This is yet another page from CALAMITY and my own personal favorite so far.

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It’s my day off. I’m hanging out, playing with my re-animated laptop, and listening to the soundtrack from Jackie Brown.

I saw the movie a year or two ago, but I got the DVD set out from library last week, and I’ve watched it three times since then. The acting is fantastic, the soundtrack kicks ass, the characters are warm and living and breathing. Quentin Tarantino’s best movie, hands down.

It’s based on Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch, and just like any Elmore Leonard plot, as Martin Amis has noted, there’s a big bag full of money and everybody’s trying to get at it. Within this framework, the characters come alive. It’s a simple, genius formula.

Here’s a bit from Elmore Leonard’s website:

When Quentin Tarantino was a kid, he stole a copy of Elmore Leonard’s The Switch and got caught. Unrepentent, he later went back to the same store and stole the book again. Elmore Leonard was a beacon in the direction that he would soon head in his films. He wrote a movie directed by Tony Scott called True Romance which he said was “an Elmore Leonard novel that he didn’t write.” It certainly is an homage; it even opens in Detroit. After Reservoir Dogs came out, Elmore wrote Rum Punch which reprises the three main characters from The Switch. Tarantino read it and wanted to buy it but didn’t have the money. Elmore and his agent Michael Siegel offered to hold it for him. When he did acquire the book, Tarantino did not contact Elmore Leonard for a long time. When he did he said he was afraid to call. Elmore said, “Why because you changed the name of my book and cast Pam Greir in the lead? He said, “That’s Ok, just make a good movie.”

Dutch has said that he thought it was by far the best adaptation of his work. The DVD set includes some great interview with Leonard. (It also includes the hilarious, “Chicks Who Love Guns,” which QT wrote and directed specifically for the film.)

Anyways, if you haven’t seen Jackie Brown or read Leonard, you’re in for a treat.

This week I’m going to post a couple of abandoned pages from The Book. Here’s one of them. (Ever notice how watching “Deleted Scenes” on DVDs makes you glad they were deleted?)

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Spent a good weekend visiting family, researching the Historical New York Times database, combing through census records, and sifting through histories of Fairhaven and New Bedford Massachusetts. My old research/genealogy bug is kicking in…

What will I be listening to today? The Studio 360 on Moby-Dick. What am I reading? The paperback of MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS.

“…for most young writers, maybe for most writers, “theme” is a word they should just strike out of their vocabulary. Because if you think about it beforehand, what you’re really saying is, “I’m gonna control this bastard. This book is gonna be about the impression of the masses [held] by the elite.” Well, the book just died. Because you know too well.”

- George Saunders, interview

This story is giving me big problems. I’ve tried to strangle it into submission. And that never works. So, I’ve had to kill a lot of darlings. This is one of the victims. Maybe she’ll pop up again. You never know…

Whenever I get about as far along as I can for the day, I pick up the ukulele and try to vent my frustration by writing songs. Little soundtrack ditties for the book. This is one of them:

[audio:http://www.austinkleon.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/tiptoe.mp3] [MP3]

I recorded it using a crappy computer lapel microphone, a ukulele, and an egg shaker. That thumping sound you hear is my fist against the desk.

Tonight, we’re going to see the Ditty Bops.

This is kind of what my book looks like before the pages actually happen, which is fun, I think, because it looks nothing like the finished product…

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Meg was quoted big-time in a great PD article today about how sustainability doesn’t equal the hippie/granola scene or spending lots of money:

“There’s this preconceived notion that living green costs more, which isn’t necessarily true,” says Meghan Feran, architectural resource coordinator for the Cleveland Green Building Coalition. “The main things are that it’s healthier, more energy-efficient and better for the environment. It’s win-win across the board.”

AND:

Feran says the three fundamental principles of green-building — energy-efficiency, resource conservation and good health — address issues that help save the earth and the individual from illness and bankruptcy. She says many people inquire about green alternatives because of toxins in the home that put them or their children at risk. And although many people think that living green costs more, it actually aims to save you money.

“Look at what you’re paying at the pump,” Feran says. “Imagine what your utility bills are going to look like in six months.”

Meg’s ideas about bringing sustainability to the mainstream audience by appealing to the pocke book are really on target. We will be seeing lots more quotes from her in the future…mark my words!

