WATCH: InstaFIRE!! @6inchCITY is no more!!!

December 16th, 2015 a fire that started in a garbage can destroyed my detached garage and all the toys I'd been amassing since childhood. When I became a teenager, instead of growing out of my action figures like my mother figured I would, I grew into them, creating an entire “6inchCity” for them to inhabit. Taking the available toy buildings of the time and combining them with custom made buildings, sidewalks and mini filled garbage cans, I gave myself a cooler way to play with the toys and characters I so loved and so…I never stopped playing. While a teen, “6inchCity” went from house to house as the Snider Family moved around and then landed in my office in my very first apartment, followed by another office in my first home with my wife Patty on Long Island, but generally, very few pictures were taken of these incarnations of 6inchCity, though I could tell you some stories. Eventually moving into storage, it seemed 6inchCity might never be heard from again, but a move to Los Angeles in 2012 would take my toy city out of mothballs and change it’s location once again, this time changing states, from New York to California. Here, I would also launch an Instagram account dedicated to capturing the amazing “lives” and adventures of the tiny denizens of my city! For three years straight my hobby was back at full steam, and for the first time, I was able to share the joy I got from my toys with all of my nerdy friends on the internet. It was an extremely happy time for me, listening to new music, playing with new toys and capturing the best stuff for my 6inchCity Instagram account. (Check it out here, if you don't believe me: http://instagram.com/6inchCity) I even managed to turn my love of toys into an excuse to see my many friends; hosting a road trip to a weekly toy flea market every Wednesday, where I would go to buy toys, chat with friends and eat cheese fries at the local Outback Steakhouse. (Note: Outback is my favorite chain restaurant.) Until, one Wednesday, on a particularly packed trip to “Frank and Sons” when I received a phone call from my wife telling me that my entire garage had gone up in flames! I returned home to find the local fire department and what was left of my detached garage, the home of “6inchCity”. I lost everything. Turned out a burning ember from a sage ashtray was dumped into my garage trashcan moments before I left with my friends and well, plastic burns pretty good. There was nothing left to salvage of the city and we lost all of what we’d been storing in the garage as well, including my father’s Twisted Sister stage clothes, which were found melted together in a big clump. My family and I were just a few days from leaving on a trip to New York for Christmas and now I had a very limited amount of time to clean up this massive mess. That Saturday I found himself digging through the debris all alone. I had many friends offer to help me with the clean up, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask them for help. I realized while sorting through the rubble that this was a metaphor for my whole professional career. I ALWAYS struggled to ask for help and generally, I never do. In an instance I understood that if I was ever to succeed at music and comic books I needed to make a major change in myself and find the strength to ask for HELP. I had held most of my art back for many years, songs and scripts because I didn’t feel like I had the power or the money to put them out on my own and I wasn’t willing to ask anyone for help. Not my father. Not anyone. I wanted to do it all myself. But that isn’t how the world works. NOTHING happens for ANYONE without help. EVERYONE who succeeds has had help. No man is an island. The fire had lit another fire in my heart. I needed to change. I needed to finally let my art be seen and heard and I needed to be willing to accept any help that came my way. Harder still for me, I needed to learn to ask for help. In January 2016, I reached out to every friend I had on the planet, telling them everything I was doing and the exact sort of help I needed. I felt very strange about it all, but as the replies began to come in, I quickly realized that all my friends WANTED to help me. They knew that I would do anything I could for any of them and they were anxious to do the same for me. By the end of 2016, I will have released FOURTY TWO individual songs, FOUR music videos and my music/comic book anthology, “black light district: 6issues”! Talk about turning over a new leaf? Better yet, I begun to learn to ask for help and boy, am I getting it. But what about my toys, you ask?! Well, I am in no rush to rebuild 6inchCity, but my love and association with toys lives on…. My company KRCO is working with our favorite toy sculptors in the business, “Four Horseman Studios” to produce the "Mythic Legions Art Book” for their line of fantasy action figures they funded through Kickstarter last year! Bringing in incredible animation producer and Disney’s Gargoyles creator Greg Weisman to pen the script and greats Axel Gimenez and Marcelo Ferreira to illustrate the interiors, I am loving every minute of helping inspire the collectors of “Mythic Legions” in how to better enjoy playing wth their new toys. The “Mythic Legions” art book should ship to backers in time for Halloween and it is safe to say, this is only the beginning! Order a copy at http://www.shopfourhorsemen.com/myleartbo.html Today’s video is a sad one, but I think it illustrates the cross roads that I recently came to better than anything else can…. https://www.instagram.com/p/_YfBBCFxbM/?taken-by=snapjesse