FINALLY

So I finally got around to getting my paws on the camera to upload some photos. Enjoy my narcissism!

The day after my second laser tattoo removal appointment. Tasty, isn't it?





















The redness around the tatt has now faded. Parts of the black outline are definitely being obliterated. The red hasn't budged, and the blue is holding on pretty good, too. I was told that I'd start seeing more results starting two weeks after the treatment, so we'll see.

It's still a bit tender to the touch, and it feels like my muscle was cooked or something...the meat feels extra tough under the tatt. Weird!


One of the husband's pride and joys at SNIFF: building a nice fire out of wet firewood and empty pizza boxes. He did what no one else could do:















I like the out-of-focus effect.

Here we are with SNIFF's host, RE:




















He is, as they say, the f***ing sh!t.

It's too bad that we weren't able to stick around for the full effect of SNIFF, but I think you'll agree that the following photos make up for our lameness.


Now the fun stuff!


Here's the husband all dressed up for the Monkey Boy and Girl's wedding in Vegas:




















Getting him to look happy for a photo isn't easy. I mean really, he's standing in the lobby of the damn Bellagio surrounded by beautiful plants and that's as happy as he can look?!


Mudsock getting a Sharpie tattoo:




















Yes, it was one of those kinds of weddings!


And now...


















for your viewing pleasure...



















THE DRESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!





































Ta-da!

I also picked up a lovely accessory at the wedding:




















No, the maniacal look on my face is standard. Notice the cute drink monkey on my earring. I think that drink monkeys should be required at every wedding. 'Cos they're fun. I like fun, and that weekend was definitely fun!


OH, and the Derby Dolls are going to start having games again in November. Boo-yah!

First Impressions

Here's some first impressions from my weekend. Totally self-absorbed, as usual.

Eating at SNIFF:




















The amount of weight I gained over the weekend was obscene. I threw any self-control when it came to eating and drinking out the window. I had some incredible tri-tip, biscuits and gravy, pizza and donuts galore. In other words, all the foods that I regularly don't get to eat. Luckily I was able to start making up for it yesterday when I rode my bicycle from the Westside to the Hollywood Bowl parking lot for a two-hour bootcamp and then rode home again. My thighs are screaming today.

I ended up riding 26 miles to and from the Hollywood Bowl. Good lourd!

Here's my rendition of standing in the Bellagio lobby waiting to go to the Monkey Boy and Girl's wedding. I actually felt like I didn't stand out in a bad way most of the time. Most of the women there looked like tourists. That's not a good thing.














I have to admit, I liked dressing up for this occasion. Alright, the shoes were absolute murder, but I knew that would happen. I found out that it's easier to run in 4-inch stiletto heels than it is to walk or stand in them. Walking in them hobbled my speed down to "normal" walking speed. The husband loved it, and I think he would love it if I wore the damn things more often so that he can actually walk with me for once. Bother!

The other part of dressing up complete with heels that the husband liked is that I was pretty damn tall. Not quite transvestite tall, but above-the-heads-of-most-mortals tall. I would wreck the effect by talking in a really deep voice as if I was indeed a tranny. The husband told me to shut up when I did that. Ha ha!


This is what I woke up to yesterday:















Cats in my face. As time goes by, the cats are getting bolder in their interpretation of the Angriest Cat in the World's annoyances. I didn't get any sleep last night thanks to the Diabetic Fatass Cat's insistence on meowing continuously and attempting to pet my face with a cold paw. I'd sleepily place him on the floor, but he'd hop right back up and sit on my feet to purr and meow some more. Rotten furry bastard.

Photos coming soon. I hope.

Underappreciating

This past weekend really hit home a point that's been swimming around in my muddled little brain for the past couple of weeks.

Friends are awesome.

Yeah, quite the newsflash, ain't it?

No, but really.

Trotting around the state visiting very different groups of people made me realize how damn lucky I am. I know some amazing people. They even invite me...me! to their fun events, whether it's a biker party or a wedding. And going from one to the other in a day is quite a stretch!

I'm not articulating what I want to say very well, so let's just say that I had such fun seeing and talking to a wide variety of people whom I consider to be really really great in one way or another. I'm a lucky little knuckle-dragger, oh yes I am.

Here's the rest of the design for the SNIFF shirts this year:





















The Never Trust an Electraglide... comment is from the proprietor of the party, RE. He has a history of, uh, testing Harley-Davidson bikes to their utmost engineering limits while out on cross-country trips, resulting in a couple of spectacular crashes that boggles the mind that he made it through alive and in one piece. He has a few guardian angels trying to keep up with him, that one.

More to come on my adventures later...complete with pictures of me in a dress. Just in time for Halloween!

An Interesting Day...

Want to read about my day?

Sure you do! If you didn't, why the hell are you reading this to begin with?!?! Sheesh!

Anyway, it all started early this morning...

I went on a beach skate, as I knew that I'd be busy for the rest of the day and I needed to get my exercise in. Things were going fine until I blew out a wheel bearing north of Santa Monica on the bike path. I live south of Santa Monica, about 2 miles inland. DAMMIT.

So I started slowly scooting back from whence I came, and I ran into one of the sequence directors with whom I worked with over the summer. In fact, it's one of the guys I was writing about yesterday. He's Example B, btw. He's getting ready to go surfing, so I stoopidly don't offer to make him take me home.

I should have.

