I got a Michael Phelps bio tonight at 'Borders' - A Rowdy Gaines quote in the back sealed the deal!

First off, Barnes & Noble was my first stop and the user experience there is horrible. Barnes & Noble is great if you want pop-culture fiction but in my opinion Borders tops B&N in both quality, volume and how well they index their stuff.

I wanted to buy the Phelps' bio, Beneath the Surface and my plan was to do ballpoint pen illustrations on every 20-pages or so and post them to this blog. Though Barnes & Noble had the book, they couldn't find it for me.

There was a Dara Torres book available and I figured, yeah, why not, she put a lot a lot bodies in the pool and she is extraordinarily inspirational! So I opened it up to get a feel for the rhetoric and the first line I read went something like this: "I was divorced at 27-years-old and I couldn't get pregnant at 35!"... Well, Dara, I went deaf in my left ear at age 6 and my parents divorced when I was 8; after that it got worse.

I like Dara, but I am not illustrating stuff like that! (BTW, she grew up in a mansion that had 27-rooms, I think most of us had it tougher.)

Off to Borders who ultimately didn't have the book either. On the drive over I began to get cold feet in doing the project. I mouth off a lot about how badly our athletes are "pimped" and I am actually quite angry about it. Octagon and PMG really have annoyed me and I have posted several posts voicing my feelings. Jason Lezak, who produced an Olympic moment equal to that of Jesse Owens or Bob Beamon, was failed by PMG in bringing him to market.

As for Octagon... Arrrgh!

And speaking of Octagon, as I drove, I began thinking that Octagon might send out legal ninjas if I drew Bob Bowman looking a bit unflattering and consequently could make me take the posts down as a questionable copyright violation. Hence, I decided to throw my money at someone else.

When I got to the swim section, I saw a book by Paul McMullen called Amazing Pace... that Rowdy Gaines endorsed. That endorsement was good enough for me so I bought it. My goal is to post one or two illustrations a week.