Paranoid American Podcast 022: The Esoteric Art of Mark Rogers
Summary
➡ The artist discusses their process for battling creative block — a technique involving 10-minute thumbnails that help shape a composition and limiting the scope of possibilities. They share their unique approach of using only six tubes of paint, consistently since 2009, and also reveal how dyslexia affects their communication, making storytelling through artwork more natural. They explain their fascination with old-timey elements often incorporated in their art and the change of their living location from Portland, Oregon to Fort Wayne, Indiana.
➡ The discussion revolves around a recent visit to a historical reenactment in Fort Wayne, particularly the Johnny Appleseed festival, featuring a memorable drum performance by children. Further conversation explores the historical context of carbonated beverages and fascination with the occult, Freemasonry, and magic. The speaker identifies as a Wiccan but has not officially joined any secret societies due to time constraints. The discussion ends with the speaker sharing their open-minded perspective on alien existence, personal unidentified flying object (UFO) sighting, and interaction with UFO enthusiasts due to their unique art production.
➡ A passionate painter in Orlando discusses his interest in UFO festivals and his creativity featuring alien characters. His art narrative includes different species of aliens with various moral compasses, each representing unique roles and characteristics in his imaginary world.
➡ The text is a shared conversation about a fantasy world centered around immortal, robe-clad aliens and the Royal Clothier who sews their robes. It also ties in elements of ancient Egyptian lore and occult practices like astral projection and tarot card reading to form narratives. The speaker uses these elements both as part of their storytelling and a tool for overcoming creative blocks, suggesting a deep fascination with occultism, mysticism, and world-building.
➡ The text covers a broad range of topics, including the speaker’s creative process and ability to remember visual ideas; the intriguing characters and adventurous storylines in their comic-style illustrations; their interest in conspiracies such as Bohemian Grove; and an elaborate storyline involving a love-struck Sasquatch, which is part of a Bigfoot series named the Primordial Conjunction.
➡ The conversation engages on topics of belief and skepticism towards paranormal and conspiracy topics, such as fairies, Bigfoot, moon landing, magic summoning demons, and celebrity clones. Discussing their levels of belief for each area on a scale from 0 to 10, they also touch on the JFK assassination and personal media consumption habits, highlighting the impact of certain programs and books on perspectives and nostalgia.
➡ The text discusses theories about the supposed magical ritualistic assassination of JFK and the power transfer that follows, hinting that such power dynamics might inspire a similar plot in a fantasy world. It then moves on to talk about a recent art gallery show featuring the speaker’s work, and details about a character, Peter, a dolphin-human hybrid from a current ongoing storyline. The text concludes with a hair-raising advert for a macabre comic book, ‘Frazzledrip Funhouse’.
➡ Paranoidamerican.com offers an inclusive game with exclusive covers accessible through backing on Indiegogo.
Transcript
Good evening, listeners, brave navigators of the enigmatic and the concealed. Have you ever felt the pull of the unanswered, the allure of the mysteries that shroud our existence? For more than a decade, a unique comic publisher has dared to dive into these mysteries, unafraid of the secrets they might uncover. This audacious entity is paranoid American. Welcome to the mystifying Universe of the Paranoid American podcast cast. Launched in the year 2012, Paranoid American has been on a mission to decipher the encrypted secrets of our world.
From the unnerving enigma of mkultra mind control, to the clandestine assemblies of secret societies, from the Aweinspiring frontiers of forbidden technology, to the arcane patterns of occult symbols in our very own pop culture, they have committed to unveiling the concealed realities that lie just beneath the surface. Join us as we navigate these intricate landscapes, decoding the hidden scripts of our society and challenging the accepted perceptions of reality.
Folks, I’ve got a big problem on my hands. There’s a company called Paranoid American making all these funny memes and comics. Now, I’m a fair guy. I believe in free speech as long as it doesn’t cross the line. And if these AI generated memes dare to make fun of me. They’re crossing the line. This is your expedition into the realm of the extraordinary, the secret, the shrouded. Come with us as we sift through the world’s grand mysteries, question the standardized narratives, and brave the cryptic labyrinth of the concealed truth.
So strap yourselves in, broaden your horizons, and steal yourselves for a voyage into the enigmatic heart of the Paranoid American podcast, where each story, every image, every revelation brings us one step closer to the elusive truth. Welcome to another episode of Paranoid American podcasts, and I’m incredibly excited today because I’ve got an all around badass joining us. This is Mark Rogers. He’s up there front and center. First of all, before we even get into anything else, can you just do some plugs up front and tell people where they can go and find your work? What? Your social medias? All, all that? Yeah, sure thing.
Thanks for having me. My website is WW, markrogersart. com, and my social media is at Mark Rogers Art. So, Mark, I came across your artwork probably on Instagram a while ago, and it was probably just like a passing thing. I was like, oh, cool, there’s like an Indian cow or an alien cowboy or something. It had a certain aesthetic to it. And then I saw another one and another one.
Then I realized that you had really honed into this very particular aesthetic and topic and just, like, content matter and, I don’t know, I felt like maybe you knew who I was and you were secretly making all this artwork just for my enjoyment because it was so dead on to everything that I love about, I guess, like traditional folk art, but also conspiracy theories, like, we got dolphins and aliens and reptilians.
First, I just want to ask you, do you have a name for your aesthetic or your style or anything? No, I don’t really think I have a name for it. But all my paintings do take place in a fantasy world that I call the Southwestern Bellows. That kind of exists in my sketchbooks and my imagination. And a lot of it is set, like, in the Southwest. It’s kind of like if you were to think about, like, a fantasy novel, it’s, like, set in Europe.
It’s like, in the medieval ages, this one is. And it’s got elves and stuff. My weird fantasy world I paint in is kind of like the American version of that, but it’s set in the 18 hundreds, and it has aliens and shit like that instead of elves. So that’s kind of what I do. And did this place start in your mind? And you were like, I have to paint this place, or did you start painting and determine, like, I’m going to world build? Like, how did it actually start? Yeah, a little bit of both.
Before I was a painter, I really wanted to become a writer like Stephen King. I love Stephen King so much. I don’t read just, like, horror and stuff, though. I read a lot of fantasy Novels. I love world building. I’m kind of a nerd like that. When I started painting, that interest really, I don’t know, took a center stage, I guess. And I’ve always been interested in paranormal topics and stuff like that, too.
So all my interests kind of combined. It’s like, what are you going to paint? I don’t know. I mean, just stuff you’re into, and that’s stuff I think is interesting. And here I’m going to just have some of your art up on the screen while we talk a little bit, just so that some of the viewers can kind of see some of these aesthetics. And I’m not going to make you explain all these in detail or anything, but some of these bring some really cool ideas to mind.
So this is the Crystal Mountain invaders, and this is in two parts. And I assume this is happening under this dude’s house. And they’ve each got a portal. Where are these portals going? Are these going back to their alien world, or is this another place on our world? Well, that painting is pretty old, so that one’s 2016. I’m trying to think of what was going through my mind at the time, but I was kind of thinking that maybe that was the basement and that the alien was going through the portal and entering into that miner’s cabin.
And we got Nephilim too, which I’ve never seen a depiction quite like this, of Nephilim, where he’s holding, like, a giant nautilus, I guess. Yeah. Outside of this particular piece, what are your thoughts on Nephilim in general? Are you big into the topic? Do you think that it’s real? Do you think they actually existed at some point? I don’t really have any concrete ideas on. I don’t have any firm beliefs on any of this stuff.
