LEMON THORNS : Ancient Tattoo Technologies

     On March 25th I posted this: LEMON THORNS
     On May 23rd I was contacted by a "Prehistoric Archaeologist" in Tennessee who is researching "ancient and indigenous tattoo technologies." He had stumbled across my blog post, and asked if I'd be willing to prune and send to him a few short branches with big thorns. I agreed, of course, because that's a really unusual request, and sounds like interesting research.

Lemon tattoo
(Not to be confused with ancient tattoos made using lemon thorns as tattoo implements.)

     He is doing experiments replicating and testing non-metal tattoo implements, to create a library of microscopic use wear patterns that tattooing leaves behind on different tools. He hopes to use the data in the future to help identify tattoo implements in archaeological collections.

Tattooed lemon
(Also not to be confused with ancient tattoos made using lemon thorns as tattoo implements.)

     Apparently there are a bunch of indigenous groups in Southeast Asia that historically used lemon thorns to tattoo. Other groups also used buckthorn, black locust, and osage orange. So if you have any of these trees with big thorns, go ahead and try giving yourself a homemade tattoo! Just use ball point pen ink. Isn't that what they use in prison?
     On second thought-- don't do that.
     Anyway, this archaeologist has been unable to assemble a collection of really big lemon thorns, and I will be surprised if he doesn't consider our tree's thorns "big." They're, like, 3 inches long.

Lemon NECK tattoo! Yikes! Why?!!
(Found this while googling lemon tattoos)

MOTHER'S DAY 2013


     Just thought I'd share the little illo I did on my mom's Mother's Day card envelope. That's my mom pulling the wagon. My mom is the very best mom ever. :)
     I needed little boxes for her gifts, and I got crafty. So I'm sharing that, too.

I actually made the box on the left out of vellum card stock. The one on the right is "re-purposed."

Spray paint and doilies!

The bottoms of the boxes turned out really cool, I think.

NOTE TO SELF: There is no way for a guy to use or even mention "doilies" without seeming like a total nancy. I'm okay with that, but it seems like there should be some manlier alternative term for them. 

     Tomorrow morning my husband and I are taking our two wonderful mothers out to breakfast together, all four of us. That's our tradition. We are very lucky to have these two special ladies in our lives.
     Then after breakfast he takes his mom to the movies, and my mom and I go where the wind takes us. Maybe we'll do a craft, maybe we'll go shopping, maybe we'll play a game. We cannot be pinned down.

GALLERY 999 at Bats Day Black Market 2013


Welcome, foolish mortals...

The spooooooky entrance to the gallery

     In case you didn't know, every year there's a semi-official "Goth Day" at Disneyland where all the black-garbed, ratted-haired, and bat-loving people converge on the park. It's called Bats Day At the Fun  Park. There's a small convention held nearby called Bats Day Black Market, where you can buy all sorts of gothy clothes, accessories, etc. I've been there twice with my comic book publisher SLG and it's always fun and friendly.

A longshot of the gallery entrance, with my Aunt Wanda's spoooooky little blond head in the foreground

         This year the originator of the event, Noah Korda, invited me to participate in a group art show called Gallery 999. (Get it? Because the Haunted Mansion has 999 happy haunts. Duh.) Anyway, the idea is to create original artwork in any medium that pays tribute to the Haunted Mansion, which is obviously every good goth's favorite ride. (In my day in my 'hood we called ourselves "Deathrock," and the term "Goth" didn't pop up until years later when everybody's granny became aware of Marilyn Manson)

"VADER & PALPATINE, SITTING IN A TREE..." by yours truly

     Back to the art show. Noah said he wanted to put a twist on the art show this year because the Black Market happened to be the same day as "Star Wars Day." So our goal was to create artwork that paid tribute to the Haunted Mansion AND Star Wars, by somehow combining the two worlds.
     For some reason one of the first ideas that popped into my head was Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine having to share one of the Haunted Mansion "Doom Buggies," and it being all awkwardly cozy. So that's what I went with. Because it kept making me giggle.

