(Insert Pithy Title Here) Weekly Update

Week flew by and I feel like I’ve done nothing… which isn’t true, I think I planted some stuff in the yard.

Still sorting out the fraud bullshit I mentioned a while back and that seems to zap my energy.

Speaking of zaps, I went for an IPL on Wednesday, which had been postponed a couple times due to shitty weather and then me having been sick at the beginning of March and suddenly I’ve got no pain tolerance… we ended up having to call it off after just a few pulses on my jawline. Lovely.

And now it’s time to get my tax shit together… even better.

Ugh.

What else has been going on… my brother’s having fun in LA this week, and thoroughly enjoyed the Lichtenstein installation at the Broad Museum… well, actually he’s hating LA this week and can’t wait to go “home” to Guadalajara in a few days.

PSA: if you’re looking for parking close to the Broad and you see that one lot where it’s only $17 for the day, that’s cause that’s the lot where no one can drive or park their damn cars properly and your rental will probably get scraped. He came out from the museum and some other shopping to find a big paint scrape and while standing there photographing it and swearing under his breath some other car almost hit him trying to get in and out of another stall. Probably one of those lots where the stalls aren’t wide enough and there’s not enough driving room between the rows of stalls.

No, I don’t know the exact location to warn you of.

Speaking of art, but of the sort that probably won’t be in the Broad any time soon, I’ve been working on some.

Didn’t get any work done on Mickey Ricky* this week beyond one little sketch:

* at the time of this writing he was still called Mickey B., but I changed his name to Ricky B. since then.

Worth a shot, eh, Mickey Ricky?

There’s a local juried annual show that’s an open art call, first come first served and the registration is on Monday… the show doesn’t happen til May, though. And I’m always trying to find a better idea and thus not starting paintings that would be perfectly good, so I didn’t start it til today, with the following base colors:

How much of this will actually be visible in the end, I don’t know.

I should probably document some of the behind the scenes work… would be more relevant than half the shit I mention in these weekly blogs… and of course there’s the thing where I wonder if I need to write more about what’s in my head or just STFU.

I remember one of the good profs at Emily Carr back in the 90s joking with us that the best artist interview he ever saw was Basquiat answering questions whilst stuffing his face with french fries to the point where you couldn’t make out a word he said. And then refused to repeat it after he was done chewing, just grabbed another few fries for the next answer.

There’s wisdom in that approach, but then this whole blog would be irrelevant… which it is anyway, lol…

Anyway, from Mickey Ricky and the new painting to Bono Mouse, which is an ongoing sketchbook thing. I think this was the best of those drawings for the week:

Bono Mouse conducting an orchestra of cheese… guarantee it sounds better than some of the “new” album Songs of Surrender Your Wallet.

I kid, I kid… it’s better than all but one of the “new” U2 songs. “The Fly” is decent as an acoustic, albeit still no improvement over the original.

Bring on the “unreasonable guitar” album they’ve hinted at.

It’s funny how many people love SOS (which is cool if you do, different tastes etc.) who then have to go that further step to insist if you don’t you’re not a “true fan.”

And I could understand someone saying that shit to me because yeah, there was a long time when I actively hated U2 and I only came over to the dark side at the end of 2020.

But they say that shit to dudes in the FB fan groups who have been diehard fans since the early 80s but just dislike this new Songs For Coffeehouse Open Mics album.

You wanna talk about “toxic fandom,” there it is. And the groups I’m in on FB, the anti-SOS brigade has said their piece and then generally shut up about it and just post about other U2 stuff they do like, but the pro-SOS brigade seems to be trolling to try to get a reaction out of us.

You like it, good for you. Hell, you want to post about how much you like it, great. Just leave out the snark about the supposed haters, and if you refuse to do that, don’t get pissy when one of us pops up and gives you the drama you want. (I usually ain’t the one to do so, but I, or rather my sock puppet, may well go around liking the comments that do.) You don’t need our agreement to validate your enjoyment of it or anything else… Hell, I think most of my favorite bands are despised by my friends and I don’t care what they think, let alone some strangers on the internet.

All of which just goes to show we all have way too much time and energy on our hands, and mine would best be utilized making more art.

Anyway, time for me to have dinner and get my tax shit together (great way to spend a Saturday night, huh?), so let’s wrap up with some garden pics.

Mostly things look the same as last week, and I probably won’t get around to my major clean-up til Wednesday, but some things look better than last week and there’s some new blooms.

First of the larger daffodils to bloom, probably an ‘Ice Follies’
One of the hellebores, ‘Ruse Black’

Speaking of hellebores, I scored at Gardenworks this week. Usually most places just sell hellebores in the 1 gallon pots and now they can be upwards of $30 at that size. But I found a stash of baby hellebores in 4″ for about $7 each. Still pricey compared to other 4″ perennials, but I grabbed 5 of them to populate some shady spots and they’ll get big soon enough. Pretty good deal.

I haven’t planted them yet.

Speaking of hellebores, there’s 3 in this bed, where I stuck some dark purple ones the year after I planted the ‘Ruse Black’ in the previous pic and realized that those dark ones are hard to see at a distance. This bed is right out the window from my desk.
The irises are at their peak in this bed, too.
More chionodoxa have opened up now.