I’m totally open minded, though, and I’m totally interested in reading as much and absorbing as much of this kind of content as I can because it’s all super fascinating. But I mean, I’ve never seen evidence of giant angel creatures personally, but on the Internet, you can find anything to confirm your bias one way or another. But I’m just totally open and fascinated with all these topics. So, I mean, I can’t really say whether or not I’m interested or I have a firm belief in it.
But I was raised Catholic, and I think that that’s where I first started. I’m not Catholic now, for the record, but I think that’s where some of my interest in some of these topics came in. Just like magic and people coming back from the dead and stuff. That sounds like alien stuff. Catholic Mass feels very high. Magic, ritual magic. Yeah, big time. And this one is. I’m curious, how long did something like this take you for a piece like this one as an example? That one, I’m going to say, like three weeks, I guess about four or 5 hours a day.
Usually. It’s a substantial amount of time. Three weeks. Were you thinking about Nephilim constantly, or does this just leave? The second you leave the canvas, it actually leaves before I even get there. Usually it’ll take place in my sketchbook, so I’ll usually draw something out there. The way I’ve been working now is I’ve been working in series of nine paintings. So I’ll actually put together a storyboard, and then I’ll just go through and paint them one at a time.
But I’m always like, nine paintings ahead of the painting I’m painting right now. I’m thinking about one series, but I’m painting one that I drew up a while ago, so I guess I’m not necessarily thinking about them anymore. Like, the story has been kind of written, but now as I’m painting, I’m just, like, revisiting them and trying to come up with extra details I can pack into the painting and stuff, but really all the conceptual stuff just kind of happens in the sketchbook almost like a year before I paint the painting.
Interesting. That reminds me, kind of like working on comics where I’ll get a hair up my ass about a certain story, and I’ll write it all out, and I’ll figure out what the art is going to look like and get all the character sketches, and it feels like, okay. It’s almost like I never learn after decades, I feel like if I get all this energy and I put all that effort in, then I’ll wake up the next morning and it’ll just be done and be there.
But really, it goes into the production process. And, yeah, I can relate to where you stop putting everything into that story because it’s already out on the assembly line and you’re just waiting to see how it gets produced and then maybe tweak it a little bit more. Yeah, it’s really a process like that. I enjoy it a lot, though. I don’t know. I just like the rhythm of just waking up and painting and just working on it, like marathon style.
It’s just like, you just kind of keep going and. Yeah, it’s not just like this wild thing, like, whoa, man. I just thought about a man turning into. From a sasquatch into a man, and he’s not wearing any shoes. I’m just so pumped about it, and I’m going to do it now. It takes months, and maybe a year later, I’ll start painting that weird idea that came into my head.
Do you run into writer’s block or artist block for any of this, or do you just push yourself and power through it? I just kind of power through it slowly. You got any tips for anyone that hits creative blocks and doesn’t know how to just power through it? Yeah, I have a couple strategies that I do for one thing that I do for an artist block, like trying to figure out a composition or trying to figure out something like that is I do these ten minute thumbnail things where I’ll just draw out, like, a little, like, my rectangle where the painting might go, and I’ll just put on a timer, and I’ll just try to fill that up in ten minutes.
And then I’ll just move on and go, ten minutes, ten minutes, ten minutes. And that’s, like a strategy that will usually yield some sort of a composition. And then limiting all the possibilities is, like, another thing that really helps me creatively because you can really paint or draw anything. So coming up with a limited range of what you’re going to be working on, you can be pretty creative when you have some constraints there, like if you’re painting from a storyboard or something, you’re like, okay, I’ve got these characters.
I’ve got this sItuation. I find it really helpful to work like that. And I actually do the same thing with, weirdly, my painting palette. I only buy six tubes of paint, and I’ve been using the same exact colors since I started in 2009. I guess I don’t know how else to ask this question. It might sound ignorant question, but are there any colors that you’re still discovering that you can make out of those six different root colors, or have you pretty much found the whole spectrum at this point? I think I found the whole spectrum of those colors.
I think I have been really thinking about switching my red out for a different red because I use primary colors. I use primary colors, a black and a white and a brown, and those are the colors that I use. Yeah, I think I’ve been able to figure out every single combination that I can get with those specific colors. But, yeah, I still feel like I’m learning, though, and I’m still trying to get better.
You had a note on this one painting where you said, I enjoy painting alien languages because humans rarely notice my dyslexic spelling errors. Yeah, I’m dyslexic. So how do you think that affected you communicating through art? Was that, like. I don’t know. For a lot of people that I know that were dyslexic that then became artists were like, it was the first time that they felt they could communicate without thinking that they were making mistakes or having to check every little thing.
Yeah. Let me think about this. Well, I feel as if my dyslexia really shows up when I’m talking out loud. And when I’m reading stuff, I’ll just mix up the words and mix them backwards. Not when I’m just reading a book, like, I’m a pretty voracious reader, but when I’m reading the text in the book out loud to somebody, it’s very obvious. I once got fired from a record store for my inability to organize records with the human alphabet.
I thought I was doing it right. But there’s something that switches in my brain that I guess I wasn’t doing a very good job. But I don’t know. I think I’m an okay writer, but, yeAh, telling stories with pictures, it seems way more natural to me. This one, too. This was probably one of my favorite ones. I saw it before I read the description. I was wondering, is this a guy turning into an alien, or was this an alien taken off his suit? And sure enough, this is depiction of Zeta reticuli Gray removing the living Homo sapien costume in a physically and spiritually exhaustive process known as drama.
So is this something that you had a dream about or thought up? How much of this machine do you know how it works? Or is this just an aesthetic thing? I have no idea. It just started happening. I can’t really tell you. I kind of got an idea. So there’s no pattern on this. This one’s an earlier painting as well. I’m, like, going to get close. Yeah. 2017.
I guess it’s not that early, but that one isn’t part of, like, a major storyline or anything. But I was like, just. I think I had seen early. I really like just collecting reference material from, like, the 18 hundreds and stuff. And I think I had seen some reference material with some photography in it and people getting photography, having their photo taken, or early experiments with photography. And then my brain just went with that instead of a camera.
So I was kind of thinking about 1800 photography when I came up with that. But that’s how an alien takes off its human face. The dissimulation reversal. Yeah. And my cat is actually. That cat in that painting is actually sitting right here beside me while I do this interview. This is a podcast. 20 pound cat. He’s lost a lot of weight. I think he’s only like, I don’t know, he might be only eleven pounds or something, but he’s half the cat.
Yeah. I used to live in a studio apartment for many years, and I live in a house now, and the house has stairs, so he runs up and down the stairs. I think it’s good for him. Did you find yourself gravitate towards an area in the Midwest or in the West? Like, your paintings follow? Like, are you in Arizona or something? I’m originally from Portland, Oregon, and My parents were born in Arizona, so all of my extended family lives in Arizona.
Then my biological father lives in Palm Springs, California, which is right next to Joshua Tree. So I visit him quite often. So I’ll go down to the desert and do that but I could never personally live in the desert because I’m very pale and the sun destroys me. But, yeah, I used to live in Portland, and then a little over a year ago, I moved to the Midwest.
I live in Fort Wayne, Indiana now. I moved here. So I was like, well, Portland was getting a little expensive for housing, and I really wanted to buy a house, and I couldn’t afford one there, but I was like, I think I can afford one in the Midwest somewhere. I’d never even heard of Fort Wayne, but I started just doing some research, and I was like, okay, Fort Wayne, it’s a little smaller, but it’s outside of Chicago.
