Richy Vegas - The artwork and music of Richard Alexander
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Tricking productivity through modest goals

5/31/2021

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Right now I'm on the fourth pass with pencils on issue 24 of Richy Vegas Comics.  I have forty-eight pages left of to finish on this fourth pass.  I could finish it today, and finish the fifth pass as well.  The fifth pass almost invariably becomes a quality control check on my finished  work rather than an extensively worked pass itself.  It usually doesn't take much time.  

I could finish both of these passes today, but that's not what I set out to accomplish.  I've already accomplished my productivity goals for today by working on the four plates I've already worked on.  A huge component of my day to day productivity consists of these kinds of tricks to get myself to start working on stuff.  I don't usually set very ambitious productivity goals on music and art.  If I set out to begin work on my book for the day, I usually decide on a very modest goal of work on a page or two, no matter the stage I'm on.  I achieve this modest goal, and that often gets me going on doing more work.  This process often snowballs to the point where the obsessiveness really takes hold at some point and I really do quite a lot of work for a day.  The same goes for music.  I usually set a goal to work on just one song, whether to practice, record, or write, and the same tendency for more work to follow often occurs.  Not all the time, and often times I will just have the wherewithal to stop myself fairly early in the game and just goof off the rest of the day.  But I'm working on my twenty-fourth issue on my comic book series, which run a full eighty pages these days, and I'm working on my fifth solo album, which consists of fifteen original songs.

The latest issue of Richy Vegas Comics recaps my night of craziness in the Summer of 1992 that led to my first hospitalization for mental illness symptoms that next day.  After I do another telling of that crazy night, the book finds me waking up in the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit after I've received a large dose of antipsychotic medication the day before.  I depict the very first time I experienced the massive dry mouth these kinds of medications can induce upon one's waking up for the day.  Issue 24 marks the eleventh volume of, "The Legend of Richy Vegas."  "The Legend of Richy Vegas" chronicles the people and events that led up to this initial hospitalization, with part twelve, the concluding volume, going into the second hospitalization during the Fall and Winter of 1992 into the beginning of 1993.  These twelve volumes, plus the two prequel volumes of the previous series, mark my most ambitious creative endeavor to date.
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Finished bass tracks today!

5/24/2021

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I only have augmenting guitar tracks, percussion, and some other instruments such as musical saw and washboard to track.  I hope to finish tracking by the end of June.  I'm on the third pass of my pencil work for issue 24 of my book.  I hope to finish that by Friday.  I decided to take the rest of the night off after I completed the last two bass tracks today.  I cooked beans.
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"I Got Your Easter Egg Right Here"

5/16/2021

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I was thinking about celebrity Easter Eggs when I thought up that title to a new song.  "Easter Eggs" are like hints or allusions to shit that pop star types supposedly put in their videos or their awards show photos or their tweets.  Allusions to shit like their righteous boyfriend or the title of their next total shit album.  I've yet to even write notes for it, so who knows if I'll actually write it or perform it or record it.  Good title.  Good concept.  It's my answer to the Invisible Woman hiring thugs to steal shit from me like my spatula and my Kinks Face To Face CD.  Yeah, "I Got Your Easter Egg Right Here."  That's the Kinks, ​Face To Face.  Great record.  I ordered a whole new copy for myself I love it so much.  It may just be it my storage space, but I swear it was in my car not last month or the month before.  I bought a new spatula too.  Biden money.

I'm taking a break from my new book.  I worked so damn hard on it the previous two days that I treated myself to drive to Smithville this afternoon.  That was when I had the song idea.  Big laughs on Highway 71.  I extended the break into tonight.  I worked on two whole pages of pencil illustration today, whereas I did thirty and thirty-four pages, respectively, of the second pass at the pencils the previous two days.  I hope to the finish the second pass with pencils tomorrow.  I might have the book ready for inks by the start of June, if not the 1st, maybe the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th.






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The other shoe

5/14/2021

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Well, two weekends ago I wrote that I would refrain from writing about that young woman at that one business whom I can go on and on about.  In order to motivate myself to actually refrain from writing about her, I would give myself a "thumbs up" sticker on my calendar as a token reward for a full day of no mentions of her on this blog.  I told myself I could order an inexpensive, easy to get classic rock CD if I kept it up until the 15th of this month.  I just ordered a Jimi Hendrix CD, and I've given myself permission to write about this person again.  If I write one or two posts about her on this one day, Saturday the 15th, but refrain thereafter until the 1st of June, I can order some other classic rock CD.

