Recorded Over Your Sister’s Paula Abdul Tape. My life as mixtape.
My life is currently running on comics, Notion docs and Door Dash burritos. Some real busted mixtape energy.
Last week as a weird little mixtape:
Track One: BINARY fulfillment grind. I am great at making comics. I am mid at packing and shipping. Fortunately my people are patient (Shout out the Vladimir over at Seattle’s Push/Pull go get some comics from those fine folks) That said, every copy of BINARY has shipped. The rest of the Kickstarter rewards will be out by the end of the week. I’m updating my store and about to run an ad campaign to support my pet theory that tabling at conventions in Artist Alley is a terrible ROI both financially and spiritually. I’m hyped to move from Kickstarter mode into future work. TWIN STAR is coming… speaking of which…
Track Two: TWIN STAR jam session. I pulled together a patio full of elite designer friends (the kind of folks who casually talk about grid systems while eating tortilla chips) for the first official TWIN STAR product meeting. Folks from Cisco, Snowflake, Atlassian. We were supposed to “focus on the storefront wing,” but mostly it felt like we were building a spaceship out of sticky notes and inside jokes. This thing is suddenly, terrifyingly, beautifully real.
Track Three: the Harvard Film Society. That’s what we’re calling my living room movie club now because the very first screening was Happy Gilmore 2. Ivy League CINEMA (spoiler: it was awful). Prestige vibes only. This week’s pick: Punch Drunk Love. Still one of the strangest Sandler joints, half screwball romance, half psychotic rage spiral, all wrapped in Jeremy Blake-inspired light art. (I sampled his art for this post.) It’s like if Looney Tunes and MoMA had a baby and gave it a harmonium. (Btw if you want to continue with good vibes, do not Google Blake.)
Track Four: dad mode. My son just started junior year and it looks like a gauntlet. I’m wildly skeptical about the mountain of work they’re giving him. My opinion? They should just run speed-dating-style mixers so kids make friends, sprinkle in group projects on “How to Defeat Skynet,” and call it a day. Weirdly, no educational experts have reached out to me yet. I’m also getting a touch of the sadz, only two more years with him at home.
Track Five: life stuff. Ray’s kid had a birthday at Cordices Park, which is basically Berkeley’s Six Flags if Six Flags was just two giant concrete slides and a stack of cardboard. Kids flying down at Mach 5, parents pretending it’s safe. I hadn’t been in years. Still iconic. Still a little sketchy.
Track Six: comics therapy. Currently alternating between Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen (pure joy, goofy as hell, Fraction and Lieber just dunking) and Crumb’s Existential Comics (strange, cranky, makes you feel like you should be journaling).
That’s the week: comics, slides, Sandler, and prototyping. I need to squeeze in more art-making. So many tracks I want on the mixed tape that is my life.