I'm Painting -- I'm Painting Again

I'm cleaning -- I'm cleaning my brain.
Pretty soon now I will be bitter
Pretty soon now I'll be a quitter
You can't see it till it's finished.

My apologies to Talking Heads for quoting the preceding lyrics from Talking Heads '77 without consulting any lawyers!

In my previous post, I waxed darn near poetic about viewing Cezanne landscapes last week at MOMA in NYC. Damn if I didn't come home and get the paint right out!

Truth be told, it all dovetails with my central blog theme of Self Employment for Bohemians. I'd been thinking about my custom screen printing business; I've been a T-Shirt guy since December 1977. For those of you who can count, that's twenty nine f'ing years pulling a squeegee!

I love working for myself, but frankly never intended to spend my life as a T-Shirt printer. So, having put a toe in the editorial/commercial illustration worlds at varoius times in my work life and found it not too odious, I've decided to go ahead and jump in, test the waters as it were.

Whether I'm self employed in T-Shirts or in illustration, there is a constant imperative to attract new clients. Currently I have a sufficient clientele built up in Screen Printing to support me; I'm in a strong position to switch my marketing efforts to commercial illustration, looking for new clients there (In the course of business, there is an attrition of existing clients--thus the need to always be on the lookout for new accounts).

I'm painting, I'm painting again!

Note: Click on the above painting to see it bigger in a new browser window.

Let's Get Some Paint!

Sprinted to NYC and back earlier this week for an interview on the Joey Reynolds Show or WOR Radio 710, talking about my brilliant comix career, I suppose was the plan. Quite a ride, blasting out east and showing up at the WOR studios near Wall Street at 2 a.m, it’s sixteen degrees out. In for a few minutes with the resonant voice of Mr. Reynolds, then back into the sub freezing night, praying I can score a cab back to the hotel.

The highlight of my trip came the next day, as I visited the Museum of Modern Art—it was my first visit there since the Nineties, thus it was my first time in the new building. It’s spectacular. More of the collection is shown in a better space.

My brain was being happily crushed by the paintings on the fifth floor, four big Kandinsky’s making real inroads on my psyche, when I came upon a series of maybe four Cezanne landscapes. I’ve always loved Cezanne of course, but considered him a master who opened the door for the brilliance of Monet and the impressionists, of course Gauguin, but above all beloved Vincent, the beautiful tortured genius.

I saw Cezanne anew this time. He found a way to coax a profound truth out of his regimented yet diffuse brushstrokes. These landscapes reported accurately on the beauty of what Cezanne saw in the moment; the brushstrokes, angled and consistent, pull the world through the master’s senses and present it through the canvas. Of all the incredible stuff in MOMA, it was these few straightforward canvases from Cezanne that kicked my ass two days ago.

I’m gonna go out and buy me some goddamn paint (it’s been too long). Thank you Paul Cezanne for your warmth, your humanity, and your glorious chops.

Never Underestimate the Power of the Staple Gun

This piece recently appeared in my DIY column in Alarm magazine.

Long before the world went digital, before creative and marketing tasks were performed online, the DIY entrepreneur had one rough & tumble, indispensable piece of equipment: The Staple Gun!

Think about it. How do you get warm bodies to show up to see your band? How do you advertise a yard sale, massage services, a second hand store, a screen-printing business? You run off a couple hundred flyers, grab your trusty staple gun, and head out into the hood to spread the word. True, you will post to Craigslist (and other on line locations), you will email friends and send a stack of postcards. But don’t forget to paper the town with fliers if you want results.

Veterans of the postering trade know where the most productive forests of phone poles are found, they know what bulletin boards will yield the biggest crop of fresh faced college kids swilling cheap beer at the gig. They also know where the cops will chase you away, where the retailers will yell at you for defacing their precious avenue. Sure, every kid with a stack of posters and a staple gun knows they are, in fact, littering. An etiquette of sorts is observed. Most will pick up old, worn fliers that have fallen by the wayside and stick them in the trash, and most will not paper over an obviously new flier.

The fact is, it is necessary to be tough minded out there when postering, if not downright brazen. It’s normal to feel self-conscious about sticking fliers on every phone poll on a crowded street in a thickly packed urban neighborhood, or university enclave. Get over it! If you are trying to make a living, trying to drive a crowd to an event, trying to make the phone ring, recognize that you are a warrior on a mission. You are trying to stay alive; the fliers must go up! One note: try to avoid that hitter of stinky green bud before setting out on your mission—you’ll feel a lot less self conscious if your not laced to the gills on thunderfuck weed! And, you can reward your self by taking a little lift when you get home, if that’s your thing.

I came at my relationship with the staple gun and postering from an oblique angle. As a painting student at the University of Massachusetts on a budget, I purchased my first staple gun in order to stretch my own canvases. From the get go, I really liked the thing, an Arrow model painted industrial blue, it was a simple, elegant machine that perfectly executed the job it was designed for.

Upon graduation, faced with the horrid reality of working full time for minimum wage (the fate of many a painting student!), I turned to T Shirt printing to pony together the few bucks I needed to survive at the time. The T Shirt trade provided me with ample beer and date money as an undergraduate, so I dove back in. It was the path of least resistance between hunger and a burrito in my belly.

As I built up my clientele, I explored every avenue open to the low budget entrepreneur for getting the word out: Postcard mailings, postering, small ads in weekly or college papers, cold calling (yeccch!), and so on. Over time, I found postering to be one of the most reliable ways of attracting new clients—I actually got The Residents as a shirt client that way, as their merch person saw a flier on a phone pole near her house! I did their shirts for about nine years, and it was fun and challenging to produce their spectacular designs.

