“What are they dreaming about?”
Come find out on Tuesday November 3, 2009 at Gallery 1988; as Greg “Craola” Simkins introduces you to “The Pearl Thief”. A new collection of paintings and drawings which holds a secret back story for those who can find what is going on in the minds inside of Simkins’ world.

check out in progress coverage here:
GALLERY 1988
DAILY DUJOUR
ARRESTED MOTION

Gallery 1988:Los Angeles
7020 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles CA,90038
(323)937-7088
www.gallery1988.com gallery1988@aol.com

Check out Gregs artwork @ imscared.com

I’ll check back in tomorrow.

I’ve been doing really good with the nutrition part of the problem in the aspect of controlling my protein, carb, fat ratio but for the life of me I can’t get remotely close to the calorie intake they recommend & I’m even doing a tier down than they recommended for my weight just because i barely fell into the 3rd tier and they is just a massive amount of calories.

I took before pictures and will be taking pictures every 3 days, which means I’ll do one tonight, and I’ll start posting those after a month or so to show progress. Everyone says “stay off the scale” but when you’re doing something like this and your main objective is to lose weight it’s really hard not to, so this morning I checked it out and to my pleasure I’ve lost a few pounds already.

Tonight is shoulders, arms & ab ripper x and I’m sure that will be a bag of fun with how sore i still am in my chest. I will probably do another batch update in a couple days, I’m gonna try and keep it to every 2 or 3 days.

Also if anybody is interested I’m logging my daily nutrition here: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/ianrees

My good friend since high school, Mike, has pretty much lived on the other side of the country since he graduated high school and has been back in town for a few months but recently passed the bar in Pennsylvania and got offered a pretty sweet job in Philly so he’s moving this upcoming weekend so his parents had a little going away BBQ at their house which was pretty much family only but I guess im sorta considered family since I’m always invited to those kinds of things. We ate some good food, drank some beers and watched some good UFC fights. I’m gonna miss that dude, but now i have an excuse to visit Philly.

Mike’s sister Kristina is doing the San Fran – LA AIDS bike ride next week and has been training like crazy for it for the past few months and asked me to ride with her group yesterday. I met up with them at Good Stuff in Hermosa, they had ridden there from Santa Monica, and rode to Santa Monica with them. It was a good ride except for they all had gnarly geared bikes and I was on my single speed, so some of their route was rough on me but i held my own. About a 4th of the way into the ride Kristina’s chain came off and me and her were separated from the pack but it was nice just riding with her. After we got back to their end location I was around the corner from Jason’s dads bike shop, Cynergy, and decided to stop in for a visit. After BS’ing with Jim for a little bit we started talking about me getting a new bike and well to make a long story short, I basically left the shop with a new bike. I don’t have it in my possession yet but I have it, it’s basically the geared version of my Langster called the Allez by Specialized.

After I got home from my ride I met up with Jason & Kelly and my roommate Michelle and we went and ate at Ortega 120, great food horrible service. After that Jason and I went and saw Star Trek, I’ve never been one for nerdy sci-fi flicks but that was a great movie & I’m looking forward to the sequels. So my “day off” was anything but that. My roommate is moving out tomorrow so i spent the day cleaning and painting and moving stuff in the house around, not fun.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be getting all my stuff i ordered for the P90X program, here’s hoping I have enough discipline to stick with it. I’ll be blogging once a week about my progress of it and plan on starting June 1st. Alright well I’ve run out of things to say so I’ll leave you with some designs I finished this week for promo shirts for a production company called F5. Live long & prosper.

Hmm.. what else, ive got a few releases in the past week im really into which you should check out.

The first is “Grey Britain” by the Gallows. I really enjoyed their first release but man this one is head and shoulder above it. It’s pissed and dark and moody and i just effing love it.  Some of my favorite tracks so far are “The Vulture (Acts I&II), London Is The Reason & The Riverbed. I love the intro to the album also, the haunting sound of the ocean flowing threw gallows gives me goosebumps.

If i make it out to Warped Tour this year i will not be missing The Gallows. Check out the video for The Vulture (Act II) below.

Next on my list is Wilco’s new album simply titled Wilco (The Album). There’s not a whole lot to say, it’s a solid album and sounds very similar to Sky Blue Sky but has a little more of a country influence. In my opinion Wilco hasn’t put out anything remotely close to a bad album and they continue that stream with this. Favorite song so far is “I’ll Fight”.

They are streaming the entire album on their site, check it out here; http://beta.wilcoworld.net/records/thealbum/

This is my surprise pick. Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears -- Tell ‘em What Your Name Is. Holy crap this band came out of nowhere when i was least expecting to discover them. They opened for Lucero this past Thursday @ Alex’s bar in Long Beach & god damn are they awesome. Very James Brown’ish but modern. My personal favorite is “Get Yo Shit”.

