Those paintings remind me of the photos you see of cruise ships and hotels. Sure, they look great, but you know that swimming pool is going to be crammed full of people when you go.
It's often noted how Hitler could render buildings beautifully, but he could never depict people. I'll take a Bob Ross landscape.
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/a-cottage-for-sale A detailed view of the issues with Kincade “The Sentimentalist” from The Baffler. He was quite the marketer and lesser-known works of his like “NASCAR Thunder” were populated with crowds. The author of the linked article mentions Charlie Kaufman’s “Synedoche, NY” and I couldn’t help thinking of the thousands of unseen clay characters written into Kaufman’s book “Antkind” after reading about these unpopulated train towns. Also, as luck would have it, I happened to rewatch “Goodfellas” last night which kept Mr. Palahniuk’s footnote about fur-cooling closets in mind. Purely serendipitous that Scorsese’s film includes a rack of furs with a future in a restaurant walk-in freezer that is never seen. That is all.
People in the art world call his art kitsch or schlock. I think maybe they just didn't like his business model. Fine art seems to be very rich people paying a large sums of money for artwork the public doesn't get to see most of the time. Here is a decent article about what other people thought of him: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/may/09/thomas-kinkade-dark-death-painter
It isn't my type of art. I prefer the stuff I get by local artists at comic book conventions or pre -raphaelite stuff like John William Waterhouse. I feel like it is all subjective. People should buy what they like while helping to support someone's passion if they can.
Artists and art critics do it all the time. I think good amount of creative communities do this. I cosplay and there are quite a few creeps, assholes, narcissists, and showoffs in my group. It makes me less inclined to associate with them but I do it so that I can volunteer at children's hospitals and charity events. I mean it is addictive to dress up as something beloved by everyone that makes you instantly famous. It seems like with any sort of success or popularity that it can go to a person's head. I think it is important to surround yourself with people that will call you out on your bullshit and keep you grounded in a healthy way.
I think Tom the Dancing Bug has some good things to say about critics:
An unfortunate but also humbling way to be included in the footnotes. I got to know though, Chuck, are you spelling my name with an “o” at the end instead of an “a” because you haven’t noticed the rather “unique” spelling of it? ‘Cause if so, allow me to tell you about a friend of mind called Irony...
Also, please tell Irony to maybe take a break and to stop showing up whenever it suits them as its making me a little paranoid. Like, can’t a guy do anything anymore without it coming back to bite him in the footnote?
I've seen online articles that suggest it's best to post social media at noon on Thursday's since that's a lunch timeframe.
Many people are thinking about the weekend—looking for things to see/do. I'm sure there
must be data in this somewhere,
but that goes out the window if you're dealing with different time zones as you are. And it may not apply to this platform blend of publishing and social media.
Without getting complicated, it might make sense to post on regular day(s) time(s) that work well for your schedule—then subscribers will know to keep an eye out. I noticed that posts were arriving for me around noon EST, which is a good time for a break, but if you're posting at 9am Pacific time (12 Eastern) during the week, some people may not be able to check your posts due to other commitments in that Pacific time zone. Maybe ask current subscribers to chime in? It could be discovered that most people have more flexible time in the evening—assuming g had doesn't create conflicts for you. Also consider giving yourself a bloody day off.
Thanks for the advice. The gurus at Substack told me to post around 9:AM my time. My plan is to slow a little and write longer pieces, but when Ephemeral appears I want to post it. Kyle's ticket stub, for instance.
You're welcome. Interesting that Substack suggests 9am pacific as a posting timeframe. Good to know as a subscriber and potential author here.
Irrespective of timing, I'm always looking forward to the longer posts—as well as more random Ephemera posts. Postings seem similar to written sentences: always good to have variety.
Not to blather, but If I have a jones for more art and craft related content on a given day, I refer to "Consider This." The "if you were my student" sections always have something one can apply to a w.i.p., new story, or recommended readings and films.
For what it's worth— it's been a very positive and informative experience here on Plot Spoiler. Thank you.
Well once I opened the box carefully, I realized the smell.. Then proceeded with caution. I want to show the pictures, but unaware how to share them. I'll send them to your Instagram account messenger.. If you see them awesome... If not it's ok!
