SLAVES OF NY

Leigh and I are in NY after spending several days in Kalamazoom, and I gotta say - you can make fun of midwestern small-towns all you want, but we had a GREAT time there.
Honestly, I DO love NY and LA, but they really need to 'get over themselves'...
Yes, they're super cool, but Kalmazoo has lots and lots of character.
Anyway, I've had several gin'n'tonics and I've slept about 3 hrs in the past 5 days. Ao I'm gonna go... hope all of you are well.

AA MEETING

Also known as the "Animation Dinner with Ira."
My good pal Ira (seen here in the polka-dotten shirt) occassionally arranges these post-work dinner meetings where a bunch of animators get together and discuss the beloved industry we all work for.
Being the restless and obnoxious type that I am, I decided to do REALLY fast ink sketches of everyone at the table.
I shant reveal identities because then I know everyone will just write me and say "That looks nothing LIKE me!"
While Ira's intentions, I'm sure, are to use these as an opportunity to 'network' and 'share info', I rely on it purely as group-therapy that helps me tolerate some of the nonsense we all have to deal with in a field that's at the butt-end of the entertainment industry.

KALAMAZOO-BOUND

This weekend, Leigh and I are leaving on a 10-day journey that will take us across the skies to Kalamazoo and - ultimately - to New York City. Leigh's got some humungous work-related bash going on there... I dunno... she can explain it better.
Regardless, this trip to Kalamazoo will be Leigh's introductory visit with my parents - which I'm sure will be delightful and all, but flying from ANYWHERE to Kalamazoo is a carnival of horrors. It requires multiple layovers and connection flights - I don't even want to go into it all.
I'm looking forward to the trip, but not the traveling.
Anyway, coupla new posts below... take a look.

NASAL-SPRAY JUNKIE

Remember my "sick and tired of being sick and tired" post a couple of weeks ago? Well, a few days after feeling better from the flu, I got the world's worst COLD! I was actually fairly convinced that it was a sinus infection. The entire inside of my head and throat felt as if it had been invaded by some sort of microscopic alien creatures (pronounced kreee-CHOREs) who were building vast empires of mung in my nasal cavities.

After a shitty weekend of this I went to the doctor last Tuesday and got some really nifty pills that seemed to relieve the symptoms and give me REALLY messed-up dreams including one in which I was a flying orca whale.

Maybe that's boring to you, but I rarely have 'surreal' dreams... unfortunately, my dreams are seldom 'fantasies'. They're always extremely realistic and grounded pretty heavily in reality. Which sucks.

The only semi-recurring dream I have is one of flying - which is as 'crazy' as my dreams usually get... but even in those dreams, my flying ability isn't like 'Superman'-style... it is somehow justified as some sort of natural, physically evolutionary development, and it usually takes some sort of 'effort' on my part to do it (kinda like flexing a muscle).
This makes the dream much more 'real', and all the more of a disappointment when I wake up to find that I can't actually fly.

But I digress...

During my bout with whatever flesh-eating virus had made its home in my nose, I discovered the wonders of NASAL SPRAY! I'd never used it before and - initially - found the sensation of shooting a wet mist up my schnozz to be irritating and off-putting.
But about 15 minutes later, my sinuses opened up so well I swear I could SMELL GOD!

Leigh informed me that you shouldn't use the stuff for more than a couple of days because it can actually be addictive, which I now fully understand... after snorting this stuff a few times, I could breathe better than I ever could even when I WASN'T sick.

C'est la vie.

