New Holiday Tradition

Don't you think its time for some new holiday traditions? Santa and the tree and the mistle toe only go back so many generations. Do we have to stick to the same stuff (which has nothing to do with the religion it represents) forever?
I think something that would really cheer up the general public in these times of war and recession is some creativity.
Oprah said of Barack Obama "time to think outside the box". She's right! What is so good about reindeer? Let's face it,
nobody really likes Christmas the way it is now. For instance my 5 year old nephew Kaleb likes gifts, snacks, attention and making a mess on Christmas day. He in no way believes in Santa, or stockings, or yuletide (which I admit have no idea what that is). All he wants to do is climb that damn tree, rip open wrapping paper, dance around and have good time. All those formal/commercial pleasantries are forced upon us, they're not that fun! That's why so many people commit suicide in December. Christmas as it is now is just another version of pagan nazi-ism. Let's reinvent some traditions that fit the times a little better. If I was running for president, even class president, reinventing new holiday traditions would be like at least 3rd on my priority list. New Years could use some cheering up too. The midnight kiss? Champagne?... more like chumpain. All that pressure to have a momentous kiss and the rarely-kept resolutions that follow are the ties the bind if you ask me.

I'm interested in New Holiday Tradition suggestions if you have any.

Here is a photo of a new Christmas tradition of mine. I call it "Let It Loosemas" : semi-destroying something really expensive as symbolic gesture of not being tied to material items... or blue tote bags. For this tradition I performed a ceremonial dance to accentuate the action. Kind of like James Brown meets Frankenstein.

General Resource Question.

Does anyone know of a printing place in Manhattan or Brooklyn that prints black+white large scale from digital images for a fair price? The prints would be from scanned colleges - mostly graphic and line drawing based. They need to be printed twice: once on medium weight paper and once on cheap bond paper. 36" wide by ?" long (96" maybe).
I used to use Kinko's because it is $1 per sq. ft. However, Kinko's isn't artist friendly, the quality sucks and they don't have the special attention to detail that I need. Duggal is rulled out because they are way over priced. So somewhere professional but not to obscenely commercial. Please pass this on to anyone super cool and knowledgeable.
abwexler@mac.com

Nipple?

I have 161 pictures on my Flickr account, viewable by all the world.
This one is the most viewed by a margin of 30!
Blood or Nipple?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/randomaaron/
p.s. the title of the photo is "Tiny Gunshot Wound".

My friend Mitch - always funny and weird (but good weird).

Too many dreams.

I dream a lot. I've always been a dynamic dreamer during sleep. In my younger years through my late 20's dreams were a great source of inspiration. Whether they were fantastic adventures, sexual, surreal, funny or confusing (plus the occasional nightmare); I always woke up restfully interested in decoding them. Also in my late 20's many symbols in dreams became source material for my art work. Hey, free ideas, can't beat that! However, the stress of adult life has infultrated my abilty to relax and enjoy dreaming the good stuff. I get caught in cycles, circumstantial and visual problems that cannot be solved without me waking up frustrated and exhausted. To put is simply, I wake up exausted from dreaming. An interesting side note to my sleep patterns is that I've never had a girlfriend who dreams much during sleep. I wake up like I've just watched six movies in a row and she wakes up like magic valuum has just instantly worn off. Such a strange contrast, we are from differenet worlds. During sleep she becomes blank, I become mentally animated. I want to be blank!

Any suggestions?

Tuesday.

The BQE by Sufjan Stevens.

This past Saturday night I was reminded of how much not a genius I am. I'll say it again and again: Sufjan Stevens is a musical genius. The Brooklyn Acacemy of Music or BAM as most people know it commissioned Sufjan to compose a suite of music based on the BQE, also known as the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.
"Robert Moses' controversial 11.7-mile roadway tears through neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens with the brute force of modern urban planning, and in Stevens' hands becomes an evocation of the intersection of intimate experience and the American Dream. Merging a virtual road trip shot on film with a live band and orchestral ensemble, The BQE discovers abstract patterns and stories in the snaking traffic, potholed pavement, billboards, badly marked exits, and beautiful city views, revealing what happens when Manifest Destiny converges with urban blight.
To tackle this project Sufjan composed roughly 40 minutes of music for a nearly complete orchestra, which is not something new in terms of size. Of course the core band members were in tact. Accompanying the music were 3 small movie house sized projections. The moving images traced the BQE using many different perspectives: on the road, from below, looking out on to scenes of Brooklyn or Manhattan... all in constant movement. To accentuate the notion of perpetual movement and cycles "hoopers" (hoolahoopers) performed in specific moments and with specific choreographed movements. In fact all movements physical, musical and otherwise were in tandem. This created a performance one step further than his normal concerts. At the end and after many standing ovations me and Holly (friend from my gallery) were ready to walk out fully content and inspired. Ahh but it was only time for intermission, Sufjan and Co. were to come back and perform roughly 40 minutes of his "hits".

I see a lot of art and listen to a lot of music. I make a lot of art and I used to make a lot of music.
I make art because the act of making it inspires me. It inspires me to question, investigate and make more beautifully complex things (although, I'm secretly searching for simplicity). Most things in the real world that I find inspiring have to do with nature and it's complex mystery. In addition, I love how wonderfully flawed we are in comparison and how we relate/interact with our surroundings - nature or not. Sufjan Stevens music and overall project is the closest thing to those notions that I can think of.

On Sunday I went searching for pictures of the performance on Flickr. The first image out of hundreds (only 12 hours after the actual event) was a picture of the back of my head looking at the stage. How strange is that?

thanks Tammy Lo.

And here is a scene from the climax of the Hoopers.