Heads or Tails?

On Sunday morning, I was trying to decide if I should go to an intermediate Photoshop workshop (no), or to finish my freelance assignment due Monday before writing my other freelance assignments due a day-and-a-half earlier, or to the comic book convention to talk to future possibilities (and maybe even boys, if I could find some single, age-appropriate ones).

"Heads, I work. Tails, I go to the con."

And that's when I saw this in the 14th & 8th subway station.

Confused Agendas

Last year at New York Comic Con, I bought a cat-eared hat. A man in line at the movies flirted with me over my cat-eared hat a few months later.

This year, I bought a skirt at the con.

Not art, not comics, not Lou Ferrigno's autograph. Clothing.

They had a print with little dogs instead of this big blue and black head, but they only had a small. Sniff.

Be Warned

This sticker adorns the top of the planer in the wood shop in class where I am learning woodworking.

Yikes.



And here is the wood I started with last night. We all use the jointer to shave level one face, then used the fence on the jointer to shave level one side. Then we got to rip the other side on the table saw. Sometime today or tomorrow I have to go in and independently chop-saw the board in half, then wood glue and clamp it together.

I don't know when I'm going to do this. I have a job, teaching, this woodworking class, two freelance comic book jobs (one of which is in hardcore critical mass this weekend), three small freelance writing assignments due immediately, a two-day-long Photoshop workshop this weekend, and a comic con on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that now is a really good time to not ask me for anything. I should have my own warning sticker. Caution: Contents May Bite Your Head Off.

And last, here is the type of table I am learning to make by mid-December.

New Fun With Spam

I was horrified that you could download my books from servers until Tom pointed out that these aren't even the books. These are what he called "dynamic PDF spam."

I'm impressed. What a stupid way to get people to your...whatever you're trying to get them to. To sign up for your server? I must be missing something.

Like Every Sunday

Today is J.C.'s artist studio tour day, as well as being a beautiful sunny day with perfect slight autumn chill. A great afternoon for wandering the streets and peering into people's homes to see their paintings, sculptures, drawings, and photographs.

Unless, like me, you're bogged down with a half-dozen project all due immediately.

Still, certain things must be done. Like this:

At the pizza place, I interrupted the chatty old guy holding up the counter to ask for a slice. The proprietor slid a slice onto a spatula and tipped it into the brick oven, while I pulled out my phone to check my mail for the few minutes it takes to heat up a slice "to go."

"blah blah blah?"

Startled, I looked up. The old man was looking expectantly at me. He had said something to me.

"What?"

"You looking at the art today?"

He was just being polite. Nevertheless, there was only one way to answer that.

"No. I'm doing my laundry."

"..."

Oh.

Souvenir Shelf: Tampon

My friend Stephanie is headed to Hanoi soon with her family. That reminded me of this stamp that I bought in the old quarter of Hanoi during MariesWorldTour, on a street devoted entirely to tampons, which means these stamps.

I was worried that my little running Marie character might be too complicated for the stamp-makers, but take a look at this blog, and you'll see photos of much more complicated images.

I went back to MariesWorldTour and looked for photos of this stamp, but there were none. I remember why...it was 2001. A different technological world. Now, I would just shoot it with my digital camera and upload it via my netbook or MacBook in my hotel room, using wireless internet. Or I'd photograph it with my phone and upload it via the mobile networks.

In 2001, there weren't many people doing online travel narratives, because it was hard. You couldn't just type into Blogger or WordPress. I coded entries in HTML as I went. Digital cameras were new and heavy, and batteries ran down fast. You couldn't get the files off your camera without installing drivers on computers, which no internet cafe would allow. There was no point in putting your files on your laptop as there was no such things a USB sticks and you couldn't hook your own computer up to the internet. No wireless.

I could have gotten the images off the laptop a few at a time using a floppy disk, but no internet cafe would let you put your own floppy into their system, for fear of viruses. In the end, I left my laptop and digital camera at home. I shot film, and scanned in images in the computer centers of the world, using various quality scanners and half-assed imaging software. And video? That was out of the question.

What a difference a decade makes.

You've Got Mail!

I trudged into my building last night, exhausted, and almost tripped over a box in the front hallway.



My name was on it! I dragged the box upstairs to my apartment.

Maybe it's my tools for woodworking class!



I'm taking woodworking this semester. I wanted to take something more hands-on than Flash, Dreamweaver, or Final Cut Pro. I look at a computer enough as it is.

Drawing? Ceramics? Ah...woodworking.

I am interested in ceramics as well, actually, but I decided to take woodworking since it's a more unusual offering. There's a ceramics studio in J.C., and I can sign up for their classes anytime. Woodworking is harder to find.

I have a metal combination square on order, but my other tools are here now. I already owned a chisel, safety goggles, a vise, various handsaws, and a small army of tape measures, but I'm starting off fresh, with well-made and lightweight tools.