"MANSION WOOBIE" an enhanced detail of VADER & PALPATINE, by yours truly

     Then, as usual, I ended up drawing something I really liked way at the bottom side edge of the picture, where you'd almost miss it. Which is why I used Photoshop to isolate and enhance it and make it its own thing. Mansion Woobie!

This thing was walking around on stilts and scared the shit out of me, but I like it. Check out the horned head in the foreground!

     My husband Anthony and I went to the event with our friend Matt, my mom, stepdad, and Aunt Wanda. I'm like Honey Boo-Boo-- I come with a family entourage. But we're not as annoying, and don't have as many chins.

Our friend Matt and a foxy lady

ARTS & CRAFTS


     This is just some in-progress stuff on my art table right now. I liked the juxtaposition of things. I love the fun mess of the process, when you've got all this stuff out and you're still trying to figure out which things to use, which elements to edit out, but for the time being it looks crazy and exciting.

PANTS

     I would like to take a few minutes to discuss my pants. And pants in general.
     I don't like pants, as a rule. If I could get away with it, I'd wear shorts all year 'round.
     Unfortunately for me, my workplace "strongly urges" us to dress professionally at all times, which means I NEVER wear shorts or even JEANS to work. Plus I have to wear a TIE. Shiiiiiit, man.
     My work pants are all wearing thin-- figuratively, and literally. So I finally had to shop for some new stupid unflattering work pants. It was a degrading, depressing experience, which reminded me of all the reasons I hate pants in the first place.

  •      They remind me that I'm FAT.
  •      They're too warm.
  •      I only wear them to work, so it feels like they should be provided free of cost. But they're NOT.
  •      They fit weird. Which reminds me of how weirdly-shaped I am. (Apparently)

     Take the new pair of pants I'm wearing today, for example. They're very snug in the legs and thighs, yet gape like pantaloons around the waist. I'm wearing a belt, but it creates weird sagging and bunching of fabric that I can't figure out how to distribute more attractively.
Do I look like Little Nemo and his clowny friend, in their weird pantaloons?

     This is not even just because of the whole skinny pants craze. I frequently had this same problem BEFORE the skinny pants invasion. It makes me feel like these pants are designed for a different species or something, like trying to wrestle myself into a pair of dog pants or something. Are my legs and thighs so disproportionately huge? And why does the waist droop? The baggy waist makes NO sense, because I am definitely a little fat most of the time. But I don't see how my legs and thighs can be so much FATTER than my waist! WTF?
     I worry about my pants on a daily basis. Are they too tight? Too droopy? Does my shirt bunch funny where it's tucked in? I've gone so far as to position a magnetic mirror on the metal cabinet in my office so that I can surreptitiously check my waist, crotch, and butt, to make sure everything is holding the line. Zipper up, etc?
     It's tiring. I need a vacation from pants.
   

IN THE DREAMHOUSE : Gummi Bear Cell Phone

     I dreamed my friend Laura picked me up on my lunch hour and drove us to the beach, where we went our separate ways, planning to meet up later. We were supposed to stay in contact with our cells, but I had this weird new cell phone that was rubbery, nubbly, and shaped like a big Gummi Bear. The keyboard was sort of virtual, in that there were no real keys, or markings to tell you where each letter was, you just had to imagine a keyboard wrapped around the body of the Gummi Bear and "type" across the surface of it. Obviously, that's very difficult and inexact, and I kept ending up with these totally garbled messages. I had to keep deleting and starting over.
Imagine this about the size of a chihuahua, and nubbly.

