This is not a good bye, it's a see you soon. I am going to stop drawing pictures for myself for a little while. Only comics and commissions for at least a month. I do have a few sketches I'll be adding to this post(because none of them are new). Those will just take a while so they won't all be up tonight. Half of this post details some pathetic and funny and sad and happy shit through the last year. I just decided to not edit it too much(except miss spellings and revealing identities). It's all true, at least so far as my perceptions.
So... out of the shit I've gone through this year I need to sum up the highs and lows. I spoke to Elaine(have no idea how to spell it right because she never corrected me, but besides she was super hot on her Biker Party day, like so hot that when she fell I refused to touch her on grounds that we were friends and it wouldn't be right even though I was talking about helping her from falling down drunk, eat that shit up lady) about letting it all hang out and the truth is more compelling than half assed shit like the stuff we are all in the middle of. As we lead to the end of this year and it all becomes tears in the rain(yeah I'll still quote that shit even ask me 20 years later and I'll still be talking about Blade Runner) I will spill the beans so to speak about almost all the shit in the form of lists. This will be really revealing, partially because I am drunk and partially because I don't give half a shit and I don't think anyone else does.
Top 10 favorite movies of the year:
1. No Country For Old Men: I loved the book, and the movie was even better. The performances perfect. The sound, maybe the best ever. And the direction is just veteran mature work from masters.
2. There Will Be Blood: The best performance of the year by Daniel Day Lewis. An epic about one man. the people around him don't even seem to matter. Just him. Paul Thomas Anderson shows what a once a decade movie looks like.
3. Knocked Up: Very fun, heart warming, and true to a certain kind of person. It just felt like home to me.
4. Super Bad: It made me laugh more than any other movie this year.
5. Death Proof: The definition of having fun while making a movie that comes across on the screen. It's not trying to be great, just fun.
6. Eastern Promises: Cronenberg shows how to make a completely different gangster movie. Viggo Mortensen shows once again that great acting he had in Carlito's Way.
7. Zodiac: Just a great story about a case and the characters involved in solving it.
8. Juno: A cute, sweet, and at some points painfully realistic look at a pregnancy. Jason Bateman had my feelings all over the map. And the kids were spectacular in it.
9. American Gangster: Another master (Ridley Scott who directed my favorite movie Blade Runner, remember) comes and shows yet another way of doing a gangster movie.
10. The Lookout: One of my favorite actors currently does an original heist movie. Almost perfect(except the music).
11. Into The Wild: An inspiring look at someone who would never give up and had only one mission in life. I don't care about the politics of his mission, it was his tenacity that was inspiring. This should probably be higher on the list if only for Hal Holbrook very nearly bringing me to tears. I took a girl on a date to see this and she was making fun of me for like an hour.
I just realized how many damn movies I saw this year. I actually excluded a lot.
And Last American Virgin stands out as a great rental(if you can even find it). Starts out as a straight Porky's riff and goes somewhere very dark. Seemingly explored in another movie that same year, here it is punctuated by the truest most painful ending, way meaner than the other movie I'm referring to here(but won't say it's name or I'll give away a key plot point). A stupid eighties movie that somehow shapes up way into it. Also there is a donkey dick dork in it that is so fucking funny. They mercilessly tease the dude any fucking chance they get. If there was a drinking game about this movie it would be every time they bully this dude for no discernible reason.
Favorite Comics this year:
1. Punisher: Strange to find this one dimensional character actually written not only well, but great. The best ruminations on vigilantism and violence I have ever read. Plus Barricuda has got to be one of the all time best villains(up there with some other Garth Ennis greats like Herr Starr). Garth Ennis is one of my all time favorite comic writers and here he forgoes traditional characterization(which he is the BEST at, think Jesse Custer, Cassidy, Tommy Monahan, and most any other thing he writes) and faces the pure violence of life and pure story. He knows he can't kill Punisher so what would in anyone else hands become pure looping episodic shit turns into something so much more.
2. Acme Novelty: Consistently great. Consistently perfect. Chris Ware will go down in history as one of the greatest story tellers of all. He can combine just a few lines and explain the meaning of life. Who else can do that?
3. Blade Of The Immortal: In issue form this comic has just bid farewell. But as books they are the most action packed long form comics ever made. Not like any of the Manga that surrounds it on the shelves. The villains are many times just as fascinating as the heroes.
