Birds and Cows

I made a pleasant “waking up” ringtone. It’s (a kid on youtube playing) Rossini’s Call to the Cows, mixed with some bird songs. Inspiration was obviously Looney Tunes.

I have a couple records to post soon.

Who lambada’d it better?

I was at the gym last night, and a song came on that was vaguely familiar. It was a dance song, and the familiar part occurred only during the chorus. I wobbled with distraction trying to figure out who they were sampling. I made an effort to memorize the lyrics (something about “dance the night away”) so that I could look it up later. But then right as the song faded, I figured it out! They were remixing Sun City Girls! Specifically, “The Shining Path” from their 1990 album, Torch of the Mystics.

This struck me as the most bizarre thing ever. Sun City Girls were an experimental psych band with a tendency toward pastiche. Many of their albums are annoyingly hard to find (especially the singles). But Torch of the Mystics is their most well-regarded (and most accessible) album… so who knows, maybe this dance/house artist happened across it and decided to sample it?

The Shining Path is my favorite song on the album – and it’s certainly the catchiest – but I’d never taken the time to dig into its background. Like many of their songs, it uses the sounds/melodies/instruments from some far off, seemingly-exotic locale (but still, I assumed it was an original song). It begins with a old western-sounding whistle, accompanied by minimal guitar and drums, with expressive Spanish vocals. Some sort of pan flute carries between the verses.

The youtube comments for the song quickly revealed to me both the origin of the tune, and the dance revision. The original is a Bolivian folk song called Llorando se Fue, by Los Kjarkas (1981). It reached greater popularity in 1989 when it was remixed/gaffled by a French group called Kaoma. As you can see from that wiki entry, the song already had a rich history of dance hall remixes. The Sun City Girls version was recorded in 1988 and released in 1990. And then last year (2011) Jennifer Lopez remixed it in “her” song, On The Floor. I was hearing the J. Lo version at the gym, of course.

Here are all four versions. And scroll down for some bonus pictures of Sun City Girls.

The original lambada, Llorando se Fue (1982):

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Future Spa

In case you’re on Twitter, consider following an account of mine, @futurespa. Future Spa began as a pinball machine in the late ’70s. But it’s a rich concept – and it includes some of my main interests: science fiction, exercise, relaxation – and so I thought I would give an attempt at expanding upon the world.

Future Spa(my pal Drew made that a few years ago for me)

The account is from the future, and provides updates on happenings at Future Spa. Such as:

News and warnings:

Polls:

Job announcements:

I’m not exactly sure where this all will go, in the end. I had a comic concept going for a while, but it faded. For now, it’s just fun to get creative, and to be somewhat-funny, and to think about the future.

Hagen illustrations

Former professor at Otis College of Art and Design and current chair of the Fashion Design Department at Woodbury University, Kathryn Hagen, has been putting some great tutorials on youtube. While I’m not a fashion illustrator by any means, anyone interested in illustration can learn a lot from watching a masterful use of layers, highlights, and textures. She uses so many different types of pens and pencils, and just layers layers layers on the color. It is mesmerizing to watch the textures emerge.

Find more on her youtube channel or on the Otis one.

Pins and Needles

I made a website this week for Los Angeles’ Pins and Needles pinball parlor. I really think that Pins and Needles is a unique and special place – it’s a labor of love, with a great line-up of prized pinball machines. It also serves as the hub for the Los Angeles Pinball League. Their previous site wasn’t as effective as it could be, so to help them get some additional business, awareness, and press, I volunteered to put together a new site for them.

For it, I opted for WordPress, so that the owner could easily update it with new content / blog posts.

pnnIt uses the responsive theme, which is a clean and simple theme, and is suited perfectly for an operation like this. I didn’t add anything fancy – mostly style updates.

If you’re in LA and you like pinball, you should check this place out. They have some great pins.

New comic – Nunchuckti Yoga

I have a new comic up on tiny mix tapes. It’s called The Six Basic Postures of Nunchuckti Yoga. Here’s an example.

nunchuckti-downward-spinning

I drew this with my new wacom tablet, the Intuous 4 Wireless. The Intuous 5 came out very recently, but after reading a bunch of reviews, and after using a 4, I decided on the 4. Previously, I’d been using a Wacom Bamboo, and I wasn’t impressed by it. I mostly just used it for touch-ups – I’d scan in art, and then clean up all the bad lines in Photoshop. But it would frequently make “phantom” lines. Even when I wasn’t making contact with the tablet, it would often act like I was! Very frustrating, and it made it difficult to undo changes, since there would end up being lots of teensy changes to undo.

Anyway, I had the phrase “nunchuckti yoga” in my head for a few months, but I couldn’t think of how best to express the idea. Then I saw some yoga posture charts, and decided to go with that!

Curren at Hammonds

I snipped this clip out of the 1995 movie Good ‘N Plenty II.

I surfed this day at Hammonds – it was a big, epic winter day – and was on the beach when Curren showed up. He borrowed a board from a guy I went to high school with (Arrow). Check out the Black Flag sticker on it! He paddled out and caught just two waves. Thankfully, someone was filming!

Tom Curren grew up surfing Hammonds. I did, too. It was amazing to see him surf the spot. We were seriously in awe watching him out there. We had spent countless hours watching him in movies. Seeing him whip a tight cutback in person (at his/our home spot!) was a real highlight of my youth.

In recent surfing news, last weekend I surfed at Rincon, and my girlfriend filmed me on a wave! It’s a very small wave – not much to work with – but I got a few little turns in.