Well here we are March 2021, a whole year into a pandemic.
Fascinating.
Terrifying and sobering as well. I’m glad I gave up hope of going to concerts and anime cons again. At this point wondering when this pandemic is going to end is like how many episodes there are left until Namek explodes. Just long as shit for no valid reason.
Anyway.
Time for another care free issue with less drama than any previous issue, Rpg or anime I’ve watched in general.
Side Quest time.
It is weird typing issues like this. But also, Spoiler alert, I’m still in the search of the last 2 “infinity stones” that I began in 2017.
UGH. We can talk about that whenever the fuck I get there….hopefully soon. Watch me finish my comic series and my infinity gauntlet around the same time…prob next year. This is all I live for. Wait, is that why some of ya’ll are still tuning in each month? Am I your new favorite saga, Jano Bizarre’s Art Adventure.
AWWW SHIT NIGGA!!!
Need a reminder of said stones before I continue? Sure take a gander or reminder depending how often you have been to my website. I should name these stones while I’m at, right?
So here we are summer of the trying times of 2020, corona has crippled the world. Literally. Activities are limited, bodies are crippled and demolished by the fiend known as corona. Meanwhile protest for social justice spread like wild fire, since cops seem to literally get away with murder for killing black people.
STILL.
If this sounds like an intro to a dystopian nightmare it is because it was the trying times of 2020, spoiler alert.
I had finished coloring act 2 of my comic series, and decided that my break needed a break. After months of my back curling up like a snail shell design.I decided to focus on helping the nonprofit I am apart of, called Back to Black.
But Jano what is Back to Black?
WELL, essentially it is a non profit organization whose goal it is to help improve the black community. It was started by my friend who I met at UNC Greensboro. One day in Fall 2019 I was picking up an order from her hair and beauty store, because ya know I need to stay pretty and have my curls flowing.
YAAAAAAAAAS.
We decided to get dinner the next day catch up and talk about things, and she told me about her non profit dreams to help the black community. I told her you need to pursue the vision you were given, because if not there is no point in having them.
A month later when we met up for a college friends bday, I found out she added me to her staff. MAN I was not ready, at all. I have non profit experience from the past decade of cotton field experience, but still.
Moral of the Story, sometimes I can be inspiring when I am not talking shit.
Fast forward to last summer, so I guess we are now just…rewinding….wait how does this work?
Anyway. She had planned to do a photoshoot for the clothing line we were launching. The initial goal was to use our fellow staff members, but life was like nah.
Insert me, and having friends. There is a 90s after school lesson somewhere.
I hit up my friend who helped me get the 90s stone….I really need to think of better name for these stones. I asked her would she, her boyfriend and other friends be willing to model for us. The concept was simple, black people living their best life and be unapologetically black. They agreed luckily, because this literally was a last minute thing. We met up at Camp North End under the scorching summer sun. It was a pretty chill event actually….despite the sun emitting full oppression nigger heat.
Like I said this this isn’t a dramatic thing, no long expose’s, no existential dread.None, no such things exist…
In this issue.
We decided to do another one at another time, but in downtown Charlotte a few weeks later.
And that’s it. Fade to black. End scene.
Wait, not yet. But thats all for the events of this issue. To check out the byproducts from the day the sun enter the group chat go forth here. Also check out the music page and CBD hemp store of one of the models.
Man I actually worked a full summer, that hasn’t happened in years. Def not a fan, even though I did get to do fun things this summer. The price of freedom yields monetary gain for joy. Yay Capitalism…. I suppose.
Anyway.
This another entry in the existential Infinity stone saga that started in the wee early days of 2017. For those keeping up this would be the fourth stone of the arc, 2 more and I’ll have a full set.
Side note, As I type this I am still in search of those two stones. As long as it has taken to get to this point I hope that they are worth it.
MAN, on god nigga, on GOD my nigga this concept was pretty simplistic, it was. But for some reason it took a year and four months to achieve it.
Spoiler Alert.
