Achewood

Serializer, The Model Train (2 versions), 2002

In this primordial—nay, primitive—strip, a very rough sketch of the Roast Beef prototype inadvertently communicates to Vlad that he has nearly zero exposure to women. In return, Vlad says something that has not aged well. I am vastly certain that if I were to rewrite this strip today, Vlad would reflect on how the little landscape reminds him of his childhood home, and suddenly magical realism would shrink him down to live there, only his mustache would remain life-size, and it would drag behind him like wings. (Arc Title: "A Very Little Robot With Enormous Wings.") It would become a 19-installment arc and end sometime in 2026.

If you can't read the color one, the b/w one is much larger. Why? I somehow have the original, enlarge-able art for this in a non-colorized form, and the colorized form is in the usual undersized, pixelly gif version.

I have no idea how a tech industry guy in Silicon Valley (me) didn't back up his actual, job-type artwork in any findable form, but maybe it's a clue as to why I got laid off from that startup.

Well, joke's on them, they're gone (got bought out for 110M the year after I left) and I'm still here! (I have a head cold and bad savings)

I Hate Long-Ass Recipes: The Smash Burger

Kenji López-Alt's smash burger recipe on Serious Eats is four written pages long. It is six hundred words longer than the Declaration of Independence (1,959 to 1,320), and has fourteen photographs (including a helpful one of the outside of a building where hamburgers are cooked). The entire webpage clocks in at 3.3MB, which means that transmitting it produces a larger carbon footprint than actually cooking the burger.

In addition to copious information about the science and lore of this style of hamburger, it covers a recent bicycle repair that his wife needed, sanitation challenges faced by early Parisian civil engineers, and a lengthy recounting of his favorite day ever (it involved both a watercolor lesson and a man complimenting his hat).

May "For sale: baby shoes, never worn" be our guide when writing recipes.

-—-—-—-—-—-—

MY SMASH BURGER RECIPE

Look at my picture. You can reverse-engineer this, because you are quite intelligent.

OKAY, FINE 

Two-ounce ball of beef. Screaming hot pan. Squash hard under parchment until wider than bun. Scrape loose when edges darken, flip, cheese, serve.

(Word count: 23)

-—-—-—-—-—-—

EPILOGUE

I will admit that I have had a sore throat since Monday, and being listlessly homebound makes me very, very cranky. I want to dig my new rain garden and listen to podcasts at the gym and work on the upcoming novel, not complain about recipes like some barnacle on the ass of the Internet.

But if you are interested in more of these condensed recipes, sans-vitriol*, I have been hard at work on a dead-easy hummus, and we could start there. Fresh hummus from the food processor is an entirely more magical animal than the refrigerated store-bought stuff, has more fiber, costs like a buck-fifty to make...and you will never find a sentence that florid, irrelevant, and selfishly long in the final writeup.

* or with, your choice

The Raising of the Onstad Deckola, 2024

The evening before my parents, Lauren, and I descended upon Hayden's farm to build a new pergola out of the old fort, I sensed complications arising. Everyone in the group, it seemed, had their own carpentry background — some professional, but most autodidact — and the gutters of Babel soon overran with incompatible visions for the simple structure. (Please advance to Slide No. 2, in which you will observe Hayden's phone-sketch of his desired installation.)

Regrouping in our private chambers that night, Lauren and I reflected upon the threat that even the most loving and well-meaning group of people poses to the simplest of goals, and talked through a fairly foolproof blueprint. It contained little space for misinterpretation or hurt feelings, but maximal space for a cute little patio set and a flowering clematis. We loaded the family vehicle the next morning, drove happily to the farm, and set out our tools and materials.

(I will omit the tale of our stop at the Bob's Red Mill headquarters, store, and cafe, as that is a story unto itself, but suffice it to say that my father was finally able to try his favorite oatmeal as prepared in the hall of the master himself.)

Once at the farm, another challenge quickly arose, of course. Enter into the project's dynamic the inexorable nature of generations, each naturally trying to teach those beneath it its hard-won wisdom — while the generation below rolls its eyes and wonders how the former ever wound up with so much as matching shoes on — and you will witness afresh the seized bolt that fastens the wheel of our shared human experience: "man plans, god laughs."

