Troy Little and Nick Cross OIAF with Angora Napkin

I know, it is no secret that I have a fondness for Mr. Little and Mr. Cross. That being said, my obsession with their extremely creative, irreverent and FUN creation; specifically ANGORA NAPKIN knows no bounds!


Angora Napkin not only exists in comic form, within the pages of the lovely hard cover graphic novel from IDW, but also the girl rock-band trio exists in bouncy toon form as well. If you have not had the pleasure of seeing this amazing spectacle, then it is now your chance to get out and catch it.


Molly, Mallory and Beatrice will grace the stage of the Arts Court Theatre October 15th at 11:30pm. I was fortunate to catch the initial screening of the Teletoon sponsored "pilot project" when Troy brought the gals to the Shanghai Restaurant in the spring. All I can say is that come hell or high water, get yer arses down town and your bottoms into the theatre seats to soak in the jovial pop rock candy that IS Angora Napkin. You won't be disappointed!

For the curious, check out my initial horn tooting here. If, like me, you are over-the-top with excitement, you can listen to CUB's "My Chinchilla" song on YouTube. (My Chinchilla is expertly animated in Troy Little's section of the Angora Napkin pilot. Beware--this will become and ear worm...) Here's a ukelele cover of My Chinchilla. CHINCHILLA!!

In Nick Cross' section of the pilot, the girls are animated beautifully to CUB's "Go Fish". Yeahp, you can listen to it here!

BUY the book! Get 'er signed! Read, enjoy, repeat...

Later..
Ok I went trolling: you can watch a quickie preview of AN here!
Enjoy >^_^<

Shoot

"Yet there is a strength implicit in such a situation, for having no one on which to rely, we relied upon no one." --_The Ferguson Rifle_, Louis L'Amour (c) 1973

It is one of those utterly beautiful days of summer; sky like the eyes of a 16 year old blond, sweet wind playfully eddying at 22 C. The thick plum, cherry and oak glisten chlorophylle dreams. The sun bakes the deck and flies hum in cadence with John Keats' verses.

It is wasted on me. All this beauty, and quietude; not even the low roar of a lawnmower to screw it up, or the blatant howl of a leaf blower. No kids mewling and petulantly dropping fire bricks on shiny red car hoods. No dogs in choral bayance. No neighbourly "how-do" "how-do" "how-do".

It is perfect for a pulp novel on a chaise longe, a glass of moderately alcoholized lemonade in a sweating plastic cup. It is perfect for cats, 19 year old skinny with grey tufty fur and bones poking out of non-existent hips and shoulders to lay pancake flat on pavement: drawing in solar power. It is a day crafted for exuberant sloppy bouncy dogs to chase-chase-chase and lie in the shade, sucking on a stuffed plush lobster from Rainbow Valley.

It is one petal of one flower opening, showing a bruised purple face to the sun. Crepe red petals crinkling into memories. It is the antidote to the wet weather, of foul tempered Nature spitting and shitting on suburbia.

It is possible that in rolling my self in this radiance that all the horror, fear, hurt, loneliness, poignant loss, hopelessness, frustration and angst is burnished away: one sandpaper swipe at a time. Until there are just these hands, typing these words on this machine, pointed at the eastern window. The wind flutters eyelids, the leaves chuckle against one another and the neighbourhood is drowsing, drowsing.

It is a prayer against the run of shit luck that has dogged my heels this summer, this year: a barrel-of-monkeys game, where each piece of ill-luck was crazily grinning and clomped eagerly arm-to-arm, tail-to-tail onto the next piece. So, drawing the multicoloured plastic icons from their barrel one winces again and again and again.

It is hanging on to the only good things that are steadfast in this hurly-burly time: family, friends that are as close as family, friends that are on the other side of the country, and a grinning ginger Corgi.

There is pain, desolation and worry in the world five hundred times the height of my sorriest lot. And I know this. But I can only live in my world; my space in my way. The pain is personal, and the News must be set to mute, or off entirely. There is still time to dance in the sun, before she rolls her burning chariot into the blur of November. There is still time, before the time clock strikes 4-0. There is time to love, and laugh and get giddy; pointing at the hapless churning of the great skewed pot, filled to the brim with molding comic books, dripping art work, plastic wasted bric-a-brac riding the coattails of the desolation.

So, this was to be a nice deep wallow. And it is a Halleluja instead. Not a cover, but the rumbled groan of Cohen's razor blade throat over another case of wine, another cigarette, another shadowed Montreal morning in ice-biting February. When you realize that when things are at their absolute worst, one must sing, sing, sing.

Suzanne.

The Crunch

The Crunch

too much
too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody.

laughter or
tears

haters
lovers

strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks

armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.

or an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.

people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.

