October 23, 2025
Two day event. Runs from 11am to 7pm on both Saturday and Sunday. $10 admission fee covers your entry for both days.
Two day event. Runs from 11am to 7pm on both Saturday and Sunday. $10 admission covers your entry for both days.
July 3, 2025
This is the thought that pops into my head when EVERYTHING’S GOING MY WAY. “The whole wide world can SUCK MY DICK!” It’s joyful. It’s a celebration. It’s definitely not an angry thing. Hence my qualifier “but, like, in a fun way.” I’d fucking hate it if someone looked at this painting and thought it was some kind of angry, pouty harumph… “suck my dick!”-kinda thing. That shit’s NOT ME. It’s some dumb expression of dumb masculinity and I hate it. But this – the JOYFUL version. That makes me smile.
I wrote a bit about that on the canvas, along with:
“My stupid punk songs, singing along and moving around like no one can see or hear me, painting ILL SHIT like this, making lots of money OR NONE – I like my life. Losing money stings but when I’ve got everything I need, it’s just a number and I’ll get it back.”
The backstory on all of this is that when I started this painting, SHIT WAS GOING MY WAY. I made a LOT OF MONEY selling art in March. When I finished the painting before this one, it was already sold and I was in the middle of a particularly profitable day of selling prints. I felt energized and validated and LIFE WAS COOL. By the time I was wrapping this painting up, the TIDE HAD TURNED A BIT. I was at some three-day festival I’d signed up to be a vendor at, and it was NOT GOING WELL. It had nothing to do with me, it was just a shit event. No one made any money. It was just so badly organized and promoted. But sitting there in my tent that first day FOR THIRTEEN HOURS, I was working on this painting and kinda depressed. There was NO ONE AROUND. It was the first time I’d done an event and sold NOTHING. Not only that, I didn’t even get a single person stop to look at my art. And I couldn’t even listen to music because there was some DJ just BLARING the worst music in the world. Without punk rock, I struggle. But when I have it, it doesn’t really matter what else is going on; it has SUCH A HUGE impact on my mood.
So that was Day 1 of this particular shitshow. On Day 2, it was still a disaster of an event, but I set-up much, much further from the DJ and his speakers so that I was able to hear my own speaker and listen to the songs I LIKE TO LISTEN TO. And, consequently, I was having fun, painting, and not worrying anymore about the fact that these fucks got $200 out of me and I’d driven from outta town to attend this waste-of-my-time. After all, it didn’t matter how bad the weekend was; it’s just one weekend. I know my art’s got value, I know people wanna (and do) buy it. I know things are gonna work out for me if I keep making good choices.
And that’s pretty much what happened (pretty much immediately). I realized I didn’t owe these flakes anything, so I lined up a couple other opportunities for that night and the next day, and then I bailed when necessary to make it to that night’s Plan B. And it went great. I had fun, I made money, I met people I liked. ALL WAS RIGHT IN THE WORLD (a world that I was once again happy to invite to suck my dick).
I finished the painting the next day – at another event where I had fun all day, painting, listening to punk rock, and getting paid for it.
I’m not gonna pretend like my “job” is all fun and no work, but it’s pretty fucking great overall. I mostly do whatever the fuck I want. Sometimes it almost does feel like the world is sucking my dick. It’s NOT ENTIRELY UNCOOL.
Prints of this painting are now available in the webstore. For the next week, you can use the promo code WWWCSMD for 20% of that print or any others. The original is also still available for purchase. Shoot me a message if you’d like to be its one and only owner.
In other news, things are generally going pretty well lately. I’ve been doing a ton of work on my bus (I basically taught myself how to be an electrician) and I’m gearing up for my first trip outta state since I started being a person again last year. (The last time I left Florida for work/art was before the relapse, wayyyyyy back in 2015). I’ve also finished another two paintings since “Whole Wide World” so I’m hoping to share those with you soon as well. And I started another this past weekend that I’m especially excited about so keep an eye on my socials to keep up with my progress on that.
As always, check the Events page to see where you can find me in the coming weeks and months.
Thanks as always to everyone who supports what I do. None of this art would exist without you.
Oh wow – how funny is this? 👇 My website’s automatic recommendations for this blog post are all DICK-RELATED 😄 Isn’t technology great?
September 19, 2015
For as much as I talk and write about Wallis, I’ve never really shared the full story of how we first came together. I’ll save the cute elements of the story for later and just give you the important part that hasn’t seemed relevant until now.
When I met Wallis, she was actively addicted to heroin. She was trying to not be on heroin but (like most addicts) she was finding that to be a little tougher than she could handle. We hit it off really quickly but I told her on our very first night together that I couldn’t be around that sort of thing. I told her that if she wanted to continue spending time with me, she couldn’t be using drugs. (I’m way too fucking fragile to not relapse if a pretty girl has a needle and a bag of dope to share with me). She told me she didn’t wanna use. I invited her to go with me on a road trip for a week – up to Illinois and back.
