Status Report

Done moving in to Boston house. I really like the apartment, and the area. We are a three minute drive from Katie and Papacrop and Jamie! Yes!

We went to the BU spinjam tonight and it was great - we met some awesome people and juggled like fools, slowly infecting half of the spinjam with our devious juggling ways.

Also - I saw Pat Campbell, a guy I went to highschool with, THERE of all places. His girlfriend made him come, and it was the first time he had gone. Coincidences are WEIRD!

I also hooked myself a freelance graphic design gig on Craigslist. I'm finishing up a project involving the packaging around a bizarre foam exer-rolly-cylinder-device. I am apparently amazing at finding odd niche things to advertise for; first deli slicer tables and now this. Go me!

All in all, a VERY promising start to Boston life!

Moving out

So Jeremy and I found an apartment in Boston and the four of us A Different Spin east coast chaps are busily filling out lease forms. It's official, we're moving out. Time to pack up, say goodbye to New York people, and re-establish ourselves in a new and exciting city and thus begin the next chapter of our lives.

TL;DR:  AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

P.S. Here are some demons that I drew the other day.

Yes we did.

Yeah, so that just about sums everything up.

Voting

So I went out and rocked the vote. I think.

Port Ewen, NY (the district that I registered with as I am still technically a resident here) has a really bizarre voting system. Maybe I forgot about going through it 4 years ago, but there's something undeniably unsatisfying about voting on a mechanical lever machine.

You go in, you pull a lever to close the curtains, you mark your votes by switching certain levers from horizontal to diagonal, then you pull the curtain lever back and everything goes back to neutral. Then you exit the booth, feeling a bit like nothing just happened. No "Thank you for your vote!" or other phyiscal proof that your vote got counted. I may be spoiled from all these internet instant-email-notification responses like when you buy something or pay a bill online, but it would be nice if I could get some sort of response to make sure that I haven't disenfranchised myself.

All that being said, I will be eagerly awaiting the results tonight. Election-night drinking game, anyone? One drink for every state Obama wins and two for every McCain wins?

Something I am working on

I haven't updated DeviantArt in the longest time. It's not that I haven't been drawing - I rarely "finish" a picture. That is, I get a picture to the point that I run out of steam on it creatively, yet before I have gotten it to a point that I feel it is worth showing to the world at large. Most of those things go here, like this one.

I actually do want to finish this picture; the final result is in my head, burning a hole in my brain, but I just don't know how to do it. This is mostly because I suck at backgrounds, but also because I originally intended to color this.

If I do ever finish it, though, I'll put it up here as well.

I am now a professional fire spinner!

Yesterday was A Different Spin's gig at Iona College. We packed our stuff, we put on our fancy clothes, we did wandering entertainment for two hours, we went and lazed at Jeremy's house for 5 hours after that playing chess and reading about Celtic Magic, then we went back and put on both of our shows, back to back.

Phew!

Let me say this: a lot of things went wrong. However, a lot of things also went right.

For example, let me set the stage: we were performing in a dark parking lot under fluorescent lights with half of our audience in front of us and half way the hell up a hill behind an iron fence. To make matters worse, the parking lot was slightly slanted downhill back towards the road. Add these factors together and you get me screwing up just about ALL of the juggling acts. 5-ball? Couldn't see them in the dark half-light. Passing? I was off-balance and dropped a ton. Torches? Any time we dropped (and we did) the torch would roll casually backwards down the hill and look like it was attacking our feet. We got a lot of shocked screams near the beginning of our fire show.

The only "real" problem, however, stemmed from the fact that our "daytime" circus show now revolves around one person always having a microphone (Jeremy's pimp wireless headset he got from working with his old circus education company). About two minutes into our show, for whatever reason, it up and died on us. No headset. No more than the people right in the front can hear us, not even if we shout.

Fuck.

We kept on keeping on, however, and for the most part everyone seemed to be having a good time. Our volunteer acts were a huge hit and all the vain attention-seekers who ran for homecoming court also got to be on stage with us, much to the delight of their school.

We cut the daytime show short at the request of the event staff (people were leaving, most likely due to them not being about to hear) and since they really just wanted to see fire anyway we obliged. This set us all a little off-kilter and made the second show a bit frantic. A few cues were missed, a few toys were dropped, but I don't think anyone lit on fire and we finished our show to uproarious applause.