HOT MEXICAN LOVE

SHAMELESS PROMOTION TIME!
Many years ago, long before I moved to Los Angeles, a bunch of artists in the animation industry said "Hey, let's do a comic anthology" - and thus, some of cartoondom's top talent went to work on a series of strips that all related (some very loosely) to a Mexican theme. Out of this, 'Hot Mexican Love' was born thanks to the initiative of Albert Calleros, Larry Reynosa and Rob Goodin.
In the years that have passed, two volumes were created, and I am pleased to announce that a third volume has been compiled (thanks to my good pal and editor Ira Sherak) and will premier at the Alternative Press Expo on April 9th & 10th in lovely San Francisco, California.
The list of contributors are a 'who's who' of animation talent and I am proud to say that I and my lovely fiancee Leigh are among them.
Our story - written by Leigh and drawn by me - chronicles the legend of 'Montezuma's revenge' (the scatalogical phenomenon one experiences from drinking the water in Mexico).
This story actually marks our SECOND collaboration together (the first of which is in publishing limbo... but that's another story). We hope you like it...
I'll have more details about where/how/when you can obtain copies of the book, but until then if you wish feel free to e-mail me and I will make sure you get the hook-up.
The heart-logo above is the graphic 'teaser' for 'Hot Mexican Love' (copyright and trademark Hot Mexican Love Comics) and highlights a handfull of the art - the drawings below are a couple of samples from Me'n'Leigh's story.
Stay tuned for more info in the near future - you'll be glad you did!

ANTICIPATING APRIL

I'm really excited about April. I can't really say why at the moment - but it has something to do with this drawing (this particular image was a collaborative effort between myself, Cynthia French and Holly Kim - who did the amazing coloring on it).
It's one of those 'bittersweet' anticipations... but I'm excited nonetheless.
Anyway... I just wanted an excuse to post this image because I think it's rad.

SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED

I'm sick... and tired.
I feel as though for the past month and a half I've had maybe three days where I haven't felt sick. Right now I feel like I'm fighting off a cold... last week I had the flu...
I've been waking up every morning with achy joints and sore muscles (such as they are). I can't seem to get enough sleep - EVER.
Leigh thinks it's stress... she's probably right, but if I could just switch my stress 'off' I'd have done it a long time ago.
I've always felt that I have a mild case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder... some would say that it's not so mild... I'd try to 'do' something about it if it weren't for the fact that my OCD seems to make me REALLY GOOD at managing my time and prioritizing my goals.
Here's an example of how my brain works... while I'm driving home from work, I will plot out my exact course from the second I walk in the door. Let's say I've decided to have spaghetti for dinner... that means I have to boil water... let's also say I have to go to the bathroom really badly... so I get home and before I even take off my coat, I go to the kitchen, fill up a pot with water and put it on the stove... THEN I will go take off my coat, THEN go to the bathroom... I have just saved myself aproxomately nine seconds of valuable time by overlapping my coat/bathroom time with the water-boiling time.
I work this way CONSTANTLY. And that's just one example of how my OCD works with SMALL things... you can just imagine how it dictates more important matters.
On the one hand, it has made me GREAT at meeting my deadlines... on the other hand, it has made me really uptight. I have a whole 'shutting down' ritual I have to go through every night to turn off my brain or I can't sleep.
It's no wonder I'm sick.
Anyway, it's this kind of mania that inspired this comic strip. If you click on the image it'll be large enough to actually read.

SKETCHY BEHAVIOR

Here are some really quick paintings I did in my sketchbook. I love sketches... a lot of times I like sketches more than finished art.
These were done with one of those marvelous brush-pens and a travel watercolor kit.
What's nice about watercolor is that it has an immediacy and kinneticism to it that other paints don't have... plus, when you can't draw for shit (like me) it makes your doodles look like they were 'meant' to look rough.

I first decided to put sketchbook scans up on the blog when I saw them on Louie Del Carmen's blog (randomanomalies.blogspot.com) and thought they looked incredibly cool... now, in retrospect, I realize that I've just set myself up for a horrifyingly disappointing comparison... oh well... enjoy these drawings, but if you wanna see really GOOD stuff, go to Louie's blog. He's my hero.

OSCAR MADNESS

Ah, the Oscars... the big night where Hollwyood gathers together to collectively pat itself on the back for mastering the fine art of 'pretending on film'...

But I kid Hollywood...

I LOVE movies, I just hate the movie industry. Or something. I dunno. I guess that's kind of hypocritical. Oh well.

I thought John Stewart did a good job, but I've always dug him.

Frankly, though, in the past decade I thought the two best hosts were Steve Martin and David Letterman.

