Ps - i'm on vacation!

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we are countin' down the minutes, people, to MUTUAL FUNDIN' VACATION!

expect slim to bupkiss bein' posted to this blog until november 8! in the meantime, please click here to enjoy the drawing i just taped to my computer moniter at work while on the way out the door.

and if you're gonna be at the south carolina festivities this weekend, safe travels and we'll see ya soon! pow!

no time for a new illustration friday piece for the last couple of weeks, just tryin to finish up some projects. so how's about i share a new design i did recently that sorta fits in with this week's "remote" theme?

have i told you lately how much i love having a digital camera? check out some new photos on flickr!

man, what gives?!?! i was at the other steph's blog just now. and accoring to the technorati website, her blog is worth like ten thousand bucks. i went to the link and entered my own blog's address, and found out my blog (and also my website) is worth the following:

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

and jenn's is worth $7,900!!! this is an outrage! jenn, i challenge you to a fight to the death!!!

i love that i procrastinated forever on downloading the latest updates for aol instant messenger. and then one day a week or two ago, i went ahead and finally downloaded it. and now it doesn't work for me anymore, and i had to uninstall the entire thing from my computer and am now waiting for the re-download of the crap. geeeeeyargggh!

in other news, there's a buttload of updates all over the place today, but mostly in the painting and graphic design areas. cheers to that! and i think i need some candy!

someday it'd be really fun to have a tshirt line that was all inside jokes between myself and my friends and family. and the hangtag would have the back story on the joke, so you'd get it and have a chuckle, too. the hangtag for this one would explain that my sister michelle and i had many back and forths about her volkswagon beetle, and how i thought it was quite milquetoast.



i don't even remember what started it - i think michelle was telling me she saw a review on the new beetle and that the writer thought the car was milquetoast, and she was really bothered by it. so of course from that point on, every chance i got, i would tell her how milquetoast the car was. even though she got a new car last week, won't you join me in reminding her about how milquetoast the old one was? that's beshall13@hotmail.com - i'm sure she'll appreciate hearing from you!

p.s. - copy me on that email as proof and get 100 points!

holy crap they're ALL DONE. i was really stressed that these little guys were gonna take much longer, like i'd be working until the wee hours on the 25th and then i'd have to spend ten bucks on next day delivery, but no! the fruit and nuts paintings are complete! (the first round, anyways, i know i'm gonna do more of em sometime...) my submission materials are going to the post office today! i have the rest of the weekend to work on halloween costumes and hanging out with my little bro justin, who's in town until sunday! can i emit a well-placed pow here? thanks.

POW!!!


blueberry practices double dutch with zach and doogie!


ben and banana take care of business!

i can now climb out from under the rock i was under and actually clean up my apartment, take care of the mountain of dishes in my sink and looming pile of clothes in my closet, and maybe cook josh dinner again! wowee wow wow! i'm really jazzed at how these turned out, can't wait to get good pics of them up here this weekend! i also can't believe in a week josh and i will be on a plane to see all kinds of awesome people on the east coast again. i. am. so. excited. i. could. crap. myself.

cheers to the weekend!

this morning i left for work at my usual 630am and headed down 7th instead of 4th because i needed to get gas. as chuckles the happy weenmobile clown car of doom rumbled down the street, it decided it would be a hoot to try a new trick it learned and turned the check oil light on very, very briefly. about two blocks later, the fucker flashed it on again. i wondered if that's what's supposed to happen when your car is 1500 miles overdue for an oil change. when i got to the gas station, i figured i may as well pop the hood and check the oil level. and i thought i must still be pretty sleepy, because when i pulled the dipstick out it was bone freakin' dry.

