I returned from my business trip to France last weekend. I had a great time. My hotel was located on the beach in St. Laurent du Var (a few miles west of Nice airport). A couple dozen restaurants and cafes lined the sea path below. I spent the evenings eating long dinners in the cafes, armed with my notebook and pen.



As I referenced in a previous post, I love the cafe culture in France. In America, eating at a restaurant is based largely on sustenance. We're hungry, and we need food so that we don't pass out. From the restaurant owner's perpspecitve, they want turnover. But in France, dining is a social endeavor, and an evening long event. A couple will go there together, talk the whole night, continuously engaged in the conversation. They look at each other, and don't stare off to continuously monitor every passing person that walks by. You start off with a drink and appetizers, move onto the entree, and follow that with coffee and dessert. All the while, taking your time. Never feeling hurried. Everything done casually. Enjoying each other's conversation. To an outsider, it may seem haphazard and wasteful, especially if you're used to everything being done in American staccato fashion. But I love the pace, and the respect people give each other at the table. It's genuine.

I worked late Monday through Thursday, so my evenings consisted mainly of descending down to the beach and lounging in restaurants. We had a half-day at work on Friday, so with the afternoon free, I took the train from the hotel to Nice proper (about seven miles east). I walked down to the beach and sat there for a while writing. It was abominably hot, between the temperature and the humidty -- a level I can't ever remember ever experiencing before -- and had I been dressed for it, I would have jumped into the Mediterranean Sea and stayed there for hours. And for those of you wondering, yes, I did sunbathe topless. Longing for shade, I crept back onto city streets and wandered through old haunts. I sat down under the awning at my favorite Nice cafe called Mori's Bar. On average, it may have the ugliest clientelle in all of Nice, but it has an undescribed charm that I gravitate to. Perhaps it's because I feel good looking when I'm there.

I returned to the beach and ascended up a staircase that wound up the side of Castle Hill, upon whose plateau offered one of the most beautiful views of any city I've ever seen.

Nearing dinner time I strolled the streets of Old Town and heard two acoustic guitarists playing familiar songs on an outdoor patio. I took a seat and enjoyed drinking beer on a beautiful evening while the guitarists played an ecclectic mix of English covers including Beatles' songs, Nora Jones' Don't Know Why, Leaving on a Jet Plane, Billie Jean, Stand By Me, and Wonderful Tonight.

I left Old Town to catch the train back to St. Laurent du Var, but I literally missed it by seconds. It departed as I approached within yards of it. With the next train not leaving for two hours, I found a nearby Chinese restaurant to grab dinner in while waiting. The food was horrible, but the ambience charming. I drank my favorite French beer, Kronenbourg 1664, and upon completing my dinner I caught the train and returned to the hotel.

On Saturday morning I caught the train to Villefranche-sur-Mer. Well, technically I caught three trains to Villefranche. I had assummed that my train from St. Laurent du Var would stop at my desired destination, but it happened to skip that one, so I had to take another that returned me to Nice's main station and the third train took me to Villefranche. The town is stunning and one that I had become enamored with when I visited France two years ago. The village is comprised of tightly woven buildings that cling to the mountainside. I passed through narrow alleys, paths, and staircases, to arrive at the Citadel, an amazing stone fort built in 1557. Two sections contained the ouvre of two local and deceased artists. The artwork was exceptional, but as there was no ventilation or air conditioning, the heat in the corridors was beyond intense and I couldn't linger for long. I saw one work on paper and thought that it was a watercolor since the paper was buckled. I looked closer and saw that it was pastel, but the weather conditions within the room caused the paper to bend as it would if water were placed on it. The sculpture and drawings in the Musee Volti were fantastic. Just wondering through the building made you feel like you were living in Medieval times.


After spending much time walking around the city I took the train back to Nice and went to its Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. The building itself is a piece of artwork. It is composed of four five-story columns with connected glass corridors. The museum has a great collection of artwork, and I was impressed -- and surprised -- by its focus on modern American art. One of my favorite pieces was Damien Hirst's, Five Black Dots. It was painted directly onto the enormous wall, and resembled a Twister game with large equidistant dots of different colors. Upon first look, it appeared that there were more than five black dots. But closer inspection revealed that some of the dots that appeared black were actually dark brown, green, and blue. Perhaps a comment on race and the hazards of judging on first appearence? I found it engaging in its simplicity. The very top of the museum had an open air atrium with beautiful views of the city and an interesting way to interlock the functional columns. They were spanned by an arching path that resembled a bridge that one would find in a Japanese garden.


