Happy Halloween

Sucks I'll be at work while all the little kids will be going around house to house taking food from strangers. If I was home tonight I think it'd be cool to dig a hole in the yard and pop out of it every time visitors come to the door. But I wouldn't be dressed like a zombie. I'd be dressed like Bruce Villanche. I saw him at a Roy Rogers in New Jersey once while my band was on tour. He's a hulking monster who's breathing sounds like a bellows full of pudding. He has the same silhouette as Gossimer, the monster who wears Chuck Taylors from Looney Tunes. He got out of a limo and grabbed a grease sack from Roy Rogers and waddled back into the limo. I was sitting there with my bass player James who was snapping his fingers in thought trying to remember where he knew that guy from. I blurted "Bruce Villanche" just as Bruce's assistant slinked over to us. "Do you know who that is? He's a comedy writer. He's a brilliant man." Shut up, asslicker.

Anyways.... I won't be here tonight. I'll be putzing around at work like a boring douf. But that's alright. I've made some headway on the current white whale of all my current painting commissions: Lewis' skyline. Here's another shot of it.

Ol' faithful

You ever take a shower... a nice, heavenly shower after not showering for a couple days and then you're all clean and you get out and you wrap your head in a turbin and you start q-tipping the ears and then you hear a thunk from behind your navel and your eyes pop open as big as ping pong balls and you stare at yourself with fright in the mirror and you feel that at any second you're going to be lifted off your feet by a geyser of steaming Yoohoo?

Yeah. That fucking sucks.

Lay off the Guinness before bed, kids. Take it from me.

New acrylics, new developments

Friday night I was all gung ho about getting home and working dilligently on paintings until the wee hours. BUT, I ended up buying a six pack of Guinness Draft and drank half of those in the saloon while listening to L.E.O, an E.L.O. ripoff album put together by Boston song writer Bleu and a slew of other famous/semi-famous people.

Somewhere in my idle swilling the phrase "Happy birthday, Thanos" popped into my head. I chuckled. I read Marvel comics religiously as a kid. Thanos is a super villain from the pages of various Marvel titles.

You can read up on him here, get a little background if you want. The Mad Titan

If you don't feel like reading up on a blue-skinned super villain who lives on a moon of Saturn, just know that he was once hired by Death herself to thin out half the universe's population. The thought of him having a birthday party is pretty funny.
As soon as I painted his mouth on I actually audibly laughed.

He's in the Acrylics section psyched as all hell for his cake.

www.hookermedia.com

Friday was good for commissions. I was approached by the Appreciation Postto do their next album cover, a friend's mom asked me to do a portrait of her husband, I'm continuing work on a Boston cityscape painting for a blogger named Lewis and a friend of mine who recently moved back to MA after a stint as a ski instructor in CO hired me for a large winter landscape for his living room.

Yesterday Jenny and I hit up the Roxbury open studios and the monsoon that hit MA, coupled with a shitty map showing where other studios were, kept us confined to the Piano Factory on Tremont st. The people there were all welcoming and seemed excited to have us there checking out the work. I talked for nearly an hour with Bernice Robinson, the general manager of Paul Goodnight's Color Circle reproduction company.

If you haven't seen Paul Goodnight's work already then you really should check his site and get acquainted. It was pretty amazing hanging out amongst thousands of prints and original pieces strewn about casually. Bernice explained the process of gold leafing to me and I was invited to touch the gold leafing on limited edition prints that Paul is currently working on. It was wierd putting my mitts on pieces of paper that will sell at the ... bargain.. price of $2,500.

www.paulgoodnight.com

Afterwards I went to the Art Store in Fenway and bought canvases and picked up gold leafing to try on pieces of my own.




Jesus. All these words call for a few pictures. Without further adieu, here are a couple things I'm working on currently....

Here's Tony, my friend's father....



And here's a rough version of what is shaping up to be Lewis' cityscape...





Happy birthday, Thanos.

Folioboston

I work downtown in Boston. Have for years. Too many years at the same boring white guy office job. Up on the 7th floor of a nondescript building near the waterfront. Years ago the block next to us was a small parking lot. Not a bad racket. Hire a parking monkey to sit in the booth and collect inflated fees from desperate people. Barely any overhead or maintenance or work. Then hit the lottery when a developer wants to buy your lot for $3,000,000 to put some high-priced condos on it.

All of us boring white guys watched from our 7th floor perch as the ground was broken and the chunks of asphalt were hauled away. Then we watched for nearly a year as they dug a slurry pit out of the ground. Trucks keeping the dust down with Seuss-like hose attachments spraying water on other trucks which had 12 foot jackhammer attachments breaking up boulders that were unearthed by other trucks with claws (not the Animal).

