○ notebook • under the haystack ○

○ the district sleeps with its phone ○

Thursday, 29 July 2010

i don’t have an iphone or whatever. a “smart phone?” a “data plan?” my phone just does phone stuff. and i wonder how many years i have before this paragraph is utterly incomprehensible (rather than just largely incoherent).

○ i’ve been traveling a lot, for work and comics and things. i know a lot of folks for whom that’s just life. they still manage to answer their e-mails and pay their bills and call their moms and pregnant cousins. these are tasks i find almost impossibly daunting on weeks when i don’t leave my apartment; out in the wild, i don’t stand a chance.

“you should get an iphone,” someone advised without looking up from his or her own. we were in a production van on our way to conduct an interview in d.c., and you know how movie people are. needless to say; i was the only one of us (aside from the driver, who often went several minutes at a time between screenward glances) looking out the window. their thesis, bolstered by a seeming obviousness, is that i would be able to attend to my various obligations if only i had the necessary apparatus. the theory is not without merit; to be sure, scheduling meetings and sending invoices is a more productive use of one’s time than counting the cars on the new jersey turnpike*.

* [unless, of course, you're paul simon, which, to my constant consternation, i am not. ]

but i suspect people are just being generous, and knowingly reversing the cause and effect in their diagnoses. anyone who knows me knows full well that, rather than being irresponsibly unreachable because i don’t have an iphone, i don’t have an iphone because i’m irresponsibly unreachable, and not the sort of person who’d return your call promptly even if i did. so considering, it hardly seems a justifiable expense.

○ i’m not immune to world’s processions, and accept that it’s only a matter of time before i find myself telling myself “this is not my beautiful phone / child / pair of crocks.” i’m no longer the idealist who swore never to tweet, or carry a phone in his pocket, or stop writing letters on paper**; i’ve been here a few decades, and know resistance to be futile.

** [ i am still the idealist who insists he'll forever demand his books be made out of book, but i'm probably the only one i'm fooling. ]

i’m just not in a hurry to get where we’re going. i don’t get out enough as it is. and i nurse the suspicion that, soon, there won’t be anyplace left to go.

○ what i do have is a sketchbook. it can’t give me directions to coast city comics or reproduce the sound of frank black’s voice, but, as travel accessories go, it does have some notable perks. it’s small and light and state-of-the-art. its battery never runs out. it can’t reproduce the sound of my clients’ voices.

more importantly, it doesn’t preclude me from being where i am. unlike a camera, it doesn’t allow me to save sights for later; what looking i intend to do must be done there and then. unlike a phone, it won’t permit me to swap the strangers i’m with for anyone more comforting or familiar. and while it most definitely contains a map, i concede it to be far less practical than the gps mounted against the windshield. it can show me the road i’m on, and the roads that carried me to it, but it knows nothing of roads to come.

that kind of ignorance gets harder and harder to come by.

kenan, sketchbook by boy blue ○ 5 comments

○ screaming from the gallery ○

Sunday, 25 July 2010

[ the following essay first appeared in fantastic monsters, an anthology 'zine edited by caitlin m., which debuted at the 2010 mocca art fest. you know, in case you were wondering what all the capital letters were for. ]

The courtroom is colder than it was outside, but at least it’s also drier. Soles squeak against the linoleum, resoundingly but a-rhythmically, no matter how one tries to count it out. (Still, who can help but try; it’s an alluring but un-winnable game, a puzzle that can’t be decrypted.) Watches are checked aggressively, proactively: forty-three minutes. Longer, it is noted, than the Feldman jury took, but that, of course, was a once-in-a-career victory. The time elapsed is still less than most consensuses require.

The codefendants try not to look at one another, not to like each other in plain sight. A wispy, approachably attractive woman with long white hair and a colorful jumper wishes them “good luck” as she passes. The paragraphs below her byline in the morning’s Post, however, cast some doubt on the sincerity of the wish. The aging beatnik from The Law Reporter makes no such pretenses; he walks directly toward the D.A. to begin their symbiotic schmooze. The fellow from The Times, universally praised for his refreshing even-handedness, doesn’t seem to be in attendance, but the gadfly blogger is exhaustingly present.

○ The jury, a paralegal tells us, has produced a note: exhibits in evidence have been requested. Counselors resume huddle formations and float theories as to what line of deliberation might manifest itself as such an epistle.

“This,” my grandfather tells me, “is what they call reading the tea leaves.” Despite his immediate peril, he cannot help but be excited at the quality of the civics lesson I’m receiving. “Usually,” he cautions, “they’re just tea leaves.”

But then, there isn’t much else to do. Grandpa goes on to outline several possible scenarios. The grim subject matter notwithstanding, I find our conversation comforting; maybe it’s good that I’m here.

○ “Do you want us to come tomorrow,” I’d asked yesterday in a family huddle between summations.

“Well, it’s not me,” Grandpa corrected for the record, “it’s Hafitz.” This was true: Hafitz had stressed repeatedly how important it was that the jury see family in the gallery.

