DerekDeal

Last night I was working late and Joey, fellow Axer, turned me on to an amazing discovery in the world of youtube. Nintendo/Rap remixes. Basically its just what it sounds like. 80s midi video game soundtracks with rap mixed on top. Sound lame? ITS NOT! I was blown away!! It fits amazingly well in some instances and since i cant post anything im working on anyway, this will have to do for now. Deal with it™

Ill start off with the best one

I dont know what’s more impressive here. The mix, or this guy completely raping this blizzard man level.

BATTLETOADS!

Ive been jamming this Kid Dynamite Tribute most of the day, some great bands and covers on it. Spread the word and embed it!

I just got my Back in Black 2 AXEcutioner shirt in the mail and it looks and fits incredible. Vertical Merch did a great job with the print, also its the second (released) shirt that me and Horsebites collabed on so im really pumped on it. There’s only 2 more days left to pick this sucker up then its gone forever and ill totes have to stop talking about it. Sorry for the crappy iphone pic….

You can order your’s right here!

I also got a sick bag of merch from my good friends over at Rockett Clothing. Im set for life! Well, maybe just till summer’s over. Speaking of summer, who wants to go camping!!!

Today is the last day i can whore out my Threadless design for votes. Seems like it was received fairly well, but this was my first time over there so who knows. If you want to see it printed there’s only a few hours left to support it. As for the people that already did go over there and vote, thanks so much. For your reward i thought id share with you the bounty of one of my favorite internet past times, finding horrifyingly creepy videos of robots on youtube. enjoy!

unsettling

ok, that’s creepy

AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

VIDEO BONUS!

just wait for it…

Last week i finished up a job for a clothing line called Antix. Im pretty stoked on how it came out so i thought id post it up here. Lucas has a thing for Tom Selleck, dont we all, so he wanted me to jam on something featuring the 80’s hairy heartthrob. Of course, i made it all about Magnum P.I. which was one of my favorite tv shows growing up. I dont even know why, i was super young when it was around. I just remember alot of saturated colors, attractive ladies, a bitchen helicopter and a gorilla dude with a killer mustache and a little hitler looking man-servant. Oh, I guess that’s all it was. I think i have to give credit to the theme song too though. It just gets you so pumped! It makes me want to drive red cars and wear brightly colored Hawaiian shirts tucked in. Watch the opening credits about 5 times like i did and check out the design. I think its up for sale in the Antix store too in a couple different colors.

The Back in Black 2 event was this past Saturday and needless to say, it was incredible! I had a great time hanging with friends and making some new ones. Huge props to PaleHorse and Hydro 74 for pulling off an amazing event! Everything looked incredible and good times were had. We slammed drinks, bought some wicked tees, and took a bunch of embarassing photos. Thanks to everyone who came out and supported the event and bought a shirt. Im stoked that anyone even considered buying our Axecutioner tee next to all of the other incredible designs that were there. I was extremely humbled and honored to be a part of it. Here’s some pics from the drunken maylay.

Palehorse, Horsebites, and Jeremy..um..horse with the pregame

Hydro 74, ISO50, Palehorse

Lazyeye from Emptees came by and said what up cuz he rules. We had a Home Depot paint mixer take the photo for us.

Me, Horsebites, Iso50, Palehorse, and Hydro 74 all sat down for a videotaped round table discussing tee shirts, voltron, and wild turkey american honey mmmmmmm. This was our view.

Jimmy Heartcore showed up to manhandle everybody. Im the headless guy to the left eating Chris Park’s foot.

no really, i was…see

Vertical Merch holding it down on stage at the event.

Laureen, Horsebites, Jeremy, Me and my hot wife Heidi

my boy Dave from Unkempt and Heather

Don Flameco and Glass Joe from Punchout™

oh yeah, we had a shirt design there, sweet!

