What the...?

Freelance

I've been a freelance artist most of my adult life. Why is it whenever I think I'm going to have to get a "real job" (i.e.; Do you want fries with that?") something else always comes along?

So now I'm doing a lot of work and all I did was wake up and read my email? Of course that doesn't mean I wouldn't take the next job in a heartbeat.

C H A S always said I was just lucky. I'd like to think my skill had something to do with it- but who knows?

Surf's up...

We've definitely decided to move to San Clemente. We spent the weekend looking at housing and talking to people in the area. The schools are better than Vegas and the locals are much friendlier.

Logan is doing okay with it. He’s not entirely pleased but he said that he knows we have his best interest in mind. He did seem to like the idea of being able to walk to the beach.

Speaking of Logan- He’s been emailing back and forth with his biological mother the past few weeks. I personally still have a lot of distaste for the woman. Imagine my surprise when I realized that she hadn’t returned to the ninth circle hell (as I had previously thought) but rather ended up in a house on the MN/WI border.

Goin' back to kali...

We're off like a prom dress- to Laguna for the weekend. Checkin' out possible relocation possibilities. Logan (once again) is staying here with the dog. He doesn't like the crowded drive in the back of the non-air conditioned Saturn through the high desert. Whatever? Teenagers huh?

Computer Savvy? Moi?

People always think that I know a lot about computers. I would venture to say that I know more than the average schmo but at the very best I consider myself to be a "software user".

Mark, on the other hand has probably forgotten more than I (or you) will ever know. Case in point; when I asked him to retrieve my old archives from Blogger (see below and to the left) he did so.

Oh, he bitched about it. He also sent me the script he had to write so I would know "exactly what a pain in the ass it was", but he did it. As far as I'm concerned the Internet and my web log runs on elfin magic. Which apparently Mark wields like Gandalf.

Once again my narcissism has been rewarded by my incessant whining. At any rate, thank you Mark.

What a week I'm having-

-and it's only Monday.

So we received a call from Mary Belle last night informing us that once again, Jean (the woman that stole her from Mary in the first place) had gone off the deep end. Considering that the woman takes a constant cocktail of high-end pharmaceutical drugs including OxyCotin, Percocet and Methadone I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

The police came out and told Mary Belle that they were going throw her in drug rehab (Mary Belle not Jean) if they had to come out again. Being that both Mary and I have some experience with people under the influence of mind-altering drugs and given the fact the Jean was speaking to people that were not there as well as threatening suicide if Mary Belle tried to get any help for Jean, we called the police in Edmond ourselves.

I spoke to the dispatch officer and she informed me that the police did indeed realize that Jean was the problem and not Mary Belle. I told her that Jean had threatened suicide and most probably needed to be under a 72 hour evaluation.

The officer informed me that they would send another squad out and they would call us for verification. They did send out a squad, they did not call us for verification. Apparently unlike the rest of the country the police in Mayberry can make psych evals without the benefit of medical school. God save us from podunk Oklahoman police.

On top of that I spoke to my ex-wife this morning after ten years. I get the feeling that this is going to be one of those weeks.

On the lighter side I did get an email from an old friend this morning that also has a web log. Check it out here.

Whatever happened to Kim Richards?

When I was a kid I saw a movie called Escape To Witch Mountain. Being that I was around ten years old I was quite impressed with it.

Mostly I was impressed with the lead child actress in it; Kim Richards. I thought Kim was just the Bees Knees. The last time I remember seeing Kim in anything was in the 1985 movie called
Tuff Turf. A very apropos name as the said “turf” was extremely “tuff”.

At any rate I was having one of those "what ever happened to" moments this morning and figured I find out where Kim ended up with the amazing power of the Internet.

Turns out I wasn't the only geek that wondered that. Check it out here at Kim Richards.net

Screw Vegas Baby

So essentially I've had it with Las Vegas. Nothing here interests me in the least. Not the video poker, proliferation of swimming pools, and especially not the ridiculous amount of Trashe de Blanc that seem to infest the city.

Mary and I have decided to move when our lease is up here. The only real drawback is that Logan likes his high school. I spoke to my mom today and she’s willing to move out here when she is done with school and get an apartment for her and Logan if he wants to come back then and finish it out.

The really annoying thing is that so many people told us not move here in the first place. People that had lived here before, and people that just knew Mary and I well enough to know that we would hate it here.

"Hate"; is good word to describe my feelings about Las Vegas. It's basically a morally bereft chunk of over developed desert. People here seem to be only interested in their own personal gain. Although I suppose you could argue that people are like that just about anywhere - there seems to be some sort of mission statement about it in Vegas. I guess the old saying is true, You can polish a turd but it’s still just a turd. Albeit a shiny neon lit turd.

