finding a silver lining.

[malcolm]

last summer, i got together with the local owner of zmoke city, a cigar/cigarette shop out her ein apache junction.

now, i've been going there ever since they first opened and know sami personally. And i really like dhis design he had for the shop which was of a devil clad in a smoking shirt with a fedora, veyr jim mahfood looking in front of a city scape but i always thought to myelf "that would be so much hotter if it was a devil chick instead of a guy.'

so i drew up a female version of him named "sindy".

sami really liked it. like dit so much that he wante dme to do other designs for him because he was getting into making his own teeshirts and wanted some stuff for his employes as well as to sell so we got together at one of his houses-he also own rental properties and we sat down and 'brain stormed" with his graphic designer from california which turned more into a

"yuo dont know what you're talking about because you dont have a college degree or a laptop, stoopid noob" type conversation.
anwyas, even with that, i trudged on. whipped out about thirty designs for sami including website graphics and non cigar shop related materials as well as a painting.

all of which, after meeting with his graphic designer he told me they were total crap more or less or too pixelly for his machine etc.

anyways, he decided to pay me eventually but no such a payment as a gift of a humidor and a halfs worth of acid cigars (around a hundred and twenty dollars in value) and a quick lunch at soem fish place.

fair enough, i have for the longest time felt art was more important than money anyway so i was cool with that and then he quit talking to me until it came towards november. now, during this time i was busy at spirit, the sword shop, drrawing some flash designs for a friend and fiddling around with video game sprites for another friends video game project-which fell through- and he wanted to brain storm with me on designs for the winter shirts.
something not christian but holiday still no santy claws either. so i said "hows about snowflakes"
thinking like a cascading marc ekko theme.
he liked the idea and i started working on it but he never got back with me on when he wanted it.

so i figure he just decided to not do the design or whatever.

wrong.

I go in back in january fopr soem top and papers and there they are, the snowflake design i was talking about only these looked terrible. i mean hardcore fucking terrible.
so i snickered about it looking so bad with mary, the one who runs the shop and went home.

well, we finally went back today to get some top-we buy it from food city now cus it's the only other place you can get menthol roling tobacco and we go in and he's got shirts as far as the eye can see done in some of those designs he was telling me looked like crap only now they were cleaned up by his graphic designer.

now, im not mad about the designs being used, im not. i was payed albeit not in the original fashion we had discussed when i first started drawing the designs up on my computer but im more irritated in how these designs were crap to him at first and yet now hes using them for his shirts and they look just fine.

so whats' the silver lining?

atleast i got to see his girlfriend butt ass naked when he was busy playing pool downstairs.

but have you ever had one of these situations in your life as an artist? where you worked your ass off to do something and got screwed pretty much in the end?

oh and his girlfriend? very hot. she used to be a stripper.

[Dusk]

Wouldnt the bare ass nekedness already be a silver lining?

[malcolm]

Wouldnt the bare ass nekedness already be a silver lining?

that Was the silver lining lol

[Dusk]

So you just want the lining to be a bit thicker?

[malcolm]

no no no.

I was counting my losses and profits over this failed venture, more losses than profits mind you and in the end, i got screwed over big time but atleast i got to see his girlfriend naked which would have pissed him off royally if he knew that i did