Road Trip Diary Day 5

Believe it or not, after getting to bed really late on Day 4, I actually got up at 6am and we were at Starbucks by 6:20 and on the highway at 6:30. The downside was that I could barely keep my eyes open during many legs of the all-day drive. The main reason for the early start was I/we wanted daylight the whole way...because we were driving through the Canadian Rockies.

An hour and a half in I needed a pit stop in Hope. I have a favorite coffee house there called The Blue Moose. Guess I shoulda taken a photo of the blue moose instead of the bear across the street...

The first real sign of spring...

Then a hundred miles later we're back in winter...

Seriously...this is the middle of May?

We made a pit stop in Salmon Arm (yes, that's the name of the town)...where you can find DeMilles - the grooviest market/farm ever. In the summer they have delicious cherries the size of golf balls...we bought honey pots, fresh veggies and I even bought some authentic sponge toffee (I'll take a photo of that later)...

DeMille's also has a bunch o' farm animals...

Baaa-haa-haa.

This particular peacock is actually a ham.

This guy reminds me of the dude in Pirates with the snakey beard.

A Real Rock Star

My obsession with tunnels continues...


The snow and near-blizzard conditions hit us again from Golden, BC to Banff, Alberta. So, even though it was daylight all the way to Banff, we couldn't see shit... :-( and apologize for not having pictures of the amazing Canadian Rockies. Feel free to google image them.

Geez, snow even stuck to the ground at the Banff Springs Hotel...

And Banff Avenue was pretty nasty...

We hit our final destination in Calgary somewhere around 9pm.

Miles traveled: 600.

Hours in car: 13 1/2 because we lost an hour going into MST.

Went to sleep: I dunno...12:30 or 1am?

Woke up: 8am...a little shaky and slightly unprepared for what came next.

Peanuts

Day 5 was a long driving day with lots of cool stops and 15...count 'em...15 photos I want to post. It's currently 12:30am where I am and we need to get on the road by 9 in order to meet up with John (you'll meet him soon) in Cutbank, MT by 3pm.

So, I have to take a break on today's post...well, technically I am posting, right?...and leave you with this picture I took on Day 5, because that's about what I'm giving you:

Road Trip Diary Day 4

The first day of no driving = relief. Which is a wimp thing for me to say when it took two and a half days to cover when I used to do the Vancouver -> LA or LA -> Vancouver trip in 24 hours flat.

We took it pretty easy on Day 4 - at this minute I can't even remember what day was Day 4 - okay, I counted on my fingers...it was Monday. Spent the day hanging with Raymond, talking movie biz stuff and life stuff.

We had swank accommodations...this is the view of the house from the kitchen:

You can't really tell from this iphone pic but there was a sudden downpour in the afternoon - the white misty bit is actually rain bouncing off the roof:

For those readers who own a copy of Everybody I Shot Is Dead, this house (now a certified historic site) used to belong to Gary Switlo who is the second dedicatee in the book. It's an authentic hand-built log house and the inside is absolutely incredible:

Okay, I know this is bad, but I just couldn't leave Vancouver without having a Triple-O cheeseburger at the White Spot. Let me clarify that the "Triple=O" refers to the sauce, not the number of patties...

We tried to go to sleep at 10pm so we could get up and leave the next morning at 6am for the 600 mile drive to Calgary. No such luck. I got into an interesting convo with Raymond and Jaimie was chatting with Raymond's wife and then we were all chatting and we didn't get to bed 'til 12:30 am.

Miles logged: 3
Hours in car: 10 minutes
Went to sleep: 12:30am
Woke up: Stay tuned for Day 5.

Road Trip Diary Day 3

aka Mother's Day.

I woke up Sunday morning at 9:30 after about 8 hours of sleep, which would have been great if I hadn't already been operating on 5 hours per night for the previous three sleeps. But all in all I was actually feeling pretty darn good. We already had 1081 miles of road under us with only 300 miles to our first two-night stopover...meaning one full day of NO driving. And the less than 300 would be the least number of miles yet traveled. Piece of cake.

