Oh My Lard

It ain't Lou Reed but it's still fun.

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 17:08:00 +0000

Notes from a show I was dragged to at the Grand Ole Opry House:

1. You would think the Grand Ole Opry would have better acoustics.

2. Dave The Spousal Unit loves prog rock. I tag along to some of the shows because it's good people watchin' and fodder for whatever I create down the road—even for something as useless as this blog.

3. This is how I ended up seeing Yes (which I enjoy but am not a rabid fan) for the second time, Asia (which doesn't interest me much), the amazing drummer Carl Palmer from Emerson Lake & Palmer, Moody Blues (see Asia), and Arthur Brown (whom I suspect is loveably barking batshit crazy) singing a few vocals for the Carl Palmer set. In its entirety, the show was four freaking hours. Four.

4. The dude in the front center row proudly waving his signed homemade concert banners. He was awesome in that comic book, or sci fi, or Neil Gaiman-fan way—generally good, interesting people who have a bordering-on-but-not-crossing-the-line passion for music/art/pop culture and the artists who produce it. They ain't called fanatics for nuthin'.

During breaks in the extravaganza he stood up, faced the crowd, and proudly held up his banners. I'm not sure why he was playing to the entire arena because the banners were small and not very readable, but play it he did. He also had VIP passes and a stuffed bag of merch.

5. The four hours started with a set featuring Carl Palmer. Let me say right here I have a thing for drummers, and what a treat to see a classic drummer still whaling away on the skins. (An aside note: I remember hearing a former Rolling Stone female writer—who knew those existed—talking about how she dealt with rock band attitude during interviews. She simply focused all her attention on the drummer. By doing that, the singer would snap out of his sunglasses-at-night attitude and cooperate with her, and the rest of the band would follow suit. And the drummer would be stunned beyond comprehension that he was actually getting attention. To me, the drummer is the heart of the band and deserves the lion's share.)

And then Arthur Brown moseyed on out to the stage in full sideshow gear and face paint. I was hoping he'd have a flaming headpiece perched on his noggin while singing "Fire," but it wasn't to be.

It would have been nice if the lighting guys had set up a spotlight for front center stage.

6. It's always a treat to see the legendary Steve Howe play, especially when he does an acoustic (well, not really acoustic) solo. But Steve Howe was not happy with the sound at the Grand Ole Opry. I get the feeling Steve Howe is a perfectionist—I could see it in his precise method of movement—and not being able to hear yourself or the rest of the band correctly while onstage must drive him up a wall. Understandably so.

7. It's kind of jarring to go to a rock concert surrounded by middle-aged and elderly people. I actually saw a walker parked in the front row. I wonder what the performers feel when they observe their audience? I suppose they're used to it by now. Hey, it might be kind of cool to see that you still have loyal listeners of your music after all of these years. But there's a strange disconnect between the song content and the audience age. What are you gonna do? That's what made their careers, and that's what some people want to hear. Over and over and over.

But I did see a kid who was maybe 15 or 16 entranced by the show. My guess is he was there to see either Carl Palmer or Steve Howe perform and maybe learn a few things from them. This is Nashville, after all. There are things to be gleaned from the Masters, and it IS a good thing they still perform.

Meet Torry…

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 22:20:00 +0000

…in the land of arches! Giant centipedes. Scorpions. Wolf mice. Rock walls with ancient paintings on them. Giant rock arches. A jackrabbit taxi service. Ninja moves!

Coming soon.

It's all fun and games until someone has to write a book (and illustrate it)

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 04:16:00 +0000

Halloo, it's been a while, hasn't it?

I'm hard at work, sweating it over a picturebook for Arches National Park/Canyonlands N. P. slated to come out in early 2019. The book is written and sketched out, but I've got puppets to make and art to paint and stuff to assemble and thingamabobs to thingamabobble.

Things like this:

And this:

It will have wolf mice and scorpions and giant centipedes and battles for life and death. It will have mountains and arches and weird desert life.

It will have a mouse with one eye, and Jackrabbit Slim's Taxi Service.

You'll like it, I think.

Stay tuned. I have an August 1 deadline fast approaching…

Never laugh at live dragons.

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Wed, 02 Aug 2017 20:13:00 +0000

“But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.”

― From A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

(8.31.17: Also, after viewing the season finale of Game of Thrones, don't laugh at the dead ones, either.)

I Often Dream Of Trains

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 21:10:00 +0000

Well, well, well, what do we have here?

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Thu, 11 May 2017 21:39:00 +0000

Dear lord, it's a coloring book for grownups. Another one. They breed like rabbits.

Longtime readers of this blog may remember "Up With Figs," a shared blog I used to do with my friend Adrienne Martini.

