I’m sad to say I’ve finally given up hope that Oin was possibly on some sort of epic personal journey and that he’d return home as he has nightly for the last nine years, either injured from battles, or to whore my girlfriend, or just deliver a marker.

I can’t say we always got along. Hell, he wasn’t even my cat to begin with. But as will happen when you take care of something for years, I became attached. This was most apparent when he got that battle wound and I had to nurse him for two weeks, including hand-feeding him water and wetfood because he was so damn deranged from painkillers and an inner-ear infection he couldn’t quite coordinate his big poofy head with the old cone attached. But soon he got better, and returned to ignoring me (unless he was hungry).

Oin had always been an outdoor cat. I strongly disagree with people keeping cats from going outside (though I keep my yap shut nowadays, as with most things). I can easily hear some friends arguing that he’d be here if I’d just kept him inside. But I’d also have a house that smelled like lingering catshit, and he’d have a completely different, likely hostile, temperament. I just don’t get why people have predators as pets and don’t let them be what they are, as God Intended Them To Be (ha), holding them back from going outside and nearly killing birds and rats and voles and mice, then playing with their half-dead bodies for 30 minutes before dragging them to the kitchen floor and howling with joy.

It’s odd to lose a pet by having them just disappear. Not getting closure can be a hell of a thing, because you end up returning to wondering what happened, over and over. I can only hope that he did indeed find a better foodbowl with less hippie, more meaty offerings, and is happily drooling all over some poor sap’s lap.

When I stopped by my local overstocked California liquormart to take home my six-pack and Silver Patrón, the man at the counter said “HAHA! GREAT NIGHT TO BREATHE EASY! THE FUCKING NAZIS ARE FINALLY GONE!” He had just given away his last newspaper to an old lady who thanked him profusely. Newspapers selling out at the liquor store?! Whatever could this be? Why, it’s an historic day of the United States of Nearly Failing America, who has just miraculously elected an incredibly intelligent, seemingly party-neutral, articulate, aware and straight-talking BLACK MAN as president.

I’m stunned.

I can honestly say I have never felt proud to be an American. I have long felt an outsider of not only this country, but of the entire human race in general. The world at large has been in a longtime love affair with the USA, slowly migrating toward our increasingly gross tendencies, our materialism, our addiction to youth and perpetual economic growth and military bicep bulging. The closest I’ve come to feeling proud of America is when I fell in love with jazz.

But I choked up when listening to Barack Obama’s acceptance speech on radio, and again the next day when watching it on hulu:

What can I say, it gives me hope. Even though before his acceptance I had just watched an interview with Bob Barr who professed that Repugnicans and Democraps were two sides of the same Big Government coin and lamented the inability for libertarians or independents to have a shit’s nickel of a chance, I still feel that Barack has the potential to truly turn this country around, to reverse the catastrophic fail of the last 8 years of thieving neocons, who left the country not only in economic shambles but viewed by the world as a belligerent, megalomaniac bully.

Just a quick, tiny note. Please, please get your ass out there and drop your puny little inconsequential, non-electoral, non-Fox-counted vote for:

Pretty please? No more monkey presidents! Thanks.

And with that out of the way, a quote from the best show to hit TV since The Wire:

“You don’t know how to drink. Your whole generation, you drink for the wrong reasons. My generation? We drink because it’s good, because it feels better than unbuttoning your collar, because we deserve it. ... Your kind with your gloomy thoughts and your worries, you’re all busy licking some imaginary wound.”

Mad Men! So good. I just watched the second season finale and almost cried twice. That’s impressive for a comfortable American male. Seriously though, this is one damn well-written show, and deserves your attention. I even went so far as to send my mom the first season DVD set! What a good son.

A while back I was asked to do an interview by Susie Cagle of Anthem magazine, but once I submitted my answers, it turned into a possible web-only feature, then just kind of .. fizzled. It’s quite possible my stunning cadence of alternating boredom and vitriolic hisses—perhaps bottled steam leaking from my previously occupied hair follicles—caused it to be shelved. Who knows. Anyway, I would like to exercise my god-like errant editorial skills (see any Palin speech for reference) on my own website, and copy/paste it from gmail.

But first! An ancient relic of me trying to grow a moustache:

What got you started in comics? Early influences (not necessarily just in comics, but in art and storytelling in general)? Any exceptional anecdotes from these early years?

My uncle drew some really badass Bob Seger pencil portraits as well as futuristic snowmobiles, Delorians and aquatic superheroes. As a 9-yr-old these drawings were like crack cocaine—well, everything but the Bob Seger.

I have always doodled on whatever surface nearby, and first painted in 32 dazzling colors on my Commodore 64. I laid out colorblind sunsets and futuristic moonbots pixel-by-pixel with my clunky red joystick.

