Overnight Field Trip

My original interest in spending a weekend in San Francisco was fueled by the new sleeper bus, but then I realized that flying from Burbank to SFO and back from Oakland was actually cheaper than sleeping on a bus. I've taken a sleeper bus before, in China, and it really wasn't bad. The real problem with the US version is it would leave me in Santa Monica at the crack of dawn. The time it takes me to get home from Santa Monica by land is roughly how long the flight from Oakland to Burbank is so...yeah.

Maybe next time. Maybe if the sleeper bus has a sale at some point.

My secondary interest in spending a weekend in San Francisco was that my hair cutter just moved there. She'd been in New York first, then moved to LA a month after I did, and now she'd moved up to Haight Street, so this seemed like an opportunity to look a bit more civilized. Plus, I could sightsee and get to an urban environment rather than the quirky, confusing boulevards of Los Angeles county.

I booked a room at a tiny hotel in Haight Ashbury, downloaded a public transit app to my phone, made a list of places to look for new clothes, and off I went to Burbank Airport early on a holiday weekend. I had been up to the Bay Area for non-city reasons, like to visit Yancey in Cupertino or on the outskirts, camping and cycling, but I had not been into the actual city of San Francisco in DECADES, I realized.

It's lovely there.

The Evil that is Social Media

I did that thing where you download all your FB data to see what the evildoers of the world are learning about you.

Here is some important information I discovered is out there in the world, about a location I created in 2012.

Pioneer Spirit

Remember this book I worked on a few years back? It’s being reissued with a new design. I can see they're tying it more into the once-popular video game, which makes a kind of sense even though it has very little to do with the style of illustrations in the book's interior.

Don’t die of dysentery!

The Dreaded Reval

I moved to Jersey City in 1988, right after the last property tax reval. I was still in college and knew nothing of taxes and real estate.

But my landlord complained frequently. She talked a lot about how she was going to lose the building I lived in. She put it up for sale and after that, real estate agents frequently barged in on me on Saturday mornings.

No one bought the four-story, three-unit brick row house then, and we were eventually thrown out by the bank when she was foreclosed on. The house sold in 1991 for $130,000. I think it was laughable even then. If I had any idea how anything worked, I'd have jumped on it.

The house continued to be taxed on that same $130k value until just now, when the state of NJ ordered a revaluation of all JC properties. That house is now valued at $1,545,200 and taxes went from $11,700 to $25,032.

There are a couple ways to look at that. One goes like this: Gasp, someone's taxes just went from $11,700 to $25,032. Holy shit. But that's the wrong way to look at it...the right way to look at it, as this reval generates no new income for the municipality, is SOME POOR SUCKER IN A LESS-VALUABLE AREA WAS PAYING THE DIFFERENCE, ALL THAT TIME.

West for Work

I headed down to Wondercon for the DC Super Hero Girls panel. Most of the creative team was there, and my job was to moderate their panel and keep them on-track.

We had a marvelous time celebrating this incredible achievement—only the best in super hero graphic novels for little girls. After years of making comics for kids via Kuwait, making more comics for kids made sense for my next step.

We are at the end of my run on this—I'm on main DCU material now. So this was a bittersweet group outing for me.

Yancey stayed overnight in my Hilton room with me. The barn door style bathroom door didn't really shut all the way, but it was still better than the half walls we once had in a cabana in Belize.

I headed to the Anaheim train station on Sunday to head back to Los Angeles. The Pacific Surfliner was standing room only, but the Metrolink came along ten minutes later, and it wasn't even half full.

A Belated Souvenir from Mali

In 2011, during the earliest days of the second MariesWorldTour, I went overland from the northern tip of West Africa all the way to Kinshasa. Mali was particularly challenging, and I was exhausted the day I dragged myself into Djenne Djenno Hotel, which was the real name, but the locals called it Hotel Sophie.

Sophie was the owner. The hotel was outstanding, truly remarkable, made from traditional materials, featuring nightly music, great food, a number of local projects, and delicious peanut butter made in the kitchen. Sadly, Sophie'd had to close the hotel last year and had left Mali for London.

But she has an Etsy store. 

And when I got my new sofa, I decided it needed a mudcloth. I went on Etsy looking for a Mali mudcloth, and found Sophie's shop. I was thrilled to get a mudcloth from someone I'd met (she didn't remember me—I only stayed one night), from something I had a personal connection to.

Here is the mudcloth on my sofa. I had planned on trying it out as a curtain in Jersey City, but I think it's destined to stay right here.

Out on a School Night

Slipped out of work a few minutes early to see the Decemberists in Hollywood. I grabbed the Burbank Bus to North Hollywood metro, took the Red Line two stops to Highland, saw the Decemberists play a few songs for one of those nighttime talk shows, then jumped back on the train to Universal, where I caught the 155 bus to Toluca Lake to join colleagues at a work event.

I would have spent that long looking for parking in Hollywood. Go transit!

Supermarket Games

The supermarket I go to is part of a chain that has an annual game involving collecting game pieces.

I won!

I claimed my prize. Now I own frozen waffles. Ten of them.

All in all, I’d rather win Powerball.

Furnishing Out West

I have a sofa! I looked and looked for a sofa I liked. I didn't find any until I did, and then I found Very Expensive Sofas.

Finally, I was wandering around the outskirts of DTLA after going to an art supply store near the Greyhound terminal, and I stumbled over an old factory converted into a fancy thingy. A destination. A hipster habitat. A place with more food trucks than Alameda Avenue on a Tuesday.

And in the middle of the circle-the-wagons food trucks were vendors.

And one of those vendors was a furniture maker.

I took a month to make up my mind, and by then the sale had ended. But they honored the sale price and I got myself a sofa, which was delivered today.

Here is my sofa, both naked and dressed for church.

Did I Err?

Something awesome happened at work today.

This. Brittany texted me from across the table in a meeting. She had a view of the hallway outside.

"Sergio's here."

She'd spotted the legendary cartoonist at MAD, just outside the meeting room. I stood up without explanation and walked out of the meeting to go find Sergio.

He didn't know who I was at first—fair enough. I last edited Groo in the early nineties. But he still gamely went along with me insisting he come upstairs to see my office door, and when he got there, he was amazed.

And then I showed him the cow he drew for me in 1992, and he knew exactly who I was then.