Flywheel

Spring Loaded

The Way Things G (r)o (w)

This started out to be a sketch of Violet but turned into something else again.

hobbling along

no new drawings, I've more important ways to spend my time:

This is my favorite gossip headline of late:

"Kid Rock arrested for Waffle House brawl"


I consider it genius to brawl in a waffle house.

Night Creatures

but she's terrified of him

Hell Pug

This is my first drawing on my friends drawing tablet. Lame, but funny?

My sign!

I'm so excited! learningtoloveyoumore.com posted my sign!

Link

Hello?

It's hard to maintain your dignity in some outfits

I wouldn't

This is what Zina Marina* sees when she reads "Do you want to be a model?"


*"Zina Marina" = the Gogol Bordello song I'm currently obsessed with. It's about sex trafficking in Ukraine.

After the Deposition

After I testified all day I felt like I had climbed a mountain, or defended my village against intruders or something.

Lynda Barry says: "You know that feeling? when you finish a book you really love, that you almost want to make out with it?"* I'm feeling that way about this Steinberg book, Reflections and Shadows.



I wish it would go out with me.


* not an exact quote

Saul Steinberg on America

"Here there is every sort of felicita, including the horrendous happiness of Florida, concentration camps for old people, the happiness of the rich, who want only to buy things, and the happiness of the bums, the human wrecks. In every large city there's a place called skid row (in New York, it's the Bowery), which is the free zone for derelicts and drunkards, people who want to end their lives in their own way, looking for happiness until the end according to their own judgment, even if they're idiots or lunatics. As long as they don't bother others too much, the police leave them alone. When winter comes they arrest them all and put them in jail, just to keep them warm, so they don't freeze to death...There are those who work steadily for years, businessmen with families, and all of a sudden they enter the skid-row world, and prefer to spend the rest of their lives there. Suicide, except it takes a little longer.


On the Bowery you see many noble faces, marked by life's sufferings, but without the degradation of vulgarity and cunning. There are artists there, painters (I'm not talking about musicians or writers, who don't belong to the same family), defenseless, childish creatures who use their intelligence and courage not for survival, who are primarily concerned with their integrity; who don't exploit anyone, or live on this earth like those who are born with a specific purpose and think of life as something from which to gain the greatest possible advantage."

Saul Steinberg with Aldo Buzzi, Reflections and Shadows (The Saul Steinberg Foundation, 2001. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., NY, 2002, English translation copyright 2002 by John Shepley)

Candy

I'm just getting home from school. I have my red plaid book bag. One of its buckles is undone and my messy papers peek out. Mommy is wiping her hands on her apron and smiling. She says did I notice what was on the table? I look over, there are two red velvet heart-shaped boxes. One's for me and one's for my sister. They are from Grandpa who makes candy and sells it in his cafe. It's weird for him to give me such a nice present. I don't even remember meeting him; maybe once. He had a cigar and needed a shave. He didn't talk to me but "played poker" with my sister. She was 6 or 7. She was supposed to have played golf with him too and gotten a hole-in-one. I can't figure out what this means but it makes all the adults happy.

When Grandpa died we had to hang around this hotel with big-patterned, reddish carpet and wait a lot. My cousins were there. We watched Gilligan's Island in the room and looked at what brands all the grown ups smoked by reading the butts in the ash tray. Some had lipstick on them.

My Mom made me go look at him in the coffin. She said "Maybe you could say a little prayer for him." We never pray in my house. I don't even know how. Something about the whole visit has made my Mom nervous.

Pug Muffin

Dream

The Feathered Couple

Violet on couch

Brave New Nose?

(I hit myself in the nose with a chair. Smooth, yes?)

Gallery of Feathered Bangs

Tough Homeroom Girl

I liked this sneaky, tough girl from homeroom. She wore turtlenecks to hide her suckermarks. She had killer feathered-bangs.

Small memory

Chris Hughes asked me if he could borrow my pen. I handed him my bic and he took the cap off and cleaned his ears with it. He wasn't trying to be mean or anything, he just wanted something to clean his ears with.

Ah. Mt. Healthy.

Critters

The girl and the creature are BOTH supposed to be the Critters.

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We're ok.

Here's a doodle I made when my Dad went into the Alzheimer's home.

