I really can’t remember how I met Dan but I do know we were looking for a doorman at the live music saloon called Barney Steel’s in Redwood City where I was the de facto manager.  I suspect it was through a mutual friend, Jan Condran, a waitress on my crew at the time.
 
If a perfect doorman ever existed he was it.  We had him for about ten years I think. 

Our bar did not attract a violent crowd but on a few occasions his gentle, wise, manner would get set aside and this brief but effective Grizzly Bear would pop out and, with little fanfare, settle the situation of the moment.
 
The rest of the time he was amazingly congenial, never seeming to tire of greeting customers with “Good evening, Welcome to Barney Steel’s.  The cover tonight is ___ and the band tonight is ____”
Endlessly…!     Always with a smile.
 
But he was much more than that.  I’m sure I share the same kind of memory as others in his deep listening and gentle responses as I/we vented our latest mental or moral trouble. Always the guy to encourage someone’s efforts.  A man of infinite wisdom and wit, wit that was never at someone else’s expense.
 
Most nights he was working I stood next to him a lot of the time to check the customers as they came in and occasionally give him a break so he could go on a “parking lot check” with someone.  I’d go on a ‘parking lot check’ with him from time to time too, where rumor has it certain herbs may have been smoked.  I can’t remember…
And we talked.  We talked for hours about “Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax…of Cabbages and Kings” as Lewis Carroll would say.  
 
I never saw him drunk.  Ever.  Maybe two beers a night if that.  A man who led by example.  He had a drive of about thirty miles at the end of the night and he would not risk a DUI… 
We had a lot in common, he and I, but at the same time we were very unalike, myself being everything they attribute to an Aries.  His Steady Mellow and my Intensity harmonized pretty well.
 
He was a pretty good pool player.  He never rattled….
 
After the bar shut its doors we drifted away to do other things as people will and we saw less of each other.  Distance and busy lives… we all know how it is.  And a visit from time to time, more of an incidental crossing of paths, were not be the same as the bonding we had at that bar.  A bonding we both missed.
 
But when someone Takes Flight suddenly like this I regret the opportunities missed to communicate, to have had at least one more dinner… one more e.mail…that kind of thing… too many things unsaid…
 
The Dan I knew never seemed troubled or worried but he must have been so at times because he was human with the same pains and pressures of life all of us face…some of the pains he had to go through  took their toll.  But you never knew because he hid it and made it About You.  You got his full attention.  Didn’t matter what it was that had you in a flutter and flurry, he would talk you down in his own inimitable way.  

Jan aptly put it this way  “He always knew the right words and his talent for getting you to realize the answer to your own question was uncanny.”
 
He would answer any question and even when his answer was “I don’t know.” you felt better anyway…
 
When I grow up I want to be just like him.

This lovely lass turned out to be my most important model now that I think about it.  Certainly the one I photographed most.
She would patiently do whatever I asked when I was learning to use my first Nikon camera and some of the shots of her are the best I have ever taken. 
Since my paintings used photos for a base it was natural that she was the focus of several attempts. 

I believe I made at least four paintings of her.  Some came out well… some did not.

I actually sold two that were based on her.  She is the only real person, as in ‘person I actually knew’  that was the subject in any of the paintings I have actually sold to date.

This is one of my most commented on paintings when people see a photo of it.  It is her head superimposed on a model from an ad I saw in a Cosmo magazine.  She did not actually pose for this painting…I’ve never seen her unclothed.  But it’s a good capture, I think… 

                                                     It’s beautiful, to tell the truth…

                           Even if I do say so myself…

I think she may have it now…
 I really don’t know…

I forgot to ask…

Every painting has a story but some have more story than others…

James Cameron’s TheTitanic came out in 1997 and was, as we all know, a huge hit.
I saw it and I thought the visuals were pretty impressive.  The epic special effects chronicled the historical disaster as best it could, being wrapped as it was, around  a fairly standard Hollywood rich girl/poor boy romantic potboiler.

Others, I found, did not share my cavalier impression of the film.  Some got quite wrapped up in it.  ‘Immersed’ might be a better word.  Some people got so enthralled with the movie one would think they had gone down with the doomed ship.

