Giving Up Would Be Too Easy

Well here it is...3pm on Dec 31 2005. I'm in the process of moving back into the apartment with the worlds funniest room mate...Brant "Diet Soda" Bumpers. We are about to meet my girlfriend at Chili's for lunch. In a nutshell...
2005-
1. financially ok
2. had one tooth extracted...2 root canals...1 crown.
3. strep throat twice....maybe three times
4. 5 group art shows.
5. built a warehouse with my brother, father and friend Davis.
6. las vegas
7. quit smoking
8. started working out.
9. stopped using markers, now use brushes and ink
10. collaboration with Annie Mess for traveling cardboard show and book!
11. collaborated with David Deyoung on stolen metal signs
12. did not throw up once from drinking too much
13. tattoos by Mig Kokinda
14. Breakfast with my parents
15. watching my nephew grow into a young man
16. my grandmother seeing her name on my arm (she's 102)
17. bought a new car
18. one nose bleed
19. no tickets
20. met the most amazing girl of my dreams.

I'm one lucky son of a bitch....

don't take life for granted.

grow and grow stronger .


happy new year!

till then...........ciao.

I don't like the place. Fortunate enough to have no memories of the place. I visit family then get out of there as soon as possible. It's the worst. I only like three things there...Family, Flea Market, Krystal Burger. Mom moved us from there when I was three months old. The last time I visited I tried to imagine what I would be like now if we stayed. Things happen for a reason, thankfully in my case.

Above is a picture of a local thrift store owned by some maniacal christians. Jesus loves you and apparently he loves a good mess because this should have burned down a long time ago. An electrical spark waiting to happen. Just sayin.

They had books also.

On one occasion my nephew and I went to the local grocery store to get "fixin's" for BLT's. We go in and at the back of the store there is an old lady serving samples of Coca Cola Zero. I approach her and ask "Excuse me ma'am, where is the Turkey bacon?". She gives me an odd look and steps back a bit and replies "Turkey's don't make Bacon!". I let her know she is correct and that I'll be on my way. We find the breakfast isle...get the turkey bacon and other goods and split. They don't know much but believe anything it seems.

Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful country. It's mind numbing and stagnant and thats okay...because I don't live there. There is however a place called Noccalula Falls. It's a waterfall. My nephew and I went hiking there. It's great! Nacalula was an indian girl who killed herself by jumping off the cliff to avoid marrying some jerk indian with an attitude problem (it says that on the stone slab on location) and a bunch of wampum, horses and blankets. Other people have plummeted to their deaths as recently as 5 months ago. It was a cool field trip.

Other than that the town is falling apart. My nephew and I went to the Gadsden Museum of Art. I have never before been in such awe in my life. They were having a Star Wars Exhibit. I personally never got into the movies but my nephew seemed excited. So we go in and it's some toys a local guy donated...he bought them in the eighties. Well...at least we got a good laugh at it.

Literally, the place is falling apart.

