Goodbye Forever

So blogger is discontinuing support for the way that I update this blog. It means that I am starting a new one and that this one will disappear. Most of the drawings and photos will get integrated into my much more professional-seeming website: www.rockwellfarmer.com.
Here is a link to the new blog: berniemcgovern.blogspot.com.

It's exciting to have all of their neat gadgets at my disposal finally. To celebrate here is the best Nasa Porn I can find in under 5 minutes:

Time Traveling Agony

Things revealed: Blair Thomas's studio, Smart Museum's presentation of Dan Kerr-Hobert's Kinetoscope Project, our doll contribution to The Twins Would Like to Say staged in Steppenwolf's Garage Space, my giant painting in progress of Lil' Pebbles getting big as a mountain, some chickpeas in a skillet, Joe Mazza's humble abode plus puppets, the beautiful creature that is JACK, and other relics of breathtaking Ohio. I swear I could explain these things better in person if you challenge me-

Quickly, as One Runs Out the Door

I am struck by visions of three 8-bit Nes games from my childhood, and for a brief moment I cannot move:

Hiatus

OH NO

It seems I have to take an involuntary hiatus from the internet this week. My work/personal home computer has had some kind of seizure, fallen into a coma, and needs to be taken to the CPU clinic. So if you need to contact me be sure to use the stone-age method of calling my phone or texting me. Otherwise my replies may take longer than usual, which was long to begin with.

Love, Bernie

An Army of Lovers News

Thanks to one Dan Kerr-Hobert there are finally more issues of An Army of Lovers will be Beaten on the shelves of Quimby's bookstore! He totally financed the ordering of more and I will forever be in his debt. Or at least until all the books sell :) Lovely

Laundry Day

Pic Attack!

Below, pictures of all the fun had lately. Hanging out at Metropolitan Brewery after finishing up a little label design for them:

A design for their limited run of kegs, by Bernie!
A fine classic of theirs, Dynamo, bathing in spent grain:

Which leads naturally into the scene of a midnight epic struggle for garlic I happened upon in my pantry:

Hiking with Jessica! We came close to petting those docile deer:

Snaps

The new (Emily's old) couch is great and so is the new job; SWISH!

I Will be Attending One of These

Mom's Brain

Brad Smith is Great. Good Job.

Barrage of Photos from Colorado Trip

Colorado was loads of fun, work, and total destruction. Here are some lovely pictures :)

Inches from Done

I Hope You are Waltzing in the Wind Like a Feather

Remounting the BEER show for this Thursday. It's to raise funds for our trip out to Colorado's Great American Beer Festival performances!

The drive home was meditative. Buckeley and NPR were my copilots:

Recently

Rehearsals, more puppet building, Brad Smith at the Hideout, and Hungarian Bull's Blood wine:

Shooting Stars & Camping Extravaganza

Camping near the Mississippi truly is like camping near the Mississippi.
I highly recommend following it up with watching Synecdoche, New York for the second time. Set a course for quietude, natural grace, and intimate trivial pursuit. Engage:

Clay Worms are Delicious

Plus new kicks for super cheap:

Kickballers on a Saturday Afternoon

Briefly

Driving is occassionally good for the heart & brain tissues:

Space Beers with Seldon

I'm home & safe. I didn't so much take any photos while on my trip but it was so very much fun. Half the time I was thinking of the following: How much I love flying, NY's endless dark skyline, & dark matter (wah wah)

New York

Would you like to have coffee with old Bernie McGovern, but have trouble pulling it off with the 800 miles between us? Well come the weekend of June 5th, that distance will be totally annihilated. I'll be attending the MOCCA indie comics convention near Park and 26th street, and staying in Brooklyn. YOU should email me or call. Here's a picture of a Catalpa tree taken with my funny cell phone:

Amazing

The world welcomes Tatum with OPEN arms!

Pthh!

There are many reasons to be happy:

Last Saturday's X-Rated Beer Puppet Show, Drawing, & Malort with Doug

SUMMER

It's unfinished!!

