Red Truck Road Trip - WEST Coast Team

THE BEARD PROJECT: Mikey’s face and my camera collaborated to create a sequence of 26 medium-format photographs that chronicle the growth of Mikey’s beard as well as our entire road trip, one photo for each day.

Now that this amazing experience has come to a close, I’m able to reflect on this life changing experience. I definitely miss Mike and Brad and our kooky chemistry. I miss the smell of the open road pouring through our windows. Each day was a gift with a new surprise awaiting us to unwrap. My heart is a little heavy at the moment because our journey has ended and it’s back to the real world and all the responsibilities that go along with it.

I’m proud of our team, our art, and our fearless attitude towards exploring America and all of its nooks and crannies. I’ll never forget what I saw, experienced, created, and all the wonderful people we met.

America is a beautiful country with something for everyone. I’m glad to have participated in this special program and it was life changing for me. My painting has never been better and I’m sure it’ll continue to grow with me into the future.

Mike, Brad- love you guys and thanks for making the trip what it was.

Never forget the HAIRY BAGEL!!!     

All good things come to an end, or so I’ve been told. I’m pretty sure that it’s just another lie of Mike’s that he tells to ruin my fun (you know, like “no, sorry, the authorities will not think it’s funny that you tried to get a grizzly bear drunk in Yellowstone,” or “yes, that label makes you look fat”), but apparently this hellish captivity has finally reached its final moments. Our last few days took place in Boston, which is considered by many to be the birthplace of our nation. It’s pretty unique because there aren’t really any other cities in America which have so much historical locations in their downtowns, and there certainly aren’t many that provide a color-coded walkthrough of said landmarks.

Mike, of course, loves the Freedom Trail, because it not only happened to run nearby his hotel and provided him with an effortless map he could use for his masochistic runs (I’m pretty sure that enjoying the amount of pain he receives from those qualifies him as needing medication of some kind), but it also let him feel like he was literally running through history instead of just reading about it. Of course, he didn’t take his camera with him, because that just wouldn’t be fun to run with, so I guess you’ll just have to take his word that it’s worth checking out.

If you happen to have some time to kill, Quincy Market (pronounced “Quinzy” by the locals) is as good a way to murder it as any. Not only does the place boast a number of colorful shops (as well as the generic ones like American Eagle and a few tacky souvenir places), but it also has the historic Faneuil Hall to explore, talented street performers appearing almost every hour (like the talented family of British acrobats, the Sardine Family, pictured below), and is located about a block-and-a-half away from the New England Aquarium, which features possibly the coolest Penguin sanctuary ever. Oh, and there’s also free wi-fi connections available in Quincy Market, too, which allowed Mike to walk around and check his email via his PDA (I fail to see what’s so exciting about this, but he loved it).

So, what else did we do? Well, there was Boston Common, which contains a number of sculptures and fountains featuring mythological and angelic figures, as well as some truly beautiful scenery and some of the most brazen squirrels one could ever hope to find outside of Yosemite. Mike liked it because of all the people who were lounging around and just enjoying the nice weather, I liked it because I got to tease the local wildlife and drive them nuts (no pun intended). There was also Walden Pond, which is a favorite hangout of Bostonians looking to cool off on a hot day (and, apparently, was also a lurking place for Henry David Thoreau). I was dragged into its murky depths by Mike’s creepy friend Lucy, who acted as our tour guide for a day and a half, but once she left me alone I’ll admit that it felt nice to just bob along the surface for a while.

And then, after two days of exploring the city, it was time to return the car, still somehow intact despite the month’s worth of abuses inflicted upon it by my dubious traveling companions. Alamo took the vehicle back, surprisingly without any comments, and then Mike had to check his bags… which totally drove home the point that trip was coming to a close. It was surprising and surreal all at once, I think because none of the guys actually believed that the end would actually come.

But it did come, and now we’ve returned to California. And now the real world is reasserting its presence in Mike’s life, with work and errands and bills that need to be paid… but I’m still around to remind him (sitting on his shelf, of course; there’s no way he’s getting rid of me now) of how good he had it this one fateful July; all of it thanks to me, of course.

