PS. I love halloween.

WHAT THE HELL IS SHE SUPPOSED TO BE?!?! A cake? A cheerleader? A stripper jumping out of a bachelor party cake?!!? Halloween: the holiday in which women are encouraged to be the sluttiest they can be. (Although I have to say, this is a super-tame costume compared to most these days…)

This is what I have been doing all day. Getting rid of hairs and scratches on my negs. Kill me now.

So, I am really excited to tell you guys this!! It’s kind of my only “successful” art post, ever and to come. My poster is going to be in the UFO show!!!! I was one of the 6 from my class!!! That’s just CRAZY! As I’m sure you guys know, I have been really struggling with my studio classes, since, well, I’m not very good. But this is re-assuring! I don’t really think this is all that amazing, but it fulfilled the requirements better than some of the other ones, which I think played a big part in selection. And, just so everyone knows, I get to thank katie for her brilliant assistance.

So, I’m finally making a substantial post. I’ll start with this:

I’M FLIPPIN’ FAMOUS! No, not really. But this is my first published illustration. It’s in RED magazine, which is a small thing Target publishes that’s about getting ready for college and things like that. It also has advertisements for Target products.

Here are a few day assignments from my Editorial Illustration class. The first four are valentines… I guess. They’re lovely. The last one is about a mustache. We were supposed to write a short paragraph about a memorable mustache, a friend and I swapped stories, so I did an illustration of his dad.

ART!

Hi, I’m Sam.

October is my favorite time of the year. I love fall. I love the weather. I love Halloween. I’ve always loved Halloween. As a kid, I loved Halloween. What I didn’t love, was scary movies. Merely looking at the covers of scary movies in video stores gave me the willies so bad that I couldn’t sleep. In fact, I once vomited because I allowed myself to become so frightened by a cover I had recently seen. (Although, to be fair, I vomited a lot as a kid.) At that age, the most frightening thing imaginable for me, was Chucky. The thought of your favorite toy trying to cut your head off is a pretty fucked up one for a kid to deal with, and that red headed little fucker tortured me for years. The insane thing, though, was that I was captivated. After a while, I started to go into the local video store on my own, after school. Once there, I would look at cover after cover of bad 80s slasher movies, scare the living shit out of myself, go home, and have nightmares. It was a sickening cycle of self destruction. I didn’t get over any of this in high school either. While Tim and Ben went to see the TCM remake, I stayed home and watched John Hughes movies with my sisters. Then, just after I finished my freshman year of college, I sat down and watched the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The very thought that this movie existed terrified me for a long time, yet somehow, once I saw it, something in my head flipped 180 degrees.

I have now become a full-blown horror addict. I can’t stop watching these things, especially this month. There is truly a thin line between love and hate. For this reason, I resolved to watch a horror movie I haven’t seen before for every day of October. While this didn’t pan out exactly right, since it is nearly impossible to watch a scary movie everyday without flunking your classes, it turned out quite nicely, because I started in mid september, and I am taking a film class that showed a few scare flicks. Not to mention the days where I just watched two movies. So, without further ado, here is the list of films I was lucky enough to enjoy during this month of madness.

Halloween- Terrifying, I went out and bought it after I rented it.
The Fog- No Halloween, but still very scary for a movie about ghost pirates.
The Fog(The remake)- Boring garbage.
The Wickerman- Bizarre, very interesting movie about paganism and religion.
The Hills Have Eyes-Classic, but I actually like the remake a little more.
TCM2- Written and Directed by Tobe Hooper, starring Dennis Hopper. How bad could it be? Very bad. Very, very bad.
Last House on the Left- Not only shocking, but the bad guys are highly interesting.
The Exorcist- Fuck you, Linda Blair. You will haunt my dreams until I die.
Hellraiser- This movie totally hinges on the effects, which are superb.
Scanners- Not really a horror movie, but good. Reminds me a lot of Heroes.
The Others- A lot like the original Haunting, scary without almost any special effects.
The Wolfman- Why don’t werewolves look like pitbulls anymore?
I Walked with a Zombie- Awesome, scary, B&W, pre-romero Zombie movie.
White Zombie- Another carribbean, pre-Romero zombie movie, this time with Bela Lugosi.
The Devil’s Backbone- Directed by Gullermo Del Toro, and a lot like Pan’s Labyrinth, but a ghost story instead of a weird fairy tale.
House of 1000 corpses- Surprisingly clever and scary in a lot of ways, but far too long. Only half as good as Devil’s Rejects.

Well, that’s my list. I hope to watch quite a few more in the next few days, but for now, I am pretty satisfied.

I feel like shambo posts should be at least somewhat thought out and well articulated (or funny). But.. well.. for this website, there are no words.

It’s just a small gallery of the worst in European interior design.. but really, what else does a person need? If you go through all of them, I dare you to guess which one is my favorite that I actually want. It’s not difficult, if you know my current color obsessions.

(found while perusing designsponge)

“Joel, what have you been doing?” Things!

I made a propaganda poster for my Type II class. Idea: On December 7th, 1941 aliens attacked Perl Harbor forcing the United States into the Galactic War cite (kinda). I wanted to make a poster about this historic event (pictures later, maybe?). I’ve also been workin’ hard for my Installation and Performance class doing, you guessed it, installations and performances. Actually, I just finished a video for my last installation and it’s fancy. I’ll post that later too…(linked in previous sentence) Mostly, I’ve been making programatic animations! (posted below) I have another version that I want to show to this expensive swanky (still probably not the right word) club called “The Caterpillar Lounge.” They have a back lit wall that looks similar to the other version I made. You guys get this one:

Click to reset.
Basicly, all of the balls have a gravitational pull towards each other based on their mass. They all exist in this little world where they are all attracted to one another, get really close and then blow up and find new lil’ balls to hangout with. This happens over and over until your computer burns out.

Flash 9 required and also it may not work in IE6 or 7.

X-mas time is always a complicated season. I mean, sure there are the socio-religious issues to be brought up, but on a purely economic level, it’s hard to buy all the rediculously awesome game releases that come out this time of the year. That’s not even beginning to look at actually having the time to play them. I realize this argument is incredibly infantile; “Waaaah, I don’t have enough money or time to do what I wanna do!” I get it, I do. But gimme a second to explain it all.

Games today are $60 new. Lame. Granted it’s only $10 dollars more, but it does create a bit of mental barrier. Ok, now, games are LONGER than they used to be. On average, at least 14 hours long, not including actually taking one’s time and throughly beating a game. The xbox360’s achievement system doesn’t make it any easier. It’s dumb, but I like going through and getting achievements. It feels good on some stupid “Hey, you did it!” level, and I like it. So now it costs more, and takes longer in the process.

Here’s what came out in the last month and is still coming out this December, with prices:
skate. – $60
Halo 3 – $60
Beautiful Katamari – $40
The Orange Box – $60
PGR4 – $60
Assassin’s Creed – $60
Rock Band – $170

Not to mention downloadable games over Live!, this is a lot of time and money that I don’t really have. While this does lead to carful selection and good saving, it also leads to balancing “Well do I wanna play with friends or by myself?”. I wanna play with friends, so I won’t be getting Aassassin’s Creed until well after the new year, in exchange, I’ll invest a hefty penny into Rock Band, which I know the house will enjoy. Skate was much the same deal. I can play with Steve and MCADets, or the house can enjoy Beautiful Katamari. Katamari came first.

It’s hard not to seem like a big baby, but it’s big buisness and big dollars, and I sir, am a touch frustrated.

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!