I went to see Collider record a live album on saturday night. On the way home Aliza and I played a new game where we pretend to be a drunken fighting couple. I would keep grabbing her arm and saying "come on!" and she would shake me off and yell and say she wanted another drink. This is funny to us, because we see these drunken fighting couples all the time and they make us uncomfortable. I think it would be really funny though if it turned out that all the other couples were faking it too, and in reality everyone is just having a good laugh.

Engagement Barbecue was yesterday. It was a delightful affair, the sun almost came out for about five minutes, and I was mildly drunk by 1:30 in the afternoon. It was totally sweet of my parents and Aliza's parents to put it together for us, and I think we were very gracious guests of honor.

After we wheedled our friend Rob into driving us back into the city (hey, we had a lot of gifts, we couldn't lug them all onto NJ TRansit...) we were wiped out. Aliza and I just lay in front of the TV for the rest of the night and watched the Tony's. Strangely we find them to be entertaining, despite the fact that we never go see any of the shows. Last year the only thing we'd seen was "Top Dog/Underdog", but we still watched the whole awards show.

Brian Denehy got up and totally dissed Eddie Izzard, who he had just beaten out for Best Actor in a Play. First thing he said was "Eddie Izzard would've been funnier". Har har, big joke, Eddie Izzard is a funny dancing monkey here to make you all laugh. Nevermind that he was up for his role in a drama - he's really just a funny clown who dresses like a woman. Speaking of Eddie Izzard's cross-dressing Brian Denehy next launched in to how Eddie should have his own category - since he's such a weirdo! I think he realized the gaffe this time, 'cos he quickly mumbled something about Eddie Izzard deserving an award and then looked nervous for the rest of his speech. Of course I have no idea what I'm talking about, but it's fun to play armchair critic when I'm sprawled out on the couch, my stomach full of hot dogs and potato salad. For all I know Eddie Izzard was laughing too. I don't even know if Eddie Izzard's play was a drama, I just assumed so since everyone looks so serious in the promo pictures I saw.

Talked about "Smells Like Teen Spirit" today. Mentioned how it is the official anthem of our generation ("our" meaning me and people who're around my age). This seems to be something that people agree with. Funny though, I didn't really like the song when it was big. I wasn't even trying to be anti-mainstream in those days either, I just only really liked bands like Queen and Billy Joel and the Who. It wasn't until later that I decided I liked the Nirvana song.

It makes me sad that I missed out on the whole grunge scene. I would have liked to have been a part of the whole grunge "happening" when it was happening. Then I could have stories about going to see cool bands when they were in their prime instead of the actual concerts I went to when I was in high school, which was basically two Rush concerts and one The Who concert where they'd played with the philharmonic.

If it counts for any kind of grunge cred, Eddie Vedder showed up at that Who concert. Also: Linda Perry from 4 Non Blondes, and also The Spin Doctors who sang "My Generation". So even though it wasn't a cool concert to go to it was still clearly a part of the sign of the times. Incidentally, I always really loved Linda Perry's cover of "Captain Jack". Embarassingly it got me to become the one and only fan of the 4 Non Blondes album "bigger, faster, better, more..." (or something). This lead me to become a fan of today's hot act "Pink", when I saw on the MTV show "Driven" that she too was a Linda Perry fan. Now I think "Mizzundastood" is a great listen. Thus: My out of touchness back in my own youth has somehow brought me into being in touch with the kids of today.

I don't know what I'm on about today. It's six o' clock friday, and I wanna go home.

The radio was telling me the news this morning as I was getting ready for work. As usual, the news was depressing. Today they were talking about how the unemployment rate went from such and such percentage last year up to such and such a higher percentage this year. I liked it better during the web boom, when everyone was getting paid big money for work they weren't necessarily qualified to do. Then I thought about how the bottom fell out, and all the investors took all their money away. Then I got pissed, and socialistic, because really all that was happening with the boom was that some of the money that the rich people have anyway was getting spread around a bit. Why shouldn't we internet workers get paid inflated wages for little work? What's wrong with that? It's not like these wealthy people don't get money for nothing.

