Tod Browning's freak you was

As they pulled me out of the oxygen tent, I asked for the latest party. Holy shit, what a weekend. Okay, let's do pictures first, then stories...

My friend Carly (flyingnakedtofu) drew me and Alexis! We posed on the couch and pretended we were a rock n' roll band. Oh wait, we kind of are.

(Click for bigger version)

The drawing is beautiful but the photos of it came out pretty bad; sorry about that. It's hanging in a hallway that's too narrow to allow a nice straight shot, and the area doesn't get much light. But it really looks incredible in the apartment, you can take my word for it. It's huge! About four or five feet across.

I asked Carly to take a couple pictures of us while we were being drawn (but not quartered)...

Rock and roll.

I am probably alseep.

And that was all just Sunday night! Okay, backing up here... Friday I worked on that poster for The Dead Sexy Inc. pretty much all day long and I kind of lost my mind, as is normal when one draws and Photoshops all day and doesn't eat or drink or interact with human beings. After I finally finished the drawing, Alexis asked me to go catch a late showing of John Rambo with him, and so we did, and it was glorious. We went out to our favorite bar afterward (the one with the crazy pianist from the other night) and drank to John Rambo and to the United States of America; I like to think Rambo would've kicked our queer absinthe-drinking Parisian asses for that. We also talked about band names and songs and touring and all that junk. I'm feeling really good creatively right now, after a pretty long dark period.

Saturday afternoon was mostly uneventful, and then that night I went out dancing at a silly goth party near the Bastille. I went with my friends, and ran into a few more friends there, which is always an amazing feeling; I actually know a few people in this city. The party was a little bit dead (and not just in the goth/Crypt Keeper way), but I had a good time and ended up taking the Metro home at 7am, completely exhausted and drunk on cowboy whiskey. I'd met an interesting French lady at the club who had lived in Japan and was interested in comic books, and she gave me her phone number, but I guess I was drunker than I thought I was when I entered it into my phone, because the next day I went to look for it and all I had was her name and "06," which are the first two digits of every cell phone number in Paris. I despaired at this, because I really and truly don't have enough actual French friends and it's very hard for me to make a connection like that here, but later on Alexis said, "Hey man, you have the first two numbers! You need only the other eight! Just try every combination." Not a bad idea. Anyway, when I got home I thought I'd lost my septum tusk, and I told Alexis as I searched around the house. He soon yelled from the living room, "I found it!" But it turned out he'd made me a new one out of aluminum foil. Fortunately I found the real one a little later.

I slept for a few hours Sunday morning and then had to get up for Courtney's (kocici's) surprise birthday brunch! Agnes had just invited me the previous afternoon. So I crawled over there with a bag of fresh croissants in hand, and spent the afternoon eating a tremendous amount of food (Agnes made American-style pancakes! I think that's illegal here) and lounging around with a few Americans, one Irish woman, one French woman, and a German/American/completely international offspring of an American diplomat who had the most unusual and un-placeable accent I've ever heard. I was the only boy, as usual. Then we tried to go for a walk at Pere Lachaise cemetery, but it was just closing, as were my eyelids, so I dragged myself home again around 6pm. I thought I'd just finish some work, show Alexis the acoustic/country arrangement of Diamond Dogs that I'm working on for us to play, and then go right to bed, but then we ended up doing the big drawing session and then going out for sushi. Alexis and I actually both fell asleep on each other a couple times during our sitting, which is probably adorable. I finally went to bed around 1am and slept for ten hours. I feel like I've been reborn.

My friends Eric Zino and his wife Bridget are visiting Paris this week! I've known Eric and Bridget since we all worked together at a public library in New Jersey when we were in highschool. Eric was the writer of first two comic book series I ever worked on, Jerkbox & Punk'nhead and Silicon Valley of the Kings (which are being translated into French as we speak, for a new publication this Spring!). I hadn't seen the guy in about six years until my get-together at Tattooed Mom's in Philly a couple weeks ago, and that's when he told me he was coming to Paris soon. So, Eric e-mailed me the other day to tell me they'd arrived, and he gave me the phone number of the cousin they're staying with; he's got family here, which is pretty amazing. I just got off the phone with him a minute ago (let's get off phones...), and we're going to have lunch in Montmartre tomorrow! It's truly fascinating how things work out; it's funny to imagine telling the seventeen-year-old versions of us where we'd all end up fifteen years later. This is a game I play in my head a lot.

So that's my weekend (bleeding over into Monday morning). How was yours?