feather2pixels

My just-completed voyage to the US easternlands resulted in some interesting artifact finds at home, as well as the creation of some new ones. Now I am back.

Some pictures of note:

And finally, a video of me and Danny dominating The Looper at Knoebels in Elysburg:

[flv:knoebels.flv 600 400]

Welcome to 2012. It was an exciting end of year season here around feather2pixel headquarters, with several visits from far flung colleagues and several more travels to distant shores. In the interests of moving things right along, here’s some artifacts and photos to recap.

Okay let’s get back to work.

Hi.  I have returned from a long satisfying voyage, visiting friends and family in Israel, Berlin, France, Slovenia, and Scotland.  I  have a lot of work to do on feather2pixels, but for now here are some pictures waiting for your tender mousecliks.

Mere weeks after printing this, I was in the mountains for this (scroll down to see the images–I don’t know why).

Coincidence? Fate? Or does the the motion of the moon and its resultant appearance from the surface of planet Earth follow some sort of regular pattern? The answer of course is impossible to know, but I spent the final week of summer ‘010 in the Sierra Nevada contemplating such sweeping issues.

See?  Pants-less contemplation:

Also I climbed a mountain with beloved companions.

And I witnessed interfaith love consecrated at the wedding of a Wohlwend. No photos of that so far, but I did purchase this panel painted with house paint at the Nevada City Crafts Fair.

And now I must go earn my keep. My day job starts now.

“You all know me
Still same old G
But I have been low key
Strongly disliked by most of these fellows with no means of personal motorized transportation,
No snowmobiles and no skis.”

–Adapted from Dr. Dre, M.D.

Hello.  Welcome to the post in which I sheepishly acknowledge my conspicuous lack of online activity and do my best to atone.  I am still active.  I still remember my English.  I’ve just been reluctant to spend any more summer time than necessary in front of the computer.  Apparently, this reluctance does not extend to shopping for leather boots or streaming “Nightmare on Elm Street” to my bed.  But rest assured that in this particular struggle between mind and matter, I resolve that mind shall heretofore regain the upper hand to ultimately slay matter, separating head from body in however many bloody blows to the neck it takes to get this blog rolling again.

Did I mention that I was away for a while?  It’s true.  I can even prove it with this doctored cell phone picture from the Israeli-Syrian border:

And since then I have been in the studio, busy as an autistic beaver.  Six layer night-scene posters, second edition wood prints, t-shirts up the wazoo, a collaboration with Molly Martin and Torben Ulrich (Lars’ dad):  I have had my reticular webbed paws in a little bit of everything this summer.

And now I want to share it all with the world.  My plan is to post a little something every day or so until I am caught up.  By updating feather2pixels.com, I am confident that the world will be a changed place.    When you finally see all that I have been up to, I am confident that you will eventually click out of your browser and perhaps get a drink of water.

I can now proudly say that I was witness to the lowest scoring first half of the shot clock era.

Recently, I picked up a girl at a play and we went on a road trip through our country’s northern territories. These are the three things I learned in our attempt to connect with the land:

1 Hens can lay an egg every day.
2. Sea cucumbers breathe out of their assholes.
3. Honey is the only foodstuff that doesn’t spoil.

Should I be embarrassed that the highlights of our twenty-five day quest for enlightenment are essentially the results of a one minute Google session?

Probably.

Is there a point in clicking the link to check out some post cards that we sent from the road, made with found materials and Mod Podge?

Probably not.

But if you notice that one is addressed to you, then you really should come and get it–for reasons too boring to get in to, they are all at my house in San Francisco.

This is a Polaroid taken during last weekend’s backpacking trip to Henry Coe State Park: land of endless wildflowers, land of eternal allergies.  What I will remember about this trip is that the days were hot, we were constantly surrounded by wild turkeys and there was a lot of mating going on.

Instead of explaining the last few weeks, I will just post some pictures:

I seem to be back from the coast. The south coast. Of Lake Erie. Ben and Joe (barely) flew in from New York, I came in from Pittsburgh, and we all rendezvous-ed with Shal in his newish, possibly semi-permanent home. The night before, driving a Korean rental car upstate, I watched the aggressively uniform landscape of Ohio (is any part of this state uninhabited?) kind of give way to the sprawling, post-industrial mass bisected by river that is the greater Cleveland area. We spent most of time sprawling ourselves: in next-to-back row seats of a tight Indians/Yankees game, in corners of the kind of bars that pull you in with a seven thousand beer menu and keep you there with a Labatt special, and of course on Shal’s living room floor, where approximately one thirtieth of his media collection still fills an entire bookshelf two rows deep. Cleveland is a good place to hang out.

Then I got on the same United States Route 80 of my daily commute and drove East out of the state of Ohio and towards the state of squalor. I was headed to State College, Pennsylvania, where Danny was about to complete his last week ever of studying at the state college in question in a fantastically shitty shell of a house (further ravaged from a party the weekend before). At this point, studying is the generous description of what he does there, though we did wake up at 9:30 AM, after a night of watching DVDs in his warm bedroom, and slashed though a thicket of Ugg boots into middle campus to learn about monopoly. Later on, we went out with his friends to the kind of bars that pull you in with their $5 pitchers of bottom shelf liquor and keep you there because you are not physically free to leave. It was fun and it all made miss college. But not that much.

I completed my five hundred mile circle on PA Route 22 West, where central Pennsylvania transforms to western Pennsylvania via the Altoona Valley.  Freight trains still do things like chug up proud green hills and cross sturdy steel truss bridges here. Once in Pittsburgh, I tried to make the most of my time there by visiting PA’s superior state college, eating a kielbasi fried pirogi sandwich, pinball, and meeting up with Stef and Alicia, who spend less on their new mortgages than what I’m thinking about spending on a studio space. As Alicia’s pup was licking my face over a distracted game of Guitar Hero, I thought, she’s got a pretty nice life.

Speaking of The Colonel… (from a college road trip to the Kentucky Fried Chicken museum in Corbin)

Last weekend I found myself stranded in the Sierra Nevada with Mark, Keri, and Jill. By stranded, I of course mean snowed in for 48 hours at a luxury cabin equipped with frozen fillet mignon and four hundred channels of satellite television (which, to make matters even more hellish, required a 50 yard trek to remove the snow from the five foot-high dish). Speaking of positive yardage, I officially never have to see another replay of Eli Manning’s fourth quarter pass to David Tyree that set up the Giants’ improbable win on Sunday. I don’t care if it was the biggest play in NFL history: an afternoon of one Superbowl highlight is the 2008 equivalent of the Donner party’s snowbound hell in this same area one hundred seventy years ago.

Here are some other things last weekend taught me:

1. Avoid winter lodging on one-lane roads inhabited by people who neglect their annual plowing fees.
2. When calling work to explain one’s snowbound dilemma, it’s best to refer to “The Sierras” rather than “Tahoe.”
3. The chances of surviving a snowbound episode can be increased by preparing a life-giving tonic of double chocolate brownie fudge gourmet ice cream blended with ordinary milk.
4. When electrical power is lost, two fit people can reasonably recreate approximations of Eli Manning’s fourth quarter pass to David Tyree until NFL Tonight is restored. A large pine cone can be used if a football is unavailable.