An Grey Trash alien I drew today, to usher in 2022 tonight. Happy New Year's people! 5 1/2" X 8 1/2". #sharpiescribblestyle, #greytrashaliens
I've always been someone who drew pictures, starting as young as I can remember. I was one of those top 2 or 3 kids that drew, in every grade school class, depending on what the cool thing to draw was at the time. Even into adulthood, I would pull out a pen and paper, and draw every once in a while. It kind of went in spurts, and from high school on (when I started drawing the outhouses some of you have seen), it was always pen and ink, with a plain, old, black Bic pen. I'd get into one theme, kind of drawing, and do a bunch over a couple of months, then not draw for a year, then get into something else for a while.
In the late 1990's, I remember seeing the a commercial for the the TV show OZ, about a maximum security prison. It was a brutal, hardcore show for its day. I also remember seeing a commercial for another prison show, or maybe a movie, where the prison was on an abandoned oil rig, out in the ocean. Totally isolated.
For some reason, seeing those, I wondered, "If there really are grey aliens somewhere, in some underground military base, and thought they'd be almost like prisoners. This weird train of thought intrigued me, and I kind of rolled with it for a while. "What would those aliens be like after years stuck underground, isolated? Would they form into gangs, like in prison? Would they have tattoos? Would they take on American/Earth habits, like watching TV, or some hobby like playing cards?" With this in mind, I drew a back view of a grey alien one day, with back of the arm tattoos that said, "Grey Pride" in a sort of Old English lettering. He also had a grey bandana on, gang style. That was probably in 1997 or 1998. I just found it amusing. I think I drew a better version later on.
I invented my Sharpie Scribble Style of drawing, while living in an indie art gallery in 2005-6. There's a post about that not too far back on this blog. By then the gangsta alien had morphed into a different idea. That idea was that a group of isolated aliens would wind up a lot like the people in the trailer I lived in outside of Boise for a year. That's the place where I got into BMX. When you're largely isolated away from most people, things tend to get kind of weird. People turn into characters. So I started drawing aliens again, this time in color, with Sharpies. Around that time, I stumbled across Bansky's Wall and Piece book, and I did a bit of street art of my own. I found grey aliens were a good little character that was easy to draw quick. I didn't use spray paint, I tried a few alternative methods.
Before long, the idea of aliens living in a trailer park, deep in an obscure part of some Area 51-type base, intrigued me. So I drew a simple grey alien with a cigarette in his mouth, and a wife beater T-shirt. It just made me laugh. "A white trash alien," I said. "Grey trash." I laughed some more. And I've drawn them now and then since. Not very often, but once in a while.
When taxi driving died, and I wound up homeless in 2007, I drew some at night, while sitting in a fast food place. The first Sharpie Scribble Style drawing I ever sold was one of these aliens. I sold it for $5 on Hollywood Boulevard in the spring of 2008. That was seven years before I started trying to seriously sell my Sharpie art.
Over the last couple of weeks, I've started drawing these guys (and one gal) again. Welcome to my weird little world of Grey Trash alien drawings.
I just heard Betty White passed away today (December 31, 2021), within 3 weeks of her 100th birthday. While most people in my generation remember her from The Golden Girls, or maybe The Mary Tyler Moore Show when we were kids, I was totally a fan of Off Their Rockers. C'Mon... Betty White leading a geriatric crew to make the Jackass of old people, how can it get better than that? That show was epic. Seriously, gut laugh funny. RIP Betty White. Look out afterlife, shit's about to get a whole lot more entertaining there.
What's the best revenge for all those people who told you your whole life that everything you want to do is not possible? Make it happen, and then outlive the motherfuckers. Goodbye to one of the funniest ladies ever.
This video, "Why NFT's are the biggest opportunity of the decade," explains it. Giancarlo was a stock analyst, making his living studying the changes in the gaming world for major stock market investors. But once he dug into the NFT/Web 3.0/DeFi/crypto world several months ago, he sold all his stocks and began to focus on NFT's, crypto, and DeFi (Decentralized Finance). Why? Because he's sees how big this movement is likely to get, and how early in the evolution we still are. So if you want to start learning about NFT's, start here. This 19 minute video is the best I've seen on the long term prospects, it looks at where this crazy new technology is likely to go in the next few years. If you don't know what NFT's are, check out this post, then come back, and watch the video above.
About six weeks ago, I started digging into, and learning about the NFT world, looking for a better way to sell my weird Sharpie art, or perhaps some writing projects. I didn't own any crypto, never had, and didn't know hardly anything about that world. But I read an article about the musician 3lau, months ago, using something called NFT's, as a new way to sell his music. The article said artists were also using NFT's. So I finally sat down to learn what these NFT things are, and figure out if they could be an outlet for my creative work, that could help me earn me a better living.
It's 2021, the second crazy year of the Tumultuous 2020's, and the whole world seems to have taken LSD and gone nuts, while we all try to keep up. As a long time blogger now, 12+ years worth, it seems crazy to have to say this, but lots of people still don't seem to realize that you don't learn cutting edge, emerging technologies, by taking a course, going to college, or reading a book. Things are moving too fast for that. I'm working in one of the L.A. libraries right now, and I just checked their database. There's not one book on NFT's. Not one, not even an ebook. That's how new and fast moving this world is.
So to learn about NFT's, I went to where most of us learn a ton of everyday tech info, the "University of YouTube." I have also read and skimmed 40 or 50 or more news articles, led to them by "Google State" search results. These are the "colleges" for new, info age trends and technologies. The good news in today's world is that there are dozens of videos talking about NFT's out there, many by the people actually making NFT's, and by the big bucks trading crowd, who have been making tens of thousands of dollars, and even millions, flipping NFT's in late 2020 and 2021. When you go to YouTube to learn new technology, especially if there's money being made, there's a ton of hype videos to wade through. There are a lot of scammers, as well. The Hype machine is pumping like the dance music at a rave. It's easy to get caught up in all the B.S. that's flying around.
So this list of videos is my suggested playlist to begin your own deep dive into learning about the NFT world. There are people making tons of money in NFT's. There are also people (many of the same ones) losing tons of money on NFT's. This blog post is not financial advice (see my disclaimer, linked above), and is here for education and entertainment purposes only. NFT's are one of the riskiest investment opportunities there is, and you should never play with money you can't afford to lose. That said, there is something legitimate to this technology, and there are so many potential uses for it, that even the seasoned experts (that have been around 1-3 years), don't know where the NFT world is going. It's constantly evolving. That's enough preamble, let's get to the rest of the playlist.
This Wall Street Journal video is a good, solid, quick look at what NFT's are, and how they work. It came out right at the top of the first NFT art hype cycle, March, 2021.
The first big wave of NFT hype from outside the crypto art world started in mid to late 2020, and crested with Beeple's $69 million sale of "The First 5,000 Days" NFT, at Christie's. His real name is Mike Winkleman, and for 13 1/2 years he drew a piece of digital art, every single day, and posted it, for people to check it out. The NFT sold at the auction was a compilation of all those pieces. So Beeple had more than a decade of work into that big sale.
That happened on March 11th, 2021. This was the "auction hammer heard round the world" in the mainstream art world, for NFT's. While artists continually say they don't care about the money, they really do. OK, a huge number of artists would do some work with no money involved, but money pays the bills, we all need it, and this crazy sale got everyone's attention. Beeple's reaction is great, as that sale, of a work that doesn't exist in the physical world, became the 3rd highest price paid for art, by a living artist, in history. Artists have flooded the NFT marketplaces with work since. And yes, I'm working on my own art project to turn into NFT's, as I write this. NFT's give all working artists new options, and it's not just about one unicorn moment sale.
Gary Vaynerchuk cut his entrepreneurial teeth selling sports cards and collectibles as a kid. Then he took his parents' liquor store from $3 million in sales to $60 million, in 5 years, using Google Adwords and a YouTube channel. Then he started VaynerMedia, a digital (marketing) agency, and started other offshoots into sports. That business ballooned to over $100 million in revenue in less than a decade. Once he got into NFT's in early 2021, he soon did a 10,000 token drop of VeeFriends, using NFT's to build his following into tighter community. In this recent, 20 minute video, he explains why he went all in on NFT's in 2021.
In 2017, Larva Labs created a drop of 10,000 digitally generated, unique characters, called CryptoPunks, on the Bitcoin blockchain. People who knew about them could claim one, for about 11 cents in service fees. The Punks themselves were free. As I write this (12/30/2021), the lowest priced CryptoPunk will run you about $210,000, and the highest price paid for one is $11.75 million. And that is for what is basically a jpeg of a 24 pixel, little, weird face. This video explains the story of CryptoPunks, now considered the O.G. NFT's, and the biggest status symbols in NFT the world.