It’s outside of Indianapolis and Detroit. It’s kind of like right in the, um. Again, the weather isn’t super brutal as far as snow goes. I mean, we get snow, but it’s not like Milwaukee or Buffalo or someplace. Those were some of the other places. I was thinking pieces with snow. I’ve drawn stuff in my sketchbook with snow while I was in Milwaukee in the snow. But no, I’ve never painted a snow piece yet.
It. I will eventually. Yeah, there’s a Christmas series coming up. Yeah, I’ll do a Christmas series. You mentioned, too, that you really like looking for reference material and stuff from the 18 hundreds, I’ll assume just browsing online and looking around. But if you’re driving by an old pawn shop or you’re walking around a pawn shop, is there something that you’re always keeping your eye open for, like a certain magazine or a certain tin? No, but I love visiting history museums.
I guess that’s my thing, is whenever I go to a new city, I’m like, I want to visit the History Museum. Sometimes I’ll take photos, reference photos of the things they have there. As soon as I moved to Fort Wayne, I was like, I’m going to the History Museum. I’m going to learn about this plAce. That’s also fun to kind of learning about different places. But I also visually, like, I love stuff from that time period.
Just like before computers, before, really, the industrial Revolution took off. It’s just, like, weird to think about how people lived their lives and did stuff with no Game Boy with that kind. No Game Boy? Yeah, I wouldn’t want to live in that time period. The Game Boy got me neither. Yeah. Having surgery or something back then. Whoa, brutal. You’re bite down on this cloth. If you were lucky.
Yeah. I mean, even just like going to the bathroom, like having to use an outhouse, just like everything. It’s just hard. Everything’s just hard. It sounds like something that you would pay to experience only so that you can go back to normal life like these days. Well, I did experience it in the form of the Johnny Appleseed Festival, which happened here in Fort Wayne just a couple of weeks ago.
I love going to any historical reenactment thing. I like watching it from the sidelines and being like, wow, that’s really interesting. What was the highlight from the Johnny Appleseed thing? There were a couple of things that stood out. They had these kids that were dressed as this French drummer group, so they were all playing these snare drums, kind of like marching band style. But what was so weird was all their faces were just, like, super Deadpan.
So they were just, like, dressed in these uniforms, like they were time travelers or something, and everybody was watching. And it was just kind of a fun juxtaposition, like these kids in costume playing drums very seriously, and all these people with their phones out, taking pictures of them. That was kind of cool. What did it have to do with Johnny Appleseed? Johnny Appleseed is buried in Fort Wayne, so there’s just a festival commemorating him and all the trees.
All the apple trees he planted. Yeah, the festival happens every year at his gravesite. It’s like a big thing out here. It’s new for me to be experiencing. I’m like, wow, that’s pretty weird and obscure, but it’s a real big deal here. Is it like an apple festival, too? They got, like, apple pie and apple cider and all that? Yeah, we got some apple cider. They have apple pies.
They had, what’s it called? Sasparilla root beer wasn’t very good. Or at least the stuff I had. It’s not very carbonated. You’re used to drinking, like, soda. Did we have, like, a laquois or whatever? And it’s pretty carbonated. But this wasn’t, weirdly, they might have just dropped it on the ground or something. Yeah, it’s totally flat. I don’t know what they did back then. If they had any means to carbonate beverages back then in the 18 hundreds, I’m not really sure.
Yeah, they had. They called them phosphates for a while. Oh, fascinating. I think that came. I’m probably just making stuff up as I go here so people can correct me in the comments, but I could have sworn that the guy that found nitrous oxide also eventually helped contribute to the discovery of, like, phosphates and fizzy sodas. And I think that was in the late 17 hundreds. Whoa. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone in 18 hundreds had some kind of a fizzy drink.
Yeah, I’m going to have to go down the rabbit hole on that, I think. Beer, too. I think they’ve had carbonated beer for a while. Anyway. I might also be talking, and I noticed on one of these paintings here, I’d like the quote. I think it was this one here. Yeah. It says that the aliens return in the year 30 92 after nuclear radiation has subsided. After meditating hundreds of years with ancient One, they promised to return to Earth with an extremely chill CBD THC strain, which would not only cure every disease, but cure the world.
What’s the name of that strain? Oh, man, I have no idea. Is this like Northern Lights or is it something it hasn’t been invented yet? Because it’s going to come out a little later, like 1000 years from now. Is this going to be like a cush? Is it going to be like a sativa? It’s going to be a new blend we’ve never even heard of. Fair enough. It’ll be that alien strain.
Yeah. And then I don’t know how much of this is just from your aesthetic influences and stuff, but I see this and I just kind of read some kind of Masonic influence a little bit, in some ways, at least with the garb or. Are you into any of the ancient mystery schools or secret societies? Does that kind of stuff influence any of your thoughts? Yeah, I’m super into all of that.
I love magic and witchcraft. Are you in the Illuminati by any chance? No. Okay. Would you tell me if you were maybe fair? I’m not sure if I can reveal that in time. You can’t disclose that, but, yeah, I mean, I love occult stuff. I love magic. I love chaos magic. I’m a Wiccan. I really into all of that. I’ve thought about joining the Masons, but I don’t think I have enough time.
Yeah, it takes a little while. It’s an investment in time, for sure. Yeah. I’m really busy and I’m kind of an introvert. It seems like they hang out a lot. That’s cool. But I’m just so busy. I mean, there’s a lot of different reasons people join them. But I’d like to describe it as, like, if you were really into chess, right? You’d join a chess club. And it’s not like you could just walk out into public and find someone that likes chess.
It’s very niche thing to be interested in. So for me, Masonry is like chess Club. But it’s for people that like to read, like, occult books and esoteric topics and old books, niche thing. And you can’t just drive up to a library and just assume that you’re going to bump into someone that cares about the R’s Gauatia, or, like, old 16 hundreds alchemical texts. So that’s kind of where Freemasonry stands out, or Rosicrucianism or Oto or any of those.
Have you considered joining any other groups before? Oh, yeah, I’ve considered joining every one of those groups, but, yeah, I’ve just never joined one, but I’m open to it all. There’s one that I would join over the others. I don’t know. I’m pretty fascinated with the Golden dawn, but I don’t really feel like the Golden Dawn. I don’t really know what they’re like right now. I only know about the GoldeN dawn in that Victorian era when they were, like the height of their thing.
And also, I don’t really know if I live near anything like that. So I guess I would join the Masons or like, the OD fellows or something like that around here. Yeah. Just geographic convenience of it, right? Yeah, definitely. So I noticed in one of these back, too, it had a reptilian looking dude. Do you actually believe in grays and reptilians and all these alien entities? Like I was saying before, I’m pretty open to it all.
I don’t have any reason to think that it’s not real or I don’t really think that I have reason to believe that it is necessarily totally real either. I could go either way. I’m just totally open minded to the possibility. I love absorbing all of the books, the stories, the first hand accounts. Like UFO Ology in general, has been interesting to me since I was a little tiny kid.
I have never personally seen a gray. I’ve seen a UFO before, but it wasn’t like a flying saucer or triangle shaped. The UFO I saw did look similar to something that I’ve seen in a couple of UFO documentaries, but it was more of like an energy ball shape type of a UFO. Was it making the irrational movements and sharp corners and stuff? It didn’t. No, it just flew across the sky pretty low.