Detroit Catholics, Abba Zabba, Pyramids, & Some Brothers

A Few Things

Substitute teaching for Lucy is AMAZING.

and JCVD might be gorgeous. Jean-Claude blew my mind for the first time since prepubescence. Did he break down in tears? Yes.

Leaving

Heading out to Detroit for the weekend to commiserate with the unemployed! And I was graced by Lauri Dahl with a last-minute free ticket to see Leonard Cohen a few nights ago. I wept 3-4 times:

After Watching Bela Tarr's "Family Nest"

Jess's friend Balázs educated us on Hungarian "panels" today via the magic of internetting. About 100,000 people live in these high buildings:

Tomorrow Night

Hey!

I'll be attending the opening for the play Static by Sansculottes Theater tomorrow night. I made the postcard image (with much appreciated help from Candice Lee Conner) You'll find my aesthetic framed throughout the event but REALLY you should come to see the incredibly beautiful work of Andrea Everman. Wonder.

Scribbles

Meme's Butt

There Were Two Perfect Days

1. My heart and nerves were soothed again at the zoo, in perfect 73˚ weather:2. There was a beautiful birthday party for my nephew, Michael, at a near bye Chuck E. Cheese's:

That's Horse Shit!

That's horse shit!

So I've taken up horseback riding lessons in preparation for the coming Apocalypse (and also 'cause it's fun & dopamine inducing) Maybe it'll be cheaper than driving!

Yesterday, I stood on the edge of Edgewater, in preparation for Sansculotte Theater's new installation/play, Static:
I'm waving, "Hello!"

HOLY MOLÉ

Sometimes I Feel Like a Chimp Before it's Reached its Face Eating Phase

I might be the only person who was happy to see this out the window yesterday:

So, there was the sad but necessary business of taking Bucket to the vet. She tried to hide:
And reaching even further back, it turns out the Field Museum has these gigantic Roman olive oil pots. They were dug out of Pompeii, home of a distant puppet show idea of ours:
Yay. Life continues to mystify.

A Week Later

About a week ago:
I saw Brandon Campbell's beautiful puppet utilized in a great performance of Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage at Martyrs March 9:

Jess & I ogled over primates and tigers at Lincoln Park Zoo:

And without fail, I continue to swoon over the mysteries of the universe, like supernovas that expand unimaginably quickly but seem to trickle:

The World Shimmers

Sat up late with beautiful Jess about a week ago, talking about solar eclipses and of how stars huddle around them:

Progress & Unabashed Cat-Love

Busy Bee

It's back to working on the good work: Army of Lovers, finishing touches on BEER, and now my editing station is finally complete! That means some long overdue documentation will come pouring into the internet. Plus ~ I can finally start animating again. Yes! Here's the first panel from the upcoming Army of Lovers book four:

Oh Dave Depew, I'm Easy

In lieu of posting new Cheese Mongrels episodes, here are some life & times photos. Oh Dave Depew, don't Point-Break my heart with your dreamy visage:

Madam Colette gave an incredible karaoke performance this week:

And Lilli Carre shared her awesome animating technique. It's top secret. Don't tell nobody:

January 30, 2009

Happy Birthday, Bernie!
Our play, BEER, opened last night for a preview & it was a blast. I relearned how to form a Windsor necktie, put finishing touches on the puppets, and operated the slide show from above the giant beer cooler in the Metropolitan Brewery. AND they asked me to design the labels for their next line of Beers! Life's grand.

My Baby She Wrote me a Letter

The band from our BEER show offered to play a special birthday song for me! Here's a little sneak peak. That's me on keys, so drugged out I can hardly keep my eyes open:

Yea! We're gonna be famous!

Puppet City, population: BADASS

Drawing, Cutting, Rubbering into the Night

and it's CRUNCH time.
If you weren't a flower, I'd buy you some flowers.

Back to Painting Rubber Molds on the Dining Room Table

Life Explosion, Ludicrous Speed

Larry Koek and his beautiful Seabull (Siebel) in progress. Expect nostrils, cowbell, a giant ring, horns, and luminous color pouring from its crevices. It is his ecstatic contribution to our puppet show, BEER:

My current sketchbook. It is painted with the Metropolitan Brewery keg logo:

The distillery next door. Was it salvaged from 2000 Leagues Under the Sea? Science!

