1. Tom Waits Drawing. Here are some more pictures. More to come.

2. The Long Rain. Finally got around to finishing this one. It took like seven hours. I kind of destroyed my carpet with all that charcoal on the last drawing. Whoops. Putting down a towel from now on.

3. CAB General Member Picnic. End of the year party. We have two more CAB picnics left before two weeks is up. Ha-ha. We just can't get enough picnics with CAB.

4. Pandemic? Normally I wouldn't be too worried about the swine flu that's going on. It hasn't even hit Wisconsin. However, I'm moving to New York City in one month and two days, and hundreds of students have been hit with it. I've got really craptastic lungs, so I'm not too keen on the idea of getting a respiratory infection. What peachy timing.

Upcoming...

Tomorrow: Literacy and Lyrics Book Drive

Thursday: Repetoire

Friday: My friends visiting and English Social

Monday: CAB Banquet

Tuesday: CAB Picnic

The Weekend Run-around

This is the longest post in the history of postage.

1. CATALYST PARTY

The Catalyst published my short story, The Things They Remembered in their 30th anniversary issue. Today was the reception. There was lots of cake. Lots and lots, as seen below. Paper boxes are, of course, the classiest way to transport it.

2. FINISHED TOM WAITS COLLAB

Today, we finished our drawing. There are better photos, but they're not on my camera. I'll post 'em when I get 'em.

3. THE DRAGON

This drawing is inspired by the Bradbury story "The Dragon." It's about two knights fallen through time trying to slay a train because they think it's a dragon. Of course, they get run over.

4. AUGUSTANA

What a great spring concert! Reasons it was great (in no particular order):

1. We sold over 600 tickets

2. We gave away lots of free Pepsi product.

3. The opener was Bascom Hill.

4. The headliner was Augustana. Now, performers by definition do not have to be nice people, especially if they're really famous as our spring concerts tend to be. But these guys were super nice! Last year's meet and greet was really awkward. We had to form a line and get our shirts signed and get a photo and that's it. No chatting or anything. But Augustana wanted a nice informal meet and greet to chat with us. Now that is the way to do it.

Oh yeah, and the show was amazing too.

5. Harmonica!

5. BROADWAY


I know they do a change-over every once in a while, but I looked up what's (and who's) on Broadway now in case there's something I want to see when I'm in New York. I'm either not familiar with the plays or I've seen them before. I'm more interested in who's in them. Here's a list of familiar people on Broadway now.

Geoffry Rush
Rupert Everett
Colin Hanks
Matthew Broderick
Nathan Lane
Lauren Ambrose
Oliver Platt
Jeremy Irons


6. BEST JAFFA CAKES VIDEOS

Just for fun...

#3 STEPHEN FRY: Is a Jaffa Cake a cake?





#2 KARL PILKINGTON: Jaffa Cakes Cure Cancer



#1 SPACED
(click for link) sorry

The Beginning of the End

Two weeks of school left. Things are wrapping up. I keep doing the very last of things. Doesn't seem real yet.

CAB

Campus Activities Board, for instance. We had our very last meeting this Tuesday. Doesn't feel like the last meeting. I suppose it's because I've been going to them every single Tuesday for the last four years.

We had a show tonight. Key Lime Special is a reggae group, partially a student band. They were really good. I'm a sucker for reggae and ska, but really, they were quite good and other people were saying they're of the best Cellar bands we've brought. Lots of people got up and danced, which is unusual for a Cellar event, but it's reggae--hard to resist.

Upcoming for CAB...

Augustana -- This Saturday

I'm in charge of all the volunteers for this show, our Spring Concert. We've sold over 500 tickets so far. Bascom Hill is opening for them. They're from my home city of Madison. I bought their CDs the first time I saw them play (this will be my third time). They're pretty awesome. I'm, of course, excited for the headliner too. We're having a meet-and-greet before the show.

We've also got three end-of-the-year parties and a cellar event (Repertoire) left.

English Club

We had our last official English Club meeting. Again, it's just weird to think about. Not many people are left, so it's hard to assign officers. We have a prez and VP for next year, at least.

I ordered our shirts tonight. They were $10/piece. They'll be forest green.

I also made this poster for Literacy and Lyrics, which is this Wednesday...

Upcoming for English Club...

English Social. Probably my favorite part about English Club. It'll be a little different this time because my friends are coming up to see me on that date. I'm excited for both.

Drawing

Okay, so the end's not exactly in sight for this Bradbury project, but I did finish one small drawing for it...It's from the story "The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse." Doesn't this make you want to go read some Bradbury? :p I didn't really like it at first, but I added the checkered floor and striped background and it's starting to grow on me. It took 2 hours. Imagine how many insane things I've listened to from Karl Pilkington in that amount of time. I like the one where he thought the cure for a parasite in your body is strapping bacon to your head. All right, sorry. Tangent.

The following drawing is the collaborative Tom Waits drawing in Foundations class. It's not done yet, but nearly there, nearly there. It'll be done tomorrow evening.

Experiments

Before I get into the experiments, I just wanted to quick post a link of the Bill Miller concert that someone put on YouTube. The guy on the left in the back is our chancellor.







