Valentine's Day throwback for y'all...

Okay, kids, although I am now oh-so-happily married to an incredibly beautiful woman (hey, babygirl!), I was once a miserable lonely bastard who hated Valentine's Day with a passion. I still refuse to celebrate it as it is indeed a corporate maunfactured buncha' malarkey (still love u, crazygirl!), but now at least I'm not a grumpy assh*le all day. But for those of you who still are (& I support you wholeheartedly!), here's your very righteous justification, straight from my 20-some-odd-years-ago collegiate misanthropic self...

Enjoy~

click to embiggen...

I once was blind, but now...

Colorblindness is really a misnomer; it is more akin to color-confused. Whereas your spectrum is quite vast & includes a veritable plethora of color, those of us who are genetically-deficient have a much smaller range & therefore colors get smashed up together, confused with others, & many unseen at all. 

I am colorblind, one of the most severe degrees of such. It is bothersome at times, disappointing at others, but as with any handicap (& I even hesitate to use that word as comparatively it is a non-issue), one learns to adjust & compensate for such. I also like the fact that I “inherited” from my Poppy, my mom’s dad, who left much too early in my life & sharing this genetic trait is at least something by which I can feel closer to him.

But being colorblind does affect me every day- the loss of a beautiful sunset, inability to decipher a traffic lite, seeing lots of green skin on folks I know are not Martians… unsure if I’m wearin’ a pink shirt. Being an artist (albeit one who predominantly works in black & white), an art teacher & just a lover of looking & seeing & really absorbing this wonderfully vibrant world around us makes it even more distressing at times.

This wonderful company EnChroma has changed all that with their incredible &, I dare say, inspiring sunglasses that promise “color for the colorblind”, & y’know what, they actually deliver on said promise in a big way.

Just back from Méjico where I sported these EnChroma Commander CX-14 sunglasses that profess (& do indeed deliver on that promise!) to allow the colorblind to see color. 

These are amazing, wonderful, & truly awe-inspiring & you can see my reaction to wearing them in the video...

(Lo siento for wind noise- tried to fix to no avail. 

Keep watching, it does improve later in video.)

& as an extry bonus, here is some comix I doodled way-back in college about bein’ colorblind… 

Enjoy:

The Line it is Drawn

Hey kids-
Over at "Comic Book Resources", a wonderful (& heavily trafficked) website about comix & such, you can see this here piece~

It's part of a competition those cats are running to find a permanent artist for that gig. The theme was to "superfy (I prefer "superfly") a celebrity. If you like the piece, please feel free to visit the site & comment, but only if when checking out the rest of the work, you truly feel it's one of the best posted (natch). (I say this only because a few other artists are stuffing the ballot box as it were with comments from friends & family, & I really wanna win this thang fair & square if at all possible.)
I'll be doing another piece on Thursday & will post then as well, which is I believe when the voting starts in earnest, so please do check back, true believers!

so it goes...

Kurt Vonnegut has always held a special place in my heart as well as in my head.

His writings, his beliefs, simply his way of being, influenced my younger self profoundly & still hold a great deal of sway in this somewhat older body in which I now find myself. Of course, Vonnegut would claim, & I think rightfully so, that these two identities are interchangeable, occupying the same time-line albeit at different points, but both exist together, now & forever intertwined.
More important than his works & his philosophies though was his place in the literary triumvirate that is one of the foundations of my relationship with my dad. Devouring those books off my dad's bookshelf in my pre-pubescence became a catapult to help us traverse that leap from being father & son to being friends.
As high school reared it ugly head, the oh-so-long (but equally wonderful) times we spent editing my school papers dwindled. Our Scrabble games also slowed a bit (although they picked up with a vengeance whilst I was in college~ when I finally beat him for the first time!).
But Vonnegut has always remained a cornerstone.

For better or worse, he & my father are responsible for the writer I am today, & a good deal of the man I am today as well.

So it was with quite a good deal of joy that I found this portrait I had drawn of Mr. Vonnegut in one of my old sketchbooks. It's unfinished, smudgy pencil & all. It's certainly not an antique, but it is somewhat vintage.
I had the pleasure of sharing it with Vonnegut at a book signing that I went to with my dad. He looked at it quite intently, then looked up at me with that same bemused smile that he wears in the drawing.
That was a good day indeed.

Enjoy:

it ends as i began...

Befitting this series should end with the first card I did- Santa skankin' to the holiday beat. Ah, I was a young buck back then. Happily this piece isn't as excruciating as it could be, given its twenty year vintage. I hope y'all have enjoyed these holiday greetings & perhaps you've even ended up sendin' off a couple to friends & family, or at the very least, one or two have made you smile, or maybe even warmed a cockle or two...

