After a long week of working at the screen day and night, I just want to take the eyes off.

I have descended into a pit of stewing budget files lately. I draw when my eyes need a break from 40 ft wide spreadsheets on a 19 inch display.

When I was growing up, there was a boy who showed up one day for football tryouts. He had big hollowed-out eyes the color of coffee stains and flippers for hands. He didn’t make the team and neither did I.

We commiserated but didn’t become friends. I could never get over his coffee hollow stare and the slimy fishy smell of his flipper hands.

I was standing outside Taylor’s Music in West Chester on Saturday while my son was inside learning the nuances of the solo in Stairway to Heaven, I enjoyed a cold iced tea from Nick’s Cafe and watched the world stroll by in the summer heat. There were pockets of twentysomethings on a pub crawl complete with t-shirts heading toward Jitters.

This girl — not on the pub crawl — was walking along alone at a hurried pace.  The look in her eyes said she had either seen too much of something or had seen something for the very first time and was deep in thought — sorting it out, trying to make sense of it.

Her thousand-yard-stare grabbed my attention enough to make me snap this cellphone shot real quick. She made no indication whether she heard the electronic shutter sound the phone makes — didn’t change her pace, didn’t flinch; no reaction to the flash going off full in her face. She walked on by.

I turned my head to see her continue West on Gay Street then take a left at the end of the block on Darlington.

A shadow distracted me. I looked down to see the iced tea-to-ice ratio in my cup was way out of proportion. Memo to myself: next time ask them to ease up on the ice at Nick’s.

I looked up and returned to my street gazing, East on Gay.

Tonight I was just about to shut things down at the office and head over to Victory to pick up a growler of their new Baltic Thunder Porter when the office troll popped up behind my desk and started gnawing on my display.

I said, “Dude.”

You pretty much have to beat him with stapler to get him to lay off the equipment and go back to hiding under the conference room table. He likes to give you those yellowy weepy eyes as a bid for sympathy. Doesn’t work on me.

It was enough of a hassle that the whole distraction put me off my post-work mission. I guess I’ll head over to Victory Friday night.

In my younger days I always wanted to do one of those New Year’s Day polar bear club dips in the Atlantic down the shore. Never got around to doing that. Will save that for later.

Started this over the Christmas break with the intent of filling the entire page with some line art stuff. My eyes wore out on me before I finished and I probably wont’ get back to it any time soon. The family is deep in the trenches fighting off the post-Christmas cold I introduced to the household. My popularity continues to soar around here.

Happy New Year.

This was the original sketch and after I scanned it I realized that the guy on his cell seemed aware of the car exploding — or he was just crazy talking on the phone.

Just to be clear that he was oblivious to the boom, I redid his eyes as you can see below, in the bonus doodle.

SeeqPod Music beta – Playable Search

foosbeer said…Zoe would like to request a doodle of a ghost playing XBox 360 with its eyes melting out of its sockets and brain dripping out of its ears.

My daughter complained that my rendering of what is left of the ghost’s brain (from too much TV/gaming) looks more like a chicken leg. My position is that the brain has rotted to the point that it was able to fit through the ghost’s ear-hole, thus providing the appearance of a brain dripping out of its ears as was requested.

If it looked more like a brain, it would never have been able to ‘drip’ out of the ear hole. Let’s be realistic here.