I retraced some of my earlier steps through Old Town, accompanied with a cup of gelatto. In the evening I took the train back to the hotel, and left Nice early Sunday morning. The flight had a barking dog and kids that continuously ran through the plane and swung off seats, so it wasn't a calming flight, but not too bad. I wrote, read, watched TV, slept, and did a drawing.

Bonjour.

Writing from Nice, France. I'm done with the business part of the trip so the next day and a half are mine to spend in the French Riviera. It's been quite warm since my arrival, the humidity especially noticible, but there have been beautiful thunderstorms over the past few days that have made for beautiful scenes and eliminated both the humidity and marine layer. The work site is in an incredible location, placed on the hillside in Villeneuve Loubet, overlooking the entire Nice coastline. My hotel located in St Laurent du Var is amazing too, situated along the beach, amid dozens of cafes and restaurants. I've been eating well and enjoying my coffee as I look across the still blue water, watching planes land at the Nice airport. I absolutely love French cafe culture (equivalent to my appreciation of British beer pub culture), and I've loved partaking in it every evening with sketchbook in hand. I got off work early today and jumped onto the train and took it to Nice proper (the hotel is about 8 miles west of Nice). I went down to the beach and hung out with the multitudes of sunbathing people. I've gotten a lot of creative writing done this trip and continued with the trend down on the stone covered shores. The other time I've been to Nice was in October three years ago, and it's amazing how much difference those two months make in atmosphere. It was much more subdued and quieter during October than August.

Tomorrow I plan to begin the day in Villefranche sur Mer, one of the places I longed, but didn't visit, during my last visit to France, and afterwards I'll explore more of Nice with a quick trip to its Museum of Modern Art. I return to the States on Sunday. I'll elaborate more then.

Au revoir.

Feeling in a bit of an Egon Schiele art mood, I decided to play around with gouache (opaque watercolors).

Nostalgia is an odd thing.  It's a reminder of how things were.  It's a longing for a moment.  It's a desire to capture a context.

The San Diego Comic-Con  is based entirely on nostalgia.  That's its currency.  Its heart and brains and lungs and legs.  Comics don't change much.  They're still 22 pages with two staples in the center.  Themes may be updated.  Instead of a superhero lifting a car off a lady, the superhero may now be gay with a sister addicted to heroin.  But in the end, he's still lifting the car off the lady.  Movies are premiered and promoted, but they're based on fifty year old comics and twenty year old books.  Circle back.  It's all about nostalgia.  It all emanates from that base.  That's why visiting Comic-Con can be both exciting and disconcerting.

In a time of war and political polarization, there's something calming about seeing Corey Haim and Corey Feldman together again, sitting at a table and signing copies of the Lost Boys DVD.  When I took a week long driving course at 16, we watched their collaborative effort, License to Drive.  That in turn brings back memories of those summers when life was solely based on working at TCBY, playing home run derby, and drinking Slurpees.  At a table around the corner sat Ms. Daisy Duke herself, Catherine Bach.

Then there are the comics.  The Comic-Con provides a unique environment.  Rare is it that you get such amazing access to industry leaders in any field.  It's fun to walk by tables and see the artists and writers I loved growing up.  But while I recognized the names, I couldn't connect all of the dots.  I couldn't remember which comics they wrote in 1990 when I collected them.  I guess that this is the disconcerting part of nostalgia.   It reminds you that you're getting older and are further removed from those times.  You're detached.

The Comic-Con was absolutely packed and a lot of fun.  I saw some great artwork.  It may be obvious that Star Wars has generated its own economy, but I don't know if people are aware of how vast and pervasive this economy extends.  The tentacles reach far and swing wildly.  You can buy anything you want emblazoned with a Star Wars logo.  Some people base their careers on the fact that they were tangentially associated with one of the movies.  You can get an autograph from the girl who was Jabba the Hut's alien slave girl (not Princess Leia, although Carrie Fisher was there too).  The convention is so enormous that it can quickly become overwhelming.  It helps if you go in with a focus or plan.

