Tales from the Brain Jar, #2

Last week I started talking about my sketchbook. I had my plan set in motion. I had run out of space on my walls and I was tired of getting things framed. I had even gotten the hardest part out of the way, the first sketch was done. It would be easier asking people to draw a character with a brain jar if they saw someone else had already done it, right? I hadn’t really commissioned a lot of work yet, so I was pretty naïve to what some sketches would cost. It was 05 then and I was getting ready to go to Megacon.


So what was next? Check it out after the jump.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Flash

Welcome back to Flash Friday. Today I’m going to talk about something special in my collection. To set it up we have to travel back in time. According to the dates I’ve looked up, I had to be 4 may 5 at the time. I was still living just outside Detroit; Warren, Michigan to be exact. There was a convenience store just a few minutes down the road called Vans, my family would go there all the time. On one such trip I got my first Flash comic.

This is the cover to that book. No hyperbole here, this comic is the one that made me a Flash fan. But this book is a little different. What’s so different about it? Check it out after the jump.

Buckets of Beer

The beer list is back. I have started going about this a little smarter and now when I drink I’m going to group like beers together. There had been too many nights where the stouts, ipa, and lagers were not getting along in my stomach. So I would have made my father proud tonight, I tackled five beers from the Budweiser family. I’m not going to go into detailed analysis of these beers; most people have tried them I’m sure. I wouldn’t wish Bud Light Lime on my enemies, but some people like it so what do I know.


So in my bucket was Budweiser, Bud Light, Bud Select 55, Bud Light Lime, Bud Light Golden Wheat. These are beers 56-60. I’m around the halfway point now, wooo. I would have more to share today, but I was only at the bar an hour.

Surfers Encounter Great White Shark

Just from the headline it sounds like it is going to be a horror story doesn’t it? Like the poor Australian surfer, Nicholas Edwards who was killed by a great white on the 18th. But this is a different kind of story. This is the story of a 10 foot great white sharked beached and the two people who found it.

Andrew Eckersley came across a surfer pouring water on the shark and trying to dig a channel in the sand to get it back into the water. I haven’t seen any articles identifying the surfer, but that is even more impressive to me. That guy found the shark on an empty beach and started trying to help. If something happened there wasn’t even anyone else there to go get help.

Anyway, Ruth Fahey also shows up and gets some incredible pictures of the whole thing (those are her pictures posted in this blog). The two men eventually have to drag the shark back into the water. They took the shark into the water past mid-thigh level, which has to be pretty scary. The shark eventually swam out to sea.

Sadly, it was probably beached because it was sick. The next day it was found on the beach dead. On top of that some asshole cut out the jaws as a souvenir. I feel bad for the poor shark, but I love hearing how the two men risked their own safety to try and save it.

Tales from the Brain Jar, #1

I like original comic art a lot, but there are problems with collecting it. It gets expensive quick and before you realize it, you’ve run out of wall space to display things. Back in 04 I got the idea to start a sketchbook. Now I had seen some amazing books online, so I knew I wanted a theme. At the time I had grand illusions of writing a few web comics and using a brain in a jar as the logo. So I figured I’d get some of my favorite characters interacting somehow with a brain jar. This has made it very hard to set up with some characters but so far has gotten some pretty amazing results.

The link to my sketchbook is on this blog, so you may have already seen the sketches. But I figured I’d take one sketch a week and tell the story behind them. Some of them are pretty funny. Some may just introduce a comic or character you aren’t familiar with.
Check out after the jump to see the first sketch.

Pinkerton in Concert? Please Make it so!

Rivers Cuomo told MTV that he is considering doing a tour where they play two nights in each city that go to. The first night they’ll play the entire blue album, the next night the entire Pinkerton album. Now the blue album has some amazing songs, “Surf Wax America” and “In the Garage” are favorites of mine, but Pinkerton is an amazing album. I would pull a serious road trip to hear the entire album played live. That’s saying a lot considering it would be a 35 minute concert. Pinkerton isn’t a very long album.

If you aren’t familiar with it, Pinkerton tanked when it came out. The songs were too dark and serious is the thing I see cited most often. Now it is considered a really important album and everyone loves it. I didn’t understand the original dislike. I got the CD when it came out and it has been one of my favorites ever since. Some day we’ll have to go into my odd music tastes that range from Dropkicks to Carl Perkins to Dean Martin, but right now I’m just excited about the chance of hearing “The Good Life,” “Why Bother,” “No Other One,” and “Across the Sea” in concert; especially “Across the Sea.”

If they added "Suzanne" to that set list my head would explode.

Fastest Mail Alive

Flash Friday is back. Way back in 2006 put out a line of stamps that celebrated pop culture. During the year they put out stamps with Disney, American Motorcycles, and DC Superheroes. I knew about the stamps, thought they were cool, and even bought a sheet of them. I mean, there were two Flash stamps, I had to buy it. But what I didn’t know is that the post office was selling more then stamps. Luckily for me my uncle is a post master in Michigan and knew how much I loved the Flash.

Check it out after the jump.