Adventures in Self Employment

As the third anniversary of my Self Employment For Bohemians blog approaches, it's my intention to reassert the central premise--not only is it very good indeed to be self employed, much preferable to the living death of holding down a regular job (especially one in a soulless corporation), but it is very do-able to be self employed.

I am not the only artistically inclined entrepreneur with a broad anti-authoritarian streak, and certainly I'm not the most articulate. I do, however, have something to say about the process of building an independent work life for oneself, and sometimes I'm even funny!

Digging back to the beginnings of this blog, I am going to reprint my seminal pieces about self employment over the next stretch. Presumably I'll have something new to say on the subject once I've reposted my core articles.

The following was first posted at the end of 2004, it's been edited since.

Self Employment for Bohemians
By Steve Lafler

SPONTANEOUS ENTREPRENEURSHIP
I was fifteen minutes from reporting to my first day of work as a minimum wage dishwasher early one evening in June, 1979. It was my first summer living out of my mom and dad’s house. Things had started well enough—my intention was to sell wholesale T-Shirt printing services, pumping out the jobs myself on a freelance basis. The first week, I sold a gross of shirts to a local pub, making a gross of dollars. Considering that rent for my summer sublet was all of $60.00 per month, I felt flush! But I hit the wall after that. Despite hanging flyers all over Amherst and environs (including on the enormous University of Massachusetts campus), the fact was that my client base (dorms, student clubs and the like) had departed for the summer and no one was buying.
Having spent most of my last $20.00 on a book that caught my eye (I’d convinced myself that this was practical through some alchemical equation), I was ready to throw in the towel and signed on for a dishwasher job on campus. UMass hosted an odd assortment of conventions, seminars and crackpot camps in an attempt to pay the bills over the slow summer season. I was to be washing dishes in the campus dining commons for a group of several hundred Transcendental Meditation practitioners from the west coast who were convening a seminar on levitation. I did mention it was the Seventies, right?
I was filled with despair at the bleak prospect of washing dishes. I’d done my time as a dishwasher at a fast food steak house in high school where I was required to wear a polyester cowboy outfit. I had no desire to return to the low rent glory of the dishwashing pit.
At fifteen minutes to the 7:00 pm diswashing shift, a bolt of lightning struck. Of an instant, a fully formed scam literally sprang out of absolutely nowhere and announced itself to me. The underlying message was clear: YOU ARE NOT TO REPORT TO THE DISHWASHING JOB! I’d recalled that an acquaintance, Sue, who worked in the campus center building, had mentioned to me that she had a list of groups who were holding events in the concourse of the campus center that summer. Sue had actually produced a list of the events for me. She assured me, if I was to set up and sell T-Shirts at these events, she would look the other way; not charge me for the space. It seemed risky and a bit scurrilous, and I’d forgotten about it until fourteen minutes to dishwashing.
It was a Thursday evening, and that very weekend, the New England Camera Club was hosting their annual convention in the campus center. I determined that I would grace the show with their official (bootleg) t-shirt. The first problem to conquer was lack of capital. I knew where I could score some blank shirts for a dollar a pop, which I could print and mark up to the princely sum of four bucks, but since I was down to $3.00 on hand, it didn’t seem much of a plan. If I had a hundred bucks, I could buy a hundred shirts and turn it into four hundred over the course of the weekend, enough to finance a month of summer living!
Did I mention it was the Seventies? Very fortunate, as it turns out you could hitchhike anywhere in New England back then within the course of a few hours, a day tops. I elected my mom as my financier and was on the road by five minutes to seven with my thumb up. As my folks lived about 70 miles away, I figured I’d get there just before the summer night settled in. I got a ride out of Amherst towards the western burbs of Boston just about the time my shift supervisor probably started wondering where the hell I was.
Okay, so mom definitely raised an eyebrow at the plan, but recognized my desperation and fronted the bucks. By early Friday afternoon, I was back in Amherst at my drawing board putting together a cute little cartoon logo featuring a guy who had a camera for a head. Somehow I managed to rustle up the blank shirts and get them all printed by eleven that evening.
The next day, I set up bright and early on the campus concourse with a table that Sue scrounged up for me (she was slightly horrified that I’d actually taken her up on her offer!). By noon I’d made Mom’s stake back, and was up to $250.00 by the end of the first day.
By just past noon on Sunday, I hit about $430.00 (having managed to get the shirts for .89, I had a few over 100 pieces). At that point, an obnoxious fifteen year old (who had been flirting with me earlier) returned. With an attitude of scorn and derision, she asked if these were the official New England Camera Club T-Shirts? I said that indeed they were! A pale and disheveled fifty year old sad sack with caved in shoulders stepped forward and introduced himself as the president of said club. I handed him the four remaining shirts, and barked “Here’s your cut!”. I was breaking down the table over his protests and briskly walking it back to the storage bay that Sue had plucked it from the day before. Table tucked away, I smiled at the Pres. and thanked him profusely. Then I turned on my heel and ran close to four minute mile pace back to my flat, a remorseless 22 year old flush with success!
Now I admit that I’d pulled a fast one on that guy, but I am hardly the only college kid to ever make a quick bundle of cash bootlegging a few T’s. The moral of the story, such as it is, goes like this: If you’ve got the BoHo self employment stuff, you know it, because you have an anecdote or two a lot like this. Normal, sensible, thoughtful people do not take risks like this, they do not engage in such brazen behavior. They want “security”! You and me, we’ll take the risk any day… for those who prefer the living death of the secure government job and pension, they can have it!

Is BoHo self employment for you?

Are you an insubordinate scalawag who hates being a cog in a hierarchical organization? Do you enjoy simple accounting? Then BoHo self employment may be the designer lifestyle of choice for you.

I was a paperboy from the age of thirteen until I was fifteen. I wasn’t particularly ambitious about adding new customers, nor was I the best accountant/enforcer I coulda been, but I was conscientious and punctual about getting slightly over forty households their morning Springfield Union for two years. I really enjoyed the earnings—at first, it enabled my Marvel Comics habit, which transformed into an album buying binge when I got a bit old for superhero comics. Finally, at the grand old age of fifteen, the gig supported important early forays into the enticing worlds of beer and weed! I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but apparently having a paper route is a good indicator that you may have the right stuff for entrepreneurship.

That may well be true, but the ultimate test is probably more like this: Have you ever been hired for a job (probably one you desperately needed) only to find yourself really depressed at the prospect of looming indentured servitude? Yes? Now there is a swell indicator that you have the right stuff for entrepreneurship!

