NEW WEBSITE UP.

This blog is now deceased. Long live my NEW website. Go here for all my future blog posts and portfolio!

Thanks!

- B

The Experiment Continues

Sent in 3 T Shirt designs to be scored on Threadless You can see me and my designs on Threadless HERE.

The one that got the most comments and people praising it -- got the lowest score. The one that I worked the hardest on and was the most bold got the second highest. The one I made in about an hour, and sloppily I might add, got the highest score. Still the scores were just under what it takes for Threadless to judge my work for print, or so I think. So experiment complete. I have other designs to make but for now...Moving on.

I'm writing scripts again. And they are tight little works of wonder. Hollywood friendly, and yet to my standards as a writer/viewer of movies. That's the real challenge to me: Creating something sellable while not compromising what I want to see out of a story. It's hard as hell but that's where the fun comes in. In fact, the "hollywood formula" can actually help at times. It gives you a structure to fall back on when in doubt, it gives you more depth to emotion as it usually demands a love interest. And what's wrong with a love interest? If you went out on your greatest adventure would you not expect to have some crushes along the way? In the end, I mix a strange brew. It's me, it's creepy, it's funny, and unpredictable in substance, and yet it has the ingredients for what sells tossed in for flavoring. To me, that's the craft - not just the story, but getting your work bought and seen by everyone. This may be a view others feel is selling out or that they are above it, but I didn't get into art planning to starve and then kill myself with a rusty paintbrush one day. For me it is more about getting my story out to more people over the money, and if that's selling out then color me your favorite shade of sell out.

So I'm designing tattoos lately. So far I slapped on one my arm this summer and it turns heads for sure.

My new forearm.

While most people get pictures of...whatever. I designed a stamp that makes it look like I am a marked soldier in the 13th Legion of Rome. A classic Roman serif font. A bold hard square design. Perfect placement. How can't people look at it? It's a reminder to me about America. We're Imperial Rome in many ways. We drink and roam the streets as Pagans in search of our next folly. We have it all and we're as debaucherous as Romans ever were. There's much more to my tattoo as well - the 13th Legion rebeled and crossed the Rubicon river under Ceasar as well as took in mean thuggin' Germans like myself into their ranks as Ceasars bodyguards. The reasons and meanings behind this tattoo go on and on. And I shant bore you with details unless we run into each other in a bar someday and you ask.

So work and so play.

There's something strange happening.

My job has devolved into pure janitorial duties. Being a security guard is so out the door that I don't even think to scan the room and watch people anymore. It just gets in the way of me changing light bulbs. However I work with good people.

And my art is strange lately too. Im hired to do T shirt designs but once again I feel my stubborn head when it comes to making what I want to make might be keeping them from getting printed. Oh well, there's always Threadless. I'll be applying for a 2D art job with a video game company down the street. I swore off games this summer, ironically, and playing them isn't fun for me really, but somehow I think that makes me better for the job, as I will strive harder to make a game cool looking and fun for someone as critical and jaded as I am.

Jaded. Good word. That's me lately. I have parties constantly. I have great friends, and loves, and health, and things going my way, and yet - there's a disturbing hole there. I don't have answers on how to fill it. I miss people. Some of them won't even talk to me or treat me like a human being. I suck at letting go. I suck at a lot of things others excel at, while I can do things they'll never be able to do. What can I do, really? I have no answers. Maybe I'm just an asshole who will never be happy with anything he has, and I hate those guys.

I realize I'm typing on a blog no one reads but me. I guess it's a good journal for the future, so I can look back and say "Damn, I was a whiney skank back then", just like I always end up doing as I get older. Ha.

My dream used to be: Go to LA, nail gorgeous women, and sell scripts and watch your movies get made.

Now it's: Be a guy with a bike in Chicago, with a small, but cozy apartment, and a nice, normal woman to share a couch with.

I don't know how this happened. I guess it's always been part of me to realize I want more simple things out of life. Too bad this realization came too late for me in some regards. I don't know if I should strive for some hollow chance at greatness or just end up on a ranch somewhere alone and making furniture.

We will see.

- B

Exploitation Rhymes With Masturbation for a Reason

So many people have just used me for their own purposes this summer. I feel beyond messed with. I was hired to do a shitty job and was offered food coupons as payment and then given the transcript for the job by a shady courier. I'm not a student anymore. I'm out in the world. I need to be respected as a writer - not a regurgitation monkey who types shit you should be able to type yourself.

People who I thought were my friends could care less about me. It's one of those defining moments for me right now: Who is real in my life and who isn't? Time to define some lines.

Time to do things right: I'm a solid security guard right now, but I'm still applying for more career boosting positions. Until then I'm writing multiple scripts. I'm finishing and screening Hangers. And that's it. I'm done being people's whipping boy and I'm done letting people take what they want from me.

I've got too much going on to let the leeches suck me dry as I walk my path. Time to work on scripts and report that rather than people using me, getting hit by cars, and heartache.