Who remembers that one part of the mermaid saga when I said I went to go scout Midtown Park for a possible shoot location? Well I am piggy backing off that for this issue. When 2018 started I remembered that location on that aggravating as fuck day. Couple that and the random images I see on the internet from Instagram and Pintrest, an idea gestated in my mind. I decide to do a 90’s era photoshoot.
But Jano that sounds like it would be simple to pull off. Why did it take so long?
Have ya’ll not been paying attention to my life? How often are any of my ideas simple? Exactly. I promise this art journey comes with more side quest than most modern video games. I should have hella trophies unlocked now. Fuck I should have bonus points for cussing anyone out. Wait would I get a trophy for actually loosing my cool? I might go for a trophy next time I get hit with some 1080 HD 4k fuckery.
I was scrolling through my IG timeline and thought to ask this girl I follow and models, who I thought would do it. I had asked her to model for me in 2017, but I didn’t really have an idea in mind unlike this time. I approached her with the idea and the time frame I wanted to do it, Ie when it wasn’t cold as fuck. She was down for it.
YEET.
I wasn’t saying Yeet last year, but I am now, So fuck it. Time travels is a fluid concept.
Eventually I bought an Old school 90’s boombox, ya know the type you would see on TV. The type you can carry on your shoulder and disturb all the peace, but be harmonious to yourself and those who appreciate the genre of music you like. I found some old blank cassette tapes I had in my room from when I use to actually listen to the radio, and record music off.
MAN the nostalgia of simple times, take a nigga back. Not gonna lie tho Spotify is def the best, especially since I can’t stand what is on the radio nowadays.
At this point we are in Mid March. I emailed her asking what songs would she want on the mixtape. I like going for a full effect of what the fuck I am trying to shoot if I can.
Ya’ll bitches be the worse. They do, the absolute fucking worse.
I would email her, and assuming that not everyone checks their mail all the time (even though our initial conversation about what I was trying to achieve with this shoot was via email and she replied, but whatever) I would message her asking if she got my email as a prompt for her to check it. Bitch would leave me left on read, but on god would like all my memes. All of em.
Bitch Whet???
At some point when I attempted to communicate with her, she did reply saying that she hadn’t checked her email. I took a screenshot of the msg and sent it to her via IG DM’s….and still no reply.
FUCK IT.
Just absolute fuck it.
Ya’ll think this is bad, wait til we get the last 2 stones. Oh boy those are true anime arcs, long as fuck. Filled with Daunting moments of existentialism.
Timeline wise we are near the nigger heat summer of 2018. I got laid off from my job, so I was free as fuck. Figured I’d make the best of my time the best I can. It was upsetting because on the photography part of the art journey, you can’t do a photoshoot without a model. And unlike the mermaid saga and the candy queen arc, this wasn’t a difficult concept.
AT ALL.
Summer came and I would fill my days of being laid off of going to restaurants, of stuffing my face, working on acts 3 and 4 of my book, while using their wifi to play hours of music on Spotify. At various points I would have random text conversations with friends.
One friend in particular, I was telling her about the aforementioned events. And she said she would do it. Awe struck I was, especially since she told me can’t be out in the sun for too long. Truthfully I had thought about asking her, but there was reasons I didn’t. Mainly because us hanging out is always difficult, typically the days we have attempted to hang out something always happened. At this point in time, we had only seen each other 2 times….
…and we had known each other for a few years. I know adult friendships are hard but this was final level boss hard.
I knew better, but hoped for the best.
Unfortunately the same patterns repeated themselves. The days when we had made plans to meet up to pick the songs for the mixtape, something drastic came up on her end. And at some point I stopped hearing from her for a while, found out who later on why which has no bearing on the rest of this issue.
Again this project was dead in the water. I kept searching, and eyeballing people of who I would want to do this. Eventually I started working a new job in October and 2018 ended and 2019 arrived.
Now we are getting to the climax of this story.
At some point in the cotton field I became cool with one of the fellow slaves. Due to the weekend shift being dissolved, her and a few others were now part of my shift. As time went on I noticed she had a 90s aesthetic. I figured maybe I should ask and see would she model for me.
