Rap Music: Does It Belong In My Cubist Epoch?

If you missed yesterday’s post, you have to be asking yourself “What the f*&k is an epoch?”

It’s okay, I was flummoxed too.

Two hours into my Cubist phase, even I was still thinking epoch was murdered by Notorious P.U.F.F. Daddy back in nine-six. I couldn’t have been more wrong. What in the world could Cubism have to do with rap music anyways?

Nothing, until now. In yesterday’s post, I also claimed I wasn’t creative enough to produce a Cubist work. I couldn’t have been more wrong there either. Would an uncreative person have the revolutionary idea to combine Cubism and rap music into one fluid art movement called rapism? That looks bad. Try again. Would an uncreative person have the revolutionary idea to combine Cubism and rap music into one fluid art movement called Curap? No, an uncreative person would not have that idea. That’s why I had that idea.

If yesterday’s painting was an example of my ‘early Cubist phase,’ then today’s installment is surely ‘high Curap.’ Here we see the artist (me) rip through the fabric of our tangible universe and stumble into a dimension all his own.

Heaven for a G, by Michael Cedarwood. (2015) Microsoft Paint

The painting again makes use of cubes, there’s some liquor in there, and double meaning is incorporated—the ‘G’ in question stands of course for Georges Braque, and also for the way that rap music uses the letter, as an abbreviation of ‘guy.’

The epoch rages on.

 

My Cubist Epoch

After reading The Cubist Epoch by Douglas Cooper, I have decided to enter into a Cubist epoch of my own. While I do not possess the vision, creativity, or even paint necessary to complete a true Cubist work, I do have the desire to sarcastically mock the movement, much in the same way the book told me Marcel Duchamp did some 100 years ago.

So, I sat on my balcony, taking in the scene, wondering how Picasso and Braque would analyze and break down the space and figures before me. I opened a blank canvas in Microsoft Paint, and created the following tableau:

Behatted John Solicits Prostitute, by Michael Cedarwood. (2015) Microsoft Paint

We can see me up there on the balcony, some cubes, the titular Behatted John, and of course, the prostitute wanting to get in on that dollar sign above the man’s head.

Not a bad first try if you ask me.

True Detective Season Two Preview—You Won’t Believe Who Plays Vince Vaughn

The speculation surrounding season two of the HBO series True Detective ends here. As a northern midwestern Hollywood insider, I’ve got the juicy, succulent details.

The cast:

Vince Vaughn plays Matthew McConaughey (all characters are fictitious, any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental), a detective who drives a Lincoln while revealing his thoughts on what it’s like to drive a Lincoln.

Colin Farrell portrays Vince Vaughn (all characters are fictitious, any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental), an alcoholic police officer trying to dry out. At one point, Vaughn, the character, believes he is the brother of Santa Claus, but then comes to his senses and starts a fraternity.

Series creator Nic Pizzolatto makes an appearance as police chief Woody Harrelson (all characters are fictitious, any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental), while wearing a pregnancy vest and carrying on an affair with a busty paralegal.

Matthew McConaughey (the real person) is absent from the cast, for he is believed to be isolated somewhere in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, rubbing his fingers together, writing dialogue for the next run of Lincoln commercials.

The plot:

Matthew McConaughey, the detective, discovers a disfigured body along the Pacific Coast Highway, believed to be corrupt politician Colin Farrell, played by Woody Harrelson. The corpse presents a multitude of esoteric knife carvings along his perineum—this obviously wasn’t the killer’s first rodeo. Naturally, Vince Vaughn’s character, Matthew McConaughey, wants to get to the bottom of things, so he calls in Vince Vaughn, played by Colin Farrell, a choice that chief Woody Harrelson (Nic Pizzolatto) has a major objection with.

Of course, the whole time, we’re wondering if the actual Matthew McConaughey will hop in his Lincoln and descend from the mythical Sierra Nevada peaks in order to help out with the investigation. After a few episodes, the actual McConaughey does come down out of the mountains, and is entangled in an impromptu metaphysical ‘act-off’ with Vince Vaughn’s fictional character named Matthew McConaughey that is not actually based on the real human Matthew McConaughey, in order to define the true meaning of Matthew McConaughey.

Matthew McConaughey, the actor, produces a notebook and begins to read: The laws of physics state that Matthew McConaughey, whether in liquid, gas, solid, or plasma form, cannot be defined by two separate bodies, for Matthew McConaughey exists everywhere, in everything. He is inside you. He is inside me. He is inside a Lincoln. He is the universe. Matthew McConaughey got himself pregnant and gave birth to God.

Security roughly escorts McConaughey, the actor, who drops his notebook, from the set, while McConaughey, the character, goes back to performing the scripted material. He picks up the notebook.

The cover reads, in childish handwriting, Matt’s Journal of Hopes and Dreams.

In the pages of Matt’s journal, the actor McConaughey’s plot to murder corrupt politician Colin Farrell, played by Woody Harrelson, is revealed.

McConaughey, the detective played by Vince Vaughn, chases down the security guards that carried out McConaughey, the actor.

