dead old blog

Last Saturday my dad called to let me know my grandmother had passed away. I loved my grandma and grandpa a lot, but her death was not unexpected or painful. Grandpa passed away in '96, and since her life was centered around taking care of him, her health and mental state declined rapidly.

On Sunday I began making plans to attend the funeral reserving tickets on United Airlines, but running into a problem with my billing address. It was too late to work it out with my bank, so I had to work it out the next morning. Before I did, I checked online to make sure my address was current, then called back United Airlines but ran into the same problem. When I called Wells Fargo they confirmed my address was current but before I got off the phone the banker asked me if I knew my account was overdrawn. "You are at -$450, there have been 4 charges on your card recently for $497 each."

I flipped out, my flight was the next morning, United had charged me 4 times and I still didn't have a ticket, and since I was overdrawn I couldn't buy another one. I spent about 4 hours on Monday trying to get things worked out with United. Then my phone would lose connection or whatever, and I'd have to call back and start all over! It was 7 pm, when I finally got it all taken care of, just in time to see Miranda July perform in the SOMA district.

After all that, the flight and check in where very easy. I got there extra extra early expecting someone to say "you aren't booked on this flight" or something like that. I sat next to a larger old lady on the flight who kept her arm laying on my side of the armrest the entire flight. She was reading a book by Nora Jones titled Dare To Dream. It must have been very well written, soon after take off she had overcome her fear of dreams and was snoring in my ears.

I flew into Chicago, and rode the elevated train to my buddy Andy's house to stay the evening. San Francisco's always like to brag about BART, but whenever I ride another cities mass transit it always reminds me of what a great thing we have here. During one of the speedier/jerkier paths of the train we hit a bump that literally threw me out of my set and into the isle. Fuck Chicago transit.

Seeing Andy was great, he is one of my greatest friends and I finally got to meet his daughter, but... well... his daughter was having a bit of a fit, so it made it kind of hard to be like "Andy, I'm so proud of you, you are a father now!" when his daughter kept shouting "I want MOMMY!" until she finally went to bed. Then Andy and I hoped on some bikes and visited a few bars. Actually, I think it was the first time we had ever been to a bar together... It had been a long time since we had seen each other I guess.

On Wednesday I rode up with some distant family, Al and Marty Bjornson. I think we are cousins once removed or something. My family (mom and dad) where never big on "family". I mean, I saw my grandparents and uncles, but really don't know much about the intricacies of the rest of my family. Al and Marty however are sort of our living family historians, they love knowing ever relative, and memorizing relevant family try dates and names. Ever visit with them is fantastic, and I do wish I could see them more often.

While in Wisconsin, we stayed at my great-Aunt Francis's house in Clinton. I remembered it very well from when I was a kid, but hadn't seen it since I was 13. This was the first time I had seen my parents in at least a couple of years. We chatted into the evening, and I stayed up late talking about squeaky curds with Francis.

Thursday morning was the funeral and the weather was cold and rainy. The priest for the funeral gave what I felt was a very unfortunate speech that sounded more like an advertisement for the Methodist Church than the proper way to honor someone. The first thing he said was "We are gathered today, in remembrance of Ellen Westerberg, to reconnect as family and MOST IMPORTANTLY to honor Christ our Lord and Savior." Most importantly? Who the fuck do you think you are? My grandmother used to take mom and her brothers to the Methodist church every Sunday, and would volunteer to cook and entertain at church functions however she NEVER attended a church mass because she was not a Methodist herself. But the gentleman at the podium seemed to miss that, he kept thanking the community for having him as their pastor, and saying how to get to the church and all that.. He said "Christ" over 30 times, "Jesus" 18, "God" 6, and only said my grandmothers name 3 times in his whole service.

I was very glad when my Uncle Gene took the podium to talk about grandma. He talked about all the things she had seen in her lifetime (on November 18th she would have been 100) and said the one thing that seemed to be the most important thing to her was her teaching. When my mom was a kid, grandma was the teacher at most of the schools nearby. Her schools where only one room, and she had grades 1-8 all being taught at the same time. In some towns they built a schoolroom only because she would teach in that city, there was no one else around to do it.

Gene had found a set of notes that Grandma had written in the 70s about what it was like to teach when she was younger, it was as if she was in the room telling us herself. Very beautiful.

I stayed one more night in Clinton before traveling back to San Francisco on Friday morning. It was great to share memories and see my family again, and as I look at my bank account now, I can see it is back in the positive.

The evening before the funeral, my cousin Brie had scanned several photos of Grandma from Aunt Francis's collection. I am posting those onto a flickr account here for now.

I few weeks ago I blogged about Yoni (aka why?) and posted some of his art, well if any of ya'll live in the Bay Area you can check out Florida Is A Death Metal Town featuring art by Anticon musicians. Here is the info:

Spindox March 2005

If you haven't seen this video check it out. I made it from a Spindox meetup last year and Spencer totally steals the show.

http://spindox.org/

Finally there's a way to cook smores outside! That's right, you too can make smores without having to be in your living room with the new Indoor/Outdoor S'mores Maker from CasaModa.