So, I was cool with he late wake-up. Took Pumpkin out for a pee, then had a long hot shower while I let Jaimie's sleep hit the 9 and a half hour mark. By the time we got on the road it was 11am but that was no big deal. We had a lunch date set up with Steve B (frequent reader and commenter here) just north of Seattle and figured it wouldn't take more than a couple of hours to get there.

As a matter of fact, I was talking to Steve on the phone making the final arrangement while I was heading up the I-5 when I noticed a dark colored Dodge on the left shoulder with a guy at the rear of the driver's side looking as if he was fixing something with the back tire. That is until he suddenly popped up waving at me with what looked to be a large gun in his hand.

Indeed it was a gun. A radar gun. What the fuck? That's a cheap shot. Disguised as a civilian car and hiding his uniform behind the rear end of his car...just sitting there in plain sight waiting to pounce on poor little me. I couldn't have been on the road more than 10 minutes before he nailed me. Welcome to Washington. You've just been screwed. I pulled over and he came up to the car and asked if I knew how fast I was going. Before I could answer he told me I was doing 83. I responded with, "Aw, come on, you know it's Mother's Day, right?" He took my license and registration and insurance and went back to his car and didn't come back for at least 10 minutes. Two other people who had also pulled over and stopped in front of me finally just drove off. Why didn't he start at the fron of the line and work his way back to me?

When he came back to my car I told him I hoped he had their plate numbers so he could send them their tickets and he said he wasn't pulling them over...just me. Gee, thanks. They were obviously speeding if they pulled over and waited that long for their tickets too. He then told me he cut me a Mom's Day break by lowering my speed to 75 which gave me the lowest possible fine. Gee, thanks. I would have been happier with a warning.

Then came the rest of the tiny state of Washington. After all these fast moving empty roads through California and Oregon we were suddenly ensconced in piles of traffic. There was some accident near the Seattle Convention Center that was causing a back-up that slowed us to 3 mph for about 45 minutes. We never saw the supposed accident. Just your regular Seattle Sunday rush hour it seemed.

We had to keep calling Steve to give him our lame excuses as to why it was taking us 3 hours to make a 2 hour drive. Actually, by the time we got there it was 3:30 something and we were two and a half hours behind our intended schedule. Which meant we also had to call Raymond (my friend who had kindly insisted we stay at his house in Vancouver) - after I had emailed the night before and said we'd definitely make it for dinner - and let him know we were way behind schedule.

Okay, enough words... here's the pictorial... damn, I totally should have shot the cop...

Sunday traffic in Seattle - this bit of freeway reminds me of downtown LA but with more foliage.

I take a lot of tunnel pictures. This one is cool (in my opinion) because of my hand in the top left corner.

Steve and his daughter, Cassidy. Thanks for lunch guys...we had a blast.

This is the Peace Arch at the border crossing. That's Jaimie and Pumpkin frolicking on the grass while I inch forward in the 50 minute line.

We arrived at Raymond's at 8:30pm.

It took us 9.5 hours to drive less than 300 miles.

Not a good showing.

I'm still bagged and wish I could take a day to myself and get some sleep...but that's a whole other post, coming soon to a blog near you.

Happy Birthday George Carlin

It's George Carlin's 72nd birthday today. He didn't get the full honorary section in my book because he passed away just last June, after the book was in print. But there is a small photo of him in the book. A backstage picture of him with WB record rep Mark Wilson, one of my five dedicatees.

George Carlin

5/12/37-6/22/08

So, today I honor him here...with a little birthday party full of lots of laughs.



George Carlin was very cool. Happy Birthday!!!

Road Trip Diary Day 2

Ugh. I wanted to start at 7am. We didn't get up until 9ish - I mean me - and Jaimie didn't get up 'til past 9:30. By the time we hit the road it was 10:30 and before we knew it we were making an unplanned stop to see my oldest half-sister here:

It was the annual Mother's Day Earth Festival on the UC Davis campus. Yes, if there's a stage with a musician -even if they're just warming up - I will take a picture.

