Achewood

0100b — Never Before Seen Airwolf Panels, etc

There was zero clipboard content generated by strip 0100 so I picked a random date and, happily, there was a strip for that day, which I could mine instead.

It was very satisfying to mindlessly type “05042006” and have it be not just any strip, but the strip where Ray has Airwolf, and accidentally launches a missile at Philippe. Please — sit back, and enjoy.   

What were you doing on May 4, 2006? I had a one-year old and little plastic Ben Franklin glasses. 

0100 — By the Hand of a Whiskey Mix-Up

The second image is a preview of what the usual noontime "making-of-this-strip" drawing board looks like — always available to tiers 2 & 3!

Thank you for being here, for helping Achewood get to this milestone — one-hundred straight comics. Two years ago this wasn't even an idea, and in the wake of The Netflix disappointment I didn't know if these characters would ever speak again. Now, because you are directly supporting the art you enjoy, all of Achewood and its limitless (ill-defined?) universe is back in play, for all that you used to like about it, plus hopefully new dimensions as well.

Every week that I write these strips and their attendant extracurriculars, I discover new possibilities for storytelling in this medium. This is thanks both to a now-clear head, and the reward of an audience who could always do with a little Ray and Beef. Here's to self-publishing as a great way forward for content too damn good to make it big.

I'll be writing with your happiness and laughter at heart as we here begin the path to Achewood's second hundred.

C

PS It's now possible to gift a subscription to a friend, for as little as a one-time payment of $5!

 https://www.patreon.com/Achewood/gift

Lev Grossman's Intro to Achewood

Hello, Author's Tier!

My friend Lev Grossman, brilliant author of The Magicians trilogy, as well as the new and stupendous (I've actually read it) Arthurian novel The Bright Sword, as well as the film The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, wrote the following intro to the legendarily dead Achewood Oni Press anthology series. To have the man who is quoted about Vonnegut on Vonnegut's own Wikipedia page also pen an appreciation of your work is just about as tops as career and personal fulfillment gets. (His intro was penned before the Patreon relaunch, if some of the verb tenses throw you.) I am considering adding this to the main website itself.

Without further hagiographic suck-off, I give you, by his own kind and recent permission, Lev's intro.

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My all-time favorite Achewood storyline is probably the one where Roast Beef—a cat who is depressed—steals a rocket ship and flies to the moon. The rocket was built by Pat—another cat, who is irritable—but Beef takes it anyway. He really, really needs to get to the moon. 

The moon is a calm, empty place. You can be alone there. Roast Beef doodles the word JAVA in the moon-dust with his paw; his thought-bubble reads “I could think about computer programming forever up here.” Also, as Roast Beef points out, the moon is 239,000 miles away from The Cure, a band that sucks, though probably Beef is just saying that to further mess with Pat. (In case you’re feeling bad for Pat, he’s kind of an asshole and will much later, in an unrelated incident, shoot Beef in a Subway.)

Roast Beef does eventually come home, but only because his friend Ray tells him he has a porno. He doesn’t actually have a porno, he just said that to trick Roast Beef into coming home, but he makes it up to him by turning his house into Cheers. Sam the bartender is played by a teddy bear named Téodor. The end!

Achewood—written and drawn by Chris Onstad—is a comic strip and therefore necessarily confined to little square panels, which themselves make up brief discrete episodes, and its principal players are mostly talking stuffed animals and robots. But like other giants of the medium—Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, XKCD—it ranges far outside the traditionally narrow emotional and formal scope of a conventional strip. There is nothing cute or cartoonish about its dramatic scenarios. Pat’s peevish anger at Roast Beef feels real. Roast Beef’s sadness and longing for solitude are real. You feel the real joy that Beef gets from Cheers (which is the only TV show you can get on the moon), and the abiding but always complicated love between him and Ray, who is in so many ways his opposite: wealthy, extroverted, rude, indomitable. (They orbit each other eternally, black hole and red giant.) Achewood gives us anger, love, horror, rage, shame, disappointment, grief, the agonies of growing up, the travails of marriage and middle age, and the encroaching shadows of death, all while never ceasing to be funny.

Even as I write about it I’m grappling with the fact that Achewood resists attempts to describe it or even find its borders. It ran for 16 years and around 1,800 strips, and overflows into, among other things, a cookbook, an advice column, a couple of novels, a dozen blogs and Roast Beef’s zine (Man Why You Even Got to Do a Thing). As with a lot of webcomics its individual strips stretch elastically from three panels to eight or twelve or more. Roast Beef’s wedding sprawls across forty-seven gloriously wordless boxes. Achewood contains multitudes.

It’s one of those vast artistic entities in which unwary critics get lost or walk in circles—for example I’ve already realized that the moon-Beef arc isn’t my favorite Achewood storyline at all, my favorite is the one where Ray dies from eating too many Tofutti-Cuties and goes to hell and meets Robert Johnson. Except no—how am I forgetting this— it’s the one where Ray and Roast Beef enter the Great Outdoor Fight! “Three days! Three acres! Three THOUSAND men! Only one will win THE GREAT OUTDOOR FIGHT!”)

Achewood stretches back in time, too – everything in it comes trailing clouds of history and mythology. It is known, for example, that in 1973 the Great Outdoor Fight was won by Ray’s father, Ramses Luther Smuckles, a mysterious hyper-masculine figure who casts a long dark Oedipal shadow over Ray’s otherwise sunny existence. Achewood also has its own cosmology, which features a heaven where you get a bar-style soda gun and a nice futon. (Heaven eventually burns down and becomes a charred ghost town, haunted by sinister vagrants.) Hell is accessible via any bathroom stall at a Friendly’s, it doesn’t matter which, and when you get there they give you a 1982 Subaru Brat. (The alt text whispers: “It has the rear-facing seats in the bed STOCK.”) 

Onstad builds his characters on a level of psychological detail so fine that they asymptotically approach the complexity of real people, to the point where fragments of their conversation have a way of escaping from their native panels and colonizing one’s real life. Every time I use a five-gold-star vocabulary word—like say for example “asymptotically”—I hear a ghostly Roast Beef ask, did they teach you that word at Talk Like a Dick school? In moments of shame I sometimes comfort myself with Ray’s stoned wisdom being in trouble is a fake idea. (Ray is one of the few modern masters of the aphorism.) When in pain I often think, in the words of Vlad the robot: To love, to hurt! Is life! Is way of world! I rarely attempt to make any kind of fried breakfast food without admonishing myself the way Roast Beef does when making hash browns: You know you got to make them into a pleasing cake you KNOW this.

