Recently designed and created this costume (with a lot of help). I have just gotten over months of physical therapy for my knee - been hurting since September and was diagnosed as several things. Was homeless for a good part of the first part of the year, to be able to save up enough for insurance to get it properly looked at.

The costume took a few days to create. We started with a cast of my torso, created by wrapping my torso in cellophane, taping that cellophane with packing tape and removing the tape with scissors. We then taped back the seam we created and stuffed the cast with packing popcorn and foam-in-a-can. Brutal process in my sweltering studio.

I wore the costume at the first annual Denver Century - a 100 mile bike ride through Denver, Colorado. The ride is not a race, just a fun ride through the environs of Denver. While riding, I cracked really bad fish-related jokes,

"How ya swimmin'?"

"I feel like a fish outta water!"

"I'm floundering out here!"

As well as reciting the theme from, JAWS, while sneaking up on people.There's a million things you can do in a fish costume, whilst riding a bike.

I got a lot of looks, a whole lot of smiles and made I think, a few people a little more happy to be alive.

I also packed a bunch of business cards and gave them out to anyone who would talk to me.

I would introduce myself like this:

"So, you know who Smokey the Bear is, right, well, I'm Oily The Fish!"

The front looked like this,

And, the back of the business card:

Here's the text:

The disaster caused by the Deepwater Horizon explosion has dumper tens of millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. An ecological disaster, entire fish habitats may now be destroyed. The extend of the damage is still unknown - the data to make estimates has been withheld by Beyond Petroleum. It's probably really bad news. Something as simple as riding your bike, instead of driving your car could lessen the pressure to drill for oil in such environmentally-dangerous locations. If I can ride 100 miles in a fish costume as protest to the BP disaster, what incredible difference can you make with your bike on a daily commute, to lessen your personal dependence on oil?

My hope was that my humor and my comedic look would serve as a ice breaker to talk about more serious matters - what wouldn't you talk about to a giant fish riding a bike?

It didn't really work that way and I have my theories. This ride cost money - $70 to ride! You have to be somewhat well-off to ride it, since you can ride your bike any time you want, for basically free! Cycling can also be (but doesn't have to be) a rich man's pursuit - you can very easily spend thousands on a bicycle! These well-off people may not have been so interested in hearing such bad news, since they're so established in their lives: they have a job, a family and a home. They probably felt that I was intruding on a day off of their busy schedule. I was literally, a fish out of water, without any peers and very few sympathetic ears.

The people at Denver's Pride Feast, also the same day, also enjoyed my costume, immensely.

Registration Test - two color. No traps. Testing new registration system using two hinges, a few pieces of tape and a three hole punch - the kind you can keep in a binder. It's pretty primitive.

Self portrait, four color screen print, using that same registration system. Ink is acrylic paint - ~ one part Heavy Gel Medium, ~1 part screen print medium, 20 drops of Golden Open Thinner and a touch of actual pigment - whatever was on hand that was the right color. The pigment has to be extremely transparent, without being too weak. Acrylic paint is very very pigment heavy.

Cheap acrylic paint works very well, since it's a little weaker than the pricey stuff. This makes it more transparent - better for the above use.

Stuck in Hays, Kansas, because of a broken down car, waiting for a Greyhound that has also broken down.

Catherine and I, screwing around in the Motel 6.

Tree swing in a cemetery .

Bored of waiting for the bus at the McDonalds, I decide to take an hour, fifteen minute run.

Post-run cig puff

"Leonardo" drawing machine, augmented with sharpies by Cat and I

Every time I gain a sizable growth of facial hair, my interest and empathy for other bearded gentlemen, such as myself, grows a considerable amount of traction in my daily cerebral wanderings. It seems almost entirely juvenile in nature: only the addition of a big wholly mop of curly hair around my fragmented jowl, seems to hold little power if seen in a purely objective light. But there's some hidden mystery about a bearded figure that strikes my interest. It may be that I've never seen my own Father without a beard...

Whatever the case, I've for a while wanted to make a gang of people in town with beards. Membership would be inclusive, rather than exclusive and nothing of any sort would have to be done to join, to keep membership and shaving wouldn't force someone to exit the gang. A gang for those who wanted in, for the pure reason of just enjoying the enthusiasm of beards, for the positive qualities they represent and the sheer ridiculousness to do so.

For the past few months - probably since I've been back to the states and sporting a growth since September, I've been asking people: "Hey! Do ya wanna be a part of my gang?! - it's BEARD GANG!" And if they say, "Yes!" they usually ask what one needs to do for inclusion and I tell them, "Nothing!". Sometimes, they say, "Well, I don't have a beard/I'm a woman!" I tell them, that's no problem, as the beard gang is open to all who are enthusiastic as to the idea of Beards and would like to gain admission into the gang. The. Gang. It's no longer my gang. In fact Beard Gangs span the entire history of People Kind and I am only a vessel - and hearer of the faint whispers of the energy force, pulsating around us all, since time forgotten. Yes, it's that big. And I am oh, so small.

This, naturally is all silly tom-foolery. I don't find this type of project superfluous. Fun, silly, creative adventures of all sorts should take some sort of precedence in one's life. Allied closed to love, than hate, war, suffering. Important to not take oneself so seriously all the time.

First, I did a photo shoot of some killer beard. Naturally, since I'm cheap, lazy and was available, I used myself.
 

From there, it was a quick little sketch, to see if I liked where things were going,

I mostly draw using a crow quill pen. It's hard to use, the ink sometimes doesn't want to flow out of the pen nib, sometimes it won't stop. Difficult and aggravating sometimes. Savage when unchecked.

I was pleased with the results. Emphasis on the beard, less on the person. Simple silhouette so your mind knows what it's looking at. Frame half the face, up the eyebrow. I took more than 5 minutes and whipped up the final drawing,
 

And that was that. I was surprised to see how similar the quick sketch and the rough draft looked. If I was to do another drawing, I doubt it would look much different. Life moves too quickly, anyways.

I needed a type face to use. I mainly stick to tired, old, soul-bereft type faces: Futura, Avant-Garde. There are reasons.

Those weren't going to work. I needed a typeface that was unique to this project - something that eludes and emanates Beard-ness, without being a cheesy onomatopoetic of a beard. Inspired by beards, but not, exactly bearded (type) faces. Something organic. Fun. Something that goes well with the drawing.

I wanted to make an entire typeface, because I wanted multiple versions of the poster. I could have just hand-lettered one version of the poster, but gangs are territorial, and local. The beard drawing would tie everyone together in a common theme, but the label for the drawing needed to be residential.

For a model, I delved into some weird old book on typefaces - I really loathe using typefaces on computers, sometimes. Font management programs seem so... goofy. There's no joy to it. I need to have some sort of relationship with the type face I wanted to create. It's also a good idea to find alternative sources for inspiration, so you're not using the same source material as everyone else.

I settled on a old looking face - probably a treatment of the face, Memphis.

It was just labeled, "Doric".

I made some sketches, to figure out how to communicate, "Beards" without making it too direct,
 

I took a piece of a nice drawing paper and made a wash of blue over it, hoping to be able to pop the type I was going to draw out of the blue, like blue/green screen in films.

I think the face came out really well,

Here's a closeup
 

This was also made using a crow quill pen and a little brushwork. I tend to get depressed if I stare at a computer screen for too long. For me, paper is much more delightful medium to work with. Scanners can be found at thrift stores for practically nothing.

Sadly, it didn't really work too well, once I scanned it in, and tried to use it, in a small mockup ,

Too busy. Barely readable. I like the idea of pushing that sort of boundary - how, unreadable could it get? But the nuances of all the pen and brush work were completely lost. From experience, it just makes the readers a little annoyed and very confused as to what you're trying to d.

