Dug it *updated

I just picked up a copy of the Weekly Dig Issue Feb 28-March 3... and sure enough, spanning across pages 22 - 23 is a huge print of "1793".

Proud of me? Aww man, go hang it on your fridge. Weeeeee.

Mom, I promise I'll mail you a copy or four. Keep on me about it.

www.hookermedia.com

The weather is lovely today. T-shirt weather. High 40's. Sunny.

And we're supposed to get slammed with snow this weekend.

No really. Where the hell is my motorcycle?

*Here's my friend Rog rubbing the print on himself excitedly.

Dig this

I just got an email from Boston's Weekly Dig telling me that my painting "1793" will be featured in the magazine's "Dig This" section tomorrow!

Here's the Dig's website.

www.weeklydig.com

I'll post a link to the article and most likely scan the paper version and post it as well because I am a dork who gets way too excited about stuff like this.

Watch out.

In the ongoing saga of Taipei, here's the latest progress after an early day of work today.



www.hookermedia.com

Snow like whoa

Last night was a really nice night for a stroll. I walked the mile or so from the tattoo shop to the T and slowed my pace a bit because of the pleasant crispy night. This morning I wake up to snow everywhere. Still coming down. Should be a nice sloshy walk to and from the T today. Just when I thought winter was on it's way out.

Where's my motorcycle dammit?

One odd thing that happened last night while on the train...

As anyone who's ridden a subway knows, the announcer guy usually just comes on and grumbles whatever stop is next once the doors close and the train starts rolling. Last night after a stop in south Boston the dude gets on the system accidentally and tells the driver "Tom ... a kid just spit at me!"

I've wanted to slap announcers before while they poke their head out of the window to make sure no one gets closed in the doors, but spitting at one?

I just realized how idiotic that sentence is. Love slap. Not malicious. You know.

Worked on a few commissions last night. The blue one will eventually be a painting of Elvis Costello. The bird crest is something I designed for my friend Peet's band.





www.hookermedia.com

Heading to church

Friday. Sort of.

I may have to work both days this weekend. Whatever. We'll see. That Loverboy joke yesterday came back to bite me in the ass.

I got an idea last night for a plan for the next four months or so. I want to have a series of paintings with a common theme to show to galleries and the like. I need everything to be A-list stuff. I plan on nearly going insane trying to execute this plan.

As I mentioned in an entry a while back I don't have a passport. I have a healthy wanderlust and no passport. A sad state. The painting of Taipei.... which I'm told is actually not Taipei but Kaohsiung.... is the first of a series I'll be doing of faraway lands. I started a new one last night. I just have the sketch and some base colors on right now. This is barely 2 hours old.



I have a romantic thought about what Spain is like. I'm starting on this painting of the Barcelona Cathedral with that romantic spirit in mind.



Doesn't look like shit now, but give me some time. Check back for updates on this and Kaohsiung.


Happy weekend.

www.hookermedia.com

Thursday

With the weekend approaching I'm curious as to how I'm going to fill my time. Saturday with any luck I'll head to an indoor climbing wall with my brother and then over to the Red Dot gallery so he can see my newest paintings in person. Hopefully he won't, as he always does, get too banged up with his buddies on Friday night to move on Saturday. We'll see. Oh very young, what were you drinking this time?

I've been getting up early this week and getting back to exercising after last weeks stomach virus debacle. I've also put some quality time into Taipei. Here's the progress....




What's everyone doing for the weekend?



I hope you're not working. Hyuck.

Sidenote: As goofy as his band was...how incredible is Mike Reno's voice?

Balmy

Supposed to be in the 40's today. I may not need a jacket.

I've been having dreams of the motorcycle lately. Those vivid dreams where you feel motion and centrifugal force and you wake up confused and disappointed. Every surface is covered in salty footprints. The inside of the train cars. Every foyer and lobby. I was driving around with my friend Frank in his ancient dying Cadillac.

The Caddy has no heat and one night we were laughing about how funny it was to have a Cadillac with an affliction as crappy as a broken heater. We were driving to get some food some night where it was a high of 20. I told him "You know though, it makes me miss the summer more." Frank cut me off "you gotta earn the summer right? That's bullshit. A buddy of mine used to say that. Then he moved to Santa Monica. He called me in February last year and said 'Frank remember how I told you all those years that plowing and shoveling and freezing made us appreciate the summer more? I was wrong. I was this weather all year round. I'm an idiot and I was wrong'."

I still think balance is good. I'll be having these dreams until hopefully April or May. When I get the bike out of the garage I'm heading somewhere far with no plans of telling anyone until maybe after I get back. Maybe I'll have earned it by then.

Newark

This weekend I went down to Newark NJ for a friend's wedding. I was in the wedding band.

I won't get into all the crap that went down while arranging the transport of all the stuff to NJ. Luckily it was handled mostly by my roomate and not by me.

We stayed here.