Anyway, I am finally feeling less sick, which is good because I have a busy weekend coming up. Aliza and I are going to go see the rabbi for a second time, and I am going to be scolded for not doing my readings on Jewish weddings (I already know what happens, we smash a glass, and then I ride around on a chair), and then we are going to go help Aliza's mom get ready for our Engagement Party on sunday. The Engagement Party will be interesting, it will be the first time I've been in a setting with my whole family, someone else's whole family, and then a bunch of my friends from different walks of life. I'm one of those people who likes to compartmentalize the people I know, and not mix them up that often. It helps me, because it's easier for me to keep track of how I behave around which people. Am I condescending to this person?, am I a suck-up to this person, do talk about comics with this person or not? etc... I don't know how I'll behave with everyone there at once. I guess I'll know next week.

Got my Gabagool! shirts in the mail yesterday, and they look nice. Apparently the cafepress site will start charging money if I don't sell a certina amount of product in six months, so if anyone is thinking of getting a snappy looking Gabagool! 4 t-shirt, waste no time! (Wife-beater shirts recently added)

Lousy weekend. I have had a cold I can't quite shake, so I pretty much stayed in and moped.

Started watching the Toy Story DVD disc with all the extras. Some of it was pretty interesting, but it is mostly a series of slideshows that you have to scroll through. Like, they have a segment called "character design ", which I figured would be a neat little mini-documentary showing the various designs of the characters and a little bit of commentary. Sadly, like I said, it was just a slideshow of about a billion little drawings of each character that you had to hit your arrow buttons to look through. I don't know about anyone else's DVD players, but mine takes a good 2 or 3 seconds to load everytime you hit one of those buttons, so I quit watching almost immediately.

There were also "Deleted Animations", which mainly showed little segments that were made, but then later edited out, or changed. This was pretty interesting, but on the Toy Story I features under this heading was a segment called "Render Bigs". I checked that out, and it turns out to be about 8 or 9 little snippets of animations where things got fucked up in the rendering. So in some cases the wrong symbol was being used in the animation (in one case Rex's head is replaced by a human hand), or the pieces are out of synch, or placed wrong in the frame. I don't know why they thought this was something that people wanted to see. I have animated stuff for work from time to time, and it's not that unusual to fuck something up as you're building it. You make the animation, you look at it, you see the bug, and then you fix it. You don't make a DVD reel out of it. That's just self-indulgence.

On the upside, when Aliza comes back from her trip we will watch Toy Story 2, which I think it the best Pixar movie, and I daresay may be one of my favorite animated movies of all time. She has not seen it yet, so that'll be fun.

Haven't said much this week. I'm not sure if it's 'cos I'm busy, or because I'm concerned my life has been getting boring.

THE MAIN EVENTS OF THE WEEK:

1) Got the proof back from the printers of Gabagool! #4. It looks awesome. I feel so legitimate. On June 11th all the finished comics will be shipped from Canada to Chris Radtke's house, where he will store them in his basement - but not on the floor! I think it's risky keeping things in basements, because basements tend to leak, but he claims he has thought of this and devised a place to keep them where they would be safe from natural disaster.

2) Finished coloring Gabagool! #3 for moderntales, and I was told the stuff looked great. The story will go up in June sometime, not exactly sure when yet. Will be followed up by another Gabagool! story in August, which I will start coloring soon.

3) Played Hero Clix on wednesday, and kicked everybody's asses. Once more, I had dreams of being a Hero Clix. That's what you get from 6 hours of intense concentration. Concentration ON DESTRUCTION!

WHAT I HAVE PLANNED FOR THIS WEEKEND:

Nothing. Aliza is out of town. I am going to draw, perhaps play a little Clix, and get my hair cut. I need to get it cut now because it takes a week or two to look any good, which will coincide perfectly with the big MOCCA show on June 22nd.

Aliza and I cannot decide on dishes. It can't be done. Who knew it would be such a task? We almost agreed on a set of dishes that had little cartoons of French waiters on it, but luckily we changed our minds. The problem is that you have to think of these dishes in the long term. Sure, I think it'd be cute to eat my cereal out of a cartoon French waiter dish for a week or so, but 40 years from now I am going to be sick of them...

