photo courtesy of the Daily Crosshatch

I will admit, I was pretty nervous about this year’s MoCCA Art Fest. Not only was it in a new location (goodbye, classy Puck Building – hello, cavernous 69th Armory!) but to my knowledge, it was being run by a new group of people (no more emails from DKC is what tipped me off). Obviously there were going to be a few snags along the way, but it was a mystery as to what type of snags would come to pass.

Not to mention, I had already attended NYCC, Stumptown, and TCAF this year with fair-to-middling, unextraordinary sales (not bad, not awesome, but at least for Stumptown, not nearly as good as last year) so I was worried that MoCCA might also be hit by the recession and my usually-stellar MoCCA sales would suffer. Not so! I checked the number from last year and I actually BEAT my 2008 MoCCA sales by over $100!

Awesome!!!

Of course, MoCCA is not just about sales! There were a lot of other factors that went into it being good or bad. Here is a quick list of plusses and minuses:

+ Equal Opportunity table layout! I love the Puck Building and ALWAYS had a great spot, but not everyone was so lucky. What with all the little separate rooms, and always one room was gross or hot or something (remember the year of the sticky floor?), someone always walked away sort of dicked over by the layout. Not so at the Armory! At first I was worried about being all the way in the back but once I got there I saw that there seemed to truly not be any spot I would look at and think “thank goodness I didn’t get THAT spot!” The aisles also seemed wide enough to accommodate most of the foot traffic and I never felt overwhelmed or overly irritated by it.

+ GREAT neighborhood! Not only did I grow up around that area, but I also attended every grade from pre-school through college graduation right there! AND I even worked around there for five years! So I knew the ‘hood extremely well, got to revisit my favorite food spots, and even got to see the neighborhood legend, He-Man (http://findheman.com/), twice! I ate at Pick-A-Bagel, Jess Bakery, 7-11 and got my favorite egg sandwich at Pax! It was awesome!

+ SO easy to get to! Since I live in Brooklyn, the coordination of train lines, transfers, and number of stairs to climb and descend all factor into the ease or difficulty of hauling a suitcase full of comics to a given location for a convention in NYC. Since I live on the Q train, it was an easy transfer across the platform at Union Square to the R, which is as few stairs as one could possibly hope for on a subway ride. To get to the Puck Building, we used to have to take a huge staircase up at Canal Street to the 6 train and it was a real bitch of a task.

+The Armory is a really awesome venue in that it is virtually overflowing with charm, character, and history! How cool was the juxtaposition of all the butch army stuff with the sensitive artsy feel of MoCCA? Not to mention, since it was the 69th Regiment, there were 69s EVERYWHERE! They were in the floor tile, in the bathroom wall, everywhere! Hilarious!


photo courtesy of the Daily Crosshatch

- The Armory was also kind of a crappy venue in that there was NO AIR CONDITIONING, inadequate ventilation, not enough fans (some overhead fans would have been great), and stuffy as hell! I decided to forego my usual dress shirt and tie look on Sunday for another t-shirt day because I just couldn’t handle the idea of wearing any clothes at all, let alone the most uncomfortable clothes possible for the weather. It was nothing compared to the sweltering heat of the 7th floor last year, but still inadequate in my opinion.

- I’m sure a lot of the kinks will be worked out by next year, but a lot of the behind-the-scenes changes seemed chock full of unnecessary red tape and other ridiculousness. For example, the wristbands? What the hell?? And they claimed if you needed to replace your wristband it would be ten dollars! And there was a different wristband for each day and god forbid you put the wrong one on! Not to mention, at early check-in it said in the email that we had to print out the email and bring photo I.D. to get our badges! Is there really that much identity theft in indie comics? Seriously?


inside the Armory - photo courtesy of MK Reed

- I know that MoCCA Art Fest is a benefit for the museum, but... I am starting to feel like they are price gouging a bit with the table prices ($400 for next year!) and other small things, like the wristband-replacement fee, and though I never looked at the table refund policy before, has it always been as harsh as was listed on the advance table application this year? How can you say there is a non-refundable $50 deposit when YOU DON’T EVEN TELL US WHAT THE DATES ARE FOR NEXT YEAR?!? What if someone has a wedding to go to or something? You can’t go around penalizing people when you don’t even give them a chance to check and see if they’re free. We’re indie comics people, for pete’s sake! $50 is a week of groceries for me! Oh yeah, and they were charging $100 to have boxes delivered in advance! I have NEVER heard of any small press con charging anything to have boxes delivered in advance (I could be wrong though). Either way, the people who mail in advance are coming from far away, and are already paying for airfare and possibly hotel. How can you feel right about charging them $100 on top of the already-steep table fee? It’s ridiculous.

