New comics

Here's a new one from me.

Here's one from my friend Cary over at Omoo-Omoo.

If you're reading this, you're probably already familiar with Matt and his Hayder.

Not a comic, but seriously fucked up and entertaining:

Jokes

Instant Messenger is a tool that has helped the world communicate instantaneously. It is also the dumbass development that leads to stuff like this, the result of the mighty Justin Waddell and me abusing our free time. The dental jokes are his, the orthodontia jokes are mine.

From "Will and Justin on the Road: The Dental Joke Tour: 2009: Across the Nation, This Ain't No Vacation Tour: The Gum Health and Gum Chew Express: Cavity Cavalcade: Once in a Lifetime (the channel) Tour*”

*Brought to you by Simonize Car Wax.

“My dentist is excellent. Just the best. Treats me like royalty. Yeah...he keeps giving me crowns.”

”My orthodontist said he was going to do an impression of my teeth. I told him to get a white jacket and 31 friends.”

“Sigh, my teeth are so messed up. Every time I go for a check up, my dentist says..."You know the drill.”

“I thought my orthodontist wanted to join my fantasy football league. He said he was going to give me some new brackets.”

“My dentist gave me this sound warning: You need to brush more. So now I brush once every other Saturday.”

“My orthodontist is a big basketball fan. His favorite team is the Indiana Spacers.”

Days of Wine and Sharks, Vol. II

Part the Second.

I’m still on Eastern time internally, so I wake up fairly early. First things first: coffee. There’s no coffee maker in the room, so I throw on some clothes and walk down the block to Café Trieste. The coffee’s not bad, but not necessarily great either. It’ll do.

I decide to do some more walking around before the city fully gets going. Again, I’m struck by the fact that although there are people headed to work and going about their business, the city doesn’t seem rushed. It has room to breathe. I like it.

I walk over to Chinatown, which is eerie when it’s deserted. I walk past an alley that looks exactly like the one in Big Trouble in Little China, then realize that it might well be. The grocery stands are setting out their fruits and vegetables for the day and the junk stores are setting out their cheap souvenirs. I don’t need any of it, but I take in the cheeseball atmosphere and kind of enjoy it.

I walk around taking a few pictures, something I didn’t do yesterday so as not to be too touristy in the middle of the afternoon. I get some pics of Kerouac Alley, which is a really nice little space between Vesuvio and City Lights with poetry quotes on the ground and some incredible murals on the walls. I do some more walking around, getting a couple of pictures of the cityscape. Heading down by Washington Square Park, I see a lot of older Asian women doing tai chi. It’s pretty fascinating to watch. I briefly consider standing with them and doing the robot. Then I think about how many other wiseasses have already pulled this joke, and I decide to skip it.

Running has been a big part of my life for the last few years, and I’m quietly thankful for Atlanta’s relative flatness while I’m walking around. If I’d taken up the hobby (can’t make myself call it a sport) in the middle of these hills, I don’t know if I would have stuck with it. Looking at the cars parked on the streets, I realize that these surroundings are exactly why emergency brakes were invented.

The original plan was for me to take the train over to Berkley mid-day to meet up with Cary and his family. He calls me and tells me they’re going to head straight into San Francisco, which will make things that much easier. I grab breakfast at a little café next to Hotel Boheme and then go back to the hotel to get ready for the day and check out. The hotel would be a little expensive to stay at for more than a couple of days, but I’m glad I had a night here, and I know that I’ll be back.

Cary and Karen pick me up, and we head down to meet their daughter, his parents, and his sister at Fisherman’s Wharf. I only get to hang out with Cary and Karen a couple of times a year at most, but given that he and I email throughout most workdays, it usually feels like no time has passed, and today is no different. I went through some pretty grim times over the last year and Cary was one of the people I leaned (still lean) on pretty heavily.

Fisherman’s Wharf is giant tourist spot. I have mixed feelings on this kind of place. Totally artificial vacation spots (Disney, I’m looking at you.) make me feel pretty disconnected from the people around me and from myself, and I wonder where mankind went so very wrong. It just seems so completely separated from any kind of real, natural experience.

I’m well aware that overthinking stuff like this is why people usually end up rolling their eyes at some point when they talk to me, by the way.

