Another One That Was Worth The While

The year is coming to an end in just a few short hours. It was a good year, full of great times with great friends, old and new. I can only hope to match it for overall happiness in 2015 - exceeding it, well, that would just be greedy.

A Pleasant Dinner With The Demons

They were all present, as usual.

Though an invitation had not been sent out, each and every one of them had arrived promptly at the dinner hour, and each and everyone of them behaved as if they should have been expected.

They were seated appropriately around the large oval table. The two most powerful of them were at either side of me - Cowardice to my right, and to my left, Selfishness.

Those two were dressed to the nines, in an obvious attempt to appear as attractive as possible.

The other four in attendance were dressed a bit more or less in appropriate dinner attire, except for Apathy, who looked as if putting on a pair of shorts and an old, worn-out T-shirt was as inconvenient as a root canal.

Desire looked at the large serving platter full of appetizers that Excess was in the process of eliminating and wondered if Abulia could be bothered to fill a small plate with a few of the more decadent looking pastries, but then thought better of it as Excess appeared to have put his fingers over everything on the platter.
  For the first fifteen minutes not much was said by any of the six demons in attendance, and I certainly wasn't about to start a conversation. It was all I could do to keep my seat, truth be told. As individuals, each demon was...tolerable. As a congregation, well, let's just say the flight or fight response was getting an Olympic-class workout in my brain.

Finally, after a loud burp, Excess looked up from his plate and said to me, "I hope you enjoyed shopping for clothes this year buddy boy, especially pants - might want to get a new belt as well, the one you're wearing looks ready to give out."

That elicited a few laughs and snorts from all present, with the exception of Cowardice. After they all quieted down, Selfishness looked around and said, "My, my, my...I think I've done rather well this year...look at all the nice things I've added to the household. The rate at which I'm acquiring...*things* may make it necessary to build another little storage shed out back."

"Heh, fat chance of that happening." Abulia quipped with a snort.

Apathy nodded his head in agreement as he stared out the window that looked into the street in front of the house. The window was hazy with more than a years worth of grime. Turning to face the others at the table, he let out a sigh and looked at his half-empty plate and then over to Excess, saying, "You want the rest of this?"

Desire quickly interjected, "I'll take it - Excess has already eaten all the appetizers, and I'm starved."

Both of them had hands on the plate Apathy had pushed towards the center of the table, but Selfishness pulled it away from them both and set it down in front of himself, saying, "Too slow fellow demons, too slow. I'll savior every bite of this though, in honor of your efforts."

Selfishness dug in and Desire and Excess fumed, while Cowardice shrank back into his chair as Apathy and Abulia simply shrugged and stared into space.

With a quick glance at the clock I reached over to the small hutch where I had placed the notepad I had been writing on before the demons had come over to the house.

I had carefully listed twenty-three items that needed to be attended to, and with the same determination I seem to re-discover every year during the week after Christmas, I cleared my throat and spoke.

"Okay demons, this is it. 2015 is the year I'm finally going to get some things done, and none of you are going to get in my way, or else."

The words had barely left my lips when the room exploded in uproarious laughter, even from Apathy and Abulia. Hell, Cowardice nearly fell out of his chair.

With a pained effort to regain his composure, Excess looked over and, smiling like a drunk hyena said, "Resolutions? Again? Oh jeez man, you are a riot!"

Sketches With A Fine Tip Sharpie 12 27

Winter Wonderland, Schmunderland

Snow, and a lot of it, fell throughout the night. by 6:00am we had somewhere between 8 to 10 inches of snow, and while it had let up, there was another inch or so of flurries during the day.

And it was cold. 14 degrees at noon, The reluctant winter not so reluctant anymore. The combination of snow and cold made for a fun drive to (and from) work.

Brrrr! 

A Place In the Cold

These days Christmas Eve isn't such a pain
The friends I have are all reasonably sane
These days Christmas Eve is actually quite enjoyable
Just goes to show, anything is possible

Years ago it was never this way
Years ago Christmas Eve always left me cold and grey
Just another long and uneventful day
All I could see was hypocrisy in the outlandish displays

These days Christmas Eve isn't such a pain
The friends I have are all reasonably sane
These days Christmas Eve is actually quite enjoyable
Just goes to show, anything is possible

Funny thing, how much life can change
Ideas on what is right and wrong get rearranged
The realization you're the only one you've shortchanged
By deciding not to be part of the peace exchange

These days Christmas Eve isn't such a pain
The friends I have are all reasonably sane
These days Christmas Eve is actually quite enjoyable
Just goes to show, anything is possible

A Bargain If It Was Twice The Price

Obligatory Picture Of A Griswold House

The Part Of The Problem That Is Me

Tough Night In Lakewood

What's worse -being one of the residents without water due to a water main break...or being part of the crew who have to be out late on a Saturday night fixing it?

