Sexy People is a blog that celebrates the perfect portrait. I wish I had a scanner so I could put up my ridiculously perfect portraits.

When I touring in Oregon we played an outside show at the bottom of a small mountain. We had some time to kill so the drummer and I climbed the mountain. It wasn’t a mountain mountain, it was fairly grassy, but deceptively steep. Close to the top we found an old rickety abandoned cabin. The floor was littered with National Geographics from the ages. Amongst the mess I found a perfect portrait. It was of an unattractive girl wearing her basketball uniform holding a ball. She had the frizziest hair ever, it even dwarfed the basketball. Anyways, I obviously kept the portrait and put it up on the passenger’s visor in the van. I named her Andrea. A few hours later this guy from the show was talking to us by the van. He noticed the picture and I told him she was my girlfriend from back home. He didn’t miss a beat and sincerely told me she was really hot. I know, it wasn’t a great story, but I really miss Andrea and I still wonder who stole my picture of her.

This last one is one of my favorites.

UPDATE!!!

ANDREA HAS BEEN FOUND!!!

Thanks Josh. I guess her hair wasn’t so frizzy, and she kind of has an Andre the Giant face.

I first heard Oberon Zell on Coast to Coast AM talking about his book “A Wizard’s Bestiary” almost a year ago. The book is a pretty neat idea, he takes all the mystical and cryptozoological creatures and figures out how the myths started and if any of them were actually real. Turns out unicorns were real, but not in the sense we think of them today.

Unicorns aren’t born that way, nature won’t let that happen. Even the Narwhal, although awesome, isn’t a real unicorn. A unicorn is an animal that can grow 2 horns and goes through a unicorning process.

In 1933 Dr. Franklin Dove did some research and found out that horns do not grow out of the skull, but they actually start out as unattached tissue and then root into the skull as the animal grows. Since this is the case all one needs to do is surgically take the buds of a newborn and place them in the middle of the head in such a way that they grow into each other. Once this happens, if done right, they will cancel each other’s natural curvature thus producing a perfectly straight horn.

If you haven’t figured it out already, Mr. Oberon Zell is a wizard. An awesome looking wizard. One of the earliest instances of unicorns he came across in his research were the Unicorn Tapestries from over 500 years ago. If you’ll look closely you’ll notice that the unicorns aren’t the horses of today’s pop culture, but they actually have goatees and hooves like a goat. After he came across Dr. Franklin Dove’s work, and being knowledgeable in biology and having some pre-med under his belt he decided to try it for himself. It worked, and he even went so far as to go through the patent process. During the 80’s he toured the country showing off his unicorns at Ren-Fairs, sideshows, and even the Ringling Bros. circus for 4 years. If you’d like to read more there’s an interview with him here about unicorns, and how the process changes the animal’s temperament. Unfortunately he doesn’t make unicorns anymore and the last one died a few years ago. I sure wish someone would take up the call, make an army of unicorned bulls, and set them loose during the running of the bulls.

The first shot is the Bonnaroo main stage at night with no one on it.  The second is a shot of Metallica on the stage.

That’s all.

So I finally saw The Dark Knight on the IMAX yesterday. I was blown away by the IMAX sequences. I forgot just how good 70mm film can look. This isn’t necessarily a review of the new Batman movie, you’ve probably already seen it anyways. If you haven’t seen it yet because you’ve been in the hospital or something then you’d better stop reading because I’m going to unleash some spoilers.

After I saw The Dark Knight the first time I tried to convince myself that it was the best comic themed movie ever. Batman is my favorite comic book character, and I would argue the most important comic character in history. Unfortunately this new movie must be more closely scrutinized than the rest for that reason.

