Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

Another weekend of derby silliness:









































Yes, I'm wearing pink.

Yes, I still hate pink.

But in the end I don't care, as long as I have fun. This bout was fun. And sparkly.

The LA City Council has been giving grief to the Derby Dolls. Specifically one woman named Jan Perry. She doesn't like us, we don't really know why. So we've been having to fight an incredible amount of red tape that keeps changing shape so that we can keep rolling. We had a regular season bout scheduled for last Saturday, but it had to be postponed because of Jan Perry's insistence that we're not greasing the palms of the right people uh...doing things legally.

Um, yeah.

There are rumors that she doesn't like anyone who isn't big money trying to start up business in her district. She doesn't like poor artists who help pave the way to the monied gentrification that she seems to want, either.

Despite the bout postponement, we had a perfectly-legal friends-and-family-only event since there were quite a few out-of-towners who were coming in to see their beloveds skate. It was a free-for-all skater-wise. All a skater had to do was show up on game day with a black shirt and a pink shirt with name and number on the back. We lined up by skill and divided into teams about a half hour before the game started.

No pressure, no extra practices, no worrying about promotion, making bank, or whether the fire marshall would shut us down.

It was the most fun I've had skating in front of people in a looooooooooong time.














On Sunday I had to help lead Fresh Meat practice. I'm Team Manager for one of the temporary Fresh Meat teams called The Mean Machines. It's a take-off from The A-Team. The other team is called The Mr. T-Stops. After practice the Mean Machines did some bonding by going to have sushi. The place I took them to has an amazing Spicy Tuna Tower, and they got hooked. They kept ordering more Towers, and then turning to me to ask if I'd squish it up so that all the ingredients were mixed up correctly and then serve it to them. So they started calling me "Momma *T*". It's very cute!

Freelance schedules are still fluctuating. The current stuff I'm on is going fine (well, other than the designer who died last week). The other job I was supposed to start April 1, then April 4, is now scheduled for April 18. Argh. Whatever.

I keep threatening to talk about the mysterious industry person known as "Anibator". They had a venom-filled blog called, "Anibation Fantasy" that just blew the doors off the industry in saying how screwy everything is right now. He had some points. Good points. Great points. Unfortunately, he wouldn't keep the blog going. It got deleted and gay porn was what you saw if you went to the old blog address.

Now there's another Anibation Fantasy blog. Most of it is reposts from the first blog(cached from Google, no doubt), with a few newer posts thrown in.

A blog like that needs to be around. To say what needs to be said. Unfortunately, Anibator isn't sparking a movement as of yet. Everyone's still in the bitching stage. If Anibator keeps the new blog going(no new posts for almost two weeks...not a good sign), there's a chance that the meek little animators in the industry will start to think for not just their little corner of the world but for the industry in general. And then make some action accordingly.

But Anibator has to do that work for now. Because it's going to take a lot to get animators out of their cubbyholes and into the mindset that change is up to they themselves, not the union(though the union is made up of artists too), not the studios, not the government, and not just Anibator.

I have a lot more to say on the subject. But not right now. I gotta go do stuff.

Highs and Lows

High: had a lot of fun at the Sacred City/Bakersfield bout last Saturday.

Low: had to work the bout(didn't get drunk enough beforehand like the husband did). Penalty tracking was a skill I previously had no experience in doing.

High: set up a bootcamp date with Sacred City in May.

Low: came out of the bar where the discussions took place to be told by the door guy that some drunken f*cktard backed into my car with his SUV and his trailer hitch scraped the bejeezus out of my front bumper. Dammit!

High: Sunday we stopped at Harris Ranch on the way home for steak.

Low: it didn't live up to the hype. We didn't go for the fancy expensive steak-eating restaurant, though. Our bad.

High: today the husband got a raise!

Low: he's going to have to work more weekends.

High: got my notes back on my freelance.

Low: not in the mood to do any work 'cos the weather is gorgeous and all I wanna do is go outside and skate.

High: I'm recovering from some major dehydration that I experienced after this weekend's fun.

Low: one of the guys on the freelance crew I'm on died last night or early this morning of a heart attack. He was in his 40's. I feel especially weird about it because I tried to get a hold of him yesterday and today to ask about some designs he was doing for the episode I'm working on.

