pursue your dream, but sidestep into the other thing when it happens

A PERSONAL HISTÓRY oF FLOMM so far     PART 9 of 10 

“Be who you are really.”
—im­por­tant part of FLOMM Man­i­festo

“I do want to turn this into a Spinal Tap-like Art Move­ment. Fake his­to­ry, fake move­ment but with real artists – and ed­u­ca­tion – I just want to get the game out so we can use it to draw at­ten­tion to wat hap­pens next.”
—wat was said to Noam to bring him on board

“One of the first com­ments we got from a gamer was, ‘FLOMM is too ab­stract.’ And my think­ing was, ‘FLOMM isn’t ab­stract enough.’ But this is the sort of thing Mod­ern Art was crit­i­cized for over the years. So I knew we were on the right track.”
—me, try­ing to ra­tio­nalise some­thing, 2015
 

fliers every­where!
It’s still 2015 and I made a bunch of dif­fer­ent fliers to pro­mote the FLOMM! game and put them every­where I could. I also re­cruit­ed some friends and stu­dents to leave them around. 

 

One of the ear­li­est neo FLOM­MISTS Al­ley Schef­f­ki took a bunch to Coachel­la.
 

 

And I mailed them to any­one who could help get word out that we had a game.
 

 
And we put out a bunch at art mu­se­ums in San Fran­cis­co, San Jose, Seat­tle, Paris, Berlin, Bel­grade, Gen­o­va, Los An­ge­les, and Sacra­men­to. And we found a few art mu­se­ums were just plain güd at just throw­ing them in the trash. 

Mor irony there.
 

 

But then came the gluey things.
 

“They say mon­ey can’t buy hap­pi­ness and it’s to­tal­ly true. Mon­ey can buy you a bunch of shit to glue to a bunch of oth­er shit that will make you hap­py, but be­sides that, there’s no more happiness.”
–Mi­ley Cyrus

stick­ers every­where!
I got a güd deal on stick­ers thanks to Aaron Win­ters, so I or­dered a whole bunch. Then I or­dered a bunch mor. And found them to be re­al­ly pop­u­lar amongst stu­dents and artists and cashiers and peo­ple who eat food and peo­ple who breathe air and, shit, there were A LOT of peo­ple who LIKE TO GLUE THINGS TO THINGS.
 

 

Some­thing like, 15,000 stick­ers were all over. In­clud­ing out­er space (be­low). Fliers? Not so much.
 

 

And in Sacra­men­to they’d go up, then they’d be down by the next week.

Sacra­men­to HATES stick­er cul­ture. Even tho to­day it’s a cul­ture that’s led to their Wide Open Walls project.
 

 

MOR IRONY.
 

“I have the east side of the gallery for a month. So you can put up wa­t­ev­er you want, but it can’t be an ac­tu­al show.”
–Jiay Young, artist
 

septt ex­péri­men­to: not a flomm exhibition
Then Ji­ayi Young of­fered me an op­por­tu­ni­ty to put on some­thing that wasn’t an ac­tu­al art show at Axis Gallery in Sacramento.
 

“NOT A GROUP SHOW
NOT AN EXHIBITIoN
OPEN
septt12: 2ndSaturnday 6–9
NOT AN OPENiNG”
–Pro­mo copy from the SEPTt EX­PÉRI­MEN­To microsite

Ji­ayi used to be my boss where I teach his­to­ry and we co-cu­rat­ed a New Me­dia FEEEL Ex­hi­bi­tion back in 2007 – and I al­ways LOVE cu­rat­ing a 3D walk-thru space, of course; as a graph­ic de­sign­er I usu­al­ly work in a 2D world.

And I’m very güd at dri­ving her crazy – be­cause chaos fol­lows me. Be­cause sim­ple things of­ten don’t quite work.

She was spend­ing the month with the gallery closed us­ing the space to plan out a large me­dia show she was work­ing on.

 

I de­cid­ed to hang a few prints of game art. To start.

