The musician at Checkpoint Charlie



This is the drawing that made us friends at the Frenchman Street bar Checkpoint Charlie's, in New Orleans. This skinny bearded singer was the first to take the stage. He kept beating his narrow little cowboy boots against the floor, and sang with an intense, Southern twang, but when I went to ask him to autograph my drawing, he was calm and demure. The bartender loved the little sketch, but added that he needed more hair. At one point she even wandered over with a bottle of White-Out, which she dabbed across the beard, insisting that I draw it darker and curlier. I did my best.

Who doesn't want more machines?



This is called a continuous blood glucose monitor.

Actually, this is called a comic, one that happens to involve a woman who happens to wear both an insulin pump and a continuous blood glucose monitor (CGMS). These two little machines, when they work in tandem, effectively tell her what her blood sugar is doing at five-minute intervals throughout the day, and then help her make decisions on how much insulin to take.

Sometimes being a savvy type 1 diabetic means remembering words from high school chemistry. I knew "interstitial" would come in handy someday. Gotta love those "hypers" and "hypos," and "glucose"--my life would be so much more boring without that C6H12O6. But the opportunity to live with not one but two
little machines plugged directly into me all day long--this was something I could not turn down. How often do you get to tap into the superhighway of your own bloodstream every day, all day long, and have it help your health? Not only that, but it graphs out glucose patterns and beeps before you get high or low, just to check in. It's like living with a doctor slash mother attached to your hip, with some of the implied advantages and disadvantages.

I'm not squeamish about needles and finger pricks, and have worn an insulin pump for more than 8 years, so I learned long that the diabetic aesthetic doesn't -- and won't ever -- cramp my style. One of my favorite Eddie Izzard sketches is his identification as an "executive transvestite" -- I like to think of myself as an "executive diabetic."



Pretty soon everyone will want one.

The Ligre Debut

Introducing the world premiere of Ligre, an improvised comics tour de force created piecemeal by a Tiger (Ryan Alpers) and a Lioness (Julia Halprin Jackson).


"It wasn't the world that made him dream of beautiful girls and wonderful things..."


"and landscapes surreal with smoking pots and endangered desert tortoises..."





"It was his job, after all, to imagine..."




"unreal realities portrayed behind curtains on silver screens...
-Ever seen that dog before?
-Nope, but she's got style on those skis!
-Yip! Yap! Yeaaahh!"



"wondering what willed whatever wont withal..."



"smaller and smaller when love comes to call..."


...



All drawings by Julia, usually done in class, in a little notebook
all text done by Ryan, usually done on the weekends, on a little tiled counter in San Francisco
website help by Ammon Bartram