(Ray sometimes addresses people as chochacho , which is a made-up word, but it sounds real. I used it in a novel once and nobody noticed, not even the copy-editor, who’s paid to notice things like that.)

Critics of Achewood point to the fact that it’s a very male world, which is undeniably true: of the dozen or so major characters in Achewood only one is a woman—Molly Sanders, an itinerant waitress who was born in 17th-century Wales (long story) and who eventually marries Roast Beef. This might bother me more if it weren’t for the fact that the maleness is the point—Achewood is in many ways about masculinity, with all its attendant violence, depression, insecurity, cruelty, chest-pounding, alcoholism, hysterical consumerism, Oedipal rage, penis-obsession and suicidal ideation. It’s a toxic labyrinth that the characters are constantly looking for a way out of. 

Sometimes they even find it. At the end of the Great Outdoor Fight, Ray and Beef, as the last two men standing, are expected to beat each other down. Instead they demolish the arena and ride off into the sunset. They rewrite the rules. Our every move is the new tradition.

You wouldn’t want to live in Achewood. Onstad spares his characters none of the pain and misfortune and inner torment and physical indignity from which cartoon characters are usually exempt. But he gives them extraordinary gifts too: each of them is in his or her own way deeply eloquent, and for all their suffering they have powers far beyond the run of your common talking stuffed animal or robot. Even when they die they still come back—even Todd, a squirrel with a stutter, whose little body got peeled on by some teenagers. Even Roast Beef, who’s sometimes so depressed he can’t summon the will to enter a grocery store, or finish biting all the way through a piece of toast. 

Maybe the message here is that they can’t escape life, or each other, or us, and it’s all just one of those Sartrean hell deals. But I don’t think so. I think it’s something about resilience—persistence in the face of the full complement of slings and arrows. The denizens of Achewood aren’t doomed to live. It’s just that they refuse to give up. 

—Lev Grossman

Ray's Place: How I Build a Mix For a Lady.

[Dear Readers: Ray went long answering his first letter this week, so we're publishing it as a standalone piece. The usual three-letter format will return next week, because a lot of people need help out there!]

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Who's on your mixtape list for that special lady? —Tracy W., Spain

Well Tracy, I am sad to report there is no special lady at the moment, but I got lots of memories of when there was. It’s the holidays as I’m writing this, and I’m in the old cardigan (vintage Marithé + François Girbaud, got some Sgt. Peppers shoulder brushes on it, hell of a nostalgia piece for me), so I’m feelin all wistful and sharesome. Sharesome should be a word, you feel me Tracy?  

So, I used to put Shantì\/Shanté’s “Riggaboochie Coochie” at the beginning of all peacetime mixes for Tina, ’cause that was our song. I liked to imagine her playin’ that track as she turned on the shower, and the water splashed all over her as the beats infected her booty, which caused her to really be feelin’ herself (figuratively, at first) as she thought about her man. Just a hell of a wonderful morning for a lady in love, to be livin’ that Riggaboochie bliss. 

If it was a gettin’ back together mix, I’d always open with “Star in a Puddle” by Edmond Redmond — classic motown ballad always sets the tone right. I’d put it through her mail slot, and she’d know I was waitin’ there out in her apartment building’s parking lot, white button-down undone to the chest, little hand-picked wildflower bouquet in hand, ready to slow dance those curves all over that sidewalk. And if another car drove up, or an oxygen person in a mobility cart needed to get by, I wasn’t ashamed — I’d show all the world I was proud to be seen lost in the lady I adored. When I pulled a move like that she’d call me the Caliphate of Love, back before either of us really knew what caliphate meant.   

If it was a mix for the interim between breakup and gettin’ back together, I’d do a blend with more of a freedom-type theme, to let her know I was swayin’ oats at the breeze — make her worry I’d get snapped up by somebody else. Somethin’ like “One More Try” by George Michael. I knew if I dropped this CD off in her mail slot at one, I’d be the power spoon by two.   

—R.Q.S—

PS Tracy, sorry I made up that you were from Spain. I’m just tryin’ to make my column seem a little more impressive, because you seem nice, and I kind of like where you’re comin’ from. Call me. 

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0099b — Autocalumny & Ashtrays

This strip made me miss Cornelius. I feel a Cornelius Friday coming on for Strip 0100. Whoah! There have been ninety-nine new Achewood strips! There was a time not so long ago I was certain such a thing would never again come to pass in my lifetime. I didn't specifically thank you for making this all possible at Thanksgiving — my timing's never been "on" — but thank you — thank you for showing me that you want Achewood to exist. Writing it is a pleasure again.

0099 — Roast Beef, Couples Therapy

Extras from this strip post at noon in tiers 2 & 3!  

In panel four, Roast Beef is referring to the popular copulatory position you may know as "missionary." Why is it called missionary? When I was a very young boy, this term led me to assume it was the position in which priests had sex, because it was more "godly." I had no mental inventory of any other types of sexual position, so I'm not sure what I meant by this, other than that the priest got to be the boss because he was on top — like when a wrestler won — which imputed that he was also successfully spreading the word of Christ.

The only other thing I will add is that in the final panel, I visualize the men on the hillside as bearded, and kind of sleepy.

Thank you for reading this small essay.   

"Ray Smuckles Fears the Future of Technology"

"Spoiler alert. Ray Smuckles ain't too much on top of his science fiction, but he does privately wonder if AI can finally invent a version of him that don't blubber." —R.B. Kazenzakis, interviewer and transcriber

Enjoy this chat between old friends Roast Beef "Road Toad" Kazenzakis and Ray Smuckles, as they discuss the future of technology, disses, and how a cheese becomes truly rare.  

The Original Art Shop is now OPEN!

This December, your purchases are expected to ship within 48 hours, via Insured USPS Priority or Registered Mail. Email chris at achewood dot com with any inquiries, or send a message here for faster response. Thank you for browsing this new collection!  

