Hiatus

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The western view from my southern balcony. Drawn at the end of a hard day.

It’s about seven years since I started drawing in earnest. In the first couple of years. I went through periods of immense enthusiasm and others of frustration and despair. Eventually drawing just became a thing I did. Not a job, not a hobby, just a healthy habit … like flossing. Days, even the occasional week, went by when I didn’t draw but I always settled back into the groove,
In 1999, I started a job that consumed me. Consumed me like a boa consumes a bunny. Eventually my marriage, my parenthood, my health, my instinct for self preservation were all swallowed up like Laocoön. One of the first victims was drawing. It always seemed there were more important things to do with my time. My brain was constantly roiling with anxieties, pressures, plans, demands, ideas, schedules. So much of what I learned and chronicled in Everyday Matters was locked into a steel box and buried in the attic of my mind.
After four years, I mustered the strength to escape. And soon after, I thought of drawing again.
However, I found myself in a real Catch-22 bind. I was in the process of trying to reinvent my life, to reinforce the things that had mattered to me most in my life and also to push into new creative areas. But my fear of my own cramped and crippled state was holding me back from trying. My self-esteem was low, my faith in my own abilities depleted. At first, I was anxious to even pick up my pen. But I forced myself to try anyway. The fact that my book was coming out, a book that described a me I was afraid I wasn’t any more, embarrassed me into trying.
Much to my relief, I found that I could still draw. Sure, I was a little cramped and my ability to concentrate, observe and relax were shaky, like an invalid rising from a long bed rest. But with a week or so, I started to feel like my old self again. Within a month or so, I was moving into new territory. Today, almost two years later, I see that my growth curve is back on track.
Fear is our greatest enemy. And yet it is a product of the very mind it binds. As such, it can be beaten by will — if the will is on the side of health and development.
I am never going to abandon drawing again. And even if I don’t draw for a day, a week, a month or even a year, I know it is always there for me. I can go home again.

Idol worship

crumbI was about fifteen and my idol was Eric Drooker. He was in the eleventh grade, the first boy in school to have an earring, to wear black Danskins and clogs and eyeliner and modeled himself on David Bowie. We would hang out at his place in the East Village and talk about comic books and girls and listen to Frank Zappa records. Over his bed, Eric had a bookcase full of underground comics in individual plastic sleeves. Before long, I shared his obsession with Robert Crumb.
Crumb was bold, scandalous, loved old records and voluptuous women’s bodies, hated the hypocrisy and materialism of American culture, and drew like an angel. We studied his crosshatching and adopted his spelling and his politics. It’s an obsession I’ve continued to feed for thirty years, though my Crumbiana is all dog-eared and well thumbed rather than in pristine collector’s condition.
Eric went on to publish his own graphic novels and draw covers for the New Yorker and I’m sure people keep his work in plastic bags of their own now. You can check some of it out here. My own path was more humble.
However ….when we talked to Crumb tonight (he and his wife Aline are visiting NY from their home in the South of France), Patti asked him, “What was the best butt you ever saw?” which threw him into a paroxysm of revery and he waxed eloquent about Serena Williams. To me, he said “I love Everyday Matters. Thanks so much.” and my fifteen-year-old self died and went to heaven.
Now, I wonder, is his signed copy of my book in a plastic sleeve?

Notes from a chat with Julie Dermansky

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Julie Dermansky: Journal page – European monumental architecture

Julie is one of my favorite artists and she has always been a huge source of inspiration and encouragement to me. She is so committed to making art and has a lot of experience in how one survives financially and psychically as a creative person.

JULIE: Inspiration is overrated. It’s all about discipline. There are glimmers of inspiration, when you lose touch with time and place but you can’t wait around for that. When I start working on something where I am so excited it’s like some sort of drug, I’m just alive. But the only way to get there is through discipline.
It doesn’t matter why you make art, you’ve just got to make stuff and eventually you’ll understand. I won this grant that allowed me to travel for a year. I just had to write four letters back to the foundation over that year. That was it. I was 20 and I could do whatever I wanted. So I just made drawings in my journal, drawing monumental architecture all over Europe. That was my only discipline, my commitment to do at least one drawing every single day. And because the fancy journal books were too expensive, I made my own, ripping up water color paper and tying it together. It evolved as I went. And when a book was filled, I would send it home and I had no idea what the value of what I was doing could be until I came home and saw all those journals. It came out of me with no forethought and I’d never done it that way before. It just came out that way. I didn’t worry what people would think, I just tried to be honest. And I didn’t worry about the quality of the drawing, I just went with it. I hated having a page I didn’t like so I kept working it until I liked it. Those pages are so vibrant and visceral, so raw. I don’t know if I can get back to that looseness, pure hand /eye. The more time I had the more I let go, the looser, the better it all got. That art was my reason for getting up each day. For me, travel is a lot of work. Nothing planned, figuring everything out on the fly, real work.

