PROGRESS NOTES:

9/5/07- My new comic, 'A CIRCUIT CLOSED' debuts on Myspace Darkhorse Presents today. It's the first comic I've done in three years, since The Changers. You know how I always said I wanted to be the 'Terrence Mallick of comics'? Well, if that's still my ambition, then I'm actually ahead of schedule in the productivity department. I'm tempted to, but won't, get into a defensive tirade regarding what, exactly, I've been doing in the YEAR since my last update, and why, precisely, I have relatively nothing to show for it. Just give me a little more time. I'll put something out. Something real good. You'll see. In the meantime, buy some greeting cards and listen to some novelty dance tunes.

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9/26/06- Seems like in my life there's either not enough going on that merits me writing about it, or there's so much going on that I don't have time to write about it. Right now is one of those latter times, but since traffic on my site has been increasing as a result of it, I figure it's time to represent.

The most pressing thing on my schedule right now is the line of comics-themed greeting cards my girlfriend and I are launching in a few weeks. We're going to Portland to debut the cards at the Stumptown Comics Fest at the end of October. Check our temporary placeholder site for links to all the finished art from some of your favorite indie comics superstars: www.LoadedBlanksHQ.com

The thing that will take over my mind next week is a trip to LA to meet up with a small production company about making my latest script (QUIVER, which I wrote in the time since my last update) into a feature. We're going to start with a teaser film and use it to drum up funding. I'm trying to keep a lid on my enthusiasm at this point. I don't want to get myself too worked up, but I figure it's an opportunity I'd be stupid not to at least investigate.

After two weeks of pre-production in LA, I head up to Portland not only to debut the greeting cards, but also to perform the annual Comic Art Battle. I've sort of re-concepted the battle in an effort to fit it into a TV gameshow format. We're going all out this year, and we're going to film it and edit it down into a pilot for the propsed gameshow. Right now, this is becoming less and less a priority though. Being a gameshow mogul isn't exactly my dream, and if working on it takes too much time away from the film, it'll have to fall by the wayside...

In other news, my best friend Shelley, whom I moved to Chicago with two years ago, moved to LA a few weeks ago to start a new life with her boyfriend Alexis. We all took a short roadtrip up to Milwaukee to see her last show in the midwest (as a midwesterner) at the Pabst Theatre, where she opened for M. Ward. We all had a blast, hanging out backstage with the bands, eating the catered food, drinking the free beer, and watching the show from the side of the stage. Adam and Rachel are playing in M. Ward's band, and it was good to see some familiar Portland faces in such a strange place (and weird to see them in person after seeing them all perform on Letterman just a few weeks prior). Shelley's set was amazing. A triumphant send-off. The Pabst Theatre is a beautiful venue, and the sound was probably the best I've ever heard at a concert. But my favorite part about it was the giant vinyl banner on the front of the building that featured a headshot of David Byrne next to his sentiments about playing at the Pabst Theatre: "The Pabst Theatre gets the blue ribbon!"

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4/14/06- There’s a reason I haven’t updated my site in almost a year. It’s not because things haven’t been happening in my life, because things have. Lots of things. Lots of traveling, moving, misadventures, revelations, life changes, etc. But the reason you don’t see any of it here is because I just don’t have anything to show for it. I don’t want to get into a personal discourse now about how I feel like I’m too lazy and I don’t work hard enough on the things I profess to matter most to me, but I very easily could. I knew I wanted to take some time off from ‘creating’ after The Changers, and I’ve always said (and it’s been recorded) that I would prefer to be an artist who puts things out when they are ready to be put out, and crafted as well as he is capable, instead of one who puts slapdash things out as frequently as possibble. Quality over quantity, remember?

That said, this past weekend, after SIX YEARS of sporadic planning, concepting, writing and rewriting, I finally finished the script to my next book, Upgrade Soul. I finally have something to show after almost two years away from the scene. And boy howdy does it feel good. Of course, the work has only begun. I still haven’t even decided if I want to illustrate it (after six years with this story, I don’t know how excited I am to spend two more drawing it when I have ten more scripts in my head that need to be put to paper). But before I even get to that stage, I have to write a tagline, synopsis, issue breakdown, and character sheets/designs. You see, I have no intention of self-publishing this book, as I did with The Changers. Granted, it was a tremendous learning experience, but I’m not a publisher, and I know I don’t have the power alone to get my book out to as many people as I would like to reach. So I’m doing it the way people do it. I going to put together a formal pitch.

But really, the biggest hurdle has been cleared. The fucking thing is WRITTEN.

And now, for old time’s sake, I’ll tell you a story that has nothing to do with anything.

A few weeks ago, Heather and I took a trip to New York City to visit Alec, Aaron and Dan. Those jokers are three of my best friends in the world, and I hadn’t seen them for far too long. Heather had never been to NYC, and I’d only been once before, when I did my reading at St. Mark’s Comics two years ago (which was the last time I’d seen Dan, who’s since BRED). We flew into Laguardia and had to figure out how to get from the airport to Penn Station, and from there to Asbury Park, NJ, where Dan lives. We were advised to take a shuttle, but when we finally figured out where we were supposed to catch it, and saw a large bus pull up that looked like it might be an airport shuttle, the ticket person just sort of grunted in negation when I asked him if I was supposed to buy a ticket from him. Then the driver, who I thought might be a little more helpful, got off the bus. But instead of telling anybody what to do, he just glared alternately at the ticket person and the people who were waiting with us to get on the shuttle (most of whom seemed just as confused as we were). Welcome to New York, I guess. Our disorientation was obvious, and thankfully there was one man waiting to get on the bus who knew what was going on. He was like a classic stereotype of an aging British rocker. Denim-clad, mop-topped, with sunglasses and a guitar strapped across his back, he was the type of guy you knew had to be somebody, even if you didn’t know who. He told us to just go ahead and get on the bus, and the ticket person would come take our money inside. We said thanks, and got on as instructed…

New York was a blast, blah blah blah. I could go on for ages about how much fun we had, and how great it was to see the guys, and our amazing tour of DC Comics Headquarters, courtesy of the lovely Sierra Hahn. But instead, I’m going to jump forward until about a week after we got back. Heather was poking around on MySpace, as she does, and saw a post that one of her friends had placed honoring the recently late, legendary musician Nikki Sudden. The thing that caught her eye, however, was that the picture posted looked remarkably similar to the British rocker who helped us at Laguardia Airport in NYC. We Googled him, just to see if we could find a home base address, or a tour schedule, or something to tell us where he was in the past week. A guy like that probably travels the world constantly, playing shows from London to Paris to Tokyo to wherever. We soon found out, however, that he WAS in New York the day we landed, there to play a show the following night. It was him. Even though we didn’t know who he was, we could say, as we’d hoped, that we saw someone famous in New York.

But if that wasn’t weird enough, here’s where it REALLY gets weird. Just before his show in New York, Nikki Sudden, whom neither of us had ever heard of, was in SIOUX CITY, IOWA (Heather and my home town) playing a show at the club Heather practically grew up in with Heather’s friend ‘Sioux City Pete’. Nikki kept a blog, and described his time in Sioux City just days prior, running around with people Heather knew well, and visiting bars and landmarks we’d both grown up with. If only Heather or I were more charismatic, and had struck up a conversation with him. Imagine the shock for all of us to learn of such a random, specific connection. We would’ve gone to his show, hung out, and been even more saddened when we heard the news. Nikki Sudden died four days after we met him, alone in a New York hotel, of heart failure.

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6/8/05- Still feeling too nauseous to eat anything, having spent the better part of the past seven or so hours drifting in and out of sleep on the floor in the bathroom, only occasionally sitting up to puke up the toxic liquids I'd consumed the night before. This morning was a bit of a milestone for me. It was the first time alcohol has directly caused me to throw up. It was also the first time I've ever vomited into a container other than a toilet. I didn't quite make it to the bathroom the third or fourth time, and found myself throwing up out the window onto the roof below.

This is all because last night was our Summer Transition Party, celebrating the new roommate line-up here at the Landmark. We had a keg, a few bands, etc. I drank too much, obviously, and to be honest, thinking of creative ways to describe this process is making me feel sick again. To my stomach.

On then, to the next topic...

On the way to see our friend Jamie's new band play their debut show, Shelley, Heather, Andy (driving) and myself were having a lively, wholesome conversation in which I was trying to relate the perplexing demeanor and carriage of a young man I once saw at Chicago's Union Station. My audience, however, was having a difficult time appreciating the peculiarity of his WALK, in particular. On someone's suggestion (I can't recall who, and won't here trouble myself to remember, if only for the sake of relieving them of any blame), Andy stopped the car just beyond the intersection for the purpose of me getting out to re-enact what I saw. It was only a little after 9pm, but we happened to be passing through a 'project' just a few blocks south of our apartment. I got out of the car then, and demonstrated the outrageous walk of the man I saw, demonstrating it as such around the entire perimeter of the vehicle.

When I got back into the car, someone remarked that it looked as though I had attracted the attention of a patrol car (the police officers contained inside). We pulled away cautiously, and full of abidingness, but after only a few yards, it was clear the police had caught the scent of blood. They followed, and a block later, their blue rooftop lights went on and the siren blurted at us. We pulled over, laughing to each other at the absurdity of the situation, and in anticipation of sharing the ridiculousness with the police officers.

Two fairly slight, somewhat inappropriately made up, anglo female officers surrounded the car from two sides, yelling at us all to roll down our windows. Our smiles began to fade as they then angrily ordered us to keep our hands on the dash, or on the back of the seat, always in view, depending where we were. They demanded our ID's, which we produced, careful to move slowly after we were yelled at for doing it too fast.

One of the cops barked at Andy: "Do you have any weapons in the car?!"

Andy answered with a negative, reacting inadvertently to the absurdity of the question.

She fired back: "You answered me like that was a stupid question! Do you think that was a stupid question?!"

These cops were mean!

They went back to their car to do background checks on us, yelling at us from behind to keep our hands where they could see them. In the reality of the situation, recognizing and remembering that it probably didn't matter what we were doing or who we were. If these officers wanted to take us away, or ticket us, or shoot at us, or whatever, they would do it and get away with it. I felt completely helpless, I got more than a little freaked out, and doubly so when I suddenly realized my license had expired in February.