They'd haul truckload after truckload of greygreen goop that looked like it weighed about 10 pounds per gallon. This happened for a full year. Maybe two. Time blurs in the confines of the boring white guy office job.

Then they started building the foundation, etc. etc. Another couple years. The siding. The bricks. The windows.

Finally people actually started moving into these places. $400,000 + for maybe ... 500 square ft? We've all marveled at the prices. They may still be up on the website. www.folioboston.com

Now we watch the one tenant on our side who hasn't put shades up yet. A 30 something woman who does nothing while at home... but watch shit t.v. Two men frequent her place. One her age. One much older. Who's the sugar daddy? Both? Neither? How can a woman who watches Dancing With the Stars marathons live in a luxury apartment on the waterfront?

I'll walk in and first shift will say "TV's been on since 7:30 am to 2:00 pm. Oh and earlier old guy walked around in his tighty whities after they disappeared for a while."

The other guys from second shift will announce whenever the TV goes off and start mimicking remote control channel changing out the windows.

Last night I remarked on how sad we are after I started doing "YMCA-style" motions with my arms spelling "T.V." at her when she shut it off. Fire trucks showed up in front of the hotel across the street and my boss said "They're gonna send a guy on a ladder up to her window with a remote control to save the day by getting her T.V. back on."

I realized that we're no different really. We sit in a room on the internet. Same idiots, different box. We're getting paid though. Actually, she's probably getting paid as well. Trust fund or a sugar daddy? Lawsuit settlement?

I need to get out of this place.

Gramma Waits

I've been slightly obsessed with Tom Waits lately. I got nearly all of his stuff from my friend Ryan months ago and while I usually listen to party shuffle on iTunes constantly I found that it's not really the way to listen to Tom Waits. His stuff is so varied from album to album... and he's such an acquired taste, that it's kind of tricky to really get into him one song at a time. I decided to start with his first album "Closing Time". I suggest you check it out if you haven't.

One thing that comes to mind whenever anyone speaks or hears about Tom Waits is that voice. Everyone has their own analogy for it.

Back in the "Closing Time" days, his voice sort of reminded me of Springsteen's. From then on Tom Wait's "singing" voice sounds like every character Frank Oz ever did (cookie monster, yoda, miss piggy among many others) after a bottle of shit whiskey, a few cheap cigars and a sandpaper chaser.

Now here's the weird part... yesterday I blogged about my paternal grandmother's odd way of speaking....

Today I watched many Tom Waits videos on youtube....

Today I came across one video where he sounds exactly like my grandmother.

The slight accent that you can't place... the rasp...

It's her. Same speaking voice as Tom Waits.

Well, 15 years ago when she smoked like a chimney. (Just like Tom)

Gramma Hooker.

Watch.

The Never Ending Lineage Story

I'm close with one half of my family. Close ish. My mother's side. They all live within an hour away at most.

My father's side however, are out in California and god knows where else.

The old man was born in Kittery ME, but grew up in Apple Valley CA. Basically draw a diagonal line from the very toppest right of the map to the very bottomist left. He would have been born in England like a few of my many uncles I'm told, but they made it stateside before he popped out.

I still don't know how many uncles I actually have. I keep forgetting. I do know there's a Buck, a Willy, a John... and ... can't remember who else. One has been on Maury Povich. One worked as a hot dog inspector. No, that's not a clever euphemism for a gay dude, but whoa... now it is. Another built raccoon traps for a living.

I didn't meet my paternal grandparents until I was 9 years old. We flew out there to CA and were greeted by the tiny old couple standing in the doorway of the house that my father grew up in.

My grandmother is a tiny, tiny woman with light red hair and ice blue eyes and a booming voice that's almost cartoon-like in it's intensity. It's by no means shrill. Just extremely loud. Standing about 5' nothing, she's still a character even today. I talk to her every now and again on the phone. She's still loud, but doesn't seem like the woman who broke my father's hand by hitting him with a tree branch after he got busted with a joint at school.

Every few years my old grandmother gets in a van with a friend of hers and drives the country. Luckily we get visits from her on her travels and during one such visit she brought us a book that reminded me of the book from the Never Ending Story.



I talked to my old man earlier and he had the album handy. He was kind enough to take some shots and send them to me.


Here's the bigger of the two albums.


Here's a mini one.


In the email my dad captioned this picture "You should see her nudes. Miss September 1864".




I'm proud to know that somehow I'm sort of maybe related to this man.



Even though my father took the album with him to Colorado, I somehow held onto a picture of my father's mother's mother. Great grandma Parshall. I finally found a family member who has the same nose as I do. So that's where I got it. She hangs on my wall. A pretty lass in her 20's.

Back in 1998 I took a few pictures from it and painted them after seeing a Chuck Close exhibit in NYC during a highschool trip.

I tried my damndest at black and white photo-realism using one of the photos from the big album as reference.

