dead old blog

I don't know who in our group was the first to start refering to birthdays as "Vagina Hat Anniversary Days", but I want to thank them. The term, which gives such an unshakable image, would be said something like "Just think, 30 years ago, you were wearing a vagina hat."

It seems only natural to bring the phrase to life by making an actual Vagina Hat Birthday Hat.

This is my mock up version of the Vagina Hat. I hope to have a IRL model in the fall.

Probably gonna have to use felt.

The biggest problem in making a Vagina Hat is that nothing I design, is going to be as haunting an image as someone may come up with in their own head when they hear the phrase.

Labels: cartooning

Or at least, that's what MC Lars says.

I don't know what he's talking about. I can get Hyphy from the corner store downstairs.

Labels: hyphy soda grapple mc lars

Sunday night (the 22nd) was a big nerd night here in San Francisco. MC Frontalot, the godfather of nerdcore took the stage at Cafe Du Nord with Optimus Rhyme and MC Lars.

I headed over to the show straight from the Alternative Press Expo (nerd cred!) and saw the already big line an hour before the doors were to open. The show was sold out but luckily I was on the performer list, so I didn't miss out and Front hooked Shan up with a guest list spot.

Cafe Du Nord opened the doors half an hour late, but started the show on time. So as Shan and I were waiting in line we could hear the opening band, K.Flay, playing there set. WTF do clubs do this? Can't they just open doors on time and let us wait inside buying drinks instead of outside and cold? Whisky A Go Go does this same bullshit.

Then Optimus Rhyme took the stage. The crowd seemed to know a few of their songs, which always makes things fun. I got to meet several folks during this set. I guess MC Frontalot did a song with O.R., but I missed it.

Finally bumped into DJ Snyder who despite the volume of the music maintained "normal person volume". I was pretty psyched to meet him, but everytime I'd try to crouch up closer to listen, he'd take a step away. I believe our entire brief conversation ended 4 feet further than where it started. Maybe I'll get to talk to him sometime when we aren't in a club.

Lars was next and he had half of Front's band on stage with him. In the line outside I got the impression that most of the crowd was there to see MC Lars, but they seemed happy to see most artists. The songs I remember Lars doing are Mr. Raven, iGeneration, Hot Topic is Not Punk Rock, White Kids Aren't Hyphy and a Time Travel Song.

Frontalot was the headlining act, and he started off with mostly classic tracks and such. About 4 songs in, he started into a role playing campaign in which he led the crowd through an adventure. He rolled for what songs he would play, adding saves for certain rolls. It was a neat concept, but it sort of sucked when he would tease you with a song he wasn't going to play (i.e.- he set up Pr0n S0ng, but played a different song instead). Other than the getting hopes up, the dm-ing thing was a cool idea. During this part of the set he played more of his newer tracks, including I Hate Your Blog (with Lars on the mic) and Origin of the Species.

For the last song of his set, Frontalot pulled up Wheelie Cyberman (from Optimus Rhyme), MC Lars, and myself up on stage for Nerdcore Rising. I got to tackle the second verse of the song with my "Wiki-wikipedia line" from my rhymetorrents nerdcore posse verse. Fun fact, I wrote that verse originally to do with Front the last time he was in town performing at the Edinburgh Castle show (sometime last year), but just barely made it onstage in time to try it that time. So this time I got to redeem myself. I don't have any idea how it sounded, but I know I looked bad ass on stage doing it.

There was supposed to be hang out time after the show, but I had spent all weekend working a comic con, and the whole week before preparing for the con, so I just wanted to go home.

Labels: cafe du nord nerdcore mc frontalot lars optimus rhyme san francisco

Back from a long weekend at APE. I had a good time this year, meeting new cartoonists and trading comics. Hell, I even made a profit (and so did some of the other cartoonists in our group too). But the main reason we table together at APE is to promote our chapter of the Cartoonist Conspiracy, garnering new members and promoting our cell. So even though I didn't loose money tabling, I really won't find out how successful this year was until our next Cartoonist Conspiracy meeting (this thursday).

Sunday was a very slow day, so I took the chance to walk around a bit and look for my favorite artists... unfortunately so did they. First stop, Jason Shiga's table to see what he's got up his sleeve this year. He wasn't around, but I checked out his books (bought a copy of Knock Knock and a tiny mini comic) and picked up a copy of the Shiga challenge. The Shiga Challenge is a simple one page set of drawings of 7 polaroids. The game is to figure out what day of the week the pictures are taken on. I walked a bit more then came back to my booth and sold some comics and hats while I tried to figure out the puzzle.

