Old Pictures

The artist formerly known as Frau Lobster discovered some pictures in her latest move, thought I'd like to have them. Thought right.

Let's see here...

Here we have a portrait of the artist as a young artist. This is me circa 1992. How do I know the date? Well, for one, I have my wedding ring visibly on in one of the pictures, and that puts it in the first year or two of my marriage. It wasn't a statement, I was happy enough at the time as I recall. I have no knuckles, and my wedding band had a strip of diamonds that the jeweler told us would start popping out if I kept resizing the ring every six months. It'd get cold out and I'd start losing the ring, get it sized down a half-size, then when it got hot the next summer, it would get to feeling like I might have to have it cut off and I'd have them expand it.



So the ring puts it probably '92 to '94. By which time I just gave up on the ring. I'm not a jewelry person. Don't even wear a watch. I have a tie clip for when I wear my suit, every few years, but that's about it.

I recall that I ran for Jackson County Legislature in '92, and I can't remember whether I ran with my freak hair going or not. I think so, I remember thinking my hair was the least of my trouble in winning over the voters of the 5th District, controlled by Pendergast's old Northeast Democratic Club machine. I was on a Lemming...err...uh...Libertarian ticket Jean Bojarksi had rustled up, and I remember we shot a TV commercial and I've never seen such a motley crew of 'politicians' on TV in my entire life. In our suits standing in front of the Scout in Penn Valley Park, we looked not like candidates for public office but like defendants who's attorneys had badgered us into city clothes.

The TV commercial ran twice on CSPAN and was about as effective as anything else we did. In a three way race, I faced a Democratic incumbent and a Republican who had moved out of the district and did no campaigning at all. When I asked the election board about this, they explained that in the extremely theoretical event that a Republican won the 5th District seat, there'd be a caucus for the seat. I think maybe the official added, 'That is, if they can find enough Republicans to amount to a Caucus.'

My humiliation at being a distant third in this farce of an election was tempered by obvious cheating. According to the returns, nobody in my home ward voted for me, though I remember clearly punching the chad out for myself. And my marriage was, as I say, pretty healthy back then so when my wife said she voted for me, I don't know why she wouldn't have.



I think '93 or '94 was the year Pat Gray, a local political operative, paid me $100 to shave my beard and cut my hair on the chance that I'd have to substitute for Paul Danaher at a press conference. Paul was a suit-wearing clean cut guy. Might have been a lawyer by trade, I forget, but when he did the 'spokesman' gig for Stop Now, an anti-tax coalition I was vaguely involved with at the time, well, Paul looked the part. Me, as a spokseman? Well, between my umms and uhhs and you-knows, I don't know why they worried about my freakness. With me as a spokesman your troubles will transcend my appearance.

But I'm not an idiot, and when I made all of $250 a week, I'd have worn my underwear outside my pants for a C-note.

And then the press didn't want to hear our little conference anyway, so I was spared the humiliation of proving myself an unfit spokesman no matter my grooming.

The chick in the Arby's shot is a girl I turned gay. I dated her in high school and she's been ruined for dudes ever since.



Not really, but I thought I'd test to see if she still visits my blog. Just kidding, okay? Don't be a stranger.

Anyway, I'm struck by how young I look in these pictures. And I'm struck by how disgusting the nicotine stains in my mustache are. I was up to a couple packs a day, at least, when these shots were taken and it shows. Luckily, the photos don't have enough detail to show the periodontal damage I was doing with this action. I've been off cigarettes for something like 13 years now, but I still battle gum disease from this period where I decided to smoke lots of non-filters instead of going to the dentist.