They came back to the car, and immediately ordered me out of it. I went around to the back of the car as instructed. Put my hands on the trunk and spread my legs just like she said. Patting me down, the officer repeatedly asked me if I had any weapons or drugs on me, or in the car. No, no, no. She asked me what I was doing dancing around the car in the middle of the projects. I tried to explain, but, as you could imagine, nothing really came out making any sense. I heard a heckling cackle from an upper floor of one of the buildings that surrounded us, and somehow felt... I don't know, happy to be putting on such a show for someone who I know has gone through this more times than they deserve.

The officer asked me: "Why do you think white people come into the projects?"

"Huh?" I didn't know what to answer; I didn't know what she was getting at.

"I asked you: Why do you think white people come into the projects?"

I felt it not too out of line to correct her: "I'm actually half black, and I live less than two blocks up the street."

Momentarily stunned, she continued the line of questioning: "According to your ID, you live in Iowa" (I usually renew my license in my home town when I can, I guess to keep myself from committing so officially to living in any one place) "Why would someone like you come into the projects and stop the car and get out?"

Trying hard to think like a police officer, it hit me suddenly, like a buckshot of relief: "OH! I guess white people must come here to buy drugs!"

She praised my revelation like a short-tempered mother at her wit's end. "Yeesss. How do you think this looks to us?"

MEANWHILE, IN THE CAR (as reconstructed later from eyewitness accounts):
The other officer had been questioning the remaining passengers.

"Where are you all going?"

"We were on our way to see a friend play at the Empty Bottle," might have said Andy. Shelley fidgeted. Earlier in the evening, we had made rootbeer floats. Andy, unable to finish his in time to leave, took his with him, and there it rested in the drinkholder between him and Shelley--and Shelley knew how it would look to the cop if she happened to glance down and see a glass full of sudsy brown liquid.

"Have any of you been arrested before?"

Shelley and Heather answered immediately, negatively. Andy, however, hesitated. He looked over to Shelley, with the most comforting look he could manage, considering: "I was going to tell you this. I was just waiting for the right--I didn't want to do it like this."

Shelley's heart might have stopped here. Who WAS this Andy, after all?

"I was arrested while I was in college in Des Moines..."

The officer immediately had him pinned: "For what? For pot?"

"No... I was--It was in the morning, I was really bored... I had like ten cups of coffee."

Breaths were held.

"I thought it would be fun to follow a cop."

The officer might have said: "What?"

"I got arrested for following a cop--well, I got pulled over for that, but I got arrested on some traffic violation just because he was pissed that I was following him. It's not illegal to follow a cop."

"Why were you following a cop?" I guess she had a right to know.

"I don't know. It was silly. It was stupid. I know."

The officer gave him some pertinent advice here: "Don't do that in Chicago, you'll get shot!"

Evidently, their cop was much nicer than mine.

MEANWHILE OUTSIDE THE CAR:
My cop seemed to have had her fill of fun at my expense and her demeanor shifted one hundred and eighty degrees.

"What happens if you get in a wreck and you're unconscious, and all you have on you is this expired ID that says you live in Iowa?"

"I know, I need to get a new ID, I just don't drive, so it never seemed like a big deal, and nobody ever told me what the law--"

"Get a current ID." I must have stood there with something of a dumbshit look on my face, awaiting further instructions. She helped me along: "Get back in the car, man!"

Once back inside, our officers advised us to have a good time at the show (and stay the hell out of the projects) and went away. We all sat silently for a few moments, still shaken, still upset, but excited at the abundance of inside jokes the experience would forever bloom between us. Reviewing the evenings series of moderately irritating and disturbingly offensive violations, Andy said he wished the cop HAD noticed his rootbeer float, and taken it out, and smelled it, and saw that it was just ice cream and pop. THEN she would've known right off that we were just a bunch of wholesome, well-intentioned kids. A different thing stuck in my mind, however, which I shared with Heather: "When that cop stuck her hand in my pocket to get my keys out, I wasn't turned on at all--not even a little bit!" She took little comfort in the obviousness of this expression of my loyalty.

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5/17/05- Three months since an update? That's probably the longest I've gone since I started this thing. To my credit, I have been busy, though certainly not so busy I couldn't find time to get to my computron and update the general public to the status of my progress and life. I found time to play through GTA San Andreas with my roommate, Tim for instance. I will accredit my extended absence, this time, to my lack of definitive news. I've been sitting on a few major potentialities that I've preferred to keep to myself until they presented themselves in a more tangible form. But enough is enough. Here's the condensed recap of the past three months of my life.

March's issue of Punk Planet came out, and, perusing the contents with a roomful of young creative types (we were gathered in celebration of Tim's birthday), we discovered that almost every person in the room was mentioned in this issue. Tim, Susan and Jamie's former band, Foxtail had a seven-inch reviewed. Antonia and Matt's former band, The Sunday Toredowns had a review. And I had a review for The Changers. It was a strangely exhilarating and suffocating feeling, all at once. Here I was in a roomful of people talented enough for the media to take notice, and yet, here we all were in the same room. You know what I mean? Sometimes that 'small world' feeling weighs heavy on my soul... sigh... Anyway, here's the review. On first reading, I found it to be a somewhat negative critique, but on second glance, it seems very reasonable:
"As sci-fi, the science contained in this comic book is fairly casual, and the work itself is more personal and compelling than action-packed. The story is a vehicle for the author's concerns, and he reveals himself as sensitively conversant in philosophy and morality. His characters are met, even at their worst, with firm compassion and respect as they ponder motivation, action, and consequence. Author Daniels is a strong and attentive storyteller, although the fictional essays included were heavy-handed and polemic. The illustration is highly graphical, sometimes to the point of being belabored. But his thick outlines have the nice effect of insulating the characters and their emotions and, while his panels and timing are not very well developed, his lush use of gutter space helps more richly cultivate the mystery, vastness, and immensity of his fantasy. The author is too apparent in the work, but overall it's a decent comic." -James Hosticka, Punk Planet

In March, I was contacted by a guy in Evanston who was trying to get some local comics people together for an anthology of three short stories using Chicago as a theme. I'll write more about this as it progresses, but I've been hired to contribute a 40-page script for one of the stories, which I've recruited Hatuey to illustrate....

But there was still no money coming in. I finally decided to give up my life of complete freedom and sporadic freelance jobs and get a 9 to 5. I applied for art director positions at Devil's Due (publishers of G.I. Joe comics) and In These Times Magazine, a lefty political bi-weekly. Both interviews were sabotaged by my lack of enthusiasm for structured days and my refusal to work part time. I know it sounds like I'm being unreasonable, but I can't allow myself to get sucked into a life of money-making while my creative dreams slowly dissolve.

So I ended up working on a 'freelance basis' doing construction work with my roommate Tim. He and his employer have been renovating an old Victorian mansion on the North side for the past year, and they've amassed a fair amount of work for a non-skilled worker to take care of for them: I spent two and a half weeks stripping lead paint off antique floorboards with a heat gun and a can of toxic chemicals. It was actually pretty fun for th efirst week. It was great to get out of the house, and great to be using my hands and muscles, but after about the 12th time I dripped chemical on my skin and had to rush to the bathroom in searing pain, I got kind of burnt out on it. I'd made enough money to live for awhile though, so I went back to work on 'my things'. In the meantime, I started putting more effort into getting freelance illustration jobs.

Then one day I got an email out of the blue from Majesco Interactive, makers of the Bloodrayne games (soon to be adapted to a feature film starring the girl from T3) and the upcoming Advent Rising Games written by Orson Scott Card. They were writing to inquire in I'd considered selling the interactive rights to The Changers. I was very surprised, I admit. Flattered, but I knew they must not have read the books if they thought they would make a good game. So I sent them copies, primarily as an example of my writing, and took the opportunity to establish a dialog, and pitch them a few game ideas I'd been saving for just such an opportunity. Who knows what will happen, but it's a foot in the door, at least. Updates will follow.

Eventually though, one of my job apps paid off and I was hired on with a design house called Lakonic. I started work there a few weeks ago, just in time for a huge deadline on a job for Motorola, to which I contributed several technical illustrations. The job has been amazing so far. My new boss has been excessively generous in making me feel at home and ease, taking me out for lunch and drinks almost every night after work. The night after my first day, in fact, we went to see The Whole Fantastic World play at Dark Room, and he totally made friends with the band after the show we all drank and partied till something like 4am--all on his tab. Insane way to start a new job, but I'm down.

Last night we went to see Deerhoof at The Empty Bottle, and my god: Probably the best show I've ever seen in my entire life. I've been kind of a fan of them for awhile--enough to request listening their CD when I'm with someone who owns it, but not enough to buy it myself. But their live show was just phenomenal. I can now remember why I used to go to more shows. Once in a while you get to see something truly incredible and fun.

But that's kind of irrelevant. Obviously, I've skipped over a few things in my recap. I did some traveling, flew on a plane a few times, and discovered at the airport that my license had been expired for almost three months, which resulted in 'special treatment' from airport security... Went to see the Virgin Mary with Tim when she made an appearance under the Fullerton overpass on the Kennedy Expressway... Did some illustrations for Flavorpill, which I think will be going live today... And Heather moved in with me for the summer. Big changes behind me, and big changes in store--which all seem more drastic, I'm sure, due to the sparseness of my updates. Sorry.

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2/14/05- Well. It's over. My "Year of Debauchery" campaign has come to an official end. An entire year of decadence and moral depravity now behind me. And did it go out with a great extravaganza of sin and corruption? No. Not at all, actually. It kind of just slowly fizzled down to a few pathetically smoldering embers, to tell you the truth. Heck, I haven't even had a drink in at least two weeks. In fact, I spent the LAST NIGHT of the Year of Debauchery watching an old Western with my roommates. Anticlimactic? Yes, but I was really just getting tired of the whole thing, honestly. Debauchery takes a lot of time and energy and money and effort. And as the sheen of novelty wore off on the whole experiment of degeneracy, my priorities kind of returned to their normal, more constructive tendencies.