As a dedicated cartoonist, plying the T Shirt trade has always been a secondary concern for me. A cash cow, if you will. That being the case, I’ve had a tendency to do just enough commercial work to pay the bills, and spend most of my time making comics. There have been many times where, lifting my head from an obsessive bout of cartooning, I would notice I was down to about enough money for, say, two beers and clean laundry. In times like this I would dust off the trusty staple guy, grab a stack of my ever-present fliers, and head out to do battle.

I’d relocated by Oakland by then, and I knew my way around every nook and cranny of Oakland and Berkeley’s phone poles and bulletin boards. It would take most of a day and about 250 fliers to do the justice to the totality of the East Bay. Let me tell you, it is serious grunt work. But after making those rounds, I would feel relaxed enough about my economic prospects to quaff a cold one, nip a hit of bud, and uncork my ink bottle for another round of cartooning. In due time, the phone would ring, shirts would be printed, and more burritos would appear on my table!

These days, with the splendid power of Google Adwords and a million other digital and online tools at my disposal, the trusty staple gun rarely gets a workout. But I plan to dust it off soon, as I’ve lined up a couple punky power pop bands to play the publishing party for my new graphic novel. If I want to drive a crowd to the gig, I better head out to the streets with my staple gun and a stack of fliers.

The Road to Yagul

One fine hot summer afternoon in 1997, I found myself walking up the road to the ancient city of Yagul with Serena and Jenny. Yagul is one of the lesser known ruins in the Valley of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, less famous than the spectacular mountaintop ancient city of Monte Alban, or the mysterious palace at Mitla with its trippy geometric designs. No slouch of a ruin itself, Yagul boasts some super cool, creepy tombs you can climb down into. There’s also a virtual warren of multi-room buildings and the second largest ball court in all of Mesoamerica (after Chichen Itza).

As impressive as Yagul itself is, I really got a spooky thrill walking the road to the site. About a half-mile off the road on the right side, there were massive stone cliffs that appeared to be carved with some sort of art or hieroglyphs. I did a double take. Were we talking about some amazing natural rock formations? Or did the ancients of Yagul do this as their summer art project over the course of several decades? I don’t know! I took a picture of the cliffs, reproduced here, but it can’t do justice to what I saw.

That afternoon was one of those gorgeous deep blue sky days where every rock and cactus appears in super real, crystalline detail. A few billowy clouds gave depth and a timeless surreal quality to the sky. I gazed at the cliffs and a wash of impressions rolled over me. In the late afternoon sun they glowed with a sublime rosy orange presence. The sun was still high enough that the shadows were not deep, yet the forms stood out in hyper real relief. The jaunty presence of the rock, the color, the impact of their craggy statement, the actual fact of their existence in the immediate moment was overwhelming. I wondered if they were meant to be seen from a great distance, perhaps from the sky. Even as I was sure they were deliberately carved, part of me puzzled over whether they were natural formations. Deep in my skull, one voice assured me they were indeed shaped on purpose, only not by humans. What??? I snapped out of it! Take a picture, ya big dummy, we’ll figure it out later.

Checking my handy Lonely Planet guidebook, I see Yagul was built after A.D. 750, when nearby Monte Alban was on the decline. The book doesn’t have one word about my spectacular mystery rocks. In his book Oaxaca Journal, pop science writer Oliver Sacks mentions the rocks. He sees “…a cliff face with a huge pictograph painted in white over a red background, an abstract design, and above it a giant stick figure, a man. It looks remarkably fresh, almost new—who would guess it was a thousand years old? I wonder what the image means: Was it an icon, a religious symbol of some kind? A warning to evil spirits, or invaders, to keep away? A giant road sign perhaps, to orient travelers on their way to Yagul? Or a pure, for the love of it Pictographic doodle, a prehistoric piece of graffiti?”

I’m wicked happy that ol’ Oliver took the time to note this amazing piece of real estate, because I haven’t seen it mentioned elsewhere. I’m trying to remember the white paint over the red background part—I mostly recall the rock formations. But reading over his comments, I do remember part of my initial shock upon seeing the cliff pictograph: I had the distinct impression that I was already intimately familiar with it. It was almost as if I had done it myself! This was not a déjà vu, more like that feeling an artist gets when they are really pleased with a painting or drawing they have executed; they own it in their heart, they see it as no other possibly can because it belongs to them.

The Perfect Market

Just today I cam across this piece about Oakland's Bulky Trash Day. I'd written it for my wife Serena's zine "Have You Seen the Dog Lately" a few years back. It seems to belong here. I hope you enjoy it.

People, let me tell you: I love Bulky Trash Day. For its simplicity, its efficiency, its punchy elegance (such an ‘80s word), its seamless nocturnal logic. Whaddya mean, you never heard of Bulky Trash Day? Where you been living?

Okay, it’s an Oakland thing. Other towns no doubt have it, but I live in Oakland, so I’ll tell you about Oakland Bulky Trash day. Each neighborhood gets a crack at it once a year. The garbage company, Waste Management, sends out a postcard to notify residents when Bulky Trash Day happens in their neck of the woods. Each household can put up to three cubic yards of extra trash out for pickup. Man, think of it: 9 foot long by 3 foot wide by 3 foot high! Got a few caskets hanging around that you don’t need? No problem! Just stash them by the curb on Bulky Trash Eve!

Yes, there are rules…you can’t put stuff out days ahead of time (fines!), and you can’t put out toxic stuff or funky stinky ass moldy living stuff. It’s more for your run of the mill rusty old half bikes, scary loose wire microwaves, 1988 vintage electronics in a hopeless state of disrepair, and of course super ugly olive green ripped vinyl college couches with three legs. You get the picture. The spicy items are there too…all the knick knacks you no longer need can be handily stuffed in the odd spaces left after you move your big chunks into place.