In the course of that trip, we fell in love. Which was a problem because it meant we needed to figure out what we were gonna do to keep her from going back to heroin once we got back to Jacksonville. We decided that she’d need to quit the strip club and get another job (nobody can stay off drugs in that environment – no addict anyway). I told her I’d cover her (financially) ’til she got a new job and then – when it was time for me to leave Jacksonville – she’d quit her new job and come with me. Sound familiar? I did for Wallis the same thing I had done for my best friend, Chris, a year prior. I brought her out on the road with me to keep her off drugs. To show her another kind of life. Like Chris had done, in exchange for “all expenses paid” she’d just help me with my set-up, selling art, whatever. (And like Chris, it pretty much worked. She never used once; not while traveling with me anyway).
When we left Jacksonville, it was for Minneapolis, where I was to be featured in a gallery exhibit. Halfway through the exhibition’s run, we returned to Jacksonville for a week, so I could make CRAZY MONEY at One Spark. On the drive down, Wallis started talking about going to see old friends – friends that she had, historically, used drugs with. I told her that this was a terrible idea. She argued that I needed to have faith in her. I responded that I’d heard that same exact sentence and had this same exact conversation many, many times in the past (with another girl) and that I knew perfectly well how this was gonna end. I told her that if she wasn’t willing to forego the reunion (and the inevitable relapse that’d come with it) that I couldn’t be her boyfriend anymore. One Spark was going to be an incredibly important week for me financially and I didn’t wanna fuck it up by spending the whole time worried about whether Wallis was safe.
She said okay (as in “okay, then you don’t need to be my boyfriend anymore“). There was no hostility or drama beyond that but when we got to Jacksonville, we went our separate ways. Wallis relapsed that very first night (though she wouldn’t tell me until later), but called me the next morning and spent the rest of the week by my side like a lost puppy. On the night before I was to return to Minneapolis, she broke down crying, told me she had fucked up, and that she still wanted to be with me.
I first had the thought years and years ago – upon hearing Rivethead’s “In My Heart a Warehouse Burns For You.” The last lyric in the song is “I love you just as much as I hate the man.” I’m not exactly the biggest fan of cops or authority figures of any kind but when I’m really fired up and full of hate, there’s only one target it’s ever directed at: me. I still listen to that record (The Cheap Wine of Youth) all the time so the idea of captioning a painting with “I love you just as much as I hate myself” had occurred to me on a couple occasions but I didn’t wanna be derivative.
Then, when I bought Pretty Boy Thorson’s An Uneasy Peace (the final song of which is called “I Love You Even More Than I Hate Myself”) I had a bit of a god dammit moment. That should’ve been mine! The song’s awesome and it doesn’t matter that the lyric is similar to another.
I started thinking about it though – that line – and whether or not it was actually true (for me). I was dating Wallis and I absolutely loved her but did I love her more than I hated myself? I wasn’t really sure. I decided that sometimes I’m afraid that I could never love anyone more than I hate myself. After all, we had weathered the storm of her relapse but I was sabotaging our relationship bit by bit with my low self-esteem [and cheating]. I wrote about some of that anxiety in the bottom-right corner of the painting:
It’s so much harder to travel with a second person. Staying with friends feels like a much bigger imposition and I can’t stay with girls I meet. That’s probably the hardest part. But I love Wallis. (And I really like fucking her). And I think she needs me. I tried to leave her in Jacksonville but it didn’t work out. I hope she’s with me because she really loves me and not just ‘cause she’s scared to go back to “real life.” It if doesn’t work out, it’s probably gonna be because I can’t stop thinking about fucking other girls, which I know hurts her (and is really so selfish and dumb - and even mean - on my part) but really has nothing to do with her. (She’s so fucking hot and sexy and cute and beautiful). It’s just my insecurity and my compulsion to fuck every pretty girl, to prove to the world (and myself) just how fucking wonderful and desirable I am. It’s not helping that girls are throwing themselves at me these days. But I know (or think) that shit won’t make me happy. And in the end, I’m just gonna want someone to love me and I love Wallis.
There’s another, shorter string of text higher up in the painting, similarly inspired by punk rock: “I was listening to that Gateway District song where they sing, ‘I’m always falling way behind and you go on and on and on.’ If only I knew someone like that. Maybe I’d have someone to look to. Everybody I know is struggling. Everyone I know is as hopeless as I am. (Or worse).”