But now that I DID go through with this, now that I did irrevocably change my life for the sake of social and emotional growth/enlightenment, there are many questions that need to be addressed:

1) Did I learn anything?
Yes. I learned what it was like on the other end of the spectrum, and I learned that I was probably better off on MY end, or at least somewhere closer to it, after all. But I also learned what I was missing. And in the process of becoming what I had for so long put myself on a pedestal above, I learned to be more open, less judgmental, and more present in my own life.

2) Was it worth it?
Yes, absolutely. There were tears, and mistakes, and regrets, and things that can never be taken back, but for one whole year, I LIVED, as living is supposed to be done, as it is done by those who say you should live. If I didn't do it, I would've had to live forever with that vague, nagging discomfort of never knowing if this LIVING thing really was for me.

3) Do I have any regrets?
Fuck yeah. But that was part of the point, right? I made mistakes that will be with me for the rest of my life. I made decisions that hurt other people. I made decisions that hurt myself. But I wouldn't change anything, really. I'm a different person now than I was a year ago. A MUCH different person. And, I think, a BETTER one. Sincerely.

4) Is the Debauchery really OVER now?
Yes. The internal conflict of consciously making a decision I knew I would later regret was incredibly difficult and troubling for me, ESPECIALLY for me, a guy who'd never really done anything he regretted before, AT ALL. But I think another thing I learned was that everything doesn't have to be written in such stark blacks and whites. Drunken nights of making out with strange girls and breaking things that aren't mine may be over, but I no longer see any moral reprehensibility in sharing a few drinks with friends once in a while.

5) So what's next? Will this experiment ever find it's way onto the pages of an epic graphic novelization?
I doubt it. I mean, "The Year of Debauchery" would certainly make a great title for a book, but I don't really want to add to the glut of autobio comics at this point. Maybe an actual NOVEL, though... Or maybe a novel with pictorial and comic embellishments, like Phoebe Gloeckner's Diary of Teenage Girl or something. I'll think about it. There are some really funny, sad and pathetic stories to be told here, though, that's for damned sure...

Back to normal for me then, I guess, or somewhere closer to it.

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1/21/05- Holy crap, I'm broke. I've never had to live my life on a month to month basis like this before--and going each week not even knowing where my next paycheck is coming from is stressing me the hell out. Is this really what I moved to Chicago for? Was this the STRUGGLE I envisioned? I don't even remember. I think I'm starting to feel trapped because of the weather. I took a drawing trip yesterday with Becca to the Garfield Park Conservatory, and the train ride there made me realize how confined I've been to the five-block radius around my apartment since the winter started. The Conservatory was a revelatory experience. I had no idea such a thing existed in this city, so easy to get to, and FREE to get into. I am by no means a plant or gardening enthusiast, but it would have been impossible to deny the grandeur and magnificence of this place. I think the most impressive thing about the whole experience was simply the SCALE of it. The building itself was gigantic, granted, with a glass canopy high enough to encase full-grown trees, and several different temperature-controlled sections to house plants of varying climatic origins, such as Tropical, Desert, Arid, etc. But the dwarfing enormity of some of the plants themselves was what made me feel like I was on the set of 'Honey, I Shrunk The Kids'. Some of the prehistoric and tropical plants they'd raised were literally humbling in scope, with leaves larger than myself, and stalks as high as buildings. But despite the impact this aspect had on me, one thing I will probably remember even more fondly was the 'Sensitive Plant', a fern whose leaves closed up at the slightest brush of your hand. Becca and I crouched over this attraction for a good amount of time, gently consoling the leaves, trying to convince them that everything was going to be alright-- But wait, looking back now, I think I'd have to say the most incredible part of the whole excursion was just standing in the humid, sauna-like climate of the Tropical Room, and looking up through the glass roof and watching the snow fall onto the bare trees outside... I want to go back there.

Last week, Shelley had her big, SOLD OUT show at Schuba's, opening for Colin Meloy of The Decemberists, who is an old friend from Portland. I went to the show early, to help her carry her equipment on the 3/4 mile walk to the venue in time for the sound check. But since I got there so early with her, the staff naturally assumed I was part of her band, so I got a meal ticket and three drink tickets! Plus they treated me like a rock star, which, man, felt real nice, I admit. Shelley's set went great, as usual, and she broke every heart in the audience, again, as usual. Colin's girlfriend Carson Ellis (whom I met and got to hang out with a few times in Portland just weeks before I left) was there to support her man and we got to chat very briefly, but we also ran into Jeffrey Brown, and Shelley and I lured him back to our apartment after the show for tea and card tricks. A very fun evening, indeed. And hopefully, this will lead to many more shows around town for Shelley.

Upgrade Soul is going very well lately. I'm about 80% finished with the first draft of the script and I'm already on page 125 (probably 200 pages of comic). Which means this is either going to be a 250 page graphic novel, or I'm going to have some serious editing to do. But both scenarios would be just fine with me, really. Man, 125 pages sounds like a lot to me right now. Hey, Let me know if you want to read it; I need as much feedback as I can get!

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1/11/05- I'm at the Omaha Amtrak station right now, waiting for my train, which has been delayed 6 hours as a result of the devastating mudslides in California. No big deal for me, it turns out, even though the train was scheduled to leave at 5am this morning, and Omaha is an hour and a half away from Sioux City (where I've been for the past three weeks with my family). No sir. That's because I made a brand new friend back in Sioux City, a friend whose generosity seems to know no bounds. But more on that later. Let me first go back a bit. As I said, I'd been in Sioux City for three weeks over the holidays. I decided to take such a long stay primarily because I was in need of a little Forced Isolation from the distractions of living in a big new city with all new friends and new places to explore. I stayed with my grandparents for the majority of the time I was back--you see, the two main characters in the script I'm writing now are an elderly couple, and what better research could you imagine than actually STAYING with an elderly couple for three weeks and taking note of their manner of interacting and the old-timey colloquialisms they employ? I left Chicago with about 45 pages of finished script, which I'd been working at for some three months. I'm going back to Chicago now, after three weeks of sitting down diligently for an average of at least two hours a night, with something like 95 pages, plus a three page synopsis with which to make pitches to publishers. I was so productive, in fact, I even considered the possibility that big city life might not actually be the most conducive to my creative ambition after all. But I certainly intend to give it a bit more time to prove itself.

My first week and a half in Sioux City were pretty much entirely spent either with my family (holiday time, you know) or alone in the wee hours with my computer, writing. After the holiday festivities had subsided a bit, however, I found time to connect with a few old friends from high school. Ben, who I stayed with on the Minneapolis leg of last spring's book tour, had recently relocated to SUX with his girlfriend Amy. I met up with them and another friend from HS, Aaron, for dinner, a few drinks, and just a bit of hanging out and reminiscing. Amy told us of what had recently become of Kay Dee Station, the old cattle processing/stockyard station that had been converted decades ago to a sort of macabre MALL of random creepy shops and offices, and was also, in my opinion, the single greatest thing about Sioux City. Apparently, however, the Station had just been boarded up and closed down, much to my dissatisfaction. She'd heard from one of her coworkers, though, that it WAS possible, if you knew what you were doing and where to go, to break into the station (for nostalgic purposes only, of course). To us uninsured, generally law-abiding citizens, all on the downhill slide toward thirty, this was all simply a whimsical fantasy. Once the cocktails began to kick in, however, the whole thing didn't sound like such a bad idea at all.

We scrounged up a single flashlight between the four of us, and changed our outer layers, as necessary, from whatever brightly-colored winter fashions we were sporting, to more logistically sensible blacks, browns and dark grays. Under the cover of darkness, we went to the site, which is located, as it was most reasonable at the time of it's construction some 100 or so years ago, in the heart of the now dead industrial/cattle district. This meant that there were scarce few people to be potential witness to our crime, but also that the setting was made several times more unnerving in its desolation. Scanning the two-city-block, five labyrinthine story tall building on the ground floor for the secret entrance that Amy had heard of, we came of empty. But Amy did us one better and found a wall of glass bricks some six or seven feet off the ground with just enough bricks broken out to comfortably fit an average-sized person of dubious intent. Boosted up, Ben and I ventured inside as scouts. The first room was a wide open warzone of concrete rubble, steel pipes and broken glass. Climbing over the treacherous terrain, we eventually found our way to a stairwell in the far back of the space. The stairwell itself looked as though it hadn't been used in half a century. The concrete steps were broken away in some parts, revealing juts of exposed, rusted rebar. Seemed safe enough to us. We went back to fetch Aaron and Amy and found that Amy had already ventured in after, using naught but the dim blue glow of her cell-phone screen to light her way. Brave girl.

Once into the stairwell, we were faced with a group decision: UP to the roof, or DOWN into the bowells? A unanimous vote in favor of an allegorical ascent into Heaven, we made our way, one story at a time, to the upper floors of the building--making a vain attempt to kick in each rust-swollen, barricaded door we came across. When we could go no further up, we were fortunate enough to come to a door that was already swinging open on its hinges. The door that led out onto one of the many rooftops the building sported in its haphazard, addition upon addition construction. From this three-story-drop, hole-punched roof, we were able to gain access, through a broken window, to the next level of buildings, like a small city built atop the ruins of a long dead one. The room we came into, as was soon evidenced by the 15-foot-long green plush snake that greeted us from the floor, as well as the pile of hand-painted decorative signage, was what I vaguely remembered from my childhood to be the KayDee Station Mini-Golf Course. Now, you may remember earlier in this story that KayDee began its life as a cattle processing facility. At some point in its reinvention, some people in power decided that in order to take the building on into the future, while maintaining its farm-industry roots, it would be a clever idea to fashion a mini-golf course out of the now-obsolete equipment that was actually used to slaughter, clean, and process the cattle. Thinking back to when the golf course was open for business, I can't recall this fact being a selling point to attract visitors. It seems then to me, that at some point, those people in power decided better to keep the origins of the mysterious steel monstrosities that the children would hit their tiny dimpled balls through on the down-low. But there it was, in the darkness of neglect and banished memories: the proof.

