Beetle Bailey Awareness Training 2

Beetle Bailey has been unfairly grouped into the category of has-been comic strips that have nothing left to say and have completely lost any edge they may have had in the creator's angst-ridden young adulthood. I say pshaw and give you this example, where Beetle is shown to loath his life so much that he screams protests at the moment he wakes. Now, I'm not saying I can relate to that, but anyone who says they haven't had a moment like this at some point is a liar or one of those strange, eternally-optimistic people that run associations in charge of hanging decorative fish on the light poles of Main Street, America.

The Road to Colorado

So I'm reading Hunter S. Thompson's book on the Hell's Angels, aptly titled Hell's Angels, which is really fascinating and a great companion read to Electric Kool-Aid. I'm nearly all the way through, but I was compelled to pick up Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and flip through that a little, thinking that I would probably have to go ahead and read that again. Upon perusing it a little and seeing Ralph Steadman's ink-spattered illustrative greatness, I decided to do a Google image search. After I worked my way through several pages of random Steadman pics, I came across the following drawing.


I then remembered that Steadman designs all the labels for the Flying Dog Brewery in Colorado. This came about because the owner of the brewery was close friends with Hunter, who, you know, lived in Colorado. I remember seeing the bottles when I was out there last year, but have no clue why I was dumb enough not to buy some.

So, that's the story explaining why I am now trying to procure beer through certain negligible methods because I live a hundred miles in the middle of nowhere. The End.

Memorial Day

Since it's Memorial Day, I thought I would throw up this one-sheet from Buster Keaton's The General. For some reason, a lot of his old movie posters aren't very appealing. I've seen a few with some very crude caricatures. The same could be said for the Marx Brothers' I suppose, but Keaton's seem particularly amature-hour. Can't fault the genius on the screen though.

However, I think this one-sheet has a really interesting layout, although it's a little top-heavy. I found it on the Greenbriar Picture Shows blog, a treasure-trove of classic film imagery.

Anyway, this has been a very roundabout way of telling y'all to take time today (or anyday) to remember your relatives and others that have died in the service.

Carbon Alley - 5/25/2007

Carbon Alley #25! First milestone, I guess.

Carbon Alley - 5/18/2007

Are You On the Bus?

So I'm halfway through The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe, his new-journalism chronicle of writer Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and the Merry Pranksters. It's very engrossing. Here we have the birth of the LSD movement through refugees of the Beat movement, including Neal Cassidy (Dean Moriarty of On the Road) and with appearances by Kerouac, Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Hunter S. Thompson, The Hell's Angels and The Grateful Dead.

An important point is that this doesn't seem to be a celebration of the movement. In fact, the book starts with Kesey's plans to finally move beyond LSD before going into the backstory of how it all happened, a smart move by Wolfe. Wolfe's writing in general is very subjective and literary, the hallmarks of the new-journalism also pioneered by Thompson, and it's remarkable that Wolfe apparently never took acid because it feels as though he is writing with a very personal awareness of that vantage point. I guess that's where high intellect and meticulous investigation come into play. Anyway, it's exactly what I needed to read right now, and it'll be interesting to read Wolfe's conclusions.

Back From the East

I'm back from vacation. But I'm still trying to compile thoughts and revelations about life, the universe and everything. So I'm going to cut and paste the exact same blog post I threw onto Myspace yesterday:

I'm back from vacation. Didn't really take a lot of photos this time. But I took enough to figure out that my new camera sucks. I swear I'm going to go back to film. But here's a few I thought I'd share -

This is an exercise in figure/ground relationships from Battery Park.



This is a pigeon butt near the East River. I believe I'm probably the first person in the history of the world to utter the words, "I can't wait to post the pigeon butt on my blog."



And this is me buzzed up after the Sam Adams tour in Boston. I have to state for the record that they were MUCH more generous with their samples than Guinness was.

Needless to say, there was much eating, drinking and carousing that happened off camera, from a pub called The Dead Poet on the upper west side of Manhattan to horeshoes and bocci ball at a bar somewhere outside of Bristol. And Spamalot was quite an experience. I'll go into in more later. Right now I need to catch up on the Sopranos.

... except now I have caught up with the Sopranos and it blew my mind. Speaking of blowing minds, tomorrow I will post about a book I am finally reading that I bought for the plane ride.

Carbon Alley - 5/11/2007

Just thought I would post this weeks filler cartoon from Connecticut. Yes, I am still alive. And in Connecticut. More to come...

Vacation Time

Well, I'm finally getting out of here for the first vacation of the year. Connecticut, New York City, and probably Philadelphia. And all points in between. If I have some down time, maybe I'll blog from out there. I'll have plenty of things to pontificate on. Oh, and no comic strip this week, although I did a quick drawing that will be posted on carbonalley.com on the 11th, so check it out.

Adios!

Carbon Alley - 5/04/2007

The Outsider Art of Fletcher Hanks

Fletcher Hanks: Comics Genius? Very probable. Writer Paul Karasik is compiling a book for Fantagraphics. Read this interview for more info.

Great Things Happening Elsewhere

Here's an example of the great things we miss out on when living in nowhere-land. I have yet to purchase any books by Kim Deitch, although The Boulevard of Broken Dreams has been on my wish list for about five years. And what I wouldn't give to watch a silent film in an actual theater. Details can be found on the Fantagraphics Blog and Cartoon Brew.