I got my hands on a do­nat­ed large for­mat print­er that only two pho­tog­ra­phers I knew could con­trol. One sort of set it up, the oth­er bailed on me the day be­fore I had ac­cess to the gallery to hang the prints – and since I wasn’t a mem­ber of the gallery, this pissed off the gallery vol­un­teers who set up shows.

Fa­vors don’t al­ways come thru – and this would be a con­stant go­ing for­ward, I’d discover.

Ji­ayi had her space marked out by tape where she’d work and I got the oth­er ⅓ of the gallery.
 

 

I hadn’t talked to Jes in a long time – but I knew she had a but­ton mak­er. And she’s pro­vid­ed lim­it­ed edi­tion (we make em once, then don’t make any mor) FLOMM pin­backs – typ­i­cal­ly on the fly, last minute – at every live event we’ve done since.
 

 
I re­cruit­ed print­ing and colour ex­pert Hal Ham­mond into do­ing some gi­ant prints of The ThWINGh and the FLOMM man­i­festo on sur­plus Sacra­men­to Bee pa­per – and to this DAY, he still al­ways replies with, “I STILL don’t kno wat what this FLOMM thing is.”
 

 

The Man­i­festo would be hung from an old clip­board – with the print auc­tioned off for charity.

And I picked an an­i­mal res­cue char­i­ty – Hap­py Tails – cause our own ag­ing dog res­cue – Kira – end­ed up dy­ing just be­fore the show started.
 

 
Kira taught me one im­por­tant thing: Be hap­py, al­ways. Every­thing else is bullshit.
 

 
Even when she lost the fight against the wire fence and need­ed stitch­es on her ear, this Van Gogh pup­py didn’t give a shit wat any­one else thought of her and knew ALL ABOUT en­joy­ing life.
 

 

Then, NO ONE had an old clip­board – any­where. None of the schools I taught at and nei­ther did I – like, my dad used to col­lect old of­fice sup­plies like crazy. 

And I was just teach­ing enough hours, time was not go­ing to be kind in all this. I start­ed hit­ting up Thrift when I could and even­tu­al­ly found some 2 dol­lar boards some­where in Stockton.

Like, every­thing with the non-show was dif­fi­cult to get. Prints, props, bull­dog binder clips (for hang­ing the un­framed art), bauhaus-like met­al bowl.

Then Rone show’d up in one of my class­es. The group of neo FLOM­MISTS was start­ing to grow.

And Rone is the first guy in a long time that re­minds me of my father. 

He speaks in po­et­ry and he’s a Jamaican.
 

“Ja­maicans sup­pos­ed­ly have some­thing like 5–10 jobs a per­son, so hav­ing more jobs than a Ja­maican would mean you have a lot of jobs.”
—Tex­as­Chick
 

It’s a stereo­type – but it’s fuck­ing im­pres­sive and some­thing I un­der­stand: Be able to think on your feet and do a lit­tle of every­thing. Like my dad and his dozen ca­reers.
 

 

In ad­di­tion to pho­tog­ra­phy, graph­ic de­sign, po­et­ry and plumb­ing, mu­si­cian and restau­rant own­er Rone also set up huge reg­gae fes­ti­vals. And he be­came my go to sound guy for this non-show.

My plan was to play 1920s jazz in the back­ground at the gallery – sim­i­lar to wat I had at my wed­ding – and in wat felt like a drug deal in a sub­ur­ban Hob­by Lob­by park­ing lot (!!?) Rone showed up with mics, mon­i­tors, ca­bles and an awe­some sound system (!!!?).
 

 

We didn’t need an awe­some sound sys­tem, but we used it any­way. For am­biance, that in­ten­tion­al­ly, to­tal­ly did NOT fit the space. 

I picked 1920s lo-fi wax disc record­ings I got from game developer/ mu­si­cian David Glass­ner. I have my own col­lec­tion – with a lot of record­ings from the for­mer LP room of the Red­wood City Li­brary – which I trans­ferred to VHS in my 1990s OTR ra­dio days – but find­ing them and PLAY­ING them: Also some­thing that was not go­ing to come to­geth­er for this.
 

