Reagan, and Pikachu

Here's a little something I drew while I was at the in-laws. They have a book with portraits of presidents and their birthplaces, homes, and sometimes their death places. The picture of Reagan was in black-and-white, but I remember him on television with all that make-up on.

(I fixed the mouth, a bit.)
--gh

Brandon Bird Paintings

I think I have finally found a mentor. Check out the paintings by Brandon Bird, purely a genius.

I challenge you to view many of his selected paintings, and comment on your favorite. For me, it is this gem:


It is titled Elysium. In case you are not of the classical nature, I believe this is what the ancient greeks called Heaven. Indeed...

--gh

Attack of the 100-foot Baby

This started as a pencil drawing that I worked on during the retirement reception of the university provost. In fact, when I scanned the sketch you could see most of the reverse side that bled through the cheap paper the program was written on. For those of you with photoshop abilities, you can find the horrible, horrible words to a song that we sang. I was once asked to help write that song, maybe I should have pitched in.

Today we walked to the A&G restaurant for lunch. The kids will be out of school mid-day tomorrow, so it was one of the only times we could do something like that. After lunch, I asked Amy if we could walk around the courthouse square to listen to the Christmas music blarin' out of the court house loudspeakers. On the way back home, we ended up walking by the funeral home where Bobby Jo Stinnet's service was being held. I hadn't realize that the funeral was in Maryville. There were reporters, cameras, six huge media trucks and satellite dishes all over Market street. Walking around all of this equipment wasn't easy, they were everywhere. A real media circus, the whole world is watching footage 6 blocks from my home. Terrible, terrible story.

Since I was walking down a street, by my church, and in my town, I found it pretty easy to just walk behind the equipment and ignore the whole scene. I did feel more like a jerk for driving 5-6 miles out of my way the previous week, though. Still not quite sure why I did that. I guess I am writing that here to keep me honest.

--gh

Black Line Fish goes back to the suburbs?

The other day I was following a car with some ribbonish stickers on the back and I realized that I have no idea where people get those things. I haven't really been looking for them, but if they are as ubiquitous at the highway makes them appear, then they should be equally available in some store that I shop in.

I have always thought about what sort of automobile adornment I could ever dress my vehicle with. I am a big fan of "MY MIDDLE SCHOOLER CAN KICK YOUR HONOR STUDENT'S ASS!" (Yeah, sorry, language.) I remember seeing the "HONK IF YOU HATE BUMPER STICKERS" and getting a kick out of that. That was in 1982 or something. ...speaking of 1982, the convention center in Washington D.C. was recently demolished. The news reporter was calling it the "old" convention center, and I guess everyone is glad to see it go. Man, I remember when that sucker was brand new! Twenty-two years is hardly old for a building. (I remember thinking it was so modern looking. It had an electronic sign out front!)

So, my thoughts of me driving around with a suitable bumper sticker made me think of a ribbon that says "Support Stuff." That's really all we need. Who cares if that guy supports wildlife, and this dude supports the NRA, while another supports Jesus, or Darwin, or Walter Mondale... does it really have an impact on anyone else? I was all set to vote for George Bush, but on the way to the mall I saw a bumper sticker for John Kerry and that fixed me...

So, this is what I spent my last 3 1/2 hours on. You will have to click on the image to fully read the sticker:

I don't really wear shirts that say stuff, either. I don't go out of my way to not do so, that is contrarian non-conformatism that I don't care to conform to. But, I did think that I could wear a shirt that says "I'm THAT guy!". It doesn't really mean anything, unless you think I am the type of guy that wears a tee-shirt to a concert with the name of the band actually playing in the concert. (Yeah, that is a Jeremy Piven joke.)

--gh

ACME License Maker

This webtool is awesome. ABSOLUTELY AWESOME. It is called the ACME License Maker, and it is used to create fake personalized license plates.

I am using it for a picture I am drawing. Too bad they don't have an ACME GRAVESTONE MAKER!

--gh

unofficial puppet master

LOL, I was the 16th person to visit this page: unofficial puppet master.

The first web page that I ever saw was www.lego.com, that was in 1992 or 1993...

--gh

Flogging

Okay, I think I coined a term when I was writing in the comments of someone else's blog. Some times we find ourselves "blogging" in the comment section of another blog. I told the Captain (Crappy Pants) [language] that this is fake blogging, or flogging.

