Archive for the ‘rambling’ Category

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Testing of the journeyman

Monday, July 19th, 2010

The testing of the journeyman.

As recent days go Sunday morning wasnt much unlike the days before it. Sunny and shaping up to be a scorcher. I woke up about 830am, got my crap together and headed out to link up with Kem and Stae2 (dont get excited they are only mentioned in the story,  this is a low budget sotry and we couldnt afford to more then jsut mention them); sort of. Since becoming a father, Ive had me cool downgraded a bit so I wasn’t going to embarrass them by paint with them, just near by, but i digress. Im on the road by 915am, stopping at a bodega to grab some travel drinks, i realized i wasn’t wearing my painting shoes. Caution to the wind, and not wanting to be any later then i was already i decided to not go home and switch it up. 930am driving along  listening to traffic, when BOOM loud ass noise, obstructing the pleasant traffic sounds. At first i decided it was the muffler, HOPED it was the muffler, you can drive with a fucked up muffler. You just end up announcing your self several miles prior to arrival. Quickly my hopes we dashed as the car became somewhat splash and was not handling well at all. Yeah!!!!!! 931am, Limped to the shoulder of the highway. I get out and walk around the car to find the driver side rear tire destroyed. Equal parts, anger, frustration and  embarrassment prevented photos from being taken, plus we all know what a baller ass 5 series BMW looks like, and for the proposes of this story thats what i rock, on the weekends.
935am, what to do do. Its hot, dam, if its this hot now its gonna be like death later. I have triple A. I am also at times a stubborn ass motherfucker, who is god dam MAN. I can change a tire, and make a fire, Im a survivor; it is however really hot out and i have triple A. 945am, im MAN, i can change and tire and make a fire god Dam it, lets GO! Everything from the trunk of the car is now on the side of the road so i can get the spare tire and the jack out from its nest conveniently placed under the area youre encouraged to store shit; good planning. 950, Jacks in place ready to life, but wait whats that batman, your lug nut wrench isnt the right size? How can this be? WTF, seriously. What dumb-ass at the plant ran out of size 5 wrench kits and just tossed in a size 4, like its ‘close enough’. Okay, that sucks i coulda been back on the road and ready to rock if the wrench was the right size. 955am, FUCK! SO triple A it is. I get on the horn with with triple A, go through the 20 minute rigga-ma-roll, until the magic happnes. All the info to finally get told the inevitable. 1005am, “Sir Im sorry, triple A is not authorized to operate on New York Parkways. You will have to get road side assistance from an Authority authorized company.” YAY! WTF? so whats the bottom line here? Im told they can make the call for me, cool. And i have options, Love options-except when there are too many and it makes impossible the choosing of said options. Option one, have the authorized co come and change tire and what have you and pay them, which can be reimbursed by triple a after submitting receipts, filling out countless forms and a DNA sample. Option two, if next exit is under 4 miles have them tow you for free to the exit, once off parkway property re-call triple A and start the process over again. Option three none above, just sit there like a dummy - somewhat as i was already doing. So being a fan of multi-tasking I chose both option one and option 3.
1040am, Pete showed up in his flat bed. Pete was a nice enough dude, although on eof those people that loved a captive audience and stopped more then a few times in the middle of changing the tire to tell me some roadside assistance stories. 11am, Im back on the road, but not in the direction of the wall, shits too far away to limp on a donut (youd think a 5 series would have a full sized spare). Resigned to call it a day i headed home.
1120am, Enue calls. ‘yo lets go do this wall in jers’. Word? you have no idea, what i jsut went through, and Im at the exit to you crib now, im rolling with you, BOOM A-Team flexible (NH) plan coming together (double NH) .1245pm, COD time in Effect, walls buffed and i been a sweaty mess since the flat tire incident and now am slowly melting into the pavement. Car radio rocking, small water bottle sipping, no shade, living large.


810pm, Getting ready to bounce bounce, Enue starts the car , tries to start the car. Nothing, except the lush sounds of battery clicking with out enough power to turn the engine over. For Fucks sake! Really? 825pm Back on the horn with my good friends at triple A. 20 minute info/account check; ’sir now what is your location?’. Im in XXX new Jersey. ‘Oh you called ny triple A, please let me transfer you’, GREAT! holding. 840, still holding. Pacing. climbing on shit. bored. 850pm connected to nj triple A, but not to the right club zone in NJ, awesome! Finally get through and set it up and help is on the way. However while i was on hold Enue went out onto the street to a near by cab stand to see if he could wrangle a jump. Haha, what dumb-ass in this part of town is gonna agree to follow you in to a secluded and dark parking lot to help you jump a car? 930pm Well Apparently Jose was jsut such a dumb-ass and enue shows up in a cab. Hot dam we back in business baby! 940pm cars on and running, Enue finished his piece a lil bit. 1230am, back at Enues crib to get the whip and limp home. what a fucking day.