It was about the size of, like, a Volkswagen bug or something. And it looked like it was made out of energy. That’s the only way I can really describe it. And it just kind of flew over the horizon line that was with another person. We just kind of watched it. It just flew above the telephone lines at maybe only like 20 miles an hour. We just kind of watched it cruise by.
It didn’t have any of the distinctive stuff that’s congruent with the lore and other people’s sightings at all. It wasn’t all spastic. It didn’t look like it was capable of. I mean, it didn’t even really look like a machine. It just looked like it was made out of magic or something. That’s why I still refer to it as a UFO rather than it was definitely something I could not identify.
But that was the only encounter like that that I’ve had that I can think of. Do you have a lot of UFO enthusiasts reach out to you because of the type of art you produce? Absolutely. And I love it. I love hearing people’s stories. I just think it’s so cool. Yeah. So obviously, I’m not painting the lore or I feel like there is sort of like a cohesive sort of story that’s starting to form with the abduction phenomenon and grays.
I feel like that that is starting to happen within UFO ology, but I just have my own stories that I make up. But still, people will recognize that and be like, hey, man, can I tell you something that happened to me? And I’m like, please do. Just Paypal me $20 and I’ll listen to anything. No, I want to hear. People will send me stories through Instagram. They’ll write their personal stories, or they’ll send me video voice recordings and stuff.
And I’m always fascinated. Do you ever go to UFO conventions or anything like that? No, but I really wanted to go to. There’s been a few that I’ve been tempted to go to. I don’t really get out very much, unfortunately, but, like, there’s the contact in the desert. When I was living on the West Coast, I really wanted to go to. But those tickets are fairly pricey. Do you go to UFO? I actually just found out that the first annual Orlando UFO convention is happening.
So you’re in Orlando? Yeah, I’m in Orlando. Okay. So I haven’t been to one. No, I’ve wanted to, and I might be able to make it to this one. Although if I don’t, I’ll be bummed. But I absolutely am going to go to all the future ones. I just found out about it too late. Desert UFO. Didn’t you want to go and do the Naruto run into Area 51? No.
Okay. Yeah, me either. It just seemed a little hot. Yeah, I don’t. Yeah, I mean, I. I’m just a painter. I don’t have, like, you know, I don’t have expertise or, like, hidden knowledge that other people don’t have. You don’t have to say that out loud. You can be like, oh, no, I’ve got all the secrets. Yeah, I don’t have any secrets that you know of. But I actually just remembered I did go to the McMinville UFO Festival.
Sorry. It took a second for my brain to catch up, but there was a side effect of that men in black flash that they gave you on the way out. Yeah. In McMinville, Oregon, they had a pretty significant sighting in, like, I think it was the 50s, standard flying saucer type UFO. Anybody can just Google McMinville UFO. So every year they have a festival there that has been.
Yeah, it will probably just pop up right away. There it is. Yeah, they have a little festival there. They had, like, a pet parade where people dress up their dogs. Chickens. Like aliens. Yeah, and chickens. Yeah. It’s a little country out. That’s awesome. Outside of Oregon or outside of Portland in the smaller cities. Oh, I’m sure it exists. I guess I just never considered that there might be, like, a best in show chicken was a.
I saw a green chicken out there. Like, naturally green or dyed? Green. Dyed? Yeah. I was like, is that really very good for the animal? But I don’t know. That’s where Tyson gets all of their chicken from. This might sound a little bit random, and you might even have an answer, but do you have an idea in mind, like, the physics of what’s going on here? Is she enclosed in energy prism, or is this, like, a material prism? What’s going on here? She’s generating an energy prism around her body because she has just discovered that she has that ability.
So she is kind of showing her parents what she can do. She’s like, this is what I can do. That one had a flash tattooed. So after you get tattooed, you’re all kind of spacey or whatever. And I had my sketchbook with me, and I was just, like, sitting down afterwards, and I was just kind of spacing out, and I just drew that lady inside of that. I don’t know.
I just had a story of just, like, really quickly flash into my mind, and I just drew it in my sketchbook real fast and then painted it, like, a year later. Are those fleeting? Like, if you hadn’t sketched it at that exact moment and waited until you got home, would it have just dissipated? I don’t know. I’m not sure. I think they do kind of stick with me.
Yeah. I have this current idea I’ve been working on. I think I’ve drawn, like, I don’t know, it’s just, like, in my mind, but I’ve drawn so many different little thumbnails, and the same one has been in my mind for months now. Are you waiting for your brain to just say, like, that’s the one? Yeah, pretty much. I have specific drawing times during the day right now. I draw first thing in the morning.
So I’ll just wake up with my cup of coffee, and I’ll just start sketching and do that for, like, 45 minutes or an hour. And if I get it, I get it. If I don’t, I’ll maybe get it tomorrow or the next day or whatever. I love the perspective of some of these ones here. That one’s a really tiny painting. I almost forgot I painted that. What kind of paintings don’t make it onto your website? How many are not on the site versus how many are on the site? I would say a lot of them are on the site.
Maybe a lot of my new stuff might not be on the site yet, but I try to be very careful or very deliberate, I guess, with making sure everything is like, I bombed quite a few paintings when I was first starting, so I try to idiot proof my painting so that I don’t make the mistake. I try to make sure, like, that one. I might want to take that one off my website now.
Really? What are you seeing in it that makes you think that? I think that I am probably better at painting. I don’t like how I rendered that girl’s face. Yeah. I think that I would have rendered some of the things differently, but, you know, I’m a little older now, and I’ve been doing it for a little longer, and that probably happens with every artist. You look at your earlier stuff and you cringe a little bit, you’re like, dang, I could do that a little bit better.
Yeah. It’s one of those things that only you see for sure, though. You know what I mean? Yeah, I guarantee you no one’s. Well, maybe someone, but I don’t think anyone’s looking at the canvas and being, ah, but her face, it could have been rendered. Yeah. Where does the Mantis come in? Because Mantis isn’t something that you would find in Arizona, is it? No. Is this something from your childhood? Well, mantids are pretty common in a lot of the UFO lore with grays and stuff, where you would have abduction scenarios where there’s this manted character that’s like almost a different species commingling with the gray characters in my imagination, I like to think of the Mantids as acting as the moral compass for the Grays who no longer have the ability to.
They no longer have the ability to dream. They’ve traded in their mortality. I call them the Zeta reticulons because the Betty and Barney Hill incident. In that incident, I think Betty said that these aliens told her that they came from the Ze reticulon star system. So that’s why I always call them the Ze reticulons in my stories. But as far as the Mantaids go, I think of them, like, in this Jiminy cricket kind of way.
So they’re actually kind of good and they kind of help people. It’s a little bit debatable whether or not they actually do, but they think they, so. Well, Jiminy Cricket was the conduit to bringing basically human consciousness into the homunculus of Pinocchio. Right. So it’s a very gnostic tale, but he’s sort of that initial spark of consciousness that invites a bigger spark. So I think that’s a great analogy for the manids kind of directing that.
And maybe think, as you were talking, too, in this world that you’ve created, are there good guys and bad guys, or is everyone just different shades of gray? The Reptilians are kind of bad. The Grays are kind of bad. Not totally bad. The Mantids are sort of good. I’ve also got not on my website yet, but I’m doing a series right now about the Palladians, the Space Brothers, and they’re bad.
