The Order of James Kennedy

James Kennedy, a fellow Chicagoan and friend about whom I've posted before, has just released his first book, The Order of Odd Fish, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Though I don't know that I could do it any justice in describing it. A less galactic Douglas Adams meets Lewis Carroll and HP Lovecraft? With a sprinkling of Roald Dahl and Star Wars?

Regardless, it's an amazing book, and staggering for a debut. I was honored to do the original cover for it, though the marketing powers-that-be canned it (ironically that terminated design was the publisher's own, not mine, but these are the workings of the lumbering beings we call mainstream publishing houses). Our mutual pal and Time Out Chicago book editor Jonathan Messinger wrote a piece about the book and its origins.

"A work of mischievous imagination and outrageous invention," writes Jonathan. No argument here.

Finally You Can Cuddle With Sinus and Loady

If you haven't already, rush to Johnny Ryan's online store and pick up the newly minted toys of Angry Youth Comics protagonists Loady McGee and Sinus O'Gynus. Hell, if you already have, do it again. Scatological, epithet-laden adventures aren't just for the funny papers any more.

The Bald and The Finger

In another crossing of comedian and musician (see the afore-posted clip of Paul F. Tompkins and Aimee Mann), I stumbled across a brief but nonetheless hilarious interview for New York Magazine: Moby grilled by Zach Galifianakis (whose performance as The Finger singing "Come On And Get It (Up In Them Guts)" is below, and beyond perfect).

Yeah, But What About Leopard Vs. Octopus?

As if nature wasn't impressive enough, it has to give us battle royales that would make any sixteen year-old metal head (or, to be fair, Dungeons and Dragons player) surrender a gravelly assessment of "sweet." Wildlife photographer Hal Brindley brings us the incredulity-inducing battle of a leopard and a crocodile and the Seattle Aquarium bring us an Octopus grappling with a shark.

A nod to Boing Boing for the land fight and Emily for the oceanic rumble.

Eraserdog

I'd not previously seen this bit of Lynchian cartooning strangeness and feel obliged to spread the word to those equally ignorant. A simple concept weirdly drummed to perfection. Thanks to Al for the tip.

Where Do You Get Your Colors?

I'm often asked that impossible to answer question, "Where do you get your ideas?" (Impossible to answer, that is, with anything other than "Um, everywhere?"). But only slightly less often I'm asked about the colors I use; "I like the colors" being the comment I receive most often on my books (to which I always want to respond a bit snarkily, "well... thanks for reading the colors?").

So I was thinking recently about palettes to which I'm repeatedly drawn. Why are these colors more pleasing to me than those? And I realized it stems from a combining of two worlds.

There are the muted colors of southern Ohio, particularly those of the autumn, but then there were the colors of television (which, highly regulated by my parents, were always a thing to be revered and awed). In reality's palette, there were the dying fields, fading paint of barns, sun-bleached signs having long since outlived the advertised product. And in television there was a pulsing madness that made me want too run out of my own skin. Frightening and infinitely inviting, a chromatic siren's song. In particular the products and aftermath of psychedelia, such as the above bit (unbelievably from Sesame Street) and below, The Yellow Submarine, which I recall watching slack-jawed at my grandmother's house while downing excessive amounts of ginger ale.

In my mind those colors print on top of each other, fading each other, warming each other, subdued on a piece of newsprint that's warm to the touch, glowing a little.

Easy Listening with Chuckles and Goldilocks

When my pal Henry Owings of Chunklet Magazine mentioned the possibility of interviewing Paul F. Tompkins (of whom I've been a big fan since his Mr. Show days and whose album, Impersonal, has been a long time coming), I couldn't help but do a bit of research and hope nobody else grabbed the interview first. Though I wasn't the lucky soul who ended up interviewing Mr. Tompkins, in my brief research I came across this (above) great rendition of "Baby It's Cold Outside" with Tompkins and Aimee Mann (of whom I'm also a fan).