Cue up Fishbone's "It's a Wonderful Life (Gonna Have a Good Time) in one, two &...

finally apprehended

"Fallin' Asleep" week concludes, very appropriately~

syllabus

More navel-gazing & nakedness (maybe that's what I shoulda' called the strip instead of "Fallin' Asleep")~

big bad wolf

"Fallin' Asleep" week continues with one of my favorites~

touch the sky

& for my next trick, I draw myself nekkid~

the greenest hair

More "Fallin' Asleep" for y'all...
Remember: only dogs see in black & white; color-blindness is a misnomer, it should really be called "color-confused".
Enjoy~

fallin' asleep

Back to work, back to bloggin'...

Whilst in college (Rutgers '92), I really came into my own as an artist. I had transferred from School of Visual Arts in Manhattan & found a real home for my work on the pages of the three major college papers there. I first slung ink at the Rutgers Review with the cult hit "Skullboy" until they censored my work once too often (a story for another time, kids). Fortunately, Ian Jacobs & Heather Alevras (to both of whom I am eternally grateful) wooed me away to "The Medium", the ugly step-child of the school's papers, with the promise of a full page for my doodles &, more importantly, a lot more respect for my work. It was there I really found my proverbial niche. At the same time, due to my ever-increasing & even more inexplicable rising popularity, I was offered some space at the "Targum", the school's stalwart, staid & somewhat stilted paper of record, wherein I tested the boundaries of good taste with a strip called "Creative Juices" (this work I will share as well in the near future).

But it was at the aforementioned "Medium" that I gave my ink-stained heart & soul with the magnum opus called "Fallin' Asleep".

I was allowed full artistic freedom to create this work which allowed me to clear my head of all the insanity & inanity that kept me up all through the the night, at first revolving at around sexual proclivities (my own & others as well) & thankfully evolving into something a little more~ some political, social & environmental musings; some emotional & psychological explorations; some small answers to big questions; & lots & lots of drawings of me naked.

This week, I will share some of my favorites from the approximately 83 some-odd (& some were very odd indeed!) strips that encompassed "Fallin' Asleep" in all its inky glory some almost twenty years past.

This first piece is a good example of the navel-gazing in which I often indulged, one of the very things for which I believe college was created.

I was so much older then...

robinson crusoe on mars

by Bill Seinkiewicz

you can own this thing of beauty here.

retro-mash

French masher DJ Zebra concocted this great lil' ditty, marrying the late '70's to the late '80's, introducing Diana Ross (no, not Donna Summer!) to Michael & the boys in a wonderful disco-poppy-dancey melange to which I woulda' danced my bike-shorts off @ the Melody in my club daze.

Upside Down Tonight

people deserving of more respect, pt. F

& "f" is for...

what's in a name...

"sweetestbaboon" originates from a beat poem written by Brion Gysin, who was a painter & poet as well as very chummy with some guy named Burroughs.
The way it seeped into my brain was on a mixtape (remember those?!) a friend made me that included the poem set to music by Gysin's frequent collaborator & jazz saxophonist, Steve Lacy.
The entire enterprise seemed to scream my name so I adopted it as my online identity as it were, in lieu of the ubiquitous "monkeyboy".
As if I even still had your attention, here's the poem in its entirety, followed by the tune as well.
Enjoy~
I'm a blue baboon
I'm a true baboon
I'm a helluva
Hullabaloo Baboon
And I love a baboon
Who bays at the moon
In the mad month of June
The looniest month of them all
He asked me to spoon
By a moonlit lagoon
and there, very soon,
I fall into a swoon
And I fall! I fall! I fall
'Cause I'm a baboon
A baby baboon
The weakest baboon of them all!
I fall into, a swoon
in the arms of this goon
And there, on a dune
I turn and I give him my all!
My all! My all! My all!
Cause I'm a baboon
You could feed with a spoon
The weakest baboon of them all
I'm a skinny baboon
I'm a mini baboon
Just so tall!
I'm the sleekest baboon
I'm the meekest baboon
But I'm the chic-est baboon
Of then all!All!All!
I'm the cheapest baboon
The deepest baboon
The sweetest baboon of them all!
I'm not uptight
I don't wanna fight
None at all!
I'll take your attack
Lying flat on my back
Or bracing myself
On a wall!
Oh, I'm a baboon
Won't join your platoon
I'm the weakest baboon
Of them all
All!All!All!
I'm a neat baboon
I'm a fleet baboon
Im' the Beat-est baboon
Of them all.~
Brion Gysin 1972.

can you tell me how to get...

