The MC5 deserve more credit for simultaneously creating punk and metal. Dig the fancy footwork and the state-of-the-art live video editing! Kick it out!

I was listening to my brand new iPod shuffle (the greatest Christmas gift of all time), and I stumbled on a rare gem. The MC5 have a great song called Looking at You from their album Back in the USA. It may be the perfect song! The driving bass line never changes, which is just fine with me. The lyrics are hormonally inspired, as you can see below. Rob Tyner's unique voice is unparalleled (that's him on the left), the drums are pure punk rock boogie woogie, and there are even three Wayne Kramer solos set on fire by Fred "Sonic" Smith's endless crunch. Where has this song been all my life? How did I miss something so awesome? Was anything better in 1970? Not much. Tell me if I screwed up any of the lyrics. I hear that The Damned recorded a version of this song ...

Looking at You
by The MC5

When it happened
something snapped inside,
made me want to hide.
All alone on my own, all alone on my own.
I stood up on the stand with my eyes shut tight.
Didn’t want to see anybody.
Feeling happy, having a good time, now hey!
Doing alright, doing alright, doing alright, doing alright.

I stared into the dancing crowd.
Felt like screaming out loud.
I saw you standing there.
I saw your long, saw your long hair.
Opened up my eyes baby, you made me realize,
all I want to do now, all I want to do now girl,
is look at you, looking at you babe,
look at you, looking at you babe.
Yeah, hey, hey!

I stared into the dancing crowd.
I felt like screaming out loud.
All I want to do, all I want to do, all I want to do
is look at you, looking at you, babe,
look at you, looking at you babe,
looking at you, looking at you, looking at you baby,
you baby, you baby, you baby, yeah!

Datarock - New Song

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I'm still contemplating whether I should go see Datarock for New Years in Philly, or sit out the fun and chill at the homestead. As a big Devo fan, I really like bands that put on silly costumes and rock the house.

Speaking of which, legendary local band High Karate rocked Mojo 13 last week with their reunion gig. They donned their 3 spirits of Christmas costumes for the gig, which made the occasion all the more festive. For a band with 3 members in 3 states across the nation, it's amazing to see them come together so perfectly with such minimal practice time together after more than a dozen years. I love their mashup of Manic Depression with the words for Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee.

For now, to Datarock or not to Datarock, that is the question ...

I know this is old news, but my art show at the North Wilmington Library in November was awesome. More people turned out than I could have imagined. The curator said I had more people than she's had for any other artist's receptions, so what more could I want? You can't tell it from this picture, but I had a nice group of groovy people show up from near and far. The city of Wilmington sprang for several bottles of wine, and everyone had a blast. I even showed my clay animation (look up delawareeditor on YouTube) on a big TV for the kids. Hopefully they weren't too traumatized by the gooey violence.

The world's most famous wife beater Ike Turner died at 76 yesterday. He could rip it up on stage too. Look at Tina go! As somebody who respects a good spasm, I can't take my eyes off her. These people drip cool. The people in the audience are going nuts! No wonder. This is the real deal, music to shake you. It's sad to see him go, even despite all the brutal violence he perpetrated against this talented woman.

I saw The Sword in Philadelphia last night and was not disappointed. I love the dueling lead guitars! Plus, the opening band Valiant Thor, who also did the dueling lead guitars with a slightly more punk rock twist, was very awesome as well. I also loved to watch the teetering girl in the front row stumble on stage with that bewildered look of a young person encountering Jack Daniels in all of his powerful, debilitating glory for the first time. She had that perplexed look we've all seen before from the inside. I hope she made it home safely. The Sword rocks! I'm looking forward to their new album in March!

The balls in my doodles are becoming breasts. I like breasts. Actually, I love breasts!

Eyeballs are so universal, they always seem to be saying something. Eyes like to see eyes, and gravitate right to them. These eyes tell me that there is more than one direction from which to view anything. After I painted it, I decided to use fewer eyes in my eyeball dominated work. There is a time and a place for an eyeball, and not everything revolves around them. A good vision is like icing on the cake.