In my short 6-month college stint, I smeared oil paints on cheap board canvases until my brain rotted with the linseed fumes. The discovery of hallucinogens didn’t help much either. To this day I’ve never taken an art class, which just means I spent 10 extra years excreting thousands of shitty drawings before I could render boobs and robots to my satisfaction.

The venerable Keith Rosson got me into self-publishing with Avow. As far as comics, I avidly read my brother’s late ‘70s, early ‘80s Spider-Man comics, and much later found Crumb, Clowes, and Brunetti. It wasn’t a terribly romantic courting. Years later I lived with Aaron Renier in Portland and was introduced a more eclectic palette of comic nerddom.

Why self-publishing? Any thoughts on its future in our digital age?

You can do whatever you want, for better or worse, and answer to nobody but yourself. This can work well for those with strong initiative and a scathing self-critique. Unfortunately, it also lends itself to unreadable emo drivel. Thank god for blogs and myspace: now we can move this human ephemera to a more appropriate (and even easier) medium.

What’s the appeal of autobio stories for you, and do you see yourself straying from those in the future?

I have to admit I really enjoy reading autobio, but I can’t imagine enjoying a novel or movie with the same content. Somehow it just works well as comics. That said, I also have overwhelming guilt in taking the easy route and masturbating on paper for so many years.

So, yes, I definitely want to move onto something more challenging. The problem is I can’t write dialog to save my life, and my dreams have been very quiet full of office work.

Tell me about your Korea book, and any other current projects.

In 2006 I visited Korea with my girlfriend and stayed with her family for 3 weeks. As I’ve done since I could hold a pencil, I doodled. We plan on visiting again soon, and I hope to tie both trips together to make a readable account. I really enjoyed Korea and the culture, and want to share. Ed: Abort plan! Look forward to many futuristic, mind-bending superhero comics in the near future. Like Fringe, but funny and pornographic.

Basic biographical info—how old are you, where do you live, etc.?

33, balding, braving Los Angeles. I am one of the many artists from my generation serving the corporate takeover of our cultural consciousness. GE/NBC paid for my iPhone!

Bwaha! Pure genius. Off to the sauna GE paid for in my bedroom. Thank you!! (Exit Nate, drunkenly tripping over moldy art supplies scattered throughout the house.)

Another longwinded, heavy-handed Video8 quickie edit with accompanying dorky poster from the box o’ tapes I’ve been hauling around for TEN YEARS.

On an iPhone? YouTube link.

This was the night before, day of, and week after leaving Orcas Island, 2001? (Right before brainfag 5 if you’re into that sort of thing.)

This starts with the Electric Greenhouse, by far the weirdest domicile I’ve lived in, and where I drew brainfag 3 (again, if you’re into that sort of thing.) I lived here 6 months with somewhat running water (gravity-fed from the pond up the hill) and solar/hydro power. Wood heat and LOUD metal roof when raining.

I visited my mom in Federal Way on the way to Portland, Ore.

That’s Pat destroying the bowling alley. (to Yo La Tengo.)

On an iPhone? YouTube link.

From found tape:

This footage is from a thriftshop box find full of Video8 tapes, most of them computer backups—except this gem.

I’ve been carrying this around and meaning to edit it for ages (aka 10 years). I finally found some time to throw this together in an evening: super-rough, one-pass editing, no adjustments. I obviously didn’t figure out deinterlacing that well. I’ll post something better soon.

Regardless, this video cracks me up as I was in 8th grade when it was made, and enrolled in TAG (who remembers that?) where we did many random projects like this.

For those not in the know, I’ve been living single for the last week and Soon Bok made the brave move to New York. This has resulted in me eating copious amounts of pizza for every meal, drinking cheaper and cheaper beer, thinking about drawing a lot (ha, I’m getting there!) and listening to all the sappy albums I can only enjoy alone. I also stare out the window for long periods. I can’t believe it’s only been a week, feels much longer.

My cat Oin also managed to disappear. I’m about to go see if I can find him trapped under a house or something—which is where he was the last time he went missing some six years ago. Jeremy and I were shitfaced drunk and found him howling in the abandoned garage next to the house I lived in with Aaron Renier in Portland. The ceiling of the garage had rotted away in the center, and for some reason Oin decided to explore inside—before realizing he wasn’t able to jump back out. Oops. It’s also possible someone took him in, as I’m sure he’s been courting tenants of nearby apartment complexes.

At work I was approached by a fella in another department to develop an iPhone app to get rich quick, but unfortunately I am not acquainted with Objective-C, nor have I ever programmed in C at all. Or Cocoa. Building an application is damn different than building websites.

