The 2nd annual Fakes-giving was a great success. There was lots of food and lots of smiling faces. I made that turkey and I can assure you it looked (and tasted) much better in person. Gwen made some sweet potatoes and delicious stuffing and Heather made a wonderful apple crisp.

I had a great time.

Now I'm off to Tampa, FL for the "real" Thanksgiving.

The Flower Shop Boys

Yesterday, I visited the Flower Shop Boys. I hadn't been to their wonderful living-space-former-flower-shop since they moved there in mid-June. They have converted the green house into a screening room/theater and the downstairs is now a neighborhood computer lab. It's real popular with all the local kids, who can go there and play computer games for free and hang out with cool older kids. Everything was going well and John-the-Canadian was patting himself on the back for how nicely they were contributing to the neighborhood, when the police kicked open his door. He tells the story like this. He was sitting in his room in his underpants, there was a knock on his door, then a female officer who was holding a big flashlight kicked it open. About ten more cops entered and they searched the whole place. They were looking for a teenage run-away who had visited the computer lab before. They suspected that the Flower Shop Boys were letting the run-away live there. They went into the basement, and found the creepy maze they had built for Halloween, with fake severed limbs and fake blood on the walls. I guess it didn't have a good impact on the police officers that went down there. The FS Boys said that if the run away ever shows up again, they'll tell him to call his parents and let them know he's OK.

Action Jeans!

1. Nice crotch shot.
2. What the hell does, "You're the champion of this Century" mean?
3. "We'll Knock'em Out!" What? Who is "we" and who are we knocking out?

This is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Halloween Week

We've been celebrating Halloween every day here in sunny Los Angeles. It took me three months, but I've finally grown enough leg hair for my costume. Wednesday, we went to a Vaudville show at El Cid and were the only ones in costume. Heather went as an active senior and I had my gym teacher outfit on. Last night, we got pulled over on the way to the dance-off. It always happens when I'm in the car. At least it was a real nice lady cop (Heather had a tail light out). She even gave us directions to Farmer Boys for grilled cheese sandwiches.



Leg hair

Heather

Me, the Coach.

More Detroit

There are lots of nice, castle-looking buildings.



This is the gigantic totally abandoned train station.

Detroit

I had a fine time taking a day trip to Detroit on Friday. I took some real nice pictures of blight and decay that I think I shall paint from soon. Here are some of my favorites:

A work related poem

I found this poem in the ladies bathroom at work. I think it's about working for the NSF/NORC and hooded sweatshirts and appreciating time by oneself.
















"Ask around the hood to see if I put in work
That's why the hood got my back like a sweat shirt.
I can go anywhere 'n be all woody
Only time the hood got yo back is when u wear the hoody
I knock on wood so I wont jinx myself
I could enjoy my own company by myself
get cha gun
lil 'nigga I got yourself
Dont let me go in the closet and get that thing off that shelf"

John the Canadian

John-the-Canadian slept on my couch for a couple weeks while he was in town shooting his road trip video about contemporary male identity. He split his time between working on the video and hanging out with a bunch of young Lacanian Marxist hobos and the Flower Shop Boys, six painters/new media students who live in an old flower shop and have a lot of idealism and good manners.




John-the-Canadian and a Flower Shop Boy.



The Flower Shop Boys hope to open up a free neighborhood internet center here.




The Greenhouse. This space is just hugely pregnant with possibilities.


I got John-the-Canadian to help me shoot a fundraising video for The Garden Center, a non-profit work center for the developmentally delayed. At the Garden Center, the term they prefer instead of "developmentally delayed" is "consumer". I guess by calling the D&D's consumers, which we all are, it maybe is supposed to normalize everything? I don't know.


John-the-Consumer with John-the-Canadian



John seemed quiet and moody much of the time during his stay. I thought it was something I did, but I soon found out it was because one of the rail-hopping French-Canadian hobos had broken his heart. Lucky for him, John has so many friends and so many plans that I don't see him being heart-broken for long. Soon J-the-C will be back on the road headed north to Canada and perhaps in another two years will blow back through the Midwest. Happy travels, JR.