“Of course,” we joked, “it’s Hafitz. You don’t even want us here.”

“No, no,” Grandpa assured us, “I don’t mind at all.”

○ “Kenan,” Grandpa would call out across the dining room table. I’d look up from my Haggadah, trying not to look nervous. “Who won his third M.V.P. award in 1962?”

For my ninth birthday, in response to both my extreme enthusiasm and lack of aptitude for our nation’s pastime, my grandfather had bought me a 1,200 page hardcover compendium of baseball statistics. Six months later, it was assumed that I’d have committed at least its most consequential data to memory.

My sister had it harder; her musical precocity had earned her an always-growing stack of “original cast recordings,” of which she was expected to reproduce both the scores and the liner notes.

These pop-quizzes were a source of baffled amusement to us grandchildren, but merely an annoyance to our parents, who still, in middle-age, found themselves reciting The Rime of the Ancient Mariner around the dinner table. I was in my early twenties, living in my grandfather’s attic while trying to figure out what one did with a B.A. in film studies, when I finally discovered their origin.

Over breakfast in Flatbush’s finest diner, Grandpa indulged in a rare moment of reminiscence about how vehemently his father had stressed the importance of academics. “You have to learn as much as you can about everything,” he would insist. “Because when they come for you in the night and break down your door– and believe me, they will– the only thing they can’t take from you is what you’ve got in your head.”

The tests and puzzles and games, I learned, were just my grandfather’s way of saying “hey, kid, I don’t mind you at all.”

○ I catch myself again assigning meters to undisciplined footfalls. At least it keeps my mind off other, equally inscrutable mathematical quandaries. What, for example, is “a lifetime” – (“82 years old” + “up to four years”)?

The next note requests a transcript of some testimony from our favorite witness. This cuts to the heart of the case, the lawyers agree; it would seem some of the jurors were awake at some point. The freelance journalist, we suspect, and perhaps the broadcast news producer. Really, it couldn’t have been any of the others.

“The people” and the defense form their respective phalanxes and begin to bicker over exactly which lines of transcript should be included. The process does not go smoothly, and the judge calls the court to order. Counsel approaches the bench, and the inevitable symphony of unintelligible murmurs ensues.

“Does it drive you crazy,” I wonder, “not to be able to join the huddle?” Grandpa is, after all, accustomed to life on the other side of the client/attorney relationship. He must surely feel his own counsel would be valuable. “It’s horrible,” he whispers, in the closest approximation of an emotional outburst I have ever seen from him.

○ The matter is settled and the solution entered into the record. The judge exits and the factions disperse, and at last we are free to resume our business. Not, of course, the business we were about before they came to his door at dawn, thirteen months ago, before he’d had time to dress or don his glasses. Just this morning’s business: “5-across,” I propose, “is probably ‘ONCE’,” since it’s hard to imagine another four-letter “bedtime story preceder.”

“I thought so, too,” he consoles, “but I’m pretty sure the National Institutes of Health are in ‘BETHESDA.’ Which would make 5-across ‘BATH.’ The Wednesday puzzle is no match for my Grandpa.

kenan, sketchbook by boy blue ○ comment

○ some days end up here ○

Friday, 14 May 2010

drought is the newest autobiographical romantic misadventure to wind its un-fortuitous way into the oubliette.

why i’d want to tell you all these things, dear reader, is a mystery even to me, but i suppose i’ll keep drawing them as long as you’re willing to read them. i know i don’t say it often enough, but i can’t tell you how sincerely grateful i am for your readership, you freakin’ voyeur.

1-sheet foldy comic • 3″ x 2″ folded; 11″ x 8.5″ unfolded • black and white
$1.50 (shipping and tax included) • ships within a day or so

the oubliette: drought

kenan, oubliette, stuff by boy blue ○ comment

○ i miss you most when i’m photoshopping. ○

Tuesday, 11 May 2010

[ neil and girlcate prepare for the morning rush. ]

look, i’m not complaining. mocca was, in my opinion, more or less back to its old, awesome self this year.

and the armory is growing on me. sure, it’s impersonal and climatically oppressive on even the balmiest of april days, but it also allowed for smooth flow of foot-traffic and reasonably egalitarian table assignations, neither of which were merits boasted by the festival’s old digs. and, while one should always exercise caution disagreeing with ms. tryharder, i will admit to loving the cluster of out-of-the-way reading tables. and okay, exhibitor space is still impractically expensive, but a critical mass of us remain willing to lose money when doing so is this much fun.

my only serious lingering complaint is how freaking terrible my pictures look. they leave me longing for the flooding daylight and luminescent walls of the puck building, which, despite its crowded corridors and unreliable climate controls, gave us such picturesque memories.

but whatever. the point is, comics:

○ i was again fortunate enough to exhibit beside chicago cartoonist and bookseller neil bridaeu, a storyteller of unparalleled heart, and one of the scene’s most infectiously exuberant proponents. neil spent the weekend rounding up new discoveries for quimby’s and giving away all sorts of awesome things for which he should have been charging, like big robot buttons and sick sock-monster stickers and a magnificent new mini called down in the dumps, which continues the artist’s ongoing exploration of friendship and its discontents. it also seems to be his first foray into the genre of predictive autobiography, by which i mean it’s a pretty accurate account of our interaction during the course of the weekend, despite having been completed a month beforehand.