     The Gummi phone had a lens in its chest that would project images as holograms in mid-air, but the problem was everyone else could see them, too, and for some reason Laura kept texting me dirty pictures. I was horrified and embarrassed, and kept trying to turn the Gummi device OFF.
     Then I dreamed about a woman with an elephant-themed zine. There wasn't much to that part.
     The best part of the night was a dream in which I was perusing the aisles of a toy store. I have lots of toy store dreams. This one was very Lego-centric, with plastic facades for Lego playsets, such as a castle, and a dinosaur rock mountain complete with rubber dinosaurs and giant insects.
This isn't exactly what the playset in my dream looked like, but it's close.
I would have pooped my pants over this playset when I was a kid!

     Anthony was with me, and for some reason he had these boxes with him that were filled with his own vintage toys, which were fragile and valuable. Some dumb toddler boys kept trying to get into the boxes, and Anthony kept having to very politely remove their hands and get their attention away from the boxes. Their mother wasn't paying any attention to that. Even in my dreams, parents let their stupid kids run rampant.

POSSUM-GO-ROUND

     Last night around 9:30 or so, little Esther the chihuahua started barking all bat-shit crazy in the back yard. And it was her high-pitched "I'm gonna kick your ass!" bark. She was racing back and forth all along the wall between us and our neighbors. Their dog was barking, too, so at first I thought it was just the dogs being bitchy with each other.
     But she wouldn't stop. I went to the door and tried to call her in, but she was in a frenzy. She began concentrating her ferocious efforts in the far corner, underneath an overhang of honeysuckle, where there's a maze of branches by the back fence. Great place for something to hide. I was pretty sure I heard something hissing loudly.
     After calling her repeatedly to no effect, I was annoyed by the sound of my own voice, and imagining our neighbors saying, "Why doesn't that idiot just go OUT there and GET that stupid little dog?!"
     So I grabbed a flashlight and took off toward the far corner of the back yard. I expected to see a cat, but  when I got close I could see it was a gross baby POSSUM Esther had cornered back there. All pale and red-eyed, frozen in silent terror on the lowest crossbar of the wooden fence.
Not the actual possum, but pretty much like it. Imagine this at night,
with an excited chihuahua and a scared homosexual.
     I HATE possums. Not in theory, but in practice. In theory they're just these poor little animals that we've displaced from their natural habitat. In practice they're freaky and alarming-looking, and prone to hissing and scratching and biting. Naked tails, pointy snouts, razor teeth... YUCK.
     I crept carefully into the corner, underneath the twisting honeysuckle branches, trying to hold onto the flashlight and grabbing at the dog, but trying not to spook the dog so much that it chomped the baby possum, and trying not to spook the possum so much that it chomped the dog. God knows what viruses & germs that possum was carrying.
     Most of the time it was so awkward that I couldn't really see the possum as I was grabbing for Esther, the light bouncing around off of snarled branches and foliage. I was terrified that at any minute I would accidentally grab the possum, or that it would leap at my face, or that its MOTHER was maybe hiding in the bush and was about to attack my face or my dog.
     I really hope none of our neighbors were listening to me hyperventilating and saying something like, "Goddammit goddammit goddammit gross-gross-gross godDAMMIT!!!" over and over again.
     I was finally able to snatch Esther up and dash back to the house. She did NOT want to leave her possum post, so it was a struggle. When I got her into the house I quickly closed the back door. So Esther raced straight around into the laundry room and back out her doggy door, and we had to go through the whole thing AGAIN. (Hence the title, "POSSUM-GO-ROUND.")
     Dog barking, possum hissing, me grabbing Esther's hind-quarters and dragging her out of the honeysuckle, lugging her kicking and yapping back into the house, yelling at Anthony to put the cover down over her doggy door...
Imagine this, but with chihuahuas and possums...

     An ideal version of myself would have gone back out and tried to rescue the possum, maybe kept it in a shoebox with a little blanky and some water and food until the next day. But the poor little thing creeped me out, and I was scared of its claws and teeth and nakedness.
     I sat there on the couch getting my breath back, and feeling bad that over the course of the night a cat would probably eat that baby possum, because I am NOT the ideal version of myself that would have rescued it.
     Eventually Fox's "Animation Domination" numbed my brain, and I fell asleep.
   

