Ah, lovely misery…

Sorry, that was the first thing to pop into my head… December, the month of holiday cheer, how I loathe it…actually, it’s not so bad. I’m just so broke right now! I’ve got $20 until the end of the month! It’s awful, people owe me money but are in no hurry to pay me! I had to forgo buying books! Ahhh! I’m going cold turkey! I’m not talking new but remaindered and used books on digital comics and about a little known conflict on the B.C. coast with the “locals” (as I call the First Nations peoples) in the 18th centaury that I am dieing to read about! I just finished a book on the Royal Navy on the Pacific Northwest but it barely touched on conflict with the locals. No, I had to go buy dental floss and milk…

I’ve just returned from my condo buildings X-mas tree raising and decoration, quite a party. People brought food and wine, told naughty jokes about Jesus on the cross being “well hung” and singing little ditty‘s about Mary getting an abortion (nobody took offence as far as I could see, we’re a pretty secular bunch but then again so is Christmas). I finally got to meet my upstairs neighbour after she’s been living here for months, turns out she’s a frustrated designer who dabbled in cartooning before giving it all up to become a nurse. We even went to art school about the same time, me in Vancouver and she in Ontario. She blushed when I told her I could hear her playing the recorder, I wasn’t complaining mind you. I helped out with the tree lights, had fun, ate munchies. The next few weeks should be busy, openings to go too, Wednesday it’s the launch at long last of the new Drippytown Comic, including a story that I illustrated for my old pal G.X. Jupitter-Larsen, at a Japanese Karaoke restaurant of all things! As long as they don’t make me sing…

Speaking of neighbours, my downstairs neighbour is at it again. About a year ago he started a campaign of harassment, hoping to give me a heart attack. I know this because that’s one of the things he screamed at me from below, along with threats, hysterical laughter, pounding on the ceiling and guttural shrieks when ever I would, amongst many other things, sweep the floor, use a stapler, sit, vacuum… he once accused me of picking a fight in my sleep… this all stop about a year ago after months of harassment for no good reason but I fear it might be starting up again. He would crank up the radio in his bathroom when I took a bath and last week I was brushing my teeth when he pounded the floor under my feet and shouted “Waaaah!” I know, he sounds a little nuts… so I decided I wasn’t going through that again so I filed a report with the police (the property managers are helpless, or should I say useless) so that if it gets worse they can do something about it. The police should know him, a few years ago the SWAT team took him out on a stretcher after he tore his place apart with a length of steel cable on a bad PCP trip…
I’ve been working on the pencils for the graphic novel, this is going to take a long time so it’s going to be very dull for you I’m afraid. Right now I’m working on the figure placement, trying to vary the camera angles as so much of the story takes place in cramped hospital rooms it’s tough to make it interesting and giving it some room to breathe. I’m adding more exterior scenes so the story isn’t too claustrophic. I’ve got a good caricature of my mother, my brother Leslie is a little harder to pin down. It’s also an exercise in memory, trying to reconstruct the horrible low-rent basement I was living in at the time and the hospital rooms that we spent so much time in. I sit in front of the TV, drawing in my sketchbooks diagrams of the places I once lived and visited, I know that sometime I will have to get a camera and get some background photo’s. I’m not if I went to the hospitals they’d let me go in for a few quick snaps but it’s amazing how much you remember when you sit down to think about it.