"Walter" is in the Oils section. Let me know what you think.

www.hookermedia.com

NEW PAINTINGS.... and "Keggadeath"

I'm all over the place tonight...

So there are a couple new paintings for sale on the portfolio site. I was at Ikea recently buying a frame for my Alex Gross print that I recently ordered from his site. I got myself a print of "the Dream" I've been meaning to get one for like three years and I finally did. Definitely a good purchase.

Anyways... I bought a couple extra little 5.5 inch frames and took them home and paired them up with a couple 4x4 canvases. What to paint? Well... there's glass over the canvas... How about insects? Perfect. The photo wouldn't really lead you to believe this, but from certain angles they look like actual moths under glass. Trompe l'oeil-ish. Sounds funny, but try this: lean a bit to the right and look at your monitor at an angle. Tell me if that deceives your eyes. Check them out here under the "Acrylics" section...

LATE NIGHT UPDATE. I talked to Murf earlier and it drove me to stay up and finish Cliff Burton. He's there in the Oil section.

Hookermedia

Now on the keggadeath....

Wow. This must have been nuts.

Dude gets killed by exploding keg.

Years and years ago when I was about 14 or 15 a bunch of us did the old Stove Top sleepover alibi. You tell your parents you're going to Jimmy's. Jimmy tells his parents he's going to your house. Ten other sets of friends do this same thing and you all meet up at the clearing in a certain neighborhood. Then you all grab your sleeping bags and tents and you truck through the woods where Awesometown awaits.

Awesometown. A campfire. One crappy bent up joint of dirt weed between like 15 kids. Various shitty beers pilfered from an older brother or two. Heavenly.

The night rages on. The licking flames send yellow light dancing over braced faces and Beavis and Butthead t-shirts. Someone shows up with their dad's CB blaring police reports. COP! The joint is swallowed. The prank is revealed. The prankster is nearly beat up by the fat kid. The party goes on.

The next morning someone offers a bunch of Vienna sausage they stole from their pantry to everyone. People are so hungry they actually eat the moist, taupe-colored sausage. A useless can of corned beef hash is tossed into what's left of the fire. No one pays attention.

Twenty minutes later a shotgun blast resonates from the center of the retard campground. A projectile going 100 feet per second with a white comet trail of thick smoke threads a needle between the astonished little boozers packing up their sleeping bags. Everyone stands in silence, covered in corned beef hash.

Luckily no one was killed by shrapnel to the neck.

Dude, seriously. No shit, dude.

Friday I got a call from my two roomates who are, like myself, single young bucks. They had started plumbing the depths of a bottle of silver Patron that evening and were looking for trouble.

They wanted me to meet them at a bar when I got out. I was at work and had until 10:30 to sit and rot in this office. I had a rough week and wasn't really in the mood to go chasing skirt at shitty bars in Quincy. I ended up staying home and painting. They shuffled in around 12:30 moaning about how gross all the girls were at the bar. How the two they ended up chatting up were definitely working girls. How every woman at the bar was good from afar, far from good.

It's funny how the madness can take you sometimes. You start thinking you and your douchebag friends are Motley Crue in L.A. circa 1983. You forget that you're normal guys with no real game or desire for bar sluts.

"Dude... tonight is gonna be fucking awesome."
"I know, man right?"
"Fuck yes. Tonight we're gonna do some shots. We'll suit up, and then hit the bars."
"Yeah dude. And chicks will be there and we'll fucking hang out with them and then we'll proverbially destroy their vaginas with various extremities. Like our penises. The sensation will be fantastic."
"Totally. Definitely gonna happen. Lay waste to many a beaver. Let's display contempt for all females by using our penises as whack-a-mole mallets."
"Top shelf idea. Top. Shelf."

Fast forward to four hours later. You're both sitting in your friend's bedroom, with no chicks, air drumming to Iron Maiden, drinking Cape Codders out of measuring cups, trying to ignore the above-stated facts.

My roomates weren't this sad. They both came home, lamented for a few and went to sleep.

Crisis averted.

But remember, young men, your life is not Entourage. You're not a hot shit. You live in some crappy town. This is not Motley Crue's "The Dirt". It's your regular old Friday night. Stay home and do some pullups and a couple hundred hindu squats.

Blogtoberfest recap

Finally yesterday it happened. The long-awaited Blogtoberfest

I rushed into town early to meet up with a friend of mine who goes to Berklee. I was helping him with a performance class by singing on an acoustic version of Zakk Wylde's "Machine Gun Man". Zakk Wylde is Ozzy Osbourne's longtime guitar player. He released a few solo albums in the mid 90's that were grossly underrated. Here's a quick version we threw together late last Friday

That was over by 5:20 and I hopped on the Admiral and rode a few blocks over to Match to meet up with Jenny. We ordered a couple drinks and the fellow blog nerds started shuffling in.

