches and junk doing sweet action. So this class is taught by an actual ex-marvel editor whos got some buddies still there. needless to say, i would do well to impress him. our assignments have included doing pencils from the actual script of the current captain america volume 5 number one (yeah i know). i want to show you guys what i’ve done so far. its pretty straight-forward cap beats terrorists on a train:

page 1&2 spread
page 3
page4
page5
page6

you cant see it but in the blue-line of page 6, panel 3, it says “PWND”

promo art for a title i might do after i graduate. maybe even for real money. no more of those MCAD “funbucks”. as for right now its just a cool illustration with type.

oh man guys check out this comic im totally in love with and willing to die for.

cave adventure

like the perfect mix of cute and disembowelment.

a side by side comparrison between an x-men page from the 80’s by Barry Windsor-Smith and a pencil recreation by myself. note: this is not a tracing.  think of it as a lame version of a master’s study (this is an assignment, im not that big of a dork…)

so obviously i was drawing this and was thinking, you know, i could totally put some funny tex in the word balloons and it might work. i think the title would be “Wolverine totally hates Storm’s slutty outfit” but my hand hurt so i didnt bother, but if anybody wants to script it out, id totally consider putting it in if i ever get around to finishing it (that is, as long as it is hilarious).

i also recreated a David Mazzucchelli page, but the BWS was way better. if you want to see it:

original

my sweet version

thanks to joel vollmer for supplying the art.