Nosferatu strips

I got so into putting Blumer into this costume. So another week exploring his determination to be in some other skin.

The thing about Blumer is that life sucks for him. Clinging to the belief that if he can just start over from scratch , things will be ok for him.

Damo Suzuki’s Network

Just saw Damo Suzuki in Brooklyn, in a room the size of my living room. Rhythmic, melodic, hypnotic, meditative, loud, constant, varying, alive, awesome.

My 101 improv show, Thursday Oct 18

Gang, my 101 improv class with the AMAZING teaching genius, Tara Copeland (Above, far right, with Ms. Jackson.Go see them Fridays at Magnet!) this Thursday at the Magnet Theater.

Where/When:
Thurs, Oct 18, 7 pm
Free
Magnet Theater, 29th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue.

I am Totally on a Highway to Hell

Things I did while my awesome, gorgeous, inspiring wife was away in Turkey for 2 weeks:

• Ate leftovers from the freezer
• Killed about 2 dozen flies
• Attached new pulls to the kitchen cabinets
• Went to improv class
• Saw some improv
• Started a new semester at SVA
• Watched Oskar wash herself
• Bought TheMoneyWarrior.com
• Bought Trashistan.com
• Did a quick animation for Marsteller Interactive
• Set pics of Leela as computer desktop
• Listened to Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Songs, especially 100 or so I really like
• Best song I didn’t already know: Keep a Knockin’ by Little Richard
• Song I added to list cause it wasn’t on it already: Hollywood Nights by Bob Segar
• Discovered the lyrics to Stayin’ Alive
• Slept on the couch
• Drew 5 strips about not sleeping
• Drew 5 strips about the women of earth leaving the men of the planet to rot in their own filth.
• Wrote 5 more, began sketching.
• Created Itunes playlist of songs by these men: Lou Reed, Rowland S
• Howard, Mark Eitzel, John Darnielle, T. Rex, Chris Whitley, and a few non-sucky Tim Buckley songs.
• Visited NYC as a tourist.
• Drank a beer with Tim Kreider and friends, as per ritual
• Talked long time with Kibye, Jay, Junior and others in front of the apartment
• Had a long incredibly coffee chat with Polly Frost (genius)
• Gave Isaac and Mike some obstructions
• Showed Margo all the best routines from Busby Berkeley’s The Gang’s All Here
• Turned off the radio.

Went on a movie binge:

1. A Woman Under the Influence
2. Scenes from a Marriage
3. Bonnie and Clyde
4. Putney Swope
5. The Passion of Joan of Arc
6. The White Diamond
7. The Seventh Seal
8. Breathless
9. Dogville

• Walked arrogant, determined, reckless, lustful
• Read farther into the Bhagavad gita
• Read bits of the Evergreen Review Reader
• Woke up early
• Daydreamed about our future child.
• Fed the pilot light.
• Kicked ass.
• Picked up my exhausted sweaty darling wife from JFK

Billy Joyce, RIP

My mother’s father died this month. Billy Ray Joyce- a terrific guy. A thin, wirey strong man with great hair who liked to talk more than most other things. Claimed to be 1/16 Cherokee. Born in Oklahoma, most of his life spent in either Witchita KS or Joplin MO. His stint in WWII was spent mostly in Algeria, where he layed down tar and built runways for Allied planes. Got Asthma as a result but the 40 years smoking didn’t help either.Visited every state in the union in his RV (except HI.) Spent years nursing his wife - my grandmother- through Alzheimer’s disease. This picture of him with the beard he took himself, soon after my grandmother’s death. The beard was his way of grieving. He was a good guy.

Website definitely down!

I’ve lost newhatstories.com forever- apparently Network Solutions thinks someone else will pay money for it.

So look for tomhart.net soon, and all this will get sorted out. Thanks for your patience!

Tom

Website down

Sat eve - 7/21/07

Newhatstories.com seems to be down. Thanks for your patience…

Hutch Strips in France, week 3: All about the cheese.

The strips here are a response to how overwhelmed I am by French cheeses when I am there. In fact, it’s mostly what I am thinking about these days, while decompressing from my time there. It’s the main thing, aside from close contact with friends, that I can not duplicate while here. Damn the law…

Most of these strips were written and sketched in Eric Corbeyran’s house in Bordeaux. I was overwhelmed, Rumi-like by a cow cheese we had bought a couple days prior. It was an accident I bought one from a cow, usually Leela and I prefer goat. Whatever- it doesn’t and didn’t matter, cause all these things are terrifyingly alive. There should be horror movies about them.

Another Hutch Comic by Joe Boginski

Another great Hutch Owen comic from Joe Boginski. Joe keeps making strips I want to steal!!!

France Strips Week 2: France is too beautiful!

These strips are week 2 of my strips about France, which is TOO BEAUTIFUL. It is so easy to walk around France and believe eerything is perfect. Everyone seems to enjoy their middle class life style. Lunches are casual, slow. Mornings and evenings are less harried than you would see in American cities. Coffee is something you stop to have. You enjoy your meals, you enjoy your rituals (France seems to be mostly rituals…)

But the suburbs riot every once in a whlie. Who sees that? It’s hard to find a bad neighborhood, or even much disparity in Paris proper, or any of the cities. Who knows what goes on in these bad suburbs?

Walking around Paris in my cloud, happy to participate in the rituals, happy to believe everything is ok… Is it? Is it ever? How can you balance it out?

Best way to not think about it? Better to take the advice of my grandfather about avoiding hangovers: stay drunk.