Okay, that’s really only part of it. Where lies you passion? Do you obsess over something that can translate into a product or service? Can you see yourself building a business around this passion, this obsession? If you have an intense focus, if you naturally bend your will to doing something about it, bingo! You are ready to put yourself in the driver’s seat in your life. Lemme warn you though, you are in for one hell of a bumpy ride. You gotta want it BAD! Seriously, it is easier for most normal humans to just get a job and have a hobby on the side. Stare yourself down hard, look in your heart and do a gut check. Ready? OK, let’s go!

Disclaimer! I can only tell you about my experience, what has worked for me. Take what resonates with you and dump the rest. I am no business genius, but I am very canny about producing an income for myself. I have been able to do so in adverse circumstances. In the midst of the devastating recession of the early 80’s, fresh out of college with an ART degree (not a lot of hiring going on there!), I created a job for myself out of thin air (more about that in a bit.)
Right now, at the age of 47, I’m running a business that grosses about $130,000 a year. It pays me about 35K, and two part timers last year made a total of about 21K between them working for me. Mind you, I’m working an average of about 30 hours a week… part of my pay I take in TIME. Say what? That’s right, I pay myself in time to do what I want. That’s the BOHO part. According to my handy American Heritage Dictionary, Bohemian is defined thusly: “A writer or artist who disregards conventional standards of behavior”. I’m an artist as well as a businessman, so I’ve always been willing to trade potential earnings for time to do what ever the heck I want. In my case, to write and draw “literary” graphic novels. Yes, I make some money from the comics too, but not enough to keep the wolf away from the door.
I’ve managed to keep myself employed during three serious economic downturns since I got out of college. I’ve been able to buy a house (I went in on it with my wife and sister in law, a very economic way to buy real estate). By virtue of re-investing a lot of my earnings back into my business, I pay pretty darn low taxes. I’m no Donald Trump (thank god!), but I’m reasonably content with the job I’ve created for myself.

THE ZERO OVERHEAD MODEL
Okay, the place to start is at the beginning, and we’re almost there, but first I want to tell you about my foolproof concept for starting your own business—it’s called the Zero Overhead Model.

The idea is that your clients are going to finance your business for you! I use my own business model here for a couple of darn good reasons. First, it’s a business I know well. I’m qualified to hold forth on the business of wholesale custom screen printing. Second, my business is built around both a service (custom screen printing) and a commodity (t-shirts/apparel). I believe that the zero overhead model can work for both a service based or a commodity based business.
Here’s how it works in a nutshell. Joe or Joanna Business owner (or any potential client) comes in to order 100 t-shirts imprinted with their logo. I quote a price on the job and they agree to it. I write up the order, detailing the particulars. The client signs the order form, acknowledging their agreement to the deal. Let’s say that the total on the job is $700.00. I tell the client that I require a 50% downpayment to produce the job, with the balance due upon delivery. With costs of about $250.00 total to produce the job, not only have I enlisted my client to finance production of the job, but I’ve gotten a little pocket money up front in the deal!
When I started producing custom screen printing jobs as an undergraduate, it didn’t take me long to figure out that my customers were also going to be my financiers. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention!
This little schema does bring up some obvious questions. For example, why the heck is Joe (or Joanna) Business going to trust you with the aforementioned $350.00 downpayment? Based on what do they trust you? Okay, I admit it’s a con game! A confidence game, that is to say. When you meet a prospective client, you are projecting confidence in your ability to deliver the goods. Your appearance and demeanor project professionalism. If you are indeed in the t-shirt game, you show them samples. They are welcome to walk if they see red warning flags in the course of your meeting. I’m a proponent of the soft sell; as such, I am very comfortable with a perspective client who decides not to place an order at any particular meeting. My attitude is, I’m not so much gunning to close a sale no matter what, rather I’m helping the client fulfill there need for some quantity of screen printed t-shirts. If the price is too dear for them, or if we aren’t a good fit to do business, I’m quite happy with that.
Another question: What about production equipment? What about samples? What about office or production space? Phones? Computers? Etc.? Well, when you are starting out, you just need to improvise. You (hopefully) have a roof over your head, whether it’s your place, your parents house, a sublet garage (ideal!), a dorm room, or even if you are couch surfing. Work with what you have and build from there. If you can borrow a friend or family members phone and/or computer for even an hour a day, that may be enough to contact initial clients and produce that first job.
I’ll dust off another anecdote as an example. I began freelancing t-shirt and illustration jobs while still an undergraduate at UMass, printing jobs in my dorm lounge. I took off for the west coast half a year after taking my degree. After several months of traveling, I found myself in Eugene, Oregon. I spent the little money I had securing an apartment. I placed some ads in the local university newspaper advertising my screen printing services, then I copied up a couple hundred flyers and papered the phone poles in the college neighborhood with them. I was down to about eight bucks when the first job came in (phew!). It was a small job, which would take only about $30 bucks in supplies to produce… yet somehow I had neglected to hit up the client for a downpayment. Oops! I needed a can of ink, four blank t-shirts, a squeegee, a yard of synthetic silk and a wooden frame. What to do… I borrowed the money from my girlfriend! From there I sold more jobs, just scraping by, until a bounty of dorm, frat and music festival gigs rained down on me in the Oregon spring.
You do not want to always ask friends or family to bail you out. And if you do borrow money from them, be sure to make it your first priority to pay them back. But you will rely on your network of friends, family and colleagues again and again. Community is a very good thing! When someone comes to you for help, gladly give it to them! (Unless they are a serial leech, in which case giving them a kick in the ass is the best favor you can do them… ).
The zero overhead model may be the only way to fly for BoHo entrepreneurs, but believe me they aren’t the only ones. Look at a guy like George W. Bush. Is that guy a self made business man? Hell no! Everything that guy ever owned was procured with sweetheart loans from his daddy’s fat-cat friends and stuff like that. Do you think the super rich ever buy anything with their own money? NO! They get it with O.P.M. (other people’s money). OKAY! That’s it for the zero overhead thing for now. I’m getting off track talking about these darn oligarchs and plutocrats.

TAXES

The Schedule C is the best friend of the sole proprietor. Get to know it well. Work it! The Schedule C is the “Profit or loss from business or profession” form, to be filed along with your form 1040.