Godmachine making everyone look stupid lazy!

i think at this point we were starting to get a little tipsy…

…ok, yeah, definitely

Thanks to Back in Black 2 and Justified Karma for supplying a majority of the images, you know, the ones that dont look like they were taken by a palsy victim . You can check out about 230 more photos of the event over at Palehorse’s Flickr Photostream. It doesnt come close to describing how awesome it was to be there, but it should give you a pretty good idea. Cant wait for the next one!

Ive had this design, The Big Bad Wolf was an Opportunist, on the backburner for a bit and decided to try my luck at Threadless for the first time. If you dig it enough to see it printed you can vote for it by hitting the image and heading over to Threadless in the next 7 days. If not, whatever, Im gonna try and forget it exists considering these things seem to take months. Thanks in advance for the votes though.

Saturday is Back in Black 2, hosted by Pale Horse and Hydro 74, and i couldnt be more stoked! You have to have heard about it by now, but if you havent here’s some videos to pump you up! Most of the Axe is going to be at Czar Saturday sacrificing some beers and slurring it up. Come say ‘hi’, by a shirt, and slam a beer with us. Also, Horsebites is turning 30 at midnight. We constructed a giant piñata filled with bean burritos for the occasion. Not really, but that would be the greatest thing ever!

Also, dont forget our shirt is on sale online until the 31st. DO IT!

Yeah so i left off, tired of typing, with me leaving Bamboozle drenched and longing for sleep.  The next day i headed out by myself again, since Heidi was working, this time i ended up in Soho. The weather was just as miserable as it was the day before, but luckily Rockett hooked me up with a fresh hoodie before i left Bamboozle so i was well prepared to front the elements. One thing you dont really consider when it rains in New York though is how much more dangerous it becomes to walk the streets. What i mean by that is everyone, except me, had the forethought to rock their umbrella. That’s potentially thousands of little umbrella knobs coming at your face at eye level. If i had my umbrella i could at least establish a perimeter, but all i could do was bob and weave, willy nilly, between all the would be gougers.  It only really started coming down every once in a while though so for the most part it was just crappy, not debilitating or anything.

Checked out a few places in Soho including Yellow Rat Bastard. That place ruled, and I was surprised to see a bunch of stuff from clients and collegues on the shelves including Iron Fist, Miles to Go, and Pyknic. I heard i should have seen my Acid Trip shirt there but no such luck. After that i Yelped™ an insanely delicious burrito cart and inhaled it on a bench next to some homeless dude. It was super weird eating next to him, maybe he thought i was going to save him a bite?  Sucked for him, it was so good i was licking the tin foil.

I then headed to Upper Playground in the East Village. It was a lot smaller than the one in San Fran, but still ruled. I grabbed a Jeremy Fish shirt that ended up being way too big and an Alex Pardee book for the road.

Later that night i went back to the village and hit up Angels & Kings to have some more beers with the Rockett crew. Closure in Moscow did an acoustic set that blew minds followed by Vinnie Caruana from The Movielife. I didnt even realize it was the dude, i just thought someone was doing covers. I was informed that i was an idiot and should probably drink more. I did, then i made my way back, missing trains and watching rats fight over french fries on the tracks all the way.

Tuesday was Heidi’s last day working so i headed to Brooklyn to hang with SkullWithHair, fellow Black Axer and Emptees terrorist. This is his front door, I got to know it pretty well standing outside of it in the rain for ten minutes.

I eventually made it in, and we ended up having an awesome hang sesh. We even banged out some sketches for a logo job which made me feel less bad for leaving for a week. Then we grabbed some crazy good fish tacos, fish burrito in my case, made fun of people for a bit, and then i headed back to midtown to finally hang with the wife.

That night we had some killer food at this place that served all meat substitutes in their entrees. She had coconut chicken and i had chicken parmesan. Both tasted crazy real and good. I should have opted for the real cheese though instead of the vegan, that was just a little too weird for me. We went to Angels & Kings again after but we were way too early for the Rockett party, so we hit a couple other places, decided the weather was just too much of a bummer and headed back to midtown.

