Halloween 2014 Part One

I got this Issue of Kult magazine in the mail from Singapore.  I worked with them and GE General Electric on an illustration about the greeness of their evolution series engines.

scooped up these mid century modern teak chairs from a guy in greenpoint.  New we just need two more chairs.

scored this cardboard boxes from a medical supply store down the street.  Halloween costume time has begun.

our super cool and trendy mid century modern table and chairs.

the shelves have eyes

tried to make my favorite thing that Fumika's mom makes, cheese and shiso leaf stuffed katsu

we have flowers all the time now because Jen needs them for her social media photo job

people take Halloween seriously in Carroll Gardens.  This guy had smoke coming out of here too

motion activated inflatable black cat causes dogs to bark and Jason's to look un-emphatic.

I don't think i've sent out a postcard promo to art directors in over 6 years.

the hard work begins.  Me and bob topless and then pantless sweating away to meet the Halloween eve deadline.  I remember it being a lot easier to make these before.

Lucali on Henry street is awesome pizza and byob and there is always a wait.  We waited outside for 45 minutes drinking beer and talking trash

their calzone is stuffed to the gils with ricotta i think.  You gotta go to Lucali if you're anywhere near it in Brooklyn.

they get serious about Halloween in Carroll Gardens.

The Raish Brothers Brotherly Road Trip - The Long Road Home

So there isn't really that much that interested us between Nashville and western New York so we aimed to complete this final leg all in one go.  Google maps said it would take 14 hrs driving + eating.  It was the long road home

a final look at the last hotel we would stay in.  To room smells of fried chicken and gravy.  In peacetime that would be awesome but in the road trip wartime on our stomachs it was not so cool

We had to drive through Louisville, Kentucky and I said we must get a Hot Brown.  We went to the Brown Hotel, the creators of the Kentucky tradition.  It is a very fancy place and Bob went and did what Bob does, sweatpants and large t-shirt from college.  Class

I told Bob I locked the keys in the car and he was like DON'T F WITH ME JASON.  and I said yea I did and he said DUDE DON'T F WITH ME.  and I said yea i did take a look right there on the seat, right there and I smiled and giggled.  He sauntered over and saw the keys square on the driver's seat, glistening in the sun and then he got a very disappointed look on his face.  I laughed.  So we ate and waited for the locksmith guy to come.  He was hyper and popped the lock in like 30 seconds.  It was $45 dollars.

The Hot Brown:  Turkey, bacon, roma tomatos, texas toast, all covered with mornay sauce and pecorino romano cheese.  What's mornay sauce you say?  It's bechamel sauce with cheese in it.  What's bechamel sauce you say?  It's one of the 5 traditional mother sauces:  Bechamel, Veloute, Espagnole, Hollandaise, Classic Tomato

the long road home gets a lot longer when it's like this for hours and hours.  We had a lot of rain driving on this road trip

yay, i'm in........Pennsylvania.

through my expert packing skills we managed to pack the car full but still be able to see out the back window.  We stopped in Erie, PA at burgerking to get the 2 spicy classic chicken sandwhiches for $5 deal, only to find that the spicy chicken sandwich was over.  That's the one thing I held on to the entire trip ,that I could get the classic long chicken sandwich of my youth, but now in glorious spicy......aaaaand we failed.  We got just normal classic chicken sandwiches and felt bad again after eating fast food.  Ooh I forgot to write about maybe an even more shameful eating thing we did at the hotel when I had to work.  I'll go amend that post right now.

we finally made it back to Canisteo, NY where we grew up and where our parents live.  What a road trip.  We are glad it's over.

relaxing with the Newfoundlands up on Raish Hill.

an unexpected bonus from this trip was that I got my Klipsch 4.1 THX certified speakers back from Bob.  I had forgotten I gave them to him when I moved to China.  I have been listening to music through a bluetooth portable jambox for over a year now.  Score!

so a final recap, this is the map from the GPS in my camera.  about 1,500 photos in all.  91 in the mountains of colorado, 89 in austin, 201 in New Orleans, 78 in Graceland, 32 in Canisteo, New York.  If you count my bus ride back to New York I logged over 3,000 miles on the road.  The driving and everything wasn't that bad, and I would road trip again.  Eventually the grand canyon and California will have to be reached....