Sucks all around.

Wednesday 12 17 Sketches

                               CRB Sketches with black ball-point pen, Wednesday 12 17

Spot The Contradictions

Let's see,,,bumper stickers in support of a former Democratic Senator (from a very prominent family of Democrats - literally, the Kennedys of the America southwest). a pro-Palestine bumper sticker, an anti-Bush bumper sticker, an anti-Republicans bumper sticker, and a anti-Israel bumper sticker (none of which are on the actual bumper). A pro-science/anti-religion bumper sticker and a anti-Christian bumper sticker (on the driver's side and passenger side doors), and a Union 76 antenna ball (Union 76 is a chain of gas stations owned by Phillips 66. a petroleum company that ranks number 19 on the Global Fortune 500 list).

The contradictions...are there. You just have to look for them (Hint: What political party do the majority of Jews and Catholics belong to? What political party boasts about being tolerant? What political party rails on and on about big business, specifically the oil companies...Come on, you can figure this out...)

Four Murals On The South Facing Wall Of The Arvada Army/Navy Surplus Store

On the northwest corner of the intersection of Old Wadsworth and 57th in downtown Arvada, Colorado there is a multi-story red brick building that houses the Arvada Army/Navy Surplus store.

Decorating the south facing wall are four murals depicting scenes of the early days of Arvada. The artwork is done well, but the only attribution is to a company named the Western Pacific Art Co. of Idaho Springs, Colorado, dated 2005 - no individual artists name is given.

Though they are about fifteen feet up, the approximately 7' X 7' murals are worth a look-see. 

The Misery Will Eventually Fade

We will not be Gods

Even if it feels inevitable

Our technology 

Will not give us the power

To create life 

Only take it away

A Lonely Christmas Eve

Christmas eve and the bars close early
Collar up tight and head back to the house
Too warm to snow but we might get sleet
Hope there is something in the fridge to eat
Not enough in the cupboards to feed a mouse
Two pairs of socks on to warm my feet

Okay, not quite Clement Moore...

My Foot

                                                  I should probably get this looked at

Harvesting Cool

                            "Son, let me school you on cool..."

Outlaw bikers never set out to become an iconic image. Neither did alcoholic writers or semi-deranged artists or Surfers or left-handed guitar players.

They became iconic images because someone, somewhere, saw them, became completely enamored of them, and said to themselves, "I want to be like them".

So they adopted the way they walked, talked, dressed, acted, etc., in the hopes that whatever it was that those people had, that undefinable something that made them...cool...would somehow, through some sort of osmosis, transfer itself to them.

Absorb the zeitgeist, as the cultural anthropologist call it.

People always seem to want to be someone or something else, something other than who they are. 

So, of course, smart people learned to make the marketing of cool very profitable.

Those people who find a way to market the attitude, the style...the ones who trade on image, who manufacture an aura...those people have always interested me.

Those that co-opted cultural archetypes or lifted a popular image/personality from the past - think Madonna liberally borrowing the gypsy/hooker/Marilyn/Harlow looks/attitudes, or millionaire rock-stars like Springsteen and Mellencamp dressing like average working men, or rappers doing the whole street/gangsta' thing (I attended High School with a man who won a Grammy for co-writing a gangster rap song - he went to college on scholarship).

Actors, of course, can create iconic characters that become icons of cool because of the way the character is received - Eastwood as the man with no name, Brando as Johnny Strabler in the Wild One, Peter Fonda as Wyatt in Easy Rider - hell, the list is practically endless.

Thing is, most of those actors do not become their characters - they go back to being their regular selves after the filming wraps. However, some actors can get trapped in certain roles, typecast, due to the public not being able to perceive them any other way.

I am sure many a fan of most of those actors has walked away after meeting one thinking to themselves, "Man, he/she sure wasn't anything like I thought he/she would be."

