WIP: 1

Here's a slightly out-of-focus-so-it-looks-more-arty photo of the bellydancer seat that I've spent about, oh, a million years on.

So it seems.

Damn weather.

I'm pressing my luck by trying to do a light clearcoat when it's about 60 degrees outside(that means it's almost too cold to be attempting such daring feats). Hopefully I won't screw it up.

Much.

Freelance Frustration

I'm working for two different freelance productions. Both are non-union, which sucks quite a bit of @$$. Both are scheduled to be worked on at the same time, which also sucks a great deal of @$$. Both are also not able to be worked upon, because I'm lacking in vital materials. How much @$$-suckery can there be?!

The production that I want to work on doesn't have a voicetrack, character designs, or even a model pack to give me. I have the script, and I've already gone through and done chickenscratch-type of thumbnails on the pages so that I'm ready to do the next step of drawing on board paper. Too bad about the not having designs, soundtrack, etc. Oh, and I have no idea when this stuff is due.

The production I don't want to work on has gone back and forth about when I'd get a script. I have no board paper to do the work even if I got a clue as to when they'd send the script. Welp, they sent the script this morning with a killer due date. Owch! Since I have to do my taxes the day the board is due, I'm asking if I can get out of doing this board and be put on another script. Oh yeah, and some board paper would be nice.

I've been emailing studios about other work, but no answer as of yet. Dammit.

I have three toilet seats that are almost done, except for clearcoating. The weather is too crapacious to complete clearcoating, so I now have different parts of each seat lying around the back room, waiting to be clearcoated and put back together. Did I mention that I hate cold wind? I'm really hating it right now, as that's what's preventing me from finishing the damn seats. ARGH!

So what am I doing? Reading angry blogs and watching reruns of "Match Game PM" on the Game channel. Somebody kill me.

More Narcissism

When I skate, I imagine myself to look something like the doodle.
Not pretty, but pretty damn scary. Those are stink lines coming up off of me.



















It's embarrassing to see what I really look like out there. Well, you can almost see the stink lines!


















The weather is keeping me from being able to clearcoat the two toilet seats that I'm working on. So I started painting on yet another one. It has a semi-nautical theme featuring an octopus. I also have some freelance to do. Yay for money!

Shhhhh!

I had to reveal another secret last night.

The husband and I went to another roller derby bout in Orange County. No, that's not the secret part.

Quick backstory: I was brought in as a guest coach to this league last Tuesday, with hilarious results. At first, they hated me. I mean, really loathed me. Why? Because I gave them a warmup that they wouldn't soon forget. I made them work. Then I made them work on essential game skills. Then I made them scrimmage for a whole 20 minutes straight! Thennnnnnnn, I made them do what the Derby Dolls call a Wall of Pain, where situps and pushups ensue...all with skates on. After two hours they were crying and complaining about the pain yet they loved it. Masochists!

Anyway, back to my story. So, there we were in Orange County ready to watch some roller derby. I had recently acquired a pair of white sneakers, which I wore with a white t-shirt and black pants. For those of you who actually know me, this is a shocking wardrobe development because I'm never seen in anything other than black with the occasional red to show some team spirit.

One of the Derby Dolls(and former Fight Crew member), Razorslut was in attendance and immediately noticed the shoes. And gave me quite a bit of grief about them. "Sooooooo, what brought this on?" she slyly asks.

I couldn't get out of it. I knew that I had to make my big confession. She'd weasel it out of me at some point, so coming clean was the best and least painful option.

I added white shoes because I'm slowly...slllllllooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwllllllyyyyyy, adding some color to my wardrobe because I'm a secret freak for a show on TLC called What Not to Wear and I know that my wardrobe sucks. That's right, I love transformation shows!

It all started over Thanksgiving weekend when I was sick. Well, I think it was Thanksgiving weekend, I'm not really sure. Because I was sick. Nevermind. SO, I ended up sitting on the couch in the den feeling like crap and the only thing on tv was What Not to Wear. I was hypnotized.

My wardrobe is atrocious. I know it. There are parts of it that don't bother me because it's for specific things that necessitate it; my leather pants for example. They're for riding motorcycles. That's usually the only time that I wear them, unless a pirate party is announced. My miniskirt collection is another example. I only wear them for roller derby or when skating in general is involved. So when I'm not riding or skating, I don't have a lot to wear that's nice-looking, attractive, or flattering. I just wear menacing black. Which is fine on Halloween, but I do think it affects the job situation sometimes.