 

The non-show had Jiayi’s non-work on one side, not FLOMM! game prints on oth­er, plus, my isn’t emp­ty or­nate frame that floats thru the game, ab­solute­ly is not the trail­er play­ing on a lap­top and (not at alll) free fliers (in­clud­ing FLOMM red con­struc­tion pa­per dit­ties fad­ed in sun­light for that an­tique look), ain’t no stick­ers for who­ev­er wan­ders thru, for­get it, a whole slew of free but­tons and a no mor bunch of Eu­ro­pean choco­lates I didn’t get at the lo­cal Russ­ian stores (Sacra­men­to has a huge Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion) + nev­er IKEA. 

Plus: Since FLOMM is about ed­u­ca­tion, I (didn’t!!) sched­ule 4 Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon lec­tures I would give on the art move­ments that in­spired FLOMM – in­clud­ing an up­dat­ed ver­sion of my Port­land talk.
 

 

“Una re­DUBB SIN­CRONIZ­ZAZIONE expérience!
GRAND fail­ure Opportunità!
El dra­ma PURE!”

AND on the last Sun­day be­fore we took every­thing down, I did a live
“LIKE un SILENTe FILM …
with FLOM­MIST-craft­ed sound, a ONE TIME only exécutión!”
of Rose Mendonca’s noir short film Laun­dro­mat (2015).

Be­cause I was re­al­ly get­ting into sound edit­ing at this point. And a live mix synced to a short film, yeah why not? 

 

SEC­OND SAT­UR­DAY is Sacramento’s night for art open­ings. And we man­aged to get a crowd walk­ing thru via a large show at Verge Cen­ter for the Arts – who owns the colour­ful for­mer fur­ni­ture store build­ing Axis Gallery is in.
 

And peo­ple were confused. 

And that was okay. Some con­ver­sa­tions I had were about the game, the game art – 

“O, so the stuff in the prints ac­tu­al­ly move? Coool.”
 

 

Some were about teaching.

“If I knew now what I now know about our ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem, I nev­er would have gone into teach­ing. It was a big mistake.”
—re­tired art de­part­ment chair from a ma­jor university
 

That was a poignant con­ver­sa­tion, I will not for­get the de­feat­ed look on this person’s face. And I would see it a lot in pro­fes­sors who’ve been in edu a long time.

Part of me agrees with him to­day – be­cause in the past few years, I’ve found my­self beat up and spit out by parts of our ed­u­ca­tion­al sys­tem, the sto­ries of pow­er games, abuse I was hear­ing, all of it. It all hap­pens. And it’s a game of nav­i­gat­ing past all this so stu­dents can come first.

I mean, one of the rea­sons I’m still a teacher: I just hap­pen to be güd at it.

But the sys­tem as we kno it is re­al­ly bro­ken, and stu­dents end up as pawns in all of it. And to­day I will still do every­thing I can to keep edu pol­i­tics out of the learn­ing process and get as many stu­dents en­gaged as long as I still can. 

And with open­ing a nü school next year – with FLOM­MISTS Tirzah, Bill, Marosi and John – we may pos­si­bly change some of it for the better.

But back in SEPT­tEM­BER 2015:

Bwargh von Mod­nar was telling me (com­plain­ing, ac­tu­al­ly) how she kept get­ting thrown out of open mics for do­ing weird art shit and swear­ing too much. And I was:

“Per­fect! Can you not per­form on Sec­ond Sat­ur­day at our non-opening?”

And the crowd was mes­mer­ized. Be­cause Per­for­mance Art ac­tu­al­ly works in an art space. And I heard noth­ing but güd things about the tal­ent that night for some time to come.
 