But Fisherman’s Wharf has one foot in reality, with the gathering of sea lions and WWII ship and submarine docked there, so I’m able to stop with the pretentious thinking and enjoy myself. We grab lunch at a restaurant overlooking the sea lions sunning themselves, and I annihilate clam chowder in a sourdough bowl. Our waitress is totally cute and has a Russian accent. Cary is able to convince me that it might be a little early to propose to her.

We walk around for a bit, stopping long enough for me to grab some sunblock. When I go out in the sun, Geiger counters start to tick and explode if I don’t cover myself, and a sunburned scalp is the ongoing nightmare of the bald man. Once I’ve procured what I need from Panama Jack, I grab a couple of souvenirs for my niece and nephew.

Our group splits eventually, with Cary’s parents and his sister going on a bay cruise while Cary, Karen, Lily and I go for a tour of the Jeremiah O’Brien, a Liberty ship permanently docked at Pier 39. I get my biggest laugh of the trip when Cary explains to his daughter that he lived on a similar ship when he was in the Navy, and then has to clarify that no, it wasn’t exactly like being a slave.

Touring the ship is pretty interesting, and I try to imagine how shit-scared I would have been leaving on a ship like this in WWII. In the days immediately following 9/11, I more or less assumed that things might get bad enough that the draft would go back into effect, mostly because I was as panicked and confused as anyone. I wondered how I would handle military life. I might be able to get used to it, I guess. It would be just like McHale’s Navy, right?

After the ship, we head over to what turns out to be my favorite part of the afternoon. There’s an old penny arcade, with all these great wooden automations from the early part of the 20th century. Several of them have little scenes that animate when you put a quarter in, like The Opium Den that has skeletons jump out from the sides into a den scene, or old movieola machines marked “Adults Only” that show women from the ‘20s in their bloomers. I love this kind of stuff. There’s also another machine that terrifies me to my very core. Please see picture for explanation.

From there, we head out to Berkley. Cary, his sister Kelly and I will be staying here before our dive tomorrow, while the rest of his family heads on back to the condo they’re staying in. As we get to Berkley, I’m very happy that I chose to stay in San Francisco the night before. Berkley seems nice enough, but there’s not much happening in the area where we’re staying. It doesn’t really matter, since we’ll pretty much just be sleeping here and then leaving very early in the morning.

We all get checked in, and Cary and I head back over to San Francisco to meet up with a friend of his that he worked with at DIMP. Mike turns out to be a great guy who schedules his own 24-hour horror movie festival every year. The three of us have a few drinks back at Vesuvio, get an insanely good Italian meal across the street (calamari pasta for me) and grab one more beer at a dive bar before calling it a night.

Back at the hotel, I go through my equipment for tomorrow. I haven’t worn a diving mask since I was a kid, so I sit around wearing it for a while getting used to breathing through my mouth.

Yeah, it looked as ridiculous as you’re thinking.

I check my email, get everything set for the morning, and hit the light. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.

Placeholder

I'm working on the next part of the travelogue, which I'm sure will make literally twos of people happy. Also, more comic strips. In the meantime, enjoy this. Stick with it even if you've already seen the initial clip.

The Days of Wine and Sharks, Vol. 1

Part the First

The day starts blearily enough as I stumble out of bed when the alarm rings at five. Shower. Shave. Throw the last few things in the bag. I’ve already decided on the music for the car on the way to the airport—Warren Zevon’s Life’ll Kill Ya. The music you listen to at the start of the trip is essential—choose poorly, and you could find yourself surrounded by wild pygmy natives, ready to take your head. LKY’s title track, with its “requiescat in pace, that’s all she wrote” refrain, seems appropriate.

Airport. Zip right through security, head to find myself some breakfast. Omelets make me believe that there may indeed be a higher power behind this planet. Strong coffee. Good. The day is starting out well.

Flight is for the most part uneventful. I have my requisite aisle seat, with one guy sitting to my right. He needs to get up at one point and I move to get out of the way, but he says “I can step over.” Before I can protest, this guy is stepping over me and essentially giving me a three-second lapdance.

Horrific.

I read Susan Casey’s The Devil’s Teeth on the plane. It’s all about the place I’m headed,the Farallon Islands and their annual shark congregation. The place has a fascinating history that includes egg mafias, mysterious skeletons and ghostly apparitions, along with thousands upon thousands of great white sharks, sea lions and birds. Great book, but by the end of it, you’re pretty sure that Casey would be an endlessly annoying person to be around. She becomes hopelessly involved with her story, to the detriment of everyone involved.

