Proteus

Just for funsises I took a Greek Mythology personality test. I answered the questions honestly, but don't necessarily agree with the assessment of me on all levels. Oh well. I was just for funsises after all.

Your Score: Proteus

33% Extroversion, 33% Intuition, 83% Emotiveness, 42% Perceptiveness

Changing your shape to suit your situation, you are most like Proteus. More than anything else, you need to be wanted. You have a very strong work ethic, and are very adaptable, but are often unappreciated. You develop very strong personal loyalties, and will often maintain these personal relationships at a great expense to yourself. Convention and conformity are very important to you, and you find deviations from either to be very inappropriate. You tend not to burden those around you with your own problems.



Famous people like you: Mother Theresa, Jimmy Carter

Album Covers: Blows Against the Empire

Wow. I have been busy as hell lately, and as a result, I haven't had much time for things. One of which being posting anew here. So here we go.

One of my favorite albums, and covers is "Blows Against the Empire" by Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship. While not a 'true' JS album (in fact this album predates their first as a group by 4 years), this concept album, which was inspired in part by Heinlein's "Methuselah's
Children", is actually a one off band made up of many of members of other San Francisco bands of the day, such as Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, CSN and Quicksilver Messenger Service.

"

The album is a narrative concept album that tells the story of a counter-culture revolution against the oppressions of "Uncle Samuel" and a plan to steal a starship from orbit and journey into space in search of a new home. The original vinyl release is of course divided into two album sides. Mau Mau (Amerikon) launched Side One, a counter-culture manifesto and call to arms. In the context of the narrative, this is the free music being performed in the park, drawing everyone together.

"Put your old ladies back into bed,

Put your old men into their graves,

Cover their ears so they can't hear us sing,

Cover their eyes so they can't see us play."

"Get out of the way, let the people play,

We gotta get down on you,

Come alive all over you,

Dancing down, into your town."

It celebrates late-sixties counter-culture, depicting people celebrating mind expansion and free love, "We'll ball in your parks, insane with the flash of living... calling for acid, cocaine and grass." They've had enough of the military, domestic and abroad, "You unleash the dogs of a grade-B movie star Governor's war... so drop your fuckin' bombs, burn your demon babies, I will live again!" They condemn the divisive strictures of conservative society, and dream of finding a Utopia.

The Baby Tree, (written by Rosalie Sorrells) an enjoyable if seemingly anachronistic song for this album, is about an imaginary island where babies grow on trees and are collected by happy couples when they fall. The scene develops over the remaining album side, in Let's Go Together and A Child Is Coming, that a couple is among the gathering in a park outside Chicago the night before the hijacking, tripping on acid as dawn approaches. She reveals that she's pregnant, and predictably they resolve to free their child from the government's "files and their numbers game" by joining the hijackers. In this setting, The Baby Tree can be seen as their acid-induced daydream about pregnancy, and so fits neatly into the narrative.

Side Two, informally known as the "Blows Suite," opens with Sunrise, describing the breaking dawn the couple was awaiting, and leads directly into Hijack. The revolutionaries storm the transport to the orbiting starship and head off into space, boarding the ship by the end of Hijack and leaving orbit in Home. As the story progresses with Have You Seen the Stars Tonite, hopes and misgivings are revealed. After the ship's engines and systems are readied in X-M, Starship relates a mutiny fought for control of the ship, to determine whether to surrender and return or to continue on. Eventually the idealists win control and the ship is flung by gravity sling-shot around the sun and out of the solar system."

"Kantner went so far as to write to Heinlein to obtain permission to use his ideas. Heinlein wrote back that over the years, many people had used his ideas but Paul was the first one to ask for permission, which he granted. The album went on to garner a nomination in 1971 for the prestigious Hugo Award for Dramatic Presentation, marking the first time a rock album was so honored."

"The original vinyl album was a single platter in a gatefold sleeve. The cover featured a piece of Russian folk art from a painted lacquer box, attributed to CCCP (U.S.S.R. in Russian). Kantner has said he enjoyed stealing the art from Russia because many of their albums were bootlegged on the Russian black market. The back cover painting depicts a partially opened parcel revealing a room inside with Jerry Garcia peeking out, the parcel being flown on a string by a pair of breasts with wings. Inside the gatefold is more artwork with track listings and credits, done in silver ink on black background and featuring a Paul Kantner caricature with a head of marijuana-leaf hair rising over a mountainous planetscape. The inner dust jacket was decorated with collages of musician photos, writings and doodles. Original pressings included a full-color booklet as well, with lyrics, poetry and drawings mostly done by Slick during the recording sessions and collected daily by Kantner. Subsequent pressings included a black & white version of the booklet."*

I have two copies of this on vinyl. One being the rather beat up copy I found for a buck at a antique shop, and the other being a VG/NM one I found in a record store in Boston complete with the color version of the booklet. I also have it on cassette (remember those?) If you haven't heard it, and like sci-fi inspired rock, and can overlook all the hippie idealism and drug shit, I recomend this record.

*from wikipedia

and in color...

Here's the final product in color. More to come... enjoy!