My wheel completely stopped turning about a mile down the bike path, and so I had to scoot myself home for the remaining 3-4 miles with one foot and trying to coast on the other foot. Sounds easy, like riding a skateboard, right? IT'S NOT. I almost face-planted about five major times, and got verbally acosted by a group of hobos in Venice. They liked redheads and let me know in no uncertain terms just HOW MUCH they liked redheads. Like I needed that crap.

After scooting across hellishly busy intersections, almost running into various joggers, other hobos, and old ladies, and trying to skate up a damn hill, I finally got home. Just in time to take a shower and run more errands.

I stop to pick up my portfolio in Burbank. As I'm packing up the bike, four WWII-era fighter planes cruise by overhead. I stop and gawk, 'cos I love planes. Especially old planes. A studio security guard is sitting by his car (a Mustang! ooooooooh!) and tells me what kind of planes they are(I forget specifically what they were, except that they're from McDonnell-Douglas). He then tells me about some place at the Van Nuys airport where one can fly those planes, which is pretty damn cool. I ask him if he flies, and he says he has. I said that it must take a helluva lot of concentration to fly, and he tells me that actually it's about as much as it does to ride a murdersickle. Really? I'm surprised. He then surprises me some more by telling me how nice his day is when he gets to see a woman dressed in leather riding motorcycles and appreciating planes. Bwahahahahaha!!!! At least he was cute.

So I skedaddled to meet up with Cute Friend Becca and my Bunny-Hugging board artist from the summer. After getting the literal runaround from the studio about where I can park the damn bike, I caught up with the ladies and we had a very entertaining lunch. Gossip and hilarity ensued.

Then it was off to my second tattoo removal appointment in Beverly Hills. I was early, so I sat and read Vogue. I can't believe women give a damn about stick figures in expensive clothes. Absolutely baffling. I get called in and get zapped. The strength of the laser was increased, and so the tattoo and the area immediately surrounding it is swollen and red as hell. It's nasty looking, actually. I'm icing the area as I type to keep the swelling at bay. My next appointment is in 8 weeks...the week of my birthday, as a matter of fact. Oh joy.

And then I came home to the fatass diabetic cat having a very mild reaction to his insulin. Good grief.

All that's left for today is going to watch derby practice at the beach, and then packing up for this weekend's adventures. In the meantime, have fun kids, and don't get any wooden tattoos!

A Few of My Favorite "Compliments"...

Everyone likes getting complimented whether they take them well or not. I'm no exception, and as an added bonus, I take compliments very badly. So my favorite compliments are the backhanded ones that I get from time to time...the surface niceness barely covers the potentially searing insult underneath. Here are three of my faves...two are work-related:


a) I was working on a fun show with a young supervising director. We're going over the notes he had on one of my boards. Generally we're cracking jokes, laughing a lot, raising a ruckus and having fun. He's very funny and very talented and I think he's a cool guy. Anyway, he's riffling through the board randomly and then mutters, "You know what I like about your drawing style? There's no style to it!"

Everything stops.

Excuse me? I say with a raised eyebrow.

Uhhhhhh... he says, as he realizes how that really sounds...No, what I mean is...uhhhh, your natural style is very adaptable to whatever show you work on...(insert stammering and sweating here)....

The thing is? He's right. I have a non-style and I tend to mimic the style of whatever show I'm working on at the moment into my boards and whatnot. But it sure was funny to watch him squirm for those few minutes.



b) One day over the summer I was talking with one of the fellow supervising directors on the last job I was on about last year's project that we had both storyboarded on. He's Mr. Action Show guy and can be rather intimidating. For the first month I worked with him I had a mantra that I kept repeating to myself over and over in my head along the lines of, I'm Not Afraid, I'm Not Afraid, I'm Not Afraid...

He says to me with an air of casual authority, "I saw your boards from last year. They're very charming, even though you didn't draw them on-model."

Um, what?

Gee, thanks! I said.

"No, really, the board worked out anyway." he says in a sorta-semi-reassuring tone. Well, that makes it all better, doesn't it?! I still have no idea whether he actually thinks I can draw worth a damn. But on the project I was the resident doofus while he was the resident action sequence dude, so we each had our place on the production.



c) I was having dinner with some of the Tejas expatriates at Vitello's a couple of weeks ago. For the occasion I actually wore some makeup and the now-standard huge earrings. One of the guys came up to me and commented on said makeup and earrings. I said, "Yeah, I thought I'd dress as a girl for once." to which he replied, "You look good as a girl!" Which doesn't sound too back-handed here, but his verbal delivery is so delightfully deadpan it just makes one wonder!



Here's a sneak preview of the shirt design I did for one of the events that I'm going to this weekend:





















I'll post the back of the design when I get back next week.

Drying Up...

Warner Bros is a weird place these days.

This morning I read this article linked from John K's blog comment section. Made me say, "WTF?!?!?!" to myself, as it comes on the heels of the announcement that Kids WB will cease to exist, leaving what little Saturday morning animation on CW to be done by 4Kids...the guys that used to do Pokemon and also currently do all of Fox's Saturday morning crap. Warners ain't itself these days.

What does this mean for the average working jane such as myself? Even less job stability, as there's one less place to try to get a job at. Crap. I yearn for a day when Americans can make funny cartoons to be shown on tv again, but I don't know if that will be allowed to happen.

What to do?

Start one's own crap on the internet is the obvious first choice. Hell, look at Homestar Runner...one of the funniest internet cartoons out there, IMO and they're still going strong. The creators got the chance to go on tv, but they turned it down because they knew the suits would screw up the show. Good on them.