Original Art Shop Reopens Dec 3, 10am PST!

Click here to shop at 10am PST! (password protected until then)

I've spent the last year building up a fresh collection of pieces, in styles old and new. Since it's the holidays, I'll be shipping all art orders within 48 hours.

I'm sharing this link with all you lovely Patreon members first, because new Achewood wouldn't exist without your generosity. Tomorrow, I'll share it on Instagram, Facebook, and X.

T-shirts, glassware, books, beanies, hoodies, posters, and more will return in 2025 — I'm still looking for that ideal fulfillment vendor!

Want to give a friend a Patreon subscription instead? Choose to gift anywhere from one month to one year, any tier!  

https://www.patreon.com/Achewood/gift

0098b — Cruciflection Point

(Okay, okay, here's the verse I was mulling over when asking why Bible passages are always freighted with metaphors. I ultimately decided to keep this discussion out of the author's notes for strip 0098, but now I am quite curious to discover how many Biblical scholars are out there in Cho Acres.) 

Just for fun, let's have a gander at 1:7 of the Book of Judges, which is affectionately regarded as the seventh tome of the Old Testament. Why this verse? It mentions tables and eating, and we're about to host a big Thanksgiving.

The actual passage, from the New International Version of the Bible, whose wording I think offers less room for error:

Then Adoni-Bezek said, "Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off have picked up scraps under my table. Now God has paid me back for what I did to them." They brought him to Jerusalem, and he died there.

In and around this holiday chestnut, the Israelites disobey God by torturing the Canaanite king Adoni-Bezek, rather than just smiting him outright. They cut off his thumbs and big toes, and make him eat scraps from under their table, just as he had done to his own luckless captives. In so doing — by reducing man to animal — they have allowed themselves to be infected by the values of their enemies.

How do you interpret this passage, and the wider chapter around it? If you just want to make something up, of course, that could be fun.

0098 — Philippe Reads the News

As always, excised panels, rough drafts, and unused gems of dialogue from this strip post at noon in tiers 2 & 3!

It struck me when all was said and done in this strip that it might contain an enfolded metaphorical narrative. You can't toss in a crucifix without inviting speculation of a deeper meaning, amirite? And why are the Big Stories of the Christian Bible and beyond always stuffing their lessons into metaphors and symbols, anyway? Is it a hidden payload, future-proofed, there to be unpacked from its tattered and unrecognizable rags when the surface details and historic context of the story no longer make sense or have relevance to the children's children?

I had a nice analysis of Judges 1:7 worked up, as a basis for discussing this further, but then I wisely decided against inviting a mess* of religious discussion in this otherwise entirely lovely and polite landscape of like-minded and brilliant people who are just here to escape the news cycle for a sacred little while. I wish you all a weekend of happiness, fresh air, and devices left in drawers.

_ _ _ _  

*yes, mess

Thanksgiving: No Nipples at the Dinner Table (New Family Rule)

For our wedding rehearsal dinner in September, Hayden asked what sort of outfit would be appropriate. I said something upscale but not formal. He sent a snapshot of him wearing a sheer long-sleeve blouse that revealed all of his tattoos, thoracic jewelry, and underarm mammalia. While I want to encourage his individuality, and I know how much people tend to enjoy observing someone with the confidence to dress in a way they’d never let themselves, I felt within my rights to extemporaneously fabricate a previously unneeded family rule: no nipples at the dinner table.  

Because it was a special occasion, he gracefully stood down and chose a white sequined tuxedo jacket with a black lizard skin vest and no shirt, thereby complying handsomely with the letter of his father’s fresh and untested stricture.  

For the wedding, he wore a crushed velvet suit in dark emerald with a homemade gold vest, black silk shirt, and bolo-like contraption made of poultry bones. (I had said that a necktie was a necessity at our nuptials, but allowed that he could be “a little creative” with it.)

Tomorrow, at Thanksgiving, I believe the key sauce element of his outfit will be his new stilts, which he picked up in order to film an audition video for a performing arts school back east. 

Throughout my adult life I have privately indulged in the idea of being the dad who waits at home in a v-neck sweater, reading in his wingback chair as squirrels in red-check shearling caps hop over the tidy pile of leaves, waiting for his collegiate child to come home up the walk. The house is warm, and there is a cozy spare room with a bed good enough that an adult would actually consider it for sleeping on full-time. A roasted brown thing is in or on the stove. 

This year, when he arrives for Thanksgiving from his gig managing the farm, I’ll be sitting watching porchetta videos in an old upholstered chair a cat peed in a long time ago (you can only smell it if it’s been hot out and you sit down too fast), and probably wearing something I can get porchetta spatter on. He’ll park his ‘96 Buick Roadmaster hearse (“David”) outside, come carrying his stilts up the front steps I just rebuilt, and ask if I can walk with him while he practices.

We did this last time he was over, too: his hair (dreadlock-type stuff, now) nearly brushing the nine-foot ceiling of the living room, he unself-consciously held my hand as I guided us in a loop around the dinner table and couches. We hadn’t shared a moment like that in a while — part of me just assumed they were over — but it instantly joined a suite of my most revered memories: holding his hand as he learned to walk alongside my knee, holding his seat for those eternal afternoons of learning the bike, even holding him close as he wept over grade-school friendships gone cruelly sour. 

Some may claim that there is not always a deeper metaphor in holding a father’s hand for safety and reassurance, but there is. I will always welcome it, even when he is the president of Cirque du Soleil and juggles out the first pitch for the Yankees.   

Happy Thanksgiving from the Onstad home, and if it’s just another Thursday to you and yours, well, I still wish you a wonderful day of monochromatic overeating.   

—C

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(If you'd enjoy more of my personal writing, the Author's Tier contains over 100 subscriber-only pieces, ranging from short stories, to autobiographical series, to photos and journals and god only remembers what else.)

Sauce Diaries: Sukajan Statement Piece

If you are enjoying the Sauce Diaries Project, please say so in the comments, or just tap Like! Otherwise, I will assume everybody has grown tired of watching me preen around. 

Careful reader Douglas "The Legal Regal Beagle" Wykstra mentioned the "casual Friday" concept in reply to an earlier Sauce post, and it must have stuck in my head, because this is what happened today. I wanted to wear this amazing sukajan that my friend Big Items Ben brought me back from Japan, and these iconic military souvenir jackets from Dobuita naturally draw in other midcentury Americana military elements. (Ben is something of a sukajan historian, and I hope to feature his teachings more here in the future.)