- Opening an hour late on Saturday was just incredibly insane to me. I have heard through the grapevine (though don’t take it as fact since it is purely hearsay) that the delays was because some books had not yet arrived. What? Seriously?!? Sure, they said they’d keep the show open an hour later but you know what? The general public was already gone by six because they thought the show closed at six. I made zero dollars in that additional hour, and was only made more hungry and tired from standing behind the table.

Zane demonstrates a sumo move on me from his sleeve of sumo tattoos, which proved an incredibly popular topic of conversation at the con!
(photo courtesy of Marianne Ways)

However, ALL IN ALL, I thought the Fest was GREAT and I had a wonderful time, did really well with sales, and pushed Freewheel #2 as hard as I could, which is all I ever wanted in the end. All the annoying stuff and bad stuff seems like it could be worked out better in the future, and since it was a new crew I am pretty forgiving on that front.

As far as the social end of things went, it was also really great! We had Rachel and Mikey of Poseur Ink staying with us, as well David Beyer (“the other David B.”), and I really enjoyed showing them around NYC (David used to live here, but it was all new to Rachel and Mikey!). We went to the Museum of Sex on Friday (we were going to go to Coney Island but it was raining) and had a really awesome time! Rachel and I also hit up the Drink and Draw Like A Lady party put on by Hope Larson and Raina Telgemeier, which was AWESOME! It went well above and beyond my expectations and I got to hang out with all my favorite ladies! Who could ask for anything more?


Me and Colleen at the Drink and Draw Like a Lady party (photo courtesy of Marianne Ways)

After the Art Fest on Saturday, we got a big gang of ten or so together and went down to one of my favorite restaurants, Bubby’s, in TriBeCa. It was Rachel’s birthday so we wanted to make sure we took her to some place that was REALLY great, and Bubby’s delivered! We even got them to bring her a cupcake with a candle in it! And I totally forgot that the Ghostbusters fire station is on the way to Bubby’s, so that was a nice surprise for them too!


I promise you, that is the Ghostbusters fire station (photo by MK Reed)

After dinner, we went to one of my favorite post-con hangouts, the Limerick House, which is a sort of divey Irish pub on 23rd St. The ISR guys were supposed to show up there, so we assumed we’d meet them there, but we were too early and ended up missing them altogether. What we DIDN’T miss, however, was the 21st birthday of some B&T girl (Bridge & Tunnel, for you non-New Yorkers – it is a sort of derogatory term for obnoxious commuters who don’t live here but rather come via bridge & tunnel from Long Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut). We had to endure shriek after shrill scream from this gang every time a song came on the jukebox that they wanted to sing along to (which was seemingly every single one). On the bright side, they helped us coin the phrase “We’re friends! Let’s hug!” which we would look at each other and shout every time one of these girls gave out one of their signature “WOOOOOOO”s. Me and MK even wrote a song about it, right there in the Limerick!

On Sunday night we took it easy, ate at a Japanese place near our house, and watched the Fred Savage picture, “The Wizard” on VHS. It was a fun weekend! Busy and crazy but fun as hell nonetheless!



Next stop: Indie Island at Heroes Con! Oh and Freewheel #2 will be up for sale online shortly, but that'll be a separate post!

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Page 13 here
Page 14 here

Freewheel #2 will be debuting at the MoCCA Art Fest here in NYC June 6-7!



The free .pdf of Sing Along Forever is still available for download here! 65 people have downloaded it so far and I'm trying to get to 100, so tell your friends!

I decided I want to put up pages 13, 14 and 15 as I finish them, in anticipation of the MoCCA Art Fest in two weeks (where Freewheel #2 will be debuting), and also because these three pages hint at the super climactic ending of issue 2, which I am VERY excited about! You can read page 13 here. Page 14 is below. Page 15 will follow tomorrow.

