Dear Friends of Jano,

We now return to our regularly scheduled program.

Huh?

A series of flashbacks of my art journey since the summer of that fuck boy 2016.

OOOOOOOOH

Right now that my special issues are out of the way, we go back to where we left off. 2017.

Man, two thousand fucking seventeen. Holy fuck my niggas it was a legit a god damn motha fucking journey.

Was it as bad as 2016?

No, but I promise you it felt like an RPG at some point in this journey. Spoiler alert we will get to that in a few issues.

But for now we are gonna enjoy simple times and talk about the first photoshoot I did of last year. Spoiler Alert I got paid for it. YES LAWD * Anderson Paak voice. I could afford life for a brief moment in my continued unemployment stint.

One Friday night in January while I was watching YuYu Hakusho when right at Yusuke and Sensui were starting their battle, my phone went off. Hermit me was like who in blue hell is emailing me. It was my actress homegirl England Simpson. Her and her twin sister wanted to do a photoshoot, and the theme of it was to be similar to Beyonce’s Lemonade music video.

Ok so this may piss some people off (Oh well) but I don’t like Beyonce enough to keep up with her music. She is ok but do I care when she release something, nah not at all.

So I watch the Lemonade video to see what they want. Real Shit main thing I saw was a plantation. What? It couldn’t have been just me. Then went to my Bff Google to see if Charlotte has any plantations and holy fuck it does. Legit wasn’t ready for that. Damn the monuments of slavery still fucking exist along side systematic racism and oppression.

FIX IT OBAMA PLEASE!!

Remember when I said 2017 was a journey. Well this was the first part of the literally journey. Spoiler Alert, I drove around a lot last year scouting locations.

So I spent my Sunday plantation hunting, yes that was a legit a thing.

The first place was a pass and honestly not worth describing past this sentence. Place two, hot damn. I arrive and as soon as I pull into the property this old white meth face lady hits the gas and follows me like I am a runaway slave. At some point we both open our windows, I lead to ask her some questions. Her answer was basically leave nigger before I Lynch ya.

Well damn.

Then she drove to chase someone else down. Look Bitch if you don’t want people to visit, close the fucking gate to your low budget Candy Land. Points if you caught the Django reference. Should have burned that whole bitch down.

Place three was a legit charm, well despite the fact that it was a plantation. As much as I hate slavery, I legit never saw myself looking for a plantation. Anyway Latta Plantation was the location and it ddef had that old colonial vibe of Lynch a nigger, rape his wife and then raise the child to be a foot stool, Ding Ding Ding we had a winner. Thank you for still existing a racist ass testament to the dark ages.

I email my friends and tell them that we are all set, Kinda, turns out they would be closed on the day we wanted to shoot.

Fuck. But do I give them points for being closed on Martin Luther King Jr day? Nah cuz it is still fucking plantation.

We defaulted to Independence Park which is off Hawthorne Lane….not Independence Boulevard….wait what? Fuck it. Anyway nigga it was cold as fuck. I need to get that out the way before we continue to establish the setting of this narrative. England and Ingrid had their poses already worked out and how they wanted to go, which made the shoot go faster was fine since it was cold as fuck. Did I say it was as cold as fuck earlier? Just making sure. I think I had one idea I wanted them to bring to life but that was it, and I’m Kool with that.

And that’s all folks, we came back to my place and they picked out their photos as well what they wanted edit wise.

To see some of the pictures from that project, click here.

Real shit I would type more but I think I’m done now. I’m going to indulge myself in Final Fantasy 7 for the first time. I know I’m 20 years late with that. Same with me just now starting to listen to Incubus. Either are a good distraction from recent depression episodes and this existential crisis. Yeah those are loads of fun, not really.