In the meantime, here's a logo for the Derby Dolls' referee crew that I'm almost done with:






















It was inspired by artwork from the early-80's ska bands like the Selecter. Fun stuff. A little more tweaking and it'll be ready to go. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!

Speaking of Derby Dolls...we're still homeless, technically. I don't know when our next game will be. I don't know if/when we'll be moving the track that's currently in a new storage space into our alleged almost-OK'd new space in Silverlake. Ugh. Frustrating.

So in the meantime I'm beach skating and getting ready for this weekend's festivities of bikers, cool t-shirts and weddings. Yay!

Holy crap I'm a piiiiiiig...

I ate too much over the weekend. Now I feel crapacious. Bleh. It's salad for me for most of the week.

I also found out that my usual beach skate route is silly as hell. I skate almost 20 miles when I go from my house to the End of the World(aka: Temescal Canyon). Wow, that's a good haul! No wonder my quadriceps are so damn huge.

Here's a couple of roughs for drawings that I did for people. We start with a card I made for my pal Raf in honor of his coming through a freaky medical scare, and then not getting a job on the upcoming Wonder Woman direct-to-video:














Yes, that's Wonder Woman getting a face full o' skate. She deserves it, trust me. The color version came out pretty well...too bad I didn't bother getting a scan of it before handing it off to Raf. He's now in the same circle of hell freelance-wise that I am. Ha-ha!

Here's a rough for a birthday card I did for fellow Fight Crew skater and Simpsons artist Vulvarine:















She had a birthday bicycle pub crawl on Saturday night. Gawdamm, that was fun! About 25 of her friends showed up for beer, absinthe, beer, tequila, pizza, beer, beer, pizza, cake and rum. And that was before the group left for the ride! When we got back after the pub crawl, we had cake, chips, and McDonald's crap. Oh, and some beer. It was ridiculous. And tasty.

I stumbled upon the latest in reality show stupidity last night: America's Most Smartest Model. To be honest, I wouldn't have bothered with it at all had Ben Stein not been one of the "hosts". Try to watch the first episode, if you can. The rest of it doesn't look as interesting.

Ugh. I have a definite case of the Mondays.

Another Hurdle

So I have this wedding to go to next weekend. In freakin' Vegas.

I hate Vegas.

I'm not a big fan of attending weddings.

Why?

Because I dread having to dress for weddings.

That's why the murdersickle is so handy. Usually the husband and I ride the bikes to weddings, so we sneak out of the whole dressing-up thing. Not this time. We're flying, so we have no excuse to not look somewhat appropriate for the occasion. Any normal woman would be excited to dress up for a wedding in Vegas, baby!

Then there's me.

Doofus extraordinaire.

But, I bravely went out to the local Nordstrom's Rack, armed with nothing but my credit card, comfortable shoes, and the swirling advice from Stacey and Clinton from What Not to Wear trying to sink into my stubborn black-clad brain cells. I intended on getting a dress for the wedding that can also be used for whatever other social crap I may have going on during the upcoming holidays. A couple of other daytime items of clothing was also on my list of to-get stuff.

I came out of the experience realizing that shopping ain't as easy as it looks.

It took me forever to navigate the store to find dresses, much less the other secondary crap I wanted. When I found the dresses, it took me forever to find anything that would look semi-decent on a Knuckle-Dragging Brute. Either the fabric was atrocious, the dress style was hideous, the color was vomitrocious, or it was in the wrong size.

I was in that damn store for two hours.

I almost had a meltdown.

Just like the women on What Not to Wear do!

So I distracted myself by finding an amazing pair of black shiny pumps. They probably qualify for what some people call F*** me pumps. I'm stoked! I won't be able to walk worth a damn, but I'm stoked!

I got a second wind after that and found a damn dress hidden away amongst some of the ugliest patterns ever created by mankind. Here's a detailed and incredibly accurate artist's portrayal of what I'll look like next weekend in Vegas:





















SHEXSHAY, don't you think?!

Kill me now.

Still working on figuring out accessories and whatnot. This dressing-like-a-girl thing is exhausting!!

What I do for a friend!

And I found a new song by Peaches. I heart it much!

Two Years

I've been doing this blog for two years now. WOW!

After reading some of my old entries, I've noticed that I've kept the idiocy and general goofiness levels about the same for the past two years. I may not be as great a blogger as Uncle Eddie or John K because I don't aim to be educational, but I've been having fun with it.

Speaking of fun, I've updated the Entropy Project.

Joe Riley

...was a helluva artist. Apparently he died this week, but I don't know what happened. He wasn't old, so I imagine whatever it was wasn't supposed to happen at this date. I hope to find out more tonight at dinner. I'm sad. Cos he was good.

Anyway, his blog is here, and he even mentioned my pathetic self on said awesome blog here. Check out his paintings and sculptures! Freakin' AMAZING.

Social Secretary

Still furiously drawing away on freelance. The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter though, I think. I can't wait to get my life back, albeit for a short amount of time.

Was a conspiracy formed so that there's too much cool stuff going on the weekend of October 13? I have to be in Jackson, CA for a par-tay and Las Vegas for a wedding(which I need to get a dress for. Lourd help me on that shopping excursion!). Also scheduled is a Derby Doll bout, an interleague bout featuring the flat-track league in town and the Bay Area league. Aaaaaaaaaaaaand, Lebowskifest West is going on. Ja-heezus, enough already!

