A roll of quarters in a sock

"I think you should be allowed to drive a Humvee- I just think that when you go to buy it, you should be hit on the back of the neck with a fucking roll of quarters in a sock, and then just wake up in Iraq with a gun, and they're like, "Oh yeah, you can drive it. You just have to get the gasoline by yourself."

-Patton Oswalt

Two posts in one day! Wow, what a record! Especially with the pirated internet! Isn't that quote above funny! I totally agree.

So I PQed* today, at the last minute. Though I use this acoronym, I will try to resist talking like a complete dork when I get back. It may be hard, as catchy jargon is one of the benifits of working on "the ice".
It is also exciting that I PQed because it means I don't have Hepatitis! Yay!

I have been unpacking my books and Mykle's books, and have found that I have around 10 or 15 titles illustrated by Arthur Rackham. And I really do like Edmund Dulac better, it's just that Rackham is more playful and therefore more popular. ANd so, more books. And so, more books owned by me.
Rackham:



Dulac:


Rackham, to me, it best at trees. His trees are gnarled and wizzened and amazing. So many illustrations are overshadowed by these wild trees that you can tell he really took pleasure in drawing them.
Thanks (for the illos) to the excellent website Surlalune which is made by someone who may be more obsessed with turn-of-the century illustrators than I!! It's really good site to browse through. I sort of wish I could figure out a way to contibute to it. I can do lots of high-res scans of my storybooks (and I have a lot of them, after working at the antique bookstore for two years!).
I am looking at having an Arthur Rackham half sleeve** done by my amazing Jessica Cooke. I'll keep you posted on that. I'd like to get tattooed by her before I leave, but I may not have time. Since I leave in 2 weeks.
Speaking of tattoos- here is my second tattoo-on-fake-skin effort:


*physically qualified
**a "half sleeve" is a tattoo covering your arm from your shoulder to your elbow. Not like there is anyone in the world that doesn't know that. Except Mom. Hi Mom!

Somnambulist

I am not one of these, but giant potential life changes do make it hard to sleep. I am waiting for one doctor to review my health information at some nameless office park in Denver Colorado, and then I am good to go. The trick is, this person needs to do this by tomorrow, or else I leave much later for the coldplace, which translates into: Kai starves in the land of Agriculture. My one-day-a-week at the indie record store shockingly doesn't pay the bills, and the OTHER work I do....for instance the tattoo shop, is done in payment for education. And I'm getting a great bargain on that, let me tell you.
My apprenticeship is rad because there is no money exchanged. Money is the middleman, the great Unequalizer, and it is kept out of the bargain. It pretty much rules. The other apprentice at my shop; Brian, is paying Jeff, the owner, upwards of 5 grand. (!!!) Pretty brutal. He also has to have all the dudes at the shop tease him about being gay (he's not, he's a young father of 2) and call him "Pugsley", for his bespeckled, round faced, shaved-head appearance. They threatened to give me a nickname, but haven't yet. Thank goodness. I don't think they feel as a comfortable around me. Jessica is sort of the Princess there, and I am too. I try to reinforce this by not drinking with them and remaining really civil and nice to all of them. It's not hard, as they are essentially really great guys. They just are obsessed with gay sex in the way only straight homophobes can be! :)

So I am working on the cover for the live Devil Makes Three album. I worked until 3 last night, and really broke through some problems I had with it. I have borrowed the most amazing book (a Dover book, of course) from Jessica, entitled "Florid and Unusual Alphabets". I love it, and it is really helping me. I am a complete font-dork, and this book has the best collection of wackmo fonts (old ones....including my favorite root-form one by Klimsch:

and Alphabet Diabolique:

That one is a "K", which is pretty much the best letter ever, but sort of problematic whaen it comes to fonts and making it look good.

The Surreal Life

So I do have big news.
I am going to Antarctica in all probability, in a mere 3 weeks.