Bring it with you next time you go camping, or to the beach for your next bonfire. Ever been stuck at a book burning with plenty of marshmallows but no means to cook them? Bring Indoor/Outdoor S'mores Maker and feast on a batch of warm/healthy smores.

It's got a basket for graham crackers, a basket for marshmallows, a basket for chocolate bars, and a basket that holds a candle... Everything you need to finally take your smores making experience to new exotic destinations.

Act now and as an added bonus we'll throw in a pointy stick!

I had a great time last weekend, between absinthe parties and playing with Kreamy 'Lectric Santa. On Sunday afternoon Dan and I recorded an episode of his podcast 40's Over 40. The idea of the show is pretty simple, on each episode the podcasters consume 40s of alcohol in 40 minutes or less while discussing increasingly difficult topics of conversation.

I've been watching the videocast and I think it turned out pretty good, although I feel like I hijacked the conversation most of the time.

Lot's of good stories as I sip the 'sinthe.

Check out Dan's site www.MoreFog.com to see this week's cast, or click here for the video or here for audio.

Peder, a friend and fan of Drown Radio, sent me a cool message today about his Philosophy teacher using "Happy Valium Meal" as part of the curriculum:

"After I sent my teacher the lyrics and song of Happy Valium Meal she loved it and decided to print out the lyrics and make copys for the entire class. She told me that when she does this she is also going to spend the day or a good part of one discussing the song. I don't know if it will take place in my Philosopy class or Critical Thinking but knowing her it will probably be both. On top of that she stated this, "I openly admit to hating rap music. I can't stand it. This song actualy sounds like music. This I like." Then we started talking about what kind of music you do and I said it is called Nerd Core. I also said that I like her hate the style of music but I do like your sound and I do love Frontalots music other then that I can't stand rap/hip hop music. She continued on to say you should drop Nerd Core and do more songs like Happy Valium Meal because it is really good and it has lyrics that serve a purpose not like the crap in main steam music."

It's like... one of those tearjerking movies, where the idealistic teacher can't breakthrough and connect with their students, so they try an alternative method... You know... like in that movie... Take the Lead, that was it!

The newly created San Francisco Cartoonist Conspiracy comic "LMNtal" is online now on the CartoonistConspiracy.com. You can read it here (feel free to print it up if you got the paper.) You'll probably recall that this is the same cover page I posted earlier this week with the black and white cover for contrast.

The SFCC gets together twice a month at Cafe Internationale in the Lower Haight. It's open for any artists to stop in and draw comics with us. Sometimes the comics are improvised panel by panel, but in this comic each artist was able to create their entire page. But at the end of their comic, they have to find the artist who is working on the following page and make their last panel link up to it.

For this challenge we created three simple rules, some artists followed them to a T, others... drew wtf ever they wanted.

1. No words
2. Natural disaster themed
3. Consistent paneling (all pages have two vertical and two horizontal 1/4 panels

The result I think is very simple and pure artistically. Adding these rules brings each artist's page to just it's basic elements, which was the inspiration for the title "LMNTal".

Our current book is a fight/action story, and after that we will begin work on a book with a guest writer. I can't wait to see how that turns out.

Labels: comics

Please note, my blog has moved to www.DocPop.org/blog Check it out for my newest writing. Please don't link to this blog entry, you can use http://www.docpop.org/2006/10/17/friday-the-13th.html instead.

Well, last Friday was a good time. There was to be another underground absinthe party (similar to this one and this one I wrote about a while back ago) and my buddy Dan was going to visit me (from Minnesota) and film some of my performances over the weekend.

As we were walking to the 24th St BART, we saw a big crowd on the East Side of Mission staring above the Chinese Food and Donuts shop on the corner. So, we crossed the street to see what was going on and saw the Live Billboard Project.



The dancers were harnessed to the top of the billboard, I couldn't really tell what scene if any they were playing out and what any of it had to do with the giant feel good text behind them, but I liked it enough to track a volunteer down and make a donation. It was a really neat thing to see in my hood.

My only big complaint would be that it would have been nice to know what was going on and when. I mean I had seen the set up for the event for a week (or two?) but had not ever seen anyone on it until the very last day it was up. If only there was some place they could have put information about what was going on... maybe some sort of banner or big sign that they could use to put up a website link with show times, or even a description or name of what was going on... if only there was some sort of giant sign that local residents would pass by and say "hey that sounds neat, I should see that thing that is being described on the sign".... Maybe some sort of board, upon which the show's bill could be posted on.

Then we moved along to our party, where I rocked a pretty good show for being as drunk as I was. The performance can be seen below, please note the most spectacular Robot ever.

Above is the cover to our newest Cartoonist Conspiracy book "LMNtal". It was a highly collaborative piece that was created in a different way than most of our comics. Brian Kolmes pencilled most of the images, then Jeff Plotkin added some penciled work, before I inked the whole piece.