WTF? bone dry!? i knew my car leaks power steering fluid all over the place, but since when does it leak engine oil, too?!?! GARRRRR!!!

so i buy a quart of oil from the friendly neighborhood gas guy situated behind his bulletproof glass. we chat a bit as he slides the quart of oil and a fancy paper funnel through the metal please-dont-rob-me drawer. i get back to my car to pour the oil in, and let it sit for a while. check the dipstick again and it just barely raised the level. HOW MUCH OIL IS IT GONNA TAKE TO FUCKING FIX THIS!!! i wonder to myself, and then aloud as i buy another quart from the attendant. a helpful lady standing behind me in line said hey, give it some time before you pour that in, it's gotta settle. so i waited for a while, and the level on the dipstick did indeed rise. but i still had to pour that entire second quart in, and half of a third, and now i have to keep on top of that leak as well. THIS STINKS!

but - and this is a very real, serious question - since all of the oil in the car leaked out, does this mean i can skip that oil change i was overdue for? god i hope so.



in other much sadder news, dallas cook from the surburban legends was in a hit and run car accident last night and didn't make it. i was trying to find their cover of the gummi bears theme song for you to listen to because it's one of my favorite songs, but they don't seem to have it available on their website anymore. allegedly they have tunes on their myspace page but that doesn't seem to be comin' up for me for some reason...

hooray for new tshirt time!!!





we've been bickering about who came up with this for about three hundred years now, and i feel it's my duty to let you know this was actually josh's idea, and every time i read it i crack up.

oh and also, can i share with you that


jon and carrot rock karaoke night?

seems to me like i promised photos and choice stories from last weekend's reunion like days ago. "michelle, joe, andrea and i" is just too much to type, so we will collectively be known as "party crashers".

we got there around 10pm or so... it was awesome walking into the hotel and running right smack into the hotel bar. like it's the first thing you get to, even before the front desk. a ton of people from the reunion had already left the reunion to hang out there. and it was like walking right back into highschool - i mean, i know we party crashers were severely underdressed, but we came more prepared than most to have a good time it seemed... like people were too cool for school. well i've got a newsflash for you walter cronkite....

...

...

you aren't.

so the three of us (andrea hadn't quite gotten there yet) surveyed the crowd for a bit, and made way for the bar to order some drinks. as we're waiting, and waiting, and waiting, i see a girl we used to know go into the bathroom. our parents are friends, and we used to have classes together, so i tell michelle hey, there goes so and so. when she comes out, we should go say hi! michelle agrees.

this my friends, is the setup for THE SNUB OF THE CENTURY.

our girl comes out of the bathroom while we're paying, and when we find her she's talking to some other chick. we approach with a bright "hey, name of girl! how are you?" and start chatting for a couple of seconds, introducing her to michelle's husband, just saying how we popped in to see who showed up... and then this chick turns to the girl she was standing with, and like we weren't even there, says, "so anyways, as i was saying, blahblahblahblahblah". we were dumbfounded. "so, uh, i guess you're still a jerk then?" i wanted to yell over my shoulder as we walked away. it was so bad it was funny.

so andrea shows up, we all have a good chuckle over THE SNUB OF THE CENTURY. we party crashers start heading towards the ballroom where the reunion's being held. you know that record scratching noise that stops all the noise at a party? picture that happening for a brief second as we walk up the stairs into the patio area. it's a bit silly that it's only 10:30 or so, and there's maybe 40 people there. out of a class of 500. that's like 8% of our graduating class. if those numbers were tv ratings this train wreck woulda been cancelled faster than the latest emmanuel lewis sitcom!

so we wander around for a bit, and found simon - michelle and i have known this guy since grade school, and he's one of the reasons we wanted to crash the thing, cuz how cool would it be to hang for a bit! met his fiancee shea, who seems really cool, and found out that guy lives like four blocks away from me in long beach. small freakin' world. so we may all go out for roscoes sometime. this other dude they were talking to - his name was dan or jim, i can't remember which, was taking email addresses for an 11 yr reunion next year, and promised that it'd be at least 750% less gay than this travesty, so yes please sign my ass up!



