John Pomara - Recent Work

john pomara 1

john pomara 2

Thumbnails of images that will be used for ink jet prints; click each for enlarged view. I like how the painterly is coming through the machine imagery and process. The edge or border is an important part of these so seeing their white "backgrounds" against the white background of this page doesn't really do them justice.

2004: Press Leaders Sing "Happy Birthday" to McCain

If you wonder why the press loves John McCain, a man so out of it he thinks Sunni jihadis are trained in Shiite Iran*, consider this news item from 2004 (via the Daily Howler):

Richard Leiby, Washington Post (8/31/04): Sen. John McCain tended to his political base Sunday night: the entire national media. The maverick Arizona Republican, once (and future?) presidential aspirant and press secretary's dream hosted a hyper-exclusive 68th birthday party for himself at La Goulue on Madison Avenue, leaving no media icon behind. Guests included NBC's Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert, ABC's Peter Jennings, Barbara Walters, Ted Koppel and George Stephanopoulos, CBS's Mike Wallace, Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer, CBS News President Andrew Heyward, ABC News chief David Westin, Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons, CNN's Judy Woodruff and Jeff Greenfield, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, CNBC's Gloria Borger, PBS's Charlie Rose—pause here to exhale—and U.S. News & World Report publisher Mort Zuckerman, Washington Post Chairman Don Graham, New York Times columnists William Safire and David Brooks, author Michael Lewis and USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro. They and others dined on lobster salad, loin of lamb, assorted wines, creme brulee, lemon souffle and French tarts.

[...]

One guest, who asked not to be identified, described invitees as "the Journalistic Committee for a Government of National Unity." After singing "Happy Birthday" to McCain, many of the guests—Russert, Borger and Shapiro, among others—cabbed to Elaine's, where Zuckerman hosted a mob scene that included Fox's Bill O'Reilly, PBS's John McLaughlin and New York Gov. George Pataki, The Post's Mark Leibovich reports. By 11 p.m. the Second Avenue landmark—with red carpet outside—was elbow-to-elbow with martini-sipping guests. Thus commenced Campaign 2008 (we think).

This was during the Republican Convention, when Mayor Bloomberg's finest were arresting anyone who looked like a protester and hauling them to an asphault paddock near the Hudson waterfront to sleep in the open air.

*The man who Hillary Clinton believes passes the "commander in chief test" doesn't understand the most basic facts about the country he wants to keep occupying. From a news report yesterday:

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back."

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate." A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate's ear. McCain then said: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."

"al Qaeda in Iraq" is a Sunni insurgency group; it has nothing to do with Iran or bin Laden's al-Qaeda based in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Update: Don't know if Wolf Blitzer was at that party, but he is showing a clip of one of McCain's (frequent) "al Qaeda in Iran" assertions that has been edited to make it look like a simple one-time slip. See Media Matters.

Update 2: According to Neal Gabler, writing in the New York Times, the reason the press loves McCain isn't because of the birthday party at La Goulue (he doesn't mention it) but because McCain is "postmodern."

"Scratch Demon"

"Scratch Demon" [mp3 removed]

Not as demonic as the title makes it sound. It's some commercial scratch samples granularized into (rather magnetic) unrecognizability, with underlying heavily delayed (simple) beats. Laptop speakers are OK as a medium.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Compromise

One of the hobbies of this blog will henceforth be collecting self-confident-to-outright-hostile artists' statements. (See, e. g., Adolph Gottlieb's; coming soon: George Antheil). Today's entry comes from CDBaby; this is the bio of Galaxy Robot Orchestra. Cower, you worms.

Galaxy Robot Orchestra is the brainstorm of Cy Borgski, who is proud to be a drop-out from the Yale School of Music. Shunned by his peers and persecuted by his instructors, Borgski knew his days at YSM were numbered when a professor asked, “What is Arnold Schoenberg’s fatal flaw,” and he replied, “Too many notes!” The look of revulsion on the prof’s face told Borgski everything. Even here, in this supposed epicenter of musical creativity, his maverick brand of nihilistic minimalism was doomed.

Soon, Borgski left this self-righteous “tune factory” to start his own recording and composing projects. With a stack of reel-to-reel tapes under his arm, containing recordings of performances by he and his YSM classmates, he decided to take the classical sketches and “correct” them digitally until only the sheer essence of their musical power remained, and none of the ostentatious narrative piffle. He expanded upon this with his own keyboard compositions, always recording in analog format to retain the essential retro flavor of his own vision of computer music. Above all, Borgski strives to maintain a rich, otherworldly orchestral sound in even the most minimal of works.

A devoted disciple of Morton Subotnick, Borsgki considers his “Silver Apples of the Moon” the only truly successful electronic symphony ever composed. Even Subotnick’s “The Wild Bull” suffered that soft, corrupting homogenization which so soon spoiled the entire electronic music movement, turning it into latter-day elevator music from the likes of Eno and Tangerine Dream.

Borgski reveres electronic film music of the 1960s. He considers the score to the 1962 SF film CREATION OF THE HUMANOIDS one of the great electronic film-score masterpieces, and finds it odd that its creator, the mysterious “I.F.M.” is not even mentioned when critics discuss this landmark cinema apocalypse. “I really don’t think anyone has ever heard this music. It’s astonishing how one can watch a film, and discuss it, and never once mention the music. It baffles me. The music hovers over the film like its guardian angel, caressing and protecting it. How can you not hear it? Sadly, no music credit appears for this film on the Internet Movie Database. How embarrassing for them!”

Another composer hero for Borgski is Frederick Charles Judd (aka F.C. Judd), who scored the avant-garde UK SF TV series SPACE PATROL (1963). Judd is famous, amongst other things, for the seminal 1961 handbook to the then-new electronic music scene, “Electronic Music and Music Concrete” (1961). Borgski admits to cribbing the term “electrosonic” from Judd. “Judd’s music was so ahead of its time, people still don’t know what to do with it. It’s dark, ironic and threatening, and it was premiered on a freakin’ kiddie TV show in 1963, for gosh sake! Now that’s avant-garde! Sadly, no music credit appears for this series on the Internet Movie Database. How embarrassing for them!”

The music is pretty good so the artist is entitled to say what sucks and what doesn't.