Experiment # 1: writing

I'm experimenting with a piece called Burbank with a Baedeker. It's a fictional comedy travel blog. It's experimental in at least two fashions:

1. It's a blog. But it's fiction. Never done that before. It'll be interesting to see how the readers interact with the text.

2. I'm the author, but the narrator is a fictional character named Burbank. But Burbank is writing it pretending he is actually his friend Milo. So it has a lot of layers of perspectives. He says things about Milo that Milo would never say about himself if he were writing his own blog. Also, Burbank's a bit of an exaggerator and liar.

To read chapter one, click here.



Experiment #2: drawing

You saw in my previous post my first drawing (not done yet) for the Bradbury project I'm doing. I didn't want to do illustrations, yet the first drawing came out as an illustration. I wanted it to be less narrative, more surreal-ish. So I'm experiementing how to draw something that IS a metaphor. I think I might be in over my head. (Pictures coming soon).

While I'm drawing, I tend to multitask either by having something on TV (I went through two episodes of Torchwood) or by listening to audio books. Most recently, I've been listening to various comedy sketches. There are a lot of really great ones on YouTube. Today, I've decided that Karl Pilkington is the funniest un-comedian ever. I say un-comedian because I don't think he's actually trying to be funny. If he is, it's one heck of an act, but all the things I've listened to (podcasts, etc.) show him to be pretty consistant.

Here's a clip I liked. I nearly died laughing at the Shakespeare part.

Art

INVITATIONS

Here are some invitations I created for my graduation and the open house for me and my brother, who are both graduating this year.

DRAWING JOURNAL

More from my Drawing Journal. These are both brainstorms from when we were trying to think of ideas for our mural based on Tom Waits' "First Kiss."

THE BRADBURY PROJECT

For my final in Drawing Foundations, I'm doing a series of drawings inspired by images from Bradbury's stories. I thought it'd be cool to show you bit by bit how it's coming. This is the first one so far, called The Long Rain. It's about one hour in:

Two hours in:

Four hours in...

WHAT'S GOING ON OVER AT THE WRITING BLOG?

(Click to read the entries)

I got feedback on my short story ROAD CLOSURE.

I got my short story THE THINGS THEY REMEMBERED published in The Catalyst. (You can read the story at this link.)

I presented at NCUR.

I'm working on a comedy...conceptually at the moment.

New Red Dwarf

Kay. So I've just seen the new Red Dwarf (Back to Earth). Wow. After seeing the first episode, I groaned. I was thinking the writers had it all wrong. It was shallow. The CGI really bothered me (half of it is green screen) and the sets are painted too cleanly AND THERE'S NO SMEGGING LAUGH TRACK!

But, by the second episode, who cares about the laugh track because I was creating my own. Brilliant. Boy did they throw me for a loop. I'm not going to ruin it for you, but let me just say a couple things...

Metafiction
Riddle
Surprise actor/actress
Bladerunner

The writers were extremely aware of how the audience would act. There was one point where they said something, I laughed, and Rimmer said something like "if someone heard that, they'd only laugh." And there was something else I was thinking, "Boy, it would be perfect if they..." and then they DID it. Sweet.

The only disappointing thing other than lack of laugh track and too much green screen was a rather lack of Holly. Boo. But otherwise, thumbs up, guys.

(link)

NCUR weekend

Some new amazing updates!

The Illusion of Shade

There are 3,000 additional students on campus this weekend from all over the country for National Conference of Undergraduate Research. It's interesting to watch how outsiders interact with this campus, even the physical landscape. I saw this one girl, lying under a tree and reading. Now, in your head, this seems perfectly reasonable, but I have never seen anyone lie on this grass under this tree in the four years I've been here. It's hard dirt with a very light layer of dead grass topping. The tree is bare. What did she think, picking th spot under the tree, that it would give her shade? Does she come from a place with no grass? Or is the only reason we don't do the same because we don't see each other lying there ever? Sorry, I've had caffeine. My mind is churning thoughts three times harder than normal.

Speaking of which, the cafe had like 7 different flavors of frappachino and I've only had the caramel, which is tasty, so I decided to try the dark chocolate raspberry because I like dark chocolate and I like raspberry. Well, yeck. It's not actually bad tasting, but it's really bland. But I drank some anyway because I needed the caffeine because I had to be up at 6:30.

Which brings me to

The Bill Miller Concert

I was scheduled to volunteer for the Bill Miller concert for 5 hours, so I told them I only need a couple more hours to fullfill my 8-hour requirement (we get free registration for NCUR if we volunteer). So they signed me up for 7:30 the following morning. Not fair. Go to bed late, get up early.

Great show, though. Tory and I were in charge of all the volunteers. Didn't fill up the house, but certainly packed a lot of 'em in. The band was brilliant too. Bill Miller plays Native American folk music. He's a UWL alumni. And our chancellor got to play some blues with them, which I bet impressed the heck out of the students from other schools.

My Presentation

I also presented at NCUR, which was awesome. Want to read more about that? Check out my writing blog post about it here.