Ulli was the first to show up. She was very fun to talk to. It was great to hear about different areas of the country through the eyes of a young European professional. Any German exchange students looking to carve a journalism career out in the states... stay away from Waco, Texas.

The next person I hit it off with was Caity. She was a highschool friend of Jenny's it turns out was in my kindergarten class back in... 1984? 1985? Either way it was nice to see she aged so well. I knew even then she was going to turn out hot.

Joe was a funny bastard. Kept talking about how sexy Jenny's picture on the Admiral looked. So I told him that before the night was done we had to get him on the bike for a couple shots. The man oozes sex appeal. It's just who he is. Here look.

I met the beautiful Karen, one half of the famed Rumor Girls, and Frank the producer of the show. I ended up walking past and overheard something about nipple rings. So instead of introducing myself like a normal person I just hiked up my blouse and showed them my pierced nerp. I also explained why there's only one now. Another story for another day. I briefly confessed my desire to be listed as a Rumor Girl crush on their past show leading up to Blogtoberfest. You can't ask for these things. You either got it or you don't.

Jon from the Bostonist had some sweet insight for the ongoing Bike Gang naming saga. I explained about the time Skip and I both wore khakis, black socks and white Italian slip on shoes while riding the bikes to a show we were playing one Saturday night. "How about Labor Day....Labor Day Saints" Perfect.


Everyone I met was fun to hang out with. I wasn't like my usual self at social gatherings, a condition I like to call "fat kid at a prom syndrome". Sitting in the corner watching everyone converge in the middle of the room, laughing and having a good time, getting excited whenever a girl saunters over.... only to have her tell you that she needs her jacket... and you're sitting on it.

The night was a hit I must say. Jenny's got a way with event planning and putting together a helluva time.

Only one this was regrettable about yesterday. Jakprints screwed up my order for my business cards and didn't send them next day like I paid for. There were quite a few people at Blogtoberfest who seemed interested in my online portfolio and I had nothing to hand them. So if you remembered to check out this humble blog, let me take this time to direct you to my portfolio...

www.hookermedia.com

Hope you enjoy. Feel free to drop me a line.

Until the next nerdfest...keep in touch.

the lunch idiot

after the emergency room the other day i went to a pharmacy connected to a supermarket. i had to wait 40 minutes for my stupid pills so i shopped for a bit. bought some salmon. instead of doing the usual white rice or whatever with salmon i decided to try thai kitchen's "green chili & garlic jasmine rice"

since monday the groceries have sat in the fridge untouched. the past few nights i've been getting pretty drunk, limping around, mumbling about my arm and what a young buck i used to be, sitting in the studio either alone or with one unfortunate friend until the wee hours of the morning, recording the a capella part at the end of "love in an elevator" in four part harmony with myself.

so today, late for work, i decide to cook everything.

my salmon is undercooked because for some inexplicable reason I set the oven for like 375 instead of the usual 425.

the rice? one warning i should have heeded was the fact that a coconut milk packet was included in the box. i hate coconut. and coconut milk powder ain't cool even if you like coconut.

i decided to hurry up and cook the rice in the microwave. the smell that emanated from the microwave sort of smelled like the sausage links they served in elementary school on breakfast day, which as you could have guessed, is nauseating. i pressed on. i want to eat that goddam rice later on instead of shelling out $7 on a lunch from those diarrhea merchants at faneuil hall.

after 9 minutes uncovered i took the rice out to cover and cook again for another 6 minutes. the smell was too much. i dumped the rice down the sink. when the steam plume hit me in the face over the sink i nearly gagged.

and now i'm blogging at 1:55. need to be in boston at 2:30. the salmon is still orange in the middle. theough i'm tempted, i can't take my motorcycle into work because of the wrist.

fart.

short, sweet, crippled

so i haven't busted into the vicodin stash. and i can sort of type with both hands now. ah. see? you wouldn't have known without me telling you this... when i just typed "hands" it came across as "nads". i figured i'd let you know that i'm still not even 70% of what i used to be. and if i could type wtih both nads i wouldn't be stuck at this boring white guy office job. i'd be taking my qwerty ballbag act on the road.

anyways, it'll be a few more days before i can even pull my own fly down, so don't expect the usual riveting drivel. driveting. yeah i know you're heartbroken.




see you guys thursday.

one armed idiot

toda i woke up and realize that the pain fairy visited me in the night. the pain fairy came and from the looks of things i must have left her a crsip one hunfred dollar bill under m pillow.

note my shitty typing. thats because im typinf with my left hand only wgile my right hand lies dead in my lap. and no, i wont be correcting my errors.

