LokiLoki

Just because I don't post much, doesn't mean I don'tlove you all. OK, that just sounds so bad on a bunch of different levels.... .. If I don't post much, that usually means I'm just pretty darn busy. Not always with jobs, but job related stuff. This was how the Voice thing went. It turned out to be an interior full page and my by-line was in larger type than the little caption that ran under it!

At some point in May I visited the Frank Frazetta museum and actually met Frank himself. He was really cool. Like a geek, I had him sign my little Moleskin sketch pad even though I had just purchased a poster (lost on the way home) and a book in his gift shop. I tried to get him to sign the page in the front "If found, please return to (blank)" I pointed to it and he signed the other side. I could almost hear his internal dialogue, "Why the fuck is this whippersnapper telling me where to sign... AND WHY AM I SIGNING HIS SKETCHPAD!?!" Or so I imagined I overheard. I left with a better appreciation for his art as I think everyone else that went on the bus trip from the Society did.

I saw my friend Yamilla graduate with a Masters in landscape architecture from Syracuse U. Later that evening, I stood holding a bottle of Knob Creek (bourbon) doing shots with architects galore in the middle of nowhere's ville, NY while a beautiful bon fire burnt. But that isn't even the big part of the weekend for me. I take Greyhound to Syracuse. Arrive around 1:30 am. Call my buddy Steve who says, "I'll be right there to pick you up." I have a doughnut and go outside to wait at the pick up/drop off area out front. About 1 minute before Steve gets there, a nonthreatening black girl with a back pack and an expression of desperation on her face approaches me. She asks if I'm being picked up. "yes", I say. "Would your friends be able to give me a lift?" The next public bus doesn't come until 5:30 am and..." And I got a brief sob story and I tell her if it isn't too far out of my friend's way... I only had a moment to try and figure out if she was legit, when Steve shows up. I thought, "Steve won't fail me! He'll not want to take her and have a good excuse not to and..." And we moved the baby seat to the trunk and she was now sitting beside me in the back seat.

Shit.

I was still not sure about her. Steve brought his other friend, Stu, with him. So this loan black girl just got into a car with 3 white guys she's never met in her life without any hesitation... She asked if she could borrow someone's cel phone to call this "friend" she told us had blown her off.
Stu hands her his phone as I'm trying to wrangle mine out of my pocket. No sooner does the "friend" pick up that she launches into the greatest line up of cliche' ghetto anger screaming that I've ever heard in a movie. It was an academy award winner.
Except it was quite heart felt. She mentioned if HE had another woman over there she was going to break every fucking window in his fucking house! And, stupidly I might ad, without missing a beat I ask her if she wanted us to stop by a hardware store to get a window breaking hammer. She paused at the odd suggestion and then gave me a slight smile before she launched into another persuasive argument on why this "friend" was the "baby daddy", as she put it. She also let it slip out we were on our way to the projects and that she was wanted for "stabbing some fucking hoe bitch." but the cops didn't have her real name. The baby daddy didn't even know her real name... OK, there was a bit more to this story but it gets boring. Suffice to say, we got through it and I ended the ordeal by spilling hot coffee on my crotch at 3 in the morning in an all night diner... after we had dropped her off at her "cousin's" house.