alRIGHT day one (night one) of bookposting. might have something cool coming up tomorrow if things go according to plan (if you know a lot about discord maybe dm me)
for now, lets take a little thread tour through the real cutting room floor - some things that did not make it in
lots of things i found going through the archives that hovered on the edge of memes and comics (ie., below). u could kind of call them either. i really didn't want the book to feel like a collection of memes, its really the story of the comics, which form a cohesive metanarrative
so, there were lots of things i found that were really more [memes] than [comics]. as you see below. for some of them, it was hard to tell, so i mostly split them up according to how much i liked them, or, more importantly, how well they fit into the arc of the book.
brb i have to carry owen jr up and down the stairs, that is the only situation he is comfortable existing in rn for some reason (stairsmaxxing). one sec.
some were a little situational, like this one. fun fact (behind the scenes), i was working at a supermarket at the time, and had this idea like the day before thanksgiving, so i drove home way too fast on my lunch break, quickly drew it, posted it, then drove right back
then i think i ate my actual lunch in the freezer or something when i got back. just a day in the life. speaking of being cold i like this one a lot also:
i kind of drew a line time wise and said, okay everything after this definitely goes in. there were a few things i drew when i was still feeling out the comics format and just doing them every now and then that just kind of didnt "stick" in the record, like this one:
there were a few historical things that were more like sketches than "comics" that i collected along the way but that didn't make it in. i think when i made these i thought of them as things to just post in the moment so, these were easy to move into the "maybe" folder.
its funny, i used to really really like hunter s thompsons stuff a lot, + in something we wrote once, he said his ideal, at least for fear and loathing in las vegas, was just to record everything raw unedited on this notepad and then drop that off and have it printed straight up
with no editing, cuts, or anything. i guess thats always partially my style, but when you're printing something and sending it out, suddenly you have like 40 pages of medium quality for every 4-5 of 5 star stuff, maybe its more of an artistic vision than ideal reality.
he never ended up getting that ideal unedited concept printed btw. ultimately on my end i had to order a bunch of test copies because i wanted to see how it felt with X included, or Y excluded, while reading it. im very happy with the sequence and overall "set" i ended up with.
some wholesome stuff that did not make it in. i think one person guessed this, but the second image here made the rounds for some reason + the center overlap is the name of a song by a band called less than jake. this is kind of a deep cut i havent mentioned but its a funny story
when i was way younger, very young, i was at my friends house. he randomly takes us in this room and says, hey, my sister has doubles of all these CDs, you guys can each take one, and theres a bunch of CDs all laid out in a line. kind of makes no sense in retrospect but, whatever
and i saw this one, and took it. theyre kind of a ska punk band (i was probably 10-12 years old). i listened to it all the time, and this band ended up being my favorite band for most of my life. its funny because their songs are mostly about a theme that became central to me.
most of their songs are about being really intoxicated all the time but kind of being brought down by it instead of enjoying it, but you keep doing it anyway, or this general feeling of dissatisfaction that pervades that lifestyle. so, i only got to relate to this more and more.
or they're about being sick of where you're from and wanting to leave but feeling stuck there. so, as i eventually got more 'in the hole' of being a drugs and alcohol based person as i got older, i just listened to them more and more, all the time, while drinking / smoking etc.
but then, i stopped doing all that, and i actually did pack up and leave the place where i was from. on the way out, they have this song five state drive that is about exactly that, and i was actually driving across five states, so i listened to it in the van on the way out.
and then when i got here, i just stopped listening to it. i just totally pressed pause and tabled it and put it on the shelf. every now and then it comes up but it just so perfectly encapsulates the first half of my life, its just really interesting i was given that CD that day.
so whats the moral of that
im not sure. its kind of weird though, in a way, isnt it. i mean its like if i hadnt "randomly" chosen that CD an entire section of my inner landscape would be totally different. it really feels non-coincidental
anyway fittingly heres another meme one
perfect. we got a music one that didn't make it in. hey some of these are pretty good. maybe i can call the printer and...
