Volcanus the Couch Guy

We had mission GO! this last Friday. It was Jamal’s bachelor party and we got him prepared,
He wasn't too happy about it but we were:
As Jamal objects to ...
We had a non-objectification of women bachelor party. The overarching theme to what amounted to a lovable roasting of herr comic book genius was Bizarro and the desacration of Superman.

We learned alot about Jamal, some of which can be shared with the world, like:

1. he spent 6 months as "that couch guy" on the circle
2. he's been named many times:
i. volcanus
ii. couch dude
iii. fluffy lips
3. he snores sounds like rapid semi-automatic tank munitions.
4. he spent many years on the run... what we term as the lost years.
5. he likes his ladies three sheets to the wind [fiance notwithstanding]

Check out the images, they speak for themselves.

The opening toast.
A John Gulager angle on the row of Jameson shot glasses with an excited Anindya. [You reality t.v. geeks oughta know John Gulager, think Feast.]
Jamal assuming his regular position.And then we roasted!
SUCCESS!











Later night drunk fine dining!

Jamal's you're a great sport. Take comfort in the knowledge that you never had a choice.

Thank all you guys who came Friday, it was great seeing you all and we had a wonderful time. Stay tuned for the Wedding That Would Not Die!

Finding Forever

Just finished listening to the new Common album, Finding Forever. It's tight and righteous and picks up where Water for Chocolate left off. Peep it. I vibed most with the tracks The People and Maybe Black.

Southside of the Chi: "lean with it, rock with it, black like the disciples,/know when the use the bible and when to use the rifle/you rap like you should be on the back of a motorcycle!/"

-Come on, that was too nice. Or to quote my dumb-ass students: "Yo, that shit was hot-to-def, yo!"

Nuptial of the Nerds!!!!!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. There was so much energy after the Comic Con and then personal tragedy struck. A death in the family, in fact the family matriarch. I shut down in a manner of speaking. The grieving process continues in my own pathological manner; but today I want to focus on a little bit of beauty.

Went to a close friend’s wedding last week, actually two of those motherfuckers I know from High School got married: Gene and Russ. Coincidentally they no longer speak to one another and chose not to invite each other to their weddings. Ironies of ironies, the wedding were 100 miles and 24 hours apart. They were both really great ceremonies and the receptions were more fitting to each other’s personalities. Jeanne and gene had a huge lavish party at hall befitting a poor sultan, with us dancing up a storm, where I must add the De Cicco clan does not fuck around when it comes to the dance floor. Hollah! Russell’s wedding was very cultured, sensible and rooted in tradition. It was weird watching a well-scrubbed Russ and I do mean well-scrubbed macking his wife every so often. I mean full tongue suction action, I’m buying him and Jessica a spittoon for Christmas, I mean Hanukah!

At one point during Gene’s wedding I got social shell-shocked and needed a break. It’s my nature to flee large gatherings after too much exposure to people. [I’m allergic to humanity.] I took a walk, along the way dragging an iron lawn chair and looked on at the shooting water works in the center of the man made lake. Three weeping willows with bright white garland string lights served as my night sky. I sat there a good minute and released self for as long as I could. The Breakfast Club is all but married out, with James and myself as the holdouts. As the theory goes James is gay so that makes me half gay. As James owns a hard drive on the brink of self-destruction because of his big-ass Brazilian girls fetish and the fact that I don’t like cock! Destroys that ever-revolving rumor. I can’t speak for Zaccheo but I’m Ronin. Hai! May haps one day. But not today, nor tomorrow will see me saddled. I’m going to follow a good friends advice: put your head down, do your art, play it out. Whatever happens happens, either way you’re involved with creation.

Congratulations you motherfucking fucks!

The eightfold path and all that good stuff

It's been a minute since I've posted but sometimes life interferes. Suffice to say things have been moving and I've been productive despite a series of minor and not-so minor hiccups along the way. In recognition of my particular brand of life philosophy and the path we flow through life, i'm getting some new ink. here's a rough:

I'll post the finish product upon it's painful completion.

Dos-double-"O"-Seven

Mahalo Peoples. Hollah at your boy in the '07. I just wanted to give you all a quick shout-out and let you know about some of the shizer happening for his year. There are alot of changes and new practices on the horizon.

Besides searching for the perfect cup of tea, I've relaunched my defunct creative aspirations. A brother's getting busy with a capital "B" so be on the look-out for occasional announcements.

The first being that I'll be at the New York Comic Con pedalling my wares, namely the Mighty-Mighty Adventures of Earlwayne and ChuckChuk as well as shopping around some other projects. I have alot of shizzle in speculative developmentright now, all mainly speculative narrative. Some violent, others not so violent. [Yes, there are a few love stories, a la Keith, coming down the pike. Fathers... hide your daughters. Muhahahaah!]

