Schenectady?

You see, I doubt Jim Davis has ever even been to Schenectady.  There he was, sitting with his "comic" colleagues, when someone came along and asked the whole "where your ideas come from" question.  Hooking off of the "where" in the question, he gave a place name--Schenectady.  Probably because he thought it was fun to say "Schenectady."  He could just as easily have said "Conshohocken."   Since I live in nearby Albany, I've actually been there and can tell you I don't get any of my ideas there.  This is not a slam on Schenectady, which gave Kurt Vonnegut plenty of ideas, though probably not the kind that the city necessarily wanted to advertise.  I love running Stockade-athon, the 15K that Schenectady hosts every November.  I suppose I might get an idea related to Stockade-athon one of these days, in which case I might need to revoke my entire premise here!

Anyway, this strip came about because I was scrambling for an idea for the strip, which caused my mind to wander to that "Jim Davis" quote in Lynn Johnston's "Essay on Ideas" (and which she has recounted elsewhere as well).  For a long time, I've had a vague notion that I wanted to respond to it in some way.  :)

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo.  Against all good sense, I have decided to give it a try--my second attempt.  Well, "attempt" makes it sound as though I didn't "win" the first time I tried NaNo, and that's not the case.  I did meet the 50,000-word goal.  However, I ended up with a document I never wanted to look at again.  It had lots and lots of filler, including large quotations (with credit given, of course, but still).  It also just wasn't good.  This first attempt was in 2007.  It has taken me since then to recover from the trauma!

And I am way, way behind.  I've only completed 2,194 words so far, after telling myself that I would do a big catch-up over the weekend.  On Saturday, I actually did things!  Like going places, seeing people, engaging in activities.  So I got NO work done on NaNo OR "Crazy Guy."  And I'm setting myself up to feel that whenever I'm doing NaNo I'm stealing time away from "Crazy Guy" and vice versa.  I'm also determined to write something halfway decent this time!  (I'm trying my hand at a YA novel with a sci-fi/supernatural element to it, but NOT Twilight!)  So no taking the approach "Crazy Guy" is taking, despite how tempting that might be.  :)

As a matter of fact....

Last week, I did actually spot the real Crazy Guitar Guy with his hat on his guitar.  Today, I saw him again, but with his hat on his own head.  For all I know, CG could have set him straight!  :)

No Auto-Destruction at the Altamont Fair This Year

The demolition derby and car drop are my son's favorite events at the Altamont Fair, so we are a bit bummed that they aren't having either this year.  We have no plans to outfit the pigs with little cars, though.  :)

Those public phone conversations

Stalking Google Maps

My husband really did spot the Google-maps car recently, but unlike CG, he did not try to insert himself into the street views.

CG's legislative ideas

So New York State did get some big, splashy legislation passed and signed this past Friday... the marriage equality bill.  Naturally, CG hopes to parlay that into momentum for his own [crazy] legislation.  Never mind the legislative session is wrapped up and the legislators have gone home to their districts.  :)

Another funny last name....

Albany public figures beware!  You never know when Albanymous might catch a glimpse of you.  I actually spotted Fred Dicker in Bermuda shorts when I was meeting someone by the NYS Capitol Building.  He was grinning and getting into the car of someone who'd pulled up to give him a ride.  When I saw him, he had on a polo shirt with his Bermuda shorts, but I've been told that he's also been known to pair them with jackets and ties, so I thought I'd go with that for more comic effect.

Fred Dicker hosts a daily political radio talk show on AM channel 1300, provides commentary on Albany's CBS station, WRGB, and does a column for the New York Post.  If only he had his own newspaper, CG would think he has a media empire and envy him as much as he envies Chartock.

Technically, CG and (N)J should be standing in front of the NYS Education Building:

But I probably would have needed another week to include that in my backgrounds for panels 2-6.  Maybe I'll add them in later if I ever have an excess of time!

And it's up... only ::mumble::fourdayslate::mumble::

Posted "Saturday's" post last night (Wednesday).  Eventually will get ahead of my own deadlines.  The good news is that I've gotten pretty far along in penciling the next (6/18/11) strip and am reasonably confident that I can get it uploaded ontimishly.

So obviously this strip was created before the latest "Weiner" news (he's resigning).  Maybe CG will finally be convinced that (N)J is right and there is such a thing as BAD attention.  :)

Weiner and [fill in your own joke about "wiener"]

In case you've missed the kerfuffle about the pic sent from Representative Anthony Weiner's Twitter account, Google News will get you up to speed....