as we wandered back over to talk to tammy and andrea and company, we party crashers decided we needed to up the ante just a tiny bit and see if we could actually get in the door of the ballroom without paying. tammy slid her "i belong at the party" neon green wristband (pictured above) and handed it to me, and i spent a good five minutes squeezing my much bigger hand into it. the other girl at the table, who's name i can't remember, donated hers to michelle to help the cause. that done, we figured the best way to sneak joe in was to have us flanking him and have him kind of hide his hands as he walked in the door. deep breaths taken by all, and we walked towards the door like we totally belonged there.

waltzed in the door to find the place almost deserted. like five reunion-goers on the dance floor, maybe four staff members, and a dj. no greatreunions representatives anywhere. (remember that old classic rock one that goes "woaaaahhh, take the money and run"? that popped into my head just now. take the money and run indeed. get while the gettin's good. i'd like to think the great reunions people snuck out the back just as dinners were being brought out so no one would be able to complain to them later. they must be very used to this sort of thing...)

so back to the patio we went. where i found my favorite conversation starter of the night. the line that really should've been the theme of the marina high class of 95 reunion: "i vaguely remember your face. did we have class together?"

and chatting with sarah martin, the best conversation bit of the night happened when the dj put on "smells like teen spirit" by nirvana:
me - "man i love this 90s era music they're playing. it - "
sarah (interrupting) - "it really makes you feel like - "
michelle (interrupting) - "killing yourself?"

and by 11pm, the last of the reunion-goers went to the hotel lobby bar where the real party was going on. more random mingling, more random "hi i vaguely remember your face, did we go to school together"s, someone smashed a glass and for once it wasn't me, more chuckles were shared over THE SNUB OF THE CENTURY, and that was pretty much that. it was a really fun retarded good time. and i think that was the first time i ever really crashed a party, and i think it went off quite well...

oh god i almost forgot! why don't you go check out the reunion photos!

paperwork with smileys on it does not make me any more inclined to do the work requested within.

so i did a crapload of painting last night and then i slept for 11 hours! and now i'm all wiped out, possibly because i slept too much! garrrrrrrrh! but i'm only 2 and a half paintings away from being done! stay tuned, in the near future there will be pictures and stories of reunions galore! or maybe not really galore. there was only that one i went to.


eugene and grapes make prank calls in the middle of the night!


peach and the oc kids rob a bank!


martha and orange enjoy eating store brand cheerios!

Ahahaha MAN am i glad we didnt give great reunions any money! Details at 11!

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word on the street is that we may be able to sneak into the reunion without paying...

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

someday, cross my heart and kiss my elbow, if i ever get famous, this little gem from my freshman high school yearbook will come back to haunt and taunt me.



i feel like jeremy piven in grosse pointe blank. TEN YEARS, MAN!!!!! ten YEARS!!!!

tonight's ye olde high school reunion, and after much deliberation i decided josh and i didn't need to drop a billion dollars to go to a thing that very well may not have any cool people there at all. so josh just left for work, and i'm at my house typing about high school reunions i'm not going to. ah, but i will not be skipping the festivities entirely, mind you. in just a little while me, michelle, joe, andrea and her husband are making haste for the hotel bar right next to the ballroom the reunion will be at so we can run into any choice people that actually did show up. simon dufour and kyle leiberman, i'm looking in your direction. unless you didn't go. then you can suck it!

stay tuned for covert spy photos and maybe a drunken cell phone post or two! TENNNNNNN YEEEEEARSSSSSS!

seriously, the whole thing is probably gonna be gay. can you catch gay from going to something that is gay? i think we're about to find out. film at eleven!

also, on that note, the abc affiliate out here has an email address where you can give them super interesting photos or videos of newsworthy things you caught on your cell phone. this is my new jackass pasttime. last night i sent them a picture of my just-finished dinner, and right now i'm gonna send a pic letting em know i really need to take my trash out. i wish there was a section on their website where you could see all the stupid inane crap people send in, i really do.

