Crap is a fun word to say but hard to define. Somebody wrote a whole book about it and I reviewed it. But I still couldn’t tell you for certain what the word means and what it doesn’t. It’s a all-in-one placeholder like shit or fuck, I guess. The best thing in that book is Murro the Wonder Pig, an ancient German ancestor of the Chia-Pet. The dark art of marketing had convinced people to wonder at watching grass grow by the the turn of the twentieth century. 

I couldn’t falling asleep the other night so I read a couple pages of Suttree into a microphone, then set it to music (a fragment of Chris Brokaw’s 31-minute cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Heaven”), and drew a sketch of Cormac McCarthy to decorate it. Then I fell asleep. 

Feels good not to know what I’m doing with these collages but when I put a bunch of them up on a wall and squinted from them to a painting completed a couple years ago they kind of looked the same. Maybe not the same but definitely related. There’s some innate thing in how I compose and organize a picture that is lodged so deep I can’t get away from it even when I’m seemingly relinquishing control by using unfamiliar materials. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. But it was a surprise. Maybe “new” just isn’t possible; just endless variations on an old theme. 

Doodling in restaurants will never grow old. I was at Antico, in the patio, waiting for John to show up and had my sketchbook. They’re constructing some sort of covering for the colder months. I asked how much difference it would be from just being inside, once there’s basically a roof over the patio, but the waitress didn’t like where I was going. She insisted that there would be much more airflow. Who knows? Restaurants are being forced into terrible choices. I hope Antico makes it through. It’s a good one. 

The Night Music series has ended. Here’s what you missed.

One thing I know for sure isn’t crap is Time. Watch it.