back covered

recently, our mother was good enough to send jean-luc and i an assortment of some of our older journals; like the ones from ten years ago. needless to say, it was interesting for me to get my hands on them again. this is a scan of the back cover of one of jean-lucien's books from over a decade ago. all the wear and tear you see on the edges is due to simply that: wear and tear. life.... the simple tread of having been handled and transported and dropped and shuffled and all of that kind of thing. i think i'm correct in revealing the adhesive used to affix the picksh was nothing more glamorous than elmer's glue. i love the color in the live bowie shot in the middle. and if you click-to-enlarge, and look very closely in the lower left-hand corner, you can clearly see and read a part of the lyrics to miss joni mitchell's genius song 'shades of scarlet conquering,' from her landmark album 'the hissing of summer lawns.' its gorgeous. i love the whole thing. it just proves that, with very, very few exceptions over the years, jean-lucien always knew what he was doing. (click to really, really enlarge.)

blue silver

hey, here's another book i 'actually had!' (...we actually had.) its the marvelous pictoral account of the great duran duran on their 1984 world tour. it was a great book. i'm sure i still have it somewhere... it might be at jean-lucien's place. it was one of the best of its kind. like, it was 99% photographs. on high quality paper. like, as a piece of memorabilia, it was really 'built to last.' and in the back, there was this fold-out photographic index, containing full-color thumbnails of ever photograph in the book and like, what page it was on. it was really a lot of 'bang' for my ragged, 1984 'duran' buck. the cover i had didn't look exactly like this... it was just some blue-scheme graphics, with no headshots of the lads on it. but i'm sure it was the same book. great stuff. i'm so glad i was able to 'get in on it,' at the right time, the duran-hysteria.

stolen

here's the cover of the next-to-most-recent book i wrote. its called 'stolen,' because i was stuck for a fresh book... i happened to have one jean-lucien started, but never wrote it. he'd done the whole cover and everything, but then never used it. so i took it, glued a few more scraps on the cover, and titled it. it's a vague throwback to that great dead milkmen song... 'punk rock girl.' in the narrative of the song, they get into a car, and the singer asks, '...how much'dyou pay for this? ...she said, 'nothin' man, its stolen...'' i've always liked that song. and i sort of feel like i 'stole' 90 percent of jean-lucien's cover. the book's finished now. but i still thought it needed a slot on 'the planet.' the lavender lad on the right of the cover is a lovely shot of a very teenaged morrissey. there's a little bit of blue alphonse mucha in there, too. very pretty.

a good reed

yeah, this is just straight-up hilarious, if you ask me. i've been sitting on this one for a long time. i almost don't think i need to comment on it. i mean, i think the humor speaks for itself. the title is just like, well... it sounds like i or jean-luc made it up. but seriously, i found it just like that. i'll bet it's an interesting book, though. i think its been pretty well established that the late, great oliver reed knew a thing or two about 'raising the ol' pint,' as it were. like i suspect the chapters would be something like, 'the night i got into a fight,' then like, two chapters later, 'yet another fist fight,' then two chapters later, 'drunken fisticuffs in the midnight hour,' then one chapter after that, 'you should see the other bloke.' then the next one like, '...pardon, constable.' i'll bet the book is almost impossible to find, even today with our robot-auctions and booksellers named after south american rivers. god bless, oliver. sleep well.

blue psychology

blue is right. i feel pretty blue. i'm pretty sure my old cat 'milkyboots' is really, seriously thinking about cat heaven. so i've been trying to look after her and keep her as comfortable as i can. she's not doing so good. so, i might not be my witty, cheeky, highly-productive self for a while. but i can still post a groovy psychology book from the 70's. i didn't have to trick it much. umm, i don't have much else to say about it except that it seems like a pretty interesting book. and the Escher illustration is cool. but that almost goes without saying. (that is an Escher, isn't it?)

novel reading

ummm, i'm sure i'm going to wake up tomorrow and wonder why i posted this. i think i'm still on a salt-grease-sugar rush from the Wendy's i had for dinner. (several hours ago) i came accross this whilst pearldiving and i thought it might be worth a laugh. first of all, the title more or less lets you know what kind of book you're in for. and the photo is hilarious. do you think that chick on the right could move her hand just a little closer to that dude's jock? i dunno, when i look at this cover, the 'three's company' theme starts involuntarily playing in my brain. ( '...come and knock on our door...take a step that is new...' ) the one on the left looks like karen allen. and the guy looks like every other 'macho' turkey from the great, glittery decade. my mother was a stewardess, by the way, in the late 60's. but i don't remember her ever telling me about any kind of 'mile high' goings-on. and she looked a lot cuter in her uniform than these two chicks do. my mom was the prettiest in her class. (fly on, pretty mommy. i love you.)

shark ride

i hope my partner jean-lucien won't mind that i'm posting this. its one of the hand-made covers of one of his recent, brilliant books. he and i both write constantly... and jean-lucien does all... and i mean all of his stuff longhand. the sheer amount of inkstrokes he gets off in one day is truly remarkable. i think this book was a few months back. i love the wild scary juxtaposition of pink gabriel-era genesis on one side, and wide-mouthed squallus on the other. he never fails to entertain and inspire me. i mean, who would've thought to marry these two images for sheer artistic impact? my partner jean-lucien, that's who. (click to enlarge; it gets really big.)