all my local (and not so local) friends of the squirrel
Current mood: energetic
Category: Art and Photography

it's rally time people...

the Utica Observer Dispatch is adding comics to their comic page--- and it would be GREAT if I could bet BOB THE SQUIRREL on their page...

to that end, if you all could spare a few moments of your busy day to take this quick survey and throw in a good word for your favorite wise ass tree rat...

the UTICAOD comic survey

thank you so VEEEEERY much...

7:01 AM - 7 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

calm...
Current mood: blissful
Category: Life

at this very moment...

a cool breeze is blowing through the windows in my studio...across the street i can see two horses trotting along in their pasture... i'm listening to david gray subtly pulsing through my speakers...i'm drinking a coke zero with freshly squeezed lemon and ice... i have my jack russell terrier contentedly snoring at my feet and a 80 lb. collie doing the same right next to her...

i'm in my very own house...

i have the love of a beautiful woman and her daughter...

i'm healthy...



and for this very moment... life is perfect...

9:24 AM - 6 Comments - 9 Kudos - Add Comment

it was six years ago today...
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Art and Photography

six years ago today bob the squirrel.com was launched. while this isn't his TRUE birthday in the conventional sense, it is the day that i unleashed him upon the world. needless to say, a lot has happened in those six years...most of which has been portrayed one way or another in the strip...all the good things and bad things, loves, loss, rites of passage and a love of dawson's creek. i went through a severe bout of depression--- and there it was... in black and white right on your screen--- i discovered that there were reasons to live...and there it was in the comic strip...i rediscovered my love for music...there it is in the comic strip...

i love hootie and the blowfish and sanford and son... there it is...you guessed it...in the strip.

i went from having no fans, doing one panel a week...to structuring my life around updating my website and making time to draw the strip...having fans all over the world wondering if i do, in fact, have an actual, living, breathing pet squirrel. ( i don't) i went from a 26 year old man talking to squirrels in a little studio in utica, to a 32 year old man talking to squirrels in a bigger small studio in rome new york...one which i now OWN.

some may say that the strip is my way to get that attention i need...my self-indulgent way of exposing myself... ok, i'll buy that--- i'm sure in some freudian way that is true. but there it is... my strip is true... aside from the talking squirrel...

in the past 6 years i've given life to something that was in my brain... those that do what i do know what i mean when i say that i have conversations with my characters all the time... if you could take a walk through my brain you'd see that. in fact, just the other day i was driving down gifford road on yet another trip to the home improvement store and all of a sudden i saw bob sitting on my car dashboard... he had his arms crossed and was looking at me in a stearnly disgusting gaze...and all he said was "....dude....what is wrong with you..." and i just knew what he meant... and i laughed.

it was another one of those moments when you just need someone to throw a brownie at your head.

so, even though sometimes it's been a sheer struggle to get my strip out...and some weeks were of questionable quality...i've never quit...i truly believe that what i do is good and different. and i owe it all to that squirrel.

happy birthday bob...

4:00 AM - 9 Comments - 16 Kudos - Add Comment

grad school
Current mood: adventurous
Category: Life

Vermont College of Fine Art.

starting at the end of july, i will begin my pursuit of higher education and student loans for the rest of my meaningful life. I will be studying towards my MFA (masters of fine art) in either drawing or painting (leaning towards painting but still undecided)...thankfully, this program is extremely flexible so i won’t have to move... most of it i can do online... gotta love the internet.

this is something that i’ve wanted since i got out of undergrad. when i transferred to a smaller art school in my junior year (1995), i met this professor who, in my 19 year old mind, had the most awesomest, coolest life ever. he had a black pick-up truck, a hot girlfriend, cool apartment, a messenger bag (remember i was 19) he wasn’t that much older than me,mhe was working as a freelance illustrator, doing work for huge magazines--- including PLAYBOY (like i said, 19 year old college male...) he had three months off in the summer, six weeks off in the winter...and all he said i needed to do was do the graduate school thing. now, at the time, i didn’t realize that it was slightly more complicated than he made it out to be. but the seed was planted. i didn’t see the work that went into it... i just saw how sexy he made it seem.

