Have you heard the news?  Turns out Swine Flu wasn’t just some mass-media generated story to whip us all into a frenzy of fear — it’s back.  Which means that I have got to stop licking things.  I’m a licker.  I like to eat with my fingers (and then lick them clean) and when I read books and magazines I lick my fingertips to turn pages.  God only knows what crazy germs I’m sucking up all day long.  (Hopefully this habit has given me the immune system of a Ukrainian ox.)

Until recently I was an unrepentant brush licker too but Skot Olsen set me straight (”Unless you’re looking to get rid of all those pesky teeth and that meddling tongue, and the jaw bone that’s always getting in the way.”).  Um, no, not so much.

Problem is, all sorts of oral fixations aside, I need to point and re-point my brushes as I paint, or clean little bits of this color that got on it when I was painting that color.  Which is where socks came into it.  I’ve started cutting the feet off old white cotton socks and putting them on my wrist and man, do they do the job.  I can clean the brush tip or roll it back into a point very nicely without having to go pick up a paint rag (or stick the brush in my mouth — haven’t done it for nearly five months now!).  Just gotta remember not to wipe my nose with it or I get a big multi-colored Groucho mustache.

Richard von Busack is pouring sugar on me — well technically on my book — in a terrific review for “On Tender Hooks” which you can read right here. He’s coined the tastiest turn of phrase in any review to date:  “toasted marshmallow-colored nudes.”  Yum!

Greetings gentle readers, sorry for the time lag (I couldn’t find the cord to download my camera). I’m sure other folks have posted numerous and better pics in Flickr accounts galore but here are a few of my snaps and musings from Comic-Con, which was splendidly fun and completely exhausting, just like it always is.

These pictures never adequately capture the madness but you get the idea.

Lady Miss Pamela asked me the other day what my favorite part of the Con was and my answer is forever the same:  I love all the costumes.  I meant to make a head-count of all the “metal bikini Princess Leias” but I lost track.  Let’s just got with “lots.”  (One of them, when walking by the Suicide Girls’ booth, muttered “Jeezus, eat a sandwich!”)

I’m so sad — this is just terrible timing because a good chunk of the Bay Area’s superheroes are bound to be down in San Diego flexing their stuff at Comic-Con.  (I know I will be and somebody thinks I’m a superhero — check out Mike Leavitt’s sculpture of me as part of his Art Army –)

I don't have little troll legs in real life. Or maybe nobody's had the heart to tell me before now...

I stayed up way too late last night watching “Trainspotting” — any time that movie comes on I pretty much have to watch it through to the end.  As a result I’ve had Lou Reed’s “" target="_blank">Perfect Day” on steady brain-rotation for the last twelve hours straight.  But now I know I’m having a perfect day ’cause how often do you end up mentioned in a post about Ludacris, Freaknik, and Battlestar Galactica?  Seriously.  That’s a perfect day.  Check it out.