LEMON THORNS


     Did you know some lemon trees have giant wicked thorns? I didn't, until I was rooting around under our lemon tree yesterday, picking up the fallen fruit so our dog wouldn't eat it and barf everywhere. I leaned close to the tree and felt something sharp scrape roughly up my forehead and into my hairline. Got myself a big ol' red bloody scratch. Lucky I didn't gouge my eye out.
     I yelped, recoiled, and peered at the offending branch, noticing for the first time since we moved in 5 months ago the giant obvious thorns. Some of them about 2 inches long. Seriously.
     Anthony hadn't noticed the thorns, either, which made me feel a little less stupid. Usually he notices every detail of everything.
This isn't our actual tree, but this is what they look like. I found this pic online.
I don't want to give our tree the satisfaction of taking pictures of it, since it might like the attention. Stupid tree.

THE DEVIL

     So this morning I was reading THE EXORCIST in the bathtub, in particular this really scary part where the demon is revealing itself to Father Karras, and all of a sudden TWO SHOWER CURTAIN HOOKS CAME UNDONE AND DROOPED DOWN!!!
     They're the S-hook kind, not the ring kind, so the effect was of two curved DEVIL HORNS suddenly gazing down toward me where I lay vulnerable in the tub with my Kindle. And I probably shouldn't even have that near water, but I did. I do.
     Why did those two hooks suddenly disengage and droop down? Was it... THE DEVIL?! Revealing itself to me, the way it was revealing itself to Karras in the book?
     I was like, "Oh my god, what should I do? Should I do something?" But it seemed like it would have taken an awful lot of energy to stand up and fix the curtain, so I opted to just continue lying there with the devil staring at me.
     I soon forgot all about it.

     I'm doing illustrations for a friend's book, plus I'm getting ready to do some artwork for a group show in May (gallery999), so naturally I had to get sidetracked and do some weird stuff that has nothing to do with either of those things.
     First I gave a makeover to a scuffed-up brown outdoor bunny using glitter paint and spray paint:
He is now an indoor bunny.

The pattern on his back allows him to hide, entirely camouflaged, in my art room.

     And then I drew this doodle:

MAYA'S APOCALYPSE

     I wasn't worried about the supposed apocalypse happening December 21st this year, based on the "end" of the Mayan calendar.
     BUT... check this out:
     That's the My Little Pony calendar I have behind my desk at work. The kids love it, of course, even the boys (bronies), and a girl named Maya had asked me if she could HAVE the calendar when the year was over. I said sure, and jotted a note on the calendar, on the last day of work before we leave for winter break, so I'd remember to take it down and give it to her.
     Look at that. Our last day of school before break happens to be the 21st! The day of the Mayan Apocalypse!! And the girl's name is MAYA!!! Is it just a coincidence? I thought nothing of it until recently, when there's been more and more talk about December 21st and the Mayan calendar. I suddenly looked at that date square and was like, "Oh, HELL no..."
     What if "Maya" is really an earthly avatar of the Mayan Apocalypse? What if she's merely masquerading as a student who frequents the library, and I'm the only one who even SEES her?! What if on the 21st she comes into the library like usual, and then sheds her earthly form and turns into a Mayan Goddess of Destruction? Like Kali, only with turquoise and, like, leopards or something?
     Oh, lordy lordy.....

VEGAS VALLEY COMIC BOOK FESTIVAL : Tommy's Twelve

     The first weekend of November (yeah, over a month ago and I'm just now getting around to posting this) we drove to Vegas for the Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival, which is part of the annual Vegas Valley Book Festival. The Comic Book Festival was a one-day event on Saturday, November 3rd at the Clark County Library and its environs.

