June 21, 2001

I've really got to update this thing more often, but lately I've been focusing on cranking out strips, and building the buffer. This last weekend I broke the one-month-ahead mark for the first time since September of 2000. Right now things stand at 31 days ahead, and I need to jump up another couple of weeks since I've got family coming into town in just ten short days.

They're staying for a week... all of my wife's family, living under my roof. The good news is that I'm sure there will be plenty of material for Schlock generated by this exercise in close quarters. The last time they were all here we managed to back up a toilet and flood the house. This time I'm making everybody not sharing actual 2nd-generation genetic material with me use the garden.

I discovered a cool comic on KeenSpace. There are lots of cool comics out there, but finding them among the list of 700 or so is often an exercise similar to, say, looking for a buried Hot Wheels car in my garden. But I found one recently that I added to my 'must read' list.

Dragonboy. It's the story of a high-school/college-aged boy who is half-dragon. His friends, associates, and even casual acquaintences don't remark on this biological oddity, but rather focus on just being normal people. Meanwhile, Dragonboy approaches life, love, and lots of other things that may or may not begin with 'L' in ways that you and I might fantasize about. Like being able to fly, or kill our own food. It's strictly pencil-work, but the rough edge you'd expect is actually kind of refreshing, lending the strip a natural flavor, like fresh duck, or perhaps goose.

In other news, I took the day off yesterday and saw "Tomb Raider." It's not as bad as I expected it to be having read a few reviews, but it's pretty bad. I guess the only reason I say that is that I still have "Dungeons and Dragons: The Movie" in my short-term memory, and nothing could be worse than that. Besides, Angelina Jolie cut some pretty neat poses with the tight clothes and the firearms--from a strictly artistic point of view the movie was an interesting visual reference.

My wife and I saw "Evolution" over the weekend. That movie was wonderful, in a campy sort of Ghostbusters-meets-X-Files sort of way. If you're torn between that and "Tomb Raider," stitch yourself back together and go see "Evolution." Or save your money and read some Dragonboy.