Garfield Minus Garfield

I am really excited right now because I just discovered Garfield Minus Garfield. A Irish man named Dan Walsh has re-invisioned actual Garfield comic strips, but without Garfield, Odie, Pookie or any of the other characters except Jon. The results are funny and disturbing. Here's what the website says:

"Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb."

What's amazing is that Walsh has done this WITH the permission of Garfield creator, Jim Davis. Apparently when Davis saw them, and was so impressed with the reinterpretation, he decided to allow Walsh to continue to edit and publish the strips, and the two are now collaborating to release a "Garfield Minus Garfield" book.

I find it really very interesting and amusing to look over the same cartoons I saw as a child with an entirely different viewpoint. No one has ever done anything like this with children's material before, to my knowledge. Or at least, no one has ever done it, gotten away with it, and even had the blessing of the original author!

I was a huge and I mean HUGE Garfield fan as a kid. My stepmother even made me a Garfield birthday cake one year, and I have never been so excited about cake (okay that's a lie....all cake is exciting---ooooh, especially the Simone LeBon cake she made two years later!) I still have all my Garfield books, and browse through them occasionally. What's sad is I dont find them funny at all anymore. Not even a little bit. They have unfortunately crossed into that vapid territory occupied by "Family Circus" and "Cathy".

I think that's okay, though. I think that's what's supposed to happen: you're supposed to grow up, and NOT still laugh at dead baby jokes and armpit farts. It's a good sign if you're 35 and you don't still find "Ziggy" hilarious.

The problem is, I don't WANT to grow up. I desperately WANT to still find Garfield funny. Every time I leaf through the books, I am like "please, let me laugh this time!"

But I don't. *Sigh*

So thank you Dan Walsh (a good, solid, straight-man-in- the-comics kind of a name, don't you think). For making Garfield funny again.






















images from www.garfieldminusgarfield.net

Dream Myself Alive

My apartment is a mess, which reflects my mental state. My Nanna used to say her bedroom was "upside down" when it was messier than she liked, and therefore off limits. Mine however, is apparely, "sideways".

Feeling busy, lazy, tired, excited, creative and overwhelmed all at the same time. Big plans to use this blog like a verbal fencing pit in the next while... Tossing things up in the air, skewering some, letting others fall...

I have been writing a lot lately. Music, that is, not this kind of writing. It's good for me....each song feels like a major accomplishment if I complete it, and if I still like it once it's finished.

In the past I have written mostly about my relationships--usually when they are new and exciting, or when they are failing painfully.... eg. "Afterglow", "Happy", "Inside", "Noah", "On The Highwire", "Blame", "Never Fall", "Half The Man"...

But for the last year and a half my love life has been stable and supportive, which although wonderful, leads to me having little to say musically. I hadn't written a song in maybe 6 months. Then in June, I wrote one for a dear friend who finally found the courage to leave a very destructive and abusive relationship. I was thinking about how scary that can be...wondering if you'd ever heal, wondering if anyone would ever find you attractive again, whether you'd ever find anyone else attractive again...? It's a quiet, private little song, just for me and her. Nobody else will ever hear it.

It sparked me, musically. All these repressed melodies came bubbling up: at the studio, clay-covered drill in hand, humming, searching for some way to record the persistant little melody that demanded to be written down. I discovered a function on my new cellphone: it makes voice recordings. How handy! Hopefully I won't accidentally text message them to people hahaha.

I 'd take the melody home to the piano, ruminate for a while, and elaborate on it. But for the first time in my life, I had this panicky feeling like I had nothing to say. It went deep, this panic, because of my secret fear that I am actually a shallow, hollow person with no real opinions or intelligence. (This fear was launched by an ex-boyfriend who said something like that to me in the heat of an argument, once, years ago. I know it's not true, but it remains, a kernal of insecurity stuck in my mind, forever).

In actual fact, it's not that I had nothing to write about-- it was just that I had to change techniques, create new pathways in my songwriting process. I had to look beyond the immediate desperation and emotion that songwriting has always emerged out of, and ask myself what I have been thinking about lately. What are things that are important to me that I have never written about, and why haven't I written about these things before?

The environment, obviously, is a big one. How can I be so vehemently "green" in my lifestyle, but never consider it in my music? After some serious soul searching, I wrote a song called "Manufactured Landscapes" which is a title I stole from a book about Ed Burtynsky.

Another big issue for me is Canadian patriotism (or lack of). This concept first tweaked in me when I moved to America for a year in 2000, and later became a part of the regular discourse of my design work, but never of my music, thus far. I am very pleased with the fun little song with (what I consider) a big message that was born a couple of weeks ago, which I have entitled "Humble Pie."

Another new song, less political and more theoretical, is called "Starting Tonight." It's a little self-pep song about "the best night of my life" and all that would occur on such a night. It has a line where I imagine I am a train whistle, all swoops and overtones...

And just a few days ago, I tackled a subject that has been very purposefully avoided by me for the last 2 years: the death of one of my best friends, Christina Jarvis. I sat down and wrote this little bossanova tribute to her, with the only rule being I could gush all I wanted, but no sappiness or depressive lyrics. It is written almost entirely tongue-in-cheek, (as she would have LOVED) but I will confess I do get fairly emotional when I play it. It was supposed to be the song that I waited 2 years to write in order to NOT make myself (or anyone else) cry when I played it... I almost succeeded.

So, as it turns out, I DO have lots to say. What a relief!


Hmm. I was planning on writing about a recording experience I had on Wednesday with a world renown musician, and personal hero of mine....but I guess I will save that for the next post, cuz I have to go to a bbq now. Mmmm...sweet BBQ! Has anyone written a song about you and your charbroiled goodness? :)

Holy Crap

Has it really been almost three months since I updated this?

I am sitting at my kitchen table right now, in a fairly black mood, with a rather large, sharp kitchen knife off to my right, beside my hand. I used it at breakfast and didn't put it away. Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt anyone, I just think it's kind of funny. It's like one of those little jokes that God plays...."I know you're really angry right now, so I'm going to put this great big knife beside you and see what you do..." It's probably some kind of test. Wonder if I have passed or failed it....?

Actually, I can't even kill flies (mosquitos, yes, but only with an emboldening yell of "DIE!") I'm the kind of person who would likely, even in the reddest of rages, maim themselves accidentally long before ever managing to inflict any pain upon anyone else... So even if I wanted to wade into murderous territory, I don't suppose I would find myself very successful at it. So, no one need worry, seriously-- ain't no stabbing going on here. Just murderously ironic observations.

I did, however, moments ago, feel like murdering my cats, just for a second. One of them had somehow knocked over the kitty litter box, spilling kitty litter all over the hall, and blocking the front door. The other cat (or I suppose it could have been the spiller, but I doubt it) then promptly peed on this new, lower, more convenient pile of litter. Lovely. I had to push the door open through a large, wet bead of stinky kitty litter, and then got stuck because my bike wouldn't fit around it. And then roll my bike through peed-on kitty litter.

Good thing they're so cute or they would have been set free in the forest long ago.