     The Clark County Library had invited me to be a special guest, along with Aaron Alexovich and Drew Rausch, at our publisher SLG's booth. Drew and Aaron have a dark and Lovecraftian new hardback graphic novel called Eldritch.
     It's like, really cool, and they drew a pretty picture in my copy just for me. Here it is:
Drew drew, and Aaron... aaroned.

     I was promoting The Royal Historian of Oz, Skelebunnies, Stitch, and my newest lil' cutie, The Weirdling Woods. (see THIS post)
     The festival organizers had also asked me to present 2 one-hour-long writer's workshops, and even though I feel like I barely know what I'm doing, I said sure. Confidence, bitches!
      The plan was to limit each writer's workshop to 12 participants, who had to sign up beforehand at the festival registration booth. About 15 minutes before the first workshop, Anthony and I swung by the registration booth to check out the sign-up sheets. I was fully expecting either NOBODY, or just a few people interested. To my surprise it was actually over-filled, and I ended up with about 18 participants for the first session.
     Ever the pessimist, I thought, "Well, I'm sure it's just because people really want writer's workshops, not because any of these people have ever heard of ME before." Which is totally fine, of course! Really. But then during the first session when I had people introduce themselves and say what they're interested in writing, a woman with two teens said, "Actually, we're just here because they're both big fans of your work, and we just wanted the chance to get to meet you!"
     So that was a really nice surprise.
     For the second session, the festival organizers tried to keep to the 12-person limit, and we only ended up with one or two more than that. They said they had to turn a bunch of people away, because there was so much interest in writer's workshops!
     In case you're wondering what I did for a whole hour, I used a PowerPoint to introduce myself and show my various works. I had everyone introduce themselves by name, what they want to write, and one thing they hoped to learn in the workshop. (Don't worry, I allowed shy people to "pass.")
     After sharing my own experiences regarding the creative process, and how I personally ended up getting published, I then talked about the importance of dialogue, particularly in comics. I described how a lot of my ideas begin as characters that form in my head and start talking. Dialogue is usually the first thing I start writing for a new project. I love that stage in the creative process when these different personalities are forming and having conversations, and it's like you don't even have to "try," you just let them speak and try to catch it all on paper.
     I reminded them that when we're kids, we ALL do this, EVERY DAY. It's what our childhoods are made up of, mostly. Inventing personalities and dialogue and adventures for our Star Wars figures, our Transformers, our Barbies, Smurfs, Monchichis, whatever. And it's EASY when you're a kid. Do you remember ever sitting down with a pile of action figures and sparkly accoutrements and saying, "Uh... I don't know what to say... I don't know what kind of story to tell..."
     As we get older, we tend to start losing that ability to freely play and create. Writers need to retain that, or to recapture it.
     So then I bossily guided them in a dialogue-writing exercise in which I passed around a big canvas bag full of all sorts of toy figures, and had each person select two. I gave everyone a sheet of lined paper and a pencil, and told them they had 5 minutes to write a dialogue between the two characters. They weren't going to have to show it to anyone, either, it was just for THEM. For FUN. I suggested they look at the characters and try to figure out what their individual personalities might be like, and how they might relate to each other. Maybe they didn't even like each other.
     I loved seeing the participants pair the Creature From the Black Lagoon with a pirate, or a dinosaur with a Bratz Baby. And almost all of them wrote like crazy, not wanting to stop until I called time, and even then hurrying to finish a thought. It looked like fun.
     I think I even said, "Language is a writer's toybox." Later I thought, Wow, that's such a hippy-dippy douchey kind of thing to say! But I did mean it, and I wasn't even smoking weed.

THESE TWO HAVE A LOT TO SAY TO EACH OTHER.

THESE TWO... WELL, THEY OBVIOUSLY HAVE A HISTORY.