One of my favorite artists is Simon Bisley.  If you know him only through his artwork you'll imagine him to be psychotic and menacing.  His artwork can be aggressive, wild, and violent.  It's also engaging, inspired, and brilliant.  Simon brings with him his own mystique and reputation (he's collaborated with Danzig after all).  When I saw him at the Heavy Metal table, he had his expected unkempt spiked hair, goatee, and tank top that displayed his huge arms and extensive tattoos.  I bought one of his books and had him sign it.  Approaching the table, I wasn't sure what to expect, but upon hearing his British accent he seemed more like Jamie Oliver on steroids instead of the wild image that preceeds "the Biz."  He was easy going and funny, but so as to not disappoint,  he did take a swig straight out of a nearly empty vodka bottle before signing my book.

The Comic-Con took up all of Saturday.  So how did I spend Sunday?  By watching the I Love the 80's marathon on VH1.  That nostalgia is a funny thing.

I found out yesterday that I'll be making a business trip to Nice, France, in two weeks.  I'm very excited.  I've been there once before, during my solo backpack trip through Europe two years ago.  I'm hoping I get a chance to explore.

While I try to suppress the nerd part of my personality, it will erupt in splendid glory when I attend the San Diego Comic-Con this Saturday.  It's an interesting place to people watch and actually quite inspiring to see so many people do what they love.  A lot of great artwork, too.  I didn't go last year, but two years ago I met Paget Brewster (from Friends fame).

I consider myself to be an intelligent guy.  Okay, I'm borderline über-genius.  But for every part smart, I'm also a part dumb.  I like artichokes.  I've had them in two different forms: boiled whole, where you pull off a leaf and dip it into a mayonnaise concoction, or the hearts all chopped up and part of another entree.  But I've never followed one form into the other -- whole to heart.  Last night I thought I'd boil an artichoke for an ambiguously healthy snack (while an artichoke is a vegetable, its healthy benefit is probably negated by dipping its leaves into mayonnaise).  After peeling off the last leaf, I was left with the bare stem and base.  My thought was that the heart was simply the part underneath, but it seems like I need an artichoke anatomy book because after disassembling the damn thing I was left with nothing that appeared edible.  Where did the heart go?  There were bits of  'choke dispersed all over my plate, looking like it exploded, but I saw nothing that resembled a core.  I'll require some diagrams with a cross-section view.  I may need to run one through a cat-scan machine.

Went to see local band, Berkley Hart, play at Lestat's.  They had a running theme: duo night.  Not only did they play their own originals, but also performed songs by famous duos.  Among my favorite covers were Hall and Oates', Rich Girl, and Loggins and Messina's, Danny's Song.  They sounded great -- fantastic arrangments.  It was a fun show.  Catch them if you get a chance.

I spent the 4th of July weekend in Chicago.  It's a great city.  I spent an afternoon at the Art Institute of Chicago museum.  Out of all of the museums I've visited, I think that it's my favorite.  Its collection is so diverse and comprehensive, and the museum is arranged wonderfully.  On the other side of the spectrum, I also wandered over to the Museum of Contemporary Art and was disappointed.  Last year they had an amazing exhibit featuring the paintings of John Currin, but this season they displayed mostly conceptual art.  One display involved a piece of wood sitting in the middle of the floor.  My mind just isn't tuned to that type of art.  If a piece of artwork can mean anything, it equivalently also represents nothing. I just didn't feel engaged.  I need to find a connection.  One of the coolest activities in Chicago was taking an architectural boat tour of the city.  The boat meandered along the Chicago River with a tour guide providing information about the passing buildings.  Much like George Costanza, I felt myself wishing I was an architect.  The tour maintained a fascinating balance between art, history, and science.  Good stuff.

I’m notorious for procrastinating. I frequently rely on deadlines to force me to complete projects. Without a due date, I would have never finished college essays. Without the newspaper deadline, I may still be ironing out thoughts for my opinion columns. And sadly, without the threat of death, I would never address issues with my health.