Problem is, I don't know diddley about clothes and how to figure them out for a tall, pudgy, knuckle-dragger artist-type who rides motorcycles such as myself. I hatehatehate ultra-feminine stuff. I don't wear pink under most circumstances, I hate floral prints, I hate chiffon and uber-girly stuff. Well guess what? There's a lot of floral prints, and uber-girly stuff out there! I don't know where to find clothes that don't fit the above description. I don't know what I'm doing, period. You'd think being associated with an all-girl derby league would be a help, but to be honest I've been very shy about asking for help from them. Probably because I'd get a lot of grief about it. So I watch What Not to Wear for clothing tips. It's not quite reflected itself in my wardrobe yet, but there's always hope for the future.

To complete my story, Razorslut has gleefully threatened to enter me into the What Not to Wear funfest of getting a new wardrobe. Thank gawd they're not looking for west coast peeps right now(I already checked their official website), so I'm safe from televised humiliation. However, I did draw the below doodle of what it would be like to be on that show, critiquing myself in their 360-degree mirror. Click to view it big and stuff so that you can read it:

The Joys of Pet Ownership

I have three cats.

If I was smart, I wouldn't have any cats, but since I'm a sucker for punishment, three cats I have.

They're all getting older. The youngest, LouC, is a big dumb Eddie Haskell type of a cat. He'll be sweet and cute with us, but as soon as he thinks we're not looking, he'll start some grief with the other two cats. He eats rubberbands and loves frolicking on the bed when we're putting clean sheets on it. He acts like a kitten even though he'll be 13 years old this summer.

When we got him as a young kitten, we were told he was a girl cat. Hence the name. About two weeks after we got the cat, it grew so fast, so quickly, I took another look at it and found out it had stealth balls. It already was answering to "Lucy", so we changed its name to "Lou C Fur". He's what I call a cat's cat...he likes stereotypical kitty toys and kitty food and kitty activities.

The other two are around the same age...we think. Lardo is gauged at around 15 years old. He adopted us one fine day back in 1999 when my sister was taking care of our other cats while we were on a motorcycle trip to Laughlin. See? We adopt critters by proxy, that's how stupid we are.

He's not a big cat, but he's a round cat. He looks like a small orange basketball with a cat head attached. He's mellow and keeps to himself most of the time. However, he's diabetic. Dealing with the joys of a diabetic animal is varied. He doesn't flinch when given his insulin. Giving him other types of medicine is usually painless. He has some baaaaad episodes when he's given too much insulin. Twice he's gone into shock and convulsions where he almost died were it not for my crazy driving to the local animal emergency hospital. LouC used to try to prove to Lardo that since he's bigger than Lardo, he's better. Lardo looks mild-mannered, but he can kick some kitty butt. LouC now leaves him alone most of the time.

Both Lardo and LouC purr very loudly. Sometimes they're in competition, which is strangely lulling when they're both on the bed at night while I'm trying to go to sleep.

Then there's Max.

Max is my first cat. We got her from the Santa Monica animal shelter when she was 4 weeks old...too young to be taken away from her mom, btw. She was fed babyfood and was small enough to be put into the pockets of various clothing. She's small, fuzzy, and has big buggy eyes. She's high-strung and grouchy. I call her the Angriest Cat in the World, because it's true. She's going to be 17 years old at the beginning of April.

She has lymphoma. It settled in her intestines, and it makes her hungry all the time. Whenever I go into the kitchen she'll wake up, jump down from whatever sleeping station she was curled up in to trot after me and meow incessantly. The moment I come close to consciousness in the morning, she meows at me. In the late afternoon/early evening, she meows at me. Whenever I open the door to the den, she follows me in and meows at me. All types of meows. Happy meows. Purr-meows. Yeowly-meows. Growl-meows. Feed-me-now-before-I-pee-on-your-clothes meows. She truly drives me nutso sometimes. It was cathartic to do the above doodle.

I may not have Max and Lardo too much longer...Max is on medication right now, but I refuse to do chemotherapy on her and so the medication she's on might help her out for six months to a year. Lardo just switched insulin today...we'll see how that goes. LouC's doing fine...he has prescription food that he eats, but he's low-maintenance compared to the other two.

Low-maintenance is what I crave right now. I don't think I want more pets when the ones I have leave. But I know that as soon as I see a kitten up for adoption, I'd be tempted. I lasted 4 months without a cat when I first moved out of my parents' house. I made the husband get used to cats even though he's allergic to other people's cats.

At least we won't get a dog. That's too much responsibility, even for us.

Wow! Derby crap!

Last night was the season opener for the Derby Dolls.

My team went into the game with a great amount of anticipation and nervousness. Our best jammer, Militia Etheridge, quit the league. Our two other main jammers, Jihad and Crystal Deth were also not skating due to injury or leave of absence. The team was nervous about the amount of new players we had, and we had a championship title to defend.

We didn't need to worry.

Fight Crew won: 44 to 27 over the Tough Cookies.

WOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! Everyone really did well, I thought. No major injuries, too.