They had some cool booths...this was my favorite:

Chimes made from silverware. They sounded amazing. Check out the one on the far right where they had everything hanging from a small candelabra.

I also loved this three-wheeled car, especially for the fact the back wheel looks like a table saw blade. I imagine running over annoying people's feet. Yes, I'm sick.

We walked by this very authentic hippy houe on our way back to the car. I dug it.

Then we got to see things like this. The iPhone takes pictures that require the disclaimer "Things in this photo may appear much farther away than they actually are." It's Mt. Shasta. Another vision that required the invention of the word "majestic."

Here's an example of suicide by windshield.

And suicide by grill. Day 2 saw the loss of at least 864 of God's creatures.

I could see myself living in Ashland, Oregon. We saw a really cool house for sale...just 1.6M. Where do I sign?

Things got a little sketchy on the driving thing. This was taken at 10:44pm. We didn't stop for the night until around 12:30am.

Miles logged: 700
Hours in car: 10.5
Went to sleep: 1:30am
Woke up: 9:30am to a Mother's Day gift I didn't want.

To be continued...

Road Trip Diary Day 1

Things that happened on Friday...

1. I got a late start: The plan was to leave at 3pm after delivering all the Cannes artworks, collecting the checks and hitting the bank. But on the way to my last delivery I received a phone call from an actress you've all heard of asking if I could get a poster done for her to take to Cannes. I would have said no but I was so impressed that she called me herself (I'd never met her) and was willing to drive to me in order to get the job done. She came by at three and we ended up working on it until five and then I had to finish packing the car and go to the bank. I was way too rushed or should I say I rushed too much and...

2. I forgot my cameras: I had that sinking feeling as I was climbing the Grapevine. "I don't remember putting the camera bag in the car." Too late to turn back. But I really need the still and video camera on this trip for reasons that will come to light in future Road Trip Diary postings.

3. Witnessed: 352 suicides...by windshield.

4. Saw the sun set: These were taken between 7:37pm and 8:17pm, in this order, while driving...do not try this at home...






5. I learned what my handicap is: Lucky for me my handicap is a six-foot long right arm...


7. I was completely burned out: Even though my Cannes output wasn't nearly what it was in past years I was still dog-tired by the time I hit the road and I was completely burned out by the time I pulled into Jaimie's place in Mill Valley.

Miles logged: 382
Hours in car: 6
Went to sleep: 12:30am
Woke up to dog wanting to go out: 4am

To be continued...

Happy Birthday Hank Snow

It's fitting that I am on the road heading to Canada on Hank Snow's 97th birthday, being that he is one of Canada's own.

Hank Snow

5/9/14-12/20/99

Here's a little ditty from Hank to help me get through the next ten hours of driving...



Stay tuned tomorrow for day 1 and 3 of Diary of a Road Trip.

You can see lots more pictures and learn more about Hank Snow and the 47 other musicians in my tribute book, Everybody I Shot Is Dead.

Double the Birthday

Double the fun.

First up is one of my favorite human subjects. Today is Papa John's 92nd birthday. And I bet if he were still around he would be fiddling the day away. He was one cool dude.

Papa John Creach

5/8/17-2/22/94

How about a little Hot Tuna to get your day going?



Second up, the incredible and ageless Rick Nelson. Today is Ricky's 69th birthday. I'm guessing he would look exactly like he did when these pictures were taken.

Rick Nelson

5/8/40-12/31/85

And it wouldn't be much of a party if Rick didn't play this...

Happy Birthday, Papa and Rick!!

You can see lots more pictures and learn more about Rick Nelson, Papa John Creach and the 46 other musicians in my tribute book, Everybody I Shot Is Dead.

Glad I Stayed Up

Look what just landed in my email inbox from someone who was at Hotel Cafe tonight...

Some of you may be surprised to know that I actually follow this guy on Twitter. He has a great sense of humor and a witty intellect that really suits 140 characters. But over the past 12 hours his tweets have been fraught with melancholy. In fact, I was getting a little worried about him.