Top 8 girls I've been devastated by this year who I have consummated nothing with:
(in order of appearance, not intensity and hey maybe this will hurt feelings but a)I doubt it and b) you should have taken the initiative I would have at least got you back)
(listening to Heart Of Mine by Bobby Caldwell, also done by a bunch of others)
1. Laura: Super hot half asian girl (I'm talking super out of my league and half naked like the whole night) who I stopped myself from kissing even though she asked why I wouldn't because she was super drunk. She had a long term boyfriend. Probably the worst decision of all. No one was around she was rubbing up against me, and I could have done anything I wanted to, but instead I was a limp dick loser and refused because she was so drunk it would be super wrong(although the limp thing is just a fabrication). She even slept in my house and I nursed her to health. Fucking idiot. She is killing me just thinking about her. What the fuck was I thinking. She makes me hungry. She could have been my "Last American Virgin" moment. You'd have to watch that fucking great movie in sheeps clothing, to mixed metaphors, to get what that means. Although I didn't in this case, I'd sum up that movie, and some choice painful moments in my own life, in the desert, years ago, as "driving and crying".
2. Sawako: Super hot Japanese girl who is probably the only girl who I could call a tease on this list. I got her number but decided not to call her because she made me jump through hoops for it. Very cute, and I had a rep for falling for asian chicks because of these first two but after that I basically gave up on the ones around me and accepted them as friends.
(now I'm listenig to "Feel Like Making Love" by D'Angelo)
3. K: I won't say her full name but I felt something deep and real with her and she worked at a "common" place that I frequented(yes, Starbucks, and yes, I was a fool). This was the first one I liked who was ten years younger than me. I totally was head over heals for her and she seemed to actually pick up on it and maybe like it on some level even though she had a long term boyfriend(the rapist who started me and Mendoza's term of Lee, based on the character in the british version of the Office). You can look at least to Spring when my whole Barista fetish began. I have never seen her since she quit and I don't think I will again. She is in love with someone and I am not. The lines do not cross. We could have been something really good. Fuck.....
4. Tu-Ahn: I may or may not have spelled that correctly. She is the girl with the most in common with me. If you like comics you will like to know I met her while stocking shit for Image Comics in Berkeley which my good friend set me up with. She was his friend and I had no idea she had a long time boyfriend from high school and my chances were next to nothing. I still talk to her every few months. She was ridiculous rad. She was fine and cool and just right like goldilocks.
(listening to "Desert Island" by Magnetic Fields)
5. D: She reads this. She was the Barista in my painting earlier this summer who e-mailed me back that she read my blog. I think we connected on an intellectual level(although she was hot to the point I painted that one picture of her and made a post about it). We loved art and she was interesting. I knew there was more to her than she revealed and I think she saw the same in me. More than ten years younger she left to college and I thought I'd never see her again. Then she came back. Just as hot but with a new boyfriend(she had one when she left which was the only thing that kept my crush from blowing the fuck up). I am trying to avoid her but I literally bump in to her all the time(the fact she works at a place I frequent all the time only has like 100% to do with it you subconscious motherfuckers). She has the guy and I don't think she likes me in any other way than in the fact we have interesting lives. To give you an example I don't think I've even said anything funny to her ever. I mean fucking ever. And that is the only thing anyone has ever liked about me. Shit, I shouldn't write so much about her. If she wasn't taken I'd eat her up like cookies...
(Listening to "New York Groove" by Ace Frehley, yeah, THAT Ace Frehley)
6. Michelle: Cute, fun, and just a great time. I met her in New Orleans during like a rain storm I thought might be the next Katrina. Seriously. They shouldn't have been showing reruns of the weather channel in the fucking bar we were stranded in. Very terrifying. Anyway, the next two days were dedicated to drinking and partying and living our last days in what clearly were not our last days. Taylor and I were depressed for days after that. Our fun level was raised to impossible levels because of her and her friends. Everything after that was a huge letdown. But it's still good to know life can be that good. Thanks!
Drought
7. M: Holy shit could you not find girl more suited for my tastes. I went out with her. I was on her so fast it was an Adrian revelation. She really didn't seem to dig me though. It was kind of sad and led to my very sad art posts of the later year. I basically thought that all women must hate me. She has a tattoo that I will not go into because I talked to her tonight and felt wrong even mentioning how hot it was. I see her all the time and hang out with her but she never reciprocated so I basically gave up on her. Still super cool and I should have gotten the fucking hair cut from her. Goddammit!
8. L: I see her all the fucking time and one night I had sparks like crazy with her. I took her on a date and nothing. I was into her but the moment I made a move the electricity was gone. So it's over.
