episodic impressions

Here are a series of illustrations of my favorite girly, “my life kind-of-sucks” coming of age movies. I did these for Alex Citrin’s Until Now Magazine. Super fun assignment, especially because I got to re-watch all the classics.

Titles: left to right

1. Virgin Suicides 2. Welcome to the Dollhouse 3. 16 Candles 4. Ghost World 5. Heathers 6. Mermaids 7. Now and Then 8. Thirteen 2014, ink, graphite, digital

So about a year ago me and my friend Nathan were walking around the “Pick-a-Part” in Clarksville Tennessee… We were searching for car badges and a spoiler to put on his trashy conversion van. While going through the lot we found what is probably the single greatest car to ever drive on any road in the world.

You are looking at… a Dora the Explorer themed gangster car… I’ve seen spongebob themed cars, Newport themed cars, sports team themed cars, but THIS.

trumps them all.

OH BUT IT GETS SO MUCH BETTER!!!!

You see… there has to be a reason that a car like this…

Would end up in the junkyard… SO me and Nathan did some looking around and tried to figure out why…

I still can’t believe the decals on this…. wait…

HOLD ON ONE FUCKING SECOND!

OH!

OH MY FUCKING GOD!

YES! SOMEONE ACTUALLY GOT SHOT WHILE DRIVING THEIR DORA THE EXPLORER CAR IN CLARKSVILLE TENNESSEE!

and i actually have a picture of it from its functioning days - this is dated 2012 -

parked in front of an adult store!

my dad has made anti-black statements in the past (all of which i call him out on and he no longer does it), the other thing with my dad is: he doesn’t see himself as a poc and has (on more than one occasion) said that he is white which he most definitely is not

so after we see the film i’m telling my dad all about the themes of micro-aggressive racism and gaslighting through the film and how jordan peele did such a good job showing how wrong yet casual they are and my dad looks at me confused and asks what micro-aggressions are so i explain to him using examples from the film

at first, my dad’s reaction is kinda self-reflective, he says stuff like “so many of the best athletes are black tho! look at serena and bolt! but i suppose that’s stereotyping if u assume all black people are athletic cos of that” and he kinda sat there thinking for a bit he asks me if the movie was intended to be be about racism and i said yes, specifically about racism aimed at black people and micro-aggressions

then he said, “wait…we’re lebanese and people always say things like, ‘oh you’re lebanese? i love lebanese food!’ or how they assume we’re muslim, or when they make bomb jokes, do the wog voice, say we look so tan and exotic…they’re micro-aggression? but they’re complimenting our culture! they’re just uncomfortable with it!”

and i just said, “dad…that’s the definition of micro-aggression: people aggressively try to prove they’re not prejudice (when they are) by complimenting a stereotype 

Lead researcher Dr Steve Brusatte said it was “the single most beautiful fossil I have had the privilege to work on.”

“ …It will blow some people’s minds to realise that those dinosaurs in the movies would have been even weirder, and I think even scarier - like big fluffy birds from hell.”

“So maybe [wings] did not evolve for flight - perhaps they evolved as a display structure, or to protect eggs in the nest. Or maybe this animal was starting to move around in the trees and was able to glide.”

Dr Bill Sellers from the University of Manchester added these details about the origin of birds. “It doesn’t look like [this dinosaur] could fly, although that needs more investigation. "However it does mean that we now know about a huge range of these early bird-like dinosaurs; some species are running around on the ground and some are experimenting with early flight.”

“[This] gives us a snapshot of what life was like at the earliest stages of bird evolution. China is the epicentre of palaeontology right now. There are [museum] storerooms full of new dinosaur fossils that have never been studied before. This is the most exciting time maybe in the history of palaeontology.”