Archive for April, 2010

I’m generally known as a capable guy, as someone who works efficiently and effectively. I always hit deadlines. I take on additional work with a smile. I generally produce above-standard results. I’m surprisingly adept at time management, despite my inability to keep appointments without my e-mail or phone shouting at me.

It should be no surprise to anyone that I keep multiple plates spinning at any given time. Writing articles. Making comics. Playing music. Terrorizing the interwebs. Recording podcasts. Throwing parties. Traveling. Planning. Rhyming. Scheming. And while this has been my default state since high school — and that’s a long time, kids — I kind-of feel like the plates are starting to wobble, and while none of them have quite hit the floor yet, I’m starting to get the impression that laying down some rubber might not be such a bad idea.

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have come across a few tweets yesterday ruminating over my perceived decline in writing quality, and theories that such a decline could be attributed to my attention just being spread out too thin.

It’s not an unreasonable hypothesis, and it’s also something I’ve explored — and acted upon — in the past. Long-time friends, both on- and offline, know that every few years, I seem to reevaluate my life, and more specifically, my internet presence, weighing the perceived value of productivity over the actual value of my happiness. I’ve been accused of being productive just for productivity’s sake, not because I’m necessarily inspired to create anything, but because of some inherent need to feed my megalomaniacal  ego by constantly having my name out there. I’d like to think that’s not the case, but then again, my warped perception may be part of the problem.

I’m just bad at not doing stuff. I’m terrible to take on vacation, because I get antsy if I know there’s work I could be doing or needs to be done. In the past, I took “vacations” from jobs just to get work done on other projects. I obsessively check e-mails, messages, tweets, etc. The only way for me to get to sleep at night — assuming I don’t pass out on the couch from sheer exhaustion — is to play a mind-numbing game on my phone (the voices! the voices!). My poor girlfriend suffers my long nights in front of the computer, cramming in revisions on articles or last-minute coloring on a comic.

But is all of this drive to produce affecting the quality of the productions? Does my increasingly shortened attention span hold me back from excelling at, say, just two areas, instead of being mediocre in 10? At one point, I felt I could claim to be a good writer. Really good. But over the years, as deadlines have replaced the muse as my impetus for writing, I think I’ve started circling the rim of the hack circle, less a writer and more a guy who writes. Less a musician and more a guy who plays drums. Less a person and more a cipher.

I could be wrong, of course. Editors still hire me. The band hasn’t fired me yet. People come to see us play. My comics get read, sometimes they get purchased. But I wonder if I pulled back, if I spent more time developing the crafts, creating amazing works and putting quality over quantity, if I couldn’t produce something spectacular, something worthy of putting out into the world, instead of trying to just hammer my name into everyone’s heads by sheer blunt force.

Hey, remember Omega Comics Presents? The black-and-white anthology series I started publishing in the winter, which features multiple new stories by up-and-coming independent comics talents?

It’s baaaack.

This time, we have some awesome contributions from folks across the North American continent, such as Glenn Arseneau and Andy Gray’s mystical adventure “Greyman: Highway Patrol,” Dino Caruso and J. Korim’s comedic quickie “Door to Door,” and perhaps most awesomely, former The Batman Strikes! writer Russell Lissau’s “Greedy,” a sultry, noir crime drama elegantly drawn by mpMann. Oh, and I have a story in there too, the second chapter of my espionage-action epic, “Omega.” If you picked up the first issue and want to see where that story is going, the only way to find out is to buy the second issue.

Remember, these fine creators only get paid if you buy the comic. So buy it. Buy a few copies and hand them out on Halloween to trick-or-treaters. Buy a few more and line your birdcage. Personally, I don’t care what you do with the comic, so long as you buy, buy, buy.

Further incentive? This mind-blowing cover drawn by my own fat fingers and brilliantly colored by Bozeman, Montana’s own Stephen Downer:

Here’s a little more incentive: If you live in Las Vegas, and you get there early enough, three local comic book stores have copies of the first issue they’ll be giving away this Saturday, May 1, during Free Comic Book Day: Alternate Reality, Comic Oasis and MaximuM Comics. So, you know, pre-order issue two and pick up issue one FREE. America: Fuck Yeah!

I think this may have been my one of my first appearances on a nightlife photo website, just before it became a regular thing for a bizarre period of time. That’s Martin Stein with me, then probably one of my editors at the Las Vegas Weekly — or possibly by then defected to the dark side of PR — but now editor at David Magazine. I believe we’re at Empire Ballroom (R.I.P.), though for the life of me, I can’t recall the occasion. It was mid-2006, if I recall …

Look at how bare my upper arms are! Man. Time flies.

