Carnet de Voyage

You ask how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen,—the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives,—I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.”

Men and women laughed at me and some ran into their houses in fear of me.

And when I reach the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, “He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks”

Thus I became a madman.

And I have found both freedom and loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.

But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in jail is safe from another thief.

—Khalil Gibran

Pinterest is like that girl you should be running away from, but she just have you hooked.

If love was as instant as Polaroids, you probably would still be frustrated. You either would have to shake them to make them come to their senses, or you would have to wait for them to reveal it to you.

One of the things that I wanted to do when I went off Facebook about a month ago was to get back into drawing. My friend John Choi has always been trying to get me to go sketching with him. He’s currently taking a class with Will Weston, and on Saturday they all went to the Page Museum so I decided to join them independently.

I was recently given an HP Touchpad. I had rooted and installed Android onto to the tablet so I wanted to see if somehow I could use it for sketching and have it be a replacement for the normal sketchbook/pen/markers combination that I use for sketching. I have had Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile on my phone for awhile. The screen on the phone was so small, however, it rendered the app completely useless for any real drawing purposes.

The sketch above was the only one that I did during my almost two hours stay there. I had gone in that day not wanting to really attempt to make any good drawings. I wanted to draw just for the sake of drawing. I wanted to get into the act of it again without having to worry about the end results. I also had wanted to see if it would be possible to use the tablet and the app in place of a sketchbook, pen, and markers.

Most of the process during the sketching actually went into discovering the capabilities and limitations of app itself. Although, I have had the app for awhile, I have never had any complete experiences with it. Somehow, after almost two hours of working on only one sketch, it just seemed absurd afterward that the drawing didn’t come out more complete. That, in the end, it still looked like some quick sketch.

I think the thing that still throw me off about using the table to draw with is the fact that the stylus that I had wasn’t very intuitive to draw with. I was originally going to purchase the Wacom stylus, but went for the generic Rocketfish brand from Best Buy instead. Both had exactly the same design. The only difference is that the Rocketfish was about $10 cheaper than the Wacom.

The tip of the stylus was a large, rounded rubber tip. Coming from using a micro-point Uniball to sketch with, and combined it the small screen of the tablet, those were the big factors to get acquainted with. It didn’t take me long, however, to get into the process of using the app and the tablet, being able to intuitively move around the tools and navigations of the app.

I really would like to take the device out again to do more sketching. I really like the fact that I have access to all the tools that I need without having to carry the physical objects, i.e. pens, markers, etc. I keep getting these comments about how drawing on a tablet really isn’t drawing or being creative. There seem to be that tie to paper and pen. I have to admit that it does feel in some ways like I was cheating, being able to erase and undo on the fly. And also to be able to work with layers and to be able to reduce the opacity of the layer to lighten the lines I was making.

As you can see from John’s sketches from the same trip, in the end, it really comes down to how well you draw. I’ll redeem myself by producing more drawings on my next outing. By the way, in case you were wondering, the sketch above is of the skull of the Giant Sloth that greets you when you first walk into the museum from the ticketing entrance.

“I’m OK, writing music, doing all of my domestic chores, hiking around since we have no car, and so on. The sun is out and that’s very nice.”

Julius: Your pardon; did I break thy concentration?

Continue! Ah, but now thy tongue is still.

Allow me, then, to offer a retort.

Describe Marsellus Wallace to me, pray.

 

Brett: What?

 

Julius: What country dost thou hail from?

 

Brett: What?

 

Julius: Thou sayest thou dost hail from distant What!

I know but naught of thy strange country What.

What language speak they in the land of What?

 

Brett: What?

 

Julius: English, base knave, dost thou speak it?

 

Brett: Aye!

 

Julius: Then hearken to my words and answer them!

Describe to me Marsellus Wallace!

 

Brett: What?

 

(JULIUS presses his knife to BRETT’s throat)

Julius: Speak ‘What’ again! Thou cur, cry ‘What’ again!

I dare thee utter ‘What’ again but once!

I dare thee twice and spit upon thy name!

Now, paint for me a portraiture in words,

If thou hast any in thy head but ‘What’,

Of Marsellus Wallace!

 

Brett: He is dark.

 

Julius: Aye, and what more?

 

Brett: His head is shaven bald.

 

Julius: Hath he the semblance of a harlot?

 

Brett: What?

 

(JULIUS strikes with his blade and BRETT cries out)

Julius: Hath he the semblance of a harlot?

 

Brett: Nay!

 

Julius: Then why didst thou attempt to bed him thus?

 

Brett: I did not!

 

Julius: Aye, thou didst! O, aye, thou didst!

Thou sought to rape him like a chattel whore!

And sooth, Lord Wallace is displeased to bed

With aught save Lady Wallace, whom he wed.

Sometimes geek moments happen without warning. We all know this very well. I’m not sure how it happens to me personally. It’s almost like when I’m out in public, I don’t notice people anymore. Well, I do. But then I focus in on things they do, or use, or wear.  And if I think it’s cool, I have my geek moment.

I wonder if that kind of act comes from being trained to be that way. Sometimes you end up thinking visually so much, that’s all you really notice.

I was at this sushi place in Long Beach today getting some food with my mom. As I was leaving, my eyes were sweeping the place. I noticed a smallish Game Boy in this guy’s hand. Obviously, it couldn’t be an actual Game Boy unit. Unless somehow he had bought a miniaturized clone of it.

So I walked up to the guy and interrupted the lunch he was having with the girl sitting opposite him, and asked if it was a phone case, and where he had gotten it. The answer? Apparently, our mass industrialized, Communist/Capitalist wunderkind and economic partner China produces many wonderful, cool things. The guy said he got it off Ebay, and that it might have already been sold out. (I did some investigating, and you can actually get it off Amazon.)

I don’t know if I would ever profess myself to be someone who knows what’s current and cool at this point in my life. There are just too many of those things to keep up with. And, really, there are so many sub-categories of coolness in our culture today. You may have your pulse on one thing, and you’ll be completely out of touch with something else.

But this Game Boy iPhone cover is cool. Sure, it’s completely non-functional aside from inciting a sense of nostalgia. But that’s exactly why it’s cool to me. Or everybody else really. It reminds me of those greyscale Tetris blocks free falling on that terribly tiny, green, and incredibly low-res screen. I makes me think of Nanoloop and Little Sound DJ, and all the Game Boy music that got created on that handheld system. (I have this 15-minute Game Boy remix of Depeche Mode songs that I would never throw out from my iPod even if I don’t listen to it very often.)

Sometimes you go out and you notice something that you think is cool, and you sort of have this little geek moment. And somehow even that is cool, too. Do we even remember a time when openly exhibiting that kind of behavior would be considered blasé? Now that nerds rule the world, we all can have our moments of random, cool, geekiness. And that’s exactly how it should be.

Game Boy iPhone cover. Do they have a Tanooki Mario that I can put on my Android?