roughs

Redneck Sushi

What is redneck sushi you ask? It's a phrase I came up with some time ago and then thought, "what would that actually be?" The answer: an outside wrapper of bacon filled with mashed potato and a center of chicken and maybe a bit of collard green or some such. This was dreamed up months and months ago and never realized... until last night.

Luci enjoys inviting her deviant and sometimes boisterous coworkers over to her palatial manse for roll your own sushi nights and general frivolity. She was also one of the people aware of the plan for making redneck sushi and was kind enough to open her kitchen and guidance last night to this mad experiment. We decided to take two approaches. Both start with laying down a bed of bacon, then coating the surface with the mashed taters, and then laying down a strip of chicken across the bottom of it. Starting at the chicken end, we roll it up just like sushi.

On the first run we decided to bake / broil the entire roll prior to slicing.

The biggest concern was the cooking of the chicken. We started broiling it and once the bacon had constricted down switched over to baking for about 30 minutes or so rolling the whole thing over once or twice. Once finished, we removed it from the oven and sliced it, which caused some smushing and loss of that nice circular, bull's-eye pattern sushi has. That said, it's overall appearance was still plenty appetizing. The flavor was good and they were insanely hot. If you decide to try this allow for cooling time. Seriously. The bacon grease infused potatoes are not to be trifled with.

The second approach was to slice the roll first and then pan fry the slices. I also decided to add some asparagus and carrot to the center. We used toothpicks to try and hold the rolls together.

Once in the pan this plan fell apart a bit. They did not do well with being flipped, the bacon wasn't really cooking, and the potatoes were just burning onto the bottom of the pan. So we transferred them onto a baking sheet and into the oven to be baked for about twenty minutes or so, followed by five minutes of broiling, flipping and another 5 minutes of broiling.

Some take-aways from the evening. The baking then broiling combo is the correct cooking approach. The asparagus was a great addition both in terms of flavor and health value. Cooking them as slices resulted in a much better result than when we did the roll. Toothpicks became a bit of a semi-hazardous treasure hunt. Either mode of preparation resulted in volcanically hot food that needs cooling time.

Plans and modifications to the recipe and process are already being made but this maiden voyage was a big hit. I am clearly a culinary genius. Yeehaw!

Now that I've highlighted some old stuff...

Let's take a look at something new.

Three old pages

What seems like ages ago now there was a book coming together called Dust to Dust, in which an aging Jesse James confronts a young Machine Gun Kelly. It never saw print and the pages have been hanging around as they had no real purpose. Today they were all scanned for posterity's sake and are all now bound for the sales pile. As a last look back it seemed like a good idea to share a few of my favorite pages.

Happy Birthday, Adam!

Adam is a big fan of Yoko from Gurren Lagann. Who isn't? Really. Anywho... Adam + birthday = quick drawing of Yoko. That is all.  

Fallcon 2011

Here are some highlights and images from this years convention. Overall it was a great day with a great crowd. 

Ken stopped by and bought some original work from me. Thanks for continuing to be awesome!

Seeing all the folks in costume is always cool, but every once in a while someone really commits to the role. That level of dedication is spectacular and perhaps, even, amazing. See what I did there?

Again, great day. It was most excellent seeing some old friends and making some new ones. Big thanks to Ron for bringing me paper and helping out with the table. Hope to see you all again in the spring!

FF sketch finished colors

We'll call this finished. Unless there's some weird color issue I can't see.

Coloring the FF sketch

Haven't really started working on Reed or Sue yet, but Ben and Johnny look fairly decent at this point. Hoping to finish this later today.

Like many things, it looks rather harmless.

Part of the creative process seems to always include trying to figure yourself out. Balancing the needs of work and the pursuit of creative impulses with an attempt at mental, emotional and physical well-being. Now I'll probably be mental for the rest of my life but it seems like physical health is obtainable. Or should be. And part of that seems to be finding ways to challenge yourself to do things that seem crazy, and quite possibly, impossible.

I felt that way some time ago while taking Capoeira classes. Every night seemed to require feats of hope-killing physicality well beyond reason. But the feeling of accomplishment and pride that resulted from getting through it all was tremendous. Even if a move was done poorly it was still done, which was more than expected at the time.

That feeling has once again returned. This time in the form of running stairs. Lots of stairs. Capoeira was always fun. Even when it was grueling the music and history of it all combined with the fluidity and grace of the movements would just pull you right along. The stairs? None of that really. It's just a steady crushing physical grind. That said, it still provides the same sense of accomplishment for barely surviving.

The first attempt involved pain, vomit, and a week of walking funny. Yesterday was the second attempt. It went better. Still rough, but vomit free. It starts with running up and down these stairs four times. Specifically, we go down four and up three ending at the bottom. This is followed by a jog, mostly uphill, to a park for an unpleasant array of ab-work. Then another jog to the base of the stairs and the fourth and final run for the top.

The amazing part is that yesterday in the park, before and during the ab stuff, I started running through some Capoeira. A bit of ginga, some kicks, handstands and cartwheels. It was striking to find comfort in something that once seemed impossible. Don't get me wrong, I'm still no good at it. But that isn't the point. The point is that the impossible has become a sanctuary of sorts from the next seemingly impossible goal. This seems to be a metaphor for life. If so, make sure to find yourselves some decent challenges.

Heaping praise and gratitude to Mestre Senna and all my friends from ABCapoeira, as well as Aaron H for your collective patience and encouragement.

SpringCon 2011 Day 2: the Finale

Towards the end of Day 1 my assistant for the weekend, AJ, decided to commission a Fantastic Four piece from me. It was roughed out last night leading to early morning inking at the con. A nice way to start any day.

Day 1 saw some confusion on table assignments due to no shows and such, but Day 2 found our merry band with an entire table to ourselves so we spread out and enjoyed our new spacious accommodations. Especially since it allowed more room for the aforementioned inking.

This made AJ and I very happy.

But not as happy as our visit from Kent who stopped by early and acquired an inked drawing of Hellboy as well as swinging by for a couple other pieces later in the day. Awesome guy.

Speaking of awesome people, Adam and Molly joined us in the afternoon. Now you should know that many people enjoy walking the rounds of the convention floor and perusing all the wares while sighting the sights and pageantry. I am not really one of those people. Don't get me wrong. I love chatting and catching up with friends and fellow creator types, but camping out at the table and drawing is the comfort zone. So Adam was enlisted to take my camera and grab some snapshots of fun stuff.

A huge thanks to everyone who came by and made this a great convention experience. It was terrific reconnecting with old friends while making some new ones. Much love.

The Four Horsemen

Pre-convention this fellow named Mike commissioned a piece. He was sending a number of artists his favorite song lyrics. I got a number of Metallica songs ( F*@# Yeah! ) and was really digging on the idea of a nine to five guy trying to work up the courage to face down impending doom. Enjoy.

Springcon Day 1

Day 1 was good. The new t-shirt was officially approved by a Japanese person. This would come in handy later when a Filipino gent bought the first one. We pulled up this last pic and he took a photo of it on my camera with his cell phone. Spectacular.