a Thanksgiving story

Don’t have much art that I can show at the moment, so I thought I’d treat you to a fun thanksgiving story.

This one time, years ago back when I was just starting out, a friend of mine reached out to me with a prospective illustration job. It was 1996, I was living in El Paso Texas, before I’d moved to San Francisco and gone to art school. Art jobs were scarce and you took what you could get.

My friend was into concert promotion stuff in Austin, and somehow he’d gotten wrapped up with these rave promoters who needed a flyer designed, and they were willing to pay $300 dollars for it.

The hitch was they wanted me to travel to San Antonio to do it, Which was unusual, but at the time, I didn’t have much going on so I said what the hell, why not?

So my buddy shows up at my house and we drive 10 hours across Texas to San Antonio. There was some guy there named Randy, who was a raver guy that owned a carpet cleaning business. He agreed to let us crash at his apartment for the week. Randy was always either raving or working so I barely saw him. His apartment was this high traffic party pad with people constantly coming and going, but I made do and set up in the corner and got to work sketching stuff.

One of The rave promoter guys who was hosting us had like this rich lawyer dad, so he kept taking us to this country club to eat. The food was great, but we looked hilariously out of place there, these scummy kids ordering way too much food to carry out every time.

These promoter guys seemed cool, but you could kinda tell they were spinning a lot of plates trying to get this rave thing to happen.

At some point it came to light that the rave was being funded by the sale of 14 pounds of marijuana that was being fronted by the Mexican mafia, of all people.

I guess the promoter guys had hit some snags moving it, and there became concerns that this lawyer’s kid was going to abscond with said pounds of weed, leave town and screw everyone over. Which in retrospect, he most likely wasn’t going to do that, because that’s like an insane thing to do considering who they were dealing with.

But anyway, with this whole rave hanging in the balance, and the lawyers kid MIA, the folks I was with eventually reached out to “La Eme,” in order to share our concerns and make sure they knew we weren’t the ones trying to screw them over.

We all ended up going to this house that one of the Mexican mafia guys lived at. Walking in, it was clear that it was a stash house, with no furniture anywhere except for a leather couch and a big screen television in the living room. The gentleman who lived there was very nice. We explained our problem to him and he assured me “ok let me make some calls, but don’t worry, even if shit goes sideways we’ll still make sure you get paid” which was a kind gesture that I really appreciated.

Anyway, he gets on the phone and starts speaking Spanish. About 15 minutes later a corvette pulls up and a bigger Mexican dude all decked out in Dallas cowboys gear gets out. You could tell he was a higher ranking Mexican mafia person. He goes inside, gets on the phone and starts speaking Spanish, and about 15 minutes later a meat truck pulls up in front of the house. Bigger Mexican dude starts pulling long gun-shaped packages wrapped in brown butcher paper out of the back and inspecting them. We’re like “what’s happening here?”

It started to feel like this was gonna turn into something more serious when eventually they were able to get ahold of the lawyer son, who had found a buyer for the 14 pounds after all. Somehow, I ended up in the car where the deal transpired in some back alley. It was so stressful. In Texas, especially back in the 90’s, you did not want to get caught in a car with 14 pounds of weed. The whole time I just kept telling anyone who’d listen “I was just hired to draw the flyer I have nothing to do with this”

So in the end, the deal was done, the Rave was saved, La Eme didn’t have to kill anyone, and I got paid $300 bucks for drawing this ridiculous rave flier I wish I still had a picture of. I remember it had like a Christmas grinch flying in a Santa sleigh and he was on turntables.

I’m actually leaving a lot out, BUT the whole reason I’m telling you all this story is because this went down the week of thanksgiving, and the reason I know this is because one of the guys we had been hanging out with there was like “why don’t you come over to my place for thanksgiving dinner? My mom always cooks a big meal and we always have room”.

So we go to his place, and its this giant house. Think it was the first time I ever saw an elevator in a house. Turns out his dad was none other than San Antonio spurs head coach Greg Popovich, so that’s who we ate thanksgiving dinner with. It was delicious.

And I guess my point to all this is that the journey of an artist can be super weird and maybe a little scary sometimes. But I’m thankful for all of the experiences and stories it’s provided me.

Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving that in no way involves dealing with the Mexican mafia.