im 26. im in decent shape... or so i thought. until i played two hours of football yesterday. it was all fun and ganmes util i jumped to catvh a pass, twisted around in the air and hit the ground sprinting. i ran it in for a TD, bu i also pulled my left groin like it was made of warm taffy. what a letdown. i had even bought sweet ass sweatpatnts fro tj maxx for the occasion.

i hobbled off the field for a few and then went back out, this time no loger playng wide receiver, just offensive/defensive line.

went home limping and had no idea my wrist was trashed until i tried to push a chair in under my desk.

instant nauseating pain.

so now instead of driving in to typesetting job, which i need my right hand for
on my motorcycle, which i need my right hand for
and then later on to band practice, which i need my right hand for
im sitting here in sweet ass sweatpants, bored and in unbridled pain. the pain of a 1,000 old linebacker veterans, the pain of being born an idiot.

im going back to bed.

UPDATE

scheduled a doctors appointment for 1.30 today.

jus woke up.

at 2.00.


FUCKIN IDIOT

to the emergemcy room i go.

PEE-nie in a bottle

So I've been in various bands for the better part of the last decade. None of which anyone has heard of, but whatever.

When you're on tour you want to save time in between shows. The drives are usually 4 hours at the least and everyone in the van is usually hung over and feeling like a walking salt lick, so we drink a lot of water. To save time we pee in bottles more often than not. Over the years I've gotten used to peeing in bottles and I can do so with the greatest of ease.

A while ago while working on Jenny's painting in the saloon I slugged back a bottle of wine and a few beers. I didn't feel like going downstairs, across the studio, across the patio, into the main house, through the kitchen and into the bathroom. So I grabbed a suitable bottle. A 12 ounce won't do. After a party I once filled up a 40 oz to the brim with frothy nectar. I grabbed the only suitable bottle I could find up there in the saloon: An empty bottle of 18 year old Jameson Master Selection.

A year ago when we moved in my roommate Anthony received a bottle from his friend as a gift, which our other roommate drank in an entire night without knowing the severity of the mistake he just made. Very expensive bottle of whiskey.

Now a back story. Years ago while living with a couple guys I was in an old band with I peed into a ginger ale two liter. These guys were both bottle pee-ers. We were in a band together for god sakes. One even mastered peeing into a bottle while driving.

One afternoon while roommate A was in the shower (he was notoriously bad with long periods of time in the bathroom) I had to pee furiously and used an empty Schwepps 2 liter. Then like an idiot, left the bottle next to the lazy boy in the living room and left to go to my girlfriend's house for the night. Roommate B came home. Found the bottle. Went to the freezer. Got ICE CUBES. Poured a glass of my pee. Took a swig. Tried to induce vomiting to no avail. Went to Roommate A's room. Started strangling him. Realized he had the wrong guy. Called me. Left angry message. Talked to me the next day.

Now back to the present... Last night while working on Cliff Burton (see post below)... Anthony came up to say hello after getting back from the neighborhood bar. He stomped across the room and grabbed the bottle of Jameson 18. "Who committed this cardinal sin again?" Thinking someone had taken his new bottle of good whiskey and was fucking around with it. He wasn't that mad though, because he's pretty even keeled when most people would flip out... and because the 750 ML bottle was completely full. It didn't even register with me that the bottle he was about to pour a tumbler from was filled with my stale pee from a few weeks ago. He was almost down the stairs before I stopped him.

"AHH.... Uhhhhh uhhh... that's. .. not whiskey. It's. I pissed in that."

Crisis barely averted.

I need to be house trained.

All your Cliff Burton are belong to us UPDATED

My paintings have adorned (stagnantly hung with no one interested in buying) in my apartments for the last six years. Naturally, all my friends have seen them. Everyone picks their favorites, and every other time they visit they drunkenly point a bottle towards whichever their favorite is and slur "I swear to fucking God, dude... I'm buying that one from you" until earlier this year no one has actually went home with one.

The first person to actually follow through was my roomate's sister. Then the singer of a band who recorded at the house studio. Then my buddy Hoga. Then Jenny. And now my buddy Murf.

Hoga. Murf. Welcome to Massachusetts. We hack last names into nicknames that make you sound refined and classy when you scream them across a bar room.

So everyone... here's Murf.

Murf singing with my band years ago...



For at least two years Murf has been saying "Dude, I want a painting of Cliff Burton" and I'd dismiss it as yet another friend of mine making a wish list, but not actually following through. I see him painfully too seldom. We both have shitty work schedules and love men.

If you don't know who Cliff Burton was, he played bass in a little band called Metallica from 1982 until 1986... the year he was killed in a bus accident while the band was on tour.

Murf has been aware of the paintings I've done lately. He brought up Cliff yet again in an email a few weeks ago. We both forgot about it soon after. Yet again.

THEN the 20th anniversary of Cliff's death came this year on September 27. So one magical night I texted Murf with the message "All your Cliff Burton are belong to us."