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Posted in How I do it, STYLE-WRITING, Sundays, rambling | 3 Comments »

Suzy Q, may your days be better

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Suzy Q, was rescued from the Elmsford Animal Clinic (forget the real name). A horrid institution who didnt care well for its pets. When i took her for a check up a day after getting her the vet said to take her back, and that he didnt give her more then 6 weeks to live. Well I refused to think of Suzy as a lemon so she stayed and had a lot of ups and downs, but held on for 8 years. And Finally her spirit was called back to the beginning and this morning her body was reunited with the whole earth- which by the way we are doing a good job of destroying; but ill save that rant for a nother day.

Suzy Q may your days be better.

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the boogie song

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

Arms, elbows, knees and toes. Knees and toes.
I see a big ole booger up your nose, up your nose.
And i wonder where it goes when it goes where it goes
when it gets up outta here
does it go up into the atmosphere?
is it greeted by the angels up in the air ?
does it dawn a disguise because its wise
is it like a cat with nine lives
howd it get that way i wonder why,
Oh and by the by

Arms Elbows, Knees and Toes, Knees and Toes
I see a great big booger up your nose, up your nose.
And i wonder where it goes when it goes where it goes
when it gets up outta here
does it go up into the atmosphere?
is it greeted by the angels up in their?
does it dawn a disguise because its wise
is it like a cat
does it have  nine lives?
howd it get that way i wonder why,
Oh and by the by….

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Bic rides again

Monday, June 21st, 2010

So I grabbed a bic from my desk so i would have one handy and did a few quick sketches instead of lunch and then started another one on the ride home.

Years ago i went to a sleep away summer camp, where oddly i met two people whom were huge artistic influences on me. One was a Boston writer, the other was a free time portrait artist. Thinking about it know it was a super coincidence on both parts, and kinda leads me to believe life as a way of providing things you need if your paying attention. At any rate this portrait artist, whos name is slipping my mind(read ive plum forgotten, it was over 20 years ago), both intellectually explained and showed me over the summer his methodology for figure drawing. What he did was sort of squint at his subject, thus reducing what he saw to a series of tonal areas or shapes, instead of looking at and intellectually trying to reproduce a figure he was just drawing shapes with different tonal values. This then became the base for the drawing and he would push and pull the shapes tones and spacial relations. He basically generalized until he had enough information to begin to become more specific. it was a process the involved a lot of layers and building of mass through shade. It was a revolution for me at the time and inspired a few years of mimicking his style and approach. Ive wanted to get away from just line work in my drawings for a while as they are getting kinda of stiff, so why not try and work in shades and tones. INstead of cross hatching i used the good old never ending circle.

park Sitters

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seeking the silver lining…

Monday, June 21st, 2010

As a teacher you are often presented with the predicament of to encourage while not installing misleading self-confidence where it isn’t merited. I remember years and years ago in high-school i did what at the time i thought was a pretty fantastic drawing of a face, in blue ball point pen. It was shaded with many levels of tonality (in my mind thats how i remember it). The next day after finishing it i had it in school and showed on of my art teachers. He responded to it in part by saying Ball point pen was a tough medium to work in as the pens themselves can be unreliable and leave globs of ink on the paper which can smudge etc etc.
For some reason this morning sitting on the train, drawing i was reminded of this incident. I had actually planned on using a ball point pen and method drawing i learned from an old camp counselor as a kid. I thin k i was reminded of the incident by the fact that i  had failed to bring a Bic with me on the train and i had sat in a bad drawing seat, so frustration forced contemplation and reevaluation.
So was I being told hey this is great drawing using a tough medium or was i told, hey pen is hard to draw in. The distinction is subtle but huge. What i heard was in part what i wanted to hear, by way of interpreting a slightly open ended statement. Crafting its meaning to fit my need for praise; but i took that with me for life, and i cant think of ball point pen drawing with out thinking of that interaction with my art teacher. And because im a self loathing neurotic im always slightly suspicious that what was meant was, ‘ I can see you’re excited about this, and as not to crush your spirit lets just discuss the medium not the content’.
As a new parent however it raise serious concerns i will no doubt over think and waste countless sleepless hours analyzing the ways in which i encourage my daughter and how those things can have potential pit falls i will blame myself for later.
How do we encourage while also teaching the over all life lesson, that life isn’t fair, talent is not shared equally and all things are at once equal while at the same time they are irreconcilable to each other. To be born is a win, and yet it is the only win in many lives.In the end i think it takes a certain combination of tact and luck to get these encouraging but not always truthful points across. Life presents countless new experiences one can use to measure the accuracy of the past.

