The sea in the desert.

A. 1000 hours to pencil. 1 hour to ink. More on this below.

B. There were two parts of the gathering I went to over the weekend. First was in a desolate near post-apocalyptic town (population 200, yes just two zeros) in the desert. The second was a gloriously poolside party. You can see a bit my trip here. It was like a wedding but it also was not one. My friend announced a few years ago that she likely wouldn’t get married and if she hadn’t by 40 she wanted a gathering of people near and dear to her. Some of the older white heteronormative folks gathered were a little bemused and confused. I arrived single as well. The world is strange as a single person. Folks assume you’re alone and dateless all the time which I am not. I am not a commitment-phobe or a Peter Pan. Like, I was married for 10 years and monogamous for 13 years. I got the resume, son. Job free moments aside, I like my life. At events like these, full of white hetero-people it does make me feel like I’m wearing a human suit. Fortunately at this party was one of the Host’s best friends: Preston (names and details changed to protect the innocent). We all should have many many Preston in our lives.

On the night before, I arrived late. Later than me was Preston. He arrived in LA and drove into the night with no cell service. He was out of minutes so he had a printed map like it was 1996. A dot matrix mapquest print-out and taste for adventure. Preston had returned to his home state to tune up his life a bit after a few years of partying. Drugs, co-dependancy and some legal trouble funneled him to his dad’s guest room the past few months. He had found some drugs and stayed up most of the night swimming naked in the pool. He opted to stay home and swim while the group went to Bombay Beach a way station for elite weirdos. Preston waved as we left out the front door to the van he sashayed through the glass sliding doors wearing a massive sun hat, bug-like seventies sunnies, a sheer flowing bath robe and a tiny Speedo bathing suit. There’s an annual Burning Man type art festival there. When it’s not there’s still contemporary art littering the landscape near the Salton Sea. The Salton Sea is a damn near poisonous body water made by American hubris. A failed oasis with living ghosts populating this tow of trailers. The Host genuinely loved this place after researching a paper for her master thesis and wanted to share it with us. We were respectful but it still felt uneasy. Our wealth and gawking was a lot.

The party was a tuxedoed affair. Preston wore some kind of black martial arts outfit he found at a thrift store that day. His face sparkled with makeup, dark hard curved lines shaped his eyes. Everyone seemed straight from a perfectly curated social media feed, Preston playing the quirky friend. There were a lot of quiet weirdos at this party. Polyamorous, artists, kinky, queer…but with a group of old rich hetero babyboomers everyone was mostly on their best behavior. The drugs were done in the bathroom like gentlemen. I’m sober so my oddness grew progressively with the crowds substances. It was hardly rowdy. Most of us dipping our feet in the hot tub, though some jumped in. Preston was wearing a jock strap and a sailor’s hat. A massive bruise was clear on his ass. We talked a bit about his court case and mandated up coming sobriety. “As of next Wednesday I have to be done.” he told me holding three drinks. All of which were his. Weirdness is an armor in some ways. A secret shame in others. The rich people couldn’t imagine living in Bombay Beach while a few of us whispered about how it seemed like a dream.

A. 1000 hours to pencil. 1 hour to ink. Ok, dull house keeping stuff. I’m crushing the inking of the pages and thoroughly enjoying it. Sooooo fast once you’re done pencilling. You can see A LOT of updates on my Instagram account. Please follow me on Twitter and Instagram and like some posts for you buddy, Mark. It helps a lot. I have a bunch of second round day job interviews this week. The whole Bay is on fucking fire. My area is cool but this climate change nightmare is terrifying. Like, I’ll be okay but, fuck, it’s going to get rough for a lot of people. Overall….I think I’m kind of ok? Weird. Like, if I get a job I think I’d be reasonably happy and making this comic is part of that. Thanks for supporting me. For reals. Hugs to y’all.

C. Refunds, as always, are still available.

Kickstarter Update #40

I really like drawing these big wild turkeys.

This is the last page of MONUMENT #2 meaning all of it is pencilled. Big deal here in the lab. I’d call it 70% done and December as a complete date seems realistic. Next up I will letter the book (put all of the speech bubbles and what not) then inking it, then coloring, then I’m done.

A bit of programming news: I’m putting my content on my site going forward. I’ll ping out a link via Kickstarter’s email going forward.

I don’t have anything funny to say this week.

Thoughts on my friend Raph as bacchus 01

I’m now 2 years sober. Yesterday the next door neighbors had a barbecue. They have a rare commodity in the Bay Area: a decent sized backyard that his three kids will frolic in. They laugh and goof around with their dog. Happy neighborhood noise. There’s fence that borders their yard and the parking lot I use. The fence is old and the wood has many of spaces. Once in awhile I get out of my car and little eyes will be peeking through. A sweet little voice will ask me “Is Noah home?”. Sometimes he is and they play. It’s pretty idyllic. From what I can tell the parents live in grandma’s house. Dad has a little outdoor patio set with roof in the backyard. It’s as far from the house as the property lines will allow. If the property is the East Coast, the house is Miami and Dad’s Paradise is Buffalo, New York. Every once in awhile plays rap music the 90’s and cards with his pals. We say “what’s up” out front sometimes. I know about his secret club house though. Living with your moms is a viable solution to homeownership in the Bay and building a Dad Lab in the yard is fantastic solution. We don’t really know each other but I know some things. He’s my best friend. 

I’m 2 years sober and my friend Raph is dead. He was murdered a few months back. I’m flying back to Baltimore where he and I went to college. There’s a gallery show/memorial featuring his profoundly good drawings. He was the best draftsman I ever met and I have met a lot. Raph was a hard man. He identified early in life that he wanted to be a Renaissance style artist. What I mean by that is that he drew the figure incredibly slowly and preferably from life. The style lacked any narrative epic that era yielded. His work were slow meditations on the pretty ladies and fools passing through his life. If he could have just blocked out the world, not think too much and just keep working he would have ultimately been successful. Happy-ish. 

Unfortunately he was a bit of a misery seeking missile (he and I had that in common).. Oh he found fun and grabbed it with two hands when he did. He was charming and hilariously hard-headed with his opinions. The last time we hung out in New York I was very very drunk leaving for a commuter train back to my wife and kid in New Jersey. When I left a beautiful woman was enraptured. Raph had sold out a gallery show and worked as a profoundly qualified figure drawing professor. I left thinking Raph had his problems but he won that night. He’d be ok. He won that night and there would be others. 

Except the night didn’t there. There were more bars, more drinks and erratic behavior that lead to poor woman stuck with werewolf Raph fleeing out the back of a bar through the kitchen. Hearing the story through the grapevine, made me cringe. Often times it was too much with Raph. His opinions were not welcome at work. Drunk Raph was charming and someone you could walk away from if he got too much. At work, most likely hungover, it was too much and they had the power to make him walk. It was humiliating. He was 0-1,000,000 in bar fights. Someone hit him with a pipe once when they stole his bike late night in Brooklyn. He thought the head injury changed him. I don’t know if it was that. The drinking was a key factor but he clearly felt so many feelings. In AA, a cliche we use a lot is “I didn’t have a drinking problem. I had a drinking solution.” 

He was moving back to Maryland. While he was fired from all of the teaching jobs at top tier New York art schools, he had a prestigious residency waiting. Raph was going to live with his parents for a minute to recharge, leverage the residency for another gallery show then return to New York. He told me this on the roof of the converted fire hazard warehouse he lived in. We were watching the sun set as trucks loaded used mattresses into part of the building. On the other side they would come out as brand new mattresses. He moved to Maryland shortly after where he’d get a DUI which lead to his residency getting pulled. He’d never live in New York again...