Creeking More In The ATL (with your host Nate Creekmore) episode #96

I'm not from Atlanta, but I live here, and (because I live here) people who don't live here ask me, "Creek, what's Atlanta really like?"  I don't know what Atlanta is really like, but if you'd like to know what it's like for me I invite you to sit back and enjoy another episode of "CREEKING MORE IN THE ATL (with your host Nate Creekmore)"!!!

[flannel shirts provided by Goodwill and REI]

In the city of Atlanta, one may find that he must (for whatever reason) take the bus to get to where he's going...

The MARTA rail system offers an enjoyable enough ride.  The MARTA bus system does not.  For one thing, it is chronically late.

And I don't know if you've ever noticed, but MARTA will put a bus stop absolutely anywhere.  Sometimes, you'll see a nice one with a bench and a roof, but usually a MARTA bus stop is just a sign sticking out of the ground.

Sometimes that ground is in someone's front lawn:

It may be in a ditch:

...or in the middle of a traffic island...

...or up in the branches of a tree...

MARTA buses don't travel along some secret road set apart from other vehicles, they use the same roads as everyone else.  And that means they get stuck in traffic like everyone else.

No one is happy on a MARTA bus, especially after having worked a full day at a job that doesn't pay you enough to not have to take the bus.  So, needless to say, if you're riding the bus home in the evening during the week, you keep to yourself and so do the other occupants of the bus.

...unless you're this guy:

He just got back into town after having backpacked through Europe (or southeast Asia or Australia) and he wants to say "hi" to everyone on the bus and tell them all about his journey of self-discovery.

He talks about the sites he's seen and the food he ate and the women he slept with and how his mind was broadened and he doesn't notice that the passengers around him just want him to shut up and be as miserable as everyone else.

He even has the audacity to offer a general "goodnight, everyone" as he gets off the bus and goes wherever it is people like him go at night.

And you realize that you hated him because he spoke; because he wanted to share his joy with perfect strangers.  And you wonder what that says about you...

And you definitely don't go home and google all the places he was talking about.

There you have it folks, another exciting episode of "Creeking More in the ATL (with your host Nate Creekmore)"!  Be sure and come back for the next installment and remember that the seats in the front of the bus are reserved for the elderly and the disabled.

FoodTruck

This week, four completely unrelated drawings from four different sketch books.

John Travolta as Vincent Vega from the musical comedy Pulp Fiction...

An assortment of hands...

A sketch I planned to turn into a larger piece but abandoned because the more I looked at it the less I liked it...

And, in closing, an obscure character from one of the Oz books that was never adapted into a feature film.  An elephant named Kabumpo...

Cheers.

BeCool

In my estimation, humble as it may be, the golden age of cool passed us by long ago.  Older generations had and continue to have (just watch how they carry themselves) a better understanding of how to just be cool.  And when it comes to basketball, the chasm between the cool of the present and the cool of the past could not be any more plain.  Sky hooks, finger rolls, afros, knee-high socks... heck, even the nerds were cooler back in the day.  Think Kurt Rambis.

When I draw basketball scenes, they tend to reflect my appreciation for the old school (re: cool) aesthetic of yesteryear.  Here's a terrible photograph of a piece I've been picking at between other projects:

...a behind the back alley-oop pass to a teammate who is flying through the air for what will be (presumably) a windmill dunk.

Here's an even worse photo:

I can't promise it'll be done anytime soon, but I'll be sure and post it when it's finished.

Be cool (folks).

Creeking More in the ATL (with your host Nate Creekmore) Episode #20

I'm not from Atlanta, but I live here, and (because I live here) people who don't live here ask me, "Creek, what's Atlanta really like?"  I don't know what Atlanta is really like, but if you'd like to know what it's like for me I invite you to sit back and enjoy another episode of CREEKING MORE IN THE ATL (with your host Nate Creekmore)!!!

[please hold your applause until the end of the episode]

In the city of Atlanta, movie theaters are easily found.  People often complain about the fact that folk are fond of talking during films.  Me?  I mostly enjoy the chatter, actually.  If I don't hear someone say something witty or (conversely) idiotic, I feel disappointed.  Years ago, when I lived in Nashville, I went out to see Kill Bill Vol. 2 on its opening night.  There's an unforgettable scene wherein Uma Thurman yanks out Darryl Hannah's eyeball in the middle of a sword fight.  It's a total surprise and no one in the room saw it coming.  The theater, appropriately, went nuts:

The reactions (audible and emphatic) made an outstanding sequence that much better.

But before I veer any further off track in my memories of Nashvegas, let me turn my thoughts back to Atlanta and an experience I had at one of her cinemas...

My favorite film director is Terrence Malick and when I watch a Terrence Malick film, I am too entranced to know if anyone around me is talking or laughing or alive or dead.  I could talk all day about the transcendent, pensive quality of his film making and about how his The New World is the absolute pinnacle of cinematic achievement, about his penchant for (somehow) simultaneously abandoning and embracing narrative, about his profound vision of humanity and nature and God... but, lest I be carried away in tones that seem hyperbolic (and would be hyperbolic were I speaking of anyone besides Malick) we'll move on.

About a year ago, Malick made a movie called The Tree of Life.  I went to go see it at the Tara theater on Cheshire Bridge Road...

The Tree of Life is a prayer.  Somehow, Terrence Malick convinced a movie studio to allow him to create a film that is, in fact, a prayer.  An exquisitely beautiful prayer.  But not everyone was as enraptured as me.  As soon as the final credits started rolling, a man began yelling at the screen:

He hated the movie and assumed we all felt the same way.  An old, professorial looking man walked over to the yelling man in an attempt to discuss some of the film's finer points:

I began to recall one of my father's favorite stories; the one where he goes to see 5 Fingers of Death (the first Kung Fu movie to come out in the States) and people in the theater begin trying out the Kung Fu moves they'd just seen in the movie on their fellow audience members.

Alas, there was no fight between the professor and the yelling man.

When the credits were done (and I stay until the credits are over if I feel the film is deserving) I left the theater, being careful to avoid the may pretentious conversations sparked by the film, and made my way through the parking lot.

...but a Terrence Malick film doesn't let you go right away; it lingers for days, floating purposefully like a dream, or a vision of the divine... a glimpse behind the celestial curtain.  The whole world is new and beautiful.

Amen.

There you have it folks, another episode of "Creeking More in the ATL (with your host Nate Creekmore)"!!! Be sure and come back for the next installment where I gush over the brilliant trailer for Malick's new film To The Wonder and go on at length to explain why Pinocchio is the greatest animated film of all time.