I was never a Make Mine Marvel kid. I read a little Spiderman and X-Men, but Batman was where it was at. And especially Neal Adam’s Batman. Batman, along with Bo Jackson, and Mr. T were my role models. Batman had the detective skills of Sherlock Holmes, the gadgets of James Bond, the fighting abilities of Bruce Lee plus 100 ninjas, and most importantly an insane thirst for justice. Those are all things that are humanly possible if one works hard enough (except if you’re not blessed with being a billionaire I guess the gadget thing is a problem). Batman wasn’t an alien, he was never in a laboratory experiment gone awry, he wasn’t born with any super powers, he was basically a regular dude.

I loved The Dark Knight. No doubt this is the best film in the Batman series, except for maybe this one. Heath Ledger totally ruled as a Joker I’ve never seen before. The closest I can think of is the Joker from The Killing Joke, which I think the new movie borrowed heavily from since in that story the Joker tries to prove that he can make a certain someone insane from just one bad day. The Harvey Dent/Two Face stuff is great too. I hate to say it, but I think that the movie would’ve been better without Batman. His raspy voice really bothers me. Really, I think I’ll save myself some time and send you to this insightful review by Devin at Chud.com. While I don’t agree completely with him, he does bring up a lot of really good points. One of the biggest problems I had with it was the Joker. Although he steals the show, he’s also very poorly written. How can someone that claims he never has a plan seemingly pull off all these really big schemes with less that a day to work it all out?¹

And what’s with this whole thing with the Government helping Batman to spy on Gotham’s people to catch the Joker? It reminds me of Kingdom Come and Frank Miller’s Batman. It’s these half baked plot points that really bring the movie down for me. You could make a great Batman movie where he turns Gotham into a police state like in Kingdom Come. Instead they just glossed over the whole thing and didn’t even take a firm stance on whether or not it’s a good idea to spy on the population in order to take down evil.

I’ve decided for myself that as far as movies go, Iron Man is the clear winner for best all round comic book movie ever. At least until we get to see Watchmen.

1. In a recent interview with Ian Punnet on Coast to Coast AM, Neal Adams explained that the Joker is an expert planner BECAUSE he’s so psychotic, and while I agree with him on that since he knows the Joker better than most people, I didn’t see anything in the movie to suggest that was the case.

Remember that Brady Bunch episode where they went to a ghost town and got kidnapped or something? It might have been an episode of Out Of This World though, or maybe all sitcoms resort to the ghost town episode like they do with the amnesia episode, and the episode where someone has 2 dates on the same night at the same restaurant, and they have to keep running from one table to the other so they’re not found out. Anyways, here’s the 10 most amazing ghost towns according to oddee.com, a site that I think was made just for me.

#8 Kowloon Walled City, AKA The Lawless city is one of my favorites. The thought of a city ruled by anarchy is just amazing.

Thanks go to Jason for introducing me to this awesomeness.

I am so unbelievably disturbed by this. Yet strangely drawn…

Check out the gruesome goodies at this Thailand bakery.

The seventh issue of the jist has now officially been launched. I had a chance to pass some out at Human Cargo’s last show for the summer and I’ll probably be around giving more away. I’m trying to set up a system to order issues for those who don’t live in bowling green, but until then, feel free to browse the issue here or check it out on the site.

I would really like to thank the loop for giving us a place to spread the jist. In the next few days I will start giving back instead of just blogging. Look forward to screencasts featuring a preview of the jist as well as Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and general magazine editing tips and tutorials.

I’ve been hearing that print is dying but I find this prediction hard to swallow. Sure, the internet is easier and cheaper to publish in but real printed material will always be more powerful and accessible. I hope that the upcoming screencasts will bring back the idea of print, or at least in the minds of our readers.

If you haven’t yet heard, the Jist is a monthly publication that I run out of Bowling Green, Ohio. The zine focuses mainly on art, philosophy and culture although we do sometimes digress into less serious things. The jist has really improved since its conception six months ago and we now feature some great artists and writers.

The upcoming issue is no exception and rather than blabbing about it, I rather show you screenshots. I’ll have much more to say once this issue actually hits the streets.