Check out the dude chillin in the LAX airport. Got his feet up on his suitcase, shoes off, got his hat tilted down over his eyes, got this little notebook and a pen. Goin home, goin home on the next flight out, finished with pitching his proposal for the biggest sheriff station in America, nice fat art budget, no telling if he won or lost.<\/p>\n
You think he\u2019s stressin, you\u2019d be guessin. But you\u2019d be wrong. The dude isn\u2019t stressin, the dude is chillin, glad to leave sunny Southern California and its 10 lane freeways crawling 5 mph for 50 miles the day before. Which IS stress inducing when the dude wants to catch that next plane home with little room for delays at the car rental or the shuttle bus or the TSA line, any one of which would make him miss that flight with none until the following day.<\/p>\n
What Joe Cool here knows — and you don\u2019t — is these competitions are always crapshoots. The deck is stacked with jokers in hidden cards. A project you think you\u2019ve won hands down goes to some dark horse. One you\u2019re certain you lost lands in your lap. Joe\u2019s been to this rodeo before. Joe doesn\u2019t even mind mixing metaphors the way a blind bartender mixes drinks. Joe\u2019s just glad to be chillin. Goin home. Getting the hell out.<\/p>\n
If he wins the commission, swell. If he loses it, another will come along. The days when it seemed like life and death, succeed or get a minimum wage job, win or lose the farm, those are just memories gladly forgotten.<\/p>\n
Oh, a small part of Joe Cool misses the tension, the excitement, the hunt. He misses the thrill of competing all-out. And he misses the elation of winning, but not the agony of defeat. He misses those but only a little. This is a blood sport, competing against other artists, some nationally known, but now he doesn\u2019t bleed. He doesn\u2019t even carry band-aids, not with ice water in those veins. Check him out, he\u2019s chillin. He\u2019s goin home. Later on he\u2019ll find out if he\u2019s a Loser\u2026. But not right now. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Check out the dude chillin in the LAX airport. Got his feet up on his suitcase, shoes off, got his hat tilted down over his eyes, got this little notebook and a pen. Goin home, goin home on the next flight out, finished with pitching his proposal for the biggest sheriff station in America, nice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[1680,1681],"class_list":["post-11341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-art-as-a-blood-sport","tag-leaving-l-a-without-getting-killed-or-caught"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11342,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11341\/revisions\/11342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}