Kick-ass review of Gabagool! # 1-3 at icomics.

Some late spring cleaning yesterday. Was very much needed. Now the whole house smells like floor polish and your feet stay clean when walking around barefoot on the hardwood. Maybe we should make cleaning the house a regular thing. Aside from it making the house nicer, it would also take less time to do it.

My favorite part of the cleaning project - when we took a break and got some lunch. I liked sitting out on the street eating a gyro and getting some sun finally. The only part that ruined it was two guys who were carrying toilets in and out of a doorway right next to us. I assume that the toilets were clean and probably even unused, but they were getting awful close to my back with those things at some points. And the toilets looked unweildy, I would not have been suprised if one was dropped.

My second favorite part of cleaning: it's a tie between taking a shower in a shiny bathtub with nothing growing in it, or getting into bed with sheets that have just been washed. One or the other, they're both nice.

Watched the third episode of the new Project Greenlight on HBO. The set up of this show seems to be the same as the last one: Get an amateur, give him some money to make a studio picture, then get mad at him for being an amateur. It's gripping!

I have had to take a few days off to recover from the madness that was MoCCA weekend. It's sad that it flew by so quickly. know, I know, everyone and their mother is saying, it really would be better if it was two days. From what I gather from talking to the people who put it together though, getting the Puck building for two days does much more than just double the costs, because it actually costs a lot more to get a saturday than it does a sunday.

Anyway, who cares? Here is my run-down of the weekend:

Friday night: Non MoCCA related - we went out to get some fancy pizza with my Best Man and a bunch of other people, including a couple who have also gotten engaged who I haven't seen in a while. That it always fun because then you can start comparing notes. Aliza and the girl got to talk about invitations and guest lists and stuff, while me and the other guy got to sit and chuckle at our wives to be and complain about money and adult things like that. I am glad to see that I have turned into my parents in a matter of only months. My new main routine is to act like a cranky husband who's wife is a spendthrift, who likes to blow all my hard earned money on shopping sprees and weddings. Just like on the Flintstones. Of course, in real life, Aliza earns as much as I do, and isn't actually so bad when it comes to money. Her only thing is that she is a little too free and easy with cab rides, but we all have our things.

Slightly comics related note to the evening: One of the other people who came to dinner is Bob Kane's second cousin. I guess this is neat. It's not like I am a huge Bob Kane fan, but this was a nice little fun-fact all the same.

Saturday: I don't really remember what we did all day, but I know we did something, because we were out of the house most of the day, and therefore pretty tired by the time we went out to start our night of pre-MoCCA parties in Brooklyn. The first party started at 6 (boo) and was in Brooklyn (booooo) out in Bushwick (double booo). Actually, I didn't know where we were, but a few people were mentioning the shabby neighborhood we were in. It didn't actually register to me that it was a shabby neighborhood, because most of my Brooklyn experience comes from the year I lived in Crown Heights, which is pretty rough. Maybe I just think all of Brooklyn is run-down, with collapsed buildings littered about, but this probably isn't so. All's I know is I spent a year living across from a tumbled down heap that I think was attached to a children's day school, so I didn't really think it was odd that there was a similar looking structure across the street from the party.

A cartoonist who calls himself James Kochalka Superstar played an acoustic set. Everybody stuck around and watched him do his thing. Then Collider went on, and everyone left. It was too bad, because Collider rocks, and I think everyone missed out.

On the way to the second party Chris told Aliza about the strip club we went to when we went to SPACE. This was remarkable, because we had made a blood oath to keep this a secret. I was aghast at his betrayal. She didn't seem to care.

Sunday: MoCCA day!

Well, MoCCA weekend is here. I am excited. I really didn't have to scramble at the end to get ready for it this time, I guess since I had to be so on the ball about getting the comic to the printers and all, I was very responsible. Last night I stapled and folded a couple things and watched the Pianist with Aliza.

The main thing I gotta do on sunday is sell. I need to make some money. The bill for the printing is going to come soon, and I want to do my best to get it taken care of a fast as possible. So if anybody who reads this is coming to the show, don't be annoyed at me if I'm in my "salesman" mode when you see me. I am just trying to earn some of my money back, don't hold it against me. I am normally not so annoying.

