Wow, have not blogged since November of last year. Doesn't seem right. Going to try and keep up better with it. But instead of dwelling on that, let me share some of the things that have been keeping me from typing descriptions.
Powerhouse: Things have been going real well at the animation studio Frank, Bruce and I started 9 years ago. Hard to believe it has been that long.
Also, we have reorganized the company a bit. I am now a CEO. Things are feeling really good. We have 30+ employees now and the jobs are nice and diverse. I think it will be a great year.
New niece: I have a new niece, Rebecca, named after my mom.
My little brother is daddy. I know I am getting older but it is a bit of a mind trip. Mandy and I have been to visit a couple times in Houston on the weekends.
Here is the photo of me holding the newest family member, trying to drink a cocktail at the same time.
I guess I am going to be that uncle.
Robert Schiffhauer: Around Christmas time, I went back to the alma mater with my co-alum Scotty Sharp who was visiting from NYC. Scotty, Mandy and I paid a visit to Bob Schiffhauer who I used to TA for in grad school. Bob is a Cooper Union and Yale Alum and a fantastic figure artist. He is also an inspiration. He has done over 100+ paintings in the past year, and done them while having major hip and leg surgery and being 80 years old. All of this while coming out of retirement to teach a full course load.
Makes me feel like a lazy bastard for belly-aching about how busy I am.
Mandy and I bought a couple of his pieces, but his work is phenomenal. Proves you are never too old to improve.
Resolutions: As I do every year, I made 100 resolutions for 2010. I spent a lot of Jan and Feb trying to plan out how to make these resolutions work, and now I am starting to get into the meat of some of the work. Speaking of resolutions, I plan on doing a lot of animation in my spare time, especially as in my new role at the company, I don't really have the time to animate.
This year my goal is to do 1 Captain Capitalism cartoon, a trailer for my Hamlet based piece, a trailer for the martial arts piece, and a short based on the Austrian anti-Claus, Krampus.
I'll try to post these projects soon.
Naked Lunch: We are still doing the Naked Lunch sessions. If you don't know about those, and want to do some figure drawing in Central Texas...check out the Naked Lunch blog: http://www.nakedlunchaustin.blogspot.com/
Martial Arts stuff: I got a lot of cool martial arts toys for Christmas, one of them is this nice little Mook Jong made specifically for Mantis practitioners. It has little fists so you can practice wrist grabs. It is a lot of fun, but loud so I have not been able to use it a lot as my daily routine puts Kung Fu practice in the morning before work.
So lately I have been training at CTC (MMA), Bruce's KO Boxing (Boxing), and Del Sol Martial Arts(7 star Mantis). Jason Williams and I just re-did Bruce's website, check it out: http://www.bruceskoboxing.com/
I eat bugs: Finally, one of my nephews favorite insults when he was little was "you eat bugs, Uncle Brad." This would be followed by furious giggling. This past weekend it turned out the little dork was precognitive. While at the Chinatown market I found "ground cucumbers." Which is a euphemism for silk worm pupae. We fried some up on Saturday night to try before a UFC. Wish I could say they were good and worth the trouble. But this is something that definitely goes on the "can say I tried it" list and not on the "would try again" list.
It has been a long time since I have blogged. It has been a long time since I have done a lot of Captain Capitalism work also.
I have been working on a cartoon but between Powerhouse and other extra curriculars I have not gotten very far...I need to change that.
But I do like vacation blogging because I get a chance to put the pictures all in one place and come back and look at them myself.
We have not been home for several weekends now, having various family functions and work obligations. Mandy has been very busy with a trial and has been in and out of New Orleans. We did get to participate in Halloween though, Jason Williams had a last minute party, so we made a last minute shopping trip trip this Halloween. Mandy was a really good sport with the costumes.
This past week, I flew into New York for a conference and to hit some meetings, then enjoy the weekend for a little vacation. I took a red-eye on Tuesday morning. I got the hotel and checked in. Mandy got me a room at the Hudson which is a fancy hotel near Columbus circle. I took a short nap, worked for a little bit then decided to explore. On the way out the door I ran into a group from the opera doing a impromptu rehearsal.
