The Black Heart Gang Presents - Tale of How

This is an amazing animation I forst saw on Irene Gallo's blog (The Art Department).
This is what my nightmares looked like when I was a kid.

Have A Nice Day

I heard a report on the radio this morning (while driving my big SUV to Starbucks) that Sydney, Australia, will soon be uninhabitable because of drought and rising temperatures.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, we had the warmest winter on record here in the greater Boston area. In the midst of that time, I had watched Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", which basically says we're fucked.

A couple of my favorite TV shows are 24, in which we are always in danger of terrorist induced annilhilation, Battlestar Galactica (Really!), where the last of the human race is desperately trying to escape being wiped out by it's own technology (the Cylons). Yes, I like some comedies like Larry David, and The Office, but really, they're all about discomfort.

"The Road", by Cormac McCarthy was my "favorite" book that I've read in a while. It's about a doomed father and his love for his son in a doomed world.

There doesn't seem to be a good way out of this #@%*!! war we're in, and frankly, I think all the Democrats are as lame as the Republicans, just in a different way.

My mother had a close call with cancer last year, my father is creeping up there in years, and I'm already into my 40's when I should be kicking ass, but I feel like I'm still thrashing around most of the time.

Generally, things are actually very good with me, it just seems that theres an underlying sense of gloom and doom in the world around us. Maybe I've just awoken to the human condition. I need a new hobby or something. Maybe I'll try to start believing in God.

Maybe it's just January.

Norman Mailer sketch

I'm starting in on a portrait of the writer Norman Mailer for a review of his new book "The Castle in the Forest" It's about how Hitler became Hitler.

It was about 8 degrees outside today, and about 40 in the studio. I felt how this guys looks.

Howard Stern/Borat

When "Borat" came out last fall, there was an uproar over the antisemitism, misogyny, and overall crude humor in the movie. I saw the movie, and I thought it was one of the funniest things I had ever seen. At times, I caught myself laughing when I probably shouldn't have been, but then I realized everyone else was in hysterics as well.

It got me thinking about where this kind of humor came from, and it didn't take too long for me to realize that guys like Mel Brooks, Henny Youngman, Don Rickles, and more familiar to me, Howard Stern had been doing this kind of material for years.
The common thread of course, is that they're all Jewish. The only thing that really separated Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat" from these guys is that he employs a candid camera/punk'd format. We get to feel as though we're in on the joke, but at the same time, the joke's on us.

It's in this spirit that I thought to do an offensive sendup of a Madonna and child.

Uncle Mike

Tail Wind

I probably shouldn't make this public, but what the hell. I'm pitching some ideas to different magazines as a way of being able to control the content of my illustration work. I figure that if I present myself as more than just a hired gun I'll have a bit more longevity than I would otherwise. Besides, my favorite part of the whole creative process is coming up with ideas and solving problems.

For this sort of thing, I'm trying to combine common terms in cycling with other common cycling related situations. Always try to make money from your hobby, that's what I say.

Red Olives

I used to work for a company called Fun Enterprises. It was a novelty entertainmant business that employed caricature artists like me, clowns, balloon artists, spin art..uh, operators. Basically, it was sort of high end carny stuff without the carny types working there.

For the most part.

I met many really great, talented people through the 13 years I worked for them. I also came across a lot of folks I never want to see again. Put it this way: If you've ever seen an episode of "The Office", well, those guys are way more together than most of the troops at Fun. Still, I do have a soft spot for Ken and Wade, the owners.

Anyway, a select few people sort of trickled down over the years to form a group I like to think of as "The Only People From That Time Of My Life I'd Ever Have Anything To Do With". We somehow or other ended up calling our once in a while get togethers "Red Olives Meetings". We hit a bar that serves Guiness, usually in Cambridge, bring the sketchbooks and shoot the shit.

The scary skinny guy on the left is me, then Mark Penta, who has a book coming out soon, then John Forcucci, Badass bass player and killer storyboard artist, and then Ken Kimbal. Ken is a true renaissance man who can do almost anything and knows alot about alot. I got into a car accident on the Cross Bronx Expressway with Ken as my copilot back when the Rodney King verdict had just come out. We thought we were going to be killed by an angry mob. As I recall, we were rushing home from a caricature gig in Philly.