Over a dozen inaccurately-placed holes were dug for the structure's six footings (many by me). My ever-supportive mother tried to stick a pry-block beneath a crowbar I was using to remove a nail — in mid-yank — and nearly got brained when the bar flew free. A conversation about the decline of the Craftsman tool company threatened to spill over into personal territory. Despite all this, though, progress, somehow, ground forward.

I would like to have taken a more active role in the actual carpentry. However, soon realizing that the best use of me was not the pergola itself, but rather the architecting of a day that would be a happy multigenerational memory for my kid — and not a memory of how dysfunctional, traumatic, and even acutely concussive days with family can be — I took a breather, walked 'round a tree a few times, and returned to the job site determined to harmonize the players.

Enter Fenway the farm dog.

As we Doozers carried boards and tools around like five Roombas in a screensaver, Fenway appeared at the top of the hill, barking in his characteristic (moronic, ceaseless) way.

Fenway is a very large black Lab, and in his senescence he has developed a little case of doggie Alzheimer's. So bark, bark, bark he came, bounding down the hill with his lopey, ungainly body, rear feet at times above his head, tail swinging like the blade of a wounded helicopter. A full three hundred yards he noisily travelled before stopping like a military drone and urinating directly onto the side of my mother's beloved purple leather Coach purse. He then ran all the way back from where he had come, barking all the while.

Fenway's comedic relief had the magic of relaxing everyone (except mom, but particularly dad) into a form of cooperation, and before long we had the deck graded, the posts squared, and the beams leveled. It was time for the family photo (I regret that the one included with this piece excludes Lauren, who, by any measure, should have been seated at center, like old Isambard Brunel) and trip to Black Bear Diner. Black Bear Diner is one of the few restaurants where my parents know all of the saturated fat and sodium numbers of each dish, so there is always plenty of fun conversation. Soon the table groaned beneath grapefruit-sized biscuits and chicken-fried steaks, good-natured ribbing was evenly distributed, and dad waved away my offer to help split the check. All was as it should be.

Yesterday, two weeks after my folks left, I drove back to the farm. In a steady gray Oregon drizzle — the sort that beads on wool — Hayden learned how to cut with the circular saw, drill a pilot hole, and use the impact driver. We added decorative lattice and trim, and made plans for more. We identified a rafter in the barn where he can hang a silk for aerial gymnastics, another of the daisy-chained projects that center our visits. We then had our traditional chewy-hashbrowns lunch and chat at Shari's (this time: the politics of riding clinics).

Back at the farm, our visit drawing to a close, he gave me a better-than-usual hug, and went inside to enjoy some of his birthday tea. I drove the hour home, double- and triple-checking with myself for the assurance I'd been a good dad. There are many years to make up for, but we are all, miraculously, present for the amends.

0057 — Philippe Gets Lyle a Present

Shirt lines that didn't make the cut:

*

I AM LYLE

I SMELL LIKE

I WENT JOGGING WITH ONION SLICES IN MY ARMPITS 

and 

YARD TOOLS

*

I already have GRASS

and GAS

So gimme your (LAWNMOWER?, SORRY, NOT SURE WHAT THIS ONE MEANS)

*

I’M A PERFECT MIXTURE OF

PALE ANKLES

AND

THAT STUFFY HAT / HAIR SMELL

*

A Hot Mug of Soup (short story)

In this brand-new story, Ray takes Cornelius on a drive to the ophthalmologist, but, as these things go, that is the least of what occurs.

(As an aside to all this, I'm still looking for a way to format these such that the PDF conversion process doesn't turn them into gappy slop, so if you notice any formatting errors, or like to talk about PDF conversion, please chime in in the comments. Thank you!)

Internal E-mail Regarding Local Dance Troupe

A brief e-mail exchange between Lauren and me, as we sat in our respective offices Monday morning. 

Perhaps you would enjoy captioning it, as well? 

Notes & Outtakes from 0056 (Pentagon Disagreement)

Curious to hear from you chochachos of the Author's Tier about your specific feelings on these panels. I couldn't ask you this until now because my parents were staying with us, but tonight my parents are 300 miles away in Yreka, trying to eat food at a Black Bear Diner, and I don't have to hear about how much saturated fat is in the biscuits.  

