(Cross-posted from kittnapocalypse )

I don't even know where to start with this one. When this showed up in my reader at first I was pretty sure it was a joke until I did a little research on the author. The "journalist" (or would that be "journalista"?), writes:

Yes, because switching the gender of a main character is as simple as swapping names, and men's interests can be boiled down to football, beer, and heavy machinery.

WTF Guardian.

The writer, one Jean Hannah Edelstein's, personal website states that Ms. Edelstein "is a London-based journalist with a signature style that combines New York sass and British wit." The sassy/witty journalista's first book, Himglish and Femalese: Why women don't get why men don't get them, sold wherever shit (I'm sorry, "shite") is sold, looks pretty amazing. Although the title alone would have been hearty enough fuel for the glowing coal of hate that now dwells in my chest the book description is really just the absolute end. I'll refrain from quoting it in its entirety but here is a choice excerpt:

they're just so hilarious

Hey everyone, my co-writer on Darwin Carmichael is Going to Hell and myself have set up a little community LJ for the two of us to post to at kittnapocalypse . My posts appear on there as coming from estrangingsea, but I will not be cross-posting them here on my regular LJ.

Topics that will still be covered here on good 'ol estrangingsea: personal crap, biking, work (as in my job that pays me).

Topics that will be covered on kittnapocalypse : comics news, sketches, Jenn's kitties.

Please please add our new blog since right now we have like, two followers and it just makes me terribly terribly sad. I promise to only post really cool interesting stuff.

Also, guys who do this sort of thing, we are on Twitter!

Tell all your friends; but only the cool ones.

Are you reading my webcomic, Darwin Carmichael is Going to Hell?

Better yet, read it from the beginning.

Today a student called with certain pressing financial concerns so I tried to contact financial aid on her behalf. While on hold for 20 minutes I tried to find an e-mail address. Instead of an e-mail address, they had a form that you could fill out with your complaint.

In the pull-down menu where you can enter your occupation one of the occupations is "financial aid staff."

I am not making this shit up.

If Jaime Hernandez wants me to vote Democrat, who am I to say no?

This weekend I picked up a bunch of minis from Desert Island, which to my mind is one of the best little comic shops in NYC. The guy who owns it, Gabriel Fowler (thank you internet), is very nice and there all the time so it's not a completely anonymous shopping experience. I'm so excited to talk about indie comics no one else I know reads that I probably come off as a little overeager and dorky but I'm fine with that. He asked me if I make comics and I said that I've done a couple things and am working on a webcomic right now and he said I should bring in some stuff. He keeps the minis on consignment which is pretty neat... I like buying comics that local artists have dropped off themselves. It makes me feel like the money isn't going into some big conglomerate's pocket.

So, stuff I bought this week:

Fart Party #4 1/2, #6, #7, Julia Wertz
Welcome to the Dahl House, Ken Dahl
Bugbear #1, Eleanor Davis & Drew Weing
FLUKE Anthology #6, Edited by Eleanor Davis
Eighth Days Out, Sarah Glidden
Conversation #2, James Kochalka & Jeffrey Brown

I think that may be it... at least ye gads I hope so. I also ended up buying Peepshow by Joe Matt for Simon, although hopefully he'll pay me back for that.

( Some short reviews under the cut. )

Yesterday I finally unpacked a box of junk that my mom had sent me from her garage. It had been sitting in my room for months, literally, and I just could't pull it together to go through it. Amid the photo albums (keep), old birthday cards (toss), stray tea bags (wtf? toss), and inexplicable sexy victoria secrets nightgown (not mine) was my old sticker book!



I "collected" stickers when I was around ten, which coincided conveniently with when the Santa Monica Mall opened a sticker store. Since I'm a natural packrat I of course never used any of these stickers so they are all still in the notebook. I think about 40% of them were of cats. Anyway, I decided to use all the shiny ones to decorate my Dr. Sketchy's notebook, and the results were a-mazing:



Wait, I don't think that conveys how shiny it is...



