Missing Things

A friend is telling me I'm too hard on some of the pics I post here. Will try not to do that, but might be writing a bit more in this space. Expansively, at times wrong-headed-ly. Feeling less shy about it, however. You can read it, or not.

Meanwhile, my little computer broke, but I can still use it, with an external mouse.

Above is the Seaview from "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea." Found the DVD of the movie at the flea market, which is cool. As a kid I loved the TV series, and built the Aurora model of the sub. Also remember seeing a large scale model of it in the window of a hobby shop in Toronto, way back in the 1960s. My Dad took me out specially one rainy night, just to see it, blue in the window. Yay, dad!

Went to Shary Boyle's presentation at the Drawn & Quarterly store last night. She's an interesting artist, seemingly very "hot" at the moment, in the very narrow world of Toronto-Montreal English-language culture. I had intense responses to it, because of my family history (my mom was a watercolourist and used to paint those kinds of figures) not to mention the kind of material I do.

But it was a tough night, because the room was crowded, and the presentation was long, and I'm getting old, getting old (will wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled). It seemed the slightest move I made would upset something, or make noise. And she was very generous -- you'd have to say long -- with her answers, but it was all interesting. At least I didn't collapse this time ...

I wanted to say a couple of words to her, but she was shy. Of course, being a guy, and coming off as nervous as I often do, and considering the gender issues in her art, I wasn't surprised to be shut out. At least it's not the 80s any more, and the culture wars have grown colder. The issues are still there, though. It was tough being the art writer at the Mirror in the early 90's, working under two opinionated feminists!

Missed the American Presidential debates on T.V., but I'm calling this guy below "Joe The Plumber" in honour of that. That's even though he's been in the book for a while, but I finally finished him the other night.