finally! i found a couple of free seconds to finish my first illustration friday venture! this week's theme is fresh. which, incidentally, could be one of trav's jive terms of the week. damn, im thirsty. pow!!!

i'm sitting here working on a little somethin for that illustration friday website because i always say i'm going to start doing little art bits for their weekly topics but then i never do, so i'm working on it and it's an illustrator drawing of a huge orange rising over some hills like a sunrise and all that cuz the topic is "fresh", right - and it's like 20 minutes until lunchtime and i am starving and drawing this big fucking orange is not helping anything, it's just making me want to write the longest, rambliest run-on sentence in the history of mankind, and i may just keep typing until i get some lunch up in this piece or die from hunger, whichever comes fir---THUD!

(that noise was supposed to be me keeling over from lack of food.)

i'm sorry, did you just say you haven't seen enough photos of the martha stewart party, and you'd like to see more?

done and done!

guess what time it is!

it's new photos time! POW!!! on tap today are two new sets on flickr (editor's note: that last word used to say "flicker", but i was informed by mark lindsay of new york that i am a douchebag for putting the e in there, since the website clearly states its name is "flickr". 20 points to him for pointing out my faux pas. now if you'll excuse me, i'm off to play my i-hate-everything-and-the-world-sucks-goth-music playlist on my Ipod as i drink some drano out of a classy champagne flute. cheers!).

saturday night, josh and i went out with a bunch of kids on a boat on the alamitos bay in long beach. it was a pretty sweet ride, dude. i've never seen the seedy underbelly of the lbc quite like this fancy outing! also, i don't know if i mentioned but i was very sad that i haven't seen any pelicans in the area this summer at all. finally saw like 2 of them flying together last week. those birds are crazy!!

sunday night was the martha stewart party - michelle and i were so jazzed about this thing, dude, and we invited a bunch of people, and they all sounded jazzed, too. fast forward to the night of the party, and out of the 25 or so people we invited, and like the 10 or so we actually expected to come, no one but our significant others showed up. which i guess is why they're significant, because they don't make us feel quite so insignificant.

not to say that the rest of the people we invited sucked, because it's completely understandable that lots of people already had plans. but it was still more than a little disheartening that another one of our wacky fun parties was grossly underattended... and if said party had taken place on the east coast there probably would've been much more people in attendance.

but let me reiterate that it was a wacky good time party regardless, and we've got billions of photos as proof. the snacks were delishous, the movies were comedy gold and y'all missed out!

oooof, i am so freaking tired. who knew that five hours of sleep could do that to a girl?!

didn't have the foresight to throw my camera's usb cable into my purse yesterday, so you're going to have to wait until tomorrow morning for pictures of the hi-larious martha stewart shenanigans that went on at my sister's house last night.

in the meantime, let this jolly jerry orbach brighten up your morning!



(did you know he was the candlestick in disney's beauty and the beast? that was news to me, too!)

okay, mobile blogging officially sucks if it can't accept the number of characters my phone can dish out! i don't get it, my blog posts can be pages and pages of rambly crap and nonsense, but one entire sentence from my phone gets truncated? this is an outrage!!!

i like that theres a section in my hunting safety book on figuring out which is your dominant eye.

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Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

this hunting class is awesome - they just covered the best way to kill and field dress a human, which incidentally, is the most dangerous erous (editor's note: that last word was supposed to be "of animals".)

--

Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

stay tuned for a sketch of the ol guy teaching this class! most important thing learned so far is this - muzzleloading is for chumps!

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Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

we're coming to you live! from the insight shootimg range in artesia, california for the finest in hunter's safety courses! stay tuned asned as (editor's note: that was supposed to be "as i learn about the latest in bright orange vests and how not to point a loaded weapon in my face! most importantly, the place isn't open yet, and i need to pee.")

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Mobile Email from a Cingular Wireless Customer http://www.cingular.com

bruce comes up to my desk just a little while ago and asks what i'm drawing.

"it's a car being mentos'd," i tell him with a straight face.

"being mentos'd? i've never heard that word." my boss says.

"that's because my sister and i just came up with it this morning," i say.

*****

this morning i left for work on time. or i wanted to leave for work on time. the ford focus parked in front of me, however, had other plans... my lovely neighbor had backed way up, leaving like 6 inches between both our cars. and the pickup truck behind me, it had left like 2 inches of room. lovely lovely.

so i call the cops and they say they'll send someone out. while i'm waiting in my car, i give michelle a ringydingy. and we're chattin' about this and that, and every now and then i'd bust into whatever she was saying and tell her "hey, there's a schoolbus going by. i wonder if they're coming to help me?"

i ask her if she thinks they'll tow the focus, since it's in the red zone. "at the very least, they should mentos the car in front of me, right?"

pause.