An unplanned birthday party. I ran into a fella I knew in high school, Benny. There was much dancing & guilty pleasure:

A Special Word from your Favorite Foaming Ginger

The puppet show moves along!

PLUS

I've got some old paintings up in the Beans & Bagels coffee shop located across the street from the Montrose Brown Line stop. They're mostly from An Army of Lovers will be Beaten. Hurray, something is up somewhere!

Love,
Bernie

The Same Deep Water As You

Over a week into rehearsals & life is great. It couldn't be going better. The puppets, T-shirts, and animations plug along here in my bedroom studio. Laura and Steve brought Curtis a cake tonight, as it is his birthday. I'm up late drawing while Bucket the cat stares at me, in the mysterious way that she does. There is a pretty good chance that I'll wake to her cuddling all over my face in the morning. I don't think I left anything out... Oh yea, I'm listening to really old Cure songs right now for some reason. Please, please make fun of me.

The New Shape of Being Nocturnal

Old Bernie McG will be up all night making puppets...

I've broken out the dusty AIM messenger business if you're ever looking for an intimate talk with your favorite ginger as he sews, saws, paints, and sketches his way through January. My screen name is PrinceEclipse after a fictional rapper that I haven't made any material for yet.

And here's a picture of my friend Julie wearing her gear for riding the CTA late at night. She sewed a couple awesome pieces for us recently while home from New York. Hurray:

Puppet Mania & a Visitor

So!
In the last few days we've cast some very successful rubber molds:

We've made some wild foam shapes:

We've turned our living room into a studio:

There has been some healthy work-shopping:

There was a pretty girl wearing Steve's reading glasses:

And we had a glorious Emily visiting from out of town.
She is dressed as a butterfly napping:

Everything Changes the Year You Turn 27

Dropping a fresh digilog, lovers.

The GOOD news:
Our Sansculottes play, 13 Dead Husbands, made the Chicago's Tribune best Fringe Theater list for 2008. Read the article by clicking here

The ALSO GOOD, IF YOU REALLY THINK ABOUT IT news:
Old Bernie McGovern is officially Artist Full-Time. Yep, turns out, the economy affects us all. The unemployment office will be a little spicier this week. It's never met the likes of this ginger! But truly, it is good. Think of all the puppets to build! Yes...

Quimby's Bookstore Window Display

Our Trubble Club is featured this month in the window of Chicago's Quimby's Bookstore. Mr. Jeremy Tinder was kind enough to install it & take some beautiful documentation of it. See below, my cat contribution. Guess which cat it was informed by? Click the picture to make it bigger, and click HERE to see Jeremy's Flickr account where there are many many more photos. Delight.

Awesome Review

Optical Sloth wrote a very flattering thing about Trubble Club!
Click here to read

100% Ass-Kicking

Earlier tonight, photographed by Mr. Nathan Beaty in Aaron Renier's hot bachelor pad are (clockwise from left) al, corinne, jeremy, aaron, yers truly, laura, grant:

Below is my contribution to our upcoming window display at Quimby's bookstore. It is the funny thing I was working on in the picture above. It is partially cut out:
The night was laid to rest after Pete's delightful birthday party. Pictured below are a few of the angels in attendance:
and here you can see my jacked up face and holiday vest :)

green = envy

Old Patrick Tianen is dabbling in the art of making me mythologically jealous. Turns out he moved to Hawaii to live with a native who is unrealistically beautiful & sings in a rock & roll band. He sends me photos taken while strolling through the idle hours of his care-free life, meant to bring my blood to about 212° F - but I do love & miss him so.

Inside Jokes & Persona Elasticity Starring Sam's

Metropolitan Brewery

The future site of our next puppet show with the Neo Futurists:

More Pretty Catalpa Trees in Fall

Nerd Update

News:

1. I will most definitely be shaving my monster beard tonight
2. There will be a new edition of Army of Lovers for people to buy soon
3. Pan Kun & James may be the most compelling thing in the world.
Especially around 3:40 minutes in, where Pan Kun performs CPR on James:

When You're Heavy Even Though Every Thing is Great

I haven't got an idea of what's going on this week. My heart is mush and the stars are all a mess.

