One More Prince Story

As I said before, I never was a total Prince fan.  His music provided the soundtrack for many high school memories, Purple Rain etched itself into those years.  But over the years, and he kept re-inventing himself, continually producing new music, fighting his record label, and keeping it all fresh, I gained more and more respect for him.  I was thinking about doing a Prince drawing, but I had a slew of other drawings lined up to do, so I was hesitating.  Then I woke up at 4am a couple days ago, started working on that drawing, and had this deep sense that I needed to pound it out in a single day.  So I did.  I went back to it today, and touched it up here and there, adding several more song titles (thanks for the help on those Sonja A., Maurice M., and Mike S.) and put some purple raindrops in it.  That's the finished drawing above.

When I wrote the big post about Prince the other day, I left out one story.  Several years ago, working as a taxi driver in Orange County (CA), I wandered by Fashion Island Mall in Newport Beach about bar close time.  An attractive woman in her 40's flagged me down.  She was the stereotypical Newport Beach cougar; great legs, saline enhanced bustline, Botox infused lips, and a college age guy in tow.  They got in, and she told me where they were headed, a little known part of Bayside, close to the entrance of Balboa Island.  She started kissing the guy, and at that exact moment, the sounds of The Foo Fighters covering Prince's hyper-erotic song "Darling Nikki" oozed out of the speakers.  It was literally like I was in a music video for the song, watching the story happen live.  Darling Nikki was luring her prey into her lair for the night.  As we pulled up in her driveway a few minutes later, the song was just ending.  She handed the guy some money to pay me, and strutted up towards her front door, keys already in hand.  She'd obviously done this before.  The young guy got out, leaned in the passenger window to pay me, and said, "Oh God, what am I in for?"  I replied, "You heard the song that was playing, right?"  He nodded.  "Have fun," I said as he ran to catch up with her.  OOooooooooooooh Nikki!

Check out my new blog on building creative scenes:
How to make your lame city better

Taxi Driver drawing

After doing the Bruce Lee drawing in the last post, I looked for other images that meant something to me.  Since I was a taxi driver for several years in both Orange County, California and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, I've seen a lot of crazy stuff.  I even published a zine all about taxi driving once.  Cab driving isn't a normal job, it's actually set up like a small business... a very competitive business that requires working 80 to 110 hours a week sometimes.  You have to be pretty crazy to do it in the first place.  Among other things, it has the highest number of murders per capita of any job in the U.S.  I could go on and on, but taxi drivers deal with a really wide selection of humans, and see a lot of the dark side of society.  This may be why so many big names have played taxi drivers on film.  Bruce Willis played a futuristic taxi driver in the movie The Fifth Element.  Super model Cindy Crawford played a taxi driver in an 80's music video.  Acclaimed director Robert Altman played a taxi driver in the into to George Carlin's What Am I Doing In New Jersey comedy special.  Jamie Foxx played a taxi driver in the movie thriller Collateral.  Even Queen Latifah played a taxi driver in the movie Taxi, working with a young Jimmy Fallon.

But there's one taxi film that stands above them all.  That's Robert Deniro playing the disturbed cabbie Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese's classic 1976 film Taxi Driver.  I saw a painting in Winston-Salem of that character that was just amazing.  So I knew I had to do it my own way.  As I was blowing up the initial photo, I accidentally cut off half of Deniro's face.  I loved it, and used that for the drawing.

For the words on the side, I wrote "Taxi Driver," and "Are you talkin' to me?"  The classic quote from the movie.  But I also added the words "Drive, Die, Cash."  Those words are not from the movie.  In one of the cabs I was driving, I flipped down the visor one day and on the roof above it was graffiti left by another driver.  It was scrawled in pen on the fabric of the roof.  There was a skull and crossbones, and around it were the words, "drive, die, cash."  To me that completely summed up that crazy occupation.  So I added them to this drawing, along with the yellow and checker pattern widely associated with old school taxis.  I was pretty stoked on this one.  Sharpies on paper, 12" X 18."