COMIC BOOK SIGNING WITH DAME DARCY

Dame Darcy and Tommy Kovac at The Comic Bug, 2006
     I was going through some old files, and found this picture of Dame Darcy looming balefully at my side from a November 2006 signing at The Comic Bug, in Manhattan Beach. It was a group comic book signing featuring Dame Darcy, Crab Scrambly (not pictured, he's shy), and Tommy Kovac, which is me. I was promoting Wonderland and Autumn, as you can see from the table display.
     Darcy wore a giant gold ribbon in her hair, played guitar and banjo, and chattered about raw food recipes. When she found out my husband is diabetic, she insisted that she'd have to have us up to her house in L.A. and make a raw foods dinner for us because we would love it. Of course that never happened. But it was exciting to talk about anyway, in that way you do when everyone involved knows it won't really happen because you're all too busy and self-involved but if you WEREN'T that way, you'd maybe be actual friends. Maybe.
     A week or two after the signing, there was a terrible fire at The Comic Bug, which you can see an after shot of HERE. As far as I know, I had nothing to do with that.
     So, yeah, this happened 6 years ago.

IN THE DREAMHOUSE : Teacups with George and Rene

Not quite what it looked like in my dream, but actually cooler. This is the Teacup ride at Disneyland Paris, and doesn't it look awesome?!

     I had a dream that I was riding the Teacups with George C. Scott and Rene Auberjonois, and some girl from Ohio.
 
     It was kind of an anxiety dream, because at the time I was riding the teacups I really should have been packing back at a hotel Anthony and I were staying in. I've stayed at that hotel before in my dreams, it seems to be a consistent part of my mind's dream geography.
     We were there for some sort of comic book convention. It was the last day, and we were going to just get up and drive home, but I slept through my alarm and woke up at 3pm, totally missing checkout time, which was at noon. For some reason, we were staying in separate rooms, and of course MY room was a shocking mess of trash and clutter. Food wrappers, coffee filters with loose grounds lying all over the floor, photographs, bags of comic books and toys I'd been buying at the convention all over, bags upended and contents strewn. Clothes lying all over the room in heaps and tangles. I stared at my mess in despair, then began frantically trying to get it all cleaned up and packed.
     When I first woke up and realized the situation, I couldn't remember Anthony's cell number, and was panicking because I needed to call him and wake him up, too. I had a new cell phone and couldn't figure out how to use the contacts/address book, I just kept pushing buttons and trying to find Anthony's info in the stupid phone. Don't know why it didn't occur to me that I could just walk down the hall and bang on his door. Then I realized that the key to my room also fit his door, and it was in my pocket the whole time.
     In the way dreams work, despite the panic and anxiety about getting packed and leaving, and getting Anthony up and moving, I ended up wandering off to the Teacups, which were not affiliated with Disneyland, and were instead part of a themepark/carnival connected to the hotel.
     A friend of ours from Ohio was getting onto the ride with George C. Scott and Rene Auberjonois, and I just had to say goodbye to her, since Anthony and I were having to rush off.
     I jumped into their teacup, excusing myself for the interruption, but explaining how we'd woken up late, missed checkout, and needed to get the hell out of Dodge and on our way home. George and Rene were very nice about it.
     The girl from Ohio was excited because she was planning to move out to California where all the cool stuff is, and then we'd get to hang out more. I acted excited about that prospect, but was thinking that she would probably be annoying in longer doses.
     Before I could finish saying my goodbyes to the girl from Ohio, the ride started. George and Rene didn't seem to want to spin the wheel and make us go faster. I offered to do the spinning, but they hemmed and hawed. They're pretty old, you know.
     I woke up before the ride was over.