Yeah that's better.

I also did some sketches yesterday that came out okay. This one of McCarren Park:



I edited out all the hipsters. Colored pencils with a white highlight added to the fence posts and bench with Pro White. I like the effect so I also used it on this Humphrey Bogart sketch:



Oh, Bogey.

I have so much work to do... but first, breakfast!

I was just going to add this as another edit to my last post but I found these Jeeves and Wooster slash fiction sketches (clearly taking off the Brit TV adaptation with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry) on Rebecca Sugar's livejournal that were, frankly, quite wonderful.



Her loose style reminds me a lot of Ren & Stimpy for some reason, with a bit of a Betty Boop 1920s flair to it.

See the rest here and here.

I just read a couple short online comics (is original content posted online automatically a "webcomic"? Even if it isn't ongoing?) that really blew me away. Pug Davis and Don't cry For Me I'm Already Dead which actually did make me cry.

Both are by Rebecca Sugar, who I know nothing about other then she seems exceptionally talented. I found the digital format a little cumbersome--her art is sized for print and thus not maximized for screen viewing--but I couldn't find hard copies on amazon or quimby's online store. Damn, and I was so ready to give her my money.

Edit: Also, these comics by Corinne Mucha (what a sweet-ass name) are really cute. Her girly style really suits her autobiographical content and sense of humor. I'm working back through her blog entries now and it's worth the time.

Moving on.

Still working on the Darwin comic. Things are proceeding a pace and we're still on track to launch in January. Speaking of which, I need to go buy some domain names...

Number of monthly comics read: 19

Monthlies that actually come out on a monthly basis: 9

Webcomics read: 28

Blogs read: 29

TV shows being followed (current season): 7

Health: fair

Current status: sleepy

Quality of life at work: excellent

Quality of life in general: tragic

Yesterday I biked home in the pouring rain and yeah, it was pretty miserable. My bags got soaked and I got soaked. On the bright side, since mother Nature decided to provide me with a shower I didn't need to take one when I got home. Three cheers for water conservation.

Since my Idiot Epiphany about filling my tires my brakes have been making attractive farting noises when the contact pads hit the tires. In practice it's as effective as having a bell because people definitely notice you when you sound like a horde of bean-eating elephants. The rain did much to silence this unpleasant noise but also made my brakes fairly ineffective, causing me to skid 10 feet past any intended breaking point until I adjusted.

I'm sure my rainy day ride home would have been way, way more awesome if I could do what this kid does at minute 2:45 of this video:


I love my job. from Edward LAforte on Vimeo.

He's like the silver surfer of urban biking. Tres awesome.

Lastly, as long as I'm on the subject of biking, meet my new crush, the 2009 Schwinn Madison. Isn't she pretty? I'm going to Frank's Bike Shop after work to try her out. So. Excited.

Just when I feel I have arrived at a place of knowledge, life has a way of bitch-slapping me in the face. This weekend and today I received some mixed blessing with regards to my budding career as a bike commuter (can a mode of transportation to your job be called a "career"? No, let's not quibble). These past two weeks it seemed as though biking was getting more and more difficult. My legs were dying on the hills and my lungs were working at full capacity. It was miserable. I was pretty sure that either myself or my bike were falling apart.

So this weekend I complained about this seeming entropy to my friend who had come over to watch the debate. Walking over to my bike he took one long and considering look at it and then reached down and squeezed my tire (that sounds suggestive, doesn't it?), condensing it to half its desired width. My tires were flat. Two weeks of long and horrendous effort accounted for by the stupidest oversight on my part.

To further my humiliation, today I took my bike into a repair shop at lunch to have the gears looked at because they kept slipping and the guy took one look at it, tightened a screw, and pronounced it fixed. He didn't even charge me.

I guess I should be grateful that my obstacles could be overcome with so little expense and effort but mostly I just feel embarrassed and silly. Will I always be a dilettante? Perhaps, perhaps.