In other fun news, the latest issue of a new roller derby mag, Blood and Thunder has an article about people who do bout posters and such for different leagues and I got a full page! See above...click on it to actually read the damn thing. For some reason the Big Trouble in Little Chinatown poster looks horrible...the gradient on it is all screwed up.

We had famous people at the bout! Patricia and Alexis Arquette were spotted, as was John C. Reilly. I didn't see the Arquette sisters, but I saw John Reilly. It was funny, because a bunch of skaters saw him and NO ONE could remember his name. It went something like, "Hey! That actor guy is here! You know, the one from Boogie Nights!" "Which guy? The one with the gun?" "Nooooooo, the other guy!" "Uh, his friend?" "Um, yeah, I think so!"

Tooooo funny!

I wanted to get a photo with Reilly, but I was too chickensh!t to ask. Lame-o!

Bea Arthur has nothin' on me

Yesterday I was drawing a birthday card for the husband(HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HUSBAND!), and the phone rang.

When I answered, the young guy on the other end of the line asked for Mr. or Mrs. Frame. For a split second I thought of answering with, "Mr. and Mrs. Frame are my parents!" in my favorite stoner/surfer voice, but instead just stated that no, they're not here.

The young man replied with, "Oh. Sorry to bother you, sir."

Oh, good lourd.

It's sad that my voice is getting raspy enough so that I make Bea Arthur sound like Betty Boop. Just sad, I tell ya. It's difficult being this sexy, I tell you whut. And now that Anna Nicole has gone to the big trailerpark in the sky, I'm one step closer to goddess status, fer shure.

Hence, the above doodle.

Nature...yikes!

Everyone sees LA as a suburban/urban sprawl with nothing to offer to stimulate the mind and senses. Sitting in traffic, going to meetings, etc. is soooo mind-numbing. It turns one off to one's surroundings. What can possibly happen here that's interesting?

Come to my neighborhood and you can see some fun, furry critters! No, not the bajillion people walking their dogs...we have raccoons!

The other day I was on the computer(as usual) when I glance outside and notice two raccoons by the back door, loitering about. I've always thought of raccoons as strictly nocturnal creatures, so to see not one, but two of them in daylight was quite a sight. So I did what any badass roller derby player who rides motorcycles does.

I freaked right the hell out!

Then I grabbed the camera.

Here we see one of the raccoons wandering around the backyard. The other one left. Must've had a mind-numbing meeting to go to. Or it found an open trash can.

Whatever.

As you can see, this sucker is big. I figure it to be a young adult. As you can also see, I was still freaked out enough to shoot this pic through the closed screen door. That's style, I tell ya.



After grabbing a couple of photos from inside the house, I excitedly called the husband. I asked if raccoons were dangerous during the day. He thought I was stupid and said that they should be fine. He then suggested that I take some water out for the raccoons. Hmmm. OK.



So I found a plastic bowl and filled it with water. Grabbed the camera, and tiptoed out the front door and silently made my way to the backyard. I put the bowl down and noticed that the remaining raccoon was having fun sniffing around by the trampoline.










It sat under the trampoline.

Then it groomed itself like a cat would.

For some reason, to see a raccoon lick itself as if it were a cat amuses me. It stopped doing that when it noticed me crouched about 20 feet away with a little box making clicking noises every couple of seconds.







Another shot of the confused raccoon. It had an air about it as if to say, "Why are you bothering me? Am I bothering you? No? Then please, let me get back to my licking. I have a hot date later tonight."









It got nervous with me being out there, so it cautiously made its way to the back fence and silently disappeared.

I left the water bowl out, but it has remained untouched. I guess I scared away the fuzzy critters. Ah well.

Updates? What updates?

It's really funny that despite me not having a day job, I manage to stay busy enough to not update this-here blog very much.

Here's some photos from the LA/TX game. They were taken by one of my fave photographers, Boss Hogg. He lives in Santa Cruz but drives all over the state taking pix of the different derby leagues sprouting up like mold in the shower. He's funny as hell and snaps a good pic. I must admit I'm horrified to see that I skate with my eyes bugged out like I'm Rat Fink, though.

The Dolls have another photographer that they use. I and a few other skaters don't like him as much because he tends to focus on a "type" that he'll endlessly take pix of, while ignoring the rest of the team. If a skater doesn't have looooong flowing hair and isn't a size 00, she ain't getting her photo taken by this guy. In fact, he didn't even bother taking photos of Fight Crew with the Toughie Trophy when we won the Championship back in November, yet he took plenty of pix of the opposing team, even in defeat. Um, OK. Whatever.

Today is Superbowl Sunday, and I intend to go skate on the beach. And maybe work on the toilet seats that are works-in-progress in the back room. I also have a travel case that needs painting up, so I'm going to try out enamel paint for the very first time. Should be interesting!