The Explanation.....

Let's start with 'why Crumbly Nevertheless'? The title came from a drawing that my brother and I did one night years ago. We had been working on a series of Exquisite Corpse drawings together and titling them by picking random words out of a dictionary. An Exquisite Corpse, for those of you who don't know, is a dead person 'dressed to the nines'....but that's neither here nor there.

This is the drawing in question, and it happened to be our favorite one of the night (both the actual drawing as well as it's title). What does this have to do with the second as-of-yet ununsed blog? I'm getting to that, Jesus!

I once new a guy in Louisville who had notebooks full of restaraunt reviews that he had written, but written from the prespective of a cockroach. Another person I knew whatched the Dukes of Hazard every day just so that he could record only the jump scenes, which he had filled a few tapes with. Another friend had a collection of photographs she had taken of mailboxes, but was thinking of moving on to photographing toasters in strange places. And I think it might be safe to say that everybody has known at least one person who kept some sort of notebook or journal near them because they liked to quickly write down random quotes they overheard....I've known three, not including myself.
The best part about these examples is that all of the people involved did these things not only because they just 'wanted to', but mostly due to the fact that they needed to!

This is one of my favorite things about being born with whatever level of creativity I was lucky enough to be born with, as well as surrounding myself with others of the creative persuasion. Whether it be collecting off-the-wall items, writing down the migratory patterns of hairstyles, staging photographs of the abuse of balloon animals just for the purpose of sending them to PETA, or drawing a quick series of the Sins that didn't make the top seven, every person that I've known with an imagination level high enough to make them want to do anything with it has had this form of creative blood-letting.
It's this process in myself that somewhere along the way I attached the term Crumbly Nevertheless to. For some reason it just seemed fitting. There is the work that I take seriously, the writing of stories and the illustrations....and then there's everything else I feel compelled to do to fill in the gaps. What's funny is that while I've always wanted my more serious work to be what represented me, it's most likely the rest that best defines my personality, the blog that I've been keeping for the past few years being a prime example.

Recently I've been told by a few people at work that I should just put together a show of these items....seeing as my career at Meiningers is littered with random drawings and creations that I am compelled to create to get through certain days with down-time or when I'm stuck at the registers.....AGAIN!! And while I don't think I will be willing to hang these creations on a wall anytime soon, or ever, the idea of putting them out there to share with others is somewhat attractive. Also, seeing as how the act of blogging in and of itself is it's own form of being demonstrative (especially in my case), why not combine the two?

So here we've come full-circle, the reason behind this blog. The basic plan for it is to be a place to post all of the above mentioned randomness (be-it drawn, written, or hand-made) from both the present as well as what is still remaining from the past. And while the majority of the content will be mine, I also hope to share related items of others that I happen to come across that make me smile.

And By the Way........(the Arlo Post)

This is Arlo.....

...he can kill you with his mind!!!

Letters Trapped Under Glass, Part 2...Electric Boogaloo!

So, as I had threatened to do in the first part of the above titled post, that you are reading right now.....a previous post that I shall now and forever refer to as "Part One" for reasons that I don't really care to get into right now.......where the hell am I going with this?

Let's start with 'why Crumbly Nevertheless'? The title came from a drawing that my brother and I did one night years ago. We had been working on a series of Exquisite Corpse drawings together and titling them by picking random words out of a dictionary. An Exquisite Corpse, for those of you who don't know, is a dead person 'dressed to the nines'....but that's neither here nor there.

This is the drawing in question, and it happened to be our favorite one of the night (both the actual drawing as well as it's title). What does this have to do with the second as-of-yet ununsed blog? I'm getting to that, Jesus!

I once new a guy in Louisville who had notebooks full of restaraunt reviews that he had written, but written from the prespective of a cockroach. Another person I knew whatched the Dukes of Hazard every day just so that he could record only the jump scenes, which he had filled a few tapes with. Another friend had a collection of photographs she had taken of mailboxes, but was thinking of moving on to photographing toasters in strange places. And I think it might be safe to say that everybody has known at least one person who kept some sort of notebook or journal near them because they liked to quickly write down random quotes they overheard....I've known three, not including myself.
The best part about these examples is that all of the people involved did these things not only because they just 'wanted to', but mostly due to the fact that they needed to!

(non-sequitur: I just hurt my back. I honestly just pulled a major muscle in my back while writing this fucking blog....can you believe that?! Here's to growing older!! [raises glass and winces])

This is one of my favorite things about being born with whatever level of creativity I was lucky enough to be born with, as well as surrounding myself with others of the creative persuasion. Whether it be collecting off-the-wall items, writing down the migratory patterns of hairstyles, staging photographs of the abuse of balloon animals just for the purpose of sending them to PETA, or drawing a quick series of the Sins that didn't make the top seven, every person that I've known with an imagination level high enough to make them want to do anything with it has had this form of creative blood-letting.
It's this process in myself that somewhere along the way I attached the term Crumbly Nevertheless to. For some reason it just seemed fitting. There is the work that I take seriously, the writing of stories and the illustrations....and then there's everything else I feel compelled to do to fill in the gaps. What's funny is that while I've always wanted my more serious work to be what represented me, it's most likely the rest that best defines my personality, this blog that I've been keeping for the past few years being a prime example.