0056 - Ray and Cornelius Disagree About The Pentagon

I have spent the past week entertaining my parents, who are visiting from out of town. We are the sort of family who hold seven concurrent conversations despite there being only three people in the room. It is a special kind of multiplexing which can drive others mad. I can handle it, because I grew up in it, but it has the unfortunate downside of making it impossible, at night, to consider anything other than falling into bed and aiming benumbed pupils at the tips of my toes. Hence, the Author's Tier and In-Universe Tier haven't seen the usual activity this week, and for that I both apologize and happily announce the following:   

As soon as I am free again on Sunday, and I finish the 298-mile personal-time run/shriek I am planning, I will greedily resume doling out the fevered ideas I've been adding to the Master Document while hiding in various restaurant men's rooms all week. The beginning of the coming week will see a compensatory burst of output for your enjoyment.  

Fall of Fort Onstad, 2010-2024

In 2010, back when I was still married and we all lived at the old house together, my wife and kid went on a trip to see her family in California. While they were gone, I thought it would be an act of classical fatherhood to build a playhouse for my child, and surprise them when they returned. 

I wasn't in particularly good shape—along any axis you might name—at the time, and did not know much about framing (or even that it was called that), but YouTube was well enough on its way, and I had a new friend (the elsementioned Jaybee) who showed me about using lag bolts for securing the rim joists to the posts, so with a whole lot of sweating and breaks and changes of very large t-shirts and probably quite a few beers I got the thing up and stabilized. 

Upon returning home, my wife's sole reaction to my hand-hewn testament of fatherly affection was that it looked "unsafe." I have carried the injury of that deflation ever since. It is quite likely I went inside and took a retaliatory gulp of vodka. 

It stood for fourteen years. Many generations of wee friends summited the ladder-stair-thing, under a few different permutations of family. Buckets on pulleys were sent down ropes to the house, hopeful of snacks. First little "I want privacy" phone calls were made up there. Camping even happened once or twice, though it had to be chaperoned due to scary neighborhood animals. 

But all structures have what's called a "usable life." Especially this one.  

Last week, one of my final tasks in preparing the house for sale was to demolish, raze, deconstruct, erase this collapsing monument of love from the darkest point in all my life. This was ok, because it had become an unusable eyesore, and, finally, unsafe. The blackberries—and a climbing rose with so many thorns it could never be plucked—had long blown through the floorboards. Raccoons had been crapping under the awning, where the kids had once made breakfasts of toy foods on a play stove. And, I would imagine, the neighbors were tired of seeing its splintering, overgrown spire. So on Wednesday of this week I went out with the same socket wrench that put it together, and took it apart.    

I had to look through thousands of photos to find older shots of the fort, and ended up going back to 2005, the year Hayden was born. I don't have an exact word for the feeling of seeing so many regretted, squandered, underused years at once, but there is a respectfully acknowledged heaviness from all those ghosts. Any aberrance in my dreams tonight will have an obvious origin, but I doubt the back-of-house processing will be so brief or so tidy.  

Last night Hayden and I loaded some of the better lumber from the fort into his hearse, and he drove it out to the farm where he lives (which, incidentally, is owned by Jaybee). My parents are coming into town this week, and we're all going to drive out and build a pergola for his trailer together, using the same old beams. Lauren, who has personally built many types of actual, legal homes from scratch, will be there to make sure it safely passes inspection. 

I'll share a photo of us all beneath it. 

May you outlive even the things you have built in love, but never the love that lifted them.   

0055 - panel edits, original script

This strip was remarkable to me because the original script took about ten minutes to write, and changed very little through the production stage. (This happens maybe once every thousand strips.) I vacillated a bit on the seventh panel — I always find a way to waste an extra hour or two — but ended up staying with the original. Why? Because it's important for the reader to know that this character's "best case scenarios" still involve parasitic brain mortality and the unmasking of love as a passing chemical phenomenon. 

Careful readers will recall that a previous exploration of this character's "best case scenarios" involved a foreign woman marrying him strictly for a green card, so that she could then get her MBA and dump him.  

0055 - TV Phone Calls

I add to this list: Oncoming drivers whom you move aside to let pass on a narrow street yet fail to wave. People who bring dogs into coffee shops and don't notice your glaring. Ship captains who gaze inscrutably into the distance instead of saying, "The sea is me soul's final keep, the briney me sheet as I sleep."

What is your pet peeve you should probably get over?