The Raish Brothers Brotherly Road Trip - Graceland

we woke up in Canton, Mississippi and started our drive up to Memphis, Tennessee to go to Elvis' house, Graceland.

ladies what if you could wake up to this?

more cotton.

this is a good thing to see when you're going to a BBQ joint.  We went to Jim Neely's Interstate BBQ in Memphis and it was pretty sweet.

this place is so cheap too.  huge BBQ Bologna sandwich, pulled pork sandwich, potato salad, and BBQ spaghetti, yes it's a thing in the south.

Unbeknownst to us there was a super awesome storm coming to Memphis and there were tornado warnings and things looked like they were about to get really serious.  A few minutes later they cancelled the tornado warnings and decreased the drama.

that doesn't mean there wasn't torrential downpour which we caught some of on the way to the BBQ place to Graceland.  If we had just been 2 minutes faster we could have outrun the storm, but no, it got us right as we pulled in and we stepped out of the car into 6 inches of water.  We were soaked and our shoes were soaked all afternoon and it was a little chilly.  It might be enough to make Bob curse HIS name (the king, elvis presley) because he already wasn't the biggest fan.  But bob is bob and he soldiered on.

Elvis' house was actually pretty cool.  its the whole waiting around for 2 hour around the crappy side "museums" and the 20 gift shops that sucks.  You have to wait for your bus group to be called so you can be shuttled ACROSS THE STREET

Elvis' famous jungle room.  Just so no one judges Elvis they said that back then this style was in fashion.  Just to be clear.

they give you an ipad and headphones so everyone is walking around like zombies with a 100 yard stare.  You would never guess who the audio host was.  John mother lovin' Stamos

so many various lighting sources with various color temperatures made it impossible to get a good photo of Elvis' tv lounge which was kinda cool.  Everything is yellow.

the bar in the television room.  There were little bars everywhere.  John Stamos told us that Elvis' heart was big and he liked to fill his house with his friends and family.  There would be people doing stuff an all hours of the night and day

I wanted to buy an Elvis bobble head but the two they had in the giftshops looked nothing like Elvis.  Seeing the museum displays, I can see that it's been a problem since the King was born.

One of his Vegas era show suits.  I've never seen this tiger one.  There were lots of his suits on display and he had an expansive trophy room too.  This is in his handball court.  The property is pretty sizeable with a bunch of buildings housing different stuff.  Horses, lots of different kinds of vehicles.  Is Graceland worth it?  The jury is still out.  If you ask bob he would say no probably.  if you ask me i would say I don't know.  We saw elvis fans from all over the world here although the majority of the patrons were of a more "country" persuasion.  After reading the wikipedia page on elvis prior to arriving we determined that Elvis really was a good guy and always acknowledged the debt he owed to black musicians and was overall a good guy.  

We skipped Beale street because we read everywhere that its like a shorter Bourbon street, and after seeing Bourbon street we were like no thank you we don't need to see that.  Actually there is a lot of shame when you have been on a road trip through the south for a week and have been eating crap for breakfast lunch and dinner the whole time.  We got to Nashville late so there was nothing open around our hotel and we were so tired and it was raining so we didn't want to venture into downtown Nashville so the only thing open was a Church's Chicken.  The restaurant part of it wasn't even open still, only the drive through window.  A car pulled up behind us at the window and Bob panicked and said just get that 10 piece bucket meal that we just said we would definitely not get.  It was $16 and weighed like 10 pounds.  At the hotel we opened it up and it turned out to be a meal for a family of four.  Lots of biscuits, family sized slaw and mashed potatoes and gravy, and 10 pieces of chicken but not normal chicken, like Franken-chicken.  10 pieces of thighs and wings fried together or wings and breasts fried together.  It was a sh!t load of chicken and we were floored after having eaten so much southern food for a week.  There were no utensils in the bag so we were going to eat mashed potatoes and slaw with the plastic bags they package cups in at hotels but I said NO, we must maintain a shred of dignity so i went downstairs to find some.  We used utensils but our dignity was already long gone.  We pretty much ate everything and half of the chicken and felt sorry for ourselves and went to bed.  It was a shameful night.