Yes, you say, it’s nice to clean house and get all this crap hauled away for free, but why is this maroon so damn excited about taking the garbage out? Can’t you see? There is a primitive beauty in my new holiday of BULKY TRASH EVE. The City of Oakland, through its agent Waste Management, creates a perfect roving nocturnal market. Our garbage day is Thursday so, for us, Bulky Trash Eve comes on Wednesday night. The excitement builds in late afternoon as you and your neighbors start hauling the booty out to the curb. Let the scavenging begin! See anything you like? Hey, is that a one-of-a-kind Dog Boy lamp in Mr. Nagamoto’s Bulky Trash pile?? It’s mine! As darkness falls, the parade of funky 30-year-old Chevy and Ford pickup trucks with wooden slat payload bed extensions troll up and down the street. They are predators looking for prey… who are these people? Will they fix that old refrigerator and put it in their house? Will they sell that beat up (huge) TV for $17 to some bizarre storefront on San Pablo Avenue? Will they have a big yard sale? Who knows, but they are the real pros… they are in early. They are scoring items that will be traded, sold, refurbished or cherished. They work fast—the trucks are bulging, bursting with loot as dusk falls, and the waves of bohemians and college students begin in earnest. Not quite as practical, they arrive on foot or in 12-year-old Honda Accords that don’t quite fit that stereo console into the trunk. But they are savvy enough to avoid paying for dishes, frying pans, kiddie pools, bar-b-que tools and a host of other household and/or tiki-lifestyle essentials.

I’m hoping by now you see how efficient and cool this is. It works for everybody! You can get a lot of crap out of your house, basement, yard, attic. Anything remotely useful has about an 87% change of getting snapped up. The giddy energy and nocturnal revel nature of the whole thing lends a festive, surreal air, almost like an obscure fiesta day in Mexico—something cool, spontaneous and weird is going down that has its own sublime internal logic. It’s a bit like the expectant mystery of Christmas Eve I felt when I was nine. This instant market/free exchange of goods disappears completely the next morning complements of the city garbage trucks.

We had our Bulky Trash Day on my street this past fall. It was my best yet. Not only did we get rid of the reviled red scare chair (ancient vinyl ripped up dirty greasy uncomfortable handed-down-from-Greed-Pig-Boss menace), but I dumped 20 old frames from my screen print business. People snapped this stuff up! But listen, here’s the best part! Serena and I had been trying to pawn our old computer off on someone for six months. Maybe some readers know how that goes. NOBODY WANTS OLD COMPUTER! Tweren’t a bad rig in its day (1998), but a 266 MHz chip, 6 GB hard drive computer just doesn’t make it in this high-powered era. That sucker was loaded with Photoshop, Pagemaker, Flash, Illustrator and Microsoft Office for starters! Not bad for free. Well, I took a Sharpie and wrote a list of the software on top of the beast, then set it out on the sidewalk with the printer and manuals (sorry, still using the monitor). That sucker was gone in a matter of minutes! I felt good about that, I really hope someone is getting some good use out of it.

A final note, Bulky Trash Day is not without some tragic endings. Like a few years back, we put our old couch out. That’ll be the first thing to go, right? Sad to say, the cushions were snapped right up, and who wants a couch without the cushions? Thus it was with horror and revulsion (okay, maybe a bit of fascinated glee) that I watched as the dusty old thang was crunched to splinters in the maw of the merciless garbage truck!

What is Your Target Market?

How many times have I been asked this question? Usually it's when someone finds out I'm a cartoonist who creates graphic novels. Or maybe I'm trying to work some journalist or radio producer for an interview, and inevitably they ask the question, a sure indicator of how goddamn sharp and "with it" and savvy they are.

The question presumes I am creating a commodity rather than art. The question presumes that, naturally, my aim in creating comics is not self expression, rather it is to make a commodity and sell it for a profit. Period. Is not the ultimate motivation money? And are you not dumber than dirt if the motivation is not cold, hard cash?

It is true that I want to sell books. Lots of them. But for chrissakes, I do not now, nor have I ever had a target market! Besides myself, that is. Why the fuck would I spend my life drawing comics for some presumed audience for the sole purpose of making money? Where's the fun in that? Where is the ecstatic joy of discovery in that? If I want to make money, I'll have a real world job, or I'll create a real world business, like my custom T Shirt shop.

Anyone who asks that question wouldn't know real art if it came up to them and bit them in the ass. So... next time some unquestioning dupe of all encompassing consumer corporate commodification programming asks me: "What is your target market?", I'll have my answer ready:

"My target market is a group of free floating 100 foot long disembodied Moose peckers, hovering in the Maine woods just a few miles south of the Canadian border".

40 Hour Man to be reviewed in Boston Sunday Globe

Greetings Earthlings. My latest graphic novel, 40 Hour Man (with writer Stephen Beaupre) will be reviewed later this week in the Boston Sunday Globe on 11/26/06.

This means a lot to me; my comics work has been reviewed in any number of respectable weeklies (including the San Francisco Bay Guardian) and has even been written up in a feature article in the Boston Phoenix. 40 Hour Man itself has been reviewed in Booklist, which has certainly helped sales (library sales in particular). I've been both praised and slammed by The Comics Journal (this back in the day when that publication acknowledged my existence at all) a magazine that over it's history has provided a confusing mish-mash of egotistical rants as well as many glowing reviews of Fantagraphics titles (can you say "conflict of interest"?). Oh, and sometimes the Journal has produced some excellent, thoughtful writing on comics as an art form.

A Sunday Globe review is different, however. It's the first time I've had the singular distinction of being reviewed in a major daily newspaper. Only a handful of papers in the U.S. are more prestigious than the Globe--The NY Times and the Washington Post, of course. At this writing, the LA Times stands a bit tarnished from it's glory days under Otis Chandler, what with all the power struggles and budget busting there of late. The Chicago Tribune is maybe on a par with the Globe. The Wall Street Journal is up there with the Times and the Post, but it's a money rag, and a conservative bully pulpit. Still, please review 40 Hour Man, Wall Street Journal! USA Today? Don't make me laugh. That's not even a newspaper. I'm not sure what it is, no wait, I'm sure it's a bullshit propaganda rag, and it's big on sports. I'd love a review there too, by the way!