It looks as if things didn't go my way in regards to this young woman at this business I go on and on about.  I really don't want to go into it anymore than that.  What to do now?  In the Fall of 1986, things really didn't go my way in regards to Donna.  I fixated on Donna all throughout the Summer of 1986, and I looked forward to seeing her at a party at some friends' house in September.  Donna had flirted once with me in June, and I took that occasion as a sign that I should make it all about her from thereon.  Donna had a boyfriend, and I fancied myself as a rival for her affections.  

My fixation on Donna seemed to freak people out.  My reputation seemed to proceed me at that party, and it seemed as if a number of the guests lay in wait for me.  I walked by Donna at one point, and she scowled at me.  Moments later a girl I'd met the previous weekend, Wanda, came up and laughed in my face, twice.  Several other people performed similar acts of scorn and derision towards me that all seemed to drive the point home that I was some sort of loser, dangerous person, etc.  Looking back, I considered my time at that party a psychotic episode.  

The next weekend I saw Donna at another party with her boyfriend.  I walked up to her and introduced myself and I asked if she'd seen a friend of mine recently whom I worried about etc.  I played it all off as if I barely knew her and all of that.  I said how nice it was to talk to her and took my leave of her.

This gesture seemed to resonate amongst my peers who so gleefully heaped serious scorn and contempt on me at the party at their house along with guests such as Wanda and Dennis, etc.  People seemed surprised and somewhat chastened by my gesture.  Wanda seemed to take a romantic interest in me.  It really seemed as if I'd managed to "cash in" and turn things around to my advantage.

My experience in trying to date Wanda became one of the worst dating experiences I've ever had.  During the early months of 1987, Wanda basically pretended to be my girlfriend while having a boyfriend she didn't tell that group of friends about.  I think the live-in girlfriend of one of those guys knew about Wanda's boyfriend, but I guess they both figured that Wanda was doing me a favor with the attention she did give me.  Anyway, crude sexual proposition by me towards Wanda after several weeks where the heavy makeout sessions with her went nowhere.

So, in regards to this young woman at this business whom I can go on and on about on this blog, what to do now?  In my past I've had several experiences similar to the experience involving Donna, where I wondered if I could cash in on a good handling of the situation. I've never really had the ability to cash in on such an episode.  So, what do I do about where I find myself in regards to this young woman at this business?  Super-niceness seems out as a way to relate to her now.  Should I come off as angry? How about hurt?  Should i come off as nasty to her?

In previous posts I've talked about how the way I relate to one woman I have an attraction to can seem to spill over in how I relate to another woman I have an attraction to.  It seems spiritual this way.  During my high school years, my obsessive weirdness towards one girl would show up in another way to another girl.  In the aftermath to my super-niceness towards Donna, my tendency to try way too hard to connect on some level with individual young women showed itself in less than beneficial ways to other women during that Fall of 1986 semester.  I won't go into detail,  but it wasn't good.

So, though I may not have any ability to cash in on the outcome between myself and this young woman at this business whom I can go on and on about, I can try to demonstrate a desire to regard her in a spiritual way in relation to other women in my world.  In a couple of my posts from earlier this year I talked about a young woman named Daria and how she gave me her email address last year.  I last sent Daria one email last November or December.  Since Daria never replied to that one email, I haven't written her since.  I have no desire to show more persistence with Daria or anyone else.  

I think how I related to Daria can serve as an example of how I relate to other women in my world; from waitresses and baristas of businesses I patronize, to women I meet online somehow, to female comics artists I send a book to, to this young woman whom I can go on and on about in this blog, to other young, attractive female employees at this business where this young woman works.  Again, not to try to cash in, which is up to the women out there to allow for that sort of thing, and therefore out of my control, but more to just not let my insecurities get the better of me and to try to relate to the women in my world in a more even handed, spiritual way.
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Music From the Motion Picture Soundtrack

5/13/2021

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That's the title of the Richy Vegas album that follows I Make Country Music Records, Sir; That is, Music From the Motion Picture Soundtrack. Of course, there is no motion picture that the album is a soundtrack to, but why quibble over the small stuff.  I'm looking forward to playing the songs I have, so far, out on the town at open mikes and at the songwriter's circle in San Marcos.  

I hope Cheatham Street Warehouse is still open there in San Marcos.  A rich country music guy owns it.  I talked to Matt, he said the Posse East plans to open in mid-June.  I'd like to run the new songs by the open mike at Posse East before I go to San Marcos. Matt said they aren't taking chances with a hasty reopening of the Posse East.  They want all of the staff vaccinated, and they'll open the inside for the first time since March 2020.