"they're gonna put it on a bench that's just been painted and roll it around so it gets stripes on it?" she asks.

"well, i was thinking that a bunch of them could just pick the car up and move it forward six inches, but that works too."

thank you very much! we'll be here all week, don't forget to tip your waitress!

(anticlimatic ending to the story, parking control showed up shortly after this and deemed that red curb to not be quite red enough. it's a fairly run-down decrepit curb. so she just helped guide me out of the spot. i have no idea how it even worked, it was such a freaking tight squeeze. got to work a half hour late, ate some lunch, and am currently wishing i was at home sleeping. the end!!!)

before we all go pop some corn and watch the oc tonight, i just wanna say the ads for it this week crack me up. they take a full thirty seconds highlighting some key points:

"chino, you better stop thinkin about marissa and start thinkin about your future!"

"you're not going to see that boy from chino anymore marissa!"

insert some romantic shots of chino taking marissa to the beach, and then candles and music everywhere.

really, they could've saved so much time if they just had a five second spot that said the following: TONIGHT ON THE OC - EVERYONE GETS NEKKID!

p.s..... just 5 more days!!!

this just in: roving reporter melissa sikorski has just filed a report stating that one of my happy skull paintings got on the front page of etsy today! 200 points to her for havin' ye olde eagle eye!

and here's hopin a bunch of the skulls will sell as a result. that would be rad beyond belief.

okay, so it's straight monsooning outside. today's the test - did the last set of repairs done to my apartment finally fix the leaks? or will i have to leave a flaming bag of dog poo on the landlord's doorstep out of sheer rage that i didn't have time to move things away from the wall and my bed got wet?

okay, i understand that they're just tryin' to sell chicken sandwiches, having the guy in a cow suit over there at the chik-fil-a in the cerritos mall... but come on, there's kids running around! can't you just say chicken like everyone else does!?!?!?

this is an outrage!!! i'm writing my congressman!

ohhhhhh friday. i sure do dig you.

i gotta get on the proverbial stick, i just read on mel's blog that the small works show is comin up at scad - and the fact that i sure do like painting on little canvases, it's perfect. PERFECT, I TELLS YA!

POW!

lookit the time, i'm outta here! happy weekending!

i'm on a roll today, people. things have been slow at work, meaning i get to do my own little things for a while.

one of the ideas i've had rolling around in my head for a while now is a samuel l jackson tee. he is hands down the most badass dude out there. and every movie he's in is gold. (except for star wars episodes 1, 2, and 3. but we'll forgive him that, won't we? i actually never saw 2 or 3. and i dunno if i need to. but this post isn't about my apprehension at seeing those movies so i'll just shit up.)

the best sam jackson movie moment ever was in pulp fiction, where he's sittin and talking with tim roth (also droolerific) at the end. and he tells tim roth to get his wallet out of the bag of stolen items.

"which one's yours?" tim asks.

"the one that says bad mothafucka!" sam retorts. tim roots around in the bag for a while, turning up a wallet that indeed has bad muthafucka written on the side of it.

but i would never wear a swear on a shirt, (cuz i'm such a lady) which brings us to the next part of the explanation. last summer i think it was, jenn and i both saw jackie brown on regular broadcast tv. and it cracked us up to no end the words they used instead of all the swears. so this tshirt design, it's a tribute to sam jackson in all his movie glory! but mostly pulp fiction and the edited for tv jackie brown.

have you had the church of the oc wallpaper on your computer for months? are you just sick and tired of it? i just did a new one with this morning's gator! haven't put it up on the free area yet, but click your monitor's size here, save it and you're good to go!

1280 x 1024

1024 x 768

1024 x 640

800 x 600

640 x 480

i wish i had birds that would clean my teeth for me, too, because i'm powerful lazy sometimes...

this weekend rocked!

there was a competition going on at the orange county sherriffs academy this weekend that a bunch of local explorer posts were in, so i hung out with josh and a handful of the hb explorers all day saturday. they were competing in a bunch of different police-related activities, like building searches, domestic violence disputes and hostage negotiations.

what was cool was for some of the stuff, josh was able to sneak me in so i could see what they were doin'... howard from the hb fire department was the bad guy for the hostage negotiations, and it was hilarious listening to him yell into the phone about how his wife was out bangin' the milkman and he didn't have a problem he was just shooting at her picture on the wall, and his kids are fine and they're not coming outside and how he wasn't going outside to get his pizza because there were cops all over the place, and where the hell was his beer?!? good times, man. good times.

josh was also able to sneak me onto a police car simulator like this one in between groups. it felt just like that arcade game cruis'n usa. completely disorienting, because there's stuff to watch on the side screens and not just in front of you... sort of like real driving... which is maybe why i did so bad?

