3-D life-size furry nacho fingerpainting

i fingerpainted nacho last week, and then brushed him and put varnish on the canvas and attached the fur to the varnish. i think it looks pretty cute.

it came from this photo

almost

amazing instant mosquito bite cure

put a drop of lavender and tea tree oil on a mosquito bite as soon as it starts itching, and it will stop itching within 5 seconds and the next day it will be completely gone.
no more x'ing out bites with fingernails, scratching it making it worse, swollen red welts, blood, scabs, or scars. one drop of this stuff and it's gone.

homemade brand ice cream liars

the united dairy farmers homemade brand black raspberry chip carton states the following:

we use only dairy-fresh cream, real vanilla, and the finest fruits and nuts.

so is fd&c red #40 classified as the finest nut or the finest fruit?

RIP Vintage Vantage (2001-2010)

it's a sad day over here.


the vintage vantage death announcement was published this morning, announcing an everything must go liquidation sale, all shirts are half price or less. the 40% off coupon code 'skippyhaha' still works, on top of the discount.


it has been a wild ride full of chaos and chuckles.


vintagevantage started as lone ebay seller john keddie selling vintage t-shirts out of a tiny garage in ocean beach san diego california in 2001.


in 2002 i was about to graduate law school in chapel hill and selling vintage myself on ebay for some money, and emailed vintagevantage fanmail because I thought they were doing a great job.


one email led to another and i met up with john a month later at a widespread panic festival in colorado. we couldn’t find camping and set up tent in a taco bell, were woken up by the Denver sheriff who ran our licenses and let us stay.

2 months later he moved to charlotte where i just started working for a law firm uptown. we came up with 'we be illin' sacred hear

t children's hospital'  and urban outfitters ordered 5,000 of them, along with 'get high on yourself,' and we were off.

1 month later i quit my job and we moved to ventura california, driving nonstop for 2 days with holden on the passenger's lap.




we sold mounds of dirty old t-shirts on ebay, and modeled every one of them. we started coming up with more and more 'originals' and working with factories to make supersoft t-shirts in flattering cuts. that was a shitty process, i didn’t really deal with it.




we got recognized by strangers at music festivals and on the streets. i didn’t like that.


we got married.


we got nacho.

American eagle outfitters copied our ‘

detroit is for lovers’ shirt and we sued them and settled. It was awesome. 

people asked heather. 

we hired happymexicansock, aka socky, to stuff packages.


we moved to pacific beach san diego.


we met a bunch of awesome people across the street.


we hired matt duerr to manage the growing warehouse and do sales.


we made up the ‘voting is for old people’ shirt and caused quite a stir, Russell Simmons hated it, MTV hated it, the san diego news came to our house.  it was awesome.

we had an online dating contest for matt (get fresh with mateo), won by none other than kid D, and flew her out to san diego from oklahoma for a weekend. It was awesome.


we moved to hillcrest for a couple months, and then moved to encinitas, where we had a pool and a living room full of trampolines and a bitchin 80’s homecoming dance.

we outfitted the kitshickers.

and the kitshakers -

we had a contest and took 8 people to amsterdam for 4 days to film 'vintage vantage and the disappearing corn dog.'  there was a lot of footage but no movie came out of that trip. yet. i peed myself on the street in amsterdam laughing so hard, at what i have no idea.

we got divorced.


Matt quit for a more stable job, and John moved the warehouse and operations up to San Francisco.


I moved to Asheville.


Things quieted down, but we kept coming up with newer better funnier t-shirts, and selling the best real vintage from the 70s and 80s online. We started making t-shirts for bands – ALO, Tea Leaf Green, Guadalajara Joe…awesome shirts for awesome bands.


The inventory was hugely swollen and the sales were down. We are not good business people. The economy went to crap. We didn’t adjust. The interest on a loan from Bank of America ate all our profits. No good offers to buy the business materialized and now we have to liquidate.


I plan on selling vintage t-shirts on my own, on ebay and on etsy, possibly on the vintagevantage.com website if I can arrange that in the next few months. And I’ll keep making peanut butter stash safes.


John is starting a new t-shirt company with a well-established LA partner and their future looks bright.


Nacho will continue hopping through life like an arctic bunny.


