Portrait of the caricaturist as a young punk:

[Victor Pross]

Portrait of the caricaturist as a young punk: A rebel with a visual cause.

By Victor Pross

As a kid I was a compulsive drawer: I would declare war on every blank area left on notebooks, school books, desks and school walls. My teachers never appreciated this, but I did win recognition among my peers, sometimes even girls. However popular, I was independent and pretty much a loner. Rarely did I communicate verbally, but I never failed to communicate by using my favorite language: images.

My childhood, from outside appearances, was practically a model example of the establishment family with its Norman Rockwell semblance. But it was merely an appearance. My mother was an alcoholic and my father was a “fuck-off dad”---as I described him years later. Without the words to describe it, the feelings that my parents had failed me were troubling. My parents were not cut from the mold to properly perform the duties given to parenthood hood. Luckily for me, it was my grandparents who mostly raised me.

Even though my grandparent’s were on hand to offer material and emotional support, I felt abandoned. It was a pain that was muted and sometimes battered into silence. But there was more to it than just that: I sensed that there was something else—a much more disturbing truth—that lay at the core of the adult the world. Being much too young, it remained a frustrating and inarticulate feeling. It was something that was only given full expression many years later.

As a kid, maybe around the age of eight or so, whatever I had lodged in the back of his mind came forward in a blurry approximation in art. It was art—drawing—that rescued me. Many of the drawings had an underlying dark tone. The drawings gave my incoherent inner world some form of expression and substance, however crude they were. Grown-ups had a profound effect on my artistic development, but not in a way they would approve. I began to observe and to judge people, making evaluations about their natures and characters. This, too, found its way in my drawings. One could see in the progression of drawings a groping and developing maturity. It was a discovery and odyssey of self.

I soon channeled my subconscious and exhibited an intellectual proclivity in the depiction: the drawings were always funny but they also communicated rather disturbing scenarios. Many of the drawings portrayed crazed adults expressing myopic personalities in morally compromised positions. On the outside, however, I had become an enthusiastic and happy boy who, one would think, had never been hurt. It was as if my art provided a therapeutic outlet to troubling emotions.

My artistic talent had made quite an impression at school. My drawings never followed convention, and I did not respond to the art teacher’s instructions about what I should draw and in what style I should draw the subjects. I was wont to disrupt the class by passing from desk to desk a sketchpad in which I drew bizarre caricatures of the teachers. The sourness of my drollness, and the devastating captions I attached to these drawings, were uproarious. Boys stifled their laughter during class as it was passed around, clandestinely, under desks.

My talent for drawing, my attention to detail, and above all, my grotesque sense of humor were obvious in the drawings. The targets, the teachers, were sitting ducks for my scorching satire. Seeing them as deeply flawed, I had little respect for any of them. And as subjects for my drawings, they were fittingly portrayed as I saw them. A fascination with deformities was rife throughout my drawings, and each deformity was intended to convey….a spiritual malady.

**

At the age of thirteen, I became a make-out artist. I was well aware of the favorable responses my art curried from the opposite sex. I decided to take advantage. Girls, in turn, took advantage of me. Stephanie was a year older than me and was a dark haired beauty. She had all the makings of the town’s soon-to-be slut. She exploited her good-looks, bending all the local boys to her will. She loathed the other boys, but she liked me and my rebellious ways. In exchange for a drawing, Stephanie promised to show me her…um…private parts. “You can look but you can’t touch,” she admonished this fervent young artist. Being a highly curious young man, I agreed.

The clandestine exchange took place in a clearing in the woods where this excited youth caught an eye-full of “private parts.” My expression flushed red and I swallowed hard. Stephanie smiled coyly, alternately looking down at her own hairy glory and at me, enjoying the spectacle of frustrated sexual energy. And it was both a pleasurable and painful experience for me. Having feasted my eyes upon the usually covered goods, the viral young artist wanted to take the plunge—but the Garden of Eden was for viewing only and no tasting of the fruit was permitted.

**

When I turned sixteen, a conscious awareness of the adult world came into sharper focus: my overall impressions of adults was that they were fakes and liars, saying not what they thought, but rather what they believed would serve some particular purpose. Everyone was armed with an agenda and two-faces. It seemed to me that the world thrived on bullshit, self-denial, hypocrisy, deception and lies. Observing people closely, I noted the desperate whoring after status, an irrational and pathetic desire to “beat the Jones” followed up by saccharine sentimentality--as displayed by mealy-mouthed charlatans--and showcased to the people they themselves loathed. Lies, backstabbing, deception, two-faces, malice and hypocrisy: this was the currency of exchange in the adult world. I took a profound disliking to most people I came across. I could sense the spiritual emptiness and viciousness within them. I retreated even more into my drawings. I wanted to like and admire people but I rarely came across anyone who was worthy of it. The only noted exceptions were my grandparents.

