Brian's quite remarkable blog of wonder.

Christer came back to town yesterday. it was really fun hanging out with him. he, danny and i made a get-well card for Jake, who has strep throat or something. well, it started out as a card, and then it turned into a multi-page construction paper festival, and a pretty raunchy one at that. and then we went to his house and gave it to him.

time to go to mom's for a few days.

ok, so wow. Berke Breathed has returned to the sunday comic pages, and i didn't even know it until today. i went home to pick up some stuff and my step mom said "so, have you seen 'Opus?'" and i didn't have a clue what she was talking about.

so i looked at the funnies and was totally bowled over. i mean shit. i felt like i was in a weird dream or something.

i hope 'Opus' turns out to be good. because i know from experience how these things usually work.

life has been really, really good. on thursday the weather was so warm... i think it hit 72 degrees or something. and there was a brilliant moment that afternoon when i was walking around downtown and i realized that not only was i incredibly happy just to be there at that particular time, i was also looking forward to everything in the future... those moments are really rare for me, especially in the middle of November.

this is the first year ever that the U of I has gotten a full week off for Thanksgiving break. right now there are very few students around. S. Johnson street is all but evacuated. Iowa City is the sleepy little burg that i prefer it to be.

yesterday was the best Saturday i've had in a long, long time. i spent almost twelve hours hanging out with danny and jake. it was one of those evenings that you just can't let go of: it was 2 AM and we all thought that we'd just disband and go home, but then somebody said "let's make cookies." so we got in my car and went to the store and got stuff and came back and made cookies in danny's deserted apartment. and then about 3:30 it started thundering and eventually the power went out.

i've been getting in some really great shape recently. i've been running at the Field House almost every day. good for me.

i'm really getting antsy to start drawing AABH again. i sort of made a pact with myself, though, that i wouldn't draw anything until it had been completely re-written. and that isn't quite the case yet.

but anyway, life is really good.

this evening i got out my City High yearbook, scanned a few pictures and whipped together this little jpeg. i did it to illustrate something for my brother, but it's funny and i'll let you see it too:


these two guys, Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Yates are English teachers at CHS. but my friends and I always nicknamed them Mario and Luigi. aren't they perfect?

today was a great, great day.

i had a trainee today on Hospital, as always. this guy was from Australia. but he had lived in Bettendorf, Iowa since he was fourteen and had lost his accent. anyway, i knew something was amiss, because he kept pronouncing "Finkbine" as "FinkBEAN." so i asked him where he was from, and as he told me about Australia, his Australian accent gradually came back. it was funny. i guess people tend to compose themselves a particular way in order to fit in, and when those little social barriers go down (i.e. when i was interested in where he was from), so do the pretenses.

i wonder, if i lived in Australia for five years, would i retain or renounce my middle American accent? i guess it has something to do with development. i went to high school with a guy who was born in England and lost his accent around ninth grade. but his parents, who had lived in Iowa just as long as he had, of course, both speak perfect British to this day. i guess adolescents are more geared toward conformity than older folks. it would be difficult for the average teenager to go through high school in America if he or she sounded like Harry Potter.

jake and danny and i spent a long evening looking at old pictures, including several rolls from our high school orchestra's Europe tour in 2000. and it's making me REALLY want to travel the world again. i haven't left the USA since three years and four months ago when we got back from Germany. i haven't left the Midwest since our New York trip for new year's. i haven't left Iowa since two months ago when we drove to Minneapolis. i haven't left the Iowa City/Coralville area since a few weeks ago when the guys and i went to Toddville (or "Fuckville" as we call it) to try to see auroras. i haven't left my apartment for over two hours. etc. etc. etc. the point is, i want to travel abroad again.

i went to Wild Bill's Coffeeshop today. that place is great. normally when i think of coffeeshops i think of track lighting, abstract paintings and pretentious people stirring their double lattes and arguing about Robert Frost or whatever. but i walked into Wild Bill's (which is in a classroom in the school of social work on a really beautiful secluded part of the UI campus), and the guy who runs the place was sitting at a table building a gingerbread house. he immediately saw me and engaged me in friendly conversation, and we exchanged a dollar bill for a mug of hot cider. i felt like i was in preschool. i loved it.

