"What Will You Do?"

Everyone has their little routines in life- their habits. When you do something so much it eventually seems like an instinct. Cracking my knuckles, biting my nails, watching the news...it's natural at this point. But one particular habit of mine makes me think about the psychological stress of being an artist more than a special on Kurt Cobain- my web comic check.

webcomic, n. (plural: webcomics)

1. (webcomics, Internet) An online comic strip, especially one first published on the World Wide Web. (Thank you, Wiktionary.)

I've been reading webcomics for at least a few years now. It started out with a comic called Megatokyo, and it took off from there. I had a thing for Ctrl+Alt+Del for quite a while. Then I stumbled upon VG Cats, and that took me to MS Paint Adventures, Allan...and so on.

I learned to adore these comics in all of their pixelly, nerdy, clever, beautiful glory. MS Paint Adventures' Problem Sleuth had me laughing until I cried, and confusing me to death with "weird puzzle shit", all the while using simple character designs and a ridiculous story line. Octopus Pie made Brooklyn seem hilarious, and reminded me how much I loved Supermarket Sweep. Beaver and Steve hit me with a shoe.

Whenever I'm online, I flip through my bookmarks toolbar, checking for updates. Did Boston post something new on 21deadmonkeys? Did Herman The Manatee get hit by another boat? And more often than not, a comic artist has yet to put anything new on their site yet. Some will post filler that says, "Updating tomorrow!" But a lot of the time, the artist may explain why they missed an update. These stories are sometimes as arresting as the comics they make.

Some explain their life's issues in ways I think would be very hard to put up online for lots of people you don't know seeing. Some may even draw it out, if they do journal comics (Inkdick and Allan especially). Some lose motivation in what they're doing and move on to new things. Sometimes in the middle of a really great storyline. But I will forever wonder why these people end up in the middle of terrible circumstances. Allan of Allan fame got ran over by a car...and then got braces too. Ducky Boy in 21deadmonkeys was based off of a real friend of the artist, and he died. I only knew him as the guy with the mohawk who usually said the punchlines, but I'll be damned if I wasn't depressed when I read those words. Sometimes an artist's brand new Mac gets stolen out of his car just after they buy it, when they can just barely afford it anyway...but his readers donate money to him and he eventually gets a new one.

This sort of thing is something I find particularly beautiful about webcomics as a medium. You can talk to your readers more directly than a comic maker in a newspaper could. With MS Paint Adventures, the comic goes in the direction the reader wants it to- creator Andrew Hussie reads fan submissions and picks one and goes with it. You could leave a comment on a comic and the artist may say thanks for your compliment. It's like a really great concert- the barriers between the producer and the consumer are blurred. The unity makes it even better.

Waiting and watching,
AJKazlouski

"Dear Mr. Gepetto..."

The power of the mix tape (CD, Playlist, etc.) is something I think I'm finally understanding. It's come up a lot in the last week or so.

On Friday, a teacher of mine gave me a cd he made. He titled it "I Wish I Were Straight Edge." Him and I have talked about music a lot in the few years I've known him. Minor Threat and the Descendants have been our primary topics. We launched into talking about the Distillers after hearing a Queens of the Stone Age song, and I asked him to show me some of their stuff, me having not heard much from them.

He just said, "I'll make you a CD."

It started with a (cool) Distillers song, "Drain the Blood," and ended in a song by a guy named Mike Doughty with a song called "No Peace, Los Angeles" (quite good). Between the two were some good tunes- the Black Keys, Jerry Lee Lewis, Led Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder, the Smiths, Radiohead...some top notch stuff.

But most of these songs were sad ones. This guy has been having a rough time lately, which I don't feel I have the right to write about. But listening to this mix, I somehow feel like I understand what he's going through a bit better. I can't imagine how he feels, but I feel like I understand it better, just by listening to the songs he's been listening to lately.

I've been reading a really great book called Love is a Mix Tape, by Rob Sheffield, about Rob and his relationship with his late wife, Renée. Rob paints a beautiful picture of a wonderful marriage, with stories of how despite their intense differences as people, they stayed together, bound by their love of music. Every chapter starts out with a mix tape, full of songs that helped the author recall specific moments in time.

A couple weeks ago, I was working on a mix for my then-girlfriend, right before she called me and broke up with me. I had a sinking feeling that the songs I was putting on there would be ruined, reminding me of that fateful moment. "My Girl" by the Temptations, "First Date" by blink-182, "Beautiful" by the Smashing Pumpkins.

They weren't. They now seem to have an odd new depth I had never felt before.

I woke up today to a playlist I had made the night before that started with Mustard Plug's "You" and ended with the Suburban Legends' "You." A fun little third-wave ska mix. I woke up in a huff, not wanting to get up. A few songs in, I was ready for a good day.

And it was.

I'll be making mixes until the day I die. I'm off to make one now.

Around the bend,
AJKazlouski