So, yesterday I was reading the second issue of X-Factor Forever, a five-issue comic book series from Marvel Comics written by Louise Simonson, who is basically picking up with the storyline left off when she left the X-Factor series back in the early 1990s (and approaching it as if the last 18 or 19 years of stories never happened). I’m enjoying the heck out of it, because a) I loved Simonson’s run on the series back in the late ’80s, and b) Dan Panosian’s art is just fun and full of energy.

BUT. I have to take issue with this panel, whose appearance in the midst of an otherwise innocent birthday party scene is insignificant, except for one thing:

Anyone who’s been reading X-Men comics for any period of time — or, in my case, for 25 years, knows that CYCLOPS’ EYE BEAMS DON’T EMIT HEAT. They are beams of force, of pressure. Wikipedia says it right here: “they do not give off heat and instead deliver concussive force.” WIKIPEDIA DON’T LIE.

So … cute as the idea of Cyke lighting up young Timmy’s birthday candles with his optic blasts may be, it’s off-character and (sorry Louise) Simonson should know better. It’s as ludicrous as, say, Iceman conjuring up a delightful ice cream topping out of thin air.

Yes, kids, it’s that time again: Time to open up your hearts (and wallets) and prepare yourself for the next print issue of The Utopian. I’m sending off the files for the third collection of my love-it-or-hate-it webcomic to the printer this weekend, in hopes to have the books in time for the next First Friday, where I’ll likely debut the issue (more on that soon). If you’re the type who likes to have a real, printed tree pulp periodical in your grubby hands to read in your bed, at the park or on the loo, then you’ll probably want to pre-order a copy now. It features a sexy new cover by my man Hernan Valencia that looks an awful lot like this:

It also features an all-new splash page and a bonus sketch, both by yours truly. It’s only $5 for 24 full-color pages, and if you order prior to the scheduled May 5 release date, I’ll even sign it before dropping it in the mail. THE AUTOGRAPH ALONE IS WORTH IT.

Oh, and in case you need to get caught up and you don’t like reading comics on the web, you can also order the prior issues as well. Or if you live in Las Vegas, please visit Alternate Reality Comics or Comic Oasis and support both local artists AND local businesses!

/end shameless self-shilling

Photo by Erik Kabik/RETNA.com/erikkabik.com

Seriously, I was going to write a semi-review of last night’s opening night performance of Dita Von Teese’s limited run with the Crazy Horse Paris at MGM Grand, and I got about four paragraphs into it, and then I realized IT SUCKED BALLS, like everything else I’ve done today, so … I scrapped it.

Instead, I think you’d be much better off reading the article I wrote about Von Teese in this week’s Vegas Seven. It does not suck balls. I did the interview with the lovely burlesque icon via phone last Friday, but that’s not how it was supposed to be. My original plan was to do an in-person interview with her at the Crazy Horse this week, and to actually observe and report on the interaction between Von Teese and the insanely beautiful Crazy Horse dancers. It was all lined up for Monday, but as things go in the world of entertainment journalism, dates and times were shifted and crossed, and in order to meet the deadline for the paper, I had to switch to a phoner and realign the focus of the story.

The conversation with Von Teese was relatively brief but chock full of goodies. Unfortunately, a lot of the topics we discussed didn’t make it into the article, lest it run way over word count and lose all focus. But it’s a shame to see it go to waste, so I’m going to share with you an excerpt from the “outtakes” here. I asked Von Teese what differences she perceived between European and American approaches to sexuality. Here’s part of what she had to say:

I have to say in America in the 1940s, everyone knew who Gypsy Rose Lee was. She was a huge household name, and she did exactly what I do now. It’s hard to imagine why things have shifted so much. Josephine Baker received honors in France for what she did, and she was butt naked, there are streets named after these people. [In France] everyone knows what I do, children know what I do. People aren’t embarrassed of it or afraid of it. Showgirls are a part of Parisian culture. I don’t know why it’s so taboo in America. My life’s work is to change people’s mind about what a stripper is, and how strip tease can be artful, and how it can be an important part of America’s entertainment history.

There was more, but I’ll probably save that for the collection of unabridged interviews I’m assembling for future publication. A few people have indicated they’d be interested in reading such a thing. Would you? A book featuring full interviews with celebrities, politicians and other interesting people? Let a brother know.