The Hilton in Newark. Smack dab in Newark.

Here's the view from our hotel room.



Bleeehhffhh.

I'm back. I'm not in Newark anymore. That's all I got today. I'm here at work and the Securities Exchange Commission isn't open. That's like opening a .... god dammit I can't come up with a good analogy.

Bleh.

Damn Cupid laced the arrow with something *updated

I'm back.

Sort of.

Eh, I know I've talked about poo on here before, but if you're not up for some grossness, I'd pass on today's entry.

It all started back on Tuesday. I went about my normal routine, I got a call saying that my friend Sal was coming down to pick up his van at our house just as I was going to take the train into town. I being the clownfish to Sal's sea anemone, struck up a most symbiotic deal, offering to drive Sal's van into town for him. It went smoothly.

But... for some odd reason... out of nowhere there came a nausea that lived in my core. Sourness that seemed to appear as instantly as a bowl of delicious Cream of Wheat.



I ran upstairs and like a confused 6'4" squid, rocketed two alarming jets of Yoohoo from my bottom.

I shook it off and wondered what the hell was going on. Maybe it was the Thai I had for dinner the night before.

Into town I went.

When I got there I went to the tattoo shop and talked shop about motorcycles for a while with a couple artists and a dude who works at Greater Boston Motor Sports.

I continued to dash off to the bathroom to make the same noise one makes when one aims a firehose into a toilet and turns the pump on.

The guys at the shop were merciless. One even put his ear to the door and laughed and yelled "Hooker was there any poo in there or was it just blood?"

This terrible scene played out literally six or seven times in two hours. Around 4:30 I started feeling terrible chills and the masochistic bastard who eavesdropped offered to give me a ride home.

Long ride and long story short, I got out of his car after a crappy ride through traffic and felt dizzy when I stood up.

I hadn't been here in nearly 13 years.

Throwing up while sober.

I was terrified.

As a kid my family used to make fun of me for a notorious story my mother told all of them about when I barfed multiple streams and in between motioned the sign of the cross out of pure terror.

I put my bags down in the first convenient place I could find. Not on the walkway leading to the house, but in a large bush next to the driveway. Then I saw my roomate out walking the dog. He asked how I was. I shook my head "no" and waddled over towards the trash cans. I propped myself against a tree and heard him coming towards me. I waved him away like I was prissy Dracula and he was wearing strands of garlic. Pure fear. I was like a cat hiding in the basement just before it dies.

The next 48 hours were filled with trips to the upstairs bathroom (the pipes in the bathroom close to my room froze on Tuesday), curling into a tiny ball and whining, not eating, guzzling pedialyte, halucinating, throwing up two more times, more poo, etc. etc.


Jesus. Sorry.

I'll stop.

There's a new painting up I think. I don't know. Someone hold me.

www.hookermedia.com

*Wait a minute. After scrolling down and giving it some thought... this may have been some act of vengeance by the universe. I depicted a beloved childhood figure on the toilet showing an obscene gesture to another childhood figure and a week or so after I complete the painting I'm doubled over muttering "oh no.. oh no... ooooh no" in a quiet, shaky, unintentional Droopy Dog voice.

I'm sorry, Big Bird.

I am so sorry.

Maybe I'll hold off on the painting I was going to do of Ernie tying his shoes. I don't even want to know what would happen to me if I went through with that idea.

Taipei

Here's some more progress on the painting of Taipei.



Anyone doing anything good for valentine's day? Don't tell me you're one of those d-bags that gets depressed while single on V-day.

The coolest Valentine's day I ever had was back in the 80's when I got home from school and found that my mother had bought me one of these bad boys:






...and some cinnamon hearts.

THANKS, VALENTINE MOM!

Tired of metal

I've been tired of metal for a number of years. It started with Sabbath tapes bequeathed by my uncle when I was barely old enough to use the tape player. Then the whirlwind of Metallica, Slayer and Pantera as a pre-teen. Then death metal in highschool. Then more death metal. Then the Gothenburg sound exploded. Then back to death metal. I loved it all.

I haven't bought a new metal album in forever. I believe the last one I bought was Mastodon's "Remission" when it came out. As much as I loved Remission I didn't bother to listen to anything they put out after that despite the hype. I just stopped buying metal altogether.

Now it's official. Slayer has won a Grammy.

Bleh.

The singing/screaming combo, ultra slick production, chug chug riffs and predictable drumming have bored me to death since it started.

The ultra-spazzy, mathy metal has always bored me since it started.

I'm going to go listen to Seger on vinyl.

This sucks.

Procrastination

Recntly I've found out that when you are fortunate, the only thing that can hurt you is your own procrastination.

I've been procrastinating lately on some things. Nothing huge. Just menial tasks...etc. It's a lucky place to be. Clear perspective is important...etc. I won't get too deep for fear of sounding like some douche hippie. Might be too late.

