Pouring Monday

To most folks, a rainy Monday is the suck -- to me, it's the music!

This means I'll see David Gabriel today -- he just called, and is on his way up later this AM. Thus, construction will continue on the basement shelving I so desperately need. Marge finished her unpacking and 'nesting' (as she calls it) back in January; I've yet to even begin, save for the DVD room and my drawing and light tables. The rest has been boxes, stacks, three storage units and a horrorshow; I barely made it through this CCS semester teaching, due to the constant difficulty getting to anything I need for class and lectures.

This involved a fair amount of prep -- Mike Bleier (my stepson) saw to the initial electrical work, prepping everything with new outlets (there were none, save for the washer/dryer outlets) and the wiring necessary to eventually installing lights and more outlets, where needed. Our plumber installed a sorely-needed pressure tank, which had to be done before any other work on the basement was undertaken. That was all finished by the first week in March, and I cleared a full half of the basement for the work ahead. I've given almost all my old pasteboard shelves and bookcases away -- Mike and his wife Mary claimed four of them, and the rest went to needy CCS students, starting with Joe and Becca Lambert, all gratis (the last three will be picked up today, again by/for CCSers -- use 'em in good health!). Marge and I have held onto and used the wooden shelving units here and there about the house; nothing has gone to waste or ruin.

As I've shown you before on this blog (see photo at left),

Dave does terrific work; check out the viewing room shelving he and his brother Mike designed and constructed back in February -- beauty!

But the basement library needs heavy-duty, rugged and long-lasting shelving units, and those can only be built, not bought. Dave initially wrestled with the sheer bulk and no-nonsense constructions I wanted, but he's now well into it; it's nothing like the marvelous work he did in the viewing room. The design is functional, not particularly pleasing to the eye (though I always love the warmth of wood, in and of itself): these will be sturdy, standing floor to ceiling, and holding the maximum number of books of all sizes possible, with the topmost shelves for backstock. I need them all; by the time we're done, 3/4 of the basement will be dedicated to the library.

Dave began work on the basement project late last month, working with his amigo Josh; they got the sheetrock up, the mud work done and sanded, and I primed and painted that in a weekend. Dave came back this past Thursday and Friday, and he and Josh pulled together all the preliminary work on the shelving for a full half of the basement, completing work on three massive shelving units -- the rough equivalent of the shelving I had in my then-new Marlboro studio last year at this time. They had to fight the weather (a rental truck took care of the Friday haul of needed lumber, ensuring it remained dry) and lack of lumber (incredibly, not a single lumber yard or Home Depot in the WRJ area had 2"x 4"s!); that's now been solved, and the unit components are all cut and stacked in the garage and basement.

Dave and Josh are returning today to finish the ten-foot-long shelving units they'd cut and prepared for, and I can't wait.

By the end of today, those will be up and bolted to the walls; then Mike can complete the electrical work, placing lights and outlets as needed. Man, we are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel!

This means, after some cleanup and a little touchup on the painted cement floor, I can unpack every box currently stacked (five-or-more feet high) in the quarter of the basement we placed boxes during the move, opening that area up completely for me to seal & paint the floor and prep for sheetrocking and that basement area's completion. That section will ultimately sport shelving and some office/work space, with a computer work station for scanning/lecture prep for CCS needs and future publishing ventures. Back in December 2006, Dave safely removed the custom-built looooooooong computer desk/workstation Olivier Flaggelot had built for me for the Marlboro studio space (based on a rather inventive design we both cooked up, sketched, and Olivier constructed); that will go into the last quarter of the basement, along with more shelving, which will allow me at last to have my entire library accessible and out of boxes for the first time since the late 1980s!

(And yes, Mike Dobbs, this time the shelving is accomodating expansion, too -- more shelving than I'll be filling!)

Remaining work thereafter involves framing the laundry room, which will also be lined with shallow shelving (for standard-size paperbacks and vhs videos), and closing in the bulkhead with (a) weatherproofed door(s), which Dave will likely build, given the odd shape and size of that doorway. The goal there is to keep the bulkhead fully functional while sealing the basement from heat loss -- it remained pretty comfortable all winter, despite the heat loss, just from the warmth generated by the boiler and hot water heater. Still, for those below-zero weeks, we'll be installing at least two baseboard heat units at the far end of the basement, just in case.

