AFLAC REDUX

Had to repurpose some frames from an old Aflac/NASCAR pitch. Once I started tweaking them it was hard to stop. My style's changed a bit in the last 6 months.

ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES

Pictured: the Pace company demonstrates their safety measures against salmonella poisoning.

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I was listening to the news coverage of the big tomato scare, kind of laughing it off, and then I realized, oh I think I had that salmonella thingy. It was a couple of weeks ago and I blamed it on improperly cooked seafood, but I had all the signs they say to watch for, the runs, the fever, the whole thing, so now I figure it was the 'maters. On the news they also say to go to a doctor but that sort of thing never occurs to me.

The sickness hit me at the worst imaginable time. Not only were my mother and sister in town for a too-brief visit with the kids, but I was also looking at two days of sitting in a jury pool. By the second day it became obvious that it was going to be sitting in a jury pool and signing out a lot to run to the bathroom.

Jury service wreaks havoc on my business. No one cuts me a break for the time off, it usually just means that I'll have to turn down work that I can't afford to turn down.  I feel duty-bound to go, but if I ever actually got tapped for a case I don't know what I'd do. I don't have the balls to be one of those guys who pulls a psycho neo-nazi routine at the interview. I already had one day down, and they settled all their cases that day without paneling  any jurors, thus reducing my chances of getting picked by half. I could tap out due to illness, but they'd just reschedule me for a couple months down the line, and the lottery would start all over. My second day was Friday before Memorial Day. The odds were too good to pass up.

By noon when they let us out I was already a wreck, but I now had unexpected time on my hands to spend with my Mom and Sis. Their hotel was nearby, and it was still morning West Coast time, so I went to collect them.

Now I don't want to make the women in my family out to be a couple of horrible meddlers, because they're not. All I'm saying is that they had stayed out good and late in Soho, that bottles of wine were opened and consumed, and that the topic that was fresh on their minds was the parenting skills I had been displaying, or lack thereof. By the time I turned up the next morning, the rhetorical saws were sharpened, oiled and ready to go.

Look, I'm philosophical about this. It's inevitable that you're going to screw your kid up in a million ways, just like it's inevitable that you're the last one to notice everything you're doing wrong. I know that it comes with the territory that everyone has an opinion. God knows I do it to other parents. When all is said and done I appreciate them giving me an objective outlook, and that they respect me enough to make the suggestions directly to me rather than just nattering behind my back about it. I just wasn't prepared for how defensive and hostile it made me. When someone tells you you're handling your kid wrong, even in a small way, it hurts your feelings, and it's up to you to manage those feelings. Add in a mean case of food poisoning, and I'm afraid I just didn't handle my side of the conversation very well at all.

After about an hour of failing to contain my worst impulses, I was released to lead us to a restaurant. But I still couldn't let it go and the argument continued down the street. I think at this point my mother was starting to lose her patience with me quite frankly. She had very respectfully offered a point of view that I might find useful on a topic of great interest to us both, and I could have just said, "that's interesting, I'll have to think about that". (And it should be noted, her ideas have since been examined and found helpful in the rational light of day.) But you would have thought I was on trial for my life the way I was arguing the case, and I may have made use of personal invective where it suited me. I think eventually she was ready to hit me back on something.

When I happened to mentioned my illness, my mother started to wonder whether I really had food poisoning. Impyling, I guess, that I was merely the victim of a weak constitution and a flair for the dramatic. Now I'm really angry. It's bad enough I have to defend my parenting, now I have to defend whatever it is that's going on in my bowels. And I did. Vigorously.

"Look, you both said you had a touch of something the morning after the Italian restaurant. You both had a bit of my meal. I ate the whole thing and I got the full-on diarrhea and the fever. Ergo ipso facto, my dinner gave me food poisoning."

"All I'm saying is that maybe you touched something in the restroom that someone touched who didn't wash his hands."

Why is this important to her? My head is going to explode. Oh no. Don't say it. Do not say what you're thinking, you idiot. Respect your mother and let the matter drop right here and now.

I hold it in a good two seconds, and then:

"So you're saying maybe it was that guy's cock I sucked in the restroom when I was away from the table?"

We found something else to talk about.

EDIE'S NEW STORE

VEHICLE WRAP

A wrap I illustrated that was shown at a car show in Orlando.

LI'L KANYE AND PALS

Some illustrations commissioned for the Wyclef video, echoing the song's references to Kanye West, Biggie, Tupac, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, and Sean Bell. I was asked me to draw them as children, in a bit of artistic license. So cute!

I did multiples of all of these because everyone likes to have options to pick from. I did many more of Kanye because the director didn't like my original versions, and was too busy to spend all day going back and forth with revisions. I figured if I just threw enough options at him one of them would have to hit if only by accident. (I even pasted in the reference photos. As if to say, "See, he really does wear sweaters like that.") You can see the versions that got picked bouncing around in the animated backgrounds in the video.

I think "Li'l Biggie & Tupac" could be a cartoon show, don't you?