Normally i’m all for downloading an album if you have the knowhow but seriously, buy this. http://www.myspace.com/blackjoelewis

I’ve been a big fan of The Devil Makes Three for a while now and their new album “Do Wrong Right” doesn’t disappoint. By their standards it’s a little more of a mature album as the songs are a little more structured and produced but it’s still god damn awesome. God ‘ol bluegrass mixed with some punk & folk influences. Choice cuts are “Gracefully Facedown” “For Good Again” “Aces & Twos” & “Johnson Family” but really there isn’t a bad song on this album.

http://www.myspace.com/thedevilmakesthree

Alright, my last album on this list is “Animals In The Dark” by William Elliot Whitmore. Another country folky album which is the way my musical taste has been for the most part as of late & damn does he have a cool voice. Pretty basic songs mostly just guitar and singing, but he does it damn good. My personal favorite is “Who Stole The Soul” although the single for the album “Hell Or High Water” definately deserves mention.

http://www.myspace.com/williamewhitmore

Alright that’s it for my music recommendations, maybe i’ll do this every couple of weeks or so to give me a reason to consistently blog. I had more i was going to say but instead im gonna have a beer and watch some TV.

Ride #1
Starting weight: 208
Total distance: roughly 31 miles (iPhone died during last mile or so)
Start/Finish: Torrance Beach
Mid-point: Venice Beach
Ride Time: 1 hour 45 minutes (2 hours 15 minutes including stops)

Overall it was a good ride and after i soaked in some epson salt my legs feel pretty good. My longest ride until today was roughly 8 miles from home to work, from Lomita to Hermosa Beach, and then 8 miles back 8 hours later. So 31 miles pretty much non-stop was quite a bit of a step up. Being it was a pretty nice holiday sunday pretty much the whole strand was pretty crowded so there were many points that i was able to get a good flow going .

Notes/To-Do list:

• Might need to look into wrist guards or something, they took quote a beating.
• Gonna need to get an iPod nano, used my iMapMyRide app to track distance, time, route & average speed along with the iPod and that drained the batter pretty quick. I can use my normal iPod in the meantime though and just use run iMapMyRide on my iPhone in my seatbag.
• Need to get a mini pump, think i have a slow leak or something.
• Need to get a 2nd water bottle with some sort of powdered energy drink, just water doesn’t help and don’t want to drink gatorade.
• Need a better padded seat or better padded shorts, started to get uncomfortable near the end.

So with that ride in the bag here is my projected plans for the week along with diet guidelines.

Exercise
Monday: Rest, Walk/Run Rosie for 1 mile/1 hour
Tuesday: Ride 8-10 miles (4-5 to work, 4-5 after work), Walk/Run Rosie for 1 mile/1 hour
Wednesday: 6 a.m. stick time, work on slapshot/one timers & quick stop & start drills, Walk/Run Rosie for 1 mile/1 hour
Thursday: Ride 8-10 miles (4-5 to work, 4-5 after work), Walk/Run Rosie for 1 mile/1 hour
Friday: Rest, Walk/Run Rosie for 1 mile/1 hour
Saturday: Ride 30-40 miles
Sunday: 8:45 league hockey game, most likely have 30 minutes ice time

Diet
Low carbs/high proteins
Minimal sugars
Cut out alcohol (gonna be hard with playoff hockey starting soon)

Whats the point of all of this? Well to lose some weight obviously, but i would also like to have better stamina/leg strength for hockey and the best off ice training is cycling. Hopefully I can stick with it and get rid of most of my belly before summer time, not like i’m a huge beach person but it’d be nice to not be carrying around this gut i got going anymore ha.

And now on to some freelance goals for the week

• Finish YouMacbeth website
• Design 3-5 shirt comps for F5
• Finish re-designing Davids blog
• Add some content to About To Break

Wow that was a dousey of a blog, I’m gonna try to nap now.

If you’re as much of a fan of the taco trucks check out this site; http://saveourtacotrucks.org/

http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=6262850410

It looks like it is a fan page and not actually ran by Michelle but i found this funny.

“the greatest photographer everr.
with the scene royalties of..

Audrey Kitching
Kristyn Strange
Sabina Kelley
Jussi
Jenn

Mandy Murders
Ian Monsta

and so forth.”

Flattering to be mentioned with those names but way off base, ha.

Also there is a photo section called “The Stunners” and these photos are in there, i’m sure they are more for Mandy but still funny.