My Austrian grandfather, forced from Vienna during the pre WWII purity tests, built an enormous model train world in their upstate NY basement. It kept getting added to and eventually sat atop three ping-pong tables. He refused to buy the German kitsch (when the wall came down, he wasn't happy -- "just you wait and see what happens when all those Hitler-lovers come together again") His boycott led to cobbled-together thatched-roof cottages and bier gardens, complete with accordion-encumbered buskers. When his only kid, my father, failed to produce male offspring, he repurposed much of the infrastructure in the form of an ever-expanding doll house that eventually took over the attic. The functional part of his house existed in the sandwich between his manifest addictions. Anyway, your post reminds me of your TV-henge project, back in the little house days.
I so enjoyed this post as it spoke to me on so many levels.
I used to work as a commercial sculptor making large scale models out of polystyrene. We'd have an entire warehouse to make this stuff. The polystyrene came in 8ft by 4ft by 4ft blocks. Those things were huge. You could carry them around in pairs like ants carrying sugar cubes.
After all the work, after hand-carving hundreds of roof tiles and brickwork and fake wood, you'd have a giant, white model of a fairy-tale village that you could crawl around. You'd have so many things hidden. Someone who would be passing though in a motorised cart on a track would miss them, but it still had to be there because you'd spent hours looking at the thing. You'd know they were there and that's what mattered. The trees you made, they'd be ideas of trees. The sort of thing that you'd just start carving and then a trunk shape would emerge. And then branches. It would be the kind of tree your hands felt it should look like. Not necessarily realistic, but the feeling of a tree. Only white. And poystyrene.
Hey Matt, I love the visual of the sugar cube. It reminds me of walking through the huge ice cave built for the penguin sequences in 'Fight Club.' The massive carved-foam-and-glitter of it. Thank you.
Cincinnati’s Museum Center, while also being a remarkable doppelgänger for the Superfriends’ Hall of Justice, is home to a remarkably expansive permanent train layout, showing the city from days of yore. The building it’s all housed in, unsurprisingly, was once Cincinnati’s train station. https://youtu.be/IO4uQvwAqf8
I enjoyed this posting but maybe because I can relate to it a bit more than some of the other ones.
My great grandfather worked on the Italian railroads. This was both before and after World
War 2. I don't know much about him. My grandfather never had any stories about him. I understood that as meaning he wasn't around very often. Also a great deal of my grandfather's stories were about all the mischief he caused in his life before immigrating to the US after the war. What he did instead was show me with his love of trains.
My grandfather built a large train diorama in the basement of his home in Springfield, IL. The kind that you had to crawl under and pop up in the center. As a kid these things seem so massive and magical. I would play for hours driving my diecast cars up and down the streets. The roads were big enough that I could drive a single Hot Wheels on them. Initially that was the most important aspect to me. After I while I did enjoy studying all the buildings and all the miniature people that seemed frozen in time. My grandfather did have people on his model town but I don't remember seeing any cripples or prostitutes. I guessed that was a missed gift opportunity.
He kept his love of trains all the way up until he passed away at 89. A few years before he died I got him a motorized Japanese bullet train (Shinkansen) set. It was something similar to this: https://lec-shop.com/products/world-train-japanese-bullet-train-shinkansen-n700a-toy-train-starter-set My grandmother said that when he got the gift in the mail and opened it up and played with it right on the floor. For a few hours she said he was just like a kid. I also got him a wall clock that had a bullet train on it and made station announcements every hour ( https://www.plazajapan.com/4562281487865/ ). I never got the chance to give it to him because he passed away shortly after I bought it. Now it hangs on my wall as a reminder of my grandfather.
Testing a theory, here. Did your grandfather recreate a landscape of his childhood, or an idealized present world, or what? Train sets are a kind of Rorschach test or self-portrait.
It looked like an idealized present world. A warm summer day based on the color of the trees.
I was going to say how it was designed to look like the gritty streets of south Chicago. That was filled with hard luck men and the desperate women that loved them. Since you were testing a theory I decided to be truthful as opposed to fanciful.
