I finished my painting today, “Nude Nabs UFO”. You can click on the image below to see a larger version.

I started this one last week during an en plein air painting session on a pocket beach near Davenport with my painter pal Vernon Head. I had the rocks and the water, and I added the UFO, modeling its shape on the lid of my water bottle. And at home I put in the two nudes, to liven things up.

The scale of the flying saucer didn’t look quite right, and it wasn unclear how far away it was, so I had the guy take hold of it, thereby shrinking it and bringing it into the foreground. I have it casting a shadow like a beach umbrella onto the California woman to further anchor its position. And finally I had the idea that the guy is shaking the UFO, and two of the little aliens inside are falling out.

Here’s what the beach “really” looked like, by the way. But, I submit to you, what is reality? I far prefer a world where a nudist nabs a UFO!

I washed my painting clothes and I’m going out again today.

As always, you can find info about aquiring prints and originals of my paintings at my Paintings Page.

[Relatively cheerful street preacher at the Jazz Fest in San Jose.]

This week for whatever reason I’ve been listening to Al Jourgensen and Ministry’s 1991 song “Jesus Built my Hotrod”. The audio “Red Line/White Line? is the longest, but the video version is quite substantial. The sound of a passing race car is in some ways like a industrial-metal riff. The vocals are performed by Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers. “Where you’re goin’ don’t matter because it weren’t never there.”

I’m still working on the beach picture that I started near Davenport with Vernon last week. I posted draft 1 of the picture a few days ago, and today I finished to draft 2. It’ll take two more layers, I think. to nail it. For one thing, I want some little aliens hanging onto the saucer for dear life. And I might change the color of the rock behind the guy yet again so that he pops out better, or maybe I’ll put a halo around him. Not sure of the the title. “Roman UFO” “Nudists Capture Flying Saucer” “Classical Painting with UFO.”

I like how the figures are coming out, they remind me a little of the figures in the paintings of M. Louise Stanley, a really great SF Bay Area artist.

We went to the Jazz Fest in San Jose yesterday, it was fun to see people downtown. They had a lot of stages, with one of the stages actually inside the Fairmont Hotel, where I was at the World Fantasy Con last Halloween. We saw the Pete Yellin quintet, they played great, some Thelonius Monk and Charlie Parker songs as well as originals.

Another standout was Mia Borders up from New Orleans with her band. If you go to her site, you can hear her great songs off her new album Magnolia Blue. And here’s my picture of her above with, I think, her bassist Pablo Gonzalez.

It’s always nice to get into the street outside the AC hotel, into the August city street. Rock on, Mia, tear it up!

I had a friendly crowd at the Borderlands reading on Saturday, and we sold some books and prints. Thanks to Jude Feldman for organizing it.

[Some of my fans.]

I talked a bit about the origins of the Ware Tetralogy, read the brain-eating scene from Software, a cheeseball vs. moldie scene from Freeware, and a juggling moldies scene from Realware. And then we had some Q & A. To hear the talk, click the button below to go to Rudy Rucker Podcasts.

It was nice to spend the day in SF. We hit one of my favorite restaurants, Esperpento, a tapas place on 22nd near Valencia St. We’ve been going there for years, the place even appears, come to think of it, in my novel Freeware, where Sta Hi Mooney is abducted right outside by a giant flying pterodactyl made of flickercladding piezoplastic. Those were the days!

I’m nearing the end of a streak of five short stories that I’ve worked on this summer. I’m still mulling over what to write next. Today I’m back to thinking a sequel to Frek and the Elixir might be a good idea. Questions of what’s marketable play a role in these decisions too.

Sooner or later the Muse is going to show up and tell me what to do. I just ordered a Philip Jose Farmer book with some stuff that I need in it: Venus on the Half-Shell and Others. The book has Farmer’s fake Vonnegut novel, Venus On the Half-Shell, originally marketed as being by one Kilgore Trout. Plus it has “The Jungle-Rot Kid on the Nod,” a pastiche of Edgar Rice Burroughs in the style of William Seward Burroughs, obviously something I need to read.