Random Notes from a Crank

Amid all the gnashing of teeth because of Clinton's emails, the whole deal reminds me of the millions of emails that were conveniently deleted during Generalissimo Dubya's regime: "The George W. Bush Email Scandal the Media Has Conveniently Forgotten" from Salon & "Bush Advisors' Approach on Email Draws Fire" from the New York Times. 

Which leads me to this satirical take about why certain people dislike/don't trust/hate Hillary Clinton: "All the Terrible Things Hillary Clinton Has Done - In One Big List." 

Regardless, both cases make me think about how the justice system is rigged for wealthy individuals with connections. 

Nontheless, I'd rather vote for the Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson than Trump. 

My favorite candidate is Jill Stein, Green Party presidential candidate, but I'm still voting for Hillary. 

I'm behind on getting some new music. The Avett Brothers and Sarah Jarosz have new albums, and I'm intrigued by the new album by Sarah Watkins. 

This article will make you think differently about the hot dog. But why do the good ones taste so damn good? 

I've only read two of of Philip K. Dick's novels, The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, both of which I enjoyed immensely. I had heard he had a troubled background as many artists do, and a new book uncovers his troublesome life. "Philip K. Dick's Divine, Amphetamine-Fueled Madness" sheds some light on the author. It's adapted from the writer's full-length book. 

This morning I was looking at a piece of art from another troubled artist, Jackson Pollock. 

Random Notes from a Crank

For major writing projects in my courses, I provide the criteria I use when I evaluate their work. For larger projects, I sometimes create what I call "alternate criteria" just for kicks. I thought I'd share the alt criteria for a recent project:

A Successful Teaching Portfolio (Alt Criteria)

• Provides quality writing
•  Lights a candle of pedagogical knowledge
•  Instills pistis in the reader
•  Has rhetorical kung fu
•  Puts the critical in critical thinking
•  Is enjoyable to read
•  Exemplifies phronesis—practical wisdom
• Assures the reader that you know what you’re doing
•  Makes the mind step lively
•  Seduces the reader with smart ideas, policies, assignments, and lesson plans
•  Shows that the Teaching Force is strong in you
•  Offers prose free of hokum, claptrap, “Engfish,” gobbledygook, administrative-speak, and logical boondoggles
•  Is a hooey-free zone
•  Seeks vengeance on anyone who ever doubted your ability as an instructor
• Creates the sound of one hand clapping 

That's me quoting my professional self, something I rarely do on this blog. Don't get used to it. Those hyperlinks above might take you to some places though. 

With the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington, I wonder if anyone has approached Cheech and Chong about doing a movie? 

Regardless, I'm curious about how much tax revenue those states will generate from pot sales this year. 

Typical of HBO's adaptation of Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, this season's first episode of Game of Thrones sexxed up the storyline. If I remember right from A Storm of Swords, when Tyrion and Oberyn Martell meet for the first time, they do so on the road to King's Landing. Instead, HBO has Tyrion Lannister going to a whorehouse to meet the Red Viper, and the first scene that introduces Oberyn and Ellaria Sand plays with the backstory that they're both bisexual. Classic move, HBO. 

And if you're a fan of the series, here's "Death Never in Games of Thrones Never Looked So Beautiful" from Mashable. 

Random Notes from a Crank

If you care about poetry, I suggest checking out Mark Edmundson's "Poetry Slam: Or, The Decline of American Verse" in the July issue of Harper's. While I find the article to be an academic version of a lit professor saying, "Back in the old days..." with occasional whining and pontificating, he does have some good points. Take these two examples: 

• "What happens when poets at the height of ambition somehow feel the need to be programmatically obscure? The obvious result is that they shut out the common reader. But they also give critics far too much room to determine poetic meanings--and this may be why some critics so love Graham and Muldoon and Carson and Ashbery. Their poems are so underdetermined in their sense that the critic gets to collaborate on the verses, in effect becoming a co-creator. This is a boon to critics, but readers rightly look to poets to make sense of the world, even if it is a difficult sense--and not to pass half the job off to Ph.D.s"
• "It is they [big-name poets] whom younger writers are to look up to, they who set the standard--and the standard is all for inwardness and evasion, hermeticism and self-regard: beautiful, accomplished, abstract poetry that refuses to be the poetry of our climate."

I wonder if the good Dr. Edmundson has read Sullivan's Every Seed of the Pomegranate, Vanderberg's The Alphabet Not Unlike the World, or Williams' The Road to Happiness? I also wonder if Edmundson writes his own poetry. 

Recently I became a subscriber to GoComics.com. I don't know why it's taken me so long to do something like this. First, it's free, so that appeals to my frugal nature. Second, daily I get old strips and current ones. Every day I'm reading Doonsebury, Get Fuzzy, Pearls Before Swine, F Minus, Candorville, Off the Mark, and Strange Brew along with editorial cartoons from Tom Toles, Mike Luckovich, and Michael Ramirez. Also, I'm getting recycled strips of Bloom County and Calvin & Hobbes. Those are my top two comic strips of all time, and I read them when I was a kid.