○ at the eastern end of the table, girlcate and i folded oubliettes, passed out coconut cookies, and plied the new prints of my new york drawings (and also pigs). the archangel michael, renowned for his awesome vengeance but less so for his way with the ladies, even found himself a new home among his own kind:

[ michael to mia: "i love what you've done with your wings." ]

○ one couldn’t ask for better neighbors than the denizens of tapir tooth, whose persistent joviality in the face of my alternating airs of agitation and exhaustion would be reason enough to sing their praises even if they weren’t innovative and impressive comiceurs, all.

their biggest seller seemed to be google doppelganger, an anthology of the five artists’ experiences searching for themselves (in all senses of the phrase), including a compelling collage-based comic by blujay exploring isolation in the age of connectivity. miriam gibson was peddling hornithology, a blush-inducing “compendium of dirty birds and foul fowl,” which she had filled with her disconcertingly lovely illustrations. peter quach’s deceptively humorous you don’t know much about jesus recounts the author’s early acquaintance with america’s favorite proto-superhero. missing pieces is andrea tsurumi’s surprisingly contemplative tale of a young human trying to build a life for herself in the monster world to which she’s been exiled. and alexander rothman’s delicately rendered comics poems, printed as 11 x 14 color posters, were among the loveliest objects to follow me home from the festival.

○ i had an embarrassment of riches lavished upon me at the team werefolf table. the c.c.s. cabal’s eponymous anthology, werewolf!, collects each member’s unique take on the mythical beast, including an inspired tale of vegan collegiate wolf-womyn by betsey swardlick and an enticing introduction to a teen occult saga by joshua rosen. they’d also put together a new sampler, called table buffet, in which matt aucoin reckons with the hereafter and katherine roy explores the perils of inter-species dating.

betsy’s second poor, poor angsty hungarian adventure pits her two dethroned eastern-european emo boys against another string of stressful non-sequiturs to typically hilarious results. matt’s newest (full-size!) doublethink treasury includes 7 stories told in an impressive variety of styles, some amusing, some touching, some downright trippy. i also picked up dance after dark, a short sequence of elegant movements from laura terry, unpleasant people, a fantasy adventure/workplace comedy mash-up by holly foltz, and new collections of delightful odds and ends from holly, matt, and penina gal. these are all names to remember, my friends.

○ new england’s trees and hills collective was well-represented, as always. marek bennett, the brains behind mimi’s doughnuts and the backbone of comics international, had a charming wordless mini called seeds, in which adorable woodland creatures come to a variety of conclusions about the value of a day’s work. and anne thalheimer was distributing the 23rd (!) issue of her autobiographical comic booty, from which i learned about the perks of reffing roller derby matches, the benefits of ending relationships, and why 2010 will be remembered as the year of the monster hat.

○ everyone’s favorite barn-dwelling breeders, matt and robbi of idiots’ books, were back promoting their latest volumes and albums and progeny:

• the new south is the second idiots’ book to arrive in the liner notes of an offbeat folk album. this one happens to be written and performed by a priest. his memorable melodies are peppered with biblical references, but, coupled with keen observations and a relentlessly sardonic wit, they rarely feel devotional. matthew and robbi’s accompaniment, on the other hand, is a deeply reverent stream of melodic delusions and faithful reminiscences, baffling and exultant.

• from the inside out is another story, i submit, about the religious obsessions of godless people. it’s a departure from mathew’s usual narrative voice, which tends to wrap a poignant emotional core in layer upon layer of clever satire, so as to render it generally unobtrusive to those readers who come merely looking for a laugh. this book wears its heart on its sleeve, and while it includes many sources of amusement, they barely take the edge of the horribleness of feeling things. it may be my favorite book in the idiotic oeuvre, a masterpiece of minimalism that forges believable characters in a matter of sentences and a protagonist whose redemption is of the utmost importance despite how little we know about him. robbi does not so much illustrate the tale as offer her own complete rendition, in her own language, on the opposing pages. and you will forgive my vagueness, dear reader, when you read it for yourself, and realize all the wonderful things i have avoided spoiling for you.

• kato is freakin’ adorable, and thus fails to show any significant innovation beyond the duo’s previous genetic collaboration.

○ the temporarily mute but indefatigably colorful miss kiki jones came by with a reproduction of her sexy sketchbook and a seductive introduction to a new tale of old money called pierette. a kind of rococo manga, its pages are meticulously designed, exquisitely illustrated, and far too far from publication (a year, we’re told).

○ would it even be mocca without a new exercise in mind-bending formalism from ken wong? the third in his series of inventive oragami comics, flexagon takes its name from the special mathematical shape in which it’s presented, which must be flexed and flipped to reveal subsequent pages. bits of story are traversed multiple times, but the same panels gain new meanings as the story progresses, and progresses, forever, in an infinite, carefully assembled loop.

