gone the sun

thunderstorms lead to the best sunsets

nacho in a puddle

if there was a puddle, yo! i'll jump in it.

butterfly away

pipevine swallowtail attacking more joe pye weed near douglas falls last week

best fries i've ever had

at the asheville tourists minor league baseball game. they were 1 minute fresh out of the fryer. perfectly crispy, hot and so salty.

happy birthday MOM!

hope you have a wonderful day and if you have too many cocktails at lunch, henry can drive you home.

computers for christ

charter communications is hellishly incompetent. our internet and phone and cable have been out since a rain storm last wednesday. it came back for 4 hours on friday night, during which time they sent a tech, who couldn't find anything wrong. out all day saturday, sunday, and today. they were supposed to send a supervisor this morning from 10-noon, but at 1230 we called and they had no record of a problem. fury doesn't begin to describe my emotions about this. i am sorry i haven't replied to emails or posted anything new on here, i am on a borrowed laptop for a few minutes now trying to do it all. it's amazingly shitty how dependent i am on the internet.

flappy limerick

No internet since weds=6 seconds on minesweeper. Charter SUCKS

happy hump day

success

from the exceptionally awesome Tom Robbins' Even Cowgirls Get the Blues:

But plans are one thing and fate another. When they coincide, success results. Yet, success mustn’t be considered the absolute. It is questionable, for that matter, whether success is an adequate response to life. Success can eliminate as many options as failure.

squirrel with his piano - poll

an eBay seller in the UK stuffs squirrels and poses them in adorable positions.


for instance, this "Wild Grey Squirrel With His Piano."


he also does a squirrel riding a horse, squirrel with a gun and top hat, and squirrel riding a motorcycle.


if anyone is ever struggling with a gift idea for me, one of these would be a surefire hit.

click here to see a squirrel get flung in a homemade spaghetti strainer slingshot.

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.)