If you re-invest in your business, your business will grow, and you will pay very little taxes. Keep a very tight ledger of income and expenses, using the categories that the IRS provides on Schedule C; you may also add categories peculiar to your business. At the end of the year, compile the data and boom—it takes like ten minutes to fill out the Schedule C. Okay, so it took you five hours to add up your ledger, if you do it by hand like me. You can do it on your computer too.
You will pay taxes on the profit you show at the bottom line of the Schedule C, and you will also pay self employment tax (figure it on Schedule SE). There’s the rub, the sefl employment tax is a stiff one—currently upwards of 15%. So be sure to make quarterly payments to the IRS, or you’ll get your ass kicked come April 15th. The best way to do this is to set aside a percentage of your earnings for taxes every time you get paid—EVERY TIME! Don’t raid your tax fund when you get tight for funds! If you are tempted to raid it, that is the moments to send it to the U.S. Treasure! Anyhow, the theory is that you’ll get some of that self employment tax back as Social Security when you’re a geezer. Whoops, I forgot, W. is gonna trash Social Security…

Steve Lafler

Contents © 2007 Steve Lafler

Announcing Diva Funnies, a new Web Comic

I'm pleased to announce my new Web Comic, Diva Funnies. It will be a regularly updated Web Comic, starring Constance Reddy, who is a Diva, as you may have surmised.

How to explain Diva Funnies? How about this:

You're not a teenager anymore, Miss Thing, so stop acting like one! Betty & Veronica never had this much fun--but look out for that suave werewolf sipping his cerveza in the corner booth...

The fact is, I'm better at doing comics than anything else, as I recently expressed in this blog, so comics I shall do! And this is how I shall do them!

Steve Lafler

Sanctimonious Polemics Here

Fuck a duck, it's hard being a blogger these days, I have no sanctimonious polemic to bash anyone over the head with today, no trivial whining about my live and loves, no product to flog, no stoooopid joke to tell.
You will have to imagine for yourself some left or right wing indignant screed, some sordid detail about my pecker, some new improved and splendid cog that will slide easily into the desired slot (that can be purchased for only $9.99 via paypal)!
I have no dumb ass jokes, some "friend" you haven't seen for sixteen years will send you a page of them with 50MB photos attatched tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.
This all being the case, I'm gonna blog off and blog out for now. For christ sakes, I'm a goddamn cartoonist, if you really love me and care about me, go read my mother fucking comic books, for chrissakes. Now there is a medium in which I am qualified to express myself.
Blog? Fog! Schmog! Bloob, Schmoob.

The Funkiest White Man who Ever Lived

To move to a new house, a new city, a new country is to open a door on a moment filled with portent--rarely in life is there such a clean divide between the old and new.
When I schlepped several pick-up truckloads of stuff into our new place in San Felipe Del Agua, a neighborhood in Oaxaca city, last Friday, I was aware of this, but frankly was too tired from the effort to fully appreciate it.
It is a cozy, welcoming and very Mexican casa; Serena and I were pleased as could be to lease it, as a try at an earlier rental had collapsed in negotiations that underscored our lack of finesse in the protocols of Mexican business. Hell, it was a blessing in disguise, as the house we took was far warmer, a better vibe.

Popping open a first symbolic box at the conclusion of unloading, I spied a CD of a Little Feat studio session from '74, and popped it in. Suddenly, here is Lowell George at the peak of his powers putting a groove in my step with an insanely funky reading of "Rock and Roll Doctor". Lowell's rich, distinctive take on the Howlin' Wolf vocal style has room to shake in this number, and his Delta slide meets L.A. guitar leads are smokin'. Bill Payne on piano, Kenny Gradney on bass, Sam Clayton on congas, Paul Barriere on rhythm guitar and Richy Hayward on drums are unmatched in distilling the essence of New Orleans into pristine yet supremely butt-shakin' rock 'n roll.

Goddamnit Lowell, thanks for welcoming me into my new house! You are indeed the funkiest white man who ever lived.

Found A House

After living out of suitcases (well, duffel bags actually) for about ten weeks, the wife and I have finally landed in a nice modest house in San Felipe del Agua, a pretty neighborhood about 2 miles north of the center of Oaxaca.

I am most relieved, as this means I can get back to my art routine.

Borrowed a pick up truck from our hosts Alvin & Arlene Starkman at Casa Machaya B&B Friday last (stayed with the Starkmans for four weeks, a great experience), and schlepped our 40+ boxes of stuff, art, jugetes, clothing and just plain junk down one steep hill and up another to this cozy modest house. (That is my spokesmodel Max Lafler sitting in the courtyard out back by the guest cottage.)

I was sore as hell the next day. Fuck a duck, I have this self image as this studly guy who has been able to run like a demon his whole life, but the fact of the matter is, at the age of 50 maybe I shoulda hired movers!

Things improved this evening when I opened the box with my cartooning supplies--I found my Winsor Newton Series 7 sable brush (#2), and forgot the aching muscles. It was like finding a mini rosetta stone to my soul.

What the stratocaster was to Jimi Hendrix, what Tiger was to Jerry, what powdered rubber jumpsuits are to Lux Interior, the Winsor Newton brush is to me: That magic tool that is infinitely simple, but allows infinite expression with a flick of the hand.

I've been slinging india ink with brushes for 35 years; I figure if I keep it up, I'll be gettin' good at it before long.

Now I can begin in earnest what I came to Oaxaca to do: Locate the art pedal, and press it to the metal!

Meanwhile, I note that I've added a product to my cafepress.com T Shirt shop. It's the FrankenJerry T Shirt, my painting of Frankenstein's monster jammin' on Jerry Garcia's infamous guitar, Tiger.

I'm trying to figure out how to make a buck from Oaxaca, and I guess my cafepress shop is a stab in that direction.

My New T-Shirt Shop

I've set up a new apparel shop featuring my paintings, like this here guitar playin' cactus. And let's not forget the giant wolfman chasing Benb in his '63 Impala!

The shop is hosted by Cafe Press, a most reputable site recommended to me by none other than Tom Tomorrow, the brilliant, distinguished creator of the This Modern World weekly comic strip. When a national treasure like Tom gives the thumbs up to a web portal, I am inclined to trust his judgement!

The apparel shop features Tees, Hoodies, Baby Doll scoop necks, and other trendy sportswear styles.

I'm looking to develop some more full color fun & unusual items as the holidays approach. I'll post new images in the blog here as they go through the formality of appearing in actual paint in the physical world!

