I was constantly asked, “What drug were you on?” and then I had to explain that oh, no, I just did it–no drugs involved, and they were all, “THAT’S FUCKED UP.” When that comes from someone that has armed robbery charges, you know that you’ve hit an all-time low.

As it seemed that I was meeting every one of those Homies characters in real life, I tried to imagine how I could market them after I got out, in the event that I chose not to prostitute. I had several smellmates, most good, and some mediocre at best. The first one that I had was at RCF (in Philly), while I was awaiting extradition. She had one of those conglomeration names where you take two boring names, combine them, and create an even more boring name–something like Taren. She preferred to be called “Suge”, and enjoyed cleaning at 4:00 in the morning, though she herself smelled like mothballs and old cheese. Suge was big, loud, black, and loud; though despite looking like a linebacker Ludacris she was relatively nice, and I didn’t have to worry about being stabbed with a shiv too often. She had an affinity for wandering around in her underwear (at the RCF we were able to do that, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing), and had one of her minions slather Jergen’s all over her, on the regular. Suge had a propensity to call me “child,” as in “ooo, child you don’t even know,” which made me think of her as Mrs. Butterworth with a doo-rag. As a Homies figurine, she’d be the one dressed in rags huffing Clorox.

To appropriately describe how fucked up this situation was; when I told them that I was being extradited to Utah, I had one girl ask if that was “across the border” and another one interrupt saying, “No, stupid, that’s in the UK.” I was asked if I had my green card no less than fifteen times, and was also asked if I was being extradited to Chinatown. I wish I was kidding.

Anyway, after Suge, I was moved into a cell with one of the only white girls in the pod (which, by the way, I was classified as), named Shannon. She was in jail to kick a mighty heroin addiction, and to battle a couple of possession charges. Though by the time I met her, she had been clean for months. We had dance parties (in Philly you were able to have radios–something that Salt Lake wouldn’t even consider), on the regular, and talked about classic rock. Shannon was probably the only one there that knew that the man Lynyrd Skynyrd was referring to in “Sweet Home Alabama” is Neil Young; and the only reason I know that is because Shannon told me about forty times a day. That was the thing about her, though she was full of interesting facts, she only had about five of them. At the time, we had three people shoved into a cell, and the other girl had a name like an overpriced piece of modern furniture, and smelled like an underage girl’s snatch after race day. Also, she never laughed. We had a few issues with her using (I guess I should say misusing, because she commonly spread something that was meant for her top pair of lips frighteningly close to her bottom pair) our things, which led to my first jail confrontation. For the sake of a good story I’ll pretend that there were death threats, bricks thrown, and poisoned drinks–but in reality, she just moved cells, and everything was fine from there. Shannon would be the White Homies if that exists, and Modern Furniture would be the deformed one, after a day of being ground into the sidewalk. That bitch.

My first Salt Lake City cellmate was a sweet older woman (by “older” I mean “older than me”) who had all, or most of, her teeth. Which, you will find is a hot commodity around those parts. There’s not much to say about her, because it’s all good, and no one wants to hear about that. SL Cellmate #2 was Mehelet, who liked to be called “Sugar”; I really don’t know what it is, but criminals really like their fucking sucrose. Sugar was nice, if not a complete hot mess. She had a mess of charges, and was constantly worrying about them–bursting into tears at the most random of times, asking “So, what do you think is going to happen to me?” Let me tell you something, it is hard being confined to a closet with someone who is always having a Garden of Gethsemane moment. Eventually she got a little better, and we passed our time playing a ghetto-rigged version of Battleship (you have paper, and you write on it, the end). Once when I was writing a letter, she interrupted by saying, “My brother…my brother is so hot,” and then proceeded to tell me what about him made him so hot–and I’ll agree, according to her description, boy is an Adonis. Sugar, the Homies with the permanently affixed tear under her eye, was eventually shipped off to the good ol’ state prison.

Okay, so, I could talk about these people forever, but that would make for an even longer, even more boring article–so for your sake I’ll split it up, and continue on tomorrow. Stay tuned, because we’ll hit Downs-Chewbacca, steamy lesbian sex (or the closest I came to it), and how everything anyone knows about Asians must have been learned from Jackie Chan movies dubbed in Spanish.

“The London Police Ride Again,” Mar 19 – Apr 30, BLDG Gallery, Kentucky

First, as I learned, Counter-Strike isn’t just for arthritis-inducing zombie apocalypse/dystopic draft training, pew pew.