For whatever reason, that got the ball rolling. So he sent me a reference picture...



We chose a suitable size for the awesomeness of Cliff.

(3x4 feet)

Then I got started.

So without further adieu here is the beginning of the Cliff Burton series. Enjoy.

Here's the first slop of shadows that I usually start with on big pieces like this.



Here we have a bit more blocks of background and shadows. Still very loose yet.



Here I started the most dreaded part of all guitarist paintings: the frets. Still very loose blocks.



Here's what I did today before I had to hit the doctor's office to check out my infected jaw/face/head.

I'd be much closer to being finished if our house wasn't a hotel for wayward parents. Every roomate, including myself, who's parents live out of state have gotten visits in the past week and my office is also the guestroom. I'm gonna relocate into the saloon until the parent summit is over.


CLIFF



I'm excited about Cliff. I was such a huge Metallica fan as a kid that I might have trouble giving this one up when it's done.

R.I.P. Cliff.

I moved my operation into the saloon tonight. Here's my workspace so far:



Cliiiiff.

Lockjaw

Last year in July when I finally had my wisdom teeth out it put an end to the series of infections they caused in the six or so months prior.

It'd start with a distant soreness at my jaw hinge. Usually only on one side. Then it'd bloom into full on pain that hindered me from opening my teeth wide enough to slip a Pringle in between. Eating was barely doable.

After getting antibiotics a few times and repeating the cycle, pain... pills. ... pain... pills... I finally had them yanked.

I went to the office listed by my insurance closest to my work downtown. Watkin Osorio. A buddy of mine had a root canal there. Said they were great.

Nearly everyone I've talked to had cute little stories of getting knocked out and waking up laughing with four fresh sockets in their gums. Everyone got knocked out. No one had horror stories.

The oral surgeon did not knock me out. I was awake for the entire ordeal. Him cracking my impacted teeth out. Drilling when I can feel it. Me feeling it because novocaine has little effect on me for whatever reason. The ropey black blood coating my tongue and sliding down my throat along with tooth dust and chips, causing me to gag. At points I'd sit up and tears would roll from down my temples into my ears, the surgeon and his assistant backing off me like I was Frankenstein's monster about to mutiny. I'd whimper a muffled "FFFFrrrrk" and they'd talk me back down, shoot a needle in my cheek again and get back to cracking.

After that I walked out into the reception area, mute with a mouth of bloody gauze, where they immediately hit me up for $300 from my debit card.

Then I wandered outside and texted my friend Sarah to pick me up. She came by and helped me back home where I drank whiskey because the weak pills they gave me caused me to itch all over, but didn't kill pain.

So that was in July 2005.

For the past week I've had a growing feeling in my left jaw hinge that feels just like the pre-extraction infection.

Today I hit up the doctor (NOT DENTIST) to see what the problem is.

Wish me luck. Hopefully the bolts in my neck aren't causing the infection.

Summer's over

Last night while I was still at work I get sent a link to a craigslist ad. Jenny had been looking at spaces in Fort Point that would be conducive to making artistic awesome-itude blossom. She seemingly found the perfect space.

Right on Summer st, five minutes from the subway, downtown, I-93 and I-90. Smack in the middle of Boston's most artistic community. The price was right. Everything seemed perfect.

She called the woman last night. Left a message.

I called her earlier today. We can go down and check it out at 11:30? Sweet. We'll be there.

Long story short we show up and the pictures that were up on the ad were definitely NOT the space that we were shown earlier today.

This was a partitioned little corner in a space already inhabited by a mortgage company. A boring one-desk mortgage company. Not two young artisans trying to scratch out a creative life in the sweetest art neighborhood in Boston.

So the hunt continues.

This weekend we'll be hitting up the Fort Point Open Studios event to drool over spaces that other people are successful enough to have locked down.

Come out and join the party. The Admiral, Jenny and I will be there.

One step closer

Last night everyone bailed on band practice. Fine with me.

I headed over to a pond in Newton and fished with Ben and Kurt, two artists from the Tattoo Shop that I'm going to apprentice at.

We didn't catch a damn thing. I always sucked ass at fishing.

So after the fruitless fishing we went over to Blue Ribbon bbq where I took down a platter of pulled chicken, collard greens and beans & rice. Ben remarked with a smirk "You tall skinny buzzards always eat like nobody's business" It's true. While I do weigh 87 pounds and stand 6'8", I can put food down like a true fatass champion.

After the guttural punishment we headed over to the shop where I got a lesson in how to put a machine together in preparation for tattoing someone. I was given over an hour's worth of pointers on these guy's personal time. They are the best. I held the buzzing machine for a bit and mocked the motion of drawing on someone. It was exciting.

Today I went hunting with the list of goods that I'll have to purchase that Ben wrote out last night.