Trivia worthy: both of these talented crooners (Aimee just possibly a bit more talented than Paul in that department) have a connection to director Paul Thomas Anderson, she through the soundtrack of Magnolia, and he through his appearance in There Will Be Blood.

You Don't Look A Day Over Twenty

This past weekend Sub Pop, the only record label more influential in my late teen life than Chicago's Touch and Go, celebrated twenty years of bringing some of the best bands around to the public's ears.

And I just wanted to extend a thank you. Nirvana and Mudhoney saved me from some pretty awful music when I was sixteen. As did one of the more unsung heroes of the label, a band that I think was one of the best they ever signed: Six Finger Satellite. Here's a brief clip from one of their songs. I'm not posting a video of them playing (though such videos exist) simply because no video can really do them justice. I've never seen, before or since, a band command a room quite the way they did. (Rumor (or anyway, an article I read in a Boston magazine the last time I was on tour) has it that they're working on a new album. I'll be first in line.)



If there is an heir to the Six Finger Satellite throne of being amazingly good but relatively under-appreciated, it's another Sub Pop band, A Frames. It doesn't get much louder or better. Like a buzzsaw through your brain case. But in a good way. And it's worth noting: the frontmen for both bands look like they eat crates of chickens for snacks.




Thanks Sub Pop, for helping to save us all from boredom. Here's to the next twenty years, provided we haven't melted the planet or created a black hole near France.

Your Inner Lemur's Poem, Shel's Porn Beginnings

Poetry can be a vexing mistress, can't it? Or she? Whichever: either way, it's tough. But no longer! Gary Rudoren, one of the comically disciplined minds that brought us Comedy by The Numbers, has trained his expository powers on the world of verse in an article for The Poetry Foundation. I was honored to illustrate it. I apologize if the lemur looks too much like a chihuahua.

While you're at The Poetry Foundation's site, be sure to read the article by Jesse Nathan (who I had the pleasure of meeting through his involvement in Dave Eggers' Lots of Things Like This show) about the inauspicious beginnings of one Mr. Shel Silverstein (to whom Mr. Jacob Covey, designer extraordinaire for Fantagraphics, bears an uncanny resemblance).

Goodbye George, Fun With Censorhip

With George Calrin's recent death, his Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television (a sort of reexamination of which is in the above video) was mentioned about as often as his actual passing. But it wasn't until I gave the routine another listen and read more on the history of the Supreme Court case surrounding it that I gained an appreciation for just how much he accomplished with this single 1972 seven minute string of words. Just words, think of that.

So amid this reading up a bit on the history of the effect of simple words and thoughts and on censorship generally, my brother-in-law Dan's recommendation of this "censored" video from The Brighton Port Authority (featuring the voices of David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal) was perfectly timed. I don't know much about The Brighton Port Authority other than they seem to have a knack for working with great people and having fun with the conventions of what our fragile minds can handle. Somewhere in the seventies, George is smiling.

"I Am The (Badass) Law"

The Onion always manages to make me grin, with at least one headline per issue pulling an audible chuckle. But coming from a family with a mother who is a judge (the stalwart joke being: aren't they all?) and a little sister who works in the DePaul University Death Penalty Legal Clinic, this one had me laughing to the point of snorting. Tragically hilarious.

Midwest Meets That Heroin Chic

Next Saturday is the opening in Paris for "Midwest" at Galerie Anne Barrault, so I thought I'd post the flier here as well as alerting all those fans of both comics and the French Vogue magazine, that they can read all about the show there. Please send me photographs of you doing so, sporting a beret, picking nonchalantly at a baguette's crust. Throw in a dusty edition of Camus in the background while you're at it, make my year.

Big Apple, City of Lights

This weekend, I'll be signing at the Fantagraphics table at the MoCCA festival in New York. I'll be staring blankly at passersby from 3 to 4pm on Saturday and 2 to 3pm on Sunday. Stop by and ask me where somebody else is, I'll do my best to redirect you. Or we can just stare blankly at one another. Our options are limitless.