Back to some more sketching,

OK, onto something. More form, less flimsy. Almost made out of a hard material, instead of, well, hair. For this project - it works. Type should hold a form, to aid in communicating an idea.

Another sheet of paper - this time, I didn't do the wash.

Scanned in and cleaned up (just a little), it seemed to be a lot more successful.

Love to try yet again, but hours have already been poured into this - anything more and all spontaneity will be lost. Using what you have, at the time you have it is good advice. In the future, you'll have something else. Don't hold onto old ideas - use them up. They will infinitely replace themselves. That's a good secret to reveal for anything creative.

I haven't named the type - and I doubt I will. All names just sound super snarky and lend themselves too much to just ass-hattery.


With the final drawing and my poster type face, I needed to design the poster, itself. One thing that was certain, the drawing itself is very vertically symmetrical. Part of me doesn't like this: you have the problem of losing a lot of dynamic feel in a design with too much symmetry.

Then again, faces *are* symmetrical, and a huge indicator of attractiveness is a vertical symmetric body. Since symmetry was somewhat avoidable, might as well not hide the fact, but instead enhance it.

It also continues the thread of this being a design based on the back patches of something like a cheesy biker gang. And this is a cheesy beard gang.

Some rough drafts. To make these timeless and simple, only Black, White and Red are used in the design. I am aware that there are different colors.



Something like that. The design of the flow of the type is supposed to make one think of a beard itself. The various cities will have different styles of beards, as well.

"Denver Beards"

"LA Beards"

"Portland Beards"

"Barbes de Paris"

I'm sort of at the point where I can print these out. I don't have post-sized screens right now, where I can burn the image on, but I made a tiny, one-color mockup, for the refrigerator, of course.
 

I think I'm happy with it.

Other than print up the posters, I need to make a Beard Manifesto, so my reasons for a Beard Gang aren't abused and start distributing these things.

This was originally published as a zine. You may download a PDF version of the below.

Someone to Bone. Online Dating Sites: an Acerbic Critique

Online presences fascinate me. Mostly because of their ability to estrange us from each other, while under the guise of wanting to bring us closer together. Instead of talking to someone directly, I can interact with a personal projection of someone's self-characterization. The more prevalent online presences get, the more local these people become as well. Since they're convenient, they have the tendency to take over the job of me communicating with someone. These projections become more and more sophisticated as the software that powers them becomes ever more complex and the hardware that runs them is integrated into computers, to phones, to watches, toasters, etc. We're going to prefer to interact this way instead of more directly. Some already do.

No other online presences engross me more than online personal dating profiles. It seems, more than any other online presence, a personal dating profile has the clearest goal in mind: have you meet someone you want to either be friends with, date, simply Bone, or - fuck me, marry. It means meeting someone else in the Real World, through a online dating site. Eventually. Which, I'm kind of all for - in theory: Move something that starts out in teh Gr8t Intarwebs, into the Real World, instead of the other way around.

Not to say that other social network sites don't allow you to do this, or people don't - or that's it's a gross perversion to utilize these sites and do so - that ain't gonna be the rant I'm going to wax about. What I've always been interested in, is how the sites themselves are designed to, "help" you find people with whom you, "match". The points I'm going to stress are the design and system of an individual's profile and the algorithm put into place that does the matchmaking. I won't be talking about what happens once you decide to make contact, agree upon a meeting place - all that. That's really boring to me, since it's basically Blind Date Time. I want to start off with how that first step is flawed - and how the next steps don't fucking matter.

First, an Admission:

I've personally used dating sites almost for 10 years. I've met people online using these services, I've dated them, fucked them, fucked with them (we all make mistakes), kept in contact with individuals, even continue to have friendships of various degrees with people I've met through them. I've seen these sites go from Really Fucking Subversive to basically, Ubiquitous. The first girl I kissed, I met online. First.

The Object of My Discontent

I will focused on a site called, OKCupid.com. Why? Because, when I was in a coffee shop, with my Extremely Attractive Friend Whom I've Slept With, it was what she suggested I do: I was going to Europe for a while and I was worried about being lonely in a city I didn't know very well, "So: let's make you a Profile" Besides, she used it. A lot. I'm not going to explain very well how the site works. That would take precious time and is boring. I have little of the former and want none to do with the latter. Use the site yourself. Play along. It's free. Moving on:

I'm opinionated. And I'm of the opinion that using this site became part of a large fixation of hers. Kind of like how Sex can be an addiction. This person was really into Boning People (her phrase, that I'm paraphrasing) and an online personal dating site was her way to find potential partners - it was her hookup. She describes the process much like one would think of a temporary job interview: hopeful candidates would write in with their proposals, if she liked what she read and she wanted to make contact, her instinct told her that this person would probably be up to having sex with her. As I said, she's a very attractive, very intelligent girl.

I describe this all to bring up my first point about all this: there's a major separation between emotional attractiveness and logical attractiveness. My friend here seems to have logically attracted herself to people for mutual benefit. For her, it works great, since there's really no lack of willing partners on a site like OKCupid, which has millions and millions of users. Fish in a barrel.

It got to the point where she could be really picky on what she wanted. "I want to be like - a Cougar " (paraphrase), "I want to Bone like - a 19 year old" (paraphrasing again). And she and I - I was staying in her very small studio apartment at the time, homeless that I was, trolled through this site, looking for hopeful matches with her. Stalking is a fun sport. We were probably looking at your profiles, laughing at you.

It turned into all what we did together - what we talked about. Her small studio apartment was like our own online dating opium den "So, where were you?". "I was with that one girl from OKCupid. She's really nice." "Did you Bone her?". "No - just coffee, dear". And then, we'd make out, or take a shower together. We were pretty liberal and comfortable with each other. Probably, because of the extent of knowing each other (most of our adult lives). I also think we don't find each other terribly mutually attracted to each other, on many, varied levels. OKCupid's Algorithm never, ever, made us a high match. She would remind me of this, frequently. She seemed agree with the algorithm, I did not.

But wait - how'd we meet? Sort of a precursor of most all "cool" online profile presence sites: MakeOutClub.com, which, having a snarky name, did prove to live up to its title. Would I have met this person without that site? No. I don't think so.

I think now I'll say something nice, because I'm not going to say nice things, about these fucking websites, for a while: What I do enjoy is a little game of bizarre chance. Before I totally destroy your dreams of happiness through online dating, I'm going to say they're a great way to get some weird rolls of the dice. I love this friend of mine, I wouldn't want to be without their friendship in my life. I love chance and I love strange connections.

But, I've also left my house with a pair of plastic handcuffs and would playfully cuff people walking around the street with as interesting an effect as staying up all night, crafting my online persona for others to stalk. You want chance - take a chance, motherfucker!.Back to my sloppy rant:

The Algorithm Thingamabob

Math is a sore spot for me. I can't really get much higher in my academics than Cross Multiplying (and I use that for Everything). It's one of the reasons that I dream of one day subsisting on a meager pay for the privilege of drawing all day. Having OKCupid match me using a statistical algorithm to help me find a potential mate is where I fucking tap out. And I know. We just started. But look: that's my job, to question our abjection to: Feelings 'n Stuff, and wondering why we have a preference to use tools like Statistics, for things like - I dunno... finding Simple Happiness.

