Joe Willie

by Lisa

       I am in Tuscaloosa, Alabama visiting my Dad for Thanksgiving.  Tuscaloosa is where I grew up for the most part. Anyone who is from here, or has ever been here can tell you that football is pretty much a way of life. The above snapshot is of me when I was a kid, 10 years ago, sporting my Joe Namath sweatshirt with my autographed paraphenalia. Of course we refer to him here as Joe Willie. I think you have to be from here to have earned that privilege. He was one popular dude playing quarterback for the University of Alabama back then and went on to star for the Jets, for all you sissies who don’t know that.

      

      Well, what goes around comes around. See the house up above? That’s my Dad’s house. This so happens to be the house that Joe Willie lived in years ago. That’s right, my circle is complete. This is the back of the house and right behind me is the lake it sits on. I love to stand here and imagine young Joe throwing passes in the backyard. In those tight little footbally pants. Sometimes when I’m standing inside, I try to imagine him coming through the front door, all hot and sweaty from winning a game against Auburn, and having to turn sideways to get those big shoulder pads through the door. At night when I lay there in bed I can just imagine…oh nevermind. Getting back to painting.

      I’ll try to do a little landscape sketching anyway from his backyard here. I’ll post it if I do. But DON’T be surprised if you see a figure of a football player in there somewhere. With cute little dimples.

If I Were King – Graffiti

By WR Jones

    On our Sunday walk of 7 or 8 miles, we have a stretch of river that passes behind an apartment complex.  There is a bridge over the river just after the apartments.  Every week there is new graffiti.  Every week I say the same thing to my wife – “why the hell don’t they put up cameras, and motion activated lights?”

    Instead they fight a losing battle of painting it over.  Last week I saw they gave up even trying to match the paint color of the building.  The city paints over the mess on the bridge and they do a pretty fair job but they too can’t keep up.   These young taggers have more energy than old Juan and Carlos (who’s lives have been threatened) who paint over the apartment.

   One Sunday we saw a boy of about 10 or 12 tagging the bridge.  I borrowed a phone from another couple walking by us and called the police.   I told the dispatcher a boy was tagging near the bridge over the river to the park.  He asked if I could give him a street name.  Huh?  You work for the city and do not know where the park is?  I ask him (the dispatcher) where the hell was he answering the phone from?   He was in a rather distant city -  OK, screw it, I’m glad I wasn’t being stabbed.

    SOLUTIONS FIT FOR A KING:

         1.  Humane -  put up portable cameras on highly tagged areas.  Man the cameras and send the police.  You can fine – most probably the family - enough to pay for the cameras and personel.   When tagging drops way off you can shut down the operation until it gets bad again.   After you take everything a family has including the shirts off their backs, mom and dad may pay a little more attention to what junior is up to.

         2.  My answer -  License snipers and pay a bounty for taggers.  The snipers would have to be highly trained for safety.  This could, for example, be good offduty income for members of SWAT.  The sniper would have to film the entire sequence leading upto and including the shooting.   If he/she makes a mistake and shoots some innocent kid, he/she will face prosecution, unless the kid is really ugly.

Note:  We found two spray cans of paint in the bushes by the high school last Sunday.  We picked them up to throw in the trash.  I accidentally pressed the button on one of them; the Devil took my hand, spraying my initials on that wall, and the side of that 18 wheeler, the train, the new restaurant, and the neighbors house.   There IS a thrill seeing your work up like that.   More people will see that painting in a day than come to the blog in 2 or 3 generations.

Green My Ass

By W R Jones

    On a walk yesterday we picked up more than 50 plastic water bottles, soda, and beer cans.  Doesn’t ANYONE teach their children not to litter?  Every household and every apartment has trash cans, can’t these people wait until they get home?

    Hell no.  You look at the parking lot of a grocery store and see trash everywhere.  There are litter receptacles just outside the door.  If you can’t wait to get home to eat that ice cream bar shit-for-brains, stand by the trash can to unwrap instead of walking 50 feet then dropping the wrapper on the ground.

    Here are my proposals:

        1.  No more plastic water bottles.   If you insist on paying $1.30 for some water, you must buy an authorized hard reuseable bottle for $10 ($3 of which is mine for coming up with this idea).  Then at filling stations, grocery stores, etc,  you can pay your money to refill YOUR bottle.  There would be an ID associated with each bottle.  If you lose it and it is found on the street or in a landfill, $1000 fine ($300 of which is mine for coming up with this idea).

       2.  I would follow the lead of England and place cameras at areas that collect a lot of trash.  Those caught dumping anything would be fined enough to pay for the cameras, people to man the cameras, and a first class flight for me to europe.

    We also found two cans of spray paint in the bushes by the high school.  I’m all for killing outright those graffiti people.   I’ll get into the details of my graffiti solution in another post.

    I probably should have ran for president.  For those of you who think my ideas too middle of the road for me to get elected, think again.   I would have won by a landslide.  I know this because I am special.  I know I am special because I keep getting mail telling me so.  They tell me I have been especially selected to receive this offer.   I get enough of these to know somewhere Bambi has lost his forest, he will soon be road kill (maybe in time for Thanksgiving dinner).

    If we think logically for a moment (but only for a moment) and take the intersection of all these offers, I must be the only one special enough to get more votes than there are people in the country.

    Oh oh, I just had a scary thought – anyone as popular as me will be having people who want to take pot shots at me, like the neighbors for instance.

 

CHAIN TAG: 

I have been chain tagged by three at once.  This is call gang chaining I guess.  I would normally ignore it but I have great respect for the painting/writing skills of my taggers so I will (sort of) keep it going. 

Rules

  1. put a link in your posting to the person who tagged you.

  2. list 7 unusual things about yourself

  3. tag 7 other bloggers and let them know

RULE 1.     Bonnie

                 Jala Pfaff

                 silvina       (Studio 280)

 

RULE 2.     I don’t think so; there is nothing unusual about me.  Mediocrity is my curse.  If something comes to mind later I will fill this part in. 

RULE 3.     Cara Dawn Romero      hey, if you are not painting you

                                                    may as well be blogging

                 Carol King                   you just finished a painting

                                                    so you have time for this

                 Barbara Pask                this is what you get for commenting

                 Connie Snipes             Connie – I always liked you

                 Dar                              We haven’t heard from you in a while -

                                                     this should wake you up

                 Diana Moses Botkin     Maybe you can follow behind me and

                                                     clean up my comment litter

                 Rebecca                        You have not been painting

                                                      my weed so take this!