Make Dumb Faces Unto Michigan

Several months ago, the good people of the Ann Arbor Book Festival were kind enough to invite me up and have a little conversation with Dave Carter, comic enthusiast and purveyor of this blog. The Festival site subsequently posted a heavily truncated version of our conversation in which I mumble and pull just about every possible face out of my bag in a simulacrum of entertainment for the five or six people in the audience. All in all, I think we had a good time. And, yes, the truth is out: I love root beer.

A Darkroom-Red Arks

While I don't typically mix my music with the rest of my life, it's an awful lot of fun (when we're not trying to kill one another over something we won't remember five minutes later). I think Mr. "Kamillionaire" (with whom I've never had the pleasure of being acquainted, to my knowledge) did a good job of capturing some of the fun at the Darkroom here in Chicago a couple Thursdays ago. Wow, do I manage to make some awful faces... but I'm glad he captured the "play-the-guitar-with-the-microphone" idiocy. That was pricelessly moronic on my part. I'll definitely have to do that again.

The Parade of Faces

Everywhere I go, I am either thinking hard or needing to crap. Or anyway, this is what my face is broadcasting in about ninety percent of all pictures. The above was snapped during my reading/signing with Tao Lin in Baltimore. I swear I'm listening to someone who is off camera. I hope I am. Thanks to the folks of Atomic Pop for hosting us and letting me ogle their toys.


And the faces didn't stop in New York. I'm gesticulating, puckering, indicating where everything went wrong, somewhere in the frontal lobe, as Forlorn Funnies faithful Tom (gray shirt, above) acts like I'm making any sense.

A ton more pictures are available from the Rocketship voyage here (this was originally on Comics Reporter (thanks to Gary for the photos), and I made a PDF of it, but now that I can't get the site's photos to load from the site directly, well, all you get's my crappy pdf. What tragedy!). Aaron Stewart (a great filmmaker and all around swell guy, pictured below looking far too excited) gave the event a high five on his blog. It was muggy, sweltering, and I'll admit to spending a fair amount of the time in front of the store rather than in it, just to cool off. But there was alcohol and comics for the masses, so all was forgiven. It should be noted: Alex and Mary of Rocketship are two of the nicer people on the planet. Case closed!


I'm sure there are a million pictures from MoCCA, so I'm not worrying about thoroughness here. Google it up. These next two photos were hijacked from the always interesting Fantagraphics Flog. I was fortunate enough to sign with Miss Lasko-Gross ("Escape From Special") and John Cuneo ("nEuROTIC"), and flipped through both of their originals. Humbling, to say the least.


And to wrap it up: the Paul/Paul team up. That's Paul Karasik, editor of the mighty, squashing, all-stupefying mad genius Fletcher Hanks world "I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets!"