Recently I've been told by a few people at work that I should just put together a show of these items....seeing as my career at Meiningers is littered with random drawings and creations that I am compelled to create to get through certain days with down-time or when I'm stuck at the registers.....AGAIN!! And while I don't think I will be willing to hang these creations on a wall anytime soon, or ever, the idea of putting them out there to share with others is somewhat attractive. Also, seeing as how the act of blogging in and of itself is it's own form of being demonstrative (especially in my case), why not combine the two?

So here we've come full-circle, the reason behind the soon to be second blog. The basic plan for it is to be a place to post all of the above mentioned randomness (be-it drawn, written, or hand-made) from both the present as well as what is still remaining from the past. And while the majority of the content will be mine, I also hope to share related items of others that I happen to come across that make me smile.

Music to Grind Your Teeth to........

I recently received a comment on my MySpace profile from a beautiful old friend, we'll call her Amy....because that's her name and it makes sense to use it, quit looking at me that way....that I have to admit kinda confused me for a bit. The reason being, in it she makes mention of my "new look", which I was unaware that I had. Honestly, I never really thought that I had a look about myself at all...for the past several years I've been known more by certain situations that became attached to me; for example (in chronological order) I've been known as 'you're that skater', 'the guy who fought all those skinheads at the Vogue', 'the art fag' (thanks to Mike Bacayu for that one), 'you're the Kinko's Guy, right?', 'You're Kevin's friend', 'Hey, you're zombiespoon', and most recently 'you're the Art Store Guy'. I suppose that I never gave much thought before that appearance would have anything to do with me, but it would have to, I guess, in order for me to be recognized at all....but still, having a new look stumped me. That is, until I thought about the fact that it has been well over a decade since Amy and I got to know one another as well as hang out together (did I mention how bad of a recluse I can be?). We met near the height of my "closet speed addict" days...and I say that with a grain of salt, because at the time I weighed barely over 100 pounds, never slept, had wild mood swings and nose bleeds....so to say that I was a closet speed freak would be the same as calling all of my friends at the time completely stupid.....but I would like to think that they were more in denial or at least holding their tongues. Who knows? I could have missed a moniker of my life: "Hey, you're that junkie, right?"

In any case, and needless to say, I do look very different today than I did then... both physically (thank the zombie Jesus!) as well as in dress.

But still, Amy's comment came at a time (that time is now) when what I look like to others has been on my mind. On more than a few occasions recently, usually on the subject of music, I have been looked at with such looks of utter amazement that I've half expected to hear a record needle scratch and witness time itself skip back one or two seconds. One example, while at work I mentioned the band Polvo. Immediately Andy exclaimed, "You know Polvo!" followed by Judd's defense, "Fisher's cool. He knows a lot of good music." I wondered at that moment if I was feeling the same sensation that a Grandfather must feel when his grandchild says something like, "You know who Luke Skywalker is?!" The defensive side of me wanted to retort with something along the lines of, "I saw Polvo perform when you all were still watching Pokemon!", but decided to hold my tongue, understanding that saying something like this would just solidify my old man status.....so I opted instead to tell them to get off my lawn, the damn kids!

It's funny how much importance can be put on music. How the music that you listen to becomes more of a part of your identity than your own appearance or profession, ect. I sometimes wonder that had the human race evolved without any form of monotheistic religion, whether we would have a history equal in violence with music as it's justification....I also wonder if that sounds too much like a plot from a Philip K. Dick book? (Holy crap! You know who Philip K. Dick is?!)
Apparently, my taste and appearance don't match up well, like a Jew who believes in Jesus....which is fine, I don't mind.

Beyond the musical shock I've lately put into the others around me, what I listen to has come up many times in messages from MySpace friends since I've kept up the profile. And while I could point these queries towards the brief Music part of my profile, I understand that most people tend not to read that far or have a fear of scroll bars.....hell, my own brother recently admitted to only reading the first two or three sentences of my blog posts, which I'm ok with, taking comfort in the fact both that I peed in his morning Cheerios for the first few years of his life as well as the case that he won't read this far enough to discover that.
So, in response to everything above basically, I am extending an invitation to you all to join me in one of my online persona's newest corners, LastFM. I joined this little community not long ago, for the reason of discovering new artists, but I realize that it's probably one of the best ways to also present musical tastes.




So, join up if you wish....hit me up for a friend request....and get the hell of my lawn!

Ground Zero and Thereabouts....

So, one question that I seem to asked frequently by far away friends is, "Are you still liking it in Denver?"...which strikes me as kinda funny....funny in the way that they might know something that I don't, like I might wake up one day and realize that living in a higher altitude has made my genitals shrink to the size of a squirrel's (yes, I DO realize that by the mere mention of genitals here I have doomed this blog to yet another onslaught of penis conversations within the following comments....damn you all in advance!), or that nobody has yet informed me that Denver has the highest population of Canadians outside of Canada and they are all very, very pissed off! But, until I discover either of those situations (or any other that is comparable) to be true, the answer is: Yes! I'm loving Denver.

