Happy Turkey Day

Gouache on sketchbook paper. Hey, actual media for a change.

Be safe and have a good weekend all. Me and the family are driving down to L.A. to visit my folks. With all the challenges of the past few months I am very gratified to have family to see and that we're all still here. A wish for all the best to everyone.

Come home safe and take it easy with the stuffing.

Berkeley & Bay Area Crawl

I just finished posting my meager two drawings from my Sketchcrawl. Hey, it is a sketchcrawl if you stay put? I didn't but just thought about it now. Anyway, I did in two locations but remained local. Too many people about on Fourth street and their all out to get a jump on their shopping. The madness is beginning. If you want to see my sketches you can visit them, if you dare, here.

Sketchcrawl on November 21--it's gone global.

Getting the lead out. On your marks, gentlemen. Sunday, November 21 (or every third Sunday of November) is now and forever going to be "Sketchcrawl" Sunday. So, say we all. "All who?" You ask? These people.

Why "Sketchcrawl?" Well, my pal and partner in self-publishing crime, Enrico Casarosa and I have this predilection to drawing our immediate environment into sketchbooks (we are also in the habit of stocking up on sketchbooks when in the vicinity of an art store because you'll never know when you'll find that you've just jotted down on the very last page of the book and not another one is on hand to start. Catastrophe).

Also, one day, our pal Nate Stanton was to have a his last bachelor night out last year and we all got together to do a "Pub Crawl." A drinking pilgrimage that had us hitting pre-determined bars to end up at the bar closest to the water in the city. We didn't get that far but we certainly were so many sheets to the wind on that rainy night that a literal crawl would be inevitable. Anyway, it was a memorable night--Nate tells me that one point I had hopped on top of a dumpster and started declaiming. I don't have any memory of this but he says that he has photos to incriminate...er, substantiate this wild claim.

So, that's how Enrico came to coin the phrase, "Sketchcrawl." You just replace the drinking and inebriated high-jinx with a small watercolor set, sketchbook and add interesting neighborhood. Draw liberally and, Viola! Images to show for about that weekend and memories seared into your psyche even better than photographs could muster.

Check out the various cities from all over the world who've caught the bug and will have members in their vicinity drawing and posting their sketches. It's really taken off. Leave it to Enrico to start a small revolution. He just doesn't know what to do with himself. Actually, he will be doing his crawl while in Japan. I will be here in SF that Sunday doing the same. But on the first weekend of December I will join our stalwart Italian artist/globetrotter in and about Shinjuku and maybe do a joint crawl there as well.

Sketchcrawl.com

Sketchcrawl international Forum

Enrico Casarosa

Wordcount

Wordcount is an interesting experiment and is good for those party opening factoids that you can drop in any gathering, "Did you know that the most frequently used word in the entire English language is 'THE'?" Well, okay, that doesn't quite set the room on fire but the ranking of some words become interesting in how high or low they are relative to each other--as well as the words around them since words are always used in very common phrases and sentences.

So, it's interesting to note that "money" ranks 227, while "love" ranks lower at 384 (check out the words next to "love" and you might be reminded of a rather hackeneyed slogan from a 1970 movie). "War" gets bandied about more than "peace" and to see by how much seems to indicate why it's not so strange we're in this fix. And it's not totally a surprise but "food" ranks higher than "sex."

It's a nice distraction, nice and playful--that is, until one puts in "America." Go ahead.

I'm in a foul mood

I could tell you all about it but I've decided against it. I wrote a long rant about what's been bugging me lately and I am chucking it. All because it is just that sort of behaviour that's been getting me into some fixes lately. The frustration will just have to find another outlet. Inhale...zen...exhale...

I'll feel better next week. I hope.

___________________

Anyway, something to make me feel better. Amazing artists with astounding talent. I find myself relishing their online galleries and wishing they had more. Javier Olivarez is such an artist I think. That image above is his. I don't know him or even remember how I came to visit his website. I troll for art and design and every once and a while I find something in the net that makes all the muck I dredge up worth it. Here's another image:

And speaking of amazing artists, isn't it about time for a Tadahiro Uesugi update? After a month or two of silence--just a quess, could be longer--Master Uesugi blesses us who are rabid about his work with another column of great art. Give yourself a treat and walk back from the precipice--there's great beauty in the world after all.

Sigh.

We get the leaders we deserve Part Deux

The numbers have spoken. There are more people in this country who want the incumbent back for another term. There.

Not enough people were that displeased with his administration. Oh, they had misgivings or moments when they wince at his singular way of having brain vapor lock, but a good part of the country can overlook that to see that he's just the kind of man they want in office regardless. That is more worrysome than having Dubya again.

A transformation is apparent now, in ways that were not imaginable before, because we have a clear picture of who we are as a nation. Polarized to a clear degree we are faced with a grim future of "Us" and "Them."

Sometimes I would be watching a movie with a group and invariably someone would venture a version of the movie we just saw and I would wonder, "what movie did you see?" The opinion would be valid, as all opinions have a right to be, but I would be perplexed to the point of brain meltdown, "How can you possibly have come to that conclusion?" This is what this election is to me: more than half of the nation had seen Bush--church going, moral, if albeit verbally challenged--lead a proud nation into battle to avenge a wrong and found a bad man across the ocean to deal American justice to. Just like in the movies of old. This is powerful, down home myth-making stuff. Plain spoken and neighborly. Gun-owning but God-fearing. A potent combination that could not be punctured by any arguments that would tarnish that laconic hero visage. Logic or reason hadn't a snowball's chance. WMD's? Oh, well. A bad man is in jail, ain't he? You're safer, right?

John Kerry, though formidable, is not that kind of candidate. He deserved the very people who voted for him. There just wasn't enough of them. He had no hero-myth built into him coming into this election. Oh, he fought in Vietnam, of course. An actual soldier in the field of battle with live bullets and actual enemy combatants. He made the mistake of having trouble with his conscience about a war in Asia. Those little people we were trying to save. Really, we were. He wasn't a soldier all out for an American war. That's bad if you're going to run for the highest office in the land. Oh, he had other flaws, to be sure, but at least his sentences were understandable and he can say, "nuclear."

That's my opinion. Congratulations to the President. I hope he can see that on the other side of his victory are people who disagree with him but still part of his rule.

Vote!

Every four years someone's going to hear from me. And I am so glad to have that opportunity today. Just plain, garden variety speaking out by checking a box to let the world know what you want. The ones who would tinker with this election or try to mangle the outcome will still have to do something to erase my vote. That's full knowlege tampering that someone will have to do and live with for the rest of their days on this planet. And to those people I say, I hope you have a friend in your local drug store who can supply you with prescription sleep aids. And if you are not bothered in the least, I know that you'll be comfortable with even more elaborate black deeds and you'll make a mistake someday. I'll be reading about it, waking to my morning coffee after a good night's sleep and watch your world crumble around you.

Comeupance is a bitch.