Enough Googling yields open source tweaking into “Velvet Strike” where players can shoot graffiti onto its walls or the full-on Van Gogh level, which would probably make Vincent gouge his paranoid peepers right out.

And now for some fine art excuses to start living on your couch. A typically academic analysis of game-on-art rendezvous had professor Celia Pearce citing chess-loving Duchamp’s object play, John Cage “playing art” with invented instruments, and Pac Manhattan as a performance art piece. She’d probably flip her shit for Marina Abramovic and Ulay’s 1977 Imponderabilia on Second Life.

Meanwhile, the indie studio Tale of Tales, makers of supposed “art game” The Path (that with all the tediously-produced visual wizardry), declared that unlike the higher pursuits of art, games satisfy biological needs and are not art, and by the way, art is dead anyway via capitalistic co-opting and government restriction, exiling artists to the far ends of the Internet. That rant carves out a nifty niche for the studio and their “anti-games,” which is not unlike capitalism mechanics, rant regardless.

So, from the digital borderlands where the meekest of perverts and geekiest of trollers roam, come tiny miracles like the intricate comic panels of ogle-worthy Machinarium’s aw-for-robots point-and-click and the like, and that’s pretty nifty too. Those flirting with the idea of being a big deal artist some day may want to put those plans of scotch-tape raver-pants fashion line and public building dry-hump performance art on hold. Getting in on the video game hustle now might give your skills a better future outlet than fetching coffee for the Law & Order raped corpse extra or polishing Jeff Koons’ balloons.

Photo: Minnesota Public Radio via NPR

I can 100% [confirm] the existence of the billboard. The first time I noticed it is when I was driving down I-35 South with my friends to the Twin Cities from Duluth. (I’m not sure how familiar you are with MN, but Duluth borders Lake Superior and the Twin Cities are south of us by about two hours … and we’re connected by Interstate 35 South). I remember thinking, “Oh my gosh, that billboard is hilarious” and pointing it out to my friends as we buzzed by it. We all had a good chuckle at its expense. So me being the obsessive photo nerd I am, I decided the next time I was going to take a road trip to the Twin Cities with a friend that I would bring my camera and see if I could snap a photo. I did and the results are the photo that I posted here on Flickr. It’s actually the original, the only reason its in sepia is because I was playing around with the camera as we came up on the billboard and it just happened to be in sepia setting. So there you have it, yes, it’s actually a real billboard heading South on 1-35 here in MN.

Photo: Jeff Meidl

“Suicide is not the route.” But, just in case you’re strongly considering it New York commuters, the Long Island Crisis Center has posted this helpful reminder at the LIRR’s Jamaica station that jumping on the tracks in front of an on-rushing train is an excellent way to go violently flying off of this mortal coil.

MY god, what a dismal ad. Are they trying to fill a quota through their advertising? The poster is co-sponsored by the MTA, who’s inept service makes many a New Yorker want to kill themselves every single day. Hey, it’s suicide ad week on ANIMAL!

Photo: Bucky Turco/ANIMALNewYork

Well so much for that rumored “Snookin’ For Love” Jersey Shore spinoff! Snooki, it appears, has a boyfriend, one she says “just like my typical guido juicehead with like a good personality.”

Reports the Daily News:

The pint-sized reality star has been proudly flaunting her new relationship with boyfriend Emilio Antonio, who according to Snooki, could give cast mate The Situation a run for his money.

“He’s actually a body builder and works at the gym,” she said. “I am really excited to like show the public who he is.

“He is freaking banging. We’re the sexiest couple I have ever seen in my entire life so I am excited for everybody to see that.”

Hopefully this jackass will stick around long enough to be a regular duck phone caller in the next season of the show. He looks like a real, ugh, character.

Photo: Sabo/News

Today, two days after the hometown football team he betrayed won the Super Bowl, Lil Wayne will go before a Manhattan judge to be sentenced on gun charges. He is expected to get around 10 months in the clink. Not surprisingly, he spent his last night as a free man in the studio, where he issued a farewell message to all his fans via Ustream.

After spending a good bit of time clowning around, including shouting out to a number of New Orleans Saints past and present, Weezy got real:

I’m out this bitch. To all my fans, my real fans, I really, really, really truly love you. I love you with all of me, for real. I’ll probably be loving everything else because I love you so much. Thank you from the bottom [of my heart]. Do not forget about me ’cause I will forever think about you, and I cannot wait for you to see me again. I’m out.

Here’s the entire 55 minute ordeal…

In Geneva, Switzerland our presidents are celebrated by kids riding and trouncing all over their faces.

Photo: shinyrocketdog