There’s a brighter, happier pair of sentences in the top-left corner – the product of a moment when everything was right in the world. Amazing sex with Wallis and I’m driving to the gallery showcasing my art while listening to “Another Way Out of Here” by The Murderburgers. The thought occurred to me that “nothing in this world makes me happier than an energetic, upbeat song about suicide.” I gave it a second thought. Is that true? I concluded, “Except (maybe) hitting girls in the face during sex.” I smiled. That’s pretty funny. I’m pretty fucked up. The things that I enjoy are – well – a little odd. This was all well and good at the time. I posted a close-up of that part of the painting online and it was met with positive feedback and just a little bit of “Oh, Sam…” But before I even got the chance to write the statement for this painting (as I am now), that photograph – that caption – would make the rounds on the internet elsewhere and garner a very different kind of response.
You see, when I wrote that, it was about sex with Wallis. Sex which includes light, consensual, fake-violence (or whatever the fuck you wanna call it). Wallis likes getting slapped in the face during sex. And I like doing it. Win-win, right? Well, yeah – until you get accused of a violent rape and the media picks up on the story and uses your art to support the idea that you’re the kind of person capable of violently raping a nineteen year-old girl you just met.
Sitting in jail, I wondered how I was going to break the news to my friends and fans that I had been accused of this horrible fucking crime. I bailed out, Chris Spillane picked me up, and after ten minutes of discussion he tells me, “There’s one more thing we’ve gotta talk about, Sam. The publicity on this story is not good right now.” Publicity? This story? “What the fuck are you talking about?” I googled my name and discovered that I didn’t need to worry about breaking this news to anyone. Some reporter knew or figured out who I was, wrote an article about me complete with images of my art (like the “hitting girls in the face” one) and everyone else picked it up and ran with it. Suddenly, strangers on the internet were talking about how I was the kind of person who PUNCHES girls in the face. I was a scumbag and I was definitely guilty. What the fuck? I’ve never punched a girl in the face! I slap! Playfully! And only with girls that WANT me to!
But none of that mattered. What mattered was that it was incredibly easy to paint me as some kind of violent sexual deviant who had finally gone off the rails and just started violently raping people. Freedom of expression has its fucking consequences apparently. The charges against me have since been dismissed by a judge who (after hearing all of the prosecution’s evidence and the girl’s testimony) ruled that there was no probable cause to believe that any crime had been committed but the evidence in the case isn’t all public yet and I’m still having to deal with (well-meaning) assholes who think I deserve to be castrated for something I never did. At the time of this writing, this is all still incredibly recent so I’m still working out exactly how a person does deal with something like that. (I’ll let you know when I figure it out).
Flashback to five months before that nightmare though – back to when I was still working on this painting (that’d later incriminate me in the court of public opinion). I wrote that I was feeling:
“stuck in a rut. This spot [on the street] isn’t super profitable [for selling prints]. I don’t even wanna write about what else is going on. I don’t want to muddle up this painting that I’m not even happy with. My little sister is killing herself and today I blocked her phone number because I’m tired of her asking for help, not taking my advice, and then texting me updates on her self-destruction that she knows will just upset me.
I really need the validation of some sales to cheer me up today. If I make less than $100 today, I’m gonna feel super depressed.”
And then – to remind myself what a dipshit I am for worrying about how much I make in one particular day, I added: “I’ve made $7,000 this month.” True as it was, it didn’t really help me feel any better in that moment. I continued writing – about an interaction I had with a guy who stopped to watch me paint:
“Someone asked me yesterday if I really hate myself and why. I had a hard time articulating it [the way that I feel sometimes]. He said he thinks I’m not as unhappy as I let on. I’d do a much better job explaining it to him today: I’M UGLY, PALE, OUTTA SHAPE, MEAN, SHITTY, POOR, FEARFUL, AND IN A CONSTANT STATE OF STARVATION FOR VALIDATION.”
Reading that now, remembering that day – it’s kinda scary. Everything in my life was going so well and I still had this monster inside me, gnawing at my insides, telling me that everything was awful. That I was awful. I’m really grateful that I don’t feel that way about myself all the time. Arguably, my life is way more fucked up now (on account of the VIOLENT RAPE ACCUSATION) but – I don’t know – I feel better today. Maybe it’s because I’ve had to fight this awful thing. Maybe it’s because I’ve had to become stronger. Maybe it’s because enough other people hate me now that I can take a break on the self-loathing. I don’t know. I’m not sure. But after separating in late-June and spending two months mostly apart, Wallis and I are back together full-time. We’re living together in an apartment in Chicago and it’s been really great. And you know what? I love her WAY more than I hate myself. Not just ‘cause I’m not hating myself so much right now but… This girl… After all we’ve been through. After all I’ve done for her and all she’s done for me… Words are insufficient to express my gratitude, affection, and love for her. I’m probably gonna marry her.
And you know what? When it comes to “falling way behind” versus “going on and on and on,” maybe I do a little more of the latter than I allow myself to recognize sometimes. Maybe I do a lot more of it.
HAPPY ENDING.