Money grubbin'

This was done for a regional magazine. Not my region, but a very nice one just the same. The story is about how the presidential contenders tend to keep coming back to the same area because it's a rich (pardon the pun) area for fund raising.

In case you can't tell, that's Hillary, MCain up top, Rudy Giuliani on the right, and Obama front and center.

Mark MCormack

My buddy Mark McCormack announced his retirement from professional road cycling recently. Mark's been a big influence on me on and off the bike. He's a good friend and a tough teacher. I've been able to indulge in a Walter Mitty-like mid life crisis fitness bump thanks to Mark's guidance.

Here's a link to his interview on cycling news.com
http://www.cyclingnews.com/riders/2007/interviews/?id=mark_mccormack07

MLK

This painting is hanging up in my living room. I'm proud that my young children have known who Martin Luther King Jr. is for years. It's nice when something I do can teach my children about the world we live in.

On the other hand, I also have some paintings of some real derelicts hanging up. Let's not dwell on that.

The Road Final

Normally, I'd work this to within an inch of it's life. But the subject matter and composition are so different than what I normally do, I thought I'd just leave it as it is. For me, it conveys the feeling of the book.

I should mention that I've been looking at a lot of Carriere lately, and that monochromatic influence shows through.

The Road (sketch)

I've been reading "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. I'm not a writer, so I'll spare you a book review. If it was a painting, I'd say it's a Norman Rockwell painted by Francis Bacon. It's giving me nightmares.

CF Payne

Chris Payne is probably my all time favorite illustrator. I attended a couple of weeks at the Illustration Academy in KC a few years ago, and I had the privilege of sitting across from Chris for a week. He did a few demos, and told a lot of great stories about his life as an illustrator. Come to think of it, he told great stories about EVERYTHING. I enjoyed the fact that he seasoned his amiable mid western accent with perfectly placed obscenities. Although I didn't really get to know him I thoroughly enjoyed getting to experience him. I still drop some of his quotes just to make my wife roll her eyes.

The first thing Chris did when he entered the studio was to pull out this big 10 pound blob of color and plop it on the desk. It's his palette, and I think it has paint on it from every job he's ever done.

The coolest thing was getting to watch while he worked on an actual job. It was a Mad magazine cover.(At the time, I thought that if I could do a cover for Mad I could pack it in and call it a life. It was a goal I'd dream of, but I didn't think it would ever happen. Within 2 months I had done my first Mad cover).

The thing I remember most was how hard he worked. I heard some really smart college kid say "He's not showing us his real secrets suring the demos". I said to this kid, "You know how when we go to lunch, Chris keeps working? And when we take our afternoon break Chris keeps working? And when we go to dinner Chris keeps working? And when we're done at 9pm and go out for a beer Chris keeps working? And when we go back to the studio at 9 am and Chris is there working? THAT'S the secret step he does't show you during the demo"!

God Rest Ye...Oh never mind.

Those of us who celebrate Christmas tend to oversentimentalize it. We spend hours going out to get just the right tree, fight traffic at the malls, find the parking space, and then agonize over what to get for whom. All that energy builds and builds and then.... a few days after the big event those decorations start to look like the beer and half eaten appetizers the morning after a party. Then we strip that tree, and throw it's naked carcass out to the curb.

Robert Johnson/Leadbelly

The recent death of James Brown has had me thinking of other similarly influential artists of the 20th century. Maybe it's because I'm more familiar with the century I grew up in, but it seems that the 20th century was fertile ground for new art forms, new technology, etc. In the first half of the century we had the birth of swing, jazz, blues, and rock in music. And in the visual arts we had the explosion of what would be known as Modern art. Picasso, Dali, Pollack, Disney. Yes, I said Disney. The thing that ties all the groundbreakers together (aside from the fact that they were visionaries) is that they were all misfits in some way. Not a lot of well adjusted children in this bunch. If they were alive today, you'd find their mugshots on the smokinggun.com.

I don't want to say that if you want to be a groundbreaking pioneer in your field you have to be an asshole, but I guess it doesn't hurt.