From what I heard on the radio last night we are going to start getting pushy with Iran. Also, the government is continuing it's process of quietly admitting that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

I made a little "store" at this place called cafepress.com, where you can go if you want a T-Shirt with the cover of Gabagool #4 on it. I may be overestimating the demand for such a thing, but hey, it's possible that someone might want one, and they're not that pricey. If anybody wants the design on something other than a T-Shirt (mouse pad anyone?) send me an e-mail and I'll hook it up.

The forecast for my three day weekend: Rain. This depresses me before I even get out of the gate. Nothing I hate worse than a crap weekend, especially one where I've got little-to-no solid plans as such. We have a couple things going on, but when you can't really go out much I find that axes my weekend activity fun by about 2/3rd's. I like being able to walk around and go places, not having to sit inside and watch TV. (well, I don't mind watching TV, but when I do it for twelve hours straight 'cos it's shitty out, then I get a headache...)

Gabagool#4 gets here in a little over 2 weeks. I am so excited. The people who've read it so far seem to approve, and I feel very confident in it. I can't wait for MOCCA. It's going to ROCK-A! (I know, that's a dumb thing to say, but I actually think those words every time I say "Mocca", so I thought I might as well get the phrase copywrited to me by posting it up here, even if it is dumb...)

There is a pregnant woman in my office. I thought she looked pregnant a few days ago, but I knew you can't really ask someone if they're pregnant or if they've just been gaining weight. Conveniently I overheard her talking to a co-worker about pregnancy, so I am going to use my detective skills and deduce that she is, in fact, knocked up. I told Aliza I couldn't wait until she was pregnant, I think she'll be so cute all waddly and bloated and cranky. Aliza disagrees.

The kick ass cover of Gabagool! #4 can be found here, and the laff riot backup story starring the "lil' Gabagool! Kids" can be found here. Warning: This could be a heavy page, you might have to wait a moment for it to load.

Swell weekend of Birthday Celebrations and Socializing Fun Times. Culminated in me cooking Aliza dinner for her birthday. I know, it might not sound like much, but considering that the only other thing I ever cooked was Pea Soup "from scratch", it was a major step for me. My soon-to-be-brother-in-law was responsible for giving me all the tips I needed, and it went over very well.

I was totally stressed in the "Garden of Eden" market though, where I was trying to buy Flank Steak. I didn't know where anythign was, and there were tons of people in there who seemed to have more of a clue than me, so I felt very lost. I forget that to some people cooking dinner is a fairly normal thing to do.

I also never knew that the actual cooking time of some dishes is under 45 minutes to an hour. In fact, steak took 10 minutes to sear on both sides in the broiler, and the aspargus only took 5. I always assumed that anything, except the kind of food that you just heat up, like soup or beans, took almost an hour to cook.

This is a new and exciting world to me. Maybe I can learn to cook well. Aliza said my steak came out perfectly, so perhaps I have a gift for it...

Okay, I have decided what songs I would want covered should we still have Collider play for us at the wedding. Earlier I had thought of having them cover "Funny How Love Is" from the Queen II album, a delicious deep cut indeed. It occurs to me that probably one of my favorite Queen songs is on the same album, actually right before FHLI. It's called "The March of the Black Queen" and it's a kick ass eight minute or so mini-rock opera. It has all these different parts that I could totally see this band playing (they are good musicians) and all those patented Queen "aaaahhhs" that I love so much. The best part is that it goes directly into Funny How Love Is on the album, so it will make an awesome Queen rock block. And like I said, it's about a deep a cut as you can get, and I know the Collider guys like that.

I'm psyched.

Decided on a whim last night to try and go see the Matrix Reloaded. So walked over to the theater near the house thinking I could pick up tickets. No such luck. There was a big crowd outside, and even though they had movies starting every half hour, the first non sold-out show was midnight. So Aliza and I just went and got some dinner with her brother and his friend from out of town.