○ having myself attempted a few ill-advised acts of anthologizing, i’m amazed at the consistent quality of greg means‘ papercutter. issue 12, like the 11 that preceded it, features three of indie comics’ rising stars at the top of their games. rachel bormann and the deservedly trending nate powell rejoin forces to scalp you front-and-center santana seats. joey alison sayers offers a cautionary parable about the perils of mass appeal. mark campos and dalton webb introduce a seaside community of anthropomorphic animals, reminiscent of walt kelly and african-american trickster tales, that had me from hello.

○ when i first received the call for submissions to caitlin m.’s new fantastic monsters anthology zine, i was, i admit, skeptical. she wanted contributors to deviate from our creative personas, to go someplace we normally wouldn’t let readers follow, to dwell with the thoughts that haunt our solitude. and honestly, who was going to do that?

the answer, as it happened, is 18 fearless writers, artists, and civilians with whom i’m humbled to share a table of contents. the contributions, which range from comics and illustrations to essays and diary entries to instant messages and personal ads, are at times so uncomfortably intimate, so disconcertingly raw as to make the going rather slow; this is not, you’ve been warned, a beach read. but it is a rewarding read, full of revealing and reckoning. it’s truly unusual stuff, interesting stuff, stuff that sits with you after you’ve closed the book and turned out the light, the stuff of which monsters are made.

new discoveries:

• subtext, a small, experimental folded minicomic that elevates show-through (ink seen printed on the opposite side of the page) from bug to feature, by c. che salazar.
• iphis & ianthe, an elegant rendition of ovid by maggie siegel-berele.
• the story of flying robert, a cautionary tale from heinrich hoffmann’s struwwelpeter, as illustrated across accordion folds by marianne r. petit.
• we will bury you by brea grant, zane austin grant, and kyle strahm; part gritty urban neorealism, part expressionist dreamscape, as though sam kieth had decided to draw zombies.

recommended reading by boy blue ○ 4 comments

○ the ghost of sundays yet to come ○

Monday, 5 April 2010

you’re looking at our braintrust, with whom you can become more intimately aquainted in an imminent addition to the oubliette, coming soon to a sunday near you:

○ april 10th & 11th in new york: the unseasonably early recurrence of the mocca art festival. i’ll be sharing table E14 with chicago comics superstar neil brideau, on loan from quimby’s for the occasion. in addition to the aforementioned foldy (which, if we’re going to be honest, may or may not be printed and folded in time for this weekend’s festivities) and the rest of my books, i have an illustrated essay appearing in fantastic monsters, a new anthology zine which editor caitlin mcgurk will be debuting at table D27.

○ april 24th & 25th in portland, oregon: boy blue & co. return for our third year at the little expo that somehow manages to, the stumptown comics fest, alongside fellow folder josh shalek and special guest grego’.

○ may 23rd in portland, maine: our first foray to the fledgling (but already well-regarded) maine comics arts festival. despite having missed mecaf’s debut last year, we are extremely excited for this one. mainly because it’s sponsored by shipyard. and man oh man, do we love maine.

so if you find yourself in the vicinity of one of these fine festivals, come chat with us and trade with us and show us what you’ve been up to. we like meeting our friends.

○ and those reluctant to leave the borough can now find the oubliettes at the one-and-only desert island in williamsburg. (the supply at greenpoint’s word has recently been restocked as well, and all our books, including (the prohibitively large for retail purposes) tick, are always available in our stuff section.)

furthermore, those saddened to learn that 2010 will not see swedish cartoonist frida ulvegren’s triumphant return to new york can take some solace in knowing dessert island now also boasts a handful of rare english translations of her seminal my stockholm diary among its inventory. the book is both an obvious homage and a deeply personal (confessional even (some might even call it a bit raunchy)) collection of intimate memoir comics that are at turns amusing and unsettling. and if that isn’t awesome, we don’t know what is.

actually, we do: this drawing of me and girlcate frida sent along with her books:

kenan and girlcate by frida ulvegren

sketchbook, sunday update by boy blue ○ 2 comments

○ word unto one’s mother ○

Wednesday, 17 February 2010

things were looking up. i’d scored a rent-stabilized flat on greenpoint avenue, a fifteen-dollar-an-hour job fighting city hall, and a girl who was empirically out of my league. my friends were all moving to town, from maine and massachusettes and los angeles and poughkeepsie. one by one, they wound their way into my sleepy little neighborhood; two by two, they settled into its subtle rhythms.

grego’ was a block away, his window accessible at any hour via an old brick tunnel that ran beneath his building. chris and coach and boots nabbed a still-under-construction three-bedroom up by the bridge, bought a hot pot, showered at the y, and carried buckets of water up the stairs to flush the toilet. b.s.g. and the jumes landed right around the corner, in a sagging four-story walk-up recently purchased by my then-landlord boguslav, but we could call him “bob.”

bob had been fixing up the place in the hope of enticing some of the neighborhood’s more lucrative newcomers (although, to his credit, he didn’t try to price out or intimidate the tiny, barely mobile 92-year-old polish woman on the second floor). he hoped in particular that one of those strange new bars that seemed to be blooming on every corner might take root on his ground floor. he built a pretty, old-fashioned facade (probably not unlike the one that had been torn out and bricked over, back when enticing a business onto franklin street was a laughable ambition). soon enough, the windows were papered over, and the sounds of urban renewal began to issue from behind them.