Yeah, I have to remember to revisit the Fitzgerald trick. This week I went to Goodwill and bought 20+ perfect copies of 'The Great Gatsby.' Christmas shopping done. But in all seriousness, I've given away more copies of Gatsby than Carter's has pills.
Okay, that was the one jarring note. It felt like a TV commercial for a Monster Truck Rally. "The ground will be SHAKE'N!!" This Monday at the Tacoma Dome.
beautiful post. it is amazing how the landscape of the model is so faithful to reality. same speech made to me by a friend who builds models of vessels: the more they suck, the more they seem real. I don't know why but in a certain sense, therefore also applicable to writing, this whole post made me come to mind when I was playing with he-man puppets with my cousin, or magati I had big jim and her barbie. and all the puppets' attitudes were very often echoed in adult talk we had overheard, or perhaps a quarrel among my own. many points of reflection. thanks Chuck!
p.s in a moment of the video i've seen the A-team van, o i'am mad?
Ha! The Corleone Olive Oil Company (around 4:26 in the video). I could look at the video for hours, though my problem is having the patience to put that level of detail into my own creative work.
Foamer alert: There's a massive model train display at Northlandz, in Flemington, NJ. I haven't gotten around to going there but plan to, eventually:
Those paintings remind me of the photos you see of cruise ships and hotels. Sure, they look great, but you know that swimming pool is going to be crammed full of people when you go.
It's often noted how Hitler could render buildings beautifully, but he could never depict people. I'll take a Bob Ross landscape.
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/a-cottage-for-sale A detailed view of the issues with Kincade “The Sentimentalist” from The Baffler. He was quite the marketer and lesser-known works of his like “NASCAR Thunder” were populated with crowds. The author of the linked article mentions Charlie Kaufman’s “Synedoche, NY” and I couldn’t help thinking of the thousands of unseen clay characters written into Kaufman’s book “Antkind” after reading about these unpopulated train towns. Also, as luck would have it, I happened to rewatch “Goodfellas” last night which kept Mr. Palahniuk’s footnote about fur-cooling closets in mind. Purely serendipitous that Scorsese’s film includes a rack of furs with a future in a restaurant walk-in freezer that is never seen. That is all.
People in the art world call his art kitsch or schlock. I think maybe they just didn't like his business model. Fine art seems to be very rich people paying a large sums of money for artwork the public doesn't get to see most of the time. Here is a decent article about what other people thought of him: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/may/09/thomas-kinkade-dark-death-painter
It isn't my type of art. I prefer the stuff I get by local artists at comic book conventions or pre -raphaelite stuff like John William Waterhouse. I feel like it is all subjective. People should buy what they like while helping to support someone's passion if they can.
Artists and art critics do it all the time. I think good amount of creative communities do this. I cosplay and there are quite a few creeps, assholes, narcissists, and showoffs in my group. It makes me less inclined to associate with them but I do it so that I can volunteer at children's hospitals and charity events. I mean it is addictive to dress up as something beloved by everyone that makes you instantly famous. It seems like with any sort of success or popularity that it can go to a person's head. I think it is important to surround yourself with people that will call you out on your bullshit and keep you grounded in a healthy way.
I think Tom the Dancing Bug has some good things to say about critics:
https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2007/06/16
This is a great lesson. Thank you. For me, it’s a small Utah town and the movie theater my grandpa managed.
and here I thought writing was about creating chaos to encourage change
you nailed the memorable ending Dumas style
inventing different memorable emotions seems like cheating
An unfortunate but also humbling way to be included in the footnotes. I got to know though, Chuck, are you spelling my name with an “o” at the end instead of an “a” because you haven’t noticed the rather “unique” spelling of it? ‘Cause if so, allow me to tell you about a friend of mind called Irony...
Brandan, I know your friend well. I will do better.
I’d ask to see the doctor’s credentials but I have the inclination that he might be a little hard to track down.
Appreciate it, Chuck.
Also, please tell Irony to maybe take a break and to stop showing up whenever it suits them as its making me a little paranoid. Like, can’t a guy do anything anymore without it coming back to bite him in the footnote?