Years ago Adrienne and I worked together at Metro Pulse, the independent weekly in Knoxville. Eventually we both moved on, and now she lives in upstate New York. She's since written two books and countless articles for various publications, and shares her creative talents at SUNY in Oneonta, NY.

"Up With Figs" was Adrienne's concept back in 2010: she would come up with a short bit of text about anything, and I would create a corresponding drawing. The next week, I would create a drawing, and she would come up with some text for it. And so on.

Sometimes it was a big pain in the butt, especially if we were busy with other things, but mostly it was lots of fun.

Why "Up With Figs"? Honestly, neither Adrienne nor myself can remember for sure, but we think it had something to do with a beloved prankster co-worker who showed up at a protest march with a sign proclaiming UP WITH FIGS. This was the same guy who used to dress up in an ape suit and juggle rubber chickens and bowling pins on Market Square in downtown Knoxville. The same sense of playful surreality seemed appropriate to our joint venture.

A few weeks ago I was looking at some of those drawings, thinking I should do something with these, but what? That's when I thought maybe we could turn the text and drawings into an unusual coloring book for adults and publish it ourselves.

The book is now available at:
Lulu.com
Amazon.com
BarnesandNoble.com
Indiebound.com
Malaprops.com

Or pop into your local bookseller; they'll be happy to order a copy for you.

Get 'em while they last, and have fun!

We sorted through the blog posts and picked some of our favorites, though there were a few that wouldn't work for a coloring book page. I reinked many of them, adding a few patterns and extras for maximum coloring adventure while Adrienne went over the text.

Finally, it was finished—50 coloring pages (one-sided per sheet, so the book has a total of 100 pages) complete with Adrienne's funny musings.

Wrong.

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 16:50:00 +0000

My great-grandparents were among many German immigrants who found themselves faced with hatred as "Prussians," "Huns," etc. when World War I began. Somewhat protected by other German-Americans who lived in rural Ohio, and living honest, hard-working lives as farmers, they saw many like themselves attacked with hateful propaganda as well as consistent accusations that "their kind" were German spies, and there were witch-hunts that were largely fruitless. German towns and foods were sometimes renamed (Berlin, Iowa became Lincoln. Sauerkraut was called "liberty cabbage."). German books were removed from libraries. In some places people were not allowed to speak German in public.

I often wonder where I'd be if my family's immigrant status had been revoked during the wars against Germany. I suppose that by 1914 they'd been here long enough—I think my great-grandfather came over around 1870—but I have a feeling that fear existed for them. I don't know why they left Germany, but I'd guess it had something to do with a chance to own their own land in the United States, though I believe at the time there was social and economic discrimination toward German Catholics and Jews in Germany.

I can't turn my back on an entire population of people who are escaping strife to begin their lives again in a new country. I can't imagine the courage it takes to do that in the first place. I can't turn my back on them.

I will not do it.

Clem

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Sat, 03 Sep 2016 19:05:00 +0000

Light she was and like a fairy

And her shoes were number nine

Herring boxes, without topses

Sandals were for Clementine.

Look out for that foaming brine, Clementine.

From the crypt

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 15:39:00 +0000

Digging through the archives…. Here's Blanche and Eddie. they still make me smile.

Quokka Ain't Your Friend

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 21:11:00 +0000

In his 1987 book Wombat Revenge, Kenneth Cook tells the story of his unfortunate meeting with a quokka, a small member of the marsupial family (which includes wallabies and kangaroos). Quokkas are adorable little smilers cloaking a mean streak.

This, as you can tell, captured my imagination.

Read on as Quokka tells how he dealt with Kenneth Cook trying to be his friend.

(strip posted as two photos to retain size width.)

Disclaimer: While Quokka believes all humans are fools, writer Kenneth Cook in particular, I certainly do not think Kenneth Cook is a fool. Go read his stuff.

Chronic

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 03:17:00 +0000

Yours truly at 13, right before Type 1 diabetes came knockin' and smacked me upside the head.

After I was put on insulin, a bunch of my hair fell out.

Plop, plop, plop.

But it grew back.

Back in the good ol' days before insulin was discovered in 1922, doctors used to:

a) taste their patient's urine to see if it was sweet. If it was, it meant the patient's body was releasing excess glucose into the urine—a sure sign of diabetes; and

b) treat the diabetes with a starvation diet to try to control high blood sugars. Usually type 1 diabetics lived about a year after diagnosis.

From the sketchbook

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 15:23:00 +0000

Why yes, there really is a Po-Boys Used Tires place. Whether they also sell sandwiches while-u-wait is, er, a bit of embellishment on my part.

Meager attempt to make you laugh

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 22:41:00 +0000

Serving up greasy grimy gopher guts.

(Old art from the time capsule.)

Some kids are so adorable I just have to draw them.

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 16:35:00 +0000

Wonder what it's like to reek of adorableness?

There are some kids who grab your heart without them even knowing it.

