Royal Flush Magazine: Book Seven Sponsorship Drive

Hey there! Do you like music, art and comics? Do you think it's a fucking shame that so many print publications are disappearing faster than endangered turtles in the oil-filled Gulf of Mexico? Do you want to reach out a helping hand and do some awesome strangers a favor, boosting your rock-and-roll-karma-quotient???

Well then have I got a charity case for you!


Royal Flush Magazine is primed to put out issue #7 of their acclaimed magazine, read by more than 50,000 of the most serious fans of music, art,comics, rock and roll culture, street culture, skateboarding, grafitti, pro wrestling, political satire and so much more. But like every other great, grassroots publication, they are in need of some cold, hard cash to keep their demented dream alive.

What do you get for putting your money in RF's proverbial print g-string?:

Pledge $5 or more (the cost of an extra pint of beer here in the city!)
Receive a free Royal Flush Magazine bookmark and Hispanic Batman collector's pin.

Pledge $10 or more (cheaper than a pack of NYC smokes!)
Receive a free Royal Flush Book 7 PDF edition, a Royal Flush Magazine bookmark and Hispanic Batman collector's pin.

Pledge $25 or more (about the cost of a pair of tickets to one of those lame-ass new 3D movies everybody is pissing themselves to see)
Receive a free copy of Royal Flush Book 7 upon release of the book in October 2010, a Royal Flush Magazine bookmark and Hispanic Batman collector's pin.

Pledge $50 or more (the cost of ten days worth of McDonald's lunches...save your fat ass AND support a good cause!)
Receive a free copies of Royal Flush Books 6 & 7 upon release of the book in October 2010, a Royal Flush Magazine bookmark and Hispanic Batman collector's pin.

Pledge $100 or more (less than your tab after a depressing night getting lap dances by aging, herpes-farm strippers at your local girlie bar)
(LIMITED REWARD)
Receive a personalized thank you printed in the pages of Royal Flush Book 7. You will also receive copies of Royal Flush Magazine, Books 4,5,6,7 A bookmark and a collector's pin

...Don't think you can afford to pledge more than $100 to anything these days? Well guess what, my friend, overspending is as American as Apple Fuckin' Pie!!! Someone will bail you out later!

Pledge $200 or more
(LIMITED REWARD)
Receive a personalized thank you printed in the pages of Royal Flush Book 7. Your copy of Royal Flush Book 7 will be autographed by all the book's contributors. Royal Flush 18"x24" silkscreen print of Joan Jett, signed and numbered by Flush artist Josh Bernstein, limited to only 200 prints A Royal Flush bookmark and a Hispanic Batman collector's pin


Pledge $500 or more
(LIMITED REWARD)
An illustrated portrait of the donor by one of Royal Flush's top contributors on archival paper and signed by the artist, Receive a personalized thank you printed in the pages of Royal Flush Book 7. Your copy of Royal Flush Book 7 will be autographed by all the book's contributors. Royal Flush Magazine issues 4,5,6 Royal Flush 18"x24" silkscreen print of Joan Jett, signed and numbered by Flush artist Josh Bernstein, limited to only 200 prints A Royal Flush bookmark and a Hispanic Batman collector's pin

Pledge $1,000 or more
(LIMITED REWARD)
An illustrated portrait of the donor by one of Royal Flush's top contributors on archival paper and signed by the artist that will appear in Royal Flush Book 7. A copy of Royal Flush Book 4 signed by My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way Your copy of Royal Flush Book 7 will be autographed by all the book's contributors. Royal Flush Magazine issues 4,5,6 Royal Flush 18"x24" silkscreen print of Joan Jett, signed and numbered by Flush artist Josh Bernstein, limited to only 200 prints Royal Flush Poster Set (5 classic Royal Flush offset poster prints) A Royal Flush bookmark and a Hispanic Batman collector's pin

What are you waiting for?? As Mike Shinoda, from LINKIN PARK verifies**: "I wish they had ROYAL FLUSH when I was a kid–I would have stood in front of the mailbox waiting for it." DO IT!!!