Balls.
Big balls.
I could talk about big balls,
but AC/DC said it all.

Oops, wrong holiday. Anyway, here is a poster I did for a Philly bar where my friend Kevin likes to drink. It's in Northern Liberties and has a very nice, local feel. They are famous for their costume parties, so here is my addition to the fun. I really like the excitement that comes with finishing one of these posters. I've posted a bunch of my old ones at Lauerart.com if you're curious what they used to look like back in the 1990s. Although I'm a big fan of color and paints, I sure do love ink! It's stark and it says so much with so little effort. Black against white has a way of burning its contrast into your brain like no other image. Forget those cones. Rods baby, rods. Hot rods. Hot, rods stroked by the luscious body of Lindsay and her beautiful shape. Mmmm, Lindsay ...

This is a compilation of many of my drawings and paintings from over the years. The music is some wacky stuff I recorded with my friends at 552 Ashbury Street in San Francisco while I lived there near the corner of Haight and Ashbury for a couple of years. Some of the pictures are indecipherable, but I think the weird overwhelming experience of seeing all this stuff at once is kind of fun and psychedelic. It's mostly chronological, so you can get a sense of how primitive my stuff was when I started drawing when I was in my late teens. Then comes my cartoons from the University of Delaware's student newspaper, The Review. Next are my posters for Slim's. Then there are some of my cartoons from my magazines Edge City and Anthem. Then my paintings add a little color to the picture. Have a nice trip!

My paintings will be hanging at the North Wilmington Library (34th and Market) through the month of November. Here is a poster I drew for the show. The reception is on Friday, November 2nd, from 5:30 to 8 pm. Everyone is invited. Please come out and say hi! The poster also works as an "I Spy" type of game for the young at heart:

I spy with my little eye, three eyeballs, five skulls, two butterflies and seven bones.
Twenty spirals, 126 dots, 10 stars, one martini glass, and a cyclops sun all alone!

Now go to it! (Some of those numbers are arbitrary, so please don't knock yourself out!)

Sometimes these doodles turn into elaborate maps of my subconscious underworld. Here is one from years ago that got way out of hand.

If you get far enough away from any design, the original meaning fades where a new one begins. The same happens when you zoom in. I have been thinking about animating this doodle by zipping around and zooming in and out of it, like a fly's journey above a cityscape below. I'll scratch that itch another day.

I recently found out that I will be having an art show of my paintings at the Wilmington Library (here in lovely Northern Delaware) starting November 2nd. Although it might be one of the most obscure locations on the planet, it will be nice to see my paintings hanging in public again. I'm still trying to think of a title for the show. I was thinking of calling it "Symetrical Bliss," but then I noticed that the concept only applies to half of my stuff. Stay tuned for the culmination of that thought ...

Here are some of the skeletons that dance around in my past. I'm not sure what this cartoon signifies, so I'll leave it at that. The music involves some of my friends during our San Francisco days in the basement at 552 Ashbury Street. Good times!

I'm not sure about the subject of this painting, but I think it has something to do with the lingering vision planted in my prenatal brain by the feelings I received when I first touched the umbilical cord connecting me to my best friend at the time: good ol' placenta. We were buddies back then; inseperable. Now I'm left with only a hole in my belly and a fond but fleeting memory that continues to haunt my psychic visions.

My step-daughter Camille took this photo of herself and added a little digital effect to it to give it that comic-book feel. I loved the photo and painted it on a 36"x48" canvas, covering it with tiny raised dots of oil paint. This photo hardly does it justice, but it does slightly transmit her amazing beauty ... at least a little bit.

This is a cartoon called Eyeland in the Sky that I tried to animate with GarageBand. I think the music is me and my friends Jesse, Norman and Scott at my place on Opera Alley in Eureka, Calif. We called the band Opera Alley. We played one gig at a party in King Salmon where the women took off their shirts and danced. If I remember this recording correctly, the two-drummer thing was too much for Norman, so he up and left in the middle of the next song. I love when two drummers play together. Butthole Surfers, Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers. Even Cypress Hill had two drummers for a moment or two at Rock the Bells. Mmmm, double drumming ...