🦶🏻👀🤭
Great posts. Thank you!
Thank you. I'm still getting a feel for the best times/days to post. The weekend seems iffy.
I've seen online articles that suggest it's best to post social media at noon on Thursday's since that's a lunch timeframe.
Many people are thinking about the weekend—looking for things to see/do. I'm sure there
must be data in this somewhere,
but that goes out the window if you're dealing with different time zones as you are. And it may not apply to this platform blend of publishing and social media.
Without getting complicated, it might make sense to post on regular day(s) time(s) that work well for your schedule—then subscribers will know to keep an eye out. I noticed that posts were arriving for me around noon EST, which is a good time for a break, but if you're posting at 9am Pacific time (12 Eastern) during the week, some people may not be able to check your posts due to other commitments in that Pacific time zone. Maybe ask current subscribers to chime in? It could be discovered that most people have more flexible time in the evening—assuming g had doesn't create conflicts for you. Also consider giving yourself a bloody day off.
Jeez.
Thanks for the advice. The gurus at Substack told me to post around 9:AM my time. My plan is to slow a little and write longer pieces, but when Ephemeral appears I want to post it. Kyle's ticket stub, for instance.
You're welcome. Interesting that Substack suggests 9am pacific as a posting timeframe. Good to know as a subscriber and potential author here.
Irrespective of timing, I'm always looking forward to the longer posts—as well as more random Ephemera posts. Postings seem similar to written sentences: always good to have variety.
Not to blather, but If I have a jones for more art and craft related content on a given day, I refer to "Consider This." The "if you were my student" sections always have something one can apply to a w.i.p., new story, or recommended readings and films.
For what it's worth— it's been a very positive and informative experience here on Plot Spoiler. Thank you.
"Dude, I love the way you keep the posts alive."
I like the randomness of it. It's like a gift getting a new post or a random post out of the blue.
Love the packaging of the bookshelf bling! I'm glad I was able to donate to a good cause. The stones I received was perfect! Thank you so much!
Hah! I hope the glitter balls went everywhere. And that mint smell started to get me woozy.
Well once I opened the box carefully, I realized the smell.. Then proceeded with caution. I want to show the pictures, but unaware how to share them. I'll send them to your Instagram account messenger.. If you see them awesome... If not it's ok!
Chuck! Foot note #10!!! Now I get it!! I’ll work harder. ♥️🕯✍🏼
(thumbs up symbol)
My Austrian grandfather, forced from Vienna during the pre WWII purity tests, built an enormous model train world in their upstate NY basement. It kept getting added to and eventually sat atop three ping-pong tables. He refused to buy the German kitsch (when the wall came down, he wasn't happy -- "just you wait and see what happens when all those Hitler-lovers come together again") His boycott led to cobbled-together thatched-roof cottages and bier gardens, complete with accordion-encumbered buskers. When his only kid, my father, failed to produce male offspring, he repurposed much of the infrastructure in the form of an ever-expanding doll house that eventually took over the attic. The functional part of his house existed in the sandwich between his manifest addictions. Anyway, your post reminds me of your TV-henge project, back in the little house days.
Spooky. Suzy, that sounds like the attic village in Beetlejuice. Remember?
As a kid, I was a huge VC Andrews fan. Flowers in the Attic. So close to home.
I so enjoyed this post as it spoke to me on so many levels.
I used to work as a commercial sculptor making large scale models out of polystyrene. We'd have an entire warehouse to make this stuff. The polystyrene came in 8ft by 4ft by 4ft blocks. Those things were huge. You could carry them around in pairs like ants carrying sugar cubes.
After all the work, after hand-carving hundreds of roof tiles and brickwork and fake wood, you'd have a giant, white model of a fairy-tale village that you could crawl around. You'd have so many things hidden. Someone who would be passing though in a motorised cart on a track would miss them, but it still had to be there because you'd spent hours looking at the thing. You'd know they were there and that's what mattered. The trees you made, they'd be ideas of trees. The sort of thing that you'd just start carving and then a trunk shape would emerge. And then branches. It would be the kind of tree your hands felt it should look like. Not necessarily realistic, but the feeling of a tree. Only white. And poystyrene.