So I'm slightly pouty about this.

This week is social, too. Tonight I'll be catching up with some of the folk I worked with in Texas. We're eating at Vitello's, which is the restaurant where Robert Blake's wife had her last meal. Woohoo! Tomorrow I see some of the Scooby people. Saturday we visit our SoCal biker friends, where drinking and eating in mass quantities will ensue. I'm gonna have to go on a severe diet next week!

In the meantime, here's some funny stuff I found on the interwebz:

What I Do Online...

Here's a silly post inspired by my online perusing today...

I religiously read quite a few sites every day I'm near a computer. Today's perusing had me catch up with Uncle Eddie's Theory Corner, where a particular topic got me thinking about things I see on one of my other fave sites. Btw, if you're in the animation biz, you should be required to read Uncle Eddie's blog. If you're not in the animation biz, you should read his blog to know that more people like him should be in charge of the animation biz.

The particular topic (WARNING: clicking on the Particular Topic brings up some photos of nekkid girls. NSFW) started with Uncle Eddie's taste in nekkid girls. He apparently doesn't mind underarm hair on girls. Read through the comments, and you'll see various people commenting on underarm hair. And pubic hair. Which got me thinking. Oh no. It's now commonplace for most women to shave, wax, or trim their pubic hair. I have mixed feelings about it, but more on that later.

Here's where my perusing and thinking cross each other's paths...

One of my other fave sites to check out constantly is Craig's List. Alright, I'm absolutely, COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY OBSESSED with reading Craig's List throughout the day. Rants and Raves. Missed Connections. Creative Gigs. The bulletin boards. And, of course, the personal ads. Men for women, women for men, men for men, t-girls for men, strictly platonic, casual encounters, misc. romance...I read them all.

Something I've noticed about the personals...guys sure like to show their junk on Craig's List. Two immediate thoughts come to mind whenever I see a pic of some guy's junk when he's advertising for a date/hookup/LTR on a m4w board. One: do chicks who aren't total skanks really go for that? I always thought women liked a little mystery in that department...at least at first. Two: why are men starting to totally shave their pubic hair? Trimming? OK, I can kinda-sorta understand that. But shaving?!?!?!?!? Especially when the guy has chest hair?!?!?!?!?!?!? It looks RI-GODDAM-DICULOUS when a guy has chest hair and then shaves his pubic area. Just sayin'. Makes me glad I'm not out trying to get a date on Craig's List, I tell you whut.

OK, got that off my mind. Discuss.

Anyway...

My two new favorite sites, because they combine two wonderful things...roller derby and lolcats:

I Can Has Lead Jammer?

icanhasderbygirlz

And yes, I've been making lolskaters for both sites, as evidenced below:


































Here's something I'd like to see more of...

My friend Kenny has a fun blog and he knows a ridiculous amount about films and film making. He knows alllll of the cool old films from Back in the Day, and he watches Turner Movie Classics a lot. On my own blog he gave a great little list of Rosalind Russell 101 films to see. Which I have to get on and watch when I'm done with my current freelance hell. I'd like to see other actor 101 lists. Start basic, and see where it goes. You know I've never seen a Gary Cooper film? I've barely scratched the surface of what Clark Gable did. Barbara Stanwyck? I know she's cool, but what are her best films? I finally saw Bette Davis in Of Human Bondage last week. Why the hell haven't I watched it before?! What about all those character actors from the 30's and 40's? Jeez, it's almost overwhelming what's out there. People like Kenny help out the staggeringly ignorant such as myself when it comes to finding stuff like that.

And now, back to my freelance and my mixed thoughts on women getting rid of their pubic hair. Thank you and goodnight.

Onwards and upwards...or not.

Haven't had time to draw up anything worth posting, so here's the first hit one gets if they google my name under "images". Pretty damn cool:

Still freelancing away. This script is multiplying like yeast! It just keeps going and going and going and going and going. At least most of the battle sequences are over.

The remaining cats have figured out that the Angriest Cat in the World hasn't come back. So there's been an adjusting to their positions. They have figured out that there's more attention to be given to them. So both of the little furry bastards have been coming up to me more often to be petted. I had no idea that the fatass diabetic cat could be so demanding. Apparently he knew that I belonged to the Angriest Cat in the World before, and now he's moving in on her former territory. The big dumb cat is now being more affectionate than before. He's always been prone to acting as if to say, Look at me! I'm cute! I'm a damn CUTE KITTY CAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but it's kicked into a higher gear. I'm going to end up with diabetes by the end of next month if he keeps this going.

I found the Angriest Cat in the World's collar and put it on my Divorce Desk. It's comforting to have it there. I decided to have her cremated, and so should be getting her ashes soon. Originally, I thought about taking them to the desert around Joshua Tree to scatter the ashes. Why there? I don't know...probably because it's a weird looking place and I had a weird cat. Now I don't know what I'll do. I may keep them for awhile until inspiration strikes me.

In the meantime, I'm doing a lot of skating at the beach when I'm not working. The weather's perfect and I enjoy the distraction. I can't wait to get done with my work so that I can get back to goofing off properly.

*sigh*

This was a sh!tty weekend.

Friday started out OK...I turned in the first half of the current freelance hell I'm in, and the supervisor liked what I did. Yay!

I then tried to make lunch plans to no avail. Boo! That came back to bite me very severely in the @$$ later in the afternoon.