You can click on the comic to make it bigger. Note that blue [+] on mouseover.

Christine got me hooked on watching Mad Men, and I’ve burned through the entire first season. I’m a total sucker for the ‘60s culture, however fucked up it was. Men wore suits and hats all the time, doctors smoked cigarettes, women chose eye-jabbing bras of industrial might, cars were mighty steel floats of fashionable flourish (ouch, Nate), booze was water, music was gay, bohemians were beatniks were poets, and .. politics were exactly the same!

That brings me to my two graphic examples of why I’ll never be in advertising and/or politics.

Obama, obama, I praise to god you kick the pants off The Cretin and The Clown and .. well, maybe change things a little bit in our sad nation.

And The Clown, I was so happy when you were nominated—you’ll drag down the entire sinking ship of Repugnicans!! Thank you! If, miraculously, you manage to make your way to the White House, I hereby denounce the American people as a sad lot of bumpkin monkeys that deserve the chaos and collapse you’ll bring upon them.

Andrice Arp and Jesse Reklaw were in town for an art show opening last night down the street at Secret Headquarters—which embarrassingly I completely forgot about. I swear if things are not thrust in front of me AS THEY ARE HAPPENING they may as well not exist. Even Google calendar didn’t help. (It reminded me a day early, wtf?)

However, we did get together today for some strange vegan food (most had Pancakes and “Chicken”) and cat turd tea following. Tom Neely, who lives right down the street from me, and another fella who’s name I’ve already forgotten (see previous rambling about being senile) also joined us. (thank you interwebs: Levon Jihanian.) As will happen with more than two cartoonists seated at a table, a comic jam started up, this one purportedly conceived by Joey Sayers. It went like this: everyone writes down bad ideas on small pieces of paper, shuffles them under a copy of BFF, and a 5-minute, 4-panel (usually) comic drawing session ensues with whatever bad idea that’s pulled at random.

Here are my bad drawings of said bad ideas:

“Cat box.” My favorite, haha.

“Catts and doggs.” Fail.

“Did you read my blog?” This is from mun2 I’m sure.

“Fuck it or eat it?” What’s going on with the host’s suit?

“Glasses fetish.” I guess it should really be ‘57 Cadillac.

“Salivating box.” Another fail.

Afterward we had some tasty ice cream to combat the ruthless dry heat of LA. It was great seeing Jesse and Andrice. I miss my cartoonists friends in Portland.

I recently had a drunken spree of watching old westerns, starting with the classic The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. While “camping” last weekend, I watched it again with my 12-year-old nephew Aaron who initially scoffed at the obviously-overdubbed dialog, “THEIR MOUTHS ARE OFF!” but he slowly got into it. It’s so classic that even with long, drawn out, often silent scenes, it manages to capture the attention of a modern-day, Mountain Dew swizzling, Nintendo DS addled pre-teen. I was stunned.

The big budget spaghetti western made me yearn to get lost in more stiff old portrayals of The Old West. I started roaming around IMDB looking for high-rated westerns. The first that caught my eye was The Magnificent Seven, which introduced me to Yul Brynner, playing an oddly endearing cowboy android. It also shared a younger Eli Wallach, playing a similarly slimy-yet-likeable villain as Tuco and Charles Bronson looking like a beefed up Alfred E. Newman.

From there it was quickly downhill with the western meme. Somehow I ended up watching The Searchers, which features the Native American hatin’ John Wayne. Besides bearing a striking resemblance in stature, dress and speech to Willy Vlautin, I couldn’t find much to like. However, I was pleased to spot The Elderly and Senile Room Service Waiter from Twin Peaks, the one who brought Agent Cooper his warm milk after he got shot. Nearly fifty years prior to Twin Peaks, Hank Worden was sporting a very similar shtick.

If I’ve not blathered to you in person about it, we recently at my dayjob relaunched holamun2.com. This was the culmination of an 8++ month operation pulling out the wildly (manmade) cancerous and expanding Wordpress innards and replacing them with a Drupal intestinal tract. The primary New Thing is user accounts and profiles and all the social hooha that goes with that; but the rest of the site has also been restructured pretty heavily.

Our design and development cycle feels much like a newspaper. That is, pretty much perpetual barreling forward movement with rapid deadlines and constant creative output. This doesn’t allow much time for the many OCD hands in the soup to perfect anything to our satisfaction, be it cronjob or Drupal module or CSS stylesheet or gif-cropping code. (Woa, I just saw some eyes go glossy.)

Despite the perpetual Marx-bros-esque coding fiasco, we’ve managed to put together something that, as the dust settles and the hundreds of kids a day (!!) sign up and abuse it, I’m beginning to be pretty proud of. It’s a goofy-ass looking kid who was born a bit early and is stumbling along the first stages of life, but we’re scrambling to get caught up with our 1,200 to-do tasks in the queue.