The Boston Globe is in a sense my home town rag. I never lived in Boston proper, but I did grow up in Massachusetts from the age of eight, until I split for the golden west at twenty three to seek my fortune. For all of New England, the Globe stands as the newspaper of record.

All in all, some few words will appear this Sunday in Boston about my latest book. I will sip coffee and smile. My good friend Beaupre and I will have a notch to add to our bonafides. Even if they deem to slam us, I'll glean something quoteable out of the piece to help me flog product!

James Baker: Senior Statesman and One Heck of an Experienced Election Thief.

Has anyone noticed of late, oil man/Republican operative James Baker, most recently seen slithering around the aftermath of the 2000 election (pulling strings for W.), has been making the talk show rounds lately? Must have a book out or something.

I guess the Republican image factory figures the electorate will see Baker lurching around, making pronouncements in his best election season corn-pone drawl, and they will forget to vote because they figure he’ll just help young W. and his gang of hoodlums steal another one?

Stay tuned to find out! And get your ass out and vote, at the very least.

The right likes to trot out old goons like Baker to lend their operation some patina of statesman like experience and probity and all that dark blue suit/red tye aura. But from where I sit, given his stumping for Bush in the aftermath of the 2000 election, James Baker is a fraud.

NPR: Don't Believe Your Ears

Good old NPR is at it again, fulfilling their function as the soft sell propaganda arm of the Bush junta. Yes folks, there is a reason why the thinking person refers to NPR as National Propaganda Radio.

The formerly creditable network wasn't always a font of disinformation and soft sell propaganda pointed at the mushy center on behalf of right wing idealogues; the slippery slope to propaganda tool for the government started back with Newt Gangreen's "Contract on America" in the '94 mid-term elections. Once the Republicans got control of congress, the message was sent to then-centrist NPR in no uncertain terms: You're too fucking liberal, get with the program or lose your funding!

In the current moment, as we approach the 2006 mid-term election, I hear daily on "Morning Edition" some soft feature that casts some issue or politician in a light favorable to the ruling creep farm. Each morning, I drop my son off at Kindergarten and listen to "Morning Edition" on the way home, and almost daily, I just want to pull over and hurl when I hear the horseshit spewing out of my radio.

Today it was a feature on new treasury secretary Hank Paulson, what a good even keel guy he is, above politics as it were, why he's not even campaigning for Republicans this election! He'd much rather serve the taxpayer than the political arm of the white house! The message? The Bush Administration is changing! We care about you! We're in tune with the American public and your needs! Vote for us!

This was a typical feature, part of a comprehensive effort to spin all aspects of the national debate in favor of Republicans during this election season. A bit less typical, you still get blatant flag waving and right wing pro-war propaganda on occasion.

NPR is not a complete waste of time. There are still great shows like This American Life and Fresh Air, among others. But buyer beware--for quite a while now, the news you hear over NPR is part of a propaganda effort by the scumbag Bushies to convince you that they are OK. We know they are not.

You can't fool all the people all of the time. Not even Karl Rove.

How Not to do Business

In the course of running my custom T Shirt printing business, I try to be honest and straightforward with my clients. This makes sense, as I can live with myself (for starters), but it engenders the true lifeblood of any business: New clients.

Here's how it works. You order T Shirts from me. I do a good job. You tell someone else who needs T Shirts, they come to me with confidence that I am not a schmuck who will rip them off. Recommendations bring in 75% of my new accounts, with marketing and advertising taking care of the rest. Any small business person will tell you a variation on this schema.

When I run into a business person who burns me, it upsets me. Yes, it pisses me off. But more important, I just want to slap them around and yell, "Can't you see you are just fucking yourself?" If someone burns me, I will not give them a recommendation. I may even do what I am about to do, tell the story of how they did it to me.

With good business communication, I generally can avoid rip offs. But I've run into a couple this summer. DHL (the shipping company) burned me by promising a refund after missing an overnight delivery. Then they refused the refund because "I had not notified them in writing within 14 days". Well, I did not know that was the policy until the refund was refused! Thanks DHL! You suck.

I'd been enthusiastically using DHL since last year when I moved my shop from Oakland to Portland. I recommended them to numerous friends. I was suckered by their marketing campaign promising great service.

Then, this June, they started missing shipping dates, and even held some shipments in their warehouses for no apparent reason. The bullshit about the refund was the last straw. What can I say? I switched back to Fed Ex ground. Works fine.

The sort of sleazy clay-footed corporate greed as exemplified by DHL is to be expected from big corporations. The lack of willingness to take responsibility for shitty work will add a few dollars here, a few pennies there to the bottom line; for many companies, this is the only measure of performance.

Within the corporate hierarchy, every cog is keen to cover their ass and do the bidding of their corporate overlords, who in turn are slave to the overarching corporate dictate to keep the stock price rising no matter who you fuck over. Again, the ultimate effect is that people do not trust big corporations, and are cynical about corporate public relations and advertising claims.

I expect better behavior than this from the small businesses I buy from, and sell to. Most of the time, if I hold up my end of the bargain, the other party does the same. Recently, I had an experience with a small business supplier that was pretty unfortunate. They ripped me off for about $1100.00 worth of their service, spoiling almost $500.00 of raw materials I supplied in the process.

Here’s the set up. I print thousands of T Shirts each year for a client who has a successful T Shirt store. About 1000 – 1200 of these are printed on Tye Dyed shirts. It is up to me to buy blank shirts, arrange for the tye dying, print the shirts and ship to the store.

