Our friend Kyle is in town - we hung out with him a little today, and hopefully more tomorrow night.
I've been getting a lot of hits from a site called "Stumbleupon," but I can't seem to figure out why. Did anybody out there find my site from Stumbleupon?
And the big news of the moment - I seem to have lost my coupon book job, after more than four years! Apparently a big coupon book franchise bought out my boss's independent operation (I don't know the details.) So now I've either got to look for another job, or finally try to make a go of it with this "professional artist" thing. I'm hoping I can pull off the latter.
My life for the last couple days has consisted of almost nothing but going to a nearby coffeehouse (The Sentient Bean,) and listening to Tolkien audiobooks with Eleanor. It is quite pleasant.
This panel was fun to pencil, but super problematic to ink, for some reason. I'm still not sure if it's coming together entirely. Oh well.
I forgot to mention the last time I posted - The ancient Egypt issue of Moo-Cow Fan Club Magazine I mention a month or so back (that I did all of the pharaoh pictures for) is on the stands. I saw it at our local Books-a-Million, so you might check there if you're interested. I think Eleanor is working on a comic for an upcoming issue, too.
Eleanor and I have been listening to the audiobook of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and we finally finished it last night. I highly recommend it, with two caveats: 1. If the idea of multitudes of footnotes, long anecdotes, "period" stylization, and very dry humor doesn't seem like a plus to you, this may not be your kind of book. 2. The ending is not quite happy for all of the characters.
Eleanor was not so pleased with me when I made her stay up an hour past her bedtime so we could get to the ending, which made her sad anyway.
I have a tiny illustration in the most recent issue of Nickelodeon magazine (the one with the "Jimmy Neutron" cover.) It's right in the first couple pages, the header for the Letters to the Editor column. There's a number of other cool cartoonists in the issue, like Vera Brosgol, Greg Cook, and Todd Webb, definitely worth checking out. You can find Nick in most grocery stores, so you could read it right there, or even buy it or something.
I think everyone there will agree that Eleanor's birthday party was awesome fun. We all chipped in and made a big jam drawing-type birthday card (with contributions from even some of our out-of-town friends, via the magic of email, scissors and glue.)
While we were at the party, our friend JP had copies on hand of the new anthology he was in, Papercutter. Besides JP's great piece, there's also a strong piece by Aaron Renier, which reminded me that I meant to mention this podcast a while back. It's an interview with Renier, who has some interesting things to say about comics in general and his book, Spiral Bound (not to mention Disney's The Gummi Bears.) But of course, the reason I mention it is because he plugs my Blar minicomic near the end.
Anyway, that's enough of this Mutual Admiration Society for today.
p.s. to a particular couple I know - Congratulations, you dang copycats!
Like I mentioned a little bit ago, I've been working on a serious revamp of my website. I finished the new main page image today, but I think I'm going to hold off a little bit on showing it, just so it'll be more of a surprise.
Eleanor and I finally exchanged Christmas presents, so I got a whole host of nice little things, including a box of Turkish Delight, the candy that everybody reads about in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but that hardly anybody's actually eaten. I was warned a number of times that it's nowhere near as delicious as one might picture from the book, but I found it quite tasty - though I'm sure there's more than one variety. so your results may vary. Mine had pistachios in it.
I also got a very nice sweater from Eleanor's grandmother (I was impressed because it came from Macy's, which always seemed like a super-ritzy New York sort of department store to me - but everyone else thought that was a pretty silly overestimation, and made fun of me,) and Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player on DVD from Eleanor's folks, which I haven't seen before but am assured that is satisfies the conditions of being both funny and "intellectual," so I'm looking forward to it. Antar gave me Kurosawa's Kagemusha, which I'm also fiending to watch. And of course both movies only go to feed my weird Criterion fetish. Jerry gave me a nice little hardback comic called Murder Mysteries by Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell (whose last teamup on the Sandman "Ramadan" short story was pretty amazing.)
And here's something nice Eleanor made for me! It's a tiny little art object to hang on the wall (Click the thumbs for bigger images.)
And when you open the doors:
Eleanor, me, and most of our Savannah friends went to Michele's gallery opening the other night, where we drank pretty skanky (but free!) red wine and Bud Light and looked at Michele's awesome paintings. Joey snapped some pictures.
I don't get paid for these product endorsements, you know
Hello, happy 2006 y'all. How was your Christmas/Channukah/Holiday of your choice?
I spent mine up in Virginia with the family. We had a great time watching a bunch of Law and Order and eating Jelly Bellies from a big flavor assortment. I was the only one brave enough to try the Jalapeño, but I don't recommend 'em. Momo and Detroit came up with me, and they had a great time running around the house and being freaked out by my Mom's cats (Ming and Maggie.)
Eleanor got a new Powerbook a few weeks ago, but I'm pretty sure I've used it more than her at this point - I actually ended up taking it to Virginia over Christmas, so I could work on the infernal coupon book. It's pretty sad that this little machine that you can put on your lap is faster and more powerful than my big noisy G4 that I've had since '01. Also, you can bring it into a coffeeshop, and magically be on the internet via invisible waves in the air. They've come up with crazy things in the last five years.
Eleanor, Antar and I haven't actually opened our presents to each other - Eleanor is requesting a short delay while Eleanor gets over the cold she picked up in Arizona, and finishes a bit more present buying/making. So we still have our little Savannah Christmas tree up, with bunches of presents underneath. Our Christmas season is going to last a bit longer than normal, and really, what's wrong with that?
The Media Play in our town is going out of business (I think the whole chain is,) so they've been having crazy sales recently, everything 40% to 60% off. I went in meaning to buy presents for other people, but somehow came out with an armload of DVDs only for myself - A couple of Studio Ghibli movies, a bunch of Ingmar Bergman, and a few other Criterion disks.
I'll go now, because my rampant consumerism disgusts even me.