WOW.

i did yet another No Shame piece last night. it was probably my best one yet. it was a somewhat risky and bold skit (for me anyway): the gist of the piece was that it was a review of that evening's show (i got special permission to go last so that this would work). of course, it was bullshit, because i had to write it before seeing any of the pieces, which is what made it funny. basically, i just stood up there on the stage and yelled libellous and terrible things about all of the other performers (most of whom put me to shame) and their writings.

there were some embarrassing moments, though, when the audience did NOT laugh at things that i really would have preferred they laugh at. and i really wish i could have performed it more confidently. the whole evening i was sweating bullets because, well, it's one thing to go onstage and act, and it's another thing entirely to go onstage and say bold things designed specifically to offend specific people who were all in the room.

i love it when i hear a piece of music and am immediately transported to another time in my life when i used to listen to whatever it was more.

i've been listening to several albums that i haven't listened to much since last fall: Billy Breathes by Phish, a Cat Stevens compilation, Hearts and Bones by Paul Simon. all three of these albums are incredibly nostalgic on their own, and it's amazing how they make me feel nostalgic about a period of my life in which there was very, very little to be nostalgic about: i was living at home, working for near minimum wage at a bakery-cafe chain, not in school, and not doing anything creative worth mentioning (except for a handful of animations). now, of course, i'm paying for my own apartment downtown, earning a good $9.50 an hour, in school (only technically), and, well, i have been doing SOME creative stuff these days. it's not like the left side of my brain is dormant, although sometimes it seems that way.

really, i actually have been doing quite a bit of stuff. this week i did another animation very much like the ones i did last fall. i'm sort of proud of it, but i can definitely see the errors. here it is: a 48-frame sneak cycle on ones (24 fps) the major problem is that i can't figure out how to make arms move right. but other than that, it looks ok. in case you don't know, that's Barry, a character from QPQ whom i enjoy ressurrecting now and then for things like this.

also, the past few weeks i've been working on yet another No Shame Theatre skit. this one is going to be real groundbreaking. myabe not for No Shame, but definitely for me. i'm going to perform it on Friday, unless greater forces interfere.

there is a cool exhibit in the U of I main library that displays a bunch of pictures, articles and artwork from University of Iowa yearbooks going back to the 1890s. lots of good stuff, including some cool student-drawn cartoons from the early 20th century, and a cartoon by Milt Caniff drawn specially for the Iowa yearbook! also, there was a photo of Jerome Silberman, who is better known as Gene Wilder, in a student production of Harvey back when Wilder was an undergraduate at Iowa in 1953! coolest guy ever.

ok, i need to shut up and go to bed.

Paul Newman certainly knows a thing or two about salsa.

i've been SO lazy the past few weeks, and it's really bringing me down. there are many, many creative things i could be doing. i have tons of unfinished projects lying around, and there's nothing standing in the way of me finishing them except for my inability to just sit my ass down and do them. it's not good.

i think i'm entering "the Big Suck" which sort of happens to me every November and February.

last night a lot of weird things were going on, and i'm not going to elaborate, but it was weird. although, it was great chilling with Cody, my childhood friend whom i haven't seen for months. also, later we all had a good conversation, using the magic of danny's cell phone speakerphone, with Christer in Minnesota.

there's a country song i like, called Beautiful Mess by Diamond Rio.

since Dan's X-Box and Playstation were stolen, we've been playing a lot of original Nintendo. i had at first thought that the reason i stopped playing video games was that i had grown up, but i think i've realized that the reason is that games aren't as good as they used to be. or maybe i'm just ignorant.