Where Can You Sit?

This is the type of question you ask from a position of confusion. I have been a gypsy of sorts for two months plus, living in a gorgeous B&B on a hillside tucked between the city of Oaxaca and the nearby mountain range. It's fucking stunning, the jaunty trees clinging to the hillside in the foreground, moody cloulds tussling with the mountain tops a few miles away.

But... but... I don't got no car, no phone, no house (yet), no drawing table. Today my scanner arrived--smashed to bits by the combined genuis of the US & Mexican postal services. I know, I shoulda known better.

Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted to be here, but I am a creature of habit. And I guess my favorite habit is working. I want to get down to some serious art making here. I know I will soon, but for the meanwhile I will try to remind myself that I am having a blast here with Serena, Max and Genevieve, and that we are living our dream in real time.

Truth be told, we have mixed it up with a hell of a lot of seriously nice people too, eager to help us and welcome us to Oaxaca. Damn near every person who sees two year old Genni with her riot of red curls falls instantly in love with here.

OK, time to turn off the lights, escape the bugs, and get some sleep.

On to Oaxaca de Juarez!

The obstacles to achieving one's dreams can be stronger than dirt. Serena and I were booked to fly to Oaxaca on Aug. 4 to begin our ex-patriot life there, when we were slammed with something unexpected, to say the least.

Now, rounding the bend of mid August, we are getting back on track and will be leaving wonderful Portland in a week or so for Oaxaca, but to get a sense of what we are up against, I'll just provide a link to Serena's blog right here:

http://haveyouseen.blogspot.com/2007/08/another-test-before-oaxaca.html

I'm fond of telling anyone who will listen that I'm lucky in life, and lucky in love, and that I pretty much came up a winner in the relationship lottery. What can I say about Serena, I love her, she is a singularly beautiful woman, and she is brilliant enought to support me in just about anything that my artist's imagination tosses in our way.
She is an accomplished artist and writer herself--the example of her genius and keen intellect push me to do shit I'd never think of otherwise!
We have embarked upon and completed adventures together that are far beyond what I could have imagined for myself, for us, let alone our kids.

And, here is the rightous good news... her doctor's have pronounced her cancer free!

On to Oaxaca de Juarez!

Stupid Real Estate Tricks

I never intended to be a real estate baron/profiteer, and it ain't nothin' but dumb luck that I kind of am a real estate baron/profiteer.

What I am, as this blog exists to point out, is a self employed bohemian. I've been a cartoonist and T-Shirt screen printer, and that pretty much suits me to a T (fuck, that is a baaaaad pun).

So what happened? Well, several years back, I hooked up with a couple cute chicks I knew (aka my wife and sister in law) and we bought a gorgeous but shambling old victorian in Oakland. Before the big crazy run up in prices. We just wanted to avoid dumping cash into the rent hole, so we pooled resources to buy our lovely dump.

Fast forward to today, two home sales and one insane real estate bubble later, and the wife and I are set up to move into the fertile territory of our dreams.

Indeed, we have cashed out and are headed to Oaxaca City in Mexico to make art and raise our kids. Yes, we are jumping into the deep clear waters of the unknown, into the very heart of our deepest longings for sublime adventure--and we are dragging our two beloved little kids along for the ride!

We lived in Oaxaca (and other parts of Mexico) for half of '97, and we loved every shaggy minute of our time in the amazing, misunderstood jewel to the south. We swore to return, so here we go!

I'm gonna blog more about this for sure, but I'm about to lose my damn battery here in the wifi cafe on Portland's Alberta St. (yes, we are really gonna miss beloved PDX!). Stay tuned!

lotsa love
Steve

I Heart Celebrities

"The Beatles were real bastards" quipped John Lennon in an interview shortly before his death, describing the Fab Four's climb to the top of the heap. It stands to reason that the famous, the true big shots, might be possessed of huge egos and a certain ruthlessness in order to deliver themselves to the winner's circle.

Yet in our culture, we worship at the altar of celebrity in a most earnest way. I'm willing to bet that your average cynical hipster with their ironic pose would melt like butter if, say, William Shatner or perhaps Julia Roberts got involved in a fender bender with them.
Why is this? Well, Hollywood provides a sort of faux royalty, and we accept that. Certainly we generally agree that politicians are bottom feeder scum, so their status is less than movie stars, sporting gods, and music industry icons
Like most average folks, I too suffer from the fixation on celebrity. Indeed, I am aflicted with a bad case of hero worship for certain writers, rock stars and the like. It's embarrassing, but so it goes.

And like most people, I've had actual encounters with some famous folks, and have sort of known some sort of famous folks, as follows:

John Linnell - They Might Be Giants (same high shcool, mutual friends)
Robert Crumb - (fellow cartoonist, mutual friends)
Matt Groening - (see above)
Dan Clowes - (see above, and I actually used to hang with Dan a bit in my Oakland days)
Margaret Cho - (printed her t-shirts for years, barely met her face to face, but she rocks)
Lux Interior - (never actually met the guy, but he did give me a quote for the back of my BugHouse book)
Tom Robbins - (see above)
Alberto Salazar - (lived one town over from Al, ran against him frequently in high school. That kid was smoke!)

I am happy to report that none of these people were "real bastards" to me, as per John Lennon's comment about making it big. Hell, I could even think of some fairly glowing things to say about each person based on personal experience.

Which brings us to my celebrity/famous guy story I really want to tell, about a bonafide genius who also struck me as a truly cool dude.
When I was in my early twenties, I dated a girl named Becca whose family was in the architecture game, and were well connected. In fact, her brother in law, an "old guy" in his 40s, was the Dean of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
We were hanging around the Dean's fancy pants Back Bay townhouse one fine spring Saturday afternoon, when I am introduced to a friend of the family, an architect, one Frank Gehry. Although Gehry was then 50 years old, I was struck by his boyishness, his unaffected charm and frank accessibility. He seemed like a peer, not a big shot "old guy".
It was not a bullshit bluff, a middle aged ploy to seem cool to college kids either. He was simply present, nothing occupied his heart and mind but the moment he was sharing with my gal Bec and I.
Still, I was surprised when he whipped out a bag of weed and inquired if I might roll a joint? Why sure Frank, be glad to! We lit up the doobie as Gehry explained that he couldn't roll for shit.
Sure, he can design the Bilbao Guggenheim, but he can't roll doobies to save his life!
I recently saw a documentary film about Gehry, and was struck once more at his joy in life, his insistence on being present in the moment and being spontaneous with the expression of his creativity.
Rock on Frank, it was an honor to burn one with you!

