1. Keith’s book, Nowhere Band, Volume 1: Live From St. Paul is out! Head on over to Lulu and order one in full, delightful color or crisp black and white. What’s Nowhere Band? It’s a web comic loosely based on Keith’s experiences as a bottom feeder in the Minneapolis music scene (or it could be any music scene – its more about the funny dynamics in a band than Minneapolis specifically). On his site he says, “For about ten years, I’ve been making music and writing about it, and Nowhere Band is what happens when all of this experience collides with my obsession over comics. Check out Nowhere Band online and, if you enjoy what you see, consider buying the first 56 strips in handy book format that you can reference anytime – like when you’re out camping or riding the bus or, I don’t know, driving.  Or consider buying it as a gift for the loved one in your life who hasn’t given up the dream of Rock And Roll Hootchie Coo. Support your local cartoonist! Start seeing cartoonists!

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I’ve had a lot of bosses because I’ve had a lot of jobs. So there have been many “incidents,” as I like to call them, throughout the years that don’t seem to add up to much until, well, maybe they do…

1. The Dead-Bird-In-the-Tissue-Box Incident – I had a boss no one liked very much but particularly one co-worker who was older than my boss and had been there longer and was having some, shall we say, negative feelings about reporting to someone younger. The two of them would either be screaming at each other in my boss’s office or exchanging passive aggressive remarks in staff meetings. This was at a Catholic school for girls (so don’t let religious people try to fool you about how harmonious and understanding they are – both these women had attended the school as teens and went on to work there, so they’d been in the environment a long time and both behaved like infants). Things came to a head right around Easter vacation. My boss took the week off to go someplace (maybe Sante Fe – she was always going on about Sante Fe) and I stayed there for most of the time but then was off for the long weekend.

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In my earlier post today, I mentioned my whitetail deer coloring book. Tonight I scanned in some of the images so I could share with everyone just how very touching this book is… A primer for all the little hunters out there.

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This week, a random round-up of stuff to keep you amused.

To Look At:
These are some of my favorite websites/blogs to check out lately.
Design Sponge
Living The Beautiful Life
Color Me Katie and
Whorange

You can see that they all have slightly the same theme… cool things to look at, beautiful artwork, the DIY spirit… I guess this is where my head is at even though I’m not making much at the moment. I like to look and dream. I wish my website were more like these but, well… maybe someday!

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I hope you’ve been saving up your coins because next weekend is a bonanza for you if you love: vintage clothing, garage sales, stuff, stuff, stuff and even some books. It’s all goin’ on June 26 & 27th.

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When we last saw Dr. Oliver Cuddles, he was preparing to embark on a sabbatical from his psychiatric practice of 23 years. The purpose of the sabbatical was two-fold: 1. To enter into intense psychotherapy of his own and 2. To explore a latent interest in camping.

Now, just several weeks into the sabbatical, Dr. Cuddles finds himself untethered and drifting for the first time in his life. His first choice for an analyst, Dr. Phil, wasn’t available due to an ongoing television commitment. His second choice, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, was not taking on new patients.

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Sometimes it’s good to share a list of the strange things you’ve read. You never know what might inspire someone else.

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Keith is about to come out with his first book of collected Nowhere Band comic strips (numbers 1-56).  This is the rejected author photo… He went with something else even more hilarious than him looking through our cat door. The one he chose involves a bathrobe, which is all I can say.

He’s been working hard on formatting everything for the book (which will be available in both color and black and white), doing all that stuff he does on his computer and in Photoshop. I admit my ignorance of the process but I love the results. This is not something that he would ever make a point of telling people, but he taught himself to draw over the course of the last 3 or 4 years. He got into comics, which I think inspired him to learn to draw, took a couple classes and developed his own comic. That’s what I admire about him – that he’ll just take something on, get off his ass and do it. Which is how you need to tackle any art or hobby that requires a lot of practice.

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Sometimes I think summer might be the saddest season of the year. Yes, the weather is great and life is easier. But it’s also the time when we become nostalgic about summers past and spend a lot of time trying too hard to have fun and recapture past glory. People tend to organize a lot of silly events to make people feel young again, get families to spend time with one another or invoke town pride.

So this week I present: The Saddest & Lamest Events of Summer 2009 (in the Twin Cities area)

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Welcome, Welcome, Welcome To My Party!

RC:  Hi, Dr. Cuddles! I was sad to hear that you’re closing your office after so many years of helping deeply troubled people.

Dr C: Yes, yes. But it’s time to take a break and uncover my authentic self, much like a gardener puts on gloves and goes out to the garden in the springtime to pick up soggy piles of old leaves only to reveal… grubs.

RC: But you’re Dr. Cuddles, psychotherapist extraordinaire, you must know who you are. If you don’t know who you are, how can your patients ever know who they are? Besides, what else will you do?

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