I came home, put the murdersickle away, and went to tend to the Angriest Cat in the World. As you know, she was diagnosed with lymphoma late last year. As you also know, her eating habits as of late have been abysmal. As of this past week, she wasn't herself at all.

She stopped growling at the diabetic fatass cat.

She stopped being able to jump up to my computer table to lay on top of my computer monitor.

She stopped eating.

She stopped using the litter box.

She stopped waking us up early in the morning to be fed.

She stopped curling up in a ball in my lap.

She stopped sleeping next to my head on my pillow at night.

She stopped purring.

She stopped sleeping.

She stopped walking around with such force that I could hear her little feet stomping on the hardwood floors.

Basically, all she's been doing for the past week has been lying in one of two spots in the back of the house, keeping to herself. Not sleeping, not doing much of anything except lying uncomfortably. She'd let me pick her up and carry her to the kitchen to give her medication and try to feed her. She'd let herself be put on the bed. She'd let herself be placed in the den. However, she didn't stick around for any of that for very long, and she'd stumble back to her semi-hiding place.

So I figured it's off to the vet she goes.

I pack her up with little resistance(a big red flag right there)and cart her off to the vet. She meows plaintively a couple of times in the waiting room, but she's suprisingly quiet otherwise. We wait for about 45 minutes in the waiting room and then go in for her exam. The vet checks her out, weighs her (4 lbs, 4 oz...skin and bones), and takes her temperature. He feels around her abdomen and notices that one kidney is way bigger than the other(one kidney has probably shut down functions altogether), and there's a large mass in her intestinal area. The same area where the lymphoma started.

There's nothing that can be done for her.

Being the strong, stoic individual I am, I do what any badass would do.

I fainted dead away in the examining room.

I scared the bejeezus out of the vet staff, but they've dealt with fainting people before and had me sitting up with a cup of water quickly after I came to. I have one helluva goosegg on the back of my noggin as a result though. Hurts like hell, too. This was the only time I heard the cat complain, as the staff had to try to put her back in her carrying case. She doesn't like the vet, to put it mildly. When she was in full force, she'd make the Tasmanian Devil look like a fluffy baby chick. Her ferocity was legend. Not this time. When I sat up, I saw her scowling at me through the bars of her case, as if to say, Good going, moron!

I blame the fainting on my not eating lunch. I should've known better. It's not like I didn't know what the outcome would be for the cat. It shouldn't have been the shock that it was. Argh.

Anyway, the vet gave her a vitamin B shot and some general fluids since she was so dehydrated. They sent her home with me, saying that if there' s no improvement Friday night, to bring her back in Saturday.

No improvement.

So Saturday was The Day. The Day that I had to put my first cat to sleep.

I've been with my sister when she had to put one of her cats to sleep. It's an awful experience. It's doubly awful when one goes back to the place where they fainted the day before to do it. Ugh!

I'm very lucky in that my sister returned the favor and was with me and the husband when we took the Angriest Cat in the World back to the vet in the late afternoon. I've been a big crybaby since Friday. I haven't been this sad in an incredibly long time. To be responsible for taking away the doomed life of a pet that's been in my care for her entire life hit me very very hard.

She went peacefully.

It was the right thing to do. It was a painful thing to do, and I haven't slept right for days. My eyes hurt from crying. My back hurts from tossing and turning in bed.

But she went peacefully.

And it was the right thing to do.

I'm still miserable for now. I cleaned up her food area and threw out her litter box. Cried while I did it. I cried when I came home from the vet's and fed the two remaining cats, because I wasn't feeding three cats.

But she needed to go peacefully when she did, and I just have to keep telling myself that.

She was an incredibly ill-tempered cat. But she was my incredibly ill-tempered cat, and I miss her horribly.

My Cary Grant moment

I've been thinking about how far I've come job-wise. Apparently my hatred for my current freelance got me pondering this. So, what was my first job?

Working at a crop-dusting company as a flagger. What's a flagger? you may be asking yourself.

A flagger is a low-paid dipsh!t who gets sent out to the fields that need to be sprayed with pesticides wearing coveralls, respirator(that would hardly ever get used), hat, and plenty of sunblock. The flagger is given a crude measuring device called a "widget" that was 3-feet across at the base. The flagger turns the widget a certain number of times from the edge of the field to be sprayed and then waves the flag they have in their other paw for the cropduster plane to aim for. The plane aims for the flagger (one flagger at each end of the field, forming a straight line for the pilot to follow), sprays the field, then turns around to come for another pass. The flagger moves their little widget, waves their flag, and moves on as soon as the plane goes by. This whole process ensures that the field getting sprayed got something resembling even coverage.

There are many reasons why this job is an incredible anomaly in my life. It was outdoors, and the peak season was summertime. SO prime for a vampiric pale pasty person such as myself! I would have to get up at around 3 in the morning so that I could ride my bicycle for six miles in the dark to the cropdusting headquarters and get my assignment for the day. I had to work with men who tended to be rather crude. I rarely got access to indoor plumbing when it came to having to use the bathroom.



















I was 18 when I got the job. Actually, my mom got me the job. Anyway, I was paired with an old guy named Harold for most of my tenure the first summer I was working there. Harold looked like a more bulbous version of Michael Moore. He lived in a small trailer on the premises of the cropdusting company. He was also a dirty old man. He talked constantly. About the weather. About politics. Work gossip. Backstories about the company owner. Anything about the local flora and fauna that came across his line of sight.