I have used a variety of tye dyers over the past decade. One of the best I found, or so I thought, was Kerr’s Cotton Creations, located in Montana. I had used them four or five times for dying lots of about 300 shirts each time. Their colors were quite bright and vibrant, but I had to ride their asses a bit about my clients prime directive: “Bright, tight and no white”!

This meant that no white (the blank shirts were white before dying) could show through the dye job. Kerr’s had done OK on the “no white” request, but not great. Thus, I made a real point of emphasizing BRIGHT, TIGHT AND NO WHITE with each order. In truth, almost every tie dye shirt has a least a tiny bit of white showing through, and it is understood that it’s OK, as long as it’s kept to a minimum.

In June of 2006, I ordered a batch of 288 tie dyes from Kerr’s. I drop shipped white blank Ts to them. Just over a week later, the new shirts arrived. I was shocked when I opened the boxes. White streaks screamed through the dye job at me. I would say that 25 – 35% of the shirts were white. It was by a long shot the worst job Kerr’s had done for me.

I printed a batch and shipped them to my client, a mistake on my part. Looking back, I was a bit in shock about how bad the shirts looked, and I rationalized to myself something like this: “They can’t be that bad, I just have expectations that are too high.” But deep down, I knew—this was a batch of shitty tie dyes, and it was a bad decision on my part to try to pass them off on the store. I should have sent the shirts back immediately and asked that they replace the blanks and dye the job over. The store called me, pretty pissed off. I had to admit that I knew the shirts were not up to par. We worked out a solution where the batch of 90 or so shirts would be sold at a discount. I felt chagrined that I had attempted to use shirts that were clearly not up to par.

I called my contact at Kerr’s, to point out that this batch of tie dyes was not up to his usual standard of quality. The guy acted as if I was trying to sell him a shit sandwich, saying “no two batches are alike”. No shit, dude. I’ve been buying tie dyes for ten years. I know well that no two batches are alike. That is a very different matter than delivering shit work. What part of NO WHITE do you not understand? I asked for a refund, and was refused. I later email a request for a refund and got no reply.

I have learned over time in the shirt business to listen to complaints when they come in, and work to find a solution to client problems, even if it comes out of my pocket. Usually, a complaint has some reasonable aspect to it. Sure, I have had unreasonable complaints, but even then I prefer to communicate on a frank and honest level with the client.

Once I printed a process color job for a big regional baker of upscale breads. I thought it was one of the best process shirts I’d done. The owner called up and told me it was one of the worst shirts he’d ever seen. What could I say? He was entitled to his opinion, but I told him I thought it was a great shirt. This dude was a perfectionist, famous for driving people nuts with his demands. Lucky for me, that was the last I heard of him.

Back to Kerr’s, I was disheartened that this guy would hand me a line of bullshit like that. I’d given him at least 4 – 5,000 bucks worth of biz over maybe an eighteen month period, but he could not have cared less. Not only did he show me a complete lack of respect, but it’s just bad business. Can’t say I can recommend Kerr’s Cotton Creations at this juncture.

I'll let you know if that changes, you never know.

I Don't Whack Cute Little Moles for Minimum Wage

Having a Job From Hell is a universal right of passage, and Manx Media wants to hear about yours. We are putting out the call for essays running 400 words about lousy jobs, with an emphasis on humor. Entries may be emailed to Manx Media.

Starting this September 15, Manx Media will publish two “Job From Hell” entries per week on its web site over a six-week period. Successful entries will receive a $20.00 check and a copy of 40 Hour Man.

Our Hell Job essay contest dovetails with the publication of 40 Hour Man, the new graphic novel by Stephen Beaupre and Steve Lafler about one working stiff’s journey into the minimum wage heart of the American Dream.

My true Job From Hell was right out of college--with my newly minted art degree, I nailed down a prestigious gig working on a loading dock at a cut rate department store for minimum wage.
One of the sales girls noticed a tiny mole scurrying about the lingerie department one fine winter afternoon (it was cold out there), and I was drafted to capture the it.
Once I caught the cute little guy, I admired his funny star shaped nose for a moment or two before releasing him in the field behind the shanty town mall that my store was located in.
Later that day, the boss asked me if I'd taken care of the mole.
"Sure enough I did" says I.
"How did you do it, did you drown him in the toilet?" he replied.
That was the last straw.
"I don't whack cute little moles for minimum wage" was my indignant retort, then I gave my two week notice.

It's no wonder I ended up working for myself! But I digress...
Any bold soul interested in submitting a Job From Hell essay, take a peek at the contest info page at Manx Media. Have fun and good luck.

Steve Lafler
Manx Media proprietor

Manx Publishing party with the Wigbillies

Top: Wigbillies Paul Therrio and Mary Fleener get their groove on at the Casbah in San Diego on July 20.
Bottom: J.R. Williams plays his little electric and croons with the Wigbillies.

Thanks to all the bands who played our publishing party for 40 Hour Man at the Casbah on July 20 during Comic Con International: The Wigbillies, Thee Corsairs, The Creepy Creeps and Deadbolt.
A damn fine time was had by all! We got a few dozen alt comics geeks out there, and lots of stylish locals came out to see the great line up of talent.

Floater

How and when did the word floater enter my personal vernacular?

Wanna cut someone down to size? Floater. Right to the point: Funny, mean and really shitty!

Hey floater! You’re a fucking floater, y’know that, ya bum?!

Maybe it’s being a dad now, an increased incidence of floaters floating in my general direction, as well as the more obscure cannon shot, loaf, schmludge, and so on.

Certain more conceptual phrases bring the image of a bowl full of floaters to my mind. Just say these few words here: “The Comics Industry”.

What do you see? Comics? An Industry? NO! Floaters, floaters, and even more floaters! FUCK!

That’s just one example. Point your head towards Washington D.C., hell I don’t have to tell you what word comes to mind. The Bush junta = FLOATERS!