The good news is, "Wallace and Grommit" got the award for best animated feature... how come the media always makes such a big deal about how 'CGI is replacing traditional animation' and yet I didn't see ANY stories about the fact that this year there were NO CGI nominees and TWO of the THREE nominees were STOP-MOTION animation???

I'm really tired of the 'animated characters' giving out awards, too... they have live-action directors give out awards... why not animation directors?

Oh, that's right... because we suck...

Anyway...

I liked Clooney's speech... he's a class act and oh-so easy on the eyes!

I'm glad "Crash" won because I liked it and it's the only one of the nominees that I actually saw. I eventually want to see ALL of them, but there are just too many good (and bad) horror and gore movies coming out these days - how am I supposed to find the time to go see "Brokeback Mountain" when "Hostel" and "Wolf Creek" beckon me and tempt my desire to see humans hunted for sport? (oh, c'mon... it's a joke... lighten up)

My biggest complain of the show was when the woman sang the song from Crash (I'm too busy and too lazy to look up names) and they had this incredibly gay 'broadway-style' production going on in the background of people pantomiming - what - the ills of race relations in our society? IN PANTOMIME?
During one of the closeups I saw one of the background dancers who was (or was portraying) a 'hispanic' character complete with greased back hair and hairnet. The rest of the background dancers were similarly stereotypical.
Wasn't the point (or one of them) of "Crash" that we are all our own best/worst stereotypes? And yet for their little Oscar number they might as well have had a Native American in full headdress 'whoo-whoo'-ing to complete their chorus line of stereotypes.

I've also read articles this year that praised Hollywood for producing movies of "substance" - unlike previous years with the horrid likes of "The Lord of the Rings" and "Spider-Man".

Hey, pretentious-art-school-dropout-entertainment-writers... I got yer 'substance' RIGHT HERE! (pointing at crotch for some reason).

Oh well... the only other upset for me was that "Revenge of the Sith" got no nominations - not even for music, effects or anything like that.

Funny, isn't it, how Star Wars has shaped our popular culture more than any other film in the past umpteen decades and yet somehow the Academy still manages to see no merit in them.

This is one of my worst, most incoherent blog entries to date. I'm really tired. I'm stopping now.

SHUT UP!!!

Don't you people EVER shut up?
I don't mean YOU people... you people are obviously solid citizens because you're reading my blog.

I mean the people who NEVER shut up.

In the apartment complex I call "home" it seems as though there are always people standing outside my window yammering it up at 3 AM. I'm not just talking about on weekends, either... I'm slightly more forgiving of that... but it'll be 3:37 AM on a Tuesday and there will be two, drunken, fratboy chuckleheads whooping it up outside.

The way this complex is laid out, it has several concrete 'courtyards' all of which may as well have 'Marshall' stamped on them because they amplify sound to the point where if a cockroach takes a dump, I can tell what he had for dinner by its impact onto the ground.

Tonight, by the way, it was "Koo Koo Roo" chicken wings and human snot.

But I digress...

You can well imagine that if the sounds of cockroach crap are hear-able (yes... 'hear-able'... it's 4:21 AM on a Wednesday and I feel like death, so just deal with it) then you can just imagine how chrystal clear every "DUDE!" from fratboy conversation echoes through the cul-de-sacs...

The thing I don't get is: WHAT ARE YOU DOING UP AT THIS HOUR ON A SCHOOL NIGHT? DON'T YOU HAVE JOBS? AREN'T YOU TIRED?

My apartment complex is NOT cheap... HOW DO THEY PAY THEIR RENT??? I direct cartoons for Disney and I barely get by every month... how do they DO it???

And trust me, these are not blue-collar joes trying to put food on the table for their salt-of-the-earth families by taking a night-shift... these are pink, healthy, manicured young folk who obviously live off of some sort of new-money parental trust-fund.

Anyway, I'm thinking of becoming a 'noise vigilante' who dresses like Batman at night and runs around abducting these types and locking them in a Dodge Stratus with "Convoy" playing on a continuous loop with the volume at full blast and letting them rot there until the car battery runs out.

Okay, not really, but it's fun to dream...