The opening s now of the late Walrus, the worlds best kitty, entering the house and finding me in my studio, drawing. This way we get a tour of my home and living conditions before the narrative begins. I know how the story ends, it’s the rest of it that is a work in progress…

My Friday night war game was the American Revolutionary War, with myself against the rebel rabble. I isolated one wing, outflanked them in the woods with my rangers and routed a regiment of traitorous Canadians fighting on the American side, serves’em right! The American commanders conceded rather early I thought, they still had a fighting chance but their morale was shattered. The next day I slogged through a blinding blizzard (okay, it was snowing) to attend three gallery openings in one night, more out of a sense of duty to the arts than anything else. Owen and terry bought me Chinese food. I never did go to the Culture Crawl, I stayed at home shivering as the snow JUST DIDN”T STOP FALLING ALL BLOODY DAY! This is bizarre weather for B.C., sure is pretty though when you don’t have to get anywhere fast… the cold really hurt me in my back. On Monday I had to go outside to check to see if money had arrived in my bank to pay for tomorrow, fortunately it did so I went and bought oatmeal! I had my granny cart (I wonder if you can get snow tires for granny carts?) walking the streets of hard packed, icy snow… the streets are eerily quiet of people and traffic, most people choosing to stay home if they can. I’m lucky to have my power, thousands in the lower mainland lost theirs. The next day the temperature plummeted, to lows we just don’t see here. It is what I call “Tajik hat weather”.

I have a Tajik hat, you may have seen them on TV being worn by members of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, Tajik’s mostly, the ones who fought the Taliban for the yanks. It’s like a thick woollen beret with a puffy rolled up brim. I got mine at Bumbershoot in Seattle, I collect hats. My tajik hat is black and made of rough wool and it is so hot to wear I can only wear it in the coldest weather, otherwise my head overheats and the sweat blinds me. Today I wore it comfortably, along with layers of clothing, out to UBC to be poked and prodded by sharp things in the hands of nervous dental students… the only dental care I can afford… which I can’t, really. In exchange for discounted dental care I have to commit to three hour sessions in the dental chair as the students carefully and slowly examine and clean my teeth while under supervision. Although I am generally a patient patient into the third hour one is quite exhausted and not a little fed up with the whole process, wondering if a few missing teeth might not be such a bad thing after all. The good news is that it looks like I won’t be needing any drilling or root canals or anything, the bad news is that I have to go back tomorrow to finish the cleaning… when more snow is expected with perhaps freezing rain as well. As you can imagine, with the entire student body of UBC leaving their cars at home and taking the bus instead, getting out was a bit of a challenge but I made it, even picked up some bread and bagels on the way home. The 84 used to be such a nice, genteel bus, with hardly any passengers. Now leaving UBC it’s packed to the rafters and leaving people behind at the bus stop. There’s rain in the forecast so it’s possible that by this time next week the snow will be a distant memory…

First off, I’m assuming you all went out and bought your copy of “Dork” #11? Another frantic and funny comic by one of my favourite cartoonists, Evan Dorkin, with dozens of gag strips and full of satisfyingly twisted humour… it‘s not easy being funny, ya know. If you can’t find it at your local comic store bitch at the store owner!

Also new is “American Splendour #3” written by Harvey Pekar and illustrated by a group of talented cartoonists including English “Bonzo cartoonist” Hunt Emerson and another of my favourites Rick Geary! There’s a wonderful story on the medicinal use of cats.

I’ve been getting a real kick out of the comic book series “Action Philosophers”(#7, the Ancient Greek philosophers), which takes a light hearted, humorous approach to teaching complex ideas and esoteric details which it does rather well… although even in comic form French philosophy makes no sense…

It’s been over week we’ve been under a boil water order and one of the three reservoirs that serves the lower mainland has been shut down entirely. There was an E-coli scare but everyone thinks it’s a false positive. We’re adjusting to it now, I don’t think I drank this much water before the tap water became tainted. Still raining of course, although next week it’s supposed to clear up, become sunny and really cold! That means the possibility of snow! That is freakish for Vancouver, we’re not like the rest of Canada! We can go a whole winter without snow. If it does snow it snows in January, not November! I asked my mom for new boots this Christmas, the ones I have are coming apart.