Philippe's Complete Twitter Archive

Sure, you could have just gone to Twitter and read all this, but I doubt many people are going there to look for Philippe Twitter content anymore (his last post was eleven years ago), so I, in the spirit of both fun sharing and completeness, present his total output here. As you might imagine, it's fairly light reading. I'd almost just call it glancing. 

No one is really sure why he stopped tweeting, but many suspect it comes down to either (a) the general unpalatability of discourse on Twitter, or (b) a lost password and a non-functional password recovery system. (Seriously, if anybody at X is reading this, I'm trying to recover Philippe, Cornelius, Lyle, and Téodor's account access, to no avail.)

Monster Truck Weekend

A friend once took his young boy to witness an exposition of monster trucks — for the boy’s sake, not his own — and returned home a full-throated proselyte of the spectacle. So complete was his joy at the performance of these machines that in his breathless recap, I do not believe he mentioned the boy.

The memory of that charming little turn-of-time has always been at easy recall, so recently, when I saw an ad for Monster Jam (I am not sure if these are the only monster trucks which parade for public affection, or if other circuits outside of Monster Jam’s jurisdiction exist), I alerted this friend, who I’ll call Jaybee.

ME: [texting] Monster Jam back in town March 3. Interested? Could bring kids.

JAYBEE: [no reply]

Thirty or forty seconds later, he had purchased tickets for us and our two children, and sent me the receipt so that I could cover my half. It was only then that I noticed these tickets cost $86 each, plus a Convenience Fee* of $27.52 each, plus a Delivery Fee of $9.95. Thereby satisfied that I was on my way to having a full-scale, properly-corrupted American entertainment experience, I forked over the money, though I neglected to exact a Delivery Fee, not seeing a button for that.

Anticipating a stadium full of twitchy hill people walleyed on beer, I wore a capacious flannel which would allow for comfortable fistfighting. Jaybee, sensing my tactics as I settled into the taxi, soothed my apprehensions by confirming that virtually 100% of the crowd would be young middle-class fathers with between one and four little boys in tow. I, now able to reason that by price tag alone the true hill people would be at their own unsanctioned BYOB vehicle-crashing events, relaxed and prepared to enjoy the promised thrills of flying trucks, roaring engines, and the patriotic rain of sponsor-emblazoned body shrapnel. Privately aware of the glory of monster trucks since the tenderest age, yet beholden to my lifetime identity of elitist sneering, I now loosed the inward shackles and allowed for the unrestricted roiling of my blood.

It makes me sad to share this, but none of that happened.

Sure, Grave Digger’s massive, 1,450hp Merlin engine sounded pretty cool, but the decibel meter on my phone never registered above 110, which is about as loud as your neighbor two doors down starting his Kawasaki. Sure, the dirt bikes that did flips at intermission suggested impending disaster, but they were landing on a giant inflatable ramp. And sure, my kid only took one sip of the $9.50 orange Fanta that I bought for him, thereby making it a complete parenting experience**. But the whole event seemed a bit tired, a lot staged, and entirely choreographed by insurance tables.

From the very earliest moments of the performance I had sensed something amiss: the cartoony plastic bodywork of the trucks. One was made to look like a shark, complete with a floppy dorsal fin; one looked like a Rottweiler’s head, complete with five-foot long flappy ears and a stubby, inflatable tail that made me embarrassed for pretty much everyone in the building. I longed for one of the trucks to have a few busted window screens and some faded beer cans shifting around in the bed, or at least expired tags. And where was the line of seized vehicles for them to flatten? If a monster truck does not flatten at least one common vehicle, can the event even be classed as entertainment? 

When things were wrapping up, and it was clear that Grave Digger’s one desultory flip had been the pinnacle of the performance, I recognized the impending feeling of being had.

I get now that they’re just trying to hit the sweet spot of adolescent ear comfort, parental pocket-loosening, and inflated legacy. It’s a business, not a public service. (Judging by the Fanta prices alone, I estimate that the event netted just north of two hundred million dollars.) But as the crowd murmured out of the stadium, and as their river of profoundly expensive urine swished slowly down a dark cement pipe to the water treatment plant, so did my disappointment subside.

Why? Because these are the things we do at empire’s fall, when the bread is stale, and the circuses deserve no more crowds. We recognize that we are alone in this world, falling through an endless vortex of neon lies and glistening barker’s tongues, eating the cyanide potato chip of stolen destiny. If anything, Monster Jam was a bargain, for it steeled my resolve to cast only my wariest eye across the world, and batten my defenses anew against the unceasing thievery of this and all lands, as it always shall be, so long as Mother Earth’s creatures can spread the saliva for the calorie. 