Hey Matt, I love the visual of the sugar cube. It reminds me of walking through the huge ice cave built for the penguin sequences in 'Fight Club.' The massive carved-foam-and-glitter of it. Thank you.
Cincinnati’s Museum Center, while also being a remarkable doppelgänger for the Superfriends’ Hall of Justice, is home to a remarkably expansive permanent train layout, showing the city from days of yore. The building it’s all housed in, unsurprisingly, was once Cincinnati’s train station. https://youtu.be/IO4uQvwAqf8
I enjoyed this posting but maybe because I can relate to it a bit more than some of the other ones.
My great grandfather worked on the Italian railroads. This was both before and after World
War 2. I don't know much about him. My grandfather never had any stories about him. I understood that as meaning he wasn't around very often. Also a great deal of my grandfather's stories were about all the mischief he caused in his life before immigrating to the US after the war. What he did instead was show me with his love of trains.
My grandfather built a large train diorama in the basement of his home in Springfield, IL. The kind that you had to crawl under and pop up in the center. As a kid these things seem so massive and magical. I would play for hours driving my diecast cars up and down the streets. The roads were big enough that I could drive a single Hot Wheels on them. Initially that was the most important aspect to me. After I while I did enjoy studying all the buildings and all the miniature people that seemed frozen in time. My grandfather did have people on his model town but I don't remember seeing any cripples or prostitutes. I guessed that was a missed gift opportunity.
He kept his love of trains all the way up until he passed away at 89. A few years before he died I got him a motorized Japanese bullet train (Shinkansen) set. It was something similar to this: https://lec-shop.com/products/world-train-japanese-bullet-train-shinkansen-n700a-toy-train-starter-set My grandmother said that when he got the gift in the mail and opened it up and played with it right on the floor. For a few hours she said he was just like a kid. I also got him a wall clock that had a bullet train on it and made station announcements every hour ( https://www.plazajapan.com/4562281487865/ ). I never got the chance to give it to him because he passed away shortly after I bought it. Now it hangs on my wall as a reminder of my grandfather.
Testing a theory, here. Did your grandfather recreate a landscape of his childhood, or an idealized present world, or what? Train sets are a kind of Rorschach test or self-portrait.
It looked like an idealized present world. A warm summer day based on the color of the trees.
I was going to say how it was designed to look like the gritty streets of south Chicago. That was filled with hard luck men and the desperate women that loved them. Since you were testing a theory I decided to be truthful as opposed to fanciful.
Live in STL and had no idea this existed! I know the post really wasn’t about the train’s, but I’m pretty geeked about this anyway.
This was great! Looking forward to hearing more on the Fitzgerald trick! Footnotes forever!
Yeah, I have to remember to revisit the Fitzgerald trick. This week I went to Goodwill and bought 20+ perfect copies of 'The Great Gatsby.' Christmas shopping done. But in all seriousness, I've given away more copies of Gatsby than Carter's has pills.
That heavy metal guitar background track had me laughing -- thank you for the totally wicked blog!
Okay, that was the one jarring note. It felt like a TV commercial for a Monster Truck Rally. "The ground will be SHAKE'N!!" This Monday at the Tacoma Dome.
Hah! My friend did just take her son to a monster truck rally at the Tacoma Dome.
beautiful post. it is amazing how the landscape of the model is so faithful to reality. same speech made to me by a friend who builds models of vessels: the more they suck, the more they seem real. I don't know why but in a certain sense, therefore also applicable to writing, this whole post made me come to mind when I was playing with he-man puppets with my cousin, or magati I had big jim and her barbie. and all the puppets' attitudes were very often echoed in adult talk we had overheard, or perhaps a quarrel among my own. many points of reflection. thanks Chuck!
p.s in a moment of the video i've seen the A-team van, o i'am mad?
Ha! The Corleone Olive Oil Company (around 4:26 in the video). I could look at the video for hours, though my problem is having the patience to put that level of detail into my own creative work.
Foamer alert: There's a massive model train display at Northlandz, in Flemington, NJ. I haven't gotten around to going there but plan to, eventually:
https://northlandz.com/