The Ben Tanzer Experience

See Ben display his handsome mug on You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aq3UKEGm0U

This may well inspire you to pick up a copy of his novel Lucky Man, which can be done at Amazon

Truth is, by doing this Ben reminds me that it's high time I took a shot at posting something on You Tube! Looks like the perfect medium for a cartoonist.

Memorial Day Blues

Has there ever been a time in history when sanctimonious hypocrites like George Bush and Dick Cheney have not called for a fresh infusion of cannon fodder to advance their venal lust for absolute power and control? No.

Come every Memorial Day, jerks like Cheney and Bush implore us to honor our war dead--the implication is that we owe them for the liberty and freedom they delivered to us. Sadly, most of our fallen soldiers were serving to advance the ambitions and dreams of the rich and powerful, who, far from the battlefield, have been willing to spill the blood of others for their personal gain.

Certainly there have been times where it has been necessary to defend the country, but most military actions have been designed to advance the agenda of the rich and powerful who stand to gain from it.

When a George Bush asks you to feel a pang of guilt for the price that a soldier paid on your behalf, he is pulling a fast one on you. That soldier likely died to pump up the bottom line for a Haliburton or Bechtel, not to insure that your first amendment rights are intact. Bush is, in truth, attempting to perpetuate the myth that military adventures benefit us all. Why is he doing this? One central reason is that weasels like him will always need fresh cannon fodder (this means you, your friends, your children and grandchildren).

If we are to truly honor people serving in the military, we would not waste their lives on missions inspired by greed and naked power lust (or religious fanaticism, for that matter). We would not send them on ridiculous adventures meant to line the pockets of venal, corrupt, power mad oligarchs and corporate slime balls. We would accord the proper respect to those who serve by allowing them to defend the country and the Constitution, as they were meant to.

I want to honor all those who have fallen in war throughout history as follows: As human beings, we can do better than to engage in violence as a means of sorting out our problems. We owe it to those who have died by the sword to prove that there is a better way to live.

I suggest that it's worth resisting the call to war, to militarism, to nationalism. The greedy few have manipulated the masses throughout history to die for them, to advance their bloody fortunes, while invoking fuzzy patriotic nonsense about "honoring our war dead". I saw we honor them by not adding to their ranks. There would be no greater tribute to those who have fallen.

Those Swashbuckling Creators from Manx Media on Tackling the Novel

Ben Tanzer & Steve Lafler in Conversation

Steve Lafler: Ben, in your debut novel Lucky Man, you take a unique approach—the story is told from the point of view of four friends. Gabe, Jake, Louie and Sammy each get a crack at the narrative from their own point of view. In part four of the book, Sammy’s version of the story brings a crescendo and a sort of denouement to the book. I’d like to know what inspired you to structure Lucky Man this way?

Ben Tanzer: Steve, I was thinking about how friends of a certain age or circumstance can become so close that their thoughts and experiences begin to merge, like they have one brain, and I really wanted to run with that. I also wanted the characters to be somewhat distinctive though and so they not only get to tell the same story from their perspective, but the novel is divided into four sections, with each section highlighting one of the characters and their struggles. I always knew the fourth section would be focused on Sammy and so I crafted his story to come to some bit of closure at the same time as the overall story. What I would like to know is what inspired you to tackle your new graphic novel in partnership with someone else? I could see where that might be an experience that’s both more creative and more frustrating.

Steve Lafler: When Stephen Beaupre and I began work on 40 Hour Man, we had no idea it would become a novel. We were creating it as installments to run in Buzzard magazine, a comics anthology we published under in the 90s. 40 Hour Man generated it’s own momentum; we serialized the piece over 13 issues of Buzzard.

The funny thing with graphic novels is that it may bebe best to start work without seeing a whole novel—it would be a daunting task to intend to write and draw hundreds of pages! For example, when I started BugHouse, I thought I had maybe thirty pages of material, and ultimately ended up with a pretty hefty novel, just following my muse and executing the premise.

As for the partnership with Beaupre, it grew out of the exact sort of shared experience/friendship you depict in Lucky Man, so we come full circle! It felt natural and organic to work with him; we put no pressure on ourselves, we just had a good time.

Meanwhile, I know you have a second novel underway, is a first draft done? How did you approach your sophomore effort?

Ben Tanzer: I have completed a first draft of my second novel which I am tentatively calling Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine. I had this idea that I wanted to do something focused on a couple that falls for one another quickly, implodes just as quickly, and then have to find their way back to one another. This idea had been kicking around in my head for several years. I also had a sense of how I wanted to start and finish it, knew there were a couple of scenes I wanted to do for sure, and then I just started writing. Lucky Man was somewhat similar, big idea, start and finish, a couple of scenes, except that once I started it I just kept going day after day until it was done and I always felt like I knew how I was going to get to the end I had in mind. With this new one, I would write for a week, and then I would put it down, I wasn’t always definitely sure where the next scene was going, but then something would come to me and I would get back to it. It took longer, but started in the same way. I guess if anything, Lucky Man was sort of more fully developed than I knew and desperate to get out of my head, and Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine, was half-formed and comfortable with that. Having talked process, let’s talk themes. Are there themes you find yourself repeating in your work?

Steve Lafler: I seem to have come to my tenure here on the planet pre-installed with a will towards being a Zen trickster, so that comes through in my work. My big overarching thematic thread is: What is the nature of creativity? What is the purpose of being human? Why are we suspended in this peculiar medium known as “time”? These concerns came into focus for me in a most spectacular way on April 10, 1976 when I first gobbled down some magic mushrooms as a college freshman. As far as I can tell, I experienced a classic shamanic initiation, traveling through an apparent death and returning to consider it over time, through my art. On subsequent trips, I have not approached that terrifying threshold, let alone traveled through it.

Now let’s here about your overarching concerns that drive you to put it down on paper!

Ben Tanzer: Nice, I’m not sure I can compete with that. Still, there are definitely themes I come back to again and again, looking at them from new angles and trying to make sense of them. Coping is the probably the overarching theme, people coping with abandonment particularly, and abandonment by parents especially, but abandonment by society as well. I tend to focus on how poorly people cope with the things they are struggling with, how they turn to substance abuse and violence and obsessive compulsive behavior, how much of their coping is internal. I’m fascinated by their struggle to make sense of the world and their confusion about how they’ve found themselves where they are. They are people who are not sure how to communicate what they’re experiencing and don’t necessarily have the tools they need to gain more self-awareness. And this of course is all fictional. So, where does that leave us? What else do you want people to know before we say good-bye?