A Hair Piece in the Road

Lonely hair piece in the road,
How did you get there?
Whose hair did you hold?

Who did you know?
How far have you come?
and how far could you go?

Do drivers mistake you for a dead squirrel?
When you are so much more.
So much lonely hair piece, so much more.

Lincoln Park Zoo

Look at these cute kids. I went to the zoo today with Aunty Nancy and her darling photogenic children. They could be child models. Nancy's been sitting on two cash cows.

Travel Stories- Texas!

Tyler with five kinds of barbequed meat.

Travel Stories- Texas!

The cowboy is sad that John's Guns is closed.

Travel Stories- Texas!

Real Streets in Texas:

Pack Saddle Pass
Old Potato Road
South Old Potato Road
Paint Creek
Squirrel Run

Travel Stories- Texas!

In Texas, one can drink liquor outside on the street or one can walk down the block with a beer in hand until one's arrival at the next bar. Texas- what a nutty place!

Travel Stories- Texas!

I spent the weekend in Texas, both College Station, TX and Austin. Texas is everything I thought it would be. I had been in Texas for no more than 10 minutes when I saw this fellow.


Notice the cell phone ear piece. This man is the apotheosis of vacation fashion.

Heather's in Town!

Hoo haa! HR is in town to do pick-up shots, meaning that we are going around to visit the prison gals and their parents again. HR is doing some follow-up interviews, getting b-roll shots of things like warning signs, locks, etc...you know, cut-away shots.

Some of our favorite gals are back in prison after having been released. Others are pregnant. Still, it's good to see them again.

Enjoy these stills of the neighborhoods we visited:

This was my Idea

Alright. This was my idea a long time ago, but I didn't know how to implement it. Now you can keep track of all the stuff your congressman or woman, senator, or political favorites are up to:



http://www.govtrack.us/users/aboutmonitors.xpd

What I'm painting now.

This is what I just painted (sorry the picture is slightly out of focus):


From this picture I took in San Francisco:

Hills are sort of a novelty for me, having grown up in the midwest where there are no hills. In the development process of San Francisco, a lot of the nearby hills were blown up. Sometimes just the hilltops were taken off, but on this one they made roads around it, making it that much more of a cartoon and a novelty for me.



I started painting this:



and this:
I like seeing the insides of buildings that I feel like I'm not supposed to see. There's a matress sticking out of one of the rooms. The shapes in these pictures are really nice too.



Next, I'm going to paint some of these nice storm pictures I took. We were on our way to Naperville yesterday for Memorial Day meat roasting and it looked like we were headed into the abyss.




I've also got some fine images of old folks from the Slovenian dance hall in Cleveland, OH. I'm going to paint some of them this summer. The color balance on the camera was off, but in a good way. It made everyone look sort of washed out and delicious. Lots of creamy whites in the hair, and streaks of light brown, next to blonde, next to gray. The old people/hair painting project will be a fun exercise in color.

Happy Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day, O My! Happier malady. To honor those veterans let's play with the anagram maker: http://www.anagramgenius.com/server.php


My name spells "Lazy Cow, benign kid."

and my friends include "Trash Heroes" , "Join Sleazier Norm", and "Chimpanzees Freak Alert"

My father's business anagrams to "Hmm! Craziness and very"

Cubs Game

I don't like baseball, but Mason bought an extra ticket so I went to the Cubs game. It was a glorious day to sit outside and I was able spend the bulk of the game searching for things for us to eat, visiting the loo, or staring at people so that I really didn't have to watch any of the baseball at all. My favorite part of any baseball game has always been when the guys with rakes come out and tidy up the field. I like to stand and cheer for them. It's so good and satisfying to watch them smooth out all the footprints in the dirt and they do it so efficiently too.





Lots of people leave around the start of the ninth inning because they want to beat traffic. Well the Cubs were winning 5 to 3, the ninth inning came and went, and the Cubs ended up losing 5 to 6. Mason and Peter were pretty broken up about it. Next time we'll leave when ever the Cubs are ahead, 8th inning, 3rd inning, whatever, and just go home ignorant and happy.