I suppose they never will be.
I don't ask them to be.

but sometimes I think about
it.

the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.

too much
too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody

more haters than lovers.

people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.

meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.

there must be a way.

surely there must be a way we have not yet
thought of.

who put this brain inside of me?

it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.

it will not say
"no".


--Charles Bukowski

Love is a Dog from Hell
Poems 1974 - 1977
Santa Rosa Black Sparrow Press 1997

Doug Murray

Today was my friend Doug Murray's birthday, who passed away a couple of years ago. July 21st doesn't go by without making me think of him and making me wonder about how things would've been different had he lived.

I met Doug when I started in the Animation-Television programme at Algonquin College back in 1997. A lot of people knew Doug as a teacher at the school in their Design programme, but at that time, he was a student. It was gratifying meeting him because he was also one of the older students too, at 33. I had been quite intimidated at the thought of returning to school at the age of 27, when many of the other students were 18 years old.


Doug was immediately charming, funny, intelligent, silly, genuine, and engaging. He could warm to any subject and had ideas and opinions on many. He was always up for a "wee pint" as he called it, and then would lapse into many Monty Pythonisms thereafter (including "Decomposing Composers" and "The Philosopher's Song").

Not long after our Siers-survival group was formed, and we were meeting regularly at the Ob, Doug showed us one of his "tricks", which was to squeeze his hands together and thus produce a credible fart sound. Hilarious! Often we'd tease him into doing it for us time and time again, and he would comply. I remember Lorne saying: "Give us a fart Doogie", and Doug, grinning like a madman, happily made the sound over and over.

I partnered with Doug in Drama class a number of times. Lorne has tapes of our Drama efforts (God!! Blackmail material for sure!) It is so poignant to watch them--usually we manage to every year at Lorne and Kim's Christmas party. Doug and I go through the pantomime motions of 1st year Charlie-Chaplin wannabes. I pretend to kill him or something, or cut off his arm... and it is all silent.

I wish that we had been more adamant about taping our later, spoken Drama moments. I really miss hearing his voice, and his laugh. I miss seeing the twinkle in his eye and the crinkle of skin that preceded great laughter.

I remember I had someone brow-beaten he and Rene into being in my Drama group, where we had to act out scripts from our scriptwriting class. None of us had practiced really. The script made sense to me, because I'd written it--but Rene and Doug were a little baffled. I finished my lines, something to the effect of being the Chief of the Tribe and having all this power.. and Doug, completely forgetting his lines, grinned up at me and said: "And I suppose that makes you special??" Fantastic!

I have our illustrated yearbook "Flip This" from 1st year, and it has Doug's drawings in it; lush, lovely life drawings and silly, whimsical animation designs. He signed in my book and I treasure the note. Another note I have is on a birthday card from our Dynomight Cartoon days. Scribbled at the back is: "Ich bin ein donut!", which is pure Doug--silly, yet very literary and historical.

Anyway, I am trolling the memories and they come fast and furious. If I dig into them too much I will be crying, and I don't want it--sometimes it is too difficult to stop, you know? Suffice to say that all that I have of Doug, I treasure thoroughly, making me miss him all the harder. He was one of the good ones, and the world is diminished without him.

((hugs))
Suzanne.

Algonquin College's Doug Murray Life Bursary
Some great Flamenco guitar music (Doug was an accomplished musician as well!)
And the old Elmdale Tennis Club where he played much tennis >v_v<

NEW Ottawa Comix Jam in Guerilla Magazine's g-Gallery

The NEW Ottawa Comix Jam is not toast. In fact, it is off to a good, energetic start. There has been a continued interest and support that has amazed and gratified this artist and gives me hope that the jam will continue for a long, long time!

One of these latest shots in the arm came from Guerilla Magazine's Tony Martin who contacted me about doing an interview and showcasing June 30th's jam in his weekly online publication of art called the g-Gallery. I was delighted, and everything went along quite well.

Until I realized that I had a file full of artwork that had to be scanned, and my scanner was in the basement. Normally a set of stairs isn't all that intimidating... however I have been recovering this last month from a torn ligament. In my knee. Yeah...

I was going to just get Clayton to haul the scanner upstairs and plug it into my laptop when I had a sudden thought. "Clay--look at the back of the scanner. Does it have a gi-normous plug? Or is it tiny?" (aka: is it a USB plug, or something from the dawn of computer time...?)

"It's huge! Huge!" came the muffled reply from the basement.

Great. So I had to get down the stairs somehow. This involved waiting until the last possible moment, when I hoped that the knee wouldn't hate me for what I was going to do to it. Then doing it. I crept down the stairs using cane and hand rail, good leg first, brace, bad leg next. It took a loooong time. But there was no way to sit at the top of the stairs and explain how to scan to Clay. I couldn't do it without seeing it. And I had to get the art scanned now.

Thankfully, I didn't reinjure the healing ligament, and slowly managed to get back up the stairs with many pauses in between to rest. The artwork was scanned, and I formatted it on my laptop so it would fit the gallery's requirements. Hurrah!