Steve Lafler: The concerns you list are certainly there in Lucky Man, especially in the parent/grown kid relationships. I suspect you start with a grain of truth, some emotional truth, and let it manifest as fiction? And I note that the theme of Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine is the next chronological step in life challenges after leaving home, that is to negotiate the rapids of relationships.

My thought to end on would be something like this… the novel (and/or the graphic novel) is truly a grand challenge to a creative person. It’s huge in scale, even if you bust one out if a few weeks, as Kerouac was known to do. It took me years of cartooning to warm up to the task, and I’m freeing myself at present to come at it anew from the moment.

Fuck if I have any idea right now what my next novel will encompass, even what the overarching process will be, but I’m rarin’ to take the bull by the horns and get on with it!

You’re up maestro, give us the final word!

Ben Tanzer: What I love about novels, graphic or otherwise, is that they can be these sprawling messy affairs, with subplots and drama, cool characters, struggles, humor, babes, drugs, pop culture, politics, pain, joy, love, triumph, and insanity, yet still be cogent, focused, insightful, and entertain someone over a long afternoon or weekend. They’re like life in that way and that to me is pretty awesome. So is the chance to write them.

Lucky Man and 40 Hour Man can be ordered from Amazon.com

Punked!

Ben Tanzer has posted a shorty interview with me on the Punk Planet site, where he is one of their esteemed in-house bloggers.
He manages to ask a few key questions that touch on all the main stops of my comics career, and even lets me talk about how much I love The Cramps! Thanks Ben!
Punk Planet is a great magazine, to say the least--I heartily recommend voting for them at the newsstand with your dollars!

Dog Boy Comic Books

I recently posted a slew of my Dog Boy comic book covers on this blog.

These books will be available from Cosmic Monkey Comics, Portland's great comic book store.

To recap, I introduced Dog Boy in Guts #3 in the summer of 1982 (Dog Boy's first actual appearance was on a "publishing party" poster for my Benb & Gerald book in March 1980 -- the band was Martian Highway, and the guitarist Carl Mayfield and I collaborated on the poster. We printed in silver ink on black paper, so that it would look like an 11" x 17" hit of blotter acid).

Dog Boy #1 (Special Shoe Issue) appeared in March '83, and I went on to publish seven issues under my Cat-Head Comics imprint. Fantagraphics stepped in and published another ten issues, starting up with Dog Boy #1 (volume 2).

Certainly I will produce a collection of Dog Boy material at some point. There's somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 pages of material, I envision a 200 - 300 page volume, culling the best stuff into one killer package. Not sure when this will happen at present, except to say it's a good bet it won't be in 2007.

As I am frankly too busy to run a back issue catalog business, I've placed over 1000 copies of Dog Boy and Bughouse comic magazines with Cosmic Monkey.

I'm giving myself the job of staying focused on my current comics work. As the dad of two small children, I have been by necessity neglectful of entering into my full-on comics creating trance for the past several years. I'm ready again to turn the light inward to see what strange fish I might haul back to the surface world for presentation to the public!

Happy to Lose the Race to the Bottom

How many times has a client asked me, "I got a lower quote, would you like to beat it?"

I got the call today from a long time client. They have been truly wonderful for almost eight years, giving me lots of interesting T Shirt printing work and paying on time. It's been a productive, win-win relationship.

They have some new talent to promote, new shirts to print, and some new management in the mix. It's always tough to keep an account when management changes, but I always try.

I do not let my clients dictate the price at which I will work. I am selling quality and service, and I do not compete on price. Thus, every time I am asked to win the race to the bottom of the price barrell, I politely decline. That's what I did today.

There is nothing more corrosive to a small business operator like myself than trying to win the race to the bottom. If you win, you lose, because you will be pissed off as you work, to say the least, and when you account for all the extra time, materials, hassles and details of doing top quality work, you probably are LOSING MONEY on the low fee deal.

So, no thank you, I do not care to beat my competitor's price--or to let a client dictate the terms under which I do business. If a competitor wants to work that cheap, that is their problem. My condolences to them for winning the race to the bottom.

Cover Gallery

Greetings fellow humans. For the sheer heck of it, I have posted a gallery of comic book covers from my checkered career.
Kids, these are truly strange and wonderful comics books. In the course of creating them, my quest was frankly to establish what contact I could with the wholly other. And to rearrange the neurological furniture of the reader, natch.
Should you want to get ahold of any of these beauties, drop me an email.
love,
Steve

Cat Suit available as PDF file

I've posted a link to my new comic book Cat Suit as a PDF file on my website. Here's the web page with the PDF link:

http://www.stevelafler.net/lineart.htm

I couldn't be more pleased to give away my new story for free! More people will read it that way. Hell, it never hurt Jerry to give away all that free music, did it? It's not like he was all, "Boo Hoo, poor me, I'll never be a rich rock star this way!"

Hey, did I mention that Cat Suit is a bad ass great mo fo of a comic book? No? Trust me, it's fucking hilarious! Okay, be that way, go download that sucker and see for yourself.

And just in case you forgot, this Tuesday night April 17 is Manx Media night at the Press Club in Portland, 2621 SE Clinton St. at 7 pm. Chicago novelist Ben Tanzer will be reading from Lucky Man, and I will somehow contrive to perform the contents of Cat Suit.

Manx Media night at The Press Club

Readings from Steve Lafler's Cat Suit and Ben Tanzer's debut novel Lucky Man in Portland.

Chicago writer Ben Tanzer will read from his debut novel Lucky Man and cartoonist Steve Lafler reads from the first installment of Cat Suit at The Press Club (wine bar/café), 2621 SE Clinton St., on Tuesday, April 17^th at 7:00 p.m. Both books are published on Lafler’s Manx Media imprint.

In Cat Suit, cartoonist Lafler takes on the super hero myth for the first time in an Alternative/underground comics career that has seen the Dog Boy comic book series, Buzzard comics anthology, the Bughouse graphic novel trilogy and the recent 40 Hour Man.
Lafler asks, what kind of whack job would put on a skin-tight suit and head out into the city after midnight? What pathology, what perverse proclivity are we dealing with here? Is he fighting crime? Hell no, he’s just going clubbing—and he’s frankly perplexed when the bar flies & drunks want to pick a fight with him.

