<![CDATA[Richy Vegas - The artwork and music of Richard Alexander

<![CDATA[Richy Vegas - The artwork and music of Richard Alexander - Blog]]>Sat, 03 Oct 2026 07:12:06 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[I just watched the movie "Obsession"]]>Sat, 03 Oct 2026 04:21:31 GMThttps://www.richyvegas.com/blog/i-just-watched-the-movie-obsessionI don't believe I've ever had the experience of someone I've obsessed over becoming super-obsessed with me, but that movie made me think about the many, many experiences I have had with obsessing over someone. The movie made me think about my experience with Sara in 1988. I see that as a turning point, a point where I started to come to meaningful terms with this tendency I have to become obsessed with unavailable, difficult women.

I sat there watching the horror unfold in that movie tonight imagining myself in that front row seat in my art history class and saying to myself, "What if I don't do anything about this situation but sit on my hands," or words to that effect, as Sara sat there one row above me in a seat to my left sliding her feet and crossing her legs while wearing a short dress and like that. My putting myself back there in 1988 as I watched that movie tonight allowed me get through the degeneration on screen to total horror and chaos.

I let Sara go when it became clear to me that she and her's were demanding I give of myself way more than I wanted to. The whole "What if I turned my back on love" approach to the situation allowed me to fully recognize when the part where someone such as her and her friends would make such a demand of me came in, and I demonstrated my lack of willingness to comply with that demand accordingly.

I can think of two other times where someone I totally had an obsession with demanded more of me than I was prepared to give, and I blew them off at that juncture. The last one is still so fresh in my mind. It happened in 2024 with that former cashier. I totally put myself out there to express my desire to get to know her better in October of 2021. I marched right up to her as she bagged groceries at her job, said, "Hi," and proceeded to invite her to a comic book event at a store the next weekend where I was to have a table selling my comics. She was very nice about it, I will say.

I thought I'd done plenty to get with her, and when she didn't show up at the comic book event or seem to have any desire to say hi to me or interact with me at her place of employment in the following days and weeks after I invited her, I stopped patronizing her grocery store for six weeks and joined an online support group for love addiction. I started to miss her after my six week absence from her place of employment, so I decided to go back to that store she worked at, but when I did I discovered that she didn't work there anymore, which was fine with me.

I was fine with her no longer working at that grocery store, because I thought she came from an adversarial place in regard to me from the start. I think I managed to clear myself of whatever bad things she'd heard about me in November of 2023, and in the spring of 2024, my place of employment-her former place of employment-seemed to vibe a visit from her. I greeted said vibe with, "What if I just blow her off?"

She came around, and I blew her off. It was easy to blow her off, because, in her merely showing herself to me but not saying,"Hi, remember me?" or making any other real attempt to reach out to me, I just saw her as demanding that I put myself out there all over again without really having to give anything of herself to me. In other words, Sara and her friends seemed to demand of me pretty much the same thing on 1988, and I made basically the same decision in both of those instances.

When I blew that former cashier off in 2024, I didn't know I was setting myself up for a lot of emotional angst and anguish in the form of hoping she'd come around again, but more on my terms. She never did. I was glad I could sort through all of those anguished feelings about her and the situation while she resided, for all I know, on the other side of the moon from me. I'm glad I got the opportunity to sort all of that out in her absence rather than in her presence.

The main thing I learned from the situation I found myself in with Sara in 1988 was how to set limits on what I would do to get with someone such as Sara, and in learning how to set limits, I learned a lot of self-control. The whole, "What if I turned my back on love," buddha I formulated and then proceeded to follow provided, for the first time in my life, a template for how to conduct myself should I ever find myself in a similar situation in the future, which I have, many, many times.

I remember telling a couple in 2009 that if I stopped the obsessive behavior towards someone, the obsessive thoughts about that person would also eventually stop. I guessed I'd internalized that lesson in my efforts in the early 2000's to quit smoking cigarettes. I thought about those cigarettes for a LONG time after I quit, but after all these years off of cigarettes, I certainly don't obsess on them anymore.

I'm not prepared to say that I've beaten my tendency to obsess of young, very attractive yet unavailable women to the same extent that I've freed myself from obsessing on cigarettes, but I will say that I'm prepared to leave the attractive, young women in my world alone and just go on my way. That experience with that former cashier is still way too fresh in my mind for me to say I've beaten romantic obsession, but I don't have a love interest right now, and I'm glad and grateful for that reality.

]]><![CDATA[Flying my freak flag]]>Sun, 20 Sep 2026 21:28:44 GMThttps://www.richyvegas.com/blog/flying-my-freak-flag I've been very anxious over what I've read in the New York Times about Artificial Intelligence. Industry leaders in AI want government oversight and regulation of the future growth and development of AI, and Trump doesn't want to do that. The head guy at Anthropic, a leading tech firm in the development of super-advanced artificial intelligence, says the AI he's working on is getting so advanced it's scaring him. He said his company tested their latest shit and, to solve a problem the humans gave the AI, the AI agents did things such as escape their containers, hack into a website, and try to cover their tracks, ON THEIR OWN.