julie-2Julie Dermansky: Steel Gate at her studio in Deposit, New York

JULIE: I was at the art students league taking drawing and this teacher came behind me and I was making a mess like I do and he said “Ah, a lefty. But its nothing like Rembrandt,” and I was, like, “Rembrandt? Fuck you! Why would I draw like him? He was great but he already drew like that. I’m not here to do that.”
If I can recognize something you did without being told you did it, you have done something magic, you have created a visual vocabulary. Good, bad, doesn’t matter you’ve created something brand new. Everything’s been tried but no one can draw like you, unique, special. It’s not the materials, it’s you.
Everyone can multiply. You struggle at algebra but you can learn it. Everyone can draw. Everyone can do their times table. It’s just a matter of developing the skill. Drawing is a skill and a science, like learning perspective.
I love Tennessee Williams – At the beginning of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof., he says something like “Every human being is in their own jail call and all we can do to communicate is to take the thing you know the best and put it out there. The strongest part of you that everyone can interpret in their own language.” He took his internal dramas and made works of art that are in the mainstream yet retain that rawness. You don’t need to know all about his internal extremeness to enjoy his work.
I don’t know why I make the things that I do and I don’t overanalyze it. I never took formal art education classes, I learned it from art historians, composition, color theory, I learned it right from the work, not from academics.
There’s work I’ve done that was completely derivative and I wouldn’t show it. It’s not part of my vocabulary. It’s my homage to the artists I love.
If you go to a museum or a gallery and you have to read the thing on the wall to understand the art, the work is bullshit. However if you go that museum and have some sort of response to the work you can’t understand, and then you read the wall, and reading the explanation helps you develop another layer of appreciation and understanding, that makes the work more rewarding, it will be a beautiful thing.
I went to see the Calder retrospective at the Whitney when I was in second grade. And I appreciated that he is a great artist but I just didn’t like it and it bugged me and I said to myself, I can make better things than that and I knew that I would. I was that confident as a child. Then looking at Picasso, I thought how did he make so many pictures and then when I really started rolling with my own stuff, I said, Oh, if you make work everyday it’s not that hard to make that much stuff. I just compared myself to the pros and never found that conceited. In Europe, it’s very conceited to say ‘I’m an artist’ but it’s fine to say ‘I’m a painter’ or ‘I’m a sculptor’.
For me the definition of an artist is someone who has created a visual vocabulary. I may not like it. But when you look at a retrospective of an artist’s work, you can check it and look for the vision, the palette, even if you don’t respond to it. It’s not about liking but seeing quality, consistency.

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Julie Dermansky: from the Lumis Collection in the basement of the Robinson science center, Binghamton, NY

