MoCCA 2008, primarily in list form

What follows are most of my MoCCA purchases and other things, in list form (please note: things may be misspelled, as I’m going off of my handwritten notes of purchase and not the actual books themselves).  I won’t bother with the drinks bought, the food eaten, the MetroCard, or the t-shirts (of which there were many–I bought more than I would have because I kept changing my t-shirt because of how incredibly hot it was on Saturday).

Real return to blogging? LIke, actual paragraphs and stuff?  I hope that comes soon, too.  As you can see, this blog repurposes the old Ledger Domain and the Low Road blogs, but now anonymously–I realize that it may not be helpful to have some of this stuff attached to the name I am now using to get teaching positions at colleges, so hence the really obvious sobriquet. 

The books, in no particular order:

• Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings: Craig Yoe
• The Dada Detective volumes 1 and 2: Stephanie Freese, Dave Milloway, and Matt Wood
• Comic Arf: Craig Yoe
• Three Shadows: Cyril Pedrost
• Pulphope: The Art of Paul Pope: Paul Pope
• The New York Four (advance galley copy): Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly
• Dororo: Osamu Tezuka
• Thoreau at Walden:  Henry David Thoreau and John Porcellino
• Wire Mothers: Harry Harlow and the Science of Love: Jim Ottaviani and Dylan Meconis
• Bluesman:  Rob Vollmar and Pablo G. Callejo
• Chiggers: Hope Larson
• Levitation: Physics and Psychology  in the Service of Deception: Jim Ottaviani and Janine Johnston
• Pictures of You: Damon Hurd and Tatiana Gill
• Burnout (advance galley copy):  Rebecca Donner and Inaki Miranda
• Janes in Love (advance galley copy):  Cecil Castelluci and Jim Rugg
• Action Philosophers volumes 1-3:  Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey (finally, bookshelf-friendly copies to replace my floppy ones!)
• Repo: Rick Spears and Rob G
• What It Is: Lynda Barry
• Drawing Words & Writing Pictures: Jessica Abel and Matt Madden
• The Annotated Wondermark: David Malki
• The Moth or the Flame: Joshua Ray Stephens
• Relish: Lucy Kinsley
• It’s Raining Cats and Dogs (and Other Pets): Mark Z-Man

The floppies and minis:

• Curse of the Wendigo: Chris Brimacombe
• Geraniums and Bacon #5: Cathy Leamy
• Broads & Monsters: Sketches: Pat Lewis (I also bought something else from Pat, but I don’t seem to be able to find it–I thought I had unpacked everything)
• Earth Minds are Weak #8 & #9: Justin J. Fox
• I Dreamed of You mr. Eybyaninich: Justin J. Fox
• Mila and the Prince of Space: Evan G. Palmer
• Happy Dog the Happy Dog: Ryan North & Allene Chomyn
• 55 Words: Rosemary Mosco
• Johnny Hero {Half Asian, All Hero}: Fred Chao
• Tear-stained Makeup: Marcos Perez
• Carl’s Large Story #2 and #3: Marcos Perez
• The Ashen Cat: Evan Palmer
• The Bear: Galway Kinnell and Caroline Kelsey
• Camp Staff Tales: Alexander Cox
• 80gun #2: Ayo
• Little Garden #4: Ayo
• Comics from Mars #1: Paul Pope

Sketches and the like (taken with digital camera rather than scanner):

Pat Lewis inaugurated my new sketchbook.  Now that I’m no longer, er, coupled, there was no reason to continue on with the shared sketchbook of dalmatians my ex and I were building.  With a blank sketchbook in hand, I was at a loss to come up with a theme I could make work (although I have another one lined up now, if I can find a small, intimate book for it–it’s a pretty awful sending-me-to-hell theme that I don’t think a lot of people would be down with), but then I decided I’m titling it Words. Language. Literature. to go along with the whole “getting my academia on, yo” thing.  Tough thing to draw, so I started everyone out easy–people reading books.  Friday night at Zombie Hut (at least, I think that’s where it was–it could have been at Rocketship, too), Pat mentioned how much he loved drawing the Thing, so:

My next sketch stop was Marcos Perez, famous for Carl is the Awesome and other such things (including music).  You can kind of see his thing peeking through behind Pat’s, er, Thing thing, but here is Carl doing what Carl does best: being awesome all the time:

This taking-pictures-of-sketches thing kind of isn’t working out, but fuck it.  That’s what Scott Pilgrim would say, I think.  Here’s Bryan Lee O’Malley’s sketch of Scott not reading:

Finally, by webcomicser Jeph Jacques (Questionable Content), a drawing of a cute girl who talks like me and every other hipster doofus–she speaks my language!