We continued through the room, out through a small room on the other side, which led into a small corridor of oppressively constricting machines that we soon realized were the pin-setting machines of the bowling alley. I'm sure this all sounds incredibly fabricated, but please bear with me. The bowling alley apparently took up most of the rest of that floor, with a few banquet-style dining areas off to two adjacent sides. This area in particular defined, for me, the sense that the building hadn't been so much CLOSED DOWN, as simply SEALED OFF and VIOLENTLY SHAKEN. Everything still seemed to be in here that was here as I remembered it: Bowling balls, pins, shoes, chairs, tables, desks, even the kitchen supplies at the refreshment kiosk in the center--only everything was broken, torn, mangled and strewn all over the floor. It seemed that no attempt had been made to salvage anything in the building when it was closed, like the word to evacuate was given and everyone fled with nothing but the shirts on their back as some giant lifted the building from its foundation and jostled it around for a spell. Ben bowled a ball down the lane for old time's sake, and we all cowered in terror when the ball crashed deafeningly into the dried out and fossilized machinery that would have once accepted the three-holed egg with gentle, cradling arms, and lovingly returned it from whence it came. I came across, of all things, a MICROSCOPE on the refreshment stand serving surface, and thought it might make a nice souvenir. When I grabbed it, however, I felt that it was coated in some sort of cold SLIME. Right, just like in any number of horror films when the monster leaves a foreboding trail of appetite-whetted saliva all over things that the soon-to-be-eaten explorers would naturally grab at. But whatever. We don't believe in monsters. Still, it was about this time that we decided to turn tail and retreat before our belief systems were challenged. We each picked up a keepsake or two (I left with a bowling ball and a frying pan) and made our way out the way we came.

As we climbed out through the broken window, Aaron cut his hand on a pane of glass. When we finally made it back to the car, which was parked down the street to avoid suspicion, Amy went in search of a first-aid kit in the most likely of places: The glove compartment. What she found, however, was the engagement ring that Ben had purchased just days prior with which to surprise her in his proposal for marriage. It was one of those: "Whoops, I wasn't supposed to see that, let's just pretend that never happened, I can't believe this, this is so wonderful" moments I'm sure we all experience maybe once or twice in our whole lives. But this sort of lent the rest of the evening a giddy 'love-is-in-the-air' aura that would bode well for some of us later on. We went to celebrate our exploratory accomplishment at Buffalo Alice's, the one bar in Sioux City that I can count on having a good time at, and the one bar I can count on running into people from my past that I don't mind running into. We got a table and the bartender, Heather, who was a friend of a few of the people I was with, came over to talk for a bit... and I was completely, numbingly SMITTEN. The only words I could get out to her were those offering her a seat at the table, but at the cue of my breaking heart, she said she had to get back work. She did, however, offer a free drink to any (non-specified) members of our group who came back tomorrow, on New Year's Eve. Okay. I had a plan for New Year's.

The next night started with Joe, my best friend from the fourth grade, at some random-ass frat party in Morningside. It was an oddly treacherous scene, and despite my protests, this is where we rang in the New Year, amidst the bronzed faces, and permed platinum blonde hair of the women, and the thick-necked, Mossimo-clad Alpha-male posturing of the men, desperately clamoring after each other as each second drew us closer to midnight. I finally got out of there at around 1, and we made our way to Buffalo Alice's. Heather was still working, thankfully, and over a free drink at the bar, I at long last got the chance to speak with her a bit, one-on-one. It was my drunken plan all evening to go to Heather with a line that would go something like: "Happy New Year. I've been saving my New Year's kiss just for you" or some such pap. But even in the state of inebriation I arrived in, just seeing her before me dispelled any semblance of courage I'd mustered before I walked in. I chickened out. I admit it. The best I could do was to ask her when next she worked, because I owed her a drink. She said she worked again in one week, and I promised to return. I left then, pre-occupied, and went to another old high school mate's house for an after party that was weird in all sorts of DIFFERENT ways. Over the next few days, I realized that, in light of the fact that one week was three days away from the day my train left again for Chicago, I couldn't rightly wait that long to see Heather again. I called Ben, through whom I had met her, and got her number. Unfortunately, being that A) I was being charged exorbitant roaming charges to use my cell phone here, and B) I am, as stated, a chicken, I did not call her. Instead, I text messaged her and wrote that I wanted to see her ASAP. See, what I didn't know was that Heather was living in Omaha, about an hour and a half south, and had only been working in Sioux City on the weekends in preparation for her move here next week for grad school. So she was over a hundred miles away, regardless, which meant I had no CHOICE but to wait. And wait I did. Friday I went down to see her and told her straight that I was sorry for doing this so close to the day I had to leave, but I was completely hung up on her and it would be stupid if I didn't at least TRY to get to know her. She conceded, hesitantly, and invited me to her friend's going away party the next night. I went, of course, and I had one of the best nights out I've ever had, just being with her, bowling, drinking, talking, sitting close, holding hands. It was amazing... unfortunately. I guess I just never imagined it could go so well. Three days before I had to leave, what could we possibly have in that amount of time? What was the point? But we had to try, at least, right? Just in case? It would be stupid not to. We spent every available hour for those three days together. She even drove me the hour and a half to Omaha, spent the day there with me, where we hung out at her friend's place, went to a movie, and ate dinner together, lined up a place for me to crash before my train the next morning, and hand-delivered me to the train station mere HOURS before she had to be back north for her first day of grad school. She was incredible. It was three days of tragic elation.

Now I'm back in Chicago, wistful and despondent, wondering why I'm here, why she's THERE, of all places, in my home town. How is it that we lived in the same city for 18 years, had a ridiculous number of friends in common, and never once crossed paths until 7 years after we both said goodbye to that place? Sounds like a TV Movie or something. A lot about this trip to Iowa could have been taken out of a TV Movie. But I promise you it wasn't. So what next? I don't know. The Year of Debauchery is winding to a close. Things are going to change for me again. I'm going to slow down a bit, focus harder on my work, and try to minimize distractions. And Heather has already made her plans to come to Chicago for spring break. Take it as it comes, I guess.

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12/18/04- The other day I went to Office Depot and bought a brand new drawing pad and a set of nice Uni-Ball pens with the enthusiastic intention of setting myself down to rediscover my much-neglected drawing abilities. The next day, I met up with my comic book friend Becca Taylor and we went to Miopic Books to draw, draw and draw. I filled up nearly three pages with character designs, figure studies, and random doodles, and was feeling pretty good about myself when I came home a few hours later. Seeing the stack of dirty dishes in the sink, I decided to do the apartment a service and do them before I went back to my new drawing pad and re-invigorated talent. While attempting to wash an extremely poorly designed cheap glass 'goblet' that Tim picked up on a recent excursion to Medieval Times, I broke it and sliced diagonally, DEEPLY, into my right hand index finger (my DRAWING finger). In the span of the twenty or so steps from the sink to Hatuey's bedroom door, I spilled a good amount of blood on the floor, certainly enough blood for anyone to have tracked my whereabouts were I being hunted. Hatuey came to my rescue with the bandaging and disinfecting of the wound, which clearly would've merited stitches were I insured. Once I got the flap of disenfranchised skin and fatty tissue to lie back down in approximately the same position it was in before that shard of glass gave it cause for rebellion, Hatuey and I fastened it into place with a jury-rigged bandage/splint fashioned of cotton balls, paper towel, and packaging tape. I figured all the stitches would've done would be to keep the cut closed, which we were able to do perfectly fine with simple items found around the house. All done, Hatuey was kind enough to mop up the evidence I left on the kitchen and living room floors (yeehaw for hardwoods) and I went back upstairs to marvel over the three pages of sketches I created in my brief, impassioned spell of artistic ambition--and to wonder, exactly, what was I to learn from the marvelous irony of the days events. Was God telling me to remain focused on my writing? Was I getting too big-headed about my drawing ability? Not left with many other options (I can't even play videogames comfortably anymore) I guess it's back to the words on my computer screen.

Upgrade Soul is going pretty well. I think I'm roughly about half way done with the script, and what I have so far makes me happy. It's actually turning out better than I thought it would, especially once I worked out what the overlying thematic focus of the story would be so I could sort of weed out a lot of the philosophical tangents I was drifting into. If The Changers was a study of the definition of 'perfection', Upgrade Soul is about the meaning of 'identity'. I hope you'll like it.

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12/1/04- Is it really that time again? Time to initiate the ISOLATION? It's been too long, really. I mean, book two of The Changers came out over a YEAR ago, and what have I done since other than publicity and promotion and a CD nobody even listened to? Time to get back on the horse, for REAL this time, and get something CREATED.

The past two weeks have been very productive. I've been sitting myself down regularly, diligently, to write; learning to say NO again to my friends; learning how to focus my inspiration again. And it feels quite good.

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving, which I spent at the Touch and Go Records house with some of my New Chicago Friends. It was very fun, a very nice, vegan Thanksgiving. My contribution to the meal was fried plantains, which, when dipped into the sour cream I brought for dipping, were no longer vegan (HA!). After dinner we went to Seth and Michele's apartment to play San Andreas. By this time, unfortunately, I was too drunk to accomplish much, even in the virtual world of GTA. Thusly inebriated, I fell asleep on the couch. The next day, we went back to the T&G house to help them finish off the leftovers and somehow ended up playing Go Fish with Nathan's deck of vintage 70's Swedish Erotica Hardcore Playing Cards. It was by far the slowest game of Go Fish I'd ever played, as every pair that went down had to be thoroughly inspected by every man and woman at the table. The object of our inspection? The coveted 'Scarved Asian Woman With Two Penises in Her Mouth' 7 of hearts card... I can't believe I just typed that. Let the barrage of suspicious web hits begin.

The following Saturday, Shelley and I hosted a house party. Unfortunately, I made the mistake in my Friendster post of promising that we'd have real, live dinosaurs in attendance at our event. Obviously, we didn't actually have dinosaurs, but a last minute trip to the thrift store for distracting dinosaur stuffed animals and a well-placed boom-box playing a loop of realistic-sounding dinosaur sound-effects (courtesy of Kit) left no one the wiser and the party went off without a hitch. Nary even a driveby to hinder our merriment, hoorah!

Shelley is in New York right now with Donna, there to play a show with Jeff London. Things are weird in the apartment without her. Especially now that Antonia is in Portland for knee surgery. Just us guys here now. Just us listless, despondent guys, left to our own devices...

