Greetings from Scrapperstown

"The Enchanted Forest

Paintings by Justin "Scrappers" Morrison

Artist Reception: Friday July 22nd, 6:00 to 9:00 pm

July 22nd - September 10th 2005

V-Gun 412 SW Fourth Avenue.
Portland Oregon 503 226-3400

Hours are 8 am to 6 pm Monday through Saturday

Free and open to the public, all ages.

Contacts: V-Gun co-curators: Marne Lucas ml@v-gun.us Bruce Conkle bc@v-gun.us



The Enchanted Forest

There is a deep far away forest that we can all reach. It is the wilderness inside. It is your wild side. My wild side is home to lumberjacks, savage scouts, happy hobos, vintage beer commercials, protesters, strange trees, unicorn and Bigfoot. They live the way they see fit and I let them be. Maybe someday I'll go join them in the Enchanted Forest, but until then they remind me to stay wild.

All the paint used is recycled, salvaged, or eco-groovy house paint. All of the wood was salvaged from dumpsters and houses that were being deconstructed. Recycling is cool, reusing is cooler, reducing your resource consumption and subsequent waste is coolest.

-Justin "Scrappers" Morrison



V-Gun

V-Gun is housed inside Veganopolis at 412 SW 4th Avenue in downtown Portland. V-Gun hosts 2 month rotating exhibitions, and is co-curated by artists Bruce Conkle (former gallery director of Orlo) and Marne Lucas (former curator at the Aalto Lounge).



For more information see www.v-gun.us and www.scrapperstown.com

10% of proceeds go to benefit animal welfare"

good-ish take on Cirque du Soleil, but once again its definitive zinging on the Simpson's (as "Cirque de Puree" & some years back, too) is ignored, or is that process of simpsonification presumed to have already happened already, to everything?--

"I arrived a few minutes late and found the stage occupied by a small goat-man with forest leaves protruding from his trousers and his hair gelled into a three-point salute. "Pfffft!" he said, to much laughter. A few moments later, an angel dressed in white descended from the heavens. The goat-man regarded the angel with mock fury until the angel rose and began to perform trapeze stunts with the aid of a hammock. This seemed to satisfy the goat-man and he departed at stage right."

& from The Simpsons December 2000, "Skinner's Sense of Snow"--

"Acrobats perform to colored lights and whimsical music. Suddenly, a clown with a pushcart interrupts the show.

Clown: Wait, wait! I cannot get the lid off my jar of rainbows. Who will help me?

[points to a man in a
double-breasted suit] You, sir!

Man: [heavy French-Canadian accent] But I cannot help you, I am just a local merchant from ... this town.

Homer:[yelling from the audience] Just smash it open!

Clown: Oh, you can do it if your heart is pure

-- or puree.
[audience laughs]

[the man opens the jar, and rainbow-colored light appears
to spill from it. The man, who is suspended on wires, is
lifted up and "flies" around the tent as more whimsical
music plays]

Marge: They always pick the guy with the wires."

The New World Order

"For there is a precedent in modern Western history for a country whose leader exploits national humiliation and fear to restrict public freedoms; for a government that makes permanent war as a tool of state policy and arranges for the torture of its political enemies; for a ruling class that pursues divisive social goals under the guise of national 'values'; for a culture that asserts its unique destiny and superiority and that worships military prowess; for a political system in which the dominant party manipulates procedural rules and threatens to change the law in order to get its own way; where journalists are intimidated into confessing their errors and made to do public penance. Europeans in particular have experienced such a regime in the recent past and they have a word for it. That word is not 'democracy.'"

Matt Taibbi

"The crime that ought to be considered this week is not that Rove may have whispered something or other to a few reporters. The crime is that hundreds, if not thousands, of journalists and politicians in this country have over the years cheerily honored this vile, scum-sucking pig of a human being by calling him names like "genius" and "boy wonder" and "wizard"—as though the business of Rove's life was somehow cute, quirky and lovably mischievous."

Where's the books?

"What is the message of this new medium? What does it mean when the University of Texas at Austin removes nearly all of the books from its undergraduate library to make room for coffee bars, computer terminals, and lounge chairs? What are students in those "learning commons" being taught that is qualitatively better than what they learned in traditional libraries?"  

Stanley Kubrick's dictionary on Ebay--starting bid 3500 quid...

Square America square format vernacular photography



(amongst much else at the newly relocated gmtPlus9) 

(Records Are Like Life)

The ageing shuffle function's
approximation of taste
gave us six downers in a row

then bounced back
with the cracker-barrel rictus
of happy hardcore.

Sadly never so "wasted"
that it ever made sense to me
just as in 1978 you could slip "new wave"

records on when everyone was drunk--
Homicide by 999, say, or The Stranglers (Peaches),
but... The shuffle function was

letting anyone else do it
which was never.
The shuffle function

of the guidance counsellor's
high-freckled "rap"
about the "sidjuation"

tight Jimmy Olsen curls
into an Archie crosshatch fade
a bifocal lowering sans specs

comes to rest
at the bridge of your nose, says
down to business--

and so impressive
the audio-visual gestetner
ink-smelling gestalt

(until perhaps a half-dozen
years ago I would still roam the halls
in sleep, stealing books

in an admixture of revulsion
that when I awoke)
that lacking even a robot's

will to charm the odds
or even an 8-track or a Lazy Susan
I consumed the script.
 

good Self-Storage Nation doesn't mention the numerous Simpsons riffs on the subject, though...



"And even when the stored items are innocent possessions, a certain poignant sadness haunts them: They are mementos we somehow can't live with, and yet can't live without, and exemplify the downside of acquisition, the moment when you realize there are more bread machines, plastic lawn chairs, and treadmills than anyone could use in a lifetime."


 

Another Ladybird illustration. (see below) 

long interview with writer/director Larry Cohen

"Jim Brown told me "It's Alive" was the scariest movie he ever saw, so I enjoy being the guy that scared Jim Brown."


(via GreenCine Daily)