Watercolor Work for Abbott and Gooseberry

These images show the "work in progress" for creating a handful of "shells" for Abbott and Gooseberry.

Adding some of the colors is very basic at this point. Nathan's hair is usually yellow (unless there's been a rebellious attempt at coloring it) Farmer Butt will usually always be blue and orange.

I will go back with colored pencil and fill in some details. The watercolor portion of this is a little flat, but the paint did what I wanted it to do.

The green parts worked out quite well. I kept mixing in a little more yellow. The watercolor sets that I'm using come from at least three other "tube" watercolor sets that run less than $20. This is not the cheap stuff, but it's not top of the line, either. I mix it in the dish and clean the same brush--I work too quickly, I suppose. I did all of this (save the first two images on the upper left) in less than forty-five minutes.

I will have to add peach for skin tones and touch up that wicked looking pitchfork. A little silver and turquoise here and there, maybe.

Overall, I should slow down. Chasing that bubble of watercolor paint around is good fun.

What Did I Tell You About Rummage Sales?

Ansel AdamsThis has turned a pauper into a prince:

Rick Norsigian's hobby of picking through piles of unwanted items at garage sales in search of antiques has paid off for the Fresno, California, painter.

Two small boxes he bought 10 years ago for $45 -- negotiated down from $70 -- is now estimated to be worth at least $200 million dollars, according to a Beverly Hills art appraiser.

Those boxes contained 65 glass negatives created by famed nature photographer Ansel Adams in the early period of his career. Experts believed the negatives were destroyed in a 1937 darkroom fire that destroyed 5,000 plates.

"It truly is a missing link of Ansel Adams and history and his career," said David W. Streets, the appraiser and art dealer who is hosting an unveiling of the photographs at his Beverly Hills, California, gallery Tuesday.

Amazing. That kind of money can buy you a wonderful home in Southern California nowadays. Remember that the next time you sneer about the treasures being found at rummage sales.

You Can Find a Lot of Bargains at Rummage Sales

Teddy Bear and Friends Magazine, a mustWhen I found this issue of Teddy Bear and Friends at a rummage sale in Maryland last year, my heart leapt for joy. I am a huge Teddy Bear collector. I have in the neighborhood of 6,000 Teddy Bears, many of which are worth at least five or six dollars apiece. Apiece!

I like rummage sales. Nothing says "oh my God, we have to sell our crap and run NOW" like a good rummage sale. I think this is a bit sad, however:

Nicaraguan mother Lorena Aguilar hawks a television set and a few clothes on the baking sidewalk outside her west Phoenix apartment block.

A few paces up the street, her undocumented Mexican neighbor Wendi Villasenor touts a kitchen table, some chairs and a few dishes as her family scrambles to get out of Arizona ahead of a looming crackdown on illegal immigrants.

"Everyone is selling up the little they have and leaving," said Villasenor, 31, who is headed for Pennsylvania. "We have no alternative. They have us cornered."

The two women are among scores of illegal immigrant families across Phoenix hauling the contents of their homes into the yard this weekend as they rush to sell up and get out before the state law takes effect on Thursday.

The law, the toughest imposed by any U.S. state to curb illegal immigration, seeks to drive more than 400,000 undocumented day laborers, landscapers, house cleaners, chambermaids and other workers out of Arizona, which borders Mexico.

I'm convinced that people who want to work hard without whining will do fine. This is a forehead-smacking moment. You don't expel law-abiding citizens who work hard, pay their taxes (yes, they do pay taxes and that's a fact), and raise nuclear families without so much as a complaint. You kick out underproductive college boys who can't hold down a job for more than three weeks because they can't give up their addiction to beer, hotties, and chicken wings.

How about passing a law that says that any man, aged 22 and older, who lives with his parents, is to be forced to join the military? I'd vote for the clown who could pass that law. Wouldn't you?

