"A comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation" is how Websters defines Rube Goldberg Machines.

The following is from the Rube Goldberg official website:

Through his "INVENTIONS", Rube Goldberg discovered difficult ways to achieve easy results. His cartoons were, as he said, symbols of man's capacity for exerting maximum effort to accomplish minimal results. Rube believed that there were two ways to do things: the simple way and the hard way, and that a surprisingly number of people preferred doing things the hard way.

Rube Goldberg's work will endure because he gave priority to simple human needs and treasured basic human values. He was sometimes skeptical about technology, which contributed to making his own mechanical inventions primitive and full of human, plant, and animal parts. While most machines work to make difficult tasks simple, his inventions made simple tasks amazingly complex. Dozens of arms, wheels, gears, handles, cups, and rods were put in motion by balls, canary cages, pails, boots, bathtubs, paddles, and live animals for simple tasks like squeezing an orange for juice or closing a window in case it should start to rain before one gets home.

Rube's drawings depict absurdly-connected machines functioning in extremely complex and roundabout ways to produce a simple end result; because of this RUBE GOLDBERG has become associated with any convoluted system of achieving a basic task.

Rube's inventions are a unique commentary on life's complexities. They provide a humorous diversion into the absurd that lampoons the wonders of technology. Rube's hilarious send-ups of man's ingenuity strike a deep and lasting chord with today's audience through caught in a high-tech revolution are still seeking simplicity.

I base my works around some kind of biographical childhood quirk, or it just sparks from a sudden bout of spontaneity.  To elaborate I guess I can tell you quite a few narrative snippets about one of my paintings called "Anti Monotony of Summer "

On the right hand corner you can see the face of Rolf Harris with a girl wearing a t-shirt asking "can I call you Rolf". This was based on a drunken incident when my partner in crime Stephanie and I were both sure we had seen Rolf Harris across the bar.  Even though it turned out it wasn't him, we still call him Rolf to this day.
The trout on the other top corner is just me being a bit cheeky to my old summer job boss.  By quitting my monotonous job I discovered how to fill my summer with awesome stuff to do, like find myself being stripped butt naked by a crowd in the middle of a welsh gay bar, climbing the highest mountain in my area just for the hell of it, plus me and Steph discovering how much people resemble horses in McDonalds.

At the moment I'm working on a million projects and one, but one I would really love to mention is my kitten girl series.  When I was younger I designed this pop up book based on my lonely childhood.  I didn't have many friends but the fist cat i saw followed me wherever I went, from then on I saw them as friends not just cats.  So I wrote a short story based on true events and maybe exaggerating a little bit.  What happens in brief is a girl is bullied in school for having this cat friend who she calls Panther and no human friends.  Her troubled times usually send her directly to the larder to feast on cakes and sugary goodness every day after school to halt her tears.

On one cloudy and miserable day, Panther and kitten girl are walking home from school, the cat crosses the road just as a car is rolling at light-speed towards it, the kid in the back seat screaming faster! faster!
Kitten girl dives in front of the car to save the cat being squished like a tomato and misses death by a cats whisker.
Upon collision with the ground, they both roll into a dark ally where Panther starts talking and grants her 9 lives and cat like abilities.

The next morning she wakes up with a knocking and with 1000 cats at the window.  Her adventure starts there but thats briefly the story for the series that im planning to build.  The kitten girl character is seen in "Bleeding Strings" also on my pics.

I stumbled upon The Penguin Cafe Orchestra while working at JEM records, a huge import record house.  Their music was magical in a lot of ways. and I soon devoured every note I could find of theirs.  The following is an interesting description of who PCO was, and how they came to be.

The PCO formed in the mind of Simon Jeffes as a result of a dream-like vision he experienced during a severe bout of food poisoning in the South of France during the Summer of 1972. Simon retold the story often. This was how he remembered it in 1988, just before the orchestra played their first gig in LA.