My detest for Math is pretty similar to other people's detest of Art Theory or Philosophy. But, since I'm the loud guy on the podium right now, this whole essay is going to through the lens and not the other. This whole essay is also not going to use Statistics, or facts, or footnotes¹ - or any of that Shit. It's going to be half-assed philosophy and everything is going to be on my rules - it's going to be Art. It's going to be the anti-thesis of such a well-crafted site, with such a sophisticated software layer. The first thing you have to understand about the design of these types of personal dating sites is that they want to hide the fact that it's cold number crunching, underneath the pleasant shell of an inviting design. It's one of those things that, if you saw what really went on, you wouldn't like it. You wouldn't trust it. But you don't see all that.

You have to suspend your belief in The Real World to to really enjoy the whole thing. It's not a bad thing to do, or something bad about you. It's what we do when we listen to a story, or get caught up in a song, or cry in a movie. It's a wonderful thing - but I think it's a good idea to know what's fucking real and what's fucking Art. Like - look, I have a soft spot for stupid pop music, but I don't forget what it is: it's stupid pop music. Some people do forget - like, it's something that changes their lives. Forget that.

Them Multiple Choices

Most of the information OKCupid (and other dating sites) use as its, "Dataset" is "Gathered" by the, "User" (you, my dear) taking various multiple choice tests. I totally couldn't understand what makes OKCupid's so much better than its competitors, but I'll take their word for it - 'cause they say they are. Depending on your answers, it basically just matches you up with someone who answers the way you want the answers to be... answered. In other words: It gives you a list of people who would be submissive to you. Custom fucking made. Just for you.

Now, I've been on a few of these, "date" things myself, and the gist I get is this sort of cuts to the chase of the, "Gettin' to know ya" part of everything. Like the, "What, you don't like A Clockwork Orange? But, I live my life based on that book! What, you don't READ?!", part of my dinner that ruins my evening and gets me home sooner than expecting to go trolling through some more profiles online.

My main complaint about all these - and man, I'm as bored writing this all out, as you are to reading it, is that it's Fucking Multiple Choice. Here's an example of a question - it's the next question they want me to answer on my very profile:

When is suicide okay?

[] Always.

[] In special cases, such as to prevent suffering.

[] Never.

Suicide. Fucking, Suicide. There's not a complicated subject, right there. You know, I could care less what your> answer is on this one. It's why you think whatever it is that you think, which is important to me. And, since I can't communicate this very important - vitally important, information to someone, this whole question/answer thing really is bullshit.

You have to answer the question in front of you to get to the next question, so, I answered, "Always". Given the choices, that's the one I picked. You want to talk about it to me on this site? TOO BAD! Here's the next question:

How important is it to you that your partner smell good?

[] Very damn important

[] Important-ish

[] Less important than you might think

[] I just don't care.....at all

From one of the most heated moral dilemmas to Personal Odoriferous Opinions. Great system. What offends me, as a stinky man myself is the casual way these answers are given. "Important-ish", is not a word. It's worse than the grammar tragedies I'm currently mashing out in this rant.

It's also another question that I have trouble answering. I once went out, for months, with a girl I met online. Craigslist and I shit you not. She was attractive and intelligent. And she rode bikes. One night, I told her she smelled like a volcanic beach -

I remember being on a cycling/camping adventure from Canada to Mexico and on the first or second week, after a good 500 miles, I was on the Oregon Coast, very tired, and after making camp, I watched the sunset on top of a rocky spire. The sun was still beating it's bastard heat on the beach and the smell from the rocky, volcanic sand, steaming up from the beach that seemed to go on endlessly North to South was unworldly.

And, this girl smelled like that. Sorta.

Which, was a plus - but not particularly important to our goings on. The question is trying to be nice, but it's fucking not. What it really wants to know if you're OK with stinky people. Which is subjective - what's stinky? I've now talked more about Person Scent than Suicide. And I'll stop.

One more note on statistics about something I heard from somewhere: The data you get from them can give you an insight on, "Trends". Trends work across a, "Population" and aren't extremely useful for "Individual Data Points" in that, "Population". Or did I fucking miss something in High School Stat Class? ²

So, once you found a, "Match" using the magic (Magic!) of Statistics, you can then stalk a person by visiting their profile, which, like the multiple choice thingamabob is really in a rigid format: Describe Yourself. Tell Them What it is You Like to Do. Who Should Contact You? Blah bla, blah, bla, blah blah, BLAH. Here's the problem with this. You can make shit up:

In fact, you will make shit up.

The reason why you will make shit up, is: you are able to, because your profile will sound boring to others profiles, written by those who have made shit up.

You are probably the worst person that can really describe yourself. Everyone thinks they're smart or funny, or whatever. And to someone, you are. Really, you are - if only to your Mother. Just like the multiple choice Thing, it's not telling me anything about anything. Some smart ass (and I am in this category) will come along and use the magic of Creativity and make a smart-sounding, thoughtful-yet-snarky, fun-to-read-and-discover-all-the-nuances, profile. And these profiles are the most bullshit of all of them, since they lie the most. As a master bullshitter, let me assure you that a tragically undue amount of glitter applied to anything is only useful as a veneer to hide a crumbling structure underneath.

So, I'm writing off the writing part, because I'm a Gooded enough writer to understand how you can screw with this part. I know the intricate tangle which a web can be woven to trap an unsuspecting fly... Next. the Photos!

The Photos!

I'm mostly attracted to the photos of OKCupid. Why? In the age where my camera can take 100's of almost 35mm comparable shots on this little itsy bitsy digital card thing (and how this statement will age so badly), this site gives you like, ten that you can upload. Ten. Much like the writing part of this all, it ain't much wiggle room. It's a controlling aspect of the site and the control is there for a reason.

And just like the writing part, you can bullshit this part to all ends. Let's say you really hate your body (cutting to the chase). Well, just upload a close up, picking from 1,000 shots you did in your own bedroom alone and pick out one that looks, "Good" to you. Or use something from 5 years ago, when you weren't so unattractive to yourself.

Most of the hundreds of profiles I've looked at (and that's easy to do, once you get a little addicted to this Online Stalking thing), you find people don't really do this a lot, they don't do anything at all. They... I have no fucking clue - just use what's relatively available, or what's on their computer desktop or something. "Hmm", they think, "I do have those shots of Halloween where I was Barbarella and got sick all over myself, after passing out on the pool table, doing very very very rude things with a champagne bottle... let's upload that!" And, I swear, people do. Alright, I made that up, but in trying to tell my gentle readers my opinion on what a better system would be, even given the parameters put henceforth by the owners of the site - I'm really at a loss.

Here's the problem:

People, hopefully, are interesting, attractive and dynamic, with many moods that vary in subtle ways. You ain't gonna be able to capture this in some shitty jpg uploaded to a shitty dating site. You just ain't.

It's a good tool to confirm, as long as everything is up to date, that the person has like, two eyes and no more (or less!³), but that's about it. If a picture shows them, in scantily and titillating beach ware, in some undisclosed, but immaculate coastal area, with a wonderful bronze complexion, sipping on some drink with an umbrella in it - and you're *into* That (say I'm into That) - like... that's cool, I'm fine with that, but with anything, I wanna know what the fuck you're doing. Like, in life: what the fuck are you doing there? Were you taking a break for some sort of covert operation in South America and decided to exploit the very locals whose choice of freely-elected social and/or democratic government is the very one and the same government that is your job is to help overthrow? Or did your parents give you some sort of trip as a gift? Did you pass out on rope swing and found yourself, now a women, in a foreign country, knowing how to speak the native language perfectly and someone just happened to snap the picture?

So, what people tend to do is put... Whatever there - the subject doesn't matter, but since you can't really have that many shots, you tend to have photos that are somewhat stressed in someway - they show, perhaps not a little bit of your personality, but a LOT of it, in weird ways. Like, if you're into Burning Man - fuck, you'll show that one picture of you, with some kick-ass hair, and those completely ridiculous fuzzy boots, with some sort of matching fuzzy dress made by someone really famous-'n-stuff from the Burning Man scene. And me - I can't help but thinking, "yup, that's you and that's you sometimes, while shitting". It just comes naturally. I'm a big-picture kinda gent.