Make some popcorn for this one, this is a full length documentary, and well worth watching. And yes, it was uploaded on "Beeple Day." This movie, and the Giancarlo video at the top of this post, go into the greatest depth at looking into this whole NFT phenomena. It's a movie, and it was made in the midst of the Great NFT Art Wave of early 2021, just before the Great Gas Wars began. The Defiant crew have made several great videos, and tons of weekly videos, about all aspects of crypto, DeFi, blockchain, NFT's, and the whole related space. They are one of the best sources to check out regularly. Watching this documentary will leap frog you ahead of those new posers who just got into NFT's 20 minutes ago. I'm being a bit facetious, but that's pretty much how fast this NFT world moves. Blink and you'll miss something. So make some popcorn, and watch this film.
This is another great documentary about NFT's, this one focusing on the art side of the NFT landscape. It's clean, really well produced, and another good video to round out your basic understanding of this fast changing world, and how it's evolved with art.
After the Beeple Christie's sale, and the CryptoPunks beginning to sell for hundreds of thousands, and millions of dollars, many teams went to work to do "drops" of NFT's, often at or near the 10,000 token precedent that the Punks set. There have been dozens of different token drops in 2021, but one odd group, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, rose above them all as the standout NFT drop of 2021. This documentary tells their story, trying to find the answer of what set the Apes apart from all the rest.
Dapp University is another great YouTube channel for info on all things blockchain. He goes back, much further in the crypto history than the other video producers on this list, which is what I was looking for for this final video on this post. The other aspect I wanted to touch on was the future of Ethereum.
The whole blockchain technology began with Bitcoin, and most people have some sense of that. But Ethereum, the next major blockchain, brought "smart contracts" into the picture, which give the blockchain all kinds of new applications. Contracts of all types, tied and time stamped, into the blockchain, are possible with Ethereum, and the blockchains built since. Most NFT's, so far, are tied into the Ethereum blockchain. But there are transaction fees, called "gas fees," that go to the Eth miners, whose computers actually verify each transaction into the blockchain. These fees have become larger and larger, from a few dollars, to possibly hundreds, when the system is super busy, on top of the price paid for NFT's. This is a major issue with minting NFT's on Ethereum, and a selling point for more recent blockchains, using different protocols, with much lower gas fees.
It's important to note that this video was recorded on June 21, 2021, after the initial "NFT art" bubble popped, and when both interest in NFT's, and in Ethereum itself, dropped significantly. Even then, when 1 Eth equaled about $1885, and the hype had fallen, he was still very bullish on Ethereum itself. That's important to note.
Since then, NFT mania went into a 2nd major (read: drawing people from OUTSIDE into the crypto/NFT world) hype cycle, Ethereum went up to about $4,800 per Eth, and has settled back to about $3,800 as I write this. So after this video, when NFT's looked dismal, they took off again. The Google Trends search for "NFT" just peaked again, much higher, around December 12-18, 2021.
Having seen the hype cycles (about ten year trends) in action sports, like BMX, skateboarding, and snowboarding, over 30 years in my personal experience, I think a similar, bouncing long term uptrend, is where NFT's may be headed. But the boom/bust cycles happen in weeks or months, not years. That's my personal opinion, and time will tell if I'm on the right track there.
But the consensus I've seen is that Ethereum gas fees are too high, and it uses a lot of energy (not nearly as much as all those future electric cars will), but Ethereum seems like it's here to stay. Which other blockchains grow to rival it in the NFT and smart contract space? That's anybody's guess at this point.
So for any of you whose interest has been piqued about NFT's, this list is a great beginning to your own deep dive of learning about all things NFT. It's only a beginning, but it's a solid beginning. We will all see what the future brings, both in the NFT/crypto/blockchain world, and in our crazy, everyday "real" world, that's moving nearly as fast. Good luck in this emerging world, and I hope you find cool projects in your future.
Rodney Mullen is probably an alien. He's too weird and cool and innovative to be from this planet. Skaters used to say he was a mutt of a human, and that's the title of his book.* He's one of the coolest, most genuine people I've ever met, an amazing skateboarder, an original member of the Bones Brigade, and a guy who has gone on stage to explain creativity and innovation to some of the smartest people in the world, at TED Talks. Here's a look at Rodney Mullen. Above is a brand new interview of Tony Hawk and Jason Ellis interviewing Rodney for their podcast Wolf vs. Hawk. I got about 50 minutes into this last night, it's a great podcast.I need to listen to the rest tonight.
"Just try to be an individual when you skate. Don't look at others, don't think about others, it just brings you down... It comes out of you, that's how it gets good."
-Rodney Mullen, in the mini interview I did with him when he was 19, at The Spot in Redondo Beach, in late 1986 for FREESTYLIN' magazine. Follow this link, and go to the December 1986 issue of FREESTYLIN', page 56, to check out that interview.
On my second night in Redondo Beach in 1986, my new co-worker and roommate, Mark "Lew" Lewman, led me down to the place where he and a few locals practiced flatland BMX freestyle every night. The large brick paved area, on the north end of the Redondo Beach Pier, had been dubbed The Spot by the freestylers. "There's a skater down there you have to meet," Lew yelled back, as I followed him on my Skway. "He's amazing."
On that night, I think it was just Lew and I practicing our flatland freestyle tricks. After an hour or so, a sandy haired guy on an old beach cruiser road up. Lew said "Hi," as the guy rode past and set up on the smooth concrete area, next to The Spot. In between trying my tricks, I watched this skater pull his socks up to his knees, and put on knee pads. Then he checked out his skateboard, meticulously put white tape on his finger tips, and then went through some stretching exercises. Only then, 15 minutes or so after arriving, did he step onto his small, flat freestyle board. He went into this sort of stationary wheelie thing, swinging the front of the board about 270 degrees, while keeping balanced on the back wheels. It was a warm-up of his. Then he started doing his tricks. I watched from a distance. It was like watching an Olympic athlete or something begin to train.
Lew and I and the other BMX freestylers just rode down to The Spot, in jeans or shorts and a T-shirt, and just started trying tricks. Rodney trained. He went on for 2 1/2 hours or so. He never fell. He stepped off his board two or three times. But the tricks he was doing were insane.
By that point, I had been goofing around on skateboards for 9-10 years, and could do rock walks and back wheel spins. I'd never bought a skate magazine, I knew almost nothing about the world of pro skating. I was a kid from Ohio and Idaho that just pulled out my board to goof around now and then. Lew told me that Rodney was the 8 or 9 time world champion freestyle skater at that point. Rodney just kept skating by himself. Lew and I finished up riding, and I think we rode down to the pier to get a Coke, maybe a slice of pizza as well, then rode back. Rodney was still just skating away, alone.
Finally Rodney took a break, and took a swig of water. Lew headed over towards him, and I followed, on our bikes. Lew introduced me to Rodney, and we talked for a few minutes. That's how I met 19-year-old Rodney Mullen. He was one of the original members of Powell-Peralta's Bones Brigade at the time. Rodney was going to college in Florida, in his first year, and debating between going into engineering or medicine. He ended up taking a much different path in life, when his friend Steve Rocco started a little skateboard company a few months later... called World Industries.
I wound up talking to Rodney quite a bit after our sessions, for the two or three weeks he was in California. Sometimes it was Lew, Rodney and I talking for a while, and sometimes jut me nd Rodney. We did the FREESTYLIN' interview one afternoon, with Windy Osborn shooting photos, there at The Spot. Rodney taught me how to do pressure flip style kickflips on his board, on my second or third night there. Night after night he blew my mind with all the tricks he could do on a skateboard. Non of it was death defying, but they just looked so freaking hard. He came back in October or November for another three weeks. Again, Rodney, Lew and I wound up talking a lot after our sessions. I remember him showing me half flip underflips then... in 1986. That trick blew the minds of street skaters about 8 years later in a Plan B video.
Rodney not only invented many of the core freestyle skating tricks, like the flat ground ollie, kickflips, double kickflips, the ollie impossible, and 360 flips, but he invented the tricks that the emerging street skaters took to bigger, gnarlier terrain, as street skating took over, and went worldwide. I watched Rodney trying to teach Mark Gonzales impossibles on his street board there, at The Spot, one night.