An hour later I tried to catch Shiga again, but missed him, I did bump into other friends of mine though and chatted with the cats at 7000 BC (a Cartoonist Conspiracy cell out of New Mexico) about setting up a C.C. distro from cell to cell. Then I stopped by the Global Hobo camp and asked if the guy who made this awesome mini comic about a boy with a worm in his head had any new books. Then I came back to my booth and solved the Shiga puzzle.

Finally on my third walk around I caught up with Shiga and got a copy of his CD for figuring out the damn puzzle. Shiga is in my mind a cartooning super-hero, and one of the few cats in the entire expo that I actually get dumbfounded around. Everything he does is so inventive and original. His newest book, Bookhunter, takes place in the Bay Area in the 70's. It follows a "Dirty Harry" type library police character that chases overdue book offenders around in these epic scenes. Shiga's most known though for his crazy ass choose your own type books that really fuck with the comics medium. He's capable of taking a concept book (like the choose your own) and actually weave together a story that is so good that it doesn't come across kitschy. In fact, Meanwhile..., the first choose your own of his that I bought, actually involves a time machine which greatly adds to the choose your own adventure. In Meanwhile..., the reader doesn't choose the "correct" ending, but instead just travels down a different path each time. All of the endings have happened and in order for you to do something one time, you have to off previously done something else in another time for it work. Fucking brilliant.



Anyway, I'm a total fanboy and got a pic and autograph of Jason.

Some people comment on how APE gets supposedly less and less comics oriented every year. The reason for that is simple, APE is not at all cheap and if you are an independent publisher with only a few different issues out of your zine/mini comic/whatever, you have to sell a hundred copies of each book just to break even (assuming you are probably selling books that cost you $.75 and you are charging $2). Now alternately, consider someone bringing in plush dolls at $30 each. All they have to do is sell maybe 8 dolls to break even at APE.

From selling at expos like this I know that the hardest part is just getting people to stop at your booth. They added 200 new tables this year, but your average shopper is probably still spending the same amount time at the expo this year as they did the last. Meaning they are dashing around trying not to get distracted until they have found whatever specific vendors they are looking for.

So I started a little experiment... Okay, that's bullshit, I came up with a neat trick to get folks to check out my book. I once worked for a man in Nashville that was the greatest salesman ever. He owned a yo-yo shop called Yo Momma's, whenever he would see a kid around that was sheepishly checking out the shop, he would toss a yo-yo at them. Obviously the kid would catch it, and then finally come over and hang out. What I did was playing with the same basic human nature. If there were lots of people walking, but nobody stopping, I would knock a comic off and wait for someone to kindly pick it up and place it back on the table... Then I had them! "Hey that's a great comic you have there. It's about pancakes and the human spirit." or "Oh cool, you saw my book. It's about overcoming great adversity at a Denny's... With syrup!"

It worked great. People would laugh, then I could get them talking and tell them about our group and when we get together and all that. I got quite a few sales off of the technique, but really it was just something fun to do and way better than just standing around. Most of the time people caught that it was an act right away, which was cool cause we could just laugh about it and I'd say stupid stuff like "Ya, they are flying off the shelf today.".

I had a new book this year, it's just an excerpt from a bigger book that's in the works, but I put a lot of time on it and was pleased with the results. It was "free with purchase" which really just meant "free to anyone who looks like they will actually read it". So I gave away maybe 80 copies of that, and sold about 15 of each of my other books. The best part about doing these things for so many years is that I am slowly building up my inventory. At the first comic convention I went to, people would come up to my table and love what I had. So they'd buy it. Great... that's a buck.. Considering how hard it is to get folks to check out your comic, that's a lot of work for one comic. But the next year, if a new customer came by and liked my comic they would usually buy a copy of whatever I had (which was my first book and my new book). Cool that's 2 bucks. Now I have 3 or 4 comics, yo-yos, hats, and crafts... So if someone stopped at my table, they could possibly spend $63 on my art. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen, and can make the difference between losing money at the expo and breaking even with money to spend on convention food.



Blah blah blah. I don't mean to make it sound like the whole con is money oriented goal, but obviously it's on my mind. In my mind the goals go like this 1. don't lose much money 2. meet new artists and find new books 3. network

The third goal was a new one. I have a new book on the way, and a planned anthology due later this year. The book is bigger than anything I've attempted, and I believe it is also better. Both artistically and entertainment wise. I keep thinking about how good it would be to have a distributor for the final product, or lord knows even a publisher. Someone who can help me make the product better and maybe even pay for a colorist etc. Despite how sharp my sales skills are, networking is not my strongest point. So the networking goal was not a success.

