http://welsheldorado.com/ en Copyright 2008 Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:34:04 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss ...Today was my last day of work at my current job in the centre of London (c'mon it's London; I have to spell it "centre"). When I came out of the Tube station, it was rainy and overcast. People's heads were down as they ducked along from doorway to doorway trying to keep out of the rain, I was subdued because I will miss the people I've been working with for the last year and a half or so. I was full of thoughts of what I needed to get done today, thoughts of the trip back to the states I am about to embark on for a buddy's wedding, and just generally being stuck in my head. As I was making my way from the Oxford Circus Tube station, across Regent Street to head down to work, I heard something completely out of place. Echoing off the grey stone of the monumental old buildings on that noble old shopping street was the sounds of horses' hooves. What sounded like hundreds of them... I looked north along Regent Street and there, clattering down the road were around 50 gigantic, beautiful, unsaddled horses. There were trotting down the road, their metal shod feet clacking on asphalt, being driven by six or seven men on horseback. Their great backs were glistening in the rain as their muscles pumped and throbbed with each stride. It was sublime. And somehow the silent awe of that moment was reflected in the awe I felt in leaving my place of work and being applauded by a hundred people whom I call colleagues and friends and whose daily presence in my life I will miss. http://welsheldorado.com/2008/07/moving_on.html http://welsheldorado.com/2008/07/moving_on.html misc Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:34:04 +0000 Laurel Canyon? It has one of the most erotic sex scenes I have ever seen in a movie and nobody gets their kit off. Natascha McElhone and Christian Bale just sit in a car in a car park talking about what they would do if they were to engage in an affair that sorely tempts them both. Or have you seen Steven Soderbergh's remake of Andrei Tarkovsky's "Solaris"? Whoa. A movie about love and loss to take your breath away. Natascha McElhone's in that one too, playing the corporeal memory of George Clooney's dead wife Rhea, brought back to life by the power of a sentient planet. It's the stuff of crazy Russian mid century sci fi, but it is also quite moving. Anyway, I've found myself quite moved by Ms. McElhone and her performances, the few that I have seen. Thus I found myself a little giddily star struck back in January when Lyndsay and I were waiting for our Eurostar train back to London from Paris' Gare du Nord and we saw her making ready to get on the same train. We watched as a small drama unfolded. There she was, hair blonder than we've seen in any movie, distressed because she and her husband seem to have lost their tickets. She is tall and statuesque, and he is tall and heroic; together, even is a place as mundane as a train station they seemed together to cut an otherworldly figure between them. I think they eventually got on the train. Today, Lyndsay tells me that as she is coming home on the tube, she reads over someone's shoulder in one of the free papers they plaster the city with each day, that McElhone's husband was found dead last night, slumped against the front door of their house, dead of an apparent heart attack. He was 42. There is a word that has come down to us from old English: fey. As it is most commonly used now, it refers to someone or something that is vaguely otherworldly. But in its original sense, it meant "fated to die." It is so strange to think back to that brief brush with a star and to watch her and her husband engaged in such a banal task as looking for tickets and to think of him breathing his last breath against the door to his house last night, unheard and unnoticed, while his eight year old, four year old sons and as yet unborn third child played or slept somewhere oblivious; a heart breaking tragedy coming home to roost. I am saddened and unsettled. I think what moves me most, is not that this was the tragedy that befell someone famous, but more that I specifically remember looking on this man, thinking that "Of course a woman that beautiful is married to a man that impossibly handsome"; a man who, at that time, had a scant few months left to live. It makes me think of W.H. Auden's poetic response to Breughel's painting "Icarus." About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. 1940 It's just so sad...]]