Probably the biggest reason we wanted to come to the Beach is to see my grandparents. “Nonnie” will be eighty next month (she’s still beautiful), and “Papa” will be 81 in September. We don’t really know how much more time we’ll have with them (Papa’s really been declining lately), so this was an important trip for us.

The final pic is of Brady as a dog. We buried her in the sand, and let her pick what she wanted to be. She’s dog crazy, so…..

Here’s some beach pix from this week….

Here’s some more pix of the Toxic concert we all attended. Most of these are afterward, when we were hanging out with them. The really fuzzy one, though, is a shot of, yes, my grandmother, ON STAGE, as Jeremy and Paulie gyrated, Chippendales-like, around her. Rene of the group has his head on her lap. I was videotaping, and laughing so hard that I was crying.

Here’s a couple more pics of the Gay Dolphin, and one of the bicycle plate wall. This was really special to me as a kid. They supposedly had every name there is on the wall on one of these plates. But IF they DIDN’T, you got a FREE trip to the top of the Gay Dolphin’s tower (probably a whole 75 feet up). Of course, with my name, I ALWAYS got a free trip. It was one of the only times as a kid that my name paid off for me.

We also got to go to the old arcade that still exists down on the Boardwalk here yesterday. Some of the machines in there are from the 1930s, at least. Here’s a pic of Brady, Barbie, Jeremy, and his kids playing the games. Also, we went to Mad Myrtle’s for ice cream. You can see all the smiling faces.

Afterward, me and my girls went to “Family Kingdom”, a small amusement park. I watched them ride. And I sweated.

We had the chance yesterday to “make the hang” in downtown Myrtle Beach with some of our best buds in the world, the James’, (Jeremy, Shalisa, Julian, and Jason) of Toxic Audio. We went to all of the old spots I remember from summers here as a kid. At least the ones that still exist (sniff sniff). I was just glad that the world’s tackiest gift shop, The Gay Dolphin, was still here. Here’s me and Jeremy in front of it…

Let’s take a few days off of the working out posts, okay? We’ll get back to that in a few days. Right now, Barbie, Brady, and I are in Myrtle Beach, SC on a vacation with my family from upstate SC. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc., are all here from the Parham side of the family. They come every year, but I haven’t been with them on this trip in oh, twenty five years or so.
Mom and Dad couldn’t come up with us, so a big reason I’m posting these images is to catch them up on what’s going on. Hey, guys! Miss you!

What’s really cool is that this week coincided with our good friends and acapella stars Toxic Audio’s (www.toxicaudio.com) run at the Myrtle Beach House of Blues. So, we got a lot of the family to go with us to one of their concerts. It was a great time, and they even pulled my grandmother on stage during one of the numbers. Here’s a few pix from the night. The top is the whole gang with toxic, the middle one is me and my aunt (can you believe she’s 50???), and the bottom one is Brady with her playmates, Jason and Julian James. We’re having a blast…..

Oh man, now THIS first picture is embarrassing. I must be about 17 here. Yikes. Look at that hair. This is back when people used to tell me I had “David Hasseloff hair”. It was a “body wave”, aka perm, that I got back in my senior year of high school. As if I wasn’t enough of an outcast, having transferred to public school the year before, and quickly gaining a reputation as a complete non-partying teetotaler, the perm solution BURNT my skin, and left a huge, gaping, oozing sore on my forehead. Of course, all of the oh-so-understanding teenagers I went to school with said it was a “runaway zit”. It seemed to last forever, but I guess it really didn’t. There are no photos of me with it (thank God), only my scarred memories. I’m sure those must be Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, or something cheesey like that. Dig that 27 inch waist…I’d kill for that again! I have no idea what that “look” is on my face. Classic deer in the headlights, I think. Oh, yeah, you gotta love that wallpaper…

Anyway, it was about this time that I got out of my basement and started going other places to work out. One place was at my high school, in the football team’s weight room. I was the only non football player who worked out there. We had a pretty scrawny team, so I was really one of the strongest guys there. Believe it or not.

I also started working out at a “real gym”. The Greenville Athletic Club, it was called. It was dingy, smelly, and had lots of iron. No chromeplated machines, and very few women. All of the “cool guys” from my high school worked out there, so it kind of made me cool too, since I worked out with them. But not too cool. I was still the art guy who didn’t party. But I did get some notoriety around the gym. Some older guys (at least 25 …they were ancient!) even told me a few times what potential I had in bodybuilding. That just encouraged me more. I was sure I’d be Mr. Olympia in a few years. This was also the time when I first heard about steroids. I never knew they existed until then. I asked my uncles about this one guy who’d come into the gym (in striped spandex bike shorts…I still remember them!), and just go around posing in the mirrors, and talking to the few women who dared work out in the gym. He never worked out, it seemed, but he was HUGE! Plus, his skin was really, really red all of the time, and he had huge zits all over his back. All signs of steroid use, I learned from them. I promised myself right then that I’d never use them. Stay tuned, because this subject comes up again!

The second photo here was taken just yesterday. It’s a photo of two of my most prized possessions, actually. These muscle mags are some of the only things my Dad has from when he was a kid (along with the 45s I mentioned yesterday)! He gave them to me when I started getting interested in working out. I was about the same age then that he was when he bought them. I’ve had them longer now than he did! They were a part of the “Joe Weider Muscle Building Club”, where you got a membership card, etc. Unfortunately, he lost the card long ago.
I’d love to have it.

Yep, I found the earliest photo I have of me from my beginning work out days. Don’t laugh! Obviously, Schwarzenegger or Reeves I was NOT! This polaroid was in an old album that’s taken me a few days to find. Took a lot of clean up in Photoshop to make the image even show up. It’s really cool that I still have it, though.

