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It worked!

May 30th, 2007

I got to the airport in time, my flight took off as scheduled…and here I am this evening hurtling down Fifth Avenue in a cab. The reading went really great! Even though all of you were off working or playing softball or whatever. I don’t know if this link will last, but the reading got a very nice announcment on the New York Magazine website.

Here are Esther Newton and Holly Hughes in the Bunns and Noodle audience.

Come hear me read tonight in NYC

May 30th, 2007

Look. Here I am this morning sipping tea in the woods in Vermont. But at 7:00 tonight, if all goes according to plan, I’ll be at the Upper West Side Bunns & Noodle. 2289 Broadway at 82nd St. Come on by.

DTWOF Archive Episode #3

May 29th, 2007

Here’s the …uh…newest twenty-year old episode. As I recently announced, I’m cutting back to one new episode per month for a while, and in between I’m running strips from 1987. But to make things even more complicated, I’m not running ALL the old strips. That’s why this second one is actually number three. Got it? Read the rest of this entry »

God, I love Vermont

May 25th, 2007

For many reasons, but here’s a new one: our stoatlike Republican governor just signed a transgender identity bill. Thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make this happen.

Tintin in the Unconscious

May 24th, 2007

As if the home movies weren’t enough, now I’m going to start in with my dreams. Last night I dreamed I met Hergé! Only he was just a boy…in fact, he was Tintin. He was signing books, doing drawings in each one. I watched him in astonishment. His hand would move maniacally, almost involuntarily, across the page and in a few seconds, there it was–a perfect, highly detailed drawing.

It was awe-inspiring and depressing at the same time because it was clear to me that this was a kind of superhuman power I did not possess and never would.

I might have forgotten all about the dream, but then at breakfast I opened the latest New Yorker and there’s a big illustrated piece in it about Tintin! Apparently Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are going to make three Tintin movies.

Why do they have to make movies of everything?

may moon. thrush. veery. sunset sky. peepers.

May 23rd, 2007

It was such a lovely evening here I had to make another installment of my Wild Kingdom documentary series.

Oh, and here’s something I keep meaning to mention. The Comics Curmudgeon made a nice passing reference to my work recently. He began a post about “amusing ancillary details” in various recent editorial cartoons with the comment, “Dykes To Watch Out For creator Alison Bechdel once described her urge to put little, almost invisible details in her comics as arising from horror vacui, which must be a common cartoonist affliction.” You can read the whole thing here on Wonkette. I couldn’t find it on the Comics Curmudgeon’s own site for some reason. I don’t understand how all this stuff works. But that’s okay because I’m not a blogger. If you don’t know the Comics Curmudgeon, you should. I have particular respect for his insights into my favorite daily strip, Mark Trail.

blogito, ergo sum

May 21st, 2007

Okay, I kind of hate to bring this up again, but it’s been hanging over my head for a long time and I just want to be done with it. Remember my “open thread” suggestion of April 10 which peeved many readers? I quickly put the kibosh on it, but your comments, pro and con, went on for some time, and I promised that I’d post my own “formal response” after I’d mulled over everyone’s ideas.

“What is the purpose of this blog?” I asked myself. “To whom does it belong? What constitutes ‘off-topic’ when my own posts are often quite frivolous?” And after protracted and deliberate consideration, I replied to myself, “I have no fuckin’ idea.”

I’d sort of like to leave it at that. But before I do, here are a few stray thoughts. Read the rest of this entry »

comics commencement

May 20th, 2007

Today I drove down to White River Junction to see the Center for Cartoon Studies’ first ever graduation ceremony. Here’s everyone hanging out on the street in front of the school. There was a very impressive thesis exhibition by the eighteen graduating students. This school is really amazing. Here’s an excellent article about it that ran recently in the Christian Science Monitor. At least I thought it was excellent until I got to the sentence, “And the professionals who pass through as guest lecturers – as many as 15 a semester – are luminaries of the comics world. Mr. Spiegelman. Chris Ware. Alison Bechdel.”

You would think a person would find that flattering, but it’s actually rather mortifying. It’s like saying, Tolstoy. Nabokov. Borat. Or maybe Garbo. Dietrich. Aniston. Don’t worry, I’m not fishing for reassurance. Just a little perspective.

a birdfight and a raffle

May 18th, 2007

Another installment of Mutual of West Bolton’s Wild Kingdom with Marlon Perkins Alison Bechdel: the  fierce rose-breasted grosbeak.

And you can buy raffle tickets here to win some framed art from Fun Home and support the Lambda Literary Organization.

cartoonists on the evening news

May 17th, 2007

My local TV station, WCAX, has been doing a series this week called “Drawn Here,” about cartoonists who live in Vermont. It’s in honor of the first graduation ceremony at the Center for Cartoon Studies this weekend. Tonight the segment about me aired. Many Vermonters refer lovingly to WCAX as WGOP-TV, so I was a little skeptical about how they’d tailor a bunch of dykes and my closeted dad for the six o’clock news. But the reporter Jack Thurston did a dang good job, I think. Times have really changed.

They also did segments on James Kochalka, and New Yorker artists Harry Bliss and Ed Koren. I managed to record the segment with Ed too. You know Ed’s stuff, those gentle, furry monster people. They look just like him.

I just figured out how to transfer stuff from the VCR to my DV recorder, and thence to YouTube. So I’ll post these quick before someone tells me I’m breaking the law.