The Cafe Society Prayer

The Art of Don Mangus: A Wide-Ranging Survey of My "Visual Puzzles"

I've always enjoyed perceptual puzzles where the viewer has to work to decode the image and flat pattern of the art marks and shapes to cognize the space and image. Don Mangus, Bird Cage, acrylic on paper, 1980.

I did a series of these zoo birdcage paintings for my qualifying 1981 MFA exhibit. Each of these oil on stretched canvas pieces is the size of a door. Don Mangus, Cage Dyptych, oil on canvas, 1980

Savage Geometry series: Lion and Unicorn, Don Mangus, monotype, c.1995

Continuous line drawings are fun, because you can follow the path of a single line as it creates the image. Don Mangus, ballpoint pen on paper, 2013

A pleasing visual tension is created by abstract pattern competing with closely observed figurative drawing. Such imagery was a stable of drawing at SMU. Figure study from Roger Winter's Advanced Drawing class. Don Mangus, graphite and crayon on paper, c. 1978.

I never tire of drawing jazz musicians. Here's another recent continuous line drawing. Don Mangus. Memory Portrait of Miles, ballpoint pen on paper, 2013

Don Mangus, Jazz Guitarist, ballpoint pen on paper, 2013

Don Mangus, To the Weekend, ballpoint pen on paper, 2013.

Humor and mild surrealism are elements of some of my picture puzzles. I enjoy the dream-like magic realism of photomontage. Don Mangus, Family of Urnina, serigraph, 1980.

Don Mangus, Dreams of a Better Future, serigraph, 1980

Don Mangus, Surrounded by Modern Art, serigraph, 1980

A Priceless Modern Masterpiece:

One of Cassius M. Coolidge's classic "Dogs Playing Poker" paintings

Politics: Huey Long Had It Right

Huey Long speaking at the 1932 Democratic National Convention in support of the nomination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The only difference I ever found between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership is that one of them is skinning you from the ankle up and the other, from the neck down.”— Huey Long, from his famous speech, ‘High Popalorum and Low Popahirum’

Poppa's Got a Brand New Gag

I've got a new gag. When people ask me what I do for a living (at the coffee shop), I tell them with a straight face that I'm a "Forensic Phrenologist" -- that is, I examine the lumps on dead people's skulls. This always gets a rousing laugh from the doctors in the crowd.

I sometimes add the  background remarks that after I got my Doctorate in "Spin," I went for my PhD in "Ethical Topology" and taught at the junior college level for a few years. But you can only train so many would-be politicians, journalists, and financial advisors, so I then quit to become a Forensic Phrenologist.

"Those that can do, those that can't teach."

The Know-It-All

Here's an uproarious book I identified with (perhaps a little too much), A. J. Jacobs' The Know-It-All.

33,000 Pages

 
44 Million words   

10 Billion years of history  

One Obsessed man   

Part memoir and part education (or lack thereof), The Know-It-All chronicles NPR contributor A.J. Jacobs's hilarious, enlightening, and seemingly impossible quest to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z.   To fill the ever-widening gaps in his Ivy League education, A.J. Jacobs sets for himself the daunting task of reading all thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His wife, Julie, tells him it's a waste of time, his friends believe he is losing his mind, and his father, a brilliant attorney who had once attempted the same feat and quit somewhere around Borneo, is encouraging but unconvinced.   With self-deprecating wit and a disarming frankness, The Know-It-All recounts the unexpected and comically disruptive effects Operation Encyclopedia has on every part of Jacobs's life -- from his newly minted marriage to his complicated relationship with his father and the rest of his charmingly eccentric New York family to his day job as an editor at Esquire. Jacobs's project tests the outer limits of his stamina and forces him to explore the real meaning of intelligence as he endeavors to join Mensa, win a spot on Jeopardy!, and absorb 33,000 pages of learning. On his journey he stumbles upon some of the strangest, funniest, and most profound facts about every topic under the sun, all while battling fatigue, ridicule, and the paralyzing fear that attends his first real-life responsibility -- the impending birth of his first child.

The Know-It-All is an ingenious, mightily entertaining memoir of one man's intellect, neuroses, and obsessions, and a struggle between the all-consuming quest for factual knowledge and the undeniable gift of hard-won wisdom.

Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs - A Parody by Fake Steve Jobs

This parody is a riot. Read it.

"Welcome to the mind, to the world of Fake Steve Jobs. Fake Steve the counterintuitive management guru: “Obviously we can’t literally put our employees’ lives at risk. But we have to make them feel that way.” Fake Steve the political hobnobber: “I can see why they keep Nancy Pelosi under wraps. Wacky as a dime watch.” Fake Steve quoting friend/musician/philosopher Bono on road etiquette: “Tink about dat next toim yer cuttin off some bloke and you don’t know who it is, right? Could be Jay-sus. Or Boutros Boutros-Ghali or sumfin.” And on, yes, himself: “Geniuses have feelings, too.” In the tradition of Thank You for Smoking and in the spirit of The Onion, Options is a novelistic sendup and takedown of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Washington, D.C., as viewed by a central character who exists, to his immense self-satisfaction, at the crossroads of all three worlds: “It’s like in one of those movies where a guy realizes he’s got telekinetic powers and it’s just too bad if he doesn’t want them, he’s got them. Likewise, I have this gift. It’s who I am.”

In this parody of the life of Apple founder Steve Jobs, the pseudonymous Fake Steve Jobs (identified in the New York Times this month as Forbes senior editor Daniel Lyons) offers a gleeful sendup of the real Steve Jobs set amid the recent stock options backdating scandal. Throughout, the fake Steve pontificates on everything from his superior management skills (only promote stupid people) to his role in the development of the iPhone (it involves a lot of non-thinking meditation), and is portrayed as a cold, callow narcissist. Blissfully unaware of the legal firestorm raging around him, a mathlexic Fake Steve goes about his daily business, balancing meditation with the firing of employees while the Apple board of directors scrambles to avoid prison time and find a scapegoat. As the fictitious Apple corporation implodes, Fake Steve must decide whether to jump ship or stand by the company. Tech industry watchers who know (or know of) the players will get a kick out of seeing them skewered, but readers who aren't already tuned in to the Silicon Valley technocracy may not quite get it. Fake Steve doesn't really evolve as a character, but as a grotesque caricature, he's fun to watch."