I'm beating the keys in a desperate attempt to join the reviled yet accepted nom de guerre of those selective group of writers, "shcmucks with underwoods!" Keep posted faithful fans, same bat time-same bat-channel.

United 93: Propaganda or feel good movie prelude to the summer Id fueled fluff season?

Everyone has an “I was… the morning of 9/11” story, each and every single New Yorker’s narrative of that day is vital and important. Paul Greengrass’ United 93 is an insider’s diary to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). From that perspective it is technical, engaging, revealing, shocking and emotional. To the extent that it depicts the heroic assault of United Flight 93’s passengers against four fundamentalist terrorists, its very questionable and reeks of propaganda, however clever and engaging, propaganda nonetheless.
A catastrophic event like 9/11 can not be dovetailed with an array of conspiracy theories, chief among them the belief that the Bush Administration orchestrated the attacks or armed with the knowledge of pending attacks [as of PDB reports dated August, 2001, when “W” was on vacation] sat back and allowed 3,000 New Yorkers to die to solidify its power structure. Less you forget Bush’s first domestic operation Enduring Freedom, which sought to have Americans buying buying buying; less we not forget the tens of millions of dollars given to Red States to combat terrorism as opposed to the three year NY State battle with the Federal government to get [promised] crucial funding. Many Americans questioned the crash of Flight 93 in a barren Pennsylvania strip mere minutes outside of the metropolitan.

Collateral damage on the part of the US military to avoid further structural damage, possible! Would the American public forgive the harsh [perhaps necessary] destruction of a commercial airplane by Air Force F-17s, probably NOT! Could the story of the brave heroic fight to gain the cockpit to Flight 93 ending in the crash been constructed to ameliorize the American public…. Uh conceivable!

Doubt my cynicism, see the agitprop for yourself!

Fuck Parker Bros. when we've got the Shrub!

Aikidoka Miller

Seagal. Love 'im or hate 'im, you gotta love his form.

I've been studying Aikido for a long minute with no true goal nor personal expectation. I convinced myself I was comfortable simply studing the art of passive resistance... "The way of Harmony with Universal Energy. " I'm a quick impulsive study, I would very quickly learn the techniques but have not aquired any sort of form. By form..., I mean posturing, correct timing, peace. Timing and posturing is simple; that requires daily practice. Peace on the other hand..., that's difficult. Very few of us are ready for peace or disciplined enough to still our busy minds. Maybe its the hubris of youth, the facade of immortality, the surburban conditioning that the world we live within is ordered and spontanteous violence is abherrant. And by violence I mean human and environmental violence. I would practice daily with no goal in mind.
Then one day I realized instead of being organic with my practice I was cheating myself. With no goals of excellence set forward, I saw no path. So I've decided to take my practice serious. As a byproduct result i've begun testing. I view kyu tests as sign posts not destinations. I'm walking now.

domo arigato gozaimashita.

Keith's 34th Year on God's Green Earth

2006 Birthday. A bullshit Retrospective.

I have advanced by one year to the date of my death. YEAH! It’s been an interesting ride thus far, like the old Kools cigarette advertisements used to exclaim, “baby you’ve come a long way.” It got me thinking about my dumb-ass cracked crew of drool dribbling mongoloids.

The A&D gang still riding strong. We were the original and quite literal breakfast club. We all survived the Eighties. Brian got rid of the flock of seagulls, Yamil discarded the muffin, Russell tried to shrug off the Dark Knight. James, well he hadn’t gotten rid of the Hair Metal look and gut until ’98. Me., well not much has changed, I still alternate between no hair and too much hair and not combing it either way. [I call it the black Christopher Walken look]. We’d stretched the gaming limits with some of the most advance computer systems. [Remember when 16 bit was the shit?]. Come on…, we owned at least an Atari 2600 or Coleco-vision.

Remember the serious discussion on the origin of Snake-eyes and the groundbreaking realization that Storm Shadow was his brother? Or how about the clever ways in which Mad Murdock always figured out a way to get BA Barrackus on the plane. Or the fact that Face Man’s AK-47 never managed to kill anyone? What about Bruce LeRoy, remember him? Now that was HOT! But not as hot as Shonuff! No to be confused with Shogosuki Rememeber how we all owned a pair of foam rubber nunchucks [pronounced nunchookas. whatever!].

Then something special happened… the discovery of porn. We moved from one form of geekness to another. You had your regular print and then the ever-coveted glossy coated. Talk about being consumed. Then of course the real thing surfaced, we dropped our brushes and began chasing after the craziness that is woman. Monster had it right… the Internet is for porn. It’s a good thing we didn’t have the Internet in High School or else we’d never get any artwork done. Thankfully, were all a little more mature.

