At the CCS Visiting Artists Blog there are some doodles, perpetrated by fellow toonies and me, of the great folks who came by last semester, including Seth, Allison Bechdel, James Kochalka, and others. Check check!

It’s great to be back at CCS, where people love comics, beer, pot, soccer, and Mario Kart. What can I say, I’m flying around in a fuckin fantasyland! Although, that ol’ demon money keeps tugging at me like some sort of devilish ballast and crashing me back to reality! The less you have, the more it ways you down. Oakley Hall’s Landlord is my anthem. It’s about how Pat “Papa Crazy” Sullivan’s great-great-grandfather murdered his landlord, and then bucked the system by sewing an iron collar into his shirt so he wouldn’t die when he was hanged. And how that same Irish anger is flowing in Crazy’s veins today and he wonders if his landlord really wants the rent so bad? Love it so much.

And speaking of songs I love so much, I think its hilarious to think about any of the Jim Steinman Meatloaf lyrics literally. Such fraught, overwrought metaphors! Like this one.

…I think winter is especially magnificent to look at. In New York, the buildings become stark geometry, light in front of shadow, shadow in front of light. It’s fantastic! And then in the country, well-defined shapes strike against each other, in white, pale blue-gray, and lavender-brown. Woops, it looks like those years of painting class snuck themselves onto me! Better show you a picture of

another BIG DICK!!

…how would you like to see some doodles of monsters and wangs? With some ampersands, of course. I’m keeping this shit classy like Brighton Beach. Oh and tits. Tits too.

Yesterday I was explaining the premise of Curb Your Enthusiasm to somebody, and today I watched a bunch of clips on YouTube. The thing that Larry does best is end his seasons with a serious kicker–it’s the punchline for the uber-joke that was being told for the last couple of months. Like, what about that third season?? Or the sixth season (which I still haven’t seen, but have heard enough about to feel like I had)??!! And then, through watching clips, I came across this LD-Marty Scorsese stuff. And it’s funny. It’s a great sendup of gangster movies. But it doesn’t look at all like Scorsese shot it. Then I thought about how HBO shows tend to look cheap. They’re written wonderfully, and with terrific acting and directing, but most of them look like they’re shot with a camcorder in a basement. A couple exceptions are Flight of the Conchords and especially Sopranos. (And I know there are others, but I’m not about to do the kind of research that it takes to write something well! So deal with it!!)

Maybe this low-budget style makes it easier to pay great actors, and allow great writers to take as long as they want to come up with something. And maybe it’s essential to the improvisational, or live performance, quality of Curb and Tenacious D. Anyhow, once streaming HBO exists officially, all I’ll do anymore is watch it.

My friends, the long vacation is coming to an end. It’s very bittersweet to be packing up and getting ready to hop on the Vermonter tomorrow morning. For one thing, I’ve apparently attributed mystical, magical powers to “my” drafting table, “my” computer, “my” scanner. I feel magnetically compelled to get back and excersize my studio equipment fetish. At any rate, I can’t seem to get anything done in this post-holidays Brooklyn squatting. I wish I could say it’s because I was doing so much and seeing all the sites, but really I’ve been sitting with the cat and looking at the internet for the last week. So, I don’t even feel like I’ve been reading cause I’ve only been reading on screens. Anyhow, it’ll be nice to feel settled and stop living out of a suitcase. From Charlotte, to Connecticut, to Brooklyn, it ain’t easy saying goodbye so many times in three weeks! And of course, as the deadline for Brooklyntime has come hurtling toward us, I’ve been seeing more of my friends and doing more interesting stuff, and it makes me never want to leave.

Blah blah blah, Alien, you know, from Alien?

It’s a time of transition, isn’t it? Just because some weirdos decided it would be better to start a new year at the winter solstice instead of the spring equinox? I don’t know. I just know that everywhere I go, peeps are itching to move onto something, or someplace, new. South America, Asia, California, New York, Vermont, anywhere but here. Maybe this makes sense, meteorologically, after all. Winter, even though it can look so lovely, and crisp, and pristine, is a real drag. So a person starts to think, man, I gotta do something else with my life. Which makes sense, because basically the thing you’re doing with your life at this point is sitting inside watching TV and playing video games, eating too much chocolate, sleeping late, and trying to maintain feeling in your fingers and toes. So then, come spring, you either really do something new, or you don’t. Now is when the idea is germinated. At any rate, it seems that the early twenties New York City recess is coming to a close for many of my college chums. Then what? Maybe I should move to Dublin, or London, or something.

New year, new beer, y’know? I’m trying to figure out the best way to set up a “shop” on my site, are you excited? Thinking I should probably find something without so many fees as Etsy. I have Oak & Linden issue 1 camping out there and so far it has cost me $4.00. Does anybody have any recommendations? How many questions can I squeeze into one post?

And yeah, I’m gonna keep these doodle posts going for another week or two.

Now I’m back in New England, but not the mountains of Vermont yet, folks, for now I’m in the swamps of Connecticut. I’m in Mom and Dad’s living room, and he’s workin the P90X while I write. This morning Caitlin did the woman in the gray suit commuting thang on Metro-North down to The City. She and I watched Schmavatar on Christmas, and I’ll admit it was interesting, especially that crazy bio-luminescent flora and fauna, and the only times I felt overly aware of the fact I was looking at CG were the times when real people were in fake helicopters. There was some really dumb dialogue, beat-you-over-the-head parallels to the Iraq war, colonialism and the environmental movement. But still, it’s nice that somebody is addressing (and entertaining) a mass audience with these liberal polemics. And there were some really exciting action sequences, and a cool alien concept that I won’t divulge lest I be called a spoiler. I forgot to mention this galling fact: the Na’vi subtitles were written in…PAPYRUS!When I get back to my home/office computer up north, I think I’ll post the full Captain Walton, since its plot so closely parallels the Av’s, right down to hot, blue alien babes and mining for rare crystals.

Oh, here’s another diary doodad I forgot to show ya! A bit cutesy, yes, but that’s what sells, kid.

Oh golly, I guess I forgot I had a blog. I’m in Charlotte now, at Cait’s parents’ house, and I’m watching Star Wars on TV (“Only a master of evil, Darth”). We’ve got Legos and preg-os, so basically, things couldn’t be better. Since last I wrote, we’ve had a kegger at my “frat house,” a lovely night out at Union Hall in Brooklyn, and I made a header for Joe Kopta’s blog.

Guess what else I forgot. I used to post doodles! Here’s a page from back in September.