Joe Mills

Kevin Dalton

Image from The Art of Kevin Dalton

I haven’t posted about an artist in a while so I thought I would mention the work of Kevin Dalton. Another artist I saw on Drawn! who just has an abundance of talent. I guess I’m really a sucker for crisp, sharp, exaggerated lines in drawings. They always seem so easy to draw, but it really take a keen eye to make it look just right. If it is not exaggerated enough, it is boring. If it is too exaggerated, it loses it’s realism and just looks a little too weird for my tastes. Anyway, I thought I would pass this along…

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Eric Gordon to Indiana

I would never post three times in one day if it was not needed. I can not BELIEVE that Eric Gordon decided to back out of his commitment to Illinois and go to Indiana. It just makes the 2005 loss to North Carolina sting even more because we were really building some momentum after that title run, and now, our immediate future is not looking so bright. I know that you never how a player will turn out when they come to college, but Gordon looked like he was going to be part of a very strong 2007 class. Now, it is hard to tell. I know that this will put into question the ability of Bruce Weber to recruit, which is valid, but I really feel like if we are going to make it back to the Finals and win, Weber is the man to do it. These recruiting pains aside, he is a great coach. I will always believe in my Illini, but it is hard to swallow something like this. We have lost strong in-state recruits before and we have not always been successful getting out-of-state recruits. Peoria should not be the only place we get our best players. I could go on and on, but I’m going to forget about it, keep on rooting, and begin to really despise Kelvin Sampson and the Hoosiers.

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Movie Endings

I wanted to take a different approach with my thoughts on inspiration today. I have been away for a couple weeks, and I got to thinking about movie endings. I am a sucker for a movie that has a good twist ending. After the mother of all twist endings, Usual Suspects, came out in 1995, though, it seems that twist endings are a dime a dozen. I don’t kinow what makes the difference between a good or a bad twist ending, but I’m guessing it has to do with the true element of surprise. The twist needs to be rooted in the story throughout and the audience needs to see where the twist came from. The Usual Suspects, Scream, and The Sixth Sense prepared the viewer for the twist throughout the movie. The twist almost becomes the main part of the story. You are completely off guard at the end, but you realize that the final twist makes sense. If a lot of explaining has to be done at the end, I think the twist is there for the sake of having a twist. I’m really inspired by those twist endings that really leave you with your mouth wide open.

I hear The Departed has a good twist ending…I will have to make that decision for myself…

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No Logo

Image from nologo.org

I don’t know why I didn’t read this book earlier…I have been a big anti-corporate proponent over the years. It is one of the reasons I became a teacher. And, Naomi Klein in her book No Logo has perfectly captured why big corporations bother me so much…they want it all. They want to be such a big part of everyone’s life through branding that they spend all of their money on advertising and building the brand that it just becomes sickening. Why can’t they be happy just creating a good, reliable, United Stated produced brand? Instead, they want to make things cheap, be an intregral part of everyone’s life, and be an important fixture in the global economy and culture. It is too much.

I’m not saying that we should abandon brands and products altogether, but people will go out and buy a good product. They don’t necessarily need the brand to take over their life. Since Klein talked about Starbucks a lot in her book, I’ll use them as an example. I like Starbucks coffee. I especially like the gingerbread lattes they serve around the holidays, and I will be purchasing a lot of them in the next couple months. They make a good product. I don’t need Starbucks, though, to help me decide what music to listen to, where to hang out on th weekends, what coffee accessories to buy, or anything else that helps them build their brand. Why can’t just making good coffee be enough?

It is almost like what happened on the season finale of Entourage this year. Ari was about to lose his Vince, his biggest client, because he had made some mistakes. All Vince wanted was an apology…that’s all. Instead, he conjured up this plan to make Vince a “brand”. And guess what…Vince leaves the meeting and fires Ari. I realize that is a television, but I wanted to make the connection.

I could go on and on about this book, but I wanted to grab one quote from the book that highlights something else that is important to mention:

In this context, telling video artists that they can’t use old car commercials, or musicians that they can’t sample or distort lyrics, is like banning the guitar or telling a painter he can’t use red. The underlying message is that culture is something that happens to you. You buy it at the Virgin Megastore or Toys ‘R’ Us and rent it at Blockbuster Video. It is not something in which you participate, or to which you have the right to respond. (Italics added by me.)

Culture should not be just consumed…it should be produced. We need to make sure that in this day and age where we are constantly asked to consume and buy culture that we hold on to the ability to produce culture. We need to hold on to that at every turn.

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Rich McBride…sigh…

Well, this is not a good start to the season. If you did not hear, one of our three seniors, Rich McBride, got arrested on a DUI this weekend and will most likely be suspended for some games this season. My friends and I got in an argument recently about where the leadership would fall this year with the departure of James Augustine and Dee Brown. I argued that it was Chester Frazier’s team. Even though he is sophomore, I’d like to see him grow into the role. I always felt McBride was a good role player but not much of a leader. I like what Mark Tupper had to say about him today. And just because he is a senior doesn’t make it “his team”. In his hands, I worried about the 2006-07 season. I just can’t imagine him running the point. Now, with this DUI, I guess we will never know. I’d like to see him bounce back and make a good showing during the Big Ten season, but it is going to be a long road. He never really fulfilled his potential. There is time left for him to make his mark on Ilini Nation, but it is not looking good…

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This is AMAZING!

Drawn! has a great post today about Stephen Wiltshire. He is an autistic man who they describe as a “human camera”. He took a 45-minute helicopter trip around Rome and was able to draw a panoramic drawing of the city from memory with amazing accuracy. This video has to be watched to believe.

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