JULIE: My work isn’t really done until it’s out in the world.
My uncle is an artist and told me, never sell anything for less than say $100, or make up your own number. If it’s less than that number, then just give it away. But don’t sell it. I like that rule. Keep the value for yourself. Joseph Cornell hated to sell his stuff. Leo Castelli could never get it away from him.
Andy Warhol said make pictures you’d sell for $100 and others you’d sell for $10,000. That way you just get your work out there by having something for every budget.
Some people feel the universe should take care of you, and others get out there and hustle.
There’s always a way to make money, one way or another. I grew up around the drive to make it for its own sake but for me it was a way to be an artist. Being an artist costs money and I needed money in my pocket. I started making and selling jewelry when I was 14. In college, I would go to the dorms, not be shy, just say, “would you like to see some jewelry” and spill it on the bed. I’d make $400 or $500 which made it pretty impossible to go do some job for $6 an hour. It didn’t make any sense. My art objects always sold.
I’m not qualified to do anything so it’s lucky people have always bought my stuff.
People romanticize self-employment but it’s a heavy burden because you can’t count on regular money coming in. I’ve envy people with steady jobs on one level. I have no safety net but then again no one is 100% safe and the rug can be pulled out from under anyone.
A lot artists don’t do their homework. You have to hustle, have to keep going, Have to have faith in your work. You have to be willing to go below your level sometimes without bumming out. If you insist on selling everything for thousands and never do, you’ll end up with no money and no collectors. If you need the money, don’t feel bad, get your work out there. That’s what makes your work into a commodity, because it’s visible. I don’t know who created the rules about artistic integrity, that money is evil, that you shouldn’t make work in order to sell it, that it shouldn’t have a decorative element. And no art schools have classes about marketing. It’s frowned upon.
It’s so easy to give up, to forget to market, to forget to find a market place, to not do your homework. You’ve got to feel confident about your work, that’s a key to salesmanship. You’ve got to learn about grants and sources of funding. Artists have a knack for being self effacing and for being overly self critical instead of learning skills and promoting themselves.
The art world is very seductive and full of hangers-onners. there’s so much energy and people want to latch on to it. When I’ve had relationships that have reached the point where men say you’ve got to decided between me and the work, it’s too much and there just wasn’t a choice for me, of course, it was the work.
I can’t be something else, even if I wanted to.

To see more of Julie’s work, please visit her website.

Cross Country

trip-mapI have just returned from a cross country trip to visit some of my journaling friends.
My first stop was in Minneapolis where I spent several days with Roz Stendahl whom I first encountered through the 45 wonderful journals she kept documenting the life of her dog, Dot.

Roz is a designer, illustrator, teacher, and writer who has been enormously generous to me with her time, advice and friendship.roz
Roz has been teaching me a great deal about pens and watercolors and I was anxious to see her studio. She has every conceivable type of paint and brush, marker and pencil, not to nention 3,000 rubber stamps in a painfully orderly library. My current journal was bound by Roz with 140lb. Arches watercolor paper and a hemp canvas cover. It was terrrific to work in and I have really been enjoying working in a book with landscape proportions once again.

Spending time with such a dedicated, prolific, fastidious, creative and talented artist was a great treat. I was really happy with just about every drawing and painting I did in Minesota and it was largely due to Roz’s example. She’s so full of energy and ideas that I really wish I’d had another month to visit with her.

Our drawing trip began at a hilarious junk store called Axman filled with my favorite sort of drawing subject – intricate gizmos. I couldn’t make up my mind what to tackle until I saw Roz and her mini paint box hovering over a gas mask.
ottersNext we headed to the Minnesota zoo and turned ourselves into major attractions by drawing various critters. Roz draws standing up so I joined her and foud it quite comfortable though it was a little tricky propping up my paint box and my pub towel and all.
I’ve never drawn at the zoo before, thinking it would be impossible to capture moving animals but I discovered that they tend to assume a handful of positions and if you keep a bunch of drawings going at once you can go back and forth between them to capture the different positions. we draw a bunch of beavers in an overly chlorinated pond. One of them scratches himself with feverish determination.

Roz is a prodigious notetaker; she speckles her drawings with all sorts of observations about her subject, writing down colors, behavior, funny things passers by say to each other.
I tried to emulate her but all of my notes tend to be a string of jokes instead. But I do love the look of hand writing and drawings together.

gasmask-etcIt’s quite amazing how people just zoom past exhibits, checking off the animals they’ve seen as if it was a competition. If they linger, it’s often to say something mind-blowingly ignorant or mean, particularly the adults.
Drawing them makes me appreciate the incredible miracle theses beats are and how extraordinary that they are right here in front of me, in Minnesota.

lion1It’s so intimate to be just on the other side of a thin sheet of glass watching a slumbering lion. I was no more than a foot from him; I could have taken his big soft catcher’s mitt of a paw in my hand and felt the coarse hair of his beard were it not for the window.

After two zoos, we decided to check out some cadavers. I love natural history museums and Minneapolis’s is a pip — the specimens were posed in wonderful dioramas with wax leaves and meticulous details. I enjoyed standing close so the painted backgrounds filled my peripheral vision and I could imagine that I was standing in the forest with wild beasties. It was a nice change to draw a critter that wasn’t going to turn around and scratch its butt, lick its genitals or wander behind a tree in mid-drawing.