The audience LOVED the fire sword fight, which made Jeremy and I very proud. They also loved the poi acts and the parts where mooch was standing on stacks juggling - so that's a compliment for all of us. After all was said and done they handed us our check (WOOT!), took our picture and one of the students working for the event asked if we'd be back next year. If that is not the true mark of success, I don't know what is!

Muse-ings

As a rule I only really create "art" when I have a random bout of inspiration. I find it very difficult to sit down and create something without prompt, and as such garbage like raver-elf-chicks get born.

How does one get inspired to do something meaningful? How does one pluck their ethereal muse from the air, attach her to one's wrist with an iron manacle, and keep the inspiration flowing day after day?

Perhaps the answer is doing great feats. Perhaps it is meditation and self-reflection. Perhaps it is hard drugs.

At any rate, it would seem that less video games and more sleep would be a step in the right direction. My mind has been flighty at best lately, and I often find myself having problems concentrating and formulating rational and worthwhile comments. I need a shot of Ginko straight to the brain. Or perhaps just a long winter's nap. Yes, in fact, that sounds lovely.

TLAPD

Well as of today, circus arts Ninja Training will officially be over. How fitting it is, then, that it is also "Talk Like a Pirate Day".

G'YARR!

So swab the poopdeck! Raise the sails! Bilge the bilgewater! And for the love of Davy Jones, who took me grog?!

Dino-roar

10-day circus boot camp starts tomorrow (today, the 10th). It is also Jeremy's birthday. Tim is here, back from Burning Man, and now our little enclave of artistic bums is complete. We are drinking rum, juggling, and blogging, like the true heroes that we are.

In the later years, we will look back upon these days and smile, knowing that we may not have had a plan, but we did it right.

More sea monsters!

Pow! Zoom!

You can't have my fireflies.

OMG I DREW SOMETHING

Artistic productivity has been at an all-time low, unless you count photoshopping deli slicers to look like OTHER BRANDS of deli slicers.

Yeah, I'm pretty awesome.

In the background, Jeremy is looking at old Vaguely Amazing comics; there is proof that once we MADE things. Often incoherent and unerringly self-referential, yes, but THINGS nonetheless.

Quickly, Robin, to the Bat-Wacom!

The Shattering

So I just broke my car's passenger side rear-view mirror while I was trying to back up out of my driveway.

MORON!

It sparked a little bit of an existential life-crisis, however, so it is thus accompanied by an overweight piece of evocative imagery.

How to Pack Up your Childhood Room

Step 1: Make a terribly difficult, life-changing emotional decision.

Step 2: Listen to a lot of hard rock / metal

Step 3: Start tearing everything off of your walls.

Step 4: ???

Video Games are the Devil

It strikes me that if I put the sheer amount of time that I put into video games that I do into more productive forms of work, then I could be truly badass.

Perhaps my addiction is, for the moment, the only thing keeping the world safe from my inevitably overwhelming talent and potential.

In other news, I am now officially on the Different Spin "Bios" section of the website (and I expect I have been for quite some time and only just now noticed), which is nice. Feel free to go there and ogle my sexy, sexy fireball.

A Different Spin

Journal update

Just got back from the BU spinjam, and dinner with them afterwards. AND I finally finished the book Stacey lent me, called "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius". So I went into boston, read on the way, met some cool people, spun a bit (in the corner, like the shy n00b I am) and got back exhausted.

It feels so good to DO things.

Oh, and it's my birthday. 23 years... is that a good year? It seems like it must be a good year.

It shall be a good year.

Juggling Act from 6/21/08

I feel hung over

Yet I have not been drinking.

This is probably the problem; dehydration. I have been drinking a ton of water today to try and stave off laryngitis (I lost my voice yesterday, probably from speaking too loudly all day at kids trying to wrangle them into fits of creativity). The sun was hot today though, and as it dried up all the flash rain that pelted camp today it probably dried up all my reserve moisture as well.

Is there a better cure for a lost voice? I've heard hot showers and honey and lemon. Maybe I can just bathe in some tea.

Back in Hingham

Warning to Vassar people: the following contains many references and names that you will not know, so I apologize.

I just got back from the after party after the after party of Mr Higgins' retirement party. This man was the drama teacher at my high school for 35 years, and boy, has he managed to build a fantastic community. All he had to do was say "Listening Club!" and put his hand to his ear to get over a quarter of the room instantly mimicking him, like we all did back in High School when he needed our attention. This is just one example of the fun, nice, quirky things that he did and that we all love him for.

