Art

“SKINAMARINK” Movie Review

1 year ago

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Written 1/23/2023

Fuck, man, this fucking movie….lingering in my brain space like a disease.

I blacked out last night…partly because of alcohol…partly because I was poisoned by this fucked up movie….it infected me. I feel diseased.

This movie is made from pure nightmare fuel and is not to be taken lightly. It’s truly hypnotic and I think there might be actual nightmares in it. It’s called SKINAMARINK. It is challenging. It is testing. It is very very difficult to sit through. I feel utterly devastated by it.

So much nothing happens that when anything finally happens it feels like a stab to the gut. It feels like it was channeled directly from a child’s nightmare to the screen. I’m sure half of the audience probably hated it. But I can’t stop thinking about it.

This movie is truly insidious. It’s preposterous. I can’t imagine how anyone could come up with it and remain sane. I would not be surprised to find out it was made by a shady government agency to mindfuck the masses.

I am truly disturbed by (and jealous of) the filmmaker. The level of creative prowess it must have taken to conceive of those images and ideas….and the sheer audacity to then turn around and show it to the world….big brass balls…,.a kind of creative courage I don’t know I have. I would applaud it if I didn’t feel so sick from having watched it.

Yes…..this movie made me sick. I can feel my cells deteriorating and my soul disappearing. It’s not a movie to be enjoyed, but rather forewarned about. So be warned. It may bore you….or it may fuck you up.

Signed,

The Traveler

4 Questions: If You’re a Fan of Stan Lee then You’ll really like Ron Fortier

2 years ago

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Listen and read this blog post on Medium.com/goshdarnblog

Read on Publc.com

Veteran Comic Book Writer Extraordinaire

INTERVIEWS

Ron Fortier has been a professional comic book writer and author for almost fifty years, now.

The comic books he’s worked on are numerous and you’ve definitely heard of some of the super heroes he’s written comics for like The Hulk, Popeye, Rambo, Peter Pan, The Green Hornet and The Terminator are just a few!

He spends a good deal of time now-a-days publishing independent comic books at his Airship27.com publisher site and let us tell you has has many, many books and comics published under his belt!

Ron is no stranger to Comic Cons and we at GoshDarnBlog caught up with him at the Fort Collins Comic Con in August 2022.

We asked Ron 4 questions so if you’re a fan of Stan Lee then you’ll really like Ron Fortier.

GoshDarnBlog asked him about his career and about how to do a Comic Con when you’re a newb.

Read on to find out below!

1. What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from Comic Cons? What advice do you have for someone who wants to be a vendor at a Comic Con?

“…For the first time, if they are sitting behind the table alright, as a creator, is have fun! Have fun meeting people, being social and talking to ’em okay? Don’t go with the mercenary attitude of “Oooh I gotta sell all my books, oh I gotta make a profit, blah blah blah,” … if you go in with that attitude it’s like I said it’s very mercenary, very cold, and it’s not what this fandom’s about. These people are here because they love Comics. The comics that you’ve written, illustrated or whatever, it’s an opportunity for you to meet with ’em and to share with them, okay, that love and that passion, if they buy something that’s icing on the cake… but trust me okay, even if they can’t the situation is they don’t have any money or whatever and they walk on they’ll remember that conversation they’ll walk away going that was hell of a nice guy and next time if I come back and have some cash I’m stopping over and getting one of his books. And it works all the time. It’s just being honest its liking people and having fun.”

2. When’s your next class at Front Range Community College in Fort Collins?

“We are starting it back up this September, once again It’s going to be an 8 week course at the front range community college alright it’ll be on Wednesday nights from 6 to 8 at night and um basically how to write comic strips and graphic novels.”