Next week: How To Make The Burger King Chicken Sandwich At Home! (Recipe)

———————————————

* Is there any world in which the “Convenience Fee” should not just be renamed, “We Are Also Taking This Additional Amount of Money”?

** At least he said it was “too sweet,” which did me proud.

0054 - Lyle's New Vase

The "Truth Vase" is defined as any item in a house over which two inhabitants disagree, but whose content or form cannot be explicitly denied as actual. What's your Truth Vase? 

Author Q&A Thread #2 - open to non-subscribers!

Please post your questions for me within twenty-four hours of this Q&A going live! (I.e., between now and tomorrow, Thursday February 29, 11AM Pacific.) I will respond over the course of the following few days, but usually within the hour. Patreon will send you a message when I reply to you.

Questions can be about anything, though Achewood- and writing-centric questions are what is largely anticipated. Surprise me. Maybe you want to know if I have mastered the "smash burger." (I have.) Maybe you think you should ask me if I want a Porsche car. (I don't, but for reasons that may surprise you.) 

Questions which aren‘t edifying for a general audience (question about an item you ordered, etc) will be pruned, but should be sent to me in a DM or email. 

If your question is mean, I will feel a sadness, followed eventually by indignance, though this progression may take many years. At some point in the distant future, and unannounced to all, I will heal. 

Q&A #2: Weds 11am PST - open to non-subscribers!

The second Q&A will also be open to non-subscribers, in the hopes that it will get new people on board and enjoying the most recent year of Achewood. This is the best and most consistent material ever released under the masthead, and I would love for it to bring happiness and laughter to more lives.  

The last Q&A had over 270 posts, and it was a great pleasure to be in there chatting with you all. Since there's no upcoming book for which to tour, this is the truly gratifying part of my work — the wonderful reminder that on the other side of the screen are intelligent, hilarious, and soulful readers. (Also one real dumbshit, but without him it would seem too much like a Truman Show simulation, so perhaps I am grateful to him most of all.)

Comments are off for this thread, so that people don't accidentally start asking questions here. See you tomorrow!  

Liquid Fire, Etc — News from Achewood Manor

Good Monday Morning, Valued Denizen of the Author’s Tier!

Here is some news of my week, which I present to you as valid entertainment.

1. An Exciting Medical Device!

Tonight I am installing a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) onto the side of my arm. I have no reason to do this other than pure curiosity about how my body is working. It was simply mentioned to me that anyone — regardless of diabetic status — can do this, in order to see how their pancreas or whatever is responding to the foods they eat and the various other things they do (step up and down on a step-up-and-down machine, have a mild disagreement about a partner’s visiting sibling, smoke marijuana until they are so horny they are squinting).

I was turned on to these devices by a long-time reader who also happens to be an MD, and who also wears one for the purpose of deeper visibility into a bodily function which we have every capacity to understand and manipulate with almonds.

We’d been talking about how we built our respective gym routines, and I believe this was the exchange which prompted him to mention elective glucose monitoring technology:

HIM: …every 22 year old with a tank top has a Tik Tok explaining why every other 22 year old with a tank top is a moron.

ME: It's unfair that these young bucks — who can build pectorals the size of allergic reactions simply by pulling the Fruit Loops off a high shelf — can also present bodybuilding claims to the world. At this point, I would have to undertake a fitness project worthy of a Ken Burns feature simply to not have tits.

The CGM is about the size of those palmed joy buzzers of yore, and in my case it will be held in place by a bright magenta waterproof patch which looks, ironically, like a mini donut. I could have gotten the generic “medical flesh color” patch, but I worried that would have evoked feelings of pity by the general public. With a bright magenta patch, one is boldly proclaiming that their disquieting cybernetic nodule is a feature, not a bug.

2. C.O.O.P.

I very recently engaged a personal trainer. His name is Coop. I hired him because in the lobby of my gym there is a poster of him competing in a Natural Bodybuilding competition, and he looks like a crucifix to which someone has glued several hundred tanned bananas.

“This guy obviously knows how to get it done,” I thought to myself. (I realize, upon typing this, that I should have just asked him who his personal trainer was.)