Here's my latest attempt to integrate my life with YouTube.

Dig the groovy spiral I've weaved for myself. I think this is the black hole I vanish in slowly and infinitly forever, procrastinating my real work. I'm turning into silly lines that have started to spin inward. This doodling gets me only deeper into itself, splendidly serving no practical purpose. I think I'll add some colors to this twirling nonsense and see where it lands. Stay tuned.

Wow. Or should I say, WOW!


I just had an amazing trip to San Francisco. I love that city. So much fun in one little place. While I was waiting for my friend Josh to shoot a videotape of a flute-playing beat boxer from Oakland named Tim Barsky, I sat down with a Sharpie in the other room for an hour and drew this doodle. I was so inspired to do more art I even came home and painted a self-portrait. Stay tuned for the finished face!

I really like this 3-D effect I get when I think about the light source for a doodle. I've been drawing many orbs lately, shadow and all. Now, when I doodle, I've been trying to add that shadow effect from a single light source all over. Voila. Here is my first full-page doodle using my new trick. Anyone can do it! Draw a few lines, then shade one side of all of them. Do it on some squiggles and it raises them off the page. The possibilities are endless. Too bad this kind of self-stimulation doesn't pay money. It's mostly just a spaced out meditation on the weird world of warping wiggles and bulging bubbles. I think I'm going to try working a figure or some people into my next one ... or at least more of a recognizable exploding head.

Here is another recent form from my forming formations. Doodling makes me feel productive in a very nonproductive way. Maybe it's the antidote for productivity: Procrastination's reward. It definitely provides stress relief at the least, and cures boredom too. I look forward to getting my work for money done so I can get back to the real business of doodling my time into oblivion. (Note the infinity sign for oblivion.)

I continue to find these little critters scurrying around in my subconscious. Here's a doodle I did moments ago, depicting one of the shapes that pops up now and again.
Exorgonic = releases energy.
Endergonic = receives energy.
Those are my newest vocabulary words I'm trying to work into conversations in which I describe the nature of the universal flow. (So far they still haven't come up.) It's been 40 years since Monterey Pop. I love that film of Jimi Hendrix setting fire to his guitar, wearing a wickedly mischievous grin, supposedly dosed on two hits of Owsley's Monterey Purple. There's a great intro where the artist who throws paint with hands full of brushes creates a giant painting of Jimi in huge colorful strokes and splashes. That's entertainment!

Here's another one of my basement doodles from a few days ago. I've decided to work on moving past outlines and getting more into 3D form. I have a long way to go, as a longtime lover of the outline school of doodlography, but I'm determined.

By the way, I'm really enjoying the new White Stripes CD, Icky Thump, and I'm looking forward to driving up to Maine next weekend to see them in Portland. I can't wait!

I've been doodling again lately, while watching laws get passed on C-SPAN 2. I've been seeing the Senate lately because the TV in my basement only has two channels, and I'll be darned if I'm going to watch nuns pontificate over the doomed destiny of my eternal soul. On many nights, in the middle of some lawmaker's glorious statement, baseball from Baltimore and Washingon, D.C., interrupts. Both Congress and baseball are both very hypnotic and full of strategy and jargon. I like their juxtaposition.

I just read a rare and interesting article in the latest Rolling Stone magazine about Owsley Stanley, the LSD-maker and Grateful Dead manager who turned on many pivotal people in the '60s and '70s with his high-grade acid. I enjoyed reading about his combination of genius and lunacy through the eyes of the famous people who knew him before he disappeared into the Australian outback. It's sad that he's so obsessed with an impending end of the Northern Hemisphere through environmental crisis. He seems kind of cool in a Dr. Strangelove kind of stylee. He makes a living as a jewelry maker, and still collects lots of royalties from the recordings he made long ago. He even helped create the Steal Your Face logo, but never got a dime. It's nice to hear he's still alive and kicking!