The girl above is just a random kid, but her sunniness reminded me of a slightly younger version of herself at one of my book signings. She came up to me afterward and, without saying a word, slipped her hand into mine and beamed.

The trust. The innocence. It's breathtaking.

It's those moments…

Ghosts in the Machine: Charlie Oaks, George Reneau, and the end

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Thu, 05 May 2016 12:30:00 +0000

Ghosts in the Machine: Mac and Bob

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 22:31:00 +0000

Ghosts in the Machine: Uncle Dave Macon

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 13:00:00 +0000

Ghosts in the Machine: The Tennessee Trio/Tennessee Chocolate Drops

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 13:08:00 +0000

Ghosts in the Machine: Bess Pennington and Odessa Cansler

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Thu, 07 Apr 2016 13:00:00 +0000

Ghosts in the Machine: Ridgel's Fountain Citians

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 12:45:00 +0000

Ghosts in the Machine: Leola Manning

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 12:30:00 +0000

Ghosts in the Machine

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 15:02:00 +0000

I'm excited to announce that, starting in today's Knoxville Mercury for the next nine weeks, I have created a short comics series titled "Ghosts in the Machine" in honor of the upcoming Knoxville Stomp festival in May.

Each week pays tribute to musicians who participated in the sessions. Many, but not all, came out of nowhere, recorded a wonderful record, and then disappeared again as a result of the Great Depression—it was just too difficult for many of them to make a living in music.

Knoxville Stomp is a festival celebrating the re-mastering and release of a newly recovered collection of recordings made at the St. James Hotel in 1929 and 1930 in Knoxville, known as the Knoxville Sessions. The festival will include exhibitions, live music, a record show, and panel discussions which will include the great 78 record collector Joe Bussard and many, many more.

I really loved creating this work that combines my love of 1920s-1930s-era music with comics. It's a good lane to travel.

Here are the first two panels:

The Trouble with Eyes

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 12:41:00 +0000

"The pressure in your eyes is a little high," he said.

Say this to a visual person and that person will picture exploding eyeballs.

I was making my annual visit to my favorite ophthalmologist. You bring in the big guns when you've had Type I diabetes for almost forty years—people who check your retina, your optic nerve, the blood vessels in your eyes. Your eye pressure. I had a cataract removed from one eye years ago. Lasers have zapped leaky blood vessels in the other eye, also years ago. They've been watching the pressure in my eyes for a while now. This is what you do to keep your vision when you have this disease.

Off to another room to do visual fields, which I hate. Visual fields are done to check peripheral vision, something that can be compromised due to high pressure in eyes (ocular hypertension) or, in more worrisome cases, glaucoma (where there has been damage to the optic nerve because of prolonged high pressure in the eyes). And glaucoma can mess you up, big time, if it's not treated.

I hate the visual field test because a) I don't like being tested, and b) I dislike the person who's usually in charge of this test. To call this person a masochistic psychopath would be mild. And it makes me very angry indeed that this person has power over frightened people who are concerned about their vision. You don't need a condescending person barking at you while you wonder if you're going blind.

Next came more pupil dilation, eyedrops for numbing the eyeball, and the doctor peering into my eyes while shining bright lights and using Seussian doodads on them to check the pressure again.

Your eyes have their own pressure independent of your blood pressure. Different things can cause pressure fluctuation: ducts inside the eyes that aren't draining fluid properly; eye trauma; certain medications like steroids, and so on. My diabetes may or may not be the cause of my elevated eye pressure, and there's nothing I can do about it except take medicated eye drops to try to bring the pressure down.

I don't seem to have any optic nerve damage yet, but doctors don't mess around when it comes to diabetes. If you have symptoms for anything, they pounce on it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. "I want to start you on eye drops to try to bring the pressure down," my favorite ophthalmologist said. I heard it as, "I want you to stick hot forks of displeasure into your eyeballs." Because I was on the verge of panic, and nobody at the Eye Doctor Palace was as generous with sharing information as the Internet.

I started thinking, "Shit! Shit, shit, shit!" and immediately thought of when my Dad neared the end of his life. An infected gall bladder had landed him in a hospital. Here he was, ten years into dementia but still living at home, and that stupid gall bladder had turned gangrenous. He woke up in his hospital bed, looked around, and, realizing he was in some sort of medical facility (and thinking he was alone in the room), started saying to himself, "Shit! Shit, shit, shit!" It's that animal-backed-into-a-corner feeling, a cold chill you feel deep in your bowels, the thought of no escaping this one, bub.

