1. Keith’s book, Nowhere Band, Volume 1: Live From St. Paul is out! Head on over to Lulu and order one in full, delightful color or crisp black and white. What’s Nowhere Band? It’s a web comic loosely based on Keith’s experiences as a bottom feeder in the Minneapolis music scene (or it could be any music scene – its more about the funny dynamics in a band than Minneapolis specifically). On his site he says, “For about ten years, I’ve been making music and writing about it, and Nowhere Band is what happens when all of this experience collides with my obsession over comics. Check out Nowhere Band online and, if you enjoy what you see, consider buying the first 56 strips in handy book format that you can reference anytime – like when you’re out camping or riding the bus or, I don’t know, driving.  Or consider buying it as a gift for the loved one in your life who hasn’t given up the dream of Rock And Roll Hootchie Coo. Support your local cartoonist! Start seeing cartoonists!

2. My neighbor across the alley is still getting her groove back with her Jamaican lover. She’s also getting her house repainted and her yard under control. It’s no longer the dense jungle filled with roaming house cats that it once was. All the house and yard work is inspiring but the reggae that goes along with it is not. We have been under something of a reggae seige of late. Loud, blaring reggae that makes chipping away at old paint tolerable, I guess, for him. I wonder if his house work is repayment of some sort?

My knowledge of reggae is limited to Bob Marley and I think I’m OK with that. From what I’ve heard, I’m not missing out on anything. On Saturday night the reggae storm started up at 10. Of course, being the nerd I am, I was at home trying to handsew a scarf. I opened the back door and was hit with a wall of music. Across the way and up the little hill the house sits on I saw that their back porch/room was ablaze in candles and I could see Mr. Jamaica getting his groove on, literally, doing a little dance. I think I saw the woman there too, reclining on a chaise lounge, and for some reason in my mind she was suddenly English. I imagined me going over there to ask them to turn it down and her speaking to me in an English accent, saying, “Darling, we’re just making a party. Don’t be such a wet blanket.” So I shut the door and went back to sewing. Wimp. Perhaps we should answer with some Bob Wills one of these nights.

3. Where were you when you heard the news about Michael Jackson? I was in my living room. I will always remember being disappointed that I didn’t have a premonition, as I did when John F. Kennedy Jr. died. Whatever.  My question is, “Who’s gonna take care of Blanket???” Can he just go to a nice, Midwestern family?

Ed MacMahon
Farrah Fawcett
Michael Jackson
All excellent choices for crop art entries for the MN State Fair this year. Maybe Michael with a tear running down his face and the words, “Still ‘Beating It’ In Heaven?” Or, “Billie Jean Still Loves You and Yes, She Was Your Lover.” I don’t know.

I can’t wait to see what LaToya wears for the funeral.

4. What I’m reading: The New Terrarium by Tovah Martin. Terrariums rock pretty hard.

5. What I’m watching: I’m no longer watching I’ve Loved You So Long. Seriously, I heard such great things about this French film but I gave up halfway through. Granted, I have a terrible attention span lately but I just couldn’t take Kristin Scott Thomas’s haunted eyes done up with heavy pancake underneath them to constantly remind us that she was in prison for 15 years. For killing her son. I never made it to the part where we find out WHY she killed her son but I felt as if we were working up to a reveal that would show us she thought his death would be for the best, or that it was a crazy accident she felt somehow responsible for and so wanted to go to prison. Or, you know, he had a terminal illness and so she offed him. Because she was a doctor before she went to prison and you know she wouldn’t be written as a doctor for no reason, right? I think this movie is hard to do without getting preachy at the end because otherwise you have a completely unsympathetic character who killed a child.

6. On deck for the weekend: The Designer Garage Sale for MNfashion at Shelter Studios 2112 Broadway Street NE-Suite 150  Minneapolis, MN 55413. Come on down Friday night from 6 to 10 p.m. or on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. to snag some stuff and support MNfashion. Friday night is the Preview sale and admission is $10; Saturday entry to the sale is free. C’mon, you know you want to go! I’m headed to the Preview tonight and I’m volunteering tomorrow morning.