I work out at the gym five times a week. I also run an average of twenty-five miles, and eat thirty different plants (later, from the grocery store). I almost never consume sugar or processed hot dog buns. And yet, I continue to look like a regular-ass guy. My wager here is that for just a few hundred dollars, Coop can get me looking like I have a couple tanned bananas of my own. (I do not want to look like some skinned, iodine-spritzed Adonis — I’m happy just to not muffin-top in the Levi’s.)

So far he’s guided me through three different custom-designed workouts, each of which has left me unable to pick things up off the floor for days afterward. My chest feels closer to the inside of my shirt. I swagger down the aisles of the grocery store, batting bags of cookies and cheddar away from my basket with the back of my hand.

3. Liquid Fire

Lauren’s sister is coming to visit from Kenosha, so I have been pouring Liquid Fire (pure sulfuric acid, which you can just buy at Ace Hardware, for some reason) down the permanently clogged sink in the guest bathroom. Tonight, I will capitulate and let Elliott the Plumber come and show me, using a ruler, how much money actually replacing the dead pipe will cost.

I like Elliott alright, but he always assumes I am fluent in: current and historic plumbing code; plumbing hardware slang; fluid mechanics and hydrostatics; high school chemistry. (I stopped taking high school chemistry in 1991 and no longer know about how calcium and galvanized aluminum feel about one another, Elliott.)

For the record, it was his idea I use Liquid Fire in the first place, probably so that there was guaranteed damage for him to fix.

4. Monster Trucks

All the world’s an anthropological field trip, and March 3rd’s monster truck expo at the Moda Center here in Portland promises to be a juicy tour indeed. My son and I are going with a couple friends who have been before, and they promise us that even, “sniveling nerds whose Dickens must be prised from their pallorous claws with unkind tools” will find their jaws ecstatically unhinged at the spectacle. I have it on good authority that GRAVE DIGGER will be competing. (Although I am unsure how victory is calculated.)

Okay, off to return some plumbing pieces and buy more Liquid Fire.

C

0053 - Just a Little Comic About a Little Thought

This is just a little comic with a little idea in it. Lyle does not burst through the wall with a buzzsaw, raging about the inadequacy of the present. Maybe this comic is kind of peaceful. It is a snatched glimpse of a small moment. 

There will still be the usual new strip Friday. Today's comic is just a little one. I like to think that Sparky Schulz would have read this in silence, noted that it was a smooth experience, and then gone into the other room to see what his wife was up to. (She was reading a different thing, a small article about Johnny Carson's love for memorizing lists, and she finished it right about the time that he came in.) 

Rejected panels from “0052 - Roast Beef is Feeling Pretty Nice!”

In the cold light of morning, as the dew sticks to the neighbor's eaves and the hot joe sits silently in the mug beside you, some of the previous night's panels bring only shame.   

0052 - Roast Beef is Feeling Pretty Nice!

(Note: precisely one minute after this strip posts, six rejected panels from it will post in the In-Universe and Author's tiers.)

If our bodies can release amazing trippy chemicals as we're dying, then (a) why do they wait until then to do it, and (b) how did this ability evolve into being? You'd think that by the time you were laying there dying, you wouldn't be able to influence the gene pool such that it selected for this characteristic. Perhaps the existence of this endogenous psychedelic passage indicates there is something else going on with the way our brains are built, and I welcome your bananas- or non-bananas-style guesses below. 

Baby, gimme your guesses. 

Serializer, 2002, 2nd-ever post

This is going back, back, back so far that the type is pixelated and their muzzles are, for some unknown reason, now rendering as blotchy color, as though they were slowly derezzing out of our universe entirely. (This was apparently before I knew about archiving the original high-res files in some way that could be searched for.) 

The 9/11 attacks were a fresh memory, there was a lot of Gordon's Handle-Style Discount Vodka going on, and Achewood's nascent voices were still blurring and bursting beneath the microscope lens. I was becoming interested in drawing chairs, an elusive and mystic element of the craft which would come to taunt and frustrate me for decades, often at the expense of the written content itself. 

Roast Beef's Latest Junk Shop Find

Please enjoy the full transcript of this long-forgotten public service bulletin, recently discovered by Roast Beef Kazenzakis at a cavernous junk shop several miles out of town. 

