Sometimes I forget I have talent. I’m an artist. I paint, I draw, I take photographs, and I even shoot a little video. Plus I know my way around a computer and the image editing programs that come with the territory. Sometimes I forget that a lot of my friends have talent. I went to art school years ago and still have many friends who went there with me. For years I worked in the offices of Marvel Comics doing production work and made many friend there. The majority of them are creative and have talent for drawing, writing and generally being interesting. I am so used to being around creative talented people that I take talent for granted and can even forget it is there. Then I check out My Space for a few minutes. Great Ceasar’s ghost! All the bad photos. The millions of digital cameras out there have not improved the general public’s photography skills. I mean B-A-D, bad, bad, bad photos. Shot badly, cropped badly, lit badly and edited badly. I find it hard to believe that the only photo a person has of himself is a tiny cropped head from a group shot photo. With red eye. And grainy. Why post that thing? Just be anonymous. We can barely tell that you are human anyway.

Anonymous I can understand. That is when someone is way too cool for a website. They want to look around but wouldn’t be caught dead during the looking. So they become Optimus Prime, Darth Vader, or Mariah Carey. Wait, maybe that really is Mariah Carey. It must be. And surely she’ll want to talk to me. I just know we’ll be best friends. Seriously she just has to get to know me. I’m a charmer.

I’m a little too old for this MySpace thing anyway. A bunch of my under thirty friends are on it but it is devoid of almost all of my over thirty (and over forty now sheesh we’re growing old) friends. I not sure what to do on MySpace anyway (besides posting a blog). I know people meet other people on the site but typing to a stranger? Somehow that is just foreign to me. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t like strangers or I don’t like typing. At least not typing for instantaneous communication. I type slow and writing is much different than speaking anyway. I’m a talker.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, this Saturday morning I tried cycling before breakfast. Holy shit that’s hard (that deserved a curse word). I prefer to cycle in the morning but usually a good couple of hours after breakfast (too close to breakfast and “sick to my stomach” sets in). I’ve seen cyclists on the road at horribly early hours and I can only assume that, due to the early hour, they hadn’t eaten yet so I gave it a try. I normally wake up fast but it is a whole different ball game waking and cycling. My normal ride takes about 45 minutes and in the beginning it was tough to concentrate and make the ol’ legs work in a coordinated fashion. I felt low on energy but that seemed to pass as I gained focus. By the end of the ride I felt alright and finished strong but I don’t feel the need to go that early again.

I checked out Clerks 2 this weekend and dug it. If you don’t like raunchy humor then stay away but if donkey show jokes are your thing head on in. Good stuff.