The jokes really do write themselves.  In fact, it's difficult (I was about to say "hard") to discuss this WITHOUT making a joke, even if you're not trying to.  So for CG, this would be exhilarating and depressing, as everyone else will have beat him [see?] to the jokes first.

Maybe it's only a matter of time....

Uh-oh....  I hope the greeting-card industry doesn't get funny ideas from the latest strip and start marketing "you're welcome" cards.  After all, don't they typically seize just about any opportunity to get people to spend more money on cards?  Hm.  Maybe I ought to jump in ahead of the curve and start marketing a line of  "CG and (N)J" "you're welcome" cards?  But only use them if you really want to mess with someone.  Next thing you know, the "Miss Manners" column will be overrun with people stressing over whether proper etiquette dictates a "you're welcome" card for every thank-you note received. ;)

Story to tide you over :)

Another weekend without an update?  Lame!  During the week, I need to rely mostly on lunch time and evening to get any drawing done, and lately, I've had more other stuff going on during lunch time.  Then when I get home, I find myself not wanting to do much more than surf the net and play online Scrabble!  Bad Scrabble addiction!  Then on the weekend, other than getting my long run in, I find myself just kind of tired and unmotivated.  ::deep sigh::

So in the meantime, thought I'd share a little story with you.  One of the days that I was doing other stuff during my lunch hour last week, I went out to lunch with my husband to celebrate my birthday.  We went to a little place that's just a couple of blocks from where I work in downtown Albany, and guess who we spotted?  The real and actual Crazy Guitar Guy, patrolling the streets with his beloved acoustic guitar.  Once inside the restaurant, we speculated as to whether he'd be pleased or not to know that he has a comic avatar.  I don't think I'll tell him!

In other news, I keep checking out this book from the library:

For around five months or so, I've been doing my inking digitally but not my penciling.  I want to become more proficient with my tablet and eventually go totally digital.  One thing holding me back is that I'd rather not lug my laptop and tablet around with me. 

My son keeps telling me he wants me to add color to "CG and (N)J."  I've told him that I might eventually do that, but it will take me a while to learn to do that.  And before I get there, I want to actually get ahead of my self-imposed deadlines consistently.  I'd like to be two weeks ahead. 

Free Comic Book Day

Well, I didn't scour the comics blogs or dispatch a team of crazy guys (which, of course, I haven't got).  I did just go to the nearest comic shop, though I had my guys with me (husband and son) and we each got to have six comics apiece!  Also a Green Lantern figure that promptly got broken from its base within 24 hours.  Same exact thing happened with last year's figure!

Somehow, I manage to come across the FCBD blog entries AFTER the day and see the super-amazing books I managed to miss.  Ah, well.  I won't obsess.  :)

Painful Reminder of "Save Early and Often"

My current process for doing CG strips is to draw the strip in pencil and make a scan of the pencil drawing.  Then I edit it in GIMP, creating a new layer to digitally ink over my pencil lines.  That way, it's easy to go back a layer and erase anything I don't want while still having the option of keeping some of my penciled structure.

I had completed that phase, which takes the longest, and was about 1/3 into adding the text (I use a font based on my own writing).  All of sudden GIMP locked up, and nothing I did would unlock it.  And of course, I realized to my horror that I had not been saving at every step, as I should.  Fortunately, the digital inking had all been saved, but the clean-up step had not.  I had no choice but to force GIMP to shut down, and when I restarted it and opened my image, I no longer had layers, which made cleaning up the pencil lines (and pencil schmutz) much more arduous.

Aargh!  Frustrating!  Just when I think I've thoroughly absorbed the old "save early and often" lesson.

The contract that Crazy Guy cites really did exist--my husband had come across it while studying contract law. :)

Vacation week

I took vacation this week because my son was off from school, and it was actually a perfect blend of activity and relaxation.  Wednesday, we took a day trip down to NYC, where my son got to enjoy his first visit to the Met.  He'd learned about it in school and was excited about seeing it for himself.  He especially enjoyed the knights in armor.  We saw a kid's magic show at a local theater on Friday, and Saturday, I did a half marathon.  In the rain.  That's a different story (I guess it fits in with CG's theory about running and comedy!).  The other days, we maxed and relaxed.  :)

ComicCon

There was another Albany ComicCon back in October.  My guys and I went to it, and my son was absolutely delighted at the sight of people in costume, dressed as characters from Star Wars and various comic books.  After shaking hands with one of them, he exclaimed with glee, "I shook hands with a FANBOY!"

