Fun & The Such.

with the caveat that im not formally trained in exercise science, im going to give you advice that everyone loves to give but hates to hear: try yoga. i can only do like 5 yoga poses because im so inflexible, but trying to do Mountain, Tree, Warrior, and Child poses has done a lot for me. the reason i recommend these is that, more than flexibility, they're about stability.

to my limited knowledge, people generally have two kinds of muscles: the ones they know about and the ones they don't (this isn't literal; by "know about", i mean "are consistently conscious of"). the muscles you know about are the ones that ache. the muscles you DON'T know about are the ones that are underperforming so that the rest are overworked and aching.

Yoga is very good at targeting those small stabilizer muscles that you don't think about. getting on an exercise bike will engage dozens of small muscles that are NOT going to be developed if you don't bike consistently, like certain parts of your obliques (sides of your abs) and hips (specifically hip flexors) and ankles. those may or may not be the parts that actually ache, but they're likely to be the weak points that force your other muscles to pick up the slack. they're easier to build up through yoga (but it's harder to mark progress; you just have to trust it a bit).

otherwise, reconsider your relationship with pain. when you say your legs start to "hurt" after 2-3 minutes, that can mean several things from an exercise perspective. i can't diagnose that from here, but there is a lot of exercise pain that's literally just your stiff muscles warming up. exercise sends a lot of signals to your brain that feel like pain, but aren't actually signals to stop. learning the difference is difficult and involves trial and error. if you want to approach it categorically, try to identify the nuances between the signals and push yourself a bit past each different kind to see whether you're hurting yourself or being productive. please remember i'm not qualified to give advice on this. ive lived a very "fuck it just grit your teeth and go" life of athletic activity and injured myself several times from overwork.

that said? personal opinion: exercise bikes are evil. biking is a great low-impact cardio exercise, but the thing that makes it fun is being outside. also, the muscles you use to balance on a bike (not to mention the gyroscopic effec that helps you balance) are different on a real moving bicycle. if you want to be outside and active, then the muscle pain of pedaling will be more bearable when you're surrounded by the motivation of being outdoors and the constant sense of progress you get from being in motion. if you live near any paved pathways, or even low traffic sidewalks, those are a good bet. shoot for under a mile.

cringe tumblr advice: imagine you're khadne training to come to eorzea

Lyra, my beloved cat of 13 years, passed away this year on Father's Day. She's been by my side through very difficult times and was my little rock of steady and unrelenting love. I struggled a lot drawing this, and struggled a lot posting it, but I know I would've wanted to read a comic like this that validated my grief for her when I lost her.

*head in hands* FUCKING SEWARD JOHNSON

You have triggered the rage within me, so now you will ALL be treated to an outside-the-readmore screed about SEWARD GODDAMN JOHNSON. 

I don’t normally attack artists because a) it scares my friends who are artists (I love you all, you are beautiful, don’t be afraid) and b) honestly most artists don’t deserve the level of vitriol I’m about to employ. I want you all to remember that the seething hatred I feel for Seward Johnson is driven in large part by class consciousness. 

But not entirely. So let’s begin. 

First what you have to know is that Seward Johnson is a “sculptor”. If you google “seward johnson sculpture” you’ll get an idea of his work, most of which is terrible. I feel okay calling his work terrible because he is also the scion of the family that founded Johnson & Johnson, so he has all the money he needs and could step back, do his art for funsies, and let people with actual talent or two original thoughts in their heads exhibit their art, but he doesn’t, he forces his terrible art on all of us. 

The reason I harbor such animosity towards Seward Johnson is that he has been exhibiting on Pioneer Plaza (that area north of the DuSable Bridge) for almost a decade now, and when I worked in the north loop I had to walk past his art every day. It was bad enough when the sculpture was American Gothic, rendered without talent or meaning into three dimensions and provided with luggage. 

How very fucking dare you, you talentless hack

These things are sculpted out of what amounts basically to styrofoam painted in rubberized/weatherized paint, so they are fragile, and tourists were constantly climbing on Farmer’s shoes and falling into them when they found out it wasn’t the cheap but supple fiberglass you would expect of a tacky monstrosity more suited to a roadside motel than the business district of a major metropolitan city. (I would imagine this is why Abraham Lincoln And The Mayonnaise Sandwich has a little fence around it.) 

