Art Bomb-10/31/2014 Ghoulish Gary

Aleathia says:

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!  In honor of our frightful American tradition of Halloween I have decided to spotlight the art of Ghoulish Gary who is a master of the macabre when it comes to art.

"His award-winning illustrations and designs have also appeared in popular magazines such as HorrorHound, Famous Monsters of Filmland, heavy metal magazine Revolver and beloved pop culture rag Royal Flush; on DVD releases for Anchor Bay’s Hilarious House of Frightenstein box sets, cover artwork for Arrow Video’s re-issues of Tobe Hooper’s LifeForce, Jeff Lieberman’s Squirm and Wes Craven’s Deadly Blessings. He’s worked in the music industry creating packaging for vinyl releases of Death Waltz Records They Live soundtrack, WaxWork Records Re-Animator release, Glass Eye Pix’s “radio plays for the digital age” Tales From Beyond the Pale; and gig posters, T-shirts and album art for bands including Misfits, Tiger Army, The Brains, Ghoultown, Electric Frankenstein and The Creepshow. "

Here are some of his ghoulish monsters:

Lit Bits-10/29/2014 Denise Levertov

Aleathia says:

Here is to a long week that is about to get infinitely better by morning.  Please enjoy a poem by Denise Levertov called "The Thread"

The Thread

Something is very gently,

invisibly, silently, 

pulling at me--a thread

or net of threads

finer than cobweb and as

elastic.  I haven't tried

the strength of it.  No barbed hook

pierced and tore me.  Was it

not long ago this thread

began to draw me? Or

way back?  Was I

born with its knot about my

neck, a bridle?  Not fear

but a stirring

of wonder makes me

catch my breath when I feel

the tug of it when I thought

it had loosened itself and gone.

Quills and Frills-10/25/2014 Namaste Yoga

Aleathia says:

I have been going at this blog nearly six months with a post daily.  That is a break neck, whirlwind thing to do.  Recently with all the things going on in my life both at home and at work, it has been harder to keep that commitment.  I am generally an all or nothing sort of girl.  I either do something full throttle or shut it down.

Today I did yoga for the first time in 2 years.  There have been many excuses, but most of the time it has been laziness or the desire to curl up on the couch with Michael instead.  Who would pass up human connection for yoga?  At this time, Michael is working a lot and gone often.  This leaves empty spaces that for some reason I have a hard time filling except with work.  I have had a great lack of focus and  I have not been tending to the inner workings of my "soul".

I ordered my favorite yoga series the other day, Namaste, and after a grueling 30 minute aerobic exercise that had me running from attic to basement to find my yoga mat, I finally put the DVD in and got started.  Oh man.  There is nothing like the soothing series of plank, up dog, child's pose, cat lift, down dog, locust, cat lift, hero's pose.  Rinse and repeat.....many times.  I feel like a million bucks.  The Earth Series episode is my favorite and I will most likely be on this one for months while I try to limber up my muscles and stretch out all the stress and damage I have done in the last few years.

Which brings me back to this blog.  I'm not going to go break neck and post every day.  It leaves little time for anything else.  I think I have established a small following so now I will post when I have something to say.  My fellow compatriots will post when they have something to say as well.  Hopefully, we will fill in all the days, but if there are weeks when we don't , so be it.  Happy Weekend!

Lit Bits-10/22/2014 Frank O'Hara

Aleathia says:

Yes.  Winter is coming and through the summer I longed for this time when the world gets crisp and cool; when everything turns on its true nature to somehow work against you.  Like a reflex this weather makes me long for spring.  I love the in-between times.  I love the palpable feeling of change that tips the scales so slightly.  So in light of that feeling you will receive a poem by Frank O'Hara.

Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet and art critic. Because of his employment as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure in the New York School—an informal group of artists, writers and musicians who drew inspiration from Jazz, Surrealism, Abstract expressionism, action painting and contemporary avant-garde art movements.

O'Hara's poetry is personal in tone and in content and described as reading "like entries in a diary". Poet and critic Mark Doty has said O'Hara's poetry is "urbane, ironic, sometimes genuinely celebratory and often wildly funny" containing "material and associations alien to academic verse" such as "the camp icons of movie stars of the twenties and thirties, the daily landscape of social activity in Manhattan, jazz music, telephone calls from friends".O'Hara's writing "sought to capture in his poetry the immediacy of life, feeling that poetry should be "between two persons instead of two pages."

The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara edited by Donald Allen (Knopf, 1971), the first of several posthumous collections, shared the 1972 National Book Award for Poetry.