Arizona is quickly going to rue the day that this law was passed. When everyone who does the so-called "menial" tasks leaves the state, a lot of fat white boys with backwards baseball caps and fatboy shorts are going to get food poisoning eating off dirty plates in restaurants with terrible service. One minute, that hale and hearty fellow who is 80 pounds overweight will be spooning up some sauce from his plate and the next thing you know his unshaven mug will be heaving six oversized meals into a toilet that hasn't been cleaned since the Bush Administration.

I've been to Arizona. If you want to know what is going to happen, think of an Outback Steakhouse running at 20% capacity, barely able to find someone to dunk the veggies in tepid rainwater. Think of hundreds and hundreds of businesses forced to operate without enough hired help. Think of Manhattan, in other words, only without the ambience and the subways and the ability to function without a car.

My friends, let me speak to you as if I were a saner, healthier version of John McCain. Arizona, you're going to be hurting in about three months. Broken-down cars will soon litter your freeways for want of basic maintenance. Sales of Pepto Bismol are going to be through the roof. Oh, yes. McCain warned everyone about this nonsense. But then, he sold his soul to the devil and now the devil is taking him for a ride on the one bus that doesn't have windows that open. It's over for him. McCain is rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi from his state, and he's being forced to actually campaign and shake hands, which for him is like eating a shit sandwich, served on a bun no one was qualified to toast.

Which reminds me--I have to dump a little investment money into whoever makes that pink bismuth stuff. Their sales are going to surge once people in Arizona start consuming thousands of pounds of rancid fast food. Shamble off to the pay toilets, you rotting carcasses. You did it to yourselves. 

Mitch Albom Has Always Been a Hack

Some sports writers get by on talent; some by dogged determination. Mitch Albom gets by on air and bullshit:

On June 25, the Associated Press Sports Editors did a “curious thing,” in the eyes ofDave Kindred, a former sports columnist.

That night, the group gave Mitch Albom, the longtime columnist for The Detroit Free Press (and author of books like “Tuesdays With Morrie”) its Red Smith Award, the organization’s highest honor.

Mr. Kindred wondered whether that was wise. Back in 2005, Mr. Albom filed a columnthat described two former Michigan State basketball players at a Final Four game that hadn’t yet happened. The athletes didn’t make it to the game, but Mr. Albom’s column ran as written.

In a column published July 16 on the National Sports Journalism Center’s Web site, Mr. Kindred, himself a former Red Smith winner, wrote of Mr. Albom’s transgression: “Note to journalism students: This is known as fiction. It can get you expelled.”

I have never seen a more self-serving sports writer, save that other regular pair of jackballs that I cannot stand: Mike Celezic and Mike Lupica. Celezic is hardly considered a sportswriter anymore since they make him write fluff pieces and human interest blurbs. Lupica is, quite possibly, the most unsavory sports writer still living, and that's saying something.

No one wants to remember Albom's transgressions. It makes giving him the awards his editors have lobbied for him to receive even that more difficult to stomach. People don't get awards for being good anymore; people get awards because their money-making status in the industry demands that their second-rate hackery be recognized and given accolades that would normally go to powerless drones, struggling to make ends meet. There's a lot of money driving the Albom franchise and much of it comes from the sale of treacly nonsense read by old ladies. What self-respecting sports writer would sell his soul for the Readers Digest crowd?

Hey, anything for a buck. Anything for a buck. Newspapers are dying. The Internet doesn't pay very well. And ESPN is the only game in town. They know they can get people for peanuts. I suppose if my dignity and my soul were all that was necessary to give up, I'd take that sappy train to big money town, too.

There's Nothing Wrong With Keanu Reeves, You Jackasses

Keanu Reeves, NYC July 2010I've noticed that the celebrity media, in their collective stupidity, have decided to run around calling people "hobos" because they are out in public in regular clothes.

Case in point, Keanu Reeves. If you look at the picture above, it comes with a story like this:

Keanu Reeves looks in desperate need of a razorblade and a hot shower.