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11/8/04- Another month and a half since an update. So sue me. The main reason THIS time for the absence is that I've been waiting for something definitive to happen in the whole 'Hollywood Changers Courtship' deal. Well, nothing definitive has happened. I got the call back from Universal after I sent them copies of the book, and it was the standard 'We really like the concept, but maybe we could taylor it to a wider demographic, maybe add a little more action, play up the thriller aspects of the story a bit'. Basically what I expected. I mean, I never imagined The Changers to be a summer blockbuster type of movie, even when I was writing it as a film script. But as far as I'm concerned, if there's a chance to get this movie made, when they say 'Jump', I'm saying 'How high?' I've already told the Changers story exactly the way I wanted to tell it, so rewriting it as a movie with a completely different feel would be much more exciting to me than just doing a straight adaptation of the comic. Maybe that's selling out, I don't know. Whatever. Anyway, at this point, they seem to see enough potential in my writing to have targeted me as a 'cultivatable screenwriter', so I've got a first name basis, running dialogue with one of the main script readers at Universal--someone I feel totally comfortable sending partial scripts and pitches to, and who will be totally upfront with the marketability of my ideas. Yeah, that's right, the MARKETABILITY.

The way I look at is just like it's a challenge. Anyone who knows me knows my predilection for working within limitations, whether they're imposed by myself or whoever. So this past week I've been trying to come up with a story idea that will be interesting for me to tell, but which also fits within this set of marketability guidelines (as gleaned from my conversations with Universal):

1. Must showcase many attractive young faces.
2. Must have the potential for explosive, never-before-seen action setpieces.
3. Projected budget cannot exceed $60-70 million.
4. Must be rated PG-13.
5. Must have large potential for merchandising tie-ins (action figures, video games, comic books, happy meals, etc.)

With these rules as my foundation, I came up with a pitch that I'm actually pretty excited about. I'll pass it on to Universal this week. Until then, I'm keeping it under lock and key. Lips sealed. Mum's the word.

'Upgrade Soul' Character design by the amazing, undiscovered talent Hatuey Diaz

In comic book news, I finally wrote a teaser script for Hatuey to illustrate for our 'Upgrade Soul' pitch. It'll be a two-three page excerpt from the story that we'll show to publishers in an attempt to get it printed. He's working on the pages right now, and I'll post them on this site as soon as they're ready. I was also commissioned to do a strip for the Portland Mercury, which I've been spending WAY too much time on this past week. The Mercury is doing this thing where they've dropped one of their regular full-color comics and replaced the spot with strips by a different guest artist each week. Mine will run at the end of November, and of course, I'll find some place on this website to post it when I'm finished.

I still don't have a job yet (not that I've been looking really), but Chicago has been remarkably receptive to me. I've already done a few 'Welcome to Chicago, why did you move here?' interviews for some local press, one for Gaper's Block, which has already gone live HERE, and one for Chicago Magazine, which will go to print in a few weeks, I think. I'm also hoping to get a little press from Punk Planet, which is based in Chicago. I met Ann Moore, their comics reviewer at the Gapers Block Interview and passed along copies of my books. She seemed into them, so here's hoping something comes of it.

In slightly more tangible news, I joined a band. We're called 'Let's Pet Puppies' and we're going to try to put out a children's concept album about a little girl who adopts a puppy from the pound and trains it to compete in the puppy talent show. I'm the songwriter and keyboard player. Shelley Short is on lead guitar and vocals, Tim Peloquin, who also plays bass for the popular Chicago band Pal is manning the four-string, and the amazing Susan Bertoletti, formerly of Foxtail, is in negotiations to be our drummer. We've only practiced a handful of times, but the songs are going to be really poppy and fun to play. I'm hoping we'll get to play shows at libraries and children's centers and places like that. That would be so much fun.

bye from ezra.

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Marisa Cravens of Portland, OR displays her latest tattoo: A slight alteration of page 27 from The Changers Book Two. (Click for detail)

9/24/04- Hi. So. I think this is the longest I've gone without an update--almost a month and a half. I've been thinking about retiring the online diary altogether, just because it seems to take a lot of effort to maintain consistently, and I only get (at most) 10 hits/day on my site, of which I would estimate maybe one or two actually visit the Updates page. But I'm back for two reasons. The first is just that there has been a lot of activity going on that I thinks merits mention, even if only to the dozen or so people who will read this. The second is just that I seem to have gotten into the habit of journal-keeping--almost to the point that the things that have happened in the past month and a half have felt somewhat intangible since I hadn't documented them in writing. So here I am. And now, please bear with me as I flex my memory in an attempt to recap the past 45 days of my life.

DISPOSABLE BOY #3 TO BE REPRINTED IN STALAGMITE COMICS ANTHOLOGY
At June's Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland, I met Seattle's Craig McKenney, publisher of the Hot New comics anthology 'Stalagmite'. Craig and I exchanged copies of our work, as people who meet each other at comic conventions tend to do. I had long ago given up on doing stuff for anthologies--partly due to a few bad experiences, and partly because I have a hard time breaking away from the larger stories I lean toward to do a short piece. This was the reason I initially said 'no' to Craig when he emailed me a few weeks later requesting that I submit something for an upcoming issue of 'Stalagmite'. After a few more trepidatious email correspondences, Craig and I comprised with a reprint of DB#3, which had never actually seen physical print in a comic (I only released the book on CD-ROM). Look for the reprint to hit shelves soon...

DANIELS TO APPEAR ON COMICS PANEL AT 2004 WILLAMETTE WRITERS CONFERENCE
Apparently, 'Too Much Coffee Man's' Shannon Wheeler doesn't have it out for me after all. I had a really bad experience working with him on an illustration for TMCM some time ago, and have since done my best to avoid him, even though he lives in Portland and frequents all the same comic book gatherings I do. I got a call mid-July from the Willamette Writers Conference, an annual gathering of area-scribes, requesting that I take part in a panel discussion on Comics with some of the biggest names in town: Brett Warnock, Dianna Schulz, Jaime Rich, Scott Allie, and Shannon himself, among others. I was flattered, but a little confused as to why they would want ME on such a heavy-hitting panel. Turns out, Shannon Wheeler recommended my name.

The discussion itself, which took place a few weeks later, was a lot of fun. The turnout was a bit weak, and the crowd seemed to be of the 'failed writer seeking to make big in an easier field' bent, but it was just a lot of fun hanging out with the industry big-wigs. As it turns out, Scott Allie, who is an editor at Dark Horse, is actually a fan of my work. He gave me his contact info and instructed me to come to him when I'm ready to start talking about my next project. Will I finally be able to bid farewell to the treacherousness of self-publishing?

DANIELS JOINS CREW OF WWII DOCUMENTARY FILMING IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
With 6 days left before I had to be completely moved out of my house, and eight days until the BLOWOUT COMIC ART BATTLE, I decided to take a four-day road trip with Ilana, ostensibly to help her shoot an interview and some pick-up shots for her documentary on the Japanese balloon bomb attacks on Oregon in WWII. Even with so much work ahead of me, I hesitated not for a second to go on this trip. It would be one of the last times I would get to be alone with Ilana for an extended period before I left, and a few days away from the madness that had become my final weeks in Portland sounded like a much-welcome reprieve.

The trip was amazing. The first day we stayed in Klamath Falls, Oregon, and spent the evening admiring the small strip of store fronts on Main Street. One business appeared to be an antique store (of which there were many) that doubled as a cat shelter. Peaking into the window, we noticed several cats basking in the sun near the window, and deeper in, we saw many, many more frolicking amidst precariously shelved porcelain knick-knacks and hand-made crafts. We sat, ogling the cats for a bit when an adorable orange-striped kitten came sauntering out from behind the counter. We shared a mutual 'awww' as the kitten pounced and somersaulted its way to the window. En route, however, the kitten became distracted by something on the floor: A frilly pink wicker Easter Basket adorned with lace and bows. In an act that was literally, impossibly, too cute for words, the kitten circled the basket, climbed in, and curled up inside for a nap. For those of you who think (as I once did) that 'kitten-in-easter-basket' calendars were 'unrealistic' and 'staged', I hereby confirm, after first-hand account, that the 'kitten-in-easter-basket' phenomenon is one that does in fact occur in nature, without provocation or intervention. And it is jaw-droppingly precious.

TEMPORARY COMIC ARTIST REFUGE ESTABLISHED IN NE PORTLAND
I came back from California with two days to finish packing and moving my stuff into my friend Aaron's house, where I would spend my last two and a half weeks in Portland. Aaron is one of the most talented cartoonists in the city (his debut graphic novel is coming out this Xmas on Top Shelf), and the time I spent here would prove to be a refuge of comic book discussion and digestion. I devoured Aaron's sizable comics collection as best I could with what limited time I had. Aaron also has a dog named Beluga, who I instantly fell in love with.

TEAM ALTERNATIVE WINS 4TH EVER COMIC ART BATTLE
The 4th Comic Art Battle went off without a hitch. I really need to create some kind of page devoted to the battles, as nobody really seems to know what the hell these things are all about. I'll work on it. In the meantime, check out this article by MOTE Magazine editor Gabino Travassos. If that's not enough, maybe this entertaining little thread on The Comics Journal forum will clarify things a bit.

PORTLAND BIKE THEFT REACHES EPIDEMIC LEVEL
With but a week left to my tenure in Portland, and a buyer already all lined up to take it off my hands when I was ready to give it up, my fucking bike got stolen AGAIN. This is the THIRD bike I've had stolen in Portland, which is also EVERY bike I've ever owned here. It was just like Portland was saying 'Fuck you. Why are you leaving? You had it so good here'. I KNOW, Portland! God. You didn't have to get my bike stolen, though. Don't you realize that's just going to make me want to leave you MORE?

PORTLAND'S INDEPENDENT COMIC ARTISTS FINALLY GET THEIR TWO CENTS IN
Erik Henriksen at the Portland Mercury wrote a nice little feature on us struggling local artists.

