Smoking Crater

I am so bad at this blogging shit. In fact, I seem to be really bad at the whole Internet Thing.
It’s so futuristic & all, I love the Future, at least I used to think I did. Am I really getting old & shit; calcifying; moss gathering up under my too-slowly-moving feet up around my ankles over my calves & thighs into my underused crotch rotting, no, fossilizing my gonads……no, wait. Stop. Take a breath. Relax…..
I can remember sitting in a living room in Bakersfield many years ago, must have been early ’70s, telling some people I didn’t know something about how in the Near Future, not too long from now, everybody is going to have a computer, & it’s gonna be great! Blank stares. They had not the faintest idea of why in the world they would ever want to have a computer. Nor did I! But I at least knew that it was gonna be really cool in some way or another! I was so ahead of the curve, the wave, the thing. I was so ready for it……not! I got books on computers, I tried to learn Fortran from paperbacks. I was not the right kind of nerd in the right college at the right time. I was an artist waiting for Adobe Photoshop™ to happen & drop into my lap so I could do all these really cool things. I was an “Underground” Cartoonist, fer chrissake! I was ready to be wielding lightning bolts in really original & constructive ways that would make the world such a better place like you wouldn’t believe!
And the whole thing went right on by me.
I never ever, in my wildest dreams, & I guess I did have some wild ones, expected to live past the age of 30. Really. I think I thought I was just going to go up in a puff of smoke at some point or something, I don’t know. At any rate, I am now in what is for me totally uncharted territory, so I am of course having to make all of this shit up as I go along, & I don’t seem to be doing a very good job of it, because I seem to have made some really dumbass decisions about how the World works, or should work, & now, having already committed myself to not spending every waking minute trying to do nothing but make more money & then some more money & then more more more more money…..I blew it. I’m a lousy provider. I’m just a dreamer. That & $4.00 will get you a latté. (Back in the ’50s & before even that, they used to like to say: “…that & 10 cents will get you a cup of coffee.”) So it’s funny, see?
Oh, man, listen to this Old Fart whining. Or not.
Which brings me back to this blogging thing. I have a hard time believing anybody could possibly give a shit about the things that I happen to be thinking about, let alone the things I’ve been looking at on the Internet.

Here’s what it looks like up on the wall of the building that used to be entirely but (for) now is only partially Kokopelli Real Estate.

It’s on black Dibond™, oh, wait, it wasn’t actually Dibond™, it was a knockoff brand, Signabond™, (same thing, way cheaper) which is a sandwich of aluminum & PVC (polyvinylchloride) that’s only 1/8″ thick & way stiffer than just aluminum so it doesn’t get all rumply; & it’s got trim (normally used for channel letters) around the outside edge, so it pops out an inch from the wall. I siliconed it onto a piece of 3/4″ plywood, so the trim would have something to stick to, after cutting a big chunk out of the middle of said piece of ply so it wouldn’t be so heavy. The letters are done in vinyl faux goldleaf, which is not really like the real thing, but pretty flashy nonetheless (especially for Roswell, where the signage standards are, well, low). It’s 4 feet high by 6 feet wide.

Here’s the first sign done in our new improved shop.

We have moved Signs Of Life out of the ass end of the Roswell Space Center & into a building nearby where we have lots of space all to ourselves to do lots of signs &/or crazy art stuff.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

Not much to look at, no windows to look out of. It’s been unoccupied for 5 years.

Sharon did that sign when she was running SignPro years ago.

Here’s the big room, runs the whole length of the building on one side. There used to be a beauty school in here.