today i went to the Public Library and got these CDs: 1) Best of the Righteous Brothers because the guy died this week, and it's true that the world appreciates you more posthumously. especially if your death is sudden and/or bizzarre. (remind me to pick up a Johnny Cash CD one of these days.) 2) Blues, Rags & Hollers by Koerner, Ray and Glover. recommended by David Bowie in an article i read in (ugh) Vanity Fair. plus i'm a real sucker for good folk music. 3) A Peter Paul and Mary CD, which i got mostly because i wanted Leaving On A Jet Plane on my computer. 4) The Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco because i remember listening to this at Christer's house and enjoying it a lot. plus i lost my copy of Somethin' Else and i haven't listened to Cannon in a while. 5) The Bewitched by Harry Partch, an artist also recommended by David Bowie. Partch invented a lot of instruments, including the Chromelodeon, the Surrogate Marimba, and Boo and the Spoils of War. actually, i think i remember hearing this guy on The Schickele Mix one time. hmm. 6) a best-of compilation of a funk group i've never heard of, The Ohio Players. in the liner notes, it says: "They were, first and foremost, seventies funk's all-time finest. Yet the Ohio Players were more than mere mortal, fo'-on-the-flo' funkateers. These MO'FOs (with a capital everythang) could puh-lay!" i can't tell if that paragraph is cool or just a white man's posturing. but i got the CD and we'll see if it's good.

so i've been wondering if i should even continue going to the University. for many, many reasons. mostly, i feel like i just don't belong in a classroom. i don't think i've ever been able to keep myself interested in a given class for more than a few weeks, let alone dedicate all of my free time to essays and homework and other idiotic things for these classes. just taking one class can be an excruciating bore for me, and the prospect of taking years upon years of these classes just for a dumb bachelor's degree is not something that has ever excited me.

also, i think that i've sort of grown up under the myth that you're a burden on society if you don't have a college degree or are in the process of acquiring one. i guess this is a mindset i've been in since high school, and i'd rather like out.

it all depends on whether you are comfortable with working a lower-wage, less secure job than you might get if you had a degree or two. personally, as a person of relatively few materialistic desires, i would rather work a modest job, collecting money to survive and go out every once in a while and perhaps start a guitar collection, than spend four to ten years of my young life writing pointless essays to earn an "instant salary certificate" from an institution of higher learning.

anyway, there's a lot more feeding into this issue, but i'm not in a typing mood right now.

this weekend, aside from Friday night, has been a real bore.

and it's basically been raining for all of November so far.

i have to work early tomorrow, so i am going to bed.

last week i detached a sticker from a Rubbermaid garbage can and affixed it to the back of my car. it says "Six Quart Wastebasket." because that's basically what my car is, a six quart wastebasket.

and today i went to Tru Value (how many years will it take for me to stop calling it Tru Value and start calling it ACE Hardware? Answer: a LOT) and got me a small metal sticker that says "NO ADMITTANCE" and i put that on the driver's side door. i also got one that says "GARBAGE ONLY" but i am still deciding where to attach it (if i even do).

the moral: the best bumper stickers aren't bumper stickers.

also, tonight i have to drive "Saferide" (Iowa City's weekend drunk bus) from 12-2AM. so, if you AREN'T killed on the road by a drunk driver between those hours, you might just have me to thank.

Halloween is fun.

today i worked a LOT.

and then i went to No Shame Theatre, as per normal Friday routine. tonight's show was short, and i thought, uninspired. but afterwards we all had a really good time downtown looking at people's costumes. there were some really good ones, including a very convincing Jay and Silent Bob, two teams of "Supermarket Sweep" contestants, multiple guys dressed as large erect phalli... but i think my favorite was a guy dressed as a Nintendo Entertainment System, complete with a controller that dragged behind him.

it brought a tear to my eye that all of these people who were normally decked unoriginally in hipster attire were together celebrating the spirit of wacky nonconformity. although there were way too many people dressed in the exact same storebought Spongebob costume.

next year maybe i'll try to put together a costume.