Brian's quite remarkable blog of wonder.

I had high hopes for this one, and they weren't really met. Sort of like the year 2005.

I've been reading books. Let's see if I have anything intelligent to say about them.

+ Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. His first novel, channeling Orwell. The storytelling skills - that page-turning fuel - are there, but the stylistic voice of the mature "so it goes" Vonnegut I love so much is absent. The guy who much later claimed that the secret to good writing is don't use semicolons! is the same guy who wrote this book? (But I really do like it so far.)

+ The Inner Circle, T. C. Boyle's novel about Alfred Kinsey's sex research. I tried hard to like this book. It's just, nothing happens. There's no clear conflict, no real solid characters, no ending (is that a spoiler?); the book is just an elaborate fractal of parenthetical comments. It could have been titled "SEX: Now That I Have Your Attention..." I don't want to call Boyle unscrupulous - the book isn't really pornographic or anything - but I'm sure there was a reason he chose Alfred Kinsey as a subject instead of Jonas Salk or somebody.

+ Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, Alan Alda's recent memoir. Ha ha! I got it for Christmas. I haven't started it yet, but I can't wait. It's autographed!

+ The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. It weighs 22.5 pounds. I've read about 8.9 pounds of it so far, and I'm loving it! Bill Watterson's extremely revealing introduction to the book made me very happy. As well as showing us some cool stuff (one of his Cincinatti Post political cartoons, early C+H submission samples, cartoons from high school and college, a 1995 oil painting of a New Mexico landscape, and other droolables), I believe he's beginning to shed some of the mystique he's created about himself as an untouchable comic strip deity, the crusty 'no-one-understands-me' essayist of the Tenth Anniversary Book. Watterson now comes across more as a regular guy, recalling his disasterous career in the early 80s ineptly and unwillingly doing editorial cartoons (a situation I also seem to have stumbled into), hinting at being "pathologically antisocial" and admitting that he didn't start off thinking that cartooning was art. Perhaps this will keep some of those Chagrin Falls stalkers at bay.

Book club is now adjourned.

Four jobs you've had in your life: Bakery cashier, Newspaper cartoonist, School bus driver, Transit bus driver

Four movies you could watch over and over: Contact, Fargo, A Hard Day's Night, Love and Death

Four places you've lived: Iowa City; Laramie, Wyoming; Albuquerque, New Mexico; um, Iowa City again.

Four TV shows you love to watch: Seinfeld, M*A*S*H, Arrested Development, Taxi

Four places you've been on vacation: New York City, Germany, Morocco, New Mexico

Four websites you visit daily: BBC News, Wikipedia, The Hunger Site, Boing Boing

Four of your favorite foods: Sweet corn, green chile stew, circus peanuts, the lemonade at Adventureland

Four places you'd rather be: New Mexico, Lake Baikal, Europe, Greenland

I was feeling reflective, and decided to read the last year of my blog. I came across this post in which I reproduce the poem When I Was One-and-Twenty by A. E. Housman, a piece of verse which cautions against recklessly falling in love. I re-read that poem and realized how poignantly ironic it is that I made that post, back then, when I was twenty-one, and could have used the advice. I have a feeling that if I'd truly understood the message of the poem at that particular moment in my life, I could have saved myself the "endless rue" of the miserable summer that was to follow. "But I was one-and-twenty, / No use to talk to me."

Re-re-reading it, it seems like there's a bit of irony at the end, as the twenty-two year old reflects arrogantly on himself just a year ago. Oh yeah, he's learned his lesson.

My neighbors (from the other half of the duplex) made this exact snowman in the front yard, with the tree sticking out of his body. Danny recognized the uncanny reference to Calvin and Hobbes and assumed naturally that I'd done it. I wish I had! Saturday we might make some snow goons in the back.

I'm reminded of this (probably Calvin-inspired) snow day back in high school:

It's interesting to see editorial cartoonists working on the topic of editorial cartoons.

Now that the Tribune Company is firing a handful of high-profile award-winning cartoonists, it's making me want to pursue that career path even less than I already did.

I'm basically finished with school, save a few finals (which usually don't give me too much trouble). My projects for break include:

- Making the music video for The Michael Tabors
- Updating all hell out of my web site
- Driving to Minnesota to visit Christer
- House/Dog sitting for Christine Rutledge
- Washing the dishes

I started storyboarding for the music video today. It's going to be cool! I'll keep blog readers apprised of more developments on that project as/if they happen. Lately I've had a lot of weird personal stuff to think about, and I'm hoping that won't get in the way of the creative stuff.

I sprained my left foot while performing at Best Of No Shame last night. It hurt a lot. This morning I went to the hospital. I'm on prescription pain killers, so I'm really tired and that's all I have to say.

Um, this cartoon is to accompany an article about a proposal in Congress to allow legal drinking for 18-21 year olds in the military. I couldn't find anything about this on the internet, so I don't really know anything about it. I guess I'll read the article.

Yesterday Dirty Sixty played live. It went OK I guess. A few fuckups. It started off pretty rocky (I broke a guitar string, a brand new one purchased the day before, during the second song). Some of the subsequent songs were great, including our finale - a hilarious rendition of Johann Strauss II's Frülingsstimmen Walzer. But man, I was really nervous throughout, probably owing to the fact that I had come directly from a stressful three hours of bus driving in blizzard conditions.

I sort of adhere to the theory that a lot of the appeal of rock music comes from the personalities of its performers. I think I realized sometime when I was up there that I'm not very good in the role of a rock band frontman. So regardless of how well we played, I can't be certain how well the audience enjoyed it. We know most of them, so there was a certain amount of civil applause.

Oh, and The Michael Tabors were great, as was their new album.

Get it? IC Alley? ICY? It's CLEVER.



I thought I would get in a good sketch of winter before it loses its novelty. I love the first snow.