A week and a half ago I felt numbness in my left arm. A short time later the numbness descended down my hand. It was followed by tightness in my chest. Then it all faded, only to appear the next day. I thought I may have slept on my arm wrong and the circulation was poor. It continued. Perhaps it was poor ergonomics at work. I changed chairs and setups. It continued. The tightness in the left side of my chest sidled my left arm numbness. Could it be due to stress? I reflected on my life and realized that the only anxiety inducing element to my life was my guitar being out of tune. It didn't seem like stress was the cause.

It continued for a few more days until last Tuesday when the pain grew intense. The muscles on the left side of my chest clamped down like an old lady on her bingo cards. It felt like my heart was being crushed and rebar driven through it. Despite my condition, I felt the need to drive home first and grab my health insurance card before continuing onto my doctor. I loathe melodrama. With that being said, sitting at a traffic light, I genuinely thought I was going to die. I wouldn't have time to see my doctor. I needed to visit the hospital. Somehow, I still retrieved my insurance card thinking that having to deal with the hospital without this card would be worse than actual death. At my home, I pondered calling an ambulance, but not wanting to make a spectacle, I drove myself to Scripps Hospital in La Jolla.

I walked into the reception area and upon telling the receptionist about my chest pains he instantly directed me to an adjacent room where two nurses waited. I told them about my condition and they took my vitals. The nurse asked me questions about my history. Do you smoke? No. Are you diabetic? No. Are you allergic to anything? No. Have you ever freebased with Motley Crue? Once.

After this initial examination the nurse walked me over to a curtain separated bay with a bed and told me to change into a hospital gown. She returned a few minutes later and stuck electrodes all over my body and hooked the many strands of wire to a machine on the wall. Another nurse entered and placed an IV into my arm. She took four vials of blood and then attached a solution bag suspended from the ceiling. I was now tethered. The final touch was a glycerine patch placed on my chest.

A series of technicians entered my bay with equipment and took an EKG reading. Later, two guys wheeled in a machine, propped me up, and took a chest x-ray. The doctor came in and asked what I was feeling. I always hate this moment. Regardless of my condition, I always feel like it's my job to convince the doctor that I'm feeling what I'm feeling and be able to articulate this pain into terms that generate an immediate diagnosis from him. I could enter the hospital impaled with a spear, have both ends of it sticking out of me, and still feel this innate vulnerability that he'll think I'm faking it.

I've described all of this in staccato fashion, but the elapsed time at this point is about three hours. And I need to pee. I inform a passing nurse of my predicament and she returns with what is dubbed, "a urinal." It's a water bottle with the opening tilted at a forty-five degree angle. As simple as it looked, I didn't quite understand the subtlety of how to use it. In the spirit of the NBA finals, should I sit it at the edge of the bed and just aim for the rim? Do I stand it upright and mount it like zebras mating in the Serengeti? I had limited mobility due to the combination of electrodes and IV. In addition, when the nurse exited my bay, she didn't fully close the curtain, and therefore left a foot wide gap of open space where busy, sullen, sad, and sometimes crying people passed continuously. Somehow I managed with grace and what I'll admit to be a bit of style. You're probably asking, what could enhance my hospital experience?

How about an earthquake?

A magnitude 5.2 earthquake shook the hospital. Laying in the wobbly bed, I was in an optimal position to experience it. I felt the bed shake and saw lights, equipment, and the IV bag swing recklessly. A nurse stopped by to make sure I was okay.

Around 3:30pm a technician came down to my bed and brought my chest x-ray. She tucked it into the side of my bed and told me that I'd need it for my transfer. She vanished before I could ask her what she meant. The doctor returned to see me. He told me that my tests had come back negative for a heart-attack. My EKG had shown that there was stress to the left side of my heart but it wasn't an alarming reading -- no person's EKG looked textbook perfect he explained. But due to various factors, he thought that I should spend the night in the hospital. Although since my health insurance preferred a different locale, I wouldn't be spending the night in this particular hospital. He informed me that an ambulance would pick me up at 4:20pm to transfer me to Sharp Memorial. If one is fortunate, they get to experience both an ambulance ride and an earthquake over a lifetime. I combined it all into one day.