so i graduated and got a job. but in the back of my mind it was still "the" dream. teach. draw. get the black truck. hot girlfriend. draw. paint. i bought a pick-up truck---it was red and a HUGE mistake. i got the messenger bag, i drew, i painted, sent submissions to syndicates, freelanced, lived, loved...

i made some feeble attempts at applying to various schools--- looking back on it now i can clearly see that my portfolios weren’t that great...my work having not benefited from life experience. before my current acceptance, i had applied to three different programs...probably about two years apart... i took the rejections hard at first...but picked up the pieces and carried on---resolving myself to the fact that it just wasn’t in the cards for an artist like me--- a cartoonist...or that at one point i would pursue a music career... but i never had the drive, the love, at least for music, to go past the open mic coffee house thing...

the portfolio that got me in to this program consisted mainly of the paintings that i did for my YEAR IN PAINT project. 15 out of the 20 were from that series. i find it interesting that pieces produced out of probably one of the most darkest years in my life got me into the next phase of my life and possibly my career. i guess there was more than one reason for me to do them.

aside from everything else...i just want my master’s degree. it still really hasn’t sunk in yet.

and for all those that are wondering, i will continue to draw the comic strip...possibly injecting him into my studies...

Currently watching : Flight of the Conchords - The Complete First Season Release date: 06 November, 2007

3:26 AM - 6 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

toby...
Current mood: pensive
Category: Life

around 4:30am this morning, i found myself thinking about a dog that i once knew named toby.

toby wasn’t my dog per se...she technically belonged to my cousin’s grandmother... at least that’s where she slept most of the time... toby was kinda like a neighborhood dog. she didn’t really get the love she deserved where her bed was so she wandered. she wasn’t much to look at... a heinz 57 of a bunch of big dogs, collie, german shepherd, maybe a little st. bernard among others...she was this off white tan, long haried dog with a dark nose and dark eyes.

we lived on a sort of country road... no sidewalks. because we lived on what is called the mucklands, a deep drainage ditch ran the length of my street. muck is a black earth that you could grow just about anything in... up until i was 10 or 11 i thought that everyone had black dirt. i mean, you could plant skittles in muck and get something in a few weeks.

anyway...back to toby.

she was a farm dog. never had a leash on her. she just roamed. so everyday like clockwork, she would make her way to my front door. and i would be there to meet her. ofcourse, i always had food for her. we’d run around and play here and there. she was really fun in the winter--- i would throw snowballs up in the air and she would catch them with her mouth... the friendliest dog you;d ever know. the cartilage in one of her ears was worn away so while one ear stood straight up the other would flop over...not sure how it happened but it made her that much more unique. at night when it was time for her to go home, i would walk her back to her house. sometimes, when i couldn’t, i would giver her a couple bones and tell her to go home. and like a loyal child, she would grab the bones and slowly walk home. she probably wished she could’ve stayed...and i wish she could have. i’d like to think she was my dog.

but as with all things in life, charlotte’s web is inevitable.

toby got older, i got older. my attentions went from playing with dogs to playing guitar and thinking about all the girls that would never think about me... trying to be an artist and trying to figure out what i was going to do with my life after high school...

gradually, toby stopped coming over everyday. it went from 5 times a week to three to once.
then she stopped coming altogether.

i would visit her from time to time...stop by her house to drop off some food or just to spend a few moments with her, trying to relive my childhood before i’d go to my girlfriend’s house or to hang out with friends. it was sad to see the sparkle in her eyes dim gradually--- laying there in a makeshift doggie barn in a pile of straw.

toby passed away the summer before i left for college. to this day i don;t know how she went. i’d like to think it was in her sleep...thinking about the days of playing with an overweight, curly haired boy who thought the world of her.

i wish i could’ve appreciated her more when i did. but we all get like that sometimes.