Anyways... for any of you dear readers who are out of state or any of you dear readers who won't get a chance to see my new pieces currently hanging at the Red Dot gallery I've put them up on my website. Finally. There are four new oils and one new acrylic.

I hope you enjoy them.

www.hookermedia.com

Money moron

Why is it that I have some sort of phobia about transferring cash from savings to checking whenever I need to? I'll write a check and wait until last minute to transfer the cash. By then I'm overdrawn and I have to fork over extra money for fees. Not every time, but too often. It's some sort of disease. I have no idea why I do that.

Great way to start the day. Dammit.

HEYYYYYY!

Can't you just picture him screaming that in his nasally woman's voice?




After yesterday I'm pretty far along with the stuff I want to paint for myself. Where are the commissions, people? Own a painting already.

www.hookermedia.com

and a bit more

Taipei circa 8:00 pm.

Rock.

Progress

So the installment is up and done at the Red Dot, as we all know. I worked for two weeks coming up with the material and luckily (depending on how you look at it) commissions have slowed this month. I'm taking the down time to work on some pieces for my own enjoyment.

I recently got lost for hours trolling flickr.com for photographs of anything and everything. It's sort of like youtube where you search for something and before you know it an hour and a half later you're still on the site, but you have no idea how you started and how you got to where you are at the moment.

I started work on rendering two photographs from flickr. I'll show them and their photographers when I'm done with the pieces. Here is a little preview on the progress I've been making this week. The last painting is something that popped into my head months ago and if you know me at all, you're not surprised by the fact that the scened depicted randomly appeared in my mind's eye.

Enjoy.







www.hookermedia.com

Weekend recap

Well it's another sunny but frigid day. I'm going to continue working on the new paintings I started last night, but first I'll give a weekend recap.

Friday I took advantage of my boss being tied up on the phone with his insurance company describing a recent fender bender he was in and slipped out the door just a little before 4 o'clock.

Everyone was expecting snow or maybe even a Noreaster Friday evening. I took the long way over to the BCEC to meet Jenny and enjoyed the stroll through Fort Point channel. The weather was perfect. It wasn't too cold, wasn't too windy. The sky looked nice. Highly enjoyable.

I was lucky enough to get a ride out of town with Jenny and we dealt with nearly no traffic. We stopped at a supermarket and picked up the aforementioned cupcakes and Busch and then headed over to the Red Dot.

From the time I got there to the time I left friends of mine were dropping by to check out the whole scene. Some of my family showed up, some old friends I hadn't seen in forever, some people I only knew as acquaintances... just tons of people. It was a really cool feeling. One piece sold that night, the latest Truck Wars. Very cool.

Saturday my friend Ryan came up from Brooklyn to practice with myself and two of my roomates. Together we form what will be Ryan's wedding band in two weeks. We're packing up and heading to Newark to play in front of a bunch of old people. Should be interesting. I swear my throat was bleeding from singing the lead on Bon Jovi's "I'll BeThere For You" and Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again". We do a sweet rendition of "Walk This Way".

After practice nearly a dozen of us headed to the good ol' Foxy Lady in Brockton for Ryan's impromptu bachelor party. It was a tame night by Foxy standards.

Sunday was more practice, dinner at a sushi place, cursing Peyton Manning's name and new paintings.

When they are worth showing I'll get some progress pictures of the new paintings up.

Happy Monday.

www.hookermedia.com

Gallery day

Well today is the day. I got up at the ass crack of dawn in order to get to work by 8. I got to work by 8 so I can get out around 4 so I can get over to the Red Dot and hang out with the droves of art fanatics who will be clamoring to see my new pieces.

So tonight, at the reception of my first proper gallery show ever '07, I'd like to give the place a taste of Hookerness. I believe I'll be showing up with a twelvie of Busch and some cupcakes. Yellow sponge, chocolate frosting of course. I was going to wear a blazer or a frilly pirate blouse of some sort but I think I'm just gonna go with the tried and true Screaming for Vengeance t-shirt.



Which reminds me, I met Rob Halford a couple years ago.



SEE YOU ALL TONIGHT.

Hooker Media

Heat's out

Got home last night long after everyone was already asleep. I took my boots off and walked through the house. Almost immediately I thought to myself "hmm. it's chilly in here. I wonder.." and then my fear was realized. I walked into the living room and saw a space heater next to the lay z boy.

I'm hearing talk of tons of snow tomorrow. I hope it doesn't deter anyone from coming down to the Red Dot gallery. We'll see.

I also hope it doesn't deter me from getting over to Harper's Ferry after the art reception to see Winger play. Lame you say? Yes Winger gets a bad rap. Mainly because of this guy...



But this is Winger with the original lineup. With Reb Beach playing guitar. And say what you will about the lameness of Winger as a whole, but Reb Beach is a monstrous guitar player and I'll gladly sit through Kip Winger's pirouettes and hip grinding to see Reb play.