Another one

Now that I got this over with, next up is wedding invitations.



Which is 100% inspired by these covers:

Some Sketches and Photos

Since I been down here, here's some stuff. A few sketches, quickly colored.

Well, well, well

Looks like I haven't made a post in over a year. Might be because nothing really happened last year. Just smooth sailin' all around.
Which brings us to right now, which is not so smooth. I'm currently in New Orleans, been here for a month and half and have, with the charity of good friends, been living freely and burning my money away on nothing but beer, good food, and adventure. Mardi Gras was a mess, by the time Fat Tuesday rolled around I was speaking monosyllabically as in:
Larence: "What do you want to do tonight?"
Me: "FUN."
Lawrence: "How you feeling?"
Me: "GREAT."
Sometimes delving into strange, antediluvian remembrances of weird, esoteric Lovecraft verses best left unquoted.
And at one point was so foggy I panicked at a bar yelling "Where's my bike? I lost my bike!" Only to find upon leaving that I locked it not two posts beyond the doors of Kajun's Pub and karaoke lounge. But the parades were great, I've met a lot of people, some of them actually interesting, caught a lot of useless shit thrown from men and women in masks that I will probably throw away, spent a lot of time in the Tree House, spent every night at Kajun's, lost my voice, got sick, restored my voice, got better. Then realized I hadn't heard from my boss in two weeks.
So the job I came down here to do no longer exists. The man doesn't answer his phone and his website is down. Gone like the shitty wind. Out of an asshole. But! I got one more month or so here and plenty more to do. I just got a job making pizzas (HELL YES) but its remarkably strict as far as New Orleans establishments go, so I think I might look for something a little more lenient, like where they let you drink at work like every other place here. Because I won't be able to see those little graces unless I decide to move back here. And that won't be unless I find an actually good job here. And so on, and so forth.
In other news, I've been sketching a bit. I'll post something tomorrow. My roommate Ava is teaching me piano, I've had one lesson. I visited the New Orleans Museum of Art with her the other day. It was alright I guess. Although there is this one spot on the second floor, where if you look across the atrium to the room beyond the angle and lighting are perfect so that this portrait just makes it seem like there's a giant lady waiting for you. It's far enough away that it gets blurry and looks real. SO REAL.
Oh yeah, I went to SXSW, but it was kind of a frenzy and I wound up not being able to see a lot of the bands I would have liked to like Gayngs or Anamanaguchi, but I did see a face-off between Pteradactyl and Parts & Labor which was excellent. With dollar High Lifes (High Lives?). Which was breakfast. Man Man were ok, as were the Strokes, but it was just good to see them. At one point we crawled over a fence with barbed wire and onto someone's roof so we could see MSTRKRFT after we got turned down at the door. We couldn't see them and had to run away when we saw shadows in the yard below because it was, you know, illegal. I was really happy that I remembered the layout of Austin after not visiting for three years. Drove by my old house, went to the donut shop where you ask for one and they give you five and charge you less than a dollar. Saw the bats. Swam in the Springs. Hung out in a millionaire's house. It was good.
So that's it for now. More tomorrow, hopefully updates on the reg.

Been busy

Last few months have been pretty excellent. Landed a decent job, had a solo show at a cafe (oh my!) and moved twice, first to Lynn, then back to the Motherland, JP. The band is still going alright, but I broke two drumheads the other day because our practice space was an abandoned apartment with no heat. I'm going to get prints made of my new work soon, but I've decided to post some drawings since I haven't done that and I don't feel like updating the website until I get my massive scans done. Big update to that bitch soon, plus a few more project pages.

Pet List

So there's been a lot of discussion lately as to the exact amount of pets to have come and gone in the Giuffre household throughout the years. So here's a chronological list as best as I can remember:

1980's
Merlin & Monroe - before my time, but I've heard about them
Sherlock - Horrifying dog who destroyed fences, got hit by many cars and refused to die
Lightning - Cat who in her waining years scared builders shitless
A couple rabbits - There's debate as to who actually left the hutch open

1990's
Patches - Annie's cat that ran away (ha)
Tiger - Adam's cat
Stripe - My cat who was almost always pregnant
Bigfoot - One of Stripe's kittens who stayed with mom during her recovery from surgery, then stayed with us until last year. Had seven toes and brain damage.
Five - The last remaining cat of the Old pack, found in a dumpster in Westfield by Annie
Peanut - Annie's cat. Doesn't really count, but she lived here for a while
Jack - The wonderful dog who when we were both 14 (he in dog years) we were the same height and weight (5'3", 110 lbs)

2000's (the age of strays)
Ahab - Real name Oscar, moved from down the street to here, then to my house in Mission Hill, then back home
Buster Brown - Walked into mom and dad's window and refused to leave, lived with me in JP for a few months where he was named by my roommate Marion
Puerto Rico - The stray who hung around my house in Austin
Dave - True name still undecided, found by Annie in Somerville. I call him Leto II after the Emperor of the Universe in Dune.

