I ran across this email I previously sent to a certain someone. Let’s say it was... um... I don’t know. Oh, let’s say it was, hmmmm.... Oh let’s just say it was my sister. This person, who may or may not be a sister of mine, is not, shall we say, extremely tech-savvy. As a matter of fact, this person, who may or may not be a sister of mine, is not tech-savvy at all. I remember when this person had to call her boyfriend over to plug in her DVD player. This is when she bought it, a few years ago, when her Betamax machine finally died. (“I don’t need a DVD player,” she had said for years,”I have a Betamax machine.”
Anyway, this person, who may or may not be a sister of mine, had emailed me a few years ago asking if I had ever heard of such a thing as “a DVD that can RECORD a TV show like the VHS tapes do.” Apparently, she had never heard of such a thing. She had also asked me if she could still find a VHS rewinder anywhere, since hers broke and Wal-Mart told her they were obsolete. She ended her email with a rant about how the greedy powers that be were going to make all VHS-related items obsolete for the sole purpose of making her world a living hell. That might have been a joke. Sometimes it’s kind of hard to tell with this person, who may or may not be a sister of mine.
Anyway, this is my reply to this person, who may or may not be a sister of mine....
“Dear xxxx xxxxx,
Thank you for your inquiry as to the future of mankind. I must say, you certainly have some interesting ideas about the corporate electronics world and the End of Times, where what’s left of mankind suffers eternally in an everlasting and unquenchable lake of fire, which will emphasize the eternal character of retribution of the lost! Ouch!
Believe it or not, there are fancy technical gadgets that you can buy and bring into your own home that actually record onto a DVD! “You’re kidding!” you might say. “Verily, I hath no idea!” you might reply, to which I would say “Why are you talking like that?” Yes, it’s been only in the last, oh, fifteen years or so that modern technology has enabled us to actually record onto a small, plastic disk known as a DVD! “You’re kidding!” you might say. “No, seriously. The last fifteen years” I would reply, wondering if you’ve actually been out of your room since 1998. Yes, you can buy from a great quantity of choices of different brands of recordable DVD machines, starting from under $100. “You’re kidding!” I hear you say. To which I might reply “Stop saying that!” I would caution though: all electronics work pretty much the same. The only real difference is some features on certain machines. But what you are really paying for is the quality in the components (a $200 DVD recorder will last longer than a $100 DVD recorder). Generally speaking.
As to your inquiry of the Wal-Mart 13-year-old cashier/105 year old greeter, no, you still can actually buy quite a few different VHS rewinders, many from 15 or 20 dollars! You can check out on line (that’s using the computer-thingy-type thing that you’re looking at RIGHT NOW!!) for good prices at Best Buy or Fry’s or some such.
Thank you again for your interest in out-dated technology, and come back to this web site in a couple of weeks, where we will try to explain the principle of fire and how it is our friend.”
That’s all. No final comments. I was just kind of proud of that email.
The following is the last “serious” drawing that I did, in 1991. I have a lot of excuses for that. To do my best work I had to have no distractions, physical or mental, which was a place hard to come by. Also, the band was playing a lot at that time, and my hands would get beat up from constant pounding on the keyboards; my drawing hand would hurt and go numb frequently. But I recently got a Wacom tablet, and, when I find time, I really want to get back into drawing.
I never worked in color. I’ve never bothered to study it, and instead cultivated a style of drawing in pencil only. I’ve also never bothered to work in ink. I should do that. This particular drawing is of my beautiful friend Denise, from a photograph taken by her equally beautiful sister Terri. I thought I would get a cotton fiber paper to draw it on, which I felt might help with the rendition of the cotton dress, but found that it looked better if I drew every thread by hand. I used 4 or 5 different pencil leads for this, from a 3H to a 6B. I don’t really have as much to say about drawing as I do about writing music. I just draw what I see, and try to match the reality as best as I can. The technique that I ended up with is from years of trying different things, and then keeping those techniques that worked. Again, like with being a musician, good work takes time. Incidentally, I remember telling Denise that I really admired her painting style (she’s an amazing artist!) and felt that I didn’t really have a style. She was the one who pointed out that my style of attempted realism conveys my personality just as much as her more “stylized” style does. That made me feel more like a real artist.