Bleh. I just don’t know where the time goes, folks. How does one achieve work/school/life/love balance?

Those guys above are friendly demons from hell. The one in front has a name, thanks to Nick Patten‘s cleverness. But that’s old news. I don’t even want to admit how old this sketch I’m serving up for your edification truly is. Okay, okay, like, six months.

Anyhow, there’s a new comic up on my portfolio page. And I do mean new. It was unleashed in print at last Saturday’s MICE, in Boston, which was a spirited, intimate affair. Thanks to all who macheted your way through to the hidden room in the corner and stopped by my table with Beth, Josh and Ben!

In more narcissistic news, I got my tooth fixed. I also shaved my summer beard and even payed for a real haircut. Before and after shots will follow, once I’m really feeling like you guys on the internets just aren’t seeing enough pictures of how great I am. <3

Well, folks, I’ve done it. I made another issue of Oak & Linden. It’ll debut tomorrow at MICE–the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo, in Boston at the Art Institute from 10:00 to 6:00. Thank Quetzalcoatl we made it through that! In other self-promotional news, you may have already noted* that a certain little comic called Nymphonomena has stormed the gates of The Comics Journal. Thanks, Rob Clough!!

I’ve screen printed this cover, with a 2-color dotscreen thang going on. I’m still not sure I’m at all pleased with it yet. I’m also making some laser prints of the cover. You, the public, shall decide how I might procede! Maybe I’ll go off on some topic you don’t really care about next week. I think I feel one of those coming on. Aren’t you so glad to have subscribed to this blog???

*Perhaps? Even? You’ve been directed to note by the very same author of this salesblog?

Guess who’s blowin up The Comics Journal Internets lately? That’s right, it’s your old pal the Toothless Wonder: me. Not that I want to toot my own horn or anything (because I’m pretty sure that would require removing a rib, and I don’t have health insurance for that). Says Rob Clough, about Tag Team, “The clear-line style of Barrett meshed well with Chapman’s heavy ink line.” In Rich Kreiner‘s review of the Caboose anthology, you may even notice a fave-bomb:

Several of those faves of mine, though, use localized experiences as the springboard for legitimate, telling — and funny — elaborations on a theme… you know who you are, penguin opining why the Center shouldn’t forsake its cold-weather isolation for a sunnier clime and you “Grown-Up Babies in ‘The Land of No Women.’”

Now, I know my Legion of Imaginary DC-Area Fans is just quivering with anxiety, wondering if I’ll be at SPX, the Small Press Xpo. I’m sorry, true believers, but I won’t. I will, however, be at a new lil’ thang called MICE, for Massachusetts Independent? Comics? Ex…poooo? I think? It’s at the Art Institute of Boston on Saturday, September 25th. So, I’ll see you there, you Brigade of Hypothetical New England Devotees.

That’s right, you guessed it! I’ve made a long-overdue update to my portfolio page, with…

1 | A T-shirt design for my broseph Dan‘s band, BGosh. I drew this back in November, and I just got word that after many delays, it’s being printed.
2 | The cover to an anthology published by Foreign Affairs featuring essays from the magazine.
3 | Another banner for another adventure in the History of Deeds done beyond the Sea by Joseph Kopta.

On another note, a particularly astute reader/father pointed out that I have a certain penchant for the word “bittersweet.” Some research in the Frog Blog archives located in the basement of the Pat Barrett Center for Introspection at Solipsist University has revealed that, yes, I might have exhausted the term. The study revealed five instances of the contraction, three of them in the past summer alone. All efforts will be made to expand the Frog Blog vocabulary and find another way to express the joy and sadness felt especially at parties and events marking departures.

Oh glory, has it been more than two weeks since I broke my tooth? I’m almost used to it, although I think I’m a bit shyer with strangers. In the meantime, I’ve been to my ancestral home, where my parents are grieving their approaching empty nest life when my baby brother, Jack, goes to college today. What was meant to be a long-weekend visit turned into an extended stay when my significant other’s new-old car got itself stuck at the mechanic with problem appearing after problem. We got back Wednesday night and I’ve been trying to squeeze a week’s worth of work (both paying and personal) into these last couple of days. Waaaah wah wah. Anyhow, I’m back, and tomorrow is my sister’s birthday, and a week from today I’ll go back to school.

Another lapse! Excuse me while I flagellate myself. August has kicked off with a bang, in both my professional and  my social non-virtual lives. And it seems like things are just gonna keep heating up through September!

First in both importance and chronology, my better and hotter half has rejoined me. And she brought along our fat little cat of a buddy. What I’m saying is my eternal girlfriend, Caitlin, and our cat, Sheba, have moved to Vermont so that we can once more form like a Voltron of Love and conquer a whole Universe of Haytahz!

