Are modest little single-family homes still being built? These days, it seems like there's no middle ground between erecting large, ugly, faux-everything monuments to money and tastelessnessitude, and factory-like faux-ghettos crammed with the home versions of the office cubicle, desultorily dressed with a smattering of faux-charming architectural rhinestones. Where is the modest bungalow of yesteryear? "Modest" is a word that has been plowed into the muck by the great steamroller of commerce in recent years. Modest implies "not spending as much as you possibly can", which is repellent to the devotees of consumerism, meaning all of us, alas. It's a word that should come back into vogue, although I have ambivalent feelings about it on a strictly personal level, because it will always remind me of "Modess-- because", which was emblazoned on the giant carton I had to balance on the handlebars of my bicycle every month or so as I negotiated a tortuous and, I hoped, unnoticed route home from the grocery store. But I digress. Oh, well, I guess I was done. In order to count as a digression, do you have to return to the original topic? Is there another term for it when it doesn't? Kind of like "peninsula" vs. "island"? And now I see I've created a sub-digression, a symbiotic digression, if you will. I may have opened up a whole new field of grammar or rhetoric here. I hope everyone reading this realizes that I use the term "if you will" ironically. I'm not pedantic and prissy in the least. There, I just picked my nose and wiped it on the backside of my iMac. You'll have to take my word for that, of course, but I believe I've built up enough trust and respect among you lot for my word to be taken. But I digress.

Yesterday in an email, Terry The Canuck, while describing a past medical conference, stated the following:

The best story out of the Infectious Diseases Society of America was about 15 years ago, when a doctor stationed medical students in washrooms at the meeting to observe how many delegates washed their hands after they... you know.

After they picked their noses?
Checked how their deodorants were working?
Murdered a colleague?
Discovered a virulent new strain of flesh-eating bacteria?
Groped a homeless person?
Pulled a leech off their thigh?
Found a new boil?
Searched the restroom floor blindly for a lost contact lens?
Impulsively plunged their hands into a bowl of Jell-o studded with little marshmallows at the awards banquet?
Squashed a Brown Recluse with their index finger?
Frantically searched the Dumpster for the brilliant paper they were scheduled to present but accidentally threw away?
Brushed against the dust- and lice-laden curtains in the ballroom?
Accidentally cut off the tip of their middle finger with a souvenir scalpel?
Pried some perfectly good gum from the left front tire of their rental car?
Delicately picked god-knows-whose pubic hairs from the sides of the tub?
Wiped a dab of butter from the room service tray, licked their finger, and realized with horror that it wasn't butter?
Exchanged high-fives with a cadaver?
Allowed one of the medical students to suck on their index finger?
Hadn't washed since shaking hands with Bob Barker two years before?

Terry, for God's sake, you've left too big a hole in this story!

Just this minute got back from Figure Drawing Group. Well, okay...just this minute got back from drinking Tanqueray martinis, slightly dirty, *after* Figure Drawing Group, but this is as up-to-the-minute as I can be. Plus, for some reason, the keyboard is acting up and typing really weird words on its won. There, see what I mean? Anyways, what you see hear is the longest I've ever spent on a single  watercolor. Three freakin hours! This is such a long way from the Laurelines school of watercolor painting it isn't funny. Strictly speaking, however, there is no distance from the Laurelines school of watercolor painting that would be funny. there's just nothing inherently funny about the subject at all. I don't know what I was thining. I still don't know what I'm thining. I don't know what "thining" is. Well, I've learned a lesson here, folks. Tanqueray martinis, slightly diryt, are not conducisve to coherent blogging. So I'm going to cut my losses and sign off for now. Except to say that the model is not chewing her cud nor does she have a goatee. And Bernice just pooped and pawed all her litter out onto the floor, leaving her damn dpoop unsullied by anything that might mask the smell, and let me tell you, the intesne aroma of cat poop dow not mix well with the aftereffects of Tanqueray martinis, slightly dirty. Bye now.

A few miles outside of Pungo, this rich guy has built an airport, and a museum, where he houses a few dozen airplanes from World War II and earlier, plus a few German staff cars and whatnot. Apparently, this rich guy is also an arch-conservative, and this airport is a mandatory stop on the right-wing campaigning and fundraising circuit. So if Catherine had been here to grab my earlobe, I probably wouldn't have been allowed to visit this place. The scary thing is, all the planes are in good working order, so it's not inconceivable that if a coup against President Obama is launched, it'll be from here.

We materialize, we drink our coffee, and then we're gone. The baristas may or may not remember our faces for a day or so, as they write our preferences on the white cups with their markers. Permanent markers.

Frankie's Place is on a semi-industrialized stretch of Indian River Road, probably serving Colonna's shipyard, which is just down the road. It wasn't open on the day we stopped, so I have nothing further to report, you miserable bints.

If I were ever in a situation where I had to chop up a body to dispose of it, I think I would just throw up my hands and say, okay, that's it, folks, I'm throwing in my cards. But that's just me.

