As if I didn’t have enough to do already….

Who got a day job?  Me!!

Yup… when the economy shits the bed, the first thing people stop spending money on is the arts.  So who got a financial sucker-punch for christmas this year?  Who?  Me?… awwww… ya shouldn’t have!

I understand it… because I’m not able to spend money on art (or much of anything else) either.  It’s just the way things are right now.  When weighing out buying new clothes or arty fun vs paying the bills- I opt for bills as well.  And I was REALLY fucking lucky and have super awesome friends who’ve got my back, and I got a little office job that doesn’t care about how I look, I have my own office, flexible hours, and the nicest coworkers & boss ever.  And after getting turned down for seasonal positions of stocking shelves at Whole Foods (apparently they don’t believe that I can lift my own weight in coucous), I have never been more thankful for office work.

But with my new job, comes added life pressure.  I thought I didn’t have enough hours in the day before.. but now, I’m a little fucked.  Here’s my typical day:

• 7:15am: Wake up into the madness of getting ready for work and getting Sully ready for school
• 8:30: Drop Sully off at school
• 9:00 Get to work
• work work work work
• 2:00pm: Leave work
• 2:20: Get home, print orders, start business calls, deal with web stuff
• 3:00: Get Sully from school
• Go to store/post office/whatever errands need to be done
• 4:30: try to package orders while strong-arming Sully to do his homework
• 5:30: Start making dinner while making calls to whatever large corporations/utility companies/financial institutions I’m having troubles with that day
• 6:00: Dinner
• 6:30: Pulling up all the Blacknoise webstore stuff and getting the shipping ready for that (because,yes, I’m still running Brad’s business as well since he’s still in school)
• 7:30: Quality Sully time
• 8:00: Get Sully to bed
• 8:15: Package Brad’s orders so they can go to the post office the next day
• 9:00: Dishes, Laundry, chores, and whatever else needs to be done around the house
• 10:00: Finally sitting down to my own paperwork & website technical stuff that I usually would have done during the day, but now have to do at night because of the day job
• 11/11:30: Try to check on/respond to emails, customer service stuff, tracking lost packages online, banking and bill paying, etc
• 12/12:30am: Try to paint, draw, etc pieces for upcoming shows, or work on x-mas presents for people
• 2/3:00am (usually later): get ready for bed.

Yup.  I’m tired.  It doesn’t help that it’s the holidays.  I loathe christmas… but this year it’s particularly depressing since we have no money for presents for anyone and I have no time to make stuff like I wanted to.  But it will be over soon, and that’s one less thing on my never-ending list of “to-do’s”.  So if I’m not writing as much on here as I normally was… now you know why.

Aside from that madness…. This past week I had some of my darling friends from NYC in town for gallery openings.  It was a much needed jolt of laughter and beautiful faces to keep me going.  Saturday night David Stoupakis had an opening at the Corey Helford gallery, Matthew Bone (a LA local) had an opening at the CoproNason gallery, and on Sunday night David Hochbaum & the Goldmine Shithouse crew had a screenprinting party.  I got out of the house.  I got to dress up and run around with friends.  I got to see beautiful art and laugh.  I got to play with my friends.  I haven’t gotten to do those things in a really long time.  And I NEEDED it.  Here’s a few pics of these beautiful friends of mine…..

Hochbaum is one of my favorite people on the planet.

That beauty in the middle is Aprella, another one of my favorites-for-keeps

My cuddly Matthew Bone

My Brad and the Davids (Brad makes great "Bad Face")

I allowed myself 30 minutes to dork around on the computer and babble on here, and my time is now up…. and now it’s back to The Schedule.

But on a final note, here is Daisy Ding-Dong Stupid Face, about 30 seconds before she knocked our x-mas tree down.  Again.  For the 15th time.  She’s a total dick.

Merry Fucking Christmas

(Ps… I saw the new trailer for “Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince” tonight.  Complete awesomeness!)