I am floored by how nicely it came together, both the interview and the artwork look great in the g-Gallery. Tony was awesome, and the artists that came out and had a chance to draw did a great job. I am looking forward to next Tuesday's gathering at the Shanghai (July 28th, 7pm) for more fun hijinx, art, dumplings and silliness. I should be ok...I hope! At least the resto only has 3 stairs.

Cheers,
Suzanne.
Thanks to Janet Hetherington for the photo!

Notable Links of Featured Artists
Suzanne Marsden
Morris Rothman
Ron Martin
Clayton Jacobs
CD Rudd
Colleen Temple
Julie Cruikshank
R.R. Steven Bissonnette
Mike Pender
Ronn Sutton
Janet Hetherington
Mike Valiquette

Never tired of folk heroes

A couple of weeks ago, Bruce Ward hammered Pete Seeger for no reason in his opinion column at the Ottawa Citizen. Taking justifiable umbrage at this attack on the 90-year-old folk hero, I clattered away on the keyboard and shot a letter to the paper.
To my surprise, they decided to print my note and sent over photographer, Bruno Schlumberger to snap a shot of me, posing with my banjo.

It took two weeks because in the middle of that time, I was asked to do a rewrite of my letter, to shorten it by about 100 words or so. I did my best and patiently hovered around the Citizen's online letters area to see if it would appear at some point. I was stunned to see this morning that they had kept pretty much the whole original piece, which was quite gratifying.

So, you can either bop on over to the Citizen, or read the letter here. If you didn't get a chance to see what spurned this on, you can read the original opinion piece here.

Cheers and keep on plinkin'!
Suzanne.

=========

Re: Getting tired of folk heroes, May 26.

Back in 1985, Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie played the NAC. I was 15 and it was one of the first concerts I'd ever attended.

I went with my mom and was very excited, even though all I knew about Arlo Guthrie was Alice's Restaurant. It isn't simply rose-coloured glasses that make the show one of the best I can remember. There was a full house; a crowd of all ages and genders, who, at the first "plink" of Seeger's beloved banjo, and "plunk" of Guthrie's piano, were held in rapt attention.

Ottawa crowds are usually polite, quiet and attentive, and give standing "O's" at the end for a job well done.

But Seeger wasn't having any of it.

The magic of the evening was not sitting on my bum, silently enjoying a skilled performance. The magic was Pete Seeger saying: "You sing the low part, and you over there sing the middle part, and don't listen to me because I'll be singing somethin' different."

He taught the crowd the harmony to The Lion Sleeps Tonight and encouraged us with grins, humour and tenacity until we were limping through our separate parts not too badly. Then, we launched into the song. It was uplifting, spiritually moving and unforgettable. Half the audience sang the song's lower range: "Hey up boys! A Wheem-a-whet..." while the other half took the song's higher part: "A-wheem-a-whet a-wheem-a-whet..." Way, way above all of us,
Pete sang the descant in a crazy vibrato: "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight..."

It was perfect! Every hair stood on end as he brought the rhythmic song closer to its finish. By then, we were all standing, and it wasn't even the end of the show: a spontaneous "standing O" right in the middle of the performance!

I am sorry that columnist Bruce Ward's experience with Pete Seeger didn't have the impact and uplifting force it did for me, and for millions of others around the world whose lives his and Arlo Guthrie's music has touched. Seeger's power is that he connects directly to people in the audience and makes them feel special, that he cares about their lives. You feel it when you see him, and you know it when you sing with him.

Seeger prevails, and I, for one, am glad.

All this talk of folk music has inspired me to take up the banjo I bought last summer; a spontaneous purchase which came shortly after finding Seeger's banjo primer in a folk music store in P.E.I. The first song I'm going to learn is Abby Yo-Yo.

Suzanne Marsden,
Kanata
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

YouTube
Pete Seeger
Abby Yo-yo
Wimoweh

World Drawing Day 2009

If you take a couple of minutes (ok 3) and head on over to YouTube, you can see my two posted videos for this year's World Drawing Day event.
This was a lot of fun to do, although at 13,000+ I think the site is still short of its million artists. At this rate, I think we're all going to have to suck it in and draw like..80 drawings each to make up the 1,000,000 they were hoping for! But, it is only 10:30am or so and the day is young.
In other news, I have uploaded artwork for the NEW Ottawa Comix Jam FB site,
so head over there and take a gander. I will be cross posting the artwork to the jam site as well shortly...

Upcoming stuff: The Ottawa Small Press Book Fair at Jack Purcell Community Centre happens June 20th, noon - 5pm and DragonHead Studio will be there..selling comics, promoting the jam, looking cute..harf! Come out and say "hello", but a comic...get a sketch! Not unlike the dragon one posted on YouTube.......!