They’re, like, totally assholes. They’ve been really cracking me up. I’ve enjoyed painting about them. They’re sort of. They’re. They’re, like, all influencers. They all work online, but these are Paul Brothers, and they’re all, like, hot. And they all kind of look down on regular people or humans, and they’re way more productive because they only sleep, like, 2 hours a day. They have cool technology, they have cool jumpsuits, and they just think humans are super pathetic, and they’re just jerks.
And so in My Imaginary world, there was, like, a lot of strife that happened when they landed back in ancient times, which was Actually Just 42 Years ago. They landed in the southwestern Bellows, but Then they were Banished, and they now live on this little island, and they were banished because they were assholes. And there was, like, a Little War that was fought, but as far as the Grays Go, In My Imaginary World, they’re really Elusive.
And they live, like, in caves and stuff. They live in their spacEships. They’re really scary. They steal people’s dreams Because They can’t have any of their Own. Yeah, they can’t have any of their Own. And I was kind of, like, taking from the actual UFO ology a little bit that I’ve read where one of the theories is they want to start inbreeding themselves into the human population through abductions and pregnancies and stuff like that.
So they don’t quite do that in my stories, but they want to gain something that they’ve lost, which would be like, some sort of, like. I don’t want to say humanity, because they’re aliens, so they’re not human, but their animal nature. They Want to Regain SOme of that. So they’re trying to regain it through humans. They don’t dream. If they die, they’re, like, reborn right away on this weird mothership that’s in my imagination.
I call it the Quartz embassy. So THEY JUSt KiND OF RESPAwN IMMEDiaTELY. Yeah, THEY RESPaWN, AnD THEY REsPOND WITH THeIR COOL ROBE ON ALReAdY. They’re born with a robe. THERE IS ONE ALIEN THAT MAkES ALL THE ROBES, THOUGH, AND THAT ALIEN IS CALLED THE ROYAL CLOTHIER. HOW MUCH OF THIS HAVE YOU. DO YOU HAVE AN ENTIRE STORYLINE ABOUT THE ROYAL CLOTHIER AND WHERE THEY COME FROM AND WHAT THEIR ASPIRATIONS AND AMBITIONS ARE? NO, I JUST KnOW THAT THERE IS THE ROYAL ClOTHIER and that person.
It takes them 200 years to make a robe. Why not 500? No, I’m just kidding. Yeah. I mean, if it’s a really elaborate robe, I don’t see why not. Yeah. Or a really tall person. It would take them probably twice as long. I see a little bit of references to Egyptian lore. There was one where they were in the canoe, which that might be one of my favorite ones, where they’re in the canoe and you’ve got, like, sub with a crocodile face, or at least something that refers to that.
You’ve got, like, a sarcophagus. How much do you know, care about ancient Egyptian stuff? Is this aesthetic mostly, or are you really into it? I like it quite a lot. I think it’s really cool. In Portland, they had this right around the time this painting and that other painting that you were referring to was painted. I had just gone to see an Egyptian exhibit at OMSI, which is the Oregon Institute of Science and Industry, I think.
Oregon Museum of Science. And. Yeah, they had a replica of King Tut’s tomb there, and it was amazing. And I just love all of that Egyptian stuff. I mean, like, sweet art, cool, weird religious magic. Some of the very first Egyptian magic is a thing that people still are into. Some people still practice that, like the Golden dawn, where all those people in the 18 hundreds were obsessed with Egypt and the Egyptian mysteries and all that kind of stuff.
I think it’s pretty far out. Yeah. Cagliostro, I think, was into the Egyptian rites, and then that made its way into French Freemasonry, which then made its way into the rites of Memphis miseryum, which are the one. Those are the ones when people are like, oh, they’re like a super high degree mason, right? Like normal masonry, Scottish rite, goes up to, like, 32 or 33, but the Memphis Miseryum goes up to, like, 99.
Those are the ones where they’re like, my uncle’s, like a super high ranking mason. That’s always what I think. It’s probably not what they’re talking about, but, yeah, those are the ones that went all the way up into almost the triple digits. I think that even if you get into those groups, they’re like, well, it goes way beyond 99, man. It goes up to, like, 130. Wow. I wonder what the apron looks like when you get.
That’s where the apron, I believe, also came from, was from the Egypt rights. Oh, yeah. That’s cool. I don’t know how much. Are you familiar with Manly Palmer Hall’s work at all? I guess you would say sort of a new age early. I don’t want to say it like some people take the term New Age to be maybe new thought would be more of like a new thought author, right? Yeah.
He was, I think, 1920s, I think is when he started getting his things together, wrote the sacred flame or something like initiates of the Flame, initiates of the new Destiny of Atlantis. Thing is name of it, secret teachings of all ages. He wrote so damn many of them. But the reason I was bringing him up is that I can see some of the, I guess, like partial influence, but that was also just because that was New Age.
He was right on the very edge of, I guess, the late 18 hundreds going into the early 19 hundreds. And in my mind, he’s like the entry point for a lot of Americans into occult topics. He’s kind of the one that made it easy for the bumpkins like me to understand without having to go through all of the hermetic order of the Golden dawn rituals and understand all the secrets.
He would just be like, hey, here’s the secrets, and then he might not have made a lot of friends during that process. Yeah. I haven’t actually read any of his books, but I’m sure one day. So this is the Mantis guy again. And are humans good or bad, or are they just humans? They’re just humans. There’s witches and wizards and all different types of people. Yeah, people are generally pretty gray.
There’s good characters, bad characters. Yeah, the Grays are definitely gray. Leaning towards bad. The Reptilians are all the way bad. Yeah. Is this she a shapeshifting reptilian? Yeah, I think so. That was, like, a little commission piece that somebody asked me for. So sometimes I do those without, so I’m like, okay, cool. They don’t have to necessarily fit into the world. Exactly. That one’s actually commissioned, too. So, yeah, those don’t quite fit into the world.
I had had another. Oh, that’s so cool, man. I had another story that I kind of came up with based on that, and somebody saw something for my sketchbook, and they were like, hey, man, could you paint this? So I was like, okay, will you only do that if you really like the idea that they pitch you? I don’t do it very often because doing commissions is very stressful.
Yeah. I take so long to make a painting. I only make, like, 15, maybe a year. 14 or 15. So if it’s, like, somebody who’s bought a painting before and they want another one, or they bought more than one painting, then I’ll be like, okay, cool. I really appreciate them supporting me in that way. So I’m kind of just like, okay, you bought a couple of paintings. Okay, whatever you want.
I really appreciate it. Now that you’ve explained some of the world where the aliens can’t dream and they steal dreams, is this an alien stealing a dream, or is this. That’s an alien astral projecting out of a human. How does that work? I don’t know. It just happens. It’s kind of like, if we were to astral project out of our body, we would probably have a representation of ourselves that would come out.
But if you’re an alien who’s possessed the body of a human, then your astral projected body would still be your original incorporal alien body. I don’t know how much you get into the astral projection stuff. This little cord that you’ve drawn there, that’s connecting him there, and say, rosicrucianism, that would be called, like, the silver cord, and that could get severed at some point. Yeah. When I was a little kid.
I went to the library and checked out a book about astral projection, and I practiced the exercises every single day for a very long time with various results. I was really into that as a kid. I had one really major out of body experience when I was at outdoor school when I was a kid. It was very tRippy. You said you were into it when you were a kid.
