The year was 1979. The place, Chicago. The environment, well, let’s say it was highly influenced by Laurie Anderson, the fall of the Shah, Three Mile Island, Jimmy Carter attacked by a swamp rabbit, the Unabomber, the dominance of disco music, the Soviets invade Afghanistan and the Iranian hostage crisis, and the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” coming in at number five song for the year. Go figure (it all out).C. B. Murphy at the time was in his “industrial metal salesman by day, mad cartoonist at night” phase. He started his cartoon series in the Chicago Reader, beginning with the breakthrough “Zombie Toll Booth Collector” and the prophetic “The Difference Between a Punk and a Dork.” Read More »
I can’t understand why this movie “wastes” the amazing performance of Mr. Day Lewis on a script that is relentless, predictable, and completely unredeeming as satisfying fiction. It’s very close to being a good (possible excellent) movie, but its faults–no change in the character from beginning to end, undeveloped secondary characters, no climax, no resolution–make is seem like someone (who? the writers? director?) was in a hurry to show the EVILS of OIL. “Oil” obviously is the only plot that makes sense: it’s evil, and it makes you evil if you try to make money on it. I smell global warming funding.
In solidarity with our brothers and sisters in pen at the Writers Guild of America (West and East coasts), by this declaration I hereby call a STRIKE by all UNA members! Read More »
What do these people (and paintings) have in common?
Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie) was one of the innovators of the modern notion that as an entertainer you are allowed (and can profit by) a series of persona changes. Madonna, too, cashed in on this. Ali G (and Borat and Bruno), all creations of Sacha Baron Cohen, pushed the “hidden identity” issue further. Many people, including the officials in Khazakstan, thought Borat was real. At first they were outraged, then they saw it as a way of making money and were less so. Read More »
I’m surprised Googling “apocalyptic ennui” didn’t deliver much, just a few quirky blogs and song lyrics. Maybe that means it’s a really meaningful connection of the two words. I realized when writing my review of “Boys Adrift” that apocalyptic ennui is a significant part of my psychology and inevitably my politics at the moment. Growing up in the 60’s (fear or nuclear war) then switching to “hippie” fears (global cooling, nuclear war, the draft, American culture generally, unhealthy food and religion) was exhausting enough. I wasn’t ready to get on the next bandwagon: global warming, global capitalism, American culture–especially overseas, antibiotics in food leading to new killer bacteria, killer viruses like Ebola, terrorism at home and abroad, destruction of species, inequality of wealth–leading to revolutions, crash of the dollar, depletion of oil, ethanol destroying the food supplies, and the inevitable Islamic takeover of Europe–perhaps leading to an imminent crash of the West. Read More »
Letter to the Editor, published in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 07-18-07
As a recovering hippie who reads The Wall Street Journal (apparently there are a few of us out here), I felt one perspective was missing from the Ted Nugent discussion (Letters, July 14). Read More »
C.B. Murphy is a bricoleur. This is a French word with no exact English equivalent, that he first encountered reading Claude Levi-Strauss’ The Savage Mind while a student at the University of Michigan. The term is used to describe the style exemplified by a tinkerer or a jack-of-all-trades. Bricoleurs are comfortable in unfamiliar realms of learning and experience because they learn best by using indirect connections to known information, even if the details are not spelled out. They try things out until they succeed. [1]
Back in college, Murphy wanted more than anything else to be an “experimental” filmmaker in the spirit of Stan Brakhage or perhaps Andy Warhol (though these are utterly incompatible styles), perhaps earning a PhD in cultural anthropology. Years later when he was selling railroad cars of lead and zinc from an office in downtown Chicago or having tea in a backroom of a trading house in Taipei waiting for his prototype of a magnetic koala bear to show up, he found himself wondering: where did all that go?
Ken Bloom, curator of Duluth’s Tweed Museum, has selected C.B. Murphy’s painting LECTURE ON HUMANS to be included in his digital collection for his guest curatorial assignment for this month’s access+ENGAGE publication.
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The year was 1979. The place, Chicago. The environment, well, let’s say it was highly influenced by Laurie Anderson, the fall of the Shah, Three Mile Island, Jimmy Carter attacked by a swamp rabbit, the Unabomber, the dominance of disco music, the Soviets invade Afghanistan and the Iranian hostage crisis, and the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” coming in at number five song for the year. Go figure (it all out).C. B. Murphy at the time was in his “industrial metal salesman by day, mad cartoonist at night” phase. He started his cartoon series in the Chicago Reader, beginning with the breakthrough “Zombie Toll Booth Collector” and the prophetic “The Difference Between a Punk and a Dork.” 
Read More »