And I'm now the proud owner of a double-sided Japanese handsaw. I hope to learn to carve out dovetail joints. And by the middle of December, I will reputedly know how to make a table.

We'll see.

Guest Post: Michael Kraiger

Currently, Marie is super-busy and despairs over not having enough time to dedicate to writing her blog and worries that her loyal readers and the random cyber-stalker or two may grow bored with the occasional photo of a giant hot dog on a chair rather than an actual post.

So, here it is, Marie's blog written by one of the supporting cast. I'm the guy who turns up when she mentions baking pie, watercraft in the meadowlands, hiking small mountains or lifting heavy objects.

I'm not sure about this whole blogging thing, so I decided to give a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse at the gal-on-the-go, Marie.

Mornings are a sacred thing to Marie, so her whole morning routine is shrouded in secrecy. I have sussed out that it involves an individually brewed cup of coffee (she buys the good stuff) and some very important ‘me’ time. House guests take note: When staying with Marie, it's best to pull the covers up over your head and pretend you're sleeping until she leaves for work, or I'll never hear the end of it.

Marie arrives at the office and immediately dives right into the day—Facebook, Sitemeter and whatever yelling at freelancers or "Can you believe it?" about the incredible nonsense work that needs to be done. Once work is underway, there's room for a little office banter, and the topic usually falls into one of two categories: how incredibly stupid the general population is (this based on comments on news stories or random snippets overheard on the elevator) or what incredibly cool things she's done since I last saw her. This is my favorite topic because I rarely have cool things that I've done since I last saw Marie.

Marie doesn't get nearly enough recognition for the work she does. As an editor in chief she's dealing with the home office in Kuwait, freelance creative types in England, Brooklyn, Des Moines, Salt Lake City, Arizona and a few scattered about California too. She’s juggling the schedule of a weekly comic strip (4-5 freelancers involved) and a comic book (5-8 freelancers involved) while providing answers to the aforementioned home office, various international magazines, an errant consultant, a couple of lawyers and whatever other weirdness slips in the door. She also knows the production end of things, and frequently corrects the goofs that occur, whether incorrectly drawn uniforms or misspelled word balloons.

And then one o'clock rolls around and I hear... "What am I going to eat today?"

After her panini is consumed with chips and a pickle—once in a great while it's pasta or a salad but mostly panini—it's right back to Facebook...I mean work.

Around three o'clock, I hear the familiar, "I'm sleepy, I think I'm allergic to dill."

That's when I jump in with the offer to fetch some coffee, and Marie says, "Good coffee or the crappy stuff they have in the kitchen?"

Back to work for another couple of hours and we're dealing with the answers to all the problems of the world (in the comic book) and the mental breakdowns of our close personal friends.

Then it's quitting time and Marie is off to who-knows-where, a concert or play in the park, or the class she teaches at SVA or perhaps it's a robot-building class she's taking in Brooklyn, or a reading by an admired travel writer. Sometimes it’s dinner or coffee with a friend, but often enough it's a short jaunt to an out-of-the-way corner of our great metropolis for an examination of something odd.

Two other things you should know about our gal-on-the-go, she reads an awful lot and her calendar is chock-full. I've seen it on her desk and the next few weeks are all scribbled in. So no complaints about this fill-in blog. She's busy.

      —Michael Kraiger

It All Evens Out

I scheduled too tightly this weekend, and managed to miss the movie at the 1929 movie palace last night, missed yoga today, and tomorrow I'll probably forget to do about 30 things I should have done today.

But I ran across this giant hot dog on a chair on the street. So I guess it's all okay.

A Half-Assed Offer

I nearly bought a house last week, but chickened out after seeing how wrecked the interior was.

The house is a wreck, and I've had my eye on it since the end of 2005. It's a few doors down from my old condo up the block, and every time I've gone into an open house there, I've left flabbergasted by the state of the property. There are holes in the roof, even.

But the price was finally low enough that I wanted it. My friend Dmitry (Jessica's husband) went with me, since he is training to be an architect. And we checked out the house.

The agent gave me a hundred pages of disclosures.

I took them home and read them.

Mold. Collapsing extension. Collapsing roof on extension. Incorrectly installed French doors. Collapsing stair railing. Crooked floors. Leaky windows. And so on.

I chickened out. I put in a back-up offer, lower than the main offer. I couldn't see spending the main offer amount on something that needed gutting.

Then today, I went to look at a brick house. It's a lot bigger, nicer, and pricier. Someone was killed there two years ago. And it still needs a lot of work.

I thought about my old block, and the funny old men and women who have lived there since they were born, and the sense of community, and the brilliant characters that sit on the stoops...

...and I called back the agent.

"If the other offer falls through, I want it."

And now we wait.