Image for September 21, 2011 - Public Service Announcement

I was behind this truck while driving home and had to grab a photo of this gentlemen's message to the world that he has carefully spelled out in little metallic mailbox letters. The message reads:

#1
MESS WITH THE BEST
DIE LIKE THE REST

Now, I am puzzled. Is he "The Best" and if so, wouldn't he have a nicer truck if he were? Perhaps he's a minion for "The Best" and is required to communicate his master's philosophy to us all?

I occasionally see these kind of homespun mini-billboards on the backs of vehicles, usually very old, poorly maintained vans or trucks. The message topics generally are religious, but a few are of the macho variety like this one. They are always on men's vehicles, I have never seen a woman riding around with some odd quip sloppy applied to their ride, so a point for women.

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500 miles

It was a lovely gray, fall-like day today and I hiked six miles. Those six miles brought me to five hundred miles total so far for the year. My goal is seven hundred miles. Just two hundred miles to go. I'm coming into my favorite season to hike, fall and I look forward to chasing down each and everyone of those miles. I am thinking ahead into the new year and it may be time to go big. There are some dreams that need to be pursued. What else is there?

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Hill Billy Highway Book Cover Design

My buddy Chad Nance of Weird Load Nation fame has a book coming out soon called "Hill Billy Highway". It's a Thompsonesque (as in Hunter S.) take on the South and politics and wild living. Chad approached me a couple of months ago to come up with some cover designs for him. I was glad to give it a try, been a while since I have had a fun design project. This was not my first book cover having done one for my Uncle Gunnard a few years back for his mystery book "The North Shore". Lucky for Chad (and me), I had a wealth of great photos to work from provided by our mutual friend,  Casey Gwinn. Not only is Casey a great photographer, but he was Chad's sidekick and documented many of the adventures described in the tome. Casey also does a blog of his photos called COGfoto check it out. I believe there may also be photos from one or two other folks used in the final design you see pictured, so Casey or Chad, weigh-in with a comment and give credit where it is due. Now, I need to get back to work on my own book...

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UPDATE - Just confirmed, "Hill Billy Highway" will be released October 1, 2011!

Image for September 14, 2011 - Save the Turtles!

I've been having lots of wildlife encounters lately, maybe it's the time of year or maybe it's because I'm always on the lookout. In this case, I came across this tiny, baby snapping turtle in the middle of a sidewalk, nowhere near water or the woods. He was a sweet little guy, didn't move much. I couldn't tell if he was playing dead or was really not feeling well. I do know that I wasn't going to leave him on the sidewalk where he'd likely get stepped on, so I mounted a rescue effort and drove him to a nearby marsh and put him by the water. I tried to give him a fighting chance at life.

Now, let me tell you the story about the time I found a baby snake in my kitchen...

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Image for September 12, 2011 - Bigfoot's on the Loose!

Was out the other day and came across this suspicious footprint. Just for reference, that is my foot for comparison and I wear a size eleven. My god, whatever left that track must be HUGE!

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Image for September 6, 2011 - The Last Picture Show

Tonight I was out doing a little shopping and went by Pembroke Mall in Virginia Beach and saw a demolition crew working hard on the back corner of the complex taking down the former Regal Cinema Eight movie theaters. There is another Regal cinema right across the street that gets all the first run films and blockbusters. The old Pembroke theaters would get the big movies after they had been out for a month and the crap horror movies and "urban" comedies and weird stuff that might play one week before disappearing.  I have no sentimental attachment to that particular movie house, it was just another charmless, corporate box, but I did see a lot of movies there. The most memorable was probably "28 Days Later", not so much because of the film itself (though it is a great film), but because some moron in the audience took a cell phone call in the middle of the movie and answered in a normal, full voiced volume that instantly drew the ire of the crowd, myself included. The clueless person kept talking, now defiant and the crowd piled on, with yells of "SHUT UP!" and "TAKE IT OUTSIDE!". The lady (I use the term loosely) finally finished her call and shouted back, "Y'all need to be shutting up!", prompting one more round of verbal abuse from the mob, before everyone quieted down and we all settled back into Danny Boyle's savage zombie epoch.

Here's an incomplete list of movies I saw at the now gone Regal Pembroke Eight:

• 28 Days Later
• Solaris
• Predators
• Inglorious Basterds
• The Mist

There were many more, but that's all that comes to mind right now.