And in a couple weeks, I will not be attending (due to scheduling conflicts), but encourage everyone else in the vicinity to attend the opening on June 21st of "Midwest" at Galerie Anne Barrault in Paris, featuring drawings by Anders Nilsen, Jeffrey Brown, and myself (above and below are a couple more of my drawings of Ulysses S. Grant that will be in the show). If for some reason you're in Paris (like you live there, or forgot that the American dollar is worth less than toilet paper), stop by. Anders' massive landscape drawings alone are worth the cost of the plane ticket.

Rock Stars, Please Be Seated: The Muldoons

There are few things that disturb me more than children who have learned to "act," who take on the pretensions and conventions of adults in an effort to win adult favor. It's an undeniably gross spectacle. But The Muldoons, comprised of a father and his two sons both below the age of twelve, fly right past that, straight into authenticity and kick-you-in-the-crotch rock.

I saw this trio at the Do Division street festival here in Chicago yesterday and left immediately afterward, knowing there was no way anyone was going to top them. Their stage presence should be a warning to most bands: you are very, very boring to watch... please start eating cameras, jumping on each other's back, leaping from amps, collapsing on stage, etc.

I should note that their online recordings don't really do them justice, as eight year-old Shane's voice sounds far wimpier (as one might expect at age eight, after all) than it does distorted in a live setting. But give Robot Car a listen, and you'll get a sense of where these kids are headed.

It's a scary thing to see kids act like adults, but it's scarier (in a good way) when they're plenty real and far better than their elders. The Muldoons aren't acting, they're playing. And playing better than most.

Further Excursions Into Alien Boots

A couple months ago, I traveled to Bologna for the Bilbolbul festival. As I'm horribly behind (about a couple months) on doing anything related to posting, I'll throw in a few notes here and there but otherwise let the pictures speak for themselves (for a far better recounting of treasures and exhibits of the festival proper, feel free to read Paul Gravett's recollections (and thanks to Paul for interviewing Kevin Huizenga, Anders Nilsen, and me at the festival... Mr. Gravett was, as usual, a gentleman and a scholar)).




Anders, Kevin (and Kevin's wife), and I spent the first few days setting up our exhibit in Palazzo d'Accursio in Piazza Maggiore (a few shots of Piazza Maggiore at night are at the end of this post).






My favorite element in this high-ceilinged room was a fresco titled "Madonna of the Earthquake." If I'm remembering the title incorrectly, I don't want to know.



On the last day of setting up the exhibit, I was driven across town along with Hong Kong cartoonist Chihoi Lee (who I'd met briefly in Switzerland last year) for a radio interview. We were both asked to pick a song to play during our segments. I, being painfully predictable, chose Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," Chihoi chose Leonard Cohen's "So long, Marianne." I've been hooked on the song ever since.





Toward the center of town there are two towers, one leaning (though not so much as its cousin in Pisa) and truncated (from what, I haven't taken the time to research) and one to whose top you could climb, on a series of shallow wooden steps. When I reached the top, winded, red-faced, saturated with sweat, a lithe octogenarian Italian was there, joking and laughing with full lungs. I couldn't understand what he was saying exactly, but it had to be something along the lines of "kid, you're out of shape."






I don't know why I'm such a sucker for these scenes: people taking pictures of each other with people dressed in costumes. There's something simultaneously bizarre/innocent/scary/reassuring/creepy about the whole thing. I should probably spend more time thinking about this. But they were handing out free chocolate, so my analysis could only go so far. My sweet tooth is a moron.




And, as promised, Piazza Maggiore at night:

(While Bologna might not be the tourist draw of other locales in Italy, this square is pretty impossible to not love at night. The age of this place, absent in the city center of any American town (and present only in an increasingly destroyed portion of our land and native population), is almost palpable, though I imagine that this is only because I was foreign, having grown up in an "old house" that dates back a mere one hundred fifty years. The people of Bologna, clearly immune, just smoked, exchanged, and walked over their ancient city, built upon past ancient cities, those past efforts visible through see-through floors, here in a library, there in a restaurant.)