Grand total of my 25 year stay at this house is 12 cats, 2 dogs, plus one Puerto Rico. I have a vague memory of there being fish at one point and Lightning knocking the bowl over and eating them. Annie still has Peanut in San Fransisco, Adam's thinking about getting a dog, and Five, Buster Brown, and Dave still live here. I'm moving in a week to a house with two cats so those three are staying here.

I'm saving the good stuff. But you can have these.

So I guess I'll write a little on what's been going on. Things are progressing wonderfully with the Auntie Lee project, its just a matter of time. In the meanwhile I've been successfully scoring great interviews for the past few weeks. Still no bites and I'm waiting to hear from this one place on Friday, which would be not only a decent job but actually exciting and stimulating and could put me in a direction I've been meaning to lean myself. I had a great interview at a Candy Factory last Sunday and although the interview went well, when I went in to work the next day, the inner turmoil of a Father-Son operation presented itself. I never like when you have two bosses and neither can agree and both will occasionally come in to where you're working and tell you to work in a manner that completely negtates what the previous one had said, rising to the contradictory crescendo of me not getting hired. Tim raised the cute question of "Do you think anyone could have done that job?"

Saturday was lovely. Rolled into JP around the 3, got coffees at Miami Restaurant, which I'm convinced is the best and cheapest coffee in Boston or anywhere near it. Hung out with Keanne for a while then went over to Tim's and beat him at the version of dominoes Matt learned from the Domicans at his work. Then Tim beat me by not too much in the version his grandfather tought him. I think its the Cuban. After that we went to Same Old Place which is no longer the same old place because it now serves wicked cheap beer. We got pitchers and slices and they told us if we were to drink we'd have to do so in the back room which as it turned out was occupied with a six year old's birthday party. So we drank with a bunch of six year olds and were loud and vulgar and saw a Cabbage Patch Kid sticking ass-end out of a trash can. The party wrapped up and the moms assured us that if the kids had any more sugar they'd never go to sleep, so they gave us the rest of the birthday cake. We brought it home, ate it and played Mario Kart. We then went over to Chico's and found that we were the first to arrive at his basement show party. Chico's parties are usually really fun, but this one was totally busted. No one there, awful bands that I couldn't pretend to be interested in and a pay bar in the basement. We lost Harry and sang and drank all the way back to Tim's to get my car so we could go to All Asia where Aslhey was working the bar and could give us free drinks.

By the time we actually got to All Asia there was a line out front, I couldn't find parking, and I'd lost my voice singing along to Nick Cave so I just kicked Haggerty and Tim out of the car and went over to Amanda's. Woke up the next day to Karen christening me yet another nickname: Mini Gun. This is derived from a few weeks ago when I was talking about my noise band BCMG and said that rather than standing for Brian.Calderelli.Matthew.Giuffre, it stood for Big Cold Mini Gun. We drove to Swampscott, got scones and coffees, sat on a bench and looked at dogs and the ocean. At one point a jogging lady stopped to stretch and aimed her butt right at us, after which some wierdo said "Now I'm gonna stretch just like that" then gave us a bunch of seaglass in an oyster shell wrapped in painter's tape. "I'm saving the good stuff," he said. "But you can have these."

I then went over JD's and rearranged the shit out of his apartment and helped his downstairs neighbor move a washer and dryer from the basement to his second floor apt. He gave us ten bucks so we went to Kappy's and got some nice beer: Weihenstephaner Weissbeer Dark and Unibroue Seigneuriale (did I have to do a google search for spelling on those? Yes). We're waiting until another round of Resident Evil to crack them open.

So I've been keeping busy. I've finished four paintings since the new year, got a call from a freelance agency today, saw Watchmen and was pleased, started a band with two more hypothetical bands in the mix, and have just been doing well. The final piece is landing a job. Tomorrow I begin learning Javascript in an effort to learn ActionScript. And hopefully Friday I'm in love.

So I now know the basics of PHP and this shit is mad boring. Its the type of stuff that made me disinterested in web design in the first place. Oh well. Its good to know. I guess I'll move on to Java now. I'm going to start recording the jam seshes and maybe set up a youtube channel for it. We'll see.