Years ago, I got used to sleeping with a "white noise" machine going, and reached the point where it was hard to sleep without it. Eventually, the one I had burned out, and I started leaving iTunes radio on, tuned to an "old-time radio drama" station. Don't know why, I just found it entertaining. So anyways, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with a recently-spoken line from one of these "dramas" repeating in my head, and it makes absolutely no sense to me. Last night it was "Papering the wall is due to his crazed mind!" One night last week it was "As you can guess from my leg, I'm a mutant. My name is Gregory." Sometimes I lie back and meditate on these lines, as if they were koans. And sometimes at the coffee shop, I'll overhear a bit of conversation that will affect me the same way, like the above. Life is like a really silly sitcom that will probably be cancelled before the year's out.

 Fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, you must be Dr. Research. I swear, he has such a mild-mannered demeanor that he can play me for a sucker with impugnity. Last time, he took me to what was supposed to be Bingo at the Elks Lodge, and it was a snuff movie audition. Today, he told me were going to Pungo to sketch, and like a fool I believed him, until he breezed right through Pungo at 65, pulling a giant "spliff" out of his shirt pocket and putting fire to it. "Sour Diesel," he croaked, holding in the smoke. "Grown indoors, but it'll dissolve your nerve endings into a tarry residue not unlike that found in the heel crack of a biker's boot, if you get my drift." He passed me the reefer. "Toke up, bud," he said. "You'll need it where we're going." "But--isn't this illegal?" I stammered. "Hey, I'm a doctor," he winked. "Haven't you ever heard of medical marijuana?" Before I could answer, we squealed to a halt at the foot of the Currituck ferry. All around us were large tricked-out motorcycles and their scruffy riders. "Toe Bandit!" Doc shouted out the window. "Puffknuckle! Stink-Jello! Cry Baby! Chicken Strips! What's the haps!" One of the bikers sauntered over and leaned in the window. "What's up, Doc?" he queried and eyed me. "What have we got in here, some fresh meat?" "You got it, konky wacker," chuckled Doc. "Wh--what's going on here?" I stammered. "Takin a biker ferry ride, homes," smiled Doc. "Gonna mess with the squares." And with that, he popped out of the car and sauntered up to the burgundy Toyota Camry in front of us. "Hey Pops!" he shouted at the elderly gentleman at the wheel, "let me clean your glasses for you!" He snatched the man's glasses and threw them to the ground, smashing them with his boot heels. "There you go," he said as he handed the broken, twisted glasses back to the stunned old man. "Maybe now you can see what's happening," Doc smirked as he sauntered back to his car. "Ha ha ha ha ha", laughed all the bikers. "D--doc!" I stammered. "What's that?" Doc barked. "Did I hear something from the Peanut Gallery?" "N--no, never mind," I stammered. "That's what I thought," Doc sneered as he sauntered onto the ferry. "Ha ha h

Okay, that's enough, I'm caught in a tangled web of lies. Sure, we went down to the Currituck ferry, and yes, there were bikers on it, but none of the rest is true. Well, Doc did smash an old man's glasses, and he did smoke a joint, and he did call the bikers by their nicknames, but the rest is exaggeration, and I'm very sorry for it.

Oh, and he didn't take me to a snuff movie audition instead of Bingo at the Elks Club. It was just for an ordinary porn movie.

Now there's a catchy headline. The old ad guy hasn't lost his touch. When I logged into Squarespace to post this, I glanced at my stats. There's a chart that lists the most popular keywords that brought people to this blog. They were, in descending order: nude, nude, nude, nude, and liverwurst. How can anyone who's paying the slightest attention to things not conclude that the world is a deeply ridiculous place?

Looks like of like something Laurelines would do, don't it? Except she does her pictures on purpose, as far as I know. Whereas blueberries paint accidentally and probably somewhat reluctantly.  Nevertheless, they do nice work.

I see now that I wrote "like of like" in that first sentence, instead of "kind of like". "Like of like" makes no sense whatsoever. It too is an accident, although not a happy one, just a dumb one. That's one difference between painting and writing right there: painting thrives on accidents and what you make of them. I highly doubt that a writer looks at a typo and is inspired by it, leaves it in to enrich their writing. Unless it's a funny typo, like "poop" instead of "pool". I would leave that in.

Bunny's is a family restaurant on the outskirts of Suffolk. Despite the presence of what appear to be Born-Again Bikers, this is an old-fashioned restaurant whose patrons are fond of beehive hairdos and baby-blue polyester pantsuits. And that's just the men. Ha ha ha ha ha. Years ago Wayne (you remember Wayne) and I would go to Bunny's for the weekend buffet, which featured African-anthill-sized mounds of chicken & dumplings, vats of collard greens, wonderful tubs of stewed tomatoes, and the like. Best of all, there was live music on the premises: a little man in a plaid sports coat played the Hammond organ like there was no tomorrow. To add a cherry to the top, our favorite waitress  was named Dot. First time I went, I was ready to be all smirky and supercilious, but it was all so friendly and good-vibey that I became one with Bunny's (and with the chicken & dumplings.) Last week I returned to Bunny's, and it was okay, but the buffet had been gone for about five years!  It was very disappointing.  You have to go farther and farther to find common ground with rural people these days.