But I got to hang with my friends Merideth, Kraig, and Jeff-Jeff all day and read our new comics.



Oh and if you thought my sales technique was deplorable, at least I wasn't as mean to crowd goers as Merideth, who would literally rest her nuts on her patrons faces.



There are tons of other APE blog dumps out there, here is a good one..

Labels: alternative press expo cartoonist conspiracy san francisco ape, comics, crafts

Today was the first day of APE. The San Francisco Cartoonist Conspiracy had a couple tables again this year with new and old comics from Meredith, Kraig, Jeff-Jeff, and myself.



In preparation for the event, several cartoonists partook in a 12 hour comic jam last sunday at Mission Creek Cafe. Some folks took the chance to create new comics... That was my plan too, but I spent the entire time shading and lettering pages that I had previously worked on.







Then I spent most of Thursday and Friday at Fast Image Printing in Oakland printing and assembling my newest mini comic "The Flatjack Incident". Meredith brought a gocco with her on Friday for me to use and I love it. Gocco is a easy to use home silkscreening kit that was produced in Japan for a while but is now discontinued. I NEED ONE! I didn't want to waist all the ink that Mere-Bear poured onto the screen so after I silkscreened all the inserts for my book, I started screening anything else I could find.







The convention is going well, I'm selling shit, so are Meredith and Kraig. Kraig's new comic book is an excerpt from the upcoming Robot Friend anthology that I'm hoping to have published in the fall. Met tons of new folks and hopefully will be seeing many of them at our next Cartoonist Conspiracy meeting.

Check out part II of APE HERE.

Labels: alternative press expo cartoonist conspiracy san francisco, comics

Weng Weng is a dwarf filipino action star. He starred in a couple of James Bond type knock offs and at 2 foot 9 inches tall was recorded by Guinness as the shortest actor ever to play a lead role.

Of course he's the perfect candidate for a nerd rap song.



The lyrics are pretty witty, if the guys actually bothered recording the vocals better it might have even been a dope song. Still, it's very entertaining.

Labels: weng weng nerdcore rap song

My friends Irina and Eddie recently got to visit the original K.I.T.T. from the Knight Rider tv series. Even getting to sit Michael's seat... Transference of David Hasselhoff's butt heat... weird.

Anyways, the car is for sale now.

You should check out Eddie's awesome flickr set with tons of close-ups of the fully functional dashboard HERE

Labels: knight rider for sale irina

Here is something that I had never seen before, it's a mexican style ramen noodle called Enchilosa.

On the left is a shrimp flavor and on the right is lime. Both are spicy and have corn chunks in them, but are otherwise very traditional "cheap" ramen soups. I think they were $.60 each. The shrimp one has a couple of dried brine shrimp in it, I tried on and hated it.

As a series of errors at the bank have left without access to my funds since the 3rd of this month, I have been devouring plenty of ramen. So I wholeheartedly approve and enjoy any new flavors to my diet.

Of course, as with all ramen dishes, I like to try to add a little character (and maybe even some nutrients) into my ramen by adding things like eggs or hot sauce. If you've never added egg to your instant ramen dish, I'd highly recommend it. It compliments the flavors well.

I love the History Channel, they have so much fascinating stuff on there it's ridiculous. Last week I was watching an episode of Modern Marvels that was about the history of paint.

It focused heavily on many of the bad chemicals that have been used in paint (such as lead), and how striving to replace the toxic chemicals we remove from paints has led to some of the greatest innovations and improvements in the paint manufacturing business.

At one point, as they showed how quickly some of this new high tech paint cures, I realized that I was watching paint dry... on TV... The show was very interesting, but just catching myself being interested in watching a documentary about paint drying was odd.

The Alternative Press Expo is this coming weekend (April 21st and 22nd) in San Francisco.

As usual, the SF Cartoonist Conspiracy will be vending, but this year we will have two tables. Booths #254 and #255 will be conspirator run, check the floor plan here.

In preparation, some bay area cartoonists will be doing a 12 hour comic jam at Mission Creek Cafe on 21st and Valencia in San Francisco. Some of us will be starting at 9am, but anyone is welcome to join us for as long a period as they like. We'll probably all be at the tables in the back of the cafe.