Performing tonight was great! I very nearly nailed every part of my routine (I got the back-of-the-head catch from a five-ball cascade!) and had a blast rocking out to some klezmer music as I did so. The audience loved it and I got tons of congratulations for the rest of the night from people I haven't talked to in ages, with one recurring theme: "Why no fire?" Come on people, we were inside, in a rented auditorium! At least they were mostly kidding.

The rest of the night was party-hopping. First this place in Scituate called "Mount Blue" where a huge chunk of our party took over and instilled a big, loud, sweaty group of drama kids into an otherwise unassuming bar. I got to talk to a lot of people about a lot of nothing, the most productive of which was Amanda Diorio who I swear I've said about 5 words to in the past who for some reason throughout the course of the conversation became my best friend.

Perhaps it was the beer.

After that I took Adam home and went stopped in at Will Hanson's house, which contained another loud gathering of (somewhat younger) kids playing a game of Kings. I stayed to the outside and continued my conversation-hopping. We got kicked out when his parents realized that they wanted to sleep, and it was late and downstairs people were loud.

So here I am, updating my blog about really nothing, just because I feel good and loved and welcome at home and it is wonderful to be able to say that.

Because because because

More of the same. There is thunder and lightning outside and it is exciting. Perhaps I shall go research some pagan storm god and go worship it.

Because I like looking at myself

More of the same. Maybe I should work on finding OTHER people to draw...

Because I never had one in college...

I decided to actually try some sort of artistic "project" of sorts, which is largely self-diluted and partially stolen from someone else's idea. Basically I am using the tools I have at my disposal: a copy of Photoshop and a Macbook Pro photo booth camera. More on this as it develops.

Forced Creativity: Drawing my WoW character

You can't keep a good man down

So my computer broke, which lead to many hours of my fiddling with the underside of my laptop while gently stroking my trackpad like only a sensual lover can.

Several days, a bunch of Goldeneye 64 and a quick trip to Best Buy later I have broken down and bought and external, USB keyboard for my laptop.

Yes, my laptop is now a desktop.

This wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that the only keyboard I could find that was below $60 is ironically too big to fit into my trendy Timbuktu messenger bag. I am, however, able to return to the world of online bloggery and other such technological time-wasting.

If anyone knows of a place that will fix a Macbook Pro with an expired warranty (not buying AppleCare = fail) for something short of an arm and a leg, let me know.

Like the great philosopher Calvin said...

..."there's never enough time to do all the nothing you want".

I shall relish my upcoming 5-day weekend so, so much. I say every week should be a three-day work week. Three days of work, two days of weekend, repeat. I'd love it. Let's get some legislation going on to see that plan through. 

Alternatively, I suppose we could just extend the weekend like they did in "Doug" by slowing down the rotation of the Earth and making "Funday" a new day of the week.

GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!

Addiction of the week: Ludo's "Love Me Dead". The song is great, the video is fantastic, and I'm beginning to wonder how much longer it can stay on loop in my mind before I start considering trepanation.

But seriously, don't watch this unless you want the same fate.

It also inspired me to touch my guitar for the first time in over a year. My fret muscles are atrophied, and my finger calluses are sadly gone.

Status:

12 hours, 10 episodes of Death Note, and several talks with friends later, I am a bit more stable. Still existential, still up-the-fucking-creek-of-life-in-a-rickety-boat-with-no-oars-rudder-or-sail, but at the very least in a sort of zen mood about the whole thing.

I stand firm, however, that no matter what other people say, you cannot take away from me the fact that Death Note is awesome.

Let me explain:

The series is about Light Yagami, a brilliant schoolboy-turned megalomaniac who acquires the power to kill whoever he wants after finding the notebook of a death god. With it, he does what any upstanding selfish egomaniacal teenager would do and starts executing every fucking murderer, rapist and general ne'er-do-well that lands themselves on the news, sure that one day because of his Justice dealings that he will be recognized as a God of the new world, free of crime and war.

"That's pretty awesome," I say to myself, "That man has a plan." One may not agree with that plan, but he HAS one, and he does what he has to to make sure it gets done.