During the relaunch, we’ve still managed to put out some great content. Of particular interest lately is a glitter set of mutant piñatas by Laura Park which is equally cool as her first set of cannibalistic fruits. Joseph Robertson has been making videos to illustrate mun2 pools (sorry about the music, and for the Starburst ad that I designed and coded into our goddamn video player, sigh). Our inhouse team interviewed and made a great slideshow of Jaime Hernandez of Love and Rockets. It didn’t connect too well with our kids (L@t1N0 t33n5 r b0r3d), but I think it would with most folks I know.

Microcosm asked for a photo for promotion of BFF and I was inspired to draw something since I don’t really have any decent photos of myself. Or maybe I just wanted to draw myself without eyeballs, I don’t know.

Scrufftastic.

Hair cut and a shave. Creepy eyeballs.

Chopped my conehead.

Not sure about these colors, I used (oft-frustrating) Photo Booth with my iMac camera at night, so I’ve got some odd blue and pink highlights going on, ha. Plus, um, I’m colorblind. Not sure what I colored this for—shits & giggles I guess, ha!

The third one is probably what I’ll hand off to Microcosm—is it too weird without eyeballs?

I’m totally going to start drawing horror comics; it’s something i’ve wanted to do since the Belmont Gang in Brainfag 7. Although it turned out goofy as hell, it was really just me testing the grounds for drawing dark material.

I’ve recently been really into Domu by Katsuhiro Otomo (thanks Albert), Museum of Terror by Junji Ito (thanks Ezra), The Cat-Eyed Boy by Kazuo Umezu (which I didn’t like like at first, but it grew on me), and even Osamu Tezuka’s MW and Apollo’s Song (not necessarily horror but disturbing nonetheless), and also the recent collections of Yoshihiro Tatsumi by Drawn and Quarterly.

One of the perks of this year’s MoCCA was the odd appearance of Michel Gondry and an hilarious comic “32 PAGES, ALL IN COLORS” called “We Lost The War But Not The Battle – a revengeful story by Michel Gondry.” I guess there’s extra drama to be found if you read between the lines, but still a fine, silly-ass, randomly pornographic comic on its own. The back inside cover is a full page ad for some mega-gondry-goodies-pak (including this comic) available at michelgondry.com but it doesn’t look to be out yet.

The best part was Michel was drawing portraits while signing. He was especially excited about how mine turned out, and showed it around. It really is a pretty striking resemblance. He took time just before handing it off to me to darken my eyes and put in stubble and bags, ha! Thanks!

I’ve been getting a kick out of helping Soon Bok’s Etsy shop Pretty Monsters by designing some labels and her banner image. I guess it’s a relief to design for something you don’t have to worry about 5,000 people using—that is, a sticker instead of website UI. Or to design and not worry how it will be converted to HTML/CSS, ha. Such a heavy cross to bear.

I posted the finished labels to my flickr account.

Who doesn’t love drawing octopi?!

Hell yeah. That’s a PANTHER!!

Le Plum Blossom.

Don’t fuck with this cupcake.

A few banners, the latter was the winner of 6.

As I sat down to write this, I heard some unearthly-sounding squawking and growling from outside. I looked out just in time to catch a raccoon being forced off the edge of a garage by two other huge, screaming raccoons. It was very much like a scene out of a bad USA Network movie—with the suspenseful final hanging-from-the-edge bit and everything. The daredevil ended up dropping some 13 feet onto pavement. Ouch!

Here are some scraps from figuring out what the cover would be for BFF.

I was pretty into the original iconic mustache silhouette idea. Microcosm wasn’t.

The final version. This was my choice for the cover. Hell, I’d pick that up. However, I’d probably be expecting some poorly-drawn, homoerotic comics.

I also liked the idea of random body parts strewn on the sidewalk, inspired from a bit in BF9.

Always like this one too, but I never did a color version.

The inks for the swamp cover. I had fun drawing this.

Colored version. This was my first idea. Nobody really liked it as a cover, but I love how it turned out in grayscale as the title page.

Spoiler alert. That’s the book in a nutshell.

I did this after submitting the cover.

I also posted the rejected outro on flickr.

I’m in the midst of a NY visit for the MoCCA arts fest. I’ll write something here very soon, and completely change the site up, I swear. (Got that partially done..) I’m REALLY retiring brainfag.com to just a showcase for the 10-issue run and BFF book, and will move my online self over here.

So come back in a few days and I’ll have a much sexier design and indescribably sexy writing and imagery to appease yr everlasting desire for ephemera.

Update: no, really, I’ll get something up soon. As in by July 9! Yeah!