Looks like I won't actually be able to get up another Set to Sea panel, since I have to hit the road. I'll have one up for early next week. In the meantime, check out Eleanor's blog for comic goodness.
We had a very pleasant Valentime's that involved eating large quantities of raw fish.
I'm going to head out of town for a few days later this week (after Valentine's Day, of course,) but I'll try to get at least one more panel up before I go.
Eleanor and I went to a zine "panel discussion" tonight, related to the SCAD "Record & Zine Fair" of last Saturday. It was awesome, because they had all sorts of catered food, and hardly anybody showed up. Kids ended up leaving with whole bags of unopend chips, and I ended up wrapping up about two pounds of these excellent little brownie torte things and carrying them home in my pockets. Of course, the napkins ended up hell of stuck all over the brownies, but them's the breaks.
Oh, and the zine panel discussion was fun, too. It wasn't really a panel discussion so much as a roundtable, since the turnout was so low... It might have devolved into just us and our friends chatting about minicomics towards the end, really. Sorry, everyone else at the panel discussion!
Eleanor and I had an excellent bean soup with biscuits for dinner afterward, and I burned the living crap out of my tongue.
One more thing - I hope nobody is offended that I leave a lot of comments on the Livejournal posts unresponded to - I appreciate every single one! I just don't know what to type for a lot of them besides "thanks!"
Yep, I've got something in this month's Nickelodeon Magazine too! I wasn't going to post up the actual comic, but since Dave Roman already posted it up on a messageboard or two, I guess it's cool. This month's issue was their annual 3-D special, so you'll need the red and blue glasses to get the full effect:
The 3-D effects were done by Ray Zone, and they look awesome, if you don't have the glasses on you. Other featured cartoonists include Craig Thompson and Michael Kupperman, so it's a strong issue for comics overall. I think it should be on the stands right now, so check it out! Though please don't tear out the 3-D glasses unless you actually buy it, think of the poor kid who'll end up with that copy.
Yesterday Eleanor and I had a table at SCAD's annual "Record & Zine Fair", and had a pretty good time. The turnout was never very large, but a steady trickle of people came by our table, including a couple offolks that I'd already sorta "met" via Livejournal, and a few new ones.
I meant to post something about this before it actually happened, but a short power-out at our house limited my internet availability.
As I was drawing this panel, I decided that for the sake of verisimilitude, I should actually try some authentic sailing food before I put it in the comic. So I decided to make some hard tack. If you don't know, hard tack is the incredibly long-lasting cracker/bread product that fed sailors at sea and armies at war for hundreds of years. It's very easy to make, so you should totally try it yourself! Here's the recipe:
Preheat your oven to about 375 Fº
4 cups of flour 4 teaspoons of salt Just enough water to bind it all together into a leathery dough, though not enough to make it sticky. (Maybe 2 cups?)
Roll out the dough to about a 1/4 inch thickness. Cut it up into 3 by 3 inch squares. Take something pointy, and poke dents into the squares in a grid, on both sides. Just dents, don't go all the way through. Bake for 30 minutes on an ungreased cookie sheet. Flip them, and bake the other side for 30 minutes.
Since this was just for taste-testing purposes, I made about 1/3 of the recipe for myself, which came out to exactly 3 1/3 pieces. Here's how it looked:
You're really supposed to let them dry for at least 24 hours (until they're hard as "fired bricks,") but we ate them right out of the oven, when they were just slightly more squashy then your average rock. Be very careful of your dental work! In Ye Olden Dayes, sailors and soldiers would soak these things in coffee, soup, or just plain water for a good bit before attempting to eat. We ate ours with butter and jam.
So yesterday was our friend David Yoder's birthday, so me and Eleanor decided as a present we'd participate in his "meme." Which was, namely, to draw David Yoder. So here it is:
Roll your mouse over it, and discover which two are imposters! The actual physical drawing has little flip tabs for the faces.
I drew the Yoder #2, and face #2 and #3 underneath, and Eleanor drew Yoders #1 and #3, and face #1. She did the watercoloring and lettering too, so she should really get all the credit for this one.
So, somebody or the other won some sort of football game. We have more important things to talk about!
For instance, yesterday, Eleanor and I got Chinese food from the Peking House on Abercorn, and Eleanor found this in her fortune cookie:
That is the actual fortune, scanned in and unmanipulated. I don't know what the fates are trying to tell us, but I'm more than a little creeped out.
We went out bowling yesterday, as a joint David Yoder/JP Coovert birthday celebration thing. The first game I actually bowled over 140, which is, as far as I can recall, the highest I've ever gotten. But I still didn't win.
Here are two things Eleanor and I got in the mail in the last week or two:
I forget whether it was an official "Pirates of the Caribbean" tie-in product, or just a generic "jump on the pirate bandwagon" sort of thing, but I had to eat two huge boxes of Apple Jacks to get this here Skull Mouse. I was thoroughly sick of Apple Jacks by the end. But it was worth it. By the way, has anyone noticed those ads Apple Jacks have been running, where they insist that Apple Jacks don't taste like apples? What's the point of those? Do kids really hate fruit that much these days?
Eleanor got this pretty awesome T-Shirt from the folks who do the True Porn comics anthology. The picture is by Rich Tommaso, I think. I have no idea why they sent it to her. She certainly did not contribute anything to their most recent volume. Er... move along, please.
Thanks to all of the folks who wrote me concerning my sudden joblessness! I'm actually kind of glad about the whole thing, though. I knew I couldn't work on the coupon book forever, and there have been a lot worse times for me to lose a job than right now.
I'm working on a new "Set to Sea" panel but it won't be up till at least tomorrow. I've also been putting together a pitch (by invitation) for a certain kid's magazine - we'll see how that turns out. Maybe I'll put up some sketches soon.
I've spent the last couple days doing a bit of transitional coupon work before the new guys take over it (irksome to be sure, but it is a bit of money.) We also had a good time hanging out with Kyle and the rest of our friends, drinking beers and such.
Yesterday Eleanor and I got around to watching Truffaut's "Shoot the Piano Player," which was very good, but a lot sadder than expected. I guess it's famous for being both a comedy and a tragedy. Eleanor got her cry on, and we had to chase it with a couple episodes of the Simpsons.
Today we watched "The Aristocrats" with Joey, Michelle, and David Yoder. It totally destroyed David's mind. Now I'm kind of curious about Sarah Silverman's recent movie.