 

Bwargh’s moth­er made her the beret, and she’s been sport­ing an asym­met­ric art fash­ion look since. It suits her well. She’s been an ac­tive con­fi­dant and FLOMM artist/ performer/ writer/ propagandist/ god­damn trub­ble­mak­er ever since. And she even­tu­al­ly made her own mu­sic video of her non-swear­ing piece from our non-show: 

 
 

 
And the non-show did something. 

It felt right. MOR right than the game ever did, tbh.

FLOMM! in a gallery not putting on a show – that was bare­ly rec­og­nized by the lo­cal me­dia or even the gallery it­self – is our thing. 

With a group of FLOM­MISTS wan­der­ing thru and en­joy­ing art that’s got a whole DADA anti-art thing go­ing with it.
 

 

And when you’re do­ing an odd non-event like this, it’s usu­al­ly hard to judge wat’s hap­pen­ing, so I as­sume every­thing is falling apart from my POV. And some­times it is, some­times it isn’t.

I nev­er kept track of if we had a big turnout or not for FLOMM SEPTt EX­PÉRI­MEN­To! – be­cause it wasn’t even a show to be­gin with. And peo­ple were RE­AL­LY con­fused by that, which was the thing. Then Bwargh re­mind­ed me:

“You’re a pro­pa­gan­dist. Of course the non-show did well. That’s all any­one needs to kno.”

And with that, I was ready to jump at the next fucked up thing.

Be­cause of Theo.
 

“De Sti­jl will soon be pub­lished again and more rad­i­cal­ly. I have moun­tains of strength, and I know now that our no­tions will be vic­to­ri­ous over every­one and everything.”
—Theo van Does­burg in a let­ter to B. Koch, 1921

“It was un­like­ly that sales [of De Sti­jl mag­a­zine] were ever more than 300 copies … How­ev­er, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of De Sti­jl was quite wide, with a sur­pris­ing­ly large num­ber of sub­scribers in Japan.”
—Paul Overy, De Sti­jl, 1991
 

One of the rea­sons De Sti­jl sort of gets buried a bit in art his­to­ry texts is be­cause as a Mod­ern Art Move­ment it didn’t re­al­ly exist.

Well, it did. And it had a bunch of artists and some ideas, which some his­to­ri­ans kin­da go MEH when look­ing at wat they were.

But De Sti­jl wasn’t as co­he­sive as oth­er move­ments; like, even DADA was mor co­he­sive than De Sti­jl – and DADA end­ed up self-de­struc­t­ing, re­placed by Sur­re­al­ism.

Well, De Sti­jl end­ed too, for sim­i­lar but dif­fer­ent reasons.
 

 

There were a bunch of Dutch artists + de­sign­ers in­volved in De Sti­jl, but most of them nev­er met each oth­er. And there was only one group show at the time – and it pri­mar­i­ly ar­chi­tec­ture. So Theo van Does­burg want­ed to pro­mote HOL­LAND as a coun­try and an art scene – and that’s wat mo­ti­vat­ed him to to found De Sti­jl (1917–31).

I mean who knos any­thing about Hol­land any­way? Dur­ing my De Sti­jl his­to­ry lec­ture, I ask my students.

I’m lucky if any of them say, ‘Isn’t that the Dutch?’ or maybe Nether­lands will be mentioned.

Van Halen came up once. That was funn.

But pret­ty much all they can think of is
windmills,
wood­en shoes,
tulips and
Dutch Bros Cof­fee (which has mor in com­mon with Van Halen than Holland).

I mean, even Spi­der-Man: Far From Home (2019) did a tongue-in-cheek take on the Netherlands.

So Theo de­cid­ed to start an art move­ment, wrote a man­i­festo and most of the artists he sent it to ac­tu­al­ly signed it. And then he ran the en­tire De Sti­jl art move­ment from his desk. Thru a mag­a­zine and thru con­stant pro­pa­gan­da. And he was relentless. 

And the artists in his group be­came Very Well Known. Like that Mon­dri­an chap.
 