But to the point, what you make is: a Caricature of yourself. You take a few neat things that you like and you put it together. If one was to describe you just from interpreting the pictures in an objective manner, you'd get either a freak mess, or something really, really boring. Say, it's the same photo, again and again, with the same pose. Which people seem to like to do. Or, it's with your dog. All of them. I'd love to think this whole profile is some sort of complicated Bird of Paradise-like dance, but it's not. You're filling out a form. A job application. Just like my attractive and intelligent friend there was hoping you're doing. And if you want the Relationship-as-Job - some sort of task, well, man - stop reading, cause you did it - you found it: Online dating.

It's demoralizing in a way that's subtle: you can't upload just any picture, now can you? Because there's rules to the site - you can't offend someone, so no nudie shots - shit, I can't post a drawing of myself, without someone getting into a tirade about it and forcing my hand at removing it. You really are going to have to make sure your personal beliefs align with the site. If you don't, well, I guess the argument is, you don't have to use the site. My argument back is: boy, what a mirror of how the real world operates to subdue my natural and healthy desire of personal expression. This too leads to boring photos.

So after days and days of doing nothing but sitting in my underwear, with my friend and her cat, filling these profiles out, tweaking them, uploading pictures, searching - constantly searching for someone to make me go: "Fuck Me and Let's Travel the World!", I essentially gave up. I thought basically, all the things I've just written in one big: FUCK THIS, deleted my profile,

and went and automatically made a whole new one.

And all I did, was fill it out, honestly and truthfully, answered those stupid fucking multiple choice questions as honestly and truthfully as I could and I stalked the people the Algorithm thought I matched.

And, I drew them

I didn't really know why - I think I was bored and wanted something to draw - and, oh, wouldn't this be interesting: drawing people who were potentially attracted to me.

And I drew and drew. For weeks. Almost always in public and just with a pen in a sketchbook. Fast with no erasing - just my impressions of them. I realized what I was doing was mapping, as best as I could, my internal image of these people - what impression they were making on myself - and recording the results onto a piece of paper. That's... sort of what drawing is, to me anyways. At least this type of drawing - fast, loose, quick, without edits. Just get it out there, baby! Blow man, Blow! After all that, I wrote this, same way: took around 10 minutes ⁴

I found the hardest thing was to not make these people into caricatures. And this is where I realized that I wasn't - it was people who were already doing this, for me. I had to keep my objectivity and draw the filtered picture in my head, which... was subjectified. That's a word, I looked it up. And that's what all these drawings are.

And, I'm not perfect. The people I found attractive were drawn with more care. It's true - I could find who I was attracted to, not with algorithms, but by taking the time and looking at a photo for ten minutes and recording. But, what I found wasn't a person I was attracted to, but the personal projection of a person and this is really rendered quite meaningless to me. I was going to order these photos from least to most attractive, but that's exactly what a site like that would expect from its users. Categorizing. Filtering. Least to Greatest. Grading. No. No. No. No. No. No. Fuck that.

I'm Wrapping This Up, Now.

My loose thesis does not mean to diss any one individual or group of individuals. I've stated in so many words that I find most people interesting, insightful, funny, complicated and intelligent in their own ways. Hopefully. These types of people are not at an advantage on an online personal dating site. My problem and rant is truly on the format and particularly on the format imposed by this one site: OKCupid. Finding attraction is not done by statistics and shouldn't. I'm completely scared shitless that we are, as individuals, fine with using Statistics in this way to find potential life partners. Because, we shouldn't.

We can, but I don't really think you're going to get any better of a result, then if you go and find a place that has people that you feel comfortable and secure with, and you say, "hello" to one or two of them. I live in a city big enough where this is possible. If you can't find this: MOVE. If you find yourself unable to, online dating sites may be your last resort - I understand that there can be people that are so alienated of their surroundings as to be fearful of them, who have to face daily humiliation and intolerance. Who cannot remove themselves from this type of setting. Fine. I'm talking of personal experiences, as a terribly, achingly, straight male. Don't make it your biggest hope, is all I'm saying.

The, "Too Busy" Thing:

If you're too busy to find someone without actually meeting someone, you're too busy to have a wonderful relationship with them. Does that make sense? Desiring something wonderful without putting time into it is a form of control. Shit, that's a pretty good working definition of, "addiction".

And Another Thing,

Do you really trust a for-profit corporation to help you find something as valuable, as say, a Life Partner? Really? Don't you think they have more vested interests in you using and exploiting their other users? Don't cha think they're using all that statistically information for other devious purposes? Yeah, you better fucking believe they are.

And what's up with this, "Dating" thing, anyways? Who's idea was that? Online dating sites don't replace dating someone, right? Cause that's fucking stupid sounding. What they replace is a genuine Matchmaker. And that's even stupider sounding, because no one goes, "Gee, if only there was a matchmaker - like in Fiddler on the Roof, just for me!"

Fuck dating, fuck filling out stupid profiles that belittle you and concentrate your pure uniqueness into a series of multiple choice answers. Do whatever it takes and meet people. Get over your social hang ups. Figure it out. Do whatever it takes. Scour the Earth. Lead an incredible life. Be a total badass. Amass a community of people that lovingly give rather than take your time and energy. Do not settle. Do not use these services, unless there is No Choice.

The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures

It seemed unfair for me to draw others, without drawing myself, so, I took the liberty of reading the latest statistical findings by OKCupid, which just so happened to be about profile pictures!⁵ What luck!

In it, they debunk 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures. Like the title of the blog post says.

Myth #1, they find it's not always the best to smile - and they have fancy graphs to prove that. So, I looked away and didn't smile. They had examples, themselves.

Myth #2 is that you shouldn't take a self-shot, shot. They basically found that you should. So, I did.

Myth #3 is that Guys should keep their shirts on. That's a silly one and well and they also said to do it, I think? So, I did: my ab shot is included.

The last myth, "Make sure your face is showing" is the last I tackled, since it's the one they say to always do: show your face, but they relented and said it really doesn't make a difference. So, I did an expressive drawing of my hands - cause those are important to me.

But - if not showing your face isn't important, as well as a double-negative, I decided that these drawings I did, all don't really show my face, and should be pretty A-OK with OKCupid, so I threw them up on the actual profile. We'll see how long they stick up.

Footnotes

1) But I will be using them, for comedic effect, naturally.

2) I actually never have taken a statistics class. All my opinions on it are made up!

3) I'm actually a big fan of Momus, so no offense to any monocled people!

4) Lies! Damn lies! A few hours, really.

5) http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/01/20/the-4-big-myths-of-profile-pictures/

 

MLE had a unicycle and I said to MLE, "Hey, that's a nice unicycle!" and she replied, "Well, I gotta 'nother one - want me to give you this one?" and I said, "Well, yeah, sure, for what?"

So we hatched a plan where's I made some shirts for her - since she had a eye for the shirt I made of just bicycles. She was into the idea of what comes after the fixed geared craze - what could be more closer to the minimalistic roots of all this wheel'd madness. Hers idea been that  it must be unicycles, since you have the whole simplicity and direct-connection to the machine and all that. So I mades up some shirts and I finally took some photos of M with her shirt on:

She wanted the actual message to be on the subtle side I told her, "I don't do subtle", but she just says, "Try.", so we put the message on the side, likes:

If, for some reaching reason you need something similar, here's a sheet you can use for your own uses (and a PDF here)

POST-FIXIE!

From here by her

Alex! Hi! You look wonderful, dear!