I still don’t have any words to describe all the indignities I suffered whilst traveling with Mike in New York. The only words that come to mind right now are a bunch of four-letter ones. Actually, I just want to spew those verbal bullets because I wanted to go watch a musical on Broadway, but Mike wouldn’t take me. Instead, he met up with his Uncle (who proceeded to take us all over Manhattan) and then forced me to have my picture taken with the Naked Cowboy of Times Square. Mike’s uncle, Sid, had the right idea: while Mike was making me engage in what many states would consider soft-core pornography, he was standing across the street pretending to have no association with his deviant nephew.

So we spent a grand total of a day and a half in New York, which essentially amounted to a forced march all over the island while Sid rambled on about historical trivia concerning each site we visited. Mike, of course, loved every minute of it. I kept on nagging the jerks to take me to see Sweeney Todd, and they finally caved and took me to go see Hairspray… the movie, not the musical. Whatever, it was two hours in a cool theater on a hot and muggy day, so it was good enough for me (even if it did have John Travolta in a fat suit and a mini skirt).

So Sid and Mike (and me, stuffed in a bag, naturally), covered most of the territories between Central Park and Battery Park, including Times Square, the Apple Store, a street fair in the middle of downtown, Union Square (Mike found some pretty talented breakdancers, incidentally), the Meatpacking District, Little Italy (some of the best eateries *ever*, by the way), and Ground Zero.   I’d write more, but I’m still recovering from the jetlag.  And laughing at Mike for how he walked a blister onto his foot… again.

One thing that I’ve emphasized during this trip is that I’m traveling with a bunch of uber-nerds. I don’t think you can be an artist without having at least a couple of nerdy characteristics, to be perfectly blunt. However, Mike takes nerdiness to weird extremes in certain cases: he’s a rampant science fiction addict, takes historical tours of towns he visits, loves technology and is always on the lookout for shiny new gadgets to play with, draws comics in his spare time, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of world mythology at his command. So, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when he insisted we stop off at Metropolis, IL, while we were en route from St. Louis to Nashville, TN (this was last Wednesday, we’ve been a little busy and haven’t been able to post for a couple of days).

Before I go any further, I should explain something: all his life, Mike’s wanted to be Clark Kent. His parents thought it would be a good idea to teach him to read via comic books and, much to their chagrin, he never put them down. Granted, when he was younger, he thought he wanted to be Superman himself because he loved running around in a cape and singing the movie theme. I’m sure his folks were convinced that he was a some sort of Karmic retribution for a crime spree in a previous life, since they had to take both he and his cape out in public numerous times and to the hospital once or twice before he learned that he could not, in fact, fly.

Now, back to the main story. Metropolis, IL is a town which must be populated by almost nothing but comic nerds. In 1972, both DC Comics and the Illinois State Legislature declared Metropolis to be “the home of Superman” and the city has fully embraced its adopted son ever since. In the 1980s, the town decided to erect a seven-foot-tall statue to Kal-El on the north side of its courthouse, which a number of folks decided to test the bulletproof nature of after its erection. 1993 saw over $100,000 raised in fundraising, and a fifteen-foot-tall statue was built out of bronze (and, yes, before you ask: it’s much more durable than its predecessor). Not content with a mere monument to the Man of Steel, Metropolis pays homage to the comics with its local newspaper, the Metropolis Planet, and the world’s largest Superman Museum (located about 50 feet down the street from the statue).

The museum itself actually fills a lot of space and is jam-packed with toys, props, costumes, posters, and famous comics from Superman’s 69 year existence (admission is $3 and well worth the price). At first glance, it’s almost like wandering through a fan’s cluttered basement, but it quickly becomes apparent that it’s organized in a rough chronological order and is chock-full of all sorts of fun stuff. If you want to allocate enough time to properly check the museum out, plan on spending 45 minutes to an hour wandering around its aisles. Just don’t feel obligated to wear a fedora whilst meandering around the town, like Mike did; the locals tend to look at you kind of funny.

Say what you want about the Catholic Church: they sure do have some great artwork, particularly in their cathedrals around the world. When walking around St. Louis, Mike was advised by one of the locals that he simply had to go check out the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, which is apparently renowned for the collection of mosaics contained within.  Not only that, but it’s so well-known that the Pope (the good one: John Paul, not his lackluster successor) visited the place in 1999 shortly after it was declared a Basilica. Seeing as how a large part of Mike’s history major focused on the Church in Medieval Europe, he was excited enough to leave the hotel around 9 AM and check the place out (nerd). The cathedral is actually a bit off the beaten path in St. Louis, lying well outside of the downtown areas and not anywhere within walking distance of The Arch. The structure itself is a bit daunting at first approach, largely due to its immense scale compared to the surrounding buildings, but if you look around the exterior of the building it quickly becomes apparent that the place is a home to some truly beautiful artwork (as evidenced by The Angel of Harmony sculpture in the garden).