C’mon George. C’mon Dick! C’mon Condi & Donald! I’d like a future and a world to come back to next time around, even this time around, so cut the shit. Aren’t any of you sumbitches parents? Think about it. Ya pack of Floaters.

That’s all for tonight folks.

Manx Media publishes 40 Hour Man

Here we are, fine with me! Yup, in my 26th year as a professional cartoonist, publisher and all around hell raiser, I am returning to the undignified, rough & tumble hell-hole of independent comics publishing. Just this week I have released 40 Hour Man, details to follow, but first:

A quick recap sports fans! I pumped out about ten books/comics in the first half of the '80s (mostly as Cat-Head Comics) before hoodwinking Fantagraphics into footing the printing bill for ten issues of my acid addled Dog Boy series.

Inevitably, the roof caved in, the bottom fell out and Cat-Head was back for another bravura run of like 35 comic books, magazines and even a couple graphic novels. WOW!

Uber comics enthusiast Brett Warnock of the fledgling Top Shelf syndicate took notice of my (ahem) brilliant BugHouse comics, and I signed on with them fine fellas for three full graphic novels of someone else paying the printing bills. Haleluiah!

Yet here we are agin, an old dog (that's me) with a new trick (Manx Media). Now I've gone and published 40 Hour Man with my old friend and fellow traveller Stephen Beaupre. Looks like he wrote the damn thing, and I drew it. For sure. It's fuckin' great, take my word for it. If you don't believe me, just read the damn press release, the guys that write these things never lie!

The press release, as it were:

Take this job and love it!

40 Hour Man

Written by Stephen Beaupre, Illustrated by Steve Lafler

Portland, Oregon. June 9, 2006.
Manx Media proudly announces the publication of 40 Hour Man, written by Stephen Beaupre and illustrated by Steve Lafler. This inaugural title from Manx Media is the chronicle of one working stiff’s journey into the minimum wage heart of the American Dream.

Is it a career or just a series of lame jobs? It’s all here—from doing time as a miniature golf lackey, to going bust in the internet boom. Beaupre recounts skirmishes with bad bosses, crazy co-workers, sex, drugs and polyester uniforms as he delineates his quest to find and hang onto a job he can live with. Lafler supplies visual hilarity with his Mad Magazine inspired, slap-happy artwork.

Stephen Beaupre is is best known to comic aficionados as the former co-publisher of the Cat-Head Comics imprint and editor of Buzzard, the 90's preeminent comic anthology. Post-comic pursuits include Beyond the Fringe, a long-running humor column featured in Worcester Magazine, and hard time in the Internet trench as writer/editor for popular online destinations such as Angelfire, Tripod, and Monster.com.

Steve Lafler is the cartoonist behind BugHouse, Baja and Scalawag (all from Top Shelf Productions), a trio of indigo toned graphic novels about bugs playing be-bop jazz.

Manx Media has signed a deal with Biblio Distribution to handle our book trade distribution. 40 Hour Man will be available to every last bookstore in American round bout October 1st. Until then, you can visit Manx Media to order you copy directly from us.

$18.00 USA, Graphic Novel, ISBN 0-9769690-0-9, 6” x 9” 248 pages.

Contact: Steve Lafler manxmedia@msn.com (503) 288-5980

That just about covers it.

Anyone who has read this far, rest assured I love you dearly and have your best interests in mind.

Art Comix: Distribution, Technology and the Future

On a recent visit to Bridge City Comics in the quickly gentrifying Mississippi Avenue hood in North Portland, I asked my four year old son Max if he would like me to buy him a comic book. Bugs Bunny, perhaps? Scooby Doo? Power Puff Girls?

“No thanks Dad, comics are for grown ups.” Laughing, I realized I walked right into that one.

It begs the question, where are we headed with comics? Do comic books have a future as an art medium, let alone as a commercial product? In an era when several conglomerates are vying to deliver movies to your cel phone, where do graphic novels fit in?

I’ve kept my eyes and ears open for clues as to the current and future viability of my chosen art form. Surely the future is bright; with the occasional New Yorker cartoon lampooning the ascendant popularity of the graphic novel, I feel moderately bullish that it’s possible to secure an audience. Certainly, I look more to movies like American Splendor and Ghost World as evidence that there is a public for decent cartooning than to the latest X-Men or Splooge Bat offering from Hollywood.

Truth is, nothing has ever stopped successive waves of kids from being incredibly excited about making comics. What’s more, nothing stops young artists from doing it their own way, packing their picture stories with their own cultural touchstones, the visual moments gleaned from the iconography encountered in the hyper wacked media landscape that is evolving around us. That’s a jumbled way of saying that comics as an art form constantly renews and reinvents itself.

It’s worth taking a look at the current state of distribution for comic books and magazines. Diamond Comics has a lock on “the industry”, as it were (when you hear someone refer to “the industry”, they are more likely to work for Image than to be a creative toiling in art comics). Even if you are doing limited edition comics with screen-printed covers, a Diamond order can underwrite a big part of your expenses; their market access is potent. But a monopoly is a monopoly no matter how you slice it; it’s been ten years since Diamond swallowed Capital City Distribution, the remaining major comics distributor.

Fortunately, we have the Global Hobo’s of the world, smart people creating and supporting a community dedicated to the flowering of comics as a means of personal expression, and to creating an exchange for such clever items as they appear. This is preferable to viewing or downloading comics on the web, I’m still very much interested in holding comics (and books, and magazines) in my hands as I read them.

With digital media proliferating like bunnies on steroids, is incumbent on each cartoonist to choose how to define themselves—are you a graphic novelist? Are you going to screen print your comics on Macy’s windows and cop cars in the middle of the night? How will you create and package your work, and how will it be distributed?

I love the example of Jeff Roysdon. Here is a guy who executes ingenious, witty paintings as a high level of craft; he produces strip and panel comics that appear in Vice, among other publications, and he is an insanely great Flash animator, the guy who always has a fresh idea. Here is someone who is not in the “comic book” world, applying his considerable energies and genius to a variety of mediums.