Well, thank you,

Can you talk a little about your outfit, tonight?

Sure - The hat is a find from the lost and found bin of a local coffee shop, the dress was purchased from the Englewood ARC and modified by myself with green felt letters, that spell out, "PANSY". The tights are from Target and many of my accessories are from various independent fashion stores, both past and present; real and imaginary and the boots -

Well, something I found, the last time I was in Paris. The tenant before me thought he was on the set of Sex and The City, the Gay version and well - when he left, these were to be left behind, as well (laughter)

So - why a dress - are you working with gender issues, emasculation -

What? No. No - I just wanted to wear a dress. This dress isn't emasculating at all. It's boxy and shows off my arm muscles. I'm more of a male tomboy than working with anything close to expressing femininity. I, myself and not very effeminate, but I don't see that stopping me from wearing something I think looks good.

But - what about the added text - "PANSY"

"PANSY" is only a derogatory word to people who are homophobic. As I said, I am not homosexual, nor am I homophobic. The word itself comes from French - from the word, penser (pronounced somewhat like: pansay), "to think". It's a play of words. Maybe you should think about it - well, as it is.

And, the purse?

Well, the dress doesn't have any pockets - what did you want me to do? The purse is also made from old ties and such, put together.

And your glasses?

I'm blind without them. Sometimes, eyeglasses are just eyeglasses.

But, they're the style of Allen Ginsberg, no?

They were also $17, when I bought them 5 years ago. I probably bought them first for the price.

You must tell me, finally, about your cuffs.

Can't tell you much: they're made of recycled bike inner tubes. They're purely made of rubber, make me itch and are sweaty. But, they do show off my arms even more. I feel like an old-school WWF wrestler with them!

Wanna 'rastle!?

Try #4

Try #3

Try #2

Try #1

I reused this last try to draw my friend sleeping. She rolled over and started snoring, so I then drew her cat.

The problem with trying to draw the Penrose Tile like this, is there's no easy pattern to follow. That sounds strange, since it *is* a pattern, At least intuitively, I can't guess which of the two (and there only are, two) shapes I need to put where, and why. I had to look at a picture - and even mark off which shapes I've already drawn, before drawing something else. It helped to draw shapes that made up circle-ish clumps of shapes, before battling a new part. 

Screws up your mind.

Drawing and traces from shit lifestyle magazines. I thought it would be interesting to use for material, but all the women have the same look, the same pose, the same everything.

Subconscious feelings.

The Photobooth Application does something subtle and strange - it reflects the stream it captures to act like a mirror, instead of a video feed.

The image you make will be a reflection, as well.

(the original drawing that's on my shirt),

(Reflection)

It's a strange feeling to draw using your laptop as a mirror in a public place, different, I guess from using an actual mirror,

Three sides to every eMotion

I've done the...opposite? Reflection? Using an actual video feed, to draw from,

October 12, 2003: Narcissus

You move left, the figure on the screen moves right - but what you see is what others see.

Another visit.

"tudy of, The Raft of the Medusa (Le Radeau de la Méduse), héodore Géricault

I randomly had The Pogues, "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash" loaded up on the iPod, so most of the second part of this very, very long study was done listening to it. I guess I get a weird delight out of that.

I've stopped taking too many pictures. Sometimes, you take pictures and forget to look. You see this all over the place at the Louvre. People taking walk-throughs with camcorders, without actually experiencing the place. I find this spectacle really interesting, since the Louvre is incredibly large and also, in certain places - incredibly boring. I'm trying to figure out the time and place all this footage is going to be reviewed and I'm failing at anything less than total apocalypse.

I guess this visit, I was more interested in seeing some of my favorite paintings from the collection and finding some of the more hidden drawing rooms. I was pleasantly surprised. There's something about the nakedness of drawings I really enjoy. Oil painting is another interesting spectacle, but doing it enough myself in the past, you actually get this idea that if you want to be a hack oil painter - you could. It's a very flexible medium and if you screw up - it's not the end of the world. There's actually some pretty shitty paintings in the Louvre, paintings without much inspiration and no real interest in creating a dynamic composition. A little sad I couldn't, for the life of me, find the Hall of Rubens, but that's life and I guess that's what it's like wandering aimlessly in that museum.

Study of, "ercule combattant Achéloüs métamorphosé en serpent (Hercules fighting Acheloos trensfomed into a snake)" Bronze, cast by Carbonneaux, 1824

This turn out like crap. The Raft of the Medusa killed me. I noticed a few figured I had never, ever seen before. I guess that's what happens when you stare at something for so long.

At the Rodin Muesum,

Study of, "la voix interieure vers 1899", Rodin

Study of, "Torse de jeune femme cambree grand modél 1909", Rodin

I had a professor in school that was very much into Rodin. He was a great inspiration and I really dug his art and his character. I failed the class pretty brutally. I just couldn't... get up in the morning.

After, Dying Slave

Michelangelo has always been an important artist for me. It was basically my introduction to both art and the female anatomy, so being able to draw right from a sculpture is pretty magical.

I was in the middle of inking the pencil sketch in - and the museum closed. I was told to leave. I meant to finish this at home - but I lost my Rapidograph pen. If I was to guess where that pen was, I'd have say a little crêperie in the 17 off of Avenue de Saint-Ouen that has 5 tables and miraculous Normandé. It's a horrible choice of pen to bring to this sort of atmosphere, but I left my other pen at home.

I guess it's fitting to have an unfinished drawing of an unfinished sculpture.

I've done a drawing after this sculpture before (but - from a picture):

Pastel, 2003

Some more, from the visit:

Rebellious Slave

dieu à tête de bélier probablement Amon Rê

Façade de androcéphale ailé

chapiteau d'une colonne de la salle d'audiences du Palais de Darius

Tête barbue coiffée d'une dépouille d'oiseau ; Sérapis

I was actually quite amazed at how considerate the other museum patrons were of me drawing things. Personal space in Paris is quite different from what I'm used to: Things are smaller and closer together and I'm a fair bit bigger than most people, on average. Simply: I don't fit well with the social architecture. But, people actually saw what I was doing, were interested, wouldn't get in my way and were in fact, curious in what I was drawing. It was nice.

A group of students were especially intrigued while I found one of the few sitting places in the Louvre, while sketching chapiteau d'une colonne de la salle d'audiences du Palais de Darius . Sitting down, I was very accessible, so the entire class crowded around to say hello, see my drawing and tell me they liked it. I like them, too.

While drawing the rebellious slave, I was actually asked to have my picture taken, with my drawing by a tourist. Strange things like that.

Museums as large as the Louvre and from such sources are strange in of themselves. One really wonders why they keep some of their collections - parts that are obvious NOT so much taken with askance, but perhaps more as spoils of war (none of which I can now cite* - but where exactly did they get, Façade de androcéphale ailé?) . But, here I am - with thousands others, enjoying and utilizing it.

