Week # 111 Good evening. Your table is ready. Here’s a menu. Hope you all had a merry Kringle! (works best in a Liverpudlian accent) Our kids got us up at 5:30 on Christmas morning to open presents. The last time I was awake at 5:30 AM, I was about to go to bed after a long day. Rarely do I see 5:30 AM as a starting point. The weather this time of year is pretty dreary on the Oregon coast. The last time I saw the sun it was on the nature channel. The kids tried to go for a walk today, but the sky opened up and pelted them with hail. Since we’re cooped up inside anyway, the kids and I have been on a “Lost” marathon with all seven DVDs from blockbuster. When I’m not watching “Lost”, I just wander around the house in my slippers saying, “Previously on Lost…” These repetitive catch phrases of mine drive Jo crazy. This new phrase is replacing “Holy smokes, my name is holy smokes.” I don’t even know what that means or why I say it, but it’s nothing a round of electroshock therapy couldn’t cure, if Jo decides to go that route. -Dylan Week # 112 Yellow, Ears vat tattoo bus maid… Sorry, I meant “Hello, here’s what the two of us made.” Sometimes I type with an accent. I had to force myself to stop what I was doing to write this newsletter. I’m knee high in editing another video to share with you. This one features some of my old junk art that’s been laying around the house, and a song off my first album. It also features “the singing eye.” I’d explain what that was, but you wouldn’t believe me. You’ll just have to wait, I suppose. The door handle came off our car today. Jo begged me not to try and fix it myself, but it just looked like such an easy job. Jo heard on the radio program “Car Talk” that your average Joe shouldn’t try to remove a door panel, since it’s so hard to get it back in place. But what do the experts know, right? My father-in-law was helping me. We got it down to one bolt that we couldn’t figure out how to remove. If it were up to us, we’d have just used the sawzall to get to the problem, or rigged up a string to pull the inside handle from the outside from now on. But I have to keep my Jo Jo’s standards in mind when I work on things, so I admitted defeat and put it back in order for the local mechanic. I’d even be fine with going in the window like the Duke boys. It could be the thing that set us apart from the other families in the neighborhood. And that’s good, right? -Dylan Week # 113 Hello. Hello? Hello??? Dog, I can’t hear nobody. Try that the next time a telephone solicitor calls. It works every time. Well, half the time anyway. The other half, they just call back. Oh, and click the link above for the art. That does work every time. I finished another video to share with you. This one features my singing eye. I really don’t know what I was thinking. The singing eye is something I’ve caught myself doing in the mirror while listening to music. What can I say? When you live out in the sticks and only have basic cable, you have to entertain yourself. Here’s the link to the video. Riptides And if you’ve missed the other videos, here’s where they all live on YouTube. Video Gallery Henceforth, this will be my philosophy concerning music, videos, art, and other creative endeavors… I can’t create anything perfect. Nothing comes out looking or sounding just how I had it in my head. But that’s OK. I’m going to attempt to actually do (not just dream of) more of the things that appear as shiny light bulbs above my curly head. And if there is a perfect moment or two in there, then it’s worthwhile. I’d rather have a collection of imperfect realities than a pile of perfect ideas. -Dylan Week # 114 Good morning. What time is it? Here’s the link to our art… Jo and I had a hard time staying awake long enough to work this week. There is something really sleepy about our little house, especially in the winter when the sun goes into hiding. We finally decided that it was the lack of sunlight that was getting to us, so we went to the hardware store and bought all the natural light bulbs we could get our hands on. The clerk eyed us suspiciously, imagining giant harvests of pot growing in every room of our house. Sorry to disappoint, but we’re just trying to grow a little art here…for personal use, of course. Now that most of the house has this full spectrum glow to it, our bedroom, with its traditional light bulbs, has a sickly yellow glow in contrast. I feel like I’m entering a bomb shelter every time I go in there. In other news, our daughter has landed a job at the historic Bijou movie theatre. It’s one of the last silver screen theatres around, complete with an old organ up front for the silent movies. She begged us to let her interview for the job. I told her, “I used to work at a movie theatre when I was a teenager…and a year later I had a kid.” So if I spot a guy working with her that shows off by balancing a broom on his foot, she’ll have to quit. -Dylan Week # 115 Hello, friends. Here’s the art, as promised. . . Not much to report this week. We played charades last night. We didn’t mean to, but our waitress’s Japanese accent was so thick that she gave up speaking and just starting acting things out. “Two words. . .first word. . .stab???. . .wait, fried!!! Second word. . .” This went on for a while. The weather is still keeping us indoors. To entertain myself, I’ve been watching YouTube more than TV these days. If you can stomach it, the videos taken by our soldiers in Iraq are a lot more honest than what’s on the news. And if you can’t stand to look and would rather have a good laugh, search for “Flight of the Conchords” or “Mystery Science Theater 3000” on YouTube. That’s where I go