Been a good year since I did a Stranger cover! Now I get to see my art around town for a week, which is fun. (But then I also get to see it in the gutter, which is sad.)

Please note that I hand-wrote all the cover text. (No fonts of my lettering! Never! [weeping] Never!) And, FYI, this is a self-portrait.

Coinciding with my upcoming art show/ book signing at Babeland (Tues., Sept. 9, 6 - 9pm) I have been knighted “Babe of the Month” by Babeland blogger Jennifer, and she’s written not-just-one not-just-two but three (as of tomorrow) entries about me and my work! Thanks, Jennifer! My Babeland connection goes way back: in 1993 (!) I did the drawings for the original Toys in Babeland catalogs.

I finally got to use those drawings myself - collected those sex toy drawings for the endpapers of Lust, including some weird stuff they (understandably) discontinued - e.g., a dildo shaped like a dog’s head (eiw!). I made those endpaper collages into downloadable wallpaper - which you too can download, right here right now! (Beware, though: I accidentally had this wallpaper on my laptop when I did a presentation for Sound Transit. Oops.)

Download the size you want below:

| 1280 x 960 | 1280 x 1024 | 1280 x 720 | 1680 x 1050 | iPhone

Regina Hackett, the arts critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, wrote a really nice review of the “Sherman Alexie: Words and Music” show on Saturday, noting that that my impression of Oates was “dead-on.”

(Honestly, I didn’t do much more than wear a wig and moustache. It’s pretty amazing to make an auditorium full of people laugh really hard by just walking slowly onstage, and standing in the middle of it for a while so they can look at you. Why is drag so funny?)

And this person blogged that she liked my “Love Story in Hall and Oates Song Titles” video, and The Comics Reporter was impressed that I did drag (maybe I should do it more??), and Sherman and the West Marginals emailed me to say they were happy that I posted both videos.

I can’t believe I don’t have a photo of Christopher and me dressed in Hall & Oates drag - what was I thinking?? The crowd was enthusiastic and responsive, and the rest of the performers were awesome. Wow, it went great! It was so fun!

(Thank you, Sherman Alexie, Christopher Frizzelle, Sean Nelson and [I don’t know the name of his accompanist, but he was very nice], and the West Marginals. And everyone at the Bagley Wright Theater, and the 500 Bumbershoot volunteers they kept referring to in all their announcements.)

I photoshopped together the image below, with the two pink, puckered… roses… to go on the screen behind us for the “Hall & Oates” section of the evening. Really doing my best to exploit the CRAZY HOMOEROTICISM of these two supposedly straight performers, jeez.

I made two videos (with no art!). I suppose I’m officially (professionally!) into the video-making right now. There’s actually a lot of overlap with comics - combining words and visuals, a focus on timing, storytelling. (Etc.)

Video #1: I came out and gave a short introduction:

“Hall and Oates? I mostly just knew ‘Rich Girl’ - I had no idea how many millions of albums they put out. So as you can imagine, they have a MILLION GAZILLION songs. I was looking over this long list of song titles and, you know how bands have a tradition of hiding secret messages in their music? Beatles, Black Sabbath… It seemed to me that in their song titles, Hall and Oates were telling us something: something about themselves… something about love… perhaps, something about all of us.”

Then I cued the video and left the stage. Please note that every frame is a real Hall & Oates song:

Video #2: I went onstage in Oates drag - curly wig, moustache, little cowboy boots - my first drag king performance, and it went over super well, thank you very much. Answering the rumors that Daryl and I were gay lovers, I finally owned up to it, and described how we met, accompanied by a slide show of our album covers. At the end of my bittersweet reverie, Christopher came out as Hall and tapped me on the shoulder, and we touched each others’ faces and kissed, and he carried me off stage. (The pressure on me: Christopher hadn’t kissed a girl since high school! At least I had a moustache on, maybe that helped.) It was hilarious and we were both laughing and had lost our wigs by the time we made it to the wings.

To make this post-able, I added a soundtrack of my narration (a new iMovie skill!):

Bumbershoot! Love it, hate it, but it’s unavoidable. I’ll be performing again at the Bagley Wright Theater on Saturday at 6pm, and the show is featured in the Stranger’s special “don’t miss it!” section.

This particular literary/artistic/musical event is too egregious a conflict of interest for me to ignore. It’s true enough that as part of this program the author Sherman Alexie will be reading (with musical accompaniment) “What You Pawn I Will Redeem,” a marvelous short story that originally appeared in the New Yorker. Alexie is an exemplar of Seattle’s first-rate literary community, though why he continues to associate himself with gutter filth like The Stranger is beyond me. The Stranger-associated felons and deviants who round out the program include the paper’s most famous comic artist, Ellen Forney; former associate editor Sean Nelson (who is also a well-known musician); Stranger contributor Trisha Ready; and The Stranger’s editor-in-chief, Christopher Frizzelle.

Sean, Christopher and I will be examining the rich topic of… Hall and Oates. I’ve made a few videos (jeez, I’ve been having fun with iMovie recently) and there’ll also be FABULOUS SURPRISES!!!

1. Lust (the book): Black Heart Magazine just posted a lovely review of Lust. An excerpt:

Forney’s drawings are fabulous, a mixture of cute and sexy with lots of allusions from pop culture to high art. A large part of the fun is in seeing how she translates the print ads to graphics, without being crude. It’s a really playful take on ads that could otherwise come off as filthy and sensational.

2. Lustlab Ad of the Week (the art show): For the Capitol Hill Artwalk on September 9, Babeland is going to host a show of my Lustlab originals, and I’ll probably do my Lust reading/presentation at their 15th anniversary party on September 18. The art show is called “Ta-ta, Lustlab Ad of the Week!” Why? Because:

3. Lustlab Ad of the Week (the cartoon):

R.I.P.!!!!!!!

Online dating has gone through a lot of changes, as has the Stranger, and LLAOTW has been cut. I’m really sad, but it’s not a huge surprise - I’m thankful to have had the series for as long as I did (four years!). I’ll take the time to work on my new book, and will soon start plotting my next comic series. (I’m open to suggestions! And no, switching to Craigslist’s personals isn’t an option — pesky copyright issues..!)

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Late night addendum: Many thanks and for the well-wishes from commenters below, and from Fleshbot, Seattlest, Fantagraphics, Capitol Hill Seattle, and Citizen Rain. Deep curtseys! Blown kisses!

I am hermit-crab-sitting this weekend, and made an exciting video of Vincent and Charlie clambering around
my tub.

Airlines do still serve coffee and tea, true. (Remember “Coffee, Tea, or Me”?) But the depressing array of little snacks makes the below question a pretty easy one to answer! Sort of!

LUST, the “Lustlab Ad of the Week” book collection, is out and on the shelves! You can order it here directly from the Fantagraphics web-catalog. “Lustlab Ad of the Week” is a comic adaptation of one of the week’s kinky personal ads in Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger, and I post them here every Wednesday(ish).

I made a teeny video of Sassafrass, who I dogsit for Ariel and Dre. Making videos is, like, totally fun! I may use it as a tool in one of my presentations one of these days…