Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Riddle at Rosebud














































































Up here in the McCleary neighborhood the oldtimers called "Arkie Hill," there was a closeknit group of neighbors in the late 1990s who held frequent social gatherings including progressive dinners, potlucks, barbeques, etc.-- and role playing murder mystery games.

The boyfriend of one of our neighbors introduced us to these games, and we held several murder mystery parties using commercially produced products. My then-wife and I decided to write our own game, Riddle at Rosebud, inspired by the so-called "Roswell Incident" and the mysterious fate of our friend, Lynn Hansen.

We wrote this in late 1998. It was performed in real life only once, in my living room by 8 people on January 9, 1999. And it was a lot of fun.

I am unable to reproduce the accompanying cassette tape, or provide photos of the participants in costume, but they were something to behold.

Nowadays I am the only person left from that crowd still living on Arkie Hill. People move, die, get divorced, have surly talking frogs grow out of the top of their craniums. Life happens.

Jim Jarvis, who played Lon Odure, provided his own re-election poster and booze tickets!

Phone photo 656

A piece of the World Trade Center goes on tour
McCleary, Washington

News from the Record







The Record, a periodical from the Washington State University Friends of the Library, had brief articles about the comix collection as well as the Lynn Hansen Beatles collection.

Phone photo 655

Open Stacks







Open Stacks was an in-house newsletter for the employees of the Washington State University Libraries. It had been in stasis for awhile for various reasons, but in the early 1980s I revived and edited the thing. Here are a few samples of Mortyness within the newsletter.

Phone photo 654

Steve Willis Anticipates the Demise of Paper / by Peter Oakley



Back in early 1991 I spoke to the Cartoonists Northwest group in Seattle. Interesting to read this half-accurate prediction about online comix two decades later.

Peter Oakley reported on the talk in CN's newsletter, Penstuff (March 1991). For the record, I had nothing to do with the legendary minicomic Penguins in Bondage. That effort came from Bruce Chrislip and Wayne Gibson in 1981, before I had been in contact with either one of these fine cartoonists.

The ending comment about post-it notes has come to pass right here on this blog several times over.

Phone photo 653

Olympia, Washington : a People's History / edited by Drew W. Crooks







Published by the City of Olympia in 2009 as part of celebrating the 150th birthday of Washington State's capital city. Local historian Drew Crooks edited a history of the place with each chapter by a different author, making this an anthology.

The chapter on the history of The Evergreen State College was really a boiled down version of my extended history on OlyBlog written in 2005-2006 called Evergroove Trivia.

Difficult to scan, I apologize for the poor visual quality.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Phone photo 652

Odd Dog


One of several books I drew for early readers in the Olympia School District. This one was first published in 1978 and used for many years. And no, you don't get to see any more of this beyond the cover. Odd Dog was indeed a proto Morty the Dog.

Phone photo 651

Priest Point
Olympia, Washington

O Fanzine Das Xornadas # 1 (Oct. 1994)






Published out of Ourense, Galicia, Spain. Three pages of Cranium Frenzy # 7 were translated.

Phone photo 650


Budd Inlet with the Olympic Mountains in the far distance
Olympia, Washington

Newave! Promo Mini Comic


Here's the page I contributed to the 8 page minicomic Michael Dowers printed up to promote his Newave book. Other artists included, XNO, Wayne Gibson, Wayno, J.R. Williams, David Lasky and Jamie Alder in what was probably one of his last published drawings.

Phone photo 649


Another one in my phone photo subseries of discarded portable floss thingies. There is something about these relics of oral hygiene just tossed on the public asphalt that really unsettles my spleen. This one was found in the Timberland Regional Library Tumwater Branch Library parking lot. Phone photo 478 was found in a Target store parking lot on Olympia's Westside. Phone photo 576 in a parking lot in Newberg, Oregon.