Oprah Crushes Smoking and I Tried to Help: A Review

Our subject, Aubrey, is spotted in the audience. She is already unsettled, as I would be, if I was on national television. But at this point I was sitting safely in my cubicle in Colorado.




"A half million people a year die of smoking-related causes, but today we're gonna change all that", says Dr. Oz.




Aubrey prepares to face the future.




Oprah tells of the physical effects of smoking on one's body and face, and offers "dramatic proof".




"Now, you're pretty to start with..." says Dr. Oz.




"so even as you age, you'll make a pretty hot grandma" (slightly paraphrased here, but not much)




Simply the prospect of aging is enough to horrify Aubrey, we're not even looking at the unhealthy future Aubrey yet.




There we go. It gets worse.




Some of the high-def detail is lost, but you get the gist.




Now is she going to cast aside those coffin nails? I'll never know.

The Policeman Who Just Wanted a Friend

Two weeks ago, I took a flight back from Michigan to Colorado. It was a long day, including Kyle driving me through heavy snowfall to get me to the Chicago airport, a long wait there due to repeated delays, the flight to Denver, getting a ride from the airport back to my car from Bobby, and subsequently driving for an hour or so back to Fort Collins.
I was really tired and as I turned onto the street I live on, I saw the police lights go on behind me.
I pulled into a parking lot and the officer approached the car. Don't look like you're reaching for a gun and remember to call him "officer", I thought. The same two thoughts I've had every time I've been pulled over. I rolled down the window and waited.

Hi, how are ya! Can I see license and registration?

Sure, I said and handed it to him.

Where are you coming from tonight?

From the airport in Denver.

Back from Christmas vacation?

Yep, gotta go back to work tomorrow.

Where do you work?

At a place called Visible Prod. in Old Town.

What do you do?

I'm a medical animator.

Wow sounds really boring and interesting at the same time. (This was said with the tone of a sarcastic sitcom teenager)
I'm also gonna need to see proof of insurance, he says. I begin to look for that and he goes back to his car for a moment. He returns.

Do you watch the show Heroes?

No, I say, but are you talking about my car? I've heard there's one on the show.

Yup, featured prominently.
"To the Versa!" he says, imitating an Asian person's voice.

I'm sorry, I say, I know my insurance stuff is in here somewhere.

Man, it is cold out here, I don't know what I'm doin' out here. It is so cold tonight, what's it like in Michigan?

Weather-related answer.

Now, you haven't been drinking, right Alex?

Nope..

.. although your last name is Beerhorst!, he says as he inspects my license closer.

I explain my last name, in a surprisingly succinct manner.
After some time, I find what I've been looking for and hand it over. He looks at it for a moment.

Oo.. and its expired... oh no, wait, he says, looking closer... Its good.
So, where do you live?

Um, on the corner of City Park and Elizabeth, I say, on this street.

Ha! Almost made it! Well, you were speeding back there on Shields so don't do that again, kay?

He stood there in the cold until it was obvious this conversation couldn't continue and he said, Well, have a good night!

OK. Thanks officer.

(nailed it, but too late for the respect to gain mercy. Didn't need it this time though.)


OK, a second story:

I don't remember my dreams, pretty much ever. But three nights ago I had a really scary one. I was in an old abandoned vine-covered house looking for something. A woman/girl was with me but she had no depth of character, my sexist mind presented her simply as an emotional foil. We think we hear a voice while inspecting one of the upstairs bedrooms but we can't properly identify it. This is unsettling enough though, and we decide to leave. After my first few steps descending the stairs I happen to turn around to whisper something to my accomplice and see, standing stock still in the bedroom across from the one we were in, a ghost. This is obvious because he wears a Navy admiral costume, dusty blue, from the early 1900s. His clothes are not transparent, but his face is and, even scarier, it looks like it has a slight Photoshop motion blur applied to it. "Do you see that..." I begin to say to the woman/girl, but she cuts me off, saying "I know". She is terrified and refuses to turn around or stop moving and her expression makes me terrified too.

I woke up breathless and I think to myself, " I can't believe it, I saw a ghost" and then the brainhaze clears and I realize its a dream. The next night I had a dream about a store called The Philosophy Box, but I'm done writing.

Do somethin' funny Boozer!

There are lots of aspects of starting a new job that I hate. Mainly the process of learning standard procedures and starting from the beginning with everything. One of the great things though, is that I can reuse jokes and stories I long ago lost the ability to use with old friends. I have been parroting lines from the Arnold Schwarzenegger soundboard at lunch and this has proved to be a real breakthrough with my coworkers, as they are mostly guys, and mostly about my age. Its kinda ridiculous really. This material is about seven years old now (first discovered in college where roommate Marc Belcastro and I spoke almost entirely to each other in Arnold quotes, used to strengthen male friendships at Medical College of Georgia, and now used again in Colorado.)

