C.B. Murphy  .:. Writer

Andy, the Californian Hare Krisha surfer-lifeguard, went the Hole for observation. Not totally sure what all happened, but he’s been on observation before. George (Bill Gates) said he thought maybe he was “never really here,” a ref to what appears to be (heavy?) medication for psych issues. Supposedly he tried to kill himself once. We’ll miss him, though. Jack (the boss) and I joked that being entertaining was an important quality of being an art student in the prison and Andy certainly qualified. It passed through my mind that his fantasy of making “the art of the bull” (meaning bull-and-bear, Wall Street) and inviting (random) brokers to our art sale might have pushed him over the edge. I mean, it was clear his fantasies of marketing his bulls, though not insane, was so far from any sort of reality that could happen, maybe it was all too much to “bear.” LOL.

Michael “Machine Gun” shaved his head. Hardly recognized him. Working on his first acrylic, a samurai riding a futuristic tiger. Trent, the best artist-tutor, was helping Coffey paint a face of some Brittany Spearish pop star (only younger, what do I know?) and it was sweet. Sweet is an odd and dangerous word to use in prison, but here I can say it. The way the guys help each other on their artwork is amazing. And sweet. There was another example of Armando (a fierce looking Mexican) helping Jerald (a non-fierce looking overweight Mexican) make realistic folds in a graphite drawing of some kind of death figure.

Pandemic update: Bob Ross dominates, though abstraction isn’t dead. A third candidate might be Guadalupe as Gray (an African-American who has been doing abstraction) started on his Mother Mary. I probably went too far when I teased him if he had changed religions, this being of course The Lady of Guadalupe that Alonzo made in a super-sized painting for his mom. Come to think of it, Coffey, also African-American is working on one and he sits next to Gray. More evidence that these kinds of things actually “spread.”

The Character First topic was keeping an organized work space. The conversation, as always, wonders all over the place somehow ending up on the fact that Sandler (white/Viking) and Fairchild (Native) lived in the same neighborhood growing up. Fairchild said he used to try to swerve his car to hit “the little shit” on his bicycle. And Sandler said Fairchild was the dealer (pot) for the neighborhood. I said, “Ah, the good old days,” but I think only Jack saw the irony of that. Jack and I kept bringing it back (somewhat for entertainment, tongue-in-cheek) to the organized work space. “Was Fairchild an organized or unorganized dealer?” I asked. Fairchild said, oh very organized, he could tell the weight of an ounce without measuring it. Sandler rhapsodized about his days as a car-contents thief and I asked him if he preferred to rob organized or disorganized cars. He said disorganized were way better.

People still tease Rob for being “too organized” regularly. Sandler said Rob was from a “rich family” in Wisconsin, though his crime of strangling his wife and hiding her body in a shed is pretty horrific. He claims he has no memory of the event and several days surrounding it. He makes a point of shaking my hand goodbye every time I come.