These pages feature a character called Old George, who I like to imagine is actually an aged Gabby Schulz/Ken Dahl for some reason. Maybe it's the crankiness. Maybe it's the wood-whittling. Maybe it's the living in the middle of the woods using improvised tools and making sure no idiots fall in the cavern.

Who knows where thoughts come from? They just appear!



Also I am going to gently remind you about the free .pdf download of Sing Along Forever, which is still up and still free right here! I'm not totally sure why I am giving it away for free but I am in a generous mood so take advantage of it before I change my mind!

Freewheel #2 is coming soon to a MoCCA Art Fest near you! Yes! It will be done in time for MoCCA! Here is a preview of one of the pages (page 13, which I finished today):




And don't forget to go download your FREE .pdf copy of Sing Along Forever right here!

Hey guess what? Since Sing Along Forever is almost out of print (only 9 copies left in my inventory) and I won't be reprinting it since I'm planning a larger expansion of it in the future, I'm currently offering a FREE .pdf download on my website!



That's right, FREE, no strings attached! Just go here and click the links to download a FREE copy of Sing Along Forever to read right on your computer, right now!

What are you waiting for? It's FREE! It's comics! It's the Bouncing Souls! What's not to like?

Who knows how long this will last? Do like Arnold says - DO IT NOW!

Hey everybody! So my good buddy/perennial bandmate/Brosephine extraordinaire MK Reed and I are in the very beginning phases of planning a two-week book tour for this fall and I figured I would put out my feelers and see if any of you guys can help us with a few things we are working on.

We would like to avoid having the tour be a total money pit by attempting to book speaking engagements at college campuses as much as possible. The problem with this is that we have very few contacts at college campuses, and being that we are in our late 20's we don't have too many friends still in college that could hook us up. So if you have some kind of connection to any colleges in a few specific areas (or near these areas), let me know if you can help hook us up!

Here are the places/dates we have in mind for college campus slide show presentations and/or panel discussions:

Saturday October 3rd - Bloomington, IN
Sunday October 4th *or* Monday October 5th - Chicago, IL
Tuesday October 6th *or* Wednesday October 7th - either Ann Arbor or Detroit, MI
Thursday October 8th - Pittsburgh, PA
Friday October 9th - Philadelphia, PA

If you don't have a contact at a college at any of those places, but you DO know of a great place for us to do a reading/slideshow thing, feel free to let me know about that as well. The reason we'd prefer college campuses is they are more likely to pay us, but we ain't picky! Think about your local coffee shop, independent book store or comic/zine shop and tell me about it!

We would also like to highlight a local cartoonist at each of our stops, if possible, by having them read with us. At the moment we are still working behind the scenes on this, though, but I might be putting out a public call once we have a better idea of which dates we won't already have a local cartoonist to join us.

We might also have a 3rd person traveling and reading with us, but it's still up in the air as of right now. If you can leave your job for two weeks and have a car to drive everyone this could be you!

There are many more dates planned for the tour but the ones listed above are in places that we know have a big college campus or two. Stay tuned for more details on Punchbuggy Tour 2009!

Dragons and Skulls are reasonably priced inside Flying J's Truck Stop in Pennsylvania

Well, ladies and gentlement, TCAF (or the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, for long) has come and gone and I am here to tell you about it. I will try to keep it relatively short.

Believe it or not, this was my very first international excursion, i.e. my first time leaving the U.S. I do not yet own a passport but lucky for me I can still use my non-driver state-issued ID card with my NYC birth certificate to get in and out of Canada by car, which is how we were traveling. (We = me, MK Reed, Robin Enrico, and Sally Bloodbath.)

We left NYC kind of late, around 11am on the Friday before, and traveled in Sally's car for a loooooong time before reaching our hotel around 10:30pm that same day. Along the way we got to see scenic Pennsylvania, including a photo opportunity wherein I had my photo taken giving the finger on top of a bunch of rocks behind a Scranton gas station.

Check it out:

 
It is my new goal to have my photo taken giving the finger in every state in the union. Facebook, MySpace and Flickr albums coming soon!