ERZSEBET AND THE DIZZY DREIDEL


     (I wrote this silly little story for a friend who was bemoaning the overabundance of Christmas stuff, and the lack of Chanukah festoonery at work. I didn't feel like making the giant menorah with blinking battery-operated lights as she suggested, so I just wrote this instead.)
Erzsebet and the Dizzy Dreidel

by Tommy Kovac

Erzsebet was a good little Jewish girl, but she had dreidel problems. Her dreidel complained, like, ALL the time. As soon as she would start to play the dreidel game, and give the dreidel a whirl, it would moan, “Oy! I’m dizzy! I feel nauseous! It’s terrible!” So poor Erzsebet would have to gently stop the dreidel and lay it aside where it could recover.
You can imagine how difficult this made the eight nights of Chanukah. Talk about a buzz kill.
When her cousins came over to celebrate and play the dreidel game, Erzsebet gulped nervously. She thought maybe it could work if she spun her dreidel slowly and carefully. She oh-so-gently gave it a mild twirl.
“Ach! My head! I can’t tell up from down, left from right! You hate me so much you want to torture me like this?”
Erzsebet grabbed the dreidel and placed it on its side as her cousins laughed, clutching their stomachs with mirth. One of the boys scooped up the gelt, and Erzsebet did not even complain. I deserve to lose, for having such a difficult dreidel, she thought.
“Erzsebet,” moaned the dreidel woozily from where she cupped it in her hand. “Can I help it if I have vertigo, or maybe an inner ear infection? I consulted a medical encyclopedia, and I think I might have several different syndromes…”
The girl soothed the dreidel, and left her cousins to their pile of ill-gotten goods. She wandered into the kitchen where her mother was fixing potato latkes, and leaned against her side. The woman draped one arm around the girl, and squeezed her shoulder comfortingly.
“That dreidel,” her mother said with pursed lips and a raised eyebrow. “More trouble than it’s worth.”
Erzsebet took the dreidel into her room and closed the door.
“Dreidel, what if you close your eyes when I spin you? If you can’t see everything twirling around, maybe you won’t feel dizzy!”
“You want I should try that? After what I’ve already endured?”
The girl nodded her head solemnly, pleading with her big brown eyes.
“Not the big eyes! I can’t take the big eyes. Go ahead. Spin me and I’ll try it.”
So Erzsebet positioned the dreidel on its point, saying, “Okay, on the count of three, close your eyes!”
“One… Two… THREE!” and she gently, steadily gave it a twirl.
“AAAAAAAEAUGHYAYAYAYA!”
The dreidel howled even more than before, wobbling and gabbling about the nausea and the horrible vertigo.
“I need this like I need a hole in my head!” cried the dreidel, finally flopping onto its side.
Erzsebet froze, a sly grin creeping over her face.
“Dreidel, I think I have an idea!”
She snapped the handle off the top of the little dreidel.
“Did that hurt?”
The dreidel shrugged. “Eh. I’ve felt worse.”
The girl then took the dreidel out to her father’s workshop, where he helped her drill a medium-sized hole right into the top of the dreidel.
As the operation was performed, Erzsebet chewed her bottom lip worriedly.
“Dreidel, does THAT hurt?”
“NNNNYEAAAAAUUGH!!!” howled the dreidel. Then it stopped suddenly. Erzsebet’s father eased the drill out of the dreidel’s head, to reveal a nice clean hole. The dreidel said, “Hold on, now… That isn’t half bad. I feel… enlightened!”
Then it sniffed. “But drafty. It’s a little drafty now, on top.”
Next, the girl and her father sanded down the point of the dreidel, so that it would sit flat without tipping.
The dreidel frowned. “I’m used to always tipping to one side or another. This feels odd, not tipping. I suppose I just have to get used to it.”
Erzsebet and her father took the dreidel inside, to the menorah in the front window. They placed a candle in the hole on top of the dreidel, and lit the wick.
“Ahhh!” grinned the dreidel. “So I’m the shamash, now, am I?”
“Do you like that better?” Erzsebet asked, reverently moving the dreidel-turned-shamash from candle to candle, using its flame to light the other wicks.
“Well, it’s certainly better than all that spinning and nausea… But the wax is dribbling onto my head. You couldn’t find dripless candles? Would it kill you to find some dripless candles so I don’t have this gunk all over my head?”
“Oh, silly dreidel!” said Erzsebet, laughing. “You’re only happy when you have something to complain about! Now, hush while I do the blessing…”

*Happy Chanukah!*


HOLIDAY DRIVERS

     This morning on the way to work I was cursing all the stupid moves other drivers were making. Not sure if it was because of the rain, or it being so close to Christmas, but everybody's acting like idiots. Me included.

