Anyway, I know that Ryan's a busy guy and never imagined that he would have the time nor want to commit to something as large in scope as our series is going to be. But, we thought it would be great to have some character sketches to accompany our script when we submit it to publishers.
So, Nate and I met with him last Sunday to drop off the scripts to him and give him some character descriptions. He seemed really into doing this for us. Nate and I hung out for a while and gave him the synopsis of our whole story. As we left, I told Ryan that there was no hurry. Just fit this in when hes had some time. Nate and I are still editing the script and writing panel descriptions for the next few weeks anyway. So, you know...take your time. We didn't want to be too demanding.
The next morning I get into my office, grab a cup of coffee, sit down at my desk, flip on my computer and check my email. Ryan had emailed me a first draft of character sketches (see below). And, I shit myself right there in my chair. He did these in a couple of hours. And they were fucking amazing. So, I emailed him back. He had started reading the script and he really, really liked it. I don't remember when it happened, but somehow our email correspondence just sorta transitioned into him officially signing on to pencil/ink our comic book.
One thing's for sure.
We will be putting out a comic book!!!!
So, I get this call from my wife while I was at work today. She tells me that our good, longtime friends Dan and Julie's Saint Bernard "Saint" died in his sleep in their bedroom this morning. Dan was hoping that I could come and bury his dog for him as he and his wife (both in their late 40s and early 50s) were so distraught that they couldn't do it themselves. I suggested that they call Animal Control and have them take his body, cremate it and return his ashes. But, they were having no part of that. They wanted him buried in their backyard next to their duck pond. So, I told them that my wife's cousin Casey and I would do it.
My
wife and I then did a little research to see what it takes to legally
and safely bury a dog of this size (over 150 lbs.). We found that you
should wrap them in plastic and put them into a wood or steel box and
them bury them at least 2 feet below ground. I had no idea where to get
a box of that size so I called a pet cemetary in Kent and got a quote
of $120 for a sealed dog coffin that would hold a dog of Saint's size.
So, I jumped in the car and drove all the way to Kent to pick it up.
When I get there the guy greets me by telling me that he had made a
mistake and that he was out of the coffin he had quoted me. All he had
was the "next one up" which was a far superior coffin than the one he
had quoted me. What a bastard! Casket salesmen are the scum of the
earth. I remember a similar thing happening when my mom was taking care
of my grandfathers' funeral arrangements. But, I digress and I am
trying to get this out of my system.
So, I pay the extra $80 and take the coffin home.
Casey shows up at my house a little later and he and I head over to Dan and Julie's house. We get there and Julie's in the other bedroom depressed and sleeping and we could tell that Dan was out of his mind with grief. So, I tell him to let us go into the bedroom where Saint is, close the door and let us take care of him. One good thing about the casket salesman was that he gave me all of the instructions for how to handle this situation. Julie had wrapped him in a sheet already, but we had to unwrap him to see how he was laid out. It was so horrible to see his poor lifeless body there like that. We put on our latex gloves and rolled Saint onto his back. We then had to "massage" his limbs to be able to fold him into a sort of fetal position so that we could fit him in the coffin. He was totally stiff. We managed to get him into the coffin along with his favorite toy and get it sealed. Casey and I then carried the 150+ lb. casket to the backyard and began digging our 4 foot long by 2 foot wide by 4 foot deep hole in the hot, hot late afternoon sun. Eventually the hole was big enough and we gently laid the casket into it.
I went inside and got Dan to say his final goodbyes. Dan collected some flowers from his garden that Saint used to like to pee on and threw them in on top of the casket, He then shoveled the first shovelful of dirt and walked away sadly. Casey and I quickly replaced the soil and packed the sod on top.
Dan then insisted on taking Casey and I to dinner where he spoke fondly of all the good times he had had with his pal Saint. He was a good dog. As horrible as it was to do, I am glad that I could be there for my friend.
My wife Kari and I just went to South Africa. Here is what we saw in totally random order 'cause I'm selectively lazy. Meaning that I have the energy to travel to Africa, live out in the wild with the animals for a week, travel to Cape Town and take thousands of photos along the way (scratch that last one actually,Kari actually took ALL of the pictures and uploaded them to Flickr), But, I don't have the time or energy to write a blog post about everything that we experienced. And, since they say " a picture is worth a thousand words" I figure these photos are the equivalent of a Russian novel.
So, please take a look and feel free to ask me any questions about any of these and I'll fill you in.
I design posters for the Seattle live music venue El Corazon. Here are some of them.
So, I get this call from my wife while I was at work today. She tells me that our good, longtime friends Dan and Julie's Saint Bernard "Saint" died in his sleep in their bedroom this morning. Dan was hoping that I could come and bury his dog for him as he and his wife (both in their late 40s and early 50s) were so distraught that they couldn't do it themselves. I suggested that they call Animal Control and have them take his body, cremate it and return his ashes. But, they were having no part of that. They wanted him buried in their backyard next to their duck pond. So, I told them that my wife's cousin Casey and I would do it.
