My call back to the great Grady Gordon and his homage to Aliens. Some of my favorite lines.

Cleaning up the studio and found a photo of my college studio, (probably 1996)  buried away in an old book. Wow.

My good pal Grady Gordon loaned me his copy of the Aliens special edition dvd in light of the fact that we are quoting it constantly.  He enclosed it in this sweet case with his “best of Aliens” moments.  Check out his website and truly awesome artwork Here.

One of the many benefits of teaching is just being around children and their natural ability to create.  If you aren’t careful you’ll miss their brilliance. If you look for it, it’s everywhere.  These signs have started to pop up around school.  At first glance, they weren’t very noticeable, but as I stopped to really look at them, the payoff was huge.

As a writer and artist, I spend all of my time trying to think of clever plot lines and catchy titles.  But these guys? They just come up with the stuff like it’s growing on trees.  Bats of the Decade.  Animal Wars.  The Stolen Crown. Hamster Book.

So in between teaching sections of 4th grade art I stop by the second grade classrooms to inquire about Animal Wars where I am met with one of my students who tells me, dryly, that they are out of stock.  They canvas the whole building with posters and I have a seven year old staring me straight in the face, almost bored, telling me they didn’t have any more copies.  The amount of time taken to make the posters and hang them would be enough time to reprint oodles of copies of the books.

“Is this some sort of marketing strategy?” I ask.  He just stares at me and says: “What?”

“Never mind,” I say, “When will you have more copies?”

“It’s hard to say.” He replies.  Brilliant.  The laws of supply and demand understood before basic math skills.

“Well, just let me know,” I say, hoping that he will give me some sort of timeline.  He makes no reply and I realize that I will have to come back daily in hopes of follow through.  Incidentally, I stop by a day later to no avail.  “We’re still out of stock.” He says as he sees me coming.  Tomorrow, I’ll try again.  Man, these kids are good.

1/22/2012   While visiting my folks over the holidays, my mom stumbled upon some old cookbooks from the seventies.  They were actually mini zines: a couple inches tall x a couple inches wide, usually stapled together.  They were so wonderfully awful that I couldn’t resist scanning a few of the choice ones.  This first one: Happy Hour Mixology, will tell you all about how to mix the perfect drink while chatting with your friends about their Zodiac sign.  What drink best fits YOUR sign? Enjoy.

This is one of my favorite comic covers in my collection.  It’s just so absurd and wonderful.  Really, Boris? THIS is the creature hiding in the wind swept fields of the Moors?

I miss mail in offers in the back of comic books.  I also miss Halloween records that had spooky noises on them.

Found this gem of an Edward Gorey cover at friends Kim and John’s house in Boston.