I call this painting, "The Orb." I've heard a variety of interpretations of it, which is gratifying. I see a guy who is worshipping this giant, man-made orb, while he's missing all of the exciting details in the nature around him. The big orb blocks his view of the real spiraling excitement going on in the sunset, trees and grass. My friend Herb had a much different take on it, which is probably even better than mine. The images in the painting all came from Arcata, California.

I just finished this poster for a show happening next month. It should be fun. Once upon a time, in the 90s, there was a band called Marcus Hook. The name comes from a little burg in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania. It is known for its oil refineries and bleak horizon. Marcus Hook's bandmembers dispersed to the far reaches of Maryland, Delaware, San Francisco and somewhere in PA (not Marcus Hook). They produced many CDs and records (on Neck Records) and played many fine shows. Although Marcus Hook is long gone, its members play in The Barons, Tube Dutch, Caterpillar, etc. Most of the members will play during this show here in Wilmington on July 6, hence the flyer. The brothers Duvall are an interesting act. I'm hoping Al plays his banjo and Andy hits a skull and fire alarm with his drum sticks while he taunts the crowd. But I expect the unexpected. A band called Smashing Orange once featured Rick from Tube Dutch, but that was long after he and The Baron's Kurt played in Your Worst Nightmare and The Stiffs back when Stiffs singer Rich could thrash a party and threaten everyone within arms length wearing a lunatic grimace and a Madonna T-shirt.

This drawing is the back of the new ALLEGED BRICKS/THE BARONS CD I drew for them from a variety of sources. Notice the Wilmington skyline on one side (that's where The Barons are from) and the DC skyline on the other (ALLEGED BRICKS' hometown). The skinheads and clothes are sort of a throwback to earlier eras, but I like the feeling of the punk rock community on their street. And the humble fellow observing the scene is kind of wondering which way to go: Should he return back with his skinhead homies or chat with the ladies who seem to be more interested in the punk rockers? I guess we can all write our own scenario. Life looks like fun in Punkrockville! Although the Delaware Memorial Bridge does not take you directly to Washington, D.C., there is a pretty big link between our nation's capital and the Wilmington music scene. Minor Threat's DIY ethic lives on in many bands and local lables like Neck Records. The Bad Brains still interest me to no end. These connections between these cities and people carry the lifeblood of music and culture that makes my tiny spot in the vast Eastern sprawl an interesting place to be these days.

Here is my cover from the new CD by The Barons and Alleged Bricks. They are a couple of local bands that have teamed up to spread Oi! to the world. I painted it in gouache, which is a type of paint I'm just beginning to enjoy. I like that The Barons sing about people getting along. Mostly they sing about drinking beer, but they always have an underlying theme of racial harmony and justice for the working man. Somehow they've wrestled the old-school punk rock sound back from the Nazis, who took it over for a few years there, and are making it fun again for people like me who just want to hear some straight-ahead rock and roll. The Barons have a sound somewhere between Foghat and the Rev. Horton Heat, and that's just what I need on a Saturday night at midnight to go along with my pint.

OK, I'm interested again. Blogging is cool when you are dedicated, like my good friend Unca Jesse. But I'm lame and forget to post for a year. Almost.

I've got no revelation today. I did get a big dose of longevity this weekend. My grandparents have been married for 70 years. I went to their anniversary party and many people turned out, old and young alike. They are each from families with more than a dozen kids each. I met several of my grandfather's siblings, many of which are older than he is. I like the idea of having good DNA that lasts a long time. More time to have fun. Only one seemed to be losing his memory. The others were sharp as a tack. My grandmother reminded me of two divine lessons she passes on to me and others whenever she gets a chance. Her one saying is: "Just do your own thing, darling." I think that explains some very deep ideas in a very simple phrase. Her other favorite line she uses to dismiss hasty judgments: "Whatever." In other words, no biggie. No comment. Profound words from a wise woman who taught me how to dig clams and make tasty cabbage.