Austin Kleon – Page 562

AND I COME HOME TO FIND…

Saturday, September 30, 2006

Got home from Chicago late last night to find my contributor’s copies of BCR #4 in the mail. The issue looks good, and I’m really pleased with the way the comic turned out. (And I have to admit that I still feel goofily giddy seeing my comic in actual print…)

If you live in Cleveland, you can get copies at Mac’s Backs, and while you’re there, you can also get the Fall Issue of Virginia Quarterly Review, which features another segment of Art Spiegelman’s new memoir, and a new story by Dan! The editors at VQR have ridiculously good taste: the fiction issue has a cover design by Chris Ware, which is pretty clever.

I have a ton of stuff to write about this week (I’m still processing our trips to Pittsburgh and Chicago), but until then, enjoy your weekend, and rock out to Spoon frontman, Britt Daniel. I’ll be at the library, working.

THERE WILL BE SNACKS!

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

“…we’re gonna live on our wits
we’re gonna throw away survival kits,
trade butterfly-knives for adderal
and that’s not all
ooh-ooh, there will be snacks!”

– Andrew Bird – “Tables And Chairs” [live MP3]

* * *

Well, like I said, the posting will be pretty slim this week: we got back from Pittsburgh yesterday, and tomorrow we fly out to Chicago. We’ll be back on Saturday.

If you’re in Cleveland, come get some free pizza! 6 PM! Tonight! If not, enjoy this awesome Andrew Bird live show.

DOODLES

Friday, September 22, 2006

“Doodling is a 20th-century form….You had the rise of bureaucracy and meetings and the demise of the secretary who would take notes for you.”

– Sina Najafi, editor of Cabinet Magazine

– doodle by Richard Nixon

Doodling is also, of course, the result of cheap and plentiful pens and paper.

A chronic doodler myself, I’m fascinated by the idea that you could psychoanalyze people by their doodles.

Kurt Vonnegut called Nixon “the first president to hate American people and all they stand for.” His doodles don’t seem to render him any better. I mean, isn’t that doodle just terrifying?

Check out other doodles by ex-presidents.

SIGNS OF ENCOURAGEMENT

Thursday, September 21, 2006

There are no mistakes.

I’ve been dicking around with India ink and a Japanese brush, and it’s been really difficult to get used to, so I made this sign to put up over my workspace to remind me to keep going. (It started out as a mistake — spilled ink!)

I like signs like this. I have a couple of them over my desk. One is the old Isak Dineson by way of Ray Carver quote, “Every day, without hope, without despair.” The other is Joyce’s “silence, exile, and cunning,” modified with the word “generosity.” (My old teacher gave me that one.) The third is “Apply Ass To Chair,” (also from my old teacher), but somehow that one got covered up with a James Kochalka comic. Oh well.

Anybody else out there have signs like this you put above your desk?

The one problem with signs is you have to mix them up: otherwise they become just like wallpaper, and lose their effect.

If you want to print out your own, here’s a nice big pdf of the sign above.

GENIUS!

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

“…genius involves the original formation of a new style….it ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.”

– Jack Kerouac, “Are Writers Made or Born?”

George Saunders’ response to his MacArthur Genius Grant? “I feel smarter already.” Dig also: David Macaulay, whose The Way Things Work was one of my favorites when I was a kid.
You know who else should be thrown a big handful of money? The National. Last night I listened to Alligator and Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers on the turntable back-to-back.

Those guys destroy.