Eating My Hat

Top Seven (previously unblogged) images from our honeymoon














Your warmest correspondent, mentally trapped 4 hours ahead of the west coast

We buy goods at the Supermarket:


We dance with Argentine teenagers to Michael Jackson songs:



We hang out at Evita's old house:

Yay! The headquarters of the right-wing government.

Even though I had to pee very badly and we couldn't bear to go into McDonald's to do it, there's always time to take a silly picture.

Me and my serious friends at MALBA

"Married in Panel Two"

Flash Jam drawing of some dood, by Theo Ellsworth, Andrice Arp, Stefan Saito, Amy Kuttab, Sean Christensen A.B.T., Jesse Reklaw, Julia Gfroerer & Brodie Kelly.
Vortex Squad!

Beastmasters of the Universe art show at Guapo Comics & Coffee
curated by Sean Christensen awesome but true

I did YHWH and MODOK they're $7 each

_milk and sugar

"The youngster wanted to see if the President's haircut felt like his own."

Our friend Jesse's widely loved diary comic, chronicling Andrice's nightmare scream and my and Julia's new zine "Stupid Tales of Wolverine"

Enclosed please find my contracturally obligated thrice-quarterly Livejournal's post that isn't just a little deal from my Flickr. I hope you're happy with yourself.

Lately I've been the father of a fetus. It's a very Schroedinger's Cat sensation, as I told more than a few unimpressed dullards with hospital nametags on their designer scrubs. He's a little boy, except not, although he has definitely shifted my take on "is an embryo a dude?" question that so many politicians manipulate us with. He's definitely a dude. I have a video of his face. He's a person. I still believe that ladies with tiny dudes inside of them have a distinct right to divest themselves of said dudes, not least because of that whole Freakanomics trip where crime has dropped considerably since Roe v. Wade. Little dudes with unhappy homes want to go smash other dudes' homes.

But that's neither here nor there. This isn't my wordy post about gagortions. This is my "what have you been up to since your friends all got on Facebook?" entry, throwing a bone to the zero of you who still care.

Portland, where they know how to rock.
We live in a little-known suburb of Gresham, Oregon called "Portland" where everybody's nicer and less employed than their counterparts in Seattle. Yes, it's true, people are friendlier here in a way that still makes me suspicious. What do they want?

Subsection: Hobos
Well, those people, the hordes of hobos, (the Hobosity Exhibition, we like to call the dozen-plus on the other side of the bridge) they want an extra cigarette. I have even fewer "extra" cigarettes since I quit purchasing and smoking them. Still they ask. The economy seems extra fuct up since our weather has gotten nicer and the migrant hobos have returned to Capistrano. If you, like  so many on my fiends-list, are from Seattle, imagine a whole downtown area and a few neighborhoods with the tenacious panhandlers of Broadway. Hobos aplenty, is what I'm getting at. They want a dollar, and then they yell at you when you don't give them one. They are on the train, selling food stamp candy bars. They travel in packs of four or five, heckling those of us rich enough to buy 75c bags of Doritos. There's a fair amount of homeless people here, I'm trying to say. Sometimes I sing "No, no, no no no nononono, no no no no no no no no no no no--" but often I just arm myself with headphones and sunglasses, and still they yell. The Hobosity Exhibition.

Job Market: Wow, that's lousy!
Many of the friendly people here have lived in Portland for a few years, like us, but a lot of folks are extra-friendly because they just moved here two days ago. That's what the terrible singer-songwriters at the Goodfoot Open Mic kept saying in sweet "I'm a baby girl" voices. "I just moved here from [some stupid place] and folks I love Portland so much!" There's goodwill aplenty here. Not a lot of jobs, though. Getting a job in Portland, especially the vaunted "day job" so many of us chumps in the arts are after, is fucking impossible. Actually it has been pretty easy for me and me Julia to find shitty jobs that make ends meet, just fucking barely, but for people who want jobs being the Pope or getting foot massages professionally the market is ruff. If you ever come here to live, bring your job with you. It's cheap to live here and it's flat for bike riding.

Really, this little town is just as rich in natural beauty as the "city" I grew up in. I have no qualms with raising a little boy here for at least a few years. Plenty of parks and museums, art shows and... oh no I sense another paragraph coming... comic book people...

Comic Artists
Funnybook people have a Mecca, no jihad intended, and that Mecca is... Toronto. But lots of people who live here and make art make comics. There are at least 3 galleries I can think of that are comics-centric. Another 3 comic shops and other stores around have shows. There are two (one and a half, really) comic festivals in town.

I'm losing the caffeine rush that made me start on this and smear jam on Julia's wrists.

Suffice it to say:
Baby!
Comics.
Hobos!
Jobschmertz
Quit smoking cigarettes!
Started smokin' that crack

Sleep deprivation was not doing it for me that week. Got sick for a week and shaved off my snotty moustache shortly thereafter.