COMIC ARTIST EZRA CLAYTAN DANIELS RELOCATES TO CHICAGO, IL
Then, I moved to Chicago. The scene at the train station was straight out of a golden age Hollywood melodrama. Ilana and I, both in tears, waving our last goodbyes and mouthing our final feelings for each other as I climbed onto the train. Her parting gift to me was the sweetest, most amazing and tear-jerking present I've ever received. She copied the pages out of a dozen of her favorite short stories, stories she wanted to share with me, wrote her own introductions to them, explaining what she enjoyed, or what she knew I would enjoy about each one, and hand-bound the novel sized book complete with a hand-drawn cover and editor statement. It broke my heart all over again when I took the book out to read on the train. It was the only thing that actually made me question why I decided to leave in the first place. But... I decided to move to Chicago. And move to Chicago is what I am going to do.

The train ride was remarkably depressing. I hardly talked to a single soul. Two days and two nights with my face buried in books and notepads. I wrote a thirteen page short story with Ilana as the main character. I read the rest of Uzumaki. I spent a lot of time staring blankly at the pages of the book Ilana made for me... Sigh...

I arrived in Chicago and was greeted by my new roommates Antonia, Tim and John. That night there was a huge party at our apartment. A good opportunity to get my mind off of Portland. I met a girl named Shayna who lived in Portland a few years ago, and it turns out she used to live RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET from the house I was living in before I moved in with Aaron. Fucking weird coincidence, but not the last. I got pretty trashed that night and passed out on the couch after a rousing game of Zombie Rise. Around 5am, I would learn later (I was completely out of it in my slumber) there was a drive-by shooting right outside the window where I was sleeping. I totally dozed through it. Welcome to Chicago.

A month or so before I left, I went to a reading at the Frenzy by Punk Planet's Joe Meno, who was on tour promoting his new novel. The reading was amazing, one of the best I'd ever attended. After the reading, I learned that Joe was from Chicago. I decided then that my first goal once I got to Chicago would be to MEET Joe Meno and befriend him. Two days after I got here, my roommate Tim, who plays bass in the band Pal, invited me to a show they were playing: Joe Meno's Chicago book release party. Turns out Joe Meno's favorite band in Chicago is Pal, and they are actually pretty good friends with him. I went to the show and met Joe, even gave him a copy of my book, which he seemed impressed enough by to hint at a possible Punk Planet write-up in the future. Another impossibly amazing coincidence.

Other than the drive-by on my first night, Chicago has been treating me incredibly well. I've made a ton of new friends, and already met a lot of the local comics fixtures. In fact, my other roommate Hatuey (there are five of us living here, total), works at Chicago Comics, Chicago's biggest and best comic shop. Hatuey also also an intimidatingly talented aspiring comics artist, and we've gotten fast to work at figuring out some way to pool our talents. We've already begun discussing working together on Upgrade Soul. Hatuey's art style would be absolutely PERFECT for that story. Yet another stupefying coincidence.

So far, I LOVE Chicago.

BIDDING WAR BEGINS FOR "CHANGERS" PROPERTY
I'm TRYING not to get TOO excited about this. Two days ago, I got a phone call out of the blue from Universal Studios. Apparently, my book has been getting around better than I thought, and Universal is 'very excited about exploring feature possibilities with 'The Changers''. At this point, the chances of it actually being adapted to film are probably pretty much nil, but hopefully I'll be able to get some money for the option, which would be GREAT, since I'm already broke as a joke here in the windy city. Then, amazingly, COINCIDENTALLY, the day after I got the call from Universal, I got an email from Platinum Studios (Men in Black, The Road to Perdition) that said they finally read the pitch I sent them almost six months ago and that they liked it and were currently in the process of reviewing it for option. BOTH of these news items are so early though that I'm trying not to get myself too worked up. On the other hand, even if nothing comes of it, it's still an enormously flattering thing to get a personal phone call directly from Universal Studios.

Of course, I'll keep you updated on this very page...

So then, that does it for my Giant Recap Update. I don't think I left anything major out, but it's fairly likely I did. I'll try to keep at this more regularly in the future, I promise. But for now, and as always, thanks for bearing with me, and I love you all.

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7/9/04- My family dog died.



A few days ago my Mom called from Iowa to tell me that Mars had tried to attack a little boy at the park; this, the latest in a string of violent lapses on his part. Mars was a pound puppy, but he was never abused, as far as we know. And as his family, we never showed him anything but affection. He was a mutt, part lab, part chow, part rottweiller. He could be a very mellow, loving dog, but once in a while, apparently out of the blue, he would just snap and get somebody. I was gotten once, and I still have the scars to show. My brother was gotten, and had to get stitches on his hand. But I mean, as far as I was concerned, it was just natural--I know people sometimes snap at each other and get into fights... I, however, through the fog of the distance of half a country and six years of not living with Mars, was the only one left who saw things this way anymore. Up until now, my Grandfather, who took Mars for walks daily and loved him probably more than any of us, and myself, were his only champions. My Grandfather was the one who was with Mars at the park last week when he went after that little boy. It was just too much, I guess. It was one lapse too many. My family decided they couldn't live with worrying about the next time Mars would attack somebody, or how bad it was going to be. This wasn't the first time the subject had been broached. It seems to come up every time Mars bites someone. But this was the first time that my Grandfather wasn't backing him up. And myself, half a country away, had no jurisdiction in the matter. What right did I have to tell my family what to do in this situation, knowing I personally wouldn't have to deal with the consequences either way. So I shut my mouth and left the decision up to them. But with my Grandfather on their side, I would feel comfortable with whatever decision they would come to.

Today my Grandfather called to tell me Mars had been put down. He was no longer with us. As he told me this, I could hear his voice breaking. He was closer to Mars than any of us; this decision was the hardest on him, I know. I don't ever remember hearing my Grandfather this emotional. It did me in. After I hung up the phone, I knocked it off the hook and went up to my room and just let it all out. Even though I haven't lived with him in six years, I loved Mars more than anything else I've known in this world. I don't know why. Maybe it was just the purity of his being an animal, and that I knew he loved me back. And maybe my feelings for him were disproportionately fueled by my absence, and skewed by the fact that the last intimate memories I had of Mars were of him as a puppy, before his violent disposition was a real threat to anyone. God, Mars... I miss you so much already.

I also learned yesterday that my 40-yr-old uncle on my Dad's side died apparently out of the blue from cancer. As I may have mentioned earlier in these updates, my Dad's family is notoriously non-communicative. When my Dad's Father died, it was almost a week before I heard about it, and only then from my OTHER Grandfather sending me his obituary in the mail. I still don't know the whole store on this yet. This uncle was an odd one though--I don' think he ever lived anywhere but at home with his parents, and whenever I would visit the family, though he was certainly friendly, he would invariably spend most of the time I was there alone in his room upstairs. But he was one of the very few members of that family with artistic inclinations, and I do remember him teaching me at an early age how to draw Beetle Baily. And he told me later that he was inspired to take some art classes at the community college by some of the early comic stuff I was doing... He was the type of guy I could imagine knowing he was sick, but just ignoring it until it was too late. It's all just really fucking sad.

As far as progress on my own work goes, I'm still just in the research stage, reading books on Colonial America, and doing the occasional reference sketch. My goal is to have at least a teaser booklet finished by the time I leave town in September. Progress on the Year of Debauchery has slowed a bit, as I'm trying to focus on the book, as well as trying to save my money for the move (decadence is EXPENSIVE). I'm going to start leaving out a lot of inter-personal details about the Campaign though. Sorry. It's just too dangerous and potentially too hurtful to those who are directly or indirectly affected by it. But other than this vow of silence, I'm honestly trying not to moralize any of this--the whole point of the Campaign is to forego morality for a year--but it's really hard to objectify these things, especially as I'm becoming more aware that morality exists as a SOCIAL mechanism, not a PERSONAL one, as I've been interpreting it in the past.

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4/25/04- The Comic Art Battle was a SMASHING SUCCESS. The turnout was immense, people were spilling out onto the sidewalk, into the streets. Everybody had a blast and the audience was really into it. A reporter from the Oregonian even came by with a photographer and took some photos for an article about the event that I am told will run in next Friday's A&E section, so watch for it. I'll try to post more photos when I get back.

I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon for the tour. Been too busy to even think about it. Wish me luck!

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4/18/04- Last Thursday, the Thursday before Easter, I went down to the bank to drop off my credit card application (I'm REALLY close to running out of money before the tour). When it came my turn in line, the teller informed me that I had 'great timing' because today they were entering anyone who applied for a credit card into a raffle to win the GIANT Easter basket over by the door. I turned to survey the prize, apparently having missed it on my way in, which is odd because it actually was pretty big. I looked at the teller, frowned and said: "Frankly, I don't know what I would even do with an Easter Basket of that size, so please don't enter me into the raffle". He looked dismayed. "Are you sure?", he asked. "Yes." I said. "Uh... Alright...." And off went my application. The next day I was running errands on my bike for most of the afternoon and came home around a quarter to 5 to a message on my machine informing me that I'd won the Easter Basket. I don't know what it is, but I win a disproportionate amount of random drawings and raffles. I was happy I won, obviously. I mean, it's a good feeling. But I just felt really bad that there was a little girl out there who could've had an awesome Easter Basket, and instead, some cynical 25 year old cartoonist who didn't even want it in the first place gets to take it home. It wouldn't have been an issue if I didn't get the message so close to five, when the back closes, because I would've just gone down and picked it up and given it to Kristen's 4 year old daughter Bija for Easter. Anyway, I just went down on my bike Monday to pick it up, rode with it to the other side of town (to the delight of all those who saw me doing this), and gave it to Bija a day late, which she didn't seem to mind in the least. She is so adorable.

Then later that night, Kristen and I went to Bingo again, but this time we won! $110! The rule when you go to Bingo with someone is that you split whatever you win, so we both came home with $55. We kicked Bingo's ass.

The Tour is all but completely booked at this point. The only two stops left are my home town (I just can't seem to get in touch with the lady who owns the record store I'm scheduled to appear at to set a final date, which is totally annoying) and Seattle, (Confounded Books simply doesn't exist as far as the phone company is concerned, so I can't seem to get a phone number for them, which is totally annoying). I think I'm going to have to buy my ticket anyway on Monday, just because it's getting too close to my leave date for me to deal with any unforeseen problems.

Also been working on figuring out what the hell we're going to do for the Comic Art Battle I'm organizing for my Tour Kick-Off Party. I spent the past few days working out some kind of logic for staging and scoring the competition. Everybody is really excited about it though, and I think even if it ends up being totally chaotic, it will be a hell of a lot of fun.