HAHAHA. It really doesn't look anything like that there, more like "a depressed mining town" (Mykle's words), so we will see for ourselves, shant we?
I've gotten a job as a supply person, which as far as I know means that I give people stuff that they need from the inside of a warehouse. Sometimes people drive little carts around, and forklifts. I'm told that I will be in electrical supply, which is right next to Mykle's work (YAY!).
I got a call pretty much out of the blue on Thursday morning. I said yes immediately. I think it will be good to go and make sort of a nest egg towards getting myself set up tattooing. If I stayed here the prospects in Davis towards employment that will support me and allow me to apprentice 2+ days a week AND maybe have a little day off for myself are slim to none.
My wonderful artist Jessica has said that she will wait for me, much like a faithful wife says to her husband who has booked passage on an ocean liner to China Chinay. Haha. No, I am sooo lucky. Jessica understands and supports me and says that she doesn't want to work with any other apprentice. Yay!
So my life has just gotten a bit more Surreal.
"I Went to Antarctica to Raise Money for Tattoo Equipment" a new movie starring Kai Smart.

Something to look at.......

Look at this AMAZING photographer. He is a bit fashion-y, but the surreal images he creates are killing me. Softly.
Eugenio Recuenco is his name and I love the colors and over-exposed burned-out and old-fashioned looks he gets in his photographs.
Look at this one, beautiful fashion with a backdrop of Heironymous Bosch.
Also this surreal Ryden-esque Victorian image:


and this photo inspired by old Chinese advertisements:


So amazing! Inspiring! Ta Da! Now you have something to look at.

Kitten on the keys

Well, it's two and I am sitting on the arm of the couch sneezing at the new cat, whom I think we have named Barnabas. Pete and Lucia had decided that any cat that they got was to be named Bunky, but, you know, there's also a Romantic in the household, so I wanted something long with a flourish. Bunky and Barnabas both start with B so I think it's gonna work out.
The cat is a boy, not a kitten but young, and is VERY beautiful. He has large green eyes with built in eyeliner and is stripy brown and white underneath. He's sort of a melting cat, very malleable, which is the kind I wanted. He did jump on the keyboard earlier... giving a rather modern spin on
kitten on the keys:

God I'm tired. Life has become very surreal lately. There was a windstorm in Davis and a giant branch fell on the backporch. We got it cleaned up, cut up etc. and then the entire top half of the tree it fell off of broke, and fell on the roof. The roof is ok, but the power got knocked out and a surge messed up the wiring in the house so now the lights in half the house only work if the oven is on. Or the dryer. Hmmm.

I took down my art show from "the Pergs of Davis", a cafe called (erotically): The Delta of Venus. As I was doing so I sold a painting to my friend Blake, who works there. That ruled. I like selling art and I need to do it more often. I got lot's of nice little comments in my comment book, which is always an ego boost to read. It has so many "I think I'm in love with you" comments in it, it really makes me wonder how I would see my own art if I didn't know me. Woah. O.k. It's late now. I think I'll write more tomorrow, I have a free day. Yay.
I may have some news. But you'll hear it from me, you wouldn't want to hear it from a blog, now would you?
Also- the tattoo blog starts tomorrow.
Stay tuned and I love you all.

First tattooed item- "Moth Heart"

First tattooed item
Originally uploaded by kai smart.

he little slots at the top and bottom of the fake skin are for the velcro straps you use to attach it to yourself or a friend. I tattooed this while it was strapped to my thigh, which caused some contortions in me that Jess says are not usual for a tattoo artist. Haha.
It is designed to be a chest peice, with the heart over the sternum and the moths over the breasts or pecs, as the case may be. It is a little smaller than the actual size I would tattoo it on someone. The skin is about 9 and a half inches by 8 inches (Ok I measured).
I am going to continue working on this peice (i.e. color and shading) and I will update with pictures of it for your veiwing pleasure.

A minus is that the rubber is sticky and not human skin (darn!) and so collects ink like nothing else. It just soaks in. So the actual design would be much less grey.

