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.