This is a piece I did in for my boy a few years back as he went from the family bed to his own digs. It's a simple & fun drawing of my family hangin' on Sesame Street with some of our favorite folk, done to make his new surroundings feel like his own spot whilst still bein' looked upon by some ol' friends~

(I am especially proud of the fact that I somehow (albeit barely) managed to work my wife's cleavage into the drawing.)

greatest marvel team-up ever...

click on the pic for even more of Spidey's religulous adventures...

people deserving of more respect, pt. 3

Frank Oz(& happy birthday, good sir!)

you'd Grimace too if you had two of your arms forcibly removed...

I am & never was much of a fan of "fast food", but gosh do I enjoy a good mascot, especially when they have some hint of secret derangement.

Corporate amputation is a dastardly act & something that now joins the long list of McDonald's evil-doings- right up there with the destruction of the rain forests, feeding secretly-lard-laden french fries to vegetarians & making America morbidly obese.

For those of you of a certain age, you may have faint recollections of Grimace, really the only interesting denizen of McDonald-Land, running around with more arms than he seems to have now. Although you are getting older & your memory is surely showing signs of deterioration, this image you hold dear from your childhood of the furry purple one running around with four arms a'flailing is not wrong, although you wouldn't know it by seeing this jolly simpleton who now galumphs around with Mayor McCheese & his fascist cohorts!

Grimace did indeed have more appendages & even further, once upon a time, he/it was an evil monster who ran around stealing shakes & committing other horrible acts that one can only commit when one has four or more arms (the more, the merrier indeed!). But upon threat of lawsuit from Sid & Marty Krofft (who had every right to sue because indeed McDonald's had stolen their McDonald characters part & parcel from the brothers Krofft), they strapped the big monster down & tore off two of his arms. They must have also lobotomized the beast, which would account for the docility & simplicity he now displays. To add insult to literal injury, McDonald's taunted Grimace further by making tasty cookies that effigized his newly-deformed form.

I also remember Snuffleupagus having multiple legs, but that seems to be a simple flight of fancy on my part...

my secret history with batgirl...

A mound of dirt was like Nirvana for the little guys. At my prodding, they could wrassle, fistfight & generally cause each other great bodily harm at the top of a pile of mud or gravel that was to us a few feet high, but to them a mountain as grand as Everest or Fuji, & woe to the loser of that epic battle who would tumble down that treacherous slope to the merciless pavement below.
The little guys were so called because of the lack of a better name. My eight-year-old world would literally be torn asunder & my very character would be shaken to its core if somebody dared to call them dolls. They were, at the very least, action figures: six & a half inches of plastic (fully poseable, mind you) molded & clothed to resemble heroes & villains such as Spider-Man, Batman, that bug-eyed alien from Star Trek, & my personal favorite, The Lizard. They had cars & helicopters, guns & swords, headquarters & halls of justice &, of course, cool outfits- costumes, actually.
I had one person with whom I played with the little guys, but not very often. The fantasy of maneuvering these superheroes & the tenuous reality it created was best achieved alone. Group consensus was a hindrance to the very process of imagining this mini-universe. There were two huge advantages to having a playmate though. The first being the fact that he was younger than me & therefore easily manipulated, so I got the pick of the best toys (“No, no, really, trust me… The Falcon is much cooler than Shazam!”) & I could dictate the course of action for our little guys like an action figure-hoarding Naploeon. The second advantage & it was a much bigger one, believe me, was that he actually had Batgirl.
At the pre-pubescent age of eight, I knew I had a certain interest in Batgirl, & although I didn't quite understand it, quite a curiosity as well. I also knew, but again without knowing why, that having her as part of my collection was inherently wrong. I'd like to think that it was simply that she was female & her so-called "action figure", because of her gender, strayed much closer to "doll" territory. But, alas & alack, I know now, as I had an inkling then, Batgirl was simply verboten. My younger playmate must've had this unrecognized knowledge as well~ he always brought her over in a brown paper bag, unlike the other toys he would carry willy-nilly in a bundle-ful the long five house walk from his to mine.
We never did anything remotely untoward with Batgirl. Perhaps she may have innocently paired up with Shazam or Superman, but our fingers never wandered & we never explored what was under her bat-symbol. Her honor was maintained & her costume stayed on. But she certainly changed the dynamic with her high-heeled boots & red billowing hair. Simply her presence in that musty previously boys-only little club made the whole experience just a little bit better. I look back to those basement battles with great affection & just a little bit of confusion.
In high school, I would have a different kind of playdate in that same basement with real live actual girls. I look back on those experiences with the same affection & confusion.
But that's a different post entirely...