I'ma flog in m's blog, if'a he's got something new.

--gh

Overheard conversations

I overheard a conversation this week, it was incredible. I took notes (really! they're in my lap) so I can try to reconstruct it for you. The scene is older people at church. Woman is early sixties, Man is not yet fifty:

WOMAN: I was at another church last weekend 

       in Kansas City and the children did

       not sing as well as these children do.





MAN:   Do you think our children practice more?



WOMAN: No, I think it was because they seemed

       to be shouting.  Not singing, just shouting.



MAN:   Oh, I see.  ...was it that type of

       contemporary music?  You know, what's 

       that called again?



WOMAN: You mean rap?



MAN:   Yeah, rap.  Was it rap?



WOMAN: No, it was just shouting.

Then it got better. Old Man (mid-seventies) starts complaining about the Beatles invasion FORTY YEARS AGO! He said "If I had thought of that yeah, yeah, yeah music I'd be the millionaire now."

Of course, none of their statements really made sense. Rap really is not that hard to describe, and it has nothing to do with "She Loves You." Seven-year-olds are more culturally advanced about modern music than these folks.

So, whenever I hear some rap, I will call it "that contemporary music, what is it again?" Time to play some late nineties MC Ren...

--gh

Skidmore

Now this is the kind of art that I would love to create some day:

Skidmore is in the news again. I decided to extend Terra's morning road trip and see what a media circus looks like. There were five huge news trucks with satellite dishes pointed to locations thousands of miles above the equator.

Man, what is it with Skidmore? For such a small town, it sure has its share of problems.

I remember the first time I drove through Skidmore. We were on our way to the Squaw Creek wildlife refuge (near Mound City). I have never heard of the book or movie of the events of 1981. It just seemed to be a small town 12 miles SE of Maryville. But as we drove through the streets, I got the creepiest feeling. People were in their yards, raking leaves or doing other fall yard work. They would stop what they were doing and stare into the car. Usually when you watch a car pass by, you glance at the vehicle, and maybe the people inside. But this was different. These people were were actually making eye contact with me, making me feel very uncomfortable. I know that some small towns distrust outsiders, but I have never felt this creeped out driving through a town on a state highway with a population of a couple of hundred people.

A few weeks ago, while driving around at night with my daughter, I told her a brief rendition of what I knew about McElroy and Skidmore. Apparently, I was telling this story too much like a ghost story, and it really freaked her out. She did not want to drive around the country that evening.

So, as this amber alert and media circus focus on Skidmore, I am waiting to see when the major news networks will casually bring up the decades-old story. Skidmore needs to produce the first astronaut to Mars or something to exorcise these media demons.

I should mention that as I drove through the small town this morning (feeling like a creep for media hunting), I got the weirdest feeling again. Of the 70-80 homes in this town, I only saw three that were decorated with lights for Christmas. (One was unusually decorated, as if making up for the rest of the town.)

The good news is that CNN and FoxNews describe Skidmore as being 45 miles from St. Joseph, rather than 12 miles from Maryville.

I hold no contempt for Skidmore. I don't blame them for being so tight-lipped and suspicious of any outsiders.

--gh

Francis!

This sketch is based on a photograph that was taken some months back. All the students love Francis. Comment if you know Francis!

(Yes, I spelled his name correctly.)
--gh

A tad more like Coolio Claus...

I thought I would post one of my lesser works, or ...er mistakes. I really wanted to paint a Snoop Claus. This looks nothing like Snoop... sorry.


Finals week!

--gh

The Beauty That Makes Me the Beast

Skin so fair, like the belly of a fish

a voice that transfixes my heart

your contenance, bestowed by a smirk

Betty, you are all that I think about

Ms. Rubble, I can't get you out of my mind

but ther remains a stumbling block

you are married to an unsophisticated ogre

a nincompoop, a Philestine, a cretin

You flippantly play with my heart

you've tossed my feelings on the ground

I am unrequited, morose, saturnine

and you have left me no choice

I am

     turning the

            channel



                           *click*

I wrote this on October 8, 2003. I think I was in a meeting or something. It was accompanied by a sketch. But I decided to update the artwork... (I am less of a poet than an artist.)

--gh

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

I haven't looked at my credit report in a year or so. From what this little item suggests, I have excellent credit. I also understand why I get so many offers each week trying to get me to have more credit.