Yipeee!!!!!! I love doing it SO MUCH!

salami and wine

Who ate all of the dry salami at 3:48 in the morning?
Oh it was me. Stealing a bit of time from the night after driving completely wasted kids home from the roadhouse tavern. I pretend time doesn't exist at night. That's why I haven't gone to bed before three for almost 3 nights now. Hmmm. It's time to get things done that are just for Kai.

The tavern was in Elmira, a small place in the agricultural wastelands about 2 miles from the tattoo shop. I had met the bartender before, through Chris and Jessica, and went with Pete and Lucia and Jesse and Jordan and Jesse's paramour, Sarah. She is under 21, but that didn't seem to matter. The bartender was Justin, who is sober (I probably would be too, if I were a bartender), and who set up a giant water/peanutshell/ice/ bottlecap fight with the table we occupied. I was drenched, all were drenched, and then we had to get up and dance to every song. Pete and I were drinking soda water with lime, which really exagerrates how everyone rambles while drunk. I had my ass grabbed/slapped 4 seperate times, all by different guys. I got told I was hot twice, even though both qualified it with "I don't usually go for girls with short hair but......" The place has a stuffed and mounted deer head, of course, and there is a thong hanging off of the antlers. Thong the underwear. There's pool, and white homies with tribal tattooes, and a jukebox full of The Judds and the best of David Allen Coe. The floor is littered with peanut shells. In short, Mykle will love it.

Today was the one month anniversary of Mykle being gone. In about 6 days it will be our 4 year anniversary of being together. Do you subtract the months apart this and last year? So far it has been 5 months apart, roughly. I miss him every day, though life in Davis has gotten much better so I am less fixated on his memory. It is nice here, I have a group of very close friends who treat each other like family, and it's very stable and healthy and awesome. I miss Michelle though, and wish I could still see/hear her singing and talking to herself every morning as she takes epic-long showers and sprays herself with perfume that smells like melted jelly-beans.

So my big news is that I have given my first tattoo. Not on a human being, though, so don't get yourself all frisky about it. Jeff (the owner of the shop I work at) bought me and his apprentice (Brian, a nice fellow who looks very young but actually has 2 kids) some fake skin, made of rubber but said to respond pretty much like real skin. I stenciled it with my drawing of a chest peice that I call "the Moth Heart". I tattooed it and it took about an hour and a half. It was so damn exciting, I swear I was giddy afterwards. My dream is coming true here, folks!
The machine was so much easier to hold than I thought, it has a rubber grip that makes it soft and absorbs the vibration. I was able to make semi-straight lines, go over lines and spill ink all over the place. Jessica said that I am a natural!!
I am going to scan the fake skin and post it on here for all to see, that's how happy I am with it. Jess wants me to actually get that design tattooed on me (by her, of course) to commemorate the happy event, and I'm thinking it probably is a good idea. I'm not sure if I am ever going to tattoo my chest (a la Lucia), but the tattoo is designed as a chest piece, so maybe.

I'm thinking about starting another blog, to detail my trials and travails as a tattoo apprentice, since I have so much free time on my hands. Hahahaha. Please let me know what you think, oh you anonymous folk who read this (just kidding, I am pretty much sure I know all of you). Would this be interesting? Would you read it?

OK I am turning in(to a pumpkin). I am full of my midnight snack and I think the neighbor's wireless network has been pirated off of enough. Goodnight all, and I'll see you at 12:00 noon when I wake ;)

Nutmeg Lane

Kai's studio
Originally uploaded by kai smart.

There are exciting (ha!) pictures of our new digs up on flickr:

The Land of Suburban Honey

There are also pictures of Lucia acting like a lunatic. Woohoo!

Straight updates yo.

