this is what concerns me

I’ve been so busy with preparations for this weekend’s San Francisco Zine Fest events that I haven’t done much to promote them! So here goes!

Tomorrow evening I’m doing my first ever comics reading, at the Cartoon Art Museum starting at 7 p.m. I think I’m third in the line-up, which includes such luminaries as Jonas Madden-Connor, Jamaica Dyer, Jesse Reklaw, Ed Luce, Noah Van Sciver, Eli Bishop (who made the flyer) and John Freaking Porcellino. Food, drink and entertainment for a measly $5 — but tell ‘em you’re poor and you’re in free! I’ll be reading a compilation of Nine Gallons stories, mostly from the nearly finished second issue, which no one has yet seen. Special!

Then on to the County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park for the Zine Fest proper! This weekend I’ll have all the old and less-old comics on hand for con-special low prices, plus some brand new purchase-ables: three-color screenprints, small postcard-sized prints and five different pin-back buttons! All for cheap or potentially free with book purchases. I’m also selling a bunch of original art of various size and quality, priced to move from $2-$75. And! I also contributed this centerfold to Laura Beck’s Fat Zine, which will be making its sassy debut as well.

On Sunday at 2 p.m., I’ll be moderating a panel about small-press journalism in San Francisco with a seriously stellar line-up: Michael Stoll (founder, SF Public Press), Dan Archer (reportage cartoonist and Knight fellow at Stanford), Josh Wilson (proprietor, Independent Arts + Media), Antonio Roman-Alcala (founder, SF Arts + Politics zine), and Mat Honan (Longshot Mag). Bring your tough questions and notepads!

Bonus: I’ll be sharing a table with the lovely and talented Joey Sayers, whose autobiographical Just So You Know series is a goddamn revelation. So if you can make it out (Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.) we’d be more than happy to accommodate your moneys, or at least your companies.

So much to see! Maybe even too much! But I hope not!

I wrote up my thoughts on the SF Zine Fest for the Daily Cross Hatch, an internet repository of indie comics news and reviews. Feel free to disagree with me if you think it’s a good and logical idea to pay $400 for a table at a convention where you’ll likely not even make that money back in sales — I’d love to hear your reasoning! (And if it’s “networking,” please show your work on the page next to your answer.)

Also, look forward to a neat series of interviews with cartoonists whose talent to press ratio is far higher than a lot of the cartoonists you read about.

I realize this blog has become a clearinghouse of excuses as of late, but what can I say? It’s in the works, but so are a lot of new comics and, well, you know my priorities.

Speaking of which, this coming weekend, I’ll be exhibiting at the San Francisco Zine Fest at the County Fair Building’s Hall of Flowers in the Inner Sunset. It’s completely free, besides your N-Judah fair or gas, plus the willpower to withstand the Sunset fog, and there will be 100 exhibitors, several interesting workshops and lots of cute 20 and 30 something hipsters with tattoos and expensive cheap-looking clothes. I don’t have the latter two, but I’m still hoping to move some comics (I’m even reprinting some of last year’s stuff, since I now live around the corner from a $.02 copy place). I’m also whipping up some affordably priced watercolors for the occasion, and I might even offer $5 portraits. Plus: free chocolate chip cookie with every purchase.

I think the “Zine” part of this fest is sort of misleading, as the majority of the exhibitors seem to be cartoonists, small publishers or crafters. But I won’t get snarky about my take on how worthwhile it is to make a zine in 2009 considering the love-in poster over there, plus the fact that I’ll be Xeroxing, folding, trimming and stapling more than I’d like to admit over the next few days.

Honestly, I had no idea the economy was so bad as to drive the Mountain Goats and the Weakerthans into the cruise industry. Et tu, Kids in the Hall? Et tu?

It’s only been like, six days! And it was great! Lots of Mr. Brendan Burford’s Syncopated Three’s on hand for the buying and viewing pleasure of all. Depicted: the lovely and talented Ms. Caroline Dworin and myself. Caroline did a bang-up job copy-editing the book. You should really go buy one! Except that you can’t yet. But maybe you should write it on a post-it note and put it on the wall above your desk or something so you don’t forget by the time it’s available in stores. Which will be, like, really soon!

So forget that whole thing about me updating more often and what-not: clearly it was all a horrible lie, and for that I cannot be too sorry, for in my non-blogging time, I have obtained a fantastic, legal apartment in Brooklyn, and I’ve run into all sorts of random celebrities and celebrities-to-me. It’s not quite Gawker Stalker, sure, but those guys suck anyway.

Today I saw Adrian Tomine walking on Atlantic Avenue between 3rd and 4th Avenue. He was carrying a cat in a cream-colored plastic caddy-thing, probably on his way to Hope Vet down the street. Adrian and I had about 15 feet of awkward eye contact, which I’m pretty sure was construed on his end as “Indie-looking girl knows who I am.” Well, you’re damn right, friend.

Incidentally, Adrian will be on a panel at the 92nd Street Y on October 26th at 7 p.m. with Jonathan Bennett, David Heatley, Lauren Weinstein and Ivan Brunetti promoting Ivan’s new book, An Anthology of Graphic Fiction. So attend and be shocked and awed by all the awkward graphic talent - you will not be disappointed.

While attending the University of California at Santa Barbara, I met a young, goofy man named Graham Talley. Graham had an infectious laugh and a “FUN” club, and I loaned him some ketchup one time, and you know, things progressed from there. Graham said his ultimate goal was to have his own scavenger/treasure hunting company, designing hunts for clients and their friends/enemies, and he and some other FUN club members organized dry runs throughout our four UCSB years.

The most elaborate hunt (to my limited knowledge) took place during our sophomore year, when Graham tricked my friends Chris and the aforementioned Ari, among several others, into following a several week-long hunt around the UCSB campus and the nearby slum of Isla Vista. The best part was that much of the hunt was caught on video by surreptitious FUN club operatives. The second best part was for some reason, the participants thought they’d win money, and were annoyed when they simply won being blindfolded, led into a huge party and publicly humiliated. If they sound a little thick, remember, this was UCSB.

Now nearly three years later, Graham is using his talent for manipulation and tomfoolery to – surprise! – win himself some money. He’s started Whim Hunts, a company which crafts scavenger/treasure hunts individually for each client. Whim was even featured in the Santa Barbara News-Press last week, in part to promote the public scavenger hunt Graham and his cohorts will be organizing to begin tomorrow, Friday, July 28.

I’ll admit, I was rather skeptical about Graham’s goals back in the day, but that just makes me even happier to see him successful now. Yay, Graham.

Incidentally, the same day Whim was featured in the News-Press, my friend Jason sent me an invitation to participate in Midnight Madness, the ten-year-old scavenger/puzzle hunt game taking place in Manhattan on August 5th. “It is exhausting and difficult and ridiculous and fun,” says Jason. The game was created in 1996 by two Columbia University undergrads; the name is inspired by the 1980 Michael J.Fox film. There are only two rules: no motorized vehicles, and no tampering with clues. And not that there was really a question, but I read this on an old message board circa 2004 re: the typical player:

The average profile of the late night walkers is pretty homogenous, and not surprising if you consider that we’re talking about a scavenger hunt involving electronic gadgets, a central messaging program and analytical puzzles. if your guess was ‘20-something geeky types’, you would have been pretty right on.

And even though it’s not Mandatory, east or west coast, you have no excuses – get outside, run around, solve some clues and, like, have some Fun. Or whatever.