This is my buddy Chip’s hand. He loves figs. This is from 2008, when we were on our way to the Mize Watermelon Festival, along with Daphne. I tried a fig for the first time, and it didn’t totally freak me out. I’ll also only eat boiled peanuts while I’m with those two, and on that trip, once a year.

This is an image from the forthcoming Sandusky Review, which will be almost a 100 pages (!!) of drawings and poetry and meditations about food, drink, and muses. Today I dropped off the image that will become the cover at the printing place for them to burn a screen for me—now to pick out some paper and figure out what the text on the cover will be!

Back in 2008 I spent about three months chronicling everything I ate or drank, in handy sketchbook form, inspired greatly by Kate Consumption and Candy Jernigan. Lula and I are currently in the culling phase of pulling out the thirty or so drinks and meals that will make the cut for a new Sandusky Review, that legendary literary zine of surpassing influence, wit, and also maybe some wisdoms, too.

I think this one should make the cut, eh?

They’re building a memorial to him, of sorts; the kind we have in the 21st century, one carved not of marble but bits and electrons, a simple marker where they can celebrate their friend. Our modern tributes are better than the old acres of lawn and stone, because they can be readily visited on a whim, prayers scrawled and let permanent, Chelsea scarves woven not out of cotton or wool but friendship and pride, with no wind to unravel the threads, no sun to fade the dye.

Loss still scars in this century, but perhaps it is eased as well.

There aint nothing like
Ill fly away
Aint nothing like
The way you feel O darling
All fly away

Ain’t nothing like
Laurie Stirratt and her
Bass guitar
Nothing like it

Love poem written during their album release party at Hal & Mal’s, August 15, 2008.

So, to recap: spent an hour driving to the wrong place, glovebox is broken, knuckles are cut, must now retrieve identification from the glovebox, knuckles re-cut, ARRGH RESEARCH FAIL. Finally did get the photos I needed, but it took me a few more weekends.

My sketchbooks are chock full of this kind of hijinx. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Sunday Jerri + Roy and I wandered down south of Hattiesburg to the Black Creek Canoe Rental in Brooklyn, Mississippi. For a few bones we rented a great big canoe and a quick little kayak and eased down the creek for the better part of the day. Maybe my favorite part was rounding a bend in the creek and seeing a great big party, with folks hollering at their friends to jump off a ten-foot-high rock embankment into a deep patch.

I’m digging that Dry Bread song Prof. Fury slung at us yesterday. I was trying to think of a decent riposte to that and his Dean Martin-Otis Redding-Paul Westerberg bizarro hat trick, but his rock-fu is strong. However, I know his kryptonitesque secret weakness: lo-fi.

Therefore: Times New Viking – DROP OUT!

This will bring him to his knees.

Oh, I know the cycle of denial—”well, this is okay, but is that really a chorus? And if I want lo-fi, I’ll go listen to Bee Thousand,” and then alla sudden he’ll be all WHOA! WHOA! And throwing away his suits and ties.

I finally imaged the first volume of the Sandusky Review. It’s chock full of some of my favorite comics strips and stories about the Commodore 64, Metallica, turning 30, and indy rock romance and heartbreak.

The physical artifact comes with a one-of-a-kind gorjus Polaroid on the cover and is available for $5 postpaid, well-concealed cash or stamps welcome. Write me at gorjus.prettyfakes@gmail.com and I’ll send you a copy. First, grab this digital version and read it up!

Sandusky Review Vol. I (1.79 meg).

You can also download the second and third Sandusky Reviews. Or, order all three for only $10!

The Sandusky Review vol. I is under a Creative Commons license.

Also, I know: the rice looks like maggots. Have you ever tried to draw rice? Jeez.