April 23, 2006
I forgot that my title for the New Times piece mentioned yesterday was, "The Lighter Side of the Kennedy Assassination." Time and distance is the key on all human events eventually ending up as comedy. I think it ran on the 25 year anniversary (1988), and then later ran in The Dallas Observer, a sister pub to the Phoenix New Times. That made me pucker, as I'm sure the cartoons did in Dallas as well, but I'm still here. The Lighter Side of 9/11 is next, but I'd give it another decade, or two.

Speaking of rash youth desperate to be shocking, the Deck Show last night was quite a success. The Ice House is basically a gutted out cement, warehouse and the cathedral style room the decks were showcased in, didn't have a roof. It looked like the Dresden Chamber of Commerce about 1944, but then, that is pretty cool, when you think about it, as skaters are quite into black holes and the anger that makes them. They had a metal band and I'd say about 500 people (it lasted from three to midnite and we got there after Taco Villa, at about six). Ed Mell did a sweet little landsape, framed on top of his skateboard with the clever title, "Landskate." It had a price tag of $2,200 (a bargain!). My "Geronimo Does A Halfpipe Over Organpipe (pre-board) 1886" was priced at $500 but it had no red dot on it by the time Kathy and I left at about 7:30.

Art shows like these are always inspiring to me and I woke up this morning and bailed into a painting called, "Looking For A Good Man On The Western Frontier." It features Honkytonk Sue (great reference of Jackie King on her horse searching the horizon for available cowboys). The horizon is from two sketches I did last weekend at Rock Art Ranch, outside of Winslow, and the color scheme is from a 1946-ish postcard of desert burros ("Desert Sweethearts"). Verdict still out, but I'm hopeful.

"Drawing is the root of everything."
--Vincent Van Gogh