[...] edited by: Scott White,
Hampton Roads Editor
The sink in my bathroom has faucet handles that turn differently from the other faucets. This has caused me to think about turning faucets instead of just turning them. So now when I'm, say, in an edit facility in Richmond, I'll hesitate before turning a [...]
This began as a photo of yrs truly, viciously manipulated to resemble a mad scientist or maybe one of those superior beings from distant planets who periodically come to warn us to change our ways or we'll be instantly annihilated by a death ray much' [...]
Two fellow Thanksgiving trough-gorgers. But while the rest of us sat around in a sated stupor, staring vacantly and trying not to fart, Bindi ran around the house in a frenzy and jumped on people's laps, thus working off the gargantuan piles of globular mush that [...]
The other day a friend of mine whom you'd recognize in a minute if I told you his first name, Chris, referred to a popular quiz show on NPR as "Wait, Wait, Don't Ask Me." Wait, Wait, Don't Ask Me! Ah ha ha ha ha. Normally,' [...]
Plate of swiss chard sautéed in olive oil with a dozen cloves of garlic, minced. Plate of spaghetti all'amatriciana. Bottle of house red. Heaven.
' [...]
This is how I draw when my blood sugar's low. Sometimes I let it get low for the express purpose of being able to draw like this. Not often, though, since lowering your blood sugar requires not eating, a practice which I'm opposed to on moral grounds.' [...]
View larger here (you know you want to.)
What we have here is a kaleidoscopey image of my face made with Pixel Bender, a Photoshop CS4 add-on available from Adobe Labs. Pretty cool, huh? This is what I do with my spare time instead of reading to [...]
According to Politico, the Republican National Committee's current health plan covers abortions and end-of-life counseling (that's "death panels" to you Palin fans.) Rank hypocrisy is common among politicians of all persuasions, but even you rightie-whities will have to admit this one's particularly rank.
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Few things are as stirring as observing the lord of the manor putting his adoring and well-trained dog through its paces. They step out the door on a crisp autumn day and the master confidently barks "Scout! Heel!" But alas, Scout is already out of earshot, a [...]
This is from back in Two thousand ought six, when Niff & Sutter were still running their Blind Contour Fridays. Ah, good times. Anyways, it's a Thanksgiving-themed drawing, so there you go. I've never been one to enumerate the things I'm thankful for, and I'm not' [...]
There's a limited repertoire of behaviors and postures in coffee shops. I yearn for someone to come in with a set of bagpipes or to break out in a frenzy of nude tap-dancing, but no. People come charging up to the door all bubbly and idiosyncratic, [...]
It never ceases to amaze me how much effort goes into the making of a small snippet of film. That's not to imply that I go around in a state of amazement all day, bumping into walls and whatnot. So I guess it does cease [...]
That guy on the right, who looks like he's in the process of digesting a chipmunk? That's actually a ponytail soul patch, the first I've ever seen. Another crew member had a fastidiously-tended moustache just like Hercule Poirot's, although believe me, you wouldn't mistake this guy for' [...]
View larger. View larder. View Lardner. View lager.
View Sarah Palin (for you Republicans.)
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You gotta love 'em. Well, no you don't. You don't have to love them at all. In their headlong frenzy to trash everything Obama, they've now got their Garments in a stinky twist over the coming trial of Sheik What's-his-face in New York. We're [...]
This tree was split during the recent nor'easter, thoughtfully providing me with a sketching opportunity. An opportunity to practice with ArtRage, and an opportunity to lower the temperature of my brain pan, which is invariably steaming like a head of cabbage after two hours of watching them' [...]
It's been a while since I've been on one of these, but not much has changed. Standing out in the early morning chill, trying to keep warm, trying to shake off too much food and drink from the night before. Long stretches of inactivity,' [...]
No, no, not anger management training, you charmingly silly people. I refer to ArtRage the painting software. It's annoying that you would think otherwise. In fact, it's beyond annoying. It makes me see red. Or more like an Alizarin Crimson. The elderly gent, by the way, is [...]
Less than tragic, perhaps. Maybe more like poignant. I believe that when we're invaded by aliens, they'll look like this. Cutting great swaths across the country, swallowing up our garbage. Or us, depending on their sense of humor.
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Where the hell was Pat Robertson this week? For you non-Hampton Roadsters, he has in the past claimed responsibility for praying away storms that were bearing down on us. This year he must have used up his quota of supplications getting his protegé elected governor, because he [...]
Last night Jon Stewart caught Sean Hannity faking crowd footage in a story about some right-wing mob gathering or other, and Fox advertised a response by Hannity tonight, so like a fool I sat through the whole hour waiting to see how he could possibly refute Stewart's' [...]
Yesterday I received this lovely gift from a good friend--in honor of Veterans Day, I'm thinking. You can't put a price on good friends, can you? On their heads or anywhere else. What I like about this packaging design is its earnestness in hammering home the [...]
I'm listening to a talk show on the radio that just posed the question "What do you do when a cat sneezes on you?" I was about to jettison that little collection of nerve pulses from my memory bank when I heard Bernice sneeze. I turned around' [...]