Christmas brought distant relatives and immediate family together at the Pross household. For me, people were bad enough on their own but it became worse when they assembled together under one roof. It was on such occasions that fully demonstrated the insanity and phoniness of people in my eyes. Now my critical antenna was fully engaged in observing. I would scan the large living room absorbing the adults sitting on the couches and chairs, each one looking anxious and distant. They were tipsy on day-long benders of Bloody Caesars making efforts to appear jovial. To lighten the mood, somebody put a dance song on. I watched with keen interest as glasses were overturned by dancing feet and the coffee table was removed for a wider space. A frenzy of stimulation bubbled in the room and everyone’s voice rose imperceptibly in pitch. The chatter and the laughter fused into an indolent buzz.

There was a constant display of smiley backslapping by people who maligned one another the moment backs where turned. There was an unvarying pageant of petty bickering over trivia and the sudden surfacing of years-long resentments best forgotten. All the forms of human flaws and ugliness to be found in the world—a world which insists on being imperfect---were on display before the juvenile artist. Each relative represented an unsavory social stereotype or archetype of one kind or another—a caricature. From the town’s busy body gossip-mongering blabbering spinster to the town’s fast-talking used car salesman to every other stereotype imaginable. It was all here. This artist to-be was exposed to these caricatures constantly.

Sitting near the Christmas three, I was observing my Uncle, better known by his nickname “Bernie.” Bernie was the jet-set wannabe playboy with the dyed perm that looked as if it had come straight off a Styrofoam head from 1973. Fancying himself a lady-killer, he actually had all the charm and authenticity of a toupee made of straw dipped in black ink. And with each attempt at a pick-up he was invariably shot-down. He always dismissed the lady as a lesbian. He was a caricature.

I turned my attention to my mother, who was immersed in conversation, laughing with a forced hilarity, her drink spilling over. There was something that troubled me about his mother, Terry. She was a woman who was so utterly self-absorbed, preoccupied with what others thought. My mother’s sense of personal value was crucially dependent on the image of herself as a glamorous beauty. At the age of 38, she was wont to ask for reassurances of her looks: “Do you think I have nice legs? I was a Go-Go dancer, you know.” But with each passing year she began to perceive every wrinkle on her face as a metaphysical menace. With what she took as a threat to her identity, she plunged into a series of sexual relationships with men fifteen years her junior demanding fresh admiration to assuage her hollowness. She, too, was a caricature.

My mother’s constant need for validation and self-absorption annoyed me. Nevertheless I was fascinated with human behavior and what I perceived in his mother was a definite narcissism, only I didn’t know the word for it at my age. Spurred by my mother’s conceit, I decided to try an experiment: I played upon my mother’s vanity by offering her a lavish compliment, just to see her reaction. My motive wasn’t flattery; it was a psychological experiment.

I tapped my mother on the shoulder.

“Mom?”

“Victor dear, can’t you see I’m talking to this nice gentlemen.”

“But mom, I need to tell you something.”

“Yes, yes, what is it?”

“I just wanted to say that…in this light…you look just like Marilyn Monroe.”

The response was pretty much what I expected. She clapped her hands in appreciation and snuggled her darling son into her arms. “Did you hear that?” she demanded of her guests. The room fell to a hushed silence. “What is it, Terry?” asked a guest. “My boy said I look like Marilyn Monroe. That’s my boy! Oh, he knows a good-looking broad when he sees one!” And then my mom let out an exuberant laugh. After a few more brandy-laced eggnogs, my mother became more of an embarrassment. She made damn well made sure to tell new arrivals at the party what her son had said about her looking like Marilyn Monroe. It was a compliment warmly recalled by her for years to come. I had always regretted this casual flattery.

My mother was bad enough, but I loathed my mother’s younger sister, Joan, with a greater intensity. There she was off in a darken corner of the room with drink in hand, and her cigarette clutched between two fingers, ash dropping on the carpeted floor, struggling to meet her end of the conversation with the other guests, communicating nothing of interest, her captive audience tried to find a polite excuse to escape. Joan irritated people with her authoritarian commentary about religion and astronomy. She was never short of offering up an insipid platitude or bromide on either subject. With her pink lipstick and pine needled mascara, she was a middle-aged hippie in the Post-Acquires Age offering “love” and “God” as the panacea for all human woes. Her make-up and clothing gave the impression that she was from Height Asbury circa 1968. Like the other adults, she was a caricature.

