Here's that ever present link to our auctions...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
Jo was in an odd mood this week. She tore into her pile of hand-drawn patterns, and cast countless numbers of them into the recycling bin, where there were great cries and gnashing of teeth. But not to worry... with a pencil and scissors in hand, she repopulated our little world within a few hours. And on the seventh day, she watched "House." I guess we're all acting a little odd this week. I tried to push our son down a hill in a Rubbermaid container. That's not normal behavior for me... but normally there isn't any snow on the ground. Yes, we've had a blanket of the white stuff over our coastal town for days now. The kids had a snow day off from school on Thursday. We stayed at home (fearing the icy roads) and ate from the back of our cupboard. Mmmm, Top Ramen noodles and tuna fish.
Lastly... a bit of news for those of you that have been following these weird little newsletters for a while. Our daughter got her bass guitar back! You may remember, it was stolen from her school's band room a while back. Well, the police found it while investigating a troubled youth for some other mess that he had gotten himself into. He didn't even peel the stickers off of the case, so it's back home with us now looking exactly as it did when it left. I'm headed to the hardware store now to get a lock and chain so we can secure it to the bust of Mozart in her classroom.
-Dylan
Here's what us weirdoes have been working on all week...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
If any of you ever decide to become self employed artists, or anything else on the fringe of society, you'll notice that the world will look at you differently (if you're lucky)...and look at you a whole lot less (if you're even luckier.) To me, this has some enormous benefits. Many of you may remember that emergency room bill I got for $1,144... which bought me a band-aid and directions to the door. I applied for financial assistance, as a humble artist, and was forgiven the entire amount. You see, when you're an artist, you don't have to do much convincing to anyone that you're poor... not the IRS...or apparently the hospital. But just to be sure, I filled out the paperwork with a burnt stick, being too poor to own a pen.
Another group that turns its back (thankfully) on us artists are the judges and lawyers that are charged with selecting juries. I've had jury duty all month, and so far no one wants me. You say "self employed artist" and they expect you to pull out a sculpture made of your toe nails and Elmer's glue. This one guy there had been selected for a jury every time he went to the courthouse...and once when he was just walking past it. His problem was that he looked like your Average Joe Citizen. When they see me coming, they usually glance down to see if I'm wearing leg irons. And that, my friends, is just the type of reception I enjoy.
-Dylan
Here's what we've been doing since the last time we saw you...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
Whenever we're short on ideas about what to make, we just look around our house. And when we "look around the house", we're usually struck first with the realization that none of us seem capable of putting our shoes in one place. But once they are all collected and piled into the shoe basket by the front door, the ideas will normally just jump out at us. I was looking at this picture on our refrigerator that Jo took of her cousin. He's an artist too.
As I was heating up one of my famous "ghetto wraps" in the microwave, I looked up on the wall and saw this framed pencil drawing that Jo did in college. It's called "Warped Wood."
-Dylan
Nice to see you.
Did you do something different with your hair?
Wanna to see some art my wife and I made????
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
We've gotten a lot of positive feedback this past week about our American Gothic set. But you should know that we haven't always hit our mark so successfully. After looking at some of our early work, I'm surprised that we didn't receive more questions like, "Would this piece provide adequate heat if I were to throw it into my fireplace?" So I would like to invite you now to join me in a brief tour of CartBeforeTheHorse's Shelf of Shame. On the tippy-top shelf in our craft room, pushed all the way to the back, you might find something like this. (Click the link below to view picture.)
This next one isn't quite as hideous, but I'm surprised we were never sued for selling similar pieces as "dolls."
This last example was actually a Christmas present for Jo in 2004. It's a Dylan doll, complete with an iron-on photo face and a Rickenbacker guitar. Jo kept this in our room for a while out of politeness, but it's a bit creepy once the sun goes down.
-Dylan
Here's what we have listed now, and there's more to come on Tuesday...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
Our son is a walking wound. You may remember that he had to sit out much of baseball season because of a broken arm. Now he has broken his foot just two games into basketball season. His timing for injuries is amazing. When we first moved into town, he gave himself a black eye the day before the first day of school by throwing a baseball straight up and loosing sight of it as the sun was setting. His teachers and principal must have asked him 100 times that day how it happened, to see if his story would change. But there's no story to tell about the foot. He has no idea when it happened. One day it was fine, the next day he couldn't walk on it. Jo and I weren't even sure if it was worth going to the doctor over. Jo told me later that he looked "vindicated" when the doctor came back in with the x-rays and said that it was broken. Our son asked her, "Did you just learn that word, or something? You've used it like three times today."
That boy is a chip off the old block though. I look at my growing collection of scars from carving knives, barbed wire fences, broken glass, rusty nails...and on and on. They're like scattered notches carved onto my body to mark the passing years. One or two of them have some decent stories attached to them as well, so they were all worth getting.
