Mark you calendars internets.
Afro-punk Festival 2010
June 25-27
@ Commodore Barry Park (directly outside of the Bklyn Navy Yards)
Cool Kids
J*Davey
NinjaSonik
Activator
Game Rebellion
Martin Luther
Bad Brains
and more…
A skatepark and BMX ramps
FREE SHIT!
Listen, it’s Afro-punk hotdammit and if you don’t know by now its because you don’t belong up in there getting down. This year is gonna be the most major Affro-Punk Festival ever but you gotta copp tickets.
Last night Chocolate Snowflake took me to the Japan Society for an exhibition they are hosting titled ‘Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters: Japanese Prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi‘.
It’s a display of these incredible painting by this master artist in a style called Ukiyo-e. These are graphic depictions of myths and ancient parables that were cut into woodblocks for mass printing. The Ukiyo-e are totally the fathers to the comic books and the graphic novels we enjoy so much today.
As I walked thru the exhibition and viewed Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s prints and especially his sketchbooks I had total recall of Frank Miller’s graphic novel Ronin from the early 1980’s. Kuniyoshi was describing epic samaurai battles with mystical apparitions and mega beasts 150 years prior to Miller but Kuniyoshi’s work looked as contemporary as the comics he inspired.
Where Frank Miller was influenced by the Ukiyo-e art wasn’t just in the concept, layouts and paneling of the stories, but most importantly in the printing of the images. A Ukiyo-e woodblock template is a precision based item hand-carved by an artist. Can you imagine the technique you must have to employ in order to print text from the woodblock? You have to carve the characters in reverse so that when the woodblock is printed it reads correctly.
Frank Miller was unhappy with the production of comicbooks. Because the process was so assembly-line oriented things like color separations and penciling details would get lost in the sauce. Peep the pages from the Wolverine mini-series that Miller did with Chris Claremont. See how the page coloring bleeds thru the paper?
click on image for larger version
Frank Miller wanted to use a different technique for the presentation of the Ronin graphic novel. He wanted to implement the Ukiyo-e style of hand painting each individual page and then have these pages printed on a premium stock of paper. Frank Miller’s Ronin became the inspirational format for the modern graphic novel.
Go to the Japan Society and see the artist that inspired Frank Miller.
On Tuesday night Chocolate Snowflake and I had made plans to have dinner with a couple of her friends. After a few bottles of wine and some delicious pasta I decided to take the night off from my usual routine of staying awake until 5am and posting drops on the page. This allowed me to get some really good rest and look like a human at the day job instead of a homeless person (a quote from a co-worker).
Wednesday evening afterwork found me with the IC crew and our big homey, Jesse Thorn from The Sound of Young America. Jesse fux with us hardbody. We went out to the $.20cent wingspot and ordered 80 wings and two(2) pitchers of Yuengling. After that we fell thru Rich Medina’s party and chilled for a few. Rich had the deep soul grooves spinning and the IC’s were doing what we like to do most… Winning. The night originally called for all of us to convene at CitiField for the Mets v. Padres matchup but the rain changed that maneuver.
Thursday night wasn’t as rainy so I took C.S. to CitiField with the unused tickets from the previous night. The Mets young pitcher John Niese nearly pitched his own version of a perfect game but all the news stories about the event have been focused on Lady Gaga’s appearance at the game and the shit she was getting into. Which goes to show you that if you go to a beisbol game and do some ghey shit you are far better off than a group of guys trying to make a documentary.
So now it’s Friday night and I should be getting ready to go somewhere and spend the money I should be applying to my cellphone bill, or my light bill, or heaven forbid my gotdamn rent. Instead I’m here in the basement checking on all the shit that has been happening in the world since the last drop I posted a month ago. Oh what? It wasn’t a month ago you say? It was only two(2) days ago, but it feels like its been such a long time. Thanks to Diesel, $yk, Grand$, get, LionXL, Jerz, LM, Foster, ‘Spekt and everyone who kept the light on over here.
It’s summertime in NYC.
Let’s get busy -(c)Arsenio Hall
If you think the Internets Celebrities are resting on their laurels after the critical success of ‘Stadium Status’ you are sorely mistaken. The final episode of the Ghetto Big Mac trilogy is the next target for a shooting schedule. But first, what will be GBM-3?
Ghetto Big Mac is legendary (Oh snizzap! Peep the tag ‘nigger’)
And the Futuristic Brunch is a slept on classic.
So the question remains… What is the final Ghetto Big Mac movie?
Drake’s debut album is the sonic event for 16yr olds worldwide. This album wasn’t as cheesy as I thought it would be. I mean, it’s pillow soft, but it isn’t Justin Bieber for Black people.
Drake isn’t going to bring back anything about rap’s golden era and that is fine. In 2010 I don’t think we should be looking in the rearview mirror to move forward. Rap has returned to its dancing at the disco roots and Drake injects his own type of Rap & Bullshit into the matrix.
Thank Me Later is all 808s without the heartbreak. It’s a fun album for the 2010 summer. It won’t make it to the fall tho’. And it honestly doesn’t want to. TML wants to have fun now and see how many groupies it can pick up without really trying.
Thank Me Later will own the aspirational rap niche this summer with all the guest features that fill this album up. I want to call this disk a pancake because it’s dripping with syrup.
‘Fireworks’ featuring Alicia Keys
‘Fancy’ featuring T.I. and Swizz Beats
‘Show Me A Good Time’
On my first couple of spins of TML I would give it a double Lutherburger [ll] rating with extra cheese thanks to all the features.
