
Now what you're looking at here is some real Indiana Jones shit, and I'm about to take a hard—so hard—left turn down Memory Lane. These framed fragments represent some of the last remaining artifacts—aside from the few people themselves—of the third Big Brother office incarnation located at the ex-World Industries warehouse on Nash St. in El Segundo, California, circa 1993–1996. Late '96, when World Industries decided it was going to make a run at being run like a real company, the Big Brother
crew was kicked clear across to the other side of the industrial park, closer to the shit plants and refineries, where the magazine lived out its last months of freewheeling dumb before being bought up and censored by—of all people and companies—Larry Flynt Publishing, Inc.—in 1997.
No sooner was the gang out the door of Nash when the reconstruction crew swept in to relayer all the old, scribbled upon desks with brand new, pristine Masonite tops for the worker bees. Five years later—or thereabouts, give or take—the revamped company relocated to new, bigger digs, and the post-modern Vietnam chic interior decor was trashed. Luckily, OG Big Brother editor and skateboard artist Marc McKee
had the foresight to salvage a few scraps of petroglyph from the woodpile, so that's what you're looking at now: Pieces from the mag's art/editorial director Jeff Tremaine's very own desk, where the magazine layouts and print files were labored over on a state-of-the-art-yet-still-slow-ass computer, allowing for lots and lots of bored fucking doodle time.
Let's break the beat, leftover lumber down, starting at the upper left, and trivially work our way clock-wise:
1) Several of Tremaine's desky doodles were the launchpad for full-scale paintings that typically then found their way onto skate- and snowboards for companies like Prime, Foundation and Division 23 (the chameleon was actually used in part on both Prime and Division 23 boards). On the far left, however, is a portrait of Rick Kosick by me, Sean Cliver, which was actually one of many that was done during that time period because he was very popular source material whenever boredom was at play.
2) This afro rendition is mine, perhaps influenced by Tremaine's frequent playing of Gil Scott-Heron
, but the added text was more likely than not courtesy of the resident pro/am skaters of the time, e.g. Guy Mariano, Rudy Johnson, Daniel Castillo, Kareem Campbell, Shiloh Greathouse, Daewon Song, etc., many of who spent hours of idle time perfecting their individual tags all throughout the office on any and every available surface, nook, and cranny (Tim Gavin's "SHITE" was a personal favorite of the staff's); or, it may have been a "street" embellishment provided by an enigmatic artist known only as "The Creeper".
3) No, that's not Cordell Mansfield, but rather another early neandertal man known as Daniel Dunphy, another former artist in the World stable. This drawing commemmorates the one (and only!) night we went out drinking with Daniel—who was not a drinker by any stretch of the liver—and he proceeded to puke until he blew his eyeballs out. No joke. The next morning he came to work sporting red where the whites of his eyes used to be. It was awesome! Hence the red Sharpied eyeballs.
4) A Tremaine caricature of Sean Cliver's profile. Yeah, not too proud of my nose, but it is what it is and doesn't physically equate to anything else unfortunately.
5) Aside from being a Tremaine, there is absolutely nothing else worthy of note about this elephant. It was a one-off in all senses ... an anticlimactic one-off at that. So, in the almighty sign off frequently used within our pages at the time: Fuck off!
(Photo by and courtesy of Marc McKee; 2013)