The Realist

The Realist was a satirical magazine published by Paul Krassner starting in 1958.
It became an important part of the underground press of the time, and of the counterculture movement in general.
Krassner was a close friend of Lenny Bruce, a member of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, and a founding member of the Yippies.
In 1985 a collection of articles and artwork was published as "The Best of the Realist: The 60's Most Outrageously Irreverent Magazine".
In 1986, when I was 12 years old and obsessed with anything related to the 1960's, I found a copy of this book at my local library.
I still have hazy memories of some of those articles and it was one of the things that helped to shape my sense of humor and political outlook.

Here are some covers:






Ethan Persoff is a comic book artist from Austin Texas who is creating a Realist Archive on his website.
He has a ton of other crazy stuff on his site too, mostly obscure comics and ephemera.
Things like "21 paper-based condom wrappers from the 1930's" which must be seen to be believed.

Here's one for the road from the Realist Archive.

Ledger Art Update

The other day I went to the grocery store with KellyR and we ran into Carl and Matt.
We chatted for a minute and Carl mentioned my blog and said "You're like a gay librarian."
I thought that was a pretty great compliment since I have no formal training in the Library Sciences and I'm really just a dork who's obsessed with Google Image Search.
My friend Chela, on the other hand is a bonafide archivist, so you should do what she tells you.
Chela commented on my post about Native American Ledger Art and sent me these two links:

http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/kiowa/target.htm

http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/kiowa/calendar.htm

Check them out, the first one contains the best drawing of all time:

Plains Indian Ledger Art

Are you familiar with Native American "ledger art"?
Well, it's about time you got wise to these incredible books of drawings.
They were made by people from plains tribes - Kiowa, Lakota, Cheyenne, etc. after they were forced onto reservations. The artists kept the same style of painting they had used on buffalo hides and adapted it to new materials like colored pencil on paper. The books date from between about 1860 to 1900.

These are from a book by Walter Bone Shirt aka "Never Misses".







This next batch is from the "Bad Eye Sketchbook".







I could keep going with these for days but you should just go look at them here.

Emory Douglas

After work I came home and drew a picture.
Then I went to meet KR at Rai Rai Ken for dinner.
After that we went to St. Marks Bookshop.
This was on the sale table so I bought it:

It's amazing!
Full of eye-popping psychedelia of course, but it's way more than just a hippie freak-out book. (There's even a little bit of punk stuff.) And it does a great job of letting the work speak for itself.

One of the artists in the book is Emory Douglas.
I didn't know anything about him, but I love his work.
He was a member of the Black Panther Party and his art appeared in almost every issue of their newsaper, "The Black Panther".

















There was a big show of his work at LA MOCA recently.
They put out a book too, which I will be buying soon.
The MOCA website has mp3s of an art talk with Mr. Douglas from 2007, so check that out for sure.

The Origins of the Freedom Friends

4th of July at Slide Mountain.





Yesterday a Hit Book was made.

Positive Technology

Have I ever mentioned to you that I am a huge dork who loves robots and virtual reality?
Well it's true, and I just found this great blog called Positive Technology. It's by an Italian psychologist who works as a researcher in Milan. Check it out.

Anti Vietnam War fliers from Seattle

NB: the "Lest You Forget" flier was for a protest to support the Chicago Seven.
A riot ensued at the protest which led to the arrest of the "Seattle Seven".
This group included Rabbi Michael Lerner who later started Tikkun magazine, and Jeff Dowd who later served as the inspiration for "the Dude" in "The Big Lebowski".
The last flier was for a protest on the first day of their trial.

Political Fliers from Seattle during the Vietnam War era

From here.
more to come...