for a laugh, anyway. Jo is at the Laundromat right now. We have a washer and dryer, but she felt that doing ALL of the laundry at once in several machines would be more efficient. Personally, I’d rather spread the folding out throughout the day than fold clothes for an hour straight. Didn’t I tell you there was not much to report? Did I lie? -Dylan Week # 116 How was your Groundhog’s Day? Mine too! Here’s the art. Click away. Our daughter has started her job at the movie theatre. I can just picture her behind the concession stand turning white as a ghost every time the phone rings. Emails and MySpace have made her a bit phone shy. It’s a different generation, to be sure. When I was a kid, we didn’t have emails and instant messages. We had walkie talkies and flare guns. And we actually laughed out loud, none of this lol business. I’m getting older and more crotchety with every line I write. I better change the subject before I chase invisible kids off my lawn. I’ve already bought Jo’s birthday present. It’s hidden in the craft room, so don’t mention it if you run into her and the grocery store. I haven’t gotten her anything yet for Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is a rip off for men. Just look at the customary gifts: flowers, heart-shaped candy. . .chick stuff! Why can’t it be bayonets, or hoagies? Jo did put a subway sub in my Christmas stocking one year. Now if I don’t see oil and vinegar dripping from my stocking, it’s just not Christmas. -Dylan Week # 117 Hello, voters. Hope you all had a Super Tuesday! Here’s the art: Only ten more days until Jo’s 35th birthday! Man, she’s old! I won’t turn 35 until April, which is years away according to my hand-made calendar. We’re heading to the Portland area on Friday to celebrate with some friends. On the list of sites to be seen: Ikea (to look at furniture we’re not going to buy), a craft museum (to look at stuff we could make ourselves), The Guitar Center (for the kids to drool over guitars), and Target. Yes, we’ve been out in the boondocks so long that a trip to Target is considered a celebratory outing. Who knows? I may even put on my goin’ to town pants. Seeing how excited the rest of us got over the season premier of “Lost”, Jo has decided to catch up with us and watch the first three seasons in one giant marathon. My favorite game is giving away what happens in seemingly innocent ways. “Oh, I forgot all about that guy.” “Great, now I know he dies!” “Oh, sorry.” Spoiler Man strikes again! -Dylan Week # 118 One Two You know what to do We’re back from our Portland trip celebrating Jo’s birthday season. The parameters of our celebration are growing. It went from a birthday, to a birthday week, to a birthday season. We had an excellent time on our trip. We took the back highways there and back because Jo doesn’t like the interstate. Whenever an interstate is necessary, she usually tries to convince herself that she’s asleep under her hat. The winding highways through the farmlands of Oregon are more relaxing and conducive to conversation anyway. The main topic on our drive was how to build a giant flower that could swallow a teenager. Our daughter’s drama class is putting on “Little Shop of Horrors” in a few months, and we’ve been recruited to build the carnivorous plant. I think that the school’s request that our prop not do any real damage to the actors is unreasonable. Where’s the realism? -Dylan Week # 119 Happy Birthday!!!. . .eventually!!! I got you a link to celebrate. Here it is. . . Jo finally had her birthday this week. Now that it’s over, maybe I’ll get a turn controlling the remote. No more, “It’s MY birthday!” For her birthday party, I made shrimp, spareribs, and chicken wings. It was like Noah’s Ark grilled to perfection. Jo and I joined the gym this week, in an effort to work off some of that delicious ark cargo. You have to be careful your first day at the gym. You get on a machine and say, “Man, this is easy.” But what you don’t know is that the machine is designed to work muscles that you didn’t even know you had. But not to worry. You’ll be fully aware of those muscles the next day. -Dylan Week # 120 Hello, fellow travelers! Here’s the link to the art. Click it or ticket. Jo and I have been toying for some time now with the idea of me writing and her illustrating a children’s book. We were talking the other day about how hard it is to actually get published now, since the market is flooded with competition. Every has-been actor from Hollywood to New York has a children’s book in the works these days. Then just when we had nearly talked ourselves out of it, Jo got an email from a fan in France saying that we should consider writing a children’s book. A sign from out of the blue! I actually did write one many years ago that Jo illustrated. We were both about 20 years old at the time. I was in a college class studying to be an elementary school teacher, and the assignment was to write a kid’s book. The story I wrote was called “The Traveler.” So I’ve pulled the book out of the darkness of our giant wooden trunk and posted it online to share with you. Just click on the link below to view it. THE TRAVELER Jo is REALLY embarrassed by the illustrations, since this is before she had any art schooling. Poor baby. She’s planning on redoing the illustrations, and I’ll probably tweak the story. Maybe I’ll make the traveler a vampire mouse with a taste for absinthe. Like I said, just some minor tweaking. Another idea we have is for a book of silly poetry for kids, since I seem to have a knack for rhymes. For example, “bee” rhymes with “me.” You see how good I am at that? And that was off the top of my head. -Dylan