Joan, being a first class flake, had a penchant for summing people up by their astrological signs: “What sign are you, sweet? What? A Virgo? Oh, that won’t do, we’ll never get along!” Or: “What’s that? Oh, you’re a Sagittarius? You’re one of those, huh? My ex-husband was a Sagittarius.” All of this was followed up by a lecture in metaphysics and cosmology. Being an astute young man, I had identified the glaring omissions, the non-sequiturs and contradictions in Joan’s abstract dissertations. I took the task to challenge her lunar assertions by simply asking: “How do you know that?” It was this same persistent line of questioning that brought an end to my belief in Santa.

“How?” and “How do you know that?” were the two foremost questions on the tip of my lips whenever I heard a statement I suspected as bogus. My questions were usually ignored, resented, laughed at, but I was undaunted when it came to Joan’s unfounded assertions. “How you know that, Aunt Joan?” this tenacious young man persisted. She laughed and patted him on the head and turned on her heels to flee into a pocket of people.

In a manner as persistent as a drill cutting through stone, I didn’t give up my demand for reasons. Joan finally lost her temper, pushed too far by my challenges. “Oh, don’t be so childish!” she yelled, waving her hand in dismissal. “Why can’t you just accept some things without asking a lot of stupid questions?” Joan turned to her indifferent sister with a pleading mask. “Terry, seriously, why does he do that? Seriously, he should learn some respect. Too many questions ruin things. Why does he do that?”

It was my grandfather, Vic, who turned to his Joan, and answered. “For Christ’s sakes, he knows a fake when he sees one. It’s obvious that you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Victor beamed at his grandfather. The old man became Victor’s hero that very moment.

I have always respected my grandfather. Vic was an autonomous man who wasn’t caught up in the obsession with conventionality and the hybrid hub about tradition, religion, appearances and status. He was benevolent and rational man—a sharp contrast to the community standard. These traits appealed to his independent and strong-willed grandson.

Vic was highly support of his grandson. It was his grandfather who always encouraged me in my raw drawing abilities and who supplied him with drawing materials. “You have a real talent there, my boy. It would be a shame if that went to waste.” Inspired, I practiced everyday.

Joan’s hatred for me, her nephew, reached a peak point when my drawing abilities improved. I was now seventeen and my drawing abilities had improved dramatically over the years. Joan now discovered that “the brat” had rendered her in caricature. The drawing made her looking supremely ridiculous: her head was lodged in outer space with stars surrounding her dopey looking head. Watching Joan’s reaction was priceless. I felt that the sheer ridiculousness of the drawing was enough to modify the flakey behavior so evident in my aunt but nothing had changed. Joan continued to postulate about the supernatural at subsequent family gatherings, almost as if to defy my caricature.

Her husband, Kevin Weber, on such occasions, felt obliged to pipe in his own two-cents. He demanded to bring the issues “down to earth” and attempted to purge his wife’s discussions of all that “philosophical mumbo-jumbo.” He typically assumed to pose as the authority on the all the current issues and he frequently quoted canned bromides from newspapers as if they were his original thoughts. He was just as much of a pontificating windbag as his space cadet wife.

Kevin Weber was the town’s slickly-dressed, fast-talking used car salesman. He was usually decked out in a shiny gray suit topped off with an Canadian flag tie. He was a small town used car salesman caricature—replete with all the clues: from the tip of his shiny black cowboy boots to the tip of his glorious mullet haircut.

Of course, Kevin Weber was my next target.

At the next family gathering, I presented a drawing to him. “Here,” I said casually, “take a gander, man.” The drawing in hand, Weber’s eyes looked as though they were about to fracture. I depicted him in caricature—his inflated head that of a hot air balloon, his body a weaved-basket. It seemed as if time became suspended and all motioned had stopped. “Well?” I said, impatient for a response.

Looking up from the drawing with heavy hooded eyes, Kevin’s face reflected a thinly veiled anger that looked like a prelude to a man about to commit murder. He leaned into me and in a hushed voice he snarled, “You know, you come across like a smart kid…but you ain’t any better than anybody else. So don’t you forget that, kiddo. Okay?” I moved forward, looking Kevin Weber straight in the eye. “You don’t expect me to take you seriously while you sport that fucking mullet, do you?”