On the comic front I inked three comics and some random drawings to go on the website yesterday. I think we're still on track to launch in January although I should probably sit down and make a schedule rather then measuring my progress by the thickness of the paper piled on my desk and the volume of used tea bags in my trashcan.

Also, a little pick-me-up for those of you interested in the climate change issue.

I just got back from attending my dad's 60th birthday party in Los Angeles to discover that winter has descended upon New York like a piano falling out of a 50-story building. What the hell? When I left here I'm pretty sure it was still t-shirt weather. I guess I can't trust this city to look after itself in my absence. Next time I'm hiring a baby-sitter.

In honor of my dad, I'm going to do something that my dad always does which is tell a slightly boring story that ends with me saying something that made people laugh, even if it isn't as funny in the recounting. The point of the story being that I can be hilarious, even if my telling this story seems somehow to disprove that.

Anyway, on route to the party my mom warned me that I may have to give a toast. I'm not exactly shy but I'm still not a fan of public speaking. Happily, after a few vodka and cranberry mixers I had overcome my fear and picked up the microphone following the least-funny toast of the evening (it's all about timing--thanks Grandma Lucille!) and delivered a short roast that began with, "Well, Dad, I know you must be feel like you're getting old now that you're sixty, but I just want you to know that you've always been old to me..." HA AHAHAHAHA... ah... ::wipes tears from her eyes:: And then I made fun of how he dresses. You could really feel the love in the room.

My favorite toast was probably my mom's though, since it managed to be sweet while still containing some of the vitriol of her 22-year-old grudge against her ex-husband. Now that's class.

Oh, wait, there were actual things that might be of interest to other people that I wanted to share here. First is a zombie love comic by Chester Brown, future member of the Canadian parliament. I think it hits all the right notes, especially the sad and disbelieving way the zombie and the heroine keep repeating the line "But--he's/I'm a zombie!" like some character in a John Hughes movie might sigh, "But--he's a nerd!"

This next and last item is NSFW... not because of any actual pornographic content (although that's debatable, really) but because you will laugh so hard that people will actually come out of their adjoining offices to give you strange looks. I wasn't reading superhero comics in the 90's, but apparently that was the heyday of Rob Liefeld who made millions of dollars drawing appallingly bad comics. I think this countdown of The 40 Worst Drawings of Rob Liefeld, accompanied by some of the bitterest commentary I've ever read, can and ought to be appreciated by everyone.

Ten minutes until lunchtime. Oh man, being an adult is SO MUCH FUN.

For awhile I thought it could only be in my head but recent events have lead me to conclude that it is in fact more dangerous to bike in the bike lane then just to bike on the road.

"Why?" I can hear you asking, because you are dying to taste the fruits of my experience, "What leads you to that strange and ironic deduction?" Well, my intensely interested friends, this is why:

1. Bike lanes are located to the extreme left of roads, which places them dead in the way of drivers making left-hand turns. Which means that several times during my commute every day I have drivers with more lead in their feet then brains turning across the lane in front of me causing me to swerve into traffic to avoid them or screech to a halt. Or they honk at me because I am blocking their turn, which is also charming.

2. Although bikes lanes are called "bike lanes" and have little pictures of stick figures on bikes on them they are also popular locations for double-parked cars, pedicabs, taxis trying to pass slower cars and pedestrians who think they're too good to share the sidewalk with the common folk. Construction crews and cops are also big fans of blocking bike lanes, meaning I spend almost as much time swerving around obstructions as I do actually riding in the lane. People just don't get that bike lanes are for bikes, no matter how loud I scream it at them.

3. Bike lanes seem to encourage stupid behavior by people on bikes. Most notably, biking in the wrong direction. To even the most ignorant biker biking against traffic on an avenue would seem suicidal but the presence of a bike lane seems to make some bikers feel that this is an acceptable practice. Having nearly collided with several of these misguided souls I would like to assure them it is not.

