dream castle

...all spawned from a dream i had. sometimes i don't know if i should be grateful or weirded out by my dreams. most people have pretty straight-forward ones, or fantastical ones, but mine are usually kind of like a Dali painting; a bunch of disjointed, really crazy things with no apparent theme, but maybe there is an underlying one and i'm just not smart enough to figure it out, i don't know. at least this dream kinda had a story.

Aqua - Lollipop (Candyman) video, Youtube

Aqua - Barbie Girl video, YouTube

i love Aqua, totally un-ironically.

platinum soul

FINALLY got my first real Blythe in the mail today! so excited! She's a Kiss Me True. here's what she looked like in her pretty box.

comparing her with my fakey Blybe, i can see why a lot of Blythe devotees are so obsessed with having a "real" Blythe. i didn't really get it, i've never been a "brand name" girl when it comes to much of anything, but after getting one myself, i understand. She feels heavier, sturdier, more substantial, and just overall better-made. i really like her make up (especially her pearl pink lips!) and that her face has a slight shine, but isn't too shiny. her hair--WOW! this might be the best quality hair i've ever seen on a doll. it's very silky and long, but doesn't tangle. it doesn't feel quite as nice as real human hair natch, but it also doesn't feel like a plastic wig like the fakey. it does seem to take quite a bit more effort than i expected to pull her string and change her eyes, though.

i already took a couple pictures of her today. XD

i'm pleased with how photogenic she is. i'm trying to think of a backstory for her...i know "model" is dumb and predictable, but it seems pretty appropriate...

...or maybe  a motocross champ with a shadowy past...

...i think i'm naming her Astrid.

black cherry

saw a lot of movies lately...trying to remember them all...

saw Tron: Legacy in theatres. i wasn't really that into seeing it since i never even saw the original Tron, but i ended up liking it pretty well. the plot is pretty predictable, but the characters weren't quite as one-dimensional as i expected them to be, and i was pretty enthralled by the action sequences. CG younger Jeff Bridges with the dead eyes and pudding skin is pretty creepy, though.

finally saw Precious now that it's streaming on Netflix. my mom sent me the book it's based on a few months back, so i had the advantage/hindrance of having read and enjoyed the book before seeing the movie. i thought the movie was a very fine adaptation, though. it perfectly walked the line of showing you just enough of the utterly graphic, disturbing stuff from the book without it being gratuitous. and just like everyone else has said, Mo'Nique is absolutely amazing in this most disturbing of roles.

Shutter Island: i'm not sure i can quite say i enjoyed this movie, but i liked being mind-fucked by it, and it's definitely a pretty original and well-made movie. i give it credit for creating a constant air of genuine unease throughout, and for keeping me thinking about it days after i saw it.

Babies: been meaning to watch this for a long time, finally saw it on streaming today. it's not quite what i expected. it's very literally a silent camera watching four different babies from four different parts of the world for the first year of their lives. no narrator, subtitles, or explanations. which is fine i guess, but being that i'm pretty ignorant to a lot of the stuff i saw, i would have liked some kind of narration of the significance of certain different cultural practices and such. instead of imbuing this idea of human togetherness through the universalism of birth and raising children, it's instead a bit alienating seeing the different ways that people handle different things, but not knowing exactly why, if that makes any sense. it's really beautifully shot, though. my favorites were the Mongolian and Namibian baby, mainly because of how breathtaking their environments were, from the bright, multi-colored carpets and clothes inside the Mongolian tents to the beautiful red dirt and dust storms of Namibia. probably the most interesting sequence to me was showing how the different mothers bathed/cleaned their babies. of course the American and Tokyo babies were bathed in a shower or tub, but in Mongolia, where i'm assuming water is probably a bit more scarce and at least there's no plumbing, the mother bathed the baby in a washtub and sprayed water over him with her mouth, acting as her own shower. it also showed her clean his face with her own breast milk, very self-sufficient. and the Namibian mother licked her baby's face clean with an expertise i found entrancing; she'd work up a good spit, lick over her face, pause to spit out any grit or dirt, and repeat.