Rodney Mullen made a huge impression on me, like he has on thousands of other people. One big idea was that I could take freestyle seriously. It wasn't just goofing around, like most people thought then, it was a legit sport, and form of athletic creativity. Years later, Rodney re-invented street skating, and in more recent years, has given TED Talks, and done many interviews, about the nature of creativity to some of the most intelligent people on the planet.
None of us at The Spot back in 1986 expected any of that to happen. It's weird and amazing how life unfolds at times. I saw Rodney once more, when I took my bike up to the Hermosa Pier, in late 1987, I think. Rodney and Steve Rocco were skating for a crowd there, and I did some BMX freestyle, and we talked a bit. I remember Rodney saying, "You've got a lot of new stuff." I thought he was talking about my bike. But he said, "No you've learned a lot of new tricks." I had improved a ton in that first yea rin Southern California. But I didn't think Rodney ever really watched us ride. Obviously he had. I haven't seen him since then. I've been following him through videos for the 34 years since, like everyone else.
The podcast interview above is great, and here are several other videos of Rodney Mullen to check out, if you're interested. Take your cap off, our mind is about to be blown.
One of the better compilations of Rodney's skating online.
Lemelson Center interview with Rodney The Lemelson Center is part of the Smithsonian's National museum of American History, and focuses on invention and innovation.
Rodney Mullen's run- NSA Oceanside 1986 contest- Gork and Lew took me to this contest when I flew down for the weekend, for my interview with Wizard Publications. That was about a month before I actually got the job, moved there, and met Rodney. Don Hoffman, the guy interviewing Rodney at the end of his run, became my boss at Unreel Productions a year and a half later.
Can you make obscene amounts of money flipping NFT's? Yes. Can you lose obscene amounts of money flipping NFT's? Yes, you can. Can I verify Alex Becker made the $832,000 he claims in this video? Not quickly. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, because in late 2020 and 2021, a whole bunch of people from the crypto world have made thousands, and sometimes, millions of dollars, flipping NFT's. Plus, all of the transactions are on either the Ethereum blockchain, or another one, so they could be verified with some research. If you don't know what an NFT is, find out here.
When you hear about NFT's, non fungible tokens, and actually start looking into them, you first hit a barrage of hype. Hype... and ridiculous amounts of money that many people have made flipping them. If you search "make money with NFT's" on YouTube, it's likely a Gary Vaynerchuk video will be at or near the top of the list, because of his huge web presence. If you know who Gary Vee is, you'll likely know his roots are in selling baseball cards as a kid, and garage sale flipping later on, and soon learn he's all in on NFT's. If you don't know who he is, you'll see a cocky, brash New Jersey guy who you'll think is just hype, and maybe blow off the whole NFT concept as hype. The same goes with the Alex Becker video above. The first time I watched this, I thought, "Who is this clown?" Is this NFT stuff all a bunch of fucking hype? When you get into that video above, you begin to realize he knows his stuff.
If you start with the "NFT art" search, you'll run face first into Beeple's $69 million sale of his piece "The First 5,000 Days." That's the flag in the stratosphere screaming that NFT's are "real art." Or at least real expensive art. Your first question might be, "What the hell is a Beeple?" That will be followed by, "Wait, some dumb fucker paid $69 million for a piece of art that doesn't even physically exist?" It just doesn't make sense at first... or even at second glance.
Then the jargon hits you with more insane prices attached. Multi-million dollar Crypto Punks, Rare Pepe's, Crypto Kitties, some person called Fewocious, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Stoner Cats, Vee Friends, Doge Pound, and on and on and on. Yes, people are paying hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, and even millions of dollars, in crypto, for weird jpeg and PNG files, of art that doesn't physically exist. And it's not just 12 bored billionaires buying these, there are maybe 40,000 or more actively in the game, and many more getting sucked in by all the hype.
Then before the hype machine calms down, celebrity names start flying at you. I already mentioned entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, Mark Cuban is also in deep in NFT's and crypto. Then come names like Mila Kunis, 3lau, Logan Paul, Steph Curry, Post Malone, Jimmy Fallon, Tom Brady, Snoop Dogg, Martha Stewart, and many more. The NBA raked in over $100 million in 2021 with their Top Shots NFT series. Dig a bit deeper and you'll find that Paris Hilton owns 150+ NFT's already. She's been into crypto since 2014 or something. WTF? Paris Hilton? Even in our action sports world, Tony Hawk just had his second big NFT drop, working with Draft Kings and Autograph.
Somewhere... out there on the open sea, there's this island where all these famous people and crypto billionaires buy these NFT things, at a broken down yacht club. Then they go into some sand box in the metaverse and smoke cyber joints with Snoop Dogg or something. Something like that. What the hell is going on?
It all sounds to ridiculous. Too ridiculous. That's why I've spent the last six weeks digging deep into this world. I dove down the rabbit hole and wandered all over the freakin' place. But the tunnels keep going in all kinds of different directions. Blockchains and smart contracts are the backbone if it all. Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, and other cryptos. DeFi, which stands for Decentralized Finance, a new wave of banking-type systems and technologies and platforms. DAOs, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. That's a member owned organization with no one really running it. Wait, isn't that what the Federal Government is half the time? Crypto art. Token drops. Gas fees. Community. Eth. Punks. Apes. Kitties. And there are a whole big group of personalities, many with their own YouTube channels, spewing their thoughts on all these constantly evolving topics.
It feels a little bit like Oz, as in Dorothy and Toto and the Wizard of. Is there anything behind all this hype?
Yes, there is. Blockchains are a running, unbroken, openly recorded, decentralized series of transactions. They are, so far, unhackable. They make crypto "currencies," like Bitcoin, Ether, Dogecoin, and others possible. The Ethereum blockchain was engineered to allow "smart contracts" into these transactions. An NFT is one of those smart contracts, tied to a digital file. That file can be a piece of art, a photo, some text, a song or piece of music, a contract (like a real estate or car sale). Once that transaction is tied into the blockchain, that file becomes the official one. And that makes it rare.
That's an NFT. And rare things can be collected, sold, and traded. We can all pull up a photo of the Mona Lisa on our phone or laptop. You can buy a copycat Mona Lisa painting for $60 or so. But there's only one real Mona Lisa painting. That's rare, and it's worth a shitload of money because it's rare, old, and painted by Da Vinci. The NFT technology makes one particular digital file rare, sets it apart from all the copies out there, and that changes the game in all kinds of areas.
Art and collectibles are the beginning. Your tickets to a football game or concert could be NFT's soon. You driver's license or passport could be one some day. You could sell your car or house with an NFT contract, in a day or two, before long. You could buy "skins," weapons, or upgrades in video games that are NFT's, and then take them into other video games, because you actually own them. Music is already being sold as NFT's.
NFT's are a new technology for contracts, basically. The can make one digital file "The One." And that it going to change all kinds of things in our world in the next several years. That's the technology, the "real" thing, behind all the NFT hype. It's a crazy realm, it's moving very fast, and there's already an absurd amount of money circling around this world.
Are you old enough to remember the first video game? I played Pong for hours as a kid, about 1977. How about the first VCR? First car phone or cell phone? First personal computer? The first home video camera? Your first time on the internet? The first CD or DVD? Your first time on Napster? Your first time on social media? Your first time watching a YouTube video? Your first smart phone with a camera so you could send dick or boob pics? Gang changers. NFT technology is one of those things. It will change a whole bunch of "games," art and collectibles are just the start. You'll have to learn it at some point, like a software upgrade or new social media platform. In this series of posts on this blog, I'll share what I've learned so far. You can figure out it it's time to learn more or not. But now you know, there is something behind the NFT hype.
Oh yeah... guess who made the very first Old School BMX NFT for sale. I did. It's on Rarible if oyu search "Steve Emig The White Bear." One Eth, about $3,800 right now, plus gas/minting fees. I don't expect it to sell anytime soon. But someday it might...
It's always best to start at the beginning. What is an NFT? This video does a great job of explaining that in just under four minutes. So here's where you start.
A few months ago, I came across a magazine someone left on a bus, and there was an article about some musician called 3lau (pronounced Blou), who made a bunch of money using NFT's to sell his music and art. It had something to do with crypto. As a guy who's been selling drawings, and making very little money, for over five years, I thought it sounded interesting, and decided I'd look into "these NFT things" when I got a chance. Now I'm currently homeless, and haven't had a place to really work, or do research, for the whole Covid era. I have had to charge my laptop at some plug somewhere I'm not supposed to, and then take a bus to somewhere else with wifi, to get online, until my battery died. Then repeat. I've been doing that for 18-19 months. I couldn't get near enough time online to get much work done, let alone dive into serious research on anything to new to be in books.
