I haven't posted about this yet, but I have a drawing that's currently on display at the New Museum For
Contemporary Art in New York City (see "artwork" above). It was originally done for a story published in the East
Village Eye weekly paper.
Here's another great image from the show: Above is a photo of Curt Hoppe who created this great photo-realistic
painting of the Ramones in 1978. It was displayed at the WPA Punk Art Show, along with a lot of stuff from PUNK magazine, and curated by Marc Miller, who also has a lot of his stuff in the show. Later on, in the 1980s, Curt was part of the SCREW magazine crew, which also
featured a lot of STOP! cartoonists and has a rich history of hiring great illustrators and artists. Curt did a great portrait of me which should be displayed early next year.
It's kind of nice to be included
in a show that's mostly about the East Village art scene of the early 1980s, since I was mostly an outsider to that
phenomenon. I always considered myself as a cartoonist/comic strip artist, not an actual "artiste." Nowadays people
are starting to realize that the roots of that crazy art scene were at CBGBs, and this show reflects that. So Arturo Vega,
the Ramones art director, is also featured, and will be a member of the panel discussion with me and photographers Pat Place
and Marcia Resnick. Marc Miller's going to referee... Er, um, I mean moderate.
(NOTE: Please check
out those links I provided, there's some interesting stuff in there!)
Anyhow, the panel discussion
at the New Museum on December 13!
BUY TICKETS
It says on the page that tickets aren't available yet, but the link on the right will bring you to the ticket page.It
works--I just bought one for myself to make sure.
There's a good chance that we will have a few copies of
"The Best of PUNK Magazine" book available for a signing event, so if you wanna be the first on your block to get
a copy? This is the place to be.
Above: Another image from the Museum exhibit.
I recently completed a trilogy of album cover artwork for the greatest punk rock band in the world today: 50Kaitenz. Yeah,
I know that's kind of an outrageous statement, but anyone who doubts me needs to listen to their latest CD: "Rock 'N' Roll Love Letter."
These guys are totally insane! In the best possible way! Check my past blog posts for when we hung out
together in Tokyo. Anyhow, for their last CD they asked me to destroy some wonderful, very professional photos that were taken
of them. This was a challenge. But I did what I could to make them look stupid, ridiculous and terrible.
Apparently
they, and their many, wonderful, Japanese fans, liked what I did, since I am now getting a lot of requests from Japan to destroy
photos, draw graffiti all over them, and make stuff look crazy! Here's the CD cover I did for them:
Like they say: 50Kaitenz are "Huge in Japan!" But if there was any justice in the world, they would be "Huge
in the USA" as well. The last song on the CD: "Yeah Yeah Yeah, Yeah Yeah Yeah" is one of the best songs I've
heard since the 1970s! (Or maybe since The Bullys first CD?)
You can buy this CD, and/or any of the other CDs 50Kaitenz has produced, on Amazon. If I could ever do it, I would produce a US tour for them. They are one of the best live bands I've ever seen--they
rank up there with the Ramones, Alice Cooper, Dead Boys, Sex Pistols, Damned, Jimi Hendrix, Murphy's Law, The Who... Yeah--THAT
good!
We need this kind of energy and rock 'n' roll insanity right now. This is my "Rock 'N' Roll
Love Letter" back to 50Kaitenz! I love you guys!
My "FrankenStorm" Story
ABOVE: A sign on the door of a St. Marks food market: Why, exactly did our mayor forbid food sales when
we needed it the most?
I heard the warnings early on--I even saw the earliest tracking suggesting that
Hurricane Sandy might hit the east coast. This would be the Big One! I made sure I had all the essentials: flashlights, batteries,
blah blah blah. Then the storm hit.
On Monday, it was no big deal, except that almost every neighborhood business
was closed. A few delis were open, a 7-11 and a supermarket on 14th Street. Since the worst was supposed to be over soon I
figured we'd be OK, especially since there wasn't much rain, really.
Around 8:30 Monday night I was watching
TV and checking my iPhone for the latest weather news when I received an urgent message to evacuate the area! WTF, since I
wasn't in an evacuation zone and I doubted that the storm surge would reach my fourth floor apartment, I didn't worry.
Then I heard a few very loud explosions and the lights went out. I looked out the window and yeah, "Here we go again."
