the unbearable lightness of being topher

* Post ten of any pictures currently on your hard drive that you think are self-expressive.

* No captions. It must be like we're speaking with images and we have to interpret your visual language just like we have to interpret your words.

* They must ALREADY be on your hard drive - no googling or flickr! They have to have been saved to your folders sometime in the past. They must be something you've saved there because it resonated with you for some reason.

* You do NOT have to answer any questions about any of your pictures if you don't want to. You can make them as mysterious as you like. Or you can explain them away as much as you like.

And I have no shame.



You can see the whole thing along with a billion others at the Hourly Comic forum.

I promise never to do this again.

With apologies to John Campbell and anyone trying to read my handwriting.



( And here are two panels for every hour I've been awake save the last because I've been scanning and swearing at the internet instead of making more shitty drawings. I hope that's self deprecating enough )

I've finally begun my massive film project. I even came up with a pretentious name! Cinemanesis is a portmanteau of cinema and anamnesis. Anamnesis has a couple different definitions:

1. the recollection or remembrance of the past; reminiscence.
2. recollection of the Ideas, which the soul had known in a previous existence, esp. by means of reasoning.
3. the medical history of a patient.
4. Immunology a prompt immune response to a previously encountered antigen, characterized by more rapid onset and greater effectiveness of antibody and T cell reaction than during the first encounter, as after a booster shot in a previously immunized person.
5. (often initial capital letter) prayer in a Eucharistic service, recalling the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ.

I'm intending cinemanesis to be an imperfect cinematic recounting of the past, a damaged celluloid reminiscence.



This was a quickie experiment. The videos can be enormously boring if you follow the narrative which you can do in numerous videos on my new Cinemanesis channel. I'll be uploading new videos as I transfer them. My dad made one to three videos every Christmas from 1979 or 80 until probably 1998. They are mostly my sister, my cousins, and myself jumping around in an assortment of Halloween masks with the vague assumption of recreating a popular movie. The children, in various states of undress and myself in drag, then must face a monster figure most often played by my father or an uncle in an assortment of masks and costumes.

I think doing an overly pretentious psychological analysis of the videos would be awesome. I'm also going to look into collaborating with some friends to score some mashups of the footage so that I don't always resort to Xiu Xiu, Animal Collective, and Sigur Ros.* At this very beginning point, I'm open to artistic direction/suggestion/damnation.


*Just so you know, it's impossible to take me seriously

Had my dad been Wes Anderson, I would probably respond to his e-mails more often.

jess_1370 and cinderoni

I should probably start shading more with paint and outlining less. Or just keep going for this. It's cute and cartoony.

I need to stop painting in the dark, as the tonal values are a bit effed. As well as some other things.. I'll keep painting on cardboard until I feel ready to do something real again.

Any requests for paintings? Comment and I'm yours. E-mail me an addres and I can even mail you the finished result.

Results not guaranteed. No case is typical. Ask your doctor.

I've decided that if I'm not going to be employed, I might as well practice my art and shit. Not sure why it took me five months to actually start on this...

I just have to get back to the skill level I was at a year ago in school. I miss college.