Six or seven weeks ago I heard of a library that was actually open inside, where I could once again sit down, plug the laptop in, and put in solid working time again, blogging, keeping up on social media, and researching things. One of the first things I did was to check out recent Gary Vaynerchuk videos, because he is a great barometer of business in the digital age. Gary knows what's happening, and what new things are starting to trend. He had several videos about NFT's. The first couple peaked my interest, so I started diving deeper into this weird crypto/art/NFT world. I've been going deep in to the NFT research ever since. In this series of blog posts, over the next several days I'll share what I've learned, and my thoughts on this whole crazy world. To understand what I'm talking about, first you need to have a basic idea what NFT's are, and the video above covers that. So check it out, if these thing interest you.
I just began working on a whole series of blog posts about what I've learned about NFT's, those weird, art/crypto things that a bunch of people say are scams. But I can't get into my Rarible account for some reason, where my two "practice" NFT's are. I'll write these posts once I know I can actually start trying to sell some NFT's... Bummer.
Until then, here's a cool history of the Mutant Ape Yacht Club, which became the breakout stars of the NFT collectible, profile pic world in 2021. These funky looking apes were created by guys who say they spent their 20's BMXing, skating, drinking, and talking smack behind the local punk bar in Miami. Never underestimate BMXer and skaters creativity. Or business sense. These 10,000 ape NFT's sold for about $130 each in April and May, and now sell for $200,000 to about $2.9 million each. Not a bad year's work.
Joe Rogan interviews Steven Pressfield about his book, The War of Art. Published in 2002, Pressfield talks about battling "The Resistance" that holds all creative people back from doing the day to day work of being creative in whatever avenue they work in, or want to work in.
There are a lot of books that inspire each of us in some way. But most of the time, those books have something that our individual self needs to hear at that particular point in time. That's why it will resonate so deep with us. But another creative or entrepreneurial person may not get anything out of that book. Then there are books that touch every creative person that dives into them, each in a different way. Here are two books I think every artist, writer, or creative person, and every entrepreneur should read at some point.
What book should you read right now? The one that keeps catching your attention, or sticking in your mind. When that happens, there's something in that book you need to hear at this point in time.
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield- I heard Seth Godin mention this bookin a video years ago. But I never looked it up. Right before Christmas, I knew I'd have some time to read over the holidays, so I wandered through the library, looking for a good book. I found this one. I'm only 84 pages into it, and it's blown m mind many times over, already. Pressfield talks about this force, "The Resistance," he calls it, that tries to keep us from doing creative work. He just nails the insidiousness of all the things The Resistance does, or gets us to do to ourselves, to become less productive. I'm a broke dude, but I get a lot of content created, I'm a productive, creative guy already. This book called me on my BS several times. If you're a writer, artist of any kind, or an entrepreneur, or want to be any of those, read this book.
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron- This book is really a 12-step program to reclaim your inner creativity. But it's a 12 step program for people who may hate 12 step programs. You work through it, chapter by chapter, over 12 weeks, and do exercises along the way. Every creative person should read this book, and actually do the work. I went through it in 1996. It made all the difference in the world of helping me come to grips with my creative drive. On one hand many of us have this urge to write, draw, paint, sculpt, shoot photos, produce videos, or whatever. Yet we live in a world that usually says, "Well, that's nice, but what are you going to do for a REAL job." Creative work can be a real job, or just a passion on the side, it's different for everyone. This book, this 12 week course, helps you figure out why you struggle with your creativity, and all the issues that come with it. This book made all the difference in the world to me as a writer, and now an visual artist as well. Just read it, and do your "morning pages." I did them for five years straight after reading this book.
Read both of these books, at some point. That's all I'm going to say.
South Park pukes, because they're funny. Having people puke in your car sucks, especially if they are family, and you can't leave them behind when they throw up on a trip. Here's my tips on cleaning up puke in your car or truck.
I spent a total of 6 1/2 years driving a taxi, between 1999 and 2012. Most of that time, I made my primary money at night, driving thousands of drunk people home. During that time I had to clean up puke more times than I can count. Unfortunately, I got pretty good at it. It's the holiday season, and half the free world seems to have Covid, so people will be traveling, some are sick already, and some will get sick in cars. Here are my tips for dealing with that, learned in my years as a taxi driver.
Tip Number One- When someone says they're going to be sick, SCREAM "Open the door, open the door, open the door!" They should have their seat belts on, so chances are low they'll actually fall out. If they're puking, and they fall out, it's probably best to leave them behind, anyhow. Seriously though, it's MUCH easier to clean up vomit in a vehicle if they puke out the door. Usually most of it goes outside, and maybe across the back fender. No problem, that's easy to clean. What does get inside the car is usually by the edges of the seat, door frame, and on the lower, inside part of the door. Those spots are much easier to clean than many other areas.
Obviously, stop the car and pull over when someone is sick. But if they're gonna blow chunks immediately, opening the door helps most of it land outside, on the road, not in the car. Don't tell your 3-year-old to open the door, but from maybe ages11-12and up, if they have a seat belt on, things should be fine. Use your discretion.
Most people instinctively tell sick passengers to throw up out the window. This is one of the worst options. First, it takes a bit to roll a window down, which means they usually throw up down the inside of the door, AND on the edge of the window. This almost always leads to vomit going down the edges of the window, into the inside of the door. This begins to smell real funky in a day or two, and keeps smelling for days, maybe weeks. So in the case of an immediate puke, tell them to open the door and throw up, as you slow down and pull over.
Tip Number Two: Get the person out of the car, once you stop safely, and let them finish puking outside, if possible.
Tip Number Three:Basic clean up. When possible, pull into an open area of a parking lot, whee you can open the door, or doors, to clean up the vehicle. Use an old drink cup from a restaurant, or something similar, to scoop up as much of the puke as your can, and throw it out. Then poor some water on all the areas where they got sick, and wipe up everything else you can with paper towels. You don't need much water, just enough to loosen things up from the floor mat, seat, carpet, whatever. Then take a spray cleaner, like 409, Simple Green, that orange cleaner stuff, or something like that, and spray the puked on areas, and clean them up the best you can. There should be no visible vomit left, and most of the smell should be gone.
Tip Number Four- the ancient Taxi Driver Secret:Get a large bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and pour some on the entire puked on area. Use more paper towels to wipe it down, if necessary. Then pour peroxide in any cracks, seams, or on hardware like the seat brackets under the seats, door latches, the widow, anything that MIGHT have been hit by vomit. Use the peroxide liberally. Let it sit a couple of minutes, then wipe up the damp peroxide.
After the clean up, and when the sick person feels ready to travel, you should be good to go. Peroxide works magic, getting into nooks and crannies, door latches, the widow edge, seat brackets, and other hard to get to places. It kills the bacteria, which kills the smell that usually lingers for a week or more. If there's puke outside on the car, you can pour some water on it, to wash it off, or go to a self-serve car wash, and pay to spray down the outside of the car, and clean it off.
The Kit- This basic kit great for long drives or road trips. Most of you probably don't have all the cleaning items I just mentioned in your car right now. I didn't at first as a taxi driver, either. Then I learned, the hard way, and built my puke (and other mess), clean-up kit. Ideally, get a rectangle plastic tub, about the size you would use to soak your feet, and maybe 4-7 inches deep. In that plastic container, put a roll of paper towels, a bottle of spray cleaner, a medium size bottle of water, an empty plastic drink cup, and a large bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Then put the container in your trunk, or the back of your SUV, when going on long trips. If you leave this kit in your car, all the time, it's a good place to put a first aid kit, as well.
If someone is feeling sick, and might throw up, empty the tub, and set it on their lap, and drive until they either get sick, or are feeling better. If they throw up, it's in the tub, which is easy to clean.
So those are my clean-up tips, which may help you with more holiday travel, and New Year's Eve coming up. Happy Holidays everyone. Oh, and drinking a bunch of water at night, when drunk, before you go to sleep, usually tones down the hangover, as well. You're welcome.
Early in the second Matrix movie, Matrix Reloaded, the team pulls up in a car, gets out, and goes into a warehouse. The way the car parks, and the angle of the shot, make the license plate easy to read. It said, "IS 5416." I caught that the first time I saw the movie, but didn't remember what was on the plate. But I knew it had to be important. I went to see the movie again, in the theater, to write down the numbers and letters on the license plate. In a movie so complex with major religious and spiritual references throughout the series, I knew that license plate was a key to something. I was right. This video above sucks, but at least you can see the license plate.