**While this is a real life endorsement for Royal Flush Magazine (one of many), I still believe Linkin Park sucks, and this was used strictly for ironic purposes.**

The Collage Art of Robert Mars

Oh look! I managed to crawl out of my icy little hermit hole in the North East to write another blog post. OH happy day!!! While most of you up here have been washing the blankets of salt crust off your four-wheeled highway hooligans, I've been in the process of moving and unpacking and trying to rearrange my life's worth of tchotchke in a new apartment (and laughing because though cars are a beautiful, beautiful thing, so is not having one in the city).

Everybody knows that if moving is good for anything, it's getting a reason to rifle through all your old stacks of ___________ (fill it in) that have been sitting around forever, toeing the line between memories and garbage. Of everything one usually finds straddling that border, I guarantee the bulk of it is in the form of magazines. Ah, magazines! The best ones are filled with recipes, naked people, tattoo ideas and pre-'65 American-made vehicles (obvious bias). But while you can still look fondly upon books you read once and haven't touched since (but still want to keep around), magazines tend to evoke a deeper, more complicated level of clutter-hatred. I don't know if the difference is the fact that magazines are about 25% advertising, whereas books are all straight up content. And even in your favorite magazine, there is still only about a 65 to 70% chance you'll really love/use/laugh at all of the articles. Now math was never my strong point, but if I were to guesstimate, of that huge stack of old magazines you have over there taking up valuable space on your dining room table, only 50% of that is matter you will actually need and/or use ever again. And if you're a glass-half-full kinda person, you are probably thinking what I am, "Well I'd better not chuck them because I might want to read that articles about how to interpret what your cat is dreaming about again!"

Which is exactly how you end up moving the same forty pound stack of paper around from three different apartments, even though you've never opened one of those magazines the entire five years.

SO, what to do with all those magazines?? Well, you can do what I am going to do: decoupage our disgusting wooden country-time coffee table...

...which basically looks just like only with a finish like someone tied it to the back of a pick-up truck and drug it around on the street for awhile. Our plan being to turn it into a collage of custom cars, bikes, old ads and - if I have my say - a scantily retro-clad boob and a butt or two here and there.

Decoupage can be pretty damn sheik (see left image), but we're going more for the one on the right.

Not into arts and crafts Martha Stewart home-maker garbage? Then why not try you hand at mixed media collage work? Today I'm going to introduce you to a mixed-media artist named Robert Mars who creates stuff that you, my engine revving roadsters, might be interested in. In Robert's words:

"My work is a chronicle of Americana. I am determined to capture the independent aesthetic of the not-so-distant past that has been replaced by homogenized corporate culture and standardized cityscapes. Industrial design, graphic design, architecture, vintage neon and mid-century icons all render important roles in my work."

How Good It Is 2008, 48" x 36", Mixed Media
I can only hope my mentioning of his fantastic work within the confines of a blog that has, so far, mostly been about decoupage, doesn't cheapen it in any way.

I like Robert's work so much because he so perfectly invokes in me such a heavy feeling of desolation and forgotten America, through his large swathes of color (that could have been chosen directly from an old Mopar paint chip card) and sparse use of period imagery. Although I've seen a ton of mixed media "collage" artists in my time, a lot of them have sucked. But Mars is a beacon of shining light in the murky sea of collage work that typically looks just like your 80 year old, leagally blind, Great Aunt's scrapbook. It's not like you just slap a bunch of crap on a canvas and "Voila! Gimmie $3000 for this original artwork, sucka!". You've gotta have a major handle on color and space usage (the two things that separate random-dude-with-a-brush-and-a-trust-fund from legitimate-artist-guy) and a "vision" that makes it through to your audience. Robert hits every proverbial nail on the head exactly, in my humble opinion, anyway.