Friday, July 16

What a sunny beach. It looks great! I should get some awesome shots there!

It's 30+ degrees (celsius) today so I'm not really doing much of anything. Too hot to even go swimming. I spent the entire day just sitting here drinking root beer and listening to tool. Occasionally glancing out to the pool to check for those Californian girls I've heard so much about. I passed a stunning woman just as I left the pool yesterday, but she was actually Australian. I feel like a wildlife photographer, but the camera would be taking it too far. There's also a joke involving Pester Balls and a Poke'Flute but my parents read this blog. I may go down now that the sun has passed, I think I see Vidas. He's a soldier on leave from Iraq enjoying some hard earned downtime. Yesterday we discussed the OC and how it has sprung up from ranches and relatively desolate American midlands. At one point on the way to Blizzard you can see the edge of Irvine and the dry hills beyond stretching up to the mountains that loom ever present further inland.

I spent the morning researching Aztec, Indian and African mythology. Particularly the creation of idols. Yesterday I stumbled across Luke's collection of PopBot books by Ashley Wood. In case you live under a rock (without wifi, because even those living under rocks can network on the information super-highway) AW is an Australian artist who paints large geometric robots and erotically proportioned naked girls. I admit I was not much of a fan of his work for those exact reasons, but after reading PopBot I now know the story behind his work and, like I did with Coheed and Cambria, I suddenly understood it all. Stories really pull me in. Fantasy worlds can make me love/buy pretty much anything. The 3A series of Ashley Wood's robots are proof of this; Luke has already amassed an expensive (and exponentially growing) collection. So, inspired by AW's universe, I felt motivated to create my own world so that my artwork would not exist in a vacuum. I have a lot of stories have written and a few worlds to go with them but lately I've been hiding Aztec idols in my paintings and so I began to think about some kind of mythology to work into 'the work of Sunny Koda'. There are twin tribes in South India named Kota and Toda respectively. Kota are artisans and produce some very cool looking idols while the Toda are agricultural and do a lot of grunt work. I like the balance between expressing yourself and making a living as an artist the Ko~ and ~Da. There's also a cult in Africa known as the Bwiti that eat the roots of the Tabernanthe Iboga to achieve extreme 'divine' hallucinations. I like their insane stories quite a bit. I should also point out (since I'm listening to Tool right now) that the Bwiti don't sound so different to any decent musicians. Even if it's just caffeine, everyone creative has their muse and their drug. Once I was so drunk I figured out how god works, so maybe there's something to it.

Sega had what was supposed to be big news for Sonic Fans, but it turned out to just be a rotation in the english voice actors. Roger Craig Smith joins the ranks of luminaries such as Urkle and Munchlax... Not only could I care less about who I hear in the few moments it takes for me to switch my game to japanese, but until their big news is "We are not going to make anymore shitty, buggy, sonic-esque spume" then I'm not even buying the games. I love my Sonic 2 shirt, and others like it enough to tell me so. You know why? Because it says 'Hey, remember when Sonic was awesome?' and people still remember. But we are veterans now. Sure there's been some good stuff, Sonic Rush and Sonic Adventure where both pretty great. But so much bullshit goes down these days it's hard to hold out hope. Yet it seems so simple: make a sonic game that is 2-D, you play as Sonic AND ONLY SONIC, has badniks and puzzle-based boss-fights, lots of high speed and loops and minimal dialogue. Personally I was hoping the announcement was a release date for Sonic 4 (episode 1 ugh, this episode business is more bullshit. Finish your god damn games you assholes) after it was pushed back for 'polishing'. Sonic 2 was made in about a year, and that's what we are asking for!

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