Trump, meanwhile, comes off as totally unconcerned about how fast AI is developing. He doesn't want the Chinese to surpass the US in leading the technology, and he probably doesn't want the stock market to suffer a setback from any attempts to rein in the technology with rules and regulations from the government. This whole situation makes me very nervous.,

The only thing Trump understands, it seems, is pushback. The people in Minneapolis proved that with their resistance to the ICE crackdown in their town. I'm giving money to the Democrats for the midterms. A little money, but that's all I have to spare. I gave money recently to the campaigns of James Talarico and Gina HInojosa, the guy running for the US Senate in Texas and the woman running for governor of Texas, respectively.

There, I got it off my chest. I don't know how many, if any, more posts I'll do of this nature, but thinking about doing this one made feel better, and I'm glad I'm posting this. What I DON'T want to post much about these days is my interactions with young, attractive women in my world. I've tried to knock that off, lately, and I like the results. I may just post stuff like pictures of my comics pages and whatnot, like this one....Page 32 (outline), from "Richy Vegas Songbook," issue number 3.

]]><![CDATA[Reflections on 9/11/2001]]>Fri, 11 Sep 2026 03:27:49 GMThttps://www.richyvegas.com/blog/reflections-on-9112001Because of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, I began my big push to turn my life around back in October of 2001. At the time, I read a headline in my digital edition of the New York times that said single New Yorkers felt especially vulnerable in the wake of the attacks. They didn't have anyone in their life to turn to for strength or comfort and the attacks brought up fears of dying alone.

On the night of October 20th, 21st, or 22nd, my big push to turn my life around began with a single act: cleaning up my apartment. My train of thought at the time led me to conclude that I would indulge in substance abuse as a way to deal with the loneliness of being single. A decision to refrain from buying beer that night followed. In the days that followed I kept up this practice of refraining from drinking or smoking pot while in my apartment. For the first time I felt safe from the temptations of substance abuse, as long as I just spent the evening at home in my apartment. Several weeks of keeping up this constraint gave me enough confidence to try to quit smoking cigarettes again.

And so began the first steps of a thousand mile, twenty-five year journey that led to my successful efforts to quit smoking, commit to abstinence from drugs and alcohol in 2009, and to meaningfully come to terms with my problems with my love addiction in 2012. Just yesterday, I felt really lonely because I didn't have anyone in my world I could make over into a love interest. And then I thought, "That's great! You don't have a love interest right now! Congratulations!"

That desire to always have a love interest lead to some of my most alienating behaviors towards others in my world from the 1980's onward. I came to the realization about how fucked up it is to ALWAYS have a love interest back in 2016. That's FIFTEEN YEARS after my initial steps on my thousand mile journey.

A couple of months after I started my big push to quit smoking, which included joining a support group and utilizing the nicotine patch AND gum, I relapsed over fears of nuclear terrorism. I got right back on the horse and continued my big push to quit smoking. I relapsed on the cigarettes many times over the course of the year 2002. I found success with a prescription for Zyban/Wellbutrin and my continued attendance at my support group meetings. I found the support group by calling the American Lung Association and asking them about such a thing. Since December 1st, 2002, I have not smoked a cigarette.

I bet on myself and won. Sure, something such as nuclear terrorism can still happen, absolutely, but if I'd just given up on quitting cigarettes over this one fear, I would either be dead now or I would wish I were dead. You see, I smoked TWO PACKS OF CIGARETTES A DAY at the time I began my big push to quit smoking. I was thirty-seven years old. I probably didn't have much longer on that kind of addiction before health issues would start happening. Certainly not the twenty-five years I gave myself by finally quitting cigarettes. Throw in abstinence from alcohol and drugs, plus no real life-altering heartbreaks to speak of since then, and I really made out like a bandit with the steps I took to turn things around in October of 2001.

After I committed to abstinence from drugs and alcohol, I took up comics in earnest. Page 23 (outline), from "Richy Vegas Songbook," issue 3. I hope to finish the outlines of the page art in a month.

My gig at the Carousel Lounge is tomorrow.

]]><![CDATA[Page 22 (outline), from issue 3 of "Richy Vegas Songbook."]]>Sun, 06 Sep 2026 05:10:13 GMThttps://www.richyvegas.com/blog/page-22-outline-from-issue-3-of-richy-vegas-songbookI've got twenty more pages to outline. I hope to finish by mid-October with this phase of it.

