*GREETINGS FROM THE WORLD'S WORST BLOGGER....
Ugh..I oughta be ashamed of myself. I don't deserve a blog. I don't deserve readers.
Anyhoo. Here was my past week:
*826LA FUNDRAISING PARTY..
..was at the Venice location. Which made it easy for me to hop a bus and head over there. T'was a nice event that featured Dave Eggers, Spike Jonze and new LA director Joel Arquillos making the pitch to a whole bunch of creative folk. Meg Ryan was there. I told her to sit down.
826LA is always looking for volunteers and donations, at either the Venice or Echo Park locations. Feel free to contact them through their website: http://www826la.org. Tell 'em Keef sent ya.
*I TOOK MY ARSE TO SAN FRANCISCO..
..for a number of events, including the opening of my glorious exhibition at the Cartoon Art Museum!! The exhibit looks great, with over 40 pieces gracing the walls. It includes high school and college work. And ends with originals of my new daily comic strip, Knight Life.
I got some decent press for the event, including a nice write-up in one of the local alt-weeklies, the Bay Guardian. Unfortunately, at the same time of my event, Lynda Barry was doing something at the Booksmith, and ultra-fab editorial cartoonist Khalil Bendib was doing the Commonwealth Club!! Three cartoonist events at the same time!!
So the attendance at my event was sorta spotty, but sales were good. I did a bit of a walk-thru for the crowd, commenting on various pieces. Shout outs to SF cartoonists
Paul Madonna and
Lev Yilmaz for showing up.
In addition, I spoke at the Oakland campus of California College of the Arts and did
an interview for KPFA's Hard Knock radio. Made a surprise guest appearance at Stephen Elliott's Progressive Reading Series and partied at another opening for a smaller exhibit of my work at the City Center hostel in downtown San Francisco.
I must say thanks to the woman from Massachusetts who showed up to the hostel event after reading about it on my blog. I didn't think anyone read this thing. I wish I wasn't so new-parent tired, I would've given her a donut or something. Thank you for coming out.
The weekend ended with my "Cartoons are Serious Business" lecture on Sunday. I was asked whether I 'd ever do a class that was more about drawing cartoons...I think I will do that for the next one.
*TOTORO FOREST PROJECT..
An exhibit that just went up in the gallery next to mine at the C.A.M. is this amazing show that features art from the Totoro Forest Project Charity Auction. All of the art was inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's animated film My Neighbor Totoro. And it was all auctioned off at the Pixar Animation Studios earlier this month. Proceeds from the auction go to save Japan's Sayama Forest, the forest in which Miyazaki's film is based on.
My buddy Chris bid and won the piece that features 4 frames on the wall that faces my exhibit. Defintely check this show out. It's the cat's bottom!!
Cartoon Art Museum: 655 Mission St. San Francisco, CA 94105
http://www.cartoonart.org*DID I MENTION THE PIECE I DID FOR THE SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION..
..about the dwindling black population in San Francisco? Check it out by going here and finding my name.
*MY "IF PALIN WERE A DEMOCRAT/BLACK DEMOCRAT CARTOONS ARE POPPING UP EVERYWHERE..
Nice to see them getting around. And to see the right-wing trolls that lurk the internet to place feedback and commentary anywhere they can put it. I hope they're paid well.
Makes me wonder: If anyone or any company performed as bad as this administration did in these past eight years, you'd never want to hire them again, right? You'd punish them so they'd change it up and come back with better service, a better product.
Yet, there are still folks out there willing to vote for the Republican ticket.
Honestly, folks. If the Republicans win, they'll know that they never, ever have to do anything for the American people, EVER. They could nominate two piles of Moose dung, and as long as all the right-wing talking heads push em, they'll have no problem getting elected.
Political video of the weak.*LETTERS/EMAILS OF THE WEEK..
I've been enjoying your stuff for a long while. To me, your forerunner was Warren
Hutcherson, who claimed his father was a state policeman, black muslim--and whenever he
the son was stopped by a trooper, they said he had enough crap in his life and waved him
on. He said his father would show him examples of racism all over the place--green olives
were in glass containers but black ones were kept in metal cans, symbolic, he implied, of
the black man's being kept in jail.
Please understand that in the sixties and seventies, and still now, I was on picket lines
all over. I don't know if you saw it, but a short while ago the local rag ran a piece on
people in Haiti were literally eating pies made from a pale mud--and selling them to
other people as some sort of nutrition. I was in the lobby of my building and expressed
shock at what I was reading. The mailman said, and another tenant expressed good-humored
agreement, that if "they" didn't have seven children, maybe they could afford food. I lit
into them (mud to eat is the result of 400 years, etc.), but the way things are going,
people just kind of shut up--declining king's gambit, perhaps.
Anyway, thanks again for all your good work--especially liked the drug-shit correlation
in current issue. Incidentally, Burlington uses our lovely Lake Champlain as a toilet and
for filtering it to drink. Screw Orange County. Give credit where due.
By the way, I'm in (theoretically) the last stages of writing an existential novel about
the Brooklyn Dodgers of 1950--and reappearing today.
Best to your family.
J
-----
"
If Palin Were a Black Democrat"BEST. KCHRONICLES. EVER. (or at least tied for first with the one about trying to get good pizza and cheese steaks in San Francisco vs. Boston)
Take a bow, sir. Great work.
--Jeremy
----
Loved today's
"Knight Life" about vet mentoring.I'm a veteran myself. A few years ago I was at the VA Medical Center in Salt Lake City and I was shocked to learn that a lot of the other vets in the hospital with me were homeless and that after they were discharged they were either going to homeless shelters or just back on the street. I did some research and learned, at the time, that 20% of all homeless people in the US were veterans. That number has risen to 25%. It's tragic. For all the talk from the Bush administration about "supporting our troops," it pisses me off that veterans just don't matter to them. The government makes a big show about raising the budget for the VA every year but then after the fiscal year gets started, the president calls the secretary of veterans affairs and says, "you need to cut your spending so we can pay for the war." It seems that in this country, we like our heroes in only two forms: In a uniform or in a grave. Anyone else is just a veteran and they don't count.
Keep up the great work.
-J
-----
Keith and Kerstin,
Nice work! Gravy’s happy face adorns our refrigerator.
As you may know, for us humans, not every act of copulation produces a life. Countless couples have mastered the fine art of coitus, but to no reproductive avail. Naturally, whenever a baby is born, most of the credit goes to the woman. Often, people don’t keep in mind that the most important part of successful procreation is a strong swimming sperm. Without the tiny sperm’s tenacity, his tireless determination to swim, swim, swim upstream like a salmon, none of us would be blessed with the awesome gift of life. Here, the credit goes to Keith, and all his paternal, sperm-producing ancestors who gave rise to the Knight family line, which Gravy will one day proudly carry on, with his own strong swimming sperm.
Love,
S.
*BUSY WEEKEND AHEAD OF ME..
..I've got workshops at the Getty Museum and a table at the
West Hollywood Book Fair on Sunday. Come on by and see me. I will be the one stalking
Adrienne Barbeau.Cheers!!