My CD's should be coming in this week. Getting the paper I wanted for the sleeves was a HUGE fucking hassle though, and I ended up having to deal with a last minute color scheme change. See, I wanted to print the sleeves on the same color stock as the books themselves, so they would make a nice trifecta when place on a shelf together, but the weight of paper I would need to use for a sleeve doesn't come in that color. So then I decided to go with this green paper, which was a nice 'Tea Leaf' green in the same hue family as the green ink of the books. This would have been a good second choice, make them stand out a LITTLE from from the books, but still certainly appear related. But then when the printer tried to order the paper, we would come to find it isn't even CARRIED anymore. GAAWWWDD!! My only other options were an off white, a bright white, and a muted blue. I went with the blue and picked out a different ink color to compliment it, which means that, other that the design style, the CD's are going to look nothing like the books. But I really have no idea what they ARE going to look like since I didn't have time to do a mock-up before it went off to press. Honestly, I think the new colors will look better than the colors I originally wanted, but it really wasn't about the colors being pleasing to the eye, it was about the CD's and the books looking they belonged together. I'm a little irritated.

Yesterday I took a little 3-hour road trip with Kristen and Bija to Tacoma for the huge PLU 9 B-Boy Tournament. It was an incredible, full day of joy and elation. I'd never actually been to Tacoma before, but whenever I pass through by train or by car on the way to Seattle, it always seems to beckon me. When we first got into town, to our surprise, there was a great big PARADE blocking the very street we were trying to find, which we interpreted as a remarkable, cosmic welcome, so we parked and checked it out before going to the Tacoma Art Museum. The museum was pretty cool, but the main star of that particular venture was the architecture. Between the Tacoma Art Museum and the nearby Museum of Glass, Tacoma sported some of the most immersive structural design I'd experienced in quite a long time. Then we got lunch and started our way toward the Tournament. By this time, the weather was beginning to warm up, sun shining, blue skies, so we rolled down the electric windows. When we got to the tournament however, and attempted to roll them back up, we would find that the mechanism was no longer working. This would be a problem on the drive back, but we decided not to worry about it until the time came to do so, as the fickle nature of the electric windows might later prove to be a non-issue.

The Tournament was fucking AWESOME. It started out with an incredible MC battle featuring, frankly (not that I've witnessed a whole lot) the best freestyle rapping I've ever heard live. This was the best part of the show for me, because the way the show was set up made it very difficult to even see the actual breakdancing once that part of the tournament started. The stuff we were able to see was great though. There were some pretty big names there, according to Kristen, who does pretty well at keeping up with these things. She takes breakdancing lessons at Nocturnal in PDX and her teacher (who is very talented, as we would see) was competing that night as well. Bija goes to lessons with Kristen sometimes, too, and at a few points during the evening, Bija was overcome by the music and unleashed in the standing area with some of the moves she'd learned, thusly drawing a sizable crowd of adoring fans. Bija is just entirely too cute. So, after some five hours of B-Boy mayhem, we finally decided to head back, and 'oh yeah, the window problem'. The windows were still not working, and by this time, it was actually quite cold out, certainly colder than one would feel comfortable driving down the highway with the windows rolled down. But what could we do? We decided to just bundle up and tough it out. How bad could it be? We got as far as Olympia (about a half hour) when we realized there was no way we were going to make it three more hours in this temperature, with that strong a wind. We pulled off the highway and tried to find a late-night grocery store, where we intended to procure some saran wrap and duct tape with which to temporarily solve our predicament. In the Mega-Foods parking lot, our jury-rigged window fix seemed perfect, and we were quite proud of ourselves. However, once on the highway again, we would be faced with an obstacle almost worse than the cold: The DEAFENING BATTER of the plastic beating in the wind. After about twenty minutes of white noise, my ears began to ring. Speech was nearly impossible, and music just aggravated the discomfort. For THREE HOURS. And we couldn't just drive faster because the faster we went, the louder the flapping became. It was just a really intense experience, the sort of thing the makes you feel totally euphoric when it's over. It was kind of a bonding experience though.

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4/5/04- Sigh... Slowly, things are coming together with the tour, but the endeavor remains a no less excruciating one for its languid pace toward completion. Check the Itinerary for the confirmed stops and guest list. Still a few stops to pin down, and California had to be taken out of the equation entirely, and at least indefinitely--this due to a lack of significant enthusiasm for my appearance in one, to be unnamed city. And in the other, a simple scheduling conflict with a huge convention set to hit town on roughly the same dates I intended to be there. Failure is a thick, salty drink to swallow, but once it passes, it is a relief to have it behind you. I'll miss California, but I'll feel no less a man for having forgone her.

Ugh... The items on my TO DO list seem to be inexplicably reproducing, or somehow becoming more intricate as their respective deadlines near. My ambition, thankfully, has been doing a good job of keeping up with it, though I recently suffered a mild heartbreak in a spasm of tragic irony. The Year of Debauchery so far has alternately opened my heart and stabbed it through; I suppose thus was the intention of it from the start. Welcome to The Experience Of Life, Ezra Claytan Daniels.

Today was the full moon. And I felt it. Oh god, how I felt it. This, what on paper would seem to be one of the better days of my recent existence, more than once brought me helplessly to the brink of weeping. Opening with my first ever hangover (credit: The Year of Debauchery), albeit a mild one, but certainly a harbinger of things to come should I continue with my experiment, as I intend to. Then to an impromptu lunch with my friend Tena, who is the receptionist at the PSU Robot Lab. My mission, on its second attempt: To find the girl I met briefly over a month ago at a bus stop one day, who told me her name was Sienna, and that she worked at 'The Pizza Place at PSU'. Weeks after this encounter, having nearly forgotten about it, I happened to see her on her bicycle while riding the bus, our eyes caught and locked, and I thusly set myself then the challenge of FINDING HER AGAIN. What I would do when (if) I did, I do not know. Probably nothing; probably, she would not even remember me. But still an interesting challenge to undertake, agreed? On the Mission's first attempt, after enlisting Tena as my guide in the unfamiliar and labyrinthine environs of the PSU campus, we found that there was not 'THE Pizza Place at PSU', rather, there were at least FOUR. Two were hit on our inaugural expedition. Two were hit this afternoon. Perhaps she has moved on to other employment. How would I know? The only thing I can know is that I have surely set myself up for another taste of failure.

Whence defeated at lunch time, however, Tena offered, maybe in an attempt to liven my whithering spirits, to introduce me to the new whale skeleton PSU had recently acquired. Remarkable though it was, the exhibit would soon be trumped through the good grace of Tena's acquaintance with the campus mailman, whose name eludes me, as he said something like 'You think THAT'S cool? Follow me!' And we did, to the Skins and Skeletal Remains Lab down the hall. Peering through the window of the locked door to the lab, we were accosted by the resident professor, who opened the door and asked if there was anything he could help us with. Tena replied that we just wanted to see the skeletons, at which he lit up: "WELL, COME ON IN!" The sort of enthusiasm seen only in those whose work goes perpetually unappreciated by the general masses they toil to serve, and so the sincerest kind of enthusiasm. A quick peek at a few exotic articulated animal skeletons would, in the end, have gone on almost forty-five minutes, and span countless drawers and three separate rooms. An enlightening, incredible experience, highlighted by the pickled Lamprey, the jarred Horse Fetus, and a visit to the back room where recovered animal carcasses are fed to a cage of beetles to be thoroughly cleaned. Phenomenal.

This miraculous endeavor did, however, leave me roughly one half hour late for my next appointment, which was for me to be the designated support for Marisa as she got the second stage of her tattoo completed. Being late, for anything, is one of the few things in life that can drive me to tears of frustration. And this meeting seemed of particular import, since I was the SUPPORT for a friend who was about to undergo a serious discomfort for the sake of adorning her body with something of my own creation. I peddled my ass the roughly, god ten city blocks to a mile? Must have been 7 miles... Really? A long fucking ways, regardless, in a brisk fifteen minutes, arriving in total 45 minutes late. Thankfully, she did not express disdain at my tardiness, though I would come to find a few minutes after arriving that she had also invited some OTHER dude to be her support in addition to me. Tragic irony, have you met mild heartbreak? You HAVE? Oh, then I suppose no introduction is necessary. Carry on then, as you were... I stayed my shift however, always a man of duty and honor, and politely excused myself from their assumed continued merriment at the earliest convenience. Some things best left to themselves, I suppose, and myself, again, cut off.

Sigh... Rushing home to my next appointment, a proposed evening of fraternal bonding with my visiting uncle from Iowa, I found my eyes watering--not tears, not tears as I have known them. More like tears of an emotion that is not felt, though it surely feels it is deserved to be felt. A strange feeling, and one that has been overcoming me more and more as of late; like a nagging residual emotion from something that hasn't happened yet, or that happened long ago but was not appropriately agitated over. I came home to a message from my recently reacquainted friend Kristen, inviting me to attend Bingo night at some vet center out past 82nd Ave on Sandy. Kristen's, a particularly pleasant voice to come home to, especially today, now, and even when digitally recorded over a telephone receiver. An evening of flirtingly platonic interaction with the most beautiful girl I have ever known, would this be the ticket to revive me from my sudden attack of the courting season doldrums? My uncle nowhere to be found despite our tentative plans, I eagerly accepted Kristen's invitation, and soon set off with her to the vet center, with the chance of winning big.

Monday night Bingo, there was something happening specifically tonight which drew a larger crowd than normal. Literally, a packed house, packed with the exact sort of clientele you are imagining, and thus a description is rendered unnecessary. And the evening progressed as expected, no elaboration necessarily required. Until an overheard conversation between two raspy-voiced elderly women sitting next to us about a mutual acquaintance of theirs who was on her death bed and had, throughout the course of her life, regretfully alienated all those who ever could have loved her, had me straining to keep from just, really, balling my eyes out. A tremendously overwhelming sensation. Part panic attack, part residual emotive response (see above), it almost forced me to excuse myself, lest I be eternally labeled 'the guy who took Bingo night entirely too seriously'. But I WAS taking Bingo night seriously enough that I would not have wanted to miss any of the called numbers to take a self-pity break. Irony? Is that you? Still, we both went home empty-pocketed.

