July countdown

the Brenham paintings
still not complete yet,?

Well this marks the last week left in July before the big move over there,

last weekend i went to this wedding , and hung out with one of my old buddies thomas, i credit half of my developent just with dealing with thomas's drama when i grew up,. He was like obsessive compulsive type, a bit paranoid and always out on the mack for women etc, (thats who organised the Hooters batchler party), but back in highschool we shared this same obsession, Toy soldiers and GI Joes. yes thats right !
I was a toy nerd back in school, so was thomas until he discovered he couldn't get laid with abounch of Joes arranged on his shelves and had all the vehicals strung out in his room,.
Thomas was alot to handle back in highschool, he could do or get into problems i counldn't ever imagine,.
In retrospect humor could only exisit in the company of seriously dramatic folks

The obsesive collecting deal came from this focused invy of each others toy soldiers, in the begining ( particularly Marx's Civil War toys) in junior high we amasses a colection of these figures and were always trying to trick each other out of the toys, Thomas was extreme about it going to any hieghts to try an get me to give him at least one figure, or trade. he had ways to conjure up passions of jealiousy i never felt before,. some primal male crap about not letting the other guy get the upper hand in all this, We went to blows over who stole what from who and who had the most awsume figures, ( cause they were rare),
Even on to GI Joes, our minds could surf for hours over the visualiations of the figures .
listening to Thomas on the way to and from the Weddding , is like listening to this endless monaloge about bitchs, lovelost , and crap we have collected over the years. It reminds me of a time when building the ultimate colection was all that mattered, nothing rivaled, the ownership of this stuff, i mean nothing!
I used to collect figures (militay miniatures like toy soldier) right outta highschool , i rember the only thing that mattered to me when i graduwated highschool was getting a job to pay off the figures mail back orders i wanted to get, that was it, that all that mattered. i got into painting them up and putting my colection in this glass case, in some sences this is where my art training began, When i got over to Alvin Junior College, i switched hobbys to art cause well simply put it was to damn expencive to buy figures when your a bagger at a grocerystore, now facing rent etc, painting pictures was fun plus there were people into painting pictures, called an art dept at the junior college, its just like a hobby store where a bunch of model geeks get together and obsesses over who's model is the most detial, yea thats what it is !
nope!
instead i was in a classes with the same kinda folks who couldn't stand me in highschool either, cool hipster aritists types, but this time, being outta school , and not growing up from grdae one on who was coll and who wasn't it was like a clean slate, , kinda like a track race,. its about production and a insain zeal to invision what you like in your imagination on to the canvas,
of cource my taste at the time revolved around horror movies and Pornos babes so i made paintings like this, but very badly,

ahh but thats a whole nother story

one of the more funny extremly wierd and private moments ohh about eight years ago when thomas moved over to San Marc, he was about to get a new job (grocery), and he found out i was still into collecting joes, after ten years outta highschool, ( we went our seperate ways) i started buying odd plastic soldiers and what ever joes etc at junk stores etc, but he found out after all this time i was still into them , which set him loss in this mind flight to exscape his wife's bulshit, so we went around to fleamarkets trying to rebuild our joe colection again, ( back in highschool he sold his entire colection at a garrage sale to prove to me he was cool and didn't play with toy anymore, he went so far as to show all his buddies i had joes and made many attepts to try an unlay me infront of hot babes in highschool , to disassoiate from this geekness , i did't give a fuck the ashole just surrended his entire collection! that idiot! )
Well after all these years i still had them and it turned on a switch with him,. he was already broke as is with three kids and a wife who thought she was still living in a English horce ranch, (avoid women who own horces!!!) and just recently moved to San Marc in their new economicly agusted trialer park. So his mind went for the joes as a santurary of sorts.
well i bring this up to show a moment where after about a year we both had a sizeable Joe collection and some how we got together on in the backwoods of Lockhart he knew some who had some property and layed out our intire colection of tanks artillery figures and planes, all the toys were old and used , each and every figure was layed out on this old mildues 4x8 plywood table, each figure with its orginal guns,. It was like amasing a alter of this unbeliveable site, we both knew that if anybody happen to walk up they would go, "what what the fuck is that, and orginal Snake Eyes with all it weapons and is that a Sears Crimson Tank! oh my God!"
Yea thats right, we gottem!!!
we sat there in our bedazzel geeked out glaze wonder where et could all lead.
of cource it lead to thomas devorce and for me i had to get back to paint pictures, thats my career right, lets just go from one pathic obsesion to another
ahhh
enough is enough,

some art poster , made in ElPaso , by D Hodges

Posted by chickengeorge at July 5, 2005 10:48 AM