Tomorrow will be busy. We have to go to the paper store and try and get somewhere on these invitations. We also apparently have to make "Save the Date" cards and send them out too. Another thing is the cake. We have been discussing it, and we are definitely leaning towards taking the economical route with it. Cakes can cost up to a thousand bucks or so for weddings, but i think we'd like to keep it more around 3-4 hundred bucks. I know I am barely going to get any of it anyway, because once again I imagine I will be in my "salesman" glad handing mode at the reception, meeting and greeting and annoying everyone I come into contact with. I won't have time to sit dowjn and enjoy my cake, so I figure we ought not to spend much money on it.

Got a mention on comicon.com as one of the books debuting this weekend. Pretty sweet.

First review of Gabagool! 4 is here at Optical Sloth, and it's positive. Got a review of Gabagool! # 1 and 3 here, which is also pretty positive, despite the reviewers aversion to mini-comics. Interestingly, the book is compared to Doublecross and Box Office Poison once more, which are books done by some good friends of mine. I wonder if I started to make comics like Alex Robinson and Tony Consiglio because I'm friends with them, or if I became friends with them because I make comics like them?

Things I need to do, Comics related: Mail out orders that I've recieved. Update my website. My weblog is getting much more action these days than www.mikedawsoncomics.com, but I love them both equally.

Things I need to do, otherwise related: A lot. Wedding, wedding, wedding! Come on Mike, kick it into high gear here, those invites aren't going to silk-screen themselves!

Aliza and I managed to run three miles last night. From 9th street to 39th and back. I complained a lot, and Aliza told me that I need to not hate running, because that's why I never do it. It's true, I hate working out, but I always feel so good afterwards.

When we got back we ordered some awesome italian food and watched the last couple episodes of Project Greenlight. I really feel bad for that Pete Jones guy. Sure, he's makes a couple schlubby calls throughout the making of his film, but he really seems like a good guy. But I looked him up on imdb and I see he's not got any sort of followup project, which makes me sad. A person I know who made a short film that did well looks like he's got some followup projects already lined up, and he's newer on the scene than Pete Jones. Why nothing for Pete? He's got two kids to support! Give him a job, he did fine. The project greenlight show was kind of annoying because all these people are looking at this guy directing and shaking their heads the whole time like he's some asshole. It's his first time, what do you expect?! Poor guy...

After the show ended I got some awful abdominal pains and had to spend the rest of the night on the toilet/curled up on the bed whining, and so I got no drawing done, which made me very pissy this morning.

The comics came this weekend. I am now the proud owner of three boxes full of books in my little upstairs attic. Chris has the other four boxes in his place out in Brooklyn. Sales so far: 15! Five went to Forbidden Planet, and ten to Jim Hanley's. I went in to talk to the people at St. Mark's comics, and naturally they were kind of pricky to me, so I don't intend to take my comics back to them. That store has a bit of a rep for being run by assholes, but luckily I don't buy anything there, so I don't have to worry about supporting an establishment that I have a problem with. I take all my business to FB and Jim Hanley's, those stores are run by some nice people.

I have to say though, I find the whole process of going out and trying to get people to buy my books to be a disheartening and slightly humiliating one. I really hate it. I think the next order of business is for us to find some distribution of some kind.

Weekend was cool, did a ton of stuff on saturday, including buying a too-expensive shirt at the Beastie Boys store. I boughta couple cheap things too at H&M, but those were not recieved so well by Aliza as the Beastie Boys shirt was. In fact, one of the items received an actual thumbs down, but I'll show her. I'll wear it all the time until she gets used to it and admits it was a good clothing choice.

Gave my family copies of G4. I think they liked it okay, but I know that the constant outpouring of comics littered with foul language and gratuitous nudity is not impressing them that much.

I got sent some samples of Gabagool! #4 today. This is even more exciting than getting the blue line proof. It all looks perfect, except I think the writing on the cover is slightly too close to the bottom of the paper, but overall I feel great about it. It was my first time sending stuff off to press anyway, so I deserve a break. At least all the images came out beautifully and not pixellated. Now I will know for Gabagool! #5 to make sure and leave more room around the edges.

Speaking of Gabagool! stuff, I forgot to post these nice reviews of issue 1 and 3 that we got over the weekend. They didn't review issue #2, because I didn't send it to them. I am out of them at the moment. I don't care though. If truth be told #2 is my least favorite of the Gabagool!'s. The drawings are the worst, and we come dangerously close to making fun of homosexuals and retarded people, which I am sometimes not proud of. But whatever, it still has it's moments, the meat story I think is really funny, and it showed a growth in the storytelling and the characters.

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.