It’s been a bittersweet couple of weeks. The CCS class of 2010 has graduated and are trickling off to the rest of their lives. In one day, both buddy/”Big Banana” Ben, and good ol’ Gabby (who was up for the weekend) left my house. I’ll move out in August and things will be different. But! On the sweet side, I’ll be living with Caitlin and our cat, Sheba, again. Other bright spots have been walks in the woods, jumps in the rivers, and nights on the porches. One such night unleashed Kaboobs, a bunch of dirty drawings from some of the contributors to Caboose, including yours truly. José put them up on a Blogger site, but he’s using it more like a Geocities site than a blog, so don’t look for updates. Still, do look for boobs.

Continuing the theme from my last post, here’s another cartoon I drew in transit. This was drawn on the train up from New York…some time. I don’t remember when. It’s about a cartoonist’s worst nightmare.

I’m trying to get back into regular routines–like blogging, exercising, brushing my teeth–since my last big comics project ended. This is some pretty Sisyphean shit ’cause right now it’s party time in White River Junction. School’s out forever, the weather is glorious, the trees still have that special springtime yellowy shimmer and pop. We’ve been grilling like crazy, and I’ve been cooking again (after a month of instant noodles) and catching up on grownup paperwork stuff that I’d ignored while I was in the drawing frenzy.

At any rate, here’s one of those sketchbook pages I promised last week. It was drawn in the car on the way down to MoCCA Fest, after a particularly paranoid walk through the White River Stinkeye.

Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Yes, maybe you’re right, even I didn’t think it would be three weeks before we spoke again. Finals season has come and gone, and I’ve got 23 great minis from my classmates to show for it. I’m still collecting myself after a wild month. But, I can at least tell you that the Upper Valley is bursting with lilacs right now and its downright glorious. Lots more sketchbook pages and some processy-behind-the-scenes stuff to come. I promise.

…I wrote one of those wacky cable news pundit-style posts??? Where I act like I’m the authority on something I know very little about, while suggesting some cockamamie scheme that is patently bunk but I keep insisting is common sense??? It’s just like TV! It hasn’t been a while? No? Really, are you sure? I think it’s been awhile…

In the ‘aughts, the diffusion of urban hip fashion switched direction. It all started in the ‘nineties when the internet hit and it became cool to be a bookish nerd with all-too clearly defined tastes. To be a High Fidelity-Williamsburg-Oakland Hipster. The articulate and critical rogue found something delightfully cute about the Victorian era while they* mashed together every  style of the past forty years. This is true in the drum machine-driven folk music, the facial hair, jeans and dresses that we** adore.

The Hipster’s position was solidified under Bush, Jr. It was definitely not cool to like him, and he happened to ideally represent the All American Jock who beat the shit out of us nerds back in school. So the convenient way to rebel against this self-aggrandized popular kid was to further nerd yourself. You could truly hone in on your singular obsessions, learn all there was to know about everything, become active, and make yourself important. It’s just like joining the yearbook and the debate squad and the student government and theater and band.

At the same time, all the jocks, popular kids and soc’s were getting really into hip hop. Black was (and is) finally mainstream. Black had a brief glimpse of being the only cool way to be back in the ’seventies, and now it has really made it. From preppies who give dap to Juggalos*** who didn’t get the note not to sag their jeans and turn their caps anymore, the youths are down!

All of which means it stopped being cool to be just hip hop. The wrong people were appropriating the style for the first time since jazz cats, rock ‘n’ rollers, beats, hippies, disco freaks and post punks. No longer the interesting, pot-smoking, bohemian types were adopting slang, fashion and music. Instead it was the dull, suburban Whities who had wriggled into some token degree of Blackness.

So, big city black kids took up skateboarding. They put on skinny jeans and learned to play guitar. Kanye West, Pharrell, Mos Def, TV on the Radio led the way to aggressively  adapting sci-fi, comics, video games, taste-making blogs, nerdy glasses and outmoded clothes. Now, I know there is still a good heap of inter-mingling, with skinny art school kids getting grills, and library scientists putting on Knicks jersey-dresses. Still, I think its going stronger in the other way.

*Yes, I’m using they as a gender-neutral singular. Ya got somethin ta say about it??

**Yes, we, because there’s nothing more Hipster to do than to say you’re not a Hipster (and therefore I’m not because I’m saying I am, right?).

***Yes, I did look up that spelling. On urbandictionary.com, thank you very much.

Your reward is a cute cat. Cute when she plays with a hair tie, but not so when she shits on the bed.

Yesterday I biked to the Quechee Gorge to make some reference sketches and photos. One thing about biking anywhere from White River Jct is it’s all uphill from here. At least that means the ride home all just coasting under trees. There’s one other thing to know about the area. A sign for a bike route can be distracting, luring a young cartoonist away from his quarry (which in this case was a gorge) and down through twisting condominium lanes, golf courses, and farm roads. Take a look at the ridiculous course I took. Anyhow, all told I biked about twenty-five miles. And it felt great! Except for my grundle. And I came along in figuring out the act of cartooning rocks and rapids (without just ripping off Bill Watterson, Jeff Smith or Looney Tunes {all of which will probs also happen [brackets]}).

The upshot:

This is what happens to a bedroom/studio when a person gets home from MoCCA on Monday, talks to Douglas Wolk; does laundry and hobnobs at the bar on Tuesday; goes out on his bike all of Wednesday, and comes home to find his clothes still damp.