We were basically the only visitors looking at the taxidermy and, after drawing this sheep, I took a nine minute nap on one of the hard wooden benches. The museum also had a touchie-feelie exhibit where you could pet taxidermy and toss skulls around so we drew a few of them.skull20

My time with Roz and Dick was running out; I took pictures of her voluminous collection of hand-bound journals, we ate dinner at an Afghani restaurant, and the next morning I began the most arduous leg of my trip, flying to San Jose, connecting to Portland and then renting a car to drive 300 miles across Oregon to visit my pal, d.price.

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Here are a few more souvenirs from Minneapolis. I so envy Roz her neat and orderly studio. What you don’t see are the big computer/scanner/printer end of her studio as well as a second room crammed with journals, research materials, bookbinding stuff, and some 60 drawers full of boxes of rubber stamps. Heaven!

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Upon arriving in Portland, I began the longest drive of my life, across Oregon. I am a native NYer and don’t drive much so tackling the endless, dead straight roads of the West was a new and somewhat daunting experience.

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I broke the trip in the small town of Pendleton, bought myself a magenta cowboy shirt, and checked into a wee motel. The next morning, I headed out at 7 a.m. and promptly got my first ever speeding ticket.
From my letter to the judge:
Dear Judge Dahl:
On August 19, 2004, I received a traffic ticket (#32914) for driving over the speed limit. While I do not deny that I was traveling at the recorded speed, I would like to explain some of the circumstances to help you reach a final decision on the matter.
This was the first time I have driven in Oregon. I live in New York City, NY and was driving across state in a rented car. I had just come off Rt. 84 (where the speed limit is 65) and onto Rt. 82. The roads were fairly empty at this early hour of the morning and very straight. I have never driven in the West before on such long straight, sparsely populated roads and, after driving 200 miles from Portland in an unfamiliar vehicle, I did not gauge the appropriate speed properly. I have been driving for over twenty years and have never received a speeding ticket before, so I hope you can appreciate that this sort of driving is certainly not a habit with me. I’m sorry for any inconvenience I may have caused you, the officer or the State of Oregon but can assure you that I will never drive in this manner again.
I enclose a check for $237 but hope that you can see your way to reducing my fine.
Yours,
In a state of shock and high anxiety, I finished the drive and pulled into Dan Price’s little town, Joseph. After a restorative cup of tea, we headed over to the cemetery where d.price is the groundskeeper.
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Joseph has an interesting blend of residents. There are cowboys and construction workers like you’d expect in a small Western town. There are also several bronze foundries so a healthy art community has sprung up. There are aging hippies and young anarchist freaks. And there are a few very rich folk, some quite mysterious.
Dan’s friend Dave is one such millionaire and the source of his money is of endless intrigue to his neighbors. I proposed that he might be D.B.Cooper — he hijacked a plane in the early 1970s and then parachuted out over Oregon with the ransom and was never found. Dave collects planes and loves ultra lights. We drew this one in his hangar at the Joseph airport. davesthingOn Saturday, Dan assembled a group of local artists for a drawing get-together. We breakfasted at the Wild Flour Bakery and shared journals, then headed out to the Kooch’s farm to draw stuff. As usual, it was great to draw with like-minded folks.
It is so different here from my life. Everyone knows each other and there’s endless gossip. The pace is gentle and free and open-minded. I don’t know if I could stand small town life for long but it makes a great break.

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Last winter, Dan Price’s son, Shane, volunteered to make a sculpture of his school’s mascot. Dan offered to help. Before long, the project has mushroomed, the eagle was seven feet tall and, while Shane put in a couple of hours here and there, Dan was working ten hours a day on this massive bronze bird. Neither of them had ever welded or sculpted before and they used the welding test scraps from the school’s metal shop as their raw materials.
After several months of herculean effort, the bird was unveiled at graduation and it looks like it’s been there forever. A family of yellow jackets has taken residence in a klieg horn between the bird’s scapulae.