I've been biting my tongue about developments on the healthcare front and the predictable responses to those developments, in an attempt to keep this blog from becoming a bitter rantfest. God knows we've got plenty of those around already. But it's so hard to spin silly [...]
Every few years I give piano jazz another chance. I have friends whose cheerleading for this vile branch of popular music is relentless, and the feeling that I'm missing out on something slowly builds and needs release every so often by the application of a brutal' [...]
This is a bona fide 2009 storefront in NoBra (North of Brambleton, a neglected but visually rich little commercial stretch of Granby Street (anchor store: Bob's Gun Shop.))
' [...]
This particular ancestor appears to have a greatly elongated right arm. I could hazard a guess as to how that happened: excessive churning of yak butter as a teenager. Why, what were you thinking?
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Pud is my favorite thing to do. And it's your least favorite. Do you perceive a connection there? Because I don't.
If you insist, you can view larger right here.
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I can't imagine political campaign seasons getting any worse, but every year they do. They're like the Bizarro Olympics. And it's one area where Republicans and Democrats are equally heinous. There is absolutely no way you could tell from their campaigns alone which is the better candidate [...]
Celery
The spokeswoman of couples, Cindy Guagenti, offers a "No Comment" constant; on the voices.. Actress the Angelina Jolie has confirmed the relationships that are pregnant after that showed outside of its collision of the child to the 2008 Film Independent Spirit Awards in Santa.monica, California, the saturday. [...]
And he did, too. It was kind of scary. Like watching an amateur production of Godzilla. Kate's going to be sorry tonight, if you get my drift. And Brandy. And the neighbors.
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I don't believe in working lunches. I believe in eating lunches. One of the highest functions of the Lunch is precisely to excape from work, second only to the actual consumption of food. To be able to step away from whatever pointless piece of' [...]
I've always harbored a secret desire to be known as irrepressible. But I'm becoming resigned to consigning "irrepressible" to the dustbin of lively adjectives that will never be applied to me, such as "chirpy". Actually, I'm glad about that one. Apparently I am quite repressible, even' [...]
Before you Mom types, and you know who you are, start tsk-ing like a cricket glee club, I had just stopped in for a toficle, it being a hot day--well, for late October that is. No donuts for me, nosiree bob, none of those soft, warm, sweet [...]
If I were a giant multinational car maker, or even a small artisanal car maker, I would have second thoughts before naming my car a TRD, especially if it were one of those faux trucky things. And don't think I'm unaware that this is the second time [...]
No, I didn't have an accident. Didn't spill my white grape seltzer on it or cry on it or anything. Well, actually, I did cry on it, but not nearly enough to cause what you see before you. That was intentional. See, the ink from a Kohinoor [...]
I'm not a big fan of the kind of art that populates the festival circuit, but I like watching the artists and their followers. Especially at Stockley Gardens: at certain times and from certain angles, it looks like a hipsters' retirement community. Not necessarily an unpleasant resemblance, [...]
Clowns, being almost human, are susceptible to the elements just like the rest of us. And there were plenty of elements at Stockley Gardens yesterday. People huddled in parka'd, hooded clusters while artists sat glowering in the dim gray light. Okay, maybe it wasn't all that [...]
Some of you may jump to the conclusion that I have sold out to The Man and gone all corporate and whatnot. You may jump right back to your original positions, taking care that a cat hasn't planted itself where you formerly were, as cats are' [...]
Sometimes you pick up a pen and, in ten seconds, capture someone perfectly. Other times, you labor for an hour and miss them completely. It can be very humbling. But that's you, not me. I nail them every time out. Not literally, that would be wrong, I'm' [...]
This is a collection of old sketches of coffee people that I didn't draw well enough the first time around (I know! Hard to believe, isn't it?) that I redrew in Painter. So I'm still sitting right here on the porch, casting an admiring gaze on' [...]
You didn't believe me, did you? This is going to be the Porch Drawing blog. I believe I'm filling a long-neglected niche in sketchbloggery. I'm big on filling niches. Why, when I was younger, I could fill two niches in a single day.
' [...]
I don't really see any reason for venturing beyond my porch for sketching subjects. Everything I need is there: the drama, the pathos, the crocs, which are not mine at all. The crocs don't appear in this picture, by the way, having migrated to the other [...]
Sorry to be so tediously political these days, but it's so hard not to take the bait. Cheering in the offices of the Weekly Standard when Chicago, and by extension the United States, lost its bid for the 2016 Olympics! If there was a better example of [...]
In twenty years, this is going to be my death panel. I'd better have my shit together by then. I should be in pretty good shape physically. I will have been conscripted into a wind-farm turbine factory, I'm sure, and will have been subsisting on the [...]
Good God. So much of the talk was about Obama's trip to Copenhagen. The pointy heads' point: how could he go when there are so many pressing issues at home? As if he were out of the loop in such a remote village. As if' [...]
The patio or whatever you call it at San Antonio Sam's is a good place to waste time on a sultry afternoon, or a perky afternoon, for that matter. Yesterday wasn't really sultry, it was kind of cool. Internally sultry might be more accurate. Very humid' [...]