The 45-year-old actor looked more like a homeless guy than the heart-throb he once was as he shuffled around New York City yesterday.

Reeves was sporting an unkempt bushy beard, an old baseball cap and dirty jeans - hardly the uniform of an A-list actor.

There's a uniform, now? If so, what is that uniform? The media tried this with Noah Wyle, and I straightened them out about that; in fact, I received numerous compliments and "hits" from Noah Wyle fans who were incensed at the celebrity media. 

That being said, Keanu Reeves is being singled out unfairly, again. Whose business is it that he's out and about in New York City? He's either working or he's not working, and his "look" is related to what he's either working on or not. Who cares?

I realize that the people who work for media outlets are on a perpetually grinding hamster wheel, trying to generate CONTENT! on a minute by minute basis so that they can hold onto their 500 square foot efficiency and their personal belongings, but this is ridiculous. Mr. Reeves can wear what he wants and look the way he wishes. He's gainfully employed when he needs to be.

He does not have to pound out nonsense all day while some editor hovers in the background and stares through panicked, bloodshot eyes.

Taking Out the Old Watercolor Paints

For The Chasseurs project, I will have to reintroduce myself to watercolors. These are photos, not scans, of what I am putting together.

I have a lifelong aversion to watercolor painting. I can either make it work or I end up making it a sloppy mess. I tend to try to use the watercolor paints from the tubes as if they were oils. I suppose my penance for that transgression will have to be trying a little harder to make the medium work...

Posted via email from Warren Jason Street

Projects underway

For The Chasseurs project, I will have to reintroduce myself to watercolors. These are photos, not scans, of what I am putting together.

I have been using colored pencils for the better part of the last decade, and I prefer to work in that medium. Some things just work better with watercolor, so I have to break out my old sets and work myself back into shape.

I'm still amazed at how Farmer Butt came out. Abbott is a fat brown mess, but I made Farmer Butt muted and pale with the watercolors, using them with the more loose and watery texture. Once I saw how he came out, I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe I can make this work.

Anyway, this is what I practiced with:

It's not great, but it does make me think that I can do this if I can get the technique down.

Bill Murray Needs to Sue Letterman's Inept Crew

Bill MurrayIf you're going to do something fun, the last thing you should walk away with is a head injury:

Bill Murray got a bump on his head in the name of comedy during a "dumpster dive" on the "Late Show," but was it painful enough to skip out on his film screening?

The famed "Get Low" comedian was a no-show for a Cinema Society screening of his new movie Wednesday, reportedly because of head injuries sustained from an outdoor "dumpster dive" goof on "Late Show with David Letterman."

Bill Murray dives into a street dumpster on the David Letterman program

In a July 21 taping, a fully-clothed Bill Murray jumped twice from a platform fixed to a truck-sized street dumpster filled with water outside the Ed Sullivan Theater.

"I just know it's going to be cold, Dave!" Murray screams to Letterman, moments before the goof.

Murray shouted "Lou Pinella" before diving head first in a pool of garbage, hat, shoes and all. The comedian even splashed some of the junky water towards the crowd and traffic-jammed cars.

Afterward, Letterman laughingly says to Murray, "Come on in, Bill. We'll get you a Hepatitis shot."

No reports have surfaced of the funnyman needing hospitalization after the staged stunt. But the New York Daily News reported that there is speculation that Murray nicked his head on a ladder that was mounted on the side of the Dumpster.

I've had quite a few of those types of head injury, and they're never much fun to deal with. I would never jump into a dumpster filled with water and crap, though. I have standards.

Whoever organized, conceived, and set up this stunt just invoked the wrath of one of the most powerful men in all of show business. Once Bill Murray gets the ass for you, you're done.

Heard of Anthony Dingle lately? No, of course you haven't. Anthony Dingle was charged with taking a bottle of water to Bill Murray, and when he screwed it up, Bill Murray did nothing. He just asked for the right bottle of water. And Anthony Dingle got him the right bottle of water. 