“The com­plete and de­fin­i­tive work of art is cre­at­ed be­yond one’s in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty … The uni­ver­sal tran­scends such a level.”
—Theo van Does­burg, 1932
 

Even tho: No one re­al­ized that De Sti­jl was just him. By him­self. And the move­ment died when he did. Which hap­pened a few years af­ter every­one turned on him, not re­al­iz­ing it was just him. And De Sti­jl was a very suc­cess­ful pro­pa­gan­da project.

Of course the big ques­tion that’s been com­ing up since I first taught graph­ic de­sign his­to­ry in 2003: Wat would Theo be able to do to­day with the tech­nolo­gies we have now?

Like: Theo on the In­ter­net – with so­cial me­dia? That would be something.

And I was on the road to find out.

Some­where in the de­vel­op­ment of the FLOMM! game, Theo kept scream­ing at me, tho he kept bitch­ing about me not ac­tu­al­ly liv­ing in Hol­land. And he said some­thing about ‘they’re gun­na turn on you’ – tho that kin­da came from wat’s been writ­ten about De Stijl.

And his ap­proach was go­ing to be part of my (un­fin­ished MAEd.) the­sis in­volv­ing al­ter­na­tive me­dia and ed­u­ca­tion AND us­ing So­cial Net­works to spread the idea of a Mod­ern Art Move­ment – with ed­u­ca­tion snuck in – worldwide.

It’s wat I’m do­ing now. And it’s been a slow process. 

But back in 2015, I found my­self sell­ing odd wares from my stor­age unit. At a hol­i­day faire.
 

“You get a free booth for this hol­i­day thing, okay? Just show up and sell stuff.”
—Liz Aguilar
 

Pop-ups be­came a thing in 2015 and a lo­cal shop called DIS­PLAY: CAL­I­FOR­NIA in Sacramento’s Oak Park not only has their own shop that would re-pop its own pop-up sea­son­al­ly, it had ac­cess to an emp­ty build­ing next door and in­vit­ed a bunch of Sacra­men­to mak­ers to show up and sell things.
 

 

And from wat I could gath­er – when the show didn’t quite draw too many mak­ers (found AN­OTH­ER group in Sac was block­ing their own mak­ers from be­ing in­volved) – we got a free ta­ble. Just like the John May­er cruise.

Liz wouldn’t take no for an an­swer, her re­mind­ing me that FLOMM! need­ed the shot of pub­lic­i­ty and I knew it. 

So I said yes be­fore I re­al­ized I had noth­ing phys­i­cal to sell – most of our stuff was snagged at SEPTt EX­PÉRI­MEN­To – and I found out the first morn­ing there it would be THREE FULL DAYS of Pop-up Marketplace.
 

“You’re do­ing WAT for three days?”
—My wife

“Not re­al­ly sure. But I guess I’ll see you Sun­day night?”
—me
 

Aside from Al­ley, Bwargh, Jes, Rone, and a few nü DER TUNG re­cruits plus Katie Hen­der­son, Steve Fer­nan­dez Maria Tifford, Scott Clark and Jes­si­ca Coy Ro­driquez (who were help­ing with fliers/ stickers/ and but­tons) – there wasn’t a real FLOM­MIST lo­cal pres­ence just yet. 

But I asked if any­one would be in­ter­est­ed to join me – via Face­book. And Car­lo and Louis show’d up.
 

“It’s a Tan­gram. It’s an ana­log game with pri­ma­ry colours, they orig­i­nal­ly come from Chi­na and they were even used in ear­ly psy­cho­log­i­cal tests. They pro­mote prob­lem solv­ing and chil­dren love ’em. You should get one for your kid.”
 

sur­re­al week­end with the boyz
Car­lo Cyphers had been build­ing his own E.F.R.T. art move­ment since col­lege and with­out any shows yet un­der his belt, he’d set up paint­ing and sell­ing things in aban­doned door­ways on Sec­ond Saturday.
 

 

He showed up with an easel and a LOT of scrounged to­geth­er paints and just start­ed painting. 