Good bless, New York. Dont see that every day.
I took the subway to Chinatown, and got thoroughly lost, here are some pics from my meandering. Here are some of the things I saw.
Frogs in a garbage can.
I got some Dim Sum including some chicken feet, which were mediocre.
Go in the park.
On the way back to the apartment, I stopped by the Time Warner center on the way back to the hotel, and the cast of Glee was doing an appearance, and there was mass teenage pandemonium. Then I went to Kennedy's, a local Irish pub, had a late dinner, enjoyed the ambiance and went back to the hotel to get ready for the next days meetings.
- Wed 4 I went to meet Mike Mendelsohn, our Powerhouse New York agent in Chelsea near the New York Times building. I got to hit mid-town comics while I was there, which is always nice.
I know it is a cliched song title, but Autumn in New York is incredible. Trees change colors. Mike and I at at Five Napkin Burger, and then walked as many of the calories as we could on the long walk to the Jatvis center and attended the ad:tech convention. It was supposed to be a "internet advertising" convention, and since Powerhouse is doing some advergaming and other buzzword work, we thought it might be a good opportunity. Honestly, though we made a few good connections, it was more of a spamming convention and acronym convention. CPA, ROI, CPA, TGIF...I really didnt know what most of the people did after talking to them.
I walked Mike back to Grand Central and we had a drink before his train. I went back to the hotel and crashed for a couple hours, then went to eat a lonely dinner at Thomas Keller's Bouchon bakery. Luckily, Mandy's trial got continued and she ended up getting on a plane and was on her way to NY. I went back to Kennedy's to watch what turned out to be the final game of the World Series, Mandy made it in time to watch the bartender firing up Sinatra on the loud speaker. Mandy and I headed to Times Square to watch the celebration.
Thurs 5- The next morning Mandy and I went to Balthazaar for Brunch before I had to catch some meetings. We ordered Le Grand. The waiters face did not fully notify me when I asked him "if it was enough for two"
After some meetings I met Mandy back in Soho and we shopped around, then made our way to the village where we stopped at Mc Sorely's:
and the Cooper Union, which apparently has a Frank Gehry building now.
We met my cousin Sarah for dinner, then walked around town, and took one of those rides around Central Park, just because we had never done that in the many times we have been to NY.
Friday 6
I had meetings most of Friday and got off around 6, just in time to meet Mandy to make it to see Hamlet with Jude Law (the original reason we were going to New York). The play was amazing. This picture won''t mean much to any one else but we were in the front row. Jude Law spat on us for 3 hours. I could write a lot about how great the play was, but I will leave that for the dream journal.
Sat 7 The next morning we met Scotty Sharp, former Viz lab cohort now Blue Sky-er, at the Met to check out a Samurai exhibit that was quite good (unfortunately no pics allowed). But I did get a pick of Mandy and Scotty in front of the Frick, which is what Stan Lee based the Avengers mansion on, according to a book I got when we were in New York.
We ate at the Brooklyn Diner (the finer diner) where we apparently werent the first rappers to make an appearance.
We then went to Lee's Art Supply which has a curious tagline
Scotty was going to see Patton Oswald, so we decided to see if they still had some tickets...luckily we got some great seats and had a good time at the show. Afterwards we walked Scotty to Grand Central had a Hoho Dingdong and went back to our hotel.
-Sun 8
The next morning Mandy and I went to brunch with my cousin, her husband and daughter. After brunch we had a great kids day. We went to FAO Schwartz: We looked at puppies, and the Central Park Zoo. It was a really good time.
Afterwards we walked around time square waiting for a Louis CK show. Some of the artists doing the portraits in the square are truly amazing. The Louis CK show was great, though the venue was not.
-Monday 9
We woke up, I worked for a couple of hours, we packed a lot of baggage and went out into the city for the last day. We ate at Daniel Boulud's restaurant, which specializes in charcuterie...which makes me happy.
