Fugitive from the Law!

After a fun time of riding dirt bikes and quads in the sand dunes of Glamis, California, I got an early-morning ticket from a sheriff for rolling through a stop sign. Turned out my license had expired as well, so the guy was being a dick and said that I couldn't even drive my car to park it, so he would have to tow it. Then he went back to his SUV sheriff car and made me wait another 10 minutes while I cursed myself and the futility of it all, and besides, who makes these dang laws that won't even let you drive 50 yards to park your car? F'in ridiculous!!

He came back and said, "Okay I'm going to let you park your car at the Motel 8. but don't drive it anywhere else. If you do, we will take your car. So call someone to come and pick up you and your car" (meaning that two people would have to come). My options were to call my fmaily that was still sleeping at Glamis and ruin their trip by making them leave Glamis early OR calling someone (two people) from LA to travel about 200 miles to come get me and the car. The cop left me and I thought to myself, "There is truly only one option". I called my sister's boyfriend Trey for moral support and any extra angles on the subject. He said to wait 4 minutes then book. I'm not saying I drove away, but I am saying me and my car were gone about 30 seconds after I got off the phone with Trey.

Spain Sketchbook 005

This was the first drawing I did in the sketchbook, and I did it in Atlanta, Georgia at some airport restaurant while waiting for my connecting flight. There's nothing to speak of in terms of inspiration, other than the tight haircut, which was loosely based on a waitress.

My problem with this drawing? The short torso.

Spain Sketchbook 004

Yet another page. The girl was a quick sketch of someone I saw. The dude came from the ether.

Public Transportation...Wow!

Bob Bowen organized some folks to have drinks at The Cat & Fiddle of Hollywood. "Hey great, I'll take public transporation to get there", I thought. The ORANGE LINE connects to the RED LINE which has a stop at Hollywood and Highland, a mere 15 minute walk from the bar.

The ORANGE LINE is a special street route built for the exclusive use of silver and orange "articulated" buses, long caterpillar-like vehicles connected together with what looks like a foil dryer duct. I don't keep tabs on the LA public transportation scene, but I knew the Orange Line was coming long before most people, probably because practically WENT THROUGH MY BACK YARD.

The RED LINE is our superb subway system, which takes you in a straight line to about two useful places. Many people fear premature burial in the RED LINE during an earthquake. People are always surprised to hear that there's a subway system in LA, especially the people who live here.

Anyway, the point of all this is to say that CRAZY PEOPLE RIDE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. Why oh why can't you get on one of these things and not experience the sheer sweaty hell of broken humans? I get on, take a seat near the driver and soon notice the musculed sweaty, intense guy in the headband standing near the driver. He's listening to headphones and he's making these jerky dance moves, punctuated by grunts and half-words, presumably in sync with the rock music which is almost distinct from 5 feet away.

He starts pacing the aisle back and forth in front of me, laughing to himself, stopping to do his rough dance, stepping down into the exit stairwell, and then taking his position at the front of the bus again. I wonder which pass will bring with it a fist to my face or possibly strangulation. He again descends to the exit stairwell, just to my left. He does his most energetic dance thus far, then giggles to himself and says, "All the cars have hairs". Acid is what he's on, I think. More dancing, and then in a commanding clear tone he twice demands, "Come in London!". I guess it's conceivable that he had a special cell-phone connection to England, but the more logical scenario is that he was receiving special "transmissions" from London that ony he could hear. My fear turned into amusement, but I still didn't dare make eye contact with him.

On the next stop, he exited the bus and hopefully the rest of my life. Who are the crazy bus dancers out there? I've asked this once and I'll ask again..."How do crazy people know to ride the bus?!". How do they know to pay, to wait at the right place, to not jump in front of it as it approaches? How?

As for the subway RED LINE portion of the night, there were no crazy people, just loud Mexican American girls cussing at eachother in a friendly manner and two Mexican guys with a PSP playing a really loud videogame. I was surprised to hear Grandmster Flash's "Scorpio" coming from the game. A pleasant surprise.

