September 16, 2005
Kitty Custer is a total Gen-Xer, lies around all day listening to cat music, walks around like he owns the place and meows (bitches) about the bad food. And to boot, he hasn’t even looked for a rat. I was going to relegate him to yard duty (a virtual death sentence out here) but yesterday we got a thankyou card from Deena’s old roommate telling us how appreciative she is for us saving “Guapo.” So, at least for the weekend, Custer stays in the penthouse.

Whipped out six drawings this morning (more stud studies) and wrote up a page worth of story points on the Mexicali Stud. Got some big plans for our plein air art trip in terms of ambitious scenes I want to capture. I think “plein air” is French and means to paint outside, or in the open. There is a whole school on this style of painting and I’ve never done it. Ed Mell has done it for a couple of years with Gary Ernest Smith, so I’m anxious to learn from the Master. Evidently there is an entire regimen and protocol in terms of setting up, how many sessions to do in a day (2) and when to break, what to watch for, etc.

Robert Ray is trying to ween me from my favorite writing program, called Write Now, which he claims has been defunct for 15 years. Ha. I know the commands and shortcuts and write all of my copy in this ancient program, including the words you are reading at this very moment. The problem is, when I go to copy and paste this very same copy into Blogger.com or into our Quark Xpress layouts, it does funky, not so funny things, that make Robert pull his hair out. I’ve got to change, and I hate change!!

The framer is coming this afternoon with 20 more images for the Blaze Away! artshow in two weeks. I’m giving him a half dozen more to frame which will put me over the 120 mark for the show. Very exciting. Going to be quite cool. Hope you can come see it while it’s up (Sept. 30-Oct 9).

The buzz on the upcoming gay Western “Brokeback Mountain” is quite good. The controversial film won best movie at the Vienna Film Festival last weekend and I think Ang Lee won for best director. One of our writers contacted Meghan today and says Heath Ledger is probably going to get an Oscar nomination for best actor. But, according to our online poll, 85% of you don’t even want to see it. This presents an interesting dilemma for us here at the magazine. Kind of a Greek sandwich kind of deal with us in the middle.

”Whatever your past has been, you have a spotless future.”
—Melanie Gustafson