RANDOMIZE

thought: leaving comments on Youtube = Screaming into a void


Inspiration: Surrealist photo collage a la Max Ernst:

Claudia Drake, collage extraordinaire (who has her pictures protected so you can not show them here)(trust me click the link)

Amazing Alexis McKenzie



thought: how much control should I take of a person's tattoo design? By drawing it I take artistic control- should I also take design control if there is something really bad/messy about their idea? Re: the man who wants seven different tattoos all crammed into one. A calla lily, automotive instruments, a crest and a straw boater (that's a hat). Done traditional style, but with chrome effect. Hmmph.

Watched a documentary on "Freak Folk":

Youtube it here:The ETERNAL CHILDREN

Why are my most aesthetically favorite youth subcultures the ones MOST DISSED by my boyfriends and social circle? I defend, but I am one little voice, usually unheard and dissmissed. Don't cry for me, I am USED TO IT.

A LIST:

Kai loves the aesthetics of:

1. Goth (the old standby)
2. Steampunk
3. Gypsy Mission hipsters
4. "freak Folk"
5. Circus punk


All I talk about is tattoo tattoo tattoo. All I think about is getting better FAST and stressing that I am not proceeding fast enough (but I am) and I'm almost thirty and I got a late start oh no.....

Ready to get your ass kicked by inspiring and masterful tattoo ?:

I want to get tattooed by
ADAM BARTON
Look at how amazing this skull is! The shadow is a solid lilac color! The turquoise in the eyes! Wow.
















Also a masterful color artist is the smoothest tattooer ever:

LU

He's in Berlin, so I'm not sure if that will ever happen. God he is SO GOOD. Look at his pics on his Myspace profile. Each one is jaw dropping. Look at this sparrow he did:



And to finish we have a picture of me and the Coug, proudly displaying our Baroness T-Shirts by the AMAZING artist John Dyer Baizley:


When I found his art is was one of those moments where I was almost sick- his art is so much the style of what I want to do...it's recognition and jealousy all wrapped in one.


A tattoo I started recently. I think it looks lovely already:

Nasturtiums

kai hat, originally uploaded by noxious nick.

In other news, my tattooing has reached my neck......

A kiss and a prayer for job security!

Photo by Mykle, on his new camera phone

head trip

This week I tattooed my first client born in the 90's. The 1990's. It was bound to happen soon, but it's still a shock.

It's 2008, folks, and those born in 1990 will be turning 18 all year long.

Wow.

Tonight tonight

Suddenly it's summer in Davis. It was almost 90 today and when the darkness fell it remained warm, with a small breath of cool breeze and couples sitting across the street, eating frozen yogurt and wearing shorts, trees above festooned with Christmas lights. I am still am work. Tonight I tattoo Mykle, my love. I am making his arm with it's two existing tattoos into a medieval church niche-filled wall with sort of a Book-of-Days flavor. Yeah!



Your new musical homework-
GRAILS: awesome, orchestral, instrumental, cinematic, building, shimmering, dark, banjo !?!?). Look it up, buy it.

Self-styled Record reviewer reviews

I often joke that I only like music whose makers have last names that are nouns:
Patrick Wolf
Kate Bush
Andrew Bird
Tom Waits (o.k., so that's a verb)

and of course the most important,
Nick Cave.


"DIG, LAZARUS, DIG!" Mr. Cave's newest album, was officially released today in the US. Yes, I bought it.

It's not a departure from his last 2 albums. I think it's more even than "Nocturama" (which had a few AMAZING songs and some that were just plain bad), but not (so far) as good as "Lyre of Orpheus/Abbatoir Blues". The latter was an album that was so inspired and so heavy and beautiful, well, it's hard to live up to. Nick Cave has a new horrendous mariachi moustache, so maybe this inspired him to make a new album.
ha
aha
ha

As far as his recent recordings, I group "The Boatman's Call" with the utterly heart-rendingly awesome "No more shall we part". These two albums are full of beautiful sad and building piano ballads. They seem very carried by Warren Ellis (of my OTHER favorite band "The Dirty Three" ) and his supernaturally good violin leads. (if you want an awesome collaboration between the two of them besides "No More...", buy the soundtrack to "The Propostion". It's haunting and wonderful)

Then, I think, Mr. Cave went back to the blues, regained some of his old bombastic libido, and decided to try to write some dirty old man songs. This is where Nocturama and Lyre of Orpheus, and now DIG, LAZARUS, DIG! get a lot of inspiration from and also the band called Grinderman- which I listened to once. I couldn't bear any more, and I am one so very SYMPATHETIC to Mr. Cave. He can get away with everything with me, if that tells you anything about how much I was embarassed by that album. (Oh well, the critics liked it) I find a few gems on all the recent stuff, though of course if you are going to get your intro to the Bad Seeds you should buy "Let Love In" (and then "Henry's Dream") and listen to nothing else. I did my first big art series on that album alone.

I like listening to my favorite artists mature, with all the missteps along the way. I think artists can grow old gracefully and put out great work that no one saw coming (Leonard Cohen's "The Future", Kate Bush's "Aerial", Johnny Cash's "American Recordings" series, The Mekons' "Natural" etc.)a video from "No More Shall we part". it starts off slow and seemlingly simple, then builds (as the song does) to a cresendo. It's great:


I now stop my unpaid advertising for the greatness of the lanky Austrailian former-junkie songwriter with a jesus fixation.
Thanks