The head guard looks confused and claims that he did not escort McConaughey, the actor, from the premises. Detective McConaughey closes his eyes for a moment to think. When he opens them, the guard is gone and an empty Lincoln MKC sits before him. The car drives off.

The face of Matthew McConaughey, the actor, is superimposed over the final scene before everything fades to black.

Rudy Maxa Asks Montrealian Bagel Maker Whether He Prefers Montreal Or New York Bagels—And His Answer May Surprise You

During a visit to a Montreal bagel shop on today’s episode of the PBS progrum Rudy Maxa’s World, the titular host was looking to stir up sediment on a rivalry as old as a man that was born a long time ago.

Maxa was no doubt hungry for blood—as the bagel maker gave a walk-through of the ingredients and techniques that make a Montreal bagel, Maxa loomed in the background, ignoring all that was said and done, visibly salivating, ready to hit the man with the controversial question that was on everyone’s mind.

Then, the bagel maker finally shut up. Maxa pounced.

“So, which do you like better, Montreal or New York bagels?” asked Rudy, crossing the point of no return.

After a full half second of silence, the bagelman answered, to the surprise of everyone present: “I like Montreal bagels.”

There you have it—the man who makes bagels in Montreal likes his own product more than one that was made somewhere else.

Next week, I hope to catch a rerun of Maxa’s trip to the Pacific Rim, where he asks a native whether or not that rim is the best rim in the world.

Hipster Plans To Avoid Mainstream Highways And Drive to SXSW Only On Obscure, Little-Known Roads

Interstate 35, which travels directly through Minneapolis, Minnesota and all the way to Austin, Texas, site of the annual South by Southwest gathering, is intentionally being avoided by a nameless, faceless hipster in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

NO.

The interstate system, dubbed ‘way, way too mainstream,’ by the hipster will be ignored in favor of a bizarre and far more lengthy path to Texas. A path you probably have never heard of.

The hipster said the following in a low, drawn out voice: “I would have driven the route if it were still the early 1950s, you know, before the interstate system was created. Roads were cooler back then. Now it’s all corporate and shit.”

The hipster was very adamant about obscurity and not following trends.

“Avoiding conventional highways was a no-brainer for me, so I sat down and brought up Google Maps on my iPhone. I was

YES.

able to find little-traveled county roads, abandoned residential streets, and even flat expanses of Oklahoma prairie that I could drive my Camry over.”

The hipster kept talking.

“I’ll probably see some stuff I normally wouldn’t, and I can post pictures to Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. Really show people how cool it is when you don’t do what everyone else is doing,” he said from behind his gluten-free beard crumbs and glasses without glass in them.

The drive from Minneapolis to Austin, which can be done solely on Highway 35, was made unnecessarily complex after the hipster read an article on a popular website.

“I was paging through Buzzfeed, ironically of course, and came across a list titled ’25 Reasons to Drive On a Highway.’ And I thought, ‘if Buzzfeed knows about highways, then 40 year-old Iowans are probably even aware of their popularity.’ Needless to say, in that moment I knew highways had jumped the shark.”

Does the hipster find his roundabout route to Texas excessive?

“Yeah, I’ll be putting a few extra clicks on the odometer,” the hipster admitted. “Is it totally necessary for me to pass through both Virginias, shoot over to New Mexico, then down into the real Mexico, in order to approach South by Southwest literally from the Southwest, all in the name of turning my back on something the majority of people like? No, it’s not necessary at all. It’s quite stupid, actually. I think I even pass through Canada at some point. But keep in mind, stupidity is in no way popular right now. But when it becomes the “in” thing, guess who will be credited with making it cool? Me. Not that I care. Then I’ll move on to something else.”

As of this writing, the hipster was somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, with estimates placing his arrival in Austin sometime between April 1-3, when the festival will have been over for more than a week.

 

I Played Star Wars Monopoly As An Anarcho-Communist—And Won

The setting: a wooden kitchen table.

The game: Star Wars Monopoly.

The players: Two greedy cappies (pejorative form of capitalist), and me. I have not seen the Star Wars movies since I was about eight years old, so I can only describe the pieces we used:

One opponent played as an ugly fellow with a sword, the other as the robot that looks like a stumpy penis. My figure was wearing a jacket reminiscent of Dr. Evil’s garb.

I went into the game with a strategy—buy little to no property. My first opportunity to purchase a tract of land was some sort of platform in the Cloud City. Even if I hadn’t been playing as a communist, this was a no-brainer. How safe does a city on clouds sound? Why not just build a home atop a pile of runny cow dung? I passed.

Peter Kropotkin

My next move landed me in the Ewok Village. Now that had a communal ring to it. I shelled out the samolians, or in the case of this version of Monopoly, “credits.” I like to tell myself even Peter Kropotkin would have been okay with that one.

I landed in jail at least six times over the course of the game, leading me to realize my character was some sort of free-thinking anarchist. Though frustrating at first, I eventually realized all that time in the clink worked to my advantage. While in jail, I sat idly and avoided rent charges, while the other two players slugged it out betwixt themselves. Numerous times after being freed from prison, I went right ahead and landed on the “Free Parking” space, the treasury of which was very fat every time, due to penalties and taxes paid by the unincarcerated.