Today we were supposed to interviewing Gilbert Hernandez, Beto, on the radio show but we totally forgot its American Thanksgiving! Oops… Robin went to the station to play a “cartoonists in music” show while I begged off… I wasn’t feeling up to it really, it was cold and wet. It was one of those days you just want to sleep all day. However, I was pumped on doing the Beto interview, I just finished reading (and re-reading) a whole pile of his books and it struck me that the Hernandez’s have been around so long (indeed, I consider Love and Rockets to be the first alternative comic series) and so consistently good that we forget how good they are. Next week all going well we interview Ivan Brunetti!

Work wise I’ve been “clearing the decks’, stuff that needed doing so I could move on to other things. I finished the Zeppelin/armoured car, painted those Samurai for Dave (he picked them up last night, now he’ll send them to England to hopefully be photographed and included in a rulebook and I finished painting a regiment of 15mm Napoleonic Hungarian infantry I owed Brian. I’ve been working on the pencils for a secret project and getting back to the graphic novel, adding pages… some of the anecdotes I was trying to tell in one page were just too constrictive, needed a little more room to breathe. Tonight I spent most of the evening cleaning up, tidying around the studio, trying to get ri of the clutter. You know, “clearing the decks”.

Friday night is my war game club’s monthly meeting, Saturday openings at the JEM Gallery (The Jupiter Project) and The Parking Lot (Owen Plummer) plus all weekend long is the East Side Culture Crawl when dozens of artist work spaces are opened to the public. I just hope I don’t have to tramp through the snow and sleet!

You know me, normally I don’t complain about the rain, I like the rain. Me, I complain about hot weather. But right now it’s getting me down. Blame global warming (which I understand just doesn’t cause warming but more extreme weather of all kinds) for the fierce weather system that blew through southern B.C. almost a week ago now. Okay, so it wasn’t a hurricane or tornado you get in other parts of the continent but it was more powerful than we’re used to in these parts. Lashing rain and high winds, toppling trees into buildings making for spectacular television. Even here, with our building relatively sheltered by a hillside that normally doesn’t get much wind a tree snapped on the other end of the patio. Of course, it was new comics day so I had to go out. It was all rather fun but the aftermath has been less than jolly. The storm washed a lot of silt into our reservoirs, the city of Vancouver and some suburbs, about a million people, are under a boil water advisory. Usually Vancouver tap water is about the best there is, not know. You can’t drink the tap water or brush your teeth with it. Some sources say it’s safe to wash your dishes in tap water, some no. I have a pile of dirty dishes in my sink while I prevaricate. Is there any point in washing my clothes or will they just come out dirtier than they went in? So every day I fill all my pots with water, boil’em for a couple minutes, fill my juice jugs with liquid the colour of weak piss water and put them’em the fridge. Boiling may make the water safe but it still tastes of dirt and makes crappy tea. One is somewhat reluctant to cook with it. Perhaps it’s all in my mind but it’s been affecting my health drinking that turbid tap water, hurts me head.

But I continue working, pencilling the “secret” project (damn hands are hard to draw) and painting those Samurai miniatures that will hopefully go into that games Workshop Book… Samurai are tough to paint, all that lacing, but the Kingsford Miniatures look really good. Got those done. I also finished the Zeppelin/Armoured Car model, unfortunately the rotter who commissioned me to do it is in Tokyo until the end of the month! Arrgh! Need money… I am so broke right now and in a week I’m going to get my teeth looked at by a UBC dental student! I really hope there’s nothing wrong this time. I’m still waiting for my cheque from the UBC Library Rare Books section. I’m now looking for my copies of my own comics to complete their collection, I found a Skunk, still looking for Incubus #1 & #2, Big Thing #2, Big Black Thing and Buddha #1... I’ve got a lead in the U.S.A., me old publisher buddy Edd Vick, so we’ll see how it goes.