Image and the perception of cool are entangled to an immeasurable degree, and the way entrepreneurs have been able to sell it is truly an accomplishment of the manipulators art. Everyday I see people walking around wearing the clothes that some celebrity has made fashionable, sporting a haircut that some actor or athlete has made almost necessary, or even adopting mannerisms and attitudes of popular figures.

It's quite mind-boggling, this seemingly overwhelming compulsion to eat up whatever it is that is currently being foisted upon the public as essential to having credibility amongst the proletariat.

I gotta find a way to get me a piece of that action - now that'd be cool.

One More Worry Than Anybody Needs

Got this friend who never stops worrying, and he asked me the other day, "Hey, why the hell are you not more worried about what's going on in this country?" I looked him square in the eyes and replied, "Because worrying is a foolish exercise in negative prognostication - you dwell on a worst possible scenario for a given situation and it cast such a dark shadow on your life that you can't enjoy the simple pleasures. Who needs that.?"

His retort? "Go ahead, live your life with your head in the clouds, it's going to come back to bite you, you'll see."

Which is pretty much what I've been hearing for about thirty years now from every negative nabob of negativism that I've had the pleasure to know. So far, not one bit of their worrying has come to fruition...and yet they persist.

Try As I Might Not

When the smiles fade from your eyes 
And your cheeks redden from laughter no longer
When the words from your lips fail to bring cheer
That is when I will still be there

The Great Outdoors...Sorta

The Storybook Sculpture Project In Abilene, Texas

This past weekend I was in Abilene, Texas with Brad B. We were visiting our fallen brother JPH's family, and as part of our visit we got a mini-tour of Abilene from Mom. Imagine my surprise when a sculpture park dedicated to three-dimensional representations of illustrations from children's storybooks was a prominent feature of downtown Abilene!

             Childhood's Great Adventure by Rick Jackson, from the book Santa Calls by William Joyce

                              Nicholas St. North by Steve Neves from the William Joyce book
                                   Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King

                            E. Aster Bunnymund by Steve Neves from the William Joyce book
                                               E. Aster Bunnymund and the Warrior Eggs
                                   

                          The Man in the Moon by Pedro Rivera from the William Joyce book
                                                                  The Man in the Moon

                           Sanderson Mansnoozie by Steve Neves from the William Joyce book
                                        The Sandman: The Story of Sanderson Mansnoozie

                                   Toothiana by Steve Neves from the William Joyce book
                                                  Toothiana: Queen of the Tooth Fairy Armies

The majority of these sculptures are near the National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature on North 1st street and Cedar, or a block over on North 2nd street.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the Jack Frost sculpture in front of the Abilene Public Library

West of the former Train Station (which is now a chocolate shop) along North 1st street is Everman Park, and there are six sculptures by Leo Rijn of beloved Dr. Seuss characters. 
                   

                                                        The Cat in the Hat

                                                  Sam I am from Green Eggs and Ham

                                     Horton and the dust speck from Horton Hears a Who

                            Max the dog and the Grinch from How the Grinch Stole Christmas

                                                        The Lorax from The Lorax

                                             The Turtle Tower from Yertle the Turtle

Last but not least is Dinosaur Bob eating a Volkswagen Beetle, on top of a parking garage along Cedar street.

                        Dinosaur Bob by Bob Daddy-O Wade from the William Joyce book
                                          Dinosaur Bob and His Adventures with the Family Lazardo

There is also a Randy Gilman sculpture of Seymour, the character from Walter Wick's Can You See What I See book series, but it has been removed from it's location in order to be repaired.

Mickey The Happy Dog

  CRB picture of Mickey, Jack Russell Terrier Of Hines Hill Kennels, Quanah Texas December 2014

Every so often something off the charts occurs - such as this picture I took this morning of a Jack Russell Terrier named Mickey. It was at Hines Hill Kennels in Quanah, Texas. It has to be one of the best photographs I've ever taken.

Wednesday Sketches With A Fine Point Sharpie

Da Vinci Said to God

Da Vinci said to God
Yahweh, I don't understand
Why the hell you ever gave
Free will to man

Can't you see all the trouble it's caused
Allowing them to devise their own plans
For what to believe in and how to behave
It's created problems from Rome to the heart of Iran

Uhm, that's all I've got...dang, really thought I had something here...oh dang