OK, time to go -- I've got a busy day ahead. This afternoon, Cat and I will be focusing on the long-under-construction website; hopefully, we'll have something up later this week, however skeletal. It's been a long time coming! I've been emailing Cat digital art & photo files all weekend, and I'm still hoping Jane Wilde gets around to mailing Cat a disc with all the work she and we'd done last year.

[Cat, U R my computer guru; art (c) Cayetano Garza]

It's coming together. It's all coming together.

Tomorrow, I'll offer my first CCS graphic novel discussion class -- I'll be moderating a session on the first volume of Junji Ito's Uzumaki, which is among my favorite horror comics and graphic novels from anywhere in the world. I've prepped a Q&A sheet (which I'll post here later this week), and then it's Ivan Brunetti week at CCS. Ivan and his wife arrived this weekend, and he's scheduled a full run of workshops and lectures; last year, Ivan arrived with Seth and Chris Ware for a three-day whirlwind of creative and instructional activity, of which I only experienced one day, due to my schedule and the long drive from Marlboro to White River Junction. Now that Marge and I live fifteen minutes away, I hope to sit in on all of Ivan's sessions, except today's. Hooooo doggies! OK, enough of my rambling --

Have a great Monday, one and all!

Back From the Grave...

You can't keep a Blog Zombie down!

Well, not for long.

Yep, thanks to the collaborative exchange of info/media/scans between my respective computer gurus Jane Wilde (of Absolute Computing Solutions in Marlboro, VT) and web cartoonist extraordinaire and early founding member of the extended & growing White River Junction/Center for Cartoon Studies cartooning community

Cayetano Garza aka 'Cat,'

thanks to whom my long-under-construction and long-overdue-for-revamping website will at last be up (gulp) this week!

Cat is now my computer guru, and you have him to thank for today's blog being up and running at last. We've got a lot planned, and will be posting info, links, and opening up the long-overdue Bissette website -- keep your eye out here, and all praise Cat! He's been making web comics since 1996, and he's a demigod in this old-timer's book.

That's a lot of back from the grave, eh?

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For those of you starving for Bissette comics work, there's a batch of stuff coming up and out -- but for now, suffice to note that Rick Veitch just sent me the first comp copy of his new King Hell anthology Shiny Beasts, which I previewed for ya

here

and here.

The book is gorgeous, and our collaborative Epic effort "Monkey See" never looked better (26 years out of print!), and there's also Rick and Alan Moore's long out-0f-print Epic collaboration to savor, too (including it's revelatory Bissette cosmic-VD panel) and Rick's afterword with vintage photos of his old hippy self (and Totleben and Bissette, in their younger years). A terrific package, if I may say so myself!

Rick dropped by the house last weekend to pick up the oldest Veitch & Bissette "Creative Burnouts" art in my flat files -- including our first ever collaboration, drawn up on our Kubert School drawing boards in September 1976! -- and Rick is planning an upcoming anthology featuring all our collaborative work. But that's later, folks -- Shiny Beasts is out now.

Shiny Beasts is shipping to comic shops pronto, and I'll post more on this blog once I know it's in stores and online. You might want to hold out, though, for buying the book via PaneltoPanel.net, as Rick, Alan Moore and I are currently signing signature sheets for PaneltoPanel's special promo of Shiny Beasts -- more info on that (and sales link) soon!

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This-here blog has been down the entire week of the White River Indie Film festival, which is too bad -- I had scribed and was planning to post a day-by-day diary of the event, and promote the hell out of it.

Alas, bandwidth issues decided otherwise, and WRIF ends this very weekend -- today and tomorrow. My panels and such ended last night (more on that later this week, as time permits).

Still, if you're in the area, as in today and tomorrow,

WRIF's current weekend lineup boasts some of the festival's best films (scroll down to the listings and info for April 28 and 29),

including a zinger Iraq War double-feature of The War Tapes and

Iraq in Fragments (which I wrote up here),

followed by panel discussion; the gender-issue one-two punches of Freeheld and Georgie Girl, likewise followed with lively panel discussion;

Adrian Grenier's Shot in the Dark and his short film Euthanasia (which I blogged about here),

(and the lingering possibility that Grenier himself may show up, live and in person); and more.

