Coffee certainly IS Good Food
posted in Home Jabber on September 23, 2004
Riding to Reading Frenzy today, I threw in Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back 
and was blown away at how fucking amazing that album is. It's one album I can sing along to all the way through -- which doesn't happen often for me. If people were singing numbers and computer code, I could probably keep up. Sounds like a side project which I never make it to.
Then, I finally got a hold of Craig's new book: Carnet De Voyage. 
I just peeled my face away from it to write this. I started thinking how unique it is that Craig, as one of if not the most skilled artist in our generation, would be a twentieth century celebrity cartoonist ferchrissakes, roaming thru France, Spain and Morocco, drawing the most fricking beautiful diary you could imagine -- and then (although seemingly to his chagrin) have it published for us to enjoy. Would this happen in any previous generation of artists? Wouldn't Craig Thompson be a painter in any other era? Craig's drawings just ooze off the paper, and he .. shit, I have to stop looking at this. Somebody else look at it. Please.
OK, I AM GOING TO MOVE TO ASTORIA. I have 8 DAYS to get my shit together. I have to reduce my house-full of possessions to a small-apartment-full, GET ALL OF MY COMPUTER PROJECTS UP-TO-SNUFF, and, of course, pack. And find a place to move TO. And take care of all that shit you don't think of that becomes totally overwhelming and you go through a three-day-blur until you land on a new bed, somewhere foreign. With windows you can't keep propped open, faucets that are reversed and won't turn off properly, strangely fused electrical systems, 5-foot-showers, etc etc.
Been listening to Willie Nelson's Crazy: The Demo Sessions. Very good. I've been staying up to 7am nearly every day. Very bad.
11 comments on this entry
nate--portland will miss you. keep drawing with that great sense of self-deprivation, humor and feeling. i've had many a night's anxiety lessened by reading your stuff.
and enjoy astoria's bike paths.
I think Astoria will be good for you. Although the winter may be miserable there, I can see it being a great environment to work in. Plus it'll give me a place to go visit outside of Portland.
NOOOO! Natron moving from Portland is like Woody leaving Manhattan at the end of his last film. Don't do it Nate! But if you do, make some cartoons about it.
Keep up the good work, dominate your subversive paradigm.
Bah! What winter? Astoria welcomes you /and/ your comics with gay computer type!
x, Astoria Welcome Wagon
Thanks.. how did you figure out my website? Is my name on my mailbox or something? Or do I just look like a brainfag? Are you creepy or clever? Ha! Talk to you soon, Creatures from Apartment A. (Nice website, btw, very well done.)
"Clever" is my middle name. Believe it or not (and you probably won't), I stumbled on a link to yr site while browsing Reading Frenzy (who carries CactusPony books)... read the entry 'bout you moving to Astoria, looking at a studio, etc, thought: "naw, couldn't be..." then my partner went outside, saw TO NATE BEATTY markered in foot-high letters on a package sitting on the mailboxes. What are the odds?! *shrugs* I dunno. But I swear we're not stalkers. Honest. Just very smart, clever, curious small town gawkers. Sooooo, yeah... welcome to town (again).
Hey Nate... I'm listening to Car Talk and a woman from Orcas. And I thought... maybe Nate knows her. She drives a subaru. Um... her name is Kathleen and she has a fourteen year old son. ANYWAY... just thought I'd say hi.
Holy crap Nate, your new apartment looks SWEEEEEEEEET! How much is your rent??? On second thought--don't tell me, I might have to kill myself...in my shitty small room in New York...
But yeah, it's great to see that photo--your drawing board right there facing the window. And Phase 7 on your table. Woo! I hope you are settling in well. Rock on Astoria!
Yeah, but what does the BATHROOM look like? Huh?
Ha! Uhm, well, it has this HOSE-DOWN setup, kind of like an old folks home, then these huge LIVE ELECTRICAL WIRES jutting out towards the sink, a suspiciously DEEP, DOWNWARD-SLOPING tub that looks like it might have some Ghostbusters appeal, a toilet that FLUSHES, mismatched handles on the SINK, LINOLEUM, and a BARELY CONCEALED LIGHTSWITCH.
Your bathroom sounds like a bad German modern art installment from the mid 80s... in other words, deeeelicious! Please post photos.
Commenting closed.