Many of you know that I have spent the last 3 years living in a tiny studio apartment. It's been hell for me. My hovel was a single 500 square foot room nestled above a Chinese restaurant. The building is attached to one of the venues I work in regularly.
I fucking hated it.
My apartment windows opened to an alley behind the restaurant. My view was a massive brick wall. Two giant kitchen exhaust fans lived just under my windows, loudly spinning and spitting grease from 10am to 10pm every day. There were bugs everywhere. The Guatemalans across the hall frequently lit their kitchen on fire and even more frequently were arrested for harboring illegals.
During Christmas 2009 the building became infested with bed bugs.
It was fucking hell. My landlord was an Indian man who spoke zero English. His maintenance guy/ building manager was an Israeli who spoke a bit more English. Communication was terribly difficult. The maintenance staff would frequently walk right in my door at 8am to "check the power box" or "fight the buggies."
It's important to remember: my front door is actually my bedroom door. Have you ever had strange Israelis walk into your bedroom with tools at 8am? It can get interesting when you sleep with a shotgun next to your bed...
Earlier this summer I was given a letter stating my rent would increase to over $700. I was done.
And then I found paradise.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you my new home:
Oh yeah, and my birthday was last week. Nothing happened. I was too busy moving into paradise!
There's a pool table and a root cellar in the giant basement. Free laundry, too. MASSIVE water heater. Vineyard in the backyard? Yup. The vines even form an enclosed room, complete with concrete floor and hardwired power. The backyard is so massive it's actually a whole other property with it's own address.
Charles Schultz drew comic strips like that almost every day for 50 years. He denounced religion in the early 80’s but he always questioned it, hiding his thoughts in his comics. His character “Linus” was a gospel quoting smart kid, on the surface. In reality he had no original thoughts and spoke almost exclusively in quotes. He carries and worships his baby blanket, his security blanket. He fights brutal wars over it with Snoopy, causing Snoopy to be astonished by his brutality and give the blanket up: “I had no idea he’d fight so dirty!”
Linus sucks his thumb, an effort to make him seem infantile. His Grandmother, after quitting smoking herself, tries to convince Linus to give up the blanket. She offers to donate money to his favorite charity, to do some good in the world. He refuses. His faith is more important than charity.
It gets better. Linus creates his own God and tries to make the other children believe. Linus promotes faith in The Great Pumpkin. Initially the other children believe until they realize he’s just a false prophet of a phony vegetable god.
Schultz eventually redeems Linus, however. He gives up the great pumpkin, stops carrying the blanket. He even stops sucking his thumb, saying “It’s a good thumb, not a great thumb.” It’s a good religion, not a great religion. He then grows up and joins his friends on the playground instead of being an outcast, even finding a relationship.
I saw that comic strip on Facebook today, posted by an old friend who somehow became an Evangelical Calvinist minister. His followers praised him for posting such a wonderfully Christian cartoon.
In other news, today's shoot with Pesky, Squeak, Smurfasaur, Perry and elodykat was a great success! There was a bit of a delay getting the shoot started but once it was up and running...
well,. I'll let this teaser video speak for itself. I used both standard speed & slow motion in this video.
Which do you find sexier?