The ambulance arrived. They took my vitals and whisked me away. Driving south on Highway 163 the ambulence driver slammed on the brakes, tossing both EMTs and their loose equipment forward. I lifted my head enough to see out the back window. Cars skidded to either side to avoid hitting us. My ambulance almost needed to be rescued by another.

At Sharp Memorial I was placed in a staging room. My blood was taken every eight hours and my heart was constantly monitored by machine. When I was transferred to my room in the evening I was given a battery powered machine that I could take with me.

The nurses and doctors I encountered during my twenty-four hour stay were wonderful. Although all of the nurses commented on my hairy chest when they hopelessly applied the electrodes, wanting them to stick.

I tried to get to sleep but the IV in my arm kept me from bending it and was very uncomfortable. A man born in 1908 lied in the bed across from me, and caddy-corner was a man whose large and noisy family visited him until 1am. At 3am a nurse woke me up to take blood.

The next morning a woman looked at my heart with an ultrasound machine. Later, a man injected me with radioactive isotopes and placed me in a cat-scan like machine. I would repeat the isotope/machine process a short time later after having run on a treadmill for ten minutes (it's a heart-stress test).

Before being discharged the doctor told me that all of my heart-related tests came back negative. My heart looked in good shape. He believed that my episode was stomach related -- that I had bad problems that needed to be addressed (he said that it looked like acid reflux -- if John Elway has that problem it puts me in cool company). He added that if someone came to him with my symptoms, that he couldn't determine whether it's heart related or stomach related. The symptoms are so similar that they mask each other. He gave me some stomach medication and I was discharged.

While my hospital stay lasted twenty-six hours, it genuinely felt like weeks. Hospitals aren't fun. The hard part is the waiting. There's a lot of it, and while the doctors and nurses did a wonderful job of informing me what came next, it's still tough to wait. On the other side, it's an interesting place to be a voyeur. I have a belief that the only two places where everyone has a story are hospitals and airports.

I haven't been to a hospital since I had my tonsils taken out eighteen years ago. I hope it's another eighteen until I return. I'm glad that my heart is okay.

I returned late last night from a Memorial Day weekend spent in Colorado. I kept busy.

Kim and I journeyed into the mountains on Saturday and had an adventurous day. We passed through Boulder and Estes Park to venture into Rocky Mountain National Park and across Trail Ridge Road -- the highest continuous highway in North America. As we ascended the pass, hovering near the edge of the mountain, snow blanketed everything as it fell. Kim would point in a direction and say, "Usually there's a huge mountain right there," where we could only see a white wall. Upon nearing the top, we were turned around by the state patrol who said that it was white-out conditions past that point.


We retreated and drove through Rocky Mountain National Park, and in a short span we encountered a wide array of wildlife. A herd of elk chewed grass near the side of the road, and located at an address further along, a group of bighorn sheep played along the mountain side. They were beautiful to watch as they glided across rocks, and occasionally one would stand mightily on his hind legs. One of the coolest sights came unexpectedly. I was looking out onto a flood plain area when I saw movement. I told Kim to stop the car. We pulled over onto the side of the road and watched a coyote approach us. It strolled in front of our car, and upon nearing the road, it looked both ways before crossing.





Exiting RMNP, we descended into Estes Park to grab some grub at the Estes Park Brewery. After eating way too much stuff that had been deep fried, we eyed the nearby Estes Park Aerial Tram with curious apprehension. It rose from Estes Park to the summit of Mount Prospect. The wind had been gusting all day, a scary element when suspended from a cable, but curiosity won over apprehension, and we took the tram to the top. It offered spectacular views including the city of Estes Park and its infamous Stanley Hotel.



Kim and I spent other days dipping down into Colorado Springs to see my family and attending the Colorado Arts Festival in downtown Denver.

In Dallas the water tastes like a swamp. It’s horrible and inescapable. When you take a shower or wash your face, you can smell the water. One of my rules regarding tap water – and I have few – is that it shouldn’t have perceptible odor. And it most definitely shouldn’t have an aftertaste. This unbearable taste creates a problem when you go to a restaurant – deciding on a beverage becomes an impossible task. You can’t drink the water, so you look for other options. You soon realize the invasiveness of the problem. It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. You know that your neighbor is a pod person. You escape him thinking that you’re safe, only to discover that he influenced others and now everyone surrounding you is a pod person too, and they all approach with their menacing, unrelenting saunter. You obviously can’t drink iced tea or lemonade. Oh, I’ll go with soda, you say? Nope. They water down the soda with the Satan-spawn H2O. Mixed drinks? Not if they’re made with ice. So what does that leave?