Was it I that didn’t live up to my potential encouragements? Or were did my encouragements put me on a false trajectory, that was unattainable based on my potential skill?
were i destination man id probably be more upset; but as a journey man, the trip is the adventure, and as suck one prolongs any destination arrival as much as possible .

poor light I&iPhone flick

scanned paper reader

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E-train hijinks

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

E train Hijinks

Mothers day for a new mother, Big Deal. What to get. No baseball bat presents would do. My father used to call gifts that you will get as much joy out of, as the person getting it, a baseball bat gift. Nothing regarding any sort of house maintenance. A new laptop it was. Decided. I hopped the E-train to 14th street and walked over to the apple store. I knew what i wanted. I had a Print out of what i wanted. There was almost a one to one costumer to apple sales representative  ratio going until I ruined the sweet spot by making one too many customers swimming in the sea of blue shirted apple staff. Finally I was spotted, by Johnny up-sale who was still delirious from his last sale kill. HE swaggered over to me and asked if he could help. Yes, i want a laptop with the following things, a- zed of what it needed followed. Will you be needing any peripheries with that? Mouse, keyboard usb Hub? No just the Laptop with afore mention specs, thanks. How bout a monitor? Nope, Im not sure if you seen the laptops you guys sell but they have monitors, keyboards and mouse pads built right in there, so just the laptop, please. Uh, ok. How bout Apple Care? No, I trust the expert manufacturing and design of apple. Well if you trust us then that even more reason to get the Apple Care, as with it you get so much more… NO thanks JUST the laptop. Poor Johnny Up-sale didn’t quite no what to do, selling me a laptop that already cost 2k wasnt enough for him, he need to feel that high of selling some idiot some crap they could get cheaper somewhere else and further more may have no need for to begin with. I hate being sold to, however i respect the hell out of a good sales man. Johnny was not a good salesman. A good salesman knows his costumer. Johnny should have known i wasn’t a first time apple customer, and seen i knew what i wanted and this was a simple opportunity to keep his numbers going and quickly move on to the next kill. This was not the big one and trying to make it such was a waste of all of our times.

In New York there are several city bus tour outfits, their representatives can be found on almost all the corners surrounding times square and Rockafeller Center. It seems more often then Not these representatives are immigrants. Which is awesome for several reasons, not least ironic of which is that people not from here are taking other people not from here and showing them around. AS if regular new Yorkers are so underwhelmed by the sights of NYC they couldn’t be fucked to show them off. What is most intriguing about these guys is that they need to be able to spot Visitors from Residence, in a place that is newly home. Every now and then Ill pass a new guy, Johnny Up-sale-came-lately and hell try and sign me up for a bus tour.

At any rate, i got the laptop and got back on the E-train to head back to work. On the second stop some ladies, and i use that term lightly got on what was a semi crowded lunchtime train car. The leader of the lady Trio loudly announced it smelled like shit on the train. It smell like shit up in here. It smell like Bayby shit here. And not the young baby shit nether. Dam, yall smell that?  Neither of the other two smelled it but were quick to call leader lady crazy. Nah it smell up in here, shit. Somehow this motivated lady number two to pop off with some perfume from her purse. And she proceeded to Douse her self with it. Her last 5 mists were aim right at her cooter area. LIke IN her home plate diamond. Really? Lady what are you thinking, what could possibly be the point of that? Do you often find people sniffin your jeans crotch to see if your the one who is stinkin? Do you have some sort of issue that should have maybe been resolved in the shower this morning before hitting mass transit with some of your less then tactful friends; whom accidentally, no pun in tended, air you out in public?
Anyway theres nothing like ridding the train to remind you of why you dont like riding the train.

E-train Scribble Scrabble: illustration by heavylox

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Spam: Robots i have my eye on you

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

Ive noticed a recetn trend in my WP spam. Spammers are now trying to get your attention by offending you. WTF? For Example i got this one today, Im sure many Bloggers have the exact same spam attempt.