I, on the other hand do not have a plan, and that fact is only growing heavier on me for every day that I spend at the job that I do not like, coming home to rot my brain in front of the narcotic glow of the computer screen. I know how to pursue things that I want, but right now I do not WANT anything at all. I need to learn how to WANT things again, even if its not in the apocalyptical flaming sword of justice kind of way (which I certainly wouldn't be terribly opposed to).

At any rate, enough about how Death Note has become my mental and spiritual guidance as of late, because that is undeniably weird. One day my addiction to it will wane, but Goddamn it, I need to fill this blog with something.

And now for my artistic musings: The first bunch is stolen from stock photos on DeviantArt. The second is stolen from real life, outside my apartment window.

This is me at my most existential.

Death Note is still awesome.

I am not quite sure what ELSE in the world is still awesome.

More on that later (?)

I am addicted to Death Note.

Yup. Nothing I can do but keep watching until I run out of episodes. I just love everything about it... the characters, the premise, and Ryuk (who is way too fun to draw).

I guess it's only a matter of time before I start cosplaying and writing L and Light yaoi fanfics.

...on second thought, ewwww...

Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot

This weekend was full of seeing friends, and I did ever so enjoy it. It was Parents' (Parent's? Parents? Parents's?) Weekend at Vassar and many a good times were had, seeing old friends, reminiscing, and making new friends. Also there was a nice amount of juggling and monkey stuff, as I rode on the coattails of the the fire-show-stressing Monkeys. I can catch a ball on the back of my neck while juggling five ball! Take that, Victor Kee!

I also saw Sweeney Todd (finally), so it is fresh in my head. If ever I had considered shaving with a straight razor, that time is gone.

And now, for some silly sketchiness:

I greatly desire more sun and more warmth. It was glorious for a while on Saturday. Today was almost okay, but ended up being too cold to comfortably juggle clubs. Let's go sun! Spread your sweet, sweet cancer rays!

Club Jugs!

I juggled clubs today outside, and promptly gathered a following of amazed little children.

And I'm not very good at clubs!

This is hopeful news. Now that the weather outside isn't so frightful, it can be Juggling Time once again. I get such an acute case of cabin fever sitting inside at my job all day, occasionally catching a glimpse of the gorgeous sun outside from the corner of my eye, that something needs to give.

The first step will be mastering 3-ball juggling. Start small. No more of this effing dropping biznass. Biznassty. ...that is not a word.

Children and petting zoos

...and warm days and cakewalks and Vassar friends. All of these things make me smile.

Today is "I Won't Grow Up Day". I got to sit in the audience and cringe at the Barefoot Monkeys's bad patter. I miss them, and miss being a part of them. There's nothing quite like making a fool of yourself in front of a horde of children who all think you are the super-coolest.

I learned how to balance a spinning plate on my chin. Go me!

The sun is returning, and with it my dormant sense of hope and life and love.

Oh, I drew this at work the other day, while I should have been working. The better I get at my job, the less I want to do it. I'm 90% convinced that I will be quitting it by June, working at my camp again this summer for 5 weeks, and then... well, who knows and then what? Maybe the clown school with Jeremy? Maybe the high seas, striving for adventure beyond the horizon. All that we can be sure of is that I will NOT be working at a manufacturing company as an underpaid artist.

Vassar Dormroom

I'm really starting to like this photoshop artwork stuff. A laptop computer and small Wacom tablet are, in many ways, like a sketchbook and pencil. A really heavy and expensive sketchbook and pencil, but portable and small nonetheless.

Doorway

Glow worms are disgusting.

I am glad there are no glow worms anywhere around. Planet Earth is the most beautiful documentary there is, but nothing can make glow worms look not disgusting.

In other news, this:

The more I draw in photoshop, the more I realize I just want to be using charcoal and pastels. If only charcoal had opacity and size settings...

Well, I drew something

Pose blatantly stolen from a celebrity. But WHICH celebrity, huh? Is it still breaching copyright if I hint at the fact that I didn't think of it first?

The colors make me think of tank girl. I don't think I've seen that movie all the way through.

Happy minutes after St. Patty's day

Am I going about this the wrong way? I'm mostly treating this blog as a sketch dump when it can be oh so much more. I can list ideas; use it as a literary "sketch" book. I can muse out loud to myself and nothing that I do or write will hold any significance.