Toxfail

Smoking Curler Lady

What breed of dog do you think she owns?

I'm thinking chihuahua-mix.

Couch-arm Straddler

Violet fell asleep while begging this morning.

powpow

This is because of Spring and because of thinking about Ron Rege.

"Winchester Cathedral"

I'm in the bathroom playing around. I have perfume from Avon and I can't believe how good it smells. "Winchester Cathedral" is playing on the beige clock radio in my parents bedroom down the hall. I love that song.
I have this headscarf that's pink with yellow flowers on one side and yellow with pink on the other. It's cotton and kind of sturdy and the right size for a kid. I think it's elegant. I spray it with the delicious perfume until it's wet. It's reeking. I think it smells heavenly but everybody in my family complains and teases me. My Dad call it "stinky". It's fun, this teasing, I know they don't really mind. For weeks I wear that scarf as often as I can get away with it.

Self Portrait -eek!

My eyes are funky.

Henry Waits

New Dress

In the 2nd grade, we girls all wore poufy dresses, which became even poufier when we sat on the heat vent. We'd pretend to be pregnant.

Work Doodle

What Grandma Brought

Face powder,
Listerine,
and Twinkies.

They Say It's Spring

The Poo Meditations

That's what I should have called this blog.


Let's just say a certain odor permeated today's morning meditation.
Why do I have dogs again?

(It was on my slipper, by the way.)

After the Walk

Trust Me

Vat ees dees? your guess is as good as mine...

One word: Tuna

I was cleaning out my desk at work last night. I knew my lunch bag was in there, I just thought it was empty. It wasn't. I think you see what I'm getting at.

I DID think I smelled something...a few months back.

Growly

I had a dream that I was this animal, angrily running around the house, and turning into smoke and slithering up the ductwork. I had to find out who had moved all the rooms around.

Joy that knows no bounds

Violet brought me a dry dog poo as a gift this morning....laid it at my feet. When I tried to take it away, she jumped on the bed with it.
This is my life.

Shaving

Once I caught Grandma shaving in the bedroom mirror
She was embarrassed and laughed.

Sunday Night Chinese

I love The Mandarin, it's so warm and luxurious, plus I get to be alone with Daddy for the whole ride here and back. I'm a little afraid here though, it's dark and adult feeling. There is a bar made of what looks like leather, fake leather I guess, and it's too tall for me to see over. I look at the front of it where there are designs made with upholstery tacks. The design in front of me is a martini glass.

Daddy talks amiably with the owner who brings our food in crisp brown paper bags, neatly folded over with the check stapled on. I'm so hungry, I almost can't stand the 40 minute drive home before we can eat. The egg rolls are not like the pale cabbage filled things you get today, but fat and crispy with whole shrimp inside.

Now I understand that we chose a restaurant so far away so that my Dad could be away from the house longer, but I still don't understand exactly why.

Toof

More about Grandma

Every morning she put her hair up perfectly without a mirror and every evening she'd brush it 100 strokes. My sister and I marveled at its length. I thought it looked like a horse's tail.

What Goes Around...

Not sure where this image came from, but there it is.

Grandma

Midnight or so, we'd pick her up. It was always cold.

Being Sued

Little Story

This little story is from a killer writing workshop I was lucky enough to take with Lynda Barry this fall:

I am at Caroline's house after school. We watched Speed Racer and now we're looking at the fish tank. We both think the shark is the coolest with his red tail. I want one. There are also neon tetras which glow. Everything is glowing, the tetras, the TV, the aquarium itself. Mrs. Sommers is in the kitchen behind us. It glows too. It's so cozy in this house I love it. I love this time of year and this time of day and somehow Caroline and I can't stop laughing. She has the coolest clothes and hair, granny glasses and long straight California hair. She actually is from California so that's even cooler. This is while we're still friends, before she quit talking to me and started hanging out with Suzanne. She has two dachshunds, Max and Michelle. Michelle i s a miniature and smaller but we like them both. It's ok for Max to be bigger and quiet because he's a boy dog. There is plush wall to wall carpeting in all the bedrooms here. Mrs. Sommers does her butt exercise, inching her way across the pale green soft carpet on her seat. She drives a yellow 4-4-2. Beautiful pale yellow. All Caroline has is amazing.

1st little drawing: Me without caffeine