One of these people happened to be a young woman I’ve known for a good part of my life.  She was one of the Titanic survivors in a manner of speaking.   For some, surviving the movie itself and not becoming a sobbing basket case afterward was it’s own form of surviving the sinking .   

There were a lot of things you could buy centered around that movie and she had more than a few of these…  She was definitely into it.

I was painting quite a bit around that time so it was only natural that I would try to paint her.  She was a pretty lady but she was very hard for me to capture with my brush and paint.  I work from photographs rather than sittings and portraiture is hard for me.  It is doubly hard to do if I know the person being painted well.

I had a certain photograph of her she’d let me copy.  It was of her, taken in one of those touristy photography setup shops where they shoot you wearing costumes, cowboys, turn of the century stuff… you’ve seen them. 

She had donned a Scarlett O’Hara/Southern Belle outfit…. hoop skirt, parasol, hat and gloves…  Her face in the shot fascinated me.   It was almost angelic, a sweet serene expression with a vixenish hint of a smile…  But I just couldn’t catch what I saw using watercolor.  I tried using that face as a model several times with no success.  I had turned out enough failures trying to paint her that she may well have thought I’d never succeed making a painting of her.  I was beginning to think the same thing.

               …meanwhile, back on The Titanic…

There is a scene in the movie where Kate Winslet’s character is laying pleasantly naked on a couch and De Caprio’s character is doing a charcoal sketch of her.   This scene and the resulting sketch got a lot of attention in the movie.  It also gave me an idea.

I didn’t have Photoshop but using my scanner and some voodoo, I got that photo of her face maneuvered onto the movie sketch.  I then ‘cheated’ and used an opaque projector so I could trace the result  to help me block it out on a piece of 20 x 30 illustration board.

I worked on that for about a week but I bobbled the “blue jewel”, a central thread of the picture and the movie both…  I had no idea how to make blue jewels.  I’d never tried to make any color jewel, let alone a blue one.   I reluctantly set the work aside.  I even thought of throwing it away but the face was intriguing even unfinished.  All  I’d had done on it were the eyes and the lips and a vague outline.    You can ruin a watercolor by overworking it so I stopped work on it but kept it around.  I figured I might at least save the face as a painting on its own merit.

  On a whim I used a Polaroid camera and snapped a shot of the unfinished painting.  I scanned that and e.mailed it to my friend  to show her what I had done.

                      Well, that got her attention and she begged me to try to finish it.

Watercolor is touchy folks, particularly if you’re trying to do repair work on it.  You can’t just daub over it like you can with acrylics and oils.  You run a very real risk of losing your paper to agressive wetting as you try to draw off some colors and otherwise try to fix things.  I started with the Blue Jewel because if I couldn’t get a sense of that then the rest would not work.  Some fixes work.  Some do not.

How did it come out? 

Honestly, it has problems because of my lack of training, but my friend was thrilled.
She was pleased so if she was pleased I was pleased…

I somehow had managed to rescue the blue jewel and in so doing salvaged the painting.    I don’t think I could do that photo of her face any better justice than what I have here.  My friend has a bit more endowment going for her than Kate Winslet had but that just requires extra attention.  One does what one must do…

             I’ve known her a long time, now that I think of it…  

                 which has nothing to do with the painting. 

                            Or the story…

                 the painting is signed, as they all are…

Paper Dolls by Vann…

     Somewhere lives a computer programmer who should be drawn and quartered.

     He/she would be the person who came up with the idea that the already frustrating task of making a phone call to a company and having to go through endless selections, menus and button pressing is lightened by creating something called “voice recognition.”

     In case you don’t use a phone much or are otherwise secluded from the real world ‘voice recognition’ is a computerized answering program that is put in place by companies that have a horror of actually hiring someone to talk to their customers. 

     In the past this was done by requiring you to press an infinite number of telephone keys as instructed by an electronic voice.  A voice that is the sister of the briskly efficient but cold voiced operator with the odd, screeing, four note Bosun Pipe whistle that tells you that ‘you have reached a number that is disconnected or no longer in service.’ 

     This button pushing was never intended to be a convenience.  This was a sadistic maze that resembles the old, old, joke about the house of ill repute that effectively channels the customer through a series of doors only to exit to a “You’ve been screwed” sign, never seeing a girl during the whole process.  The process is intended to make you do anything but talk to a live person.