To that end: some super high-rise (I'm talking over the belly button) fatigue-green wide leg (10", suckers) chinos, a ringer 3/4 sleeve baseball tee, a layered pop of collared red to add some life and depth, less-common but still-classic aviators, and some old Keds. Element of discord? The Stetson Stratoliner, Lauren's first xmas gift to me. The Stratoliner is a vintage fedora style with a low crown meant to accommodate cramped airplane cabins, but I find it handy just for sitting around the house.

I recruited Lauren into taking a full-length photo today, but the winter beard made my head look a bit too "we found the body down by the river," so it's a crop today. This is fine, because I'm still getting used to making myself an object of scrutiny and vanity.

Please tell me one of you has worn a daring item of clothing this week, either with or without the help of The Old Sauce Jar. 

0097b — How to Manufacture Fracture

The Christmas holiday looms near at the horizon, which means I am busy gathering oddball lines and visuals — like a squirrel with his walnuts — for the Twelve Days of Christmas mini-strip run. Or however it shapes up this year. In the above scratchboard (which lives off to the right of the board where I assemble the final strip) you will see an early draft of Permanent Agent Mike Colton wearing glasses which are actually designed for feline anatomy. I immediately transferred this visual oddity to the file in which I will assemble the final mini-strips. I am not sure what the deal will be yet, but I imagine it has something to do with Pat.

The idea for this strip arose because we heard a news story about immigration policy while we were driving to pick up some craigslist medicine cabinets for our bathroom. (We are always working on the house, even during our winter off.) It got me thinking about how constantly working on this house together has given Lauren and me a type of "twin language," where we can look at a particular flathead screw or sagging bit of stamped tin ceiling tile and be having the exact same thought — anyone who visits with us will immediately know we spend a LOT of time around each other. When we first were dating I heard a relationship expert say couples need to spend at least 37 minutes a week talking with each other. I think we knock that out before we even decide who's going to start the coffee pot each day.

Did you know there are no other good rhymes for "fracture"? It's like "orange" in that way. The only other word that rhymes with orange is fornge, which is "forge" with an "n" in the middle.

0097 — Gaslighting Roast Beef

Early drafts of this strip appear in tiers 2 & 3 at noon! This month, the upper tiers also featured Ray's Place, an interview with Cornelius about the afterlife, several installments of my new personal fashion column, Roast Beef's post-election interview with Philippe, a look inside my art studio (including dozens of pieces), and much more! Please come look!

It is time for Lauren and I to face the hard fact that our cat, Sunny, is slowly revealing herself to be an actual idiot.

Usually you assume that cats have it together. These cunning little hunting machines self-clean, suffer no fools, and pierce your soul with the unblinking eyes of independence. Sunny, on the other hand, gets trapped behind open doors. Freezes up. To back out the way she got in is a few semesters beyond her.  

Yesterday she got stuck under the deck, even though there are no entrances to the enclosed space under the deck. To exacerbate her condition — and the anxious hour I spent searching for her with a floodlight — she went silent when I would get anywhere near enough to echolocate her. ZZ Flop, her brutish and short-legged sister, mewled while skirting the perimeter of Sunny's oubliette, but drew forth no response.

This is precisely what happened two winters ago when she somehow got herself stuck in the crawl space of the old house for so long that we assumed the coyotes had done their thing. Suffering in silence isn't just a dumb human habit.

Now she's sitting on my lap, and her breath, which is always terrible, is wafting from beneath the board my laptop sits on. It's unbearable. She's about to get escorted out of the room.

Oh, Sunny. If you weren't constantly getting some kind of UTI that makes you pee your special awful variety of marking urine on the bath mat, I might actually feel sorry for you. It's a good thing Lauren tries to figure you out and make you healthy again when you seem particularly out of whack.

Enjoy this week's comic, which is about cats with a more evolved kind of stupidity. Sorry to vent.

The Sauce Diaries: In For a Penny

One of my ongoing quests/hobbies is to recreate the best of the RRL lineup with only thrifted, non-RRL materials. If you aren't familiar with RRL, it's the "western/workwear/vintage Americana" line of Ralph Lauren, and it is actually way, way, way more expensive than their typical lineup. It is so expensive that even if I were to have a best-selling novel and also be the leading man in a Marvel movie, I probably still wouldn't think it's okay to spend $400 on a flannel cowboy shirt. My momma didn't raise no price-and-value-conflatin' dummy.

But, it's one of the deeper and more coherent menswear concepts*, and it's always appealed to me, so I study it and then see which pieces in the thriftscape subsequently resonate. For example, that big, thick, vintage Pendleton overcoat you see in pictures 1 and 5 is straight from the RRL playbook, and would be no less than $2,400 under their rubric, but I found it at Buffalo Exchange for $80, and I used store credit because I often trade things in there. (The $80 still gave me considerable pause, because you can take the boy out of the woods, but you can't...etc etc.) When I went to relocate the buttons for a less-boxy silhouette, I was charmed to find the previous owner had done the same thing.

Careful reader Dapper Dan Ford mentioned male jewelry in a recent reply, which reminded me to snap the metals (photo 3). The old watch was my grandfather's, and I was elated that it was awarded to me when he passed, as I had coveted it since a child, and this way I am reminded of him every day. The turquoise wolf ring was a flea market find in Sedona a few years back. Dudes, are you bold enough to rock a ring that isn't a wedding band? The statement of confidence it makes will pull positive attention — as long as it is sauced out correctly — I promise you. (Except from your parents, who will probably make fun of you, because they are still trying to keep you down.)

More details in the captions.

*The last three seasonal 2024 RRL collections have actually been under-inspired, but I sense all clothing lines are still reeling in aftershock from covid. J Crew has less than a dozen Wallace & Barnes pieces right now, and they are heartbreakingly dull.

How to Family the Ray Way; Advice For When Things are Bullshit

Ray, what’s your stance on having children? Who, when, where, why or why not, how many, etc. —Sam J.