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The highlight of my visits to Oregon is always staying in Dan’s place, Indian River Ranch. Over the past decade or so, he has lived on a meadow on a river bank and had erected various sorts of residences there. He has lived in a teepee, in a one man tent and then built a kiva, an underground structure like a hobbit house. You enter through a knee-high door and crawl into a wood-lined burrow, a round room about seven feet in diameter. It has wall-to-wall carpeting, electricity, a sky light and is always 55 degrees, year round. I always sleep like a hibernating squirrel in there.
The meadow contains other buildings: a garage for Dan’s trike (he recently drove it 5,000 miles across country) ; a little kitchen/shower; a sweat lodge; an outhouse; and his most recent construction : a fantastic boulder covered studio where Dan publishes his zine, Moonlight Chronicles.
(If you don’t subscribe to it yet, I’d be very disappointed. It inspired me to start drawing, journaling, and get on the path I’ve been on for years. It is a mixture of adventure, philosophy and art that will make a serious impact on your life. I simply insist you subscribe right now. Come on! It’s inexpensive and wonderful! Or at least download yourself a copy of your license to be a kid).
The meadow has a lawn, a vegetable garden, and a couple of acres of wilderness. It is a Walden-esque paradise.
I have created a special gallery of images from the meadow. I hope they bring you peace.

baylerWe finish up our sketching for the day and pack up the car for the hour drive to LaGrande where Dan’s parents live, stopping en route to pick a bouquet for Joanne Price.

The Prices have a large bison ranch and I drive out with Dan’s dad to visit the herd, about a hundred of these monsters and their families. Dan’s mom is an accomplished pianist and after dinner she plays beautiful music as I draw. The serene evening is jarred by the abrupt and uninvited arrival of Dan’s ex-wife, Lynn, who, as is her wont, causes a scene. Nonetheless, I sleep well and head out early for the long, leisurely drive back to Portland. No speeding tickets this time!

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quincy

Last stop on my cross-country trip: the Mission district of San Francisco to visit my e-pal, Andrea Scher. If not for Andrea, this blog wouldn’t exist. Last December, she convinced me that I could and should start a blog of my own after I showed admiration for her site, Superhero Designs, a combination jewelry showroom, photography gallery and creative coffee klutsch.
andrea We spend a couple of days walking around her neighborhood, drawing, shooting photos (she also convinced me to buy my wonderful new Canon Rebel digital camera), and talking about art, commerce, and her time working for SARK. Andrea is wise beyond her years and has given me so much sound and illuminating advice. Like many young people and creative and sensitive people she is still looking around to define her own identity, to figure out what she should do for a living, how to make ends meet without surrendering her spirit and her creativity.
For a weird West Coast experience, she took me to Psychic Horizons for a psychic reading. An intense looking man examined my aura and told me that he saw a floating glass vial of red liquid that indicated that I had a substance abuse problem. All I could think was that perhaps the vial represented ink, the only substance I indulge in with any regularly. Then he cleaned my chakras and filled my being with an imaginary pink liquid filled with golden flecks. I felt rejuvenated and my walled was lighter by ten bucks.
There was a madonna in the psychic courtyard and, to avoid being ensared in conversation by any of the inmates, I drew and Andrea photographed her.

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“Mi Casa”

When I was in San Francisco, I stayed in a little guest house called “Balmy Casa” . It was a lovely apartment that even came with two bikes to rise up and down (puff) the hills of the Mission. My favorite thing was the street, every house of which was covered in spectacular murals. There is street art all over the neighborhood and, on one morning, I saw no fewer than four artists at work on fresh ones. New York has occasional murals but they are are rarely well done and quickly desecrated. In SF, the art makes the street glow. If I wasn’t so in love with NYC, I would definitely be packing for ‘Frisco town.
I took a few pictures of my neighbors’ digs to share with you.

Meet Prash

chapel-1Every so often I see work that makes me say, “Well, yes, that’s what I’m trying to do but some thing seems to have interfered between my brain and the page.” Prashant Miranda’s journals always make me feel that way.
He emails me tantalizing glimpses from them every so often and I get quite green with envy. His watercolors are so loose and bright and expressive.
Prash came to Toronto from India some five years ago. He says: “if I was to describe myself…i’d say that I am a scribe. I keep sketchbooks all the time, it’s moved from sketchbooks to sketchboxes…with loose pages, and now they are leather pouches that I stitch myself.”
Prash has sent me journal pages he made in India: on his recent visit to Quilon, his childhood home on the south west coast of India, and of the lighthouse in Tangeserri; to Benares, the holy city in the north; and to Goa. And also scenes from Canada, his new home: his solo camping trip on an island in the Moose River; and, most recently, an old sedan being being shot in his neighborhood for the Russell Crowe movie, Cinderella Man.
Prash worked for Cuppa Coffee, a lovely animation studio where he’s developing a kids’ show called Ted’s Bed. The series looks to be an updated version of Nemo in Slumberland and the website is full of watercolored postcards with beautiful calligraphy in Prash’s signature style.
If you’d like to know more about Prash, drop him a line.