* The Louvre is involved in controversies that surround cultural property seized during World War II by the Nazis and under Napoleon I. After Nazi occupation, more than 60,000 articles were returned to France. Nearly 2,000 objects that did not have clear ownership and were claimed by Israelis and Jews were retained by French museums, including the Louvre. In 1997, Prime Minister Alain Juppé initiated the Mattéoli Commission, headed by Jean Mattéoli, to investigate the matter and "according to the government[,] the Louvre continues to hold 678 pieces of [claimed] artwork."[68] Napoleon's campaigns acquired Italian and Northern European pieces and antiquities were taken during excavations, particularly in Egypt and the Near East. The Louvre administration has argued in favor of retaining these items despite requests by source nations for their return. The museum participates in arbitration sessions held via UNESCO's Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to Its Countries of Origin.[69]

rapidograph on paper

Brush/ink and rapidograph pen on paper

C'est un bon coup

L.H.O.O.Q. is a work of art by Marcel Duchamp first conceived in 1919. [ ... ]

The name of the piece, L.H.O.O.Q., is a pun, since the letters when pronounced in French form the sentence, Elle a chaud au cul. "Elle a chaud au cul" literally translates into "She is hot in the ass".[1] In a late interview (Schwarz 203), Duchamp gave a loose translation of "L.H.O.O.Q." as "there is fire down below" (in fact the term avoir chaud au cul is slang used in the sense of "to be horny"). *

I bought the postcard above at the Museum Kunsthaus Zürich for an astronomical price. I forget who the artist was who painted it. I think it's supposed to be just a bunch of squares painted in some sort of generative way, but all I saw was a penis. A big, multicolored, erect penis. A must have.

Walking back to the train station, I stumbled right by, Cabaret Voltaire! The birthplace of anarchistic Dada! Looks like it was turned into some sort of coffee shop, with a themed back room with Dada-inspired flare everywhere. I did the most Dada thing I could think of and had coffee at a Starbucks instead, just across the street.

When I got back to the place I was staying, I took at the old Sharpie and made a few little modifications of my own to my postcard and sent it to someone in New York City. Not sure if they ever received it. I guess that's fitting. The French isn't as clever as Duchamp's - it just basically means, "It's a good Fuck"

Here's an entire few days in Switzerland described in, coups

passe un coup dans la salle de bains

ah, tu as le coup pour mettre la pagaille!

C'est bien un coup à lui.

Murten, Switzerland:

un beau coup d'œil

après coup

Yo La Tengo, Friburg Switzerland

faire d'une pierre deux coups

Il en met un sacré coup.

jeter un coup d'œil à

du même coup

un coup de pied

Back home

avoir un bon coup de crayon

Glazart. Paris. Port de Villette.

Riding my bike to the venue - never been. Took a wrong turn. Lost at Barbès. Trace the Peripherie. One way streets. Running reds. Slight Drizzle. Check the Metro station map. On course. A few more minutes. Check the next Metro station map. Still on course. Hastily scribbled instructions (to myself): Cross Canal, After Bd. MacDonald, Before Peripherie. What? Only thing there is a bus station and a police station. Relent. Asking the person working the desk at a crap Hôtel. Walk in with vélo. Yelled at. "Get out! Get out! with that bicycle!" Coming back in, Pardon Moi, Messieur, je suis un petit perdu. Savez-vous `ou se trouve le club, "Le Glaz'art?!" He's answering in English. "Big Pink Wall! Good bye. ". The daily confirmation that my French is crap. Looking for this pink wall. There's no pink wall. Just a police station and a bus station. Rolling into an anonymous.. driveway? Meeting up with three backpackers, high on very very bad things. "Bonsoir!" (They answer back). What? in the bus station? In the bus station. The club is there.

The doorman telling me to lock up my back in front, on the pole. "La! La!" (pointing). Checking my bag, letting me in.

Immediately run into Brian. Watching/Listening to the current performers. They're done. I ask Brian - "you go on yet?" "Nope - nope, we're headling". Feel less of a loser for missing the first band, because of leaving late and becoming lost. Talking to Brian - after introducing myself - met him a few times before - Rose for Bohdan , they did a strange cover of Peter and the Wolf, if I remember (that was a long time ago). Find Josh and we're catching up. I'm now (in the present, as I write) embarrassed to get into how intensely admirable I am of Josh and - if I was him, I'd hate to read my gushing, but Josh knows himself pretty well and we'll leave it there. Exciting to see so many familiar faces.

Foot Village setting up and ready to play. Telling everyone watching to climb onto the stage, since - that's just Comment ils font.. Promoter freaking out. Paris manager freaking out. Brian and Josh handling things - got the OK! They say. So they say - people climbing up - but only a few. Me of course. I'm well and truly ready for Foot Village, from past experience. The drums - four sets all face each other. Lots of thrashing/yelling/pounding. The crowd needs to be around to simply contain them.

Starting, never to stop. Bang bang bang BANG.... Squelch! YELLing. We want it all! We are human. We are animals. We are ugly. We are worthless. All we do is fuck! The Parisian crowd - impossible for me to completely understand. Pensive is a nice word. They are very intelligent. They're taught art, music, forms and lack thereof. Deconstruction. This is very obvious. Cultured. It's true! It must be a different trait to just let yourself go, since I have no problem - I'm just, shaky-shaky-shaky, starting to sweat, moving around, taking pictures, taking videos - even with few on the stage, I'm running into Brian, stepping on lights. Promoter tells me to not, please not - the lights - stop stepping on the lights. Moving out of the way. A few leave the stage and then a few more. Ending of the set, I'm with the four people in the band and just one or two others from the crowd. They crowd likes to just watch. That's OK. The crowd basically thinks I'm part of the band? That's far removed from the truth.

Josh is saying, thanking me for staying on the stage. Where else would I have gone? Apolgizing for messing up a few times - as if I would know. Know? Yay-No? Hanging around as the band packs up and I get a few more scant minutes to talk to the band, before they pack up in a little minivan and go go go. Just fun to talk. Amazing to think back to Monkey Mania and Friends Forever - but easy to do, when it's been so long and you're so far away and quite isolated, but still, little wondrous pockets of the past and past-current friendships come rolling through this huge city you've found yourself in - in your complete anonymity. Someone knows your name. I give the best account of what I think Paris is about to everyone, found out about someone else touring through (perhaps?) and say goodbye. Hug hug. Bisous.

Cycling home. Getting lost, again. It's an easy city to get back home, I said.

A collage of street art, near to my place of residence:

What caught my eye was, Zilda's wheatpaste of an old etching. I obviously have made it clear I really like etchings, but what's interesting about Zilda here in Paris (I'm assuming they're from here), is its completely transparency here. There's drawings, paintings, sculptures, anything - everything of robed figures everywhere in Paris. Why does Zilda appropriate these images, and have them write "Zilda". You know, I don't know.

The other pieces, I will just list:

• A penis without a body, pointing down, towards spread legs.
• A message that reads, "Mickey Mouse is Dead" (In English). If you look closely, there's a picture of Mickey Mouse, dead in a coffin, underneath the text.
• Various Tags
• And leaving the frame, a big face with what looks like cartoon scars.

It's just... everywhere.

This floor had me more captivated

It's a similar pattern to a skateboard company I was infatuated with. I used to draw it in all my notebooks in high school. I had t-shirts with it. Many. T-shirts.

It's also similar to something you'd see in Victor Vasarely's work.

It's always very queer to see someone take a similar shot, in the same city, in a similar date - and having just saw that person, but not really knowing who that person is (just as an audience member of a performance). The same tiles by Momus,

Some photos of said Momus from the BBMix Festival

I've known Momus for a while, but really never actually listened to his music. I think someone introduced me to him many, many years ago and his name was surrounded by bizarre wonderment, mystery and excitement. She would say,

"He's MISSING an EYE!"

"He's homeless in New York City!"

"He wears crazy suits!"

Only one of the above, I think, is true.

A nice performance, at a very strange venue. The space was a theatre, so the stage was set up for very... theatrical things: lots of fancy lights and smoke machine! A SMOKE MACHINE! Going on, full tilt, un-ironically. Words fail.

The set was good though. The song writing was great. The experience Momus has of playing live is very obviously felt, especially the music-show-as-performance-art aspect to it. And I don't mean that in a bad light.

It seems many current adventures of mine involve smoke machines.