Time for art therapy and to bring the real people into my life.

Greatest Hits.

Hit by a car again this summer on my bike. This time the motorist decided he didn't want to wait for me so he honked once and then drove by me, hitting me and pinning me between his Mercedes and parked cars. I put my foot down to keep from falling over. He drove over it. My adrenaline surged. He sped off, rap blaring from his car.

I tried to get the license tag to no avail and he turned and was gone. I pedaled to find him, but no luck. I jumped off my bike and pulled off my now blackend, grease-ridden shoe to see if my foot still worked. It does, somehow. It hurts, but the piggies still wiggle and it isn't swollen. Yet I felt an entire car roll over my foot. I can now say I know what that feels like. Silver lining I suppose.

All it does is teach me to be a better biker and smash the guys window next time he tries something like that.

Somehow I like that it happened as it made me think about dying, or maybe walking with a limp for the rest of my life. It made me think about people I care about. People I miss. People I love. Have I told them all that I love them? Not all of them. Better get on that...

On Repeat.

Once, sometime before 1st grade or so, I was the only boy invited to an all girls birthday party. Girls seemed to always just love me for some reason. The party went well from what I remember. A clown and balloons shaped like wiener dogs. Once we were through with the typical party rituals and were allowed free roam a game was spontaneously created by one of the girls: "Get the boy."

You know how the Beatles felt with hordes of screaming girls running after them? Yeah, I do.

I ran and looked for a place to hide. A closet was open. I flew inside and flung the door shut - on to many, many pairs of little girlish fingers.

I opened the door and said sorry, but multiple girls were already crying. And the girl throwing the party said, "I don't like you anymore."

Ever since that day my life and relationships have more or less been a repeat of those events - minus the clown and the wiener dogs.

I seem to get along with women better than men, I become their friend or boyfriend quickly and it's amazing and fresh and each day is a glowing orb of possibility. And then something happens. One accident - and nothing meant to hurt anyone. And without warning, "I don't like you anymore."

I'm on repeat. And I don't know what to do about it. I'm walking around terrified of closing their fingers in the door.

The Best Time to Be Unemployed is During the Summer

Applied all over. For design jobs, writing jobs, and...eek, food jobs.

Still finishing Hangers. Still having a summer of fun.

Birthdays. Concerts. Holidays. New friends. Old friends returning. Goals that have hovered over me for years now are getting accomplished.

I'm a new Blake.

No more Hanging around.

...Finally. My short film Hangers is now in post Sound production and I'm more excited than ever to finish it and screen it this summer. Since Hangers was filmed, I've dealt with some of the hardest things I've ever had to face in my life recently. So finishing it will be a bit of a new start. A jolt in the ol' monster.

The Hangers Facebook Page.

Hi-yo Silver.

Got a new bike recently. It changed everything. Now all I need is someone to ride it with...

Interesting stories are already hovering around this bike: Firstly, it was cheap. Wayyy too cheap for a solid street bike. Maybe someone died on it? Ha. But As I was buying it a woman, a cyclist enthusiast supreme, approached me and said, "You found that bike in this shop?" She was a regular there and never saw a bike like this pass through. Her envy hung in the air around us like an anvil from a string. She complimented it and drooled over it a bit. I knew I made the right choice.

Then I rode it home. I felt more free and empowered than I had in a while. And I was terrified of city cycling. Being from Texas and Oklahoma I never had much biking experience let alone real city navigation. And somehow that made it all the better. Doing the things that terrify us the most always end up being the most worthwhile.

A guy who must live on his bike pulled up behind me on the way home. He came complete with spandex cycling suit. The helmet, the sunglasses, the gloves, the revealing colorful shorts. The whole "I peddled out of my momma's womb on a bike" look. He asked me what kind of bike I had. I told him I had no earthly idea. He said, "That's a damn good bike. What you got is a stealth." I asked him what a stealth is. He told me in the bike world a stealth bike is a bike with no brand names or labels so people stripping bikes or stealing them usually pass them up. They assume the bike is old and crappy and painted over or stripped of paint usually. So a stealth is a bad ass bike with no labels or bullshit attached (something that attracted me to my bike right away) that is actually a beast of a bike. I fell in love even more with this bike on the way home.

"You made the right choice", he said.

"I know", I said.

The Switcheroo Job

Recently asked by Switchback Books to make a 3-5 min short film based on or inspired by the work of one of their poets. Totally signed on. How often do we get to slap poetry on to celluloid (err, pixels). Got my book from them today. Peggy Munson's PATHOGENESIS. It's powerful stuff and reminded me that I need to read/write poetry again. Can't wait to get started.

Check out their catalogue:

http://www.switchbackbooks.com

And check out Peggy Munson's work here:

http://www.peggymunson.com

Almost...

What a hell of a way to start summer. Let's start by looking for jobs and seeing about finishing some feature lengths. So close to finishing my portfolio website. I can't wait...