Sam, 

Consider it like this: folks been havin’ children in every wacked-out terrible situation imaginable for all of history. (In a cave on a cliff while a hungry eagle is shrieking in the hole; behind the medicine table’s backdrop curtain at Dancing With The Stars, etc.) So, here and now’s always basically as good a time as any.  

If it sweetens the pot a bit, other people love to pitch in raisin’ your kids! I dig on messin’ their hair, gettin’ referred to as Uncle, all that happy jazz. I picture myself shoppin’ for a meaningful present that helps shape who they will become: Cross fountain pen = high power lawyer; wind-up wooden turtle = sports broadcaster. Then, when their behavior sucks, I can just bow out, so I don’t say anything regrettable!

Oh, and have as many kids as you can. Most don’t turn out that interesting, and you don’t want to be bored when you’re so old they’re the only people who have to hang out with you. 

=-Reychaldo Gulch, Known Pistolero-=

+ - + - + 

Hi Ray, the name's Jason, first time long time. I have two teenagers (twins, i'm very lucky) but they seem to want nothing to do with me anymore. I like to think I'm a fun dad, into all the nerdy stuff, but getting them to hang out with me is getting harder. Do I push and insist we do things together or do I let those kids be on their own? Signed, Frustrated Dad

Frustrated Dad Jason, 

You could be peak Johnny Cash on orangutan reds and they’d still think you were a bore. It’s the sad, hard road of dads — but also the main way civilizations advance — that those kids got to distance themselves from their home base to learn who they are. Did I ever tell you about the quarter I took golf at the community college? Mom’s voice mails were stackin’ up, and I felt bad about that, but I also knew it was just somethin’ I had to do. 

They’ll be back before too long. Maybe with a job, or just dreadlocks, but treat it all the same. Stay positive with them, so they’ll always sense the door is open. 

I truly hope Little Nephew starts this detaching process soon. 

>—R. Smunkle, Known Uncle—<  

+ - + - + 

Ray, I'm curious, you seem like the kind of guy that's skillfully navigated and overcome all sorts of adversity in his life. I feel that, for myself, there's gonna be hard days a-coming, and I don't feel prepped. My question is, is there a mantra or words of wisdom that you stick by in hard times, that gets you through the hard days? Any advice for us little folk to find the value in challenging times? Asking for a friend. Bungus B.

Dear Bungus, 

I bet The Highwaymen used to write letters like this to Ann Landers. 

(That may sound like I’m just not giving you a serious answer, but in truth, it’s a line I say to myself every time the universe shoots some bullshit across my bow: crazy driver almost sideswipes me, shopping cart wheel keeps jamming up, etc.) 

Ray_Of_Truth.exe

+ - + - + 

Confidential to Mercator_Projectionist: Ticklishness is all in the nature of the attack. Fingers that touch you gently can seem MORE tickly (they remind the brain of a spider), while confidently-placed hands that rest firmly upon the same area will not tickle. Incidentally, it’s the evolution of the latter property that allowed for the development of slow-dancing. 

The Sauce Diaries: Author's Deep-cut Fashion Backstory

Why do you dress the way you do? I like chatting with people about this topic, so please comment. Okay, on with today's piece:

I have yet to receive so much derision for my vanity that I bury my entire closet in the back yard, so here is another installment of the Sauce Diaries. Why am I doing this? I hope to address the at-first-insufferable phenomenon of documenting one's outfits more thoroughly in a livestream, but here it is in a nutshell.

When I was very small, perhaps six or seven, my grandmother took me to buy a nice shirt. I think it was a Polo shirt. Typically my siblings and I were clad in hand-me-downs or unremarkable items from The Thrift Station — a creaky little secondhand store known as much for its rack of one-off, obsolete golf clubs as it was for one-off, obsolete fashion. But the arrival of this shirt on my scene, thanks to the compartmentalized ritual of its purchase, and the special place it came from, was something I sat and pondered deeply and often over my young years.

McCaulou's department store — pronounced muh'-CULL-uh's — was and is a clothing-only standalone in Danville, California. (Although, in that charming organic way of small-town shops, it included the counter where the local scouts bought their uniforms and badges.) It was the kind of place that Cost Money, but my beloved grandmother, Marva, who had grown up in an unplumbed farm shack, took quite gracefully to the trickle and then moderate flow of income that my hard-working grandfather began to generate as they grew old. So, with some gentle but assured means in place, she loved to reward us with a treat from McCaulou's on an unknown schedule that kept the thrill fresh. As the years tallied ho, and she noticed how much our little excursions meant to me, shopping trips for nice clothing increased in frequency — well into my high school career, until her arthritis became too debilitating. I suspect she knew that cowering young me needed the sort of supplemental assurance that good clothing provided.

I had a wealthy cousin for whom a trip to McCaulou's would have scarcely elicited a puff from the nose, but for me, each instance of light that reflected off the racks — matching racks! — and mirrors — mirrors! — was an instant to be savored; it held the promise of a fuller life, soon to be yanked away. Even the mannequins were so much better than I would ever be, but they didn't mind me examining their casually assured scarves and curiously delicate cardigans. I was mystified by clothing for pleasure, rather than utility.

After I had tried the shirt on in the dressing room, making sure the sleeveheads fell correctly at the edge of the shoulder and the belly draped comfortably but not excessively, the saleslady would fold it, wrap it in that crinkly tissue, and place it in a flat-bottomed McCaulou's handle bag for us. Back at home, I would sit with the shirt on the couch a while, holding its still-folded form, examining the texture of the pique, marveling at the tiny stitches that drew the horse, thrilling in my powerful knowledge of the not just grown-up but secret word "placket." (Incidentally, it was at my grandfolks' house where I first encountered a thesaurus.)  

I've run on too long with this, and want to have something to share in a livestream, so I'll end it here. But that's one of the bedrock reasons I find myself interested in clothing.

Clothing notes in photo captions.

What the Cartoonist is Wearing This Week, Inaugural Edition

So many people* replied to yesterday's post begging for photographs of me wearing clothing** that I gave in to the pressure and put these together. You will have noticed in my various social media incarnations that I am not much given to selfies, or any general thirsty celebration of my physical form, but when you take dead aim at my hobby of thrifting neat old clothing and release your arrow of flattery, well...I am but the humble tailor's dummy for the true star of the show.