My wife and I then did a little research to see what it takes to legally and safely bury a dog of this size (over 150 lbs.). We found that you should wrap them in plastic and put them into a wood or steel box and them bury them at least 2 feet below ground. I had no idea where to get a box of that size so I called a pet cemetary in Kent and got a quote of $120 for a sealed dog coffin that would hold a dog of Saint's size. So, I jumped in the car and drove all the way to Kent to pick it up. When I get there the guy greets me by telling me that he had made a mistake and that he was out of the coffin he had quoted me. All he had was the "next one up" which was a far superior coffin than the one he had quoted me. What a bastard! Casket salesmen are the scum of the earth. I remember a similar thing happening when my mom was taking care of my grandfathers' funeral arrangements. But, I digress and I am trying to get this out of my system.
home.
Casey shows up at my house a little later and he and I head over to Dan and Julie's house. We get there and Julie's in the other bedroom depressed and sleeping and we could tell that Dan was out of his mind with grief. So, I tell him to let us go into the bedroom where Saint is, close the door and let us take care of him. One good thing about the casket salesman was that he gave me all of the instructions for how to handle this situation. Julie had wrapped him in a sheet already, but we had to unwrap him to see how he was laid out. It was so horrible to see his poor lifeless body there like that. We put on our latex gloves and rolled Saint onto his back. We then had to "massage" his limbs to be able to fold him into a sort of fetal position so that we could fit him in the coffin. He was totally stiff. We managed to get him into the coffin along with his favorite toy and get it sealed. Casey and I then carried the 150+ lb. casket to the backyard and began digging our 4 foot long by 2 foot wide by 4 foot deep hole in the hot, hot late afternoon sun. Eventually the hole was big enough and we gently laid the casket into it.
I went inside and got Dan to say his final goodbyes. Dan collected some flowers from his garden that Saint used to like to pee on and threw them in on top of the casket, He then shoveled the first shovelful of dirt and walked away sadly. Casey and I quickly replaced the soil and packed the sod on top.
Dan then insisted on taking Casey and I to dinner where he spoke fondly of all the good times he had had with his pal Saint. He was a good dog. As horrible as it was to do, I am glad that I could be there for my friend.
Yup, it's that time again....time to get busy on this mutherfucker....like we always do about this time! Monkey Run 10 is this weekend and it is gonna RULE (as always). We will be starting out with a buffet of almost 500 buffalo wings at the Wingdome on Friday night, followed by Django's Wild Ride® to this small playhouse theater on Capital Hill where the beer will flow 'til the break-o-dawn,
Saturday morning, after breakfast at Jules Mae's Saloon in Georgetown, we will begin our crazy, long-ass ride to Twanoh State Park for the craziest, most out of control rally in the Northwest. We're gonna have a Flying Monkey Airplane Booze Bottle Piñata®, Monkey Trivia Night® and a Monkey Midnight Movie® screening of the 1965 classic "The Beast That Killed Women" featuring an idiot in an ape costume killing teenagers camping in the woods!
Sunday is for hangovers and having breakfast in the quaint, little hicktown Belfair. Then we catch a ferry back to Seattle to have the closing night BBQ at Chris and Wendy's!
I love Monkey Run......sigh
So, it was a great show (of course) and I shot a ton of video on my little Sony digital camera. Here's the opening song "The Queen Is Dead". I will upload the rest in the next day or two. But, for now enjoy this clip. You'll have to pardon the little bits that you can hear me singing along. I've seen Morrissey and I, sir, am no Morrissey!
MONKEY RUN IX WAS AWESOME! I picked Steve up at the airport on Thursday and we went out for some Mongolian Grill. When Steve comes to town there are just certain things we have to do and Mongolian Grill is one of them. I had to go to an Amerivespa meeting that night so Steve went for drinks with another friend. Whatever.
So, Friday was Otis & Steve Day in Seattle. We started off getting crazy baked and going disc golfing. This was followed by getting baked and seeing "Snakes on a (muthafucking) Plane". That shit was so fucking dumb. But, it rocked! After the movie we met up with Simon, his lady friend Erica, Mike and Katie. Then we all headed up to the old OK Corall BBQ. This is Steve's favorite place in the whole wide world. This old black man from Georgia named Otis (fuck yeah!) owns the place. It is the sickest BBQ. He hooked up 35 of us with ribs, chicken, sausage, hush puppies, collard greens, beans and rice. It was the bomb yo! After BBQ, Marc led a ride down to Ballard's Sunset Bowl for karaoke. We headed home kinda early. My wife went straight to bed, but Simon, Steve, Erica and I got crazy baked and watched crazy Japanese game shows on YouTube.