SÜPER­FLOM­MIST Louis Her­nan­dez jumped in with both feet – brought his own print­ed works and start­ed sell­ing like a madman.
 

 

I had some wood­en Tan­gram puz­zles I got my hands on, not even sure where. I paint­ed them black and af­fixed a KEEP CALM AND FLOMM stick­er on the back and Louis sold a bunch of them by giv­ing de­tailed his­to­ry on the use of Tan­grams, which was awe­some.

I made prints from the ‘FLOMM AMONGST THE MOD­ERNS’ piece I made as an east­er egg at our web­site, got some large com­ic books bags and il­lus­tra­tion boards and put it up for sale at our ta­ble AND over in the main DIS­PLAY shop it­self, where we sold a bunch. 

Some of our ‘so called’ merch sold – but it wasn’t much con­sid­er­ing we were sell­ing most­ly junk from my stor­age unit – but we also cap­tured some emails (cause that’s fuck­ing im­por­tant!). And pret­ty much spent the week­end paint­ing and draw­ing and mov­ing things around the space cause just a ta­ble kind of sucks.
 

 

And hard­ly any­one was there but we had fun be­ing artists nonetheless.
 

 

“I’m now an ex­pert on video game sound.”
—me, wtf?

talk­ing sound
Dy­lan Vaugh­an taught the sound de­sign class at school. And once I had the au­dio bug, he be­came my ad­vi­sor on how to ac­tu­al­ly work with sound. 

I would ask him a lot of ques­tions and show up in his class and say things like THIS IS THE MOST COOL CLASS EVER! and his stu­dents would look at me funny. 

But Kay­la LeMas­ters aban­doned Graph­ic De­sign for Sound. And the re­sults have been awesome:

 

All this came in handy, be­cause I found my­self giv­ing a talk with DY­LAN at a GAME SOUND SUM­MIT ei­ther be­cause of FLOMM!’s sound de­sign or they were also try­ing to fill a space.
 

 

So I re­pur­posed the Port­land slides again (adding Ben Burtt and Star Wars Ra­dio as ana­log in­flu­ences) and with Emi­ly Buonau­ro’s help (she pushed play but­ton in iTunes), I show’d how I built each sound ef­fect, am­bi­ent and fo­ley tracks from non-dig­i­tal stock, hunt­ing around freesound and odd recordings.
 

 
Dy­lan gave an awe­some talk about how to record in dif­fer­ent spaces and the whole thing res­onates with how I edit RADíO FLoMM today.
 

 
Best part: A lot of the at­ten­dees end­ed up in my class­es, where I shoved Ty­pog­ra­phy down their throats, not sound.
 

“And what bet­ter place for Flomm, then to show up in a gallery ad­ja­cent to the archive of RCA-founder David Sarnoff – one of the char­ac­ters (not nec­es­sary the hero) in one of my fa­vorite doc­u­men­taries, Ken Burns’ Em­pire of the Air: The Men Who Made Ra­dio (1992)”
—me be­ing san­guine about doc we lat­er re­viewed on first RADíO FLoMM
 

flomm art in real shows
FLOMM end­ed up in a cou­ple of art shows in New Jer­sey and Seoul.

(Plus, we have prints from the Jer­sey show avail­able here – ti­tled Skirmïshschauplatz!)

And for any FLOMM project go­ing for­ward, I would in­sist on col­lab­o­ra­tions; BAMR and Rik­ki More­house – with a nü font from Jim Was­co, in a FLOM­MIST Com­po­si­tion – made an ap­pear­ance in Seoul:
 

 
I nev­er un­der­stood Project Runway’s anti-team work is­sues. Nor do I un­der­stand stu­dents hat­ing group work in school. 

Well, I kin­da do. Be­cause one stu­dent does all the work and the rest just coast. Tho I have some re­al­ly harsh meth­ods to quell this, be­cause if you have a group of 3 or 4 all do­ing wat they’re best at, you’ll get an even bet­ter product.