By the way, that cool song in the new Reebok commercial, the one that has Dallas Cowboys sliding down a sand dune, is called "Train Song" by Vashti Bunyan. And looky here, she's also got a song called "Hebridean Sun." It's a small world after all.

The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. And then you could spread it on a cracker, like a Triscuit or a Wheat Thin, or--did there used to be a chicken-flavored cracker, like Chicken Thins or something? Did I just dream that? Chicken in a Biscuit, or something like that? Anyway, this was one of those defining moments. It didn't define a generation or nothing, it just defined this party. I just had to come back and draw it, because I really sucked at Figure Drawing Group tonight. Sometimes I draw like someone with no talent whatsoever, like in a movie where someone is under a spell and has super powers, but then the spell goes away, and they're just ordinary people, but they discover that people love them anyway, for who they really are. That's me, except for the last part.

You know, when I started this blog twelve years ago, people called me crazy. Not for starting the blog, but for other reasons I'd rather not go into. And now these people are laughing out of the other side of their face, all the way to the bank. Now the shoe's on the other foot. It's a mistake I make more and more lately. Both shoes look the same to me these days, kind of gray and blurry. But after four or five hours, I have a pretty good idea whether I've made a mistake or not. But that's neither here nor there. The other shoe, I mean. It was right here a minute ago, I think. If it was up my ass I'd know where it was. That's what my Dad would say. He was full of witty sayings. But he would only say that one. The others he kept to himself.

Seems like the yard of a reasonable, responsible, upstanding family, doesn't it? Well, take a gander at this:

This is the alpha male of the flock. Just goes to show you, you can't judge people by their yards.

If anyone out there has not yet climbed the Mr. Peanut statue and experienced the spectacular views from the top of his top hat, you don't know what you're missing. I just wish they would install some sort of stairway so more people would give it a try.

In the last 24 hours, I have watched two movies where a man and a woman meet cute, the man (or woman) behaves badly, the woman (or man) leaves in a huff, the man (or woman) delivers a charming apology, the woman (or man) refuses to be charmed, the man (or woman) walks out of her (or his) life, the woman's (or man's) friends urge her (or him) to stop being stupid and go get the man (or woman), and she (or he) does so. These two movies are just the tip of the iceberg. 65% of movies end this way. "Dark Knight" ended this way, only the woman was killed in an explosion of 200 drums of some kind of explosive, and the man had half his face burned away so you could see his bare eyeball moving around and the tendons moving his jaw as he spoke. In my life, none of these things happen. I don't mind very much that the exploding drums or the exposed eyeball thing doesn't happen, but neither do the reconciliations pulled from the jaws of defeat. My scenarios go like this: man and woman meet cute, man acts stupid, woman moves to a different state, the end. You could not sell this treatment to a studio head. It would make a shitty movie. It would never be called the "feelgood movie of the year." I should stop going to movies and stick to reality tv.

I know what you're thinking: why did he paint such a tiny picture? And in return, I'm thinking: why are you thinking that? That's a stupid thought! And I know what you're thinking now: What he thinks we're thinking is not what we're really thinking. He's the one having stupid thoughts. And so now I think: how are they thinking in italics?

Anyways, if you've stuck with me through this little test of your fortitude, here's a larger version:

I suppose a clarification is in order: anything unpleasant that happens to me, no matter how trivial, is classified as a tragedy in my book. Seems like a reasonable policy. Wednesday night my iMac refused to boot up, and I was only halfway through my Pilot sketchbook, due the next morning. After fortifying myself with a good strong whimpering session, I performed a home invasion on the premises of Bot Fot and commandeered his Mac, but it turns out that material backed up with Time Machine is only restorable on a Mac with Leopard installed, and Bot is the type of guy who would still be running System 9 if business would allow. So we cruised his neighborhood trying to guess who might be harboring Leopard. Finally found Zach, and, long story short, well, not as short as I'll bet you wish it were, but shorter than it could've been by a long shot, because I left out Brandy and uncontrollable peeing and that kind of stuff, I finished up the job in the middle of the night, and spent yesterday in and out of the Apple Store, and they were very helpful and would have been so without the crying, and all seems to be well this morning. So it's back to cataloguing the never-ending stream of Starbucks addicts.

Tonight we had a celebrity model! I can't tell you who she is, because I failed to secure her permission to do so; you'll just have to take my word for it, she's kind of a big deal. Not only that, this was her first time modeling, and she was really good. Not only that, Artmark didn't fling his easel at me, which I consider a personal milestone. Not only that, but Noah treated us to a round of drinks afterward and made a moving toast, and Bernard drank the world's most expensive beer, and Artmark ate 32 raw oysters, and Alison ate none because she's a vegan, and Emily drank several pitchers of water, and Mystery Guest got a free oyster, and if I had known you get a free oyster for modeling, I would have volunteered. No, no, I would never model for the Norfolk Drawing Group because I know what they say about the models over drinks, especially the male models, especially over martinis. And that's all there is to say about that. Here's a bigger picture.