3. What’s your comic book series Mr. Jigsaw all about?

“Mr. Jigsaw is a comedy super Hero that myself and Hawaiian artist Gary Kato created almost forty years ago now when we were first breaking into the business and it was basically a series of short stories, 8, 10 page adventures of a character who can break apart like a jigsaw puzzle, alright, he lives in the state of Maine and operates out of the city of Portland Maine he’s a young fella he’s very naïve and he thinks his ability to break apart and then reconnect is some how very cool and so it gets him into all kinds of different problems and situations but the thing is he’s so likeable and has such a close circle of friends that they always come to his aid and in the end the good guy always wins that’s Mr. Jigsaw, Man of a Thousand Parts.”

4. What’s coming up for you?

“I got a new six issue mini series it’s science fiction it’s called beyond the stars we just kickstarted issue #1 and I’m doing it with an Italian artist names Andrea Bermeda that I connected with online he’s a 30 year veteran from working in European comics so that’s the newest thing Ron forty (Fortier) has go on the shelf these days.”

Visit his website Airship27.com.

Hey you!

Thanks for reading “4 Questions: If You’re a Fan of Stan Lee then You’ll really like Ron Fortier!”

Let us know what Ron Fortier comics you like in the comments!

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George Dessev is a Fine Artist

2 years ago

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Listen to this gosh darn blog post aloud over at Medium.com.

And gives a big middle finger to Modernism

“I have,” he says with emphasis. “In that direction I have excelled everything.”

For George, painting is more about symbolism than anything else.

“Appliances or cars er (pause) I think they don’t have symbolism… Like a can of Coke has no symbolism. A cup has symbolism. A can doesn’t. For artistic purposes, if you put anything like that… just spoils your painting…”

I ask him if he knows what an NFT is and he replies, “Huh…What’s that?”

George is forty-eight years old, from Lafayette and drives into town almost every day to draw in coffee shops. He tells me his angle is “the coffee shop.” Since he was a teenager he’s been going there to learn art rather than a school.

The man sitting with me at OZO Coffee in Boulder, Colorado, is soft spoken and intelligent. In fact he’s so soft spoken I’m wondering if my recorder will pick up his voice over the funk music and the banging sounds the baristas are making behind the counter.

George Dessev Jr. — Courtesy George Dessev on Flckr. GoshDarnBlog.com 2022.

On this hot August day George is hunched over in a black t-shirt. His dark hair parted to the side. In the chair next to him is a weathered leather bag with a strap that makes him look like a professional when walking down the sidewalks of this town, but in his bag are pencils and paper.

Two drawings by Fin Artist George Dessev. GoshDarnBlog.com 2022.

He sold me two drawings for five bucks last week and I’ve been carrying them around in my laptop bag. We’d had a short conversation about visibility or how my blog doesn’t get any hits, like he wasn’t going to do the interview with me because of it.

I was introduced to him several years before Covid and saw some of his paintings hanging up at Avante Coffee on Walnut. He had nudes, which I thought were cool and something you don’t see often in Boulder.

Courtesy George Dessev “The Funeral of Robin Hood”

Another time I saw his self-portrait, a striking painting, but something every famous painter has done, like Van Gogh for instance. George’s self-portrait looked similar to portraits from several hundred years ago, like you would see on the walls whenever you visit a well-known museum.

Dessev was thinking of subject matter no one knows about when he created his 36″ by 40″ art piece “The Funeral of Robin Hood,” which will be available for sale at The Trident Bookseller and Café at his month long hanging in September 2022.

George said about Little John in his painting, “He’s kind of a midget… Like Friar Tuck you can recognize.”

Also you can see minstrels singing about Robin Hood’s immortality in the furthest part of the picture.

There are several painters of note he’s studied with; Quang Ho and Ron Hicks at the Denver Art Students League.

His Show in September 2022

For the month of September George Dessev will have his paintings hung and for sale in The Trident Café at 940 Pearl St, Boulder, CO, 80302.

He does not have a website you can visit so you’re going to have to go over to the café yourself to see them all.

