Bed with Wife #4 slash The First Rule of Professional Football

Let's assume you found yourself face to face with Tom Coughlin, the head coach of the New York Football Giants.  This isn't as unlikely as it sounds.  I remember standing in line at my local bagel joint, back when I lived in suburban New Jersey, and realizing I was queued up directly behind Dan Reeves, a man who had been fired as Head Coach of the New York Football Giants one day earlier.

So it could happen.  For you completists, I was ordering an everything bagel with vegetable cream cheese, a slice of tomato, salt and pepper.  Not toasted.

So it could happen.  And you say to Coach Coughlin something along the lines of "Hey Coach, are we making it to the Super Bowl again this year?"

At which point the man begins to quiver; turns beet red; starts yelling things at you like "Super Bowl?  SUPER BOWL?  We are trying to beat Cincinnati next week.  Don't talk to me about any Super Bowl."  He is yelling at the top of his lungs, with such vigor that bits of spittle are making dark spots on your imported Italian silk shirt.

Don't get me wrong, by the way.  I love Tom Coughlin.  And I could be saying the same story about Mike Tomlin.  Or Herm Edwards.  Or whomever.

The point, as I understand it, is that you worry about the game in front of you, not the game two games in front of you.  Or the first playoff game.  Or the Super Bowl.  You focus on achieving immediate goals.  Win the next fucking game.  The presumption is that the long-range goals will then take care of themselves.

Thank God this isn't professional football.

The point of all this being I took Bed with Wife and put it in the frame, just as a kind of buck-me-uppo. And look how lovely it's starting to look.

We still have a long ways to go (although this painting is one of those classic if-you-do-too-much-to-it-you'll-screw-it-up kind of paintings), but sometimes it's fun to jump ahead.  And I'm extremely fond of how the newspaper peeking through the paint gives it quite a colorful feel for a painting that is functionally black and white.

It's an odd one, isn't it?
Yes it is.

Do you know what the secret is?  I'm gonna slather -- positively slather the thing -- with gloss varnish when I'm done.  It's gonna shine like a new car, in a sort of jangly, textural way.  But first, there's a lot of work to be done.

It feels very Madonna-with-Child doesn't it?
It does, doesn't it?
I love your religious paintings.
The frame helps.
It'll be much cooler when the writing goes in.
Yes it will.