Let me start this post by saying I just learned the Wachowski Brothers, that wrote the original comics, and wrote and directed The Matrix movie, are now the Wachowski Sisters. They've both come out as trans. What? That has nothing to do with this post, but it surprised me. You can see them in the original Matrix as the window washers at the office building where Neo works.
On to the license plate. Being a dork who thinks way to deeply about things on continuing level, I loved The Matrix trilogy. The idea that our everyday lives is really a simulation that we all believe in is a brilliant literary concept. But better than that, it's a great metaphor on multiple levels. For people who just never seemed to fit in to the superficial, everyday world that most people are wrapped up in, it seemed like a validation that there is something more, a deeper, perhaps more intelligent, or more creative aspect to life.
Deeper than that, the matrix life of Neo and the crew, and the "unplugged" life are a brilliant metaphor for spirituality. The Matrix trilogy is the most spiritual set of movies I've ever seen. This is brilliant, because a lot of devoutly religious people, who are not very spiritually evolved, hated the movies. You could write a book about the dozens of little things and nuances of spiritual awareness and insights tucked into those movies. There's the obvious, the underground world of humans was called Zion, the hill where ancient was built, deeply meaningful to Jewish people. There are the everyday superficial, materialistic life of Neo and everyone else in the matrix, then there is him taking the red pill, and becoming aware that there was something else beyond. In dream symbolism, a pill often means restoring harmony, healing. Blue symbolizes conformity. Red symbolizes energy, courage, and individuality .
The symbolism and metaphors just keep going through out the trilogy, getting deeper and deeper. The Oracle, in my opinion, represents intuition, following your heart, your gut instinct. The Architect, I believe, represents the intellect. So it's the classic battle that every human is constantly facing, mind versus heart. Do I do what "logically makes sense?" Or do I do what I'm really passionate about, "follow my heart? The Wachowskis managed to package all these layers of symbolism into a hardcore action movie. The movie moves and has crazy action, keeping people at all levels entertained, but there were also all these deeper levels, most of which our subconscious may pick up, but slide past our conscious mind, until we think about it later, or watch it several times. And even then, only bits and pieces seem obvious. As we dig deeper into the layers going on, the depth of spiritual references just keep going. That's why I loved The Matrix trilogy. You can keep getting insights out of these movies for years.
And then, in the second movie, the car pulls up, the crew gets out, to walk into the warehouse. And we get those few seconds where we can read that license plate. IS 5416. I was able to write it down the second time I saw the movie. But I went to see Matrix Reloaded a third time, just to make sure. Then I walked out, trying to figure out what IS 5416 was a reference to. It took a day or two, of just working my restaurant job I had then and thinking about it. Intellectually, I thought, "OK, there's a huge undercurrent of spirituality in this movie, and tons of Biblical references. Then it hit me. "The Bible. IS 5416 might reference a Bible verse." I wasn't online then, I think I went to the library to look it up. Isaiah 54:16 seemed to be the verse that made sense. That verse reads:
"Behold, I have created the smith who blows the fire of coals, and produces a weapon for its purpose. I have also created the ravager to destroy." - Isaiah 54:16, RSV
On the surface, this verse is about a blacksmith, who uses is bellows to heat up the hot coals, and get the metal red hot, to make sword, or some other item. But in the movie we have the agent, Smith, the bad guy, dressed in black, who chases Neo around, pops out of nowhere in the matrix, and continually attacks Neo. So the Bible verse in Isaiah, referenced on the license plate, is about Smith. That makes a lot of sense, and it's brilliant.
But it doesn't just reference Smith, this verse explains Smith. And here is where we leave contemporary religious thinking, and delve deep into spirituality. Smith's role, as the Bad Guy, an agent of the machines (a metaphor for materialistic life), is not just to attack Neo, and try to destroy him. Smith's role is to attack Neo, and beat on Neo the way a blacksmith forges a piece of steel to make a sword. Smith's role in attacking Neo is to forge him into into the "weapon for ravaging," or, metaphorically, into the super hero he's supposed to be. Neo isn't born "The One" (Yes, "One" is anagram for ,"Neo"), Neo becomes the one by battling Smith time after time, until he realizes that he can control the matrix. He learns that he can make those bullets stop mid-air, like at the end of the first movie, and do other things.
Smith, the Bad Guy, sees his role as mandate to destroy Neo, and save the matrix and the machines. But this obscurely referenced Bible verse helps us figure out that Smith's real role is to make Neo better, until he becomes that hero that can save them all in the end. Smith is like the boxer that a champion fighter practices against in the training gym, pushing him to improve day after day, to get ready for the prize fight. Only then does Neo become someone who can save everything in the end, fulfilling his destiny, and bring in the new age of peace.
Neo didn't realize who he was, or who was supposed to become. Trinity helped Neo realize he was The One of the prophecy. Smith didn't realize that he wasn't there to kill Neo, though he kept trying, he was there to push Neo to become someone neither of them imagined was possible. Then Neo is the hero who can defeat the machines, and bring the whole world into a new beginning, reset it.
In pretty much every action movie, the "bad guy" (or bad woman), is "evil," and must be destroyed, obliterated, or vanquished in some way. The message is "evil must be defined, destroyed, and not allowed to exist." But from the more enlightened viewpoint in The Matrix trilogy, Smith, the "bad guy," and all his clones, are a necessary part of the story. They are a negative force, but not necessarily "evil." Smith plays his role by trying to defeat Neo, but in reality he helps forge Neo into the Hero. This also ties into Joseph Campbell's whole idea of "The Hero's Adventure," introduced in his book, The Hero with 1,000 Faces." Heroes don't just pop out of nowhere, and then go on adventures. The real heroes are rather ordinary people, who go off on adventures, seeking something. Think young Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars movie (now episode 4). It's the trials and the tribulations of the adventure itself that forge the person into the Hero. The adventure creates the hero. This was one of Joseph Campbell's big lessons studying religions and stories of heroes throughout history. George Lucas was a big fan of Campbell's, and incorporated many mythological ideas into the early Star Wars movies. J.R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy are other hero's adventure stories, combining classic mythological themes in fictional novels. The same it true of the Harry Potter books and movies.
And this, as Joseph Campbell, the comparative mythologist, figured out, is the metaphor for the potential of each of our lives. As humans, we can follow the "logical thing to do,' the Architect, and be the person everyone around us wants us to be. Or we can follow our intuition, the Oracle, which sets us off on a crazy adventure. That adventure, if we complete it, can forge us into the hero each of us is capable of being. The attackers we face in our own lives, like Smith in The Matrix, are not so much evil, as they are negative forces to challenge us, and seduce us into giving up, to push us, and to distract us from becoming our particular form of hero in life.
So that's what I got from noticing that license plate in The Matrix: Reloaded. Now, as Matrix Resurrections is about to come out, we have a much later sequel to the original trilogy of movies, along with the comics, graphic novels, and video games from 18-22 years ago, all of which added detail to the story in the movies. We'll see how this movie stacks up to the originals.
Neo and Smith fight in the first movie, when Neo is starting to believe in himself.
Whatever you do, don't read any of these articles before the disappear from the internet. I've mentioned in previous posts that the last 20 years of my life have been really weird. A few of the similar stories are now beginning to come out, about other people who got caught up in some of the crazier stuff going on in our world these days. This first story caught my eye this morning, and I searched to see how many similar stories or articles were out there.
The season's upon us... remember, if you want a mellow Christmas, stuff the turkey with Xanax. I can't think of a better video than the Dropkick Murphy's to get me into the Christmas spirit. Except watching Bad Santa, but that takes two hours...
"You're a Mean One, Mr Grinch"- Albert Hague/Thurl Ravenscroft "You're a three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich... with arsenic sauce" Seriously, take a moment, and maybe a shot, and listen to the incredible lyrics of this classic Christmas song. When have you ever heard lyrical magic like this?
Here's a quick video rundown on the 2021 Forbes 400 list. For almost 40 years now, Forbes magazine has listed the 400 richest people in the U.S., in a Fall issue of the magazine. Generally speaking, the ultra rich got ultra richer last year. It took over $4 billion in net worth to make the list this year, the highest base level ever. Since about $5-$6 TRILLION in new money has been created, because of the Covid/financial crisis, that's not surprising. Donald Trump and Oprah Winfrey dropped off the list, leap-frogged by people with faster growing fortunes. Melinda Gates is now on the list, after her divorce from Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Dozens more made the list this year, for the first time, and crytpo fortunes are one big reason why. You can read the 2021 Forbes 400 list here.