Joshua Stevens: A Musical Saw Player and Fine Artist from Boulder, Colorado

GoshDarnBlog.com 2022

Interview with a Maze Designer

GoshDarnBlog.com 2022.

Meet an Author

GoshDarnBlog.com 2022.

3 Thoughts About Mazes

6 years ago

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The “maze” has been around forever. There have been archeological sights discovered that hint that mazes have been built in ancient Greece and Egypt. You can find mazes today in amusement parks, in those famous corn mazes at Halloween or in old gardens styled by hedges.

1. Labyrinth vs. Maze

Basically a labyrinth has one route in and out.

A maze has dead ends, multiple paths, but one route out.

A labyrinth is “unicursal” with one path that goes to the center and then you can exit by turning around and going out the same way.

Mazes are confusing and labyrinths are not.

In myth the labyrinth is home of the Minotaur, but in today’s world it’s mainly for walking meditation.

When you walk through a labyrinth you walk methodically, in a civilized fashion because sometimes it’s a group activity and once you get to the center you have to turn around and avoid the other people.

A labyrinth can be a painted floor, built with with rocks, or cut from hedges. There was one time I saw someone spray-paint a labyrinth design onto a grassy field. He even made a mistake with one line and should’ve cut the grass to get rid of the mistake, but left it.

Mazes can be life-like for you to walk through, but mostly they are printed in books for you to go through with a pencil and eraser. You can find them on restaurant place mats or in coloring books. There’s also this great marble maze I played as a child. Maybe you did too?

2. Maze Video Games

Long ago in the 80s, “Maze Craze: A Game of Cops ‘n Robbers” for the Atari 2600 was one of the first maze video games to enter the market. Pac-Man is also considered a maze video game. Would Q-Bert be considered one, too?

3. Of Mice and Ants

Scientist John Lubbock, in 1882, studied insects by putting them in mazes. All the fascinating data he discovered was published in his book Ants, Bees, and Wasps.

Willard Small was the first scientist to make rodents go through mazes for study. He was inspired by a hedge maze, you know, like in the ending of that Stephen King movie “The Shining?”

If you can’t get enough of mice and mazes try reading a good book called “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes.

Buy a Maze Book by DD Stewart

DD is a publisher and designer of mazes.

He’s designed hundreds of mazes in his lifetime. He told me he used to design his mazes with marker, white out and by making copies at Kinkos (Now FedEx, but Kinkos sounds better). Now he designs them in PhotoShop.

His book is called “Tome 1: From Here To There (kulsiz Tome) (Volume 1).”

$7.11

His second maze book is actually printed in color, “Tome 2: From Here to There in Color (Kulsiz Tome).”

$25.00

One Whacky Crazy Way to be Happy!

6 years ago

If you purchase through our partner links, we get paid for the referral at not additional cost to you! Visit our disclosure page.

Okay. it’s not that whacky.

It’s a graphic novel called “Happy!” written by Grant Morrison(Batman, The Invisibles) with art by Darick Robertson.

I bought it off Amazon because I really wanted to read it.

You’ve probably heard of “Happy!” the TV series, Season 1, with that actor from “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” episodes–Yeah, that guy.

When I was younger growing up in Brooklyn in the 1980s I really liked buying comic books. Not DC and Marvel, but independent ones.

I used to go to a comic book store in Park Slope and stay there for hours. The DC and Marvel comics were in boxes in the middle of the room, but I’d go around the walls and look at the many indie comic books up there on the shelves.

Some were not for children, but I was 5′ 10″ and had a mustache by the sixth and seventh grade, so I bought any I fancied.

I would usually only buy ones with great artwork that pulled me in.

Recently, I ordered the graphic novel “Happy!” off Amazon, a physical copy. No digital.

It’s by a publisher called Image Comics.

It’s rated M for Mature.

It’s about a dirty cop turned hit-man who sees a little girl’s invisible friend, a cartoon horse.

I won’t tell you anything else about it.

Go buy a copy for yourself and enjoy.