The comics crusade

My brother Wolf and I collaborated on many crazy projects when we were little, so I suppose it was only natural when we started an ongoing comic together for no real reason other than to crack each other up. This was back in the early 90s when I was living in L.A. (L.A. in the 90s! Woot, woot!) and Wolf was in New York, so we'd send them via good ole snail mail, and I remember Wolf used to (I'm not sure I did) draw really hilarious things on the envelopes. Damn, I should post one of those envelopes. Maybe I will!

Anyway, here are the first couple frames of what we ended up with. His is the first three frames, mine are the next four. I'm too lazy to post all 8 pages, but I'll tell you this: there is no way you can possibly guess what happens to this poor head and its resulting headless body. So much. Too much!



Well, recently a little bird reminded me about this strip (thanks DPE IV) and I un-filed it and read it again after lo, so many years. Wolf and I had some fun chuckling over it again, and he reminded me that we took something more like six or seven, or, ahem, eight? years to finish(!!) — considering it's not so much finished as halted since we just dropped the ball completely at some point, but aha! still managed to tack a satisfying end onto it, if you ask me — as opposed to the mere two years, as I originally thought. In other words, we were a bit lazy about passing it back and forth.

This step back in time coincided some with Wolf's birthday this year, and we were inspired anew! Wolf dared me to start a new comic for us to collaborate on by his birthday (Nov. 17). Well, ha! I did it! The below is the first installment. So it's your turn now, bro. Get to work!

Click below if you'd like to see it larger.

30 rocks

What follows is the ultimate tribute, to anything — in this case, a Sesame Street sketch inspired by the brilliant TV show 30 Rock! Now, in my opinion, if you've never seen 30 Rock, you're crazy — no, wait, that's not what I was going to say. If you've never seen it, this won't make you understand why people (like ME!) keep rhapsodizing about how great the show is. So don't go ahead and watch this and then be all like, See? I knew that show wasn't for me. That would just be dumb. O.K., glad we cleared that up. Enjoy! And thanks, Keith!

Fr-fr-frightening

There have been scary monster buildings popping up all over this city for years now. And I mean years! But in the last few years? Holy crap. This one really knocked the wind out of me when I first saw it looming over Madison Avenue at 23rd street. Oh what a crazy long shadow this sucker is going to cast.



It ate these two little buildings.



You think I'm kidding? Well, where are they?! Before (June):



After (November):



O.K., I guess I'm kind of obsessed with this building. Wouldn't you be, if you saw this growing in what used to be a perfectly pleasant neighborhood? It's in the trendy box style that was such a hit for the New Museum on the Bowery recently. And it has that spooky overhang that just lends to its fearsomeness. How does that work, I wonder? But it's just so damn tall. It's sooooo tall. If I was going to take all the ogre-ish aspects away from it, and just see it for what it is, it would still look to me, at the very least, like it was a weird, skinny building that showed up one day to bug the two cool old buildings on the corner of Madison Avenue and 23rd street and won't leave them alone anytime soon. 

I guess you can tell, I don't have any great pictures of this damn monstrosity. THAT'S how big it is. Here it is with all the little people, scurrying around on 23rd street. Poor little people! Run, run!

Guess what

One guess.



What does this tell you.



That's right: I got a cell phone. And yes, that's correct: I've never had one in all the cell-phony years gone by. The more time passed, and the more cell phones proliferated across the country like horde upon horde of skittery bugs, the more I seemed to enjoy not carrying around anything that beeped or buzzed. But, alas. Especially recently, moments have cropped up where it would have been much more convenient to reach for something at least somewhat clean and that I could dial that was in my bag, as opposed to using one of the garbage-strewn, sticky, leaning-like-the-tower-of-Pisa, and frequently peed-upon remaining NYC phone booths.

(Have you stepped into a public phone booth lately? I hope not. It is kind of interesting, though, to see a part of the city that was of use for so long, fall into such neglect and disrepair. In a sort of Planet-of-the-Apes kind of way.)



So anyway, I finally did it, I joined the masses. I thought I was joining the masses when I started a blog. But no: every single soul out there does not have a blog. Every single soul out there does, however, have a cell phone. I mean, I almost got hit by a nun driving a van and talking on a cell phone recently, and no, it wasn't Halloween or even the days leading up to Halloween. A real nun! Ignoring the stop sign on the FDR drive and banging an incredibly careless, high-speed right onto Houston street!



Anyway. I've always loved the above street art by skullphone. I think it's a brilliantly dark and funny, not to mention accurate, image. Sigh.

Joyride!

Holy Halloween costumes!

Wow. I am totally familiar with my sister Brook's artistic genius and yet, it still (and will always, I'm sure) have the power to make me totally speechless. Check it out. She made my niece and nephew Hazy and Henry their costumes as she does every year. This time Henry was a lego guy version of himself, and Hazy was a princess fairy magic glittery star covered yeah, you get the picture. But will you look at these costumes? Henry can walk and move his arms and hold things in that crazy cardboard contraption. And look what happened to dozens of satiny fabric samples — why, they turned into an amazingly sewn petal skirt on a perfect dress with wings!



And there wasn't even a contest going on or anything. Which annoys me. I think she deserves some sort of trophy, or like, a series of trophies, presented to her on a daily basis all throughout November or something. Not that I'm so into awards or anything, but come on, now. The costume ambition and excellence exhibited here is on multiple trophy-deserving levels, don't you think? Here's Henry with his new friend, wearing his favorite t-shirt (from H&M, purchased by Erica, of course).



Well, apparently the kids had a great Halloween and scored tons of candy and attention. What a great mom you are, Brook. Kudos!

And speaking of inspired costumes, this was my favorite of the few I saw on the boob tube. (Hells no, I do not venture out on Halloween. N and O as in No, no, no.) A duo worked together to make this magic happen. She's the woman in the movie Psycho, and her partner is behind her, somehow making the shower curtain move while also making a shadowed stabbing motion at the curtain. She was able to scream and wave her bloody hands while walking down the avenue. Hooray for such creepy cleverness!

Thank you for this pic, bnittoli. Check out his photostream on Flickr to see more great costume pics from this year's Greenwich Village Halloween parade.