I love my porch. While I'm enthroned there, I am the king of Washington Park. The sweating hoi polloi scurry by, hither and thither, while I calmly and with raised eyebrow survey my holdings. I think I'll buy some traffic cones and, from time to [...]
While moving last week, I unearthed this piece of paper on which I had drawn, back in the mid-80's, a sketchy chronicle of a visit I had made to Wayne's sister's farm. I hope it goes with saying that I am as much at home' [...]
A tiny bit late today. Had to get Stephanopolous online. My sincerest apologies.
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Oh God, that mouth is so repellent. I can't stand to look at it. And yet, I brought it into this world. It's one of those whatchamacallits, conundrums. I never use conundrums, usually. Kind of irresponsible, I know. But I am nothing if not irresponsible.
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We here at Crack Skull Bob Laboratories now have a new base of operations, upstairs from the spider hole we had occupied for so long. The Teeny Hadron Collider (THC), small as it is, was growing too large for the old space. Just the other day, [...]
There sure seems to be a lot of waste in our industrial areas. Equipment left to rust and rot, huge tracts of land bespoiled and coated with rubble. Take a train up the industrial spine of the East Coast sometime. You pass giant parking lots of old [...]
To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun.
A time to weep and a time to wail,
A time to throw up and a time to be thrown up upon,
A time to kill and a time to pinch really hard in a [...]
A good people-watching crowd at Shucks Saturday night. Everybody seemed happy and relaxed. No politics. No one seemed angry or scared that healthcare would pass, or that it wouldn't. We just go on being humans in spite of everything.
' [...]
One thing the Outer Banks Chamber of Commerce doesn't tell you is that the Outer Banks mosquito does not belong to the same species as your ordinary mosquito. The ordinary mosquito is like the Mother Theresa of insects compared to the Outer Banks mosquito. The OBX' [...]
Made in my way-too-big Moleskine watercolor sketchbook, that I ordered by mistake. It's as big as the menu at a faux-classy French restaurant. Worse, it's got a great big flappy cover that you have to hold up somehow. When I open it up, I feel like [...]
Not my croc. In fact, on reflection, it appears to belong to someone with giant cankles. My fallback position: I hadn't had my first coffee of the day yet. My little eye-focussing muscles weren't sufficiently engaged. My fullback position: fullback. My fatback position: I'm in favor of' [...]
I ventured into Bed, Bath & Beyond yesterday for the first time since I was a mindless suburbanite a few lifetimes ago. I was quickly reminded that "Beyond" was interpreted in a restricted and disappointing way. It doesn't include remastered Beatles CDs, or bejeweled jeans' [...]
If I had been dropped into the middle of last night's scene from, say, Bulgaria, I would have thought, "Why, one side of this chamber seems to be dominated by sour-faced middle aged men who look like they haven't had a good BM in weeks." I'm providing [...]
Squarespace tells me I had 1700 hits yesterday, after 400 the day before. What's behind that? People googling Nancy Pelosi's teeth? A belated Pimply Teenage Boy response to "Pile Driver"? It's a mystery.
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Happy Labor Day, everybody. Since I have been diagnosed as labor-intolerant, I won't be celebrating today. I take that back: I do have something to celebrate. I learned yesterday that I've been appointed an alternate on Obama's Southeastern Virginia Death Panel. I can't wait! I've [...]
I hope you lot appreciate what I have to go through to do this. 2 solid hours of pundits and politicians! I feel like I've been swimming up someone's lower intestine. Someone who visited Taco Bell last night. Thomas Friedman wins this week for saying' [...]
from a mug shot posted to Flickr by Angus McDiarmid
There's something deeply satisfying about crosshatching. Some people derive pleasure from golf, some from chocolate, some from bawling like babies at town hall meetings. Me, I get off on crosshatching. I have no idea why. How such a [...]
It's one of life's ironies that the restaurants with the most atmosphere and history, the ones that make living in the city a richer experience, are invariably the ones whose food is most likely to leave you on the floor straddled by a guy with them defibrillator [...]
Downtown Richmond is strikingy different from anyplace in Hampton Roads. Craven civic reapportionment during the segregation wars forever doomed us to fragmentation, and the idea of a strong urban center growing from a rich historical base vanished. This is admittedly a simplistic, unfair, non-nuanced judgment typical [...]
Not to worry, just a routine visit. Lots of downtime, of course, good for sketching. And nobody slugged me, which is always a plus. My heart looks a little better, as you can see, but the cutting it in half still hurts like a bitch. It [...]
A little harder today, since most heads were making nice with Teddy platitudes. One thing he had that's going to be missed is a sense of civility and a willingness to work with others of opposing viewpoints. That's just what the healthcare debate needs and [...]
This marks my 1686th post to Crack Skull Bob. 1686 is, of course, the year that the forces of the Holy League of 1684 liberated Buda from Ottoman Turkish rule (leading to the end of Turkish rule in Hungary during subsequent years). Buda, as [...]
I've always experienced some cognitive dissonance with the word "bucolic", originating as it does from the root words "butane" and "colic". It must be because I was musing on this fascinating piece of nonsense that I forgot the name of this restaurant, so if I were to' [...]