The guy is question is Manx, a costumed cat man. He can't figure it all out, so he goes to Dr. Grippo, a sultry lady shrink from Eastern Europe (a divorcee, she has a crush on Manx!)All heck breaks loose when Manx reveals to Dr. Grippo that he has fallen for Delia, a hottie he picks up on one of his late night excursions.

Lucky Man follows four friends from their final days of high school through their first couple of years out of college.
It is a story about friendship, growing-up and trying to move on. Interwoven throughout are explorations into dreams, the Twilight Zone, and The Greatest American Hero. There are drugs, road trips, breakdowns, violence, and adultery.

Ben Tanzer lives in Chicago where he shoots pool, dabbles in social work, compulsively watches High School Musical, and spends quality time with his wife and young sons. He has had work published in Rated Rookie, Clamor, Punk Planet, Abroad View, Opium, Thieves Jargon, The Truth Magazine, Third Coast Press, 20dissidents, and Caketrain.

Tanzer and Lafler will be on hand to sign books after the reading.

For further information send Steve an email.

Lafler & Beaupre on KPFA

On Monday April 2, I will be on KPFA 94.1 FM Berkeley at 3:00 p.m. talking with Denny Smithson on the Cover to Cover book show. Stephen Beaupre will be joining us by phone to chat about 40 Hour Man, which Mr. Beaupre wrote, and I drew.
You can listen live over the web at www.kpfa.org

Manx Media Mania this March 7th at Quimby's

It's all happening this coming Wednesday night, March 7th, at 8 p.m. at Quimby's in Chicago. I'll be there to flog 40 Hour Man, and Ben Tanzer will be our headliner, reading from his debut novel Lucky Man.

This should be a really fun, rollickin' evening, as Ben is a master ranconteur and he's on his home turf. I hope his fans don't rip his shorts right off him, but you just never know. Me, I've never been to Chicago (with the exception of the airports of course), so I look forward to checking it out.

In case anyone reading this hasn't heard, Manx Media released Lucky Man several weeks back. Hell, I guess the official publication date was yesterday (March 1), come to think of it.

Ben maintains his own inspired blog, so check it out.

Your money is not my money—it might not even be money!

Money does not exist. It’s a con game, an agreed upon illusion, a convenient conceit to chart the flow of power in our lives.

Where does money come from? How is it created? What do we mean when we say we “make money” or “time is money” ? And what the heck is “cash flow”—is money a liquid?

When you work at your job, you are indeed “making money”; for all intents and purposes, you are introducing new cash into your life where it did not exist before. But what about a bank that creates a $20,000 dollar loan for a car. Is that “making money” ? Did that 20K exist before the bank granted the loan? What about when the federal government expands the money supply? What about when Bush spends another several billion on his military misadventures? Is that “making money” ? It is certainly creating money almost literally out of thin air, aided by the stroke of a pen.

People tend to see money as an absolute, a measurable unit of, uh, measure. See how quick we get into the quicksand when attempting to define what money is?

I am interested in how money functions in the life of the self-employed person. It’s different for the self-employed than it is for the job holder, who can expect a predictable amount of cash per week, month, and year. The employee can handily measure income against expense, set up a budget and earmark an amount for saving and investing. They can become obsessed with their “magic number” as per the dictums of Money magazine in their quest for a comfortable retirement (Just thinking about the “magic number” concept reminds me why I consider holding a job a LIVING DEATH, where you mark time until you retire, close shop and drink or whatever).

Certainly it behooves the self-employed (bohemian or otherwise) to have a firm grasp of their numbers. How much do you take in during a typical month, what are your expenses, and what do you need to cover your nut? As I stated when I began blogging, an entrepreneur can set up a simple book keeping system, taking deductions allowed on the Schedule C and meticulously recording their income and expenses on a regular basis (and do explore all those lovely tax forms that help you keep more of your money—don’t be afraid of them, they are your friends!). Keep on those books on a daily, or at least weekly basis. Nothing will paint a more literal and accurate picture of the financial soul of your business than your financial ledger.

Armed with this information, you are in a position to make decisions about what your next moves. Are your profits enough to live on? That’s not bad, but what frugal things can you do to attract more clients, or make more per transaction? Are your profits far in excess of what you need to live? Good time to expand—create and execute a new marketing plan, acquire new equipment, take on an employee. Are you getting the crap kicked out of you? Rethink the entire business model RIGHT NOW! Do you have peak cash flow months and slow cash flow months like my T Shirt business? Then salt away some green in the flush months for the lean months.

The point is, money is not the end all - be all absolute measure of your success. In business, your cash flow, and in particular detailed information about your cash flow, is an accurate picture of the flow of power through your business effort, your business model and your business soul (business soul—that has to be an oxymoron!). This information will guide the combination of critical thinking and emotional thinking that you use to make the dozens of daily decisions about how to run your business life.

And isn’t that why someone becomes an entrepreneur, because they are passionate about the proposition of calling their own shots, nurturing their dreams into the real? Certainly the self-employed want to make a lot of money, but they are really in the business of manifesting their dreams. I’d argue that building the dream is the image in their mind’s eye first and foremost—the stack of cash is just a simple by product that naturally results when the fine tuned machine is hummin’ just right.

A Growing Boy Needs his Fun

I did not have a mid-life crisis when I turned forty, no, instead my gal Serena and I packed up our stuff and hauled off to Mexico for half a year. We traveled the country from the culture rich highlands to the fabulous beaches. I wrote and drew Jonk!, a graphic novella in my BugHouse saga. I picked up enough Spanish to get by. A very good time indeed was had by both of us.

To some, this will sound like the classic solution to the mid life crisis, running off on a grand adventure, but I was doing what I always did anyway: Writing and drawing comics. To say someone is having a mid-life crisis presupposes that they are desperate, melancholy, psychotic or otherwise in some dire straights. None of these conditions had befallen me at the moment of my fortieth birthday, I was a moderately happy camper getting a bit happier, a self realized individual continually following his bliss, as per the recommendations of the late Joseph Campbell.

Gotta admit things feel a bit different as my train pulls into the station marked FIFTY.

I still work for myself and I still create comics, both are fulfilling endeavors where I execute a portion of my dreams in real time. I have two children now and I love being a dad and all that implies. Serena and I are still a unit; I must have won the relationship lottery—all the ways our love has helped both of us grow into ourselves and each other has me convinced I’m the luckiest of men.