All the way back in high school, I had this idea that I wanted to work for myself someday, to run my own business of some kind. Technically, that's never happened. I was a taxi driver for 6 1/2 years, which operates like a very small business, it's not an actual job, with guaranteed pay. I've made it to the gray area on the edge of a "real" business, but I'm not there yet.
When I got into BMX and freestyle in 1982-83, I started reading magazine articles about all these young entrepreneurs, all in their teens or early 20's then. Rider/entrepreneurs like Bob Haro, R.L. Osborn, Bob Morales, Scot Breithaupt, and Ron Wilkerson, were a huge inspiration for me then. Much to my surprise, I ended up getting into the BMX industry, and got to know these guys. I actually worked with Bob Morales and Scot Breithaupt on projects, worked at Wizard Publications, where R.L. Osborn had his office, owned by his dad, Bob Osborn a fireman, photographer and entrepreneur. Later I was friends with Pierre Andre' Senizergues, who started Etnies, and after that, I was a roommate of Chris Moeller, during some of the early years of S&M Bikes. Hanging around these, and other highly entrepreneurial people, I ached to start my own business. But I was deathly shy back then, and just couldn't sell things, and selling is a huge part of entrepreneurship. So I wound up working as a sidekick to several young entrepreneurs instead.
Being a pretty smart, geeky type, I started reading about real estate investing in the late 1980's, and that led to reading all kinds of other books on business and marketing later on. During this time, 1991 or 1992,I first picked up a copy of the Forbes 400 magazine. I wanted to know what the richest people in the United States knew that I didn't. That was how it started. What were they doing that I wasn't, and how did they look at the world, and at business? The annual special edition of Forbes listed the top 400 wealthiest people, what business or industry they were in, and had two or three paragraphs about each person. So I just dove in to that list, to see what I could learn.
The first thing I remember learning was that I, and pretty much all of us "average people," had a whole lot of misconceptions about wealth and how people got wealthy. I realized that the vast majority of people don't really know much at all about money and wealth, yet we spend 40-50+ hours a week, our whole adult lives, working to earn money, to survive. But very few people really try to learn to understand money, and the financial world. This hasn't change, the vast majority of people are still pretty clueless about the big picture of money, and the investment world. And yes, I recognize that irony that I'm writing this blog post as a person who is homeless these days. Stop reading, if you want, my living situation is plenty of reason not to listen to what I have to say.
Still here? OK. Let's continue. The first misconception is that super rich people have this huge pile of money sitting in their bank account, and a then own bunch of stocks. As a general rule, that I learned from reading the Forbes 400, the ultra rich own a big part of a major business, or they're part of a family that owns a major business. Second, and I learned this from other business books, the super rich do not have a lot of money sitting in standard bank accounts. They own assets. Yes, they have bank accounts, with a lot of money by working class standards, but that's a bad place to keep money long term. They own things like businesses, stocks, bonds, real estate, copyrighted intellectual property (songs, books, software, movies, etc), that are worth money, and often have some cash flow coming from them.
The next big lesson was that about 1/3 of the Forbes 400 list, on average, inherited their money. One in three super rich people did not create their fortunes, their dad, grandpa, or great grandpa did, in most cases. No ladies, there were no self-made billionaire women when I started reading this list, Oprah, Meg Whitman, and others came later. So the easiest way to get super rich is to be born into a wealthy family. The second easiest way is to marry into great wealth. But there's a lot of competition on that front.
Another big misconception I had was that most rich people got rich by investing in the stock market. Nope, Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger of Bershire Hathaway are the only two ultra rich guys that made their wealth from investing in stocks. Buying and trading stocks IS NOT a good way to get ultra rich. You can make millions, maybe, if you're really good and really lucky, but not billions.
But, a huge portion of the Forbes 400 have much of their wealth in stocks. This was a huge insight for me. The people who were stock billionaires started a business that became huge, or were angel investors in one, and in most cases, they took that company public in an IPO, where their stock became publicly traded. That's where most of the stock fortunes in the Forbes 400 came from. People built huge companies, owned millions of shares of their own stock, and that stock increased in price when they went public on the stock market, making them multi-millionaires or billionaires.
Another interesting thing was what types of businesses created billionaires. When I read that 1991 or 1992 Forbes 400, there were family members of companies like Coca-Cola, Seagrams, Levi's and major brand name products on the list. Those fortunes went back 80-100-150 years. Guys like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were just getting on the list in the early 1990's. "Tech billionaires" wasn't even a thing in 1992, it was brand new.
Have you ever eaten a Milky Way or Three Musketeers candy bar? Of course you have. That light colored nougat in those created one of the biggest fortunes on Earth, for the Mars family. That candy business started in 1883, and 3 or 4 members of the family are still on the 400 list. Cargill, one of the largest privately owned companies ever, started with a grain storage business in the 1800's. Several members of that family are still on the Forbes 400 list. Much more widely known, the Walton family, kin to Sam Walton, who created Walmart, is another family fortune that has several members on the 400 list.
As I watched the Forbes 400 list change over the years, I could see the long term trends in business play out, by counting how many people in various industries were on the list. In 1992, I think it took a net worth of about $400 million to get on this list, 1/10th of what it takes today. Most of those people were owners of stock in older, industrial, consumer, media, or energy (like oil, coal), businesses, and in real estate. A lot of people in the mid 20th century made millions in some business, then many millions more in real estate, making the list using both.
As the 1990's progressed, the new and rapidly growing high tech sector thrust several billionaires onto the list. There are names we know, like Bill Gates and Paul Allen of Microsoft, and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple, and Michael Dell of Dell Computers, but also a lot of lesser known players in tech, from computer, chip, and software companies. It soon became obvious that high tech was creating levels of wealth in 10-20 years that took generations before. Later came hedge fund managers, a few more real estate people (like Donald Bren, who owns much of Irvine, CA), financiers like Bill Gross of Pimco, and more computer related billionaires. As these fortunes grew, many of the older, industrial based members of the list dropped off, as tech fortunes soared eclipsed them.
And I haven't even got to social media yet. Guys like Larry Ellison of Oracle (the richest guy I've met personally, I gave him a ride in my taxi in 2003, he was only worth $9 billion after the tech crash), were getting to the top part of the list, as were the two founders of Google. A few years later, making fortunes even faster than the computer billionaires, were the social media posse, Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook crew, guys from Twitter, and several others. Now we're seeing the crypto billionaires wealthy enough to make it onto this list. So the types of industries that pump out billionaires changes over time, and the time it takes to generate those types of fortunes has dramatically decreased, as our society becomes more tech enabled, and business moves and changes faster.
Another interesting thing I found was where these people lived, or were based. The older, industrial fortunes were often across the Midwest, largely. Financiers of all kinds centered mostly in New York City, and that region. Tech companies clustered as they began, building Silicon Valley (San Jose area of CA), as well as Seattle, Austin, New York City, and San Francisco itself. New York, California, and Texas have the greatest numbers of the super rich, but little Jackson Hole Wyoming had 3 billionaires, last time I checked. Why? Really good skiing, and they all inherited their wealth, as I recall. Those three didn't need to sit in an office somewhere else.
So the basic things I learned from reading, and really studying, the Forbes 400 list for about 20 years, was that it takes a lot of work and hustle to become a billionaire, if you're not born one. The way to do it is to build a business at the start of a major trend or wave in business (like computers/software in 1970's/1980's, internet in 1990's, social media in 2000's, crypto in the 2010's, etc.). Just build a giant business, hold it together, change the lives of millions of people with your products or services, and then go public, making your stock worth billions. That's the scenario. Heck, Kylie Jenner did it with make up by age 21. No big deal, right? Actually, it's a huge deal.
Right now we're in a place in history where the working class have been screwed over for about 40 years. But it's not the dozens of self-made tech billionaires that screwed most of them over, it's the older, industrial companies, that don't have the profit margins tech businesses do. So they can't pay tech-level salaries. Those older corporations still employ tens of millions of the working population. Also, new technology and industrial robots have taken over a lot of those jobs, as has outsourcing. IN addition, people are mired in debt today, as are businesses, and the various levels of government. That massive amount of debt is a major reason people have to work so hard to make a living today, they're paying personal, corporate, and government debt off, all at once. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk aren't conspiring to make your life harder, they just have cool ideas, and a lot of momentum that keeps growing their absurd fortunes.