The "dirty old man" aspect really revealed itself on very hot days. Harold would talk about Stupid Pilot Tricks(a favorite trick of the pilots would be to take the planes down on the Sacramento River and buzz low enough to get the landing wheels wet. A highly illegal move, apparently) and other flaggers. He'd then casually mention how previous girl flaggers would do their jobs topless on really hot days. WTF?!?!?!?!? I would just roll my eyes at this. He'd try to convince me that this was standard practice with girl flaggers at other cropdusting companies, too. I'd just stare back at him. I was never afraid of him, ironically enough, because a)I was quicker than he was and could definitely outrun him if I had to, and b) I looked like his daughter, and as a result I think he actually kept a reasonable physical distance from me most of the time out of some form of respect. Working with him was actually a good base for learning to deal with rollergirls, who never cease to amaze me when it comes to being crude!

I learned something important working at this place: pilots are crazy. They may not look crazy when you meet them. In fact, the pilots I worked with tended to be very mild-mannered. Get them in a plane and all of the sudden you have the Red Baron coming down on you...literally!

There was Joe, who flew in Vietnam and was incredibly cranky most of the time. He didn't give a damn about how much pesticides the flaggers got sprayed with, and the few times I was on his crew I used the flag as a cover as much as it was used as a marker. I think he was the only one who crashed his plane while I worked there. He came out OK, but the plane was toast.

Rich was a little better, but he'd get impatient with the flaggers sometimes.

Wayne was practically blind, but he still flew. He'd usually get put on actual crop-dusting detail as opposed to spraying pesticides. Literal crop-dusting in our area was dusting tomato field with sulphur. Flaggers weren't needed for this, as the sulphur dust held in the air long enough for the pilot to see where he's been, and can dust evenly accordingly.

Harry was a former sheriff and was the most quiet of the bunch. He was also the most daring pilot. I heard more stories about him than anyone. I didn't see too much in the way of aerial acrobatics from him while working, though.

TAD was the youngest(he was around 40 at the time), smoked a lot of pot, and was the best to work with when it came to getting crap sprayed on me. The most amount of workplace gossip was about him, as apparently he was quite the Lothario. All I know is that he almost killed me with the plane one time(Wayne was responsible for almost killing me another time), and gave me a ride in the plane another time. Both were fun!






















So here's the Cary Grant part...the times I almost got killed while flagging. One time the field foreman thought it'd be a great idea to stick a flagger(me) on top of a levee that was under some huge powerlines that the plane(piloted by TAD) had to fly under to spray a field. So, TAD had to fly the plane over a levee and under huge powerlines while avoiding me waving a damn flag. No biggie, right? Right??

WRONG. Things started out OK, and I thought I was moving my little widget fast enough to get out of the plane's way as it headed right for me. Technically I was, but I felt the wind of the tip of the wings push me even further out of the way. TAD made one pass, turned the plane around, landed, and screamed at the foreman to get me the hell outta there because he almost hit me. Oopsie. I thought the whole thing was kinda fun, but I'm an idiot that way.

The other Cary Grant moment came when I was placed between two very small fields to be sprayed. I got set up, Wayne was flying, and I waved my flag accordingly. He came right at me, and I started to move out of the way. I wasn't fast enough. He didn't raise the damn plane up at all when he came at me, and so I literally had to hit the ground when he went over my head. The fields were tiny enough so that Wayne got himself turned around and came back for pass numero two-o before I could get up and run, so I got sprayed again while on the ground, laughing my ass off. The rest of the crew had a great time telling the rest of the company how I almost got splattered across a field in Dixon!

















I worked on and off at the cropdusters for a couple of years. I perfected my ability to drive a standard-transmission vehicle on that job. I saw a lot more of the local topography than I ever would have otherwise. I worked with people I NEVER would've dealt with otherwise.

I still love seeing cropdusters out and about. There's something poetic about watching them swoop around.

My Mood

Freelance has me in a bad mood. My general expression is much like the one below:
















Grrrrr.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!

IT'S ABOUT TIME THE HEATWAVE STOPPED.

Seriously, I was getting concerned about the stoopid cats again. The Angriest Cat in the World hasn't regained the weight she lost during the last heatwave when the husband and I were in Vegas for Rollercon. She's now a delicate little creature, and I don't know how much longer she'll be with us. Sucks.

I might be able to get some work done now, though. It was too hot and humid to draw over the holiday weekend. Seriously, one would think that drawing wouldn't be uncomfortable under most circumstances...that is, until they try to draw when the graphite in their pencil is practically melting. I'm now so far behind on my freelance it's obscene. It doesn't help that the project is driving me nutso. Any excuse to step away from my desk, and I take it. Baaaaaaaad.

Here's a drawing I did for a skate company that found me drawing on people at Rollercon. It's for a new line of derby-specific skates that they're coming out with. The skates are called, "Rebels", so they wanted a mean-but-not-too-mean girl for the ad. I haven't seen the final ad, but apparently they made the skates and her hair black. Fine by me.






















The Derby Dolls might have found a new home. Woohoo! Which means I get to help move the damn track again as soon as this weekend if things go right. Not looking forward to that. But having a home for 6-10 months sounds pretty damn good right now, so whatever.


Not much else is going on. When I'm done with this round of freelance I want to take some serious time off and clean out the closets in the house. Doesn't that sound exciting?!

