This book came out the other day— I think I read most all of the Ink Stains over the years. It’s Jim Mahfood’s online comic about his life as an artist in LA— it’s a lot of live painting, a decent amount of good living, a lot of the jerk chicken at Swingers (which is not really my place, but I remember that coming up more than once, at least enough where when I drive by Swingers, I’ll have that thought of “Food One sure likes their jerk chicken”). I like it, more maybe just as a person who lives in LA more than as a comic guy (I don’t really get high off autobio comics)— I don’t know I have any kind of high-falootin’ experience with it; I just like hearing about living in LA, and Mahfood lives in a cooler LA than my lame ass does. (The big innovation in my life is after years ordering from one Thai place, I’m now ordering from a different Thai place that’s literally across the street from the old one; the Mayans predicted 2012 would be like this).
Anyways, blah blah blah, I was looking at the book yesterday and what was kinda-moving about it is it comes with a “Yearbook” putting the photos of everyone who’s shown up in that comic next to their drawings. A lot of familiar faces— comic people, LA people, comedy people, art people; Mahfood gets all over (they had his original Kickpuncher pages in that Community art show, so I had him on the brain from that)(that was a nice time but the whole art show based on TV show/nerdy thing has gotten old/sorta-wack to me).
I’d guess that’s a common thing for that kinda comic— not my genre so I can’t say for certain. But looking at it yesterdayI found it really, I don’t know— it’s just interesting how many people you invariably come in contact with over a certain span of time. Or just how connected people are to one another— you could Kevin Bacon game Jim Mahfood to a LOT of people, dead easy. I guess these aren’t new insights— there’s facebook but I don’t really do that facebook, but I guess you can see all that looking at facebook enough. Still: it’d be nice if grown-ups got yearbooks. That’s all. That was my point. Did that point really require three too-long paragraphs? It did not. I concede that. But here we are. So. How do I put a red pin in this thrill-a-minute diary entry, tumblr?? Never forget!