Saturday morning we all got up and loaded up the bikes with our camping gear and headed off to the Kona
Kitchen for breakfast. After eating and meeting up with everyone we headed out around noon for the first ferry. A couple of miles into the ride someone lost their kickstart arm. Fortunately somebody grabbed it and strapped it to their scooter. I was riding at the very back of the pack like a shepherd. Anyway, like 5 minutes later I see Mike coming back towards us. I'm thinking that he's coming back to ride next to his wife since it's her first solo outing at a rally. But, a few miles down the road I realize he's not with the group. Mike doesn't know his way around Seattle, so I know he's lost in the middle of nowhere. So, I break off from the pack and retrace our steps looking for his lame ass. Finally he answered his cell phone. He had lost his kickstart arm and went all the way back to Kona Kitchen looking for it. He was just getting ready to go to Sound Speed Scooters to get another one. If he'd just stuck with the pack it would have been just fine. Mike's bike is always fucking breaking down. Hence his club Wu Name of Brokedown Mountain. I am always babysitting his ass. Anyway we finally hooked up and hauled ass to try and catch up to the pack at the first ferry. We got there just in time to watch it leave the dock without us. FUCKING MIKE'S FUKING BIKE! So, we catch the next ferry, but he had to walk his bike on since he couldn't get it started again. When we arrived on Whidbey Island the ferry workers helped us bump start his bike and we were on our way! We get about halfway across the island when we ran into Andy on his P. He had come back to bring Mike his stupid fucking kickstart arm. So, now we were 3. We went a couple more miles when we came across Euan, Steve, Jesse and the support truck on the side of the road. I guess this was like the 4th time that Euan's bike had broke down on the Island. Euan managed to rig something up (wish I had a picture of that shit, it was hilarious). We were once again on our way. We caught the ferry to Port Townsemd and finally met up with the rally at the campsite. They were all hungry. Unfortunately for them, they had to wait for us because the food was all in the back of the support truck. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Suckers!
So. Mike and Scott immediately started the food. The rest of us started to get our drink on. Junior and I set up the old Monkey Booze Piñata® (a piñata full of airplane bottles of booze). I sent Junior off to find a good stick to hit it with. He came back with a fucking log. So, we gathered everbody around and picked our first contestant - Bill Metteer. We put his helmet on him backwards, spun him around and let him go. This was the shortest piñata experience of all time. Because of Junior's giant fucking log, Bill killed it on the first whack. The booze was gone in a matter of seconds. Lame yet somehow awesome. While the chefs finished cooking, Junior and I started to set up for Drunken Monkey Bingo®. After dinner it was on. Junior is the world's greatest Bingo caller and I was his Vanna White. Much hilarity ensued and prizes were won. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that "Space Brownies" were going around. This makes for difficult concentration while playing Bingo.My friend Susan got so high that she was playing the wrong game. She's easilly embarrassed and she had yelled out "BINGO!" without winning. Brownies......yummy!
After Bingo, Jesse had to drunkenly climb up into the big X-Ray tower thing at the camp site and show his cock to everyone. I don't know what's scarier....him standing in a window 50 feet up in the air or the size of his enormous schlong. Anyway, things just started deteriorating into drunken debauchery after that. At some point our newest pledge Euan was made to slather Tiger Balm on his testicles. This is called "Frosty Balls". It is very painful (so I've been told), but Euan didn't even
I was awakened at 9AM by the sounds of two-stroke engines revving. We cleaned up the site and headed into Port Townsend for breakfast. After we ate, we rounded everyone up and rode to the ferry. We all took one last ferry ride home, said our goodbyes and went our seperate ways. Monkey Run had offically ended. It was another great time. Now we start planning Monkey Run X!!!
So, I'm in this scooter club in Seattle called The Emerald City Flying
Monkeys. We are like the outsiders of the "Seattle Scooter Scene".
Nobody likes us and that's the way we like it. We're like cops that
don't play by the rules. Actually SOME people like us. We have this
annual camping rally called Monkey Run that is coming up next weekend.
It is like my favorite thing to do. We rock at putting on rallies yo!
This year is gonna be off the hizzee, snackaz! We're gonna have
sheesh-ka-bobs, a piñata full of 35 little airplane bottles of booze,
followed by DRUNKEN ASS MONKEY BINGO®. It is seriously the
funnest scooter rally around. Steve's coming up from SF. He's a Flying
Monkey, too. Maybe I'll end up with something to write about. Probably.
Well, for sure. There's rumours about another round of Jesse's Frosted
Ballz. That's always good for a laugh.
Anyway, I gotta lot of preperation to do. A LOT of preperation. Yayyyyy!