“I Love You Even More” by Pretty Boy Thorson & The Falling Angels
“Another Way Out of Here” by The Murderburgers
“Waves and Cars” by The Gateway District
“In My Heart a Warehouse Burns For You” by Rivethead
“I Could Never Love Anyone More Than I Hate Myself” is now up in the webstore.
November 10, 2014
I just read another article (this one from The Guardian, penned by a member of Ramshackle Glory) condemning punk rock as being some club for straight white boys. The author, a white trans woman, laments that white males ” get to be their whole authentic selves on stage and off” while other punks like her are stuck feeling like they’re “being given permission to play along.”
I’m not gonna laundry list women who play a major role in this scene in order to counter the author’s argument that “men run the scene, men are the scene, and men always have been and probably always will be at the center of the scene.” What I am gonna do is explain why I find these articles so frustrating.
I am white, straight, and (for all intents and purposes) male. I qualify that last one ’cause I was the kind of kid who grew up getting called a “pussy” and a “faggot.” I wear tight low-waisted jeans and crop tops. In other words, I’m not the most masculine guy around. I still refer to myself as a “kid” not because I have delusions about my age (29) but because the word “man” makes me uncomfortable.
Anyway, I’ve played in punk bands, written for punk zines, and I used to run a punk record label. I have more friends in punk rock than I can count and – by any outsider’s estimation – it’s almost certainly inarguable that I have been accepted by (and my contributions have been valued by) the punk community. And you know what? I still don’t feel like I belong. I still feel anxious at shows, I still don’t ever feel secure, I still feel like I exist on the fringe of the community and like I’ve somehow snuck past the guard and tricked the others into thinking that I belong here. Do you know why? Because I’m a weirdo, an emotional fucking basketcase, and a perpetual outsider. In other words, I’m a punk.
My problem with these articles has nothing to do with race, gender, or anything like that. My problem is that the authors always assume that these feelings of alienation and discomfort are something that they have a monopoly on. They don’t. We’re all fucked up and we’re all broken; that’s why we came to punk rock in the first place. That’s why we were fucking born into punk rock. Because there’s something that’s not quite right about all of us. And that sensation of not belonging has a lot more to do with our own fractured psyches than gender, orientation, or anything that we can blame punk for. This scene bends over backward to make sure that we all feel like we’re welcome. I know because I’ve seen it and because – despite my own sense that I’m some kind of outsider or intruder – I still fake the role of ambassador and make those efforts to try and help others feel comfortable, welcome, and wanted in this scene.
If you feel like you can’t be your “whole authentic self” in this community, I’ve got some advice for you: DO IT ANYWAY. Instead of writing editorials bad mouthing this scene (that, for all its flaws, has given us all more than we could ever hope to give back to it) why don’t you brave up and fucking be yourself? I can’t promise you that you won’t still feel like a fucking weirdo. In fact, you’re probably still gonna feel like you don’t quite belong. Just like the rest of us.
And that’s okay. It’s why we’re here.
January 3, 2014
6 AM. Walking home.
It’s 40 degrees outside and I still haven’t gone to bed.
Pineapple soda, a cigarette,
BRAND NEW RATIONAL ANTHEM playing in my headphones.
What more could an idiot ask for?
—–
I stayed up all night, clearing out my house,
Getting rid of the things in my life that I don’t need.
Some of it is really hard to get rid of.
I still don’t know if I’ll actually be able to part with my zine collection.
And (honestly) I haven’t even considered the records.
But I’m young, itinerant,
I’d rather not be weighed down by possessions.
Do you ever fantasize about your house burning down
And starting over with nothing?
I do.
I’m working to be okay with the idea that if something is important
It’ll come back to me.
I don’t need to cling to anything.
Or only to so much, in any case.
—–
Here’s a cartoon I drew in an Alcoholics Anonymous.
It was the second of three that night.
The third being My Favorite Cartoon.
This one’s not important.
It’s just about me,
Being a resentful little jerk-off.
There’s no way for me to explain what I was thinking when I drew this without sounding like an asshole. Which is okay – after all – sometimes I’m an asshole!
This kid was rambling on and every word out of his mouth reeked of “here’s some shit I heard some other clueless bastard say at a meeting, so now I’m gonna repeat it at all of you so that I can walk back to my halfway house confident that you guys will think I’ve really got a handle on this recovery thing.”
Which – who knows – maybe that’s me projecting. Or maybe it’s just me being bitter about some girl not paying enough attention to me. And – honestly – what the fuck should I even care? I guess it’s easy to fall into this kind of judgmental/negative thought when you’re compelled to go to more meetings than you’d otherwise elect to on your own. I might have needed that many at one point early on (or I might not have) but by this time last year, I was definitely ready to move on to the next phase. And within a month I had done just that.
Cool!
—–
Some (more recent) pieces on the subject of twelve-step groups are Save Yourself and Snowflakes Anonymous.