○ greenpoint was still in that early stage of gentrification when the phenomenon’s downsides are easy to overlook. we didn’t yet have a starbucks or prohibitively expensive boutiques or fancy-people restaurants or art students commandeering our bars for their birthday parties. polish was still spoken on every sidewalk, and manhattan avenue was lined with dollar stores doing a brisk business. paloma hadn’t burned down, and all change seemed for the best.

we theorized excitedly about what manner of improvement was happening behind the brown butcher paper. a bar would be fun, but maybe not the best of neighbors, and we already had a local favorite a block away. a coffee shop would be better, someplace quiet to sit and read and work and make new friends. better still, a diner. just imagine rolling out of bed and demanding french toast. yes, please.

eventually we learned the site would house greenpoint’s first english-language book store. a real book store, full of books. it was better than anything we’d dared to imagine. at last, our neighborhood was complete.

one saturday morning, on our way to the farmers’ market, we found the windows, still opaque, had been branded with paint and decals. “word,” they read. so far so good. “books. stationery. gifts. kids’ stuff.”

“oh,” we sneered in despondent unison. “it’s going to be that kind of bookstore.”

○ here’s the thing: part of moving to a place like greenpoint is assuming a certain posture, a suggestion that you’ve always been, and will in all possible futures continue to be, exactly as you are now. coming from somewhere, or leaving for anywhere else, are strictly prohibited. it’s a fragile illusion that becomes nearly impossible to maintain in the presence of children or their parents. the mere thought of procreation will set the foundations of my freewheeling, freelancing community a-tremble.

already the first baby had started to attend happy hour at the pencil factory. but she was sweet and quiet and her parents were friends with the bartender and they never wheeled in a freakin’ stroller; we were still a far cry from the raging breeder militias of park slope. but suddenly, staring down the sign of our bookstore-to-be, a trajectory had become apparent. we could see where this was headed, and where we were headed, and, worst of all, our own complicity in bringing about such ruination. “huzzah,” we’d cried in our naiveté, “build us a bookshop.” now we were going to have one of those “bookshops” that sold trinkets and tchotchkes and stationery. to parents, no less.

○ my expectations were accordingly low when i finally stepped through word’s grandly opened door. sure enough, i found inside very little that i wanted to buy. although, to be fair, this was because the contents of words’ shelves almost exactly mirrored what my own already held: michael chabon, miranda july, bill mckibben, michael pollan, jonathans lethem, franzen, and safran foer. shelves of mcsweeney’s. a small collection of “graphic novels,” which, while less extensive than my own, included most of its highlights. even the stationery, that inventory that was so damning in the abstract, made me aspire to be the sort of person who still wrote physical letters.

christine, word’s proprietor, smiled and greeted us and immediately began disseminating local gossip; it was our first inkling of the neighborhood nexus she and her store would become. she asked us what other books we’d like to see and talked up the events she hoped to schedule. i grabbed a copy of fun home, which i’d been meaning to read, and left, still uncertain just how to appraise our newest commercial resident.

○ three years later, three things are clear:

1. word is an unambiguous credit to its community. it hosts an almost uninterrupted procession of signings, readings, and launches, persuading the likes of rick moody and isabella rossellini to grace our humble franklin street. it organizes book clubs and craft circles and running groups and singles’ nights and innumerable other means of congregation. it cedes valuable shelf space to the work of demonstrably unprofitable local authors (including this one). it keeps us literate and interesting. it’s pretty.

2. word endorses a much broader and ultimately more sustainable notion of community than do many of its customers (including this one). What this kind of community lacks in specificity and exclusivity, it redeems in its ability to evolve and continue. the store caters not just to the hipsters we are, but the children we once were, and the child-rearers many of us will (or have) become, and in so doing situates us in a continuum we are not always eager to acknowledge. it has even produced a child of its own, widely agreed to be another neighborhood treasure in and of himself. maybe he’ll grow into the kind of twenty-something who’s suspicious of book stores that sell kids’ stuff.

3. greenpoint is still awesome. if word’s presence in fact portends the upscale armageddon i once feared, it does so no more than my own. maybe death by gentrification is inevitable; maybe we can’t help but destroy the things we love by the mere act of loving them. and if so, i can’t imagine a more friendly or socially valuable place to pass the time between now and then.