One last thought. Inflation. My first real job paid me $2.05 an hour, $1.30 under minimum wage, legally, in Boise in 1984. When I started reading the Forbes 400 in 1991-92, the biggest fortune was about $4-5 billion dollars. Now Jeff Bezos is worth about $201 billion. That's 40 times as big a fortune in nominal dollars. Inflation, the rising of prices, or more accurately, the devaluing of the dollar, is a big part of that difference. One dollar in 1992 is worth about $1.98 today. Even adjusting for inflation, Jeff Bezos' Amazon fortune is still 20 times bigger than the top 1992 fortune. Why? Amazon and online shopping is such a huge part of everyday life for millions of people. And they dominate the online shopping world, and he owns a major chunk of Amazon. But another huge factor is that stock prices have soared, even after a large stock crash in 2020. This is why all the super rich are so much super richer, the assets they own are rising in price because of the trillions of new money created. The whole system is out of whack right now, and I think we'll see a pretty big drop in some of that in 2022. We're in for a big correction in almost everything this year, it appears.
So that's some of the more basic things I learned by simply reading the Forbes 400 list, and analyzing the info, over about 20 years. Oh yeah, taxing the rich won't work the way politicians and working people want it to. A good inheritance tax would help, but the rich always find ways around taxes. We need a better tax system, but full blown socialism isn't the answer. But that's what the cries on the street will be for for another 2-3 years. We're in for a few more "interesting" years.
Just a reminder, you just had your mind blown by a blog post written by a homeless guy. Think about that one...
The guy talking in this video is Richard Johnson, long time taxi driver, indie gallery owner (at the time), gifted storyteller, poker player, and self-proclaimed "fame-ass arteest." Richard's one weird and great character, and he offered me a uniquedeal back in 2005, because he needed someone to drive his taxi on the weekends. I took the offer, and wound up living in AAA Electra 99 gallery, where my creativity was reborn, and my Sharpie Scribble Style art technique was invented.
With the turn of the new millennium, in January of 2000, came a tough time in my life. After an injury, I quit my good paying, Hollywood lighting tech job, in late spring of 1999, and took time off to get a needed minor surgery. My insurance was all screwed up, I couldn't see a doctor, or get the surgery. I looked for a new way to make a living, without heavy lifting, and became a taxi driver in the Huntington Beach, California area. I was living three blocks from the ocean, in downtown H.B. at the time, and one of my neighbors told me, "Some taxi driver told me he makes $300 a day." "OK," I thought, "that sounds good, so I gave it a shot." I soon found out it was a really hard way to make a living. I learned you could make $300 on a really good Saturday. But you had to pay $115 of that to the taxi company, and spend another $35-$40 for gas. And that was the best day of the week for driving.
I scraped by for a couple of months, driving a cab at Orange County (aka John Wayne) Airport, working seven, 17 hour days, while dressed in black slacks, white shirt, and a tie.. I looked like a waiter, and made about $300 a week take home money, if I was lucky. I started hanging out at the downtown bar scene in Huntington Beach on weekend nights, to make extra money driving drunk people home.
I couldn't afford to pay rent anymore, after about two months. I wound up moving out of my apartment, putting all my stuff in storage, and living in my cab, in about October or November of 1999. I also quit driving at the airport, and became a "street driver." I could wear shorts and a T-shirt, and I had to find most of my own business, while paying the taxi company $600 a week to lease the cab. I also had to ante up about $300 a week, to pay for my gas. All my fares and tips blended together, and after I paid for lease and gas, what was left was my "pay." I made about $300 to $350 a week, but worked less hours than at the airport. I soon became an expert at "flagging" the local bars and nightclubs of Orange County, learning which bars were the best which nights of the week. I got really good at finding rides in places other drivers never thought of.
I switched to another taxi company, a new one, that had brand new Ford Crown Victorias, but they were natural gas powered. So I had to go to obscure places to refill, but I got free gas for months. Since it was a new taxi company, they had almost no business, but the lease was only $400 a week. I lived in that taxi, and easily made enough to pay my lease, but not much more. I was making about $200 a week, while living in my taxi, for six more months. Then the new company got the big O.C. Airport contract, and didn't have enough drivers for a month, as the drivers from the other company switched to our company. So I made insane money for three weeks, working back at the airport, and was able to rent a room in a house after that.
By that time, I knew how to make money in a taxi, and I switched to another company where I could rent the cab just on the weekends, for $115 a day, for three days. About 8-9 months into my taxi career, I rented a cheap room in inland Huntington Beach, I made about $300-$350 a week, and had four days off. Life was pretty good. Until Christmas 2000, when my driver's license got suspended suddenly, apparently from a clerical error at the DMV.
I wound up working odd jobs, and was homeless on the streets, while working a restaurant job for nine months. On Labor Day weekend, 2003, I was finally able to get my taxi permit again, and go back to taxi driving. Once again, I was living in my cab, and working 7 days a week, and taking showers at the gym as I kept getting fatter. It was around that time I met another cab driver named Richard Johnson. He was a long time taxi driver, a couple years older than me (I was 38, I think), and he was this weird, funny, driver I'd run into now and then.
At the taxi company one Monday morning, I saw a flyer by the window that said, "Taxi Driver Art Show," and asked the girl in the window about it. She told me Richard Johnson had a little indie art gallery, and wanted any taxi drivers who did artwork to do something for an art show. That's how I first heard of AAA Electra 99, and indie art gallery, museum, and co-op, or something like that. I rolled by the next Friday evening, and talked to Richard, checked out the gallery. Unlike traditional art galleries with their miles of cold, boring, white walls, Electra was crammed with all kinds of art. Artists paid $40 a month to rent a 4 foot X 8 foot section of wall space, and they could put up anything they wanted. There was no selection process, and only three rules, all begun because of Richard, himself. The three rules were: 1) No fire. 2) No live animals. And 3) No really bad smells.
I decided to do something for the taxi driver art show. I wound up drawing a hand made, taxi driver board game, sort of like the game Life, but with Matchbox cars as your markers. I can't remember what all was on it, except that one square said, "Party at Dennis Rodman's house, lose turn." I regularly picked up people at Rodman's Newport Beach house at the time, usually after the bars had closed. His and Carmen Electra's beach house was almost like an after hours club, so many people partied there. My board game got a few laughs, and I soon rented a wall, and put up prints of a bunch of my poetry, along with a poem written on a toilet paper roll. People would unroll it to read the poem, and then roll it back up. It was my homage to the great (and terrible) bathroom wall graffiti of the 1970's, where hand drawn dick pics and odd poems were standard in any public restroom. Before "graffiti" was spray paint tagging and colorful pieces, it was something we read while taking a dump in public.
I came to know Richard as a weird, old school punk rocker, artist, and funny storyteller guy, and started hanging out at the gallery a little bit on weekend evenings, before the bar business got going. He drove his taxi mostly in Anaheim and inland O.C. during the days, and I made most of my money from the H.B., Newport, and Costa Mesa bar scene fares at night. I hung out at the new Huntington Beach Hyatt during the days, catching a few rides from there, and sleeping when I could. Richard would roll by, and just jump in my cab and hang out, once in a while.
Soon after I started driving the cab in 2003, the company pulled our dispatch CB radios out, and replaced them with new technology, dispatch computers. Those computers totally screwed up the business, allowing the company to put more and more cabs on the road, mostly. So we had fewer calls, more cabs, and A LOT LESS business per driver. And we all had to lease the cabs weekly, so suddenly everyone was working 7 days a week. Before that, most drivers just worked weekends, and a few worked all week.
It got harder and harder to make a living. From Labor Day weekend 2003, to about the same time in 2005, I had 5 complete days off. Normal working people get two days off a week, I took five full days off in two years, and worked every other day. By late summer 2005, I was angry, burned out, and had gained about 150 pounds. When you drive a taxi, you either eat too much or smoke too much. I don't smoke.
That's when Richard made me and offer. He bought his cab, which meant he paid $200 less a week, but was responsible for all the maintenance. He drove mostly during the day, during the weekdays, and needed a good weekend driver to help pay for the cab. I needed a break from driving 14-18 hours a day, 7 days a week. The deal was that I would pay $270 a weekend, and drive his cab from about 6 pm Friday until about 4 am Monday morning. I made most of the money I made on Friday and Saturday nights, so I could make $200 or $250 to take home, after paying him, if business was decent. I paid him $50 a week for rent, and could live in his art gallery, which had moved to Anaheim, from Newport, by that time. I thought the deal over for a couple of days, and went for it. It's the location you see in the clip above, which is from 5 or 6 years later.