Beer.

Aaaah, beer. Sitting in a Bennigan’s at the Galeria Mall, the kind waitress that called me dear, honey, and sweetheart throughout my meal asked what I wanted to drink. “I’ll have a Guiness, please.” She asked me if I had a Unicard. No, I replied. She then explained to me that since this area of Dallas was a dry county that she couldn’t technically serve alcohol, but there was a loophole that allowed me to drink if I filled out a Unicard permit and had it on record. She brought me the form and said that the restaurant would pay the application fee. Yes, in order to drink beer in Dallas as to escape the wretched water, I had to fill out paperwork.

I have neither a sensitive nor picky palette, but I just couldn’t deal with the taste. It astounded me that there wasn’t a revolt in the city over the water. I was curious if I was the only one aware of it. I went online and did a few searches. I found a recipe that said if you were making this recipe in Dallas during the summer months, you needed to use bottled water due to the “off taste” the water acquired.

The reason the water acquired this taste? During the summer months the algae levels in the lakes grew dramatically.

Dallas… it’s called a filter.

Last night I returned from a four day business trip in Dallas. I flew out early Sunday morning so that I could arrive in time to visit the Dallas Museum of Art. I have a fancy membership to the San Diego Museum of Art that allows me to visit seventeen other art museums in the Western U.S for free. The irony is that it would actually be cheaper to just pay the normal admission fee to each museum then what the fancy membership costs. Anyway, to alleviate the magnitude of my poor accounting practices, I feel a deep need to visit the museums when I can.

The Dallas Museum of Art had some great stuff and an interesting layout. It had five floors arranged in a cascading stair-step pattern where one flowed down onto the next. I say this with reluctance -- since I'm an artist I feel inclined to embrace all art forms -- but I hate square paintings. I loathe them. Every time I see a Mark Rothko painting with a description hanging nearby about its deep symbolism and metaphor I have a visceral reaction that makes me want to shake museum directors worldwide and tell them how they all have had the wool pulled over their eyes. The one exception to the square paintings comes from the artist Piet Mondrian. I enjoy his squares. However I seem to enjoy them more upon seeing his wonderful landscape and figurative work that preceeded the squares. The DMA had a nice collection of both.

Across the street I visited the Nasher Sculpture Center. The entrance fee was $10, which for an art museum is on the very high side, but upon entering I found that it was definitely worth it. The featured exhibit was Picasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivier. A great collection. I'm not very good at internalizing sculpture, but the museum had so many engaging pieces laid out wonderfully in internal galleries and an outside garden that it made the attraction easy and instantenous. They also had some Giacometti sculptures which are always whimsical and intriguing. He's one of my faves.

Been keeping busy. I've been painting, drawing, and writing a lot. I recently purchased some toys that have enabled my creative productivity. I bought the scriptwriting software, Final Draft, whose slick instant formatting have made the flow from head to typing hands run without pause. Due to the odd death of my old printer, I picked up a new one that I love. It's a Canon i860 and it's been helpful in printing out digital photos that allows me to use them as a reference for paintings and drawings. I've never had a printer that could create photo-lab equivalent 4x6" pictures, and now having that ability has opened up a floodgate.

Kim visited over Easter weekend and along with friends, we went and saw Anya Marina give a great show at Lestat's Coffee house. Since we arrived early, we decided to visit a nearby bar beforehand, The Ould Sod. Sitting in a lounge semi-circle booth, we talked about possibly hitting a karaoke bar at the end of the evening. Almost on cue, the music grew louder and a woman's voice was heard on a microphone announcing the start of karaoke. It was all very serendipitous. After hearing an impressive rendition of Jack and Diane, we returned to Lestat's to hear Anya perform.

In the times between painting and events, I've attended different art gallery openings in the area. A lot of good art is happening out there.