So one February day in the cotton field I asked.
She seemed squeamish to the idea, but gave me her email anyway so I could give her all the details of what I am trying to do for the project. She told me she would give it some thought, I was like Koolio beanzo.
However, *deep sigh*
Her started to get complicated for various reasons which I don’t feel like typing. But emotionally she was starting to go through it. The tiny part of me that is humane thought it would be in bad taste to ask her about it.
I promise this could have been so simple, but was like Nah Nigga.
Anyway, One week I saw an art event on Facebook about Art, Beer and Chicken. And this nigga likes chicken and art.
Spoiler Alert.
Friday came, and I made an effort to stay awake post cotton field. If I passed out like I usually do I would have not made there at all. I got there and legit didn’t plan on seeing anyone I know at all. I didn’t. Social skills was not a thing I was planning on using that night.
Ironically enough I did.
At some point I went to the restroom, came back and while I was waiting in line there was a girl ahead of me in line. I recognized the green hair and the pointy cat ear frames, internally I was like I think thats a person I follow online. And it was.
You know how you what if scenarios play in your head? Well sometimes I have ones where I’m out and someone who follows me online sees me and they go OMG you are so kool, nice to meet you, you are hilarious as fuck. Well thats what happened.
We catch eyes and she starts talking to me, and me being the awkward, tired person I am finds myself in a scenario I legit never thought was gonna happen especially since I didn’t think I would run into anyone that night. Oh irony. We talk for a few mins, goes off to grab some food and thats it for our interaction for the night. I see her with 2 other people, but don’t go over to them because I legit didn’t wanna be a odd as fuck spare wheel who is socially awkward. At some point I leave to go home and pass out, but before I do send her a message sorry if I came off awkward as fuck. She said it was kool, she thought she was awkward and I was like nah you were ok.
Awww tender moments.
Ironically enough, I ran into her the next day at Abari’s block party and it was like we were friends from 10 years ago. It was me, her, the two guys I saw her with last night and my homegirl. It was a pretty chill day. At some point I started to think maybe she would model for me.
The following week I asked my aforementioned coworker when did she want to work on her mixtape. Man the apprehension and nervous on her face was all the answer I needed, and after a discourse she told me my least favorite words when it comes to a photoshoot.
I’ll let you know.
Essentially those words are nails in a coffin for me, because no one ever lets me know shit. Spoiler Alert, its several months later and I still have not been let known anything. I decide to message my recent internet friend to real life friend, and she said would totally be down.
YEEEEEET!!!!
HOLY FUCK, THE YEEET I FELT DEEP IN MY HEART. The ball started rolling finally. Something that should have happened last fucking spring finally was happening.
We started an email correspondence, of what songs she would want on the mixtapes, when each of us would be free, and what not. Her playlist was crack on a stick. I somehow downloaded all the songs from Spotify using some program, and the transferred them to a cassette tape.
Kinda.
The transfer didn’t go as smooth as I had planned. First I had to order a new flash drive because my kool Transformer Ravage one fragged out on me. Even after that I didn’t get the order of the songs arranged like I thought. And for some reason the last 30 secs to minute of the song would abruptly cut off, which was really fucking odd considering the songs were downloaded in full.
Odd, but not odd enough for me to sweat it. We chose Easter Sunday to do the shoot. As excited as I was, I was also nervous as fuck. To be honest I was nervous that it would be a repeat event of Incandescent Spirits, where I had acted like I never held a camera before Plus this was the first photoshoot Ive done since August 2018.That was humiliating for me and I didn’t want that to occur again. At any costs. As usual I spent the day mentally preparing how I wanted this to go down. I had recently scouted the area again, since the last time I was there was August 2017.
She and her boyfriend arrived, which was kool because he helped carry some of the things that were brought. Oh I forgot to mention, she had never modeled before which really didn’t matter because she did a great job. She had made a comment how she hated how she looks in photos, and then I showed her and she was like well damn.