I'm going to have to invest in some serious equipment in the next month.

I've already bought a liner machine earlier this afternoon. It should be here in a few days. I have to pick up the power source, a tube to attach to it (the part that would be the equivalent of a pen's shaft), and a few other pieces of the puzzle.

After that it's time to choose a guinea pig.

As scary as it may sound, I have quite a few people eager to get tattooed by my inexperienced hands. As nerve wracking as it can be, I feel very excited and quite confident that I will do a decent job my first time around.

More to come.

Columbus, you prick

So I'm one of the few, the bitter, the working on Columbus day.

End of last week I was confused when people would ask what I was planning for the long weekend. Then confusion turned to disappointment. Then disappointment turned to jealousy. Then jealously to rage. Then rage to diarrhea. Not really. But the day is young.

Since I'm in here on this beautiful day while most are still rolling about in their beds, I guess I'll give a weekend recap.

Friday the clients that had been keeping us busy as hell at work finally got their files filed and their this and that squared away. As a result I got out in time to catch Iron Maiden at the Agganis Arena near B.U. I wish I had gone home.

Don't get me wrong, I love Iron Maiden, but they played their entire new album, and album I've never heard, in it's entirety. Four old songs. Three of which I had seen last time I saw them.

Oh well.

After the show I went over to my buddy Frank's home studio and threw down a couple solos on a project he's working on.

Saturday I got up and had lunch with my brother and my old man who just came into town with my stepmom from Bailey Colorado.

I haven't seen my old man since he moved away in January. It's good to hang out with him.

Did some riding while I had time and then went to my buddy's wedding before I had to run into town and soundcheck for our show at the Middle East upstairs.

Ah before I forget, my ride brought me down to the Blue Hills. The roads that wind through the hills are curvy and fun to ride. I had Jenny on the back of the bike and we went up to the top where there's an observation area where you can park and see Boston. We're both standing on a wall checking out the skyline and this car pulls up. Guy gets out and let's out a loud "WOOOOOO!! BOSTON IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CITY IN THE FUCKIN' WORLD!"

I turned around and gave him a sarcastic "Fuckin A". He was psyched about that.

We were going to hang out for a bit but after this exchange we both made a B line for the bike. I fired up the engine and finally got a good look at the behemoth before me babbling on about how Boston's a gem of a city.

He was about 6'6" and was wearing ash grey shorts and a shabby white T shirt. He had coke bottle glasses and was haggard as hell. Bout 40 years old. But the kicker was his ankles and calves which were wrapped in gauze and had fresh bleeding wounds all over them.

He told me his name was Godzilla. I told him my name was Steve. He told us he was going to be on Jay Leno within two years. We sped off screaming. We pulled up to a stop light and a couple next to us was checking out the bike with their windows down. I blurted that I had diarrhea just before the light turned green. After the Blue Hills we went to the Outback. I think I'm some sort of clairvoyant.

The show went well. Metal...etc. I got to talk to Ben the guy who's gonna show me the ropes with tattooing and hopefully we'll meet up this week and talk about equipment and supplies I'll need.

Here are some pics of our set.


Sunday was pretty useless and lazy. I hung out with the old man and watched the Pats game. That was a good time. Then I rode for a while and didn't do much of anything else.

Me and the old man...

Campbell's Soup at Hand

These commercials. Good Christ. I'm sorry. I usually blog after I wake up or just after I got into work. Tonight it's after a dumping a gaggle of Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale's down my throat while sitting on the couch with the t.v. on, putting my website together.

A commercial has repeated a few times during Conan. It's for Campbell's little Soup at Hand portable soup cups.



These little shitty things. Creamy chicken flavor. Sign me up. Also try... Milky beef. Fish nougat.

The commercial shows a business dude and a business chick walking through a lobby towards a revolving door. The chick is showing the dude pictures of some sort and blabbing on. The dude is loudly moaning while sucking the soup out of a Campbell's Soup at Goddam Hand. You moan while you eat? Moan about how good the food is... you should be forced to sit in a chair and have a giggling John Madden rub his bare, warm penis all over your face.

So the chick walks through the door, but the dude, still moaning into his soup can, gets stuck in the revolving door! Because the soup is that good.

There's another commercial for this product. Same dude. He's falling back in his office chair every day of the week because he keeps finishing the last of his awesome microwavable soup.

I want to force the dude who wrote these commercials, at gun point, to moan while he hungrily laps at Elliot Gould's pouting man breasts while his parents watch. I want it to be on camera. I want to hack the Campbell's website. I want to put the video up there.

I don't want to watch this character moan into his soup anymore.

I'm not really that angry. I'm done. Sorry. I just want to ensure that the next time you see one of these Soup at Hand's at your local grocer, you're going to think of Elliot Gould's breasts.

What is it.. Wednesday?