But what about movies being delivered to your Cel phone, let alone via DVDs, TV, theatres and downloads? Are comics being digitally distributed? Yes, yes and yes. The difference is that no one is getting rich off of digital comics as of yet (although I could be wrong on that).

My own mini vision as I am about to issue a new graphic novel is to work the web with generous excerpts from the book, letting the best part of the cat out of the bag for free. I guess it’s worth thinking about movies themselves too. No doubt some readers of this mag have put videos up on the web already. Meanwhile, loose canon investors are pouring their money into movies at a record clip, at least this season. Hollywood insiders snear at the newcomers, yet are happy to make deals and take their money. Not too many art cartoonists are going to run into a Hollywood deal, and many would not want to, but I for one am a big fan of Ghost World, what the hell, let’s see some more cool flicks like that! I note that I have yet to view Art School Confidential as of this writing; the critics are panning it, but I will make my own judgment.

Marketing—What Works Now (for me, anyway)

Having moved my business to Portland from Oakland some 11 months back, I was faced with the task of attracting some new clients. Granted, I brought my core clientele with me, but any business needs to continuously market itself, indeed it is essential to recreate a business daily to survive.

Wanting to create a high profile for my custom screen printing shop in my new location, I opted for a display ad contract with the leading local “Alternative Newsweekly”, Willamette Week. I know from experience that this type of advertising is expensive, and it is unrealistic to expect a dollar for dollar return on it, but I was confident that it would successfully present my new business name, logo and selling proposition to the local market.

I was not disappointed on any count; it was expensive. While I attracted several clients from my 36 ad campaign, they have yet to pay for the ads (but they might; one new account attracted by the ad shows great promise). I am satisfied that slamming my logo and sales pitch at the local alt weekly readership for 36 of the last 48 weeks has indeed had the desired effect: Readers of Willamette Week undoubtedly know that Manx Media means quality custom T-shirt printing!

Next, I began sloggin’ away at an ambitious direct mail campaign within a couple months of getting to Portland. This is labor intensive, detail oriented work: Developing mailing lists of prospective customers and creating a series of postcards to mail to the lists, constantly updating and adding new lists while honing my marketing message. Direct mail is a big effort to properly execute, but over the years, these postcard mailings have developed into my number one tool (next to recommendations of course) for attracting new accounts. I should mention it always works best when I develop my own lists, rather than with a list purchased from a broker.

Once I had my display ad and direct mail campaigns under way, something amazing and wonderful happened—I discovered Google Ad Words. Focusing on the Portland metro area, using this online advertising service brings me quote requests from people who have searched for exactly what I am selling. And I only pay for people who actually click through to my web site. The unique tools offered by Google allow me to set my budget where I need it to be.

It is essential that my site very clearly states my selling proposition, and directs the potential client to email me for a quote, but here is the bottom line: It bloodly well works like a charm!

As the world becomes inundated with more and more advertising messages, I have noticed that direct mail returns less of a response over time. Well, I’m here to tell you that for a given budget, Google Ad Words has outperformed direct mail, and display advertising, by a ratio of at least ten to one. No lie.

It is worth noting that Yahoo and Microsoft are both nipping at Google’s heels to provide this type of focused advertising, so keep an eye on those companies offerings.

So here I am, busy as hell with tons of work. I went to Google the other day and turned my campaign off, for the time being. Whoa! Who knew? I suppose I could power up and add capacity to my business and expand and all that horseshit, but honestly, I’d rather smoke a fatty and draw some comics!

Read This Before You Give Up

What defines success as an artist? Money? Groupies? Perhaps fancy cars, vacations, houses, etc.? Nope, not even close, none of the above.

From the start, I’ve always paid myself generously in the commodity that an artist values above all others: Time. Plain and simple, success as an artist is defined as ample time to make art.

Yes, we are assuming that you have a roof over your head, and food to eat. Whatever scrambling you have to do to make that happen, do it as efficiently as possible with no waste—no wasted time that is!

What does an artist do? Make art. An artist, I believe, should be less concerned with their end product, and more concerned with process. Engage in the process, and you improve technically, you get real darn good at your craft. Engage in the process, and your muse finds a way to sneak boatloads of good ideas in the back door in the dead of the night. And what does a body need in plentiful supply to engage in the process of making art? Time!

The art life is not about ending up with pretty pictures. Or sculptures, films, songs, drawings, comics, novels, whatever. It’s about the process of creating all that stuff; the journey itself, the illumination, the epiphanies encountered along the way are the true rewards.

Clean Energy/Clean Tech and the Future

Recently I have become obsessed with the Clean Energy and Clean Tech fields for the simple reason that I have kids; being a parent tends to make a guy want the earth to thrive and the human race to survive.

A Scottish scientist (what the hell was that dudes name?!) was in the news a couple months back, predicting that within 100 years, the only remaining habitable areas of space ship earth will be the artic region. With rising temperatures, melting polar ice, desertification of much of the planet, and rising sea levels, this guy thinks we will have billions of people dying off, with just a few breeding couples left, as we’ve made the earth sick with all the fossil fuels etc.

I’m sure there are varying opinions on how bad Global Warming is now, and how fast it will get worse, but only greedy jerks like Bush/Cheney and friends can still pretend it ain’t for real.
I hope the aforementioned Scottish scientist is just a wee bit off on his scheduling of the extinction of 99% of humanity!

In any case, there have always been lots of great arguments for Clean Energy and Clean Tech, in terms of what is good for all the creatures on the planet, not to mention Mother Earth herself! Up until recently, “it’s good for business” hasn’t been one of the arguments for Clean Energy and Clean Tech, quite the opposite.

