So, I agonized for approximately ninety-seven weeks over getting the New Yorker Magazine DVD archive thing, but then a remaindered copy showed up on the Amazon for a pretty cheap price, so I stopped agonizing, or at least agonized slightly less than usual, and went ahead and got it, and it’s a good thing I did, ’cause this thing’s been endless fun ever since. Like, I remember back in college having a subscription for a while, and reading whatever I could read before and in-between classes, and for a long time since then I’ve been slowly disremembering all the interesting stuff, like the story about Elmore Leonard’s researcher and all the various Roz Chast cartoons and everything John McPhee ever wrote about geology or the merchant marines or whatever. So, since about all I’ve got in my memory anymore is just sort of this index card file of notes, instead of full-blown detailed images, films, and texts, it’s kind of nice to know the stuff I can just barely recall, but would like to recall better, isn’t totally lost but is instead just a couple of clicks and search terms away (not that a DVD is much more permanent than paper, in the long run). Anyhow, now I guess instead of worrying about what all I’m forgetting, my headspace can get freed up for more important pursuits…which, what those might be, I’m not sure. Can’t cure malaria or feed the hungry with doodles, I know that. Maybe, though, there’s a way to harness the energy of doodling to power zero-emissions airships or to help run the soy cake factories that’ll be feeding us in the not-too-distant future.
Still, though, I need more junk like I need another hole in the head, so I hope Mad Magazine or Art in America never ever come out with DVD archives, ’cause then I’ll have to get those, too, and where does it ever stop, once you give in to that kind of temptation? Plus, the time to look at stuff isn’t exactly super-abundant.
Dang, obviously, it’s late and I’m making less sense than usual. Gotta work tomorrow on getting stuff together for some sort of portfolio, plus there’s a ton of other work to do, lists of tasks scattered all about, so that’s gonna keep me from sketching for a day or two, but maybe this blog-like thing’ll be like giving myself assignments, ’cause art is work, after all.
Oh, and yeah, my wife and I watched Mr. Soderbergh’s “The Limey” the other night, and when Wilson tells someone that he’s come to L.A. to “do a job of work,” that phrase kinda stuck in my head a little, for no better reason than I like weird phrases.