We're looking at Diamond Bar and Covina CA now as a possibilities. We're also considering Lake Forest, San Clemente, and of course Laguna Beach.

The Return of Cafe DNA

At some point while I was living San Francisco (wow! in the mid-nineties-doesn't seem that long ago) I was invited to join an AOL group about comics. The small group eventually became a huge international group of comic artists/geeks (such as myself) and known as Cafe DNA.

After leaving AOL, we were hosted for several years by Wizard magazine. Eventually things changed there and we were left without a home.

But after a long absence we are back. Check it out Cafe DNA

Shoes Democracy

FCCked

Does anybody but me find it more than a little disconcerting that the Chairman of the FCC is Colin Powell's son? I mean could that have anything to do with patriotic fervor and ultra conservative biased in which the media is presenting our holy war against Iraq?

More Moore...

Selected passages from the Michael Moore newsletter...

"-- On the day after I criticized Bush and the war at the Academy Awards, attendance at "Bowling for Columbine" in theaters around the country went up 110% (source: Daily Variety/BoxOfficeMojo.com). The following weekend, the box office gross was up a whopping 73% (Variety). It is now the longest-running consecutive commercial release in America, 26 weeks in a row and still thriving. The number of theaters showing the film since the Oscars has INCREASED, and it has now bested the previous box office record for a documentary by nearly 300%."

"--I tell you all of this because I want to counteract a message that is
told to us all the time -- that, if you take a chance to speak out
politically, you will live to regret it. It will hurt you in some way,
usually financially. You could lose your job. Others may not hire you.
You will lose friends. And on and on and on.

Why is that? Because there is nothing more important now than to keep the voices of dissent -- and those who would dare to ask a question --SILENT.

And what better way than to try and take a few well-known entertainers down with a pack of lies so that the average Joe or Jane gets the message loud and clear: "Wow, if they would do that to the Dixie Chicks or Michael Moore, what would they do to little ol' me?" In other words, shut the f--- up.

And that, my friends, is the real point of this film that I just got an
Oscar for -- how those in charge use FEAR to manipulate the public into doing whatever they are told."

via Michael Moore

Digital Journalism

Casualties by Patrick J. Sloyan - amazing work.

via Marc

Howard Zinn Interview

This interview with Howard Zinn, author of "A People's History of the United States," was conducted by Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine, on Friday, March 21. Fascinating listening....

via The Progressive

But Richie Rich is a fascist!

I have this theory that people are influenced by the minutia surrounding the circumstances of their life whether it's true ot not. When I was younger and drawing comic books people were always a bit unclear about what I did exactly (what I do is even more confusing now). I would say that I drew comic books and about 65% of them thought I meant Sunday comics. About 34% thought I was a stand up comedian. There was of course the 1% that were bigger geeks than me (yes they do exist!) and understood exactly what I did.

When I was around four years old, my grandmother surprised me with a stack of old comics that belonged to my mother and my (13 years) older uncle during a Summer stay with her. This would have been around 1969-70 for me. I started drawing then with encouragement of my grandmother and never really stopped.

That means that the comics she gave me were from the early 1950’s (when my uncle went off to Korea) and the early 1960’s (pre-Kennedy assassination) before my mom discovered boys. Basically two extremes of comic content and style. One stack was pre-comics code the other was the aftermath. In the 1950’s the Comics Code authority did not exist and comics were pretty amazing. Especially horror comics. In particular EC horror comics. Right up until Dr. Fredric Wertham decided that comics were bringing about juvenile delinquency in his book Seduction of the Innocent.

The people that I would tell what my job was, would depending on their age, believe that I either did horribly graphic and vile (juvenile delinquent producing) work or sickly sweet but imaginative stories featuring super-heroes.

I think that because people that were impressionable pre-teens in the 1950’s (the target market of most comic companies) were told (this was during HUAC remember) that comics cause all sorts of the world’s ill’s the believed it.

These people were also told the marijuana cigarette could lead to a lot of sketchy if not downright evil things. So essentially my theory consists of the idea that if people are told to think a certain way that is pretty much what they do. Whether it’s the belief in the evil of marijuana or comics, or the communist threat for that matter. It’s not much of theory I know, but at least I’m not stoned and reading horrific comics any more. I’m reasonably sure that I’m not a delinquent any longer either…although that is dependent on who you ask.

via Dueling Modems

Thanks for the link Emberly.