The Johnny Bacardi Show

Now that I have your attention...

Nah, nothing about Britney. I think she messed up her knee recently, though. Besta luck to ya, little missy.

I've got a few minutes here at work, and no time to write anything much substantial (although, of course, comics reviews and my favorite 90s comics list are coming. Is coming. Whatever. I'm still compiling the latter, and I haven't finished reading the former.) Just thought I'd ramble a while until they bring me more work. So here goes nuttin.

I'm listening to Outkast's Speakerboxx/Love Below twofer as I type this. When I decided to order it (part of the same order in which I got that Essential Clash), it was because I liked the songs from the videos I'd seen- "Hey Ya", "The Way You Move", "Roses". I also figured that I'd prefer Andre's side because I'm such a fan of Prince's 80s and 90s output, not to mention the P-Funk sound as well, and it sure seemed like he was channeling that. So surprise, surprise- I'm digging on Big Boi's Speakerboxx side a lot more! It sounds like a great lost warped demented Parliament album. The Love Below's side is fine, great in places, but right now Boi is rocking me. Go figure.

Other CDs I got in that order: All That We Let In by the Indigo Girls and Richard Pryor: The Anthology 1968-1992. They must love my orders from Columbia House...!

Yesterday was comics day, and I got most of the stack that I wrote about back on Monday with some notable exceptions: Demo 7, no surprise there and more on that later; the Clock Maker Act II (big disappointment there- seriously), and Walking Dead 8. I think WD came in but didn't make its way into my folder...also, I overlooked it on the rack. I hope. Clock Maker I don't remember seeing at all. I called my comics shop and they're checking on it, so hopefully all will work itself out. About Demo- my comics shop's manager was finally there for me to talk to about it, and he is having a copy sent up from Nashville. He apologized for the problem, said he'd make sure that I got it in the future, and also said he intended to order a couple of rack copies after I told him a bit about the title. I laid a great spiel on him that would make Saint Larry proud! Anyway, hopefully, the upshot is that I'll be able to get the last four issues on time. We shall see...Matt's a good dude. He's a Replacements fan, y'know, and Dylan, and the Fabs. I think he'll come through. I also picked up one of those 99¢ DC Archives reprint comics...this one with some Silver Age stories in it, most notably a Justice League reprint I hadn't read probably since I was a teenager.

OK, step back, I'm gonna get personal for a minute, so watch out. State of Dave's Union time. You probably know I finally got a job back in December, after being out of full-time work for seven months, with a local newspaper. Well and good. I'm happy to have it- it beats unemployment and I have benefits, after a fashion. But the pay, to be kind, sucks. It's roughly half of what I was making at my previous employer, and I was living paycheck to paycheck with them. Plus, while the people here are nice enough and have been very nice to me, I have almost less than nothing in common with most of them plus the way they run their prepress drives me INSANE, it's so arbitrary and inefficient. So it will probably come as no surprise that I'm still out there looking for a better, shall we say, situation in the prepress graphics/graphic design field for myself...and one's come up, I think. This company, located in Bardstown, Kentucky (about an hour and a half-two hours from where I live now) has approached me about an opening in their graphics department, and I'm scheduled to go for an interview Monday at 1:30 CST. Keep your fingers crossed. The more I find out about them the more impressed I am. I'm also trying to get in the mix at this Bowling Green company as well, thanks to a tip from the Bacardi Show Political Correspondent, who works there. Seems they'll have an opening coming up in their creative department, and I'd love to get my foot in the door. I've sent resumés to the necessary people, but so far nothing. Feh. Funny thing, I actually worked for them for a couple of months back in 1997, on a freelance basis. Stay Tuned!

Complicating things is that I'm suddenly immersed in art projects for the first time in ages. My plate, which I had consigned to a neglected cupboard stored in the attic of my mind, is full-to-running over. I have some art requests to fill, such as a couple for the redoubtable Ken of Ringywoodyrageyfucky note; and I am also committed to doing the illustrations for a children's book written by my wife, who is consumed with a passion to write the things. She's found a publisher/printer online, has arranged to pay their fee, and is now anxiously awaiting on me to provide the drawrings. She's been after me for years to do this, and naturally I've put it off and resisted, but I'm out of excuses now. This particular story is one I had done several illos for already, but did them in Prismacolors and scanned them on the computer so I could cut and paste some of the more repititious images. Problem is, when I was forced to wipe my hard drive back last May, these working files, like those of my Thriller website, were wiped too. Thought I had them backed up, but soon discovered this was not the case. Anyway, I had rethought my approach and decided to scrap the Prismacolor style anyway and redo it...but then I procrastinated more. Now, I'm doing them. Penciled, the pen-and-inked, and computer colored. That's the way I'm gonna go. But it's taking time, and I know she's getting impatient with me!

By the way, I posted a whole bunch of sketches on the sketchblog the other evening, but it didn't show up on the Comics Weblog Update-a-tron 5000 so I'm telling you now. They're mostly pieces I had already posted here at the Show, but it occurred to me that perhaps there were people who, God bless 'em, have never seen this blog and so consequently have never seen those sketches...so up they went. Go look 'em over, and leave comments if you like. Even if you don't like!

OK, that's all I got time for now. I'll be back later. It may be tomorrow, or even Saturday, but I'll be back. Chin-Chin!