**

Around this time, I fell into a little band of local misfits: The McConnell brothers—respectfully Blake, Blaire, and Barry. They were an extended family of all brothers that also included Bill, Brian, Bruce, and Brent. The grand total in the McConnell family was seven boys. I was astonished to behold such a large family. Amused, I took note of the fact that each brother’s name began with the letter B. “The next letter in the alphabet is C,” I quipped to Barry’s parents. They looked at me as if he had a third eye. They didn’t know what to make of me. They feared me because of my weird ass art, and because I had taken to riding a motorcycle. But I responded with a further joke: “Have you heard of birth control?” Of course my tongue was firmly planted in my cheek, but Mr. and Mrs. McConnell were deeply offended as they were stringent Catholics. Barry thought the whole thing was utterly hilarious.

Of all the McConnell brothers, I was inspired by Barry’s insanely inspired comedy. It was Barry who left me awestruck. One time, I had a seltzer bottle at hand and was stricken with a wicked whim and squirted Barry in the face. As if on cue, Barry immediately dropped to the floor clapping his hands together yelping like a seal! It was uproarious. I was astonished at Barry’s spontaneous zaniness and his impressive take of a seal to boot. Barry McConnell was hilarious and I took to him immediately.

The new gang proved to be certifiable lunatics looking for trouble and fun, but it was Barry and me who were not to be outmatched. “You guys are crazy,” said Blake. During the summer holidays Victor and the McConnell’s hung around store fronts like the Bowery gang sipping cokes and snacking on Cracker Jacks. There we were, young louts hanging around on the streets arrogantly popping gum, our running shoe laces carelessly tied and their jeans tattered. As a group of restless teens, we all agreed that life is all far too dull, far too uptight a world for unruly punks inclined to have fun and disrupt the social order. The gang looked to me and Barry to bring it on.

A test of true friendship was measured by letting a guy take a swig from your bottle without wiping it off afterwards.

“Hey, don’t hog it all, Pross!” Barry complained after entrusting me with his Coke. I gulped the drink and Barry snatched it from my hand downing the rest.

“Hey, I’ll let you have a sip from mine one day, McConnell,” I complained, wiping my mouth off. “Don’t flip out.”

Addressing a guy by his last name meant you respect him; it was a form of male bonding to call him as was by his sir name—as it was to insult him. Slighting a friend was merely a way of masking the esteem you felt.

“Hey, Pross, you nigger lipped my Coke, shit head.”

“Eat my shorts, McConnell.”

“Eat my mother, tool.”

“I will. I had to take a number.”

We attended the same church. The McConnell brothers and I weren’t interested in church, but the brothers were compelled by the authority of their parents. I was enormously inspired by the solemn atmosphere of the services, insofar as it served as a foil for his devilishness. But it wasn’t just that: I was also truly perplexed by the referential attitude that this primitive superstition elicited. It was this fascination with an irrational phenomenon that kept me enthralled during the actual services. The McConnell’s, especially Barry, simply hated the whole process. A religion that supposedly exalted love and joy was, in practice, a set of dreary duties and a source of agonized idiocy. A religion that was supposed to be a mighty hymn to salvation was actually a dirge.

Seeking relief from boredom, Barry and I would laugh ourselves silly during the actual services. What he found hilarious was the rigid solemnity of the rituals and the vacant expressions from people who looked as if they had just been chloroformed. Other congregation members looked as if they wished they were somewhere else and were called upon only by duty.

Finally, Barry’s restless nature came to full force. Born with an uncanny ability for mimicry, Barry gave way to imitating the minister’s speaking manner with an eerie accuracy that was both amazing and hilarious. He could make me laugh with a simple comical remark, a subtle infliction in the voice or facial expression. My laugher would inspire Barry to indulge further in his antics. Shortly, I would try to match Barry’s comic skills with my own brand of humor: funny pictorials of the congregation and the minister. In one of my drawings, the congregation resembled a flock of sheep and the minister was decked out in red leather lingerie. This, in turn, would get both of us laughing. Of course, the rest of the gang collapsed in repressed hysterics causing the blackest of gazes from the congregation.

Barry was not to be bested by me in the contest of being a holy disruption. On one occasion, when the preacher was delivering a particularly impassioned brim-stone-and-fire sermon, Barry suddenly rose from his seat and addressed the pew, his facial expression a deadly sober plate: “Please, everybody—don’t drink the Kool-aid!”

