“Starting a New Painting (and Other Adventures!)” by Richard F. Yates

[Sharpie sketch on stretched canvas. 2020.]

Today was quite a ride…literally! Mariah (aka: The Boss) had to work in Portland, Oregon, this morning and then had a class in the afternoon, so I drove her south, dropped her at the health center (she’s an optician), and then headed, once again, for downtown Portland, more specifically, Powell’s World of Books. BUT, before I left the parking lot of the health center, I drew the sketch for my next painting, (which you can see above.)

At Powell’s, I ran amok, as usual---upstairs, downstairs, all around stairs. I was looking for some new (actually, really old) books for my granddaughter, but in board-book form. I found the one I REALLY wanted: The Monster at the End of This Book. I also grabbed a Maurice Sendak classic, One Was Johnny, (which has a corresponding song by Carol King that my wife and I love.) Mariah said she wanted to read more poetry, so I grabbed a collection of American poetry (I love Dickinson, Emerson, Ginsberg, Poe…) and a Romantic poetry collection (also a huge fan of Blake and Coleridge…)

For myself, I found an Alan Moore biography that I HOPE will be entertaining. I dug for HOURS through the comics, graphic novels, and manga books, hoping something would jump out at me---but I’m in more of a HUMOR mood lately than a dark or gritty or serious mood, and it’s actually kind of tough to find FUNNY BOOKS anymore, even though that’s what comic books USED to be called!!! (If anyone can recommend some good, funny comics, I’d love to hear about something new!) Because I couldn't find anything funny, I walked out without any new comics... (It felt weird.)

After my bookstore shopping adventure, I headed back towards the waterfront clinic, although I did miss my turn the first time around and had to drive almost halfway back to the bookstore before I could find my way back---because Portland’s streets are unforgiving! Mariah’s class was in a cool structure called the Robertson Collaborative Life Sciences Building. I got a couple of photos of the inside.

[Time travel mode: ACTIVATED! We are now HOME from Portland. Trust me, it was quicker for you folks than it was for us...]

Some of you may have noticed that I didn’t post anything yesterday. That’s partially because I’m trying this new thing where I don’t HAVE to post every single day if I’m working on something important. In THIS case, I was finishing the editing on my Uncle Randy’s new book, Bigfoot and Further Adventures! (Technically, it's his Bigfoot book, minus the "Other Stories," but with his "Further Adventures," the second half of the Bigfoot tale, finally collected in paper form. ALL of Randy's stories were originally published through The Primitive Entertainment Workshop, in serialized form, over the course of the last several years.)

Randy’s style is a mix of folklore, nostalgia, and TERRIBLE, B-movie aesthetics. When I was a kid, Randy was one of my primary babysitters, and we would go, several times per week, to the local video store and rent the most awful, low-budget, trash films of all time! Forbidden Zone, My Science Project, Trancers, Hawk the Slayer, Beastmaster, and so on… These wonderfully terrible films are clearly simmering in the background of Randy’s stories.

So far, it’s only available in paperback form, but I’ll try to get a digital version up in the next couple of days!

That’s it. That’s all I’ve been up to the last few days---besides reading and driving and sleeping and trying to HEALTH UP. I’m HOPING I’ll be able to get another book review written tomorrow, and then it’s on to my NEXT book project. (That’s two partially finished books down, and I think five or six to go!!!)

---Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Holy Fool)

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