Today I set out North to Bohemia in search of the caricaturists Mecca known as Montmarte. Okay some say “Mecca” others say “God’s waiting room for old cartoonists.” Either way, I was set on finding it.
This morning I wandered in to my studio, picking up the usual wad of bills and junk mail from the letterbox as I went.
The usual gang of blue-logo corporates had kept up their monthly correspondence, each one like an autistic pen-pal who can only write letters with a calculator.
As I sifted through the binnables I noticed one blue logo that didn’t sit right. It was from ANZ, with whom I have no accounts. “Why do they have my address?” I thought. “Must be some sort of national marketing database I ticked onto by accident somewhere.”
However, upon opening the envelope, I noticed it had numbers. More specifically, account numbers. and a BSB … I called the hilarious ironically-named ‘Helpline’ to get some answers…
Late one night after a gig in Perth, my best friend Benjamin and I were enjoying some over-priced treats at Perth’s only late night haunt; The Moon Café.
It hit 3:30am before we decided to hit the road. I took a quick trip to the gents and noticed a scrawling on the wall in front of me that read: “If you like chuby chub-chub, call this number…”
The number had been rubbed off for one reason or another, but I recognised the type of marker that had been used. I happened to have one of those markers in my pocket- and Ben’s mobile number is just one of those that are easy to remember.
I quickly scrawled his number where the old one had been rubbed out, zipped up, and left the gents, not thinking twice about the whole thing…
I’ve been holding out on publishing this review for a couple of months now. It’s a review, of sorts, for Spider-man, the broadway musical.
The first reason I held out was I didn’t want to review something based on seeing a non-press preview show.
The second reason was out of pure exasperation. No amount of words can describe how mind-numbingly stupid the entire concept of a musical based on the comic book called “Spider-man” is… But I’ll give it a try.
Air travel is not meant to be this chaotic, awkward or utterly frustrating. When you save up your money and spend it on a plane ticket, you come to expect a few basic things.
1.) You’ll be able to board the plane and ride it to your destination.
2.) You’ll be able to do that at time you specified, when you paid for your ticket.
3.) You’ll actually be treated like a human.
It seems over the last 10 years, air travel has devolved from something special and exciting- a privilege even, to something that causes more stress and angst than driving a semi-trailer through a peak hour traffic jam.
I was due to fly to New York today.
Today – not tomorrow, not next week – today.
I woke up this morning in Emergency at the Alfred Hospital. The right side of my head throbbing, not able to open my jaw, my drawing arm shredded up from my shoulder to my wrist and my hips shooting pain up my spine as I tried to move my legs- and I’m told the first thing I was saying was “Shit, it’s easier to get an Ambulance in Melbourne than a bloody taxi.”
I need your help- I need you to pass this on to anyone you can who might have been in Melbourne last night around 3:22am- if you know someone who went out, if you know someone who lives in the area, if you bought a dodgy burger from Lord of the Fries and wandered anywhere around the corner of COLLINS STREET and ELIZABETH STREET, 3:22am please call Constable Robinson, Melbourne Police: 1800 333 000
“On Sunday evening, I deleted Twitter and Tumblr off my phone, and besides for a five minute relapse this afternoon, they have stayed deleted.
It was all just starting to feel too much like an eating disorder or like academic mania— being preoccupied with thoughts you don’t care about, compulsively seeking information that is at once overwhelming and boring, soliciting the approval of people you don’t know, relying on your own anxiety for stimulation.”
The day I left for Paris, I got a message from a friend saying:
“Okay okay I know you’ve probably had a million messages telling you what to see in Paris, but you can’t leave without seeing Rodin’s gardens. Have a good trip. PS. Rodin’s. Gardens. Seriously.”
Needless to say, I seriously needed to see Rodin’s gardens.
My visit to the Louvré had my legs akin to un-set jelly by the end -and I barely scratched the surface.
It think the most impressive thing about the museum is its scale, and ease of navigation. If you have a good look around outside before you go in, it’s easy to figure out where you are in the scheme of the epic structure.
The French.
Touted as the rude, obnoxious frog-eating, wine quaffing snail-cookers who won’t speak English out of principal, and won’t even look at you if you don’t uphold their proud customs.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Yes, they like to whinge, (much like the English) but they’re not hostile, and they’re certainly not as rude as they’re made out to be. Kind of how Australians aren’t really as dim-witted as we’re made out to be by the English and Americans.
{This is a long read. Get a coffee.}
Yep – seen that. That went around months ago. Yep. Seen it. That’s Old. Man, Where have you been?
Something that now shits me about the interne tis the concept that you can seemingly no longer discover something and surprise your friends with it, as the likelihood was they’ve “already seen it.” The very concept of the Internet, the idea that all information is as readily available to everyone equally (except say, China) means the only unique thing a person can grab onto is if they “saw it first.”
This notion of ‘first’ is what seems to keep people addicted to RSS feeds and Twitter- and trawling through their Facebook feed to see what comments or links their friends have posted in an effort to be ‘first.’
If I were to rename my Friday, I would rename it FAIL.
It was one of those days where nothing seemed to go right, but you plough through it with the vain hope that it’ll all work out.
First thing in the morning I got up early to go to the rheumatologist. I was going to fly to Sydney in a few hours, so I stuffed my laptop into my bag and jumped in a tram towards Fitzroy. I didn’t bring my power cable as it would only take up room I didn’t have in my bag, and I’d be back in Melbourne tonight anyway. The battery on the MacBook is 5 – 8 hours anyway, so no biggie.
I’d been waiting four months for this appointment and had been hanging out for some good news on something that had been gnawing away at my brain since before Christmas.
{This is the mother of all bad airline stories.}
The single most commonly asked question I get about Ginger Meggs is:
”But who writes the stories/words/gags?”
The short answer is: I do.
The slightly longer answer is, producing a daily comic strip is (by my observation), separated into three parts:
60% is writing
20% is drawing (the fun bit)
20% is business and syndication
The writing is the most time-consuming and difficult part of it. That’s not to say that getting syndicated isn’t difficult (heck, it’s near impossible these days!) but as far as time goes, you spend more time and mental energy coming up with new material day after day than anything else.