Do you have any desire to Astral project now? Have you grown out of it? Do you just not have time? Probably not have time. Yeah, I guess I’m still interested in it. I’m still interested in magic in other ways too. Yeah. Astral projection, remote viewing, things like that I do find pretty fascinating. Still. I noticed on your feed you’ve got a bunch of tarot cards, like pictures and stuff.
Do you do that to direct your day or anything? Yeah, I took a few Tarot classes. I’ll give readings to friends. I’ll usually pick a card every day or focus on a card that I want to have happen for that day. I’ll intentionally choose to do that. I also use Tarot as, like, a creative prompt too. I guess that could be one of that question you were asking earlier about writer’s block.
One thing that I do when I’m creating a series of paintings that has a major storyline is I have a specific spread that I use for creating the story. So the spread will be like protagonist setting, conflict, emotion, moral, something like that. So that I can start generating a story based on a spread. Maybe I won’t completely go with it, but it kind of gets my mind going in a direction that maybe I hadn’t thought of before.
Good. Sorry. I was going to ask if you had a specific tarot deck that you prefer. Yeah, the Rider waite deck for sure. It’s right here next to me. It’s like, here. Can show you. It’s very beat up. Yeah, it’s very worn. Yeah. I love this thing. Do you bring that everywhere with you? Not everywhere, no. What about your. I was going to ask you this before when I said, is it a fleeting thought? Will you be able to remember an idea you had? What do you do if you don’t have a sketch pad and a pencil on you for whatever reason and an idea comes to you? Usually I do have a sketchbook with me at all times, but usually I’ll just be like, okay, cool, that’s a good idea.
I’ll draw that later and then whenever. I have a very good memory for some reason, it’s weird being dyslexic but having A good memory. I don’t ever forget visual ideas. Is this a reptilian or what is this guy? What did I call him? Oh, the Lorga. That was more of just like a demon. That was an oracle. And that’s the little version of the story. They were going to ask some advice of the Lorga.
I love that they bring them a strawberry rhubarb pie. That’s the coolest thing to give an oracle monster. Yeah, I like pie. That’s Haxam Forehand in there. He’s a major reoccurring character. He’s a crystal wizard. He’s super New age. He had some alcohol issues that he had overcome, but for the most part, he’s a really great guy. He travels around and he uses crystals. He heals people with crystals.
I saw him healing a gray in an earlier one. Is he like in grays or does he have something worked out with them? He actually is friends with the Grays. There aren’t very many that are friends with the Grays. That Gray’s name was Zolerium, which is Miralax backwards, which is what I give my cat when it gets constipated. But its name is Zolerium. And Paxam forehand encountered that gray in the desert and it had been shot.
It had been shot by some bandits. It was just that solarium is a cactus theologian and force field expert, or force Field chief, I’m sorry. And for whatever reason, his force field didn’t work and got shot. And Haxam healed the Gray and they became friends. And Haxam taught the alien, taught Haxam all about force fields and Haxam taught the gray all about friendship. Have you ever considered turning this into an know, you know, writing, you said, is kind of like a pain, but writing all this into a narrative with the images, illustrations.
Yeah, I mean, I’m kind of working on that right now. So it’s something that’s kind of happening. I’ve got a publisher in France I’ve been talking with, so we’ll know part of it. They want to put it out, so I’m going to let them kind of guide the effort a little bit. But, yeah, I would love to put out a book or something like that. The images are so cool, but hearing you tell the stories behind everything just makes it like ten times as cool.
Oh, thanks. Yeah, when I saw this one, I’m biased, but all I could think of was Bohemian Grove. Yeah, definitely. What are your thoughts on Bohemian Grove? I first heard about Bohemian Grove, like a little over 20 years ago. But I was like, in a college, I did a political science degree at the U of. It was like, back before you could find all this stuff on the Internet.
I had this teacher telling me about. He was really into conspiracies and stuff, and he was telling us all about Bohemian Grove. And I was just like, whoa, that is far out. It doesn’t sound real. And then you read about how real it is. And that was one of my biggest ones, too. Was like, are you telling me that these guys on TV that are talking about being God fearing Christians and trying to.
And I don’t have a religious leaning one way or the other, but to say one thing and be like, you can’t even wear white after Labor Day, or I’ll be offended. And then it’s like, and I’m going to go and sacrifice this effigy to a pagan God. It was like this weird, complete breakdown of what I assumed was reality. I don’t know, man. That’s like my go to.
Yeah, definitely. Bohemian Grove is fascinating to me. And also, I’ve never been there. Obviously, I wouldn’t be allowed, but I’ve heard that presidents and officials who you would not picture being friends would be there together at the Grove. Just all kinds of different people who you would be. Really. You guys. You guys all go to this. My favorite analogy for a. If you’ve never heard of Jordan Maxwell, highly recommend.
Just like, devouring everything he’s ever put out. But Jordan Maxwell has this amazing talk. He does a lot with wordplay. But one of my favorite ones is he’s talking about lawyers in a courtroom. And if you imagine, like, two basketball players on the court, and they might be arch enemies, like this big rivalry that’s been going on for 20 years. But after the game, let’s say that everyone that was at that game, the audience, the players, the refs, they all go to a bar somewhere, and all the basketball players go into the VIP section.
Who do you think that they’d have more ease sharing a beer with their arch rival of 20 years or some random bumpkin fan that might even be on their side? It’s like they would still hang out with their quote unquote, enemies because they are their peers, right? They’re all basketball players, right? And he would say that the same thing is with lawyers, is that after the big court case, the two lawyers go and have a drink with each other, because they were just in the court, just volleying that ball back and forth, and they’re both on the game.
And they love to just be in the game. And they can bond over being players in the game. And everyone else is a spectator. So two players will always have more in common than a player and a spectator would ever have. So anyway, that’s my. That’s when I see Bohemian Grove. And it’s, know, cats and dogs living together. Pure chaos. But really, it’s just like, no, two rich guys living together.
Yeah, you’re powerful and I’m powerful. Let’s hang out at this place and worship moloch the Owl. Skinny dip. Yeah, let’s kill a hooker, too. All the rumors or whatever. Cremation of care. Yeah, the cremation of care. Yeah, that’s what it’s called. Yeah. I played in punk bands when I was in college. And we had a song about the Bohemian Grove. What was it called? Was it just called Bohemian? I think it was Bohemian Grove.
Yeah, right on the nose. I, like, mean, you’ve got so much art here. I’m not going to go through every single one. When we first started, though, you mentioned that you’re kind of working in, like, batches of nine that tell a story. And I couldn’t help but notice these. All the new ones. Yeah, those were all in a Bigfoot series called the Primordial Conjunction. Apparently, I’ve never seen Shrek, but I’ve been told that my storyline is identical to the storyline of Shrek.
With that. I don’t know if that’s cool or not, but I don’t remember Shrek getting an amulet and transforming into A. Yeah, yeah. So it’s about this Sasquatch named Applebear Stone Tree, who. He sees these Bigfoot hunters in the forest. And he falls in love with this one Bigfoot hunter. Because she smells horrible. And he’s just like, oh, my God, I love her. So he goes to the aliens.
Oh, spoiler alert. In my weird story, Bigfoot is what an alien Gray used to be before they transcended. And primates, to us, are what Sasquatch is to an alien Gray. Okay, so anyway, missing link between humans and grays. Kind of. Well, no, we’re not even related to, like, that’s what Grays were in their ancient past is they were. So. But that’s just in my story. But anyway, so Applebear Stonetree acquires this shapeshifting amulet from a gray, who is down to help him with his love quest.