Last night night the fog came down in sheets and the sky was dense purplegrey wet smoke that swirled and choked the top of the bone-white Victorian apartments and I was back in San Francisco, breathing cold sea air with a frog in my throat along with my heart.
It was heartbreaking to return to the apartment and it's echo, it's barren state. I am a pack-rat clutter bug and I think Michelle and her new housemate Brenda will be very spare comparitively. Brenda is like a zen monk in a couple ways: shaved head and no possessions (except for a house (!) in Berkeley) and no so monkish in others: tiger-stripe tattoos and very cute shoes always. I hope they will be happy living together.
I cried again when I saw Michelle. I've only been gone a week, but I've been through SO much that I feel it's been about a month. I love Michelle so much and I want to try to come to SF at least once every 2 weeks. I'll see how my work/apprenticeship schedule works out.

We move into our new house on Nutmeg Lane tonight. They still have to paint the living room, but the bedrooms are done and so we are anxious to move our beds in, at least, and stack boxes in their appropriate places. The young men that lived there before didn't take care of anything (perhaps it is the college male syndrome of slobbishness due to the lack of mom/maid? I don't know why this is so pervasive, but it's like they ALL grow beer cans in their backyard instead of plants and never do laundry...) but the property manager, Sherri, has been cheerfully fixing everything and it suddenly looks like a great place that I would want to live! Shocker! I am thoroughly amazed by the amount of closet space. I also have my own bathroom with a medicine cabinet of epic proportions and a European hostel shower.

Insomniac awaits tomatoes

At 6:26 in the morning I await the arrival of my father. He is on his way to Canada, driving there by himself to work on the small plot of land he and my mom bought, and he has insisted on stopping by and bringing me tomatoes at 9 am.
This is the first day that I've had to sleep in since before I moved on Wednesday, and I had decided earler (when I went to bed around 1:00 am) that I would get up with some blankets and a pillow and and go sleep in front of the front door, so I could wake up, hug my father, get the aforementioned tomatoes and go straight back to sleep. As you know, when sleep is interrupted for any great legnth of time it becomes harder and harder to fall back into it. This plan (I thought) was foolproof, but here I have been, for 5 straight hours, tossing and turning and feeling horrible and stressing and writhing....having fallen prey to the great beast insomnia.
I don't get insomnia. I don't think I was a likely canidate either; I worked an 8 hour day, matched a movie, drank a beer and 3 glasses of wine, made a conscious decision not to read any more in my book when I went to bed in preparation for some solid rest. But here I am hours later, having formed the pillows into a vague human lump form which is covered by the comforter (it is hot and stuffy in this borrowed room, and the fan makes little whispers of movement on your skin) and which I can hug. How pitiful, really. Compared to the room I've been sleeping in for the past 2 years this place is a silent tomb. Sometimes I hear a train whistle. Sometimes all I hear is the tick of the fan and the scratch of my eyelashes on the pillow as I struggle to keep my eyes closed.
I want a sick day.
I want my own bed.
I want Mykle back so that I can sleep next to him (his blog informs me that that will be in about 23 weeks). I want a place to call home in this white suburban ag-town, if nothing else. Talking to the natives is disheartening. I had one 15 year resident tell me that he is always depressed when he comes back to Davis from travel, so he never goes anywhere, I guess to avoid said depression.
So I wait for the tomatoes, feeling sorry for myself in my clammy bed. Well, technically not MY clammy bed. I wait and the sky is light now and the shade does nothing to keep the daylight out, of course it doesn't because there are no insomniacs here, no taxis, no after-hours clubs, no singing post-bar revelers, no car alarms, no sirens always wailing in the night, no street noise at all to keep you awake.
I just want to sleep and wake up naturally, to no alarm, and I thought I would tell all of you all about it. Aren't you lucky. I would tell you how the tomatoes are too, but that will have to wait until another time. Hopefully one in which I am more rested and less filled with sorrowful foreboding. We'll just have to see, won't we.......

In Davis

Too much heat
Not enough money
Too many tears
Not enough home
Too much suburbia
Not enough mystery
Too many white poeple
Not enough clouds and fog
Too much paperwork
Not enough boyfriend
Too much Heat
Not enough money.


New address (in a week):
1301 Nutmeg Lane
Davis CA 95616

Send me yours.