I can't keep track of this week for some reason. Today was dedicated to the Admiral. Changed the oil, shined his chromed ass up, cleaned the air filter casing.

If I didn't have to drag my ass in here today at 2:00 after maintaining the bike and taking Sophie for a jog, I wonder where I would have gone.


Yesterday Skip and I took a ride up to the Mt. Auburn cemetary in Watertown/Cambridge. A week or so ago we took them up to the Arnold Arboretum in JP. Both places bring to mind trite adjectives for big sprawling areas with lots of pretty trees.... words like uh..sprawling, lush, dense, fertile... green? Purty.

We ambled about yesterday looking at some of the more ridiculously lavish.. ah "lavish" that's another word.. gravestones. Then I noticed a small area of "grave plates" that didn't peek above ground at all. We tried to make up life stories for a Russian woman with a beautiful name who died in 1953 at the age of 27.

No. We're not gay. Swear to god.

Later on Skip, while perched on some huge structure built by Christian Science people, said "you should blog about all the faggoty shit we do during the day"

So the riding season is coming to a close, as we all know, but I'm going to try to bring my camera out to these daytime excursions so I can bring you more quality faggoty shit than my competitors. My faggoty shit won't be topped.

Stay tuned.

Oh, and suggestions for places to go and check out are welcome.

Jenny's painting

So as promised, I'm putting up a picture of the final product of Jenny's painting. I put it to bed in four installments.

A red wash covering the canvas uniformly. This was easy enough. Get a big ol' brush and slap red paint on.

Getting the outlines of the bridge sketched with pencil and then darkened in with black paint. This was the most fun because the canvas was transformed from a red rectangle to a semi detailed picture of the Longfellow bridge. I also did this work in the Saloon, so that helped the fun factor. Standing there pacing around in the 800 sq feet around the canvas, slugging white wine from the bottle, smoke and wine in one hand, four brushes sticking out of the other fist. With enough room I pace around a canvas like an angry cop around an unfortunate interrogation victim.

Then the sky was put on, which I had picture of in a previous entry. This was great because instead of doing sky, then clouds over it like I've done for years, I did clouds and then put in patches of sky in between. This is probably my favorite sky painting I've done to date and it was done the quickest. I think that plays a part in my choice.

Then I went back in on Friday night and did the rest of the details. The buildings, the little bits and pieces, last minute shading.

After tweaking a few more times and making some bad choices (splattered white paint under the apple in the shape of a heart) I undid the tweaks and put this painting to bed before I really screwed it up.

It was one of the better experiences I've had while painting. I enjoyed making it and I really enjoy the outcome. I hope you do too.

Weekend recap

I can remember who sang the Chilly Willy theme song. I remember the woman's name from the credits on the show. Mary Jo Rush.

I can remember every elementary school teacher I ever had.

I can remember the code to getting thirty free guys in Contra.

I can't remember what I did this weekend. Not without thinking hard until my forehead sweats like when I used to do long division.

Shit. It'll all come back to me. Give me a minute. Sad thing is, I only drank one night this weekend. And even then it wasn't an absurd amount.

Friday I went home and finished Jenny's painting. I sat at the desk and just worked until it was finished, then packed up and went to sleep. I'm an assclown though because I haven't uploaded a picture of the finished product yet. Sorry. Tomorrow.

Saturday woke up pretty early.
Contorted and stretched for an hour.
Ate the usual breakfast.
Went for a ride down to Abington and bought a stupid little miniature death helmet from a bike shop. It's like a biker yarmulke. Yes, retarded, I know. But the other faceless helmet I own is designed poorly. Cuts off my windpipe with the strap. That, and I look like a large-headed penis with a moustache when I wear it. And what are motorcycles about?

Safety?



....


Or looking cool?



!!!!


After the bike shop I went over to REI in Hingham and got a membership for the rock climing wall they have in there. $15 and you can climb free at any location that has a wall. For life, dude. Started on a medium difficulty wall and that's all I did because there was a gaggle of third graders eager to try next. I want a wall of my own. Every person except me who was in line to use the wall was 10 years old or younger. It was pretty nice to see a bunch of kids hitting up a climbing wall rather than playing video games or some shit.



The Sharking show went well. I was pretty nervous about screwing up the basslines so I kind of shoegazed on stage. We all had fun regardless.

Closed the night with a trip to The Fours in Quincy with most of the roomates and some old friends we hadn't seen in a while. One of our long lost friends, who I have a long-standing crush on, touched my arm and a loud slide whistle sound emitted from my pants, freaking the other bar patrons out a little. Why am I the only guy equipped with a slide whistle weiner? Blessing? Curse? Both.

Sunday was more practice, some football watching, some more contortion, bed.

There. I think I got most of the weekend minutia crammed into this entry. Happy Monday, everyone.