Moar stoopid pix

I'm supposed to be working on freelance right now, but I'm having a very difficult time getting into it. Why? Because even though it's a cute little Flash show, it's a complex little Flash show with about 10 kazillion characters who have a lot of battle sequences. How the f*** did I get a job with battle scenes, fer feck's sake?! It ain't right, I just like to do the funny, not the epic!

Ah well, at least I have plenty o' thumbnail drawings that the storyboard supervisor gave me, so I should be slogging through it soon enough.

In the meantime...

The weather is also distracting me. Too damn hot and humid to draw in a house with no air conditioning. Funny, since the last job I had where I was in-house, I spent the majority of my time freezing my tuchus off, thanks to the other directors being covered in a protective layer of...who knows what so that their offices were sweltering dens of masculinity which resulted in the air conditioning needing to be on full-blast all the time. Anyway, Sweaty Betty is in full effect at my house. Be forwarned.

And Sweaty Betty got to sweat it out in Compton last night. The Derby Dolls had to move our track again. It looks like we're officially out of our Little Tokyo location, and are currently homeless. So we're storing our track at Mila Minute's work in freakin' Compton. I've never been to Compton before...it was an experience.

You know how on tv you see how the ghetto is full of liquor stores, fast food restaurants, car repair places, general squalor and hookers? Guess what? It's like that in real life! I carpooled with new Siren Roxy Cotton and Tough Cookie Kaboom, and we sounded like tourists when we saw our first smatterings of hookers. Oooooooooohhhhhh, WOWWWWWWWWW! was emitted in non-sarcastic ecstasy several times as we drove down the street. Amazing...just...amazing.

Enough people showed up to unload the track and store it so that it took about an hour and a half...a new record! On our way out Roxy, Kaboom and I planned on checking out a revamped dive bar in Culver City...that is, until a skittish-yet-friendly bundle of fur found us. A young pup, around 4-5 months old with rheumy eyes, wandered into the parking lot and found her ticket out of the ghetto. We immediately knew that we couldn't leave her to the fates, so Kaboom volunteered to take the pup. No name for the dog yet, so we're just calling her the Derby Dog.

One more thing to yakk about...I went in for my first of seven laser treatments to get rid of my one tattoo. It stung like a mofo getting it done. But it was over very fast. My skin was warm like a nuclear reactor for the rest of the day, and I was pretty good about icing the area. There are a couple of small blisters on the tatt area now, but they don't hurt or anything and it isn't distracting. I go back in six weeks for treatment numero two.


Here's a few more pix from Saturday. Here I am getting kicked out of the game:





















I love the expression of Haught Wheels in the center of this photo:





















Tawdry Tempest and I in full-on Scooby glory:

Holy crap, I'm in pain!

Saturday night was painful.

Fun, but painful.

We had our bout in City of Industry. Quite a few people showed up, which was great. Different from our usual downtown LA/hipster crowd, but very enthusiastic.

The game against the Sirens was brutal. Tough, close game all the way through. Unfortunately, my team didn't win...the final score was Sirens 40, Fight Crew 36. However, everyone who saw the game loved it, and the crowd was going apesh!t the entire way through.

AND, as an added bonus, I GOT THROWN OUT OF THE GAME.

AND THEN, I WAS BROUGHT BACK INTO THE GAME.

Aaaaaaand, I got a lot of cheering for both!

How the hell did that happen?! you might be asking yourself. Well, it's like this: a skater can accrue up to four penalties during the course of a game. If she gets a fifth penalty, she gets kicked out of the game. Someone miscounted the penalties I accrued. During the last quarter of the game I was thrown out. So I left to much cheering by the fans while Fight Crew's team manager, Fighty, screamed at me, "F*** YOU, TARA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" as I stepped out of the infield of the track. I imagine she was expressing how the rest of the team was feeling at the moment, since I was in every other jam of the game.

I skated back to the dressing room area and started taking off my skates so that I could put my shoes on and sneak back to watch the rest of the game. Oh, another thing about getting kicked out...if that happens to a skater, she's supposed to go back to the dressing room area and STAY there. No going back to watch the game, or being with her team, or anything. It's supposed to be a punishment, fer crissakes. Next thing I hear is one of the announcers saying, "TARA ARMOV, REPORT BACK TO THE TRACK. YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES!" The husband is already running back to the dressing room, screaming at me to get my gear together. I already had my helmet, mouthguard, and one skate off. The husband grabbed my helmet and mouthguard, I grabbed my other skate, and I scooted back to the track on one skate while the husband jogged behind me. The crowd continued to go nuts.

I get back to the track and am promptly seated in the penalty box. Fighty informs me to get my goddam skates on as I go back into the game in one minute. Those last three jams I was in were the best I skated in the game. Apparently, I do my best skating when my team is losing. Goddam competitive nature, I guess. I know that I fell a lot. Usually due to my own attempts at blocking. I guess that's a good thing...the Sirens didn't get to wipe me out much...I did it myself!

Here's some photo highlights:

Crystal Deth and I waiting for the star jammer of the Sirens, Mila Minute:















PS--it's a bad, bad idea to wait for Mila. She's really fast, and when one waits too long, they get passed.


Oh looky, here I am trying to block out Roxy Cotten. She stayed upright. I trained her well!




















Here I am blocking out Kung Pow Tina. She looks bored.




















Here I am falling. This was after making a block with such force that I took myself up to the railing and bounced off. On the rebound, I hit my own jammer, Leia Mout. Who you see in the white helmet in the process of going down. She told me after the game that she got three big hits, and mine was one of them. Good going, sport!













