4 Thing Thursday

4 Thing Thursday

Every Thursday I'm going to post 4 things that I find worth sharing. They could be anything, but if I know me, they'll tend to be links or musings from something that I've come across in the world of art or music or lit...or something completely insanely dumb that just needs more gawking.


 

1. Platinum Grit. The lost art of Trudy Cooper and Danny Murphy, which may be may favorite comic of all time. First published in 1994 and on indefinite hiatus since 2009, it's one of the most beautifully written and illustrated oddball comics of all time. It dances with the mundane, the occult and the insane all at once with a sense of humor that is hopelessly anchored in self-conscious truth. And it has a talking Jamaican Cabinet named Raoul.


2. Brain Pickings. Maria Popova is astounding to me as one the most intelligent and prolific curators and distillers of art and literature. What began as a weekly letter to 7 friends has grown to reach millions of people. I have no clue how she does this on her own.


3. Sturgill Simpson. This year has been brutal with Musician deaths. This week we lost Merle Haggard. One of the last original souls of Outlaw Country. But we also got a first peek at Sturgill's new album. Click on his name to listen. I'm going to make a bold claim and say if anyone can restore the idea of what quality country music can be it's going to be Simpson. And this cover of Nirvana's "In Bloom murders me. And anyone who can write a serious line about getting high and playing Golden Eye on Nintendo 64 has got a special level of talent.


4. Seth Godin. I hate the word Guru, but with Seth it actually fits when it comes to the world of marketing. His easily approachable and consistently brilliant insight never fails to inspire, regardless of whether you're in marketing or not, his blog is sage advice for life and his AltMBA is one of the more intriguing programs that I think is a much needed poke in the ribs to the general theories of higher education.

4 Thing Thursday

Every Thursday...beginning right about now. I'm going to post 4 things that I find worth sharing. They could be anything, but if I know me, they'll tend to be links or musings from something that I've come across in the world of art or music or lit...or something completely insanely dumb that just needs more gawking.


1. Audrey Kawasaki has produced a new limited edition painting in honor of the 30th anniversary of the Legend of Zelda. Definitely one of my favorite LA talents working right now and whether or not she started the movement, she's definitely creating the coolest work in the field of "groggy-sexy." I'll definitely try to curb my use of the word "definitely" from here on out.


2. Baseball is back and it's not just sweaty big man chess. Or for some people it is, but for me it's synonymous with Spring. Rebirth. Grass, cleats, dirt and leather. And of course as the season gets ready to kick off, we have to deal with inevitable wave of crappy marketing. Lots of large-forearmed boys who couldn't act their way out of a locker, selling you everything from tickets to meatballs subs. But occasionally an internal marketing unit will use that exact lack of theater prowess to produce a spot like this, which is pure gold.


3. Laurie Spiegal is a composer, computer programmer and visual artist. A pioneer of electronic music in the 70's, not only is her music hauntingly timeless, but it's conceptually and literally out of this world. I'll unpack that: she musically interpreted Johannes Kepler's 1619 exploration of natural and mathematical congruences in nature titled "Harmonices Mundi" into a single track that was then pressed onto the "Golden Record", loaded into onto the Voyager spacecraft in 1977 and fired off into space. Hard to get much cooler than that. If aliens have turntables, Laurie (not Bowie) will be the first human thing they hear. (click on the pic to take a sample listen)


4. Bloom County. It's back. Well it's been back for a few months, but there's something about the way that's it's being cultivated in Berke Breathed's now autonomous world, free from publishers and the limitations of color printing that makes not only its voice as fresh as it was in 1985. In dark times, this strip is a guiding light.