Sometime during all this, I landed on a property adjacent to the Ewok Village, The Forest, which I purchased simply to provide a buffer zone for the community and also prevent the razing of the trees for a galactic equivalent of Walmart to be built.

The next swing around, I found myself in the Throne Room of the Death Star. I picked that one up, and, unknown to the other players, filled it with an unshaven mass of jobless vagrants, in order to give it a sort of “Occupy Wall Street” vibe. The surrounding properties subsequently went undeveloped.

As with nearly any game of Monopoly, an impasse was reached. I, with three properties, accepted an offer for the trinity-completing neighbor of the Ewok Village and The Forest, in exchange for the Throne Room.

I took all the money I had amassed and spread it among the people, promptly erecting four communes on each piece of land. We decided to gladly accept rent from any wayfaring capitalist that came our way, and invest the money in useful things, like hammers and sickles. The other two players, by following the law and not spending most of the game in jail, owned plenty of property, but could only afford sparse development.

Within three turns, both capitalists were bankrupt, with one of them desperately trying to sell me something called “The Moisture Farm” in an embarrassing effort to restore some semblance of wealth.

So there you have it: indestructible proof that communism and anarchy work.

 

Pope Joan And Patriarchal Folly

Here is a legend:

During the Middle Ages, a learned woman named Joan may or may not have risen to the rank of pope by disguising herself as a man. Google Pope Joan if you like.

This brings us to the quote of the year, so far. In The Secrets of the Tarot: Origins, History, and Symbolism, Barbara G. Walker writes:

“Whether Pope Joan was legendary or not, a strange Vatican custom appeared after what the church insisted was not her reign. Candidates for the papacy seated themselves naked on an open stool, like a toilet seat, to be viewed through a hole in the floor by cardinals in a room below. The committee then had to render a formal verdict: Testiculos habet, et bene pendentes—-“He has testicles, and they hang all right.”

The men of the church would rather gaze up at an old guy’s scrotum than mistakenly allow a woman to assume power.

Here Are The Books I Read In 2014.

This is a list of the books I read in the year 2014. I only read three pages from 50 Shades of Grey, which is why it is not listed here. See? I’m not hiding anything.

Burgundy, Ron—Let Me Off at the Top! My Classy Life & Other Musings (2013)

Camus, Albert—The Stranger (1942)

Chandler, Raymond—The High Window (1942)

Dick, Philip Kindred—The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)

Dixon, Chuck/Moench, Doug—Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Broken Bat (1993)

Egan, Jennifer—A Visit From the Goon Squad (2010)

Evans, Colin—The Casebook of Forensic Detection (2007)

Everett, Percival—Assumption (2011)

Frissell, Bob—Nothing In This Book Is True, But It’s Exactly How Things Are (1994)

Taken from http://www.bobfrissell.com

Greene, Graham—The Third Man (1950)

Haldeman, Joe—The Forever War (1974)

Harris, Thomas A.—I’m OK—You’re OK (1967)

Heinlein, Robert A.—The Puppet Masters (1951)

Kafka, Franz—The Trial (1925)

Kakalios, James—The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics (2010)

Larsson, Stieg—The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2005), The Girl Who Played With Fire (2006), The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest (2007)

Le Guin, Ursula K.—The Dispossessed (1974)

Moore, Alan—Batman: The Killing Joke (1988)

Petersen, Penny A.—Minneapolis Madams: The Lost History of Prostitution on the Riverfront (2013)

Pynchon, Thomas—The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Bleeding Edge (2013)

Reed, Ishmael—Mumbo Jumbo (1972)

Rowling, J.K.—Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (1997), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1999), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007)

Slater, Lauren—Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century (2004)

Stokes, Philip—Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers (2003)

Swartzwelder, John—The Time Machine Did It (2002)

Vonnegut, Kurt—Breakfast of Champions (1973)

Westlake, Donald E.—The Ax (1997)

Wilson, Robert Anton—Prometheus Rising (1983), Quantum Psychology (1990)

Wong, David—John Dies At The End (2009)

Yeager, Jeff—The Cheapskate Next Door (2010)

Hi.

I have been gone for some time. I am back.

Where was I?

Kind of a long story, I suppose. ***SPOILER ALERT—even though everything that follows is completely true, it very closely parallels, and at some points is the exact same as, the ending plotline from the hit television show Breaking Bad. So here’s the gist of it.

As he became increasingly psychotic and morally bankrupt, I had no choice but to turn on my meth cooking partner. I’m dumb, and he’s smart, so naturally some things went very wrong. I was captured in the New Mexican desert by a gang of neo-Nazis who tortured me and forced me to make drugs for them in a secure compound from which there was no escape. I was, however, able to replace the active ingredient in meth with an industrial grade laxative. The only thing that kept me going all those months was the solace that tweekers the Southwest over were experiencing historic bouts of bowl-vacating pestilence.

Then I escaped and came back here, where I now sit and type.