I eventually play the in-flight trivia game. I don’t do so well the first round, but my second round, not only do I win, I get the highest score of anyone on the plane of any round. Advantage: me.

Plane lands in San Francisco and I find my luggage before heading for BART. I take the train to the closest stop to my hotel and promptly walk four blocks in the wrong direction. I catch my mistake and turn around. The upside of this detour is that I’m 99 percent sure I walked by Mike Nesmith. There’s a lot of construction as I make my way along Columbus, meaning there’s a lot of crossing back and forth along the street. I’m trying not to stop and stare too much along the way, but I’m taken with the city pretty quickly.

It’s a big city that doesn’t feel clogged, something that’s become all too apparent about Atlanta lately. It feels like there’s room to breathe here. Even walking around the financial district in the middle of a weekday, the vibe doesn’t feel crunched or dirty. It feels livable.

I find where I’m staying, Hotel Boheme, without much trouble. My room’s not ready yet, but I leave my bag and ask Charles, the front desk guy, where I can find some lunch. The area where I’m staying straddles the line between Little Italy and Chinatown. He recommends a place called House, an Asian fusion restaurant. Charles is right on the money, as I have some wasabi noodles with roast pork that are just what I need. I walk around the neighborhood a bit. Lots of Chinese restaurants and strip clubs. I’m home?

Head back to the hotel to check in. Charles tells me the room I’m in was where Allen Ginsberg used to like to stay. I spend about 10 minutes trying to think of a “starving, hysterical, naked” joke, and decide the hell with it. Hotel Boheme is a really cool, old school hotel with only 15 rooms. I’m given a key to my room and to the front door of the hotel, actual metal keys, which is nicely reassuring in an age of plastic keycards. Every evening from 6-10 they set out sherry in the lobby for an evening cordial. It’s a pretty wonderful place to stay, and I’m glad I shelled out the extra 50 bucks for the night.

At the same time, there’s a little bit of a creepiness behind it. The history here is palpable, almost so much that it feels trapped in time a bit. I fully expect to see a ghost floating down the hall at some point. I read an interview with Billy Bob Thornton once where he described having a phobia about antique furniture. I’m starting to understand what he meant, I think. But the idea that we’re all so used to bland experiences that we’re petrified of something real is horrifying, so I put the weight of the hotel out of my head and appreciate it for what it is.

I get into my room and doze for a bit. I’ve got Doug Sahm’s (look him up) San Francisco songs playing in my head as I drift off. After my nap, I change clothes and head out for a bit. I’m staying just down the street from the City Lights bookstore, where the Beat movement had its genesis. Incredibly cool to wander around inside and soak up some of the history. I pick up a couple of books, The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolanto which is a staff pick and fits in nicely with my efforts to read more authors who aren’t American or British, and The Yage Letters Redux, by Burroughs and Ginsberg.

I step next door to Vesuvio. About three seconds after I walk in, I know that this would be my regular bar if I lived in San Francisco. Long bar, cool art up on the walls, absinthe(!) behind the bar, and friendly people. Also, they open at 6 am. I grab a seat at the bar and watch baseball for a while, talking with a couple of the regulars. The bartender gives me a couple of dinner suggestions, and tells me I really can’t go wrong in the neighborhood.

I don’t know what it is about certain bars. I’m never as comfortable as I am sitting on a barstool in a dark room. The “third place” (look it up) is where I’ve always gravitated, where I’m in my element. When you're in the right bar, you pick up slices of everyone’s life, you’re a part of a communion or a nameless sacrament. Traveling alone carries with it a pretty natural feeling of alienation (or maybe I just carry that natural feeling of alienation), but it’s something that melts away however briefly between those walls. I fall in love with waitresses and bartendresses pretty easily, and I think it's part of the sense of belonging I feel when I walk into a bar (with a priest and a rabbi), even one I’ve never been to before.

The bartender’s right about the neighborhood, as it turns out. I end up sticking my head into a no-name Italian place and grab a slice of pizza, which tastes like a little bit of heaven. I wander for a bit into a couple of seedy blocks, realize I probably have “tourist” written across my face and head towards The Beat Museum. I’m a little unsold at first, as the first room you enter is the gift shop. But it’s only $5 to go into the museum proper, so I take my shot. I’m glad I did. It’s a thorough re-telling of the movement, with some way cool artifacts, including Neal Cassady’s shirt and Ginsberg’s old pipe organ (slang). There’s even an exhibit that addresses the lack of women in the movement, something that some females I know have quite understandably said kept them at arm’s length from the Beats. I settle into the movie room at the end of the tour for a bit, then grab a copy of Howl and head out on my way.