I should have known better though. I gathered through the nerd-grapevine that people bought their tickets to see this movie over two weeks ago. You can't go see anything on opening night in this city without buying the ticket six months ahead of time it seems. Oh well, I don't care that much, The Matrix has never been a movie I was particularly fond of. Interestingly, I was reading John Byrne's forum a few days ago, and I saw that he has the same exact problem with the first movie as I do: which is that the "heroes" of the movie kill a lot of innocent people in their quest for freedom. At some point Morpheus says something about how Neo has to regard the humans that are still a part of the Matrix as enemies, and then when Neo and co. go to bust Morpheus out of the building they shoot the shit out of a bunch of security guards and stuff. What was their crime? That they were not "enlightened" as to the true nature of reality, the way that Neo and his cool leather buddies were. Whatever, I'm sure tons of people have beef with this movie for the exact same reason, but it was a pleasant suprise to see John Byrne felt the same way I did. He was a favorite creator of mine as a kid, and I was a little saddened to see that his online persona had become this shrill and angry man. But, maybe I mis-judged, who knows?

Today begins Aliza's Birthday Festival which will carry us through monday with it's various celebrations and get togethers. Tonight's activity is Dinner with My Folks, and they've even come into the city for it. Tomorrow is the Meal with all the Friends, and sunday is the Meal with Aliza's Folks. Then monday is the Meal for Just Me and Her, and after that life returns to normal and Aliza loses her VIP birthday-girl status.

New review of Gabagool! #1 Special Edition here. This guy seemed to like it, but doesn't seem to think the ugly nature of the book is for everyone. He will probably not like the newer Gabagool! stories much at all...

Trounced Alex in Heroclix last night. 2 games to 0. Next week we'll play again, with Radtke as a third, and we will truly have ourselves a war. Alex is hard at work on a custom battlefield. My suggestion is to re-create a scale grid of New York and stage the Battle for Manahattan. The next step is to take it beyond the grid paper and into 3-D cardboard buildings...

This week has been rough in terms of drawing comics. I think it might be because I just wrapped on G4, so I don't have anything else to do but do all the pre-press work so's I can send the book out sometime next week. And now I am supposed to work on things like invitations and stuff for the wedding. I should also start working on any little comics that I wanna make as a favor for the guests.

Also, the past two nights have turned up the most wondrous distractions. Monday's was pathetic: I got sucked into this stupid Three's Company movie that came on after Fear Factor (which always sucks me in). I don't wanna harp on about the Three's Company movie too much (it's embarrassing enough that I watched it), but I couldn't help but notice that Janet was the only cast memeber who had anything to do with it, and in the movie Janet was the only character who didn't screw anybody over, but was instead screwed in one way or another by Chrissy or Jack. Oh Janet, why are you blaming the others for your lack of post-Three's company success? They're talented people. Maybe if you'd showed some solidarity with Chrissy you all woulda' got raises, she wouldn't have been kicked off the show, and it wouldn't have sunk in the ratings. Look at the cast of Friends now, see how they do it. If you're the number one show in the country, there's nothing wrong with asking that you get paid something that reflects that. (Although, I will admit, according to the Three's Company movie I saw, Chrissy got a little out of hand with her demands). Anyway, I guess my main point is: Isn't there something wrong with a movie that asks us to treat the Network executives as the heroes and think of the evil greedy actors as the villains. Those poor execs, they were only trying to make an honest buck, why'd that money-grubbing cast member have to destroy such a good thing? Oh Chrissy, didn't you realize that the producers were only making the show out of the goodness of their hearts, and you had to ruin it by bringing money into the equation?

Ok, I have to stop. I've already harped on more than I wanted. Like I said, it's embarrassing that I got so caught up in this movie. I am going to be sure to not watch the Martha Stewart movie they have coming out in a few weeks, as I think my thoughts on whatever that is will not make exciting journal reading...

Instead, lemme tell you about last night's distraction: Heroclix! Yes, some friends came over and introduced me to this new nerdy pastime, where you get to be the heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe, and the objective of the game is to simply "get the other player". It was good fun. I dreamt about battle strategies all night (except for the part of the dream where I was being attacked by Freddy Kreuger and Jason Vorhees) and I think I may have come up with an idea of how I can combine Heroclix and Lord of the Rings RISK, and make the Ultimate Dork Game of All Time!

Anyway, these are all bad things, because I should be drawing, not acting like a man-child with my little superhero figurines or watching garbage on TV and yelling about it afterwards...

Also: The lineup of the 2003 SPX anthology was announced, and Dirty Banana made the cut. Pretty sweet news. There is a link to the story somewhere in one of these posts, so if you want to go to the trouble of searching for it amongst my babble, then you can save yourself the eight bucks it'd cost you to buy the book.