Now where was I? Oh yeah, it’s about 1981, and I’m fourteen years old. Like I said, I was getting Muscle and Fitness in the mail now. Funny, I just had a flashback to about that time… I still remember reading my uncles’ copy of Schwarzenegger’s autobiography, “Education of a Bodybuilder”, while we were over at my Grandparents’ home one Sunday afternoon after church. I was in the kitchen. Weird how you remember certain things, where you were, what you were doing….

Anyway, I somehow talked my parents into getting me a weight set. A Joe Weider bench, with the old cement filled weights. The only place I could fit the gym set was outside on the deck. I’d work out there, then cover it up with an old blue tarp when I was done. That’s when this pic was taken. In the original photo, before I zoomed in to get this image, the tarp is visible, off to the right. I grew up in Greenville, SC, in the northwestern tip of that state. Asheville, NC, and the beginning of the what would lead into the Great Smokey Mountains, was less than an hour away. So, we did get mildly cold weather in the Fall and Winter, and even a few snow days most years (usually on my birthday). Mostly, it was kind of cold, gray, and rainy for most of the Winter.
So, the Weider set on the deck inevitably began to rust in a very short period of time. I moved it inside for a few months, into a corner of my bedroom. I’d lock the door and turn up the stereo as I worked out. I “rocked out” to Christian rock band PETRA, the American Graffiti soundtrack (50s Doo Wop), and to my Dad and Mom’s old 45s of Elvis, Ricky Nelson, and early Beatles. I was a weird kid, I know. Remember, I was working out alone. No spot. That spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E when you’re working out with free weights only, and don’t know what you’re doing. That’s why, one night, I dropped 175 pounds on my nose while I was bench pressing. That was my max at the time, and after I did it once, the bar started coming down on me. I screamed for help, but with the blaring stereo, no one could hear me. I should’ve just tipped the bar to one side, but instead has the bright idea to let it fall BEHIND me. It’s hard to think clearly in those situations. Well, the bar came down ON me…right on the bridge of my nose. I rolled it down, where it busted my lip, and then the adrenaline kicked in…I literally THREW it six or eight feet away, where it bounced off my bed.

That’s when I graduated to the DP 1000, as I believe it was called. Sold by SEARS, it was a cable and weight stack based system. I didn’t need a spotter. We assembled it in the moldy, partially finished basement. Actually, it was just a cement slab in the basement, surrounded by dirt. I only once remember an animal, a rat or something, being in there when I was. Well, maybe twice. I got to my “gym”, rain or shine, by running outside and down the hill to the side of the house, since there was no inside entrance to the basement. Once there, I worked out by the single naked lightbulb that hung from the ceiling. I remember playing Rocky III’s soundtrack (“Eye of the Tiger”), as I worked out and dreamed of being a pro bodybuilder….

To be continued…

“The Path not taken”. Man, I’ve had a lot of those in my forty years. Everyone has, I guess. Being artistic, and nonconformist, mine were always just a little bit “off the beaten path”, I guess you could say. Model, actor, comic book artist, Elvis impersonator, I did them all. Did pretty well at them too, or at least showed some potential to do well. Then I finally settled on caricature artist. I’ve been very blessed with that. Now as I keep that going, I am transitioning more and more into “just a cartoonist”. Everything I’ve done is just part of my lifelong goal to never have a “real job”. Probably goes back to that Tshirt I had printed up back in the early ’80s in Myrtle Beach, SC that said “Why Be Normal?”.

But, about the above photo. It is my goofy attempt to put my head on, to those who recognize the photo, the body of the incomparable Steve Reeves. If you read the comments so far, my buddy Tom picked it out right away. Reeves played “Hercules” in all of the most famous sword and sandals epics of the early to late 50s. He was the most famous bodybuilder ever until Schwarzenegger, and, for a time, the biggest box office draw in the world. Even in these days of the HGH and anabolic steroid freaks that populate professional bodybuilding, to most purists of
the sport, Reeves is still one of the legends.

Which gets me back to the other path not taken. The one I haven’t told you about yet. Yep, I wanted to be a professional bodybuilder. For those of you who’ve known me int he past ten, relatively couch potato years , as my wife and I have grown our business and our family, this may seem hard to believe. Almost as hard to believe as the Elvis impersonator thing. But, once upon a time, I was convinced I would be Mr. Olympia one day.

Don’t laugh.

It all started with my uncles, I believe. Manuel and Daniel were and are my twin uncles, and they’re only about six years older than me (Yeah, if you say them in the proper Southern drawl, their names rhyme. Cute.) They were kind of like my cooler, older brothers more than anything else. I idolized them, to a degree. When they started bodybuilding in the late 70’s, I remember reading their Muscle and Fitness mags. Arnold was still competing. Manuel even went on and competed in a local contest. I know he didn’t win, but I can’t remember how he placed. About this time, they met a fellow young upstart who was also starting competitions…a man named Lee Haney, who eventually broke Arnold’s Mr. Olympia titles.

Anyway, I subscribed to Muscle and Fitness myself at the age of fourteen, and started working out in our basement. This was the time of Mohammed Makkaway, Samir Bannout, and Bob Paris. Frank Zane was still winning, and Boyer Coe was still competing. It was a great time for bodybuilding. The last years before the freaks took over.

To be continued….

Here’s another sketch from our beach trip last week. I had a lot of fun drawing this “beach beauty” as she walked briskly down the beach. I like sketching quickly, trying to catch the person’s essence as they go by. The lines I could do, the weight of the figure (literally) I could play around with, made this one fun. I also LOVE gray chartpaks and black prismacolor, and used them on all of my beach sketches.