"I was laying in bed delirious, sort of hallucinating for about 24 hours. I had this one vision in my mind of a place that was like the ark of buildings, like a modern hotel, with all these rooms made of concrete. There was an electronic eye which scanned everything. In one room you had a couple that were making love, but lovelessly. It was cold sex with books and gadgets and what have you. In another room there was somebody just looking at himself in the mirror, just obsessed with himself. In another room there was a musician with a bank of synthesisers, wearing headphones, and there was no sound.

This was a very terrible, bleak place. Everybody was taken up with self-interested activity which kept them looped in on themselves. It wasn't like they were prisoners, they were all active, but only within themselves. And that kept them from being a problem or a threat to the cold order represented by the eye.

A couple of days later I was on the beach sunbathing and suddenly a poem popped into my head. It started out 'I am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe, I will tell you things at random' and it went on about how the quality of randomness, spontaneity, surprise, unexpectedness and irrationality in our lives is a very precious thing. And if you suppress that to have a nice orderly life, you kill off what's most important. Whereas in the Penguin Cafe your unconscious can just be. It's acceptable there, and that's how everybody is. There is an acceptance there that has to do with living the present with no fear in ourselves."

Towards the end of his career Jeffes's direction changed. He moved from London to Somerset with his close companion and partner Helen Liebmann and built a new studio. Shortly afterwards he fell ill with an inoperable brain tumour and in December 1997 he died. Sometimes tragic events can only be spoken of in platitudes. It is quite true that Simon Jeffes lives on in his music. It is also true that the Penguin Café is an imaginary but necessary place which everybody with an ounce of spirit ought to invent for themselves.

These are the reasons my car is better then yours, says Emily of Philthy Hoops fame

1) I can always find it in ANY parking lot even if I was DRUNK when I parked it!

2) It has never and will never be stolen

3) People see it outside of places and COME IN AND SAY HI TO ME!

4) When me and the pink Cadillac drive down the street together its
like an instant parade

5) It runs like a purring pink pussy

6) It can fit about 30 hula hoops in it plus the stand and a cooler full of beer

7) It can fit the materials to make over 100 hoops in it

8) It has NO parking tickets!

9) People are careful when they park near it because it's PINK

10) ITS PINK PINK PINK and I OWN IT I OWN IT I OWN IT

Glubdub:
Do you really make caskets? Are those cool little creatures really from casket lumber? Thats so fucking cool.
I read your profile and it says you've been involved in the Mortician biz in several ways. Have you ever been involved with preparing the bodies, or anything gruesome like that?

Skullboy:
I was, for a while. I helped out at one of the funeral homes, mainly doing removals and viewings. It becomes quite an experience after you've done it for a while. You wind up seeing everything.

GD:
You must have some pretty cool stories to tell. Does any of that come out in your work?

SB:
Hell yes. Some of those images just don't go away, especially when you're filling in a lineage to the body lying in front of you. It sets your mind reeling: Who were they? Were they decent? Were they loved? Did they love? You imagine them sitting with friends at a bar, laughing at jokes; you wonder what activities they were involved in. It's a person who could never answer any of the questions you may have about them. It leaves you with a lingering sensation.

GD:
I've seen alot of your work, and it doesnt all fall under the skull-art. In fact its quite differentand really shows of your chops as a painter. Where did the whole Skull boy persona come from? I guess why paint skulls?

SB:
I imagine it all stems from the fact that i should probably be on some type of prescription meds haha!(Oh, i laugh here but cry on the inside) I don't know, i'm an inventor, man. I like to take art in any direction and apply it as fully as possible (hence the old Skullmobile, covered entirely in graffitti thanks to Peet Johnson, Leon Rainbow, Jesse Rinyu, and Espy). The different styles i work in all depend on where the inspiration is coming from, and while i find many different things inspiring, the whole central purpose for my work comes from one point in time when my emotions were deeply affected. I hold onto that time as a constant source of motivation and creativity, and at the same time push forward and try to progress as a person(s) and as an artist