Alcatraz

New look to blog. As if you didn't notice.
Went to Alcatraz. See here.
Still working on comic.
Over and out.

Shout outs to Al Jaffee and Elizabeth Fraser.

There's another one coming. It's just taking a while. It's inspired by the Cocteau Twins. I had to brew it for a while and listen to a LOT of Cocteau Twins to conjure up the right mood.

So obviously I've surrendered to the comic book form of expression. It's had a strangle hold on me since I picked up my first issue of Mad Magazine in 1982. I didn't really understand at the time that it was a monthly magazine. I'd go back to the corner store every couple of days to see if a new one was in yet. I would spend hours trying to copy the drawings and had a revelation when I realized I could make up my own drawings. So thanks Al Jaffee mainly, for kicking off my "lucrative" and not at all fraught with conflict, path as a cartoon artist (and also embedding my love of sarcasm with his "snappy answers to stupid questions" series).

So there. On another topic...

So far, California has been...let me find the right word here...California-y. Not really up my alley, as it were. Sometimes though, sometimes it's nice.

Like at dusk, when it's cool enough for a sweater and coat, and the sun is sinking behind the mountains so they are purple and soft looking and the same purple jumps out in the wildflowers against the green of the grass and trees and you can smell the blossoms on the trees in the breeze and everyone is inside their homes and you can walk past and see blue computer screens and someone at the stove and the flickering lights of a tv and planes are circling high up with the last of the setting sun reflecting off their wings and the sky is huge and cloudless and unbroken...that's when California works for me.

4 weeks left. Crazy.

Cards for peeps.

Why not throw up (as in throw up on the blog, as in put up on the blog, look, just stop picturing the act of vomiting!) a couple of real life cards and stuff I made for peeps. You tell me why not, go ahead. One might be lost in the mail by the way. This deeply irks me.







And yes, I totally stole the "I'm a lady" thing from Little Britain. I don't think they'll mind too much as it's a card for my dad only.

INCOMING!!

You will see that I have a whole number of new posts all at once. Due to popular complaint (a couple people anyway) I've put up the entirety of some of the "teaser" comics I only posted part of before. They are in various states of being unfinished or sucking or whatever but you'll find them below, plus this new one. Aren't I great? Ehem.

Speaks for itself.

Decided the painting technique didn't work and abandoned it. I'll have to redraw it entirely!

Geeks and freaks.

The title of this one is the same as my blog.

Bookstore continued.

The moral of this comic is that there is such a thing as too much background detail.

Urges continued

Urges

It's my highschool geek tribute.

"Time isn't holding us, time isn't after us..."

Ahhh, the library. Why did I put off the library for so long? I went there today to work distraction-free. I felt like drawing something different. I did research drawing. I pulled some William Morris and Arts and Crafts movement books off the shelf and practiced their beautiful lines. The results were very grade nine, but it sure was fun and I didn't get up once to play a move in scrabble, or see what's in the fridge or on tv, or wander around aimlessly, seeing if there was a bed to be made or a toilet to be cleaned. I concentrated the whole time. Imagine! Unheard of, except for the trillions of people who manage to concentrate everyday and get things done and don't make a big deal out of it...

Well anyway, it got me out of the verstinkine house.



I went home during rush hour. While waiting on the light rail platform I listened to Talking Heads playing on my iPod: "...letting the days go by, let the water hold me down...". I'll tell you what you see a lot of here. Guys with moustache handlebars and tatoos. You don't see that in the part of town where we are staying, but all other parts of San Jose you do. You know that Frank Black video for Los Angeles, where he's standing out in the desert at night with sunglasses and a rain jacket, and a fu-manchu stache, holding the microphone to the side? The one where he drives the hovercraft around and drives over the lightbulbs? This one here. Ya, well, uh, I kind of get where he's coming from better after living here for a while for some reason. I bet I'd get it even more if I lived in Los Angeles.

I just went back and reread that paragraph and noticed I wrote "moustache handlebars" instead of handlebar moustaches. They don't sound like even remotely the same thing when you switch them around like that. By the way, go here to see a very hilarious blog about moustaches.

As a final note, I wanted to tell you that the library has a big section with hardbound thesis papers, since it's shared with San Jose University. My favourite topic was : Perceiving Ingmar Bergman's The Silence Through the I Ching. I shit you not. Good job Gordon A Lee, on ensuring a jobless future for yourself. Can you imagine the scores of people he must have alienated during the writing of this thesis?

"It's about WHAT?" -his parents.

"I dunno man, it's like, you've become so crazy-boring and I don't mean crazy as in super boring, although you are, I mean you are crazy AND boring. I didn't know that was possible until hanging out with you lately." -his best friend.

"Robert, I just can't picture a future with someone who tries to apply ancient Chinese philosophy to Swedish art films, there's something about it that makes the idea of seeing you naked, so... horrifying." -former girlfriend.

und so wieder as the Germans say. (means: and so on.)

Poor Robbie. Wonder what he's up to these days. Academia can truly be so far up it's own hole, it ends up finding some new spacial dimension of up the holeness. Shine on crazy diamonds. Shine on.

Now please enjoy this photo of an Amaretto sour I enjoyed at a British-style pub on sunday. That is all.