The Business of Being Born: i wasn't originally interested in seeing this until a friend discussed it with me, and i'm really glad i gave it a watch. very eye-opening. it's very significant to me how much women in American society have been conditioned to be terrified of giving birth naturally, and even told that they can't do it on their own. i think it's important for women to realize that they have a choice, which i wasn't even really aware of before this documentary. i also liked that it doesn't dismiss the medical industry, and does admit that birthing complications do happen and that hospital births can be life-saving, but on the whole high-risk births are relatively rare and most births can go just fine without medical intervention. i encourage anyone who's interested in this stuff, general medical history of midwifery and birthing in hospitals, or just women's rights and reproductive health issues to give this a watch. it's on streaming Netflix, and i think on YouTube, and probably other places online.

blah, blah, blah.

no one else is the same

just beat Fable 3...kinda obsessed with it for a bit, but not so much the gameplay itself, it sucks much worse than Fable 2 in a lot of ways, but i do really like a lot of the characters and character designs.

i love that in this game they made Reaver all Oscar Wilde-fabulous with his top hat and fur coat and cane. they even gave him a tiny heart tattoo on his cheek over his beauty mark so he's the ultimate fop now, haha.<3 a lot of girls/players seem to REALLY hate Elliot for some reason (your character's childhood sweetheart if you play a female character/the character you're "supposed" to marry), i guess because he's not a bad boy/pretty boy like Reaver and Ben Finn, but i think he's sweet. i love his Justin Beber hair, haha. a lot of their ire seems to come from the fact that the programming prohibits gender-specific interactions with him--like when you're a female hero, you pretty much can't help but be taller than all the guys in the game, and when you do interactions like kissing, you dip Elliot in your arms. XD i kinda love it though. i like that when i come home from adventuring he's always cleaning or in the kitchen, mwahaha. and i like that when you become queen he doesn't become your king or anything, he's just your consort or concubine or whatever, haha.

okay, i'm done geeking out. about that dumb game, anyway.

i finally got my fakey Blythe in the mail!! she's really cool, but i hate her hair so i tried to cut it and dye it, but i think it's hopeless. her hair won't take the dye at all, so i'm thinking i'm going to have to resort to rerooting her scalp, which i really didn't want to have to do. i'm also terrified of trying to get her eyechips out, Basaaks are notorious, but i'll worry about that when the time comes. i've made her a couple of cool pieces of clothes, though. and i dyed my fingers pink trying to dye her hair!

it fades fast, but it looked really cool and vibrant when i first did it. it made me start thinking about doing it on purpose all the time, like Henna, heheh.

i'm getting a Jem doll, too! i'm excited. i'm still kinda mad at my mom for selling all my Jem dolls in a garage sale without asking me. i really wanna get the Misfits, they're the best, but they're so expensive/hard to find!

the bite

after 20 pages, i feel like i'm finally beginning to get a feel for these characters and how i should be drawing them. it's decidedly looser, more cartoony, way more expressive, i think. most people probably won't like it, but i think it feels right. i feel like i tend to over complicate things, especially in art, like i'm trying to compensate or something. but sometimes less is more. not usually, but rarely.

ugh, the going is still so slow though, because of being drained from work so much. but i will prevail!

snow is ruining my life this week.

neige

France Gall and Serge Gainsbourg

hehe XD i love how many pictures there are of France with weird/creepy fake animals.

don'tcha know me?

finally watched Dead Ringer the other day. i'm a huge Bette Davis fan, and i liked the idea of her doing a horror/thriller-ish type of movie. well, actually, it turned out to be more like a thriller/mystery sort of thing.

Bette Davis plays twin sisters Edith and Margaret. Margaret married Edith's one true love under false pretenses twenty years ago, which obviously kinda pissed Edy off, so the two never speak again until Edith's former lover and Margaret's husband passes away and they meet up at his funeral. Edith discovers her sister is and has been living the high life all these years, living in a big Hollywood mansion, hob-knobbing and wearing glamorous clothes while she's barely been able to afford to eat, and her little dive bar that she runs is about to be shut down because she's three months behind on rent. what unfolds is an expertly laid-out and suspenseful plot for Edith to kill her rich twin and assume her identity.

as far as suspense goes, this one was a real nail-biter for me. maybe it's just because i like Bette so much, but once she kills her sister, it's a non-stop roller coaster of "will she get caught??" it's hard to believe she was considered washed-up at the time she made this movie. she turns in such a great performance as both sisters, and manages to play them both with very distinct personalities, and while they're both deeply flawed characters, they're also sympathetic. it couldn't have been easy to portray twins. it's like an adult, homicidal Patty Duke show!

