productivity

Things I do at work when I can't/won't focus:

- painfully basic color studies with text

how does that work out for you

I am

ON....

FIRE.........

with this crappy MS Paint comics thing I am doing, huh.
I present to you the most dignified and successful idea I had all week:



Lessons learned: multitasking for efficiency and time-saving feats of genius not likely to end well when hurrying at 8am, having physically gotten up at 7:51am.

and she probably lives in tahiti

EXCITING NEWS EVERYONE

I made a third installment to Abashed Comics, which you've never heard of before. It is about getting sexually harassed while you are trying to schedule some guy for an evaluation.



Seriously, what a dick. But.... island girls????????

imagine me and you, and you and me

101Dalmatians_004Pikturz, originally uploaded by Pikturz.

I want to talk briefly about the absurd crush I have on Roger Radcliffe from Disney's 1961 version of One Hundred and One Dalmatians. He has many fine qualities, but I think the potent combination of being British, wearing sweater vests, having an all-consuming endearing obsession (music), and having a prominent nose is just the concoction that does me in. Supporting factors are his gangly 60s animated styling and the fact that he scowls in consternation more than once (these last bits are not exclusive to Roger in the pantheon of male Disney characters from the 1960s and 70s, but I think they are displayed most appealingly here). Also, pipe.

Maybe this is an unavoidable sequela from having been spoon-fed so many Disney movies as a child (like any true scion of America), although I can't explain why I would have gravitated so strongly towards the ones set in England. To elaborate: I have far less lasting fondness for Prince Eric, Aladdin, or Belle's Beast, despite owning all three films on VHS from an early age, and thus having watched them upwards of 10 times each, to give a conservative estimate. Those films served more to inculcate Disney's Template of Feminine Wiles in me than anything else - though it's fair to point out that the main protagonist in at least The Little Mermaid and Beauty & The Beast is the female character, so it only follows. Still, I feel nothing for Aladdin, compared with a wistful starry-eyed softness for Robin of Robin Hood (1973), who is not even a human being, and a similar feeling for Arthur/"Wart" from The Sword in the Stone (1963).

I don't really have a point to wrap this up, I'm just saying... Roger has some nice shoes (and socks), and a pipe. And floppy hair.

over the hills and far away

I believe today is the day. One year ago, my friend Andy Woodward passed away in his sleep, the result of a congenital heart failure. I don't want to make the attempt to condense into a silly blog entry all my memories and feelings surrounding the connection I had to him, but suffice it to say that he was a singular person.

Without a doubt, I am a better person for having known him, and to have experienced his powerful trajectory of peculiar individuality. Andy was fucking weird. Weird, brilliant, sometimes off putting, provocative, ludicrous, and almost charged with a desire to live his life to his own standards of person hood. I know that doesn't make any sense. It's hard to describe Andy in a way that is truly Andy.

Look, here's a picture of him and my pal Shannon when we were dumb 16 year olds:

And again, intentionally caressing a guitar case in an unsettling manner:

But I think this photo of us at our informal 5-year high school reunion is my favorite of Andy, as he's grown out of the horror show of adolescence. He graduated from Virginia Tech, and was completing his Master's in education so that he could teach high school English. Here he is, serenely bemused, a little hammy, and finally comfortable in his own skin:

I miss him, and can only helplessly question why someone with his brilliant and good-hearted potential had to turn it all in on account of a bum heart valve. RIP, Andy. May you discomfit all the angels of God's entourage.