Texas Pics

Just spent a meat and beer fueled week in the Lone Star State. Here are a few pics. Yee-haw!





Austin Airport Art






Plaque on a wall in San Antonio






Pearl Brewery






Terrell at Fiesta in San Antonio






Old Church in Boerne






River Park in Boerne






German Restaurant in Fredericksburg






McNay Art Museum, S.A.






ETC






Texas wildlife






The less I know, the better.






The gigantic capital building






Sixth Street in Austin






The Jackalope. Terrell hated this place because it smelled like vomit and I spilled an entire beer in her lap. Touchy!






Shuffleboard at Buffalo Billiards.






Frost Bank Building, Austin






U.T.- Hook' em Horns!

Illustrations from my Sketchbook Project

Surprisingly, Harold was a yoga master







Have you heard the good news?







Read all about it in the news-tapir






At that moment, an entire universe was created







During the Harvest Moon, the young-lings would skulk out of the hive in search of grubs






Cryptozoology never goes out of style





A garnish to some, a prison to others







What gets hatching pod goo out of carpet?





Harlan was, first and foremost, a spirit guide






Even ghosts get scared sometimes






Fear not my realm





The Conrnclopse is the wisest oracle in the land






Hey, what's in the box?






Nobody was sure what kind of tourists Oregon was trying to attract





Elegant and sophisticated, watch out high society!







Chop and store with the new Axe-Drive





Despite what people said, it was hard not too notice Beauregard’s pompous attitude

The Hazy World Between Sleep And Reality

Last summer I spent an uncomfortable night hooked up to a bunch of machines at the Northwest Hospital sleep clinic. The next morning, after the wires and goo were all removed, it was confirmed; as my doctor and my girlfriend who was ready to eviscerate me because of my snoring had suspected, I have sleep apnea. A week later, I received my fancy new CPAP, just as I had always dreamed of as a child.

CPAP stands for continuous positive air pressure-catchy, I know. What happens is you put on a little mask type thing and air is forced down your windpipes to keep them open, ensuring that you are in fact breathing in your sleep, which I hear is important. Despite being awkward at first, the CPAP has been life changing.

For starters, I actually sleep well, something that I never knew was possible before. It is amazing how much more productive you can be when you don’t wake up every morning feeling hung-over from lack of oxygen and have to skulk through the day like a sleep deprived zombie.

Aside from the obvious health and psychological benefits, another interesting thing has come with treating my sleep apnea. I get up earlier than the GF, which means that I generally go to bed before her. I try to read for a while, but that usually puts me to sleep pretty fast. When Terrell comes to bed, I am usually in the early, light stage of sleep and when I hear her I half wake up and start talking about really strange things.

For example, one night I was laying there laughing. She asked me what was so funny and I replied "it is stupid." Upon further investigation, I admitted that I was laughing about a game where you roller skate around and try to catch chickens! That actually sound pretty fun, but I have no idea where it came from. It has happened several other times. During the Olympics I came up with: "Mr Farnsworth is in the bobsled competition." Mr Farnsworth was my cranky junior high principal and I highly doubt that he was an elite winter athlete of any kind.

The weirdest part is that I remember waking up and talking to her and in my delirious state I feel that what I am saying is totally reasonable and that she is crazy for not understanding. However, I am always totally surprised the next day when she tells me what I was saying. The mind is truly a strange and complicated thing. I hope that I never talk about anything really embarrassing, like the small tail that I had removed when I was a pup...I mean baby.

I'm Starting to Think That This Picasso Character Knew What He Was Doing

For most of my life, I have been a suffering artist. Unfortunately my vision is often a lot larger than my attention span. Put more simply, I want to be a master immediately without putting in the necessary work.

I tried piano lessons as a kid, but that went nowhere. Even at the age of eight I was way to cynical to practice playing "Here we go. Up a row. To a birthday party." Ridiculous.

Luckily music and I clicked in the seventh grade when I took guitar at school. I had always been a fan of classic rock courtesy of the Old Man's record collection, and my ex-hippy guitar teacher was only too happy to teach us how to play that stuff. The beauty about a band like the Beatles and rock in general is that a beginner can learn three chords and start playing good music. It isn't about the technicality, but the soul and the limitless harmonies that you can put on top of simple rhythms. Rock music comes from the intangible, emotional side of the human psyche; something that can't be taught. That being said, after twenty years of obsessing over rock, I like to think that I have learned to channel some of that dark magic. Don't get me wrong, I still grovel at the feet of my idols, some of which peaked and faded away when they were younger than I am now, but I have developed a certain style and I ain't a bad guitarist/ songwriter. Things aren't so easy for me, however, when it comes to paint on canvas.

A few years ago I started keeping a notebook of all my weird ideas. Basically I would think of some kind of play on words when I was flying on coffee and sketch it out. For example, cover a watch in fur and call it a sasque- watch. Too easy.

I am no master artist by any means, but I did start to notice a kind of child like style in my drawings that I thought had potential. Picasso's art reverted to a child like state towards the end of his career, but this was after years of innovative genius. In his case, he had plumbed the depths of what could be done with an image and come full circle, back to the pure joy of simplicity, while my drawing skills just peaked around the age of ten. This may sound harsh, but I am cool with it. Like I said, my pics do have a certain something and my off the wall brain is constantly providing new fodder.

Last Christmas The GFs mom, who is an art teacher, gave me a set of acrylic paints. I was thrilled. With visions of a glamorous art career racing through my head, I set to work.

Turns out painting actually takes time and effort. Boo!

It's not that I am bad, it's just that it takes time. The most frustrating thing to me is the amount of expensive materials that you go through while learning from your mistakes. With guitar, you screw up, start over, and never look back, but with painting you have a defaced twenty dollar canvas to forever remind you of your failure. This can be difficult for a perfectionist like me to deal with.

Yes, learning from your mistakes can be frustrating, but it is also the best way to learn, so I am just going to have to suck it up and keep improving. I figure that in a year or so I will have my first show at MOMA. That should be enough time.

Reentering the Blogosphere: Oxygen Thin, Hard to Breath

When I was a younger man in my mid to late twenties, I had a pretty good little blog. It was nothing earth shattering, mostly just weird updates on my life peppered with the occasional political rant or little known fact about a certain obscure animal. I hope that I helped to convince a few people that Bush was an A-hole or that echidnas, along with the other monotremes are really interesting. I enjoyed it for a while, but the thing is I wasn’t very satisfied with my life at the time. I had good friends and a roof over my head but I just couldn’t seem to break out of the glamorous world of stock room work.

Finally, after several rejections, I earned my place at the trough of higher education and moved east of the Cascades for a year to slurp up a B.A.’s worth of swill. This change in my life prompted me to clean house if you will. Along with selling my Les Paul, my VW, most of my record collection and pretty much every other cool thing that I owned to pay for school, I decided to show everybody what a martyr I was and delete the blog.

I regret all of this now that I am a thirty two year old with a real job who desperately wants to cling to any youth that I can get my hands on. So here you go- a small window into my world. If you are interested or, let’s face it, bored enough to read any of this, I thank you in advance. I hope that you can take something from my vast pool of useless information. I will expect a five page, double spaced report on egg laying mammals on my desk by next Friday.