I finally broke down today and went out to buy a flat of bottled watered, it’s been long enough that the mad scramble for water at the beginning of our water crisis has abated, on the news it was sounding pretty crazy with people hoarding and scuffling over water. In many places it was impossible to find for days. Man, the bottled water does taste good! My first decent cup of tea in days! If I ration myself to two bottles a day (one for drinking, another for tea) I’ll be fine for almost a week, hopefully the tap water will be clear by then. If it doesn’t rain heavily again… never happens in Vancouver…

Ah, where have I been…

Well, lets see… damn apples… I’ve glued everything I’m planning to glue onto armoured car zeppelin thingie and painted the base colour, dark green… I would’ve preferred a different colour (My other model for Jim Ramsey was also dark green) but the evidence is clear, green is the colour of Russian armoured cars (and airplanes for that matter) in the Civil War. Oh sure, I hear you say, it’s made up so you can do anything you want! Paint it lavender with pock-a-dots! That’s not how I do things my friend, I strive for realism! With the model grounded in fact it makes the weirdness stand out that much more vividly, as opposed to something which has no connection to reality. Besides, it’s more challenging, more fun and I have an excuse to read more!

I had a couple of “black days”. I have them occasionally… it’s sorta like a sick day. Sometimes when the state of denial I need just to get out of bed in the morning breaks down and I am left unprotected to face my fear, self-loathing and doubt. I should quite this pointless struggle and get a shitjob that gives me a steady pay cheque. I’m not dissing people who work, I’ve just known too many talented cartoonists who get a job “that won’t affect their art” and are never heard from again. Who the hell would hire me anyway? I’ve never had a proper job, done lots of volunteering, but nothing I get paid for. When I started out I accepted poverty as the price of doing my art and it hasn’t bothered me much. I’ll admit it’s getting harder as I grow older and the money and recognition I’d like and in my more grandiose moments think I might actually deserve to have remain elusive. But I’m not ready to quit, not just yet…

So I spent Sunday curled up on the couch trying to suppress my thoughts by watching stupid football and sleeping. Football helps me relax, an obnoxious, bizarre, militarised ritual… how can people take it so seriously? I just wanted to be alone to stare into the black abyss of my future, all very adolescent I know but I do not judge myself by my darkest, self-pitying moments (I know I’ve got it good, really) but by how quickly I can get back up on my feet. Felt much better on Monday…

I walked downtown in a rare period of dry (it’s been monsoon season in Vancouver). I passed a big mound of earth at a construction site, it’s black plastic tarp was loose at one end so the plastic undulated, roared and snapped furiously in the stiff wind. It was a beautiful sight, standing watching it felt like I was about to be swallowed by an gigantic black beast. I was going to meet my mum, Leslie (the bro) and his friend/nemesis Derren at the VCC for cooking student dinner. We were going to the theatre tonight, UBC student theatre, a play based on Douglas Coupland’s book “Life after God“. I was early, as usual, so I went into McLeod’s Books (nothing more serene to me than a bookstore) and who should I run into but Douglas Coupland! I knew Doug from high school art class, the Emily Carr and after but I hadn’t seen him in ages. To further the Dickensian theme of coincidence he told me he was just thinking about me, had a project he wanted me to contribute something too. Drawings of British and American soldiers War of 1812! Since I’d studied the conflict for my war games I can pretty much draw a British Napoleonic soldier in my sleep, the American I’d have to be at least drowsy. The play I thought was okay, the acting was quite good but I did wonder if they needed quite as much interpretive dance and full frontal nudity… I’m not a real prude but it does get distracting, never knowing when the actors might start whipping off their clothes at any moment. I had read “Life After God“, awhile ago now (it’s one of my favourite Coupland books), and there were bits I hadn’t recalled from the book. Doug’s work has so much of home for me . Not just Canada or Vancouver, but West Vancouver, where we all grew up scarcely aware of how lucky we were to be where we were in a troubled world. No matter where you come from, teen angst is going to get ya! We sat in front of my friends Gudrun and Mark from the new Vancouver Review, another coincidence! Leslie found a $10 bill on the floor on the floor of the VCC cafeteria so we were all happy!