okay i didn't do that bad. but i did crash into a bambulance, and that was neato. but when i went out to pick up burgers later, i was still in cop car mode. it was like my driving after seeing an action flick - very crappy with a bit of speeding involved...

one of our guys ended up doing a flip over the freakin' wall in the obstacle course... i still don't understand how that worked out without him breaking his neck. i wish there hadn't really been that many people around because i kinda wanted to find out if i could make it over that wall, after watching some of the highschool girls have so many problems with the entire course. i'd tell em all to get off their asses and stop watching degrassi, but damn that's a good show.

there was a massive amount of time in between the obstacle course and the officer down events, and it was boring but it wasn't, you know? nothin' better than sittin around with a bunch of funny people being funny, just shootin' the shit. i was informed that josh would someday be Briefcase, this dude a couple of the guys talked to on the 4th of july who was planning on blowing up the city. with his briefcase. which doesn't really sound all that funny typed out, but i'm thinking about this shit and just laughing my ass off right now, so suck it.

i think the thing i liked about all this is that i really had absolutely no clue as to how cops learn how to be cops, you know? and the whole tactical thing - every time josh uses that word it cracks me up inside because I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT IT MEANS. but going to this, even though there were big chunks of time where we weren't doing anything, it was really fun because shit, this is what they do. maybe not so much the explorers, because rumor has it most of em are gonna be firemen, but i loved seein the stuff in action.

and i think i understand the word tactical better.

which brings us to the coolest event to watch, the tubular assault.

no, i did not say tubular salt.



i also did not say tubular salt assault.



i don't know if it just applies to buses, but in this case they had an octa bus that was "hijacked", and the guys had to storm the bus and arrest the bad guys. we were able to get on the bus and sit in the back row and watch the group come bustin' in and DAAAAMN that was cool. there's just no other word for it. when i grow up i wanna be a tubular assault. or a tubular salt. you know, whatever.



so cheers to josh and the hb explorers for havin' me out there. i hear they got 2 awards the next day. i was at home, sleeping in like a chump.

p.s. - rumor has it i'm getting a newer scanner at work soon. what does this mean for you? better color on my scribbley stuff, dude. you may actually be able to see all the colors on the drawings instead of just the bright ones.

the best thing about this ninja website is that i'll forget all about it for a while, and then something comes up that reminds me OH CRAP! I FORGOT I HEART NINJAS! and i'll go back to it and read it and just laugh my ass off all over again.

i highly recommend reading the part about seppeku, especially if you'd like to see some photos of a kid trying to swallow a frisbee.

and make sure your sound's turned on, cuz you can't beat that midi madness!

a couple of years back, there was a made for tv movie that shattered the glass ceiling of made for tv movie mediocrity.

a made for tv movie so terrible, it rocketed right into the realm of awesomest movie ever.

i'm talkin' about a little ditty about jack and diane, two american kids doin' the best they can.

except replace jack and diane with martha. as in martha stewart. as in the movie martha, inc. this movie is the filthiest awesomest funniest movie that ever graced the boob tube. it's right up there with that 80s one i saw on cable about how to become a dallas cowboys cheerleader!

today i went on ebay and bid on a copy of the movie. i'm hoping it gets shipped to me with enough time to watch it before... drumroll please....

someone hand me the envelope...

hm, it seems to be stuck, can i get a scissors?

thanks. that's some lovely heavy-duty paper you've got there. what's that? oh right. read what's on card. where was i - boob tube, 80s one on cable, went on ebay - ah here we go -

i'm hoping it gets shipped to me with enough time to watch it before they air the brand new martha stewart movie about her time in jail! that's right folks, strap yourselves in for the wild ride known as MARTHA: BEHIND BARS!!!

ask josh - i'm not exaggerating when i say i completely freaked out the first time i saw a commercial for this. because the last one was soooooo effin' good. i possibly jumped up and danced.

so mark your calendars, people. on september 25, i don't care what else you have going on. by 9 pm (eastern and pacific - i dunno when it's on if you're central or mountain time zones) you better have your magical gnome hat on, your gourmet popcorn popped, and your ass on that imported silk couch! it's gonna be amazing! i hope it includes tales of how martha made designer shanks and a romantic subplot concerning her cellmate, Shane. (starring crazyhaired chick from the l word.) instructions on how to make fine wines using cafeteria jelly packets and toilet water would also be greatly appreciated!

and now, let me leave you with my favorite martha moment from the first movie masterpiece:

so today i put up some new pics on flickr - come bask in photos taken at the eye doctor, during hailey's fifth birthday and while on safari in the remote jungles of redlands! also, i think i threw up a photo of my recent haircut because i finally got one and love my hair again! but that's not really what you came here for, is it. and now, without further ado...

