…I did not meet my senator, but I did take some pictures.

Jaded Ibis had toys.

This reading was a lot better than it smelled.Oh, look! It’s the girl from the puzzle!

Justin Sirois explains to Debra Diblasi how RED DEAD REDEMPTION made him “teary.”

“Hey! I’ve got a Publishing Genius of an idea!”

“Wait. You don’t mean we should?”

“That’s right. Let’s stand up on this rock and invite writers to come read at this zoo!”

Mike Young: “I’ve got this thing about food. I could yell it.”Luckily Blake had this thing about goats and James is really into goats.

And here’s Michael Kimball who happened to be doing a reading at the zoo that afternoon.

Amy is more aware of the camera than Sasha.

Now Sasha trumps Lincoln in camera awareness.

Hawking Gigantics.

Great trip for Greg. He got a new job.

Tim prepares to read with me, despite the lurking presence of a mime named “Davis.”

The Hoyas won. By two. Should have been by more.

Lots of drawing these days. Lots of teaching and dadding. Trip to Denver. Spring. Rain – sun – rain – sun again. Watching the Mets win ballgames – lots of them. Lots of time far from my computer. This is a good thing. But this website need to have the weeds cleared. I’m going to start posting fragments of the drawings I’m working on – so those will start appearing soon. Until then – some good things going on:

First, we got Lily Hoang reading over at Apostrophe Cast. That’s 20 minutes well spent for anyone. (If you’re not sure, send me an email and I can convince you.)

The second annual Chapbook Festival is happening at the CUNY Grad Center. It looks like a lot of fun. Good people will be there – M.C. Hyland and Adam Robinson included (and I’m supposed to be reading, if we can work out the times) – Ana Božičević is helping to organize.

I’m drawing a new comic – with colored pencils. Using a set I think I got for my twelfth birthday. Getting back to my rooooots.

Oh, and Greg Gerke and I will be announcing the new bi-monthly series that we’re running at Soda here in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. So as not to confuse anyone, we’re calling it Soda Series. It’s going to be four writers having a conversation (rather than simply reading at you), every other month. The first on will be in May. More on that in a few days.

Tomorrow Lydia Conklin is having a party to celebrate her new comics and her love of dogs. On Friday, Lara Glenum’s coming into town to read for Amy and Ana’s Stain of Poetry Series. On Sunday, I think we’re going to eat some sausage from this place. Good time to live in NYC.

What else? The Mets are in first place. Don’t know how that happened.

Just got my contrib copy of Pear Noir! (issue 3) in the mail. Really excited about this one. Go here to see the names. Just read Lily Hoang’s “Inivisible Women” selections. She reinvents Calvino’s cities. Really interesting to read someone doing a transliterative project like this, as I’ve been doing a lot of this recently myself, particularly with Bernhard. These pieces from Lily are really beautiful. I’m looking forward to seeing the rest.

The other reason I’m excited about the new Pear Noir! is that they did a great job printing my comic, “My Brother’s Shoe.” Not many lit. journals are very excited about publishing comics longer than ten pages, but they were kind enough to give me a nice chunk of real estate. And, as a comics artist, you always cringe when you first look at your work printed by someone else (especially when it involves a lot of gray tones like this one). They did a terrific job. Go get your copy of Pear Noir! here.