Since I work in the Old Town part of Fort Collins, there are a number of ways that my coworkers and I amuse ourselves other than "I'm a cop, you idiot". We walk to Goodwill and check out their wares, play shuffleboard at Washington's, eat at Big City Burritos, and last week, tried to make Mountain Dew glow. We were much ashamed to discover this phenomenon, which we saw on the honest internet, was a hoax. We didn't find out in time to prevent the CEO of Visible Productions from stumbling in on us mixing ingredients together in a dark conference room.
I was also able to reprise my previous well-known role as hilarious self-effacing jackass this week, as some photos that were taken of me, modeling physical therapy poses for an illustrator's reference, were discovered by my fellow animators. They were considered so outrageous and got such an extreme response that a female coworker who had volunteered this week to participate in a similar photoshoot has now decided she will not. Nobody blames her. Do somethin' funny, Boozer! Now I really feel at home. I believe you can see some of these photos on the internet.

Outside of work, life is comfortable but unfruitful. Almost everyone that I know in Colorado lives in Denver. Originally, I thought I would be going there all the time, but Bobby and Missi's house, for instance, is seventy miles away from mine. This can result in a lonely week. However, this also leaves a lot of time open for long-term art projects and pizza(see step eight).

There is one project in particular that I committed to work on that I subconciously work to avoid. Its a painting of medivac choppers in the mountains of Vietnam for my uncle. The very fact he commisioned me to do this for him is very rare and special, but I'm so afraid of failing to do this well that it is hard for me to start. Creepy puppets and tapirs and such are easy for me to produce creatively,


but this one is difficult. For one thing, I can tell he has a specific image in mind (probably a specific event) that it is difficult to describe. Secondly, the Bell Huey helicopter is a very technical creature, not organic like the ones I usually draw. Lastly, creating a interesting composition for this one has proved difficult. If I want to finish this project I need to stop watching youtube. Other than behavior modification, I have some reference photos I have taken of aforementioned helicopters from a military museum I spotted from the interstate while passing through Nebraska on the way to Colorado that I hope will help me. In addition, I'm entertaining the notion of creating primitive models of the helicopters in 3d software to get the perspective right.

Last weekend I made a shelf that fits inside the alcove in my apartment, where my computer now resides. Here's where it was before.



Now, I've cleaned it up. Even though the cords and stuff look messier than before because I can't hide them anywhere while my laptop is on this countertop. I want to get another monitor to hook up to my computer in the future the serves the dual purpose of improving my workflow and hiding those cords.

If anyone wants to comment on the structural integrity of this shelf, let me know because I don't want it crashing down on my computer. The scanner isn't very heavy, but I'm playing it safe.

my new apartment

I went with the monkey skull design for my check card, but it got rejected. Apparently, monkey skulls are gross.

Here are some photos of my apartment and the surrounding area. This attempted panorama is the view from my balcony porch thingy.



Last weekend, Scott and Tricia stopped in while on their way to the West coast. We went hiking in those foothills at the Lory State Park and we saw a BEAR! I told a guy at work the following week, and he told me that he saw a bear in town. It climbed a tree in front of some historical house downtown and fell asleep. Apparently its not all that uncommon. But what I have to watch out for, he said, was mountain lions. He showed me a website that collects accounts of cougar attacks and it was terrifying.









My bedroom is not complete yet. I'm gonna get a drawing table and chest of drawers at some point.



This table was given to me by the Mark and Emily Brieve, who encouraged me to paint it. Colorado is home to the lots of fossils, so that's what I put on my new table. I designed it such that, when all the leaves are added, it still forms a cohesive image (multiple fossils). I think I'll post more on this later.





A sock monkey made by Kyle as part of his Civil Engineering grad school work? Some fake plants may be joining him soon, up there in his loft.






This last photo is of a little something I keep on my refrigerator to brighten my day. I found this in a pile of litigation stuff when I worked at Kinkos. I made a little copy for myself and you as well. Enjoy!

Designer money

What are you doing out there in Colorado, Alex?

Well, here's one project: I just opened a checking account at Compass Bank. They pay all your ATM fees, no matter who the ATM belongs to and they have no minimum balance. Also, I found out when I met with the bank lady, you can submit a photo to be printed on your checkcard. I've put more thought into this than I should have already. I'm guessing the marketing people thought this option would be desirable for the college demographic, so i should just use a greasey face close-up of me and my best buds at Senor Frogs in Cancun getting HAMMERED! Instead I put together these three options, hopefully one will really impress the girl behind the counter at Qdoba's:





One of James Cormier's (a MCG classmate) monkey skulls. He lived with a tribe in the Amazon rainforest with his anthropologist wife for a year.



Christmas ham in the clean room.



This last one might be even more intense with a new background Photoshopped in, and I'd always have to explain that that's not my baby. Its my niece Vera's crazy face she does to amuse people, probably much more common now that she has a baby brother to compete with.

Keep in mind that blank space at the top is for the Compass Bank banner. Which one should I use?