We walked around Times Square for the 100th time, and then went to Macy's for a bit. By this time our legs and feet were blown out from days and days of walking and we decided to go to the airport early.
I love New York, but I am very happy to be back home.
I was the subject of Powerhouse's "Luck of the Draw," last week. For fun and in order for people to get some good drawing practice in every week, we spin a wheel that has everyone who works at the studio's name on it. Then everybody does a caricature, comic, or animation of the person the wheel lands on. Then we put them up on the Phetchblog, Powerhouse's sketchbook blog.
Inside jokes abound in this, but I think most of them are better left unexplained.
Sorry it has been a while... work has been busy, lots of family and guests coming in on the weekends. I have been working on a new Captain Capitalism cartoon, hopefully will post more soon.
Mandy and I went to Vegas for 3 days right after releasing the cartoon. One of the best parts of having a blog is being able to go back and look at what I have done over the course of the past few years, so I usually make these "travelblogues" so I can remember what all we did. The main theme of this trip was "fighting and food," two of my favorite things.
We went to Vegas during a UFC fan event for UFC 100, so I took advantage of that and did some training sessions with Wanerlei "The Axe-Murderer" Silva and Kru Mark Dellagrotte. The sessions were great, I learned a ton and got to "roll" and train with a few professional fighters and did not end up with any black-eyes or broken bones...so, bonus.
Mandy got to sit in the Wanderlei session, so I got some pics.
You should have seen Mr. Silva's arms and legs. The best way I can describe it is rebar wrapped in veins. Mr. Silva overlooks Jesse Garcia and myself doing some ground drills...
I even got to do some drills directly with Wanderlei. That night Wanderlei invited us to his gym.
This is my sad attempt at a staredown. I cannot hide the fear well. Better stick to the cartoons.
We ate at two Hubert Keller restaurants in Vegas, Fleur De Lys and Burger Bar. Fleur de Lys might be the best restuarant I have ever had the pleasure to visit. It ranks up there with Les Halles and Craft. I had a tasting menu, and was nearly in a food coma by the end of the night. We also ate at Shabuya, which has a great sake selection, our waiter made some really good recommendations.
We also went to a great bar in the Mandalay called Red Square, which was like if Captain Capitalism's enemies had a bar: Outside was a headless statue of Lenin. The head was inside the "vodka vault," where patrons can take a shot off the frozen head. Unfortunately, the price was too steep, so Mandy and I just hung out at the frozen bar for bit.
Mandy's brother Sean, came into Vegas from San Francisco, on Friday evening. It was nice to see him again, it has been a while. Another cool bar we went to was called Minus 5, in this bar, everything is made from ice...the tables, chairs, even glasses. You have to wear a parka and booties. Frozen bars are big in Vegas, I guess. We watched the UFC event from a beach on closed circuit TV. We had a really good time, but Vegas wears on me. The noises and smells they pump start to make me claustrophobic after a couple of days. The wife and I arent much for gambling either, though she did hit this:
Makes me feel like a lazy bastard for belly-aching about how busy I am.
Mandy and I bought a couple of his pieces, but his work is phenomenal. Proves you are never too old to improve.
Frogs in a garbage can. 
I got some Dim Sum including some chicken feet, which were mediocre.
Mr. Silva overlooks Jesse Garcia and myself doing some ground drills...
This is my sad attempt at a staredown. I cannot hide the fear well. Better stick to the cartoons.
We ate at two Hubert Keller restaurants in Vegas, Fleur De Lys and Burger Bar. Fleur de Lys might be the best restuarant I have ever had the pleasure to visit. It ranks up there with Les Halles and Craft. I had a tasting menu, and was nearly in a food coma by the end of the night. We also ate at Shabuya, which has a great sake selection, our waiter made some really good recommendations.
Outside was a headless statue of Lenin. The head was inside the "vodka vault," where patrons can take a shot off the frozen head. Unfortunately, the price was too steep, so Mandy and I just hung out at the frozen bar for bit.