Mum crashed at my place and kept me up most of the night with her snoring… she could snore for Canadian Olympic snoring team, she could. I was up early, making breakfast. We bussed downtown so she could pick up a theatre ticket half price, School for Scandal, even at half price it was beyond my budget. We went to see “The Last King of Scotland” which is worth seeing if only for the riveting performance of Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin Dada, awesome and frightening. Idi Amin has a special place in my memory growing up. When I was a kid I knew about Stalin and Hitler but Idi Amin, he was a mad dictator I could watch on TV… he was real, contemporary, not a piece of history but alive in my time. The “Beatles” of madman tyrants. I knew kids in high school, Asian’s, who had fled to Canada after Amin expelled them all from Uganda. My brother in laws family, Scots, were dispossessed of their tea plantation and were forced to leave Uganda. Idi Amin killed something like 300,000 Ugandans. He was ousted in 1979 but passed away in 2003 I think it was, in exile in Saudi Arabia. I just wished that the film had more of Forest Whitaker’s Amin and less of the fictional Scottish protagonist. “Hotel Rwanda” proved you don’t need a white face to sell a movie about Africa. Has anyone made a “happy” film about Africa? “The God’s Must Be Crazy” I suppose…

We went to Hon’s in Chinatown for noodles and I then saw mum off on the bus… walked home. There was a signed copy of Louis Riel in the mail from Chester Brown, a contributors copy as I had helped Chester with his uniform reference, the envelope was in shreds but the book perfectly intact. The cat had something nasty matting her fur so I gave her a good combing. I’m listening to Joe Jackson right now, “Summer in the City”, my stinging eyes tell me my lack of sleep is catching up on me…

On Wednesday I bussed out to UBC. I’d been asked to drop by the UBC Rare Books section to sell them my comics for their collection and to bring everything! So I did, including old New Reality’s and more recent Drippytown comics I’m in. They bought everything I brought, it seems I’m an invaluable source for Vancouver comics history and as Vancouver is so much a part of my work anyway they couldn’t resist! Cheque’s in the mail… sigh… but still I’m honoured they asked me and that future scholars will have a record of my work and others. My father was a professor of history at UBC, I know the academic mind and how it works. I feel sorry for scholars of small press comics, the limited print runs, non-existent records, constant reprints, the anarchic free for all which is the very essence of small press publishing! Speaking of scholars, John bell’s book on Canadian comics history is now available:

“Dundurn Press of Toronto will be publishing my history of Canadian comics this fall. Entitled Invaders from the North: How Canada Conquered the Comic-Book Universe, the book will feature a cover by Dave Cooper and a foreword by Seth. In addition to a main historical narrative, Invaders will include two in-depth studies, one on Canadian superheroes and the other on Chester Brown.”

I can’t wait to see it, apparently there’s a photo of Chester Brown and I taken by David Boswell in his studio in 1993. I’m going to try to get John Bell back on the radio for an interview on Inkstuds, the interview we did with John Bell on Onomatopoeia was a lot of fun!

Welp, gotta go, I’m painting a unit of Kingsford Miniature Samuria that will hopefully be published in a set of war game rules, very nice figures…

“You say you're going to get a lot of work done. Is that COMIC work? Can you fill us in on what will be coming from Upton Studios in the future? Us googly-eyed red monsters need to know!”
"Flashfink!"

Damn, you googly-eyed red monsters sure are demanding (and there's no need to shout!)! Check out my recent blogs and you will see I’ve come out in the last month with seven friggin new mini-comics and new 2 collections! Plus all that interviewing for the radio show, small press festivals, comic jams and check out the Fall issue of the Vancouver Review for my one-page history of that Vancouver institution, the Nine O’Clock gun! Okay, I took a sicky week and it’s time to get back to work! Here’s the list:

“A Short History of the Longest Undefended Border” Revised edition
This began as an 8 page mini-comic about the times that the United States has invaded Canada that was a big hit at Word Under The Street. Since I did it I’ve been learning of more nefarious American plots so and I’ve decided to expand it to a 16 or 20 page digest sized comic to improve legibility (larger type size) and include incidents I’d never heard of before, like the Aroostock war of 1838 when Maine declared war against New Brunswick!