Fast forward to 1990? That was a year of angst, impatience, expectation and extreme optimism for the future. We’d all broken off to attend F.I.T., SVA, Purchase, N.Y.U., and a lucky few… Cooper Union, Parsons and last but not least Brooklyn’s own Pratt University. We were going to revolutionize our respective chosen art fields in comics, illustration, film, fashion, graphic and package design, oh… and anthropology.

Despite our different schools, studies, our fucked up lives still intersected. We’ve all developed our houses, created families and moved on. Some of us stayed the course and live enriched creative lives; others have gone astray and trying to find our way back to creativity. Whether we’re doing asst. super-ing, super security-ing, supposedly teaching, porter-ing, permalancing, teddy bear drawing when you wanna be X-Men drawing, or just plain doing nothing. the only constant has been our continued interaction and support. Does it matter that we only see one another two or three times a year? it's a given if anyone needs anything from anyone of us then they got it. No questions asked. [Unless it's 3o'clock in the morning, you're dripping blood on the welcome mat and we can hear muffled whimpering sounds coming from your trunk.]

I’m one of those morons searching for creativity again. I think I lost it somewhere between law school and Bronx Housing Court.It's hard to get back into that framework; to try and capture 15 years and to fight the opposite desire to stop the creative work because your hands can't draft your mental image. I’ve picked up my brush again. And I’m back at the keyboards trying to craft interesting yet FUCKED-UP stories.
"See you on the other side, Ray!"

Keith's 34th Year on God's Green Earth

2006 Birthday. A bullshit Retrospective.

I have advanced by one year to the date of my death. YEAH! It’s been an interesting ride thus far, like the old Kools cigarette advertisements used to exclaim, “baby you’ve come a long way.”

The A&D gang still riding strong. We were the breakfast club. We’d all survived the Eighties. Brian got rid of the flock of seagulls, Yamil discarded the muffin, Russell tried to shrug off the Dark Knight. James, well he hadn’t gotten rid of the Hair Metal look and gut until ’98. Me., well not much has changed I still alternate between no hair and too much hair and not combing it either way. [I call it the black Christopher Walken look]. We’d stretched the gaming limits with some of the most advance computer systems. [Remember when 16 bit was the shit?]. Come on…, we owned at least an Atari 2600 or Coleco-vision.[Notice no jpegs of the Coleco system so you know where I camped my tent.]

Remember the serious discussion on the origin of Snake-eyes and the groundbreaking realization that Storm Shadow was his brother? Or how about the clever ways in which Mad Murdock always figured out a way to get BA Barrackus on the plane. Or the fact that Face Man’s AK-47 never managed to kill anyone? What about Bruce LeRoy, remember him? Now that was HOT! But not as hot as Shonuff! No to be confused with Shogosuki Rememeber how we all owned a pair of foam rubber nunchucks [pronounced nunchookas. whatever!].

Then something special happened… the discovery of porn. We moved from one form of geekness to another. You had your regular print and then the ever-coveted glossy coated. Talk about being consumed. Then of course the real thing surfaced, we dropped our brushes and began chasing after the craziness that is woman. Monster had it right… the Internet is for porn. It’s a good thing we didn’t have the Internet in High School or else we’d never get any artwork done. Thankfully, were all a little more mature.

Fast forward to 1990? That was a year of angst, impatience, expectation and extreme optimism for the future. We’d all broken off to attend F.I.T., SVA, Purchase, N.Y.U., and a lucky few… Cooper Union, Parsons and last but not least Brooklyn’s own Pratt University. We were going to revolutionize our respective chosen art fields in comics, illustration, film, fashion, graphic and package design, oh… and anthropology.

Despite our different schools, studies, our fucked up lives still intersected. We’ve all developed our houses, created families and moved on. Some of us stayed the course and live enriched creative lives; others have gone astray and trying to find our way back to creativity. Whether we’re doing asst. super-ing, super security-ing, supposedly teaching, porter-ing, permalancing, teddy bear drawing when you wanna be X-Men drawing, or just plain doing nothing. the only constant has been our continued interaction and support. Does it matter that we only see one another two or three times a year? it's a given if anyone needs anything from anyone of us then they got it. No questions asked. [Unless it's 3o'clock in the morning, you're dripping blood on the welcome mat and we can hear muffled whimpering sounds coming from your trunk.]

I’m one of those morons searching for creativity again. I think I lost it somewhere between law school and Bronx Housing Court.It's hard to get back into that framework; to try and capture 15 years and to fight the opposite desire to stop the creative work because your hands can't draft your mental image. I’ve picked up my brush again. And I’m back at the keyboards trying to craft interesting yet FUCKED-UP stories.