So, this is the first of the last two sets of pictures from the great excursion. Due to the delay since the last post, here’s all of California wrapped up into one nice huge post.

We left Crater Lake and headed South-West towards the California border, trying to get over to the coast to drive Highway 1.

Here’s Joe, photographing the coastline. Driving Highway 1 is an experience, even in a Corolla. It would’ve been nice to give it a go in a sports car, instead of a low-horsepower gas-saver, but worth it either way.

More coast.

Even more.

We rolled into San Francisco at about 10 that night, stopped to get gas, and were immediately accosted by a homeless gentleman who really, really wanted to sell us a jean jacket. We did not need a jean jacket, and therefore declined. We drove around the block to get away from him and then parked the car. As soon as we got out of the car, there he was, still trying to get us to buy his jean jacket. I guess we looked cold.

That first night we met up with our friend Susan. Here’s Susan’s back. She knows Joe Kimpel.

Susan is way too busy and spends way too much time at work, and should stop working so hard. But she’s the coolest EVER,… when she’s not at work. Which is not often. We spent the next couple of days intermittently hanging out with Susan and/or Joe’s cousin Andy, who has the bachelor-paddiest bachelor pad I’ve ever seen. He’s a Burning Man pro from way back, and has a lot of technical know-how from working at Dolby. One year his group made a 1,000-foot runway of lights that would move at the speed of sound while they blasted music from one end to the other. He showed us Burning Man photos on his ultra-projection screen, and took us around the Mission neighborhood, where he lived, to check out some of the local hangouts and restaurants. Andy also got us free tickets to see Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem at an amphitheater a bit south of the city, which was awesome.

Joe and I spent some time driving around the city on our own as well, and wound up here:
Best part was we found a cool CD stop at the end of Haight near the park, where we got 4 used CDs for 7 dollars. Just what we needed, as we had grown tired of pretty much all the music in the car by this point.

This is the kind of car people drive on the highway in San Francisco.

While in the area we headed down into the Silicon Valley area to see my Aunt and our mutual friend, Reda, who knows Joe Kimpel. Reda was an inspiration to us in our Sophomore year of college, because he almost never went to class but still got better grades than everyone else. He’s now programming the iPhone. My Aunt was exceedingly accommodating, and we stayed at her house for a couple days. She had basically an orchard in her back yard, complete with fruit like these:

I forget what they’re called and haven’t seen them anywhere since, but supposedly the make great jelly.

And we went on a hike and found Banana slugs! They’re really big.

After a few days there and a trip back up to Chinatown for a great meal with a $10 Liter of wine, we headed south, along the coast again.

There were hundreds of these guys just laying around one beach we passed.

A couple of the males were sort of fighting. Mostly just leaning on each other and looking tired. Then they’d take a nice long break, until one of them decided he wanted to lean on the other one some more, then they would kind of fight a little bit, then rest again.

Aren’t they just the cutest!

Sunset on the coast. The colors were, again, even more brilliant, but don’t really come through at web resolution.
We made it down to LA, ate some In-N-Out Burger (which was amazing), and met up with Joe’s friend Walt.

Here’s Walt and Eileen at Eileen’s place. Lauren O’Connell, of CCS fame, was also in LA and she came and hung out with us one night. Hi Lauren! She’s not in the picture, but we had a great time, and melted Dots and stuck them to the wall. Walt works at IMax, so we got to see the Transformers movie screened at IMax Headquarters. It was big and loud and I was a little bit dizzy for about a half hour after it was over.

Here’s Walt’s dog Tweety. If you thought the seals were cute, look at this little guy!

Next up, the last round of photos.
Vegas, Colorado, and the whole trip wraps up.

We have a bunch of new books over in the Store for those of you who haven’t been over there lately. Here’s a preview:

Alexis Frederick-Frost has his new book out, and he square-bound it, by hand, by himself! I think he’s crazy, but the book came out beautiful. “Maria of Montmarte” is the title, follow the link to check out the cover and a blurb.

Colleen has the next installment of Tragic Relief out! She’s now a Xeric winner, folks, so check out her work if you haven’t already.

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Out of the depths, here comes The End of the World!

by Emily… is it the product of a warped mind, or a real vision of the future?

Bob Oxman is a new addition to the roll here at IKJK. Here’s the first chapter of his epic, Smuttynose.

Check out a review here.

Joe Lambert has a new mini, Thin Bear Loves His Brother. Get a hold of some hand-made Joe work before all the big publishers get him!

For those of you who haven’t been following, I’m chronicling the course of a cross-country trip I took from August through October with none other than Joe Kimpel. We’ve already been across the country, hitched a boat ride to Alaska, and have just returned to Tacoma, Washington.

From there, we went to Vancouver for a night.

This is the view out of the window of the hostel we were staying in. Looks like a nice, normal street, right? Well, we went out walking a little bit before sunset through the downtown area. We were at the southeast corner of downtown, and walked along the shore up to the big park in the northwest corner before the sun set. Then we wandered in and out of different parts of the downtown, eating and drinking, eventually making it back to the hostel late at night.

When we woke up, here’s what we found:

Yikes! A crackhead broke the window and stole a bunch of stuff out of the car. He stole my contact lenses, my art supplies, Joe’s air mattress, and my old, half-broken, useless cell phone. And half a handle of Jim Beam.