My friendship with Barry came to resemble that of the Siamese twins. We would skip school to see movies, slipping in the backdoor. Sometimes we were guilty of more serious offenses against the social order. This included trespassing to vandalism and shoplifting. There was one occasion when we were brought home in a police car to the gapping stares of the neighbors. But their penchant for remained undaunted well into their teens.

Barry now exhibited a definite gift for humor as he seemed to have an endless supply of one-liners. The sick joke was a plague of the town, and Barry was a major carrier. Sick jokes were everywhere, a nonfatal disease you picked up from drugs stores and pool halls. Barry had honed an uncanny ability to delivering a joke. He executed, with perfect timing, along with an astute ability for characterization, side-splitting jokes and impressions.

You never knew what to expect from Barry. He would stroll up to his friends and, with a malicious grin on his face, lay on an impression, a one-liner, or some sick little gem: “These kids go to Billy’s home,” Barry chirped, “and they ask Billy’s mom, ‘Can Billy come out and play baseball?’ And the mom looks at the kids in a weird way. ‘Why, you know he has no arms and legs.’ And the kid says, ‘That’s okay, we just wanna use him as home plate.’ And with the delivery of this sick little punch line, it convulsed us with laughter. Behind much of the laughter, for both Barry and me, there was much anger.

Drawing, as always, helped me during a traumatic period known as adolescence. My art served as both an escape and rebuke—an escape--from the crazy world I lived in. My teenage years were a period of the “angry rebel” and my attempt to be an authentic person in a bogus culture of trivial pursuits. I lived hermetically sealed within my mind, incased in my own unique and alternate universe of arcane interests from the community. I would be known to roar up and down a neighborhood street late at night on my motorcycle disrupting the peace and quiet.

I became an exceptionally cocky young man who demonstrated precious little respect for his elders and invariably said what I thought. I shocked others with a bold braggadocio and a devastating sarcasm. I had a tendency to voice my true thoughts about religion and politics with relatives and visitors. It took a stern and definite force. I enjoyed engaging anyone in inflammatory subjects and I felt justified in going for the jugular in the heat of debate. Joan became a more constant presence at the Pross home. She continued to get under my skin, and my outspoken manner remained a thorn in Joan’s side.

“Why can’t you just be like everyone else?” Joan admonished me.

“Why can’t you just be anyone else other than who you are now?” I retorted.

At school, my incurable levity and insolence earned me a few fist fights. And by now my raw talent for drawing was now employed to wreck havoc. My caricatures took a sharper turn in depicting various teachers, who attempted to put me in his place, in humiliating sexual positions. With each rendering, my drawing ability improved. The drawings served, as always, an emotional release. It taught me to laugh at the ridiculous and not to be overwhelmed by a feeling of incomprehension in the face of idiocy and evil. Art was a form of therapy. It was also a spiritual odyssey.

I had learned to appreciate the art of caricature. I appreciated it more so now than ever before. I enjoyed the spectacle of observing the reaction of anyone I nailed in a drawing. When people observed a grotesque drawing I had rendered of them in spot-on accuracy, they would dissolve in self-consciousness. This had a clammy, clinical kid of fascination to me. Though it makes one as disconcerted as witnessing an open incision, I got some amazing glimpses of my subject’s insides. What came out of it was a deeply ingrained self-doubt.

I knew at that moment that my art had the power to reach people.

**

Happily, not everyone responded with agitation to the drawings of this teen age caricaturist. Sam Ferguson, the owner of the dinner I frequented at the time, was blessed with a robust since of humor. Observing one of my renderings, he laughed with his whole body. His heavy-set frame would shake like a bowl of Jell-O resting on the clothes dryer in final spin. “You’re a crazy son of bitch!” Gus howled. “How do you think of this stuff?” In one drawing, I had Gus lurched over a hot stove stirring the day’s soup special as beads of sweat drip into the pot. In the background, one can see an unsuspecting customer slurping the broth of the day, bellowing, ‘Gus, I love the extra flavor you added!’ The drawing was framed and hung up in Gus’s office.

I realized that I could temper my art with light-hearted humor, the gentle good wit that my grandfather imparted to me—along side the acerbic wit characteristic of Barry McConnell. It was a dire wit that the outside world inspired in me, too.

It was here that this caricaturing punk learned that caricature has both a dark and light face to it. I also learned that the caricatures I drew—and the people who inspired them, were not confined to the community were I was raised. It circled the globe. It was the wider culture that my focus turned. My next targets were the Icons and Idols that the world enshrined.

