I'm telling myself I'm wrong in the comments too.

I haven't seen the TV show MAD MEN for the sole reason that I'm pretty sure it would make me want to kill myself. I've heard people talk about it though. And I've seen animated .gifs of the characters in livejournal avatars. With this knowledge, I can pretend to know why it's so popular; the most beloved form of entertainment right now is marketing.

I'm not saying people like it because it's actually about marketing. I think viewers realize MAD MEN isn't so much a show about ad executives as it is a show about selling a retro style of 'cool', nice clothes and the idea that cable makes classier entertainment than network television. That's why people like it, not because they want those things advertised to them, but because the show makes very obvious what it's trying to sell. All media is 'secretly' trying to sell you something, and by putting it not so much under the surface as just further away on the surface, MAD MEN is making viewers feel like they figured it out. It's real subliminal advertising is that it's making you feel smarter for watching it.

That's what's cool now, I think, having knowledge about marketing, figuring out why and how things are being sold to you. And it's been cool for a while. Most blogs or forums about movies are more likely to talk about how GI JOE was marketed than the actual (terrible) film. I think this, rather than decreasing attention spans, are why trailers are seemingly more popular than the films they're advertising. People into BATMAN don't so much talk about what he's up to, or how he's drawn than how he's being sold to the comic readers or how he could be sold to not comic readers. I realize this isn't new as it's been going on since the 60s, or since I've been on the Internet at least, but I think it's popularity has entered the mainstream, and there was a slight change in the discussion about it and how it's treated a couple of years ago.

I was raised by HE MAN. A show created to sell me action figures. I had no problem with this. I was also an impressionable 12 year old when grunge music happened. Remember 1991? Kurt Cobain said Rolling Stone was a corporate magazine, the music industry was fake, patriarchal society is just trying to sell us pre packaged fear and rebellion. He might as well of said 'Fuck He-Man.' But He-Man was my father, and no matter how much adolescent rage I'm going to throw at him, somewhere there is love.

College music and the college attitude became cool. Gen X, like their hippy parents before them, started to slightly rebel against marketing culture. Then, also like their parents before them, they got jobs, and had to start marketing themselves and their companies. And companies started having to advertise to them. There was a certain guilt embedded into Gen X advertising that carried over into companies and people advertising on the web. A friendly, sort of, 'this is an ad, we're sorry for trying to pull one over on you, but please buy our shit.' People used to apologize for having to register or have ads on their blogs. They felt sorry, or at least, knew you knew you were being marketed to and didn't want you to object. They also wanted you to feel like you were part of a group of people reclaiming the marketing machine. He-Man still wants you to buy his toys, but he's sorry he tried to trick you.

And, of course, it being Gen X, there was heavy use of irony. Indie music blogs started talking about, or singing the merits of Billy Joel or Britney Spears. Ads were all 'wink, wink, buy.' But it was cool, because they were kind of kidding. But they also kind of weren't. And now they totally aren't.



People a few years younger than me were raised by Pokemon. A show created to sell video games. They were impressionable 12 year olds when rappers and boy bands were the most popular music acts. Both rappers and pop groups have no qualms about advertising. You know what record label a rapper is on, or when his new album is coming out because he says it in his songs. These kids also grew up on not only ironic advertising, but web advertising, like Google, and Amazon, that is more personalized, but also much more obvious. They know everything is an ad, and I don't think they don't give a shit.

A lot of blogs have ads, and most blogs are almost attempting to sell the blogger as a product. A lot of people have Twitter accounts selling themselves (sometimes, it seems, for no reason). Most vlogs I see on Youtube essentially beg for comments, or star ratings. Corporate run websites or magazines, like Vice or Paste or Flickr, don't really hide the fact that they're owned by a corporation. They don't care, and don't expect you to.

You can listen to Billy Joel or Britney Spears or Madonna unironically.

The difference between the sons and daughters of He-Man and She-Ra and the children of Pokemon (besides one group's likelihood to be sexually attracted to furry cartoon monsters) is that marketing is no longer hidden, or at least not hidden in the same way.
Marketing has just become something else you do, like painting, or coding, or making music. And people love to criticize it like they used to criticize painting, or coding, or music. And that criticism is one of the most popular forms of entertainment right now.

I can't believe I'm still typing, so I'm going to avoid the whole Republican VS Democrat, Apple VS PC, Xbox VS PS3, thing. Or that Kurt Cobain is a video game now (I like him more as a video game). Also I'm grossly generalizing, yo, and not saying one thing is better than the other.

I have all this stuff in mind when I'm trying to make a website for my artwork. I've had a domain for about 5 years now and I've been slowly updating it and changing things around the entire time. I want a site that's all 'hey look at my drawings, if you want', but I sort of need a site that also says 'and give me some of your money.' I don't want to come across like He-Man or Pokemon. Which is probably why I don't get jobs. Then I had a break-through the other night and came up with this:

http://ifeelawesome.net/dollars

Also, if anyone wants to pay me to attempt to write the longest set up for a joke ever, I'm your man.

Here's a song:

The Cancellation of Quasar

Here's the first 3 pages of the comic I'm working on right now, PAWS. I'm going to put it on my site to read in chunks. I've been waiting for a good stopping place for part 1. At first I was going to stop at page 5, but now I'm thinking 10. If this line of thought continues, Part 1 may encompass the entire thing.

Halloween.

Old News/Self Conscious Blogging.

I put the 16 page comic I made for Stanley Lieber's Fake anthology and have been posting pieces of for the past 2 months or so here if you'd like to read it.