This information is bit incomplete, I must say that the homework was done really good, but the problem came when you tried to assemble this information and present it. No doubt you did your best and I appreciate the fact that this will help as well, you should read other posts as well to make your posting really to the point and really understandable. I will PM you some of the threads about this topic so that the next time you visit the forum and post something really informative like this, it will be more effective and helpful to all.

Its Annoying i can let an automated piece of spam get to me, but it makes me wonder what their aim is, why would you approve a comment that is telling you youre trying but failing? Isn’t that the kind of thing one would maybe take to heart and do something about with out announcing it to the world by approving said comment? Assuming of course that the ‘advice’ of your impending failure was from a real person.

Obviously these comments are aimed at getting approved under the guise of useful feedback after which with an approved email address the spam can begin and get by the initial comment approval system and go straight the the posts. But what Kind of idiot manages to miss these signs and approves these spam, precursors? 

I do enjoy comments telling me i have it right or wrong on a particular subject, and there are vast numbers of pro supporters and con objectors to my well articulated point of view. Yes i love these as they always appear attached to posts that are noting but a drawing. Got you bitch I know youre a robot, speak to the Ctrl+alt+ del or the cntrl+cmd+del.

 

to quote a heroic ex President, GWB, “There’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.”

 

Robots i have my eye on you and my finger on the Delete key, so come see about me.

Spambot, fembots, Cowboy Bebops, can all get it.

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Good Times

Sunday, April 4th, 2010

years ago i did these painting, and etching based on my memories of the paintings from the opening scenes of good times. Looking back on them they didnt really mimic them much beyond having a certain lanky quality to the bodies. At any rate i was reminded of them the other day and googled the crap out of them. Ah, ha, how could i forget It was Ernie Barnes, amazing. So i did some quick sketches of a few characters from the Sugar Shack (see below):

The plan was to develope them a bit more and maybe create a scene of some sort, but i got to the wall saturday and it was too nice to just do a piece so i decided to try out a few of the characters i sketched the night before.;

Happy Easter & Good Times in preparation for a good summer, and  in fond memory of the MLK (04.1968.04)

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Lifes fortuitous accidents

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Recently ive been thinking about taking drawing into the realm of the characature in order to continue to lossen up and stop making drawings that are stiff and many times uninteresting depiction of the mundane. So as fate would have it for the first time in a year or so of drawing on the train i ran into someelse who draws in the train, while i was drawing on the train.
I was sitting ina 6 seater in an early afternoon train, which was pretty sparse in its passengers when some guy decided he needed to sit int eh seating row with me when clearly there were plenty of entire rows empty for him to occupy.

He proceeded to take out a sketchbook and pencils and announced he was ‘returning the favor’. He was so unassuming and nice that i had a hard time justifying feeling threatened but I did. Anyone whos willing to draw on the train or in public is an idiot like me or really good and confident in their work so as not to mind or be bothered by onlookers. As it turned out we were both getting off the train at the same stop so, after showing me his drawing of me i got his information, and went home and GOOGLED the shit out him (NH).  Looking at his drawing made me prety sure he fell into the 2nd category of public drawers and googling him confirmed it. He is a pretty fucking good  illustrator. And envialby makes a living drawing among other things (you bastard!). You can check him out at Peter Emmerich dot blogspot dot com

I have Long been a fan of caricature and its ability to flirt with both the cartoon and the classical potrait, but have never found the middle ground needed to successfully caricaturize people, but am going to make a concerted effort to figure it out. I did this as a start.

Life’s fortuitous accidents can really work to affirm your instincts.

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St. patricks day…

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

So i missed the fact that today was St. Patrick’s day until i got on the train and 35 teen agers trooped through the train car wear as much green as you can whilst still looking hip {read dudes = green hoodies and fitted caps, girls tighter then skin tight green stretch/compress pants. Were it a lil colder one might be able to make the argument then decency was more to keep warm then a fashion choice, but today will be in the mid 60s so summer gear is in effect and will be in greater effect as the embedding increases.
So i get off the train and am walking up the escalator to the street , when i see a sight that warms my heart, two teenagers are helping a lil cripple boy down the stairs. What a world we live in, a real selfless melting pot. As i got a lil closer to the good deed in progress i realized that the lil cripple boy wasn’t at all cripple but was just retarded drunk thus walking like a cripple. Oh thats right its St Patrick’s day, when its cool to get shit faced before, checks watch, 10am and be stumble drunk in midtown. I don’t ever remember having St Patrick’s day off from school, what the fuck are all these kids doing in the city?

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