I’ve been back and forth on the Beats as an influence on my own writing. I took to Kerouac and Bukowski pretty easily, but Burroughs and Ginsberg took me longer to wrap my head around. Ginsberg was pretty easily explainable, since I’ve always had a little bit of a block when it comes to poetry. For Burroughs, it took a while to get myself into the fractured mindset that his stuff requires. Maybe I wasn’t broken enough to appreciate it before, but it feels like I am now. One thing I’ve discovered is that their works tend to be malleable enough to still feel fresh and current, rather than purely being reflections of the time. There’s a trick to being of your time and place while also being of any time and place. I need to figure out what that is.

I stop by my hotel, intending to drop off a couple of books and go back out, maybe to the Condor, the city’s oldest strip club, purely for historical purposes of course. But I lie down for a minute and everything gets dark for the night.

Still feel gone

I'm still not here. In the meantime, watch this, turn the volume way, way up, and throw furniture around the room as one of the all-time great songs plays for you.

A quick one while I'm away

Bonus points if you get the Who reference. I'm on vacation, but set up a couple of posts to go up while I'm gone. If anything went wrong with my flight, this post is coming to you FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE.

Anyway, here's another dumb comic strip from me.

http://www.stripcreator.com/comics/wmason/444298

Public Service Announcement

Until October 31, you can get Todd Snider's new EP, Peace Queer, as free download through his site. Just go to the store and you'll see the download there. I'm listening now, and it sounds so, so good. Todd's been one of my favorite songwriters since I heard his first record, Songs for the Daily Planet, waaaaay back in '94. I'd go as far as calling East Nashville Skyline and The Devil You Know essential for your record collection. I'm not going to go into a big dissection of the man's music here. Dig around the intertubes for a while, see if you like it. And if you don't...there's no accounting for taste.

Three things.

1. More adventures of Tim.

2. Checked my referrals, and somebody visited this site looking for instructions on how to make a shark fin hat. My apologies for not having that information.

3. Take On Me, the literal version. Stick with it.

My first attempt at this...

Me at StripCreator.

A play I just wrote

Whiny Blog: A short play by Will Mason, Esq.

(The day is Saturday. Our Hero, a bald, pale man, is feeling more bummed out than usual. It's been an excruciating year for him. He's sad, and he's mad at himself for being sad when the rational part of himself is screaming at him to knock it off.)

Our Hero: Sigh.

(Our Hero spends some time with his family, including his niece and nephew. This cheers him up, but then he realizes someday that they're going to go through some kind of emotional pain and they're going to realize life isn't all goofing around and fun.Then he gets sad again. He goes home, eats a couple of cookies his mom made for him, and calls it a day.)

(Our Hero rises on Sunday, ready to see if he can't be a little more cheerful today. He decides to go run 5 miles, as he'd done several times earlier this week to see if he can't get back in shape for a half-marathon on Thanksgiving. 1.5 miles into his run, Our Hero trips and fully kisses the pavement, collapsing in a rising cloud of skin that used to be attached to him and dust.)

Our Hero: Fuck!

(Several people are standing on different parts of the same intersection. Several of them look at Our Hero, who is now covered in grime and blood. Then they all go about their business, none asking if he's okay. Our Hero takes stock: left elbow: destroyed. Left Hip: ripped to shit. Right knee: beyond the valley of the superfucked. He's also pretty sure he bruised a rib or two.)

(Our Hero shuffles the 1.5 miles home, after using his shirt to stop the geyser of blood coming out of his knee. He notes that when you're in kind of a nice neighborhood, people tend to walk a little faster to avoid the bleeding man. He finally makes it home and clean his wounds the best he can. He is currently terrified at the thought of getting in the shower, because he knows that's going to hurt like a bastard.)

(Our Hero had originally planned to go volunteer at a voter registration drive today. Now, he's thinking that he's going to sit on the couch for a bit and wait for the bars to open. At least Our Hero doesn't have any vacation plans coming up in the next week and a half where an open wound might be a liability---OH WAIT.




What do you think, folks? Am I the knew Tom Stoppard or what?