Speaking of SL and comics; you can download, or buy his comic (on paper, or, I believe, laser disc) The Abandonment Of Cruelty here. My totally lazy review of it is: it's like Eddie Campbell drawing Valis, bro.

I originally wrote this post last week and saved it as a draft, as I am young, and busy, and run from hip social engagement to hip social engagement, hopped up on Red Bull and metatextual references. Or I had to go to my Grandmother's birthday party. For the past 7 days, I've been tweaking and slightly editing this while reminding myself that it's a blog and not something important like a thesis paper, or a groundbreaking scientific research article, or an internet video game review. This is why I normally just stop doing things at the first sign of being finished. I'd never actually consider comics or songs, or blog posts to be 'done' otherwise. I'd be the George Lucas of blogging.

I'm hoping that paragraph makes more sense, but remains equally as thrilling when I turn it into a 350 page mass market paperback called Save As Draft, Save As Death.

All that being said, I think the 12 paragraphs (no joke) I wrote about the Running Man script don't necessarily need to exist outside my head. Although making a blog post about the making of the same blog post probably doesn't either.



This is the cover to my next comic of which I've drawn one page so far. I keep going back and forth on whether to run the thing as a weekly-ish webcomic or just wait to put all of it up when it's done (I'm hoping between November/December and 2020).

Hippies.

Two drawings I did a couple of weeks ago for an article about Phish fans in The Portland Mercury.

First time in a while I had a lot of fun doing an illustration for someone else. I got an email from a dude that's into Phish talking about the band today, and I had to admit that while chances are I have heard them, I can't remember it actually happening. Music, for me, just like the news, poetry, or love, doesn't exist unless it happens in a Raekwon song.

Rom N Roll.

My Rom drawing for the Bill Mantlo fundraiser Spacenight that's happening at Floating World Comics in December. Here's the blog for it.



I realized a few days ago that I neglected to mention it here, but I still have a (very) few copies of my Pink Tombs comic for sale. It's $8. More info on my livejournal

I'll probably do another print run once these sell out, though that may take a while. They should, however, be available at 1, 2 or 3 comic stores soon, so I'll let you know. I'm also wondering if the comixpress webstore only looks like a pit of despair, and if it would be worth selling it through them.



I feel like this post reads as if I used a blog template to write it. 'Insert Image, Insert Description, Insert Link' Insert Life Update:

I haven't been writing on the internet too much recently as I've been feeling a little blogged out. Not so much in a 'I went on a picnic, and there's a 3-d world out there, with 3-d women and I cried, so I'm deleting my Myspace' way, more in a cranky, my new neighbors are really into this music that's a mix of traditional Latin songs with club beats, and it could be breaking my brain, and I've cut down on caffeine which is causing me to have emotions, or at least one emotion: grumpiness -way. Though, after 15 years of being protein deficient, I have discovered these things called 'protein drinks' which are making me feel almost human again. So I should be back to typing about random comics from the 1980s, and the magic of Teaneck, New Jersey in no time.

2 4 U.

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Stanley Lieber made a comic for you to read called Ensign Smurf. The first part is up on the Arthur Blog.
I was going to write about how SL is an internetional treasure, ect but then I realized that I'm tired and cranky, and you could easily read the first few pages of the comic and discover this for yourself if you haven't already. Such is the magic of comics that they contain a dense amount of information in a small space. And part of the Ensign Smurf information package is the sentence 'I'm Stanley Lieber, I'm a genius motherfucker.'

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I made you a mix. Sometimes when I'm kind of bored or procrastinating on 'paying my bills' (writing suicide notes to credit card companies) or work or whatever, I start cutting together samples to use in my music. I however, almost never use them. Not because I'm afraid of copyright infringement as I laugh at copyright (not really but sometimes I write 'LOL' inside of copyright symbols on things), but because every time I do use a piece from someone else's song, someone points out how it's the best part, or really impressive for my music. Which in itself would be okay if it didn't lead to me slowly punching myself in the face for a few hours.

Anyway, this is bits and pieces of songs and noises and whatever. If you were to imagine being in a club that replaced dancing and drinking with napping and birdwatching it might make more sense. I'll put up a tracklist for it when I get a chance to listen to the thing again.

more slashr.

two more pages from this comic. i should be done drawing it sometime between this weekend and 2011. hopefully when read at once the whole thing makes slightly more sense. committing myself to work solely on this until i finish it was, while honorable, possibly a bad idea as my personal life lies in so much ruin i can't convince anyone to go see the gi joe movie with me.

yesterday we spent 20 hours vaguely house sitting, but more specifically doing laundry and watching an endless amount of cable television. these are some things i learned:

-television now allows you to just pick a tv show/movie to watch. it's like a world where space time does not exist. or it's like watching tv on the internet without chinese subtitles at the bottom of the screen. i guess i should mention here that i haven't had cable in 10 years.

-watching too much tv may give me brain damage. i think mostly because it lacks the interactivity of the internet. 3 hours in and i was lulled into a near catatonic state that is only now beginning to lift. when i'm online, i'm usually doing 40 things at once. when i'm watching 'babylon a.d.' on tv, i have only vin diesel's living poetry to occupy my mind. i'm not saying it's bad, it just makes me feel weird and unconnected. remember that episode of 'terminator: the sarah connor chronicles' where the john henry robot gets unplugged and he won't speak or move until he is allowed back on the internet? no? i guess it's your fault the show got canceled then.