I am.

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I live on the earth. I am an earthling.
I eat meat and vegetables. I am an omnivore.
I have a wife. I am a husband.
I have a son. I am a dad.
I scratch my ass. I’m an ass-scratcher.
I walk. I’m a walker.
I go to movies. I’m a moviegoer.
I read. I am a reader.
I take photos. I am a photographer.
I play the guitar. I am a guitarist.
I write. I am a writer.
I draw. I am an artist.

Holy Roller Novocaine

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Most mornings, after breakfast but before we head out for the day, Jack and I flip on our amps, grab our axes and fire it up. One of us plays rhythm, a standard 12-bar blues (E,A,B7) and the other solos, usually with the drive turned up for maximum distortion effect. Fortunately, we have thick floors and forgiving neighbors and for some reason Patti generally ignores or applauds our efforts. After ten minutes or so, we return our Fenders to their stands and go out the door, our fingertips and ear drums still vibrating, adrenaline still coursing through our arms and legs.
After I drop Jack off at the bus to camp, I walk the twenty or so blocks to the office, listening to my iPod. These days my absolute favorite is a new band called The Kings of Leon, three brothers and a cousin from Tennessee who kick serious ass. They are a sleazy, boozy, brawling blend of 70s country rock, satanic heavy metal, surf, and punk, and they channel the spirits of early Stones and Lou Reed and the Strokes , (all of whom I have always loved), and Tom Petty, Eagles, Skynrd, and Zeppelin, (none of whom I’ve paid much attention to) .
Though I think I would have always dug this band, these days I find I can really hear them,. I am aware of each note; I can feel the separation of the instruments; sense what Caleb and Matthew Followill are doing on their guitars; take it all apart and put it back together; and it’s all due to the few months Jack and I have spend whacking our own geetars.
Over the past couple of years, drawing has done the same for my appreciation for art, focusing my likes but quelling my dislikes, broadening my mind and letting me see what I would have formerly walked past or dismissed. I feel increasingly less intimidated by the heavy intellectualism of a lot of contemporary art and get a lot more pleasure whenever I’m in a museum.
You don’t have to be a musician to love music or an artist to love art or a writer to enjoy a novel, but when you try to make it yourself, even in the most rudimentary way, it enhances what you get out of really great Art. In the end, we are all Artists. Some of us have long hair, greasy fu-manchus, and peg leg jeans while others just back up nine-year-olds.

Summer past

During the summer of the Iran-Contra hearings, my wife and I rented a remote farmhouse in Delhi, upstate New York. Each day, we would lie on inflatable rafts in the pond as our dog hunted for frogs in the reeds. Each evening, we would barbecue and play gin rummy. Each night, the terror returned. The darkness was impenetrable. The silence was unbroken but for the occasional creak from the old house or the vermin skittering in the walls. We lay awake, clutching the counterpane, as the same lone pickup rattled back and forth across the county road beyond our front door. We whispered to each other: Gein, Gacy, Bundy, Berkowitz, Bianchi, Buono… In the morning sunshine, those fears seemed absurd. But finally, unable to get a decent night’s sleep, we cut our vacation short.

That Christmas an item appeared in the Times. A serial killer had been arrested in Delhi. Operating in the area for years, he had been particularly active the previous summer, burying six prostitutes and hitchhikers in the farmyard directly next door to the one we had rented. The following summer, we went to Disney World.

Published in The Morning News.

Change Your Underwear Twice a Week

underwearrelease
My third book is the first and only history of [beep] educational filmstrips. You remember them [beep] from when you were a kid, right? No? Well maybe  this little tour will jog your memory.

The book is interesting, funny and crammed with thousands of images from rare, vintage strips. Selected by Amazon as one of the top ten humor books of the year.

Buy a copy now!

Fishing in Manhattan

fishing in manhattanIt’s late and I’m exhausted from a long day which culminated in something a little tedious but exciting: revising a new piece I’ve done for the Op-Ed page of the NY Times. It’ll run this Sunday.