Origins...

I'm feeling kinda vulnerable right now and it's all this comic's fault...

"The Deal" written by Gerardo Preciado and drawn by Daniel Bayliss in a fanfiction based on DC's Batman and if you know anything about the Batman legacy, it will have you balling within the first few panels. 

No spoilers but this particular panel makes a stitch in my chest. 

For me, as I'm sure with many others, Batman was my introduction to comics. I distinctly remember my brother giving me a copy of a collection of the first Bob Cane issues of Batman. It ran from the very first issues all the way to the 1980s. 

Those panels are more vivid in my mind then most memories. I remember one issue where Batman and Robin were captured by Catwoman and taken to her secret island hideout, full of tropical flora and genetically modified big cats, all of them at Catwoman's beck and call. 

I guess it stood out to me too because she had stripped them of everything but their masks (awfully nice // convenient of her) leaving them to run around her pesduo-jungle in loin clothes. And you know, this being the early 90's, before smartphones and rampant internet, this was the closest I got to porn, I guess. 

Hormones aside, I loved these stories. They are a huge part of my childhood, and helped shape who I am today. Without them I wouldn't have continued my interest, moved on to Sam Keith's The Maxx

I love you Maxx

Or Jhonen Vasquez's spooky creations, JTHM, SQUEE, I feel Sick, and most recently Invader Zim. 

If you look into these stories, you could probably figure out a few things about me. Psycho analysis aside though, I gravitated to these writings // characters, to these stories because they gave me something. And now I'm not even sure what that was. 

I feel like they showed us this unrelenting darkness that does exist. For the first time, someone was talking to me like an adult, someone spoke to me without flinching at the "not so pretty" details of life. It was honesty and I clung to it. 

Life hurts. None of these writings denied that, rather to opposite it exclaimed it. Illustrated all the ways one can hurt and could hurt. These works are like watching an exorcism, and after the smoke cleared, the blood was washed away, and the sun rose once more, I felt clean. 

Why am I telling you all this? 

So you realize how important these stories are to me // lots of us. They're a part of my childhood, the part that helped me deal with a scary world, the part that helped me grow up and not be scared ( at least some of the time ) 

"The Deal" is a schizophrenic, blood-stained love letter. 

Using violence and graphic images to shock us with so much hurt and ugliness we come out the other side into nothing but beauty and love. 

But that's what life does to us too. 

We go through this meat grinder of bills, worry, taxes, death and struggle. Building up the drama and tearing down resolve. Until life breaks us down to the point where we can't fight anymore and have nothing left but wonderfully still acceptance. 

A blissfully soft understanding that nothing matters, and that everything matters. 

"And we can explore space together, both inner and outer...forever." 

                                                                             

                                                                                         - Bill Hicks

[shea] 

     

  

Love? Love's a strong word…

I like my job. I like what I do. Being in the design field is nice so far but I'm still a noob.

On breaks, I draw.

I like to think he was walking somewhere

when somebody behind yelled

"Ey yo Jack!" 

I don't think his name's Jack though

Maybe the things we do on break should be the thing we do all the time. But I've heard varied experiences on that. 

I used to think I wanted to be involved in movies, making them, or being in them. Then I got too brunt out on dealing with the people in that scene, watched too many behind the scenes docs and couldn't suspend my disbelief any more. I couldn't enjoy films anymore, something I once loved. 

I feel kinda luke warm about movies now a days, but who could blame me seeing the current state of hollywood productions. Snarky remarks aside, it's true, you get to know something so intimately you really start to ask yourself the hard questions, do I really like this? Could I do this forever? 

I've been drawing since I was in kindergarten. I think it's always been an easy escape. I can never wrap my head around someone who doesn't enjoy it to some extent, because it's like being handed a key to everything. 

Whatever you want. However you wish the world would be, or whatever things roam around in your head, you can make them real. You can put them down on a sheet and give them an identity, take them out for others to see, others to experience and make them all the more real. 

Despite my reasons for drawing (and they have been different through various times in my life) I always return to it because it gives me freedom. 

It proves to me that I exist. 

I mean…none of what I've drawn existed before I made it, before I thought about it, before I put the pen to paper and made what was once an inky musing in the back of my skull into something solid, visible, alive. 

And anyone can do it.

Why wouldn't you jump on the opportunity to be a creator? To prove you exist. 

[shea]  

Yeah he's a veteran, but is he HOT?

So I've been following the career of Alex Minksy for a little while.

To really summarize, Alex is a former marine that lost his leg in Afganistan when his truck ran over an explosive. After sustaining his injuries he was in a coma for 52 days. After being honorably discharged Alex came home, sobered up ( he's admittedly a proud member of A.A. ) and began to work out immensely, along with covering every inch of his body with tattoos. When doing his routine at a local gym in Venice Beach, CA he was discovered and so began his illustrative career as a fitness and fashion model.

Alex has also been involved with a number of charity organizations, least of which the Wounded Warrior Project, a charity that benefits those soldiers injured in war and their families. He participates in endless marathons and even his girlfriend, Mylee is a total bad ass in her own right. Mylee is a breast cancer survivor and Alex and her have teamed up for multiple breast cancer awareness campaigns and charities.

So what's my beef with this generally awesome, sweet guy that seems to love his mom and only want to spread positivity and hope to others? Well...basically...

Would anyone care if he wasn't hot?

That's feels shitty to ask, but it's a valid question.

I don't want to make this about diminishing Alex's career or the positive impact he's had, because he's definitely an all around outstanding person. It's not really about him.

I guess it's about media highlighting his pretty face, increasing hero fetishism, and negating all the other wounded veterans out there. I mean, where is their center fold?

A few of my favorite things...