Now I know I need not fret. Tonight he played some music in a tiny club to real live humans and, although I wasn't there to witness it, I'm guessing he got the jolt he needed...much like what playing in a small club did for Michael Bloomfield the last time I saw him play live at the Troubadour.

It's kismet that the tome he is holding landed in his hand tonight...because if he takes the time to look inside I believe he will find some inspiration from those who came before him...further proof that my sweet dead rock stars continue work in mysterious ways.

Rock on, John!

Almost Forgot

...to write a post.

So, here I am. At my desk. In my office. With nothing. Again.

I can't even imagine what photograph to throw up here. I took some pics of a spider outside the house a few days ago but they didn't turn out. It was night and he/she/it was pretty flimsy looking...not one of those multi-colored fat-bodied jobs that normally takes up residence in a never-empty cookie jar.

Speaking of cookie jars...

I made these. From scratch. Tonight. Ate dough. Had sugar high. Had sugar crash. Ate warm cookie. Yum.

I can make cookies. And then I can take a picture of them. And put it on my blog. And call it a post.

So, do you want to see the best of the worst spidey photos? Since they're the best of the worst, it's quite possible that Tyler took some of them. We traded off. The pictures looked much better on the back screen of the camera than when I downloaded them and saw them on my computer screen.

Anyway, enough excuses...actually, no excuses...here are the spidey pictures...








In a side note...or should I say a bottom note?...the fire in Santa Barbara is a-hella-ugly. The winds are whipping around my house so I can only imagine how bad it is in SB. A lot of people are losing their homes. Three firemen are down the street from me in serious condition at the Sherman Oaks Burn Center. They're reporting 0% containment on the 11 o'clock news. Very sad all the way around.

Happy Birthday, Tammy Wynette

Today we are celebrating Tammy Wynette's 67th birthday. Who;s bringing the cake? She deserves a very pretty homemade cake.

Tammy Wynette

5/5/42-4/6/98

This girl could sing...

You can see lots more pictures and learn more about Tammy Wynette and the 47 other musicians in my tribute book, Everybody I Shot Is Dead.

Paul Butterfield

I don't have to tell you who Paul Butterfield is, right? Or do I?

I'll let Michael Bloomfield tell you, "You can quote me on this, man...Butterlfield's something else. He feels it, he's in there all the way. Butterfield is a blues singer. There's no white bullshit with Butterfield, white-colored thing with him. He's there. And if he was green it wouldn't make any difference. If he was a planaria, a tuna fish sandwich, Butterfield would be into the blues."

Paul Butterfield passed away 22 years ago. I had some good times with him...and miss his presence on the planet.

Paul Butterfield
12/17/42-5/4/87

I love this video...not only for Paul Butterfield but for all the shots of the audience..Monterey 1967...must have been cool to be there...

You can see lots more pictures and learn more about Paul Butterfield and the 47 other musicians in my tribute book, Everybody I Shot Is Dead.

Road Trip

A whole lotta fun...

Los Angeles, CA
2
San Francisco, CA
2
Vancouver, BC
2
Calgary, AB
2
Great Falls, MT
2
Helena, MT
2
Butte, MT
2
Chubbuck, ID
2
Lovelock, NV
2
Reno, NV
2
Laytonville, CA
2
San Francisco, CA
2
Los Angeles, CA

Me.

Jaimie.

Pumpkin.

5/8
2
5/26

Let me know if you're on this route.

We'll have coffee.

Or lunch.

Or dinner.

Or a sleepover.

The Anatomy of a Movie Poster

...well, at least part of a movie poster.

I don't know if this is of any interest to anyone out there but it's something I'm working on at the moment and thought it might be fun to share.

One of my long time very favorite clients is Cinetel Films. You may not know them by name but if you watch the Sci-Fi channel - wait, that's wrong isn't it...didn't they just spend whole pile of dough to change their brand to SyFy? - well, anyway, if you watch it you've probably tuned in to a Cinetel film. They produce a lot of movies in the creature genre (Ogre, Hydra, Snakehead Terror and Beyond Loch Ness) and in the disaster thriller genre (Polar Storm, Stonehenge Apocalypse, Shockwave, Earth Storm and Solar Attack).

