Mmmm..... Martyr.....

I am totally crushing on this woman. She's a 15th Century statute of St. Catherine, French, sculptor unknown, and we met her at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts when we flew into SLC. I don't know if the photo does her justice, but she is very lovely indeed. Plus, I've always liked bookish women.

Medieval art is the shizzle.

Colorado

It's been a rewarding 2 1/2 weeks of blogging here at L&TM5K. But, now it's time to just slow things the hell down. Alan Greenspan and other voices in the financial sector have been expressing concern that the blog is in danger of "overheating."


Plus, I'm going to Colorado. The trip will largely consist of a family reunion. It's Mrs. 5000's family, not mine, so although they are all very lovely people I will inevitably be feeling like the in-law I am. My plan: stay just a little bit drunk all week. Or, with a little luck, I might be able to get away for a day or two to indulge in my admittedly freakish hobby of county collecting. A guy can hope.


If there's a computer in the hotel, I'll to check in to entertain you with some pithy little anecdotes from the road. Or whatever. If not, see ya next weekend. Thanks for reading.



M5K

Mrs. 5000 at 23rd and Sandy

Listen, I have admitted that I might not be entirely impartial on the subject of Mrs. 5000's artwork. Nevertheless, I think you really ought to get to the 23Sandy Gallery this month to see her camera obscura. And I don't care if you DO live in Chicago. This is art, damn it!

The camera obscura is appearing in a book arts exhibit called "Sense and Sensuality," a national juried show which I believe will also feature work by recent L&TM5K contributer fingerstothebone.

Here are the dates:

June 27 - August 4, Thurs - Sat 12 to 6 p.m.

Artist Reception: Friday, July 13, 6 - 9 p.m.

NE Sandy and 23rd in beautiful Inner East, Portland

And here's an example of the kind of thing you might see if you gazed into the camera obscura.

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I tweaked with the Palmcorder Yajna recording from last night. It sounds much better to me now, but I don't know if will sound any different to you. You can check if you want.

Concertina Yajna

So I bought a concertina a few weeks ago. It was a rash and controversial act that I can't explain or justify. A concertina is incredibly loud, and I don't really know how to, you know, play it. Per se.

This lack of natural ability and talent is conspicuously on parade on a demo recording I finished tonight of the Mountain Goats song "Palmcorder Yajna," a great track that frankly deserves better than this kind of treatment. (I've posted it as "Concertina Yajna" on SoundClick to throw off the intellectual property enthusiasts.)

A note to the uninitiated: Home recordings don't sound all slick like you might be used to. And I know my voice sucks, OK?

In Which Michael5000 Talks Back to The Man

When bitching about public issues, I really try to resist the logic of "how come they are doing x, but they ain't doing y!?!" In general, that's a pretty naive way of thinking about any complex organization.

Furthermore, it bugs me that many of my fellow Portland lefties enjoy characterising the Portland Police as a sinister cryptofacist brutalizing jaugernaut. It ain't. Complaints about the PPD generally strike me as embarassingly provincial, kind of like complaints about the terrible, terrible Portland traffic.

Having said that, though, it was discouraging that in the same week we learned about the Police Bureau's abyssmal performance in investigating rape cases, we were also treated to the spectacle of officers aggressively ticketing letter-of-the-law traffic infractions by bicycle commuters -- $242 for rolling stops in the light-traffic Southeast Industrial neighborhood. Which is just unspeakably stupid.


C'mon, Rosie. Let's set some priorities.

Surreal Detail of the Week

I learned a few days ago that my high school sweetheart has joined the roller derby.

Mrs. 5000 in Blogospace!

I was more than a little pleased today to see the work of Mrs. 5000 -- a book artist who is, in my evenhanded and dispassionate opinion, only slightly greater than Joseph Cornell -- featured on the Rag and Bone Blog. Lamentably, she is not credited. Hers is, you know, the best one. Third one down. With the little birdy.

Oddly, if you scroll down in the blog (which is worth doing; there's lots of cool stuff down there), there is a post on another project by artist Nina Katchadourian, recent winner of a Michael5000 Award for Excellence in Online Cartography. This one is completely unrelated to maps, but is nonetheless very cool and very entertaining. Small world, or something.

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On a completely unrelated note, here's the Michael5000 Song of the Day: Sufjan Stevens performing the Innocence Mission song "Lakes of Canada" on a banjo, on the roof of a public building in Cincinnati. No, really. Check it out.

It's incandescently lovely. Or maybe that's just me. Whatever.