A incomplete part of his, A Complete History of Sexual Jealousy (Parts 17-24)

Could you imagine watching Momus open up for Belle and Sebastian?

Mural on Oberkampf, Paris

I had walked around here the night before and a different mural was up. That sort of thing makes me excited.

Pictures from last night. Tops of buildings. So many people living so close together. Lights on. Lights off.

Looking down, instead of up, more street art:

I don't really know what it says - something like,

I don't let myself sleep in my dormitory.

But, the conjugation of, "Laisser" is.. wrong. Or, "Laise" is something, completely different.

People standing in bars. Flirting. Footwear is very important, here

Art Opening in Tours for Terrence Netter, surprisingly, these photos are basically straight from the camera

Got willfully taken to a discotheque, deep in the French countryside, afterward. The spectacle was incredible. Smoke Machines, again.

The bartender was giving away free shirts. Somehow, I received one. it said, "World Famous".

They sold liquor by the bottle. Not like, Bottle of Beer, like: bottle of Vodka. Dangerous.

I think we made it back to the quiet, country home not far from the discotheque by 5:00 am.

Mr. Netter, a man of 80, made a comment about how he thought the discotheque was a little, "Provincial". I mean, it was.

Took a walk and saw a rainbow:

Street artist on one of the bridges. He was pulling a fake turtle. I was excited for the Dandyism reference, although I don't know if that's what he had in mind.

I stayed for the performance.

If you were wondering, this street performer is running with Dura Ace components,

I took a small clip of this street performer, doing his circus bike act, and in the middle of the performance, walks in a pair of kids of fixed gears. Very pretty kids. The contrast of the circus performer with a similar type of bike - fixed geared, was sort of delicious. Doing fancy tricks on modified track bikes - similar to what the street performer is doing on a bike specifically made to do fancy tricks is sort of a, how would you say, big thing to do right now.

The carefully put together sloppiness of the performer and the carefully put together togetherness of the kids . All of them, color-coordinated in their own way. The extremely dramatic gestures of the street performer. The extremely nonchalant look of the teenagers. Acting. Spectacle. Smoke Machine.

On a été d'Halloween le samedi. J'adore Halloween! Je me suis réveillé dans la matin et
j'ai travaillé sur mon costume. Je me suis habillé resembler à Marcel Marceau. J'ai coupé et j'ai créé un costume "mime" avec les vêtements j'ai trouvé et acheté dans la friperies. Les propriétaires des magasins ont regardé se moi comme vous regarderez un personne folle parce que j'ai acheté seulement de femme vétements .

Je me suis maquillé de noir et blanc et j'ai mis sur un chapeau ridicule avec un fleur. J'ai regardé trés effrayant! Mais, j'ai voulu regarder amical.

J'ai sorti le maison et je suis allé à le boîte de nuit, "Nouveau Casino" et j'ai ecouté mon ami, "Picture Plane" et le band, "Health".

 

Ils ont joué musique sauvage!

La musique a été incroyable! Fantastique!

Dans le boîte de nuit, je rencontré une belle fille. Elle a porté un t-shirt rayé aussi! (Mimes port t-shirts rayé) J'ai voulu demander si elle a été un, "mime" aussi, mais, je ne ai pu pas parler - j'ai été un "mime", bien sur!.

Le tout band, "Health", "Picture Plane", la belle fille et ses amis avons quitté "Nouveau Casino" et nous ont allées dans "L'international" et nous avons bu de la bière plus. J'ai pris des photos de mes nouveaux amis. Ils ont porté mon chapeau avec une fleur.

J'ai sorti apres j'ai embrassé, "Picture Plane" et j'ai souhaité, "Bon Chance!". J'ai fait un vélo à une autre féte. Mais, j'éte tres ivre. J'ai fait beaucoup de bruit sur le pavé sur la Boulevard de la Villette. Je me suis blessé mon genoux. J'ai saigné partout mon pantalones blanc. En plus, j'ai été très perdu. Enfin, apres quelques heures, j'ai trouvé le chemin du retour. Je suis revenu et je me suis évanoui.

Bonne nuit!

Sometimes I even find the decisions I make concerning the way I do things questionable.

So I'm hanging out in Paris. I have friends in Amsterdam. I email them, asking if I can come visit, they say, "Come 'round." Perfect, since Paris is a hub of transportation options to get to somewhere like Amsterdam. The most obvious being by train - or even take a plane.

I take out a map, I go, "Hmm"... a little and say, "Well, I'll ride a bicycle to Amsterdam, instead". Knowing full well that it is now Fall and Fall means it's cold and bicycle rides of such distances mean, for me, Camping Savauge. Camping Sauvage means simply exhausting oneself of functioning whilst riding a bicycle, to retire to finding a quiet, out of the way patch of secluded land to discretely lay a tent down and snore for a while.

You may also call it, being a complete bum.

And - that's what you must look like: a bum. You're on someone's property, having your way with things, just sleeping as if the world doesn't turn when you're nodding off and then, you just get up, whenever you feel like and keeping on going. It sounds inherently dangerous, but, it isn't. There are secrets, I guess to successful Camping Sauvage.  We will not get into that, in this essay.

The day before I'm supposed to leave, I visit the local camping store. Stores. There's many, as is la mode in Paris, where many different boutiques are established under the same name, since storefronts are just designed that way. I go to the pots 'n pans, stove + fuel magasin for some fuel and the books 'n maps magasin for a map of Northern France -

And what catches my eye? But a guide through the route of Paris-Roubaix!

To the uninitiated, Paris-Roubaix is a one-day professional bicycle race, known to be extremely difficult, since the race follows a route that tries, as hard as possible, to use the sketchiest, oldest cobblestone roads that can be found and is also known in the same circles as a complete joke, not even a race! - for the exact same reasons.

The cobblestone sections are now somewhat well maintained, since there's just not that many any more to be used. A much different story, when the race was first ridden, over 110 years ago. What makes this all the more hard is that it's raced on road bikes - $10,000+ carbon fiber super bikes (these days) and not mountain bikes, of any sort, which would make such terrain castrated.

I'm holding the guide in my hand and I decide to buy it. It sounds like a good adventure, since it fills many of the necessary requirements:

    * It's literally, off the beaten path
    * It's not something I need to do
    * I really have no true interest in the subject


The last point needs some explanation.

I like bicycles. Quite a bit. I don't really love bicycle racing. I've done a little bit of it myself, but it's not a passion. I like roads too - but nothing really about cobblestones makes me get up in the morning, to start a new day.

What does spark my interest is having to search for something so benign - a road! A road that may be very old, that's not used very much, that you need a guide, to even find!

The stretches of cobblestones in the Paris-Roubaix race are only dozens of kilometers long, under 50, I'd guess. The entire race is 260 km. What this means, is that what you're looking for, isn't even most of your ride - the cobblestone sections are split up in a few dozen (again, around 30) different sections. It means that there's a lot of things to find and what you find is fairly diminutive.

It comes down to the act of the journey being the most important part, not what's to be found. Like I constantly remind myself, there's nothing I can do, to transport you the places I've seen and more importantly, the feelings I felt, while doing this course - and afterwards, to Amsterdam.

What follows, though, is a small photo essay on what I did find, as well as a few notes of my travels.

My ride for this adventure was going to be my trusty Surly Cross Check, known to me as, Marserena III. What makes this somewhat interesting is that the bike is not set up with multiple gears - I had basically just one. One is fine on a beach cruiser, but for touring, well, I've never done it before. Things get a little problematic when you face something like a hill. But going to Amsterdam, I really wasn't expecting much of that, so - whatever.