> http://welsheldorado.com/2008/05/auden_breugel_icarus_and_euros_1.html http://welsheldorado.com/2008/05/auden_breugel_icarus_and_euros_1.html misc Wed, 21 May 2008 23:47:47 +0000 ]]> http://welsheldorado.com/2008/03/better_than_tv.html http://welsheldorado.com/2008/03/better_than_tv.html misc Sat, 22 Mar 2008 23:20:23 +0000 In other things, one a completely unrelated note, for those who didn't see or hear the full version of Obama's speech on Race and Religion on Tuesday, listen to this man. He truly may be one of the great statesmen of this generation. I know everyone wonders if he's been properly tested in hte crucible of international politics; but no one freaked out (except for the reactionary wing of the Republican party) when we elected a no name governor from Arkansas with little international experience to the White House in 1992. If you can get past the inappropriate fellatiography of the man and his intern, he did some good work in trying to bring peace both to Ireland and the Middle East. Check it if you get a chance... ]]> http://welsheldorado.com/2008/03/friday_warm_up.html http://welsheldorado.com/2008/03/friday_warm_up.html rant Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:04:18 +0000 Didn't have to work this morning... quick fiddle in photoshop... ]]> http://welsheldorado.com/2008/03/doodling_on_a_rare_saturday_at.html http://welsheldorado.com/2008/03/doodling_on_a_rare_saturday_at.html misc Sun, 16 Mar 2008 02:38:21 +0000 ]]> http://welsheldorado.com/2008/03/spitzorific.html http://welsheldorado.com/2008/03/spitzorific.html rant Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:07:42 +0000 ]]> http://welsheldorado.com/2008/03/looking_for_something.html http://welsheldorado.com/2008/03/looking_for_something.html misc Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:34:14 +0000 photo on my buddy Dene's website. Loved this guy's expression. Did it as a doodle to warm up this morning. It is a cheat, however, because drawing from photos to warm up is like using one of those 1950's fat jiggling belts to lose weight. Ah well... ]]> http://welsheldorado.com/2008/03/warm_up.html http://welsheldorado.com/2008/03/warm_up.html misc Sun, 09 Mar 2008 12:42:03 +0000 ]]> http://welsheldorado.com/2008/02/bad_cartoonist.html http://welsheldorado.com/2008/02/bad_cartoonist.html misc Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:00:06 +0000 And then, you've got to love the simple declaration of a return address like this... Now back to scribbling...]]> http://welsheldorado.com/2008/02/your_options_as_an_american.html http://welsheldorado.com/2008/02/your_options_as_an_american.html rant Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:22:28 +0000 What I drew tonight for a warm up sucked, so I decided to post another. Saw this guy drawing over Christmas, oblivious to his parents sitting on either side of him chatting about shopping. He sat there moving his hands over the paper with the determination and sense of importance of a brain surgeon. I'm not sure what I was like at that age, but I'd like to believe someone could have seen me there, navigating a line with my pencil that felt like the weight of the world lay on where I plotted it....]]> http://welsheldorado.com/2008/02/subway_doppelganger.html http://welsheldorado.com/2008/02/subway_doppelganger.html misc Tue, 12 Feb 2008 23:12:47 +0000 At home, taking a few minutes out from freelance. Was reading about Javier Bardem on a blog and am really looking forward to seeing No Country for Old Men. He has such an interestingly brutal face, craggy and misshapen in a fascinating way. Anyway, made me want to play with Lyndsay's Muji multipen...]]> http://welsheldorado.com/2008/02/ball_point_penting.html http://welsheldorado.com/2008/02/ball_point_penting.html misc Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:08:55 +0000 Just spent a good part of the weekend hanging out with this milk-devouring, sleep-consuming supernova of baby cuteness. I know dudes don't have biological clocks, and I would be singing a different tune if I had to battle my way through a series of catastrophically soiled nappies, but... ]]> http://welsheldorado.com/2008/02/liesel_hunter_nisbet.html http://welsheldorado.com/2008/02/liesel_hunter_nisbet.html misc Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:56:06 +0000 Messing around with old ink sketches. Would love to find some resources on doing really painterly stuff in Photoshop... Any hints from people would be greatly appreciated.]]> http://welsheldorado.com/2008/02/more_fiddling.html http://welsheldorado.com/2008/02/more_fiddling.html misc Sat, 09 Feb 2008 00:35:19 +0000 ...used photoshop as painting tool. But after some of these things I've been seeing other guys do on other sites, thought I'd give it a whirl. The idea of the three guys came from seeing three suits on a street corner all checking their blackberries--all together but oddly alone... At work tonight, I think my daddy instincts kicked in like nobody's business. This little boy, who couldn't have been more than six or seven was wandering around the store. I looked down, said hello, and he gave the bloody great exhale that said, "Finally a big person has figured out I need a little help." He'd lost his sister so he and I wandered off to find her. It was all I could do to not want to pick the little guy up and throw him on my shoulders so he could get a better look....]]> http://welsheldorado.com/2008/02/never_really.html http://welsheldorado.com/2008/02/never_really.html misc Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:37:30 +0000