My friend Ben Prisk just dropped this wonderful thing on my Facebook wall.
He’s an amazing artist, and an amazing man; I have yet to meet him, but one day soon.
I love this drawing.
…And yes, day-after-tomorrow (Thursday) is my birthday.
Locked out, but damned sexy.
I got myself blocked from my own website somehow – I couldn’t possibly explain how (because I don’t know), but thanks to Brandon, who is a gentleman-and-a-scholar, and keeps this site and many others up and running for vastly inadequate pay, I’m back in and can resume inaction voluntarily, rather than enforced inaction.
So there’s that.
Meanwhile, there’s this: you know you want some.
Shot in Mexico – Las Ventanas al Paraiso, Baja California Sur, Mexico.
Skull Ring updates
A couple of quick Skull Ring notes.
First, Tony Creed has a new site that looks pretty slick. Go visit him at superskull.com!
I love Tony’s stuff; my first skull ring was my ELVIS LIVES ‘riffman’. Tony’s still the original badass in the industry and his stuff is stil as cave-man-biker as ever.
Second,another favorite designer, MT Maloney, has just released this brillian, HUGE ring: the JUPITER:
MT’s awesome, and this is really a statement piece. He won’t even be offering this in small sizes; you need Big Old Man Hands to wear it.
I want it.
Black Horses by Adam Franklin
I just wanted to push a particular favorite artist of mine, Adam Franklin.
Adam was the lead guy in one of my favorite bands of all time, Swervedriver.
He’s been a significant solo artists for some while, and has released a number of excellent solo albums, both as Adam Franklin as as Toshack Highway
He’s just released a wonderful new album, Black Horses (buy on iTunes or Amazon).
This is a bit of a departure for Adam; where Swervedriver were hard, loud, driving music with a sometimes shoegaze feel, his solo work has been more varied; sometimes more basic rock, sometimes shoegaze drone. But this album has a softer feel, and an oddly 60’s vibe. Often acoustic, It almost seem like a more intimate, personal version of Adam Franklin.
It tool a little time for me to get to know this one; it’s growing on me with each spin.
Give it a try.
Dramatic Look Selfie
Old photo. New treatment. Done with an iPhone app called ‘dramatic B&W‘.
I swear, some day soon, I will start writing again. It’s killin’ me not writing, but I just can’t right now.
TCB
Rabbit in the Moon
“The Rabbit in the Moon” – a pendant made by my father. I just found this one while cleaning up my office. I still need to polish it up, but here it is as I found it.
Dad made a lot of things like this; it’s one of the things I miss about him; his abstract logician’s mind turned concrete in silver.
He made these out of old silver coins (a 1940’s Australian florin in this case). He said he learned the skill in the army; he was in the south pacific in WWII, and spent long, tedious hours on troop ships. Jewelry was one of the ways he passed the time, sitting on deck to catch cooling breezes, working with small hand drills and files to shape bits of silver coin (in the days when coins were still made of silver).
The image is of the Rabbit, pushing a wheelbarrow down a hill; my father used to say the wheelbarrow contains “books with pale blue covers, about the goodness of life”.
Miss you, Dad.
All The Skulls
That’s the full collection, as of now. Instagram shots, so low res.
I’ll add tags with the individual details + links.
FXDB rolling again
My FXDB Street Bob has been down for a couple of months; shortly before the holidays, the shifter arm broke loose.
This wasn’t your usual ‘harleys suck’ problem, this was all operator error; I fucked up the shifter spline when I was trying to adjust the shifter a few months back, and my kludge job finally failed.
The moral is, don’t force it, and don’t do the job if you don’t have the right tools. Yeah, yeah, I know.
Sunday night I looked at the weather report, and found that, unlike most of the country, here in northern CA we’re experiencing lovely spring weather; highs in the seventies this week. It occurred to me monday morning, just exactly how pissed I’d be if the weather tunred perfect and my ride was down; so I gave in, had the steed towed in, and a day later had it running again.
Warrantees are a good thing.
(Pic taken with iPhone 5, processed with instagram,
and then processed more with aperture.)
bitter bowl, tasty cup.
It’s called ‘Kaepernicking‘.
I know it’s only a fucking game.
I get that, ok? But it’s my game.
I started watching the San Francisco 49ers play football at the perfect moment: early in the 1981 season. I got to see a team that had langusied at the bottom of the stats for some while rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of a terrible season, and rise to the peak of football success.
I was there when it started; watching the start of what would be the most successful run of championships in football history.
Sometime in the 90’s, I lucked into a season ticket. I was there for the last years of the Steve Young era; I was there in the stands for Jerry Rice’s last game as a niner. I was there for the Jeff Garcia era. I was there for the last flirtation with greatness in the mid ninties, and I was there when it all sort of collapsed around our ears.
I regrets now that I had to give up my tickets; this year, I wanted them back, so badly. This year, it felt like 1981 over again.
But it wasn’t. Not quite. Because in the last seconds of super bowl XLVII, for the first time ever, it didn’t go our way, and we lost a superbowl.
I point no fingers; yes, the officiating sucked; yes, at times, we sucked. Coaching mistakes were made (on both sides). For whatever reason, that day, they did better than we did.
It feels fucking personal. Not like any other loss I can remember. And I think I’m going to be angry about this one for a while; maybe ’til Sepctember and we’re back on the field, maybe ’til the playoffs end. Hell, maybe until we get to our seventh super bowl; I don’t know. But I’m pissed off.
On the other hand, I posted the above picture (of me ‘Kaepernicking‘) partly because there’s another team I’m now following passionately – the San Jose Sharks NHL hockey team. It’s not the same – football is in the blood, I grew up watching college with my father and my aunt, and have been following the niners now for thirty-plus years. But the Sharks have me as much as the niners did back in the days of our second and third superbowls. Hockey is a different thing, a different game.
I didn’t get the above tattoo for my hockey team – but it still represents it to me now. And god dammit, after the crushing disappointment of Super Bowl XLVII, one thing will make it better; lord fucking Stanley’s mug.
Go Sharks.