By way of addendum to my last posting on the topic of the "vanity Google" here's a curious tidbit I discovered during an egosurfing session:

Jennifer (nee Linton) and Joshua Brugger
Kaiden Monteith Brugger - 25 December, 2005
We had a son on December 25th, 2005. Christmas Day! Kaiden Monteith Brugger. He weighed 6 pounds, 11 oz...19 1/2 inches long.

I've happened across this particular Jennifer Linton in the past. I find it a remarkable coincidence that this person, with the same name as myself, also had a son born on Christmas Day (though a year later than Ridley). Now, if this new mother was also born on Christmas...I shudder to think of the cosmic ramifications.

Six degrees of separation, folks.

The Vanity Google.

I confess to having committed this most heinous of cybercrimes. Repeatedly. I've typed my own name into the Google search engine and closely examined the results.

In defence of this seemingly vain practice I offer this agrument: I am a public personality. Of course, I'm certainly no major celebrity. Heck, I'm not even a minor, B-list Canadian celebrity. However, I am a professional visual artist who actively exhibits throughout Canada & the U.S. and about whom articles are written -- often without my knowledge. Hence, I make use of the "vanity Google" to uncover these hidden treasures that refer to myself and/or my art.

Here's an interesting factoid I recently unearthed:

"Probably everyone who ever used a search engine at once entered his own name. "Vanity Google", as US people call it. There's practically always some information. If you play in a chess club, you'll find tournament result lists. There's photos of class reunions, quoted University papers, and archived commentary from newsgroup discussions. Exactly where your own name turns up is out of your control."-- Ansbert Kneip, Die Google-Jagd auf Libby Hoeler (Spiegel Online), May 12 2003"

The vanity Google has excavated newsgroup postings I had written over ten years ago. I've discovered online versions of newspaper reviews of art exhibitions I held over six years ago. Never would I have guessed that these writings would live on in apparent perpetuity in the transient world of cyberspace.

The moral of the story: be careful what you write, 'cause that shit will stick.

It's official. I am now a fully-fledged initiate into the world of the experimental art film. On Saturday, June 24th I viewed David Lynch's cult masterpiece Eraserhead for the very first time.

The synopsis for this film that appears on Zip.ca (online DVD store to which Richard & I subscribe) reads as follows: "Surreal, nightmarish psychological horror film set in neo-Gothic industrial wasteland. Art-house cult favorite is compulsory for fans of non-mainstream fare in mood for bizarre, disturbing film."

Yep, pretty much. The photography in this film is gorgeous; remarkable when you consider the shoestring budget on which the film was created. In his director's commentary, Lynch speaks at great length on the expert lighting techniques of his Director of Photography (whose name now escapes me). Sadly, this lighting wizard met an untimely early death, as did a couple of other crew members. Kinda makes ya wonder, huh?

I did enjoy this film very much. Strange, yes. It unravels before your eyes like Lynch's very private nightmare world. Like a true artist, Lynch sets up a complex vocabulary of symbols and then just lets them interact.

I never did see a "Lady in the Radiator". I did see the radiator glowing with this unearthly light, and something that resembled a soggy mass of hair piled at the base of said radiator. But a lady? Nope.

I felt a great pathos for the inconsolable cries of the monster baby. Poor little fetal-calf-looking creature, isolated as it was on the table across the room from the parental bed. No wonder it cried so much. (Perhaps this is just my maternal urgings talking, though.)

At the tender age of 17 months, Ridley Linton-Martin launches into an experimentation with the technique of "automatic drawing". Inspired by the scribblings of American abstract artist Cy Twombly, artistic protegy Linton-Martin conveys his existential angst over the impermanence of life with forceful, unmediated drawings in that most transient of media: chalk on blackboard.