     First incident:
     I was in the right lane, and another car was in the left lane, when a guy on a bicycle appeared, wobbling around in the lane in front of me, then he abruptly careened over into the left lane, and the other car had to brake and swerve to avoid hitting him. Then THAT car abruptly swerved right in front of ME, cutting into my lane without even signalling. And it had nothing to do with the guy on the bike. I growled, "IDIOTS! Both of you!"
     Second incident:
     I came up to a signal just as the light was turning from yellow to red, so of course I stopped. The car to the left of me, however, just barreled on through, and just barely missed being clipped by a guy coming from the opposite direction who was turning left, and had a legit green light. The guy with the legit green light totally SAW the idiot running the red light, but didn't seem to care. I think they came within an inch of crunching into each other.
     Third incident:
Johnny made me do it.
     I was in the right lane, following one of those big trucks that carries a bunch of cars on it, like baby marsupials clutching their mother. Know what I mean? I don't know what they're called. Anyway, I realized the big truck thing was going really slow, and didn't want to be stuck behind it, so I merged into the left lane, hoping to get around it.
     The left lane turned out to be slow, too, so the big truck thing pulled ahead and I lost sight of it. The MINUTE I lost sight of it, I completely forgot why I had switched lanes, and started to move BACK into the right lane. Then I saw the big truck thing ahead, and went, "Oh! THAT'S why I switched lanes!" and swerved back over into the left lane, not wanting to get stuck behind the big truck thing again. I'm sure any other drivers who saw me doing that thought, "Idiot!"
     My excuse for not being at all focused on the road or my own driving is that at the time I was listening to this entertainingly overwrought Johnny Cash Christmas CD, in which he very emotionally tells the story of Mary and the Baby Jesus in between verses.
     It's not a very good excuse.

STAFF MEMBER MOST LIKELY TO

     ASB runs these little popularity contests where the kids fill out ballots voting for which staff members they think are the "best dressed," or "nicest," or "funniest," or whatever. I sometimes get a modest handful of votes, depending on what the category is.
     In November they had a category I had not seen before:

November's Staff Member Most Likely To Be U.S. President
Please name the staff member who you think is most likely to be elected U.S. President this month! State reasons and examples.

     One of the kids wrote this:

Mr. Kovac because he reads a lot, knows
has a lot of knole
knowledge, and is cool.

     I thought that was pretty cute. And it is indeed HIGHLY likely that I will eventually become President of the U.S.A.

BOX OF BOOKS VOL.5 RELEASE PARTY

     Saturday night my husband and I drove up to Chinatown in L.A. with our good friend Matt for the "release party" of a group art project I participated in. "Box of Books Vol.5" was organized by Darin Klein & Friends. (Darin's a curator at L.A.'s Hammer Museum)
     20 creators were each asked to make 100 copies of a little reversible booklet using 11"x17" paper and a clever cutting and folding technique. Subject matter was totally up to the creators.
The Weirdling Woods (I sign each one by hand in magical silver ink)
     I chose to use this opportunity to work with a project I've been noodling with for years. An illustrated children's fantasy story called The Weirdling Woods.
The Weirdling Woods, page 3
     That's all you get, as far as a peek at The Weirdling Woods. I'll be selling them online for $5 each through my Etsy shop: HERE. (Give me until about 11/7/'12 to get it listed, por favor)

Sales table, people, a dog...

More people, and that freeloader dog is still there... (I don't think it even purchased Box of Books Vol.5)

Upstairs zine room, looking down on main floor of exhibit hall

Anthony amid art

The foyer of the facility was draped with black ribbons, a visual theme that was carried throughout the place.