I AM CUPID, WHERE THE WEED AT?

Overheard Voicemail, 2/11/2011, 4:54pm:

"...you know, like, it was all like foggy when I left your place last night. I mean, like, I was in complete control, you know? But, I mean, like, I'm sorry that you feel that I wasn't. Listen, I, like, forgot to wear my jacket and I get hella crazy when my body reaches a certain temperature, and shit. I mean, I'm not too proud to admit that I was wrong for what I did. But you need to calm the fuck down. I sent more than enough text messages apologizing for that weird nail polish smell coming from your basement. And the trail of broken ceramics I left on your street wasn't my fucking fault, ALRIGHT? I told you Tony is a fucking idiot and didn't see how dragging a bunch of old plates around in a trashbag could be a bad idea. AND LISTEN, you're just going to have to forgive me for those fires. BUT LISTEN, THOSE WERE FUCKING CONTROLLABLE FIRES. AND I KNOW THAT YOU DID THE SAME SHIT AT JAVIER'S HOUSE TWO WEEKS AGO. Wait, ok, so that wasn't you. BUT YOU LOOKED A LOT LIKE HER AND THAT IS STILL PRETTY FUCKED UP. Alright, ok, now that we've both made our apologies, lets get down to the straight shit. I have this delay pedal that only runs on 9 volts and I have to get down to the Radio Shack by 5pm or my tone tonight is going to be TOTALLY FUCKED. And, like, I love you. Call me back."

one - YOU CAN SHOOT GUNS AT THE MARTINEZ GUN CLUB.

two - MORMONS.
three - EVERYDAY A MAN WAKES UP TO CURE DISEASES, EVERYDAY ANOTHER MAN WAKES UP TO DESTROY THE SURVIVORS.

I was recounting the more delicately idiotic aspects of life with a 60 year old drunk man in sunglasses the other night when I came upon an epiphany. My life is fucking retarded. Not in a self deprecating way. Self deprecation is for eternal teenagers who haven't figured out what to do with their dicks, so they tie them up to chains and beat themselves over the back with them; like Muslim men during Ashura, or Jaleel White in that one romantic comedy he wrote that never got produced outside of a puppet show inside of a broken television on the corner of Tele and Haste. I mean, the mania that exists from constant contrasts. The 9 to 5 and the 5 to 9, the hustle and the ramble, the 934214=p;gk,;lklkf and the 83ikfldskjflkskdj4. That shit is retarded,
RETARDED LIKE THIS PARAGRAPH.

The man in sunglasses started in with the crazy nonsense talk most drunk men in sunglasses tend to dish when they're down on their luck and up on their nostalgia. He gradually got comfortable when he saw I wasn't goin' anywhere. For some reason there are only two topics that matter in such circumstances: women and money. Actually, those are probably the only two things that ever matter to a man with blood too dirty and warm to do be anything else but free.

He asked me about my life. No, he asked me what I stood for. He asked me where I was and why I was there. From that median between being MOTHERMARYSOBER and sweetly drunk, I told him about the contrasts. Within a few fractured minutes of comfort and illegibility I cut in deep about the civil war constantly raging between an honest man's time and passion, the clear definitions between love and sex, and a young blood's meditations on the immediacy of death. He leaned back, lowered his sunglasses, gave me a look that said "SHUT THE FUCK UP, IDIOT", then inched millimeters away from the the longest hair of my shitty beard and said:

"DON'T FUCK AROUND WITH WHITE WOMEN."

I cocked my head down toward the ground for a second to try and jam that shit into context, like a Buick through a bike spoke, but, no. Nothing. I asked, "wait, what the fuck should I be concerned with?"

He slapped my left shoulder, put his arm around me, pointed toward the sky above Saigon Market, and said:

"MARS."

I sat there with his arm around my shoulder, staring toward wherever the fuck the end of his finger met the sky, looked back at him and said, "MARS. FUCK YES. MARS."

We sat there with our arms around each others shoulders for hours until the cafe closed, staring at each other wide-eyed and bobbing our heads in agreement, singing a call and response of:

Me: "MARS... FUCK YES... MARS..."
Dude: "MARS... FUCK YES... MARS..."
Me: "MARS... FUCK YES... MARS...."
Dude: "MARS... FUCK YES... MARS..."
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Dude: "MARS... FUCK YES... MARS..."
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Dude: "MARS... FUCK YES... MARS..."
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Dude: "MARS... FUCK YES... MARS..."
Me: "MARS... FUCK YES... MARS..."
Dude: "MARS... FUCK YES... MARS..."
Me: "MARS... FUCK YES... MARS...."
Dude: "MARS... FUCK YES... MARS..."

The "OPEN" sign turned off at the cafe and we both awoke from our mania to a group of Gypsy kids playing a game of pogs in the gutter. The dude that smelt like pee won the chick in the Hammer pants' big daddy slammer. Evening was over and night was to begin. I rubbed my eyes, scratched the back of my neck, and mumbled, "hey man, I'm late for something or whatever, or something and whatever. Hey, Mars, right?"

He took off his sunglasses, pointed his index finger an inch away from my nose, looked me dead in my eyes and said: "FUCK YES."

