Nate Beaty's Brainfag

The You-knighted Sedates of Mmm-erica

posted in Home Jabber on October 28, 2006

I have to say, the first two days I was back, I was giddy and full of energy. But I've already crashed back down to Planet Portland, the land of scraggly white snobsters sipping PBR. Hooa, what a scene. I found myself at a party tonight, surrounded by people a block from my house, none of whom I recognized, and none of whom I felt like approaching to see what's rattling around their mophead bean.

Perhaps I'm just bitter about missing the first day of Stumptown Comics, most importantly the fourth (?) Comic Art Battle, which I heard was renamed to COMICS APOCALYPSE. I'm so bummed. I don't know how I missed that, but it seems to represent just how fucking bad I am at orchestrating my social maneuvers.

In other news, I think today was my first back in the Pacific timezone. Soon Bok and I woke at 5am, got the giggles with morning jabber, and then slept from 7 to 11. Finally. We'd been having a hard time re-adjusting from Korean time, awaking at the worst hour, with nothing to do but watch the sun sloooowly rise.

The portraits to the right were my slow progression to a self-portrait I could handle looking at, sent away for the US-pressing of The Motel Life. Which has also just hit it's second printing in the UK with Faber and Faber -- sporting a new but beautiful cover, dropping the watercolor cover I did for the first pressing, but of a wholly new design from the line art inside. Beautiful work. Can't wait to see it.

I'm .. halfway? through a new comic from my trip to Korea. I've got 16 pages down, but there's not much cohesive storyline to speak of. So I'm going to try and fill in the gaps and come up with some sort of printing format -- I'll keep y'all posted on that.

Joseph Robertson of Cactuspony and pthbbbt.com fame is going to be joining me in renting a studio on 28th and Alberta, and organically growing into the ambiguous identity we've given the moniker color • space -- a combination of our creative selves. We'll see what comes out of it. Joseph has been hard at work on a publication called LAB, which he hopes to have out by mid-December.

Aaron and Ezra are in town from New York and Chicago, but I haven't seen Ezra yet. (Insert sound bite of sobs from missing the Comic Art Battle. UGH.) And Kaz is in town from Seattle. Portland is throbbing with even more comic art geeks than usual!

Should have some more photos up very soon from Korea on my flickr account. Just haven't had time yet to filter the gems from some 1,000 shots. Hard to choose just a handful from so many damn photos. But I make it easier on myself by shooting something decent about one in a hundred. Digital photography is just too easy. For each shot, I tend to take a good 3-5 different versions. Then when I get em on the computer, I can't decide which is worth showing, if any.

Yikes, pretty acidic post. Flowers tomorrow, I swear.