All is well.






Some of my favorite t-shirts over the years have been:

Solar power turns me on -

Let’s hear it for sign language -

the pantychrist -

Fork my life -

Duluth, Duluth Duluth is on fire (burn Minnesota burn) -

Minivan Mega Fun

Polite as fuck -

Jesus loves immigrants

I’m not fat husky-

French canadien

Made a shirt with my dad on it -

And one with holden on it -

it was a good ride. keep it fresh, amigos.

god answers smutty's prayer

i think prayer is basically talking to yourself in a reasonable tone in complete sentences about things that are most important to you. i know i spend most of the day with my thoughts in rapidfire images and half formed snippets of words that are relating what i'm sensing and trying to categorize and respond. hardly ever, if at all, in reasonable full rational sentences. i think you don't have to believe in god to pray, and get the same benefits from it as people who do.

saturday

drool

never mind the fur stuck in the cracks, this is why i need vinyl seats in my car. anybody want a ride?

green army guys

i have a great idea. you know those thousands of men and women who risk their lives for our freedom, because they want a chance to get ahead in life, or because they have deep feelings of patriotism and love for america and the rightness of its causes? let's make them into gummy bears and eat them.

soft like bunny

would you look at the freakin wrinkles on this dog's face?

weekend with leo

leo is half golden retriever, half shar pei. he has the soft wrinkled face of a shar pei and the sweet goofiness of a golden. he's only 1.5 years old but acts more mature. he's staying here for the weekend and nacho and i couldn't be happier. game on!

my hippo

speaking of hippos, check out lindsay's little hippo ethan! he's only 6 months old. nothing cuter than a chubby baby. (other than a chubby puppy).

rapids

may be going tubing this weekend. may be going on the la zoom purple bus tour. may be filling the kiddie pool with ice cubes and snorkeling in it. may be eating genuine alaskan moose burgers. will be fun.

alex trebek can suck it

it is kid's week on jeopardy and some sharp mini-cookies were on TV last night competing for tens of thousands of dollars on the classic thinking man's answer and question game show. (what the TV guide calls it).

after the first break, alex makes small talk with the contestants, and one of the boys told him he was going to get into falconry when he grew up. he was extremely serious and passionate about it, and mentioned by name a professional falconer that he had met when he was younger and how he was going to follow in his footsteps.

alex said, "well i don't think there's much of a market for falconry these days so you better have a back up plan" and walked back to his podium to start the game.

what an asshole. who squashes the dreams of a 10 year old boy on national TV?

labs wearing goggles in a sidecar

i have found a new dream. i would like to travel around with a sidecar full of labs wearing goggles. this man is my hero.

(photo taken at the montreat 4th of july parade by sweetashvegas, author of the super informative asheville site ashvegas.)

fluffycups and chucklecheeks

nacho and eli don't mind being sequestered when the cable guy comes as long as they get rawhide chewies on the bed in front of the fan.

giant black bear on the loose in asheville

went up to the blue ridge parkway last night for a hike on the mountains-to-sea trail and we saw a GIANT black bear cross town mountain road in a fairly residential area of asheville.

it had to be between 500 - 700 pounds. it was six feet tall and very wide. it did not seem interested in the car, it climbed a hill and disappeared into the woods.

i didn't have my camera, and this is not the bear, but it looked like this size. at least. probably bigger.

here are some interesting facts about bears from the western north carolina nature center. http://www.wildwnc.org/education/animals/black-bear-ursus-americanus

Trevor Garrod - Nothing Changes

Beautiful song, beautiful singer. I am not a banjo fan but I make an exception.

