It’s “the holidays,” and it’s been lovely, but I wouldn’t want the internet to think I’d forgotten it. So here I am, with another short-term memory-drawing of the north country. It was funny passing by the same spot the next day and realizing how different the construction of the bridge is, and how there are bigger, uglier buildings just past it. But, isn’t that the great part about memory? The relevant parts stick out. I’m really enjoying doing these landscapes in this way. I think it has a lot to do with cartooning, and with only including the pertinent details. If I ever teach a class, I’ll probably make my students do some memory sketching. First I’ll show them Laura Park, who does a lot of it.

In other news, my whirlwind tour of the New York metro-area is drawing to a close, and it makes me sad. Caitlin and I extended our Christmas stay in Connecticut, due to that big snowstorm the entire Eastern Seaboard is talking about. One of my oldest and dearest friends was staying there, with my parents, and blended right in, an extra sibling, just like he used to when we were kids. That was lovely.

The other day a bunch of us took the commuter rail down to Grand Central. It was the day after the storm, and the train was packed. My dad had to go to his bank, my sister to the French Consulate, my Chad (that’s the friend I mentioned) to Brooklyn, along with a friend of his who joined us on the train. Caitlin and I took the subway over to Penn Station, and never emerged to the light of Manhattan. We just got straight onto a New Jersey Transit double decker train and took it to her grandmother’s, where we’ve been the last two days. Upon arriving in New York, neither Caitlin or I felt the Country Mouse sensation that I’ve had when emerging from a day’s travel on Amtrak directly from Vermont. There was none of that “gorsh, there sure are a lotta pretty people…an’ boy do they move fast!” kinda thing. I don’t know if it was the buffer of some days spent in the suburbs, or the familiarity of the commuter line, or what, but it just felt comfortable and right.

I’m looking forward to our approaching weekend stint in Brooklyn. I miss the old borough, and haven’t been back since August. I’m worried that I might never live there again. I can’t stop thinking about what I’ll do, and where I’ll be, after graduating (unless I fail) from CCS this coming May. I know I’ll stick around in Vermont for a while, but I don’t know for how long, or how I’ll be paying my loans. Ah, the future! There’s nothing like the New Year to make you obsess over your plans, is there? Welp, that’s my life. Sorry to get all reflective on yas.

The other day I saw this happening. I felt really sad, like this was some sort of a betrayal. Each detail that hadn’t been removed, like the mailbox on the wall and the little flag on the porch column, and the kid’s room wallpaper I spotted through the window, felt like a cruel reminder that somebody lived here. That people have been living here for probably more than a hundred years. A hundred years! And then the steam shovel, it’s business end like a mammalian face, mouth agape and just sorta knocking things around, then pulling, then smashing through. When I finally stopped staring, and walked by, I started to choke and cough on air-born house dust.

I dunno. Maybe this was just the outpouring of disappointment after I went to pick up some covers at the printer’s. They’d been printed horribly wrong. All 300 of them. I was really excited to see them and to make some more Oaky Lindy 3s and get them out to the public. Ah, well. It’ll just hafta wait ’til January.

Is this a burden on your RSS feeds, dear readers? Have you had it up to here with walking wieners? This page started with a horse and a bird. My beloved Caitlin actually asked me to draw the horse in order to distract me from drawing a penis person. Lo and behold, I came back to this spot months later and what should pour out of my brush pen? A pouty, veiny cock cutey and his happy pussy pal. Then I thought about how she looked like those creatures you’re supposed to knock over at the carnival. So it goes!

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

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.

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.

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?

Lately I keep finding myself in conversations about fashion’s tendency toward revivalism and pastiche. It seems especially commonplace in the last decade, but it ain’t a new phenomenon. Before the ’00s riffed on the ’80s, the ’80s was really into the ’50s. It took us the last twenty years to try to forget that bellbottoms made a comeback in the ’90s, but it was the Roaring Twenties that sported ‘em first. So, granted, these things are cyclical. But! Here’s a little nugget of late-night wisdom for you: they’re also political.

Okay, okay, maybe I’m not blowing your mind here. Yes, you may have already noticed that women wore gigantic, man-shaping shoulder pads both times they found themselves trying to muscle into the office, in the ’40s and the ’80s. But check this out, I think you can predict what era will be in vogue for a comeback by who is in the White House. Eisenhower and Reagan both hated Commies and glorified the notion of a clean, orderly suburbia with plenty of time-saving gizmos and great new stuff to acquire. Change the Commies to Evildoers and it’s easy to understand how the ’80s were so huge in the ’00s. The Obamas/Kennedys-era fixation with long, sharp silhouettes and solid colors has already been discussed enough.

How about, let’s try for a bit of a stretch. Teddy Roosevelt and LBJ both replaced assassinated presidents. They also both used their executive might to take on too-big corporate interests. What was all the rage with hippies? Cowboy stuff! Fringe, leather, big facial hair. It was positively turn of the century!

Well, aren’t you glad we got through that? Are you just here to look at the pictures anyway? Alright, then. This I drew on the Greyhound some time. It’s Don Rosa (as best I could remember) at a barbecue in Charlotte, thinking about Scrooge McDuck (who looks something like that?) who’s thinking about money. Well anyhow, the point is they have similar hair and glasses and mouths. Gahd, cut to the picture already!!