Like, the rock band YES. (Ever no­tice that solo acts of­ten are not as strong as the group? It cause there’s mor ac­tive brains in a group)

So FLOMM’s a GROUP. 

And I’ll be us­ing a lot of Van Does­burg tech­niques to help ANY­ONE who gets involved.
 

 
In­clud­ing Mark Emer­son – one of the first neo FLOM­MISTS I start­ed show­ing on In­sta­gram. His week­ly sketch­es I was post­ing un­der the ti­tle what’s mark emer­son work­ing on?

Mark does beau­ti­ful large scale geo­met­ric pieces and was teach­ing next door from me; so I would pho­to­graph his sketch­books and throw them up on In­sta­gram un­der #emer­son­note­books.
 

 
That last­ed un­til our school went away, but if you want to see Mark’s work now – the real stuff, not the sketch­es – talk to Jay Jay Gallery and check out his work in the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion at Manet­ti Shrem.
 
 

“I did the FLOMM thing cause it was the hard thing to do. Then it be­came important.”
—me
 

der tung has some­thing to say
DER TUNG be­came very im­por­tant when Tra­di­tion start­ed to push back on Crazy Nü Ideas such as Ac­cess to Health Care, Poor Peo­ple Hav­ing Op­por­tu­ni­ties, the rad­i­cal con­cepts of Be­ing Gen­der Flu­id and Gay Mar­ried, and oh, Women Be­ing Able To Ac­tu­al­ly Leave The Kitchen, among oth­er things we thot were pret­ty much a given.

And I was ex­pect­ing a few writ­ers, not the OVER HUN­DRED I end­ed up with. And 1,400 posts lat­er, every­thing is on the ta­ble here.
 

“‘Why did I go there?’
‘What was I wearing?’
‘What did I do or say that brought this on?’
All of which only di­rect­ly points the fin­ger of blame at us. As if we didn’t blame our­selves enough. In these cas­es we only have our words and rec­ol­lec­tions un­less the ‘lucky’ few have some sort of ev­i­dence to de­pict what hap­pened is true.”
—Al­ley Schef­f­ki, be­com­ing i: an 8‑part jour­nal of rape and sur­vival, 2016

“In­ti­ma­cy and com­mit­ment are things I see my friends have …
And I have in­ti­ma­cy and com­mit­ment in my life,
even if it looks noth­ing like yours or theirs.
Stop seek­ing it in bars and apps. It’s not there.
And stop blam­ing those of us you would have hat­ed be­ing stuck to anyway.”
—Mel­ony Ppenosyne, era of hon­esty, 2016
 

 
the ‘cho­sen’ child ruler
So I read SPY mag­a­zine back in the day, in this case, the day was the 1980s. I used to call it MAD mag­a­zine for grown ups, and it very elo­quent­ly (and vi­su­al­ly, the graph­ic de­sign was amaz­ing) slaugh­tered the Su­per­fi­cial Su­per Rich of New York City. It was THE NYC mag­a­zine, aside from New York mag­a­zine which is ac­tu­al­ly the New York magazine. 

And quite a few mag­a­zines – from En­ter­tain­ment Week­ly and even our own Sac­town – still count SPY as the Roset­ta Stone of güd mag­a­zin­ing. Their writ­ing was im­pec­ca­ble, a news­pa­per re­porter I worked with once said, ‘SPY HAS to have the LARGEST re­search staff ever in the his­to­ry of jour­nal­ism. They don’t miss ANYthing.’

SPY was like the in­ter­net be­fore we had the in­ter­net. A pre-post mod­ern in­ter­net in print. Where it would take weeks to just thor­ough­ly read one issue.

In the open­ing NAKED CITY sec­tion, SPY would point out ass­hole be­hav­ior of celebri­ties from Bill Cos­by to Martha Stew­art – who once ran over a whole palette of baby chicks cause they were de­liv­ered to the wrong place, or had the wrong col­or beaks or some­thing. The SU­PER RICH could and would do ANY ASS­HOLE THING they want­ed be­cause they were RICH and POW­ER­FUL. And SPY was re­lent­less­ly on them, like an STD.