Oh yeah, the best line from those Mexican girls..."Would you give me like the biggest cigarette in the world for Christmas?". Her friend says, "Yeah, I would". Now that is heartwarming. The subway ride was very quick, and as I stepped out onto the Hollywood and Highland exit and saw all the bad teenage kids clogging up the revamped street corner, I thought, "Hollywood still sucks ass".

Spain Sketchbook 003

Great...another guy with a beard. Perhaps my own beard which I sported at the time and yes, even now, crept into my drawing.

Nothing to do with Spain, this guy trickled out from the very hand that drew it. What was I thinking at the time? Hmmm. I think I wanted to draw something with a clear attitude. He's supposed to be a black guy. And what is his attitude? I don't know. He looks a little pissed off, a little villainous and perhaps even offended by your presence.

My major gripe with this sketch? I didn't put some convincing swooping wrinkles on his out-turned left leg. His left...not the picture's left.

Spain Sketchbook 002

I can't remember what prompted this picture. Maybe it started with a brief glimpse of a woman on the train from Sitges (a beach town) to some other town that I can't remember the name of which turned out to be a crappy excursion. When we look at this drawing, we must think, "What will I eat for dinner tonight?". And another thing, I'm sort of turned off by these types of expressions where people look all self-satisfied. Come on, it's so ridiculous. Can't she have a little pain her life? What the hell does she have to be so "at peace" about?!

Spain Sketchbook 001

I did some doodling in Spain. I'm not saying the stuff is great, but at least I was drawing. Here's page one. As I remember it, I was inspired by a dude walking and tugging on his pants. Hey look! Whaddya know...the guy in the picture is doing the same thing. Wow. Wow!

You know what I hate about this drawing? The head. It's not in the right spot...the "neck" is off-center. It just doesn't fit right. Plus, the beard is probably an attempt to salvage what was turning out to be a crappy face anyway. He looks like a dang hippy. Oh, why? Why why why why why? And what's going on with his mouth? Is his tongue coming out the side? I don't know. I just don't know.

Flash Drawing 002

Dammit, I just wrote a post and uploaded it and nothing happened, so here I am again. I hate repeating myself. The short story is that I hate seeing hack furniture in background design (I work in animation) and I love it when background designers actually go the extra mile to use nice furniture in their designs. With that in mind, I felt like drawing a chair...

Wait...I just found the original post. In the interest of redundancy, here it is:
I am really disgusted by that typical couch you see in animation...you know the one with the two arms that sort of bend out to the sides. Jeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzz! Haven't we seen enough of that freakin' couch? I'm an animation director at the moment, and it's always exciting when a background designer actually puts in cool-looking furniture. This heavy issue was on my mind, so I drew a chair. It doesn't look very functional, but who cares?

Flash Drawing 001

This is the first in a series of drawings done in Flash, which is quite nicely suited to my often scratchy mode of work.

Why Life Sucks

Since Friday morning, I have been feeling a small stinging sense of crapiness.

Bob Bowen, Ira Sherak, John Aoshima and I spent about 12 hours today working on a "video scavenger hunt" project, and for what result? Total, humiliating garbage. Unwatchable. The most satisfying part was working up the nerve to show the video to the crowd at Titmouse Studio, then laughing and crying hysterically from the overwhelming shame of it all. John and Ira had already left, so it was up to Bob and myself to bear the load. And we did, dammit, like the men of old. We were not proud of our failure, but Bob does own the only copy available on Earth, and he will hopefully destroy it tomorrow night.

That is all.

Jeff Levy Hooked Me Up

It is unlikely among my <1 readers that any of you have heard of Jeff Levy. He is a radio talk show host who hosted a computer-centric based program on KFI for years. It was stylishly called "On Computers”, and even though I'm an Apple fan and Jeff pretty much addressed Windows machines, I still somehow found the show interesting. He had a knack for inserting a slightly blue-cheesy vaudeville sense of humor.

