a friend of mine and his girlfriend once had an apartment in this house. that had to of been at least 14 years ago. a lot of good happy times were had in that house. i lost touch with him not long after the fun ended.

strolling through my hometown last saturday morning, i walked past this house and i smiled.

after the first 30 minutes of last night's ocsar broadcast, i popped in a hogan's heroes dvd and went away.

i'm glad that "the Departed" won best picture. it was a decent flick that kept my gerbil-like attention span in check for 2 hours. i am also a little suprised that alan arkin won supporting actor. i realize that "supporting" actors are just that--- supporting the leads... but as soon as you start digging his character he goes and... well, if you haven't seen "little miss sunshine" i won;t give it away...

jennifer hudson--- totally deserved it. first movie--- first oscar. it's too bad that we probably will never hear from her again. girl has got some pipes...

thoughts?

this is a painting of two of my guitars and my amp. the black one i bought brand new out of a catalog in 1992. i worked the whole summer to buy this guitar. my mother thought i was insane for blowing everything i earned but i didn't care. when the box was put on my porch i remember actually being a little scared to open it up--- my first "real" guitar.

i can still remember the smell of the wood and the glue in the foam wrapping. sitting up in my dark little room just looking at this black, beautiful piece of equipment. the neck was so smooth, the sound was so clean... it was just so...new.

as i was setting up this still life, i realized that i spent more time with that guitar than any friend, family member or girlfriend i ever had. i played her every night, thinking for sure that one day i would be playing in front of thousands of screaming fans on a stage---music that i wrote, my lyrics sung back to me... every voice getting their own meaning out of what i sang.

she got old...dirty, worn out... strings broke, were replaced. parts fell off, were replaced (and in some instances were macgyvered on)... her paint chipped, her body dented.

eventually, i retired her. as the years went by, i bought guitars more expensive and different than that black charvel. eventually, i stopped playing as much as i used to. i never got to that stage in front of thousands--- i never really made it past the coffee house stage.

you move on... but you never forget the first... the guitar that you grew on, that you learned on...that guitar that was, for a while, your best friend.

the other guitar in the painting i got in a trade i made. it was originally a red guitar--- which i completely stripped off... i was going to paint it but i decided to just leave it the way it was. the last time i played it was in college. when i look at that guitar, i smile. remembering the times i played really bad metallica covers in my friends garage...stopping mid song because we didn't know how the rest of it went. as i remember, we only knew one whole song completely through... that didn't really matter though...we had no cares and big dreams.

i miss playing music. a lot.

you may or may not have noticed the link to the other project i'm currently subjecting to myself-- the year in paint.

when i set out to do this last year, my wife thought i was completely insane (a feeling that is never really fully away from her). but, frank being frank i had to do it. a painting a week--- i could do that--- many artists do a painting a day... how hard could it be?

like anything else in life, there are good days and bad days. some weeks the brush just moves under it's own power and i OWN the subject. other weeks i want to crawl up in a ball and sit in a dark corner with a grey's anatomy dvd.

but we do what we do because we love what we do. good, bad or indifferent.

i'm in the homestretch with this project. after this week i'll only have 12 left to do---which will take me to the end of may. a complete showing of the pieces, at a local art gallery, will follow in august.

i have to admit, i will miss doing a painting every week. so i'm not going to stop.

wait 'till you see what i do next!

so... i live in central new york. currently, we are getting all the snow that mother nature has ever made with an additional 10 feet.

whatever happened to global warming?