    This cruelty was not enough.  No.  Now they have invented an Iron Maiden they call “voice recognition” which is a computer program that, according to the lying thieves that sell it, can understand the spoken word in Amerenglish. 

     They have created two voices to inhabit this thing.  The male voice’s lines have been read by a guy who must be named “Bob”.  He has that irritating high pressure announcer-salesman’s voice like the one that freverently urges you to “use your credit card” on all the TV infomercials.  Him you just want to murder and would if you could.  No court in the land would convict you

    The other voice of course, is female.  It is this voice we shall discuss.  It really doesn’t matter since they both use the same lines.
    The female voice sounds so bright and happy you suspect she has a scrip writing doctor who is an amphetamine specialist.  I, for one, cannot visualize a human face to this female voice.  What I see are the brown haired pretty women rendered by commercial artists for appliance ads.  She’s a lot friendlier sounding than the telephone company’s woman who icily tells you you dialed the wrong number but don’t let that fool you.  The end result is still the same with a demonic difference.

     Before, when you had to deal with the button pushing, your coworkers knew what was happening because they could hear you muttering darkly to yourself while you hammered the suggested button code.

     But with the new ‘voice recognition’ things are a little different.
    Now you have Sally Sunshine telling you to “Say what your problem is.” and gives you several examples you could use except none are remotely similar to what it is you’re calling about.

     So you gather your thoughts and part of you wonders whether to talk in a normal tone or perhaps talk a little more loudly…you don’t know if it has its hearing aid turned up.  And while you’re getting ready to speak she gets impatient.  She’s sunny and cheerful about it but still she says “I didn’t quite get that.” or some such so you know right then you’re dealing with a pushy, hearing impaired robot that is possibly suffering from dementia.  As a matter of fact, “I didn’t quite get that.” is its favorite thing to say. 

    Even if you didn’t say anything.
      Great.

     But you soldier on…

    On simple things like “Yes” or “No” she performs brilliantly.  But god help you if she needs a number.  That will result in a back and forth comedy of errors which she may or may not ever get right.

     Argh! 

     In frustration you hang up.

     Big mistake!

     You realize, too late, that you now have to go through the whole process all over again to transact your business but duty calls and you go back to the firing line.  Then some people are like me and we another problem. 
     Not all of us have the elocution of a Shakespearian actor.  Some of us have diction of startling clarity but truth be told, most of us do not have this clarity and some of us even have small impediments, lisps, etc.  This is my lot in life…
     So you have to deal with getting her to understand simple commands and responses to her questions and all she hears are Mondegreens…
        From time to time you realize that you’re not talking to a real person but to a machine…wait, it’s not even a machine.  It’s a chip.  A mini computer and you can’t help feeling like the idiot you appear to be…your co-workers are snickering under their breaths because you are trying to reason vocally with a gadget and the gadget doesn’t care in spite of its happy-puppy tone. The gadget won’t let us pass unless we tickle its electronic sensors with the right sound waves to trigger the circuit.

            You have no choice.

         Sally Sunshine, at any time, might pause for a commercial and ecstatically ask you if you went to their website at www/itainthereeither.com. to try to resolve your problem.  In fact she does this often as if you’re actuallly going to stop, now that you have invested all this time, and go to a website.  To “enter” that website they will require you to sign in by sacrificing your e.mail address so they can spam you endlessly.  And fifteen or twenty mouse clicks later they’re telling you they can’t solve your problem at the website. 

You know what it does then…

Sure you do.

The website advises you to call their Kustomer Kiss customer service number which will be identical to the number you called to get where you are now…

         If you thought you could have fixed it at a website you would have gladly gone there to avoid this insanity. 
            You curse the cyber-woman most foully and she doesn’t flinch.  She asks you to repeat yourself because “I didn’t quite get that.”
           
    There is, however, a solution.

        If you keep punching ‘0’ often enough and desparately enough  it will wait until you are about to smash the receiver on the edge of your desk and rip the speaker from your speakerphone.

It will then, grudgingly, put you on hold and sullenly punish you by playing the latest CD they found in the three for a dollar crate at a garage sale, usually badly played classical music containing too many violins..

            After twenty minutes of this it passes you to a human….        

                                                    …in Bangladesh…