Now that I've put up today's strip, my husband thinks we should actually show up at the con dressed as "Crazy Guy" characters.  :)

Sense of Entitlement Girl

What can I tell you about Sense of Entitlement Girl that you don't already know by interacting with people just like her?  Hmm.  Well, she was inspired by an actual person.  In our apartment-dwelling days, we'd come up with descriptive names for the various people in our building.  Like there was WAS, aka "Walk Around Smoke" and "Smoky McFarty."  SOEG was a college student whose sense of entitlement was palpable.  I came up with "Sense of Entitlement Girl" off the cuff, and from then on, she was SOEG to us.

In the same building, there was another "Crazy Guy," but he was really just a bit eccentric.  The poor guy had a run-in with SOEG that ended with his family taking him in because she was threatening to sue him.  Something about him banging on a shared wall.

SOEG once insisted that we move our car to make room for hers.  The parking area in question belonged to a nearby college where I was employed.  So I had an actual parking permit that allowed me to park there.  She only had her sense of entitlement.  We didn't move our car.

I did a one-off comic on SOEG long before we ever encountered the guy who inspired Crazy Guy.  You'll recognize it as the inspiration for the standard "SOEG entrance" I use whenever she appears in the strip:

Click to enlarge.

  

Outsourcing tweets

I know that Charlie Sheen advertising for a Twitter intern isn't new news anymore, but I've been meaning to do something about that in the strip.  Sheen now has more than 3 MILLION followers.  More than 100,000 times as many as CG has.  You know CG can't stand that!  :)

Madoff

Another idea from my husband.  He came across the article I link under the strip--a New York Magazine interview with Madoff--shortly after passing the strip idea along to me.  Life imitates crazy!  Original idea had CG making signs, but I liked the visual of him making a t-shirt with Madoff's face and the "Freebird"-inspired slogan.  One hazard is that while I was working on this strip, I kept getting "Freebird" stuck in my head.  Darn Skynyrd!

Bubbles

My husband has two MBAs and a law degree.  He reads financial and economic blogs and makes predictions about the impending economic doom.  Today's strip was born in his brain, as are many of the economic/financial-themed strips.  Ha, it's all his fault I had to [try to] draw Cuomo for four panels!

The Doodle

Crazy Morbidly Obese Guy came about unexpectedly from a doodle on a legal pad.  Once I'd drawn him, the idea for the script followed and I scribbled it out on the same piece of paper.  Here's the doodle:

  

Chartock and Egg Yolks

In no way, shape, or form is my husband Crazy Guy.  HOWEVER.  The story about the UAlbany graduate journalism class, Chartock, and the egg yolks is his.  It seems that, out of health consciousness, Chartock would eat just the eggs whites and feed the yolks to his dog.  And, as CG recounts in the strip, a student impressed him by suggesting that something bad for Chartock would also be bad for the dog.

CG's "Chartock" Obsession

As you can see from the collection of strips featuring or mentioning Alan Chartock, Crazy Guy is a little bit fixated on him.  In CG's Albanycentric view, Chartock has a MEDIA EMPIRE.  He might be the only one in the world to think so (no offense intended to Mr. Chartock).  :)

New Administration, Fresh Crazy

Crazy Guy just can't let go of the notion that he's going to be a playa in state politics!  By the way, the "yard sale" strip came from a couple of suggestions my son made.  He wanted a yard sale strip, he wanted both David Paterson (then-Governor of NYS) and Elly Patterson to be in the strip, and also some of his favorite characters.  Those of you who read "For Better or For Worse" might be able to recognize the "Elly Patterson" bobblehead next to the David Paterson one.  Other favorite characters appear on the table.  :)

Solitaire Staring

I was just amused by the idea of CG having a staring contest with himself.  Then he can't win without also losing.  Such a dilemma.  :)

Scenes from finish lines

The idea for the January 15, 2011 strip comes from my husband, who observed the finish-line situations noted in the strip.  I did a half marathon on the first of this year, and he was disappointed that nothing extreme happened at the finish line!

Strip for Saturday, January 8, 2011

The characters in my strip are most decidedly NOT me. (Okay, the woman in panel four of the "Library" strip is loosely based on me--when I'm in the library during my lunch hour I just want to be left alone!) But otherwise, the characters are not me and and I am not the characters.

HOWEVER. For the longest time, I thought the saying "A stitch in time saves nine" made no sense whatsover, because I thought it was about a stitch into TIME itself. My misinterpretation only declined from there.  When I realized my mistake--and my realization was embarrassingly belated--I felt pretty silly.  :)

(Similarly, I misread "I want to be in that number" in "When the Saints Go Marching In" well into adulthood and still hate the song because it led me astray like that.)

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog for the "Crazy Guy and (Not) Jesus" comic strip.  I will continue to post the strips at the Webcomicsnation site, but this blog will serve as a simulcast and supplement.