Photobooth

Turns out you can upload pictures from your harddrive to Photobooth. I won't be doing it every day, but whenever something interesting is happening like concerts, etc. I'll try to post a picture of me there (and hey, New York to come!). So, you can follow me by clicking here.

Website Videos

Don't forget to check out my new website, jleighnelson.com. I'm putting more videos on it by loading stuff onto YouTube, but for some reason I can't update the site. At first I thought it was because of the firewall, but now I'm pretty sure it has to do with being on the school's internet. The reason is that when I'm here at school, I can't get my FTP client to connect to the site, but when I'm home, I can. So I think I'll keep uploading videos and putting them on the site, but you won't be able to see those changes until I get off this stupid paranoid school internet. You can see new videos on my YouTube page here.

Art Class

My final problem is working on a series of drawings inspired by images in Ray Bradbury's short stories. I'll post 'em when I get some work done.

In the meantime, check out our progress on our collaborative mural based on Tom Waits' song "First Kiss."

Easter Weekend

What I did on my Easter vacation by J Leigh Nelson...

I saw Bill Cosby at the Orpheum. The guy's 71 years old and still on top of his game. I mean, two 2-hour shows back to back and then flying back to New England later that night? At 71? Really? Fantastic show, really. Loads of stuff about having a family, having a wife, getting older. New stuff, mostly, I think, except the bit about the dentist. He'd go off on tangent within tangent of his stories but always managed to find his way back to where he started to finish the first story, even if he had to ask the audience sometimes where he left off (the audience was usually wrong anyway).

Got some homework done. I say SOME because I certainly didn't get it all done. Did my fiction. Got to do my Chinese today. But I did get my art class drawing done...

Five hours this took me. Charcoal. 2-foot paper. Half reality (had to sit in my backyard amidst dog poo) and half nightmare. That was the assignment. This is a real nightmare I had. There was this labyrinth in my home and a minotaur running around. Each section of the maze had a designated facial expression. Whatever expression I wore at the time is where the minotaur would appear in the maze, so I always had to make sure that my expression was different from th section I was in, but the maze tried to work against me.

I quite like it. I was displeased with the last one. I'd worked hard and everything, but it just wasn't that exciting. This one's pretty cool, though. Charcoal's a better medium than pencil for large scale, I think.

Did I watch any TV this weekend? Well, a bit. Graham Norton for starters. They say there's a theatrical play based on Dante's Inferno? Dude! I want to see it! Wait, I don't speak Italian. But I don't care. That's awesome. Also, I saw the movie Ghost Town, which was very funny as well.

I did some Easter-y things too. We went out to eat, we went to church, we visited my grandparents, we drove two hours to La Crosse. What, you don't do that every Easter, drive for the majority of the day?

I've also been tinkering more on the new website. Have I mentioned a new website? WEBSITE! But more on that once I've done some of this Chinese homework.

Upcoming...

This Thursday is my NCUR presentation. I am also helping out with the Bill Miller concert that night.

Website

The wonderful people at 1and1 pointed out that I will be able to upload my website better if I disable my firewall, so I did that, and voila...NEW WEBSITE!

www.jleighnelson.com

Yeah.

t-shirt design

These are the two sides of the English Club t-shirt I designed. It might change. Maybe I should have the school name on there somewhere.





MORE TO COME...


I just ordered a new website, but it takes 24 hours minimum to process, so I'll have to wait before I can unveil it, but unveil it I shall as soon as it's up.


Also, some drawing "problems" (aka projects) are well under way. More on that later.

This blog might get a little travelly this summer. I'll try to stay focused.






IN THE MEANTIME...


Watch my 20-minute presentation about how to revise a novel
and don't forget to check out the website for that.


Check out my ideas for draft 4 of my novel


and "critical acclaim" for my undergraduate research project.

Hello fools,

welcome to april.

Got to hand it to YouTube. You think you're pretty clever, don't you? ;)

Other April Fool's Day business...

The last SPEAK! of the year was tonight. Although no one really told jokes, per se, we had a solid hour of performers ranging from poems, short stories, singing/guitar, advertisements, and ukulele.

I just saw the series finale of the American Life on Mars. That show's definitely not coming back another season. I'm glad they're not planning on running it into the ground. The ending? Not what I expected! And definitely not the ending of the original show. Did I like it? Well...I've been reading Bradbury's R is for Rocket, so it wasn't too outside of my frame of mind as of late, but it was strange. I'll have to meditate on it. But, man let's play count the David Bowie references in that episode. Good gravy.

Non-April Fool's Business...

1. Despite having finished all of my own CAB events for the year, I have been asked to help out heavily with the upcoming Bill Miller performance during NCUR. Rock on.

2. New website. Is in development. Going to buy new domain name. Thinking 1and1.com (what do you think?).

3. Rest in peace Andy Hallett.

4. Drawing. All right, not the best drawing ever, but not too bad. The assignment was to "draw something out the window: a real window but imagined exterior." There's a really cool assignment coming up that you can look at here.

Writing Blog news...

1. I am going to NYU's Summer Publishing Institute

2. Shop Talk with the editor

3. Presentation this Friday!

4. Been reading some Bradbury