Attache

March 9, 2012 was my last journal on deviantART. I didn't go out with a bang but I did go out wishing birthday wishes upon someone I hold dear: The lovely and talented artist . She is the reason I'm back here today.

Before I get into that, it's worth mentioning that I didn't quit dA out of some perceived slight or outrage or issue with the site. It's entirely possible that no one will remember me so I'll just remind anyone who cares that back in the day I was mostly here commissioning art. My gallery is all commissioned art, in fact, and I still love all of them. But after enjoying this hobby for about a solid year or so, my wallet really could no longer stand the strain. By the time I was making this realization, I had also done some extra work on The Guild, some convention work with Team Unicorn, and was about hip-deep in a metric fuckton of new friendships which taxed my time and finances. The baby steps I'd taken over here at dA reconnecting socially with the world were actually paying off and with Facebook taking over as my default social media medium of choice - it was really tough to be on dA and see all the awesome art and not be able to afford it anymore - something hard to give. I let me premium membership slip away and just occupied myself with other things.

The other day I was feeling pretty nostalgic about deviantART. I have a few Facebook friends that originated here and they are important in my life. I owe this site a debt of gratitude. It fulfilled a deep seated need back in the day to desperately find some beauty in the world. And while the art did that awesomely for a really long time, it was when I started to see the beauty in other people that life really started to turn around. Again, one of those people was Anna Marine.

A couple weeks ago, Anna and her sister discovered that their father Sergey has lung cancer. All things considered, he has a real chance at a full recovery but the news came at a horrible time - Anna's sister just lost her job a month ago and only Anna is working right now. In Russia, treatment for cancer is very expensive and after much convincing, Anna agreed to let me set up a GoFundMe for her father to collect part of the money. It isn't everything the family will need - treatment will be be somewhere in the neighborhood of $34,000 to $38,000 - but Anna hopes to sell her car and is really pushing her commissions and print sales. After a great start, we had a bit of a slow day but I am still confident that we can reach our goal.

We need donations and no amount is too small. If we could just get 4700 of Anna's watchers, followers, and customers to part with $5 each, we'd hit our goal easily. But what we need every bit as much as donations is shares. The successful GoFundMe campaigns tend to have shares in the hundreds or even thousands. Any help spreading the word or fundraising ideas are greatly, greatly appreciated.

Save Sergey GoFundMe Campaign

Anna's Etsy Shop

Thank you all so much for your time and attention. It feels good to be writing a dA journal after so many years - I just wish it was for a happier reason. 

Usually I try to do my birthday features on the faithful day in question but I'm heading out of town for the weekend so this gives you an extra few hours to fully prepare to lavish heaps of good wishes on our friend and new home owner !

Yes, that's right…on March 10th young Anna well be 17 years old once again for the 8th year running and while she hasn't aged a single day in the couple years I've known her, she continues to show more grace and charm than many people twice her age. Present company included.

I follow Anna almost exclusively on Facebook now and try to support her with various "likes" and shares on her activity. Because I have a pretty motley bunch of friends of all ages, I get a little bit of good natured ribbing from the fortysomethings for my promotion of a lovely young lady that appears to be about the same age as their sons and daughters. I have to affirm that while I am certainly not above finding a 24-year girl attractive (see my favorites for proof), I look at Anna and can only muster brotherly affection. She is just too adorable and good-natured for me to envision any other way. I can't wait to see all the successes she will get to experience.

If you're not watching Anna Marine, what the hell, man? I definitely encourage you to check out her art but let's enjoy some of her modeling:

:thumb289132994:  :thumb286681078: :thumb274859382: :thumb213677699: :thumb268233836: :thumb262859188: :thumb272780063: :thumb188430992:

You should definitely be keeping track of this girl because someday soon she will be BIG. Watch her here and find her at the following:

Official Facebook: www.facebook.com/officialannam…
Twitter: twitter.com/#!/anna_marine
Blog: anna-marine.blogspot.com/
Website: anna-marine.com/

Anna, many happy returns on this birthday. Enjoy your new home and the best birthday yet!

All of you know our good friend artist/model , right? Well, over on Facebook she is in a competition for the next couple of days to have her picture be the profile picture for Corsets UK in the month of February and you can help make this happen! All you have to do is have a Facebook account and "like" her pictures and that's it! Her loveliness will do all the rest!

You don't even have to "like" Corsets UK to like their pictures. It is so easy. Here are the Facebook links:

Picture 1: www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbi…

Picture 2: www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbi…

The set is just beautifully done and deserves to be loved and faved here on deviantART even if you do not have a Facebook account.

:thumb213677699: :thumb213391957: :thumb210937883: :thumb210503860:

But if you are on Facebook, get over there quick and like these pictures now. The competition ends on the 26th! She is doing quite well - as could be expected - but every little bit helps. I know she'll appreciate it.

Here we are just a smattering of days into 2012 and we're obviously just a couple clicks away from planetary Armageddon. S.O.P.A. and P.I.P.A. aren't even going to begin to compare to the C.H.U.D.s when they begin to rise from the underworld. Sure, a sharpened stick, fresh drinking water, and trusty 12-guage might just make you the Mr. Burns of your little post-apocalyptic Springfield but what you are really going to need is a calendar. Think I'm wrong? Okay, Smart Guy, you try calculating the half-life of Uranium-232 without knowing if it is a leap year or not.

Fortunately for you, I know of a purchase that will make everything better and if you hurry you might just get delivery before your mailman starts to crave human flesh. They're almost sold out so supplies are truly limited but you still have time to buy one...or one for every room in your house.