So yeah, we had a long ass car ride and when we hit upstate New York I thought perhaps we had wandered into a sci-fi novel with all the creepy huge windpower thingies littering the mountains there. I can totally understand now why Lynda Barry is so against there things.

They are way huger and creepier than I thought and only upon seeing them in real life could I fully comprehend why one would not want to live in a region littered by these things. I actually shuddered when we were coming up a hill and mountains' worth of them came into view at once, moving in creepy slow unison.


photo is from here.

We were all a little freaked out about the border crossing business, and what we should say/act/do, but the crossing was surprisingly simple. We passed our ID over to the officer, she asked us if we had any illegal stuff, we said no, she asked what we were doing in Toronto, we said "comic book convention" and we were on our way without hassle!

The thing I was most excited about in Canada was Tim Horton's, which is a doughnut chain in Canada similar (yet ultimately superior to) Dunkin Donuts in the U.S. Once we crossed the border, every time I saw a Tim Horton's I would softly exclaim just under my breath, "Tim Horton's!" which ended up becoming a bit of a running joke if a Tim Horton's appeared and I said nothing, someone else would exclaim it on my behalf (usually MK). This became especially funny (or annoying depending on who you are) when we all came to the realization that there are Tim Horton's EVERYFUCKINGWHERE in Canada! Like imagine the proliferation of Starbucks in NYC, you really could not go anywhere without hitting one!

And lucky for us, there was one right across the street from our hotel, where I got my Tim Horton's fix as soon as we settled into the hotel and had dinner at a local pub. They also had a Starbucks-esque coffee chain called "Second Cup" whose coffee I enjoyed very much. Definitely superior to Starbucks, and I'm not one of those super anti-Starbucks people either (when I worked in an office I got a latte and a big cookie from the Starbucks on the corner nearly every day after lunch, so although I can't afford to have it anymore, I used to go there all the time).

Anyway, the next day (Saturday) was the first day of TCAF proper! I really had no idea what to expect since I had never been there, and my friends who HAD been there were there two years ago, so it was really tough to gage exactly how the show might go. On top of that, it turned out there was no guidebook/floorplan thing so the people who might have sought me out would certainly have some trouble finding me if they didn't happen to cross my path by accident.

In speaking with Chris Butcher (the show's main organizer) later on, he explained that this was because the show was in a new location and they simply had no way of knowing what the floorplan would look like until the last possible second. Therefore - no floorplans. This was the only major complaint I had with the show, which will hopefully be rectified two years from now when they have the next one.

Other than the lack of floorplans, there were a lot of really great, unique things about the show that many other indie comics shows could take a hint from:

-free admission to the public which ensured all kinds of random people would walk through, and the show got crazy busy with attendees jamming the aisles on many occasions.

-AMAZING volunteers (they would do things like watch your table for a while, get food or drinks for you, or make change for you! There was a guy walking around with a big red tacklebox making change for everyone! If nothing else, more shows should have a change-maker walking around for sure. Getting change is the single most annoying thing I have to do at a show and it usually happens at the busiest times, thereby insuring some lost sales by my not being at the table while I search for singles.) I have never had a negative experience with any volunteers at any show, but the volunteers at TCAF were far and away the most helpful and useful I've ever encountered.

-Awesome "backstage" area for exhibitors with a bunch of actually decent snacks, bottled water, coffee and tea. They had things like gummi fruit snacks, apples, little cheese danishes, chocolate cookies, mini cinnamon buns, etc. Stuff like that is great if you are someone like me who almost never leaves their table and most likely won't leave the convention to eat a full lunch, and just needs something to get you through the day without having to pay $5 for bottled water. Since I didn't really leave my table, I can't comment on any of the panels or other events or exhibitors at the show.

Sales-wise, on the first day I did okay but not great. However, I knew that this was not the show's fault - I was in a really cranky "I don't want to deal with people" mood which meant I didn't do too much "selling" from the table. I tried really hard to not be cranky but sometimes when you are cranky you are unable to pretend that you are not cranky even for the sake of making money. I did MUCH better on Sunday when I was in a better mood and was able to be a lot more social with people. Let this be a lesson to you, convention exhibitors - being nice, happy, friendly and talkative WILL result in better sales!