welcome to this weeks edition of strange but true!!!




i have a lot of problems believing that an entire chicken fits in this can. i'm picturing that cartoon chicken dinner, you know, where the bird is whole, and there's those little chef hats on his legs. just packed into this can. deeee-licioius. or is it just chunks of chicken in here? inquiring minds want to know, dagnabbit!












okay, so the other day josh and i drove out to yorba linda to meet his mom and give her some keys she needed. and at this huge shopping center called Savi Ranch, we saw the nicest dennys ever built. look at it, all up on the hill. it looks like a mutual fundin' five star eating establishment!












no, really! check out this other picture! no moon over my hammy in here; i bet they serve a seven course meal with roast duck under glass!
















i bet you almost never get food poisoning at this one, too!

and before i go shower and prepare myself for some splendid oc-watching, can i just tell you i got an awesome new t-shirt transfer photo courtesy of maria, and you really should go check it out!

folks, let's talk about that reunion. i just got word from a girl who graduated a year before me, and apparently great reunions did thiers too, and it wasn't so great. which would be putting it mildly.

plus, there's no guaruntee that quality folks like simon dufour and kyle lieberman will be there. and it's a hundred and seventy bucks. which looks like a lot more money than 170.

what about you? would you go to your high school reunion? 20 points for your answer.

allright guys, i need your help. my ten year high school reunion's coming up. no, you don't have to say it. i know. dude. it's been ten years already. and that is some crazy shit.

the kids in charge of putting this way too expensive event together ($85 a person is heart-attack inducing. this evening better include a solid gold bowl of ice cream) have retained great reunions to plan the event... so i get a packet in the mail like 2 months ago with all this info, and a blank bio sheet for me to fill out that's just itching to be re-designed. and i was going to, but i was reading the directions again and maybe if i turn in my own redesigned sheet they won't even use it.

okay you rouges, i'll play ball. but my bio's still gonna be the best one in the book. and that's where i need your help.

i've typed up three biographies that are short enough to fit in the tiny tiny space provided, and i'm not quite sure which one to actually use. so for 30 points, tell me what your favorite one is, and if you have editing points (like "really, does your biography need to include that much swearing?") or ideas for the photo i have to send with it, include that in your comment. thank you muy mucho!!!

*****

option 1: double intrigue, hold the mayo
Shortly before my rainy high school graduation was to take place, I was cornered in a dark alley by a man in a trenchcoat. He told me I had to go to art school in Savannah, Georgia, and that I must leave immediately. After handing me my assumed identity in a manila envelope (with top secret stamped across the front a’la the old Clue board game), he punched me in the face. So I proceeded to kick him in the nads and steal his wallet.

During one fateful day in art history class, I cracked the DaVinci code. Why DaVinci thought it was so important to protect his favorite chocolate chip recipe in code, I’ll never know. (For the record, the secret ingredient was cocaine.) And dude. There’s not enough space here for 10 years of good-time shenanigans. For more on this gripping saga, visit your local library or www.stephlehman.com.

*****

option 2: secrets and lies
The last ten years have been jam-packed! POW! I fought Hulk Hogan in the steel cage and won, I got first place in the Tour De France, and I starred in a major motion picture, receiving an Oscar for my breathtaking performance as the lead in She Gets Around: The Fanny Eubanks Story…

I also made history as the first plastic surgeon to specialize in the baby toe. And I once jumped on The Man Show’s trampoline. But I think the thing I’m most proud of is finding a cure for cancer. Who knew it was as simple as putting a jellybean in your bellybutton? Seriously folks, it’s always the last thing you think of that ends up working, you know?

For more on this gripping saga, visit www.stephlehman.com

*****

option 3: information overload
Here’s a list of things I’ve done in the past ten years: lived in Georgia, went to art school, learned how to do old-school drawn animation, became an aunt twice, ate some chicken and waffles, became the reigning dance dance revolution queen, took off my pants and did a little kooky dance, learned the finer points of cross-country bus travel, played paintball, and learned to play the very first note of ozzy’s “ironman”.

I also lived in wisconsin, sledded down garbage hill, pulled an oversized balloon in a wanna-be macy’s day parade, jumped on the man show’s trampoline, drank way too much, threw up a few times, made a prom dress, learned how to cook, learned how to put out a kitchen fire, became way more comfortable with my past and present, yelled out the car window at many, many pedestrians, learned to knit, and met an amazing boy who is my partner in crime and shenanigans.

I made a website, too: come check it out at www.stephlehman.com

sorry for the infrequent posts folks, just sortin through some stuff over here. happy weekending to you, i hope you all go into labor and have babies in honor of monday's holiday. especially if you're a boy.