okay i'm really excited about the positive reaction these celeb paintings are getting from you guys - maybe they'll all sell at the small works show? god i hope so. getting a small chunk of debt paid thanks to painting would be so freaking rad. and trav, WHERE'S MY BRAND NEW CAR?!?!


oprah and cherry go biking!

what say you and me start a queen cover band called freddie's moustache? for reals, people. let's make it happen! i even designed another shirt for us!

i'm shoving my entire fist in my mouth trying to stop laughing at this shit and it is not working.

oh thank god. i thought i missed the oc last week, and it turns out it wasn't even on.

can i tell you about how the whole picture framing thing leaves me flummoxed more than 90% of the time? i was pondering how to do the wiring thing that's required for the stuff going to ye olde art school, cuz i've done it like once and it looked wicked lame. so i went poking around on the internets, and i found this very helpful how-to which told me that the last time i did a picture-hanging wire i did it all wrong, and that's why it looked awful. so cheers to being much more prepared this time around! cuz knowledge is power!

also, remember way back in april when i had that minor fender bender? it boggles the mind that it took this long for my insurance to catch up to me, and goddamn you'd think i ran over the pope, because instead of the $80 a month i normally pay, they now want $150. WTF!!! they tell me the accident, paired with my speeding ticket from oshkosh a couple of years ago made me lose my good driver discount. and that the accident was one with injuries!!?! WHAT!!! i've been on the phone with my insurance almost 24-7, pestering them about how outrageous that is, since it was just my car scraping down a portion of the other car's door. things are slowly, slowly, slowly turning around in my favor. last night the chick i talked to gave me $10 off my total payment a month if i signed up for renters insurance. and the guy i talked to this morning said the injury part of the accident was dropped from the claim just a couple of days ago because the car i hit, those people said they were injured but they never actually went to the doctor. if they'd gone to the doctor, that'd be completely preposterous. cuz like i said. my car scraped the side of their car. they were going like 25 mph, i was coming away from the curb. if there were any injuries i'll eat my hat.

anyhow, my speeding ticket drops from my record at the end of december. the rate won't be $80 again for a long time, but we're slowly working it down from $150. slowly. *phew*. cuz i dunno about you but this girl cannot afford that extra $70 towards car insurance a month!

aaaaaaaaaaand i'm over this whole working thing. is it time to go home yet?

man these are taking a long time to finish! check out the latest:


barbeque with strawberry and gwen!

how is it rod stewart just got his star on the walk of fame today, but ryan seacrest got his months ago? This is an outrage!

okay i worked with the swirls and their placement a bit, and i think i'm sold cuz it's not competing with the moustache so much anymore. anything stand out as glaringly retarded?

time for this week's episode of you make the call!

10 points for your 2 cents: do you like the swirly border or the plain border. i lean towards the plain border, but is it too plain? i almost think the swirly is too much swirly... do you know where i can find a better oldwesty feeling swirly border thing to use? i was also thinking of doing a version where there's a red line inside the swirly, that'd break it up a bit... your thoughts?

version 1:


version 2:


version 3 (modified swirly on top and bottom):

Where can i find a magazine pic of elvira for use in a painting? 20 points for your thoughts on the matter, and a hundred to you if it pans out!

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yay painting! are you ready for more in the fruit and nuts series? i thought you might be...


david, courtney and apple take a bath


green pepper and the donald love the slide

i think theres more than one company out there using postal service songs in their commercials. what im wondering is will i always get all nostalgic for lia and mercy parties in madison when i hear these songs, even when it's on a commercial hawking kaiser permanente, the most evil health insurance ever?