Currently listening : The Odd Couple By Gnarls Barkley Release date: 01 April, 2008

3:47 AM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

bettie jo
Current mood: amused
Category: Art and Photography

acrylic on canvas
48"x 36"

Currently watching : The Race to the Moon (History Channel) Release date: 25 May, 2004

2:00 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

the virgin mary by candlelight.
Current mood: contemplative
Category: Life

i haven't written in a while.

still cranking away at that proverbial grindstone. a million new things go through my head on a hourly basis. i've gotten good news, bad news, really bad news and just news. in a few weeks, i'll be beginning a new life with new responsibilities, sensibilities, problems, pleasures and pains. and i'm walking into it with a smile and faith... which is something completely new to me. faith that is.

i never really understoon faith, even as a child sitting on that hard wooden st. john the baptist church pew listening to father tosti or father wood tell me that i was going to hell (i'm paraphrasing) if i did not live a pious life...or that i didn't go to confession or church... i was 9 years old. that's some shit to scare a little kid. grab 'em early and catholocize them! ha ha hah! i even remember going to church school once a week on wednesdays or thursdays...they would bus us all to church where we would gather in little groups in the rectory and listen to nuns talk about the love of jesus, reconciliation, being confirmed, the communion, the holy trinity and what have you. i remember one class i had took place in the candle room... which also had 10 life-size statues of jesus and his crew... talk about scaring the religion into kids... at 9 years old a life size statue of anything would scare you... especially by the light of $1.00 devotional candles. the mary statue REALLY scared the shit out of me.

i'm not dissing religion by any means. i actually admire those that are religious. they see something that i just don't--- and being an artist who can;t see certain things... that just bothers me.

and i'm not writing this to announce some divine conversion... i just don't have it in me...however i will be a devout frankist for the rest of my life.

but i have found some sort of faith... i just don;t have to pray to anyone to feel it. and it only took me 21 years

Currently watching : Dawson's Creek - The Complete First Season Release date: 01 April, 2003

2:16 AM - 4 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

my yearly ritual...
Current mood: okay
Category: Art and Photography

once a year (sometimes twice, depending on my energy level) i gather the best of the best of what i've done that year, slap on a cover sheet, spray it with cologne, get a witch doctor or rabbi to say a prayer over it and send it out to the syndicates for the inevitable rejection.

and as i was self addressing and stamping my envelopes tonight, it occurred to me how long and how many times i've carried out this ritual... this will be my 11th year of submitting various incarnations of strips that i thought would be the next licensing craze...

i remember one strip i did had a talking and walking egg...a character that was coddled so much as a child he failed to develop past the yolk stage. funny? in 1997 it was. then i did a strip about a playground...i ran out of ideas as soon as my summer job at a playground was over. i don't know... you try you fail... i had another one that was a direct rip off of seinfeld... but with a cat and an alien...

i even thought to revisit a comic strip i did in high school--- moonbeam the happy hippie. ugh.

so tonight i began my 11th year in pursuit of something that may never be. but i keep trying. i know that the internet is key to the future of how we get our daily comics, and i already have somewhat of a foothold on that... but cartoonists like me need to be on paper... looking at something on a screen will never be as satisfying as feeling it in your hands...being able to turn the pages...that's when you know you've made it.

here's to hoping this year will be the last time i perform this ritual.

Currently watching : Crossroads Release date: 10 August, 2004

6:28 PM - 7 Comments - 7 Kudos - Add Comment

happiness is...
Current mood: anxious
Category: Art and Photography

opening that brand new bottle of ink and dipping your brand new crow quill in.

the sound that it makes when it glides with little resistance across your piece of bristol...

creating something where there once was nothing...


i think i just turned myself on...

Currently watching : The Fighting Temptations (Widescreen Edition) Release date: 03 February, 2004

3:18 AM - 3 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment

into the swing like tarzan...
Current mood: angsty
Category: Life

ah... so .. the new year...

i never really understood the fascination with celebrating the new year... i mean, it's a holiday based on one second of time... and i admit i'm a hypocrite for accepting the day off.. screw it... you want to give it to me i'll take it. gives me that much more time to examine my shortcomings and deal with them accordingly (which translates to: not dealing with them at all).

experts say that you shouldn't set more than one or two resolutions for the new year. humans can be lazy, intimidated individuals that when faced with a daunting self-prescribed task they turn into turtles, go into their shells and not really emerge until november or december.

so i've decided to set two, across the spectrum, goals. i'm not really sure what the hell they are...but i know it has nothing to do with weight loss... although i will consciously cram less doritios and more fruits and vegetables down my neck. a 32 year old body doesn't recover as well as a 22 year old body does.

2008 will be my year. if something doesn't happen, i will make it happen---because 2007 drained me like a pound of pasta. i'm ready for you dammit.

Currently listening : Galore By The Cure Release date: 28 October, 1997

3:02 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment