Still Trippin'

Below is the next part of the journal that I made on my family's long summer road trip. You can read the first day's entry here.

Now on with the show!

August 1, 2010, Day 2:

Today is the first day of camping. Driving today, we passed through three states, two national parks, and what seems like 300 visitor centers from various places. The worst one was in Utah about the Oregon Trail. Half of it was paintings made for the museum, the other half was quilts. Quilts. Quilts? Who cares about quilts?! They may have been interesting had they actually been made by people traveling to Oregon, but they were made just to fill the other half of the visitor center.

The third half didn’t even have its lights on, even though that looked like the most interesting part. I guess they decided no to pay the electric bill on Sunday mornings because everyone in Utah a Mormon. So there are plenty of crew cuts, bicycles, and carefully planned brick communities around their tabernacles (which everyone would be at on Sunday mornings).

The rest of the drive was way more exciting consisting of beautiful forests, open plains, and The Tetons. And what Grand Tetons they were; spectacular mountains we spent most of the day looking at.

Following twisty, barfy roads, we found our way to Yellowstone. After our recovery, we ate dinner. Thankfully it was my mom’s cooking so we only got a little sick from eating the meal. We went to the lake to see some bugs, and we ended up seeing some geysers as well. We went to a spot we went to the last time we were here, and the mosquito bites hurt then too.

Coming back to the campsite we saw some Elk. It doesn’t take one long here to realize that you can’t see stuff from the road, all you have to do is to look for people stopped by the side of the road acting like they are pointing and taking pictures. Joey finally saw something.

Now I am writing by the light of the flashlight, I hope we have enough batteries. A few moments ago I saw a bat, or a big bird, or a small bird depending on how big you think a bat is.

Alright, I need to go to sleep, but here is my Yellowstone song, sung to the tune of the Hawaii Chair commercial, “Yellowstone, it’s a great place, don’t ya’ know! Saw some geysers like ‘Ol Faithful. You really outta’ go!”

Oh yeah! I had my first heart attack of the trip today when Matt nearly stepped on a snack and I was standing right behind him. Until tomorrow, if the mosquitoes allow. Good Night.

Day 1

This is the first journal entry of the trip. I am hoping to put all of them up here eventually while I work on learning Photoshop. I usually wrote each entry any time from late afternoon to midnight, and that usually by the light of a flashlight or while we were eating dinner, so I didn't spend a whole lot of time on any of the entries; just free writing. In typing it up I tried to fix most of the mistakes, but left a few in their for its vintage quality.

And just so you guys would have no idea what we did on the trip, I was sure to fill each time I wrote in the journal with inside jokes that were made on the trip, and sarcastic extremities. If you didn't know me, you might say I didn't like the trip, but that's why I am putting this on the internet, where anyone can see, people who have no idea who I am, who could totally misinterpret what I say... Um well, here you go:

July 31, 2010,

Epic Annual Family Summer Road Trip-tacular Day 1:

Today we started out epic trip north similar to birds in summer. My family and I, a couple of bird-brains, are questing on another summer travel. But if you are reading this you probably know all that already.

We didn’t leave too early this morning which was kind of a bummer because then none of us got any sleep in the car. The drive today was smooth with just a few 30 foot potholes, 30 billion pit stops, small fights, cliffs, rocks, and the occasional thunder storm. Yeah, it’s going pretty smooth. Today is the longest day of driving, or so my parents make me believe, but thankfully video games saved the day. And I actually won a few times on Mario Kart. We saw many exciting sights today such as Kolob Canyons (a part of Zion National Park), which was beautiful, sunsets, double rainbows, and Joey didn’t see any cows. We stopped and ate lunch today in a Carl’s Jr., in a gas station, in Las Vegas…yeah triple sketch.

Seems like a long time since we waved goodbye to Mark, Tawnie, and The Cimino, since we have gone through four states today. And yet after all that traveling I still can’t sleep because my body is on Pacific Time, while reality is in Mountain Time.

Well, I will try to keep these things short since not only am I penning down this even with journal and comic, but Matt is documenting via video, Zac through facebook, and Joey is doing absolutely nothing. (Sorry for all the disses Joey.) So the trip should be well remembered.

Shutter Shades in the Shadows, Ben.

Well, I'm Back

A long, fun, filling, and tiring three week Epic Annual Family Summer Road Trip-tacular has finally come to the end. I kept a journal of just about everyday of the trip, so hopefully soon I will get those up here. And keep hoping, I'm hittn' the showers!

Dandy, Pandy, Wandy, that's all he ever talks about

Yay! Panda! I wanted to draw another Panda, so this is all you get. I don't really have anything to say about it except that your guess is as good as mine as to what is in his hands.

Well, I'm going to be gone to my family's annual Super Vacation Trip-tacular for this summer. And as an added downside, this year it will be more time in the car and less out! But you know how road trips go, it's not about where you're going, but the fast food and soft drinks on the way. YAY America! -I decided I would talk about this now, since it directly relates to Panda Bears.

Summer Time Pests

Another great thing I forgot to mention about Summer in Sunny Southern CA, are the bugs that well, bug me. And flies are the worst. I set out to solve this fly problem by making a flip book on the subject. I found that the only thing you need to solve your bug problem is a gun!

Unlike my last animation video, this whole thing took me about 2 hours all together. And scanning all the little flip book pages into the computer took the longest of all the steps.

If you couldn't tell I have done more posts this month than I have for a long time. The desire to post more has not only come from having more time, but also because I am going to be on a long vacation next month and won't be on here for awhile.

So, hope you enjoyed the video. I usually like to put these kind of things on here before I put them on facebook, but this time I got it up there first. The downside to putting them up other places first is less comments over here. 'Cuz who seriously checks their facebook, right? Facebook is a summer time pest!! Where's my Assault rifle?!!

"Hey, it's your buddy John!" -John, Wall-E

My good buddy John Fisher is quite the artist, and he gives me some masterpieces from his vast collection of sermon-time drawings. Picking out some of the ones that looked like they had some great interpretations I decided to do my own.

Look at the first one. Now, I don't know if you see exactly like what you see, but here's what I got: A dinosaur (that's obvious), in a boxish-looking thing, with a caveman with a hammer on top of the box. Oh yeah, and a flying, hairy fart ball...don't forget about that.

So looking at all these things I asked myself, What could all these things mean? Figuring John had some deep meaning behind the art, that he didn't tell me, I knew I needed to find out what it was. The final conclusion I came to was The Best Dinosaur Trap Ever! It's so obvious! Once I came to this marvelous understanding, it was easy to create my own depiction of the scene.

There you have it! Dead dinosaur, caveman, trap, but WHAT'S THIS?? I guess I forgot about the flying hairy fart ball!! Oh well, I replaced it for a spear instead I suppose.

If you couldn't tell John loves dinosaurs, so following a similar pattern to the last one, I came up with my own version of what I call Krogasaur! Notice the head that contrasts with its disconnected, slug like body. The eyebrow, the twiggy arms...I am just beginning to realize this kid's genius!

I hope you enjoyed this month's John and Ben combo art! Tune in next month for another installment! Maybe!

Gotta' love those Severed Heads

If I had tags on my blog, the subject that would probably appear most often would be Severed heads. Of course I couldn't resist keeping the tradition.

Despite the common trend, I almost named this post Me Four, for a reason you may not have expected. This may be a shock to all of you, especially since my drawings don't exactly support the theory, but giraffes have extremely long necks. Typically their necks are about 6 feet tall. Similarly, my neck and the necks of the people in my family are averagely 5-6 feet long. Well, sorta... Ok, not exactly true, but we do have long necks compared to most humans. It is the one thing that you could tell that we aren't actually who we say we are, and come from a distant planet. I mean, we're normal people-sort of like you, except we're normal. Well, most of us anyway.

Starting in 2008, my alie-I mean regular family had passes to the San Diego Zoo. During that time we would get a magazine that is published by the zoo that has some amazing pictures of the animals. Thankfully my mom gave one to me awhile back and I kept it. So all of these are altered versions of the pictures in the magazine. Including the Ben looking one. The zoo claimed that they had captured an alien, but I told them that was foolish, it would have a long neck. -Not to mention just having a neck.