1. Outfit One 

It doesn't look nearly so impressive in these photos (and it really isn't), but in the context of a rainy-day Portland coffee shop where everyone else was wearing the standard issue beanie, black hoody, black jeans, and black tennis shoes, it was quite the atom bomb. Especially the hat. Real men's hats are dying a slow death, but not on my block. Have some self-confidence for god's sake, fellas. Shoes: gumsole high tops I cut down because the high-top portion was a ghastly puffy material. Photo quality? Lauren snuck these through her office window while I was evaluating the spot for my second rain garden. Sauce Comment: quiet sauce, but sauce. Could have done with a belt buckle but no turquoise.

2. Outfit the Second 

"Who's Your Traddy" — I recently managed to successfully shrink a J. Crew intarsia I got on clearance last winter, and was glad when today was cold enough to layer it with a chambray. This combo (and the weather) seemed to want an old blazer, and to balance the ivy stiffness — yet harmonize with the ivy value of wearing old clothing until it is but the collar and hem — I threw on some beater jeans. The dogs: a pair of Mayports I thrifted a couple years back. Sauce Comment: The incongruous high-sauce element here is obviously the orange web belt. It is the modulating transition between the jeans and the top, and its craziness is far outweighed by the cold and quiet colors of the rest. Zigzag does not count as sauce, but we did recently rename her ZZ Flop, after her penchant for flopping across our paths and expecting belly scratches.

I have shared some sauce secrets with you. Now you share. Below.  

_ _ _ _ _

*A guy named Spyguitar who has a new mullet

**Yesterday's post does not contain nude photographs of me 

The Elements of Fashion Sauce; rain garden update; upcoming Author's Tier pieces

Good morning. It is 11:24am as I begin this, this momentary diversion on the road to whatever it is you and I are doing this afternoon. This is probably nothing more than a journal entry; or is it a powerful and precious shield against the intrusion of yet another news cycle into your already-vexed and -incredulous temporal lobe? But there I go, subtly suggesting what you ought to think, like some kind of insidious news cycle. I sometimes wonder, when I am outside and gazing into the rain garden which now holds copious autumn water, if the two greatest forces invented by mankind are (1) the concept of time, and (2) the news cycle. 

But you will find no more of that heady talk here. This is a distraction, an Instagram reel of your favorite type of person dancing in a swimsuit, but in textual, cerebral form. Take my weird hand, reheat your flagging beverage, and read on. 

The Author’s Morning Habit

I awoke this morning around seven a.m. This isn’t typical, but we entertained twice this weekend, and I’d fallen asleep a little earlier than usual, just after midnight. I’m experimenting with a large-dose CBD edible before bed and it knocks me out right away, which I love, because I have never been able to fall asleep in anything like an acceptable timeframe. One of the many reasons I liked to drink heavily in college was that it promised a much more reliable bedtime. At some point I may naturally harmonize with whatever internal rhythm nature has plumbed up inside me, but that time is not this week. Mama N made me chemically antisocial and that project is going to take some kind of spiritual month drumming a bongo on a Sedona butte-top. 

I did a little deep breathing, but not enough to count as discipline, and brushed my teeth so that I could taste the morning’s coffee without interference. I switched to decaf many months ago, as it results in deeper sleep and no more pesky crepuscular trips to the loo. Breakfast of a single fried egg, yolk popped and flipped in olive oil, and slid onto toast, was enjoyed at the dining room table, looking out across the street to the house of the neighbors who only wave hello if prompted to do so. I will not allow this neighborhood to be one where we blank each other, so everybody gets a wave and a verbal greeting if I see them. If elementary human warmth is a thorn in their side, perhaps they will grow the pearl of artificial affection around it, and soon come to recognize its appealing lustre.   

Option: Sauce

A podcast recommended a walk around the block, so I did that, after putting in the effort to assemble an outfit. I have been giving considerable processing time to the concept of “sauce” lately, as it pertains to building the day’s costume. It’s easy to fall into a safe and easy, inconspicuous clothing rut. 

Sauce, as I define it, means including an element of risk, incongruity, or potential derision in your outfit. It’s a delicate thing: Not even Adam Sandler can pull off a top hat with his voluminous basketball shorts and oversized 1990s short-sleeve button-up shirt, and nor would anyone want him to. But what if you wore a non-theatrical hat that’s on the brink of contemporary usage, with clothing that wasn’t thrown out the back of a Goodwill? Today I wore a new wide- and flat-brim fedora that almost comes off like a Trilby, which Lauren got me last weekend in Poulsbo, and the barista at Extracto gave me multiple compliments on that, as well as the rest of the ensemble, which was a cardigan over a strange bright red polyester cowboy shirt buttoned all the way up. Normally I’d feel painfully conspicuous in such attire, but I try to remind myself of the dashing Italian men we saw everywhere on our honeymoon — men who could not give two fucks about what some black-hoodied Americans in a sodden suburb thought of their sprezzatura — and I am reminded how attractive boldness and self-confidence is. There will always be grouches whose internal monologues are filled with disdain for tall poppies, but that is their poison vessel, and it shall burn them out from the inside if they do not soon decant its bile.   

Next time: choosing your outfit’s Statement Piece. 

Rain Garden Update! The Empire Expands. 

After arriving home from the walk I stopped and pondered my rain garden for a while. The heavy skies lately have filled its main pool, and yesterday I spent a calm and reflective while just watching the drops spatter and ring its surface. I realized that I was enjoying the experience quite a bit, so today I perambulated the remainder of the yard, scoping the footprint where its sister pool will lay. A yard ideally needs two rain gardens, so that the existence of the first doesn’t come across as some precious and vain anomaly. Two rain gardens says, “I know what I’m doing.” One rain garden says, “I’m a dabbler of little consequence.” 

Gym time.

12:56pm. I have also been chatting with Hayden this whole time. He wants to open an Etsy shop for his jewlery, which is, in keeping with his own sauce, quite meticulous and luxurious-looking. Kid has a much better sense of color than I do. If we get that project off the ground, you will hear about it here, you can be sure of it. 

 In the works for the Author’s Tier:

I am editing down a big story about the true time I worked at a marketing firm where everybody went crazy. I think the statute of limitations has passed on talking about it. 