One of the new songs on the album is, "Tastes Like a Penny."  That's a gospel number that shouts the praises of Richy Vegas' butthole tasting just like a penny.  Another song is,  "I Never Was Her Guy," I wrote that one a month or so after "Tastes Like a Penny" in January or early February of 2020.  I dusted "I Never Was Her Guy" off a couple of weeks ago and played it for the first time since I wrote it, and it sounds pretty damn good.  Another song I wrote, in 2018 I think, is "I'm Just a Rock."  I'm just a rock/ skipping past the waters/ of Asshole Woman Lake.  I'm skipping I hope/ to the Island of Good Women/ 'cross the waters of Asshole Woman Lake.

Some of the new songs I have to run by a live performance before I know if I'll keep them.  I need to work on the arrangement of at least one of them ("Cat And Mouse"), and performing that song at places in various incarnations will help with that, I hope.  The two waltzes about the Invisible Woman: "Fuckface on Monday, Fuckface On Friday," and, "Fuckface Bloody Fuckface," well, I don't even know if I'll put those on Music From the Motion Picture Soundtrack. 

  
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Working on album: I Make Country Music Records, Sir

5/12/2021

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The name of the next album will be, I Make Country Music Records, Sir.  I've finished the guitar/vocal tracks.  Now I'm working on the two remaining bass tracks and the four augmenting guitar tracks.  This afternoon and tonight I rehearsed all of those.  I hope to finish with those tracks by the end of  the month.

The most involved augmenting guitar track appears on "Job Called Shrimp."  I pick the strings high on the neck and just place my fingers on the strings in the chord positions instead of pressing all the way down on the strings and actually fretting the chords.  This suggests shrimp swimming around in water during the part where the narrator gives the girl the shrimp job.  Kinky.

"The Man Who Never Washed His Hair," has me plucking the same bass notes and guitar notes together to accompany the guitar/vocal part.  I wish I had the guitar know how and chops to do more than that, but maybe this simple arrangement will give listeners something interesting to listen to.

I had charts for the bass arrangements when I worked on them last Fall, so I cold just pick up where I left off on that.  That was when i decided to rerecord three guitar/vocal tracks, and that's what's been holding up production.  I got sick with the flu in January and so I couldn't practice all that month, and then I moved.  I figure I'm well over two thirds done with this record as far as actual work I have to put in to complete it.  I hope to finish in June.




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I'm looking forward to things opening up a bit more

5/8/2021

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Austin Clubhouse announced an effort to reopen their facility for in-person activities such as lunch and volunteer participation in the running of the place by the beginning of next month.  I think I want to start going there to do volunteer stuff primarily as a way to meet some people.  My options for meeting women have proven limited along with a lot of other people's options for all kinds of social activities since this pandemic began.  I don't anticipate things getting back to "normal" anytime soon, but they might get better than they have been in a long time by the next month or so.  While I don't want to get a full-on job just to meet people, the clubhouse presents an option that might do for now in that department.

I've started illustrating issue number 24 of my comic book.  I've got two more issues of this series to go.  I met Casanova Frankenstein yesterday over by a coffee shop I patronize frequently.  He said that he wrote me after I sent him a book last Summer, but I never got the email.  I have problems with spam coming through my contact page for this sight, and I can see how legitimate correspondence can slip through the cracks.  I apologized to him, said, "Good meeting you," and went on my way. 

I've got one more guitar/vocal track for my next album to record before I can proceed to the two remaining bass tracks and all of the other stuff I want to do for the record.  I recently rerecorded two guitar/vocal tracks that, in addition to the one left to record, sat on my docket for months.  I got sick in January, and that slowed all kinds of productivity down.  I've gone over some of the songs for consideration for the album that follows the one I'm working on now, and some of them are not bad. 
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Signing off on a certain subject for a while (I think)

5/2/2021

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Right now I don't want these blog posts to undermine my efforts to interact with this young woman at this business whom I can go on and on about at length, so I'm going to try to sign off on her as a subject of future posts for a while (well, we'll see about that).  I really think my last post about feeling insecure about her lack of accessibility really hit the nail on the head in regards to my deal with her and just about every girl and woman in my past, good, bad, or indifferent.  So I'm just saying to myself, "Dude, right there!  Stop right there!  Work on that!"  This person has done absolutely nothing to alienate me from my affection towards her, and I just want to see how an effort to interact with her in the real world will go without these posts possibly fucking all of that up.
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