Unsupervised, I Hit My Head

So tonight, I finished putting the kids to bed and went down to the art cave to do some serious drawing. I'm working on a book dummy for a personal project and I really wanted to get a lot done on it before the next few weeks because my schedule seems to be filling up rather quickly with some big projects (more on that in the future!). I get to my desk, start getting all set up and I move my sweet adjustable clip-on desk lamp into position and it just falls down, shattering the bulb into a million pieces, all over the floor, my chair, my desk. Everywhere. So I spend the next howevermany minutes cleaning the whole mess up and determine that this is just a minor setback. I'll just get a new bulb and be back in business. But then I discover that the lamp is all messed up at the base and it won't hold the weight of the lamp any more. Back out of business.

See, the lighting down here sucks. We haven't redone the basement yet, so it's wicked dark and the nautical-themed lanterns the previous homeowners placed on the other side of the room give off crappy light. The dark wood panelling on the walls doesn't help much either. (Yes, we have a lot to do down here.) All in all, without the desk lamp, its not a conducive drawing environment.

So after a little moping, I decided to forego the drawing tonight and mess around with this old image in photoshop just because. Heck, I have to go to bed early tonight anyway because I have to get up early for an appointment. How much drawing was I gonna do anyway, right?

Looks like I'm buying a new lamp.

Explosions in the Sky

I'm out of the musical loop. I've made an almost conscious decision to be there too. I stopped reading music magazines a long time ago. I haven't been by Pitchfork in quite some time because I was beginning to choke on the snarky, too cool for school-ness of the whole enterprise. And honestly I just stopped caring. I came to the point where I just liked less and less of the new music I heard various reviewers touting as divinely inspired (for that week anyway, beware the sophomore album!) and found it really hard to get excited about anything I was hearing. I call this point "getting old."

"Getting old" is great because it never matters what's cool anymore, you just listen to what you like. (Heck yeah I've got the Carpenters on my iPod, without the slightest whiff of irony) As all that angsty indie snobbery falls away you can even start to enjoy older music that wasn't deemed kosher by the keepers of musical purity and integrity. Seriously, nobody ever told me that ELO was awesome, I had to figure it out for myself.

All that being said, I have a new favorite band, as of about 2 hours ago. Explosions In The Sky.

I honestly don't know almost anything about them. I vaguely remember catching about a minute of their performance on Austin City Limits back in twenty aught seven. I thought they sounded cool, but did no further investigation. Today, I was reading the internet and for some totally unknown reason, remembered this band. I looked them up and holy schmoley, they're awesome. Now I don't know if these guys have been popular with the indie reviewer set, and I don't care. I may be the last person in the world to find out about this band, and that's fine. I just dug them so much that I felt compelled to post. I've been really listening to instrumental music lately (another post for another time) and these dudes will now be in heavy rotation. You can download one song from each album and the whole EP "The Rescue" from their website. I think you should, if you like things that are cool. But remember, not cool because I or anyone else said so, just plain cool.

The above video was created by a fan for a "make us a video" contest the band held a while back. I hope you love it!

Which Describes How You're Feeling All The Time

It's Tuesday and this image sums up my week thus far.

It's Tuesday folks.

Tuesday.

Can't go wrong with a crappy hulk image though.

Illustration Friday: Packed

He's packed and heading down to the train yard because, well...

He kept dreamin'
That someday he'd be a star.
But he sure found out the hard way
That dreams don't always come true.
So he pawned all his hopes
and he even sold his old car
Bought a one way ticket
To the life he once knew,
Oh yes he did,
He said he would
Be leavin
On that midnight train to Georgia

Watch this video and tell me you don't want to be one of the Pips. The suits, the moves... I always wanted to be a Pip.

Mojizu!

I finally got around to joining the Mojizu

character design community.

It's pretty cool and there are a ton of awesome little characters that people have submitted. I posted two myself, one of whom is none other than Fireworks and Karate Supplies regular, The Professor.

If you're like me and you like to create little dudes and dudettes all the time for the heck of it, Mojizu is the place for you.

Bob Staake's new book

Bob Staake's new book, The Donut Chef

is out and I can't wait to get me a copy. I love Staake's

art. His colors are great and he really gets a lot out of his characters even thought they're just built with deceptively simple shapes. I personally only discovered his artwork a couple of years ago, but I've been trying to get my hands on his books ever since. The Red Lemon

and Hello Robots

come to mind as other favorites.

Sick as a dog.

Sick.
as.
a.
dog.

and so the season of perpetual sickness begins. From here on out, this cold (and I do believe that it will be this one cold) will tear through my family like a viking plundering and pillaging a small, defenseless village. This will go on from today to some time in May. Each one of us will get it and then pass it on to the other.

It's here. Wicked.

Yellow Magic Orchestra

If my life were a video game, this would be the soundtrack.

Sadly, my life is not a video game.

Illustration Friday: Routine

Y'all can't compete with the Professor's mad pop and lock routine.

He's the better of the best, best believe he's the badddest.

Someone please hire this Yeti already....

Check it out, progress on "Yeti 4 Hire". I'm reworking the manuscript a little, planning on starting the dummy very soon and working up some finished samples to send out a submission packet, hopefully by the end of the year. This image is the first of those samples. It's the first image that really came to me when the concept of the book popped into my head. The Yeti's first foray into town seeking gainful employment. The townsfolk aren't sure what to think. My son continually asks me why the people all look so scared and I have to remind him that they don't know that the Yeti is a swell guy and means them no harm. For some reason this puzzles him. I tell him that he'll understand once he reads the whole book, to which he replies that this week, he only wants WALL•E books. I then bang my head against the wall. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So summer is winding down. Though, it is winding rather quickly. We went on vacation at the end of July and since then, things have been a blur. August has seemed almost non-existent. I don't care much, because I like all the seasons and I'm not a kid, so I don't get my summers off. So bring on the fall. I'm ready for it.

Here's a little bit of trivia for those who like that sort of thing. Ever wonder why this blog is called Fireworks and Karate Supplies? Is it because of my fondness of these two, seemingly unrelated product classifications? Not exactly. Here's the skinny: I'm not originally from Ohio, no, I hail from the great state of New York, the empire state. I've lived in Ohio for about 8 years or so and over that time we've made many trips back to the state of my birth for holidays, family gatherings, visits to the grave of one Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth (long story, I'll explain another time), etc. What does any of this have to do with my blog? Not far from the Pennsylvania/New York border, which we obviously cross in our travels stands this place:



It might be hard to make out, but that sign indicates that this particular establishment does in fact sell both Fireworks and Karate Supplies. For years, this has made me very happy. I don't know why, but for reasons beyond my control, I find this very funny. No disrespect meant towards anyone who loves either/or/both fireworks and karate supplies, both of which are very cool. It's just that never in my life have I thought that these were two great tastes that taste great together.

That being said, apparently a lot of people do. I've checked the stats for this blog, and received the messages and emails... many people come here after googling Fireworks and Karate Supplies. I apologize for any confusion this may have caused, because I don't have a single firework or karate supply to sell. Thanks for stopping by though. I would refer you to the cats at the place pictured above. I think they can help you out. I mean, look at the size of that sign, they gotta have a lot of stuff.