Cosplay for a Cause

The Cosplay for a Cause Calendar is giving 100% of the proceeds to the Japanese Red Cross Society for disaster relief and supplies are running out fast. I've had mine since October and I'm very happy with it. The costumes are truly spectacular, the artwork is top notch, and the girls are beautiful inside and out. I've met a few of them since my original purchase and the work they put into this hobby is completely amazing.

Want proof? It features the following fellow deviants:

                 

All that plus artwork from the likes of Mark Brooks, Eric Canete, Cully Hamner, and Brian Stelfreeze.

Just click on Cosplay for a Cause and that will get you right where you need to be for purchase. You can also access information about Cosplay for a Cause at the following social networking sites:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/CosplayforACa…
Twitter: [link]

And, for the next few days, you still have the opportunity to bid on a special copy of this incredible calendar that has literally traveled the globe collecting the signatures of all the cosplayers (and most of the artists) involved. I can assure you that your kids will be studying at the school of hard knocks in 2012 so they definitely are not going to miss a grand or so out of the old college fund. Bid now and help out a great cause: www.ebay.com/itm/150738657960?…

If I can be serious for a moment, what Japan experienced with the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami last year was truly horrific and the aftermath is ongoing, expensive, and devastating. I know as well as anyone that it is very easy to get caught up in our own issues and problems and kid around about 2012 but for many Japanese people, 2011 must have seemed like the end of the world. Even if you have no interest in cosplay, please consider other charitable donations to aid these ongoing efforts. Thank you.

Let me say up front that I've always liked Seth Green. He came on my radar way back with It and then deadpanned his way into my heart with his work on Buffy. I still say that he was the most consistently funny element of the Austin Powers movies and by all accounts is a swell guy. Seth Green's presence on a project nearly always perks up my interest.

As much as I like Seth Green, I never really wanted to be Seth Green. Nothing against him – it's just that for all my myriad of faults, my self-improvement fantasies gravitate towards building a better me who is kinder, stronger, and more successful than my current incarnation. No matter how much I might admire someone I don't, as a rule, want to supplant my being with another body or persona because I'm just that special, dammit. They told me that in school!

I happened to meet Seth Green's wife Clare Grant this past Saturday. I spotted her in the lobby of the L.A. Convention Center at the Comikazee Expo and walked over to introduce myself. My boldness was only facilitated by the fact that I had agreed to help out the Team Unicorn booth on Sunday and we had already exchanged emails. Both her and fellow team member Rileah Vanderbilt were exceedingly gracious but something in Clare's sparkling blue eyes told me that my semi-unisex first name had them expecting a nubile female, not a paunchy middle-aged man. The opportunity had come to me via my affiliation with The Guild as an extra and I had agreed to do it because of my fanboy affection for yet another Team Unicorn member Michele Boyd. Michele had appeared in Seasons 2 & 3 of The Guild and her performance as the semi-sadistic Stupid Tall Hot Girl Riley (inspired, amazingly, by fellow TU member Rileah Vanderbilt) had earned my fandom. I have to admit that my main motivating factor for helping out Team Unicorn was a desire to help Michele and after Clare was kind enough to walk me inside as a vendor so as to forego the line that was hundreds of people deep, we parted ways with me fairly certain that my unexpected penis had lost me the gig. It was like losing my spot in Danity Kane all over again!

Amazingly, Clare sent me an email that evening thanking me in advance for helping and confirming for the next day. I woke up to Sunday rain, traveled to downtown L.A., bought and lost an umbrella from 7-Eleven within 12 minutes and arrived on time to spend my day with Team Unicorn.

For the uninitiated, Team Unicorn is a multi-media production team that came on the scene in 2010 with their parody song G33k & G4m3r Girls. The team consists of the three aforementioned ladies and probably the most adorable Unicorn Milynn Sarley. The video hit a million views in a week and Team Unicorn followed up with production shorts like A Very Zombie Holiday, superHarmony, and Alien Beach Crashers.

As taskmasters, the girls of Team Unicorn were very sweet to me. Michele did snap at me once for straying too far from the booth when she needed me but she did it with a smile and I was thanked by each girl probably a half dozen times. Getting to see how much these girls appreciate their fans was a treat and I can attest that all of them are geekier than me – they talked about games and aspects of geek culture that went way over my head. If they saw a cool costume, they were excited beyond measure. Add to the day some good conversations, a prank on Jace Hall, the wide-eyed adoration of every little girl who laid their eyes on the stunning Milynn Sarley, and Clare's penchant to give out the occasional drive-by hug (she was on roller skates), it was a pretty fun day for someone whose original Sunday plans were to stream Mad Men, watch Dexter in the evening, and settle into sleep feeling like I'd wasted another weekend. Having helped out these four lovely ladies, I left the L.A. Convention Center feeling productive.

Oh, and I also left wanting to be Seth Green. Just a little bit. He is a fortunate man.

Hell, I not only wanted to be Seth Green but Rileah's husband Adam, and whichever souls have the good fortune to hold the hearts of Milynn Sarley and Michele Boyd. Yes, I wanted to be a ginger-crested chimera made up of unknown man-parts and possessing a world-class deadpan, an eye for pacing and story, and the affections of four stellar women.

Alas, I will have to settle for their appreciation. And anyone who reads this would have my appreciation if you check out the following links and see if any of the Team Unicorn products interest you. These girls fund their productions from the sale of this merchandise and I want to help them out in whatever small way I can. Read it, fave it, and share it. Help spread the word and join the Uni-Corps!

Links
Official Site: teamunicornftw.com/
Store: store.teamunicornftw.com/
You Tube Channel: www.youtube.com/user/TeamUnico…
Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/TeamUnicornFT…
Twitter: twitter.com/#!/TeamUnicornFTW