Getting me into the cathedral was a little bit of a challenge, but a little fast-talking got us around it (we claimed I was just a bottle of Christ’s Blood in disguise and then legged it through the door as soon as the volunteer looked the other way). Once we were inside the building’s main chamber, though, it took us a minute just to collect our thoughts because we were hit by both the immense size of the place and the beauty it contained all at once. Unless you’ve wandered through some of the Basilica cathedrals found in Europe, there is absolutely nothing which can prepare you for what you’ll see in this place: towering ceilings which leap and curve every which way, vibrant colors surrounded by golden t

iles, mosaics so detailed that they look exactly like paintings until viewed up close, and sculptures which look like they’re straight out of a Botticelli exhibit are all things you’ll encounter as you walk through this hallowed place.

Somehow (meaning a volunteer told us to follow them), we wound up attached to a tour group that was actually training tour guides on the Cathedral’s history; as a result, we ended up hearing a lot more details about the place than most of the general public normally gets to. Mike found it fascinating, I wound up getting distracted by my reflection in some of the gold tiles (I get lost in my eyes)… but we both had a good time wandering around.

The Cathedral Basilica was originally erected in 1907 and took over 60 years to decorate with all the mosaics that appear on its walls and ceilings.   In each half-dome (the East and West wings of the church), scenes from the Old and New Testaments respectively appear.  Mike was particularly fascinated by the Southern arch beneath the main dome, mainly because of the way it depicts Judgment Day: there’s the usual stuff about the dead rising from their graves, going before God on his throne and being judged, and St. Michael putting away his sword because the Great Battle is now over, but Mike really got a kick out of the story behind the representation of the damned going down to Hell.  Instead of a lake of fire, cloaked figures are seen being led into a snowy cave; it turns out that the artist was originally born in Siberia and hated the cold much more than than the heat, which in turn led to his choice in depicting damnation the way he did.

Ultimately, though, the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis is one of those places where once can spend days exploring and learning about.  We only had a couple of hours, one of which was spent wandering with the tour group.  Was it beautiful and interesting?  Yes, yes it was.  But I maintain that I’m still prettier.

Our spirit quest in the Badlands

“Good day Madam”

Me running from a rattlesnake

My audition for Brokeback Mountain 2

One day, all this will belong to you, Mikey

Mikey: “Hey Brad, check out that weird dog”

Pure Mike

The Badlands

SEARED SCALLOPS OVER POLENTA WITH PONZU AND SCALLIONS- the dish was well executed. the scallops were seared perfectly, crisp and brown with a juicy center. the flavors were balanced and clean. the plate had symmetry and color.

FILET MIGNON WITH A PORTABELLO COMPOUND BUTTER, MONTEREY JACK GRITS, ROASTED CORN AND GRILLED OKRA- this entree could not have been better. the steak was exactly medium rare and the compound butter had an essence of truffle. the grits were rich and the fresh thyme provided a beautiful bridge to the steak and vegetables. it was colorful and southern food at its finest.

CHAMPAIGN WITH EGG WHITES AND SUGAR OVER A STRAWBERRY ROLLED STUFFED CAKE WITH MANGO AND BERRY REDUCTION, FRESH KIWI AND OTHER BERRIES- need i say more. 

SERVICE WAS A 12 OUT OF A 10. BRIAN, GAETAN, ROBIN, CANDACE, JEREMY were all a pleasure to meet. I even got to meet papa BEAR. PAM AND JOHN GAVE US THE ROYAL TREATMENT.

MR. SINCLAIR RATES THE ACORN IN NASHVILLE, TN 4 stars- ****

I said good day to you sir and madam! I have equally rated these 5 cities perfect 4 star marks for their exceptional architecture, city feel, all around attractiveness, cleanliness, culture- art/music, but most of all, REMARKABLE PEOPLE.

Minneapolis, MN- ****

Madison, WI- ****

Chicago, IL-****

St. Louis, MO-****

Nashville, TN-****

This piece was inspired after visiting the Chicago Institute of Art. After staring at Picasso, Miro, Matisse,  and Pollock I needed to do something a little more my style that was away from the heavy landscape series. King Sinclair is what came out. He’s a hip guy!