Okay, I shot Liberty Valance

I'm off to New Mexico for the rest of the week to scout locations for the Western I'm making. It's a movie called The Burrowers, and falls in line with the long tradition of brutal, historically steadfast Oaters.

If anybody's got friends or pastries in New Mexico I should acquaint myself with, let a brother know.

JT said Pumpkin

I've signed up for Amazon Connect. So now you can find self-aggrandizing ramblings daily updated at TWO places on this grand interweb.

Today's piece of artwork stolen from the good kids of PS126 comes from Tony, who chose as his topic one of my very favorite things in the world.

Pumpkin
by Tony

Tony said pumpkin
Dad said pumpkin
Mom said pumpkin
Tony said pumpkin



This brings up The Squampkin Patch, my upcoming book from Simon & Schuster. It's about (in the words of School Library Journal) "carnivorous attack pumpkins." To herald its arrival, starting July 1st I'll be sending a new cookie recipe every week to everybody who's signed up for the mailing list. The recipes come from the lost journals of lunatic chef Charlie Argyle, a rapscallion who struts his stuff through the pages of Squampkin Patch.

Stealing from the Kids

For the rest of this week, I'll be publishing cameraphone photos I took at PS126 during career day. A class was assigned to write poems, and these were the results.

The first comes from Joshua:

Shark

Shark eat fish
Shark sleep
Shark gets mad
Sharks eat everybody



A beginning! A middle! An end! There's even that emotional dip late in the second Act that makes the conclusion so satisfying. Awesome work, Joshua, wherever you are.

Squampkin Patch!

Yesterday, Simon & Schuster gave me a hardback copy of The Squampkin Patch, which will be in published August 8th.



Pretty, isn't it?

And, there's a trailer online for Terry Gilliam's new movie, Tideland!

Tomorrow, I start publishing art stolen from the good children of PS126 in Manhattan.

Scapes!

First off, there are a few upcoming screenings of Soft for Digging, my first feature(ish) movie. The soonest will be in Louisville, Kentucky, at the Last Call Film Festival. If you're on whatever side of the Mississippi River that Kentucky is on, I don't think you really have an excuse not to attend. They'll also be playing Call of Cthulu, a movie I'm dying to see

I was at a wedding this past weekend, and many congratulations to Matt and Mary. I'm sure those kids will conquer the world, or at least re-arrange it on a subatomic level. To all of my family hoping to stalk my girlfriend, you can do so at SarahLangan.com.

And in a shameless attempt to draw more family attention to this website-- LOOK! It's a picture of a baby!



Also, it's garlic scape season. Steam them until tender, then drizzle olive oil and sea salt on top and you won't be sorry for long. Put a fried on top and they're dinner.

Sneaking out the Hospital

I've just seen the first sketches for the illustrations in the third Clemency Pogue book, "The Scrivener Bees." Very exciting stuff. The monster count in the series starts to go up as the books progress, and I believe the illustrator is having fun.

The picture below is a sign taken from a hospital in Washington D.C., where one of my favorite people was having some plumbing worked on. It's the Wong-Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale, and I can only assume it's for robot doctors trying to pass for human, who cannot interpret patient's facial expressions. But even if so, there are some extremely mysterious phrases there. "Hurts Worse" is more painful than "Hurts a Whole Lot?" And "Constant Moaning Without Stimuli" could apply to everybody I know.




According to this chart, I spend most of my time in "Hurts a Little More."

I'm trying to come up with a good name for a race of giants in a graphic novel that I'm working on. Dermot Brunton's namesake suggested the Nephilim, which certainly inspired some interesting reading. But it's not what I'm going to name my giants.

Wonders, Books of and Otherwise

Today, Tuesday, June 6th, I'll be signing The Hobgoblin Proxy at Books of Wonder. The event goes from 5pm to 7pm, and BOW is at 18 West 18th Street. Every tenth book I sign will include a map to buried treasure.

So I've always had a thing about Ben Grimm. He has stars, he has garters. He has religious heritage. He has a brow that makes mine seem almost human. And most importantly- he doesn't have the luxury of a secret identity. This panel from the Fantastic Four probably sums up most of what I love about the Mighty Thing.

Then yesterday, I was shown a man who had built his own Ben Grimm costume, and built it from actual rock. It weighs 150 pounds. The link comes by way of BoingBoing. Soak in the beauty here.



Pay special attention to the background in all the pictures. Is that Gandalf, Jet Li, and Snake Eyes? Is that a re-purposed hamster cage? Is that a friend on a World of Warcraft chatroom? When I look on the internet, I see my people.

the misfortune to kill a man of influence

Saturday, June 3rd at 3pm, I'm going to be reading and signing at the Park Slope Barnes & Noble in Brooklyn, NY. It's on 7th Ave between 5th and 6th streets. It's my first ever public reading of THE HOBGOBLIN PROXY. Come watch me giggle and blush.

I was in Los Angeles this week, working on the western I'm going to be shooting for LionsGate. I took an evening off to see The Mark of Zorro with my friend David Kopple. It's a fun movie with some good swordfighting and some amazing eyebrow-wiggling. But the theater we saw it in was AMAZING. The screening was part of the Los Angeles Conservancy's Last Remaining Seats series, which benefits conservation of LA's landmark buildings. The movie played at the Los Angeles Theater, an amazing old movie palace. Kills me that we have to watch movies now in sterile space-ship seated megaplexes.


And an interesting piece of video here about a new process for the Electrolysis of Water for making clean, cheap fuel. No idea if it's huxterism, the website for Hydrogen Technology Applications looks garage-built.



I hope he's on the level. And if so, I hope he can run faster than GM's goons.