Wednesday we decided that our goal was to get into a tv show taping. First thing, i hit up the daily show website for standby tickets. The third time i checked, 2 popped up, so i registered for them real quick like and within minutes had a confirmation email telling us what time we should be at the studio. stoked! We decided to hit up NBC to do the studio tour before we had to be back at Comedy Central since it was just a few blocks away. Once we got to 30 rock the guy at the ticket counter was pretty confident we could get into Jimmy Fallon if we stuck around. I guess the way it works is, every morning they issue anywhere up to a hundred standby tickets for the day’s taping. Up until that point in the day they had only given out 30 standby tickets, so we had pretty good odds, considering he told us that the day before they ended up letting in 55 standbys to the show. So eff it we said, and decided just to hang out in the area instead of having to rush over to CC later on.

Anyway, the studio tour was awesome. First they take you to the NBC Nightly News set with Brian Williams and show you all that, which is way smaller than it seems btw. The control room that’s behind him is actually just a huge lcd screen, i know, i was crushed too. Then they took us up to the SNL studio where you actually get to sit in the bleachers in the studio while they explain everything. And they really are bleachers, If i remember right, they got delivered there instead of yankee stadium way back and they just decided to keep them. That was a really cool experience because ive been a huge SNL fan since I was a kid, just being in the studio was a thrill. Then there was other stuff, um, they showed you the makeup process for SNL and crap like that, and they capped it off with a tour of the Today set on the first floor. Fortunately i didnt see Al Roker, it would have taken all of my being not to throw change at his dumb face (he sucks).

Lunch followed and later in the afternoon we went back to the studio to see if we made it into Late Night. When we got there they made us walk down a maze of hallways and wait outside the studio patiently until they knew how many they needed. Fortunately it seemed like a lot of the standbys before the #30 mark didnt show, so we were in a pretty good position (thats what she said). They told us 25 were going to be wrist banded and allowed in, we made it with about 5 people to spare before the cutoff. sweet! More hallways ensued and we got herded into another line, this one mixed in with people that actually reserved tickets for the taping. About 5 seconds later, a page grabbed me, heidi and these two other younger chicks and said he was putting us into the band bench and moved us to another line. Ive seen the show a lot so i knew that meant we were going to get to stand around the band when they played. Still not knowing the drill I asked if we would still be able to see the show. He informed me that we would as he made an awkward face like i had just let out a squeeky fart mid convo. So yeah, at this point we’re thrilled, we’re getting in AND we’re getting a pretty good shot at being on tv because of the band bench thing.

We waited there a while until the herd slowly started moving. This NBC security guy was getting super pissed off about the noise. Every few minutes he would yell at everyone and people would stop talking for about 5 seconds and then gradually start murmering louder and louder until almost louder than before. I felt like i was in middle school for a second except without the braces and flannel shirts. But anyway, more hallways, elevator, security and then we’re in!

The studio was pretty much exactly what it looks like on tv, maybe a little smaller feeling. We were sat in the 3rd to last row close to the aisle. They have a warm-up comedian come out and ask people where they are from and then make fun of their homeland, intertwined with obligatory instruction of how to behave and stuff like that. After that The Roots came out and performed and really got the crowd going, they were friggin incredible. As they played the crew was all dancing into their marks and then the show just kind of starts after a 10 second countdown.

Overall the show was pretty awesome, Amy Poehler was the first guest and she was hilarious. Then they had these two Mexican actor dudes which was alright and then the band, which was The National. For the music part they have the band bench walk down, on to the studio floor, and file them into the balconies surrounding the stage. It was kind of awkward because the band wasnt really that energetic, not bad or anything, just not anything you can really move to. So we just kind of tapped our feet and politely bobbed our heads. Heidi got some good tv time, I was basically just a silhouette standing behind her, which is fine with me. It was just rad to be in the middle of it all. After the band, they did their send off, and basically told the crowd…”ok,……leave”. So we did.