I slapped his back, gave him a hug, and made my way down Tele toward 23rd. All the sudden he shouted out, "RAP AIN'T SHIT! ITS ALL ABOUT RAY CHARLES AND BILLY IDOL, GOD DAMNIT!" I kept walking and shouted over my shoulder while laughing, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THAT MEANS, BUT MY LIFE IS FUCKING RETARDED."

I turned the corner with this blaring in the back of my skull:

"RAP AIN'T SHITTTTTTTTT. WHITE WEDDINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG..."

RAY CHARLES V. BILLY IDOL. ROUND 1: FIGHT!

Overheard conversation, 2/11/11, 9:42pm, Broadway Liquors, 29th and Broadway:
"My mom sent me this $10 dollars to spend on my Valentine's Day cutie. Let me get a pack of American Spirit Blues and that small bottle of Jameson. She doesn't know I'm single. I'm still spending the money on my cutie, right?"






























WRONG.

Oh yeah, this blog is for a band called "B. Hamilton." We have a record coming out the month after eventually. Hey, I'm really into your band. We should play some shows in the city sometime. My friend books the Knock-Of99999990---------))))))__________________________________JJJJJHNBDCVFbgnmthyjjjjjjhhhhhhh90999999999999999999999999

THANKS FOR THE TEN BUCKS, MOM.

-B. Hamilton, Ph.D (a.k.a. Bill Crowley)

The Work of Ron Kristaphone.

Here is a half-assed recount of the Ron Kristaphone installation J. Otto Seibold held in his "This Party Blows" art-truck at Oaklondon's ArtMurmur on July 2nd, 2010. Kristaphone rarely checks his email, but can be reached at rkristaphone@gmail.com when he does.

Kristaphone with his Cocker Spaniel, "Doug."

BIOGRAPHY:
Kristaphone, Ron, b. 1968, American illustrator, b. Mendicato, California.; son of a prominent illustrator, Alexander Ronald Kristaphone. Among the most obscured and respected American illustrators, Kristaphone was trained as a mechanical philosopher at University of California, Berkeley. In 1986 he went to Paris and was influenced by the art of Mondrian and Miró, as well as the overall aesthetic of the Maytag man. In 1988 he exhibited his first particleboard-based illustrations of California's working class, called "Art Boxes," consisting of 16" x 16" squares filled with quotes and portraits of the men he encountered on his daily tours as an asphalt analyzer for the Alameda County Agency of Roadway Therapy (now defunct due to budget cuts). The Museum of Applied Art, Tashkent, Uzbekistan has several examples of his work during this period. These stark inventions along with his puppet shows of the same subject, and of course, his colorful and complex miniature zoo (1992; Museum of Applied Art, Tashkent, Uzbekistan), brought Kristaphone to wide spread prominence in the Caucuses. However, the celebrity was bittersweet due to virtually no recognition in Western Europe or The United States.

In 2002. Kristaphone went through a traumatic period following the death of his father and the first of many encounters with street drug, DOMO (N,N-Dioxyethylmiproptamine.) Kristaphone described this period in his life in an interview with Uzbek Art Journal, "Gulnara Karimova" by saying:

"I use to walk down to McCrackey's Liquor Store on American Avenue in Hayward, where I was living at the time, buy a Lunchable, go back to my sea container apartment, smoke some DOMO, and just space the (expletive) out on the flavors that were going on in my mouth. They use to have these candies in Lunchables called "Gushers" that were just (expletive)ing insane. It was like a thousand butterflies going ape(expletive) with jackhammers on my tongue. I don't think I've ever recovered from mixing 'Radical Raspberry' and a slice of Bologna. But it was so much pleasure that I knew the next phase was death. There wasn't anything else to do aside from get the (expletive) out of that situation and return to some kind of reality."

Instead of going through a rehabilitation program as most addicts do, Kristaphone adopted a regiment from his friend and HVAC technician, "Doug" that involved using profanities between every other word, regularly going to the batting cages, and replacing DOMO with a 30-block of Coors Light. The road to recovery was rough with many relapses, but he eventually won the battle and returned to his life's work of documenting the trials and tribulations of the Bay Area's strip malls and industrial parks. Kristaphone now lives at a Hacienda-style estate at 82229 San Leandro Boulevard in San Leandro, between two auto body shops with his wife, Luanne, his daughter, Doug, and his cocker spaniel also named Doug.

Longtime friend and Children's Book author and illustrator J. Otto Seibold handpicked Kristaphone to be apart of the third installation of his "This Party Blows" art-truck series at Oakland's monthly Art Murmur in July 2010. Enjoy.

ART:
"REALWORKINGCLASSDUDES" Series, 2010:


"Hayward"
February 19th, 1996, 3:32am

"South San Francisco"
April 11th, 2001, 2:22am

"San Leandro"
September 11th, 2001, 9:21pm

"San Carlos"
December 31st, 2001, 11:58pm

"Oakland"
January 1st, 2002, 1:10am

"Novato"
March 20th, 1993, 4:49am

"Concord"
September 12th, 2001, 2:01am

"Alameda"
July 4th, 2004, 5:12am

"Concord (Sketch)"
September 2nd, 2001, 8:43pm