(listening to "Wouldn't It Be Good" by Nik Kershaw)
I'm still seeing some of these girls(not in the dating sense but in a literal sense). But for the most part it is totally over with them and I think I won't actually have anything romantically to do with them. Right now I have an every other day hang over of D. at her place of work. Need to avoid. What good can come out of it?
There were actually enough repeats to make it to ten but I'm not going to go into how they repeated. Although I guess I have.
I'm gonna check my Itunes for embarrassing lists of music. Lets see what I listen to the most regardless of what people think.
These actually say a lot of my piece of mind. I can't believe looking back on it haow much, actually.
1. Magnetic Fields - In My Secret Place: About, literally what it sounds like. And most likely about how I feel alone where I live, yet sheltered and safe. Everything I do is so for myself it's an artists dream. Yet it is scary on so many levels. It leads to highs that most don't get yet it also leads to lows.
2. Elliott Smith - A Question Mark: Shit, this is really getting personal. This song explains a lot in it's lyrics about how you can feel confused , destroyed, and powerful. And yeah, he killed himself. No, I have a lot to live for so I would never do the same. But the whole album is on the edge.
3. Magnetic Fields - Strange Powers: Probably the only positive song I listened to. It treats women as a mystery(although I'm sure he's talking about a man since he is gay). "I can't sleep, 'cause you got strange powers". Pretty much my year.
4. Magnetic Fields - The Trouble I've Been Looking For: Same album as the other two. Again about meeting someone who will tear you up yet make you feel good for a short time. Dammit, I really thought my song choices would be more random and not so telling.
5. Gary Numan - Metal: A song about the disconnection between people. He basically makes the Blade Runner paradigm about some people are more human and sometimes a connection can be made anyway.
6. Dubstar - Everyday I Die: Actually a Gary Numan song, but the cover is so fucking immaculate and rad I listened to it a lot. About a crush on someone far away. Through celluloid or on the pages of a magazine. My crushes were distant and fascinating in their complexities.
7. Sugar - Helpless: About being helpless to the powers of another(again I thin I heard the dude was gay, so maybe that says something, although I am crazy straight). A great song about the confusing feeling that another can give you.
8. Sineade O' Connor - Mandinka: I guess this is a very positive song also(like Strange Powers). About love and making a connection. I somehow see it as light and heat and summer. Maybe something to do with my youth and when I first heard it. A great song.
9. Magnetic Fields - The Things We Did And Didn't Do: A song about the name and all the possible permutations. What relationships feel like and what they should and should not. Great lyrics and a great sentiment about the things that should and shouldn't be. Again, the lyrics say it all.
10. Lush - De-luxe: A song about sex and feeling. Very sensuous and just plain sexy. I love it and it reminds me of actually doing something. It reminds me about living. I guess I have. But sometimes I forget anyway.
(Listening to "Magnet And Steel" by Walter Egan via the Boogie Nights soundtrack)
I guess there is a note of possible happiness in these songs.
Favorite Porno Titles I can remember right now:
1. Somebody's Daughter: So fucking cruel and perfect. No I've never seen it. Just the commercial(huh).
2. Dirtpipe Milkshake: Not as bad as it sounds, but never the less I have never seen it. I know better, come on give me some fucking credit.
3. 7 The Hard Way: Reminds me of that great Rodney Dangerfield moment from Caddy Shack("How would you like to earn five dollars the hard way"). I actually had to sit down and think about this title.
R.I.P. Haley Paige. Long Live Jenni Lee. If you don't know you probably wouldn't care anyway.
I can make lists forever like High Fidelity or I can stop typing and live life. I think I'll do that. Live life. Draw the stories I said I would. Love the way I want. Live. Live.
One from the heart, the whole heart, yes it lives it breathes and it will abide, like the Dude, like everyone else,
Adrian Rivero
This is a loose quote from a manager at a chocolate cafe that Rivero and I were patronizing. Rivero wanted to visit his friend, so they talked, and I ordered the chocolate au lait after the young guy behind the counter assumed I was a moron who couldn't figure out the meaning of some names on the menu. I had only asked a couple of questions just to make friendly conversation, but he mistook my kindness for illiteracy. Then three of us talked about Adrian's behavior, drinks they had the day before, etc. More chit chat, and no other customers were coming in when this guy comes out from the back room and rudely interupts the conversation with his red face. Now, I fully understand that most bosses don't want their employees to enjoy themselves especially when it comes to food service, but this was a bit much. He barked his orders and told them to dust the cafe, even getting up on a chair to wipe the top of a picture frame to prove his point. The guy will probably continue his stressful ways and drop dead at the age of 41 if we're lucky.