It's the monday before Christmas and I'm here at work. I went to Starbucks and bought a cup of coffee (caramel macchiato) and drank it super fast. Last summer I went on a trip with my Mom and my Nephew to Alabama. I remember at one point I we were in the middle of Mississippi surrounded by huge green trees and humidity. In hopes of finding a restroom soon there was a light up ahead...STARBUCKS. My mom and I discussed how funny it was to have one in the middle of nothing. The first time I traveled East it was late summer 1996. I drove my 1984 honda prelude, my mom had a 85' suburban and we had a Penske. My brother/sister/mom/nephew made the trip. My father stayed behind to sell the property in texas. My mom took a job in Hampton, VA. I started my senior year of high school at Kecoughtan High. It was absolutely different from where I was coming. School was in a residential area. My previous schools were in the country. All three schools elementary, middle, high schools were on the same farm road all within one mile. I had gone there since 2nd grade-11th. So Virginia was a total culture shock. I kept to myself mostly and wrote/draw/painted. I got a job at the local school print shop. So i would go to school from 8am till noon then go to the printshop 3 blocks away and worked from 1230-430. I LOVED THAT PLACE. i had my own press and learned how to bind and run an A.B.Dick offset printer. exposing my own films and all that good stuff. I got to make my own sketchbooks! i still have one. I think i copied a painting by mark johnson that i saw in transworld in it. The only crappy thing about the job was that it paid once a month because it was a school. and i was only working four hours a day. luckily those days gas was less than a dollar. Before we moved I was working at Fast Forward at NorthStar. I was making my own stickers and tshirts. I remember seeing an OBEY sticker somewhere and that night went home and bootlegged it. Out of bright orange crack n peel paper i made a stencil out of poster board and dabbed it with a marksalot marker. I was already making Frankenstein stickers and putting them up everywhere. My good friend started dj'ing and i made a batch of stickers for him (GOLCONDA). with my bootleg obey stickers i wanted them glossy so made the sticker as wide as a roll of packing tape (1.5 inch) and covered the image and cut with an exacto. TONS of labor went into these damn things. So when we went out skating i was putting them up every where. There is still a frankenstien sticker on a register at Chic Fil A in the mall. I was totally into it. Then there was a write up on Black Market in Transworld. it showed 2 or three pics of ads and the write up was like 1.5 inches wide and top to the bottom of the page. it had a phone number... not sure about website... so the next day i called 411 in San Diego and tracked down Mr. Shepard Fairey. He was ultra nice and I got nervous. We were just talking about skateboaring and design and stuff and he was talking about some projects he had going on and I was shook! this guy was the real deal. At one point he said "c'est la vie". He might as well have been speaking martian. I was an idiot! If it wasn't spanish (taco bell menu) i had no idea what you were saying. I think he realized this when my reply was...."uh....yeah". So he politely asked for my address and said keep in touch. 3 days later I received the biggest package in the mail with a huge black market sticker sealing it. IT WAS HEAVY!!!!!!!! from that point on I knew I wanted to be involved in/around graphic design and vowed to read more (because I did not want to be embarrassed for not knowing quotes in french)(not that I only read french stuff from there on out, but making an attempt to learn from more than just my immediate surroundings). i had a box of stickers and stencils with me in my honda and at every stop on the way to virginia...i bombed everything.
geeez that was 9 years ago and I still make stickers with crack and peel and sharpies in my spare time. I am fortunate to have met many many many people who are heavy influences in my life...more so...getting to work some of them or have me involved in their projects. I mean...I haven't even been west of Colorado but had a toy I customized show in JAPAN! are you kidding me!!!!!? ahhhhhhhh.... C'est la vie.

Dane Cook is Brilliant! I just bought some cd's. Purely brilliant.

The internet...you get caught up looking at some of the most random stuff imaginable. I have found that I am almost obsessed with peoples workspaces. I work in a cubicle enviornment, actually, i have worked in this enviornment longer than I would like to admit. I am amazed at how people set up their desks. I look at the layout of the designated spot they have and if I'm lucky enough they will have pictures of "home". I will then compare...home to work. Do they have it as equally set up? Same decorations? Stuff like this intrigues me. I really enjoy painting and drawing. Illustrations and Typography are some kind of drug to me. So while online I will search for artists workspaces. To see the desk they sit at and draw or the studio in which they paint. I've recently come across a couple pages that had me floored! I will not share them with you because I think that would jinx me and the next time I went to said pages the would be gone. There is a young woman in L.A. that works for a law firm, on the weekends and evenings she goes to art shows. She goes and sees everything from high end upscale yoshitomo nara to the Venice Beach art walk. She documents each show with her Digital Canon a520. I haven't counted because I think would add to my compulsion, but she may have damn near 40 shows on her site. each show consisting anywhere from 4 to50 photos. I pick out the faces in the crowd of those I know are may have only read about, like a star struck fan boy I guess. I will write and thank her one day. Then there is a fella on another site who seems to be "in the know". from the dates of the pics I think he travels constantly but knows of artists everywhere he goes. He has tons of pics of drawing tables or light rooms, silkscreen presses, broken skateboards, dirty coffee tables...all the pics are of artist's workspaces. I day dream about the best workspace much like I used to hear people talk about the perfect house... or garden.
I will soon be moving back downtown. I am eager. I will be with the same room mate in the same apt I shared with him for two years. My girlfriend lives maybe four blocks away. My job is a mere 6 miles compared to 48 miles (one way). I will live very simply. Growing up I realized little niches about myself. Things that I need to do just to get by. For instance... My bedroom, if it is a mess, scattered and strewn about...I can't concentrate well. Only because in the back of my mind I know my "home" is not tidy or very "welcoming". As if I would need to rush home for some reason... I would not be able to rest immediately because I would have to clear a space for me to lay. I would get upset if someone touched any "mess" i made because i knew how it was put together. Like Mr. Einstein...he was a bit of a slob i gather. but he was brilliant in his mess. I can bare draw if my nails are freshly cleaned. I went on a tangent, sorry. but I hope and plan to be very simple. Now that I have a place to store and work on art out in the country, I will actually have a home to get away from constant interaction.
I could not sleep. I was in bed 2 hours ago but I could not rest. I apologize in advance for any bad grammer.

Giving up would be way too easy.