My New Life with the Magic Marble
posted in Home Jabber on February 21, 2005
This morning Joseph and I walked downtown to possibly haul back some heavy freebie furniture he'd spotted earlier. However, it appeared some enterprising folk had moved the furniture 20 feet down the street under some large umbrellas, and were working up to selling them. How very capitalist.
We apparently weren't meant to walk away 70 lbs richer with junk furniture. In its stead, however, we were both offered "lucky marbles" immediately as we walked up, by an unusually confident, gangly, skateboarding teenager. (It should be noted that this was in front of Astoria's very own MARBLE SHOP. That's right, a shop dedicated to marbles! Beat that, Portland!)
How can one refuse a lucky marble?
As quickly as he offered the gifts, the kid skated on by, barely able to stay upright. We turned away from the capitalists and followed marble boy, who was skating in his barely-upright fashion directly in the middle of the road, against traffic on a one-way street. Marble boy, along with the sighting earlier of a walking cartoon caricature of the small town, post-industrial-goth speed freak, made me prematurely nostalgic for Astoria, and even more upset that I'd given my 30-day notice today.
Yep, I'm headed back to Portland! I've been here five and half months, but it barely feels like one. I guess I've probably actually BEEN in Astoria a cumulative month or two, so maybe that's why I feel like I just got here. I'm sad to leave this amazing apartment, sad to leave my awesome neighbors (who appear in the above illustration, albeit in my can't-draw-hands-lately interpretation), sad to leave this quaint, quiet and clean-aired lil' town where I can walk to everything I need. But overpowering all these is the excitement to spend more time with Soon Bok. So there.
Joseph showed me how to BIND BOOKS! I've always wanted to learn how to really do book binding, and I guess I was his first "pupil" to have talked him into it. I took picture of (almost) every step, wrote notes, and borrowed a how-to book, so I will soon have a debut article for the upcoming HowTo section on Brainfag. Later that night I went home and built myself a bona fide Ghetto-Bound journal using dental floss, duct tape and lp covers, and I took a few photos of that too.
All you get for now, however, is a photo of the finished products.
11 comments on this entry
Holy cow, you know Mary and Joseph Too!
Anyway, how come your site isn't listed at orblogs.com
ps, what do you use to manage you site content?
Your getting better and better at coloring. It's almost like you're not color blind! Almost! Hahaha! um... *cough* *cough*
dude: uh.. never heard of orblogs.com -- i've never promoted brainfag at all. not terribly interested, really. like my comics, they're mostly for self-exploration.. but i submitted brainfag to orblogs for the hell of it.
mr. renier: uh.. thanks. ha! are you saying i did something awful with that coloring? granted, i'm doing these pretty damn quick -- it's not like they're finished illustrations or anything, right? like, where's the laughing fat boy's right leg in that drawing?
Why do you use to manage your site content?
no ... I was being sincere. I thought it was really good... my ORIGINAL comment didn't include the word "almost" ... but I thought it was funnier this way. Sue me. Okay? What, are you sad because I touched on a "tender" subject? You wanna fight me? Throw down! ... *what? Hello?*.... ugh... *HACK*
dude: i use my own software which some day will be available for public download. some day when i don't have five billion barely-paying projects giving me troubles.
ehr-yawn: fuck yeah! throw down! where the hell have you been, anyway? i need to scan some drawings so i can continue colorblinding them.
Apropos of nothing, I just read an interesting interview at salon.com of Ruben Bolling, who draws "tom the dancing bug," which is a pretty funny weekly strip. I've read a great number of interviews of people who make comics, and the ONE question that they NEVER ask but I always, always want to know is "since you have a day job, how do you ever find the time to draw new stuff?" Cuz that seems to be the ultimate pain in the ass... finding time to do stuff after your day job robs you of your bone marrow.
Yeah, the only way to get work done after your day job is to have NO LIFE, NO FRIENDS and NO GIRLFRIEND. I just moved to New York, so I have been able to hide out pretty well and I get anywhere from 2-5 hours a night of drawing time in after work. But yeah, it's hard... It's all about those weekends...
I also have it set up now where I work full time for 3 months then I take a WHOLE MONTH OFF to just draw full time.
I get a lot done, but I'm not real happy. So... Aaron? You've got friends and a girlfriend, right? Wanna weigh in on this one? I don't think Nate counts because if I'm not mistaken he's successfully avoided having a day job for about 3 years now...
Um... well, personally, most of the time at work I'm secretly thinking about what I'd rather be drawing... and then when I get off work I try to keep that enthusiasim. But the weekends now are my saving grace... but with a girlfriend wanting to spend SOME time with me... that proves to be more drama... it's hard... but I think my life would be much harder if I knew I wasn't getting drawing done. I'd be a mean little man.
I guess it would help if my "day" job didn't spill over into most nights, and half of the weekends, ala 50-60 hours a week. As it is I am lucky to update my hideously vitriolic website once a week, and making zines/comics seems like a pipe dream.
I could use a trust fund.
The man who owns the marble shop drowned this morning when his car slid on some black ice and veered off the road into the river :'(
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