I also did a lot better on Sunday in part because I had done a reading on Saturday night, and not to toot my own horn but there are only a few things I am really REALLY good at and one of them is doing readings. The few times I have gotten a chance to do one at a convention (which I think is twice now) I have done exponentially better sales-wise the next day. Here is a picture MK took of me reading from Sing Along Forever with Robin (since he co-stars in the comic):



Since I stupidly didn't bring any comics with me to the reading to sell, I ended up selling the one I read from right out of my hands! Oh well.

On Sunday night some of us decided to hit up the official TCAF after-party at some bar/restaurant place where MK and I also decided to get dinner. There was a foosball table upstairs and MK and I ended up playing several spirited games as "Team Horton" against Josh Cotter and David (a Toronto local dude we had met the previous day). MK and I sucked ass but I did knock the ball out of the court several times which was pretty funny even though it did not result in any type of scoring advantage for Team Horton.

After that, we came back to the hotel and watched some shitty Canadian cable TV (mostly U.S. shows sadly... I was hoping to come across some shitty Canadian sitcoms or bad Canadian pop music) until we all felt like going swimming in the hotel pool.

Speaking of which, if you are reading this and you are someone who exhibits at shows a lot and stays in hotels, ALWAYS bring a bathing suit! Tis better to regret the pools that didn't exist rather than the ones you couldn't swim in because you didn't have a bathing suit! There is nothing quite like a nerd pool party at the end of a long weekend convention and you don't want to be the jerk who missed out!

The next day, we went downtown (I think it was downtown, who the hell knows, I've never been to Toronto before) where MK and I had breakfast and watched a movie crew arranging fake snow for the Scott Pilgrim movie, which they were filming right down the block!

 
I watched this guy arrange fake snow for about 15 minutes, totally convinced he wouldn't make it look like real snow, but by golly he did it!

 
This guy was spraying fake snow all over the restaurant in which MK and I were eating breakfast.

 
Just like Scott Pilgrim but real life!

All in all, I would say TCAF was a success and I hope to be able to come back when they have the next one two years from now!

In semi-related news: Sing Along Forever is almost sold out! I have something like 15 copies left in my possession, and after I sell them they will be gone, gone, gone!

If you have been waiting on getting a copy, head on over to my online store post-haste and get one! I will NOT be reprinting this comic!

I repeat: I WILL NOT BE REPRINTING THIS COMIC.

This is not for selfish or lazy reasons, but rather because I am in the beginning stages of planning a much more extensive, epic, full book-sized project similar (yet far grander) in scope. A lot has happened since I put out Sing Along Forever and I would really like to cover more of that territory, along with a lot of stuff that did not get covered in SAF, also along with a way huger, awesomer, weirder narrative method I'm working on. So yeah, I know that was kind of a convoluted paragraph but it will make sense in a few years when you see what I'm talking about!

First of all, this weekend (May 8-9) I will be in Toronto for TCAF - the Toronto Comic Arts Festival! I will be sharing a table with my buddies MK Reed and Robin Enrico! If you are in the area you should come say hi and witness my very first excursion outside the United States, which I feel kind of pathetic about, being 29 and only just now leaving the country. But whatevs, better late than never!

Second of all, the Saturday night after the first day of TCAF (Saturday May 8th) I will be participating in a reading! How cool!




I will be reading first from My Brain Hurts (fiction coming-of-age style story about queer teen punks in NYC) and second from Sing Along Forever (non-fiction autobio about my obsession with the Bouncing Souls). Then I will be participating in a panel discussion afterward. Then I will be drinking beer. Won't you come watch me read from my comics whilst presenting a slide show, participate in a panel discussion, and then drink beer with me?

-----

In other life-news, I just got back from a trip to Vermont to visit my buddy Alec Longstreth and go see the Bouncing Souls play in Burlington! I got in touch with Bryan when we got there so I could give some of the guys their own copy of "Sleeping Where I Fall" (MOTMC#4 - tour sketchbook) and even though Alec and I had paid for our tickets, Bryan still got us passes and brought us backstage to hang out, which was really nice of him.

When we got to the backstage area, Bryan showed us a stack of maybe ten drum heads that he said were going on these new Bouncing Souls drums being made by Dark Horse (not the comic book one, the music one) as some kind of promotion, so when whoever gets these drum sets, the drum heads will be signed by the band and have some kind of drawing or whatever on them. I think we both felt a little weird "defacing" these prizes, but Bryan was insistent so we went ahead and started drawing on them. Between the two of us we drew semi-Souls-related things on 8 or 9 drum heads and then the guys signed them. Pretty awesome!