Then my TA work at the CCS Summer Workshops started at the exact same time that we began unpacking in our new apartment. The days and the nights have been full. I’m behind on freelance work, on comics, on replying to emails, on the blog, on everything. But! If Doc Brown pulled up in a DeLorean and gave me a chance to take back my decision to help out, I would stand proudly, pointing to my left, and tell him, “Go back! Back to from whence you came!” Working with the students who came for this program, and with the faculty I’ve come to adore over the past year, has been a dream. I can’t believe how many truly talented and enthusiastic people showed up, and how much quality comics work has been produced in just one week. Today marked the end of our Extended Studio option, and ended with a bittersweet tube ride down the White River.*

I also gotta give a shoutout to a couple of my besties that crawled their ways back to the Junction last weekend, by red eye planes and all day trains, Ben and Kevin. The party’s back! And speaking of BFFs, one of my oldest and dearest is going to be visiting starting this Friday. In the meantime I’m trying to get my house in order and catch up on (at least) my actual paying work. And the following weekend I’ll be going to Maine with my fambly. So what I’m saying is, there might be another lull. I’m sorry. So it goes. But don’t feel bad, Internet, I still LYLAS.

*A tube ride that I actually wasn’t on. This is what happens when you try to write about the future as if it’s the past. I had some spare time this morning and was trying to crank out a post, so’s my imaginary horde of fans could stop complaining in my head that I hadn’t posted for a while. And I thought that that tube ride would be a great, happy/sad way to end this session for the summer, which I’m sure it was. But, alas and alack, before I could go on said ride, I broke my front tooth. Combined with my red beard of summer laziness, I am the spitting image of a pirate. Not unlike this LEGO self-portrait. Needless to say, I wound up at a dentist and wondering how I’ll pay for a root canal and a crown. And thinking that Yoda would be very disappointed in me.

Oh, shit! Bet you didn’t think I’d hitcha with the Greenday!! Well guess what?? Today I finished the second chapter of Petrified Girlfriend! Yes, yes, I know I “finished” it back in the spring, but take a look at what I’m talking about. Here are a few sample panels that my cohorts at the Center for Cartoon Studies (the poor saps) got at the beginning of May.

And now, here’s what you, the faceless masses (my reason for living!), will get to smudge between your grubby little fingers come this Autumn.

That’s all for now! I’ve got other things to do! Away with you all, I’m a very busy, very…very powerful, and very important man!!

Things are happening! If you follow my Twittles diligently enough, you may already know that last week I was going through a bit of despair. I didn’t think I’d ever work on this comic, or maybe any comic ever again. I was lonely and bored and only wanted to drink gin and play video games. I think this was mostly because nothing could live up to the spectacular weekend before it.

There was delicious barbecue with grilled potato salad and grilled tomatillo salsa. There was jumping in the river and taking in the view down the Connecticut River Valley. There was a three-hour walk to the town’s outer limits. There was Rock Band the game and going to Indian food. It was all great. And it was all part of my stalwarts, my rocks, Caitlin and Todd, coming up to visit.

At any rate, now I’m coping. Partially by talking to myself. Today I cheered Lee Marvin when he ended a Western with a really cutting line to a robber baron. Yesterday I got tough with my pens, and with a guy on the radio who wanted to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

But, the more crucial part of my recent spat of not hating myself is as I mentioned first; things are happening! Yesterday I finished revising the second chapter of Petrified Girlfriend, “The Forest Primeval.” If you’ll recall, I was working day and night on this back around April. I let it stew and fester a couple months before coming at it with the clinical gaze of an editor, and now that awful deed is done. But, before I can flip you all a third issue of Oak & Linden, (featuring, of course, this very same chapter), I’ll be adding some gray tones to the piece and also making some little shorts. What would Oak & Linden be without shorts?? Anyhow, it should drop in September.

And speaking of Todd, and talking about collaborating with him and Dan, and Colin, did you notice Wilma Whistlepig putting on some weight up there? How do you like this, with the drawing at the top, where you want it? Where you can skip the blab blab blab?

These are the notes to myself I have taped above my drafting table. They’re normally squeezed between triangles, a cutting mat, T-square, and some ellipses and curves I never use any more but keep crucifying from long thin nails in each new apartment of every new year.

I think of these missives to myself in the voice of a coach (except for the little one, but we’ll get to that). Specifically one who’s red haired and balding (with a fierce patch of curly neck hair, macheted below his neckline every few weeks). A baby faced and small lacrosse coach/admissions councilor. One with a soft voice that could, through fiery intensity, be brought to a tenor roar. Usually this was in furiously despairing disappointment, but every once in a while it was in uncontainable, genuine excitement. His name’s Sam Gaudet and he would always wear a bow tie to his day job and at games, but like a real jock, I always called him Coach.

That’s the thing I miss most about high school: having a coach. He’s a man that every committed student athlete is a little bit in love with. We look to them for approval like cats that kill rodents and present them to their masters. We’d never admit how much we care about Coach’s reaction. And we’re jealous of his attention, like rival siblings. The other thing I miss is caring about hip hop. Which is why I thought it was still worth posting that little scrap that predates the motivational posters in my studio space.