Isn't it surreal how one feels when someone they know has died?

HOLY CRAP!!!!

So I checked in to my goofy MySpace account this morning and found a pic of this:




























So? Two chicks got the same tattoo. Hardly earth-shattering. Why do you care? You might be asking yourself.

They skate with the Bakersfield Rollergirls, and they just got tatts of their league logo.

A LOGO THAT I DESIGNED!

How cool is that?! They're marked for life with my artwork!

Mwahahahahahahahahaahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Two-fer Tuesday

Oh looky, I get a break in the weather and I'm actually able to accomplish something! Who knew?!

Here we have my latest favorite seat...octopus and girl.













I like how I didn't bother to hook up the octopus' arms very well from the lid to the seat. That's klassy!




















Ride 'em, cowgirl!

This is one of my fave pin-ups that I've done. She looks pretty good, has a nasty scowl on her face, and is a redhead.






















This close-up is kinda fuzzy, but hopefully you get the point:





















This week I'm looking forward to actually being able to work on the freelance stuff I have to do, since I now have something resembling character designs to work with. Woohoo! I still don't know when the roughs are due, but oh well. I'll just keep plugging away.

One of the voices on this show is Patrick Warburton. Yeah, that guy from Seinfeld(a show that I don't particular like), and he voiced Kronk in Emperor's New Groove(a movie that I liked mainly because of his character in the flick). In real life he's a rather deadpan fellow expression-wise, but his reads for animation are very expressive. Very expressive. It makes me want to put a pose in for every other word he says. Needless to say, it's hard to do that, so it really slows me down when I try to break down big chunks of dialogue into manageable pieces of storyboard panels.

Darn you to heck, Warburton! Darn you for having such a fun, expressive voice!

Anyway, I need to have the roughs done before I leave town for the weekend on St. Paddy's day. I'm going up to Sacoftomatoes to catch an interleague bout: Sacred City vs. Bakersfield. Sacred City is the breakaway league from the original Sacramento league. I submitted a rough logo idea or two to Sacred City, which they promptly discarded because they actually didn't know what it means to submit rough ideas. I'm not gonna clean something up that isn't going to be used, by gawd.

Bakersfield had the good sense to use my logo idea, so I might be cheering for them just a little bit more over the hometown girls. Ha! That's what happens when you dismiss my work!

Neener-neener.

One of these days I want to blog about the infamous "Anibator" who had a helluva blog about the animation biz up, but has since taken it down for various reasons. Anibator was anonymous, as were most of the commenters on his blog, but there were some excellent points made about the sad, pathetic state of animation.

WIP: 1...FINISHED!

Here's the lid to the never-ending Bellydancer seat.

I think it turned out pretty damn good, all things considered. I hope that the lady who's getting this likes it, too.


Last night the husband and I attempted to check out the yearly group show at La Luz de Jesus. It's a cool gallery, but as with many "cool" things in Hell Lay, it's in a part of town where the parking is absolutely ATROCIOUS at best. We drove ar0und and around and around looking for a damn parking space just to look at some goddam art. No luck. At all.

I got peeved, strangely enough. So what did I do?

I said we should go eat dinner instead. Which we did.

Take that, La Luz!

And had fun, 'cos we went to the Brite Spot on Sunset. It's a favorite little diner-type place for many little Silverlake hipsters and such, but we like it too. We sat next to a punk/metal band who seemed to be planning a tour. They were in their mid-40's and had many piercings and tattoos. They were of an age where the piercings in particular weren't really working for them looks-wise, but then again I'm kinda funny-looking too, so who am I to throw stones?

So we had a very, very mellow evening last night.

Today is another bout, the Sirens vs. Tough Cookies. I don't have to skate! Wow! But I do have to work the bout. Ah well. The husband will get to drink with impunity. Lucky bastard. The LA Marathon is tomorrow, and the new route practically encloses the track. So we're going to have to figure out a way to get out tonight when they start closing the streets off for the marathon route, and get back in tomorrow for clean-up and practice.

Oh freakin' joy.

Stoopid athletes! Messing up our fun!