Sweet Home Manhattan

The trip back home was marvelous, I didn't get to see everyone because I was only there for a two days so if we had plans and I disappeared forgive me. Somehow I filled up my 2 gigabyte SD card to the brim in 48 hours, which is odd because I'm not much of a photographer. Well, sometimes I am.

After my camera took a big steaming dump of New York on my laptop, I thought I'd share a few of the high and low moments with you all.

Seeing my favorite dog Bella was wonderful, we played like the old days and I could tell she was happy to see me.

Equally great was seeing my favorite view from Manhattan.

No, stupido, not anything from the high line. I'm talking about this view, baby:

Another great moment was going over to Daniel's house. For some reason I haven't set foot in his abode for years. We joke about it all the time, that I had become a rumor in his household, that Daniel's parents get suspicious when he says "I'm going to chill with Kevin" thinking he is actually saying "I'm going to go do drugs with bad people"

Needless to say, nothing had changed. Just like the old days.

The real highlight was spending some time trying to record an awesome episode of Friday Night with K-Dog. It was the dopest night to do it, energy was high and my boy-o's Chris, Ludwig, Carlos and Daniel all hit up the microphones and had our shot at greatness.

Well...things didn't turn out that great. After tanking for at least an hour, we all started laying around in defeat. The place looked and smelt like an opium den.

Essentially, this photo of Chris can summarize how much fun we were having.

Still, even after failing miserably and having nothing to do but revel in our own incompetency, we all had fun. That's what I love about these buckos.

All of that is long gone now. I'm tucked away in my living room, back in Chicago, chilling with Spuds Mackenzie, thinking about some prints I have to do tonight. It's a totally different pace from things back home but in some ways I enjoy it just as much.

I do look forward to going home, though.

Episode Three, Baby

The vacation induced hiatus ends today and what a better way to celebrate that than uploading the third installation of the Friday Night with Kevin Gannon poopcast?

If you missed it last week don't fret, you missed nothing. Literally.

Enjoy, baby. Don't forget who's back in town.

Stay Tuned...

Sorry folks, I guess I should have put this up a few days ago.

Why are there no posts? No poopcasts? I'm on my two day vacation, baby!

That's right, my school gave me two days off for spring break and I'm trying to live it up while I still can. It might be hard to believe but even K-Dogs gotta' rest sometimes, too.

I'll be flying back to Chicago tonight. See you then.

Robbie and Chicago

Robbie spent some time here and I decided to take a few days off and update you about things later. I guess now is later.

We had a pretty wonderful time. Robbie seemed to have brought the nice weather with him and Chicago was a completely different city. Don't believe me? I have photographic proof:

I swear to god, that's Chicago.

We didn't do much but lounge around the crib and occasionally take a nice stroll somewhere. Something I never thought I'd see what Preston and Robbie lounging in the Gene Siskel Theatre. Talk about synergy.

It felt like the scene in Heat when Pacino and DeNiro finally met over a tense meal only the meal was a movie with Janet Gaynor and no one was tense at all.

I think the only low moment of the entire trip was when a telescope stole a quarter from Robbie.

It was his last one.

Sadly, all this fun had to come to an end. Robbie is back down south and I'm back in the Big Apple. Tonight I record the third episode of Friday Night with Kevin Gannon and let me tell you:

This one's a doosey.

Litho With My Bro

Robbie Cline is in Chicago for a week and I'm having a blast kicking it with him just like the old days in very new day surroundings.

Today I had a shitload of litho prints that needed to get done which meant, unfortunately, Robbie had to tag along with Steph and I as we panicked to get as much work done as humanly possible.

After a few hours, Robbie became a crucial element of the artistic process. He timed each print, forcing Steph and I to work like athletes during the most important game of our lives. Our record? Two minutes and 30 seconds. That's from plate treating to sitting the print down to dry. That's beautiful.

One thing that blew was that we didn't have an extra pair of gloves for my precious little hands. The professors insisted that we use gloves but I had no choice but to do this barehanded. What a mistake.

There is a stage in the process where you coat the plate with asphaltum liquid. This stuff looks like asphalt, smells like asphalt and feels like asphalt. Essentially, it's road in a bottle.

I found out the hard way that getting street all over your hands is nearly impossible to tolerate and even harder to clean off.

Still, six hours later the prints came out nicely.

My hands still smell like Delancey street on a hot day. Blech.

Second Episode

It looks like this poopcast business is official. iTunes is not giving me a tough time with anything and updating episodes is easy and smooth. Like a baby's butt. Uh...why'd that come out dirty this time?

How do I know this? Today I put up the second episode! Yay!

For those of you who have subscribed you probably already know this (congratulations: you are the cool kids). Those of you who haven't, now you do. You can listen from up above or you can download the files from iTunes.

Your call. I'm all about autonomy.

Finally, do me the favor and rate this sucker on iTunes. I'd suggest fives stars but you know what? You can rate it whatever you want. Seriously, though, five stars would be best.

Frogs

Sorry folks, nothing special today. Got a lot of work and I'm thinking of hitting the sack ASAP. Who knows what I'm doing, maybe I'm prepping the next podcast or something?

Nah.

Here, this should hold you off. It's not much but it's pretty beautiful.

Later.

iTunes? How pretty

iTunes approved my poopcast. I didn't realize that the name of the account I have at a hosting site would be the name of the show so there is a discrepancy in the title and the image. That sort of drives me crazy but I'll figure something out.

Go subscribe!