So I ask the question again. Heard of Anthony Dingle? No, of course not. Because Anthony Dingle doesn't exist. The situation described above never happened. And why? Because Bill Murray is too powerful to mess with, either on a blog or on a television show or in the media or in real life. Don't mess with him. Don't make jokes about him. Don't sneer about Garfield. Just walk away, brother.

Walk away.

Still Burying the Dead of World War I

Aerial view of the Fromelles battlefieldHere's an example as to how honor is upheld:

The last remains of scores of British and Australian World War I troops recovered from mass graves will be reburied in northern France later.

Prince Charles and relatives of identified soldiers will attend a commemorative ceremony at the new Fromelles Military Cemetery.

It comes 94 years after the soldiers were killed in the Battle of Fromelles.

Work to excavate and identify the 250 soldiers began two years ago, after the bodies were found.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission was behind the work to exhume the bodies.

Of those recovered, 205 have now been identified as Australian, three served with the British army and 42 are still classified as unknown.

It is no less tragic, nearly a hundred years later, to read about the senseless loss of life.

A Lost Battalion Awaits a Proper Burial

8th US Cavalry Regiment CrestSomewhere on the Korean peninsula, there are the remains of countless American soldiers who have fallen in battle but were left behind, thousands of them. They await a proper burial:

Trapped by two Chinese divisions, troops of the 8th U.S. Cavalry Regiment were left to die in far northern Korea, abandoned by the U.S. command in a Korean War episode viewed as one of the most troubling in American military history.

Sixty years later those fallen soldiers, the lost battalion of Unsan, are stranded anew.

North Korea is offering fresh clues to their remains. American teams are ready to re-enter the north to dig for them. But for five years the U.S. government has refused to work with North Korea to recover the men of Unsan and others among more than 8,000 U.S. missing in action from the 1950-53 war.

Now, under pressure from MIA family groups, the Obama administration is said to be moving slowly to reverse the Bush administration's suspension of the joint recovery program, a step taken in 2005 as the North Korean nuclear crisis dragged on.

"If I had a direct line in to the president, I would say, 'Please reinstitute this program. There are families that need closure,'" said Ruth Davis, 61, of Palestine, Texas, whose uncle, Sgt. 1st Class Benny Don Rogers, has been listed as MIA since Chinese attackers overran his company — I Company, 8th Cavalry — at Unsan in late 1950.

It would be fitting to give the families closure and to give these men a marker of their own.

George Steinbrenner (1930-2010)

George Steinbrenner on the cover of Sports Illustrated

While this post should be about George Steinbrenner, it's actually about the 300th post of a wonderful idea that has never really taken hold. I'll leave this blog up and running, and I may revisit the idea of commenting or writing about sports in the future, but the reality is that writing about sports is no longer any damned fun. I believe there's a place for what I'm doing here, but I haven't quite figured out what that place is as of yet.

With the loss of George Steinbrenner, an era of jackassery in sports has come to pass. Oh, sure. Mark Cuban is still alive. Al Davis might be alive, but who can tell? And when the rank amateurish jackassery is dying out of sports, what fun is it to write about?

I'm sick of writing about Tiger Woods and I'm sick of sports, in general. I get no joy from it anymore. I truly believe that hockey is the greatest sport. I might just make this a hockey-only blog when the season resumes. I don't know. I also have come to realize that sports is now corporatized and controlled to the point where it doesn't make sense to tell people that ESPN has ruined it for me. It has ruined it for everyone. Sports is now the province of the scold and the moralizing buffoon. Thanks again, Jim Gray. Being mediocre and bought off ruins it for the rest of us. I am going to take a few weeks and think about how to fix this thing and make it better.