And that's really it. Having suddenly come to this conclusion on my ride home yesterday during rush hour I switched from biking in the bike lane around midtown on 6th avenue to swerving in-between cars in the middle lanes and you know what? I felt safer. Also, it was a lot more fun. Besides, bikes should assert their presence on the roads! We have all the legal rights of cars... only we also get to run red lights. Cheers!

I have dreams just like this...




But, I ask, where do you rest your tea cup?



And of course the infamous stairwell bookcase:



May God heed my prayers.

I was in the super market this morning buying breakfast things when I overheard this old man tell a joke to the benevolent but unamused lady cashier:

"...So one night I'm in bed with my wife and I asked her to talk dirty to me. So she says, 'the kitchen, the bathroom, the garage...'"

Faced with the complete and utter silence that greeted this joke, and perhaps noticing my expression of incredulity and muted outrage (it took me a second to realize he was telling a joke and not actually reporting details of sexual congress with his wife to a total stranger) he added loudly, "I don't care what anyone says! It's a good joke." And then followed up with a line about how "Gristedes" translates from Greek as "Robbed Blind."

Maybe cashiers are the only people he has to talk to?

So I've been working on a webcomic with my friend Jenn, medieval blogger and all around swell chick. The working title for the moment is "Darwin Carmichael is Going to Hell," which may be the actual title since we can't think of anything better. Anyway, I've been doing conceptual sketches, writing story ideas and even drawn a few strips (*gasp*!) so I wanted to share some of my character sketches with y'all.

This is Darwin Carmichael, who as you may have heard is going to hell. Why is he going to hell? I'm not telling you, it's a secret. He likes climbing trees, baking, kittens and complaining. He'd probably look cuter with hair but he can't be bothered.




( More beneath the cut... )

Your feedback is appreciated! Sorry for being vague on the story but I don't want to talk it to death before I've even drawn it.

The gridlock today was some of the worse I've ever biked through. Cars were nudging each other's bumpers, horns were honking, cabbies were cutting into turning lanes &c. I spent the forties and fifties weaving in between cars, shifting from the right to the left side of the road and back looking for openings to slip through, ducking under car mirrors and shouting down errant pedestrians.

Somewhere in the midst of all this—between squeezing through two vans so close I had to suck in my breath and shaving front bumpers with my back tire as I cut across lanes—I realized I was having fun. A lot of fun. I wasn't thinking about how much my legs hurt (and they do, all the time), or whether biking was some sort of death wish on my part (probably), I was riding with total concentration and efficiency. I felt like a cowboy steering my mount nimbly among a herd of long-horn cattle, only at the time it wasn't cheesy—it was terribly exciting.

And then on the bridge I passed two other bikers. Which almost never happens, because I am very very slow, though in conversation I like to blame my slowness on my shitty second-hand department-store-brand mountain bike. But I passed two bikers, both female, both on road bikes. One of them was even wearing bike pants, which means extra points for me.

It feels good.

I just realized I didn't have my helmet where I usually keep it behind my desk. Then with dawning horror I remembered I'd put it on the newsstand next to where I lock my bike in the morning. When I ran outside it was still there.

I'm going to go buy a lottery ticket STAT.

When I haven't been asserting my authority over freshmen today I've been calling campsites and trying to figure out how to get two people and and all their survival items to the wilderness without a car. So far, it's been a lesson in why one might want to own a vehicle in NYC. Since one of us was a boy scout (not me), hopefully this expedition won't end in total disaster.

Anyway. I found two interesting cool interviews today, one with Chester Brown and kind of double-your-money interview/conversation between Joey Comeau and Ryan North the writers of, respectively, A Softer World and Dinosaur Comics. Chester Brown I enjoy hearing from since he's a strange and interesting kind of guy with a very unique viewpoint and artistic process, and the other one with Comeau and North is kind of silly and inspiring, especially since I'm working on getting into that line of business myself.