Anyway, here's an image of a couple of my all time favorite assh...uh, pioneers. Robert Johnson and Leadbelly. They say Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his prowess on the guitar. He'd show up to gigs late, get drunk, then leave with someone elses wife. If he were alive today he'd probably be a hip hop guy. Thank God (or, you know who) that he was born way back in the day instead.

Leadbelly, whose songs Led Zeppelin covered, was a killer musician. Literally. He did some time for killing a man, then after being released he was charged again for attempted murder. He picked up the nickname "Leadbelly"(his given name was Hudy Leadbetter) from his fellow prisoners after an attempt on his life turned into an old fashioned turn of the tables butt whoopin'.

If not for the documentarian Alan Lomax, we might not know about Leadbelly or many of the other southern musicians whose roots eventually grew into the amazing tree we know as the music of the 20th century.

New Years Ride

The New Years ride is tradition. For me, it used to be a mountain bike ride, but for the last 3 years it's been on the road. It's a great way to transition into the new year with a clean slate and a bit of suffering. In years past, it's been relatively managable for the first half, then after the traditional convenience store stop for Snicker's bars and Lil' Debbies, there is the traditional convenience store sprint. This opens the second half of the ride, which is usually accompanied by great deals of suffering, open mouths, slumped shoulders, and crossed eyes. Not as much chit chat on the back half.

This year was different, First, we had about a dozen guys, so there were lots of bodies to hide behind and recover. Second, Mark McCormack had just retired and taken 2 weeks off from riding, so there wasn't the McCormack freight train driving the rest of us. So, we actually had a pleasant, social, moderate 5 hour, 96 mile ride.

We arrived back at my house to pasta, chili, and brownies that Maria had whipped up for us. She can't help herself - she has alot of greek mother in her.

End of the Year Top Ten List - #1 Us

We've been together since 1980. We've lived more than half our lives together. We've had 2 kids, 2 houses, 2 great careers(one just slightly better than the other), and probably more laughs than McDonald's burgers sold. That all adds up to one thing I wouldn't trade for all the hommus in the Mid East.

End of the Year Top Ten List-#2 Green Mountain Stage Race

I did this race for the first time in '05. It's on labor Day weekend, toward the end of the season. By that time, I had a full season of racing in my legs and head and I was starting to understand it. After placing 5th in the prologue, I felt confidant about doing well. A couple of days later, on the last climb in stage3(the road race), my friend Tobi pulled me and the rest of the lead group of about 30 guys up the hill. Tobi talked me through things and basically gave me a great launch into the final climb.

And then I cracked. Not just cracked, but completely fell apart. In about a minute's time, my spirit was broken, and I felt like I was just clawing my way out of a mud hole with no traction.

I was pissed.

The good news for me was that I've always done my best work when inspired by my own failures. I'm never so angry as when I let myself down, and I was really, really angry with myself. The next year was basically the execution of an obsessive mission to redeem myself on that same climb in that same race. I'm not sure why this was so important to me. I'm sure it goes pretty deep, but I won't get into that here.

Over the winter I lost 10-15lbs, got even more obsessive about training, and visualized that spot on the climb. In early August I went to Vermont(after a 110 mile mountainous ride with Mark McCormack) to ride the major climbs and commit them to memory. I wanted to be able to ride them over and over in my head.

This year I took 2nd on the prologue, maintained my overall GC position through the circuit race. For the road race, I hung in the wheels until the first major climb, when 7 of us got away for what would be the winning break. I was the only one there with a teammate, and he (Coleman O'Connor) babysat me.

When we hit the final climb, IU sat comfortably in the group, trying not to do any work. When we reached that spot in the road where I cracked last year, I put some pressure on, and we dropped 3 of the six guys in the group. At the foot of the final, killer climb up App Gap, it was blowing about 30 mph, raining, and foggy. I was in heaven. With just about 500meters to go, John Funk slipped past me and I just couldn't match his pace. In the fog and lactic haze, one other guy got past me just before the line, and I took third. Could I have hung on for second? I think so, but I'm not going to obsess over it for a year.

I survived the Burlington Crit to take 3rd overall.

End of the Year Top Ten List-#3 Rolling Stone Cover (not)

This was the high and low of my year professionally. For the whole story, click here:
http://dalestephanos.blogspot.com/2006/11/led-zeppelin.html