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Two of my favorite writers were on NPR this week: David Milch and Etgar Keret. And Alison Bechdel returns with the NYTimes to setting of FUN HOME.

I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, “The Beatles did.”

- Vonnegut, TIMEQUAKE

one more day of vacation…

“…he seemed to have lost the ability not only to see color, but to imagine or remember it, even to dream of it. Nevertheless, like an amnesiac, he in some way remained conscious of having lost color, after a lifetime of chromatic vision, and complained of his world feeling impoverished, grotesque, abnormal — his art, his food, even his wife looked ‘leaden’ to him.”

- Oliver Sacks, The Island Of The Colorblind

Greetings from South Carolina. The past few days I’ve done nothing but swim, tan, play the ukulele, walk the beach, eat and read. I’m in paradise.

I foolishly thought I’d be able to leave the book behind, but I forgot how the ocean waves have a way of clearing your mind of junk and leaving it free to do the good thinking. So, I’ve resumed working in my sketchbook. This afternoon I drew a boy battling the waves with his raft. It was perfect.

Other highlights: last night Meghan made her famous shrimp boil, and this morning I finished Elmore Leonard’s spectacular GET SHORTY.

It’s supposed to be 90 degrees up in Cleveland…hope everyone’s staying cool.

a new panel from A Terrible Calamity At Sea!

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“I’ve always been interested in the problem of depicting sound in comics. I try to come up with a kind of expressionistic pattern or decorative line to represent the music, something that will spark the imagination of the reader. I was inspired years ago by a wonderful cartoon by Saul Steinberg that showed in graphic form the sounds emerging from different instruments. He drew the different sounds as solid, three-dimensional matter, which made so much sense to me as a strategy to draw sound.”

- Megan Kelso, interview with PW

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“Serializing is an interesting problem….How and where to do it? In the old comics format? Online? Grouped in magazines? The serial offers another kind of freedom, and the added value for authors of ongoing contact with their readers. Creators don’t have to toil for a couple years on a project before it gets received. In the highly interactive age of the text message, the Weblog and Wikipedia, that seems a useful agency.”

- Mark Siegel, Editorial Director, First Second Books, in a PW roundtable

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- Scott McCloud, interview. Other interviews: here and here.

I woke up thirsty the day I died
And the tide was swirling
My mouth is so dry
And all I see is sea

- “Swans (Life After Death),” Islands

This is a page of drawings I did for the city in CALAMITY. As usual, I didn’t end up actually using any of them for the page I was working on, but you never know…

I wish I could just have Stanley Donwood illustrate the thing. Those woodcut animations are spectacular. He’s always been a big inspiration to me.

As for the book, having only worked on short stories and comic strips, I’ve never experienced anything like this — not even when I did my senior project. Total immersion in a world. In a set of ideas. If I’m not careful, almost every waking thought can be consumed by the book. For my sanity, and Meg’s sanity, I’m trying to set time limits and totally shut my mind off to it when I’m not at the desk working, but it’s tough.

My dreams have been helping me along. Sometimes I’ll wake up and a panel will come to me. Meg told me that she used to use dreams to help her solve problems. She’d go to sleep, wake up, and know the answer she was looking for.

Did you know MOBY-DICK was inspired by a real whaling accident? And that Sammy Harkham’s POOR SAILOR was inspired by the Maupassant story, “At Sea”?

Some dewey decimals I am haunting:

SEAFARING LIFE 910.4, 910.45
SHIPS 387.2 623.82 387.209 910.45
SHIPWRECKS 910.45 910.4 904.7

I worked so much today that my eyes burned and my hand cramped up. The adventure continues…

For being 6-6-06, yesterday was an unbelievably good day.

Just one of the happenings: I keep a notebook and pencil on my dashboard, and once in a while I get lucky at a red light, and the inspiration strikes.

<---On the way to work yesterday, a clunker van turned left in front of me, and this guy gave me a dirty look.

I scribbled his caricature as quick as I could. Then I thought he'd make for a good character in TERRIBLE CALAMITY. Engineer first mate, maybe?

Thanks apocalypse, I owe you one.
** You FULL THROTTLE fans will know what I’m talking about. [MP3]