The Armoured Car Zeppelin thingie
I’ve been commissioned by Jim Ramsey to work on another 3D card model, this time of an armoured car airship combination that he built. I’ve decided on making it into an armoured car/airship of the Don Cossacks Grey Wolf Division of the White Russian Army during the Russian Civil War. I’ve just been staring at it for a couple weeks now, thinking about what exactly I’m going to do with it… just about ready to get to work…

“The Graphic Novel”
I’ve been procrastinating on this, the graphic novel I’ve been talking about for a long time about my sister‘s car accident and eventual death, it’s about how it effected her, me and my family . I started writing and pencilling a few months ago but put it aside, I’ve got to get back to it… don’t expect this anytime soon, I’ve got 70 pages written and roughed, should be over 100 pages when it’s all said and done.

“Apples”
I’m working on a mini-comic on the dangers of apples…

"Colin’s Comics”
I have enough stories for two more 24 page collections, one of my funny animal comics including the infamous “The Fur Flies to France” from the controversial furry fandom satirical comic, “Skunk”.

Oh yeah, there’s an outside chance I’ll be writing a documentary short film about the history of underground comics but we’ll have to see if anything comes of that…

Also trying to line up interviews for the Inkstuds Radio Show with Roberta Gregory, Diana Schutz and Dennis Eichhorn amongst others…

Gotta rebuild the web site…

Is that enough for now, googly-eyed red monsters!

Chester Brown at the Writers and Readers Festival, Vancouver

Welp, I’m back… on Friday I went to the Writers and Readers Festival on Granville Island for “Worth a Thousand Words”, a talk being given by Barbara Reid and Chester Brown. The last time Chester was at the Writers and Readers Festival he was presenting a section of “Yummy Fur” where the head of Ronald Reagan appears on the head of a man’s penis, leading to a walk out by a school group from Abbotsford, B.C.‘s bible belt. I arrived, as usual, way too early, took a stroll… another lovely fall day in Vancouver. I was on the guest list (as “Cecilia Upton”) legitimately as press because I’m on the radio show, Inkstuds, but it still felt like sneaking in! I was shown to the “Reserved” section for the first time in my life, which was kind of creepy as the place filled up and I sat alone, but finally they opened up the “reserve” area for the latecomers. I’m beginning to think that reading is becoming a largely female pastime as I looked around the room and saw perhaps a half dozen men in the audience primarily populated by middle-aged women. Do boys read anymore, or has it become “totally gay”? Barbara Reid is a children’s illustrator and author, her books include “Subway Mouse” and “The Fox Walked Alone. The Illustrations are crafted in plasticine and are quite remarkable.

When Chester started his presentation on “Louis Riel” (with the use of an overhead projector) I figured I should take some notes, at least look like a proper newsman… the notes soon turned to doodles, birds mostly. Chester’s talk was illuminating, particularly how the drawing of Louis Riel changed over the series, under the influence of “Little Orphan Annie” creator Harold Grey the heads shrank and the bodies got bigger, so much so that he later went back and redrew the first third of the series to match the latter drawing style when he collected the series into a graphic novel. In Chester’s first drawings of Riel he had a big nose. He also showed some other work, a story about Huey Long that was to accompany an article in the New Yorker that was never published. He talked about the trouble he had with the art director and estate of Dylan Thomas when doing comic book covers for “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” which will be coming out from Penguin. After being interviewed (it was odd to see Chester being treated like a young readers author, if they could only see his other work I wonder what they’d say… of course Chester didn’t have an age group in mind when he wrote the book) and a question and answer session it was on to the book signing. Chester was generous with his time talking to his readers and sketching in their books. It turns out the woman sitting beside me during the presentation was “Gerbil”, a friend of Chester’s that appears in some of the autobiographical “Yummy Fur” stories! She lives in Vancouver now. We parted ways and I walked on the seawall as far as Spyglass Point but as Olympic construction has closed the seawall at Cambie I took an Aquabus to Science World and then walked home.