There are platitudes about middle age. One of them is “Life Begins at Forty”. It sort of did for me, I finally was in a great relationship. I finally figured out that bliss was not to be found at the bottom of a bottle of beer (let alone nine rapidly consumed beers). I found the success that comes to the self-employed by being too dogged to give up, give in or otherwise submit to the LIVING DEATH known as “a steady job”. Hell, I even bought real estate the moment before it got trendy, and I’m embarrassed to tell how well that worked out for me.

Another platitude about middle age is this: “Fifty is the New Forty”. Now what the fuck does that mean? It begs the question, what was the “Old Forty” like??? Did one walk to the mirror on their Fortieth birthday to see deep lines written in their slack face, the grim reaper peering over their shoulder? Or does it mean I am to try for eternal youth, deny middle age, and try to be young and fresh forever?

In my case, as I near the big birthday, here are some facts. Note that these are tied to ego, and youthful dreams.

1. I still do not make a living drawing comics.
2. I can no longer run a mile under five minutes, something I’ve been able to do since I was sixteen.

When I graduated college in December ’79, more than anything I was burning to make comics. All day, every day, I was literally consumed with the mission to sling ink and publish at all costs. That is literally what I have done since, always staying true to my vision, making no compromise to the concerns of commercial publishing. While I am thrilled to have chosen this path, have made some decent money along the way, and have near 100,000 comics and graphic novels in print, the basic fact remains: It has been necessary to maintain my T Shirt printing business in order to make a living. This hurts a lot, and there is no way to pretend it doesn’t.

The running thing, hell, it’s an illustration of the survival of my adolescent ego. I still want to conquer the world with my strength, my brute enthusiasm for life, while manifesting the joy of movement. At Forty, the aging athlete can still put it together; think of Kareem, of Robert Parish in the NBA finals, of Eamon Coughlan breaking four minutes in the mile at age forty.

Nobody plays in the NBA finals at fifty! Nor do they run the mile under four minutes. Thus it is incumbent upon me to accept my diminished physical powers, my softer middle age corporeal personage.

Where do I go from here? Do I amend my youthful dreams? Run off to Mexico again? (Hey, that sounds pretty good!). I’ll answer with my own near platitudes. It is necessary to keep growing and keep learning. It is necessary be eternally curious, and to embrace new experience. I will fan the flames of new creative endeavors.

As far a the model of continuously pumping out comic books and graphic novels in hopes that I hit the zeitgeist or otherwise catch on, it’s simply time for a new model. I sustained the old one for a long time because it was fun. If I am having fun I am doing something right. I’ve always been a process oriented artist. The process of creating my Bughouse comics was insanely fun, and then some. I’m not possessed of that burning passion to create comics come hell or high water at present.

If I was to continue pumping out comics under the same model, I then should not be surprised if the same modest, tepid response is the result. If you keep playing an out of tune guitar, don’t be surprised if it sounds off key! Time to tune that sucker up!

So I’m in search of fun. What will float my boat? What will work for me as an artist, an entrepreneur, a human being? I’ll be sure to report back on that.

Manx Media releases Lucky Man, the debut novel from Ben Tanzer

I am pleased to announce the publication of Lucky Man on my Manx Media imprint. Lucky Man is the debut novel by Chicago writer Ben Tanzer.

Ben has been a reliable purveyor of short stories and magazine pieces (he even profiled me for Punk Planet a couple years back!). Here he is with his heart wrenching coming of age story, focusing on a group of friends attempting to transition into adulthood. The book is harrowing and funny. It will resonate in particular with anyone who came of age in the Eighties.

I posted a Lucky Man page on the Manx Media site, but you can also go direct to Amazon and buy it there.

Mr. Tanzer and I will both be reading at Quimby's in Chicago on Wednesday, March 7th at 8 p.m., it should be a rollicking good time. We're working on some other appearances too and will post them when they are confirmed.

Lucky Man by Ben Tanzer, ISBN 13 978-0-9769690-1-3

Benb For Dummies--Wait, Benb is a Dummy!

At the tender age of nineteen, a strange and unpredictable entity appeared on my dorm wall: Benb.
He appeared there by virtue of the black magic marker that my good friend Tim Robinson wielded in his paw; Tim and I were immersed in a cannabis-inspired fit of graphitti. The best I could do was "The messenger from C.A.K.E.", but Tim, off the cuff poet and all around inspired genius that he was, hit one out of the park and introduced Benb to me, and to the world.

I've bring this up because I've posted a BENB page on my stevelafler.net website, for those interested in more Benb-ness.

The Monster of Rock

Frankenstein’s monster purchased Jerry Garcia’s legendary guitar “Tiger” at auction yesterday for an undisclosed amount. The custom axe was made for Garcia by guitar maker Doug Irwin.

The move comes two days after Frankenstein’s monster unloaded 55,000 shares of Google.

“I’ve loved string instruments ever since that hermit in the woods played his violin for me” quipped Frank, as the monster prefers to be called.

When this reporter mentioned that the encounter with the hermit ended badly, Frank quickly changed the subject. “I’ve been in love with “Tiger” ever since I saw the Dead in Oakland one Halloween back in the day—so I jumped at the chance to bid on it.”

The monster is currently in rehearsal with his new band “Frankenjerry”, which includes Wolfman on drums and Vampirella on bass. The Creature from the Black Lagoon has been mentioned as a possible keyboard player. No tour dates have been announced yet.

Illustration by Steve Lafler.

New Lafler Comics coming up in "Other" magazine

A ten page excerpt of my upcoming comic book called "Cat Suit" is scheduled to appear in the next issue of Other magazine.

A work in progress, Cat Suit asks:

Why would a grown man put on a skin tight suit and head out into the city after midnight? I mean, what is this guy really up to????

The guy is question is Manx, a costumed cat man. He can't figure it out either so he goes to Dr. Grippo, a sultry divorcee shrink from Eastern Europe.
All heck breaks loose when Manx reveals to Dr. Grippo that he has fallen for Delia, a hottie he picks up on one of his late night excursions.

The four pages above will be included in the piece in Other.

I freely admit that I don't know how long this piece will be, or when it will appear. Forty pages are drawn, about 60 are written. About 30 are inked.
This art and other recent stuff from me can be viewed at my stevelafler.net site.

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.