Best of tonight's offerings, to my mind, is the African film Bamako, which I reviewed

on this very blog during our screening process (scroll down a bit to that writeup),

though I've no doubt the two most popular films of the fest may prove to be tonight's showings of Brick (reviewed in the same post as Bamako; see link, above) and The Devil and Daniel Johnston, which is one of my son Dan's favorite films.

Sunday's program offers an intense lineup of "First Person" documentaries, including a panel on the genre. There's a lot of intensive scrutiny of abuses of power in these films, too: The Forest for the Trees,

the excellent Strange Culture (which I reviewed here),

the riveting Hand of God, and the 5:15 PM show of Sacrificial Lambs, which I will be introducing, followed by a panel with filmmaker Ed Dooley, Norwich Selectwoman and farmer Suzanne Lupien, the Faillace family, and farmer Doug Flack. Now, that should be a lively session! Tomorrow's program also includes

51 Birch Street

and the evening begins with the marvelous

Absolute Wilson (Bissette review here)

and concludes with the amazing documentary Jesus Camp (my review, and some blistering fundamentalist comments, here; scroll down to the goodies).

Sorry I didn't have this venue available to promote all this past week's wonderful films and events, but c'est la vie. If you can come this weekend, see you there!

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My ol' pal Mark Martin has been posting some great vintage Mark Martin comics, art and stories on

his blog "Jabberous,"

and that's a perpetual treat.

His latest excavation has yielded a complete MM parody of Harvey Comics's venerable bowler-derbied spook Spooky,

Dooky, who's short-but-sweet adventure begins here. Then click on over to

Dooky's page the second,

Dooky's penultimate panic, and

Dooky's ass-blasting last hurrah (and more)!

Now, tell me that ain't funny. Kudos to you, Mark, and here's hoping for a complete Harvey Comics parody comic from you one day!

Everyone in comics knows about Dan Clowes's Harvey parody in Eightball, but this has been a rich vein of comics satire for ages, and it would be a corker of a book if someone would brave the legal hurdles and put them all together into one fat tome. My old XQB pal and vet Taboo contributor Tom Foxmarnick had cooked up a hilarious satire of Hot Stuff a loooong time ago, which I still fondly remember. Rick Veitch and I once roughed out a Harvey parody of our own (back in 1979) intended for Dr. Wirtham's Comix and Stories which we entitled "Li'l MicroDot," in which our version of Harvey's beloved dot-obsessed li'l girl character was tripping her brains out and finally, in desperation, grabs the phone to call for help, only to space out on -- the little holes in the receiver! As she is mesmerized by this miniature landscape of uniform holes, a clutch of tiny Art Linkletters pop out of them all, screaming "Don't jump, MicroDot! Don't jump out the window!"

Well, it was funny to us in 1979. We never drew it, though, so it remains a layout in one of my sketchbooks, which ain't funny.

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What really ain't funny, and has prompted me at last to turn off the fucking news by yesterday AM, is

the utterly spineless news coverage of President Bush's latest pathological projection of blame -- it's just too infuriating for words -- isn't anyone going to call this latest GOP shell game for what it is?

Bush and Cheney and their corrupt cabal have manipulated their budgets year after year by keeping the genuine cost of the war(s) off the table, and out of their annual budget -- it's at last caught up with them. Is anyone really falling for Bush's bullshit? Cheney, per usual, is even more reprehensible in his rhetoric; I have never, ever so loathed a public figure in my life. The man is evil incarnate; typical of our times, he was keynote speaker at the Brigham Young University graduation recently. Now, there's religious values for you.

I am so aching for any coverage of this current "showdown" to confront the core issue -- the President and Vice President's false budgeting of this war, by persistently not budgeting for these war, by absolutely refusing to budget for these wars -- for what it truly is: the consequences of this President's ongoing strategic shell game.

These two bastards don't give a flying fuck for our troops -- they created this horrorshow, they have abused the military and military families every step of the way (note this week's Pentagon hearings), they created this current standoff by refusing to responsibly budget for and truly wage the war they claim our very lives depend upon, and they are the lowest slime to ever hold the highest office in our country in US history.

Have a great weekend, one and all --