Not to be cocky, but thats usually the reaction when I show people photos of them. Nice how I make people believe in themselves….even though I am a legit asshole.
As the shoot went on we laughed each time a song ended abruptly, not gonna lie it was hilarious and annoying when it was a song we all really liked. At some point we called it quits for various reasons. She was exhausted from her job which I totally understood, and there was a still a good amount of the park to shoot. Plus there were other areas we had to skip over because people were shooting there already. And she wanted to do her make up better than she had for today. We ended it for the day, and did the 2nd half a week later.
MAAAAN Listen. She came out her car looking like Rachel True from The Craft and I won’t mad at it. At all. We did the rest of the park with no problems.
Wait, no there was a problem. So at some point this random old white man, who we presumed was homeless and drunk. Decided to piss in the area where we are shooting.
NIGGA!, There is a whole park for you to piss in and you chose the area where we are. Smells like racism and expired Budweiser. Cunt.
And after that I fulfilled my promise of feeding her when it was over. She originally wanted to go this sushi restaurant, but at some point we were talking about how I went to this Ecuadorian restaurant that my friend took me to while I was in Raleigh J.Cole’s Dreamville festival which led us to Viva Chicken. OMG blessed be Viva Chicken and the purple and yellow sauce.
YEET NIGGA YEET.
Also Dreamville Festival is where I heard the word Yeet. It was during J.Cole’s performance, and at some point after he performed Middle Child this white girl yelled it and it has been part of lexicon ever since. Damn White girls.
Anyway to see the images from this shoot that honestly should have taken this damn long go here.
With this the 4th stone was collected. Green did infect beat gold after all.
Don’t ask.
Anyway I legit just spent a good while typing this, and I’m all typed out plus hungry for some chicken.
Until next time.
2 stones left.
UGH.
On another note, my goal is to finish Final Fantasy 7 this month and finish Grave Destiny by Kalayna Price. Since ya know they should have been done along time ago.
Man I draw I some weird shit and I am ok with that.
A few weeks ago I said I would be doing 3 issues this month, well this is the 3rd one and which is coming out today on my bday. Yep I am that narcissistic to drop an issue on my bday, this year at least,
Man it feels good to just be fucking laying here, and not in the cotton field not getting whipped to do a repetitive task. Not gonna lie I’ve been drawing lately while I should have been picking mastas cotton, hell I redrafted that image while there HAAAA *Jadakiss laugh.
Speaking of that image is an invite for my bday party tomorrow. The actual invite has Sega font on it, excitement doesn’t begin to describe the way I feel when I found that font.The goal is to get schwifty as fuck tomorrow while rocking a portal gun….and hopefully not black out. Yeah that’s a thing, hey I actually didn’t last time I had a house party. Look at me being a responsible adult….kinda. Am I still an adult if I’m waving around a portal gun? Not like I can use it to exile nuggas from this time and space.
As far today goes the chill goals are gonna be tremendous. My main goals is to take a walk in the park while eating a mango.
Spoiler Alert Im serious.
And to watch some of my favorite movies. Hyper Speed Grandoll (OMG still a fave from when I was 16), Dope, and probably The Craft. Oh yeah to eat Japanese, gotta eat Japanese plus playing video games. Maybe continue playing Sonic Mania and Etta Bond like I did last night .MAN FUCK THE FLYING BATTERY ZONE that stage can suck my whole dick, veins and circles.
Huh Sorry, kinda.
Probably listen to Savage Garden, and oh shit Logic has a new CD.Time to vibe yo.
Anyway thats roughly gonna be my life today, hopefully ill see some friends in the process while having my hair out in full force. I’m hoping Ill check Spotify at some point and see Azealia Banks Fantasea 2 is released today, that would be a great bday present. YES LAWD *Anderson Pack Voice.
Alright, fuck it I’m done typing. I just woke up Im surprised I wrote this damn much. I updated my house party flyers here., minus the font of course. Don’t want y’all nuggas knowing where I live.