Things I would have bought at MoCCA, had they been there:

• Comic Book Comics #2: Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey (not out until July)
• Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko: Blake Bell (shipping or printing snafu–the book’s arrival got pushed back to Monday)
• Your moms.*

Favoritest Memories that may or may not involve comics:

• Karaoke with the nerdcrew, including Joe Rice and Alex Cox’s brilliant “Like A Prayer,” F-dot’s FUCKING AWESOME rendition of Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” (I have never seen karaoke done like that)
• Dropping $30 or so at the used bookstore in my hometown on the way to NYC–got some Chester  Himes stuff cheap, two fun books on language, dialect, and etymology, and other assorted things that smell like a mixture of old book, stale cigarettes, and air ionized by repeated NPR programming
• Spending a lot of time with Justin J. Fox, including hearing the real story behind Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and inadvertantly cock-blocking him in the nerdiest of all possible ways.
• Buying books that I wanted at last year’s show, but ran out of money before I could get to them.
• Drinks, food and conversation with some of my favorite people, including James Smith, Neilalien, Metrokitty, Das, F-dot, Pat Lewis, Joe Rice, Justin J. Fox and Marcos Perez, Alex Cox, Michael Pullmann, and Gina Gagliano; seeing others like Kevin Church and Benjamin Birdie briefly; convincing my best friend on the planet to make it in for Chinatown karaoke; an awesome hotel breakfast with a wonderful guy and his wife from Buffalo, NY who were in town to help their son move to Brooklyn–we killed a little over two hours shooting the shit; and getting some quality time with two of the other people in the grad program who tagged along to do the whole NYC sight-seeing thing.
• Running into my friend Kristin’s sister, Kat, whom I only have seen in family photographs but still recognized, which lead to an awkward stalker-esque interchange but made for a great reason to call Kristin in Chicago that afternoon
• The free advance galley copies of upcoming Minx books
• Being somewhere where at least twenty people saw my arm and said “Hey! Nice Great Gatsby tattoo!” as opposed to “y’know what would make that shit sweet? You should put some skulls in it.  Or some big-tittied bitches.  Or a demon with, like, blood drippin’ out its mouth an’ shit.  Or some big-tittied bitches.  Or an alien smoking weed” or “you’re going to Hell, young man–and that’s where demons will rape the tattoos off of you. Amen. Hallelujah.”
• Having others confirm that, yes, those Centaurans on Doctor Who really do look like people with Downs Syndrome who abuse steroids and is that supposed to be a commentary on something related to eugenics or not?
• The whole Rocketship party, but especially seeing Jason’s original art in person–it’s given me an idea I’m going to run with if all goes according to plan (perhaps for actual ink-and-paper publication, even).

Things that kind of sucked, in retrospect:

• Disappointing horse racing results
• Having said best friend accosted by a crazy Mongolian guy at the bar who was talking about “Obama,” “McCain,” God bless America,” “prison,” and “need food”–those are pretty much the only words we made out.
• The Bob Dylan laserdisc being broken, so Brian Cronin couldn’t sing anything at karaoke.
• The Minx table refusing to sell me books that are already published and sitting on their table
• Not getting time with certain people–barely saw Tim Leong this year, didn’t get to meet Bully at all, seeing Chris Mautner and Jog only briefly, Kevin Church being a big whiny vagina with a cold and shit and not coming to karaoke (Marcos came to the first party and he had a migraine! A migraine!), not only barely seeing Chris Pitzer but forgetting to buy the collected Skyscrapers of the Midwest (luckily, my shop will likely have it, as they like AdHouse as much as I do), and people I didn’t know were at the show until after I had left.
• Being sick and miserable and hopped up on Tylenol Severe Cold and Flu (but I still made it to karaoke, Kevin–FYI)
• The goddamn fucking heat.  I went back to the hotel in Brooklyn mid-day on Saturday, and nearly passed out before I got into the sweet, sweet air-conditioned walls of the Comfort Inn-Brooklyn Bridge (also–really cute desk clerk girl who, while she was probably only being nice to me because I was a patron, totally didn’t seem phony about it so maybe you will see her in a soap opera some day or something) where I pooped and showered and changed my shirt for what would be the second of four wardrobe changes inspired by the fact that I sweat like a kid that’s even fatter than I already am.
• The really shitty Dave Matthew’s Band-esque band that played before the Indie Spinner Rack party 

Things I have already made with the reading on (presented in order of how I got my read on, and with two word midget reviews):

• Geraniums and Bacon #5: fucking awesome.
• Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings: pretty interesting.

Total hours of sleep had between Friday morning and Sunday night:

• Six (approximately four Friday night, and about two Saturday night)

Amount of money spent on books, apparrel, food, alcohol, lodging, gas, and other assorted expenses:

• [REDACTED: I don't want to see the number when I post because I will likely kill myself]

The crystal ball:

• recharged love of comics leads to more bloggery
• recharged love of comics nerds leads to an SPX visit

* If she wasn’t giving it away for free, I mean.