I wonder how many credit card offers you get if your score is in the low 400s. Sadly, I bet those people still get them, but for ridiculous terms that border on usury.

Oddly enough, my credit score will probably start going down over the next four years as I pay off the last debts and mortgage. I've heard that people with no mortgage, no car payment, and no credit balance get mad when they see they have a "lower" credit score like 560 or something. (That's a funny thing to get mad at, and shows how financially illiterate people are, even if they have their "act" together.)

When I get there, I'll share it with you. (Er, I'll share my score, not my credit.)

--gh

Can there be another G-Had?

I've been keeping track of links that lead to this blog. Most of them are the random link that Blogger puts at the top of our pages. (Thanks, Blogger, ...I guess.) I've witnessed no "repeat" visitors, so I assume I have no impact on anyone. This is to be expected, since I have not matched the 38 visitors to this page, nearly a year ago... then again, I don't whore out my blog by randomly visiting sites and posting comments. You do get a lot of hits from commenting on a more high profile site. But I don't do that either.

I decided to blog on these links when I recently found someone looking for another G-Had. Well, I found another one, right here. He (?) appears to be a younger assier version of me. Fairly Crass would appreciate that he uses the word "I'ma." (...but he spells it "Imma." I expect M to visit his site and right him of this error.)

Here are some other links that led to this page:

mathew lesko sucks (well, he does. But I really didn't say this)

immodium dose for toddlers (so, someone probably up late at night trying to care for their toddler and diarrhea ends up reading about me staying up at night with my dog's diarrhea)

curriculum vitae de andres manuel lopez obrador (Oh yeah, I'm sure my blog was helpfulf for this search...)

fortuna imperatrix mundi (Looking for serious Carl Orff information? Wrong place.)

hair and calics (You know, I finally fixed my hair situation.)

hair+calics (But someone else hasn't apparently.)

la mesa que mas aplauda (Oh yeah, my own mainstay. Thank you META TAGs! This phrase alone has brought countless visitors from Texas and Mexico to this page.)

jetsons xxx (What the?!)

shaving stick bump fighter (Still shaving like an African American, and it is still working.)

maryville+missouri+blog (This led to some interesting links, but not really a gold mine or anything.)

"You gotta pump?"

I just have to relay a story that just happened. Shortly after 12:30am (yeah, A.M.), I was startled by the door bell. We have one of those old fashioned door bells with the mechanical twist key. Most people that are new to the house do not know how to operate it (or see it at night), so I assumed that the person at the door was a friend (possibly in trouble).

I was shocked to see a young man with a nice winter coat (wasn't that cold out) holding a box. Was he selling something? He seemed, you know, different and stuff.

"You gotta pump?" he says.

"What?" I answer dumbly: "No, I don't want to buy anything."

At this point, I can see the guy is retarded. He is holding an empty box for an inflatable mat, and is trying to borrow a pump to assist in some kind of disabled sleep-over. He is pointing to a mechanical bellow style pump in a picture on the box. The only way I could help him would be with a small air compressor that works only with a car cigarette lighter. I told him I couldn't help, he said "okay" and stumbled off of my porch.

I watched him for a little while, walking up the street, stopping at houses. I felt like following him, because this was truly bizarre. Retarded people, especially well-dressed retarded people don't wander the streets of Maryville at night. What house was he at where walking out past midnight to knock on neighborhood doors seems like a good thing to do.

It was 15 minutes later when I realized that I should probably have called Public Safety. I started to worry about his safety, only after I locked the front door.

--gh

Terra and Buster

I drew this based on a picture that my daughter took. She's the only one in the family with a camera.


I wanted to work on another sketch this evening, I even scanned it to a computer at work. But I forgot to copy the image to my laptop before heading home. It was a picture of a 100-foot baby ravaging the countryside, attacked by planes and tanks. You know, the usual. Since I gave the synopsis now, I will write a story about it when it is posted. I'm still struggling with writing creatively.

--gh

Grover and Jon Jon

Here is a "painting" I made of Grover and Jon Jon... this is an epic TV event. This was based on a picture I found somewhere.

When I was a kid, Sesame Street would put this on at least once or twice a month. They don't really talk about anything, but it is a heartwarming exchange between an adorable kid and someone's hand shoved up a glorified sock.

--gh