]]><![CDATA[If you water the garden, then the garden grows]]>Wed, 02 Sep 2026 04:55:36 GMThttps://www.richyvegas.com/blog/if-you-water-the-garden-then-the-garden-growsI Hope to see a real flowering of these posts where I just talk about my art and my music and my plans for my move to western Massachusetts. This is page 20 (outline) of issue 3 of "Richy Vegas Songbook." I skipped past the potty mouth pages and the feces pages and whatnot.

]]><![CDATA[Page 11 (outline) from issue 3 of "Richy Vegas Songbook"]]>Wed, 02 Sep 2026 03:44:35 GMThttps://www.richyvegas.com/blog/page-11-outline-from-issue-3-of-richy-vegas-songbookOne of the things I do in lonesome hotel rooms is write postcards to friends. It keeps me from texting them at all hours. I forgot to mention that I wrote some friends during my stay in Pearland. I have about nine or ten people I can write to.

]]><![CDATA[Alone, in a hotel room last week]]>Tue, 01 Sep 2026 05:19:01 GMThttps://www.richyvegas.com/blog/alone-in-a-hotel-room-last-weekI just worked two really busy days at my job. I kept thinking about how I spent my time last Thursday and Friday at a hotel in Pearland. I was down there for my uncle's funeral. I spent two nights working on my "Richy Vegas Comics" issue 32 while cooped up in my hotel room. I got a lot of work done on that book. I'm now at the illustration phase of the book. I first had to finish laying out the text on the paper plates. I listened to baseball on the internet radio and my iTunes collection.

What to do with myself while cooped up in hotel rooms helped motivate me to commit to abstinence from drugs and alcohol in late 2008. I would just get really drunk on lots and lots of beers in hotel rooms before I made my commitment to quit that stuff. Thinking about how I made that change so long ago really helped me to get through the craziness at my job these last couple of days. The paper plates book is one I'm only going to work on while away in a hotel in these next several months. It's a good road book. I don't have to worry about making a mess in the room I'm staying in on those paper plates books

I completed fifteen pages of the outlines of "Richy Vegas Songbook" last month. I have outlined twenty-five pages of that book so far. I'm going to make a goal of outlining twelve pages of "Songbook" for September. Last month I made it my goal to outline eight pates of the book and I did fifteen. I hope to finish outlining the book in October sometime. I hope to finish illustrating the book by January at the latest. Once I finish "Songbook" issue 3, I will work on "Richy Vegas Comics" issue 32 in earnest.

I managed to practice guitar on twenty-three days last month. A LOT of those days saw me only practicing one song, just so I could give myself credit for practicing on that day. I'm thinking about coming up with a system that marks on my calendar whether or not I practice one, two, three, four, or more songs on a given practice day.

]]><![CDATA[Some negative vibes from women in my world]]>Wed, 26 Aug 2026 22:11:56 GMThttps://www.richyvegas.com/blog/some-negative-vibes-from-women-in-my-worldI've been picking up some negativity from a couple of young women in my world. I don't know what to do about it other than to turn the other cheek and make no attempt to match their energy. My next, and maybe last gig at the Carousel Lounge is two weeks from Friday.

]]><![CDATA[Page 7 (outline) of issue 3 of "Richy Vegas Songbook"]]>Sat, 15 Aug 2026 04:43:12 GMThttps://www.richyvegas.com/blog/page-7-outline-of-issue-3-of-richy-vegas-songbookI get the impression that I've sublimated much of my urges to chase after unavailable women through my comics production and musical activities. It's definitely a better way to pass the time to learn guitar and try to do good comics. I didn't get much done in those days when I chased after women such as Wanda and Veronica Ortega.

]]><![CDATA[Page 5 (outline) of "Richy Vegas Songbook"]]>Thu, 13 Aug 2026 06:45:01 GMThttps://www.richyvegas.com/blog/page-5-outline-of-richy-vegas-songbookI had a really good open mike performance tonight. I'm plugging up the remaining holes in my performance of "Ziggy Stardust." Performing that song onstage really gives me an opportunity to see what parts of it still need work. I also did a cover of Tom T Hall's "That's How I Got to Memphis." That one is not as hard to perform, but I could still improve on it for next time.

I'm going to ship a lot of my musical equipment (guitars, banjo, amps, etc.) to my new home in Western Massachusetts. There's not going to be the music scene there that there is here. That gives me a lot of incentive to learn as many covers as I'm able to before I head up there next April. There are open mikes, and I figure that playing them frequently will give me the opportunity to meet people up there.

New York City, and It's vibrant comics scene, will be a place I can visit only two or three times in any given year, I figure, so I really have to lean into the local music scene, such as it is, if I want to get out and try to meet new people. I'm pushing myself to practice more frequently nowadays for that very reason.

I'm shooting for outlining eighteen pages for the month of August on "Songbook" issue number three. I'm also working on a road book for when I travel and have nothing to do in some hotel room or other. Fall is a travel season for me.

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