But American Gothic Motel Attraction was mostly just annoying because it was meaningless, derivative, and CONSTANTLY covered in gawkers getting in everyone’s way. 

Additionally, Seward Johnson’s sculptures on the Plaza are very popular photo spots for tourists, who carry lots of cash and are constantly distracted, which means beginning with The Assault On American Gothic it became a very popular spot for pickpockets. Which means members of our staff, who had nothing to do with this mess, got pickpocketed as collateral damage about once a week during the exhibition of…. 

Forever Marilyn.

SEWARD JOHNSON GO FUCK YOURSELF

This is a very famous image of Marilyn Monroe which is horrifying for the following reasons that Seward Johnson appears not to have understood nor cared about:

a) The day this was shot, on an open set with people leering at her all day, her husband, professional athlete and dirtbag Joe DiMaggio, found out about the filming. Rather than comfort his wife, who had been through some shit already that day, he became angry she’d been showing her panties in public and beat her so badly the neighbors called the police on him. Joe DiMaggio also go fuck yourself. 

b) IT’S IN A MOVIE INFAMOUSLY SET IN NEW YORK. To quote a local newspaper, “Did Chicago lose a bet?”

c) Yes, you can look up and see her panties. While this is juvenile, it’s not nearly as juvenile as the literally thousand of photographs I angrily photobombed of some douchebro from Fuckville Middle America in a backwards baseball cap standing between her legs with his face tilted upwards and his tongue out. 

Oh and btw before it was unveiled it looked like this: 

For literal days, before it was installed, she had a bag over her head. The post is no longer available but in July of 2011 I posted up about it the day I discovered it: 

Sam: OH L, I am about to come upstairs so we can talk about the Lawn Ornament.L: OH MY GOD SHE LOOKS LIKE SHE’S ABOUT TO BE THROWN IN THE TRUNK OF A CAR.

SHE HAS A PLASTIC BAG OVER HER HEAD AND TIED TIGHT AROUND HER NECK. And you can’t see it in that picture but the rope is also wrapped around HER LEGS.

We’re torn between “Marilyn Monroe, Kidnap Victim” and “Marilyn Monroe: Tragic Death By Auto-Erotic Asphyxiation”.

In any just world, there would be a trap door between her legs and everyone who tried to do the upskirt shot would fall into a pit where they would be forced to give five dollars to women’s shelters before they were allowed to leave. THAT would have been interesting art. 

Sidebar, both as contrast and because I love it: Marilyn left a few years ago and was briefly replaced by a refreshing and beautiful piece called The Watch, by Hebru Brantley. The Watch was playful and interesting and didn’t have a single upskirt. Hebru Brantley is a wonderful artist in his own right, but he was also a welcome breath of fresh air after Johnson’s mediocre tribute to sexual assault. 

The Watch was a temporary installation, however, and eventually along came Abraham Lincoln Approves Of White Men. 

It is an unfortunate coincidence that Confused Closeted Republican there is wearing khakis and a white shirt, the new uniform of the alt right, and it’s also coincidence that this is facing Trump Tower, but it’s not exactly helping Seward Johnson’s cause that he chose the blandest outfit possible for Paean To Confused White Bread. The sculpture is meant to be Lincoln, the darling of Illinois, welcoming a visitor to our fair city, but it sure does look like fresh meat is about to get a free trip to Boys Town with the Sixteenth President of the United States. 

This is what I mean when I say Seward Johnson lacks not only skill but also understanding: he clearly didn’t know that Lincoln’s sexuality is under enough debate to have its own wikipedia page, and he either didn’t know or didn’t care that Marilyn Monroe was nearly killed by her husband for shooting that scene. All he cares about is image and he’s bad at reproducing image. That is not a well-executed rendering of how human beings are, and dynamically speaking it’s boring. If he were good at visuals or if he had something meaningful to say I would be less angry, but he is mediocre at best and the statements his sculptures make are banal pap if they make any at all. 

But he is rich, and I guess either he likes Chicago or he’s got blackmail on Sam Zell, owner of Pioneer Plaza, so he gets to spatter his hideous, meaningless masturbation in my city. And lest you think Seward Johnson got here on his own merits, Forever Marilyn, now on tour from coast to coast, is owned by The Sculpture Foundation, which is heavily subsidized by Seward Johnson. He basically founded a nonprofit to ensure his work gets toured around and publicized and to ensure that if no museum wants it, it has a place to go to die (Palm Springs, CA).