Amps, porn shops, and ball games, Jeff's week progresses.

Day 3 of 7 Wednesday

Looks to be another slow day. Hopefully IÂ’ll find something interesting to do. I wrote so much yesterday that IÂ’m a little burnt out.

Had a dream I was walking on a dirt road through a field and came across an Indian lady with a baby. She was also holding two baby skunks, and saying something in her language (seemed like she was saying, “Oh, how cute!”). I was like, shit, I bet the parent skunks are around here somewhere! I looked and on either path there were skunk tails coming at us from within the weeds. I yelled at the lady, “What are you doing!? Those are skunk babies!” all the adults started spraying, and I could smell their skunkiness in my dream (did I pass gas in my sleep??). My only out was to jump this barbed wire fence to safety. The lady and the baby got soaked in skunk spray. That’s all I remember.

I thought today Jennifer and I could go out looking for public art here in Riverside. Stuff like cheesy sculptures in front of banks and government buildings. We found a few but I think IÂ’ll go look tomorrow and try to add to our collection before displaying them in here.

Dude, my wife brushes her teeth for like 5 minutes straight. I only brush for about a minute. Neither of us have been to the dentist in years. And yes, she's naked. Just kidding. No really. Okay I'm kidding.

Smart ass little byatch with her ungreasy Pringles! I think I watch too much TV.

Driving around looking for sculptures and running errands. Still need to wash my car. It's getting hard to see out the windows. David Flores emailed me "you need to put some 20's on that saturn holmes,..spokes." Hmmm.

Some gang graffiti down the street from our apartment.

Beware of dog sign. Looks pretty friendly to me.

Swung by the studio to check the mail and read any comments on Day 2. Someone asked what I have on my iPod. Right now Tom Petty is singing “Free falling, now, I’m free falling...” I have all kinds of music. Been really getting into Grandaddy, N.E.R.D., and then rediscovering some of the music I grew up with- albums like Gn’R Appetite for Destruction, Living Colour and Michael Jackson’s Thriller. I have a lot of rock and rap, reggae. Toots and the Maytals. Weezer. George Clinton. Eazy E. The Doors. Outcast. Supersuckers. Wyclef. Of course the Beatles. Dorky shit like the Minibosses. Propaghandi. Yeah yeah yeahs. Lots of stuff. About 14GB of music (10.3 days worth). I keep it on random play so i never know what i'll hear next. It's like my own private radio station. I just bought it a few months ago and I love the freaking thing. They're also great on airplane flights.

Fedex showed up with something nice. The new September issue of Popular Science that I did an illustration for. The article was about the car of the future and how they will become more autonomous and start to do some of the thinking for you. Turned out nice, and I have a photo and quotes in the contributorÂ’s page. Cool!

WeÂ’re gonna go run some errands. IÂ’ll take the camera.

ThereÂ’s not too many sex shops in Riverside. This one serves all the people near downtown. I'm not a regular or anything.. but I've been in here a few times. I've never went back there but I guess there's an arcade in the back, private stalls where you can watch porn for cash. I made it sound like we're running errands at Le Sex Shoppe huh? Nope, just driving by today.

We went to go visit JenniferÂ’s brother Ralph at Music MikeÂ’s here in Riverside. HeÂ’s their inhouse amp repair guy. Thought itÂ’d be cool to show some of his working area because itÂ’s always so fascinating to me. He tells me about all the amps and tubes and everything but IÂ’m always a little confused about what the hell heÂ’s talking about. RalphÂ’s a bad ass brutha. If you need your amp repaired hit him up.

Ralph in his working area.

He was working on this amp when we got there.

His setup. I love seeing how people set up their work spaces. I have no clue what all that stuff does but damn it looks cool.

So futuristic. Looks like a prop in Han Solo's freighter.

A Fender amp awaiting repair.

Shelves of amps waiting for RalphÂ’s magic touch.

Tube amp.

A customer brought this in all taken apart. Ralph will fix it byatch.

Ralph at work.

Cheaptrick poster. Nice guitar.

Tube amps. These things are pretty cool looking, like little delicate sculptures.

Little tube amps! They're just babies!

One big mutha tube amp. We should name it Big Werm.

After talking with Ralph, we decided to show you a little bit of Riverside and Los Angeles history. Right in the center of Riverside, at the intersection of Arlington and Magnolia, unbeknownst to almost everyone is the parent Navel Orange, the first orange tree in the region. The climate in Riverside was good for growing these trees and they started propigating them in the 1870’s. Soon the whole southland was encompassed by huge groves of Navel oranges. They were big money makers and in the 1900’s were used to advertise the climate of Southern California. In one case they loaded a train full of oranges and headed back to the frigid East coast. At each stop they gave out free fresh oranges to people and proclaimed “This is the taste of California!” The Navel was a big part of the development of Souther California- for better or worse. And my navel is a big part of my lint harvesting.

That's the old ass Navel, over 100 years old. I heard it still produces good fruit. I wonder if I could get one of it's oranges. Maybe once eaten I'd have the power of the King of Oranges.

Then we headed to get some stuff at ClarkÂ’s nutrition. A long time ago (the 60Â’s??) it was the De Anza Theatre.

Headed to TonyÂ’s, one of the mexican food places I frequent. Got some carne asada tacos. mmmm. Damn! Spicy!

Jennifer making some celery and peanut butter sticks.

Sheeit, itÂ’s 11:00pm and I still have to come up with some sketches for Philadelphia Magazine by tomorrow. Damn you Fecal Face! Taking up all my time. I still need to resize all my photos and post this shite.

Dang, Angels rocked shit tonight. 21 to 6. Jeff DaVannon hit for the cycle. Jose Molina with a grand slam. Nice. We were going to go to this game tonight but had too much work to do. This daily thing is seriously taking up all my time. But itÂ’s fun! Jeff Soto signing off. Good day!

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