This week’s art is notable for two things.  First, it’s the oldest piece of art of mine that I’ve ever presented here. I did this oil painting of DC Comic’s mystical hero, Dr. Fate, back in my high school art class, in 1979. And it’s also notable because it is the only oil painting that I’ve ever done in my life.

Adding to the notoriety is that I had no idea what the hell I was doing and used way, way too much linseed oil. As a result, the painting took more than four decades to dry.

Seriously…I came across it in the basement a few weeks ago and realized that, for the first time ever, it wasn’t sticking to stuff.

This piece is a testament to my inteptitude. Not only did I have no idea how to paint with oils, as you can probably tell, I had no idea how to depict human anatomy, and my color sense was…to put it generously…not terribly well-developed.

The mutilated signature had more to do with my art teacher frowning on the practice than on my embarrassment at the quality.  He told us that he preferred it if his students didn’t sign the front of their works because he didn’t want to know whose piece it was when he was grading it.

The truth was that he was taking student’s pieces to Ohio on weekends and entering them into juried exhibitions as his own work. I found out when I saw a newspaper clipping of him with one of my drawings that had won a cash prize. I confronted him, didn’t get any of the winnings, and was threatened with a failing grade if I told anybody. As a result of the nasty fallout from that, I decided to never enter my work into a juried exhibition. Also, unless it’s purely digital or a commercial commission, I sign all my work.

There is a happy ending to that story.  He eventually died.

None of that side story changes the fact that this piece sorta sucks. I’m only runnning it here because Jon Raider said he wanted to see it in a Facebook exchange a few weeks ago, and I was too tied up with other stuff to do new work this week. so…there you go.

If, for some ungodly reason, you want to see this image larger, click HERE.

Meanwhile, over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a brand-new episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM we do the same with Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

I asked the Haversham crew if they could give us some Halloween-appropriate music this week, and last Friday Sydney Fileen came through with her new proto-Goth edition of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat.  This week we did not get playlists, but Nigel Pye devoted his entire program to the music of The Zombies, while Herman Linte gave us two hours of highlights from Frank Zappa’s legendary 1978 Halloween concert. I’d say they came through pretty well for me.

Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM. You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM.

Beginning at 5 PM, you can hear some more great Halloween programming. Tonight we bring you a couple of versions of The War of the Worlds, plus an hour of Halloween Novelty tunes. We’re going to bring you Halloween stuff every day this week.

Tonight at 9 PM we bring you our newish Monday night line-up featuring two hours each of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast, plus six hours overnight with an assortment of our programming from Haversham Recording Institute: Psychedelic Shack, Sydney’s Big Electric Cat and Prognosis.