I'm aiming to pencil, ink, and letter at least 6 pages for my book. Here's to hoping.

Labels: comics

"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."

Kurt Vonnegut JR passed away yesterday.

Goodbye Kurt. Goodbye Kilgore Trout. Goodbye Malachi Constant, Howard W. Campbell JR, and Billy Pilgrim.

While most folks spent Sunday evening squatting upon colorful easter eggs (that's what people do, right?) I was hunched over a sewing machine hella tailoring pants at Self Edge's first ever "Denim Shorts Party & Competition".

It started at around 4:30pm. I set up my machine on an old oak office desk and started cutting up the first pair. They belonged to someone who couldn't make it that night (again I'm going to assume that if you wheren't at the party, then you where attempting to hatch rabbit eggs) so he left a pair of really worn in high quality denim pants for me to short-ify. Hemming is a new skill, one that I had barely any experience before last week, so each pair was a learning experience. But since these pants were worn in so nicely, they turned out to be a terrific pair to start on. We cut off about 3 feet of material on each leg. That's a shitload of selvage material.

The jeans turned out great, I did a straight stitch on the bottom, then added a parallel decorative stitch about 1/4" above it. At this point people started to line up with jeans for me to butcher. I would say that the theme of the evening was a cross between decadence and gaudiness. Basically it was a "who has the balls to cut their nice jeans so short that we can literally see them".

Pictures have been posted here!

Of the 4 winners, I had hemmed the top two. The first place pair were not expensive jeans, but they were hemmed insanely short. So short in fact that we made a matching loin clothe for them. But the shorts owner actually took it one step further by actually shaving his legs as I was hemming his jeans.

Next time we do a shorts party I'd like to see 4 total sewers and separate prizes for best shorts and best tailoring. That way we'd have an incentive to get more creative with our sewing.

The contest wrapped up around 10pm, that's 5 hours of sewing! For what? For massive money? Fame? Free SEXIH jeans? Nope... basically Kiya is a pal and if it wasn't for him I probably definitely wouldn't live in SF. So I hooked him up with hard labor and he gave me access to all the scrap. Of course that means hella selvage wallets!

Labels: crafts, Self Edge denim raw Samurai blue jeans selvage

Jim Stensland is god's prophet, Christ's cousin, a veteran of the civil war (decorated by Lincoln himself), and a producer of bumper stickers. Upon first seeing Jim, you are bound to notice the two giant American flags flapping behind him as he rockets down Nicollet Street in Minneapolis, often times passing buses or cars. Next you'll probably notice all of the "Porn Stud", "Pimp Daddy", and "All the churches are guilty of aboninations." bumper stickers adhered to the back of his wheelchair.

It was the latter sticker that most interested me, so after a little research I have finally been able to meet up with Jim for a cup of coffee. As I hand Jim his mocha, he tells me about the first time he heard god's voice. It was 1973 and he was with his girlfriend when god said unto him "Leave her. She's no good for you.". During the next week Jim had many visions of the future. He saw how he and his girlfriend would break up, who she marries, and how she dies. Miraculously, Jim and his girlfriend broke up a week later. Just as his prophecy had foreseen. A week later the voice returned to Jim and told him "Parents are brainwashing their children.", before adding "All of the churches are guilty of abominations".



I ask Jim if god ever specified what abominations all the churches had been guilty of. "Not really," he says "God never really clarified on that much." But Jim tells of his own theory "None of the major religions believe in reincarnation. I know reincarnation is real. In fact, in a past life I lived in Atlantis. I was general in the Ohio militia. I was the apostle James. Brother of John, cousin of Jesus. God told me once 'You are the spitting image of your cousin, and the only one worthy of his salvation'.". Jim takes a sip of his coffee through a straw and begins to tell me of the two witnesses in Chapter 11 Revelations. "I'm one of those two, and so is my wife. I haven't met my wife yet, but in this lifetime, she's a blonde."

He and his wife to be, who has not met yet but he thinks he once saw in Fargo, will be part of the coming armageddon. "For rapture to begin, I have to persecute reverend Moon of the Unification Church. I also have to successfully inquest the impeachment of president Jimmy Carter." I was really interested in how someone would go about impeaching an ex-president, Jim says "He only served one term, so he will serve again. There are seven kings and the antichrist. Carter was the first and he'll be the eighth." This means Carter may be 100 years old when he takes his second term in office.

