There is no Santa.

I'm further convinced of the nagging feeling I've had since age 9 that this whole Santa thing is a crock of shit.

My evidence--which may seem slight to you, but is of paramount gravity to me-- is that there is still no box set of the entire series of 'Night Court'.

I hope with all the free time coming up that I get a lot more stuff done.

Writing and art and otherwise.

Right, so I find it exceedingly creepy and disturbing that the Google Truck has in fact gone down my parents' street, right up to the foot of their driveway in the cul-de-sac, and you can now seek it out. In podunk Mississippi! The future is not supposed to go there.

NCN Convention - Famous Corpses

Well, the 2008 NCN Convention in Raleigh just wrapped up last night. Early Wednesday, post Election Night elation, I flew down on the teeniest jet Delta had to offer to join the festivities mid-week as a guest.

While I was there I signed some copies of 'Famous Corpses'-- it had been sale already for a few days so Emi and Jan had gotten all of them, but some people came up to have me sign theirs as well, and Friday we sold some more to those stragglers who hadn't gotten theirs yet.


One day, maybe I'll take a photo of 'Famous Corpses' that's not totally blurry.


Publisher Joe Bluhm, Author Danielle Griffith, and Illustrators Emi Sato and Jan Op De Beeck





We met and talked about the next volume, of course; 2008 was full of awesome people who totally died, and we have a hell of a list already. We need to par it down, but, well, the deadline to get in the book is December 31st, so we need to sort of play a waiting game to make sure somebody fabulous doesn't make the requirements (ie die) before then. We're going to move tentatively forward, I guess.

All in all the book was well-received by the members of the NCN! Jan Op De Beeck is a superstar, so of course they were waiting for it to come out. People looooved Emi's cartoon contributions too. I dare say it was a hit--we definitely sold enough this week, anyway. It will become available on the Art Squared website very shortly; I'll be sure to mention it when it is.

Tabloids.

Here are some truths, things that stubbornly refuse to change, no matter how much you may want them to.

Tabloids have a creepy and unsettling obsession with babies. OK Magazine and US Weekly seem to exist only to deliver to us the innermost thoughts and desires of the most celebrated babies of our time. Also, OK Magazine offers the absolute worst airbrushed covers in the industry.


They look like terrifying porcelain dolls.




My personal favorite.


It's important to note these are separate photos of the two girls, but obviously, the idea of Shilo and Suri cavorting together is OK's biggest possible wetdream.


Now, this one is special in its own way. Number one, look at the amount of airbrushing gone into Shilo's face. Really? Really? You actually had to airbrush flaws from a baby's face? You had to make her skin and features smoother? Really? Now, aside from that... "Kissing and cuddling her baby doll and sleeping in her big girl bed?" Either Maddox is a mole, there are some OK Magazine owned hidden cameras, or someone has a RIDICULOUS FUCKING OBSESSION to come up with these INANE DETAILS. Oh, and guess who it is! YOU people who read this crap and lap it up. I mean, REALLY? This is front page news? The SUPPOSED WANTS AND DESIRES OF A TWO YEAR OLD? Are you KIDDING me? For God's sake, Patrick Swayze's recovery from cancer takes a backseat to somebody's bizarro fan fiction. I'd rather hear Jen tell us again why she's over Brad.

Famous Corpses

We're now searchable on Amazon.com.

Score.

The book will officially be for sale in North Carolina at the NCN Convention the first week of November. That's pretty neat. The book looks great-- excellent illustrations and layout, etc.

Oh hayy

So, I don't know. It's pretty late, and I feel pretty sick. What do I do in that case? I stare blankly at my computer screen. This time I found myself looking at my flickr photos. Here are some awkward shots of me from a birthday party/warehouse party/karaoke party from May.

I appear to have been fighting between just two emotions that evening. Sassy, and aghast.

The book should be coming soon....

Anticipation. Anticipation of more boxes in my life, to trip over...

Missed Encounter - 6 Train Around 7:30pm m4w

Tall short haired man in a black leather jacket meets the most beautiful woman he's ever met (redhead). You were engrossed in the instructions on the back of your can of oven cleaner. You wrinkled your forehead. I once bought oven cleaner too; my oven was really dirty. I was weirded out when the instructions explicitly told me to wear long rubber gloves and not to breathe in. I guessed that's what you wrinkled your forehead about. Really though, it's no sweat; I thought it'd be really hard to clean my oven but it wasn't. You just follow the instructions and it's pretty easy. You read the back of the can for approximately 1.5 stops, between 77th and 59th Streets. Then you got off at 59th. I wanted ask you if you were cleaning your oven because you liked to bake but I felt silly approaching you. Maybe I should have. Live n Learn.
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This is a Craigslist ad that absolutely no one will write about me tonight, but I wish they would. Because that shit is great.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

So there's this bar that just opened up on Queens Boulevard, just off the 46th street stop, and when I walk by it, I can't help but look at it and think of this movie:



This is, of course, the movie based on the book, that unless you are French and were reading books in the 90's you were unfamiliar with until Julian Schnabel decided to up and direct the film adaptation.

So anyway, it's an autobiography; a story told from the point of view of a gentleman, a former successful magazine editor who was inexplicably and suddenly impaired by a stroke. He suffered from what is referred to as "locked-in-syndrome", meaning the man was imprisoned inside his own body. He could see, and hear, but that was it. He couldn't talk, couldn't move, couldn't eat, etc.

So he figured out a way to communicate via blinking; a nurse would hold up the alphabet, or recite it, and he'd blink when she hit a letter he wanted. They'd spell out words this way.

And the man wrote a book. And then he died.

So Julian Schnabel made this movie. And it's a fantastic movie. Lots of excellent filmmaking here, kids. The shot where you're seeing the protagonist's eye being sewn shut from the point of view of his own fucking eye is pretty astounding. If not gross. I have an eye thing. Maybe it's just me. I kind of felt like barfing, or digging my own hands into my own eye, but it was still all in all a great shot.

The thing that blows me away is that I kept hearing reviews prior to my viewing this soul crusher of a movie was how "life affirming" it was. And something something about the human spirit.

Yeah, it's life affirming, like most things that you look at and say, "Wow, I am so glad that didn't happen to me". I'm glad a lot of things didn't happen to me! It affirms my life when bad things happen to other people and not to me. Sometimes I even giggle a little bit, that's how much my life gets affirmed. Like if you get kicked in the balls-- look, that's hilarious. And I'm glad that (or the female equivalent) didn't happen to me. And I'm extra glad I didn't have a stroke and get locked-in-syndrome, because God knows I procrastinate enough, and without the use of my hands I'd absolutely never get anything done. This blog alone took me 8 years to type.



So no, I won't be going to that bar. I mean, I know what a diving bell is, but all I correlate the name with is the most depressing French movie I've seen. Besides that one where Meg Ryan runs off to France and meets Kevin Kline and he's French and an ass and of course they fall in love and like, get a vineyard or something. That movie is in english but I sure was depressed I watched that shit.