We watched a lot of the opening bands from this really neat little private balcony upstairs, and when the Souls came on, I went downstairs to the floor and made my way to the pit. I really wanted to dance and rock and flail around, which I did for a little while, but everyone there was so nice the tall people kept letting me go in front of them until I ended up on the barricade, which wasn't really what I wanted but I am not complaining!

Also, they did a cover of "She Sells Sanctuary" by the Cult! Do you know how many times I rocked out to that song in grade school on the radio? SO MANY TIMES!

During the show, Greg pointed out Alec in the crowd and said "Rick Rubin is in the crowd! Maybe he's checking us out to produce our next record. Give us a call, Rick!" Check out the resemblance for yourself, it was a pretty hilarious moment:


Alec Longstreth with Red Vines

Rick Rubin with sunglasses:



At some point a guy flew over my head and slammed my arm into the barricade and my whole arm went numb and tingly for a few minutes. Kinda scary! After the show, it was kind of swollen and gross so I iced it a bit. It's still a little swollen and a nice bruise is beginning to form:




After I iced my arm a bit upstairs, Alec and I drove back to White River Junction and the next day I came home!

So yeah, last weekend was the Stumptown Comics Fest in lovely Portland, OR and I was there!


Me, MK and Robin shared a table! Did you know tables at Stumptown are EIGHT FEET LONG? That's two feet longer than the average convention table! Makes it a lot easier to share! Anyway, we all got into town the Wednesday before Stumptown and stayed with our hospitable local buddy Greg Means for the first few days. We did a bunch of awesome stuff like going hiking on the trails in Washington Park!

Here is a picture of Robin with a really pretty tree!


The trails were so cool primeval looking!


I made some videos about it while we were hiking on my shitty camera!






After we went to the park, MK had to see a man about a comic, so me and Robin went to the sushi place where you eat off a toy train! So cool! Of course, I took another shitty video of the train going around with food on it. Everything tastes better when you're eating off a toy train.

I also had a delicious red bean bun there, but I had to ask the guy for it, which is less fun than eating it off a train. We also took the Max (Portland's version of the subway) a bunch of times and I loved the view from the window going over the bridge so much that I took another video of it! And of course, as I mentioned before, there were DOUGHNUTS! MK and I had made a vow to eat at least one doughnut from Voodoo Doughnuts every day of our trip (including the day we got in, even though it was basically 1am NYC time - Voodoo is open 24 HOURS!). I chose also to not eat the same doughnut twice. It was awesome. I ate so many awesome doughnuts (and a few mediocre ones, and at least two gross ones).

My favorite of all was the Bucket O' Doughnuts, which is a bucket of day old doughnuts we bought on our way to the first day of Stumptown. It was only six bucks!



I particularly like this shot of Robin looking all GQ holding a bucket of doughnuts:


We also visited Voodoo's new second location, which MK posed in front of:


Alec posed with the mysterious Scrub Monster out back (and don't say "which is which?" the joke has already been made at least twice!)


Besides doughnuts, I also went out of my way to eat food that looks like vomit (my favorite kind!):



Every so often we'd take a break and hang out at Greg's house and veg out:



Alec stayed at Greg's one of the nights we were there and Greg got him Red Vines. Alec LOVES Red Vines. Behold as he worships at the altar of Red Vines (which are apparently unavailable where he lives in VT):



All that worshipping candy sure does tucker a cartoonist out, though. Pretty soon it was naptime.


Napstreth

 
Robin fell asleep in the middle of the room, so Greg made some teabagging jokes.

 
One good thing Kramer's is good for - making grown men look like children!

We went to the party at Guapo Comics on Friday night, where we witnessed some awesome readings and got to see Vanessa Davis win herself a Kukoc Award!


MK got a choice shot of Longstreth chatting it up at the party with one of his biggest cartooning idols, Jeff Smith:


At Stumptown Comics Fest proper, we were seated right next to our friends Robyn Chapman and Dennis Pacheco! Look how well-dressed Dennis is! He has come a long way since the days he wore jeans covered in paint with an oversized Fat Albert t-shirt.