Their biggest tar­get was this real es­tate id­iot named DON­ALD TRUMP. And he’d CRY and SCREAM and IN­SULT and pret­ty much the same shit he is do­ing today. 

They took jour­nal­is­tic plea­sure in not just skew­er­ing him, but con­tin­u­ing to skew­er him.

Like, The Don­ald WAS THE IN­SPI­RA­TION for evil 1980s BIFF TAN­NEN in Back to the Fu­ture Part II (1989). Like, Back To The Fu­ture DID pre­dict the fu­ture, but we weren’t sup­posed to be liv­ing in the al­ter­nate, BIFF-con­trolled 1985 – it was sup­posed to be fly­ing cars. NOT gun­fire via Slack­ers.
 

 
And then I watched the first episode of The Ap­pren­tice (2004) and I couldn’t stand it. The tack­i­ness, the sol­id gold ‘Best apart­ment in New York City,’ with bootlick­ing re­al­i­ty busi­ness trash want­i­ng to im­press the Id­iot Clown. To me, the real thing felt like the Dar­rell Ham­mond jabs. It’s every­thing that was bad about the 80s, but still alive. 

The ASS­HOLE in SPY was now known out­side of NYC and out­side of their pages. So when he de­cid­ed to run for Pres­i­dent, the clus­ter fuck was com­ing. I’d say I was hop­ing for him to do some­thing out of char­ac­ter – maybe have re­spect for the of­fice, maybe ac­tu­al­ly act pres­i­den­tial? – and so far he hasn’t.

And he will get worse.
 

“You can waste hours of your life hav­ing the same ar­gu­ment for the 30th time with some Alex Jones-lov­ing ran­do duck dy­nasty bro, or you can say ‘this isn’t a pro­duc­tive use of de­bate’ and flush them out­right. You’re not go­ing to reach some peo­ple and there’s di­min­ish­ing val­ue in a de­bate like that anyway.”
—Ja­son Malm­berg, DER TUNG, July 2016
 

Ja­son start­ed writ­ing for us in 2016. I like to de­scribe him as a guy who is run­ning at 78 RPM when the rest of us are – maybe 45 – but we’re re­al­ly just 33 and a third. 

And he called most of wats go­ing on NOW in 2016. And I pub­lished all I could cause I saw the writ­ing on the wall. It was BIG FUCK­ING WRITING.

Hell, Na­tal­ie Michelle as­sumed (in this piece 8 No­vem­ber 2016) he was go­ing to lose. In the FLOMM anal­o­gy, the TRA­DI­TION­AL­ISTS are not go­ing to leave of­fice silently. 

Like, the world IS chang­ing and the proud ass­holes JUST CAN’T LET GO.

And frankly, I’m here with an un­cen­sored blog and I will pub­lish every­thing I can to help us move for­ward as a species.

Hell, help us sur­vive as a species.
 

 
As the FLOMM com­mu­ni­ty keeps grow­ing, along the way, Women’s March ma­te­ri­als were de­signed by FLOM­MIST Nicole La Rue, while Woman’s March Sacra­men­to is head­ed up by our own Jasper James – who with her awe­some wife, Dar­cy Tot­ten – to­tal­ly in­tro­duced me to VOGUING.
 

(and that’s not me. That’s Rik­ki again.)

 
AND THEN,
an un­ex­pect­ed Art Ex­plo­sion went off in Sacra­men­to at a small HO­TEL Feb­ru­ary 2016. 

ART HO­TEL was an un­ex­pect­ed dose of NÜ right in front of us, and it would in­spire us to THINK LO­CAL but to­tal­ly run with LO­CAL GO­ING FAR­THER THAN IT EVER HAS.

SACRAMENTO’S ART SCENE WAS AWAKE and a LOT OF STUFF was about to happen.
 

con
tinue
read
ing —

                   forward to  PART 10   • • •

· · ·  back to  PART 8

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM!

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