metafold.:.currency

we don’t truck with none a that

actual new-news first: i’m putting some illustrations & prints up for sale in the vericon art show, so if you’re in the boston/cambridge area, you should check it out.  SWEEEEET.

greetings from sunny florida where we are currently experiencing record-breaking low temperatures.  this is something it has been doing since we (the fam and i) arrived here and (i am assured by weatherpersons) will probably stop doing immediately pursuant to our departure.  i thought, since florida is a land of interesting and exciting differences from those i have lived, i would relate a particularly awesome incident that occurred to me today:

i was in attendance at a juried gallery opening here in vero beach; one whose entries ran the gamut from incredibly (humorously, really) amateurish to very artful and expressive.  at one point, upon introducing me to a local artist, my gran remarked that ‘he just published a graphic novel‘.  this, given that it was self-published, is a bit charitable but (frankly) i’m just going to stop drawing the distinction whenever people mention it because it’s more trouble than help to explain.  this is particularly true when i consider that it’s usually a distinction that’s detrimental to however i’m perceived anyway, so it’s kind of a win-win to leave it alone.  but (as usual) i sidetrack myself.  upon mentioning this, the woman asked me, “oh, a graphic novel.  is that like, all full of sex and stuff?”

i am fully aware that (even in these enlightened times of graphic novel mass-marketability) a time must come in every comic artist/author’s life when s/he must explain that graphic novels are not badly-drawn porn but in fact are books with plots and things.  but still, it was shocking and hilarious to find myself at that moment.  i replied as simply and inoffensively as possible: “no, it’s more like … a really long comic book.” which seemed to satisfy her.  then i meandered over to look at her art piece.  it was, in fact, a vaguely biracial, child-sized (by barbie standards) plastic doll denuded and glued to piece of wood (redundantly painted brown).  it had a black afro and its shoes were also glued to the board, squirreled away in the corner like some strange product of a deranged fetish.  its other clothes were nowhere to be found.  the price was $75, i think.