Robyn had a really cool Hey 4-Eyes poster which adorned their table:


Neil Brideau was at the show as well, showing off his swank, BRAND NEW tattoos (as in, I'm pretty sure he got them the day before):


A few cartoonists' parents showed up! Most notably, Dr. Dadstreth and Momstreth:


Doesn't he look like Future Alec come back in time to send Past Alec a message?

Also, Maris Wicks was there with HER parents:

Ain't they just the cutest?

On Saturday night, we went to a party at Jesse Reklaw's, where we did not take any pictures. However, it was really fun, even though I was so tired and incoherent people thought I was drunk. The two high points of the party, for me, were talking to Joey Sayers about the possibility of a doughnut filled with smaller doughnuts which are filled with the essence of the truth of what a doughnut is, within which is a smaller doughnut, and that possibility blew my mind in half. The other high point was recording a hilarious nearly unsaveable interview with Aron Nels Steinke at the tiki bar in Jesse's basement for Indie Spinner Rack.

On Sunday we ate more doughnuts and worked the show all day. On Saturday I had tried the sales-boost tactic of offering a Free Ukulele Serenade to anyone purchasing $20 or more worth of stuff. The only person who bought that much stuff didn't want the serenade. So on Sunday I decided to just hang out behind my table and play my ukulele without singing, hoping that it would both keep me amused and possibly bring more people to my table. Well, I can't say that it increased sales in any way, shape or form but it was actually a really fun way to keep me busy and amused throughout the day. Standing behind a table all day can be kind of draining and boring, but the uke kept me more than happy all day!

See that right there? That's a GENUINE SMILE!



And then at night was the now-traditional KARAOKE!!!


Me and Joe Q. rocked an amazing rendition of "Born to Run" - since it was a karaoke standard for both of us we decided to join forces, and this was a very good idea. In the photo above, I am doing my invisible saxophone solo.

 
Derek sang "Add It Up" and we couldn't help but get in on the action.

 
Me and Alec did our traditional "at least one Weezer song" together, which this time around was "Undone - the Sweater Song." I must say we rocked pretty damn hard.

 In closing, I love comics people:


Me and MK had a flight leaving at 6:30 the next day, so we pretty much didn't sleep. Stumbling into the airport, unpacking and repacking our bags so that our checked luggage weighed 50 pounds or less, we shuffled through the gate.

The stewardess who took my ticket was acting weird though - when I gave her the ticket she looked me in the eye and asked me in a weird, almost condescending way "And how are YOU doing today?" Not having slept at all I was pretty out of it, and answered confusedly "I'm gooooood...?" figuring her overzealousness could be attributed to general West Coast Portland friendliness. Then she asked, in the same weirdly condescending manner "Are you here aaaaall aaalone?" to which I, still confused, stammered out that I was with my friend who just boarded the plane. She then asked me "Aaaand how old is your friiiieeeend?" to which I now, completely bewildered, answered "Twenty.... eight??" to which she replied "Oh okay, go ahead then!"

A moment later I realized... she must have thought I was an honest to goodness little boy! I get joked on about that all the time but no one has REALLY thought I was a little kid before!

For posterity, MK took a photo of exactly what I looked like boarding the plane:



I think the tiny ukulele case might have put me over the "is that a woman or a little boy?" fence.

All in all, I had a great time at the show, and Portland is always fun. Sales left a lot to be desired compared to last year, but I suppose it could have been worse. I felt a little better after talking to a few friends who also didn't do as well this year as last year, so at least I knew it wasn't just me. I certainly had a lot of people stopping by table to say hi or tell me they loved my work, which is really a priceless experience. I also got a lot of people who seemed to want to buy something, but didn't have any money left or felt bad about spending because they didn't have a job. I also noticed a lot of people who maybe in any other year would have bought a few different things were generally scaling back and sticking to just buying one small thing.

I definitely got a ton of new names on my mailing list, and gave out way more postcards than usual. I think that's a good sign for the future, even if sales at the show itself were a little down. I should say that I didn't do TERRIBLY, I just didn't make as much as I have recently been making at shows. I still plan to give Stumptown another shot next year!