The World is a Fiery Maelstrom

Halloween was fantastic! A hunchback, deep sea angler fish, and a dance party:
Mosh's brilliant old man in the park costume:
Ecstatic times at Sam's:

Super Silly String Theory & Cute-Cup Over Floweth

My continued infatuation with String Theory, a boner for Dodecahedrons, & dreams in the theme of the Golden Ratio:

My allegiance to Howard Barker, that fine brained gentleman, is reignited. Time to rent 20 more of his plays from the library~ Yes!

And Michelle sent me an incredible sequence of a newborn panda growing. Aw shit it's cute:

Fuck you! You're so cute my brain's leaking out m'shoes!
Class.

I am Gross

Why? Because I made a Prosciutto, butter, & Foie Gras pate sandwich for lunch today. If it were not for the wine, I'm pretty sure these arteries would be pumping Twinkies.

Anyway, here's a photo of it. It's a little blurry so I can imagine that it looks funny:

Dwelling on Today September 14, 2008

Old David Foster Wallace did himself in Friday at the not-old age of 46. It's brought a very real tear to my eye.But along that there have been dwellings on beautiful things like the Megamouth Shark. The first recorded finding of one happened in Hawaii 1976, future home of one blessed Patrick Tianen:

And there is this Incredible Scottish Cow, found while casually looking for references to draw beautiful cows:
The world is a cornucopia of reasons to weep, whether for being all bummed out, astounded, or warmed by something as cute as a super harry cow.

SCRAPPERS

A few things:

First, can you make it to the Scrappers' Benefit tonight?
I hope so! Info below:

Second, a super-sonically brief Life & Times update.
I socialized:

I traveled to a time where "we don't need roads:"

And I pulled a dying bee off my sweater while waiting for the train:

Fin!

Thinking of You, Wish You Were Here

Being in love really is the fuzzy, knot in the super-string of life.

Cute Picture of us Artists

Check out the sexy, sassy artists that will be featured August 15 thru September 3 at the Bloomingdale Arts Building at 2418 W Bloomingdale, Chicago 60647:

Just imagine how fly they are up close!!

Unsolicited Phone Photo

Good old PET sent me this cell phone photo while I was at work today. A tear came to my eye as I miss him so... Soon he'll be living in a mansion in Hawaii for free. Balls.caption: "yes please"

The Sky Dripped with Demon Sweat

Life has been feeling like a wrestling match lately, where I'm half naked, grappling with my opponent, who wears a hilarious leotard labeled DELIRIUM and slaps out of the match with his partner, CLARITY. They're winning I guess, leaving me with bubbles that rise up from my head and pop~
It's pretty fun even if it means I sweat in the cold.Life is overrun by cats!

Everywhere ~ in my armpit, on some blankets, on the back porch, sleeping on my bag:

And of course I was attacked by the scandalous, picture texting sprees of Mr. P. Sniffles, states away scratching himself:

(what a sweetheart)

And home from the beautiful road trip, I ran into three lovelies at the Grafton: Jennefa, Kyle, and Blayne (not pictured)

I came to draw alone in the corner but ended up enjoying their delightful ways. Kyle, Blayne, Anthony, and Michelle will be sharing a house right down the street come November.
AND one of the most beautiful people I've ever known might be coming out to visit me next month. I can't contain my excited self!

Carpe Bernum

SO ~ "Le Cat Show" by Sarah Bendix and Mikalina Rabinsky was a true delight and engaging. The Chopin Theater was set aglow...
And apparently I'm the very last person to see the Baron Munchausen, which split my head right open letting goopy German-Irish-Polish brains spill out all over my room mates' beautiful rug:And so long for now, Chicago. I'm heading out to the country again to shake loose some of these city woes. But I'm bringing you with me Freddie :)

Demonlogue 2007

This is a blog!
So I'm heading back down to Louisville for the closing night of Actor's Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Less formal pictures and like things will be here for the viewing indefinitely. Delight.