God, what a fucking mess I was. What a treacherous full moon we had today.

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3/9/04- God, a lot has been happening these past few weeks. I've just been waiting for it all to slow down a bit so I could gather my thoughts before relating them to the two-three people who read these updates (even though I've probably told them the news over the phone already). Okay. Let me think. First of all, a mere three weeks into it, I have already accomplished almost every goal on my '25th Year Debauchery Campaign' (and all that that implies). So, you know, congratulations to me. If you haven't seen or heard from me in six months or more, I think you would find that I am a considerably different person now. It's an exciting time. Yep. Exciting.

I went to the Emerald City Comic Convention in Seattle weekend before last with Alec Longstreth and Nathan Beatty. We went up a few days early to push our wares on Seattle's unsuspecting contingent of bookstores and were tremendously successful. Seattle was SO GREAT to us. Almost everywhere we went, people actually KNEW WHO WE WERE and KNEW OUR WORK. At one bookstore, upon telling the buyer we were comics artists, she said "You make comics? That's awesome! You should check out this one... It's called Phase... Phase something, I think." Alec's comic is called Phase 7 and she was totally talking about him and had no idea he was the guy who put that out. We were like: "That's HIM! He's Phase 7!" I imagine that was the highlight of Alec's trip. It was even one of the highlights for me. Then at another shop, I saw that they already carried The Changers and I asked if they wanted some copies of the freebie posters I just had printed up. The guy looked at me and said: "You're the guy who does the Changers? I can hardly keep that book on the shelves!" And the cashier chimed in: "I always practically force it on people, it's such a great book!" Then they asked me to sign the copies they had in the store. It was so cool. The next day at the con, a number of people came up and told me how much they enjoyed The Changers--people I'd never even met before. It almost felt like someone had orchestrated the whole thing just for the sake of my suffering ego, it was so unbelievable. In the end, I sold almost every single book I brought with me, and came home completely high on self-satisfaction.

Then this past weekend, Nate, Alec and I (now referring to ourselves, for some reason I can't quite remember, as the 'Trifecta of Fonk') tabled together again at the Portland Con. Our expectations were lower, granted, based on past experiences with the Portland Con, but GOD, they weren't as low as they should have been, apparently. The Portland Con was a total bust. I sold FOUR BOOKS, and even THAT was enough to make me the high seller for the afternoon, which was just, really, unacceptable. Lesson learned. It was fun just hanging out with the guys and watching people though, so no regrets. The whole experience just makes me feel more passionate about the small press comics festival (now called the Stumptown Comics Fest) some local self-publishers are putting together for the summertime. I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but I've been involved in some of the planning process and I am now the official graphic designer for the event.

Creative output-wise, I've spent the better part of the past few weeks writing songs and rerecording dialogue for the CD. I'm actually starting to get really excited about it. At the very least, I think it's going to be a really tight production. At most, however, it will completely revolutionize the industry and make mine a household name... Like I mentioned earlier in this update, I got my Book Tour posters printed and they look tremendous. I had 6,000 copies printed, 5,000 of which went off to Diamond's shipping hub in Canada the day I got back from Seattle. Let me just tell you, in case you were thinking about sending a sizable package out of the country, that it is an INCREDIBLE hassle. I spent at least an hour wading through pages and pages of nonsensical import/export laws searching for license numbers and NAFTA codes, just to mail four boxes of comic book flyers over a fucking LATITUDINAL BORDER.

Marisa, the girl who wrote me a while back about getting a tattoo of Page 27 from Changers Book Two got the first stage of the art inked onto her arm last week and it looks fucking amazing. Photos will be appearing on this site very soon. In marginally related news, I went with her to make the First Thursday Gallery rounds last week. By the time we got to Backspace Gallery, I had to use the restroom fairly badly, so I hustled into the back, where they'd set up a makeshift movie theater to show short films by some local artists. One of the movies, I knew, was mine: the video game one called 'Crongktonge', but I put it on a DVD with a few other shorts, I guess simply to justify burning the DVD in the first place (I'm weird like that, forgive me). Anyway, I thought they were only going to show 'Crongktonge', which was fairly anonymous, animated and without dialogue. As I made my way past the crowd toward the back, I heard this voice that sounded vaguely familiar. As I got to the bathroom, which was situated RIGHT NEXT TO the movie screen, I realized that the voice was MINE and that they were showing another short film of mine that actually featured MY FACE and MY VOICE. So there I was onscreen, my voice broadcasting throughout the stage, and then I show up in real life, off in the corner, doing the potty dance. When I realized what was happening, I freaked out and ran away, postponing my pee-break until AFTER the movie was over. Unfortunately, the experience lent a decidedly awkward bent to the rest of the evening.

This past Saturday, I, along with local cartoonist Aaron Renier, were special guests at a Comic Book class for 8th Graders at PSU. Our friend Bruce Orr is the instructor, and he invited us to come down and share our 'expertise' and 'experience'. It was actually a lot of fun. The kids were slow to open up, but they got pretty enthusiastic when Aaron and I busted into a COMIC ART BATTLE, simultaneously drawing two sides of a confrontation on the same sheet of paper. The first was 'Two Strange Men in an Altercation', the second was 'A Head-On Car Collision w/Ejected Passengers'. The kids loved that shit.

Yesterday morning, my roommate Brian and I went to look at a house that his friend is buying way up in N PDX and wants us to rent after he gets it fixed up. The house was pretty cool, even though it was a few miles farther out of the city than I would really feel good about living. While were looking it over, however, Brian found a dead cat in the crawl space under the back porch. Bad omen? Yeah, probably. But you should've seen his face when he realized what he was looking at. So funny. But I shouldn't laugh. Should I?

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2/13/04- I just realized it's Friday the 13th. Oh well. So Monday was my birthday. I turned 25. A pretty big milestone year, I would say; accompanied by a somewhat surprising onslaught of self-doubt and re-evaluation. I've decided that this is going to be the year everything changes. I'm not talking about my work. I'm not talking about implementing a new drawing style, or writing technique. I'm talking about my life. For those who don't know (and for those who do, I'll spare exorbitant detail), my first 24 years of life were based on a strict self-discipline which forbade me from partaking in the apparent pleasures of drugs, sex, alcohol, lies, atrophy, etc. But for my 25th year, I have accepted there are certain among these things which I would like to experience (on a clinical level, I'm sure) before I die.

The night of my birthday, I had my first drink of liquor. My roommate and top male friend Brian took me out to dinner at a really nice restaurant, then opened up his wine bar for a private wine tasting. I had been slightly nervous all day leading up to this, but the moment of actual FIRST INGESTION was eased remarkably by the nearly supernatural coincidence of one of my favorite and most ease-inducing songs queing up on the bar's sound system: 'By The Time I Get To Arizona' from Public Enemy's Apocalypse '91 album. The decadent, gritty and confrontational beat of that song was an almost too-perfect accompaniment to my controlled descent into moral debauchery. As for the wine itself, much to my surprise, it did not taste AT ALL like grape juice, or even any variation of that theme. Instead, it tasted like flu medication mixed with a healthy compliment of turpentine. I tried nearly ten wines, each one an impressive vintage, import, oak-fermentation, etc., but in the end, though I did notice a general difference in taste between white and red wines (I prefer the sweeter taste of white, for now, at least), beyond the slight fluctuation of discomfort as it went down, they all tasted essentially the same to me. And after all was said and done, my total wine consumption for the evening likely equated to something like a single small glass, certainly not enough for me to have felt any of the effects of the alcohol. But even then, honestly, I was just glad it was over.

Though it should not be my defeat.

Last night I went out to an actual bar for happy hour with my newest friend Marisa and drank some things with the premeditated intention of FEELING it. I started with a sweet-tasting vodka cocktail, which actually tasted like juice and went down very easily. Next was another cocktail, something with sugar on the glass rim and also, I think, salt. It tasted like white jelly beans. These things tasted fine indeed, but I wasn't really feeling anything yet. By this time, the bartender (who is a good friend of Marisa's) was kind of getting into it, suggesting lots of drinks with names I'd never heard, and serving them up even after I expressed hesitation. I drank a shot, of what, I don't remember. It tasted like coffee. I wasn't really feeling anything still, when the bartender served up another shot of something, again, of what, I don't know, but this one she said was SURE to get me to, as she said: "Get off the porch and be a Big Dog". Shortly after she said this, however, I actually started to feel the liquor I'd consumed previously. Significantly, actually, and now I was faced with another shot that would just go to waste if I did not drink it. And for those of you who know me, you may know of my marginally compulsive need to never leave anything (in terms of foodstuffs, at least) to waste. So I drank it.

Being drunk was a somewhat... less than extraordinary experience. I had a bit of a hard time walking straight, and things seemed to be slightly funnier than they would have been under normal circumstances, but the whole inebriation reminded me a lot of the time I ignorantly took some Nyquil on an empty stomach and walked to the store before it had a chance to take effect--only to be nearly stranded there when it kicked in, leaving me struggling to stand upright in the detergent aisle. Granted, I was far from shit-faced last night, but I can't imagine being shit-faced would have made it a more enjoyable experience. On the other hand, it is quite possible that the very clinically exploratory attitude that led to my making the decision to partake in the first place would likely serve to take much of the FUN out of it, as Marisa pointed out after a minute or so of my staring introspectively at the backrest of her chair.

The alcohol did, however, seem to make it slightly easier for me to talk to people, and to verbally articulate my thoughts. And despite my initial fears going into it, the alcohol did not make me feel violent or exceedingly obnoxious (I hope). Also, I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank the incredibly kind and supportive Marisa for holding my hand through this potentially traumatic experience. As the first person ever to see me intoxicated, she will eternally hold a place of significance in the autobiographical story of my life. Additionally, I am beginning to wonder if the liquor may also have had the effect of making my writing excessively melodramatic. Do you think?

In closing, I am glad to have had the experience, and I intend to keep at it diligently throughout the course of this year until I can decipher what all the fuss is about.

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2/5/04- Hi. I've missed you.

Let me tell you what's new:
Had a bit of a panic attack this evening as I realized the deadline for my finishing the book tour poster is much closer than I was thinking. The tour booking has been going