After the wires are off…

Can someone (Hello Lisa Lyons!) tell me how to get this hair FOREVER?

Wired for brain

All wired up for my ambulatory EEG. For 24 hours a little box will record my brain waves, looking for those crazy epilepsy “spikes.” Melissa Shaw’s got a picture of me, complete with box, head gauze and Belgian beer that is much more telling. More soon.

The problem with a common name

I’ve been thinking, somewhat seriously, about changing my professional name for some time. It’s too damn common. ASIDE FROM ANOTHER CARTOONIST IN MY CITY with the same name, my Google Alerts is constantly throwing my way links for sportscasters, small-town politicians, and lately, a cowboy. Here’s a curious thing to wake up to:

I got an eyeful of Tom Hart, the cowboy on AMC’s Broken Trail, and I knew I wanted to do another western. The guy isn’t at all good looking. He’s not hero material in the sense of charm, but he had more grit than any hero I’d seen in …

Click here for more at petticoatsandpistols.com

And send ideas for what to change my name to my email address, which notably has no Tom or Hart in it, because they were all taken by the time I got there: hutchowen ( at ) gmail . com .

Longé, Sahmi visit New York City

The fabulous family of Christopher Longé visited NYC and Leela and me for 10 days ( staying in our tiny apartment!) and it couldn’t have been more fabulous. The family is Christopher, his brilliant wife Nadia, and his two brilliant (yes- they are all brilliant, trust us!) kids, Lilia and Tydian. They HEART NY!
Here they are enjoying a jacuzzi in New Jersey…

Grover Norquist, 2008, with cartoons

Well, my nemesis, Grover Norquist has published a book, “Leave Us Alone”.

To quote Bugs Bunny, “what a maroon”.

In fact, he is interviewed this week in The New York Times Magazine.

Read through this interview. Grover Norquist is the classic example of the walking baby-man, of which there is a surfeit in power in this society. A man, aged 40+ in body, 10+ in mind and emotion. My feelings about him are justified: he came up with his “no tax pledge” when he was 14. Grover’s problem, as I see it, is he never grew up.

Grover Norquist claims in his interview that private entities take care of their properties better than public ones. He claims parks as his example, but consider, let’s say, Okeefenokee Park. By all parameters, Okeefenokee should be a national park. It’s gigantic, a glorious national treasure, a unique ecosystem and living, wild environment. The park itself, for reasons you can read about elsewhere, is privately owned, pathetic- full of cardboard cut outs of Pogo and other swamp creatures. The goat stall, the train, the gift shop are all slight and embarrassing, and not one person knew anything about the “Walt Kelly Museum” on their grounds. Though everyone had a vague idea in which direction to point me. (Though let me say that everyone working their was very pleasant and charming.)

Your average National Park is run by dedicated rangers, and is full of scientists and other professionals dedicated to either the conservation of the park or the accurate education of the park goers. The parks are reasonably well taken care of, and are in equal service of the park and its patrons. Grover can keep his crappy little private parks.

Another example. The French trains (the SNCF), publicly owned, are clean, well-maintained, affordable, on time, efficient and fabulous. Compare to the London trains, mostly private and mostly shitty. Or any other number of competitive, penny pinching, profit-driven enterprises.

What GROVER NORQUIST, the jackass, doesn’t realize is that the same thing is true, private or public. Things are run best when they are run by responsible, intelligent, caring, well-trained people. Period. Whether they are private or public matters not.

Norquist, take a powder!

What a maroon! What an ignoranimous!

In honor of GROVER NORQUIST’S RIDICULOUS new book, I am running classic Norquist strips on Hutch Owen. Click here for the dailies. Click the image below for more Sunday Grover.

Bookstack, March 08

I’m liking this Bookstack idea. Here’s March 08.

First, I realized how wrong I was about Joann Sfar’s Vampire Loves. Its weird meandering nature, it’s mixing of characters all searching for something is really really charming… The Rabbi’s Cat I was already sold on, and reread it last month. Just finished Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up, which is so intelligent and good-hearted, his quest so rigorous and serious. Thanks, Tim Kreider. (I’m trying to feel regret or envy that the book shows a case of super hard work and dedicated intelligence as a path to commercial success. I’d like to believe those qualities are in fact, valued in our media world.

Finally read Calvino’s the Non-Existent Knight, which had a great minimum of characters and bizarre, meta-situations. I think I might not get to The Cloven Viscount before I return the book. Above that, a stack of student work, which I managed to get through and notate. Points of View is a book of short stories organized by narrative strategy, that inspired me to think on that subject a bit more widely, and also construct a few exercises for my students… Atop that, finally reading Don Quixote all the way through, but yes, that’s an abridged version… I am unashamed.

Atop that, notes for a new project. Why can I no longer find metal recipe cards boxes?

Manga versions of Shakespeare by my students

Two of my students have recently adapted Shakespeare into m-a-n-g-a format…

Yali Lin drew Romeo and Juliet and Tintin Pantoja did Hamlet. Hurray for them. Order the books here:
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470097582.html
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470097574.html

Also on the roster was Julius Ceaser by Hyeondo Park (great guy, who was not one of my students) and Macbeth by Candice Chow (I don’t know her.)

On Spurge’s best of 2007 list

Tom Spurgeon puts me on his best Internet Features of 2007. Or rather, “Five Features Even The Most Ardent Internet-Hater Would Find Worth Reading On-Line“

The strip is on indefinite hiatus as of Friday, March 28. See my favorite strips here.

Leela Corman in The Forward

My wife Leela’s graphic novel Unterzakhn is now being previewed in The Forward! Read an interview with her here.

Lileks’ section on comics and funnybooks

Few sites raise joy in my dark heart like James Lilek’s Institute of Official Cheer. This panel is from his subsection on Big Little Books in his “Unimpressive Examples of the Sequential Art” section.