I could feel panic rising, and I started to cry, startling my very kind favorite ophthalmologist. "Are you okay?" he said, reaching for a Kleenex. I was surprised, myself. "I…m…sorry…I…muh…terrified," I blubbered. He truly did look surprised at my reaction. "Well, things aren't so bad," he said. "You don't have any optic nerve damage, and the eye pressure is elevated, but it can be controlled." He said he understood my feelings. But later I realized my reaction was mostly because I didn't have enough information about what was going on, nobody seemed forthcoming about giving me more without my asking questions, and I felt like I didn't know where to start with the questioning because I was so unnerved. Reading more about it later on did help, and it gave me the ability to ask halfway intelligent questions the next time I saw him (two weeks later).

I went home with a sample of prescription eye drops—one drop per eye at bedtime—after being told the side effects of this drug include, weirdly, eyelash growth and the possibility that my blue eyes could turn brown after prolonged use.

"Oh, Bwoonhilda, you're so wovewy." I guess I won't need false eyelashes…

The drug has reduced the eye pressure a bit, and I go back to my favorite ophthalmologist in a month to check its further effectiveness. I'm not crazy about taking another prescription drug, but in this case there's nothing else I can do. Chances are, even if I weren't a Type I diabetic, I might still be cursed with high ocular pressure.

So here we are.

Choogling along

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 13:04:00 +0000

You know that graphic novel I've been working on for the last few months? You, know, this one?

I'm up to page 63 in the illustrations. The story has been outlined and about 1/3 of it written.

I originally planned to write the whole thing first, then sketch it all out, work a second draft, and then do some finished art for submitting the whole thing to a publisher.

But I was itching to start working out the art—figuring out how it should look, colors, etc.—while I wrote. I figured if I set up the detailed story arc via the outline and wrote a section of chapters, the second draft of that section could be worked out while I did the sketches for each page in those chapters.

This is probably madness, and no doubt an experienced comics person would snigger in disbelief at how I'm doing this, but it seems to be working for me so far. But stay tuned—the projected finish date I've set up for myself is August 2017. I might be singing a different tune by then.

The most I can do per week is 3 finished pages of art—sketch to finish—while I do other work that actually earns money. Maybe at some point I'll be able to work faster without the quality of the work suffering, but for now I have to be content with this pace.

But the surprising thing is this—me, Ms I Will Never, Ever Be A Morning Person. Ever.—decided to started getting my butt out of bed early in the morning: 5 or 6 a.m. I'd read a blog by comics creator Greg Ruth, who has some pretty sound advice:

Sure it means you're hungry for lunch at 9-10 am and that's weird, but the overall effect on your health is impossible to disregard. Even if I had superpowers and stayed up late woking on INDEH I'd still never have turned it in on time. I was producing someday as much as five or seven pages of fully finished lettered and printable pages of art every two days waking up early. It was exhausting, but like the kind of exhaustion a nap can solve, not the bone burning tongue-wagging hellscape you enter when you've clocked the same hours late into the night. Humans are daytime animals, even we natural night owls must accept this. Your pals scoff at your crashing out around 10pm where they're just getting started? Just wink at em and walk away knowing you're doing it better and in the end, your tortoise will totally crush those obnoxious rabbits at the finish line. Seriously- try this out for a week and see if it doesn't change your thinking. You don't like it, switch back. But I think you'll dig it. Even after I turned in the book, I'm still on this schedule. This is my new schedule now, (though not the seven day a week thing. that sucks and should never happen).

Link here.

Let us all pause for a moment of silence while we ponder "five or seven pages of fully finished lettered and printable pages of art every two days." Holy shit. I think he's talking about black and white art, not full color, but still! I bow to you, Greg Ruth.

Changing work hours made a lot of sense to me, and I thought why not try it for a week? And I was pleasantly surprised at how much more I was able to accomplish when doing the work at the beginning of the day instead of the end of the day. And if I need a short nap in the afternoon I don't feel guilty about taking one. I'm in the third week of this experiment, and it seems to be sticking.

Oh, and before I go, here's a project I'm really excited about. Knoxville Stomp is a new music festival to be held May 5-8, 2016. It will celebrate the Brunswick/Vocalion record label recording sessions made at the St. James Hotel here in Knoxville in 1929 and 1930. Country blues, hillbilly, and popular music were recorded, but the Great Depression interfered with the release of much of it. Bear Family Records, highly respected as a source for archived historic music, will be releasing these recordings in a new box set, and the festival will celebrate this and the musicians who music at the St. James.

Since I love Depression-era music and collect 78 rpm records, I will be creating little bio comics about these musicians which will run in the Knoxville Mercury, if all goes as planned, in the weeks leading up to the festival. This so satisfies the inner librarian in me as I research who these musicians were and what they looked like while I write their stories and listen to their recordings (which are old but mostly new to me). The title of the comic may change, but for now I'm calling it "Ghosts in the Machine." I hope it sticks. Listening to music made in that era is kind of haunting, but in the best way.

From the little sketchbook

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Horstman) — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 15:32:00 +0000

Mugshots from the 1920s.