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America, where did you lose your way? Why does target need an entire aisle devoted to bratz?

could i please share with you this brand new art that makes me laugh my ass off?



and nothin' says friendship like throwin together the following to zing people with on their myspace pages:



i'm so glad it's friday.

it's freaking friday!
yay yay yay yay yay yay yay!
put it in your sock!

you know the damn drill,
bust out yer best haikus here
and get 20 points!

the more the better,
catch up to that angela
and write three hundred!

i finally started actually painting the new series for the small works show at scad! did these two last night during the so you think you can dance finale and the martha stewart apprentice. they're really crappy cameraphone photos, so bear with me until i get em scanned in for reals, but it's exciting that they're turning out as wackily retarded as they were in my head when i came up with this shit...

did you watch so you think you can dance? what's with the judge who keep going "WOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!"??? i bet she used to do aerobics at the y in oshkosh. just woo it baby, just woo it. much as i hate to admit it i kinda liked that show, and i bet johnny castle would've had the time of his life if he coulda showed off his pachanga! except that they do the pachanga every year and this year he probably wants to do something different... like maybe to switch things up he'll sleep with a high school girl named baby.

and the martha stewart apprentice... it just doesn't have as much bite as the donald's. i still like it and watch like a rabid raving lunatic, though. last night they had to design and sell wedding cakes at some wedding expo - the winning team sold five cakes and brought in somewhere around $3000. that's right, THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS. for five cakes. do wedding cakes seriously cost that much? WHO PAYS SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR A FUCKING CAKE?!!? you know you can make a cake for like five bucks from a box at the store, right? and making one from scratch, it's probably right around there, too. what. the. hell.

oh wait, i was gonna show you pics of a couple of new paintings! sorry about that, got a bit sidetracked. check em out - i'd love to tell you what the other ten images are, but you're gonna have to wait and see, mutual fundas!


fruit and nuts: jeremy and pear practice ballet


fruit and nuts: will gets in a knife fight with apple

i can't stop subjecting people to natalie dee links.

also, we just got done reading a little of this teen survey in some magazine here at work, and how according to the survey, teen america would most like to get stuck in an elevator with clay aiken.

my response to this: so teen america is gay?!?

after seriously thinking about it, i think i'd most like to be stuck in an elevator with mutual-fundin' macguyver, because if all i had on me was a lump of pocket lint and a pack of gum the dude could still get that damn elevator running again. and if i couldn't have macguyver, i'd pick star jones because you know she's got enough food in her purse for us to live on until help arrives, be it weeks, months or years.

20 points to you for your pick of best person to be stuck in an elevator with!

man, i don't know what the hell is up with me, but it's getting damn near impossible to get up in the morning! i was thinking about it this morning as i sat in the uncharacteristically bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 710... wasn't there some shenanigans about daylight savings time this year? like it got pushed back a month? i think that's got something to do with it, cuz i'm not getting up 10 or 15 minutes later than normal, i'm getting up a whole hour later than normal. like the alarm will go off at 5:30 and i physically can not get out of bed.

or i'm just powerful lazy.

the nice thing about getting to work at 8:20 instead of 7am is the rest of the morning just breezes by. but the bad thing about it is i'm here 'til 4:45. i declare shenanigans on the workday!!! bleeeeyargh!!!

also, where the hell is my complimentary raymond and scum tshirt, hot off the press!? or more accurately, since it's been sitting at my sister's house all weekend with me being all sick and crap, nicely cooled to a lukewarm or room temperature.

not that i'm only doing illustration friday posts anymore, CUZ I'M NOT!!!

but it's been a tad slow at work today and i had an idea for this week's theme, float. i give you my innocent, relaxing homage to stephen king's classic horror story it, in tshirt design formation.

sorry for the falling off the face of the earth folks, kinda went outta commission on friday with ebola or west nile or some crazy gross sinus/cold nastiness. lots of sleep and juice and drugs and a couple of days later i'm doin' better, but now is not the time for postin', cuz i'm supposedly working on some wacky new paintings! more on this and other gripping stories, like what's josh keep in his glovebox, film at 11!!! pow!!