New Found Yak

Oh benevolent deities of the Blogosphere, I know I have not paid you homage in over two months, and I've totally back-slacked on updating this thing, but I have returned with an offering of delicious bouillabaise stew, beats dropped like they are hot, and tiny angels with rainbows coming out of their asses.
I hope this will pacify you, and that somehow reviving this blog will give me a creative kick in the pants for the fall.

I guess I'll start at the top of the pile: despite the imminent heat wave that is upon us, summer is indeed is wrapping up. And I have to say I am very, very, very satisfied with the way this summer played out. As I mentioned in my last post eons ago, I spent one month in the mystical isle of Newfoundland, where I did the following things, among other things:

• made a lantern shaped like a cake with my buddy Cherie, which we carried in the St.John's Lantern Festival procession, eliciting oohs and aahs from every which-a-way
  
• fed goats and horses and carried chickens around on a farm
• played a succesfully attended show at the Rose & Thistle Pub
• jumped into ponds
• saw 1 day old kittens
  
• was a flower girl at a drunken fake-wedding party
• played with pups
• pulled weeds for 7 hours a day
• ate moose fat

I also drew a fair bit in my sketchbook. Voici le resultat:


I'm only putting up two, because I'm very lazy. Also I'm planning on making some sort of ziney thing out of my Newfoundland drawings when I decide to stop being lazy, so there'll be more sketchbook stuff unveiled later (probably).

Also I noticed while looking through my sketchbook that I'm very much into making lists.

LIST OF QUAINT/CUTE/AMUSING NEWFOUNDLAND EXPRESSIONS

• hard ticket ("Michael Furlong is one hard ticket") = a phrase used to describe a tough guy, someone whose path you shouldn't cross
• queerstick ("His sister Betty Furlong is a queerstick; she wears ponchos year-round")= someone who is eccentric, unusual
• the once ("I only met him the once but I won't forget him soon") = one time
• whippersnipper ("Use the whippersnipper on the front lawn") = a weedwhacker
• the Bay ("he was from around the Bay") = a generic place from where Newfoundland bubbas and rednecks are said to come from

In recent news, I just returned from another new place, which wasn't as idyllic but had it's own thing going for it; I was a volunteer at the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in Brooklyn, New York. I had a amazing, inspiring time. We started everyday by punching our fists in the air and shouting: "WE ROCK! WE ROCK! WE ROCK! WE ROCK!" Some 9 year-old girls wrote a song called "Barbies on the Battlefield". Every lunchtime there would be a different band performing (all ladies all the time of course), and Beverly "Guitar" Watkins, a 70-year-old blues guitarist from Alabama, played on Thursday. She and her band KICKED ASS. I also played a lot of Boggle. I most certainly did not kick ass, but my best word was "crux".

Here's some drawings I made while I hung out waiting for delicious pierogies and spacing out in the Willie Mae Volunteer Lounge listening to ladies gabbing it up:


This thing called "Buttermilk Channel" is a restaurant you should all know about; I was advised by someone who knows that you can't have their fried chicken on cheddar waffles without following it up with their pecan pie sundae. It just isn't done. One thing that seems big there that I hope will soon catch on here is that bars will often give you free food if you buy drinks. There's one place in Greenpoint that gives you a slice of pizza if you buy a beer, and another that gives you a corn dog if you buy shots. America is good.

So now I am done my wanderings and am ready to hunker down and get serious, dudes. I'm going to focus on finishing things instead of starting new ones (I tried this a little bit before I left for New York and it made me feel so blissful). I'm going to finish my record, polish it up and get it out into the world. There'll be many other things happening in Quartier M-D, so come visit me often in Cloud Town, y'all.