at first when Edith murders Margaret and it becomes obvious that she's switching places with her, i was like "pffffffft, this'll never work! so stupid." but even if it is a pretty unbelievable scenario, even in an era before forensics and ballistics and all that stuff, this movie does a pretty great job of covering itself. because Margaret's husband died only the day before, and then her sister supposedly commits suicide the next day, any strange behavior her servants and friends will of course notice can be blamed on this. there's this one great scene in which it's Edth's first full day in her sister's gigantic mansion, and her butler tells her the police are waiting to speak to her in the living room (about her sister's suicide), and once she gets to the bottom of the stairs, she freaks out because she doesn't know where the room is obviously. so she tells the butler to bring them to her, watches which way he starts walking, then says she changed her mind and goes into the correct room. XD i just love characters like this, that are kinda bad and you really shouldn't be rooting for, but they're so clever and dedicated and resourceful that you have to admire them.

another thing i like about the movie is the sense of loneliness and isolation that developes, perhaps a side effect of her assuming a new life that Edith didn't anticipate. not being able to truly be herself to a single person in the world quickly becomes stifling, and maddening. she also discovers, as the layers of her sister's sordid affairs peel back, that she also inherits a whole host of unforseen problems from her sister. it's really, really interesting stuff. i thought the ending kinda sucked; i mean, i guess i knew it could only end one way, but i felt like it would've been better if it had ended about ten minutes earlier and left just a couple things hanging, though definitely pointing in a certain direction. or maybe had gone somewhere more over-the-top and dramatic, since the rest of the movie was kind of like that, but it was just kind of depressingly low-key. but i guess that was kind of the style of the time or whatever. overall it was a blast, one of Bette's best movies i think, just kind of an eh ending that doesn't really do the rest of the movie justice. this really makes me want to see more Bette movies, especially Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte.

also started watching this new Avengers cartoon the other night before bed; they had this marathon or something of it on. it was pretty good. i think Wasp Girl or whoever is pretty annoying though, and i wish they'd gotten a better female character to be on the team, but then i realized that Marvel kinda doesn't have any good female heores that aren't a part of some other team, haha. but yeah, the animation's pretty good, the stories are okay. i'm not sure if Captain America is really as crazy as they depict him. and i'm disappointed because i fell asleep right as they were introducing Black Panther. :/

get off my case

all my tears

i just realized for some reason i forgot to post my submissions to my friend Nick's Project Basement here. for vol. 1 i just did a kind of redesign of Dazzler, because i like her.

and for vol. 2 i did Cyclops and Jean Grey because they're some of my least favorites.



never missed my water till my well went dry

i'm out of green tea D:
really into blues and like story telling music right now...i think because i heard "Isis" by Bob Dylan on the radio the other day. I'm mostly really inspired or moved by visuals anymore, but sometimes words are so perfect they really grip something in me like nothing else.
White Stripes cover of "One More Cup of Coffee" - YouTube
Bob Dylan is a fucking poet.
Son House - "Death Letter Blues" - YouTube
Robert Johnson - "Hellhound on My Trail" - YouTube

Robert Johnson is so infinitely fascinating to me. i'm kind of glad not more is known about him, because all the mythos is so mystifying and romantic. XD only two known pictures of him exist, no one's sure exactly where he came from or when he was born, or other minute details of his life. even disappeared for years at a time with no one knowing where he'd been. his recordings are his legacy, along with legends about his personality and a Faustian origin story for his talents. i love that he had a reputation for being surley, dour and gloomy. maybe depressed people can be great artists.

dying from memory

my sketch for Project Basement vol. 2 is up on audioshocker.com! the theme this time is least favorite characters, heheh.

going through a pretty bad depression lately, but i think (hope?) i'm pulling out of it. i hate how my depression leads to me stagnating, which leads to even more depression. such a vicious cycle. stagnation is my biggest problem. i think maybe the best (only?) way to get through it is to work myself through it. the stuff i produce might suck, but at least i'm producing.

Bette Davis

lightning strike scars!

i kind of like this idea

body language

hope everyone had a good Halloween! mine was pretty good. i was a skanky Snow White, haha!

XD

Disney's The Little Mermaid - "Poor Unfortunate Souls" -YouTube

damn, i love Ursula! best Disney villain ever? y/y? i wish i was one of those super ambitious people who make really bad-ass Halloween costumes every year, because i'd love to be Ursula sometime. but i don't really like going to parties and crap, so it'd be kinda pointless putting that much effort into something no one else would really see. but yeah, she's so cool. her expressions are the best, so over-the-top. and i looove how they animated her jiggling boobs, and her back fat. XD

i've always been real into mermaids; they're probably my favorite mythical thing, tied with unicorns. i think maybe i'd like to do a mermaid comic.