Guess what? That has changed, big time! It appears that investors, venture capitalists and other money oriented types see big opportunities in all this Green & Clean stuff!

Here is a link to an article that posits, among other things, that Clean Tech/Clean Energy investment may offer 5-10 year compound annual revenue growth rates as high as 35%:

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=42742

I’ve blogged plenty about self-employment, and naturally I stand by every word. But if self-employment ain’t your thang, especially if you are young, I strongly urge you to consider Clean Energy and Clean Tech as great fields to pursue. Solar, Wind power and Fuel Cell tech are especially promising, but really are only the tip of the iceberg; these and related industries are growing fast!
As for the die hard self-employment personalities, of which I am one, there has to be ways to be an independent contractor within these new industries.

In any case, I recommend Googling these terms:

Clean Energy

Clean Tech

Bounce around the web looking at stuff you find there. You may find not only your future, but the future (hopefully!) of all of us.

Senator Russ Feingold has Nuggets

Yes, there is a Democrat in the Senate with balls: Russ Feingold.

On March 13, Senator Feingold said that President Bush should be censured. Feingold wants Bush to be held accountable for breaking the law, arguing that Bush's unauthorized domestic wiretapping is illegal.

Here is a link to the text of the speech calling for censure.

I heard a broadcast of the speech on Democracy Now, and it made my day. It's about time the Bush/Cheney creep machine gets taken to task for their deceitful, reprehensible ways.

Goddamn Economic Outlook

So am I crazy, or has Bush pretty much completely messed up the economy? Let’s face it, the tax cuts were a give away to the rich, and the Bush/Cheney (failed, illegal & immoral) war is driving the deficit over the cliff. The dollar is taking a serious pounding, real serious. The Chinese lend us money to buy more stuff from them.

This, my friends, has bankruptcy written all over it. Looks like the United States of America has been driven to the brink of bankruptcy by the moronic moves of the Bush / Cheney junta. The only thing I can see propping up the U.S. economy for awhile longer is the possibility that the Chinese will keep buying U.S. treasury bonds, and lending us money to buy more stuff from them, because they never had such a good customer!

Meanwhile, author Barbara Ehrenreich has published Bait and Switch, the (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream. Ehrenreich illuminates the current corporate thinking about it’s white collar employees, as expendable liabilities. Time was, a company was only considered as good as it’s staff, but no more. Here I quote from promo copy for the book from Ehrenreich’s web site:

“Today’s ultra-lean corporations take pride in shedding their “surplus” employees -- plunging them, for months or years at a stretch, into the twilight zone of white-collar unemployment, where job searching becomes a full-time job in itself. As Ehrenreich discovers, there are few social supports for these newly disposable workers -- and little security even for those who have jobs.”

All the preceding is a preamble to today’s screed on the Goddamn Economic Outlook. I hope for your sake you are not in the market for a white-collar job! If you are, perhaps you should avoid Ehrenreich’s book! No, go ahead and read it, at least you will know to trust your own counsel in a job search, rather than hire some phony high priced asshole “career coach” to make you feel shitty about yourself for doing things like engaging in critical thinking (they prefer you embrace herd mentality, so it’s easier to take the stick up your ass a corporate job gives you when you are hired).

As usual, my advice would be to carve out a niche working for yourself, doing work that is close to your heart. I’ve written a lot about self employment in this blog, I’ll just send you digging through the archives for my nuts & bolts advice on working for yourself, and how to get started.
But what if you prefer to work a regular job? The core of my advice is the same, take a hard, honest look inside your head and heart, and identify what you love to do. Track down work related to the best impulses of your soul (If you like to smoke crack, on the other hand, you may want to detox first, you probably won’t be getting paid for that. On the other hand, if jacking off is your thing, you may indeed be able to find work there).

It is necessary at this point for all of us to think, where are we going to be in three, five, ten, twenty years? Where will the earth be? Where will the human race be? It’s time to take Thoreau’s advice to advance in the direction of our dreams, trusting that more open and liberal laws governing events will emerge as we embrace our faith in our own best selves. Okay, so I didn’t quote verbatim, but trust me, there is indeed a fine passage echoing those very sentiments in Walden.

I advocate pursuing careers in Alternative Energy, perhaps the most promising field. Wind, Solar, Hydrogen, Efficiency, there will be a growing mega-industry there. Hell, I frankly believe the hope for the human race will be in clean energy technology that is so spectacular, so unprecedented that we don’t even know what it is yet; some genius kid out there is already brainstorming on it.

There will be lots of careers in Clean Energy much sooner than we now imagine. Remember, even that knuckle-head Bush talked about Alternative Energy in his State of the Union Address.

Whatever else happens, the price of oil will continue to rise as the demand increases. Meanwhile the supply will be shrinking. I am confident that Clean Energy will be cheaper than oil in a relative blink of the eye. Don’t buy this crap that we need to return to building nuclear power plants either—that’s just another old school, big money crock of shit that leads down a dead end alley. Frankly, people like Bush and his gang of big money/big oil goons will cease to matter at the point when, due to it’s poor cost/benefit ratio, no one wants to consume oil anymore! Clean Energy will have evolved technically and marketwise to the point where the oil greed creeps will be out of business.

We will need engineers and overtly smart techies for sure, but we’ll also need business innovators, sales people, mechanics, and the whole range of support staff. Of course, visioning the future isn’t just based on one industry; farming and food production will no longer be based on petrochemical fertilizers, you can bet your behind on that. The demand for organic food is already huge and growing fast. As with Clean Energy, there will be technology and market models we can’t know, because they have not been envisioned yet. Trust you heart, your head, and your intuition. Move confidently forward in the direction of your dreams, towards your best self. Isn’t life too damn short to do anything else?

Media is changing too. Hey, that’s what I’m doing here and now, standing up shouting like a maniac from a new kind of soap-box! Now, if I could only get free burritos for mouthing off like this…