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!

Full of Myself

I'm going to be even more full of myself than usual, so get ready.

In the opening credits of the DVD I'm working on, the sequence directors are featured in a quick vignette where we're popping up out of the ground in a cemetery. Of course I think it's awesome as all hell, and one of the two other directors think it's nifty-peachy-keen. The third...well, he enjoys being contrary and his first reaction to the idea wasn't the most positive. Luckily humor prevailed, and so one of our character designers started working on our caricatures. He came up with this for me:


















Well, OK. One's first reaction is, Yep, that looks like you.

But I wasn't happy. So I took his drawing and did some changes, albeit minor ones. The result is this:


















That's just more BADASS. And all I did was tweak the eye, tousle the hair, made the mouth even bigger, got rid of the Shaggy shirt, and gave myself the usual slouch to my back. Oh, and added big ol' earrings. The supervising director was amused and approved my changes. Ha!


I also have the drawing that I did for my coworker and his comic book that's being done as an anthology in freakin' Croatia done and delivered. I wouldn't have ordinarily done something like this for anyone, since I have zero experience with comic book art, but Raf said the magic words when asking me to do it: pin-up. So I came up with this in short order:




















Poor Sonambulo getting the snot beaten out of him by three roller derby chicks seemed to go over very well with Raf and a couple of other guys at work. If they're happy, I'm happy. I hate the background, but I was never very good at that type of thing. Oh well.

Speaking of comics, this weekend is ComiCon in San Diego. A bunch of the work crew is already there, but I won't be. I went once, ten years ago. It was enough at the time. I may change my mind in the future, but who knows. For now I'm content to stay in LA and do stuff.

How to TOTALLY Piss Me Off...

There are many ways to annoy me. There are quite a few ways to peeve me. There's a list of things to do to vex me. Some people think I'm horrendously cranky all of the time.

However, nothing sends me into an absolute rage than hearing about animal abuse. Yes, I'm a carnivore, but killing an animal for food(and hopefully killed as fast as possible) is waaaayyyyyy different than deliberate cruelty. Of course I'm talking about that NFL scumbag Michael Vick, as well as a story out of San Diego concerning two dimwitted teenage girls who set a kitten on fire.

Excuse me, but WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!!

What kind of dipsh!t gets off torturing animals?!? How fucked up was their upbringing?! I wish I could slap the living bejeezus out of their mothers.

So.

Unbelievably.

Messed.

Up.

Anyway, I found a petition from the Humane Society that's supposed to be forwarded to the NFL urging that Vicks gets suspended. I'm not a petition-type o' person, but I'll make an exception in this case. I hope a pitbull rips Vicks' balls off.

Sunday

It's Sunday and I don't know what to do with myself.

Of course I'm procrastinating on several projects, including doing a pin-up-ish drawing for a coworker who has his own comic that's getting published in Croatia(!!?!?!?!?!!) and wants the drawing for part of a "gallery" with other artists.

Below is a very veryveryveryveryvery rough Illustrator pose for what I would've used for a poster pitch if I hadn't gotten so damn busy at work. The pose is taken from a photo that my fave derby photographer Boss Hogg took at the Smog City game I announced for last month.

It was supposed to be for the "Texas Shoot Out" WFTDA Nationals that will be happening in Austin come September. Hence the cowboy outfit. I dunno, I might clean it up anyway just for snicks and giggles.
























Other news...still busy, still enjoying work even though it's busy, and wishing that derby hiatus would last just a few weeks longer. I don't want to drive to work at all, but due to the amount of gear I have, it's necessary. Phooey.

Oh, and I finally saw The Awful Truth on TCM today. It stars Cary Grant and Irene Dunne and was damn funny. I think I have it on dvd somewhere at work, so if I get a breath during lunch or something I'll watch it again. I have to give it to George Clooney...I've liked him a lot better since he decided to totally rip off Cary Grant. If you're gonna steal someone's schtick, steal from the best!

Ahhhhh...

I finally finished my freelance over the weekend. Here's the group of five girls that I did:













Wait til you see what they're going to be used for. Nothing huge, but it's fun and I enjoyed the work, even though I was going absolutely nutso trying to balance this with the day job. Ahhh, the day job...

I almost hate to admit it, but I'm really enjoying it. It turns out that when I don't know what the heck I'm doing, I have the most fun doing it. Go figure.

Vewy vewy qwiet...

It's not that I don't want to blog all day, but I can't.

Am wrking hrd.

This week is timing for the animatic of my act. Very long, very tedious work, but it's interesting and am learning A LOT.

brb, k.

Another Milestone

Today I did what directors everywhere do all the time.

I slugged my storyboard.

What's a "slug", you may ask?

It's very very rough timing of a storyboard in preparation of making an animatic of the storyboard to see how everything flows and if all the cuts work, etc. It's not rocket science, but if one has been willfully ignorant about any sort of timing like I've been, well, it's intimidating to say the least.

But I got through it. Badly, but it's done.

To add to the fun, the supervising director would say to anyone within earshot, "Doesn't Sandra look different today? More...confident? More...accomplished? That's because she slugged her board today!!!!!!!" Everyone laughed, I got embarrassed, and the rest of the world carried on without a hiccup despite this momentous occurrence.

The funny part of the above silliness is that the supervising director's spiel reminded me very much of when puberty reared its ugly head and I got my period for the first time. Of course my mom told my dad and he did the whole, "My daughter's becoming all grown up" routine that has embarrassed daughters for generations. To be reminded of that from my boss was surreal, and pretty damn hilarious. Like a dumb@$$, I mention this to said boss, who starts singing this:



And you know what? My job's pretty damn amusing.