You know, I think Rapidographs get a bad rap in our little community of cartoonists and illustrators. Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe they get held in higher regard than they deserve. But mostly I think people badmouth em. Like, the other day I even found myself saying, “They’re a pain in the ass to maintain, but…” That’s the consensus talking, man! They’re not a pain in the ass to maintain! More recently, I was lovingly cleaning two of my pens out, and I thought, this is nice, it’s meditative, and it means I care about the tool I’m using.

You know what’s a pain in the ass to maintain? Try maintaining disposable pens! They run out before you’ve done like four drawings, or more likely the tip splits and you haven’t even gotten your money’s worth of ink. Or, try maintaining the ink on a page after you erase it.

Plus, none of them are color-coded for the size, so you have to search out a number on the barrel or the cap every time. On the worst, and most commonly used, technical pens, Microns, the numbers wear off and you have to compare all the tips side-by-side to figure out how big they are. Talk about a pain in the ass!

And then, when they wear out, you go and dump another piece of plastic into a landfill to sit for thousands of years, taking up space amongst decaying poisons. And then! Even worse! You have to get your ass to an art store and buy another one! What a pain in the fucking ass!

That being said, I give you a drawing of my jambox. It’s been with me for seven years or so, and the other night at a raucous good time at my house, I thought I’d lost it to the ages. But it turned out the CDs just got stuck in a space in the tray, and I just needed to open it up, take them out, and put it back together again. Praise Somebody! A month before that happened, I realized it looks like a cute little imp, and I drew it. With a Pentel Pocketbrush. Not Rapidographs.

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.

All my blog friends have been blogging awesome/hilarious stuff and I haven’t been reading it! Even Devon returned from nowhere. Sorry Devon, I don’t think you’re awesome or hilarious. jaykaying, oh my g! So now I’m writing too.

Here’s the deal. Basically I’ve just been drawing portraits of BFFs lately. One for what’s become the defunct-est artists’ community/blog I’ve ever seen, and the other for, of all places, Slate!

A couple weekends ago Jen played me this song. It roolz. Love the weird operatic soprano.

It’s Passover and it’s Easter, and Easter includes my favorite exclamation of all, as seen above. I thought I’d switch things up a bit this week and do more showing and less telling. Maybe you’ll like this drawing some stoner kid did in his notebook in highschool…

OK, actually there was a guy on the L train platform playing the blues b’jesus out of Amazing Grace and had me literally on the verge of tears. I didn’t have any dollars, though! Only change! I emptied my pocket, but he totally deserved better. So I guess maybe I thought I could make it up to him by drawing him on the ride home? Annnnd, (that’s the Obama speaking delay) how about this? I don’t know if Cait’s melancholy is rubbing off on me, or maybe I’m just overwhelmingly frustrated right now. I’ve been fighting customers at work and generally going around moping. Anyhow, He is risen!

I know it was cool in Pitchforkland to not be absolutely bonkers crazy for Paper Planes, and to instead dissect its samples and influences. I also know that by now, cool people must be sooo over this song, especially because it has gone national, being so thoroughly attached to the Pineapple Express campaign. But you know what, every time I hear it, I get so damn excited, cause it is a really! fucking! awesome song!

Also, I really like the flying hand gesture MIA makes when she let’s us know she’s fly like paper; gets high like planes. I even don’t hate her nineties-revival style. Retro pastiche of the previous decade has never been done with such aplomb.

Bruuuuuuuuuce!!! We’re talkin Asbury Park-E Street Shuffle-Born to Run mid-’70s young and smokin’ The Boss here.

Basically, as always, I have Blog Guilt. My man Dan is actually pulling through (well, he has for 2 whole days) on posting a song and a drawing every day, or some bullshit. So, in honor of him, and so as to not go 2 full weeks without posting, I present a high point in music and in animation:

I’m resisting the idea of posting illustrations on here, cause that’s what a website’s for, right? But, I’m not exactly updating that very fervently… I just don’t know. My roommate thinks I should toss up storyboard work on here, cause it’s work I won’t put on the portfolio, but it’s drawings I’m working on that are filling up my day. I just don’t know how to feel about that.