And then he drank a bunch of sodas and left the empty bottles on the floor! Talk about rubbing it in!

Well, it cost 600 PBRs to replace the window, plus the cost of the stolen items (we measured the cost of everything on the trip by the number of PBRs we could have bought for the same amount). We got back to Seattle late, which sucked, because I was supposed to go visit the Fantagraphics office that afternoon and missed the opportunity while the window was being replaced. Then it was back down to Portland, with our friend Kate, who had to make it down there for a wedding.

This is Kate paying for and pumping gas while the two guys stand around and watch. But she’s a track coach, and she could beat us both up, so when she offered to pump the gas we were afraid to argue with her.

So then it was back to Portland to meet up with Brad again. We went out on the town, and even tricked Kate and her husband Jon (both friends from college) into meeting us out at a strip club. They were so uncomfortable! It was great.

We were bouncing around town with Brad and he took us to the sites of one of his several jobs, a party hall by the name of Disjecta.

Here we are on the roof. It’s blurry because we’re all so fast. Don’t be confused by the picture looking like we’re standing still.

And the view from one side of the roof was this:

The famous Burnside skate park.

Our last day in Portland, on our way out of town, we stopped by Dark Horse Comics. Long-time editor and all-around awesome person Diana Schutz showed me around. She was as nice as nice could be. She was also Rich Tommaso’s editor at one point. Small world, right?

Then it was south towards California. We passed a lot of these:

Finally, right before sunset, we made it to our destination for that night, Crater Lake National Park.

We were there to meet fellow CCS alum and park ranger, Ross Studlar. Or as the people at Crater know him, by his radio handle, 4-2-5 Studlar (the u is pronounced oo).

Here’s Ross in uniform. We lived it up at the rangers’ end-of-season campfire the night before, then went out to breakfast the next morning before dropping Ross off at work. See how official he looks! And lest anyone think something looked weird in the picture, Ross did not go somewhere backpack-less, it’s there in the background, stuffed completely full as usual.

Next up: driving the Cali coast highway down to San Francisco.

T Edward Bak, current CCS fellow, is the Sunday conversation on the Comics Reporter.

Click here to go check out the interview.

Good Golly! Lynda Barry came to CCS this week and gave an absolutely great 2-day workshop. Even Alumni were invited, because we would have totally freaked out if we weren’t. I mean, c’mon, it’s Lynda Barry. The ceiling already fell in, they didn’t need the alums breaking the doors down too!

The first day of the workshop was held in the American Legion, because it had space and an intact ceiling. Lynda is so full of energy, it’s unimaginable. Or it would be, if we didn’t all already know Steve Bissette. At the beginning of each day, and after every break, she had to go out of the room and re-enter it as the teacher to get herself into teaching mode.

Any way you look at it, the workshop was amazing. We did a ton of writing, but it wasn’t about the writing as much as creating images in our minds. Lynda talked a lot about the power of images, and what images can do to adults and kids alike. She came chock full of stories about this, from the intense concentration of kids at play to studies where stroke victims could regain limb function by picturing the limb working, forcing the brain to rewire pathways between hemispheres.

She talked a lot about the “play” habits of children, and related the value of play to the value of artistic expression in adults. When we grow up, people seem to think singing, acting, drawing, dancing, etc., should be left to only the professionals or the drunk. But what if you told a child he or she wasn’t allowed to play for the first 18 years of their life? They’d be craaaaaaazzzzzzyyyy. So why aren’t adults allowed to play? Mental health and happiness can flow through these channels, so don’t restrict yourself!

Lynda giving a demo with her Chinese brush set. She has a great set-up with stone, ink sticks, and brushes, and she let us all take a turn making the ink and using the brushes. Definitely a great investment. One ink stick can last years and year and years, so when you think what you spend on jars of Higgins, Lynda’s tools start to make a lot of sense, even if they’re not considered traditional cartoonist paraphernalia.

Lynda at the second day of the workshop, giving us such sage advice as “don’t take mesculin and then go to a renaissance fair,” and letting us know how much her conservative Wisconson women neighbors like a good dirty joke. She forgot to take a “before” picture at the start of the first day, so at the end she had us create a fake before picture by all scowling and flipping her off. Then she immediately took the after picture, with us all smiling and happy and full of new knowledge.

Lynda was an absolute delight to have at the school. The workshop was incredible, and she even hung out with all of us at the Main Street Museum after the last day of her teaching. She’s irresitable! Even Chris Oliveros made it to White River and sat in on the second day of the workshop. If Lynda ever comes through your town, go see her!!! Thanks, Lynda! We hope you had fun too!

I was in the CCS basement, when we heard an EARTH SHATTERING KABOOM!

And then:

Luckily, everyone was downstairs at the time, ’cause that was a big chunk of ceiling. And this isn’t the first time it’s happened, either.

Any wealthy people out there want to donate a bunch of money to The Center for Cartoon Studies to fix our ceiling, so the freshmen don’t die?

As we’ve mentioned many times before, we just love the guys over at Indie Spinner Rack. Not only do they know how to party, they’re always saying nice stuff about our work. Listen to their latest issue in which Mister Phil and special guest Alec Longsteth do their SPX roundup and mention many of IKJK’s artists latest minis. Holler!