Operation Ivy: Logo #312

Designed by OpIvy singer Jesse Michaels in 1987. At last report, there are no plans for a band reunion. Simple things are sometimes the hardest to do well. Theirs is a logo (mascot?) that was left out of the recent Yahoo! blog survey that ripped off many of the images and entries of this blog, which is a real shame but no real surprise. The NME did the same thing back in April. Linkbacks are the Internet's equivalent of the reacharound; neither site gave me the profound joy of even that cold comfort. Like that popular band once sang, "That's the price of love..."

Siouxsie & the Banshees: Logo #311

Siouxsie's heroically pharaoic eyes - courtesy of London design house Crocodile - graced the cover of their 1987 LP "Through the Looking Glass." It was the face that launched a thousand shirts and plunged countless young girls into annoying, frustrating conversations with men and family who wondered who the eyes belonged to and why they have to be so weird all the time.

This Day in Death: Leos Janácek (July 3, 1854 – August 12, 1928)
Thomas Mann (June 6, 1875 – August 12, 1955)
Ian Fleming (May 28, 1908 – August 12, 1964)
Philip-Dimitri Galás (July 21, 1954 - August 12, 1986)
Jean-Michel Basquiat (December 22, 1960 - August 12, 1988)
Bernard Kliban (January 1, 1935 – August 12, 1990)
John Cage (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992)
John Loder (Southern Studios; April 7, 1946 - August 12, 2005)

Phish: Logo #310

Created by Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, possibly as early as 1986. More Holist goodness - the whole being bigger than the sum of its parts. Speaking of the sum of its parts, so what must that internal memo have been like about the guy from Phish being beaten up by Hells Angels? The world, like the ad said with the wise old owl, will never know. I don't particularly care for Phish. Too imprecise and meandering and beardy. Their ice cream is fairly good, though.

My ex-girlfriend died last month. She was 26. Her heart stopped. I'll be 39 on Thursday. Do I really have to experience dead ex-girlfriends at age 39? Naturally - naturally - if you want to read about what a godly being she was, you have but to read any of the blaugs out there extolling her virtues and whatnot. "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones," said Mark Antony in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," and much like Mark Antony, I come to bury Danielle - not praise her. Here's the downright lowdown on the latter-day ambient saint: she was a beautiful pain-in-the-ass who had a deathly fear of commitment through her 20s and sought enlightenment and inspiration from one boyfriend after another. Conversely: I was not her star to follow. She wound up with the man she wound up with - and although I thought much of their recorded output were shiny cogs in one vast and endless boredom factory, clearly she was happy; clearly she was at peace. Who am I to begrudge anyone that? I'm just this curmudgeonly scribbler who writes brilliantly about disposable popular culture. Conversely two times: the day she died (unbeknownst to me), I was digging through storage and found a packet of her love letters that I hadn't looked at in years. Someone meant, it would seem, to say something before she departed for the great Beyond. Anyway, he had his time with her - but I got her on the way out. Bye, Danielle.

The Song of the Moment is "Last Day of Magic" by The Kills.