When I was planning on writing this all out, I was going to emphasize the components being used, as single speed and fixed geared bicycles are certainly in style. Touring on such a beast, mostly used either on an actual vélodrome, or as city bike seemed to me, as quite the hipster thing to do - we could even coin the term Hipster Touring for such a setup, but we run into one impassible problem:

If you're that much of a hipster to be touring with a single speed/fixed gear bike (fashionable bike, in other words), you wouldn't have the interest in actually pursuing the tour at all, since there's nothing really ironic about spending so much time to get something done. In the end, it's just riding a bike, once again. End of story.

I left Paris on Tuesday, around 9:30...ish. Much later than I wanted to. I asked my ever-generous host, which way out of Paris and she told me to take, N17, which turns into D117, otherwise known as La Route de Flandre.

Basically translated to, "How to get to Belgium"

Since we're on the subject of, "Roads", one must think about the history of this little path, how/when it started and the changes it has gone through, since its inception.

The route, sucked.

Construction all the way to Compiègne - the contemporary start of Paris-Roubaix. Construction was partnered with fairly heavy traffic and modifications needed to my route, since the construction literally closed the road itself and I had to scramble to find alternative ways to get to Compiègne.

This is my guidebook. The sections of the route (red) that are dashed are the parts that are cobblestone. The time it took to finish the ride to Roubaix is quiet extended - as you can see from this page. The race route isn't straight, it turns all over the place. It also doesn't follow the main routes. This page shows just the start of the route - it gets worse, the closer you get to Roubaix. A good part of one day was spent in the same 10 square kilometers.

Hôtel de Ville, Compiègne. This is our starting line.

 

Even though I made it to Compiègne by the first day, and started the Paris-Roubaix route shortly after, I did not hit any pavé the first day.

To give you an idea on the speed I'm moving, I can generally cover 100 - 200km/day. 200km is sincerely pushing it, since there's just so much sunlight, I'm on a bike that only has one gear and I'm packing some serious baggage. As well as the camping gear, clothes, toiletries, camping food/stove, I brought two cameras, many books (mostly French books) and a MacBook Pro.

Bum, indeed.

The route from Paris to Roubaix is over 320km. It took me three days to cover it - once I hit the Belgium border, I kept going.

From Roubaix, Amsterdam is another ~270km. I did this in two more days. This, of course, does not take in the countless times I got lost trying to find these small patches of cobbles.

So, I did about 100 miles/day for 5 consecutive days. If you map this route, you'll find that it's generally a lot less in distance than what I'm saying. Your mapping will not take into consideration the Paris-Roubaix route (twisting) and my wanderings (many).

Secteur pavé #26 de Quiévy à Saint-Python

Sectuer pavé #25

"Pedestrian Path" 

The guide I got was actually about walking the Paris-Roubaix route and doing so, in about nine days. I couldn't imagine something more boring.

Taking a break from riding on Day #2. I was awaiting a pizza being baked in a van in a random parking lot, in a random town, near Secteur #21 in Verchain-Maugré. The pizza was OK and I kept riding, well after midnight - probably until 2:00 am, or so.

This would have been extremely dangerous, but the route followed small, local roads, with little or no traffic. The few larger roads I was forced on all seem to have bike lanes. Appreciated.

Funny things happen on the pavés during the night. This is relatively flat country and these are relatively unused roads. Sometimes, you find a car, parked on it, for what seems, no reason. I got up close to some of these cars, only to find two teenage heads bobbing up from the back seat. Cracked me up.

Horses near Secteur #20 in Quérenaing. Thought I'd try the, "I have some food in my mounth fake-out"

Success!

Secteur pavé #20

Secteur pavé #17 - la trouée d'Arenberg

The nights were very cold.

Secteur pavé #16 - de Wallers à pont Gibus, à Hélesmes

Camped right off of the pavé. Woke up very very cold. Notice the frost on the ground.

Secteur pavé #15: de Hornaing à Wandignies-Hamage

French towns next to nuclear power plants always seem excruciatingly depressing.

Secteur pavé #7

Secteur pavé #4 le carrefour de l'Arbre

Secteur pavé #3 de Gruson

Another short day was drawing to a close. Still, a few hours to the finish and well away from Amsterdam

Secteur pavé #2 de Hem

Secteur pavé #1 Roubaix Espace Charles-Crupelandt

The last piece of pavé is actually in between the two sides of l'avenue Alfred Motte. That big arrow points to the entrance to the velodrome in Roubaix - the current finish of Paris-Roubaix. Being after 21:00, the velodrome was certainly not open, so that was the end of my little trek for Paris-Roubaix.

I still had the problem of getting to Amsterdam. In the next few days. And I mean days: two, at maximum. Pushing ahead.

What Belgium looks like, initially.

Belgium was somewhat of a blur - I didn't take many pictures. It was somewhat forgettable. I sauvaged in a very small patch of wooded land, next to a cow pasture and, as I realized when light hit in the morning, someone's back yard. Whoops. There's not much free land left. Another depressing thought. Whatever really - another notch in the, "countries I've visited" headboard.

Amsterdam was reached around 22:30, on Saturday Night (I initially left on Tuesday, 930am). I stayed only till Monday and then off to the small city of Nijmegen.

You'd think that Amsterdam would be a perfect city to be a flâneur in - and you'd be right, but I never really got myself together to take too many pictures.

Actually, you may just want to give me (Maybe I mean, I may want to give myself) a break: I just spend three days searching for, and photographing, roads. Talk about the ultimate flâneurusation. In Amsterdam, I was more interested in hanging out with my friends and their child, resting and recovering from a marathon ride through some backwater towns and generally, well, eating. More pictures does not necessarily mean better. And, I'll come back.

Autoportrait at the FOAM museum:

Well, the bathroom, anyways. Good exhibits. The joke is that it's a photography museum and I have a photograph in it. Ha ha.

I traveled to Nijmegen after Amsterdam - this time, by train. I'm not comfortable taking trains anywhere yet - they seem like such a weird idea. It's the American upbringing I guess. I went to Nijmegen to meet someone I met in New Zealand in the spring. She had some city bikes and we went for a bike ride through the countryside,

My Friend, and I

My Friend:

Ahoy fellow skippers!


(Seen here on the River Seine)

The Good Ship Marserena III flying the flag of captain death has just come out of cardboard box dry dock on the Île-de-France to set sail this Autumn season in the Olde World. She has been re-rigged from a full ocean-crossing vessel, having sailed both sides of the Pacific and the Eastern Atlantic, to a versatile channel-hopper to deal with the tight inlets and dangerous seas this city of lights has to offer.

The current rigging is very underpowered - as you can see, as the Good Captain's knee is going through the slow but inevitable healing process of being overworked - but he's on the mend and in good humor, helped out with an extra ration of whiskey at night. What's is flying now is a 42 and 38 double up front and a 17/21 dinglecog, paired with a 16/18 DOS ENO. With a little luck and a pair of "Powar Links" a 48 ring can be put up front for greater wind-catching.

To counteract the thieves and traitors of the area, I've re-painted the shiny-black hull with black board paint, which is very dull and perhaps hopefully will start a fake patina of rust, making the vessel look un-seaworthy. The Planet Bike fenders have also been lightly sanded to reduce glare and make it less available when on the horizon of a looking glass. Once the ride is dialed in, superglued ball bearings where ball bearings should be superglued and chain up the seat will be the modifications. Two mini-U's are necessary in such disenchanting waters. A CETMA rock will be here, shortly to extend the bow for extended supplies on extended routes to bring back extended riches.

Marserena III is to set sail on Wednesday to the port of Old Amsterdam - the only addition being two waterbottle cages for fresh water and a back brake (that works). The course takes us through the Paris-Roubaix Pavé before entering Belgium and then Holland.

Give some luck to thee!