I've been having a lot of fun inking lately. I'm not shifting focus or anything, but I've always penciled and inked my own pieces and now it's great practice to learn to ink other peoples stuff. It's an excercise that helps you learn what is unique about your pencil and inking style.

Afterwards Brian colorized the project, I think it's interesting to see the difference. I liked my black and white, but I really like the colored version.

BTW, Jeff Plotkin posted his 24 Hour comic! You can see it here. Click on the link after each description to move on to the next page. I couldn't make it to this years event, so it makes me feel really happy that I could still be part of it through Jeff's comic.

Labels: comics

Since I've moved to San Francisco I have been volunteering as a cartoonist at 826 Valencia, a local non-profit writers workshop for kids. It's a lot of fun, and doesn't feel like work at all.

Usually there will be 4 or more volunteers working these field trips, a story leader, a typist, an illustrator, and a Mr. (or Mrs.) Blue. The groups consist of 10-30 middle school kids.

What happens is the kids all come in, grab a nametag and a seat then the story leader will walk them through the basics of creating a story and ask the kids to create a main character, then a setting, then a conflict.

Occasionally the story leader will check in with the Blue character by yelling up the ladder towards Mr. Blue's office. The kids never see Mr. Blue, all they know is that he's the mean old publisher at 826, who hates kids but needs a new book published right away.

The typist keeps the story up to date on a big projector for all the kids to read. Whenever the typist makes a mistake, the kids make the "hand of shame" and tell them how to correct the error.

As an artist, my job is to illustrate each page of the story as it is being created. This is pretty harrowing on the first page, because I really don't know what I should be drawing until they are already halfway through page one. Characters and scenes change often, so I have to work very quickly to finish my first page right when they finish theirs.

After the first page is written and a title for the story is created, I roll up my first drawing and hand it to a volunteer that will present it to the "hand of doom" that reaches out from behind a curtain in the back of the room. Each panel I do is about 3 feet by 2 feet and usually is created in about 20 minutes.

A typical story will be 2 pages of text, and 2 pages of art, followed by a blank ending and back cover. The class writes their own endings and bios, and get a picture to glue to the back cover.

The books are all then presented to Mr. Blue to approve of.

Here is the most recent book I illustrated, the class was from Harvey Milk Middle School.

In the previous blog I wrote about my new wooden loft bed and the Bosch-esque heaven and hell theme with cassette tapes. The background would be orange, the cassettes where white, and all of the clouds would be the original wood color. To give the clouds shading, I used wood stain.

Here is the unpainted with with Mike's pencils, and the wood stain.


Going along with the "wooden clouds" effect, Shannon put stickers up before we painted. After many coats of paint, the stickers hand to be cut before we could peel them off. It took a lot of debate, but we finally picked a qoute from Me And You And Everyone We Know for the bed.


I painted and stained a desk and a file cabinet.


Here is the final project. Check it out, I climb on the clouds to get to the top! I think the staining turned out cool, and I love the cassettes. On some of them I put label names, like
Sebadoh's Bakesale etc...



By Mike Hales, WoodenLofts.com, Doc and Shan


I'd like to mention that the original idea for the woodstained clouds came from the beautiful mural in Fabric8's store on Valencia and 22nd. You can't come by and check out my bed, but you totally can check out their awesome woodstained mural and art gallery.

I found the above video of Omnizero 2 via Suicide Bots. I recommend you watch the bigger version via this french Google Link.

About two weeks ago I ordered a custom loft bed through WoodenLofts.com. It's got six feet of clearance beneath it, so the idea is that I'm going to keep my "music studio" beneath it.

I asked my friend Mike to come over and check it out early last Sunday morning. We poured a couple glasses of absinthe (Pernod) and hatched the plan for a mural on the loft.

Since I've got a couple of audio cassette themed pieces of art in my room, I told Mike that I wanted to do a cassette piece on the loft. We chatted it out more and developed the idea into a Bosch-like setting, with angelic tapes and demonic tapes and tons of clouds. The cool part is that the clouds will be the unpainted wood, everything else will sort of be the same color as the new Bolt yo-yos.

We've been working on it ever since, with mike doing most of the cool illustrating parts, and me doing the bitchwork. We worked on it until 3 in the morning a few days this week. Finally, at 2am this morning, we finished it (mostly). I still need to put the final coats of lacquer on it, but I'm very happy with it! Here is a picture of the unpainted loft as Mike lays down the first sketches. I'll post the finished studies next week.

Coincidentally, Mike is planning on making his second 24 Hour comic book this weekend. Good luck bro.

I recently came across these old pics of Yoni Wolf (aka why? from anticon's cLOUDDEAD, Reaching Quiet, why? band etc.). These where taken during Yoni's recording session with Andy Broder in Minneapolis. Some shots are in Hymie's Basement, others are in Dosh's living room. I interviewed Yoni and made a cool Anticon freehand for him with painted caps. I asked Yoni to sketch something during the interview, since I would be talking about his art a bit in the interview. The piece on top is that piece. Hymie's Basement came out in November 2003, so I think these shots are from 2002.