Back from Berlin, and searching for the motivation to function

I got back from Berlin on Sunday night.  The flight back was more grueling than the elderly infested flight out there…. but I’ll save that story for another day.  The show was fantastic, the Strychnin crew are all among my “top 10″ people on the planet, and much fun was had.  I posted a bunch of pictures on my flickr page of the show, some that I took, but mostly ones that Iris Bitter (one of the lovely Strychnin folks) took. I’m really really bad about remembering to take pictures wherever I go, so thankfully Iris was there with her trusty camera to capture memories that will soon be flying out of my head.

Something interesting that I discovered at the show while talking to some of the locals is that apparently the Germans’ don’t know what a cupcake is.  I have cupcakes in a few of my pieces, and I was asked by more than a few people what exactly those were.  This kindof blew my mind, because I rely on cupcakes for the bulk of my dietary intake.  Not to mention I have framed photos of cupcakes around the house because I love them so.  But to try to explain what a cupcake is to someone who’s never had one, and then try to explain why it’s important and has become such an american cultural obsession is difficult… not to mention it makes you sound like a crazy person.  Because they are silly and insignificant.  But they’re so much fucking fun!!!   So for any German out there reading this who doesn’t know what a cupcake is, here ya go (and I stole these off flickr, and I don’t remember who I stole them from so I can’t give proper credit… so sorry to whoever these pics belong to… bla bla bla whatever)

There.  Cupcakes.  Do ya get it?  With cupcakes, everyday can be your birthday.  It’s your own little personal cake, but small enough to where you’re not obligated to eat an entire regular sized cake.  And they’re pretty.  And made of magic.  Maybe it’s just an American thing…. but the Japanese have caught on, and they understand it too (but it’s probably because cupcakes are small and adorable, and Japan has perfected the art of creating things that are small and adorable).  Yes, it’s probably moronic that we’re obsessed with something so insignificant just because it’s small and cute and yummy… but that’s kindof what the U.S. is known for- being obsessed with stupid things for ridiculous reasons.  IE: Paris Hilton, Pokemon, the pet rock, Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, porn or anything related to sex that causes a juvanile reaction, Urkle, Bay Watch, Pogs, flip flops, designer sweatpants with stupid phrases written across the ass…. should I go on?  I’d rather not… it kindof hurts my feelings and makes me wish I was Canadian.

So since I’ve been home, I’ve been in a slump. I’m not sure what’s wrong with me.  Maybe it’s because I was running on manic for so long that now I don’t know what to do with myself (because I’m not good at sitting still, or slowing down… it makes me weird).  And I KNOW part of it is because of money, and that forever-growing virus in the back of my brain that says mean and horrible things to me all day and night because I’m bound to financial struggle (I fucking HATE being broke… I don’t want to be rich… just stable… for once…. please?).  But I’ve just been tired and non-responsive and unimpressed with everything.  I’d like to have this go away and go back to perky.  Maybe I’ll make some cupcakes and it will all be better.  Brad says I need to get a part-time job somewhere I like to get out of my head for a couple days a week.  It’s probably a good idea.  Because right now I’m sick of my head.  Anybody know anyone who’s hiring?

For now, lets all watch something that makes everyone happy……

Oh yeah… I have a couple drawings for sale on the webstore that weren’t needed for the show, so go take a peek.

xoxoxoxoxo………..

You can keep your dollar- part 2 (or alternately titled “Horrors from behind the Delivery Wheel”)

So my last post about tipping delivery drivers resurrected some memories from my “Get Your Pizza in 30 Minutes or Less” college employment that I apparently had blocked out of my mind for the sake of mental well-being. And because these memories are so fucked and funny… I will share them with you now.

Part 1: The Bird Lady

I can’t believe that I forgot about The Bird Lady. Legends should be made about this woman, and passed down generation-to-generation to scare children into behaving- in the way of the Boogy-man and Babayaga. “If you don’t eat your vegetables, we’ll take you to see the Bird Lady”. She was truly horrific, and tragically sad.

My second day on the job was a Wednesday 4pm to midnight shift. I remember this clearly because after this day, I immediately requested a schedule availability change to only having these shifts on Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday/Sunday because of The Bird Lady. My request was denied because all the other delivery drivers with seniority had already request those shifts because of the Bird Lady.