Anyhow, I was walking the dog sisters Chuy and Scout and decided to stop at the donut shop around the corner to get a little somethin' somethin' when this older man approached and asked what kind of dogs they were. I don't really know what they are...Retriever/Lab/Australian Shephard? Anyway, he told me about his adventures in adopting rescue dogs, culminating with a $7500 Doberman. And it has a passport from italy, he exclaimed. He said that he could mentally communicate with dogs and showed me his "dog training techniques". I was curious at first, until his first command was something like, "Okay, don't roll over". He then proceeded through about two more jokey commands, then we made way to the donut shop doors. He told me that anybody who liked dogs was "alright in his book" then insisted on purchasing my cappucino and croissant.

I thought he was an eccentric rich guy (he had a newer white Jaguar), and when he gave me my stuff he noticed my iPod. He told me that he had a website, "www.jefflevy.com" and then I instantly knew who this phlegmy-voiced comedic angel was. I gave him some props and told him that it was a pleasure and he assured me that we would see eachother again. So there you have it. My brush with radio aristocracy. Perhaps I will see Jeff Levy again. And when I do, I'll tell him you said hello.

http://www.jefflevy.com/default.aspx

My Sister Broke her Back

My sister is my dentist.

And I was on my way to have her veneer my dead-nerved and discolored left front tooth. Only about 30 seconds from home, I was checking a cell phone message from her office, saying to give Sandi (my sister) a call on her cell. She answered and in a woozy voice said, "I broke my back." I said "Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?!". How often do you hear of someone you know breaking their back? It sounds crazy.

She was riding a dunebuggy and hit a hard bump, and on landing felt that something had gotten out of whack. I instantly thought of paralysis, but she can luckily move everything and was even painfull walking around and working for two days! Thinking it was a simple thing, she went to a chiropractor, who told her that she had a misaligned disc or something like that AND THEN PROCEEDED TO ADJUST HER BACK!! When she went to the doctor the next day (I think) and got a cat-scan, the doctor told her that she had a broken back and that the chiropractor was of course an idiot to do anything to her, and that she could have been paralyzed by the "adjustment"! The doctor put her in a back brace and sent her off with some pain medicine.

The cat-scan or xray (I forget which) revealed that, as Sandi said, "It looks like someone took a hammer and cracked one of my vertebrae". I guess that there's all kinds of fragmentation going on. She was waiting to get an appointment with her real doctor, who is an orthopedic specialist, and when I last talked to her, he was finally on the phone calling her.

Anyway, the discomfort finally got too much for her to work another day, so my long-awaited tooth veneering is on hold.

The Slowly Evolving Bathroom

I humbly admit that I have not been very diligent about finishing the redecoration of the "vanity area" of the guest bathroom. Yeah, we've been in this house at least two years. Why can't I remember how long? There you have an example of my inexact memory. Anyway, now that my hiatus from work is coming to an end, I wanted to be able to go back to work knowing that the cabinets were in and the wallwork around them finished and perhaps even primed for painting.

I built the simple cabinets out of birch wood. They're basicly open boxes with slots for glass shelves, which I have already had cut to size. You'd think it'd be easy to make a simple box, but it took a long time to get those cabinets right. In the process, I bought a nail gun for my Sears Craftsman compressor, which I scored from my brother Jerry after he bought a better one.

Back to the bathroom. I should be commended for gutting out the old double-sink cabinets, ripping out the old boring floor tile, installing the little blue wall tiles (my first tiling job ever), installing a new sink (which involved my first copper pipe work ever), and installing the little hexagonal floor tiles, which were a real pain around the curved profile of the bathtub. And don't even ask about the bathtub/toilet area...that whole thing needs to be redone too. Although I did put in floor tile there too.