[ this illustration was drawn for the zinester’s guide to n.y.c. (edited by ayun halliday, forthcoming from microcosm) and will hopefully appear therein. those who are excited by such things can see it in various states of undress below the fold.

design, greenpoint by boy blue ○ 6 comments

○ steep in me, o muse. ○

Saturday, 6 February 2010

this seductively condensating iced chai latte was prepared for me by all-star barista ryan, back in the summer of aught-nine, just when i needed it most. at the time, my attempts at comprehensive comic creation were being filibustered, as always, by my crippling self-doubt. given my extensive library of unfinished projects, the populace was understandably losing confidence.

but i found that cloture could be successfully invoked in champion coffee’s cozy back garden, an urban oasis away from the distractions of my meticulously cluttered apartment. at the ends of afternoons, i’d retreat from a day of false starts and frustrations with just my sketchbook and pencil, eliminating the temptation to defer the infinite uncertainty of ambitions with the dependable tedium of paid work.

desperate to avoid discovering my artistic ineptitude, i’d push my pages aside and sketch the food i had bought. day after day, i sat in the fading late-august sunlight, squandering what was left of my marketable youth, drawing to procrastinate from drawing. and oddly enough, this worked; with the unexpected confidence gained from a successful scribble, i was able to hammer out an hour or two of work while the day lasted. (and yes, this is why my comics are so short.)

○ uncle eph says some people are weeds and others are orchids. some of us will thrive and produce under any circumstance, while some of us need the conditions of our environment to be just so. he, of course, is of the former variety; the world has not yet conceived of the sustained drought or sudden frost that can keep him from painting, masterfully, breathlessly. and yet he is a dedicated apologist for the latter camp, attempting to comfort me with the observation that the most delicate flowers are often the loveliest to look upon. still, i can’t help thinking the line between “orchid” and “degenerate slacker” is almost imperceptibly fine.

○ the champion sketches accompanied our rather exhaustive discussion of the cafe’s deceptive splendors a few months back. one of them grew up to become the fine, upstanding illustration you see above. the others are all degenerate slackers.

[ this illustration was drawn for the zinester's guide to n.y.c., edited by ayun halliday and forthcoming from microcosm, wherein it will hopefully appear. as always, you can re-size the image to your screen by clicking on it. ]

design, greenpoint, kenan by boy blue ○ comment

○ second to the right, and then straight on ’till manhattan avenue. ○

Tuesday, 2 February 2010

peter pan donut and pastry shop is greenpoint’s most beloved bakery. its confections are both marvelous and treacherous: after a single bite of one of their locally renowned doughnuts, you’ll feel compelled to buy at least four more. upon completing the first, however, it will become apparent that you’ve already ingested twice as much doughnut as you need. ever. and then you will eat the other four.

theories abound as to the source of this beguiling richness. apparently, their dough boasts an unusually high shortening content, and it doesn’t take an educated tongue to identify their supremely liberal infusion of refined sugar. whatever it is customers may actually be eating, they can be certain of deliciousness procured cheaply from a friendly blond girl with a really charming accent.

the bakery named itself long before its environs became a haven for those hoping to evade adulthood, and in fact makes no discernible effort to court this burgeoning demographic. rather, it is often said to preserve the air of a bygone brooklyn. even relative newcomers to the borough, with no experience of its earlier incarnations, will likely recognize the patisserie as a ghost of greenpoint past, like the shop remembers something they don’t, and is trying to regale them with tales of yore, in a strange language with an unnervingly high consonant-to-vowel ratio.

unlike new york’s other famous sweet shops, where people line up only to pass in and back out again, peter pan is a genuine neighborhood haunt. polish is still the official language of its regulars, who sit at a long counter punctuated by periodic right angles that ensure people face each other, the better to strike up conversations with strangers. upon the burning of our beautiful waterfront rope factory, before the advent of twitter and social network news feeds, it was here that emily and i came to get the scoop. over egg-and-cheese sandwiches, we learned about the old maritime manufacturers and the area’s industrial past, the craven developer and the ambitious historical society, the squatters and the skate park, all long before any local news outlets were able to piece the story together.

we weren’t regulars, and i was surprised at this forthcomingness; i’d often encountered a palpable (and, let’s face it, justified) resentment from the neighborhood’s older residents. but everyone’s your friend at the peter pan bakery. also, everyone has a bit of a tummy-ache.

[ this illustration was requested by ayun halliday, editor of the zinester's guide to n.y.c. (forthcoming from microcosm), wherein it will hopefully appear. as always, you can re-size the image to your screen by clicking on it. ]

design, greenpoint by boy blue ○ 2 comments

○ deep in the heart of sunday ○

Sunday, 31 January 2010

you’re looking at boots, curled up in the window seat, reading michael pollan and trying to hold down airport food.

were we the kind of people who’d pay twelve dollars for three hours of in-flight internet, we could have indulged in literary diversions that didn’t compound the unpleasantness of our gastronomic predicament. we could, instead, have been dwelling on health care, or haiti, or any number of greater, more momentous unpleasantnesses. hell, we might even have stumbled upon something fun.

○ we could, for example, have found ourselves reading ursula viglietta delgado’s dear stranger. have you been reading dear stranger? you should. you’ll thank me. and when you pass it along to your friends, they will wonder first why they weren’t already familiar with this wonder, and next, why you were. “oh, i must have read about it somewhere,” you’ll answer vaguely, leaving them no choice but to accept that you are simply a savvier, better-informed, more plugged-in, zeitgeistier individual than they. they’ll thank you. and make you their king. you’re welcome.

[ note: like many (most?) webcomics, dear stranger is built on the comixpress framework, which is, in my opinion, unreasonably difficult to navigate. you'll want to use the arrows in the upper right hand corner, or the links immediately below the image, to move through the story. which is not to suggest the blog below isn't also worth reading; it definitely is. it's just an independent (and somewhat more linear) narrative. ]

○ we might have happened upon the photoblog atmosphere, where travel-pornographer tanveer badal has been chronicling the south african safari from which he recently returned, and forgotten for a time, among the alligators and impala and buzzards and buffalo, the mundanity of our own adventure.

○ maybe we would have discovered the tiny little odd things of l. van nortwick, who’ve finally found a home on the web where their grotesque elegance (think breugel in love) can be appreciated for the marvel it is. we might even have been inspired to address our own miserable illustrator skills.

○ we very likely would have checked in over at the five-page folded mini-comic, where super-fun foldies have been posted by promising rookies josh shalek and megan metzger, along with a beautiful new contribution from elder statesman reid psaltis.

[ note: if you haven't yet tried one of these, you probably should do so now, and if you have, you probably want to send it our way. ]

○ or perhaps we would have wound our way over to afternoons in tablespoons, where girlcate has illuminated the science of chocolate chip cookies. but then we would again have found ourselves longing for superior foodstuffs, and right back where we started, and twelve dollars poorer.

○ so instead, we were forced to luxuriate in the endangered delights of print media. which is why, this week in the boy blue mile-high book club, we’re reading theo ellsworth’s capacity, itself a kind of travelogue, albeit of an expedition that ventures in the opposite direction of most.

○ kevin has posted a nice review of the pyramid over at optical sloth. interested parties can now find it, alongside the other oubliette comics and tick, at the legendary quimby’s bookstore* in chicago, as well as greenpoint’s own indispensable word.

* remote readers can now order the books from quimby’s online store, or, as ever, from mine.
** an up-to-date list of coming festival appearances can be found on our front page.

we’ve also begun arranging for the coming season of festivals and expositions,** beginning with mocca in april, at which we’ll be tabling with celebrated cartoonist and award-winning indie comics enthusiast neil brideau.

○ if you find these posts to be unmanageably long-winded, you can now follow our considerably more succinct and slightly more frequent tweets.

○ cultural evolution, like its genetic corollary, has occasional gaps in its fossil record. this is, of course, to be expected; the world can only record and remember so much, and we don’t mean to suggest that seemingly abrupt developments cast any doubt upon the process of change. but they can leave us unable to explain or even comprehend fully how one thing led to another.

this week we were reminded of two such anomalies. and it’s hard, for us at least, to imagine the literary and political muck in which we’d still be slithering about were it not for messrs. salinger and zinn.

○ we flew to san antonio to shoot an interview. tommy and i, who had been there before, tried to prepare the rest of the crew. “it’s like a theme park based on itself,” we explained. “it’s all hotels and restaurants catering to people who’ve come for the restaurants and hotels, plying endless arrays of ‘texas toast’ and ‘lone star burgers’ and ‘alamo fries.’ and there’s this little canal, like the tube-filled ‘lazy river’ at a water park, circling its downtown. they call it a river, but it turns at right angles. it’s the phoniest thing you’ll ever see.”

as it happened, our hotel overlooked the “riverwalk”. we loaded in the gear and broke ranks to freshen up for dinner, agreeing to meet back in the lobby in 20 minutes. because i pride myself on traveling light even when practicality dictates otherwise, the aforementioned freshening consisted mainly of ditching the thermal i’d been wearing between my t-shirt and hoodie, and i found myself with a moment to kill.

stepping outside into the warm january dusk, coatless for the first time in months, i crossed the street to peer over the wall at the umbrellas of the eateries on the “riverbanks” below. a barge-load of out-of-towners floated past, led by a man with a microphone reciting a “tour” of the “city.” the porous weathered “stones” from which the bridges and embankments appeared to be constructed were, i had to concede, pretty convincing; had our stretch of promenade not been under renovation, i wouldn’t have realized they were in fact tiles cemented to concrete.

i knew that people lived here, but, coming from a place that is constantly complementing its own ‘realness,’ somehow couldn’t fathom it. where did they live, exactly?

still, it was nice to be outside. the simple awareness of not clenching my shoulders against the cold was an unfamiliar and welcome sensation. and the air, to be sure, was clean and sweet.

boots, our sound chick and chief food officer, appeared beside me. “that’s pretty ridiculous,” she noted. “although,” she appended after a moment of further observation, “it looks a lot nicer than sidewalk dining in brooklyn. no trucks barreling by, drowning out the conversation and making you cough.”

it was true; i had in fact just been thinking the same thing. graham joined us and stood in silence for a moment, appraising the scene with his cinematographer’s eye. “i don’t know, you guys, i’m having trouble mustering the scorn. i bet people here don’t have rats nesting in their tail pipe.”