I am finishing my honeymoon installments. 

I’ll be privately posting a first glimpse into the finished studio art pieces I’ll be offering for sale. 

I am willing to post pictures of my Fashion Sauce, but only if some kind of petition is filed. 

"What is Shangri-La?" Cornelius Bear edition

In this installment of the "What is Shangri-La" series, Roast Beef interviews the one denizen of Achewood who might actually have some advanced and well-considered ideas on the matter.

Previous interviewees have been Ray, Peter H. "Nice Pete" Cropes, and the unlikely duo of Philippe + Lyle.  

0096b — Akkolade gets his new head-angles

As you can see, this script landed on the page in near-final form, with minimal fiddling as it was worked through the strip production process. The bulk of the work this week involved inventing how Bensington Butters and Akkolade (particularly Akkolade) look from multiple angles. This is not what I am good at. At first I feared Akkolade could not be drawn from anything other than the angle at which he has existed for twenty years, but a few anxious experiments finally yielded a lower lip, an extra chin/neck flange, perspective on his very large glasses, and a continuation of his little hairstyle-type thing.

Can anyone tell what Ray was thinking with this logo for The Echelons? I feel like he recently saw a motel lounge's matchbook from the 1960s.  

0096 — Return of Akkolade and Bensington Butters

The workspace/draft version of this strip posts at noon in Tiers 2 & 3!

There are two main things I noticed about this particular strip.

One is that no one mentions the graphic design Ray displays for his "The Echelons" concept. This has to infuriate Ray, as it clearly is the product of a specific vision, and likely represents a considerable financial investment. Did Téodor make it? I think Ray probably went over T's head, because he needed it to get done, and I don't think he thinks Téodor's all that talented.

Two is that Bensington Butters, even though he is a scoundrel for being unclear about which definition of "cream pie" has primacy in his world, doesn't seem to know what a "chode" is. Strange, but permissible, as this is also the man who drinks Hunt's ketchup and didn't know who Mickey Mouse was.

A further note on chodes.  

In the people of my world, the understanding of this term has been mixed — for nearly all my life. Some say it is a stubby edition of the male organ, while others insist it refers to the perineum. Still others defend the position that it is only spelled "choad," and refers to the measurement around the testicles but excluding the length of the penis itself.

What do YOU believe?

A Chochacho was robbed! But his Cocoa Buddies escaped a positive evaluation by the criminals

AUSTIN, TX (Achewood News Wire) — A Texas Cho's storage unit was recently burgled to the tune of all his life's many precious things, excepting these three Cocoa Buddies, and a few other small pieces. It is gut-wrenching to read, and to then walk one's self empathically through a similar predicament. It warmed my heart greatly to know that the sight of the remaining Achewood artwork, left among the debris, gave him such solace and relief.

This post originally appeared in a Facebook Achewood group, and the author was kind enough to grant me permission to share his words above.

Philippe: Post-Election Interview

Roast Beef checks in with Philippe after the American Presidential election, and they hatch a plan to unite America.

0095b — A Deep Peek Behind the Scenes

This is a pretty good peek behind the scenes, in my humble estimation — First you see (on slide 2, sorry) as the idea changes radically from the initial Big Game Hunter direction, and then you can see the way words shift and morph between the framed-out version here and the final version.

0095 — Voting Day, by Philippe!

Two pages of unused panels and scripts from this strip post in Tiers 2 & 3 at noon, as does a new Roast Beef + Philippe interview on Saturday at 10am Pacific!  

I will admit to writing this several days before the 2024 American Presidential election, so it is easy and accurate for me to claim this has nothing to do with those figures. This strip was originally going to be about a big game hunter (again, see the In-Universe Tier for those drafts at noon), but all the politics headline saturation suddenly sprang a leak in my head and it leaked upon the page. How does a child struggle to bend reality to this falsely diametric framing of his world? What is the path of his reasoning, and does his verdict on the matter resemble ours, or the opposite of ours?

I think the only thing that stayed from the original was the shooter named Jack. Also, I wanted to show the joy a little child feels when they realize they have the power to use end notes, just like textbooks do.

When did you first fall prey to the delicious power of academic citation markup styling? Sound off, F. Crews Crew!

Actually, don't answer that. Ending a media feed post with a phony-feeling call for interaction is so demeaning to us all.

(I mean, I really do enjoy interacting with you in the comments, as previous threads will attest, but please, let us speak organically, and not of real-world politics or joyless citation markup systems. I like to think of Achewood as an escape from both.)

Ray's Place: Gettin' Shredded the Ray Way; When Love Dies; Each One Teach One (Drinkin' Edition)

®@¥, I am a man of humble muscle mass who is looking to change that. The problem is that I have basically no idea what to do in a gym. Do you suggest taking group classes so someone can tell me what to do, or should I just watch some YouTube videos and figure it out? —Brian D.

Brian! 

Man, do not get “YouTube fit.” That is a very simple recipe for gettin’ like one ripped lat and a punctured lung. I even saw a dude at the club break his leg in two places cause he had his screen on no-rotate and went in the goblet cage sideways. (He was all, “Aaaaaa! Aaaaaaaaa!”)

A trainer is always, always worth the couple hundo you’ll drop gettin’ a routine and goin’ through it with them a couple times. You’ll probably see trainers at your gym with their clients—chat with those clients in private, later, to see how they like them. (Not everybody sticks with a trainer because they like them. Lotta head games in that relationship.) 

There’s also a huge benefit to knowin’ a pro designed your routine, as you’re more likely to stick with it for the time it takes to see gains. If you’re just followin’ some mix of nobodies on YouTube, like who never have an ad where they built in a break for the ad and the video just starts again, you’ll lose respect for them pretty quick.  

Oh, you also said “group classes.” Every time I’m at the gym those group classes are all just the dowdiest old peckers and hens you ever saw, and I would definitely not want to be among them. Hella demotivating…ankles all rattlin’ around inside loose socks, dude all with a business belt over his sweatshorts (which have no belt loops). 

Start shiftin’ plates with a true bag-slappin’ banana dancer* and you’ll be swole on the pole in a few short months! 

=-WHOOT-WHOOT-RAY=

*[Translation: Begin a resistance training program with a certified fitness coach who is so dedicated to their discipline they have electively installed catheterization rather than waste time using the restroom. —Ed.] 

