General
August 21st, 2007 | Posted in General
I stopped doing gigs many years ago. I always hated hauling all my stuff out to some company picnic or holiday party and trying to draw with people jostling my elbows, drunks sloshing around, loud music from some obnoxious DJ in my ear and typically bad lighting. After a while I just decided it wasn’t for me. I refer all party inquiries to my best artists from the parks. That’s not to say I don’t occasionally venture out with my portable drawing table and do caricatures… it just needs to be for a good reason. Every summer I make at least two visits to Eden… READ MORE
August 20th, 2007 | Posted in General
Live caricature is an artform unto itself, combining fast art skill and technique, split second caricature observation, quick wit and a certain amount of showmanship. It’s not an easy thing to do well, and those who do it well are worthy of praise and admiration. One guy worth a lot of praise and admiration is Joe Bluhm, one of the best live caricaturists I have ever met… and that’s saying something as I have met approaching a thousand of them in my 22 years “in the business’. I blame Joe for much of my recent displeasure in my own live work, which I have been… READ MORE
August 18th, 2007 | Posted in General
The internet is a bizarre place where ordinary people become “iCelebrities” for seemingly no concrete reason other than they are on the internet and strike some unknown chord with other internet dwellers. YouTube in particular has spawned a number of iCelebrities thanks to quirky and just plain weird uploaded videos. The traditional media is starting to take notice, and as a result iCelebrities are sometimes breaking into the mainstream pop culture. Here’s a recent example: The other day in my local newspaper was a story (front page, no less) about a University of Minnesota grad student who has made a YouTube music video of his… READ MORE
August 14th, 2007 | Posted in General
Well, the problems with the blog have been solved. Nothing is ever as easy as it’s supposed to be. Last night I did a routine upgrade to my WordPress blog software. It’s a simple procedure where I download the new files, delete the old from my website and upload the new ones to replace them. You have to be careful not to delete the files containing your uploaded posts, images and settings, or your customized theme if you have one. I’ve done it a half dozen times at least since I started this blog. This was supposed to be a simple upgrade that just patched… READ MORE
August 13th, 2007 | Posted in General
After an upgrade my blog is having serious problems and I may be “off the air” for a while. READ MORE
August 13th, 2007 | Posted in General
Here’s a few I did this weekend while working at the park. Sorry, some of the pictures are pretty bad: READ MORE
August 10th, 2007 | Posted in General
I’m a pretty big baseball fan. While the sport has taken it’s lumps the last decade or so, it’s still the best sport in the U.S. Pro football is full of monstrous egos and grossly overpaid showoffs that play for a whopping 60 minutes every week. Every time I see a player crawling around on the ground and barking like a dog after making a routine tackle I get sick to my stomach. The ridiculous hype and endless rehashing of that 60 minutes of play time is even worse. Pro basketball is full of thugs and criminals, and players who whine and quit playing hard… READ MORE
August 9th, 2007 | Posted in General
I’m on my way today for a very brief visit to my park operation at Six Flags New England, so little time to blog. However, here’s something I’ve been meaning to mention: The newly released Popeye DVD. I’m not a big animation afficinado, but I regcognize good stuff when I see it. The early Popeye animated shorts from Max Fleischer studios are good stuff. Warner Brothers just released the first of several volumes of Popeye cartoons on DVD: “Popeye the Sailor: 1933-1938 Vol.1“. This is something special for Popeye fans… the first 60 Fleischer shorts all remastered from the original negatives, uncut, shown in chronological… READ MORE