I'm rounding up my last semester in design school so I'm doing a lot of projects to force me to work with techniques I haven't had time to use.

Basically it's become a mad dash to squeeze all this knowledge into my brain before I no longer have the academic resources // time // whatever.

BUT

I also want to do some fun things before I wont have the time to fuck around anymore

(I have no idea what's gonna happen after graduation, I just imagine it's going to be like being shot out of a canon and end sometime in retirement. I plan not to sleep until my 60s)

So here are some things I made for an upcoming event.

I've been wanting to play with "vibrating" color palettes forever and so I took this opportunity. 

I think a lot of us ( graduating students especially ) are so freaked about getting an occupation sos as not to become a raging hobo but I think in this crazed attempt to get yourself out there, to go to events, and meet people // potential employers, we so often forget to have fun with what we do. To make connections because, hey, we actually ENJOY this person, not just because it may lead to a job later. 

I mean, you're trying to make this your career right? Well whatever happened to doing what you do because you LIKE it? 

I feel people make such better work when they're in an environment they like, surrounded by people they are interested in, doing work that they would be doing anyway - paycheck or no. 

Making rent's a bitch, but should not be the main goal in life. 

Who says you're awake?

I have pretty vivid dreams, it comes and goes of course, but pretty much since childhood I've had pretty detailed dreams.

I don't think I'm unique in that way, I feel most people have a pretty imaginative night life. I guess the thing that does make my experience difference is the level in which I retain the events and happenings of my dreams.

I have a lot of reoccurring dreams, not reoccurring in the since that it's the same things happening with the same players, more I keep visiting the same places. I've gone to some the same places so often, that I'm fairly certain I could build a map at this point. And like in most dreams, time doesn't really exist, at least not in a linear sense. I've visited a few spots throughout a centuries of time.

For example, here's a dream I had last night.

___________________________________

We're out in the middle of nowhere, somewhere on the plains. 

We're at a run down gas station, I think it's one I've been to before when it was up and operational but it's not now and hasn't been for a while. Everything's pretty dusty, dry, and bleak. For some reason I go inside to use the bathroom.

I walk straight into the main building of the gas station, there are no doors. When I go down a short hallway the room opens up into a relatively nice bathroom, nice considering. it's still the same dull tan color as everything else, but the it's tiled and somewhat lit. 

I reach down to see there's still paper on the dispenser but when I reach for it, it rolls independently and I get the sudden feeling the movement is supernatural. I leave and when I do I notice an entrance to a room I hadn't seen before, a tan dark haired man lays in a cot and locks eyes with me. I panic. Run outside to my friends and try to warn them. We're not supposed to be here. 

I'm guessing this place had become a hide-out 

Slowly more and more men come out of the wood works. They look asian, or more likely Vietnamese but their skin is dark, baked by the sun, and their hair is matted in sweat. They wear dirty polo shirts and kakis, crappy sandals and 80's band tees. They have AKs and wife beaters.

All of our things are laid out and I know that they won't be giving any of it back. My laptop is there and suddenly I realize that I haven't backed up the files, everything I've been working on for the past couple of years is only stored on this laptop. I cry. I know they won't care, about some design kids posters, but it means a lot to me. They even have my favorite sketch book and I know that none of it is coming back with me. I'm pretty upset. 

[ this part above has particular meaning being that, I'm sorry to say, this is the current state of my files. Pretty much most of the good things I've produced from my four years in school are stored on my laptop and ONLY my laptop. It is a great source of anxiety for me and this dream has prompted me to actually do something about it. I just think it's funny that I basically manifested the VC to terrify myself into being responsible ] 

I say fuck it and grab my sketch book in the heat of the moment then make a mad dash for my motorcycle. We had been on a cross country trip and my bike shows it, it's beat up and the paint is worn down so thin the metal shows in lots of places. It looks almost cell shaded. I drive and leave everything behind in dust and commotion. When I hit the highway everything changes. 

I'm in a huge vacant house, almost a manner but not quite victorian. Probably an old plantation house, everything's wood and molded. I've got a doll with me, she's old and her dress is a little tattered but she looks fancy regardless. I keep talking to her as we slowly walk through rooms, I forget exactly what I say but everything seems to be about comforting her. I'm crazy right now, for this moment I'm crazy. 

While walking through rooms I lose the doll like you do in dreams, one second it's there and important then the next it's gone and you're not bothered at all. Now I'm holding a crude teddy bear, small enough to fit in my hand and with no articulation. He's more like a teddy pillow, with a bit a red string around his neck. I fade from that dream and wake up in another, still holding the small bear. 

I'm laying in a small twin bed, everything's fuzzy but my sight is coming back and the bear is in my hand. I get up groggily and move from the child's room were I was sleeping out into the crowded and busy hallway of a very small house // apartment. 

I can't tell which. 

A black woman in her late forties or fifties is coming out of the bathroom and very zenfully corralling her ten children. All of them little girls with their hair done the same, braided in balls like strings of pearls, with red bands. They all have wide, white toothy smiles and keep looking at me pleasantly curious. 

There's one little boy and he seems to be barely keeping himself from being trampled. When I ask what's going on the women tells me without looking at me that I must have had a seizure. She had found me passed out on the road with my bike and had brought me here to her place. Now we had to get ready to leave. 

Then I wake up.  

________________________


So it's kinda stuff like that.

I think having this level of detail and interaction in my dreams, kinda makes me disconnected at times. When things in your dreams are just as real and frequent as the every day happenings that are supposedly "reality" it makes you question that reality that much more.

Sometimes I think both are dreams, or both are realities. The only thing separating them is a difference of rules and thus our own difference in perspective.

But I could be wrong.