0051 - Fuck You Friday

What's one unsettling or otherwise noteworthy detail you've discovered in an Airbnb? I once opened a jar of shampoo and caught Hugh Laurie's limp from House.

Brief Update from Savannah, GA

(Please see the photo captions for more-concise early thoughts on my visit here.)

With the exception of the local drivers, upon whose murderous pathologies I will expound elsewhere—perhaps before legislature—Savannah presents itself as modestly charming. 

My tourism needs are not difficult to satisfy. I hold fast only to the following humble requests, formed out of necessity over the course of a lifetime of travel:

1. That there not be more than three cavernous shops selling the same four dozen tasteless and vulgar T-shirts in any single block*;

2. That there be at least one museum containing at least one malfunctioning display, the malfunction of which having gone unaddressed for so long it has become accepted as part of the display, perhaps even garnering mention on an updated placard; 

3. That no-one dressed as Paul Revere anachronistically beckons me into a T-Mobile store. 

Savannah has delivered handsomely on all three counts. I would go into greater detail, but it is time for me to take my jeans out of the dryer (unrelated to point #2) and go to an oyster roast at Re:Purpose Savannah. Lauren is speaking at a conference on demolition and deconstruction policy, which means I'm about to spend three long hours listening to people bitch about dimensional lumber.  

C

* E.g., "I Got My Lits Tickled on Bourbon Street"

After the Great Outdoor Fight: Salmonwood

We see Ray and Beef growing distant in the wake of the victory which redefined their lives. 

0050 - Epilogue; sneak peek at next week's strip

Next week we begin a run of Old School Classic standalone strips, set to run indefinitely. The story arcs are very pleasing to mull over and plot, but under the mop of my well-being I sense a hunger for the wham-bam of the spirited and irreverent basal ganglia of this excitable troupe. 

I'm also doing another Author's AMA, open to all tiers, in the next few days. 

Now, to address once again the subject of the mop of my well-being. Expert readers will observe that in the above strip, I have clearly decided to lock the Onstad character in to his early-2000's hair amount. I thought this would be a nice thing to do for myself. To reflect reality would be to copy and paste Pat's hair onto my illustrated pate; the world does not need the one sad instance of my hair, let alone an additional rendering.  

I just found the lost, first-ever Achewood painting, 2004

In the little house on Holly Street, before the baby and the book tours and the Oregon move and the rest of that rise and spectacular grind of a fall, I went to Michael’s Arts and Crafts and bought a couple tubes of cheap acrylic paint.

“I should learn how to paint. I’m an artist, after all, and I’ve seen that other artists do this.”

Today, as I cleaned a couple dusty old IKEA cabinets out of attic crawl spaces in the old house I’m getting ready to sell, I opened a drawer, saw this thing face-down on some old tax forms, and immediately knew what it was. I hadn’t seen it in maybe ten years, but optimistically assumed we’d cross paths again someday.

I hadn’t intended it, but it has a “The Little Prince” feel. I wish I’d added a couple tiny volcanoes. But then it would, I suppose, have been derivative. This is just Philippe, standing on it.

Studio Sunday - canvas updates

My baking coach Neven brought over some fresh homemade bagels this morning (final photo), so we laid out the fish and brineys and did it up. Afterwards I spent a while in the studio taking a few passes at the latest canvases, and felt like it was time to share again.

Great Outdoor Fight animation sequence: Beef's trailer

**PLEASE DO NOT SHARE THIS INFORMATION OUTSIDE OF PATREON**

**I AM NOT SURE BUT I THINK I COULD GET COMPLETELY YELLED AT**

This is actually the storyboards for two sequences: 

1. Zooming in on Beef's childhood trailer with Gramma K, right up to his bedroom door

2. A transition from that childhood bedroom door to the door and interior of his poolhouse residence at Ray's

For those who are just joining the Author's Tier, there is an earlier post in this collection which gives some background on the Netflix adaptation of The Great Outdoor Fight.  

0049 - The Account, Pt. 8, 2-PAGE FINALE

That's right, this one's two pages long. Don't forget to read the second page, because that is where the finale is. If you just read the first page, it will seem like a pretty bad finale, or at least the kind of anti-finale that has been popular in Hollywood lately, ever since writers' parents stopped reading them Agatha Christie as infants. 

EXCELSIOR

FINALE FINÁLE FINĀLE