Dark Side of the Internet...

I can't sleep and have a class in three hours. Usually during these times of stress and panic I try to do something productive so I don't feel like a complete waste tomorrow. Tonight I decided to use my time wisely and check out the blogs recent traffic report.

Things were decent but not ideal. The hiatus seems to have fucked things up. Hopefully word will hit the interwebs that K-Dog is back in business and things will be like they used to.

After perusing for a few minutes I noticed something very peculiar. The post on my track marks that weren't actually track marks has gotten me a lot of traffic.

Strange.

I decided to do a google image search. On the second page of results, I saw a fine example of the Internets wonderful talent of taking things out of context and making people look like asses.

Great. A photograph that comes up after searching "Track Marks" with my name underneath a photograph of my forearm.

What could go wrong with that?

Top Fans

This might be the funniest thing Facebook has ever churned out.

It's good to know that if my close friends got into a massive brawl I could hide behind Carlos as he whoops ass. Daniel seems to have done well for himself but he has a stick, which I think is cheap.

The real climax of the battle is the final round. As the dust settles from the small skirmishes, Carlos and Ludwig face off, each covered in the blood of fallen foe. Each with their mind on one thing: friendship.

I congratulate Carlos, but I tip my hats to all of you fighters. Well done.

First Episode!

Yay! The first episode of Friday Night with Kevin Gannon is online. Please enjoy and shoot me any advice because lord knows I need it.

I submitted the podcast to iTunes and they are reviewing it, probably checking to make sure I don't talk shit about Steve Jobs or the itampon. I read online that the process could take up to a week so I figured I'd post the above to hold everyone off.

I pray you enjoy and I can't wait to really get this ball rolling and have this shit live in the world of itunes.

Poopcast

Remember the special package I mentioned yesterday? Well, it came today and I am ready to reveal what it means.

Essentially, I invested in a wittle baby mixer so my recordings can sound super sweet.

What recordings, you ask? Well, I am proud to announce that I am going to try and start up a podcast. Thing is, it's not anything like Kevin Gannon Radio. In fact, it's something completely different. The biggest format change in my mind is that each episode will be a lot shorter than an hour. I think that investing time like that should be reserved for something special. It will have pre-planned bits (which, tonight I recorded the intros to) and will not have the musical element to it.

At the same time, even though the podcasts are going to be much shorter, they will come much more often. It's difficult to gauge how it will work until I start doing it. Still, right now in my head I'm thinking once every week or every other week. Not sure yet.

Either way, it's an exciting new thing to look forward to. I'm hoping that it will help me get a little bit of a release every week (lord knows I need it) and I hope it does the same for you too.

The ultimate plan is to get an RSS feed, a space to host it and get it on the podcast section of iTunes. Just like the bigwigs!

So folks, it's official. Kevy wevy has a podcast.

I don't have any names yet. Could you help me and suggest some?

Dog-Tired, Lingerie and Diphenhydramine

I write about sleep a lot. As far as this blog is concerned, the topic is about as tired as I am. Still, it seems that catching Z's is a pretty significant part of my life. A lot of my work revolves around snoozing and without the right amount of hours under my belt I'm a cranky asshole.

That being said, in the past few days I have been a very cranky asshole. I went three days straight without any shut eye and the days after that I couldn't sleep at night. Instead, I would sit in my room, stare at the ceiling and wait for the sun to rise. If i didn't have class, I would pass out around 9 in the morning and wake up when it was dark again.

Needless to say, that is a very, very depressing way to live. So depressing in fact, that I started to get very blue.

There isn't much to do in those hours, especially when most of the projects I'm working on these days necessitate properly equipped studios for me work in. I can solemnly swear that if it weren't for Opie and Anthony I would have gone completely insane by now. It's nice to know that at least at my lowest I can laugh a little bit.

Basically, my nights go as follows. I sit on the toilet and read some Seinfeld scripts because it's a lot quieter than watching them on TV.

Once that gets old, I switch over to whatever other bathroom literature we have kicking around the bano. Long story short, let's just say that Victoria's only secret is that most of her models are composed of more airbrush paint than flesh and blood.

Actually, it's funny. One of the most annoying things in the world is getting junk mail intended for the people who lived here before us. I can't tell you how many times I have been excited to see mail only to find out that the old tenants are due for their annual tooth cleaning. I have systematically been calling and cancelling most of the subscriptions but Preston and I both agreed that Victoria's Secret still has a small demographic in this house and them mailing magazines here is not a nuisance.

If it's close enough to daylight that I know I'm not going to sleep, I get dressed as slowly as humanly possible. This moment is when salt gets rubbed in my sleepy wounds. Staring at yourself, fully clad at 5 in the morning, knowing you will be on a train to school in only a few hours is the worst feeling imaginable.

Finally, I leave you with a warning. One of the ways I combated this sleep deprivation is by taking over the counter medications. They contain an active ingredient called Diphenhydramine which is, essentially, a big fat anti-histamine. I found out through my Mom that this stuff seriously fucks with your mental health. A few google search results verified this. I can tell you personally, as someone who took twice as much of these things as instructed to every night for a month, it does start to make someone very, very depressed.

So, please readers, if you are tempted to take such measures to get a good night's sleep do what I'm doing. Go get some help from a head doctor, not a generic miracle pill.

Anyway, things should get better as I sort my shit out. I have a very special package coming in the mail tomorrow from Amazon. It effects this blog and all I can say is stay tuned: something awesome is in the works.