"Nothing Changes"

Thunderstorm is coming
I see it through the door
If I get struck by lightning
My heart won’t beat any more
In other words…
Nothing will change

I went down to the river
The water is turning brown
If the levy breaks
Well I will surely drown
In other words…
Nothing will change

I’m drivin through the field
The field sowed with corn
I saw a dead fox lyin on the side of the road
My baby left me yesterday
She packed up all her clothes
She said that I would never change

This bottle’s almost empty
Yet I cannot catch a buzz
And the radio’s a tragedy of
Country songs and fuzz
In other words…
Nothing will change

The daylight always fails me
There’s no secret he can keep
The midnight will embrace me
But she will not let me sleep
In other words…
Nothing will change

Today there was a thunderstorm
It came in from a far
Lightning bolts came beating down
The earth was burned and scarred
My baby left me yesterday
She drove off in her car
And she said that I will never change

The kitchen clock is tickin
And the faucet’s got a leak
Like that water drippin
I’m on the path that resists the least
In other words…
Nothing changes

Yes I’m fallin to the bottom
The bottom of a hill
Where the rich men build their mansions
And they marry pretty girls
In other words…
Nothing changes

And if I had a little
Of what they got up there
Things would be different if
Life was only fair
My baby’d be beside me now
Together through this storm
There are some things that just cannot change
Some things you cannot change

The night is awfully quiet
There’s no friends I can call
I’m standin on a wooden chair
And if I should fall
Nothing will change
Nothing will change

Yes it’s that which hangs you up
That holds you down
Yes it’s that which hangs you up
That holds you down
Yes it’s that which hangs you up
That holds you down


Video by DGold.

kibble shoots

the highlight of nacho's day is when eli gets fed and nacho gets a dozen of eli's kibbles thrown into his face.

the highlight of my day during the first 8 years of my life was when i would go to bed and then get 'shoots' which involved one of my parents bringing in a dixie cup of water for me to drink and then they threw the leftover drops in my face.

reflected recycling

especially when i lived in a neighborhood subdivision for a few months, i noticed that the number of women's morning walking groups increases on recycling day, and i think it's so they can snoop around at what their neighbors are consuming.

jesus christ hair

across from mission hospital

JC
Jesus Christ & Company Hair Studio

(sign in the window says "MASSAGE CHAIR")

i thought JC was a carpenter not a barber

Dear Solid Gold,

Dear Solid Gold,
We want to have a rock group we already made up 3 songs, The name of our group is Heather + Carin and the rock + roll fevers. We have eight people. Carin and I are 7 three of them are nine 1 is 8 and one is eleven. We desided to start early and our teacher said our songs were EXCELLENT! Our costumes are jeans and sweaters but if you can please send us something more fancy our sizes our three sevens three 10's and one eleven. If some are to big or to small can we send them back?
Are addresses for the costumes are- 316 Crestwood Rd. and 132 Windermere Way Warwick, R.I.
Yours truly,
Heather McTammany & Carin STEGER & the rocketts

P.S. Were sending some extra for Marilen McCoo

[Koala bear sticker that says Heather + Carin]

[band aid stuck to the other side]

i can't believe i never mailed this, i feel sure they would have sent us some costumes that were more fancy.

solid gold california envelope

world cup static

we have been having major trouble with charter communications since a lightning storm last monday night fried the cable.

a tech guy finally came out thursday for over 2 hours and replaced the whole cable from the street, but it only made it worse. the internet cuts in and out for no apparent reason. the phone stops working. the cable stops working.

it was like stepping back in time 30 years watching the world cup yesterday. the static fuzz on the TV was kind of charming after all the HD lets me see every stitch in every shirt.

but i just can't bear this life without reliable internet so they're coming out again this afternoon to try to fix it for good.

long legged eli

eli is mostly a chocolate lab, but he's got some other stuff mixed in there, as evidenced by the bright white star on his chest that is hard to see unless he is on his back, which is very rare because he is extremely alert and dominant and doesn't like to be flipped over.

he misses out on belly rubs but he catches more bugs this way.

his back legs seem just a little bit too long, i think he might have some german shepherd in him.

if there is ever a flying stinging insect in a room that i would like removed, eli is happy to help.

he is an excellent swimmer and ball chaser.

he wears a bra when he goes for a walk and it has cut down the pulling by 99%.

marco's pizza spinach slice

this pizza rules.
http://marcos-pizzeria.com/index.shtml
the crust is not too thick and not too thin, and perfectly salty and crunchy and soft and fresh out the oven. the sauce is tangy and not too sweet and full of chunks of tomatoes.
the service is great.
they have good specials too - wednesdays and saturdays are half price bottle of wine day. tuesday is 3$ pint day.
highly recommend!

pig dog

nacho is now on twitter! he has a lot to share.

nachodoggy.