New Vantoon

Last night I decided that my break from drawing had to come to an end, so I whipped up this little piece I call "Gone Vannin'". I don't usually name my drawings, as they are often just of peoples rides, but this one is right out of my head, it told me it's name. I made one of my favorite things, that being a van and matching trailer combo. The van is a mid-Dodge (like mine of course) and has several features/mods I like on vans I have seen like the Vista Cruiser roof for example. I hope you enjoy the picture, and know that they should start coming again with some degree of frequency.

BTW- Yes I will color it eventually, but for now I like the b&w.

Akira bike

Ok, so sorry I haven't posted anything interesting in a while. I have been quite busy lately, and haven't really been online much.

I found this over at scifi.com. This is really cool!

Akira is one of those classic films for geeks that's become an icon. Its bleak vision of the Tokyo of the near future, it's crazy story line, its disturbing visuals, all made it one of the most popular anime films ever made.

Now, the famous motorcycle from that movie has jumped from the screen and into reality. Think you can tear it up like Kanada? Well, you probably can't, as according to the horribly mangled machine translation I'm basing this post off, it's just a concept model. But hey, just seeing the real-life representation of such a classic piece of animation history is pretty cool, right? Yeah, I know, I wish it was for sale too. — Adam Frucci

Music Meme

As requested at The Skull Cave, I did the following.

1. Go to www.popculturemadness.com
2. Pick the year you turned 18
3. Get yourself nostalgic over the song’s of the year


Boy did I have a hard time with this. Looking at the list form the Billboard Top 40, I am reminded of why I stopped listening to the radio back then and was a long haired freek (not a "hippie"* tho, they bug me) who listened to music that was 20-30 years old at the time. I have to say there were a few tunes out then (1992) that I thought were ok enough to comment on.

Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen. I took some flak for being a Queen fan, mostly from people who weren't familiar with them, and when this song was re-issued for Wayne's World, all of a sudden all the people who gave me a hard time about it were rushing out to buy it. Go figure. I hadn't heard the song in quite a while, and I had forgotten how much I actually liked it. There are a few other songs from "A Night at the Opera" I like better like , "I'm in love with my Car", or the Brian May penned Sci-Fi offering '39, but I'll stay on topic here. One of the best things about the re-issue of this song to me was the classic video was being played on TV.

Baby Got Back - Sir Mixx-A-Lott. This was one of the funniest things I had heard in a long time. There isn't too much I can add to that.

November Rain - Guns N Roses. Ok. not necessarily November Rain, but I was pretty into G'nR at the time. I remember the first time I heard this song, it was played on the radio the day after the albums came out, and pretty much fell flat. I liked it, and later that year when it came out as a single, I was not surprised. What did surprise me was the fact that it became one of the biggest songs of the year, thanks in part to MTV driving the video down our throats about 15 times a day. I was more of a 'Civil War' fan myself when it came to Use Your Illusions. One other thing, at this time I was really heavy into collecting vinyl ( I have about 350+ records representing about 2yrs of buying whenever I had money and time to kill) , and was super pumped to find both of these albums!

Give It Away - Red Hot Chili Peppers. I used to love the Peppers. I think this album was one of their last good ones tho. Their early stuff was pretty fun party tunes, and I have to say I think they pretty much suck now. There's some serious talent in the band, but in my opinion, i find their offerings pretty weak now.

One that wasn't on the list, that will always remind me of that time of my life when I hear it it Soundgarden's 'Black Hole Sun'. "Superunknown" was another one I found on vinyl (clear vinyl no less!) and it spent a fair amount of time on my turntable that year.

Looking back, it's pretty funny how my musical tastes have evolved, and I rarely listen to any of this anymore. If I had known about them some of the albums I would have enjoyed that year would have included Tom Waits- Bone Machine, Morphine- Cure for Pain, Dr. John- Goin' Back to New Orleans, but it was still a few years until I moved on from what I was listening to to this. I wish I had found Tom Waits sooner especially, as I have really enjoyed all eras of his music, but he was one of the things my wife introduced me to thank God. (and my wife)
Perhaps I need to do a Tom Waits post soon......

The time has come...

...for me to sell my Buick. First of all, let me just say I love this car, and deciding to sell it has not been an easy decision to come to. It has been in the family for 11 years now, and I have been familiar with it through various owners for about 16. I haven't done anything with it in a few years now, and it breaks my heart to just see it sitting in my garage collecting dust. Here's the rundown.

1972 Buick Riviera. Has the distinctive boattail design.

455 CI, 4BBl, 315 HP

Power everything.

Cruise Control.

This car will float down the highway, and has plenty of power. However, it is a 35 year old car, and is a project vehicle. There is a few rust issues which need attention. The rear quarters, which is an easy fix, and the roof under the vinyl top. That is the worst part of the car. There is signifigant bubbling under the vinyl, but several body guys have told me that it's not the end of the world. The frame was repaired in 1992, and is still in fantastic shape. I have a spare bumper for the rear which is included. The seats were professionally recovered from the original leather, to a woven fabric 'salt and pepper' design. Also the climate controls need attention.
Here's a few pictures.







I'd like to get $2500 for this car. Restored these cars book close to 20k. This one still has a lot of life left, I just want to see someone get it who will love it as much as I have.

contact me at driftwoodpile@yahoo.com

Thanks for looking.

I don't believe it...

Ok, I've seen every Zombie movie, I'm pretty handy with a firearm,, and I have keep "The Zombie Survival Guide" next to the bed. I submit that this quiz is full of shit.
...but who knows?
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