For the most part these movies come to me when they are in the earliest stage of their development, as in not only is there not a movie, there isn't even a script. It's a synopsis and a title that may or may not change as I am doing what is called pre-sell key art. Meaning I start with nothing and am given nothing to work with. No pictures, no actors, no nothing...well, maybe the name of a creature or some kind of newfangled storm that promises to be the end of us all.

For the most part it's a fun and interesting creative process. But sometimes it's a pain in the ass because there's really only so many ways to depict the end of the world starting with nothing. And it's extra-hard to photographically build a creature that looks both real and menacing (I once had to create one called the Bone Eater with only the information that it was reptilian).

But this week it's a disaster movie currently called Earth's Final Hour. I'm creating a 4-page brochure that has a teaser cover, then city in destruction on the inside (not an easy task btw), followed by a synopsis on the back.

My first go-round on the art resulted in a thing I did with planet Earth to illustrate what would happen if the Earth stopped rotating. I originally had this idea for the inside but they decided they wanted something more down-to-earth for the inside instead of "space." But now I'm trying to sell the little thing I created as a sort of symbol on the back below the synopsis. I sent the new version out to them a couple of hours ago and now I get to wait for comments.

So, I thought I'd go layer-by-layer to show you the Earth thingy I created.

This is the first layer, on the bottom of the pile:

Obviously, it's a picture of an eclipse, although when I'm done it will not look like an eclipse (hopefully). First thing I did was color balance it to change the lit rim on the left to blue.

The next layer is Earth...

...which I sized and put directly over the dark part of the eclipse picture. And masked out the starry starry night (name that tune).

Then I put another layer of the eclipse over the Earth as a hard light layer at 45% opacity and masked out the right half - when the grey part is on the layer it lets what's underneath it show through...in this case the right side of the Earth. The mask is a little sloppy but I'll fix that if the idea ends up in the finished piece.

The next layer is another stock photo from space. I just used this corner of it to illustrate the half of the planet that would be facing the sun.

This is the same photo...
...after I created a mask to hide the parts I didn't want to show. Yes, another sloppy mask that will be fixed.

Once the layers are all on top of each other, they look like this...

And that is how I created something from nothing...with three existing space photographs I plunged our planet into certain death.

Lucky for you my powers don't extend beyond the photoshop file.

Or do they?

Think about that before you go to sleep tonight.

Sweet dreams.

You can see more of the stuff I do with photoshop and the creative side of my brain on my website.

Oh No

Fuck. It's already tomorrow. And I didn't post yesterday.

Wait. Since I haven't been to sleep yet, technically it's still today. Right?

So, unless I bore myself to death (I mean sleep) with these words - which is entirely possible - I'm still good. Plus I can set the clock back so it records as yesterday*...or as I like to call it, today.

Been a bit of a crazy week. The clock is ticking down to Cannes. Which means I'm busy doing work. The kind of work I actually get paid for. Although this year is about 20% of last year so I am here to confirm, yes, there is a recession.

I'm ever so late with my post because I worked all day long then had an 8pm dinner meeting with my director and didn't get back from until after midnight. Met a famous actress (who has a combined 176 IMDB credits for film, tv and producing) at the restaurant. My director was talking to her when we came in. Of course I didn't recognize her - I rarely recognize anyone. But she was super nice and down-to-earth. The director did the 'this is...' saying my name and the actress, with no airs about her, extended her hand and did the 'hi, I'm...' saying her first and last name even though I would have known who she was on the first name. I was impressed.

Shit...I should have played tacky tourist and taken a stealth iphone photo of her so I'd have something for my photo of the day. Oh no, no photo.

Can't have that. Here's something I just snapped of Tyler. He's been sitting on my floor yakking at me while I've been trying to get this damn post finished...

Post finished. Good night.




*FYI...I cheated. This was actually posted on May 2 @ 2:39AM. Is it still cheating if I cop to it?