So, yeah, he transforms into this hot guy. And then he goes back to the group in his alien form, in his human form. And then he meets this woman, and they fall madly in love. They get married the next day. And then he decides to tell her that, yo, now that we’re married, I have to tell you something. I’m actually a Sasquatch posing as a hot stud. And she’s like, oh, dang, that doesn’t bother me at all.
And then he gets shot. One of the Bigfoot hunters sees the Bigfoot that he’s turned into, and she accidentally shoots Clarinda Moondu. That’s her name. That’s the love interest name. Instead, he goes totally berserk. But then something magical happens, and it turns out that his love interest was actually also a Sasquatch posing as a human in hopes to find love. So she was tagging along with a couple of Sasquatch hunters, hoping that she could find a Sasquatch.
Because they’re so elusive, they have a hard time finding each other. So, yeah, in the end, they open a portal to the primordial realm, and they go back in time and lay some eggs. Lay some Sasquatch eggs. That’s a new one for me. So these Sasquatch actually lay eggs? Yeah, they lay eggs. And they’re able to communicate with the creatures of the fairy realm? They’re not fairy. Yeah, they’re on good terms with the fairy folk.
What’s the little skeleton dude that has, like, a tree stump and duck legs? Yeah, he’s of the unseely court. He’s, like a bad fairy. All fairies could potentially be bad fairies. I’ve read they all could be about fairies. Yeah, that fairy, he’s kind of bad. Maybe a little bit of a trickster kind of guy. So I’ve got another segment here that I think is a good segue, especially talking about fairies and dinosaurs and Bigfoot.
So let’s just run into it. Hey, conspiracy buffs, I double dare you to take some PCP, the paranormal conspiracy probe. On your marks, get set and go. So this is just real casual. I’m just going to ask you on a rating from zero to 100, meaning like you don’t believe in something at all. And ten, meaning like you’re 100% on board with it. I just want to get a temperature check on a bunch of random topics.
I can’t preface it with any disclaimer or anything. If you want to, I would just give it, like, a five or a six, and we’ll revisit it so you don’t have to feel, like, ultra committed to any of these numbers. Okay. We’ll revisit all these. This is what’s going to drive the last, like, 1015 minutes of us talking. Okay, so Bigfoot, zero to ten. How real is he? 100%.
Ten. The grays. Ten. Reptilians, ten. Dinosaurs, ten. Dragons. Ten. Man, where could I get some nines or eights at? Okay, I like this so far. Okay, let’s direct it a little bit. Humans have stepped foot on the moon. Ten. The moon landing footage that was shown in the. In that James Bond movie. No, I do think that that was real. And I was going to say that it was also in that James, so I guess it was real.
Sorry. Delete that last part that I said. The one that got aired on television, you think was the actual moon landing footage? Yeah, why not? Okay. Magic is real. Yes. Ten. Alistair Crowley successfully summoned a demon. Nine. How possible? Zero to ten. Do you think it would be for an atheist to just go and buy the top five books on how to summon a demon on Amazon and then successfully summon a demon? I don’t know.
It really depends on the person. That’s a tough question. I would say a pretty low number, like a three. What do you think of Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin of JFK? Zero to. You think we’ll get back into that. JFK is one of my favorite topics. We’ll get into that. Celebrity clones. Like, for example, people would say, like, jamie Foxx is no longer Jamie Foxx. It’s now a clone of Jamie Foxx.
And then he came out with a movie about being a clone. How real do you think celebrity clones are right now? I don’t know if I have enough information about that. I don’t know anything about celebrities. We don’t have to name anyone in particular. Have you not heard about celebrity clones? I haven’t heard of any celebrity. I don’t know anything about celebrities. That’s one black hole in my knowledge.
You’re missing out so much. You’re going to be on your deathbed and you’re going to be like, I wish I knew more about celebrities. Yeah. When people talk about pop culture and stuff, I have no idea what they’re talking about. Look, I want to transition away from the. That’s awesome. I want to learn more about the. So one of them is the ones that I don’t really like as much, but, like, the Jamie Fox is a big one.
Usually when a celebrity gets really sick and then they bounce back, everyone will, and I say everyone in a very flippant way. But a lot of the conspiracy community is know that’s not the real one, he’s fake. Now, the biggest example is probably Britney Spears, where a lot of people assume that she’s either programmed or she’s got a body double, or there’s legitimately real clones, and they just cloned her so they could always have this ready to go to work sort of product model they could just put up on stage.
I don’t necessarily put a lot of credit into a lot of them, but it is a very persistent topic that I find interesting. That’s a pretty cool idea. I mean, at the same time, though, I did see on Instagram Brittany dancing with some knives, and it seems pretty. Brittany, though, that seems like something that she would do. I don’t know if that seems like a clone sort of thing, but I don’t know that much about, you know, it didn’t seem, like, too crazy.
I was, you know, that’s cool. What is your media consumption like? My media consumption is, like, 90% fantasy novels. Like, I listen to a lot of fantasy novels. I’ll listen to the news while I’m painting on a podcast, usually listen to the BBC or maybe something from around here. I don’t really watch very. It’s kind of rare. Like, if I’m on vacation, my girlfriend and I will watch some movies or something, but sometimes I’ll watch Netflix while I’m painting.
But for the most part, I listen to books and I listen to music and stuff. Do you have any movies or TV shows that you remember from your youth that have directed your view on art, or, like, you see the Exorcist or you see close encounters? All of those? Yeah. I mean, I’ve only watched that kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, the X Files, like sightings. Sightings was a big one.
That show is kind of spooky. Sometimes. Unsolved mysteries. Yeah, I would say mainly the X Files when I was a kid, as far as, like, alien stuff goes. But I guess the one thing that really did it was the mysteries of the unknown. Books. I was always more into books than watching stuff. Correct me with mysteries. The Unknown. Was that the one that geographic put out? It’s a Time Life series, and they’re all really pretty high quality.
Oh, wait. I even have one still. I have one on witchcraft, but these things were. Oh, my God. I 100% had some of those, man. Not that one. My stepdad owned a lot of these. Sorry. My real dad owned a lot of these, so whenever I would go over to his house, I’d flip through those, and I would learn about all kinds of stuff. And I was pretty young when I started breeding them.
I was like, whoa, werewolves. You can turn into a werewolf by doing that. That’s amazing. When I grow up, I want to be a werewolf. Man, you just gave me a huge hit of nostalgia on that one. Because I remember that exact. I haven’t seen one of those in decades, but I remember one was about the Bermuda Triangle. And it also had an article on spontaneous combustion. I remember, I don’t know, eight or nine.
And I just remember thinking, you’re telling me that there’s people just bursting in the flames randomly all over the place, and I haven’t seen this on the news yet, and that could happen to me. Yeah. Dude, is this going to happen to me? What was going on here? It’s weird how the spontaneous combustions kind of died out after they introduced, like, flame retardant clothing and safety stuff. Yeah, people stop smoking as much.
Yeah, stop smoking in the car and flicking it on them and then going over. So I wanted to ask about the JFK one because you said zero. That Lee Harvey Oswald. I mean, that’s just a placeholder. Questions of figure out how much you actually care about it. I don’t really know that much about it. I don’t think I’m the most informed person to be, like, having a passionate argument in that way.