As Richard was helping move my clothes and stuff to the gallery to move in, only then did he ask, "Do you like cats?" I said, "Uh... sure. Do you have a pet cat in the gallery?" Richard said, "Yeah... well, technically, we have 8." Good thing I wasn't allergic to cats. They had a cat maned Pita, and then another stray female cat that just showed up, and started hanging out in the gallery most of the time. They called her "P.A.," for "Pita's Assistant." P.A. had just had a litter of six kittens, in the gallery a couple weeks earlier. So suddenly I had 4 1/2 days off, and lived alone in an indie art gallery, inside a typical small industrial unit, with 7 cats. By the time I showed up, P.A. had run Pita off, and it was me, her, and the kittens all week. The gallery was open on Wednesday nights, and then Friday and Saturday nights each week, when local garage bands played.
I moved in on a Wednesday, since Richard and his girlfriend were going on a trip to New Orleans for a long weekend. So I got a couple extra days driving his cab that first week. As it turned out, that was the weekend Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, so Richard and Michelle only made it to Chicago, and spent a weekend there, instead. Come Monday, they got back, he took the taxi, and I suddenly was surrounded by a huge room, jam packed with art from all kinds of local, unknown artists, and a couple from Europe who Richard knew. The bathroom was plastered with band flyers for shows at the gallery.
I slept for most of the first two days, I was completely exhausted from the two previous years of non-stop taxi driving. In the evening of the second day, I drew a little picture in pen, on a post-it note. It was the first creative thing I had done in about 2 1/2 years. The last place I lived, in 2002, I'd been playing around, doing artwork with markers. I had been making collages of BMX, skateboard, snowboarding, and rock climbing photos, with marker doodles in between. I was trying to find a way to shade well with markers, after trying to draw a big mural with them for my dingy room. Instead I made several huge collages.
I did this drawing in 2021, a reminder of my taxi driving days. Another driver drew a skull and crossbones, with the words "Drive, Die, Cash," above the visor, in pen, in one cab. That sums up taxi driving, so I remembered that basic idea, and drew this. Then I lost my storage unit, including this drawing, about a month go. Bummer. #sharpiescribblestyle
The next weekend, while out in the taxi, I bought a roll of big, white paper, the kind cheerleaders use to make banners in high school. I also bought a cheap set of 12 generic markers. I started spending my days trying different drawing styles, looking for something I liked. I soon bought a 24 pack of regular size Sharpie markers, in all their colors. About October of 2005, sitting in AA Electra 99, just me and P.A. and the kittens, listening to music and the rain on the roof, my Sharpie Scribble Style of shading was invented. That link is a blog post telling how that all happened.
My creative drive, abandoned for over two years while I tried to do nothing but make money in the taxi, and get my life back on track, was reborn. I just started drawing for hours a day, trying whatever ideas came to me, on 4 or 5 foot long sheets of that roll of paper. I mixed scribbles of different colors over each other, seeing what I ended up with, and figured out how to blend the colors to arrive at the final color I wanted. At first I wrote some of my poetry real big, then did designs in the background.
As I drew, P.A. and the kittens roamed the gallery. There was a stage at one end, and old couches on both walls. I slept on one of them, and once the kittens hit about 4 weeks old, they would venture from their box to my couch, and I usually woke up each morning with kittens climbing all over me. P.A. became my best art critic. She would jump up on the table where I drew, and sit on my drawings, while I was drawing them, in typical cat fashion. But she only sat on the good ones, and somehow avoided the crappy drawings.
We had a refrigerator and a microwave, and early, dial-up internet, at the gallery. I spent a little time trying to surf the web, but mostly I drew pictures, and read some art books that were there. At one point I drank some mini whiskey bottles, and then took photos of the kittens when they fell asleep in weird positions, with the whisky bottles around them. It looked like they had passed out at a party. I also start taking boxes and making a kitten amusement park. I made all kinds of little things for them to crawl through, play with, and explore. And I just kept drawing and playing around with my "scribble style" technique with Sharpies. Back then I was drawing things by hand, then shading with different colors, seeing what colors blended the best with the scribble style.
The Ramones, 18" X 24", one of the first music related drawings I did, in 2016. Hey, ho, let's go! #sharpiescribblestyle
My sister had taken me to see the movie Rent when I visited them in North Carolina, during the time I lived in the gallery. She loved the play and the movie, and was friends with Anthony Rapp, the filmaker guy in Rent. So I did a huge RENT logo drawing for her and my niece and nephew, about 2 1/2 feet high and 5 or 6 feet long. I put a bunch of quotes from the movie, handwritten in the background, which is something I still do today in many of my drawings. I had a 4' X 8' section of the wall in Electra, which was part of the deal of living there. So I kept doing drawings to hang up, and changing them out when I did new ones.
As time went on, the kittens grew up, and were sold off or given to people who came to the gallery to watch bands play. P.A. had another litter, 4 kittens that time, after the first litter was grown and gone. She would go out, and just wander outside, for one or two days, then show up at the door again, and want back in. Obviously she met some male cats while out and about.
On Wednesday nights, the gallery was open for 3-4 hours for The Spinning Head of Big Prizes, which Richard called "An open format poetry game show for people who hate poetry." Basically, each person would spin the big wheel (visible in the video above), and do what the wheel told you to do. It may be to sing or act something out, to tell some weird story of your life, read a poem, or to "tax Matt." Matt was a life size dummy in coveralls, made of wadded up paper and duct tape. "Tax," was supposedly an old jail term for beating up someone who disrespected you, or broke a rule. So when you hit, "Tax Matt" on the wheel, you had to attack and beat up the dummy, which was lying on the floor most of the time. That got pretty funny, at times. Most of the people coming to the gallery were in their late teens or early 20's, usually friends of one of the local bands playing. And artsy kids usually aren't big on violence, so some would barely hit Matt, while others would just go berserk on him like it was WWE wrestling. After doing what the wheel said, you got to pick a prize from a box of dollar store stuff.
Spinning Head Wednesday nights usually wound up with Richard telling crazy stories (for $1 each), the taxi driver in him felt people needed to be charged for everything. He'd also break into a closet of his albums, and play really obscure punk bands, like Nail, and other bands I'd never heard of, loud as can be. Since the whole business area was empty at night, no one cared how loud it got.
Richard, his girlfriend Michelle, and few others were also big into playing poker. The whole Texas Hold 'em craze was in full swing then, so Wednesday nights usually ended with me falling asleep on my couch and a few artists smoking and playing poker around the main table. Michelle usually walked away with most everyone's money, she was the sleeper poker shark in the crew.
I just kept drawing every day, and walking a bit, so I lost some weight while there. But I ordered way too many pizzas, since there wasn't a stove to cook, and I got sick of microwave food. But my health improved quite a bit, which was good.
Kurt Cobain, drawn for my first, and only, solo art show, in November 2017. The show was at a great indie music store, Earshot Music, in Winston-Salem, NC, and Phred the owner, used this drawing as a flyer. The drawing sold an hour after going up on the wall, the day before the art show. I started getting a lot of requests for drawings after that. #sharpiescribblestyle
After about three months of drawing the scribble style, I moved to the smaller, ultra fine point Sharpies, which worked much better, allowed me to do much more detail, fade colors well, and they lasted a lot longer. I lost some weight, walking a bit every day, and was feeling a lot better just because I was being creative, and not as stressed out from working 7 days a week. But I wasn't making much money, and couldn't make enough to actually rent a normal room, or my own apartment, and get back to "normal life."
So in June of 2006, I went back to working full time as a taxi driver, but this time I had a 12" X 18" art pad, and my Sharpies, in the cab, and would draw while sitting in front of hotels, or waiting other places. That helped a lot. I never could make a decent living in the cab, but I was less stressed out, generally, since I was drawing a lot.
I left a bunch of my drawings at the gallery, when I moved out. I also lost two sketch pads worth of drawings that I left on a bus about a year later. While they were all in my #sharpiescribblestyle, they were totally different types of drawings then I've done since. But I invented, and then learned the basic color combos, of my scribble style, while living at Electra. I kept drawing on and off since. Then in 2015, while living in North Carolina, I started drawing people, leading to the drawings I've been selling for the last 5-6 years.
This is my personal favorite, of all the 100+ large drawings I've done since 2015. Harley Quinn/Tainted Love. I had to sell this one cheap in Richmond, VA, to get a motel room, after a week long hospital stay. It was in a gallery in the Richmond Arts District last I saw it. #sharpiescribblestyle
I'm doing most of my new writing on Substack now, check it out:
