Reubens on the Hudson pt 1

Well we're back!

In the interest of timeliness I will be posting about the weekend in stages as I get organized.

I'm going to start with the posed cocktail type shots because there are a boatload of those and I want to get them out of the way :-)

You will notice that most of these fall into the "John standing next to someone famous" category. This is because of all the cocktail parties that happen at the Reubens - I think I counted about 12. Well..... maybe only 5 but, still - it's a weekend with a lot of standing around drinking and talking.

And for me that usually includes high heels. I added it up and I spent total of 18 1/2 hours standing with a drink in my hand. That includes the marathon session on Saturday - about 2 hours before the awards ceremony and 5 1/2 hours after that. (This would be because all the hobnobbing carries on until 2-4 a.m. each night). Needless to say, my knees and feet are still recovering. (Would totally do it all over again, though!)

Here goes:

John with Lynn Johnston - I need to put a little explanation by this one: when John got his development deal with King Features, I contacted Ms. Johnston for guidance. She not only called John, but spent about an hour giving him some very important advice and also the name of Stu Rees, Intellectual Property Lawyer Extraordinaire. John knew at the time that this was a generous act on the part of Ms. Johnston, but now that he is in the trenches of producing a daily strip he really understands how hard an hour of non strip time is to come by. Thanks again to Lynn so much!

With Tom Richmond, winner of this year's NCS award for Best Newspaper Illustration

With Tom Stemmle

With Rocky Shepard - President of King Features

With Chad Frye - note how I have cleverly positioned them so that John appears to be wearing an illuminated mortar board.

With Bob Rich - nominee for Best Newspaper Illustration

With Frank Pauer - Editor of "The Cartoonist"

With Anne Gibbons

With Dan Thompson, Dave Blazek - nominee for Best Newspaper Panel Cartoon, and Bucky Jones

Sam Viviano (Vivainio), Frank Caruso, and Patrick McDonnell - another note - if you have not seen this video on how to get your work into Mad Magazine you must watch it right now!

Rocky Shepard and Rina Piccolo

Linda Houden and Amy Lago

With Norm Feuti - apologies John - I think I ran your hair through a blender before I took this one :-)

With Mark Parisi

With Caroline Roth

With Rina Piccolo

More pics on John's blog here and more to follow tomorrow!

Heading to the Reubens

I hope the hotel likes cats because apparently ours is coming with :-)

Seriously, it's time to head to New Jersey for the Reubens. This year, partly because of my airline boycott, but for other reasons as well, we are driving. And I'm actually looking forward to the time on the road. While road trips can be tedious, they can also be great adventures. In fact, as I think back over my various travels, my airline travel stories are generally ones of aggravation and annoyance while most of the best and funniest memories have been the trips where we drove.

There was the trip to Florida in 2005 - our Honda Odyssey was brand spanking new, so new in fact, that we were unaware of a few little things about it. The salesman had been excellent about showing us all the little secret storage compartments and the copious number of cupholders, and how the rear seats folded into the floor and how to rearrange the middle seats. He had not told us about the built in "security system". That little gem we discovered for ourselves on Lookout Mountain in Tennessee.

Apparently, if everyone except one person gets out of the van and one person hits the autolock button on the keyring and then the last person in the van opens the door from inside, the car alarm goes off.

And keeps going off.

And a red light (which is not pictured on the dashboard schematic in the owner's manual) starts flashing.

As we didn't even know the car had an alarm, we were pretty confused. I think I remember one of the kids asking if the car was going to explode and was trying to warn us to get away from it.

Even more confusing was the fact that it turns out the system is on a timer. So when everything stops honking and flashing after five minutes and you think you're safe - five minutes after that it all starts up again. In a parking lot full of tourists. Who are staring at you. And who are pretty sure you are a certifiable idiot as you are whipping through the manual desperately trying to figure out how to shut this thing down and your husband has the hood open to see if there's anything helpful in there and your kids are running around in circles screaming "We're all going to die!"

So you do the only sensible thing you can think of, which is to pile everyone back into the honking van, slam the doors, and drive honking back down the mountain away from said tourists while frantically dialing the dealership for help.

The last hilarious bit was when, after pulling into a gas station and finally connected to someone at the dealership he says to tell my husband to get out, go around to the passenger side and unlock the door with the key. There is no keyhole. "Oh." he says. Five minutes later we will finally resolve the situation by hitting the "lock" and then the "unlock" button on the keychain. This educated not only us, on the future disarming of the system, but the guy at the dealership as well.

Or the time in Michigan when we had our gigantic suitcase - the old fashioned kind that measures 36x48 - bungeed to the top of our little Honda Civic. I'm on I75 which has a speed limit of 75 or 80 mph so I'm going at a pretty good clip. John is asleep in the passenger seat and some of the bungees break loose. The wind catches the suitcase and whips it off the top of the car sideways. The chords on my side have held, so the suitcase is now dangling next to my driver's side window. Picture the opening credits of the Flintsones when they put the big steak on the car and the whole thing tips over. I still insist that if John - who is a foot taller than me and weighs, well, more than me, had been driving, we would have wound up on two wheels.

As it was, I managed to ease the car over to the left shoulder. John woke up and said "I'm pretty sure we can't stop here."

I just pointed out my window to the precariously positioned suitcase. Enough said.

There are many, many stories like that from my times on the road. I'm not sure if we'll get any more from this trip but if we do, you'll be the first to know.

It's Here!

OK, so I splurged and bought an ipad. John and I have a big anniversary coming up and I rationalized this as a sort of joint anniversary present. For the record, I did hold out for the second version with 3G wi-fi.

And, as you already know if you follow my blog regularly, I wanted one really, really bad.

Seriously, this is a huge deal for me. I clung to albums and cassette tapes until about 1992 before I finally caved and bought a CD player. Who knows when I would have bought a DVD player if my father hadn't gotten me one as a gift (I still have about 150 VHS tapes taking up shelf space - a source of constant irritation to my 16 year old son). I didn't buy an ipod until it finally seemed like a good idea for my oldest son's birthday in about 2005. And I have held out against cable TV since forever. Ironically, I can now watch almost anything I want on my computer, but that's a blog post for a different time.

So buying this ipad while the proverbial paint is still drying on the marketing campaign is a step waaay outside my zone.

But, as I posted back in January and April, I firmly believe this device and others like it are going to revolutionize print. And, even though we have seen the "digitalization" of print since the advent of the internet, we have not seen a revolution in content delivery.

Up until now, portable print has been primarily still analog in the form of actual paper. Laptops were a first step in untethering digital print from the desktop, but laptops are designed more to produce content than to consume it. I very rarely see folks doing actual reading on their laptops. Instead they are usually surfing the web and multi-tasking.

One of the criticisms of the ipad has been its lack of multi-tasking but, after spending a day with it, I find that to be one of its strengths. With one graphic on display at a time I can fully focus on the article I'm reading and check my inbox later. I find that when I am reading things on my desktop mac, I am constantly pulled to that little icon that is my emailbox.

The two main reasons I got this ipad were for digital newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and also the ipad's color capabilities.

First, how does it handle articles?

I chose, as my first foray into ipad news consumption, this article in the Atlantic Monthly. Ironic, no?

So I tried reading it, first on my desktop with an 18 inch monitor, and then on my ipad with a screen that measures 6 x 8. You'd think that the monitor, with its larger screen would win hands down. But no. For one thing, no matter how big your monitor is, content is only delivered to your desktop in one size. And, even if you crop your window to the edge of the article and cut out the banner ads, the print still remains one size. I loved that I could use my fingers to create the size of print that both fit the window on the ipad perfectly and also increased the font size to a nice level of legibility. And, again, with only one thing to focus on - the article - I did not find myself constantly eyeballing other things on the screen. Even just having the side banners go away was helpful.

Another drawback to reading things on my monitor is the way I sit at my desk and the angle of my head and neck. Holding the ipad in my lap (while lying comfortably in my bed, yet)

felt like reading as it was meant to be.

Second, the color capabilities.

This is it. This is what all creators of color content have been waiting for.

The second I went to John's home page, I was knocked out by the vibrancy of it. The sheer clarity of the images. Then I went to my website. Same thing.

So then I really put it to the test and went trolling for comics. First I tried reading Edison on Comics Kingdom. Then Pooch Cafe on Gocomics. Both looked reasonable good and the large screen meant no more scrolling as on an iphone.

But then I signed up for the Bizarro App and the Marvel Comics App.

I cannot even begin to describe for you the difference. This is our conversion from cassette tapes to MP3 files. This is our conversion from analog TV to HD.

The lines are crisp and the colors are beyond vibrant.

And this is why people are going to pay for comics again. Because, while I could read comics like Edison and Pooch for free on a variety of sites, every image there had to meet the low res and file size limitations required to fit the comic onto a large complicated page filled with bandwidth gobbling content.

Removed from those constraints, the Bizarro and Marvel comics shine in all their RGB color glory.

And THAT I will gladly pay for.

Tall Tale Radio Interview - Reubens

For more inside scoop on John's nomination - and much silly digression into movies - check out Tom Racine's excellent podcast here.

Unfortunately, all the bits about our daughter's fascination with Monty Python's Holy Grail since the age of five were after the mic was off :-)

Edison and the Reubens

As most of you know by now, The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee  is up for an award from the National Cartoonist's Society. It has been nominated in the newspaper strip category along with Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller and Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman. I have not blogged about the nomination up to this point because I guess, in many ways, I am still trying to wrap my head around it. For John's work to be nominated for any award is such a thrill. For it to be nominated for an award by his peers is even more thrilling. For it to be nominated in the company of such giants in the industry as Wiley Miller, Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman is beyond mind blowing.

Another reason I haven't spoken out publicly is because I am in an unusual position. To my knowledge, other wives of cartoonists don't have public blogs. There are a lot of days where I'm not sure why I have one, to tell you the truth. It started because John's blog (Lab Notes) won't let him enable comments and also because he truly doesn't have much time to write up blog posts on anything like a regular basis. He's lucky if he manages one a month, let alone putting up something every week. So we started this second blog because I had the time and energy to keep up with it.

And why blog about the things I do anyway, you might ask? I guess I try to look at this space as the extra behind the scenes commentary you get on special edition DVDs. I just love watching Monty Python's Holy Grail with the various bits of commentary from all the cast and crew.

So, in that vein, I'm prepared to do a little "fly on the wall" blogging from the point of view of "cartoonist spouse on the street".

First, John has been quoted as saying that, despite the cliche'  quality of this phrase, this is one of those cases where it truly is an honor just to be nominated. And you have to know he really means that. No matter what happens at the Reubens, he has been given a thumbs up from his fellow cartoonists that can never be taken away. 

Second, is my very real hope that the nomination itself - not even a win, just a nomination - might be enough to put the strip over the magic number of newspapers and online subscribers it would take for John to finally be able to quit his other job. 

As I type those words, I feel guilty for wanting the other job to go away because, in this economy we are lucky to still have other jobs while so many people are looking for work. But I cannot begin to describe to you how hard it is to watch John put in these 80+ hour workweeks. Not only does he work 7:00 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. pretty much 7 days a week - with occasional breaks for dinner and piano recitals (oh, and roofing) - but both his jobs require continual creativity which is exhausting.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to paint him as some super human martyr. Those of you in the cartooning business know what I'm talking about because, if you're not in enough papers to make a living solely from your strip, you're pulling exactly the same kind of hours. I just don't think folks outside the business have any concept of the time and energy it takes to produce 365 illustrated jokes a year. I know that, before John got syndicated, I hadn't a clue what the workload would be like. Or how hard it would be to dovetail it with the rest of our lives.

All I'm trying to say is, being a cartoonist is a difficult prospect at any time and is an extraordinarily difficult prospect in the current market of media transition. Getting recognition like this is like a ray of sunshine after some very cloudy, rainy, windy days, and is something that I look forward to seeing happen for many other deserving cartoonists working today. There are so many who are doing terrific work that may be flying a little under the public radar. 

Someone asked me if I had practiced my "polite loser" face for when they say "Non Sequitur" or "Zits" - you know, like at the Oscars where they split the screen 5 ways and show all the nominees reaction when the name gets announced and you get this sort of frozen look on the faces of the people who don't win. 

I said "Of course not!" because, 

A) luckily for us they don't televise these awards and the only people who see you are the folks at your table 

B)if I have to practice any kind of face it will be the one that isn't fainting from shock if he wins. I'm going to try very hard not to look like one of those people on the Antiques Road Show whose Grandma's necklace (you know, the one everyone thought was costume jewelry) is worth $250,000.

C)Hellooo - I'm not nominated - he is -no one is going to be looking at me anyway :-) 

So, until I hear the magic words - "And the winner is..." I'll keep floating on the little cloud I've been on as the "supportive spouse" and, no matter who wins, the thrill of the nomination will last forever.

Backyard Superheroes

It's been pointed out to me, by no less than the renowned comics afficianado and podcaster extraordinaire Tom Racine, that I have been slacking off on my blog posts. Here goes - this one's for you Tom :-)

So it's project season again and first up on the roster was the garage roof. 

Last year the large and ancient Silver Maple behind our garage decided to fling a good portion of itself at our garage. Because the roof was beginning to rot anyway, this resulted in several good sized and unfortunately placed holes. Upon inspection, it became clear that the entire roof was going to have to be torn off and redone. As John is handy (and we are also cheap) the decision was made to do this ourselves. "I'll be able to get it all done in one long weekend" is a phrase I seem to recall hearing.

Before you think me too critical of his over optimistic timeline, you have to know this is not our first roofing rodeo. In 1989 our first house needed a complete tear-off and rebuild. John, his brother, and one other friend with roofing experience did the whole East face themselves (including a dormer) and John wound up doing the entire West face himself. It took an amazingly long time, turned my then youthful (read childless) husband into something vaguely resembling a coal miner and, I believe, prompted the phrase "Never again!!".

Ten years later, when we put that house on the market, we were told by the inspector that we would have to replace the garage roof in order to sell the house. Again, a total tear-off. As the profit margin on said home sale was going to be pretty thin, John reluctantly opted to do it himself.

"Never again!!"

Roof number three was our current house. Mindful of the perils of the steepness of this current roof, as well as it's extreme height and proximity to a thoroughly unforgiving concrete driveway, the decision was made to - gasp - Hire Someone.

Completely worth the money. I didn't have to worry about him breaking his neck and they had the whole thing done in two days. Plus they have this amazing conveyer belt to take the shingle bundles up instead of several bone crunching trips up the wobbly ladder with 40-60 pounds of shingles on ones back.

Roof number four almost doesn't count as it was our screened porch and is entirely made of those translucent corrugated fiberglass panels. Those things are nasty to cut, though.

So this was roof number five and by this time we should know very well how long such things take ;-)

Phase one - the South side - wound up taking 2 full weeks and one gi-normous dumpster and was completed last fall. Then the weather turned and we had to wait until April for phase two. To be fair, the North side did only take one long weekend, beginning Good Friday and finished Easter Sunday. It also took another gi-normous dumpster

This roof was different, though. Different in a good way because we had the help of our strapping teenage son to take some of the load off. Different in a bad way because our bodies are a little less shock absorbing these days and our tempers a little bit closer to the surface.

Which is why, over the course of the project - and after several bashed thumbs, blown knees, and dropped hammers, I have taken to calling my two backyard superheroes Dammit Man and Dangit Boy.

Long may they protect us from rotten roofs everywhere :-)

Ta Daah! Isn't is beautiful?!

Jazz Harp Videos - UPDATED

Well, I have finally gotten my act together and uploaded some videos from my February jazz concert to Youtube. 

Unfortunately, of the 7 I have uploaded, only 2 are showing up - not sure what that's about, my son says youtube's been weird and buggy lately.

I've posted another one on my blog here but, while the audio is fine, the video is pretty low res. I think it's time to call in the teenage son tech squad - watch this space for updates.

Speaking of updates:

UPDATE: Well, a couple more have made it through. So far on youtube we have: Vinnie Goes To Washington, Buddy Blues, Ripples, Bossa Nova Casanova, and Fuschia Blues.

A couple of "liner notes" as it were - Buddy Blues is named for a baseline I snitched from Buddy Guy years ago. Along with a little "turn-around" I bought from reputed jazz harpist Park Stickney. Thanks again, Park :-)

Vinnie Goes To Washington is an actual chapter title for a terrifically unscholarly biography of turn of the century, American female sculptor Vinne Ream Hoxie.

The genesis of Bossa Nova Casanova is pretty fully explained in the video.

I should have a couple more before the week is out - fingers crossed.

Kudos

I realize I've been kind of slack posting on the blog lately. Suffice it to say that Spring is usually chaotic for me as a harpist - a lot of concerts, a show (Sondheim's "Sunday In The Park With George")my private students' annual recital, my college student's recitals and juries, etc..

I know, excuses, excuses.

So I'm going to try to make up for it by posting more often from now on, even if it's just to shout out to strips that caught my fancy. The following are some of the strips that made me laugh out loud this week.

I have been following Ollie and Quentin since its launch and, while I enjoyed it from the get go, I think Piers Baker has come into his own as a master of the unexpected visual gag in the final panel.

I've seen a lot of snuggie jokes, this one is my favorite so far.

Jim Toomey has now irrevocably changed the way I view Pandas. They shall forever more be "Land Orcas".

Pooch Cafe is one of the first strips I read every morning as it is right below Edison in the local paper. I love the way Paul Gilligan pushes the level of innuendo possible on today's generally G rated comics pages.

Unlike Pooch Cafe, Cul De Sac is a strip I have to go out of my way to read, as it is not in our local paper, nor is it available on dailyink as it is from a rival syndicate. I love this strip in particular for its channeling of Roald Dahl and Willy Wonka.

I am afraid I must admit that this probably took me an entire minute to figure out :-)

I love how all the criminals in Pros and Cons always wear either a collared shirt or a shirt and tie. The British truly are a great combination of classiness and silly absurdism. Kieran Meehan particularly so.

This is actually from last week - I meant to post it then but got behind. I have to say Cooper is probably my favorite character from Retail. After meeting Norm I think I can safely say Cooper is the closest to his alter ego :-)

And finally, my friend Sandra who gets two shout outs this week. I have a particularly soft spot for Between Friends because it always seems to be channeling my life.

Food Inc.

Some of you may remember a little piece I did a couple of months ago on losing weight. It wasn't really about losing weight, it was about all the exposure John and I have had over the past 5 years or so to books like The Omnivore's Dilemma and movies like King Corn and Food Inc..

For anyone who is interested and has not yet seen it, Food Inc. is airing this week on PBS. Check your local listings - it will probably be on a program called POV.

My Fridays

For comic strip creators who happen to be syndicated with King Features, Fridays are deadline day. This means that each Friday six daily strips and one Sunday strip need to be submitted to the media company for processing before they can be used by newspapers. In some cases, only black and white files are sent for the dailies and then the color is added by a third party. In others, the color is added first by the artist (or one of the artist's peons - read, wife).

So, as strips are usually  coming down the pipe to me between Thursday afternoon and Friday morning (and sometimes afternoon - I'm waiting for the last one now), I generally spend Fridays on the computer trying desperately to find something interesting to listen to on TV while I work.

So I got to wondering how many of us are there in this little Friday photoshopping/file separating/emailing club. I can imagine us all sitting in our respective universes doing the same thing at the same time. Sort of a globally spread out office of comic producing cubicles.

Of course, I may be in a club of one, with all the other artists blissfully ahead of deadline having already submitted all their strips by 8:00 a.m. Friday.

But I doubt it :-)

One Fine Sunday in the Funny Pages

(The Edison Lee for One Fine Sunday in the Funny Pages)

John Read, editor and publisher of the always excellent "Stay Tooned" Magazine, has taken on another project. (As if he didn't already have enough to do!) He is calling it "One Fine Sunday in the Funny Pages". 

A couple of months ago Mr. Read took on the Herculean task of approaching over 100 of the syndicated cartoonists working today to ask them to contribute a Sunday strip for a traveling exhibit. His idea was to have all the contributing comics be from a single Sunday - in this case today, April 11, 2010. His plan was to have the original artwork (which is almost always in black and white) and then a color representation for each strip and then turn all this art into a traveling exhibition. 

Personally, I can't wait to see this exhibition myself as comic artists produce their original art in such a large number of ways with so many different papers, brushes, digital files, etc. and I'm curious to see who does what. John's Edison Sundays are about 8x24 and I know there are artists who work larger and artists who work smaller.

Anyway, you can read more about the project here and here along with lists of contributors.

Be sure to read the comments as well as there are some more explanations from John Read there.

The ipad - I want one even more now! (Updated)

Check out this post by Tom Richmond which addresses the ipad and Marvel Comics. I want one of these so bad. I am doing everything I can to hold out til the second or third version because I know it will have so many bells and whistles the first one doesn't. I am hoping someone at the Reubens will have one so I can ogle it :-)

And, again, I agree with Tom that this device is going to change the publishing world - hopefully for the better. To those who are hung up on the idea of having the ipad take the place of a laptop, I think Tom explains very clearly why the ipad is more like an ipod than a pc. Can you imagine having to maintain a wifi connection to listen to all your favorite tunes and podcasts while you are jogging or otherwise out and about?

(UPDATE)

I am also adding this link to the Charlie Rose show and their run down of the ipad.

Digital and Print - Where is The Future?

I found this article very interesting - I know this was a conference about comic books rather than newspaper comics - but we're all in the same boat wandering around the North Atlantic.

http://newsok.com/word-balloons-digital-delivery-a-hot-topic-at-comics-meeting/article/3450663

Help For The Homeless

You may remember that a while back I posted about the needs of our local food pantry. In our town, we have no permanent structure to give relief from the elements to our homeless population. For the months of the year that it is brutally cold we have a series of churches that volunteer their time and space for the shelter of the homeless but it is one of the missions of our food pantry that a permanent shelter be built and staffed. 

Partially to this end - and also to continue to serve the other day to day needs of the hungry - The Shalom Center held one of their biggest fundraisers this past Saturday. Called "Artists for Shalom" the event gathered over 50 works of art from artists and collectors in the area for auction. I do not have the total amount raised by the event, but I am happy to report that the framed Edison Lee original sold for $850. John and I are so pleased that we were able to support the center with this gift. 

I know times are hard and coming up with extra money is challenging, but if you have any similar events in your area, please consider donating your time or talents. You might be surprised how much it can help.

BTW, the above is the strip that was donated - although, as it was an original, it was in black and white.

Comics Kingdom Outage and the Nonfunctioning Widget

You may have noticed that the area for the widget with the daily strip on comics kingdom is not working. I could post the strips here every day but instead I suggest you go to the right hand sidebar where it says "Other Places to Read Edison". Each of the newspapers listed under that heading is actually a link to comics kingdom in that paper. Even though the widget is down, these links are working fine. 

By reading Edison through comics kingdom rather than here on the blog, John will actually make something like one thousandth of a penny for each time you click on the link. With son #1 in college and son#2 having just gotten braces, we need every one thousandth of a penny we can get :-)

Today's Strip

For some reason the widget isn't working today and the strip won't show up on Comics Kingdom so I've posted it here.

NCS Division Awards

Too stunned to blog.

NCS Division Award Nominees

Go Buy These Books!

Mother's day is right around the corner - what better gift than a copy of Coffee, Tea, and Reality (I looooooove my copy) and Hello Daughter.

And bonus - Sandra will even sign them for you.

I Want Spring! Updated

I want Spring! And, in the words of the immortal Veruca Salt, "I want it now!"

As you can see from the above photo, we still have plenty of snow in Wisconsin. I got so crazy with snow/ice/mush fatigue a couple of days ago that I splurged on a nice assortment of cut flowers so that I could at least pretend to have Spring.

It is generally about this time every year that I have, flat out, had enough of Winter. I don't mind Winter - on many levels I actually like it. I truly can't imagine Christmas in the land of cactus. Or palm trees either, for that matter. It's just that Winter lasts too long. I think five to six weeks would be a nice amount.

Early Spring in Wisconsin brings the promise of wonderful weather to come, usually round about late March to early April. This promise lingers.

And lingers.

And lingers.

Until about the middle of June, when the temperatures that have spent six to eight weeks hovering between 30 and  50 degrees, finally decide to inch up into the 70s.

Then we get lovely summer weather that lasts until almost the middle of October. (I have spent many a Halloween picking the last peppers and tomatoes from our garden)

We then get something vaguely resembling Autumn for roughly three to five weeks and then, BAM! Back to Winter again.

So that's it, really. Two seasons. Winter and Summer with small pretendy bits of Spring and Autumn.

No wonder Winter seems so long :-)

Update: Apparently throwing little Veruca like tantrums works because yesterday was sunny, almost 60 degrees and gorgeous. No more snow!

It doesn't mean we won't still get one more good blizzard in before May but I have my fingers crossed.

Comic Strip of the Day

Mike Peterson has started a new site - Comic Strip of the Day.

It is a site like the striptoonist that features daily commentary about comic strips in a positive way. I started linking to it down in the blogroll a couple of weeks ago and meant to make a post about it then but it got lost in the shuffle.

I am so happy to see more sites like this popping up. I know the internet is full of sites like the comics curmudgeon that like to make fun of comic strips and I completely get why they exist. Especially when it comes to poking fun at strips that have been around a really long time. My cousin and I used to make a weekly date to sit down with potato chips and ice cream and watch the old Star Trek series, all the while making fun of how many times William Shatner took his shirt off, slept with an alien woman, violated the prime directive by completely destroying whatever computerized god/thing was running the planet so the natives could discover the joy of looking after themselves for a change, etc. (Can you tell one of my favorite movies is Galaxy Quest?)

So I get the snark thing.

But comics and most types of entertainment are really struggling right now as the entire media paradigm shifts and it is really nice to see a couple of sites come up that praise the work.

One of the features of Mike's site that I particularly like is that he gives a good in depth description of the comic feature as a whole rather than just the strip he picks for the day. He also makes it easy for you to find more of the strips by posting links to subscription services and book collections. And he has a place for comments so you can give your own feedback.

Mike has quite a background in the newspaper business and used to work as an editor which also gives a nice level of credibility to his choices. Plus he presents a broad spectrum of comic humor by including web comics and editorial cartoons as well.

And, it just so happens, today he is featuring Edison.

Thanks, Mike, so much for the shout out, and I'm sorry it took this long for me to send people to you. Your site has become one of my daily favorites and I hope it's around for a good long time :-)

CD's for sale

I am now officially offering my CD for sale on my harp website. I had stopped producing CD's because people just wanted to download music rather than deal with shipping. It seems there is a renaissance of sorts going on in the music arena and folks want CD's and vinyl records again. 

I'm afraid you're out of luck with vinyl for my music though - I can't quite pull that off :-)

Kudos

I don't talk here very much about my harp life, but today's Retail really struck home with me. 

Most people don't realize how much all service sector jobs have in common. I often try to explain to my friends that being a freelance musician is just like being a waitress only with better clothes and a higher minimum wage. You still have to follow the "prime directive" of serving the public which is to not mouth off. 

I think I shall adopt Norm's punchline as my new mantra :-)

If You Could Meet Anyone Famous...

A friend of mine recently asked "If you could meet anyone famous, who would it be?".

Well that was a toughie because the first three people who sprang to mind were all dead. 

She assured me that was not a problem. 

"Not a problem?" I wondered to myself. "Does she have access to some secret pipeline I don't know about?"

It turns out that it wasn't a problem because, in this case, it was one of those questions where the answer is supposed to reveal something highly significant about you. You know , like "What kind of tree would you be?"

Or all those quiz questions in magazines that - once you finish taking the quiz - promise to solve the rest of your life and all your relationships. Forever.

Guess all that money people spend on therapy is completely unnecessary. Cosmo has it taped.

Anyway, it turns out my answers where less than she hoped for. I didn't want to meet the President. Or Ghandi. Or Jesus. Or Queen Elizabeth I.

No, the three people I first thought of were all women and they were all writers. And on some level, each of them changed my life. 

One taught me an infinite number of things I would need to know about people and living a life of creativity. One made me a more thoughtful voter and citizen. And one prepared me for the peanut butter and jelly covered roller coaster that is motherhood.

And they all made me laugh.

The first, and the one who had the biggest effect on me, is Agatha Christie. 

I consider her tremendously underrated as an author. I think most people just see her as a writer of fluffy little detective stories.

But she was so much more. She wrote a number of novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Giant's Bread and Absent In The Spring, to name two, are both very powerful and insightful peeks into the human psyche. And it is that ability to put her finger right on the archetypes and personalities all around her that makes her writing resonate so firmly, even today almost 90 years after she wrote her first novel. As silly as it may sound, she was Miss Marple. A highly observant woman with a deep understanding of human nature.

Further, her autobiography, simply titled "An Autobiography", is not merely a recounting of her own life but a comprehensive diary of a life lived during extraordinary times. During her lifetime, 1890 - 1976 she saw the invention of the telephone, the airplane (her first husband was one of the first fliers in the fabled RAF), two world wars, a world abandoning monarchies, the invention of radio, television, and moving pictures - with and without sound - the automobile, and the fall of the Victorian Empire. Look up how much real estate England controlled in 1890 and compare it to a globe from 1976.

And she documents it all through the eyes of someone, not only living in extraordinary times, but understanding them.

She also had an entirely different second life as the wife of famed archeologist Max Mallowan and spend over 40 years on digs all over Syria and Iraq. She was not merely a visitor - she worked on those digs right along with the rest of the team.

But the parts of the book that have influenced me the most are those that deal with her life as a creative person, both the aspects of trying to be creative when one doesn't feel in the least creative, and the aspect of dealing with publishers and all the various people one must work with if your writing is to be marketed to the public and/or adapted into movies and plays. I think this book should almost be required reading for anyone who plans to make a living in a creative field.

Added to all this, is the fact that her writing is terribly charming, witty and humorous. Almost like A.A. Milne for grownups.

The second writer, and the one I probably miss the most nowadays, is Molly Ivins.

A political columnist with a wickedly satirical bent, Molly's newspaper columns crossed my path at a time when it would have been easy to lower my head into the demands of mothering young children. Instead, through my encounters with her wit and her dogged journalistic investigations into the sausage making process that is politics, I realized the importance of being an informed voter. No matter how busy one's life might be, if one is going to live in a democracy and vote, one should go to the trouble to be informed. You may not always have agreed with her point of view, but you couldn't read her column and keep your head in the sand. 

And oh, was she funny! Her book "Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life Of George W. Bush" published in 2000 (before his presidency) remains a favorite of mine. She spent time working for both the Houston Chronicle and the Minneapolis Star Tribune - both papers who carry The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee - and it feels good to share papers with her.

Finally, I come to the writer who showed me writing didn't have to be stuffy and women can point out the absurdities of their lives without whining, Erma Bombeck.

For me, Erma Bombeck blazed the trail for women humorists of all types. She wrote about all the little joys and mishaps of motherhood, laying the trail for an entirely new type of standup comedy and new humor opportunities for women in general. She is the root to which I trace back Ellen Degeneres, Julia Sweeney, Rosanne Barr Lynn Johnston and Sandra Bell Lundy,  to name just a few. While there were many funny women before her, her self depreciating humor seemed to be a truly original voice. No Henny Youngman type jokes like Phyllis Diller. Just funny everyday observances. I miss her terribly. 

The bright spot is that, even though I can never meet any of these women for coffee and a good chin wag, as they say, I can meet them over and over again in their work. And my day is always a little brighter for it.

Thank you, ladies. 

I Am SOOO Getting This Book

I try not to go on any socio-political rants here on the blog. Suffice it to say that John and I have been aware of and ticked off about the culture of corporate greed for over 10 years. It's one of the reasons there are so many strips that touch on the topic.

Before today, I was unaware of the work and writings of Jim Wallis. I heard him on one of our local NPR shows, (we are lucky to receive 4 different NPR stations in our neck of the woods) with Joy Cardin of WHAD 90.7 Milwaukee. It was just a stupendous interview and I will be running out to buy his latest book "Rediscovering Values" just as soon as I can.

BTW - it's pledge week over at WHAD - if you're one of their listeners be sure to give them a call with your support. And if you are a regular listener of NPR elsewhere in the world, I'm sure they could use a pledge as well. In this world of bombast and opinion that passes for news, I don't know what I would do without NPR.

Kudos

Brilliant.

Paying For Comics

Whenever the print comic vs webcomic debate gets started, there are invariably many voices that say people won't pay for content on the web. Paywalls are said to scare off fans, who only open their wallets to buy merchandise, not the strip itself.

That may be very true in many cases. I myself have experienced this with my music. On my harp website, I made my music available for free but requested that those who downloaded it make a donation in any amount they felt comfortable with. I tried to make very clear that the donations were for breast cancer research and support programs for cancer victims. I was curious to see if folks would download the music and pass it around for free while - in essence - stealing from cancer victims.

The answer is: yes, people will happily download anything and everything that you provide for them with nary a thought about paying for it. The analytical program that comes with my website is sophisticated enough to track every download so I know people are taking the music. They just aren't paying for it. I started offering the tunes last spring and, to date, have been paid exactly 0 dollars and 0 cents.

I am not that surprised. It was an experiment. 

But I am taking steps to put the music behind a paywall from now on.

Anyway, I bring this tired old topic up again because of something I read on Paul Gilligan's blog over in Pooch Cafe land. 

The Denver Post has dropped 21 comics and Paul has written a very nice piece of commentary on the subject.

But what really got my attention were the comments in response to his post. Most of them are from folks promising to pay for Paul's strip no matter where they have to get it from - print or web.

This is because, along with having a great, high quality strip, Paul obviously has a very loyal and enthusiastic fan base. It gives me hope that, all previous evidence to the contrary, people will eventually make their peace with paying for content on the web. We just have to hope that the companies that are in the business of providing the content figure out the best way to get everything behind that paywall.

So take a little stroll over to Paul's blog - it's a great site - and be sure to particularly check out the comments.

I am also going to go out on a limb here and predict that the Post will have to reinstate at least 5 of the comics they've tried to axe.

Have You Read Your Credit Card Statement Lately?

For those of you who live in the U.S. and carry credit cards, this strip's for you. It originally ran this past  September. Now that the new laws governing credit cards have gone into effect, we get to see all the shenanigans the companies have been up to the past 9 months to nullify said laws and retain their tidy little profit margin. (Click on the image to enlarge.)

For Star Trek Fans

Courtesy of our local "vintage TV" station, our evenings are  spent watching Star Trek from 8:00 to 10:00. First, the original series, and then Star Trek The Next Generation. Our kids have become huge fans of both shows as well as the recent movie. This strip is a result of actual conversations in front of the TV :-)

My Anti-Depressant

A couple of years ago, I resolved to get into shape. It wasn't that I was terribly overweight, it was just that the pounds that used to creep on and off with the cycle of life began to creep on a little more frequently. And they weren't leaving.

I wasn't in a position to join a gym but I had an old exercise bike in the basement and a great neighborhood to walk in so I took the plunge. Very quickly I discovered I had a problem.

I was bored. 

Bored, bored, bored.

So I decided that what I needed to get me moving and keep me moving was an ipod. I figured if I had something to listen to while I worked out all would be spiffy.

And it might have been, except then two things happened. The exercise bike decided it now went only one speed - and it wasn't a good one - and winter hit. At first I tried pedaling my now tension free bike like mad but I could tell I wasn't really getting anywhere. I also bravely went out in the cold weather and walked around the neighborhood a couple of times. A fall on an icy unshoveled sidewalk put a stop to that.

So I put the ipod to the use for which all such devices are really intended anyway. 

I used it to play solitaire.

A lot.

More pounds crept on.

This state of things continued for a while and then, luckily, two things changed again. First, I realized I drove by an indoor walking track every day. A track to which I, as adjunct faculty at the college housing that track, had access to. 

For free. 

Free is good. 

Secondly, my sister came to visit and brought her ipod playlist with her. This was important because it contained a large amount of Irish music.

Up until this point, despite my Welsh/Scots/Irish antecedents,  I am afraid my main acquaintance with Irish music was a song by Dennis Leary called "Traditional Irish Drinking Song".  (I am unable to find a video of Dennis performing this himself - I saw him do it on Letterman and it was hilarious.) So there was obviously going to be a learning curve here.

I started with the Chieftains. Everyone should start with the Chieftains. They have a lot of great up tempo jigs and reels and some of them even have funny lyrics.

I moved on to music by "The Celtic Women". I have no idea who these women are. I suppose that, true to the title, they are a number of women who are Celtic. But I quickly ruled them out for exercising. Beautiful stuff but not really rousing.

Then I came to the music of Bill Whelan.

Bill Whelan is the composer behind the music that swept the country by storm as the backdrop for Riverdance. When I realized this, I promptly fast forwarded past it because I now remembered that I had another previous acquaintance with Irish music and that was Riverdance. And, by the time it had stopped showing on PBS every pledge drive, I had had enough of Riverdance.

But this was a mistake. Because, removed from the trappings of the Riverdance machine, this is some great music. And much of it is incredibly up tempo and just right for walking around and around in circles on an indoor walking track. The two best tunes I have found for this purpose are "Reel Around The Sun" and "Countess Cathleen".

So I got myself into gear and made it a point to walk at least 3 days a week for 30 minutes. 

Almost immediately I noticed a difference. I didn't lose twenty pounds in a twinkling, but I noticed a difference. Along with being good for walking, the music was starting to alter my mood. 

Like many folks I have a busy life. A life so busy and full of the needs and demands of other people that I often feel overwhelmed and  a little depressed. Not clinically depressed but the sort of depressed that makes many days seem daunting right from the outset. 

Walking to this music was starting to make my days go more smoothly. I had more energy for one thing. But, and I think this is really important, I had more optimism. 

I'm sure the energy partly comes from being physically active and endorphins and stuff like that. But the optimism really seems to be tied to the Irish music. When I listen to other types of music, even good up tempo rock music, I don't get the same feeling. A feeling that I am ready to tackle my day and conquer it. A feeling we could probably all use a big dose of these days.

Of course, there are some side effects. 

I now frequently find myself wishing for a pub, a pint, and a rollicking good group of people to dance crazily with.

I have an unaccountable urge to run up and bite the Queen of England on the leg. 

And it feels right to drive about 15 mph over the speed limit.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Courtesy of Tom Richmond

Thanks to Tom Richmond for this, I also found it very interesting.

Kudos

These two really got me today:

What Is It With Valentines?

I don't know if you've spent a lot of time in the greeting card aisle lately, but something odd is going on.

I first noticed it last year when I was trying to pick out a nice anniversary card for John. 

(I know, I know, artistic types like John and I are supposed to be whipping up beautiful homemade cards for each other - as I stated in a previous post, "Like we don't have enough to do.")

As I cruised through all the cards marked "Husband" I was having a tough time finding a nice one. Because so many of the cards had a sentiment like this "I know we haven't always had our fairytale ending, but we're still together and I love you anyway." 

I know you think I'm kidding but I'm not. Card after card said something similar. Then I found the cards that had about 6 paragraphs about true love - not expressing that this woman feels that her husband is her true love - simply stating the fact that, if you're lucky enough to find it, it's really, really wonderful. After reading all the previous cards, these cards now had the aura of faking it.

So I decided to check out the "Wife" cards and see if there was a similar trend.

Nope.

All those cards went on and on about "I can't imagine my life without you" or "You complete me". "I'm the luckiest man in the world."

What gives?

I can only deduce that there are a whole lot of crabby women out there who, for some reason, feel they could have done better, and a whole lot of men who feel at least they lucked out and someone said yes.

Or else there are a bunch of crabby women trying to send their husbands a message and a bunch of men just telling their wives what they want to hear.

Or else there is just one crabby woman writing all the cards and she is saying what she thinks everyone should be saying.

I forgot about it until the other day when I tried to find a nice Valentine and ran into the same thing all over again.

It's too late for you to check this theory on Valentines because at 12:01 on the dot all the Valentine cards were spirited away to be replaced with Easter cards (I know this because of the year I forgot to get a card and thought "No biggie, I'll just grab one tomorrow" - Ha!)

But, next time you're in the store, swing on over and check out the anniversary cards and let me know what you find.

In the meantime, I guess I'm back to making my own cards :-)

Cartooning Questions

David Paccia has a great site where he has been surveying cartoonists about their tools and artistic influences. Today he featured John and Edison.

(For future reference it is survey #69)

We're Keeping Him But........

This is our cat. 

He gets a medal for taking all the abuse our youngest has doled out. We got him as a kitten when she was only a year old so they have grown up together. He has withstood being used as a pillow (frequently), carried upside down, sideways, backwards, by his neck, you name it. He has submitted to being dressed up in her doll clothes on numerous occasions - I never thought you could get a cat to wear a hat and keep it on for more than 10 seconds. It can be done.

He also thinks he's a dog. For years he chased our terrier around the house and yard. Now the terrier is too old to run but the cat keeps the border collie busy by letting her think he's a sheep and herding him.

He's a champion hunter - not only has he saved us from the yearly mouse migration into our house (every October they come, bags packed, full of decorating ideas for the new space), he has also taken out about 10 squirrels. This is important as the squirrels declared war on us 8 years ago and began eating through various wooden bits of our house. 

But...

He has also been expensive. To date, the regular yearly vet bills notwithstanding, there have also been the bills to sew his nose back together (fight with something - maybe a racoon) and the bill to have his jaw wired back together along with other injuries sustained when he was hit by a car in front of our house. (We live on a residential street with a speed limit of 25 mph - apparently this translates to 55 mph if you're late getting the kids to school.)

But today was the kicker.

Today he ate my contacts.

As in my contact lenses.

Yes, you heard right, the cat ate my contact lenses - the $50 a pair ones. 

Lately he has developed a craving for saline contact solution. At first it was just annoying as both my son and I have had to lock him out of the bathroom while we put in our lenses. He jumps up on the sink and starts licking the saline right out of the lens case (which means I have to add to my busy day the act of boiling my lens case to disinfect it - I'm not sure how many kinds of germs live in a cat's mouth at any given time but I'd bet it's a lot).

Well today he ramped it up. I apparently had not screwed the case covers on tight enough and the cat actually knocked the case off the sink, got the covers off, and licked the case clean - contacts and all. I mean, it's like he had a plan.

I have no intention of subsidizing a diet of contact lenses so my son and I are going to have to develop a security protocol for the storage of all things contact related.

Like I don't have enough to do.

Pros and Cons

This made me laugh today. The guy is so completely clueless and it not only shows in his dialogue but in the way he's drawn.