Everybody else is on their way now to Black Rock City. This year I’m not going. I’ll be back on the other side of the looking glass, i.e. watching it on a computer monitor, which is how I experienced it for about 10 years before I got to go.

When I started Signs Of Life, I would put “established 2001″ under the name on my advertising. Like the Yellow Pages. That was part of this thing we called the Phone Book, where you look up people’s phone numbers, & see what businesses were in town & where they were. It amused me to think that some day I would say “Yeah, I started way back in 2001″. I grew up in the 50s; 2001 was always the Distant Future. I really didn’t expect to live that long. Anyway, that was 10 years ago. It didn’t really work out. Time to move on.

After a 7 year hiatus, I have returned to painting carnival rides: funhouses, mirror mazes & dark rides at Owen Trailers in Riverside, California, where they build such things. I’m actually working for Duncan Designs Inc. of Santa Rosa, California. Working with Larry Todd, who’s been doing it all along since I hooked him up back a long, long time ago. There were dinosaurs when we started painting rides together.

Tom Wolfe just kills me. In the Sunday New York Times, he has done :

One Giant Leap to Nowhere

Why the American Space Program died in 1969. For 40 years, nobody has talked about that like this:

At last, in February 1962, NASA managed to get a man into Earth orbit, John Glenn. You had to have been alive at that time to comprehend the reaction of the nation, practically all of it. He was up for only five hours, compared to Titov’s 25, but he was our … Protector! Against all odds he had risked his very hide for … us! — protected us from our mortal enemy! — struck back in the duel in the heavens! — showed the world that we Americans were born fighting and would never give up! John Glenn made us whole again!