hey this one fits the story also. man these are pretty good. wow if these are the ones that didnt make it in, the book must be pretty solid. we must be feeling pretty good about the book if this is the cutting room floor material
lmao i love this one (2real)
lol forgot about this one, i made this specifically to quote tweet a post on here one time
2esoteric4me (idk)
did a few of these weird ones way in the beginning. they're also not in the book.
man this is the perfect one to (maybe) end this b-sides thread on. obviously the main series of comics now, they start (in a way) at the tail end of the book with the m99 comics, ended up being about me (or a guy who is basically me) and the people in my life [...]
i just found this drawing way back from our apartment in [big city]. kind of a proto-comic image i guess. my wife used to knit on our bed, and we didnt have curtains, i just pinned this tapestry over the window, and it would blow in the wind. this is really what it looked like:
thats crazy man. honestly thats the coolest part of the book, it really spans a whole set period of my life, from that apartment, to my exodus from the city, to her getting pregnant. the book took so long to make, we found out she was pregnant, then we moved this summer [...]
so by the time i sent it off to print, i had more comics i made here (at our new spot). i tried to add them in at the end but it just didnt fit. the book really is like an album the perfect spans from point A to point B. that was the weirdest part of making it, to be honest.
initially i thought it would just be like a 60 page tiny thing but in the end, i was holding this 250 page document that really was a total summation of this whole body of work and chunk of my life. an interesting feeling. many old interesting pics but we'll wrap this up now.
yooo anprim owen cyclops???? this was even before dog
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posted this morning: you may have heard about the tornado situation in kentucky. in my friends town like 70 homes were destroyed. its not much but we are selling some stuff here to raise money for it. we’re like 30% of the way to todays goal here already (~$1100). check it:
hello i will now tell you things that i know about kentucky to raise awareness for our little micro operation here
did you know kentucky has an esoteric connection with japan (its real). in fact colonel sanders went to japan many times (did u know this)
in fact although i can not find my own photos or the tweets at this time, on one esoteric americana roadtrip i went to the grave of colonel sanders. it is tucked away in the back of this nice cemetery. notice anything interesting here btw
alright some of u may have seen this + things like it (below video). gonna pause day three of book promotion to see if we can get some cash together to donate to some people here.
THE OP: described in red pic below
the short thread: happening
the link:
THE TALE: i have a bunch of these stickers here that i have previously only packaged with art people buy from me. people have asked to buy them. wasnt sure how to ship them out but my friend said he uses envelopes all the time and its fine so, i have 50 sets ready to go.
theyre basically the highest quality stickers you get commercially printed. they're vinyl (that means kind of plasticy) and they're a good size, that being 3 inches, which you can see in the pic with the pencil below.
in his writing jefferson davis calls kentucky “the eldest daughter of virginia”, reminds me of various catholic writers referring to france as “the eldest daughter of the church”.
i am unfamiliar with how common that particular phrase is but interesting seeing it in both places as he apparently attended a catholic school, in kentucky, wherein he was allegedly the only protestant there.
for an extra bit of deep americana, many of us will be familiar with the simpsons running gag of not disclosing their state of residence. however in a “behind the scenes” episode of the simpsons (behind the laughter season 9[?]) they are described as a kentucky family:
two humorous footnotes here: a) i believe this screenshot was saved on a mormon facebook page and thats how it started making the rounds again, and b) i am currently writing this tweet on the floor of my studio underneath a baby (fr)
did you know that when babies are hungry they headbutt you (its real). very powerful. he will just straight up bash his head into me to request milk. before crying. thats the first maneuver. bam. forehead smash into clavicle: “give me breast”
we fixed his tongue tie, so every three hours i have to open his mouth and poke around in there and he cries. im not complaining, i just thought i would tell you its kind of a vibe, on the floor, doing that, in the art studio, its raining, looking through documents. whatchu up to
do you think that, if we take our current model of the solar system, if you zoomed out from earth and kept zooming out, that eventually it would look like a star? self luminous? do you think the dirt and water around you would look like a bright star from really far away?
i kind of feel like it wouldn’t.
anyway unrelated check out this picture of jupiter in the night sky (mostly swirling gases and liquid btw)