I think my social hiatus as of late has been due in a good part to having finally been feeling comfortable with my life and surroundings after such a long stretch. Anyone who has known me personally for any length of time knows this to be true, that I go through long stages of inwardness, working on my own projects, living in my head and forgetting for the most part that the outside world is there until it marches into my room and demands money from me at gunpoint.....in which case I usually wet myself and never report the event to the police. Really, have you ever had to try to describe 'the World' to a detective? It's embarrassing......the looks they give you in the precinct.....judging me.....but I digress.

Part of what makes your immediate surrounds seem comfortable (or at least in my case) Is not only the environment that you create for yourself, but the environment created for you, that is. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I'll try to explain.

There's my little corner of the world right now....my home is in the cross-hairs, in case you want to send me puddings. I love this neighborhood, even though I'm not quite sure what neighborhood it is. Depending on who you talk to, I either live in Capital Hill or Wash Park. From what I can tell, there are two sets of arguments going on about this area: Either people from CP or WP trying to claim it as part of their's, or people from CP and WP trying to deny it and push the responsibility onto one another. Basically it comes down to the fact that I live in a Denver void, which seems fitting. I think I'll just name this place Void Park, make a flag and declare war on the border neighborhoods.
Like I said, it's not just the environment that you create, but the environment that you are a part of that becomes part of settling. For me here, that constitutes a lot of little things; such as the fact that I live in a North facing apartment that keeps me out of any direct sunlight, but still gives me enough light to grow some of my favorite Low-Light plants (I actually bought a damn fern a few days ago! Holy Shit! I've become one of 'those' guys! All I could think about when purchasing it was Steve Martin....and for that reason, the fern is now known as "Larry the Fern', with apologies to Wunk). During the late evenings, or as scientists like to refer to as 'night', I can hear the ghostly sounds of the trains in the distance, which is one of my all time favorite sounds, and one of the things I missed most about moving away from Louisville.
There is a fox that frequents these streets. Now your run-of-the-mill normal Animal Planet type foxes, no. This one is a mutant lab-experiment escapist giant fox. He has followed me home on a few occasions, when walking late at night, and I've come close to getting it's trust enough to almost pet it. Maybe we'll become friends soon.
My new upstairs neighbor wants to be a rock star. The people who lived there before him wanted to be porn stars, so I imagine that this room above me exudes some sort of alternative inspiration, or harbors a muse with a sense of humor. The porn stars were hilarious due to the sheer volume and content of their fucking. The place I lucked out in moving into is fairly well sound insulated, and I usually hear very little.....but I heard EVERYTHING that went on during their frequent Rail Sessions (as did most of Denver I suspect)...and Holy Shit!! honestly, on a few occasions I could also hear other neighbors of mine break out into laughter, which made the whole situation that much more humorous. But, they moved away. The new neighbor I find as equally as entertaining as well as far less intrusive. Yes, he wants to be a rock star, but instead of playing guitar and singing, picture clarinet and singing. Yep. Really. I mean, this would be just as funny even if he didn't suck! One minute of clarinet followed by a few off key verses of lyrics, and repeat. After two or three of these comes.....THE CLARINET SOLO!!! I can't wait for the cd to come out.
And finally, we come to my new favorite neighbor I have lovingly named the 'Fuck Guy'. I don't know if he is a newly transplanted addition to this area, or if he just went unnoticed during the closed window months, but I do believe that he is to be a regular daily fixture....seeing as he is going on a week straight now. I can't tell exactly where he is. He's not in my building, and I don't know if he's actually in a nearby building or outside hiding in the shadows, but every evening, near the same time of day, he emerges. Actually, he's been going strong the whole time I've been writing this entry.
What his shtick is seems to be yelling 'Fuck' in a variety of ways for 2 - 3 hours every evening. "Fuck you!" "Fuck this!" "What the Fuck!" "Come the Fuck on!"....and you get the point.
I was talking to Christina about the Fuck Guy earlier today and we were coming up with a few theories: He has a rare form of daily-short-term-tourettes; He works in an environment that denies him his daily allowance of letting off some Fuck; He's doing his best to argue with the voices in his head....and we all should fear the day that he actually stops yelling.
Personally, my favorite idea is the second one, if for no other reason that the picture I have in my head - "I'll be back honey, I have to go let off some Fuck, I'm completely backed-up with it!"

I realize that I haven't really mentioned much about Denver itself here, and quite honestly it's because I still know very little of it. I have only begun to scratch the surface of this city after my stressful and disorganized move and social hiatus. I am hoping to change that during this summer and fall....learning more about the city and it's corners, the events and culture.....but, then again, that requires actually making friends here and being social....the very thought of which gives me the heebie jeebies.

Maybe I'll just go outside and yell Fuck a lot?