Fallen Angels Fun

Review for the play "Fallen Angels" at the Alamo Street Restaurant and Dinner Theatre. Pammy got a good write- up.




In the early nineties, specifically November of 1992, there was some decent theater work happening in downtown San Antonio. Nestled deep in the heart of the King Williams neighborhood, was Bill Larson's Alamo Street Theatre and Restaurant (now Casbeers) , that was running Noel Cowards "Fallen Angels"as it's inaugural play. It was directed by Danny Spear and the cast consisted of company members including Pammy who recalls it being a fun show and received a good review for comedic role as the "know-it-all" maid.

The place is reputedly haunted and on the evening of the anniversary of Eddie Raffel's death (a legendary San Antonio actor, theater mover/shaker and theatrical entrepreneur), Pam dedicated the evening's performance to him and a split second later the lights went out. There were no storms or any other reasonable cause for the power outage except perhaps Eddie playing a prank as he often did in life. Nonetheless, the show went on. Pam entered the stage, in character, to explain that during her travels to Africa or Asia, such occurrences were not permitted to interfere with any theatrical presentation. With that, the show went on in candlelight until just minutes before the end of the play when the lights came back on. Life is so much more fun with theater.

Friday Roundup

Pammy laying down the law at the Silver Spur for their show, " If You Build It They Will Laugh" in 2009.

Just a quick update to start things off. Tamara's upcoming gig fell through so Pammy wont be busy wrangling flamenco dancers next week. Oh, well. That's show biz. We've got a meeting set up with the good folks at the Edwards Aquifer Authority to begin brainstorming ideas for the "Doc Ed Early Reader" presentation. Once it's up on it's feet and running it will be the third presentation we will have written for them which is cool. Not bad for our little company.

I'm still working on an illustration project for Raining Popcorn Media( actually three) but the Houston Metro project is the big enchilada right now. Mmmmmmmm, enchilada. That particular job will take about a month to a month and half to complete my part. In the meantime we're trying to make time to work on some new comedy material and I'm slowly plugging away at writing and illustrating my own book about supernatural creatures. Things will be pretty busy between now and the time our kids are back in school. But today is my birthday so that means today we get to play a bit. All work and no play...etc,etc.

Making Funny Faces

Celebrity portraits I made for use as samples at the parties I worked as a caricature artist. I tried my hand at political cartoons but I found it more fun to draw celebrities and the average "Joe" .

I've always enjoyed drawing caricatures but not the kind that you do in three minutes at a party (though I've done that before) but the kind that Mort Drucker popularized in Mad Magazine and those found in editorial cartoons. It's portraiture with a twist that appeals greatly to me and is the great equalizer(second only to the Grim Reaper) because you can caricature anyone. You simply have to look at the op-ed page to see caricature used in a powerful way. Editorial cartoonists are the modern day court jesters. Even to this day, the pen is mightier than the sword. Power to the people y'all!

National Latino Family Expo

Happy Wednesday to all. I've just confirmed that I will be plugging the Milagro de Monterrey book at the National Latino Family Expo at the Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center Sunday, July 11th. It's an event sponsored by the National Council of La Raza and features 200 exhibitors, games and much more. It's free and open to the public.

I can be found at the Scholastic Publishing booth at 4p.m. and again at 4:30 p.m. and then I'll be at the Tres Rebecas booth at 5p.m.

Basically I'll be doing a presentation, much like the ones I've done for students, on how the illustrations for the book were developed and finally painted. I'll bring along a bunch of sketches, manuscripts, proof sheets of the book plus the actual paintings too. Below is a link to the event. It should be fun. See you there.


http://www.nclr.org/section/events/conference/2010_national_latino_family_expo

Excercise in Silliness

I grew up obsessively devouring Mad magazine, with my parent's blessings, long before I got most of the jokes and it has influenced my art and taste in humor. I love parody and clowning. Clowning as I know it, is mostly parody. My favorites were the movie parodies Mad did so well and the above image is a go at that type of humor.

This is only the first page and I'm still working out the end to this sequence. Just about the time I felt good enough to submit a sample or two, Mad went belly up. Bummer. Mad came to be during a time in history similar to ours in quite a few ways. Perhaps it's just a matter of time before we see a "Mad"- like magazine arise to fill the void in the 21st century.

Happy Fourth Of July!

I wanted to share a couple more sculptures I've done. That's an early attempt at sculpture and, considering it was my first, it didn't come out too badly.


That's Christy McDonald posing with another likeness I made for her.


I'll be enjoying the typical fourth of July feasting later today challenging my slowing, aged, metabolism with lots of brisket and beer. As we celebrate our nation's independence I hope we do our best to be nicer to each other and take better care of the world we live reside in. I leave you with the eloquent words of Chief Seattle who put it so much better than I ever will:

" All things are connected like the blood which unites us all. Man does not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."