So, I have a cold. Or something. And it effing SUCKS.
I’m on day 5 (or so) of this weird illness that appears to be using a random symptom generator each morning. Today, I practically need to take direct snorts of menthol or pepper spray or sulfuric acid just to smell or taste anything, and it feels like I’m sucking in a quarter pound of sand every time I open my mouth to take a breath, only to erupt in a wheezy coughing jag when all I wanted was some sweet, sweet oxygen.
But lucky me, formerly-DC-but-now-LA-based artist — and apparently very funny dude — Zach Storm has my remedy. In 20 easy steps, Zach has the cure for the common whatever, and I love him for it. Here we go:
They were nice enough to invite me to participate, thanks in part to my friend and former roomate Steve Frost, an excellent artist who has work in the show himself.
Sadly, I won’t be able to make it down for the opening, so if you’re in the DC area, go and represent!
If you do plan on going and want to pretend that you’re me, these are the new collages about which you’ll need to make up something to say in art-speak:
I recommend heavy use of the word “recontextualized”.
I saw this walking home from the train station after I was at the Speakeasy Illustration show in Toronto. The crosswalk box thing made this shadow on the ground and someone drew a most perfect Batman face on it! I laughed so hard when I saw it. So unexpected and awesome!
Spotted near the corner of Iroquois Shore on Trafalgar road in Oakville Ontario.
I was wasting my time in middle school trying to be friends with this kid who was mean and ugly but had a lot of cool skater gear and one of those haircuts that’s short all over apart from long hair-tentacles that covered his face. Aaron something. I’m sure he’s happily married now and teaches homeless kids to read in his spare time.
But back then, shit was different.
It was the year that Tim Burton’s “Batman” was coming out and I was believing ALL the hype — still got the t-shirt, too. I gave up on Aaron when he smacked some comics out of my hands in front of some girls and said to the whole hallway “what’s so cool about Batman?”
Nothing sounds dumber than trying to answer a rhetorical question, especially when you’re mad. This photo pretty much sums it up the answer:
Online gallery & print store Dirty Pilot is currently featuring a set of wonderfully twisted Captain America-themed drawings by artist / musician / underground cultural icon Daniel Johnston on their site. Here are a couple of winners:
Long after humans succumb to self-induced extinction, alien anthropologists are going to visit Earth and come to an obvious conclusion: Spider-Man was our God. Even if you discount the unholy rotten truckloads of Slurpee cups and action figures used to market the films, Spider-Man’s so much a part of our collective consciousness that he may as well be a God — we use the story to tell moral fables and … forget it. Just forget it.
I was trying to put an intellectual spin on everything here, but the fact is that I’m a nerd and way more stoked about Spider-Man 3 than an adult should be. The whole point of life is to be excited about stuff, as excited as you can be, and I’m trying my damnedest to access the passion I felt for Spider-Man as a kid. It’s working pretty well, too. So instead of inflating this post with a bunch of pseudo-intellectual nonsense, I’ll get to the nerdy fun.
Here’s ten incarnations of Spider-Man that will never, ever make it into a movie:
Japanese Spider Man
The Japanese Spider-Man TV show aired in the late 70′s and did what Japanese culture does best: took a pre-existing idea and made it completely insane. Check out the opening credits:
In the following clip, several samurai led by a man with a beer can for a face have captured Spider-man and are menacing him with their swords. A Japanese mariachi appears on the hillside, strums a few chords and hoses the bad guys down with a stream of bullets emanating from his guitar, which naturally doubles as a machine gun. Spider-man escapes to thrilling music, using his spider-like abilities to strike some poses and rapidly climb a large dirt pile. Our hero bests several bad guys with a few well-timed kicks and calls for his sports car over his wrist radio. The man with the beer can face grows to Godzilla size and since this is 70′s Japan, low-budget Voltron shows up to save the day.
It’s not really Christianity that’s so bad, it’s just that Pat Robertson and Ned Flanders have pretty much given it a bad rap. I found a couple folks on Flickr that are using Spider-Man to tell Bible stories. One of them’s definitely making fun of Ned Flanders Christians … the other guy isn’t.
Spider-Man Ganesh
Why is it weak when Christians co-opt Spider-Man to tell Bible stories, but when Hindu folks make a Spider-Man Ganesh it’s cool? I’m not 100 percent on this, but I think it’s because white people are just kinda lame.
Bollywood Spider-Woman, Superman
In this clip from a Bollywood classic, Superman and a woman in a Spider-Man costume fly over the city kissing, pausing to break funky dance moves in a city park, fight bad guys and celebrate their victory with more funky dance moves and in-flight smooching.
Spider-Man’s fought alongside some pretty colorful people in his day, but none quite so colorful as WWE Superstar Lou Albano. In this Indian comic, Spidey teams up with Lou Albano, Superman, Batman and large wizard who looks like Moses to save the day. Unfortunately, an evil wizard turns Lou Albano into an violent giant and an Indian superhero is forced to kill him by force-feeding him some deadly snakes.
My Son Sean, on his 7th Birthday, with “Spiderman”
I met up with lady who use to work in the costume department at whichever movie studio did Spiderman stuff. She was able to get hold of some Spiderman films and made a costume for her son to wear. It was pretty good, except his glasses showed underneath the eye cut outs … As a single mom at the time, a spiderman Birthday Party for that many kids was a big deal for my wallet, and I was so hoping Sean would like it.
Jay Pinkerton’s Spider-Man Comic Remix
Pinkerton writes for Cracked Magazine, among other publications. His remixed Spider-Man newspaper strips are really funny .. or funny enough for fifteen minutes or so, anyway.
3 Dev Adam
Loosely translated to “3 Mighty Men,” this Turkish film delivers the stange, alright. El Santo and Captain America team up against a villainous Spider-man with glasses and giant fluffy eyebrows. He instructs some gangsters to bury a woman up to her neck in sand, puts rodents into a tube aimed at some guy’s face (a la 1984) and has a neglected physique that makes your IT guy look like Hercules.