Jim doesn't have a website or anything, but he says you can learn more about him by to the Flying J Truck Stop in Fargo, ND, where is he is apparently infamous. Or you can go to his hometown of Phillipsburg, Montana. For now, you can find his bumper stickers in Minneapolis, where Jim lives now, at Arise bookstore.

Labels: Jim Stensland god's prophet flying j truckstop fargo

It's been a while since I've done a Scrap Life project, so I thought it was about time I shared a new one. The Scrap Life projects first started when I took some of the scrap leftover from my Love Life bag and made a wallet out of it, and this project is somewhat similar.

I don't have a lot of Love Life scrap left, so I also used pieces of scrap from high end selvage denim that had been tailored.



The design is based on a wallet that Eric Zo made and gave to me a few years ago. I simplified it a little, but the basic idea of a wallet that folds into itself as show in the pictures was his. When working with the denim I wanted to make sure that the selvage line would be worked into the design.

I had mentioned these denim wallets before, but I've been making some really swell ones lately. Check out this one I made from scraps of leather and Samurai Jeans.

I was really surprised at how easy it was to work with leather. It was the perfect size piece, I didn't even need a special needle, just the same one I've been using on denim. My next goal is to learn how to create a tool to brand my logo onto the leather.





Fuckin' beautiful, aint it? The wallet design itself is largely based on simplicity. The wallets are stripped down to their barest necessity and that helps keep them really thin and comfortable.

The denim is high quality raw denim, as it breaks in it becomes form to fit. Check this out, as the wallet breaks in it gets easier to use and softer and thinner. Closing the lip when tucking in the edge of the wallet can be tough at first, but as it gets used it really breaks in nicely.

Here are some pics of more wallets I made. For these I used bits of mens neckties, upholstry sample swatches, and even some that are all denim. Notice that some of them have selvage lines on the the lip and also have a line at the card holder.

Labels: crafts, scrap life scraplife, Self Edge denim raw Samurai blue jeans selvage

I've been working on a new comic that might or might not be finished in time for the Alternative Press Expo later this month.

A while ago I posted about a 24 hour comic I had started (you can read about it here). I didn't finish the book that day, in fact I only finished 13 pages (half of my goal), but they were some of the best pages I felt I had ever done, so I decided to continue the story and take as much time as I needed.

The book is filled with several true ministories, each done in a very different style. Right before the tour started, I wrote a three page story called "The Flatjack Incident" about a time I ordered food from a Denny's in Seattle. I wanted to share my pencils with you guys because I feel they are really lush. So if I fuck them up when I ink them, we can all look back and say that at one point they didn't suck.

I'm trying to come up with a name for the book btw.

Labels: comics

Tom Richmond has posted a video of the well known caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. The video, apparently captured from a documentary about Al titled The Line King, shows a 99 year old Al Hirschfeld doing a caricature of Paul Newman. Some of you may know that Al continued cartooning up until of the day he passed away.



When I think of Hirschfeld's work two things come to mind; a) long, bold, and confident lines b) the name "Nina".

Hirscheld's style largely seemed to be built upon large loopy lines. The most interesting thing to me about the above video is watching how Al creates those elegant lines from some short scratchy movements. In fact, watching the video I can only see a few circumstances of a long stroke. Even when he signs his name, he does so as if he's etching away at a piece of linoleum with a knife.

In 1945, Hirschfeld had a daughter named Nina. In celebration of the fact, he began hiding Nina's name within his work, often times sneaking it into a characters hair or in the crosshatching of a characters clothes. I remember at the age of 13, going into a Tower records and scouring the Classical section for Hirshfeld covers, just so I could see how many Nina's I could find. BTW, the youtube video was shot by Nina's daughter.

Thanks to Stwaskull for the original link and bpib.com for info and pics.

Labels: al hirschfeld, comics

It was the first day of The Mediocre Tour and we were chilling out in the lobby of a hospital somewhere in Oregon. Within a few hours of landing in Portland, Router's ear infection had gotten so bad that she need ed to have it checked out. After a few hours of waiting around, Router came back out and told us what was happening.

"I have a bad ear infection." She said, "The doctor says I could have gone permanently deaf in one ear."

"Well, I'm glad that didn't happen," I replied "because then you'd have terrible deaf perception."

"That would be terrible." She complained, apparently oblivious to the grade a pun I had just laid down, "I wouldn't be able to make music anymore."

"Sure you could, just change your name to Mor Def."

Again she didn't crack a smile... I probably was just talking into her bad ear.

Labels: beefy mc router doctor popular doc pop drown radio the mediocre tour