That was probably the last noteworthy thing we did. We just kind of screwed around until our flight back Thursday afternoon. Overall it was an incredible trip, i cant wait to visit the city again one day, i still feel like I didnt even make a dent in conquering all there is to do. Which is good, leaves plenty for us to do next time.

I just got back from a 6 day trip to NYC on Thursday. I had a blast, met a ton of great people, ate some killer food, and wore myself completely out. It pretty much ruled. I hadnt been to the big city since i was 15, and that was shaperoned, so this was my first experience as an adult i guess. My wife had to go for business the first few days so i decided to tag along and take a much needed hiatus from designing and illustrating.

Since she was busy right off the bat the first day i just kind of explored midtown. Time Square was just down the street so i went there first…

It was pretty much what i remembered it being, tons of people and huge billboards and lights everywhere. Every five feet someone is trying to sell you something. Show tickets, knockoff handbags, obama condoms…you know, “for those hard times”, stuff like that. It gets old kind of quick, its like walking through a giant commercial. The scale of everything is pretty staggering though and made it worth the time to check out. I left just in time because right as i decided to head out the naked cowboy started putting people in headlocks…

The rest of that afternoon was more of the same. I was having an awesome time just walking around taking in the city, taking pictures and poking my head in a few stores and crap.

I dont know why anyone would want to take pictures with this creepazoid, maybe she thought it was mike myers dressed up like goldmember, ” I love goooooooooooooooold”.

On the way to the park i saw Jackie Mason on the street. He’s the little Jewish dude from Caddyshack II. He didnt recognize me. That night i had some awesome tai food with some of Heidi’s coworkers and afterwards farted uncontrollably until I went to sleep, it was a good first day in the city.

The next day i headed to New Jersey for the last day of the Bamboozle Music Festival. Getting there was interesting for sure. I had to take the sub to the bus station and then catch a ride into New Jersey from there. I thought the buses were going to be rank but they were like the nice charter buses, so that was cool. This was my first attempt at using public transit in the city so it was a little intimidating. I made it eventually though, the sketchiest part was it didnt seem like there was  really a Giants Stadium stop out of Manhattan, so i got dropped off under this sketchy overpass and had to walk along a highway for half a mile back up to the venue in the rain, but anyway, i made it right?

The amazing dudes over at Rockett got me into the venue so that was my first stop. First thing they did was offer me a brew so i knew i was in good company, and i was right, I had an amazing time crashing their merch party. They had a majority of the new line up including my Chef Goredon and Acid Trip designs, and also a bunch of Horsebites stuff. That’s Travis slinging the hoodies and Amanda from Right In The Family Jewels repping her custom jewelry. Check her out, she rules.

I checked out a bunch of other friend’s in the industries booths throughout the day including EZ, Pycnik and Glamour Kills. All those guys had amazing setups and were super nice when i met them. Pyknic even let me hit their warm foamy keg. I wasn’t complaining though, the beer prices at the fest were straight criminal…$8.25…yikes!

face to face, the only band i watched all day.

later in the day i went over to the EZ booth to check out the ADTR signing. They were the super secret, hush hush band so i didnt get to show off the poster before hand, but this is what they were signing. I did all the gross over stuff and the monster, kind of like i did for EZ’s spring release photo shoot. I was pretty stoked how it came out and the kids seemed like they were flipping out pretty hard,  Im sure it was because of the poster, not the band or anything.

