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.

Today is awful. I have nothing to do at work, and the time is dragging by. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't X-Men tonight. Agh, I wish it was 9:30 already... I wanna watch X-Men!

I know, I know, I'm behaving insufferably, but it can't be helped. I was just very much into the X-Men comics as a kid, and I hear that this movie is supposed to be great, and the anticipation is killing me.

Ok, I gotta focus on something else. What else is going on? Well, it is going to cost a lot of money to print up Gabagool! #4 the way I want it. So much that I am re-thinking my original concept of what I wanted and downgrading the product a bit. At the moment, instead of having it printed on nice paper with a un-glossy card stock cover, I think I am goign to end up with a comic printed entirely on glossy paper, including the cover, which will be the same stock as the interior. Hopefully this will make it affordable. Chris is concerned, I don't blame him, because not only do we have to pay for this, but we have to pay for issue 5 too in a few months. And then #6 and then so on, unless of course things go according to plan and some publisher realizes that Gabagool! is a cash-cow just waiting to be discovered and the series is picked up.

My major dilemma now is that I have gotten so excited about printing the comic, I don't see any way I can be talked into going back to the crummy ass Kinkos way of doing it.

Anyway, if I don't finish the comic soon this won't be an issue, because I won't be able to get it printed in time for MOCCA anyway...

So, this weekend I am going to work my ass off and get a lot of this stuff done. Aliza is going to Jersey tomorrow to see her parents and look at florists, and then on Sunday she is looking at bridemaids dresses, so that means more time for me to work. I have to do 2 and a half pages, the cover and the inside front cover. I hope to have almost all of it done by monday morning, but that won't happen.

I'll update on monday and we'll see how I did. I will have seen X-Men by then, so at the very least I will be a bit more coherent and focused...

Bought a couple comics last night at the comic store, including Robert Ullman's "Grand Gestures", a new issue of "The Nimrod", and Robert Crumb's "Art and Beauty magazine" #2. The R. Crumb was my favorite by far, just 'cos the drawings are so amazing. That goes to show you what a lifetime of honing your craft can get you, some seriously nice looking drawings. I eagerly await the time when I'm an old man and can draw so good.Sadly, none of the comics lasted me until this morning, so I had nothing to read on my subway ride to work.

Still have a ways to go on the Gabagool! #3 coloring for moderntales, but I am confident it'll get done. They need it by early June, so that gives me all of May, and I only have to do 12 more pages. For a sneak peak at what this stuff is coming out like, click here.

Tomorrow is the X2 premeire. Ridiculously, we had to buy our tickets on monday to go see this movie tomorrow. It is going to be a mad-house at the movie theater, I am not looking forward to it. There are a bunch of people going who I know, but I am planning on meeting up with them after the film. I can't be bothered with trying to wrangle a row of seats for twenty people so we can all sit together. Who gives a shit? I'm not planning on talking to any of them in the movie. All's I'm concerned about is getting a reasonable seat for myself, the rest can fend for themselves. Sadly, my eagerness to see this movie has caused me to read a considerable number of reviews, and now I think there is probably very little left in the movie that I don't already know about...

Good gabagool! review today here. Gabagool! is a joy to read, a JOY.

Chris wasn't too happy about not being mentioned in the review. I don't blame him. I would flip a lid if my name got left out. In fact, when someone wrote to me to tell me they enjoyed Chris's artwork, that's exactly what I did. Well, "flip out" is too strong a word, I just made a point of correcting them when I replied to thank them for their kind words.

Couple of links:

Got a good review yesterday from Rich Watson of A View From the Cheap Seats for my mini comic Cabaret Comix #2. You can find it on this page. (It's the only one that scored an "A". I rule)

Aliza started a blog too. It can be read here. I think her's and mine will just go swimmingly together since we will probably both be talking a lot about our upcoming nuptials.

For instance, tonight we will be continuing our quest to be registered. I think we will be hitting flatwares and dinnerwares and stuff like that. Sure to be thrilling!

On thursday we meet up with the guys who're going to play at the reception. we need to figure out which songs we want them to learn. One that occured to me yesterday was "Funny How Love Is" by Queen. It's a nice little jam, and it's by Queen who rule. It's a win-win.

We had friends over on friday night to play games (a game called "Apples to Apples" and then a round of Trivial Pursuit in which Aliza and I were creamed...), and then on saturday out to Chris's house in brooklyn for another little soire. I ate tostitos for dinner both nights. All the chips have mashed up in my colon and become this immovable mass. I can eat nothing but Broccoli for the rest of the week if I ever wanna get regular again...

But seriously, Chris's girlfriend Vania makes the best dip for chips ever. Seriously, no joke. The best. That is probably why I ate seventeen economy sized bags of Tostitos...

Yesterday was nice. Once we got out of bed we began the joyous task of registering. We walked over to this gigantic Crate and Barrel over on broadway and Houston. On the way we found ourselves walking behind an "ex" of Aliza's, who was also going into Crate and Barrel. So we had to duck out of sight and go to H&M to look at T-shirts for a bit until we thought it safe to go back to Crate and Barrel. Childish, I know, but really I got no need to be making awkward chit-chat with some doof that Aliza used to date. Plus, he was like 8 feet taller than me, so that makes it even worse. But he had dumb hair and wore a motorcycle jacket, which makes him uncool, so that part was okay.

After we registered (we did well with baking stuff, but lousy with everything else) we went and bought something to grow in the flowerpot that used to house the plant that Aliza recently killed (Some friends of hers refer to her as "scorched earth" after a plant sitting mishap from a few years back). Then we went and had a late lunch at some Italian place near our apartment with all these wide open breezy windows. It was so beautiful and sunny out, and the food was good, and we'd accomplished one of the ka-jillion tasks we still have to do for this wedding, so I felt really really good. If I didn't have a concrete ball of corn chips sitting in my gut it would have been perfect.

Went home, hung out, wrote some cards to my groomspeople, and drew Gabagool pages while listening to Joe Frank on NPR. I don't know why I like listening to his show. Usually it is nothing but whiny self-centered people telling whiny self-centered stories about themselves, but for some reason I find it to be fascinating. Aliza hates it. It is like her sunday night torture, as I listen to it in the bedroom late at night while she tries to sleep.