SPX books are notoriously hit and miss. I do feel though that mine and Chris's story kicks ass, and this year we will be the toast of Bethesda...

Friday night: Went to see "Spellbound", the documentary about 8 or 9 kids competing in the 1999 National Spelling Bee. It was like the definition of "bittersweet". I found it to be very touching, funny, and melancholy all at the same time. I got weepy when the brother of one of the contestants talked about how proud her family was of her, and how they'd come to this country so their children could succeed, and now they had and they were very proud. I'm not embarrassed, I think it's okay to let the emotions out once in a while.

I participated in a message board thread about the importance of spelling over here, which I thought was pretty funny, but also relevant. I like especially how a couple of the people who are notoriously bad spellers get all bent out of shape and indignant, arguing not that they are bad spellers, but that the people who point it out are judgmental and anal retentive.

Maybe I only see it from my point of view, because I am a reasonably good speller, and I try and correct my typos when I can. I'm not perfect though, just reasonable.

Yesterday Aliza and I plunged back into bridal registration hell. This time: Bloomingdales. We are having real issues with our plates. Can't agree on a pattern to suit both our fancy. This is because Aliza's tastes run more "modern", and mine more "country homes and gardens". So I'd like the plates with the flower patterns, and she'd like the ones with the facist-like-suprematist-art-for-art's-sake-minimalist-speckle pattern on it. We have yet to find our middle ground.

Watched a film clip of Picasso in his studio fiddling with his sculptures. A co-worker of mine mused "I'd like to live like that, in some sweet spot in France, just dinking around in my studio all day". I couldn't agree more. Who are these people who get to live lives like this? He's just tinkering around, all fat and hairy, with his paper mache donkey. That's all Picasso has to do with his day. One day I hope to be just like Picasso, except not hairy and bald.

Aliza keeps mentioning some desire to move to England. I don't know where this is coming from. Why would she want to live in England? Who wants to live somewhere were it rains all the time. It brings you down. That's why Brits always look so miserable. You'd be miserable too if you had to go to the beach in a sweatshirt and bring along a "windbreaker" to sit behind so you don't freeze to death. Then you have to pay 6 dollars a gallon for gas for your dinky little car that will get you back to your dinky little house along some tiny narrow roads. Who needs that?

Nothing exciting to report. Couldn't work last night, everything was coming up crap. So I watched a bunch of HBO On Demand "Sex and the City", which is a funny show and hung with Aliza.

Tried to convince Aliza that we should just go to Las Vegas for a long weekend and get married. We could blow a ton of money doing it, and still come out ahead from where we're gonna be. But, I realize it's too late for that now anyway. Some people are already booked, and I only just sent out my little cards to my groomsmen and best man asking them to do the honors. If we backed out now they'd all be so let down.

Aliza is not sure what songs to ask Collider to cover for us. I am pretty sure I'm going with "Funny How Love Is" by Queen. She is not so certain. I like "Crazy on You" by Heart, but I think she was just kidding when she suggested it. I also enjoy the song "All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You" also by Heart, but that's my own issue and has nothing to do with the wedding...

If fact, I am going to go listen to my MP3 of that right now, and then after that "Freebird".

First off: My archives now work. This makes me feel good, and less hopeless.

The insides of Gabagool #4 are now done. I worked like a fiend all weekend to get it finished. I am determined that we'll get this thing printed up properly. Now all that is left to do is the cover. Radtke and I are both undecided on whether or not we want to go with our first idea for a cover, which was to make it like an homage to an issue of the Fantastic Four with the Watcher's first appearance. We think it's a funny cover, but are unsure if we want our first properly printed comic to have a swiped image on the front. I dunno, we will discuss this more later.

My plan is to wrap this issue and get it sent out to the printers by the end of the week, or early next week.

Printing it makes so much sense on many levels, I am annoyed that we never did it before. If my quotes are right, we can print 2000 copies for under 1000 bucks. It is totally reasonable to sell them for 3 bucks. The math there works out to be that we'd make about 5000 bucks profit. However, we all know that they won't all get sold, or at least won't be sold for full price, but even then we can recoup all our money and earn a little more. I am very excited.