I need to learn to juggle better. I want to learn to juggle better. I have reached a plateau where I will not get better at anything unless I actively pursue it at least a little bit every day. There are so few hours in a day after one works full-time. 8 hours are work. 1 hour is lunch. (Ideally) another 8 hours are sleep. That leaves only 7 hours of freedom. FREEDOM to do whatever you want. Now, let's not forget that one needs to eat as well, and that may take another hour or two out assuming you need to prepare, consume, and then clean up your food. So we have five hours in a day?

The only way out of this is to make money by doing something that you love. I need to find a way to fulfill myself in a productive manner for those 8 working hours and bring in enough money to pay for food, rent, and "oh shit my car just broke down again".  Jeremy and I are making a board game. We got a LOT of good progress done on it yesterday, but did nothing today due to his being sickly-feeling and my being tired.

Why am I tired? I went to the gym every day for four days straight last week! I got to the weekend and feel into a sloth-like stupor where I spent most of my time staring at a computer screen doing mindless WoW errands to accumulate gold for myself. In other words, I may have been playing 3D pong or looking at porn for all the good it did me. What a waste of time.

I'm going to draw something now. I have several projects that I "should" be working on right now, but I'm not inspired by them. I don't WANT to, and art cannot be forced. At least not good art. I'll see you again in 15 minutes or so.

The opposite of Productivity is Conductivity

...but what does that mean???

On the other side of my cognitive one-liners, I realized that James Bond is very much like a professional basketball player. All he does is kill people with guns and sleep with women.

In other words, he shoots, and he scores.

Backlog of sketches

I feel sort of bad waiting several days after drawing these sketches before I upload them, but then I realize that I'm still the only person who knows about this blog, so it's all okay!

Anonymity is bliss!

Kill Bill is a great movie(s?). I had forgotten then until I marathoned them together.

Mind Candy

It's so, so sweet. It fills your brain and numbs you, takes away your eyes and ears and hands and tongue and breath. It makes you forget.

You forget... something.

What is this post about? My Orc Shaman?

I hereby promise to not play WoW for one full day. Starting yesterday. I win!

Whoops, no, two hours to go. I made art today, with charcoal and paper and my hands and my eyes and my feelings. How I felt at the time I was making it. I had music playing, and I was in my room, with my charcoal and my paper and my hands. I laid six of our 800 plastic bags on my floor to keep the charcoal out. Now I need some tape or something to put it on the wall, like a proper picture. That's where pictures live, on the wall. Not on the floor, like some dirty ragamuffin sitting in your way. You could trip over it. Smear it. Then it wouldn't be art anymore. It would be abstract art.

Shit was SO cash.

People in positions of power have much more to worry about than their lowers.

Take work for example. When my boss is having a bad day, everyone has a bad day, because he has the power to make it so. I cannot do any work without his approval, and any work that I do end up doing ends up adding to his stress pile and causes stress fallout. All we can do is wait for him to walk into his office, look at each other with scared faces, and reassure one another that it is he who is crazy and not all of us. However at the end of the day, no matter what, he is right. Well, either he is right or we are out of a job.

My boss is not a bad man, he is simply one in a high position with too much work on his plate. Should he share his power with someone else, everyone's lives would be improved by the decrease in anxiety. It's amazing how much sway one man has over the lives of many, and this is only a tiny microcosm of the world as a whole.

With great power comes great responsibility. Rock on, Spider-Man, rock on.

I made this!

LOOK AT IT!!!!!

Word.

HOW WOULD HE EVEN EAT IT?

His face is covered in bandages!

Things I draw while I should be working

Two of these are inspired by classical stories and themes. One of these is not. Can you tell which is which?

There are so few hours in the day

...and there's definitely not enough time in the world to sit around doing nothing.

In response to that, I try to do my best to at least sit around and do something. It may not be the perfect answer, but if I can do my part to fill the internet with a little something special, then I've done well. I have so many ideas, wishes, and dreams that have yet to be fulfilled; I even sit at this very moment with a "To Do" list staring back at me with mundane tasks that won't even get done.

"Go to the Gym". "Shower". Who has time for these such things? Certainly not I, who even now am wasting precious minutes that could be fruitfully spent levelling my Orc Shaman in WoW.

At least this blog, perhaps, will serve as a place for me to dump all the silly things that run through my head at work, when I should be concentrating on how best to pimp out my boss's latest Deli Slicer table design to the big supermarket VIPs.