How many other sports bloggers are suspending their sports blogs for a few weeks in honor of the biggest jackass to ever find himself flush with cash, drunk with power, and capable of buying playoff victories at well-above-retail prices? Hopefully, I'm not the only one who will point out to you that, at the height of Steinbrenner's ownership and personal involvement in the running of the New York Yankees (1979-1995), they were awful and didn't win hardly anything.

Sure, the man had his rings. But for over fifteen years, the Yankees were an overpaid clown circus worthy of ridicule and a Bronx Cheer.

The Chasseurs

So, what the devil is this about?

Posted via email from Warren Jason Street

LeBron Bails on Cleveland

At least he didn't choose New York, right?

LeBron James just took his career south, literally and figuratively. He is signing with Pat Riley'sMiami Heat, and no, it was not the best option on the free-agent board.

If he was going to leave Cleveland -- and leave it LeBron James did in a staggering prime-time way -- the New York Knicks always made the most sense.

He would've won a couple of championships here with Amare Stoudemire and the third major piece the Knicks would've landed with LeBron in the fold, that piece arriving in the form ofCarmelo Anthony or Tony Parker between now and next July.

Those titles would've ended a Knicks drought of biblical proportions, and they would've belonged to the King and the King alone, just like the 1994 Stanley Cup was Mark Messier's for keeps.

First of all, no one thinks of the 1994 Stanley Cup as "Mark Messier's" cup because that championship was won in New York by a team, not a man. That's just bad sports writing right there, and the hoary image of an exited Messier hoisting the cup belies the reality that the entire '94 team was much beloved in New York, not just Messier. Hockey isn't about that. In Hockey, teams win cups, not players.

Second of all, this is just the sour grapes of a New York media market mentality that would have started tearing LeBron down the moment he landed. The Knicks franchise is a basket case, even today, and there's no questioning the fact that playing for a dysfunctional franchise is no way to win a championship. How, for example, does anyone really know how Amare Stoudamire would have handled playing second banana to LeBron James?

Third, if James, Chris Bosh, and Dwayne Wade win a championship, it'll belong to the three of them. Wade has a ring; James does not. Combining them is what the NBA does when it comes to championships. You need two or three superstar players to make a serious run at the title; Miami has that now. New York has Amare Stoudamire, and that's it right now.

Fourth, Pat Riley is not the devil. Pat Riley has a bunch of championships. No one in Cleveland or New York has what Riley has. Small wonder that that's what LeBron James gravitated towards.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Here's How MSG Options Traded As The LeBron Rumors Spread (MSG) (businessinsider.com)
• Cheers in Miami, Jeers in Cleveland Over LeBron (abcnews.go.com)
• LeBron James Not Going To Knicks? (huffingtonpost.com)
• Cheers in Miami, jeers in Cleveland over LeBron (sportingnews.com)
• "It's LeBron James to Miami Heat (or Knicks, or Bulls) if ESPN runs this" and related posts (blogs.orlandosentinel.com)
• Cheers in Miami, jeers in Cleveland over LeBron (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Cheers in Miami, jeers in Cleveland over LeBron (sfgate.com)
• LeBron, LeBron, LeBron James! Who The Hell Cares? (chicagonow.com)
• LeBron chooses to join Wade, Bosh with Miami Heat (tsn.ca)

Marion Cotillard Fights Illegal Timber

Marion CotillardWhat better use of a person's time is this?

The European Parliament has voted to ban imports of illegal timber.

From 2012, companies importing timber will need to prove where it came from, and will face legal sanctions if they do not comply with the new law.

The vote follows several years of wrangling over how stringent the legislation should be.

Campaigners say they are pleased that the issue is to be addressed at last. About 20% of timber coming into the EU is thought to be illegal.

The illegal timber trade plays a significant part in the deforestation of some tropical countries.

Celebrity activism is beautiful, is it not? Miss Cotillard has been advocating this change in the rules, and it's clearly one of the more positive uses of celebrity that I can cite. Rolling around drunk in the gutter is for lesser mortals, especially when the world needs saving.

The Chasseurs