And here's a Triumphant Return to the Track photo:












You can see that I'm still in only one skate.

Unfortunately, none of these photos show off the Scooby Doo I drew on my chest for the game. Yes, I'm a big idiot. A sore, bruised idiot.

Mind=Blown

Moar pix of The Dress:











































Frightening, isn't it?

Good times, good times

New Fight Crew teammate Vulvarine took a lot of pix at Rollercon and she posted them up on Flickr. Since I still don't have my photos on my computer and therefore haven't uploaded them to Flickr myself, I'm going to steal some of her thunder.

First, we have one of the drawings I did for Lonestar skater, Cherry Chainsaw over the course of the weekend. Yes, that is a Homer Simpson quote next to the drawing:



















For those who can't read it(I barely can), it says, "Alcohol: the cause and solution to life's problems".



Next, we have a leg drawing I did on Sirens' teamember, Ana Hymen:





















And here we have one of our new referees, Corporal Carnage, dressed in PVC and Sharpie ink. The drawing on his chest is from Vulvarine. Notice that I'm wearing a dress. And it's blue. That's because this was taken during Rollercon's Black and Blue Ball. It was fun. We almost crashed through the ceiling onto the casino floor below because everyone was bumpin' to the music.




















I should post a better pic of the dress. It's weird to see me in anything besides black.


And here we have a fine example of my kick-ass cross-training. Yes, I'm smoking and am not entirely sober. Yes, I'm wearing a goddam skirt. Yes, I'm drawing on people while sitting in the casino bar. The guy with his hand in my crotch is Hurt Reynolds, who lives in Seattle but is going on a cross-country derby-livin' extravaganza of epic proportions. He's a really cool guy, and I've had many an interesting derby discussion with him, especially since he hangs with the flat-track crowd.

















And here we have my reaction upon seeing the above photo:


















Today I'm going into work withdrawals.

No, seriously. I miss the job already.

Friday I was completely useless at work...my act went into shipping and I had a margarita at lunch and a Long Island Iced Tea at dinner to celebrate. I made a huge card for the supervising director to thank him for babysitting me on this job. I slipped the card under his office door and went back to my office to watch some Jimmy Cagney films. He came shuffling by about an hour later with a completely shocked look on his face. It was awesome. Later in the day he came back with a drawing of his own that depicted me running over characters from the show and breaking through the guard gate of the studio on my motorcycle. It's awesome.

So far there isn't much out there work-wise...even the freelance situation ain't lookin' too good. Ah well. I have a huge list of stuff I need to do this week...everything from making an appointment to get my tatt removed to sending in some jury duty paperwork to cleaning the house. Also, the cats have been on strike food-wise. It was really bad over the weekend, but I think now that it's not quite as blisteringly hot outside, the little buggers will start eating again.

I hope.

The Homestretch

This Friday is my last day at my job.

I'm sad.

However, this next week is going to be busy as hell since I HAVE A GAME NEXT SATURDAY.

I was kinda hoping this game wouldn't happen, but it is. So please, show the f*$) up if you can, it should be good! And, it's all ages, so bring the kids and have 'em be psychologically damaged for years to come due to roller derby exposure!





















Last weekend the husband and I went to Vega$ for Rollercon.

Holy hell, was that fun!

My daily routine consisted of: getting up around 10am. Cursing the dry air. Getting my skate gear together and trudging down to the parking garage for on-skate workshops. Sweat like crazy. Stink up the place. Hit girls that I've never skated with before. Go back to the hotel room. Take a shower. Take a nap with my contacts in. Wake up and get dressed in outfits that I'd never wear in public while in LA. Go wander around the hotel casino floor. Text everyone since I couldn't get cell phone reception worth a crap. Sit in the Mai Tai bar and pull out a buttload of Sharpie markers. Wait for some girl to get in range, grab her, and start drawing on her. Get a crowd. Get free mai tai's. Go find some food. Come back to the hotel and draw some more. Wander around the Strip at night, cursing the dry air. Come back to the hotel and draw some more. Rinse and repeat until 3, 4, or 6am. Go crash in the hotel room.

Seriously, bringing the Sharpies was the BEST. IDEA. EVERRRRRRR. Over the course of the weekend I drew on over 80 people. It was incredibly fun! But something funny would happen over the course of the weekend. I'd draw on people, then see them the next day with my doodles still on their bodies, and they wouldn't recognize me! Ah yes, drunkeness at its best! Here's a couple of examples of my doodles:






























The husband took pix of almost every drawing I did. I still have to sift thru the pile and then post everything to Flickr. When I do, I'll post a link here.

Gimme the Bat, Wendy...

All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.
All work and no play makes Knuckle-Dragging 101 a dull blog.

















The job's rockin', though. Me likey it very much. Well, it's the crew that's making it fun. One of the board artists who has gone on to another show at another studio came back to visit this week and lamented that the atmosphere where she's at now isn't as much fun as our crew. Awwwwwwww!

I just wish the schedule wasn't as crazy-short as it is. I feel that I've barely gotten my feet wet when it comes to some of the directorly dooties I'm supposed to know because things are moving so fast. My act ships in two weeks, fer feck's sake. That's an insanely short amount of time when one considers that we started storyboarding in late May.

In roller derby news: next week I go to Rollercon. I'm STOKED.

The Derby Dolls still haven't found a venue to hold our bouts. That SUCKS.

I got a couple of my derby posters printed in a new roller derby book. GO BUY THE DAMN THING!