Teshkeel trailer 2

AFLAC DOES NASCAR

Racer girl

some frames from a music video job. I'm going to post on it if they ever get the video out of post-production and onto the web. but I like these frames a lot; I don't think I'm spoiling anything for anybody by posting them. For pre-vis purposes, the illustrated figures are combined with backgrounds captured from a video game.

What’s So Funny ‘Bout PJs, Love and Understanding

A Monday night a few weeks ago:

Working at the house, three days into a monster of a job for Olive Garden with a super tight deadline. I suddenly had what I thought was a cool idea: let’s pack the girls up and hit up the Olive Garden in Poughkeepsie for dinner! It’ll be ironic or something. Now before you feel all superior to me, please consider my situation: I had gone three days almost without food or sleep, with nothing but propaganda for Olive Garden in front of my face. Those are pretty much prison-camp brainwashing conditions, you know.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, Faith leapt into action. She’s learned through experience that she can’t stop me from working insane hours, or from becoming a strung-out stress goblin over the course of a heavy job. But by God, a heartwarming family trip to Olive Garden was something she could damn well put a stop to. In a flash she dug out the lonely jar of Prego in the back of the pantry and tarted It up with fresh garlic and leftover shrimp and vegetables. When the smell hit me it was like my body suddenly registered three days of hunger, stress and exhaustion all at once. It was all I could do not to shove my face into the pan while it was still on the stove. Just as we’re about to dig in, baby Roxy decided it was time to shred what few nerves I had left with a monster screaming fit.

I happen to be the black belt in baby kung fu around our house. It's sort of the one thing I bring to the table, not being able to say, lactate, or balance a checkbook. This was the sort of five-alarm barn-burner of a meltdown that was going to last a good hour and can only ever be marginally contained. If I made her mom handle it I would get to eat, but we were still going to have to listen to it. What could I do. I let Faith and Edie enjoy their meal and walked Roxy around the house, using every secret Tibetan fussy-baby trick in the book to keep her from blowing our ears out. An eternity later she exhausted herself, and I was able to pass her off to mom for feeding and bed.

A broken shell of a human, I stumbled and collapsed at the table next to Edie. She sat and watched me struggling numbly to push my fork at the cold noodles. One of the hundreds of reasons that I’m madly in love with this kid is her way of exhibiting empathy at times. Or maybe she just thought it would be funny if it was her turn to feed me for a change. In any event, she looked me up and down, and showed that there was more to her than diabolical master plans to score cookies and stall her bedtime. She took my fork and started lifting big long strands of pasta, waving them menacingly in my general direction. Even if I wanted to say no to a two-year-old, she pretty much could have overpowered me at that moment. I bobbed and weaved and sort of aimed my mouth at it as she stabbed at my face. She even did the running commentary that people do to her when she gets fed: "Here it comes! Thassa big bite! I guess you like it!" She didn’t stop until the plate was empty.

I sucked down a beer and we mutually helped each other up the stairs. Faith had the light in the bedroom off so the baby could sleep, and I managed to put Edie’s one-piece pajamas on her body all wrong, which she found hilarious. Even after I figured it out and fixed it, she was still laughing at me and giving me crap: “That’s notta arm, thassa leg!” She tumbled into the crib and wished me nice dreams. My three girls went to sleep and I went back to work.

YOU'RE EITHER WITH US OR YOU'RE WITH THE TERMINATORS!

I've gotten completely hooked on the Terminator TV show.

Over vacation I was hanging out with my presumptive brother-in-law and T3 came on the tube. I didn't let loose my loads of bile for that film since he's a fan of it (except for the scene where Arnie actually says "talk to the hand". For fuck's sake man!) It's embarrassing how little T3 has going for it besides a special effects budget and a willingness to go for the dark ending. No atmosphere, no point of view, not an original idea in it's self-referential little head.

When the film was over I whipped out the laptop and played the first handful of episodes of the series off iTunes. It made a believer of him too. Holy fuck does the series blow away the third film. What's more, it continues the storyline from T2 and completely ignores the continuity of T3.

The series has a TV-size budget for special effects, but that's a good thing: it makes it a throwback to the first film, which after all had no budget either. They have to make do with the same things that Cameron did: suspense, good casting, creepy photography and a good script. I'm happy to say that Arnie's rapidly-aging ass is not missed; the casting of the Terminators is right on. (And mercifully, they wear regular street clothes. Here's an idea: the audience might be smart enough to understand that it's a Terminator even if it wears jeans. You don't have to contrive a reason for it to shake down some goddamn leather bar whenever it needs new pants.)

There's so many cool ideas floating around in the stories: A Terminator skeleton walking around LA in a hoodie to hide its face, figuring out how to re-grow it's skin using today's technology; a super-advanced chess computer as the possible ancestor of the Terminators; a human trapped in a bomb shelter with a Terminator whose mission is to hibernate through WW3; the revelation that the Terminators are smart enough to get what they want through commerce if it's more expediant than using force; a "good" Terminator who's that much scarier for the human qualities she's able to exhibit.

The fact that I like this show is a sure sign that it's headed for early cancellation, but what are you gonna do. It was good while it lasted.