It just seems one with passionate arguments, though. Yeah. It just doesn’t really seem like one person could put together an operation like that just on what little I know. It seems like a challenging little project to put together to murder a president. It seems like you would want to have some allies and you’d want to maybe be put up to it. I don’t know. I read the Stephen King book.
It was a date. The date JFK was assassinated. 19. I can’t remember what the actual date was. On the spot. November 3, 1963, I think. Eleven 393. Is that the name of it? Yeah. It was a time travel book. It’s pretty cool. I did not read the book. I did see the TV show with James Franco, though. Yeah, I haven’t seen the show, but, yeah, that was pretty fascinating.
I think his whole thing was that he acted alone in Stephen King’s book. I can’t remember, but, yeah. What’s your ideas on it? I mean, I do find it fascinating, but I’ve got wild thoughts on it, to be honest. Just like you, I’m not an expert on the topic. And also, I feel like you could literally spend your entire life becoming an expert on the topic and still not have the right answer, but I am a huge fan of the King Kill 33 theory.
Are you familiar with this? No. So, man, this will wrap up our conversation here a little bit, but cool. The King kill 33 ritual, to grandly oversimplify, it, is basically that the health of the kingdom reflects the health of the king. So if you’ve got a virulent king that’s at the top of his game and a sharp thinker and witty, then you also have the village that is kind of reflecting that.
The same time, if you’ve got a sickly leader that’s, like, on his deathbed, then it’s also like your village is sickly and might be on its deathbed. And likewise, if you’ve got a corrupt leader, then it might mean that your city is corrupt. This kind of acting as the leader is almost like the head of the body in a lot of ways. So King kill 33 ritual states that you can control that power.
So if the king is sickly and you kill the king, then whoever inherits that energy might also be sickly. So I’m oversimplifying this, but it means that you want to take the king out at his height, at the peak of his energy, because whoever you replace the king with gets to inherit that high amount of real quality energy, right? So you don’t just bump the old guy on his way out and replace him with a new guy, because there’s not a huge transfer there.
So the King kill 33 ritual, which not mine by any means, it’s proposed by this guy named James Shelby Downard, who is dead now, long time ago. But basically that where it took place in Dealy Plaza, the arrangement of where people were standing, the time of day that it happened, like he passed under some sort of pagan. I don’t know all the little intricate details, but that he was taken out in a very ritualistic, magical way in order to transfer that energy from one to the next, the next being LBJ, essentially.
So that’s one of my favorite theories. There’s a lot of other cool ones. One of them is that he was killed by a curse from. I can’t remember his name, the president of Haiti, because JFK, he revoked international aid that we were giving to Haiti. And the president of Haiti at the time, I’m flaking on his name. He basically put out a curse on JFK. And after JFK was taken out, he claimed that it was his curse.
That was what really happened. And to make this just a little bit more sweet, this guy named George De Morin Schultz, who, if you go into the JFK research and stuff or even sounds very familiar. Yeah, he was in the book. He was the one that basically became Lee’s friend when Lee moved to either Dallas or Fort Worth because Morinschill, he had a Russian history. And basically, anytime friends with the wife.
Oh, so not only friends with the wife. He also knew Jackie Kennedy when she was just a girl. Not just did he know. And this is all real. I’m not just, like, coming up with random. So he knew Jackie Kennedy. Bouvier was her maiden name. Knew her as a girl. He literally wrote in one of his memoirs that she used to sit on his knee as he would tell stories.
So, like, her as a little girl, he knew. He knew JFK. He knew JFK’s wife Marina. And he was in Haiti, in Porter Prince, when JFK got killed. And he wrote in his memoirs that as soon as he heard the president was dead, that he knew it was Lee Harvey Oswald. So you got this guy that’s, like, connected to Haiti, connected to JFK, connected to Jackie, connected to Lee, connected to Marina, connected to CIA.
Anyways, the theories don’t stop, man. Like, every time I pull up one little leaf, it’s like, there’s 20 other theories under there. We’re not even talking about the guy that has the weird eyebrows that I forgot. Not Danny DeVito, but someone played him in the JFK movie. I can’t remember. Have you ever seen the JFK movie? So there’s a weirdo that shaves his eyebrows, brows off and draws them back on.
This is based on a real person. And that guy is the one that started the Civil Air patrol that Lee Harvey Oswald also joined while he was in New Orleans. So it’s just like, everything’s connected. And the more I look into it, it makes me feel like JFK never had a chance. He was born to be sacrificed in a magical ritual, and it was just like, take your pick on who ended up doing it.
But he was kind of, like, meant to fill that role. So, anyways, that’s my. Wow, that’s far out. Yeah, that’s a rabbit hole. I’d like to dive down again, too. I’d love to drop that seed, man. Maybe there’s, like, a presidential assassination plot in your fantasy world that can play itself out. Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah. Thank you. That’s good. Well, Mark, I want to give you another chance to just tell people where they can find your work, where the website is, if there’s any projects you got going on to look out for this is airing early November.
Cool. Yeah. My website is Ww markrogersart. com. My Instagram is at Markrogers Art right now. I just had a show in Philly at the Arch Enemy Gallery for the High Fructose Invitational, 2023. And I think that that’ll still be going on when this airs. So if anybody’s in Philly, I have a huge painting there. It’s a gallery. There’s a bunch of other really cool paintings there, too. It’s a group show.
Congratulations, by the way, man, that’s huge. That’s awesome. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Thomas. Yeah, man, this was fascinating. I love getting the backstory. I never would have known any of this. I mean, I just like the art, but now knowing the story. Oh, wait, actually, before we go, I have to ask you about the dolphin character. I’ve got a good friend, Donut. What’s his name? Peter.
So what’s Peter’s backstory? Peter is a dolphin human hybrid who is sort of like acting as the Palladian’s coastal patrol officer. And he’s kind of like their servant. I guess he’s the only nice one to this character. This is the current story I’m working on. It’s about this guy named Ballard Diffenback, who is a cookie salesman, and he goes to the island where the Palladians live to try to set up a cookie subscription account with them.
And they are like, you are pathetic. We don’t eat sugar. We’re amazing. You’re just disgusting for even coming here. And also, you also have to take our mentorship program. So the series is about him undergoing their brutal mentorship program where he has to work on his brand and he has to become more productive and more spiritual and more all of this stuff. And he probably won’t survive. But Peter, cookies one by one, like, by hand.
He’s always just handing people a cookie in the banks. It just kind of cracks me up. He’s, like, kind of creepy in that way. He’s like, here, have a cookie. So anyway, yeah, I wanted to shout out the donut because he loves dolphins. And when I saw this. Are you familiar with John C. Lilly’s work at. I definitely was into that. There’s a shark human hybrid in this story, too.
Who’s Dieter? So it’s Peter and Dieter the Dolphin and the. Yeah, yeah. John. John Lilly’s a pretty fascinating guy. Well, man, thanks again so much for coming on, for talking with me. I had a great time. I hope you did too. Maybe sometime in the future, we can get back on and talk. Just geek out about John C. Lilly and a bunch of other cool people. Okay, cool.
How fun. All right, thanks again, Mark, and I’ll leave everyone on a commercial for my latest comic. By the time you’re seeing this, it probably already would have dropped. Unless you’re on Patreon, in which case, go support it, go buy a copy, and then I’ll talk to you in a second, Mark, right after this awesome commercial. Frazzled drip Funhouse enter, if you dare, the world of an animatronic bear whose metallic heart beats with a thirst for justice, a hunger for revenge.
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