“yeah, okay,” tommy allowed, coming to round us up. “but you have to actually see the restaurants. they’re super-cheesy.”

it was comforting to know. “who’s in the mood for tex-mex?” tommy asked. we turned to leave, subduing our doubts with the expectation of a truly terrible meal. the water shimmered and sparkled, seemingly unaware of its inauthenticity.

sunday update by boy blue ○ 7 comments

○ boy blue review of books ○

Friday, 8 January 2010

[ frida ulvegren's "little furry book" with its new friends midnight and cloud. ]

the months are quiet and cold from a.p.e. to stumptown*, as long as their days are short. we get out less; we begin to miss friends in our own neighborhood, to say nothing of those who reside in the far-off lands to which our festival travels bring us. * traditionally the start of our festival season, although 2010 will begin with the month-jumping mocca art festival. likewise, we take less in, and the ‘zines and minicomics and other self-published wonders which surely would help us to pass the winter hours become considerably harder to procure. we make use of what recourse we have, and begin to mistake benjamin linus and lorelai gilmore for the friends we’ve been neglecting.

but this off-season has proven somewhat less bleak. thanks to the wave of new local comics shows and the tireless efforts of postal services around the globe, wondrous little tomes of unsung literary and graphical achievement have continued to trickle our way through the bleak midwinter, bringing with them glad tidings of acquaintance new and auld.

○ at the brooklyn lyceum, under the auspices of the new comic-centered kingcon, i happened upon darryl ayo, in whose persistently delightful vicinity i tabled a few moccas back. i picked up just like clockwork, an unassuming collection of daydreams and reminiscences which hide their biggest payoffs in their smallest details, both narrative and visual. ayo’s trademark, a peculiar sort of abstraction which feels less like reduction than a kind of hyper-accuracy, is in full effect.

○ from portland came a small envelope containing a special message, a new foldy by josh shalek, table-mate extraordinaire and the full-time cartoonist behind welcome to falling rock national park. whenever a new artist concocts one of these, i’m surprised at the variety of stories this obviously restrictive format can support. josh has used it to execute a scott mccloud-style meta-comic in which an aesthitic argument is illustrated as it’s made, to great effect. and even though i’d already read it in digital form (because, you know, these sites don’t update themselves) and knew the punchlines before they came, i laughed even harder, and agreed even more, seeing it unfold before me.

○ at the year’s final to-do, the first presumably annual brooklyn comics and graphics festival, i procured the much-anticipated (by me) second issue of mika oshima’s mopey and magical dense valley. and while it addresses some of the questions that have been nagging at me since i discovered the first installment back in june, it does so in the david lynch-iest of ways, so that a few minutes after closing the book you realize your queries have doubled in number, and your need to have them answered has multiplied by a similar factor.

○ on a recent drawing night, brooklyn’s own caitlin mcgurk [ website pending ] brought over the first of her series of field guides, a carefully researched** catalogue of edible roadside plants. it explains how to recognize said plants, and what steps, if any, should be taken in order to survive their ingestion, ** i.e., she’s actually eaten them all, and apparently lived to write the book.and almost (but not quite) makes me wish i still had a car, so i could be the kind of kid who drives around with this book in my glove compartment.

○ before frida and johan left our humble headquarters for greener pastures and softer mattresses, we decided to exchang fanzines***. ms. ulvegren, however, had drastically underestimated both her work’s appeal to american audiences and her relentless personal magnetism, selling out of what she called her “little furry book” within a few hours at mocca. i wasn’t sure quite what that meant, but, not wanting to let the language barrier get the upper hand, smiled confidently and assure her it was no problem.

*** european for minicomic
**** it should be noted that this story begins in june of 2009, which is to say, frida totally beat dave eggers to this idea.some months later****, a tattered envelope lacquered with unfamiliar postage arrived, containing the answer to this perplexing riddle. “little furry book,” it turned out, was frida’s idiosyncratically swedish way of describing a book that was small and covered in fur. inside this fluffcover is the winningly watercolored story hunger, concerning two breadwinners whose attempts to feed their respective families bring them into conflict with one another. the textless tale boasts frida’s trademark juxtaposition of sweetness and unsettling honesty, and even proves to be furry for a reason.

○ a week into january, it’s already been an archaically bitter winter*****. ***** weren’t we promised a warmer globe?
****** and steadily recovering, thanks for asking. but we know we’re better off than most: we have a warm, sunny place to read with a peacefully purring****** companion beside a new stack of small, hand-bound treasures with which we can curl up (and, in hunger’s case, snuggle). they remind us that, should we ever decide to leave the house, we have clever friends waiting for us with good stories almost anywhere we’d want to go.

recommended reading by boy blue ○ 8 comments