**

This bio essay will appear in my book Icons and Idols. Feed-back and critiques are welcomed. :turned:

Edited November 21, 2006 by Victor Pross

[BAMF]

Yay! I will get to reading this as soon as possible.

[Rich Engle]

Me too on getting to read this... I think I'll print it out.

You're a Total Wild Man, Mr. Pross.

[BAMF]

That was awesome, Victor! You really were a badass! Hahaha! :devil:

When I turned sixteen, a conscious awareness of the adult world came into sharper focus: my overall impressions of adults was that they were fakes and liars, saying not what they thought, but rather what they believed would serve some particular purpose. Everyone was armed with an agenda and two-faces. It seemed to me that the world thrived on bullshit, self-denial, hypocrisy, deception and lies.

There was a constant display of smiley backslapping by people who maligned one another the moment backs where turned. There was an unvarying pageant of petty bickering over trivia and the sudden surfacing of years-long resentments best forgotten. All the forms of human flaws and ugliness to be found in the world—a world which insists on being imperfect---were on display before the juvenile artist.

In a manner as persistent as a drill cutting through stone, I didn’t give up my demand for reasons. Joan finally lost her temper, pushed too far by my challenges. “Oh, don’t be so childish!” she yelled, waving her hand in dismissal. “Why can’t you just accept some things without asking a lot of stupid questions?” Joan turned to her indifferent sister with a pleading mask. “Terry, seriously, why does he do that? Seriously, he should learn some respect. Too many questions ruin things. Why does he do that?”

Wow, I can definitely relate to those feelings you had. And I especially hate that some people think that questions are childish. WTF, mate?! I think you can read my mind, dude.

Looking up from the drawing with heavy hooded eyes, Kevin’s face reflected a thinly veiled anger that looked like a prelude to a man about to commit murder. He leaned into me and in a hushed voice he snarled, “You know, you come across like a smart kid…but you ain’t any better than anybody else. So don’t you forget that, kiddo. Okay?” I moved forward, looking Kevin Weber straight in the eye. “You don’t expect me to take you seriously while you sport that fucking mullet, do you?”

First of all, fuck Kevin. And secondly, that is probably the best burn I've ever heard in my life.

“Hey, Pross, you nigger lipped my Coke, shit head.”

“Eat my shorts, McConnell.”

“Eat my mother, tool.”

“I will. I had to take a number.”

Hilarious!

God, I really loved this, Victor. I can't wait for Icons and Idols!

[Victor Pross]

Thanks, Kori. I’m glad you are looking forward to the book. Now I know I have at least one buyer.

Regarding that short bio, if I had to narrow its theme down to one single sentence, it would be this line:

“My teenage years were a period of the 'angry rebel' and my attempt to be an authentic person in a bogus culture of trivial pursuits.”

There it is. You see, I don’t believe in rebellion for rebellion’s sake. Even during my heyday of being my “worst” I was always fighting for my best.

Around that time, I rode a Hog [motorbike for the layman] and decked myself out like Marlon Brando. But unlike Brando’s character in the movie “The Wild One” I was a rebel with a cause. When asked what he was rebelling against, Brando’s character in the movie answers: “What have you got?” That’s lame. To be against everything is to be for nothing. Rebellion for rebellion’s sake is for chicken-ass conformists. How is it conformist? Every second-rate faux fake is doing it, that’s why! How many people can you count on your right hand know what they are fighting against—in order to be fighting for something? I would probably say less people than you could count on the hand of a bad wood shop teacher.

What should one fight for? Well, read the single sentence I selected above, and make it your mantra. I have changed a lot over the years but the above has always been a constant. The only person you have to be better than…is the person you are today. And you are the only person who you have to do it for.

-Victor

Edited November 21, 2006 by Victor Pross

[BAMF]

Of course I'll definitely buy it! And I'll spread the word as much as I can.

You and Angie are both motivational speakers, if I do say so myself.

"The only person you have to be better than is the person you are today." That's totally my new motto.

[Victor Pross]

Angie totality motivates me. She’s just another reason to get up in the morning [she’s also a reason for going to bed in the first place]. Wa-Wa!

[BAMF]

Hahahaha! You plus Angie equals :heart: *plays a bass line* Bow-chicca-wahoo-wow!

Edited November 21, 2006 by Kori

[Victor Pross]

Kori, read all the posts. You communicate yourself well. Perigo is into singers who pitches are such that only dogs can hear, and their own brand of caterwauling is enough to break a Champaign glass. The gloss of “sophistication” given to it is because it is, after all, sung in a language other than English, but those Opera singers are still really singing about the same stuff Manson or Cash would sing about…you know...death, love, causes, betrayal, girls, guys, alienation...and the like. Girl, my tongue is only slightly planted in my cheek.