Coincidentily, I looked at Utne's nominees for the its Media Awards, checked them out, and subscribed to various Web-based magazines like TomDispatch, Grist, and OnEarth. I'm also getting updates from The American Conservative for some variety in my political reading diet, and there's an article about Calvin & Hobbes by Gracy Howard that's worth a quick read: "Imagination and the Artistic Value of Calvin & Hobbes." I look forward to watching the documentary she writes about. The strips below showcase Watterson's artistry. 

Sorry for the bleeding into the right bar, but the only way to see them well is making them extra large. 

Last night Mrs. Nasty and I went out to supper and then watched The Wolverine, the latest Hollywood offering from the Marvel universe. As comic book-based movies go, it's a good one. From my perspective, Jackman seems to get the character of Logan/Wolverine, and this movie provides a good character study. I remember reading the Wolverine four-part series in the early 80s when he went to Japan, which I think the screenplay chose parts to use in the film. I remember the comic book differently though. The love interest angle was a bigger theme, and I vaguely remember him training as a samurai, but I could be wrong. Because I enjoyed that short series back then (1982), I bought the book (below) that collects the issues. I'm looking forward to this rediscovery. 

Stay Positive: Family Art Night

Last Thursday my daughter's school had its Family Art Night. A bunch of the classrooms had their own arts and crafts projects in them, which was fun, but one of the big draws to this deal is the competition to correctly identify famous paintings posted around the halls. If I remember right, there were eight of them.

There was Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon...

Van Gogh's Starry Night

Grant Wood's American Gothic

Edvard Munch's The Scream

Da Vinci's Mona Lisa

Monet's Bridge Over a Pool of Water Lillies

And a Georgia O'Keefe painting that I correctly guessed as a magnolia and a Picasso painting of a woman sitting in a chair that I couldn't identify. No Guernica for the kids...

So it wasn't a real difficult task if you've taken any art history courses, but the wrinkle to the competition is that the kid of each family is asked to describe the painting in his or her own words. 

Apparently, my daughter provided strong (and sometimes humorous) descriptions because she won the whole dang competition. She received a fancy James Rizzi water bottle as a prize. 

Roll Nasty Family Roll. 

"50 Coolest Album Covers"

The ShortList.com has a post up about the top 50 album covers. Check it out.

From my perspective, there are some sound choices on the list, namely Van Halen's 1984, John Coltrane's Blue Train, Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, Rage Against the Machine's debut, and Nirvana's Nevermind.

I know Abbey Road is a classic album cover, and it's on the list, but what about Sgt. Pepper's? That seems like a monumental oversight.

If I were I were to offer other albums and more recent album covers that should be in this conversation, I'm nominating the ones below:

Amanda Shires, Carrying Lightning

American Gun, Therapy

Backyard Tire Fire, Bar Room Semantics

The Bad Plus, Give

Beastie Boys, Licensed to Ill

Blind Melon

Death Cab for Cutie, Codes and Keys

Drive-By Truckers, The Dirty South

Faith No More, The Real Thing

Glossary, Long Live All of Us

Jane's Addiction, Nothing's Shocking

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Langhorne Slim & The Law, The Way We Move

Metallica, ...And Justice for All

Police, Ghost in the Machine

R.E.M., Life's Rich Pageant

The Replacements, Pleased to Meet Me

Rollins Band, The End of Silence

Son Volt, Trace

Trampled by Turtles, Duluth

Wynton Marsalis, From the Plantation to the Penitentiary

Baseball Art

When I working on the last Music Friday, I checked out Centro-matic's website, and there's a portal on the site that leads you to the artwork of Will Johnson, the head man of Centro-matic/South San Gabriel.

It's great stuff.

He paints pictures about baseball players as you can see by trolling http://www.willjohnsonart.com/.

With his permission, I've provided some images of them below, but you can get the best look at them by going on the website.

Vida Blue was one hell of a pitcher.

For the Cardinal fans out there, I thought you'd appreciate the painting of Al Hrabosky.

For me, of course, I'm drawn to Banks.

A lot of the paintings are sold, but after looking at the list of them, I'm fantasizing about having a man cave with one or more of these paintings in it.

I'm considering who I would want even though I doubt Johnson paints them on demand. Nor do I have the disposable income at this moment to buy one. Those damn kids keep needing clothes and shoes.

Though I've always liked Sandberg, my favorite Cub is Andre Dawson, which is clear if you read "The Hawk Has Landed."

One of my favorite baseball cards, which I rediscovered after helping clean out my parents' house, is the 1980 George Brett card, the year he flirted with hitting .400.

And even though I don't like the Cardinals, I think Bob Gibson was one of the best pitchers ever. That man was intimidating.

Long Tall Abe

What you see here is the enormous statue at Lincoln Springs Resort, which is just east of Charleston. It's billed as the tallest statue of Lincoln in the world. All fiberglass, baby!

Lincoln Springs has the best miniature golf course I've ever played on though. The owner shelled out some serious dough to create those eighteen holes, and the restaurant on the premises has pretty good barbeque too. 

The "resort" is strange though. Right beside the establishment is a quarry and the Charleston Speedway for dirt tack racing.

Shake and Bake!

Highway 51

The part of Highway 51 in Mississippi is a well-known two-lane road.

As you can read about HERE, there's a book of photography out that has ninety images of the famous Southern highway. The link provided from the Garden & Gun website provides fourteen of the images. 

Enjoy.