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Image for August 31, 2011 - Don't Tread on Me

While securing the yard before the hurricane, I found this snake coiled up underneath one of the clay pots. It was small, about as big around as my little finger. It was so still when I first noticed it, that I thought it might be dead. Then I noticed what I thought were eggs around it and considered that maybe it was a momma sitting in her nest. With Irene approaching, I decided I couldn't leave this serpent to the elements, so I put another clay pot back over her, making sure to leave a little escape tunnel. Now that I'm looking at the photo and can study this snake in more detail, I got to wonder, is this a rattler? The end of the tale is there was nothing under the pot when I checked later.  No snake, no eggs only new knowledge that I need to be careful where I poke around in my yard.

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Image for August 29, 2011 - The Aftermath

So the sun did come up Sunday morning as the last dregs of Irene drained from the sky to our north. We woke-up to no power (expected) and a yard carpeted in small branches and leaves. I set the grill up so we could make some coffee and breakfast, then we set to the task to return our life back to normal. The air was clean and bright like an Edward Hopper painting and my gal and I were glad to be alive. All things considered, we got damn lucky. We finished our chores and got out on the beach for a long walk. It was the perfect day to walk along the shore. Irene left the beach, packed, flat and wide and it seemed everyone was out enjoying the calm. Came across this pelican dead on the sand. Can only guess that the storm was too much for the old boy and the wind dropped him here. A sad reminder that lives were lost in this storm, five in our area alone. No one I knew took any serious hit, in fact most didn't even lose power (we are still without power as of this morning, but a minor hassle). I'm grateful to be done with last week, a week that brought us an earthquake and hurricane. Here's hoping that September is more peaceful.

zahdah!

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Hurricane Irene - Noon Report from the Front Line!

Here's the second video. I ventured out and across the street. A little lull right now, but lots more weather to come!

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Hurricane Irene - First video update

Here is my first video posting on the storm.

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Image for 8-26-2011 - Hello Irene...

 Here's the current Weather Underground WunderMap of the approaching Hurricane, Irene. It's been a few years since we've had to ride out a storm threat like this. The last couple of big hits have been Nor-easters that can be every bit as bad as a hurricane. We are staying in our beach house across the street from the Chesapeake Bay. If the storm were a strong three or higher, we would be hightailing it to the mountains. As it is, we'll ride this one out; have all the supplies and are ready for whatever Irene can throw at us. I took a couple of "before the storm" photos of the beach and the houses across the street that will take the full fury of the storm. I'll get the "after" photos Sunday and post'em. We are all hoping for a few down branches to clean up on Sunday and a brief power outage, but know that it'll probably be worse then that. To any of my friends in the path of this monster, be safe, no surfing, stay away from the windows and keep that supply of SPAM and liquor handy (same plan as the zombie apocalypse). I'll check-in after the storm has moved on.

All the best!

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Happy Birthday Bukowski

Hank would have been 91 today. It's amazing he lasted as long as he did considering how hard he tried to end sooner. I stumbled on Bukowski through a great article about him in Film Comment magazine when "Barfly" was coming out and it made me curious enough to get one of his books, "Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame" and it branded my vision. The older I get, the more I understand what he laid down. There is a directness and truth to his writing that never fails to pierce my soul and help burn the bullshit away. Here's a little taste of Hank reading "dinosauria, we". Reminds me of Leonard Cohen's "The Future". Get a good jar of the red, close your eyes and listen to this:



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Images for August 15, 2011 - Bring Out the Gimp

Here's another sculpture I did many years ago. He was one of a series of little busts that I sketched up in Sculpey, a polymer clay. I usually painted them with acrylic paints, but this one was never painted. I recently was surfing up what other artist are doing with Sculpey and found a whole group doing some fantastic sci-fi and fantasy genre stuff. One of my favorites are The Shiflett Brothers. Their work continues the same epic sense of adventure and power that painters like Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo are so well-known for. Looking at their work and going back and reexamining my own from back-in-the-day, is making me a little itchy to push some clay around again...

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Images for August 14, 2011 - African Mask Drawing

Got a little drawing done today. I have to get my skills sharpen in anticipation for the Monster Drawing Rally in Richmond at the 1708 Gallery later this month.

This is a "Gabun, Bakota figure" that I drew from an old book titled, "Primitive Art: It's Traditions and Styles". I like this piece because it is so abstract and alien. After finishing the drawing I noticed how asymmetrical the main form is of my version  compared to the original and I'm OK with that. The aim of the exercise was not to perfectly replicate the photograph; I may have well just scanned the photo and posted that, instead I wanted to filter it through my hand, brain and heart and see what happened.

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