After that Taking Back Sunday started playing and I decided that i had my fill of bamboozle so i made my way out. Getting home was a crazy drunken debacle. I had no idea where to catch my bus so i enlisted the help of a traffic attendant just outside the parking lot. He was great, but every 5 seconds some nerdy parent was asking which gate they were supposed to pick up their kid so he ended up not being much help at all. I actually flagged down what was supposed to be my bus, but because of the weekend the werent going into the city or something. great. Then this indian guy with barely any knowledge of the english language approaches and says he has a cab. I figured this guy was my savior, and proceeded to tell him i just needed to get to the bus depot a few blocks away. He seemed like he understood so we made our way to his unmarked car. It wasnt a cab at all but just a car, so no maps, lights, meters or any of that good stuff. We start going down the road and realize we arent really going the direction i thought we should be. He starts telling me its going to 65 plus tolls to go to manhattan, i slurrily told him “NO” i just need the bus dude, I dont have that much money. He pulls off the highway and drops me off at a remote bus stop on the corner of mug whitey and stab whitey (yeah i stole that from patton oswalt), and tries to charge me 25 bucks for a 2 minute drive. Not knowing who this dude was at all, i talked him down to half that and left with my face still attached to my skull, which i was stoked about. Anyway, long story not as long, the bus came in like 10 minutes, which was about 2 minutes short of my bladder completely exploding. Made my way back to the city, took a giant piss, and grabbed a delicous slice on my way back to the hotel and crashed.

Despite the shitty weather and transportation headaches that day i still had an amazing time and met some incredible people that i cant wait to hang out with again. This was only day 2 of the trip so Ive got more to report but its probably better that i do this in installments so not to bore the bejesus out of people. So on that note…to be continued….

Its Official, The Back in Black 2 Store is LIVE! That means you can pick up The Axecutioner, designed by The Black Axe, along with many other eye deflating tees by incredible artists. If you’ve been following this blog at all you know the deal already, but if not you have a whole month to grab these shirts online and THAT’S IT! The last day to pick up these designs is May 31st and then they are gone forever! Forever-ever? Forever-ever! If you are in the Tampa area on May 16th you can have these printed live at the Back in Black 2 opening at Czar Bar. All the info is below, get stoked! Hit the shirt for a direct link to it in the store.

So, up front, as long as im apart of something this badass, im going to be blogging about it as much as I can. That’s just going to happen. That out of the way, Id like to inform you all that the Back in Black 2 official website just launched. You can check out every piece that’s involved as well as check out event news and participant features and interviews. This is also the only place where you’ll be able to order the tees online when the store goes up. Im not sure when exactly that’s happening so keep checking the website. There’s some mind shattering work in the artist section, Im already deliberating which shirts im going to pick up myself. Every single piece is incredible. Im particularly proud to see such phenomenal works by the likes of Dan Mumford, Godmachine, and Jimiyo too. Some fellow tee designers that are getting some much deserved spotlight. I guess my point is, start saving now! You arent just going to want one…and you’re probably already going to buy the AXE tee because, well, you know, it rules!

I decided to update the blog a little bit today and try out a new theme. This one actually lets people leave comments which is nice. If you are ever feeling randy and want to say something about a post you can hit the ‘comment’ line at the bottom and go to town. I guess that’s about it. I’ll leave you with this youtube video i came across today. If you’re looking for a huge inspirational jolt, this should do it.

We recently got invited to contribute to the second installment of Back in Black presented by Pale Horse and Hydro 74. Naturally we’re more than stoked to be lumped in with so many other amazing artists and to also have the opportunity to showcase what we feel we do best, design kick AXE tee shirts. If you havent heard of it, its a pretty creative approach to showcasing tee shirt art. At the night of the show, everyone who shows up will be able to select which design they want, and it gets printed, right there at the show. There’s not a whole lot of opportunity to go to a gallery and be able to take something home for 20 bucks, which is why this rules and we’re so pumped about it. If you cant make it to the opening you can always order the shirts online as well for a limited time. Once its over though, its friggin OVER! Here’s all the info…

aaaaaaand here’s our submission for the show. We’re calling it the AXEcutioner!!! There’s nothing we love more than crushing beer cans and skulls while listening to Slayer so we figured why not incorporate it into a tee shirt the whole family can enjoy. I ended up doing the AXEcutioner portion of it and Richard (Horsebites) rocked the rest. Kind of like a reverse Biking Viking. Im super floored about how it came out too. Make sure you snatch one up while you can online, or come down to the show on the 16th and slam some Black Ribbons with us!