This [link] is a good example of the way Roy Krenkel worked. He would do sketch after sketch of the thing he was working on, and break it down into bits. One time, he was obsessed with wagon wheels, because he didn't like how the ones in something he was working on looked. He had piles of reference material of other artists' wagon wheels, and pages covered with wagons and wagon wheels. He did all these sketches really fast, but he did hundreds for any one drawing. (He was also notorious for being late.)

Here's the book, Imagine: How Creativity Works.

Lehrer was interviewed on NPR (how Cash and I heard about it) and he sounds so much like Rob Morrow when he was Dr. Fleischer on Northern Exposure it was ridiculous. And he was popping open a Diet Coke and swigging it during the entire interview.

Well, I presume it was a Diet Coke. He seemed like a Diet Coke guy.

There was also a lot about shutting off the impulse control part of your brain. The part that says, "Don't do that!" They did a lot of studies on improv comics and jazz musicians and discussed the notion of Getting Out Of Your Head (which is a specific warm up exercise that comics do at Second City).

One of Oliver Sacks's books had a chapter called "Witty Ticcy Ray" about a man with Tourette's who had a fairly ordinary day job but played in a jazz band on the weekends, and, after a few years of fiddling with his meds, decided to take weekends off -- his weekday self depended on the stability of unvarying routine, but his playing was freer, more swinging and more responsive to his bandmates' improvisations when he loosed the neuro tethers the meds put on him.

Unrelated to my art plight: Does anyone here believe that men can't be feminists? Or is anyone here familiar enough with that position that they can explain it to me?

style in any medium derives from mastery

But what I'm saying is that expressing style in a medium is not the issue. Expressing style outside of medium is what flummoxes me. Expressing it in form is where I'm taken aback. Bill's obviously a master of the pen. That's not a question. But he also makes decisions about how to depict the human form that I can't make my own version of, because I look at people, and I'm doing my best to represent the proportions and relationships I see there.

Because tonight is the season finale of Archer and Sunday is the season premiere of Mad Men, I need to remind you all of the awesomeness which is Sterling Archer Draper Pryce.

In re the Florida "Stand Your Ground" law - I read somewhere that since its passage, gun deaths in the state have tripled.

In re the hoodies - I ride the bus and fairly often I'll be on one with a bunch of teenagers. They're loud, they're jumping around, they're swearing, a lot of the time they'll be eating and drinking (you're not supposed to). I've seen letters to the paper, comments online, and so on calling kids like this thugs and worse. But ... they're kids. More energy than brains. They're annoying, but they're harmless. I hate the thought that they can be assumed to be up to no good just because.

A male view for ita !:

Different people mean different things by "feminist," so I'll start by giving my view, which is probably best expressed by the bumper sticker, "Feminism is the radical view that women are people." In other words, feminism means that being a man doesn't automatically give you special abilities or insight into how the world works. (Okay, we can pee standing up. It's convenient at times, but it really doesn't mean anything in the broader context of the world.)

Based on that standard, there is no reason that a man can't be a feminist. You don't have to be of a particular gender to recognize that one's gender does not determine personhood. As well as the right to be treated like a person with the same rights of common courtesy (for starters) that you expect for yourself.

At the same time, there are limits to our ability to truly understand someone unlike ourselves -- and in some way, everyone (except maybe an identical twin, and probably not even then) is unlike ourselves in some way. We may be able to create parallels to certain elements, but we can't truly understand the entire experience. For example, as a male, I can't truly understand what it's like to be pregnant and give birth. So if your definition of "feminist" requires a thorough understanding of what it's like to be a woman, then, no, a man probably can't be a feminist.

I've heard that men can't be feminists, but I don't recall the argument for this.

I remember in college one woman told me it was impossible for men to know what is sexist, and another woman told me she was tired of men always asking her if something was sexist, as men are perfectly able to determine if something is sexist.

So I learned at a somewhat young age that feminism isn't monolithic.

if your definition of "feminist" requires a thorough understanding of what it's like to be a woman

Is there one, on the books, that does? I know there are formal definitions out there.