Edited November 21, 2006 by Victor Pross

[BAMF]

Looking at your caricature of Perigo, I really DO love it.

I can't relate to all the opera stuff. I respect that that's what he's into, but he seems to want EVERYONE to listen to that stuff. How boring the world would be...

[Victor Pross]

Kori, I’m not really into being too outspoken about someone’s tastes in music, it’s just rather disappointing to see someone’s selection more limited than the variety given on a children’s menu at Kelsey’s. It's not WHAT he's into--it's just so damn limited; he's so closed-minded and pig-headed. [Okay, that felt good].

There is so much out there—the world is an esthetic artistic oyster. Come, let us taste from this dish, and this dish, and that other dish. You know what I’m saying?

Hey, I have been giving you the hard-sell on Cash—but that’s not the end of my musical rainbow.

-V

Edited November 21, 2006 by Victor Pross

[BAMF]

Tell me more about your musical rainbow then, Victor.

You crack me up. I'll bet he's not heard a whole Marilyn Manson song, just like most people who pass judgment on him. "Oh! He wears make-up! What a freak!" :sick: Well, I do know one thing, and it's that since listening to Manson I have become a lesbian, a child molester, and a satan worshipper.

[Victor Pross]

Kori, here is just a taste of some of my favorite caterwaulers. It is a SHORT list. There is no particular order or logic, and I have painted my whacko stuff to each of them:

*The Beatles.

*Bob Dylan

*Elvis Presley

*Chuck Berry

*Dean Martin

*Jimi Hendrix

*James Brown

*Aretha Franklin

*Lily Frost

*Portishead

*Ray Charles

*Bob Marley

*The Beach Boys

*Led Zeppelin

*Muddy Waters

*Stevie Wonder

*The Velvet Underground

*Frank Zappa

*Otis Reading

*Dixie Chicks

*U2

*Rush

*Fats Domino

*The Ramones

*Green Day

*Nirvana

*Pink Floyd

*ELO

*TheWho

*Neil Young

*Blue Rodeo [Canadian]

*The Lowest of the Low

*David Bowie

*Public Enemy

*Pattie Smith

*Fleetwood Mac

*Cheryl Crow

*Collective Soul

*Janis Joplin

*The Band

*CCR

Deep Purple

*Fiona Apple

*The Pretenders

*Peter Gabriel

*Tool

*Cream

*The Stones

*R.E.M

*Chantal Kreviazuk

Whew, THEN I start a painting! B)

[Victor Pross]

didn't mean to double post :cry:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeSoQSx-kOY

PORTISHEAD! :w00t:

try it out!

Edited November 21, 2006 by Victor Pross

[Victor Pross]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii6uPFg-lfg

Jim Cuddy from Blue Rodeo: Pull Me Through [shot in Toronto]

This is for Angie :heart:

Edited November 21, 2006 by Victor Pross

[CNA]

Honey, you are an amazing writer !! I found myself totally absorbed and even re-reading and going back just to get a bit more. This totally freakin' ROCKS. The whole Kevin thing is just too much, fabulous. I found myself smiling, laughing, and clapping my hands literally, especially the whole mullet in your face fuck you come back. Wow. Totally had me bustin' up. You did a wonderful job on this. We get along so well now but we would have also gotten along very well in our youth, your rebellious nature would have matched mine perfectly.

I'll say what I said to you earlier. I should have read this last night as it would have perked my evening up even more but I was totally content and very happy talking with you and listening to your music !! But actually this is perfect to read it NOW because it perked me up and totally made my day. I'm not feeling well, came down with a nasty case of bronchitis. Since I'm not feeling well and very subdued today, this has totally perked me up, biting my lip and smiling. I'm glad I waited to read this until tonight because it has totally taken my mind off of not feeling well and being under the weather. I feel wonderful now. Thank you, honey. :heart:

Edited November 21, 2006 by CNA

[BAMF]

Bronchitis? Yikes! :shocked: I hope you feel better, Angie! *sends e-goodwill your way*

That is quite a list, Victor! I was glad to see Tool on there. Have you heard their somewhat new album, 10,000 Days? I especially liked the song The Pot off that album. I went to one of their shows when they came to Kansas City, and it was good (they're very good live), but there was a drunken idiot jumping in front of me the whole time.

