Posted on by mwhybark

Site tweakies in progress

Still working the kinks out, but I’ve added topical archives to the link area to the right of the main page.

There’s some div nesting problems to be worked out on the archive pages, too; but hopefully this will make finding a particular entry or reading within a given subject area (hi, Matt!) somewhat easier.

I think I can stuff the archive lists into drop-down menus; would that be helpful?

The most onerous task is properly categorizing the “special” entries into the new categories: I’ve added a category for “Blimp Week” and of course one for your Ken Goldstein of the week.

BTW have your printer ready for tomorrow’s Ken.

Posted on by mwhybark

BLIMP WEEK UPDATE PART UMPTEEN

Now on ebay: Own your own blimp!

Someone else’s loss is your gain. We found this SEA DOO blimp hung up on one of our fences on our ranch (in the middle of nowhere). It was fully inflated with helium and flying a couple of hundred feet in the air, so there are no holes in it. It has at least 200′ of cord (which was how it hung on our fence) so it can fly high over your place!

This thing draws a lot of attention!

The only damage that we could find was that the seam has come apart on one of the fins and it had duct tape around the edge. This doesn’t affect the part that holds the air, and would not be noticeable while “flying”.

We have it tied to our jeep in the picture, so you can see the size difference between the jeep and the blimp and the loader.

The object in question is an inflated 20-25 foot advertising buoy-blimp, the kind of thing one sees tethered over car dealerships. There is no mention of shipping details.

Posted on by mwhybark

1987 Stenciled poster

summer_of_hate_poster.jpgOops!
I was so involved with my Wired piece I forgot about the Monday art.

In a few days I’ll fudge the dates of publication so it’s neater.

This image is a photo of a no-longer surviving copy of a large, 18″ by 24″ or larger poster I made for a party/show in the basement of the house I lived in during college, the Litter Box. As I recall, the bands were Too Cooland also the Truckadelics. Too Cool was this too short-lived postpunk power rock band – sorta glam. As I recall they were great but I only saw them twice that I can remember.

The Truckadelics were a long-lived Frankie Camaro project. I have video of Andrew Wagner singing an original Frankie number, “Unlucky Highway”, in the basement of the Litter Box at a party, possibly this one. The parties in the basement with bands at this house remain epic in scope – I recall one in particular in which the keg was tapped and completely consumed in less than thirty minutes. Occasionally, I am introduced to someone here in Seattle who happened to be in Bloomington during this era and recalls the parties at the house.

I cut the stencil at full size into a piece of heavy drawing paper, and used a variety of spraypaint colors and on-the-fly paper masking to accomplish the variant color effects. This is one of the most ambitious stencil pieces I did. For many years I would attend punk rock shows with no money in my pocket and hang out by the front door of the show, selling a stencil to be sprayed on whatever people were wearing for a measly buck.

I would clean up, and usually had money for beer after the show. I still have almost all of the stencils I cut – there were thirty or so as I recall, some as elaborate as this image.

I actually got a “real” job from a promoter who worked for the University Student Board from this flyer – he came to the show and asked me to make a flyer for a Replacements show he was booking. I did the job for free plus four tickets to the show, but I don’t think he liked the flyer I made for him.