So I’m standing there with one of the other drivers, and at 4:30 he looks at the clock and says to me “The next call, you’re going to take”… and he smiled this evil and knowing smile. And a couple minutes later- the phone rang, and the counter girl yelled “BIRD LADY!!”. I had a bad feeling about this. But I was the “new guy”, so what could I do? They made the food, gave me the address, and off I went.

I drove out to what used to be the edge of town in Lawrence, KS where all this new housing development was popping up. Clean and lovely identical new houses in various shades of beige with perfectly manicured lawns. I couldn’t figure out what could be so menacing about the customer in this bland milk-toast neighborhood. I found the house (tan with small bushes and tulips all along the front garden), and went up to ring the doorbell- and before the door even opened, the smell hit me. This weird smell of rot and death and decay. I immediately got scared, and knew that I wasn’t getting paid enough to endure what was about to open that door.

The door opened. And every one of my senses was hit with an assault so hostile that I think I might have actually died that day, and my zombie body has been walking around living my life ever since. The woman that was standing in the open door smiling must have been in her early 80′s, with wild white hair that stuck out in every direction, she had food smeared on her face, and she was wearing a sheer cotton little nighty that was paper thin and covered in food stains- AND NOTHING ON UNDERNEATH (which is something that NOONE should ever have to see). The odor that I smelled on the other side of that closed door hit like a tidal wave when that door was opened, and it took everything I had not to visibly gag.

I was able to mumble out the total for the food, and she says “Oh, I have to write a check… come inside!”. I shake my head “no”… but she insists. So I step into the house.

Holy fuck… the house….. let me see if I can do this justice. It was bright and airy looking, and filled with what WOULD have been expensive new carefully-color-coordinated furniture. But the carpets were covered with mystery stains from what looked like various forms of food and ones that looked a little too much like blood for my comfort levels. There was garbage stacked high all throughout the living room, dining room, and what I could see of the kitchen, and plates of rotting food on all the furniture and all over the floors… and there were flies in SWARMS. The TV and radio were both on and blasting- but they were on static channels, so there was nothing but loud white noise. And everywhere were birdcages… there must have been at least 30 of them in the livingroom and dining room alone. Hanging from the ceiling, sitting on top of 4 foot high stacks of newspapers and on tables and countertops. But all the birdcages looked empty. I stood in the livingroom while she shuffled into the kitchen to write her check, and I leaned over to look in one of the birdcages- and was shocked to find a dead rotting parakeet at the bottom. Then I quickly looked into the bottom of another birdcage close to me- and there were 2 rotting finches at the bottom. I looked into a third cage- and yes, another dead bird. But all the cages were piled with bird food… so she was apparently still feeding and watering them. She shuffles back out to the livingroom to hand me a check, and I notice that her hands and arms have little cuts and are smeared with dried blood, as well as dried food. She smiles and says “It’s nice of you kids to bring me my food, because they took my car away” and I just nod and exit the house as quickly as possible. And no, there was no tip involved in that check total.

The smell didn’t leave my hair and clothing until I took a shower that night. I had to drive around for the next 7 hours smelling literally like death.

Upon getting back to the pizza shop, I learned that the Bird Lady orders the same thing at the same time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. For the following 2 months until a new driver was hired and became “the new guy”- it was my job to deliver food to the Bird Lady. Each time trying to come up with a new excuse to not enter her house of cheery horrors- and each time getting denied and having to step over that doorstep into the abyss. I was about 19, and didn’t have the awareness to report her living conditions because she obviously wasn’t able to care for herself and an needed assisted living situation. But my boss (who was in his 40′s and married with kids) was well aware of the Bird Lady’s situation and should have known to contact someone- but he was the world’s biggest douchebag and didn’t give a shit. Some family member of hers obviously set her up in a house with new furniture and someone to care for the lawn- and just left her there to rot like one of those little birds in her cages. It was a tragedy on every level.

So that is the first story from the Delivery Driver Diaries.

Tip your fucking driver… because they have to deal with far worse than you can ever imagine.