(bio from Wikipedia)


Aus Einem April

                       We dust the walls.
                       And of course we are weeping larks
falling all over the heavens with our shoulders clasped
in someone's armpits, so tightly! and our throats are full.
      Haven't you ever fallen down at Christmas
          and didn't it move everyone who saw you?
              isn't that what the tree means? the pure pleasure
of making weep those whom you cannot move by your flights!
              It's enough to drive one to suicide.
And the rooftops are falling apart like the applause

of rough, long-nailed, intimate, roughened-by-kisses, hands.
Fingers more breathless than a tongue laid upon the lips
in the hour of sunlight, early morning, before the mist rolls
in from the sea; and out there everything is turbulent and green.

Let's Go Somewhere-10/21/2014 Session's Woods

Aleathia says:

There are times in our lives when we go places that seem pretty benign.  Just another wooded path, just another waterfall, just another lake.  In general, most of us take life for granted and believe we will always have another opportunity to revisit these same benign places over and over again with the people of our choosing.

This is not always so people.

In 2008, Chloe and I went to Connecticut to visit my mother for a week.  It was filled with the usual hurry up and wait cycle that was my mother.  She was notorious for taking 2 hours to get ready to go somewhere and then what should be a 20 minute trip somewhere would turn into an all day project. It was chaotic waiting.

That year she took us both to a local walking area called Sessions Woods.  I had lived in Connecticut a long time, had traveled there many times as an adult and never remember going to this place.  It was beautiful.  It was a walk with my mother and my child.  Three generations of women getting back to nature.

Here are some photos from that precious time:

Music Monday-10/20/2014 The Monkees

John Says:

I rarely watch television.  In the last month I’ve had the television on for maybe two minutes, and that was to get the weather and ogling the mini-skirted anchors on the Weather Channel. If I weren’t so lazy I wouldn’t canceled the cable by now, and saved the wife and I $90 a month.  But last week I was home from work.  I had lunch going and boredom overtook me.  The wife and I put on the TV to find something to watch while we ate.  MTV had a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air marathon going.  I laughed at the program despite myself.  But then it hit me….MTV was now doing marathons of programs that were on when I was young.  Good old Fresh Prince had joined the ranks of golden oldie marathons along with I Love Lucy, the Honeymooners, and Happy Days.  It was time to check my Geritol and Ensure stock.

When I was a kid MTV aired a marathon of a television show that rocked my world.  On February 23, 1986, MTV aired a marathon of The Monkees television show.  I had never seen The Monkees before.  I’d only heard of them via the oldies station that my old man forced down my throat in the car in lieu of me and my brother getting to listen to anything contemporary.  I only knew of Davy Jones from his episode of The Brady Bunch.  To say that I was transfixed was an understatement.  Before me were four cool guys, who drove a cool car, lived in a cool pad, had zany adventures, and sang cool songs that sounded an awful lot like my beloved Beatles.  In next to no time Micky, Davy, Peter and Mike would become synonymous for me along with John, Paul, George and Ringo.

That marathon started a resurgence for The Monkees.  Soon the Monkees were being broadcast in syndication nationwide.  The group reformed (sans Michael Nesmith) and toured to sold-out shows across America.  My twelve year old self woke up by nine or ten every day that summer to watch The Monkees and sit there with my boom box ready to record, from the TV, whatever song played during the show’s ubiquitous montage.  By summer’s end I had a tape full of Monkees songs along with snippets of the show that I would listen to over and over again until RCA wised up and began re-releasing their albums on record and tape.

One of the things The Monkees get slagged off for is that they were a manufactured band created for a television show.  And while that may be true it discounts the contribution that the band made to their recordings in the studio.  From the first album there were songs written by members of the band, and members of the Monkees, primarily Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork, contributed to the music on the albums.  Most specifically The Monkees were at their most band-like on their hard-fought-for third album, Headquarters.

Headquarters was released in 1967 and was the first Monkees album to feature significant songwriting and instrumental performances by the group.  The Monkees sang AND played on the album.  Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork handled the guitar work, and Tork handled the keyboards and pianos.  Micky Dolenz took his place behind the drums, and Davy Jones handled all other percussion.  Bass was provided by Chip Douglas, a former member of The Turtles, who was asked by Nesmith to produce the album.  Seven songs on the fourteen-song album are either written or co-written by one of The Monkees, and one song, No Time, was written by all-four Monkees but credited to their sound engineer Hank Cicalo.

Sadly the experiment in turning Pinocchio into a real boy didn’t work.  By The Monkees fourth album, Pieces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, the collective group was heading back toward entering the studio as individuals to dub their voices over pre-recorded tracks, or to simply add their own instrumental part to a song selected and/or written by one of The Monkees.

OM-10/19/2014 Chogyam Trungpa, Love and Loneliness

Aleathia says:

"I don't think anyone can fall in love unless they are lonely"--Chogyam Trungpa