Torley Lives

For those of you who got the reference, I salute you. And if you didn't, don't feel bad, I'll explain: I've been listening to a lot of dubstep recently, and Benga's new album is titled Diary of an Afro Warrior. It's got sparse melody, shuffling triplets, moody starkness, and a lot of induced head nodding. (Why its main Amazon main page doesn't have sample clips but its MP3 version does, I don't know!)

A lot of media (books, film) use vegetation as a metaphor: whether it's a tree growing or grass being mown. I haven't seen watermelons as much, but if you know me, then you also instantly know that I'm associated with watermelons. Melons work/play on several levels — fun, serious, juicy wisdom overtures.

Watermelons are a great gateway to remarkable discussion, a fine fruit, and bursting with vibrancy. If I were a serious brand marketer (I'm not), I'd check all those off as prime reasons why I'd want watermelon to accompany me. Furthermore, watermelons are easy to remember: they're not the Tox Uthat or some other obscure device that give most people pains to keep in their brains at first hear.

     » Read more…

UBERAWESOMEISM is a revolution in your pants and/or skirt. Its fundamental uniqueness — an intellectual-yet-groovy synthesis of preexisting artforms to create a newness more new than any new experienced before — is a testament to the perfunctionary variance of expressive artistic mediums as channeled through the virtual world of Second Life, a 3D space where people sometimes sit in camping chairs and have intimate pixel relations (sometimes simultaneously!), but can do other things too — such as this.

The brainchild of "digital burlesque" artists Torley & Ravenelle (aka Ravi), UBERAWESOMEISM draws upon preestablished interpretive tropes and neophysical concepts employing avatar body language and the totality of one's AWESOME SELF contained within the parameters of a vibrant GLOW field, and unleashed via a quota of sheer asskickology.

One does not understand UBERAWESOMEISM. One never will. One can only shake thy booty and dance like a flower making love to itself, a self-indulgence which increases the smile factor present in one's sometimes humorless Second Life.

In this first act, we present, for your consideration, the symbolism of such a flower, emphasized in the colors of PINK + GREEN. Observe as Ravi parts her supple columns of artificial meat and spins into the air, a ripe, gorgeous blossom. Her enthusiastic companion in this mixed-pair performance, Torley, suddenly thrusts onto the floor and rolls in the non-existent dirt of this simulacrum, beholding strong overtones reminiscent of humility and grace. These spontaneous lesbians are not meant to titillate your carnal urges; rather, they are here to provoke your thoughts at partytime and induce (re)action, as all great and crap art does.

There can be no more meaningful message than this, my friends. This is not just art. This is… UBERAWESOMEISM.

I am high right now, and not on drugs! I get so intense when passions from crazy corners and far-reaching parts of my life come together, it's like this formidable mashup of superheroes that can't speak the same language but need to join forces to defeat evil, or something like it!

Needless to say, I've got several things on the mind including: We Are the Strange (just finished watching Disc 2 with my dear wife), classic Amiga/PC game loaders (the crisp PWM warbles PWN!), games themselves like uhhh Bubble Bobble, Paul Rand and every typographic/design genius out there, motion graphics, and the fiction of Philip K. Dick (I've got two new books coming in the mail, one is his Reader and the other is the seminal cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades which is also prompting me to be more awesome).

So OK! You can see they're all connected and I've united their forces.

In a way, it reminds me of the lasers in J. Lo's "Waiting for Tonight", with a touch of Dr. Octagon's paranoid scifi. Gosh, I'd like to learn more motion graphics and do some seamlessly looping VJ clips, that's what!