The outcome:

Here it is, at long last, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I present to you a fully gesticulated, and subsequently developed, COVAH!

Now come marvel at this wonder of wonders, this stupendously executed specimen of inter-roommate molestation (that’s groping, folks): The Grown Up Babies in The Land with no Women: Oo-White! Rivah! Junctiooooooon! The strip will appear in Caboose, an ab-so-lutely free-of-charge comics supplement to your local MoCCA festival!

Have all you wonderful people not had your fancies tickles enough yet? Might I point you to yet another example of the scientific proof, that’s “proof!” folks, that cartoonists can all get along? Well, then I’ll direct you to an ode to brotherhood and a sonnet to camaraderie,  Tag! Team! Comiiiiiiiiiics! Now sporting a glorious cover by none other than Dennis Pacheko!

And if you’re just absolutely itching to have comics barked to you this weekend, come to the Feast of the Fests, the MoCCA Fest! Table G4! I won’t actually yell things at you! I’m a really nice guy, I swear!!

Sorry my posts have been a bit sporadically lately. There have not only been a whole buncha deadlines, but also there’s been a crazy string of unseasonably warm weather in the V-T (talkin 70s–even 80º!!). I’m also sorry to say they’re gonna keep on bein sporadic until May! I’ll try to keep bringing you something new once a week, at least. I just don’t wanna let nobody down. This might be bad timing, but I’m also starting in on this newfangled thing, the “twittle,” the “tweedle?” Whata you call it? Anyhow, enough of that. Tweet and Retweet went out in a boat, Tweet fell off, who was–http://twitter.com/paddymacjr, OK????

Well, there is plenty of news. Big news! All of it related to this first item: I’ll be at table G4 at MoCCA Fest next weekend, so if you’re in the New York area, please stop on by. It’s Saturday and Sunday at the “Fightin 69th” Regiment Armory on Lexington Ave between 25th and 26th. I’ll be debuting Oak & Linden issue #2 there, which’ll be available at the shop after I get back. And! my work will also be appearing in a few anthologies:

1. Caboose, a tabloid-size extravaganza all about White River Jct, VT, distributed for free
2. Tag Team Comics, “a round robin cartooning adventure” that blends factory-style job separation with jam comic togetherness (a full description awaits you at the other end of the link)
3. San Papel–Westerns! And perfect bound! I drew the cover, remember?

Mayhap this will pique your interest until next weekend. It’s the new Oak & Linden cover some time in its second trimester. I’ll post the finished baby juuuuust before the actual Fest, so I hope your breath is bated!

Spring break is winding down, and various deadlines are looming. I’m having the trouble of trying to take it easy, and at the same time get things done. One major problem, as always, is to not hate myself for taking it easy. Or, on the other hand, to stop dragging me heels and freakin’ accomplish something already! Ah, me. I’ve been listening to Moby Dick while I get things done, and Ishmael says “Ah, me,” like, a lot. I’ve been reading Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Murakami) while I take it easy, and those sentences are so short and direct! Why can’t I ever write a short sentence? Perhaps its time that this train of self loathing left the station.

Here are some trees, which haven’t yet realized that its spring:

Well, I guess I slipped. If you’re wondering what I’ve been up to, it’s basically been this:

Yes, that’s right, it’s spring break time at the Center for Cartoon Studies! I’m waystid! Not too long ago, I wrote about my boy Steve Ditko and his Objectivist obsession, Mr. A. I’m afraid it’s a little, uh…verbose, but if you like Steve D, you might like it.

What else, what else? Gabby returned to the green mountains on my feast day, and wrote all about it, and it was too much fun. We all miss him very much in Vermont, especially Yours-Truly, as a quick troll through his comments will attest. Speaking of missing people, this delightful episode was immediately followed by my own return to the swamps of Connecticut. My co-writer-for-life, Caitlin, met me at my parents’ house, and we had delicious food and cookies and beers, and it was lovely. We rubbed elbows with my dear old friends Danielle and Chad, and spent most of the weekend just sitting on the porch. Danielle and her family were mourning her grandfather, Dick Shand, and we all went to his simple, sweet funeral, surrounded by his family and friends, in a church that must have been plucked from Western Ireland and plopped down in the Hudson Valley. I think maybe the whole town of Pearl River was transplanted from those emerald shores. And now I’m in good ol’ Brooklyn where spring showers are sprinkling the forsythia–forsooth! More friends and beers and fun times and celebrations of the return of Persephone from the Underworld are sure to follow.

Aaaaaanyhow, if this post hasn’t been vernal enough for you yet, what if we were to celebrate the return of sports I care about with this helmet decal I drew for my baby brother Jack, and for the Wooster Generals varsity LAX club.

Sometimes blogs have this funny, insidious spam that pretends to be a comment, but usually there’s something just…off. In the context, that is. Like this one from Linda: http://blog.patbarrett.com/2009/06/cover-girl-whole-shebangin/#comments

Folks, I’ve been having lots of fun in my sketchbook lately. I am feeling some small moments of clarity and putting them on paper. I’ll shut up about it, though, because I’m not even sure how many of these I’ll show you. That might also be what’s making them good, that they aren’t made for an audience. So, sorry, we’ll have to give some of these some time. I’ve been picking up my Microns again, to get ready to make chapter two of Petrified Girlfriend. Let’s hope that’s good!