This was my fourth NYC blackout. The first was in November 9th, 1965 (when I lived in Connecticut). As a young kid,
I heard how people had a party in New York City. No wonder I wanted to move here. The second was the most famous: July 13-14
1977 (during Son of Sam, the "Bronx Zoo Yankees" and punk rock). I definitely had fun during that one. The big East
Coast blackout on August 14, 2003 was definitely "No Fun" for me because I drove to Detroit to see The Stooges'
big homecoming concert. The power went out just a few hours before the show. I drove back to NYC as soon as I could, heard
about all the fun people had in the streets, and got back just as the lights came back on, after the parties were over.
This
blackout was different. The others lasted a day or two. This one? Four days. I tried to go outside after the lights went out
but the wind gusts were too dangerous and everything was now closed anyhow. No bars, no beer, no fun. I spent the rest of
the night and the next day cleaning up the melting water from the refrigerator, but at least I had some leftover food.
I
had a radio but it was useless: The local news station, 1010 WINS, was knocked out, and the other stations weren't giving
out much info (like where the local evacuation centers were or where the power outages had taken place). I had no idea if
the entire world had lost power or just my little neighborhood. Radio is now owned by big national networks, so I heard financial
advice (Bloomberg Radio), sports news (ESPN), music stations (all awful), lots of foreign language programming I couldn't
understand, endless political coverage about Romney versus Obama, but absolutely nothing useful to my current situation. Shame
on you, radio. You are supposed to be the last line of media defense.
You know those "Emergency Disaster
Alerts" that interrupt programming all the time on your cable TV? Here's what I learned: They are totally useless.
Because they tell you to tune into nonexistent radio programming. Maybe if this had been an atom bomb attack someone would
have set up some "emergency radio programming," but since this hurricane had the power of a few atom bombs and this
was an emergency, I think our system is broken.
On Wednesday I heard that there was "Limited Bus Service"
so I ventured out to recharge my cell phone and figure out what the fuck was happening in my beloved city. I waited
near 8th Street--no bus. Waited near 12th Street--no bus. Waited by 14th Street--no bus. Then someone said the buses started
at 23rd Street. We all walked up there and got on a bus... This whole thing took over an hour, and I never ever saw it mentioned
anywhere that buses weren't running above or below 23rd Street. Anyhow I got to a Starbucks near 84th Street where I charged
my cellphone and tried sending messages to the people I owed artwork to. Apparently no one received them due to technical
problems with the grid and all. A crazy traffic jam took over the city so I walked most of the way home.
Above: A bicyclist struck by a motor vehicle is attended to by police while they wait for an ambulance. Since
traffic lights were out all over downtown, accidents like this were inevitable.
The next day, getting
on one of those free city buses was almost impossible. Even though the MTA was running a bunch of them, they were always too
full of people desperate to get on to bother fighting your way on. I had to walk a few miles until I got one with room for
a passenger. This was madness. And sad, because you saw how too many people act in emergency situations like this: Total pigs.
I saw elderly people pushed aside by asshole adult males, and young women with children pushed aside... What for? A place
on a bus? All this disgusting behavior encouraged me to just keep walking. I'd rather walk a thousand miles than act like
those despicable, disgusting jerks pushing everyone out of their way to get on a city bus.
The few places that
had WIFI also had lines of people waiting for the service. I had to walk several miles before I found one, and it took a few
hours to recharge the damn iPhone. I tried to get on an Internet station but the bandwidth was worse than a dial-in connection--I
spent $10 to send three email messages.
It wasn't just me having difficulty communicating with people. Here's
a sign on The Continental, once one of NYC's best punk rock clubs, from Trigger, the owner. It kind of sums up how difficult
the past week has been. Friends who live just a block away were impossible to reach. You also couldn't reach relatives
a thousand miles away. You'd send messages to people and they'd never see them. Too often, our much-vaunted technology
failed us.
"FrankenStorm" should have made that fateful left turn at Washington, DC and not New Jersey. They are
the people who need a wake-up call, not the poor citizens of New Jersey, Staten Island and Long Island. Anyhow, I do have
a crazy political rant, I'll do that later, but honestly, what does it take for our idiot politicians to admit that climate
change is a scientific fact?