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Hi Ray, first time, long time. I've got a situation wherein I'm in a loveless relationship that has dragged on for way too long, and the financial entanglements prevent both of us from just admitting it's time to split and strike out on our own. No kids involved or anything but we got this hella nice apartment and it'll likely come down to who wants to keep paying both shares of rent. I would also like to know your best recipe for such as a simple cheese less taco for someone with high cholesterol and a love for things that are dangerous to that (Dr. Andretti may have some input.) All the love, Tony 

1) both move out of apt or remaining one gets roommate

2) asada

R

Just kidding, Tony! Man, what if my answers were always so cold like that! I’d be hella a dick! So but seriously T, chop the steak, either cooked or leftover, into real small bits, like corn kernels and dice, and brown the gadzooks outta’ them in a pan with small-chopped white onion and jalapeño. What you’re after is full-crust, just this side of black. Those onions will get all sweet, and the pepper got that heat. Throw some of those expensive-ass (use your cheese money) local-made corn tortillas right on the flame and let those get char marks, then stack them and let them steam each other back to softness. Dose them snazzlitas with salsa verde and chopped cilantro and shit, son, who needs cholesterol? 

Oh, wait, you said cholesterol. I forgot what that was for a second. So, instead of the steak, use white mushrooms also cut the same size, and brown them off alone in the pan with either avocado oil or clarified butter (no water), and definitely do not crowd them or they’ll get too wet to brown. (Brown the other ingredients separately too).  

Okay, as you might have guessed from this rockin’ answer, I took a taco class last year. I was super bored with my taco game, but didn’t want to get into complicated stuff like cochinita pibil, which involves squattin’ down to look in the oven. (I got a mild phobia about how hot ovens are. I mean, I’ll do it, but it wears on me.) Anyhow, I had that Rick Bayless dude in, that older gringo who is like a lifetime scholar of the stuff? We ended up talkin’ nearly the whole time about bronzer and neck lifts, but we did break to make lunch, and he taught me that technique. 

Ray the Old Famous Online Hippo Baby 

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Dear Ray, I've got a nephew who's not so little anymore, in fact he's recently of drinking age, and has the late-year birthday/Christmas combo coming up. His knowledge of alcohol is at the "toss back boxed wine like it's a shot" level, which is not his fault, it's just where he's at in linear time. I want to get him some bottles to help him develop taste, but I don't want to get him anything TOO nice so he's not struck by the yearning of the impoverished when he's looking at those high shelves in the liquor store. I'm a bourbon person myself but want to encourage openness and discovery in him. What would you recommend as an alcoholic starter pack? Any general advice on teaching the young about such things without seeming like a snob? Tim P.

Dear Tim, 

Your heart is in the right place, but you can’t just hand off a well-reasoned $40 handle and go, “Start! START!” This runs the risk of causing him to develop less-than-great drinkin’ habits. 

A more effective gift will be the night of drinkin’. Together. You’re the older and wiser one, and you got to do things like this in person to make ‘em work. Put on a turtleneck and a light-colored corduroy sport coat. Take him to some place that will impress him — like a place with chairs — and order for you both. Then, take him through the paces. Nurse the drink, make it secondary to the conversation. He’ll be surprised how long an inch of Scotch can last if the convo’s rollin’. Mention some flavor qualities the drink has (fortentuous, duffy, halcyon), so he knows that’s a thing. Also, remind him never to order a martini: (a) because that’s my drink, and (b) everybody thinks a twenty-year old kid with a martini looks like an idiot.    

Rizzo Flute tha God-Man

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Confidential to Gary_V in Minneapolis: Up yours too, pal! BLOCKED. 

Jury Duty: Unexpected Beauty! Also, photos: art studio update; kinetic truck sculpture

Several weeks ago, the dear Lord in his Vaulted Elysium sat upon his crystal throne, an elbow upon the great Knob of his knee, a fist beneath his pensive chin. (From which flowed a white beard.) Unsure what to do with Chris on the morning after the American election day, he spun through his cylindrical index of Bothers & Agitations - Minor and soon his fingertip came to rest upon an old reliable: Jury Duty.

"That's just the thing," he thought quietly to himself, before committing the assignment to the routing system (i.e., snapping his fingers) and moving on. "He was such an ass about it last time, making a grouchy sport of getting kicked out."

At 7:56am this morning my bleary-eyed bride dropped me off at the county courthouse, just a hop-skip-p'too from her office, and I bustled in to perform my way out of my civic duty. Soon I had wiggled my fine adult bottom into a chair, and shortly thereafter an official lady took confidently to the lectern to outline how our day would go.

To paint a picture and bring you in with me: she was compact, dressed in officey black slacks and crimson blouse, and upbeat in a way that was measured but still excessive for the task of addressing our involuntary number. She had a very thick accent, but fairly decent English. (Certainly better than my version of whatever her native tongue might be.) The unmoved silence which a hundred people offered her at each opportunity for response and engagement did not daunt her in the slightest.

As she described the restroom usage guidelines to us, she offered the following treasure of a sentence, which I transcribe verbatim not in mockery, but in appreciation of its poetry:

"All the toilet are self-flushing, but they are not perfect. If you turn around and still can see what you have done, please do the flush manual, or some time a people come after you and see the sadness and disaster."

It was so lovely.

The only thing better than that was when she returned to the lectern an hour later and told us we were all dismissed because both of the day's cases had agreed to settle out of court. Huzzah! I hopped on a bus, went home, and — bonus of bonuses — sold 120 wedding wine glasses to some nice lady from Facebook Marketplace.

I fully anticipate the arrival of another summons this afternoon, slung from Mercury's own satchel. But for now, I'm happily back at my post, posting and painting and pains-taking, which I've been trying to return to with greater frequency ever since the honeymoon ended. (The honeymoon is over, as they say.)

0094b — Clipped by the Chochacho Chanclazo

This strip was almost entirely created on the original artboard, so there is not a lot of evidence of its creation, other than the large trace, and my recollection that instead of a "hippo's ass freckle" Todd had originally referred to himself as a "polka dot." But people do not feel sad for polka dots, so I changed it.

I am also running the dick/bread/gravy panel again, as it was quite popular with people.