-Dylan
Here's what we have listed now, and there's more to come on Tuesday...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
'Tis a miracle! Our son has thrown his stylish, Velcro laden, blue medical boot aside and rejoined his team on the basketball court. This is truly either a house of miraculous healing, or the hairline fracture on the x-ray was in fact a hair...possibly the last one the doctor could afford to lose. Whatever the case may be, our boy is running, jumping, rebounding, and falling down in a game that resembles something closer to a bar fight at this age.
On a more serious note, one of our valued customers was kind enough to forward me a spoof email trying to sell her one of our dolls. It wasn't a very well executed scam since they claimed that the high bidder hadn't paid...even though the auction wasn't over yet. So if someone sends you an email offering to sell you our art, it's a scam. If you get a long, rambling email about nothing at all...that's our newsletter.
-The Real Dylan
Here's the link of wisdom and enlightenment. OK, maybe it just leads to our auctions on eBay.
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
We're slowly starting to give our daughter more and more slack in our parental ropes, but every once in awhile she gives them a tug to see if we're still holding on to the other end. We've been taking her to meet groups of her friends at movies and restaurants, but she wanted to go to the "secret beach" for a bonfire the other night. And she let me know that transportation wouldn't be a problem, since her friends (seniors) could come pick her little 14 year old freshman self up.
"Umm....no."
Man, did I get a 24 hour dose of the bottom lip, the cold shoulder, and the mumble tongue. Oh well. I found myself giving simple math lessons. "14 is not 16, and 16 is not 18." It's hard to argue with numbers. OK, that's our newsletter for the night. Time for all of you to get on up to bed. Don't make me tell you twice. Sorry, I got stuck in parental mode.
-Dylan
Here's what we've got for ya this week...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
Since we live out in the sticks, we've got one of those mailboxes that's out by the main road. I guess this saves our mail carrier from having to turn down our dead end road and get chased by territorial dogs and roosters. But this leaves our mailbox sort of vulnerable to thieves, since it's not really in view from anyone's house. I bought a locking mailbox about a year ago after our Netflix movies were disappearing, but it wasn't enough. The other day I found the locking mechanism in pieces on the ground, and our junk mail shoved back into the box with disappointment. A far as I know, they didn't get anything of value. My "Jim Neighbors Sings" box set had thankfully arrived the day before. When I was a kid, I used to make pitfalls, flamethrowers, catapults, and a long list of other things that could have maimed me for life. So when I saw that my mailbox was being looted, my first thought was of setting a booby trap of some kind. Luckily, I came to my senses before all of the bamboo spears were sharpened. I'm not a lawyer, but it occurred to me that there may be some laws against booby trapping a mailbox. Just a wild guess.
-Dylan
Here's that familiar link to our auctions. We didn't get much finished to list today, but there will be more hand-painted items listed on Tuesday.
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
Jo and I just rolled back into town weary from the road. I feel like I'm still going 70 mph and dodging U-Haul trucks driven by first time truck drivers. We were up in the Seattle area, so it's safe to assume that we saw a bit of rain on our trip. There's some sort of mysterious leak in our car that I can't find, so a puddle forms by the driver's feet during heavy rains. My right pant leg sat in this puddle the whole way and slowly soaked up more and more of the puddle. When we'd get out at rest stops, my right leg was a good 5 pounds heavier than my left, giving me an awkward limp. I tried to draw attention away from my limp by talking like a pirate, but was unsuccessful. Perhaps if I bought a parrot...
Don't bother trying to follow my reasoning. Just trust me.
-Dylan
Here's what we have listed this week...
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
Jo and I are not gamblers. We don't even bother with lottery tickets. But there was a contest to win a 2 million dollar dream home sponsored by HGTV that we took the time to enter each day for a month. It was free and all you had to do was click a button on their website each day, so why not? Today is the day that they are announcing the winner, so we've been joking with each other that we need to straighten up the house for when the TV cameras show up at the door to tape us screaming and carrying on.
I was upstairs when Jo announced that there was a limo pulling into our driveway...and she wasn't kidding. I thought, "It must just be some Twisted Sister limo that's lost its way."
I'll take a moment to explain...
I used to work as a bellman at a resort in the Disney World area, so I have seen my fair share of limos come and go... and they are not all created equal. A "Twisted Sister" limo is what we called a limo that has its radiator filled each morning with a garden hose. It's a beat up, boxy white limo that probably began its career in the 80's transporting seniors to their proms, with Flock of Seagulls music drifting out of the gymnasium doors. You could also picture Dee Snider from Twisted Sister writhing on the car's hood in one of those early MTV videos...thus giving it its name. But this was not one of those beasts entering our driveway. This was a black bling-mobile that the President could step out of. Jo sent our son out with the dog to casually ask the driver if he was lost. Our boy came back to report that he was just waiting. Now we were waiting.
Then we saw our neighbors, whose driveway is too steep for any type of limo to climb, come down and get into the car and head off...taking our excitement with them.
We may not own a 2 million dollar dream home, but we are living the dream life...and that's enough for us.
-Dylan
