Secret Still

Anyone who has lived in a small suburban town can relate to the paintings of Jake Longstreth. No one walks so you never see actual people when you’re out driving around, and you’re always out driving around, because there’s nothing else to do. It’s just one long series of moving from a climate controlled car to a climate controlled building and back again. Every store front is fighting to be different in a line of buildings that all look the same, and the sad anonymity of the strip mall city constantly wears away at your thoughts until they just fade into white noise. It’s an empty experience that’s punctuated by brief moments of irregularity penetrating slightly into the climate controlled life, a life of sighs instead of sounds. You want to define ennui? Go to the suburban town. Or just look at Jake’s paintings and try not to feel too alone. This cheery slice of life brought to you by “My Childhood.”

Jake Longstreth

I’ve been blogging for over 12 years now. Before Blogger was even a glimmer, my dumb ass was writing stupid 10th grade poetry on the internet and talking about my feelings. Once I realized how much of a giant, walking vagina this made me, and it took a while, I started to write about art instead. I picked up a spray can a long time ago and realized in a blinding flash of insight that I was total crap with it. But what I lacked in talent I made up for with a keen eye and the wit of a glue-huffing thirteen year-old, a sense of humor that I fight hard to maintain to this day. So I wrote about the things I thought were beautiful on the internet, and tried to swear as much as possible at the same time. It got me a cool job for a little while, but for the most part I’ve been doing it without help and without recognition for a long ass time. That’s what Secret Still is, a secret, something that not a lot of people know about, because I never wanted them to know about it. I never wanted help or a handshake, and yet here we are. Starting today I’d like help finding out about things.

If you’re an “emerging artist” (I know, I hate that term, too), or know of one that I should check out, just let me know. If you have a zine or something that you want people to know about, just send me one. I want to find out about so much beautiful shit that it gives me cancer of the balls (too soon?), and I need your help to do it. Can I guarantee that I’ll like whatever it is you send me? No, but those are the chances you take.

Notice, if you will the left side of this page, and you will see that there is now an archive dropdown, a category dropdown, and an About page. For the first time in my selfish life I want to make things a little easier on you, the reader.

Consider this Secret Still 2.0. And now, back to your regularly scheduled dick jokes.

Nod again to B/D, who’ve been batting a thousand lately, for turning me on to the paintings of Sarah Emerson. Her work, in her own words, protrays the “violence and romantic sadness of the natural landscape”. Does it ever. Even her semi-impressionistic meets paint-by-numbers style is softly sad and bittersweet. But there is also the juxtaposition of these fragile scenes with the stark reality that this is just how life is outside of our own existence. We share a planet with a multitude of other species, and probably never stop to think that their entire world is just a dance on the thin line between life and death. And I’m not exactly sure who’s better off, us or them.

Sarah Emerson

I’m back from my holiday hiatus, and aren’t you all just chomping at the bit for all my glorious words? I’ve got a lot of catching up to do at the day job, because surprise surprise a website without ads that no one reads doesn’t pay off my student loans. I don’t have any best of 2008 posts, or how the world will change in 2009 bullshits. I can tell you what to expect from Secret Still in the fourth to last year of human civilization: more of the same. In addition to the normal content, whose awesomeness is responsible for spontaneous pregnancies around the globe, there will also be a long overdue site re-design, a monthly (hopefully) mixtape/podcast type thing, maybe some additional writers, and almost definitely some random photos of my sexiness. Stick with me for another year, because Krishna knows you’ve got nothing better to do once the porn runs out. And the porn always runs out. Regular posting resumes tomorrow. Until then, here’s a video to start your year off with a little more beauty.

Happy New Year by Electrabel

I’m out for some Thanksgiving R&R the next few days. I leave you with this gem of a video that could only happen here and now. Give thanks for the madness of the world you live in, because it makes anything possible.

Snoop Dogg Makes Mashed Potatoes with Martha Stewart

Now that we can all unclench our sphincters a little, you might want to check out this great photo essay by Callie Shell chronicling Obama’s road to the Presidency. These are some beautiful and candid shots. We made the right choice.

Callie Shell: Obama

I was just informed that Jason Sho Green, the artist who is literally responsible for my interest in art in the first place, has been royally fucked by recession. Some of his major clients for this year went out of business, taking half of his yearly income with them. So now Jason is selling off as much of his art as possible to try and make ends meet. Not only should you want to buy his art for the rewards of altruism, but also because he’s a fantastic artist, and your life will be better for having one of his works around. Trust me on this. Snatch it up now before it’s all gone. Help a brotha out.

Jason Sho Green Emergency Art Sale

His paintings for sale

Prints (for those of you scrounging change from the couch)

Did you miss me the last two days? I was on a work trip in Mt. Shasta. Highlights include: getting challenged to a drinking contest by a Canadian and subsequently drinking a quarter bottle of Maker’s Mark in 10 minutes and subsequently having the most metal night of my life; canoeing in some serious majesty; a 12 hour train ride on a restored 50’s train; dancing to Lil Wayne at midnight in front of a lodge. Except for the five hours of hurling it was good times. We call it freeform teambuilding. Usual posting might resume today, or maybe tomorrow. It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just that I love me more.

I want to share something with all of you that maybe you don’t know about me. I can be bought. Easily. I love free stuff so much that I would be the guy in the Klondike commercial who executes his family at gunpoint just for a free Klondike Bar. So when any of the artists that I write about send me a sketch, or stickers, or a postcard, or anything, they are down for life. I will support any and everything they do forever. Mark Penxa and Will Scobie are definitely in the Secret Still BFFF club. And now I can add Joe Schlaud and Melvin Galapon to the roster of people I would kill for. Both of them sent me nice little care packages in the mail. I took some pictures to show the rest of you exactly what you should’ve already been sending me in the mail. Check them out after the jump.
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My official vacation for the year starts tomorrow, so you will have to do without me for a while. Don’t sweat. I’ll be back before you know it, and the three of you will have more to stare at than the cold, boring bars of your cells. Just keep your head down and do your time while I’m out snorting blow from the various stripper crevices. I’ll send you a postcard with a picture of me and Lindsay Lohan doing the Lindy Hop on America’s grave. This vacation is mostly just a trip back home to see the progenitors and the shiftless layabouts that I hold as friends. You can’t go home again? That’s true, not after the fire I started before I left. I doubt there’s much left to go home to. Back to a triple digit pollen count, air like soup, and a pre-New Deal attitude towards race and sexual preference. Back to the land where Jesus is King with his wife Dairy Queen. Does Manifest Destiny work in reverse?