At war with the Turks!

I just had enough time for tea before I was picked up by Al and we drove out to Burnaby for the monthly meeting of my Trumpeter wargames club. I had a splendid time playing “Age of Reason“, 18th Centaury Austrians against Turks! The Austrian horse turned tail and withdrew when they saw the elite Turkish heavy cavalry coming at them in full armour (with barding) and lances, leaving my infantry brigade to stop them from rolling up the Austrian army’s flank. This I did rather well, when the cavalry charged I hit them with a thunderous volley from three batteries of artillery and a battalion of grenadiers inflicting over 50% casualties!

"You ain't No Dancer" #2 launch and comic jam

The next day was the book launch of “You Ain’t No Dancer” #2 at R/X Comics, which was packed as usual with the finest from the Vancouver comics scene. The monthly cartoonist jam at the Jolly Alderman afterwards was fun but not as productive as usual, never is after a signing. People just don’t seem to be in a drawing mood, or maybe it’s because they’ve already been drinking… it seemed quieter without Don King who was at a party. Don pissed is always good for a laugh. Anyway, had to get to bed at a reasonable hour (2AM) the Canzine West…

Canzine West #2 report

Ah, the second Canzine West. I didn’t make a great effort for this, only had one new mini-comic, after all those comics I released a month ago at Word Under The Street are still fairly fresh. Another nice day so I walked it carrying an impressive amount of stuff, backpack full of display units & tablecloth, pens & papers in my haversack, a portfolio stuffed with two CD cases I’ve converted to mini-comic display units with foam core and a granny cart full of over 100 comics titles! That’s TITLES, not books! They moved Canzine to the Welsh Hall so I have even further to walk, uphill! I ran into Tim the Poet outside, we went for brunch at a Vietnamese Pho place down the street. It takes me about an hour to set up. Fortunately the new venue is just as cramped and claustrophic as the time before. I was crammed between my table and a staircase in a chair that when I stood up tried to come with me. The tables were wider this time (at the first Canzine West I swear the tables were two feet wide!) and once they saw how much I’d brought they gave me a little more room… normally it 3 exhibitors to an eight foot table! I shared my table with a nice woman, a poet from Victoria, who thought I was funny… she gave me a loaf of bread. Near me was Don King, Phil, and some other cartoonists I know but it was so loud in there I couldn‘t hear them. Sometimes I couldn’t hear the customers, just wish they’d speak up! Nobody has a problem hearing me! It was busy, but for some reason not as busy as the first time and I made less money. The cramped conditions in the room meant that sometimes the customers couldn’t reach my table, I think it‘s a real problem! Now that they’re charging $5 at the door (that may have affected attendance) you’d think they could get a bigger hall. I swapped for some books, mostly with other cartoonists. By the 5th hour it was winding down, I was bored and tossing rolled up bits of green tape at Don… that maniac threw a magazine at me! Good thing he’s a bad shot! Then, all of a sudden, the crappy chair that had been punishing me all afternoon began to sink. Slowly, it buckled and I disappeared from view as I sank gently to the floor with my legs sticking out the front from underneath the tablecloth. When I could stop laughing I called out “I’m alright! Help!” The poet from Victoria pulled the table away so I could scramble to my feet, holding aloft in triumph the chair I had killed by sitting on it! I asked if I could take it home as a trophy, it was beyond repair, but they said no. This seemed to be a message to wrap things up so started slowly putting things away, the place was virtually packed up an hour early. I got a lift home from Jo Cook, I was grateful as I didn’t want to have to make the journey back… it was fun, but my back is still killing me…