I will check out all your links soon, I promise! I'm such a procrastinator. I should be doing my english right now. *sigh*

[Victor Pross]

Bronchitis? Yikes! :shocked: I hope you feel better, Angie! *sends e-goodwill your way*

That is quite a list, Victor! I was glad to see Tool on there. Have you heard their somewhat new album, 10,000 Days? I especially liked the song The Pot off that album. I went to one of their shows when they came to Kansas City, and it was good (they're very good live), but there was a drunken idiot jumping in front of me the whole time.

I will check out all your links soon, I promise! I'm such a procrastinator. I should be doing my english right now. *sigh*

Kori, put the Procrastination off for some other day!

Haven't heard that Tool CD.

Listen, why don't you Tube me, girl, with some music you wanna lay on me. I have been Cash-ing you to death, so it's your turn. ;-]

By the way, didn't I read somewhere that you like Fiona Apple?

[BAMF]

Bronchitis? Yikes! :shocked: I hope you feel better, Angie! *sends e-goodwill your way*

That is quite a list, Victor! I was glad to see Tool on there. Have you heard their somewhat new album, 10,000 Days? I especially liked the song The Pot off that album. I went to one of their shows when they came to Kansas City, and it was good (they're very good live), but there was a drunken idiot jumping in front of me the whole time.

I will check out all your links soon, I promise! I'm such a procrastinator. I should be doing my english right now. *sigh*

Kori, put the Procrastination off for some other day!

Haven't heard that Tool CD.

Listen, why don't you Tube me, girl, with some music you wanna lay on me. I have been Cash-ing you to death, so it's your turn. ;-]

By the way, didn't I read somewhere that you like Fiona Apple?

LMAO. I saw this shirt that said, "Procrastinators unite! Tomorrow."

You should check it out. The Pot, Vicarious, 10,000 Days, and Rosetta Stoned are my favorites off it. But there really aren't many other songs on it besides those.

I'll give you some tubes tomorrow. Gosh, I'm in a slump here. I really MUST do some homework. Only tomorrow and then Thanksgiving break! Woot!

I do like Fiona Apple. She's a badass as well.

[Victor Pross]

Feist - Mushaboom (2004)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVrqsRodOMY

Kori, Angie, everybody---Cananda's own FEIST. Maybe them there Americans don't know her, eh?

[CNA]

Damn, leave it up to Kori and Victor to hijack every thread they come upon, well, me included. Yikes. First it was the Fun Question thread now this one. I take it music is a huge aspect in our lives !! That's a pretty extensive list you got there, honey. Damn

Girlie Girl, thanks for the *e-goodwill* I'm definitely feeling better than I was earlier.

I absolutely loved that song, Jim Cuddy. Beautiful and a bit more love :heart:

Edited November 21, 2006 by CNA

[Victor Pross]

Damn, leave it up to Kori and Victor to hijack every thread they come upon, well, me included. Yikes. First it was the Fun Question thread now this one. I take it music is a huge aspect in our lives !! That's a pretty extensive list you got there, honey. Damn

I absolutely loved that song, Jim Cuddy. Beautiful and a bit more love :heart:

Shit, you're right, baby--we hijacked the thread! :fear:

One of us should start a YouTube music thread--share your fave tunes or bands!

As for Blue Rodeo and Jim Cuddy, that's one thing I would miss in Canada. Better bring the CDs so we can dance to these gorgeous tunes. ;]

Edited November 21, 2006 by Victor Pross

[Victor Pross]

Kori, Angie

Totally halarious! Johnny Cash wannabe! Too much, way too funny. This guy is serious!

[Great tune though].

[CNA]

Damn, leave it up to Kori and Victor to hijack every thread they come upon, well, me included. Yikes. First it was the Fun Question thread now this one. I take it music is a huge aspect in our lives !! That's a pretty extensive list you got there, honey. Damn

I absolutely loved that song, Jim Cuddy. Beautiful and a bit more love :heart:

Shit, you're right, baby--we hijacked the thread! :fear:

One of us should start a YouTube music thread--share your fave tunes or bands!

As for Blue Rodeo and Jim Cuddy, that's one thing I would miss in Canada. Better bring the CDs so we can dance to these gorgeous tunes. ;]

hey, I totally agree. Let's start a youtube thread for a music free for all. I have a lot I would like to share. You wanna do it? I'll do it or you should do it or maybe Kori should do it? You wanna, you wanna LOL

[Victor Pross]

Honey, you do it. Don't you think I start enough threads and do enough writing already?

Do it! Do it! Do it! :devil: