Thank you everybody! To Mission Dolores Bar, to Sixpoint Brewery, to Amy Adams at Bergen Street Comics, to Timbuk2 Bags, to everyone who bought a book, to everybody who came to the event and supported us, and to everyone who came to Mission Dolores Bar and accidentally attended the To Timbuktu Tap Takeover: Thank You!
We had a blast. Congrats to the winners of the Timbuk2 gear:
This was just so much fun.
Afterwards, we got pizza. This is the best job in the world.
See you on Thursday 7:30pm at Mission Dolores Bar, Brooklyn.
More info about event details here.
RSVP on Facebook here.
Many Brooklyn readers of this blog most likely know Liam McWilliams best as the bouncer at our favorite bar in NYC, Mission Dolores. (Seen here with his very own Shitty Kitty creation at one of our many Meet Ups at M.D.)
That’s certainly how we met him. But somewhere between the Meet Ups and being a good old fashioned bar patron we got to know him and thus know of the new arts and culture mag he just launched today, Theft Mag.
He did a pretty bitchin’ job describing what the mag is all about in his first article as editor-
It’s a time of no heroes. Batman wrapped the Batmobile around a tree and Superman lit himself on fire freebasing Kryptonite. In times such as these, we must put aside our similarities and embrace being different. A voice without an audience says nothing, so we dusted off the soap box.
Through Theft, currently resounding inside your head, we hope to bring to light the oddities and the obscene. A venue to voice ideas and concepts that need an outlet. A publication, of sorts, with the intent of coagulating characters of all walks and instigating mighty discussion between people. We welcome debate and have an affinity for hearty banter. These are some of the major principals responsible for the creation of Theft. Where we will go from here is uncertain. That is however, the entire reason we began Theft. It isn’t as much fun when the end is in sight.
We’re down. Here’s our first submission, a retelling of one of our favorite jokes including the word Timbuktu, which we also retold with our good pal Shitty Kitty.
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Save the date for a real party– To Timbuktu and Sixpoint Brewery are taking over Mission Dolores Bar on Thursday, May 12th!
Brewmaster Shane C. Welch is going to be bringing out all kinds of cool Sixpoint brews, including some especially crazy ones that don’t normally make it to the bars.
Timbuk2 Bags is hooking up two lucky folks with some of their gear! Buy a book, get a raffle ticket, win a messenger bag or one of their brand spankin’ new tool kits!
And big up to the rest of our local crew who are helping the event come together– Rolling Press printed some beautiful posters and postcards and Bergen Street Comics will be selling books at the event!
RSVP to the Facebook event here.
By the way, Mission Dolores Bar is on 4th ave. between President and Carroll in Brooklyn. On the map it is here.
And double by the way, we’re currently in a very competitve race in the Sixpoint “Beer is Culture” design contest, which we won last year. Please go to Sixpoint’s contest page and “like” our design! (You will have to “like” Sixpoint on Facebook before you can like our design.)
Last year we won Brooklyn’s own Sixpoint Brewery design contest with our Mr. Sixpoint design.
This year’s theme is “Beer Is Culture”. So we decided to go with a very classic version of culture: Ancient Egypt. Et voila!
In order to win the contest our design needs to have the most “Likes” within Sixpoint’s Facebook album. Please help us out! Here’s how you go about doing it:
Thanks for the support all you beer guzzlers.
Thank you so much to WORD and to everyone who came out! We’ve got more pics and stories on the book’s website here.
Woohoo! Next Tuesday, come on by WORD in Greenpoint for our NYC LAUNCH PARTY of To Timbuktu!
You + us + books + all your friends = GOOD TIMES AT OUR BOOK LAUNCH!
Official Facebook invite here.
We began our 2 week West Coast tour in LA with Oscar’s. No, not actually at the Oscar’s– for some reason we weren’t invited. But the Oscar spirit got into us nonetheless! So without further ado, this tour’s winners are…
Hottest Reading-The-Book Photo
Laura + Laura @ the Launch Party at Mission Comics and Art. What a party! What sexy reading eyes!
Best School Signage
A school gym in LA. Yes, we make quite a team! That’s us with Lisa Becker (our amazing LA media escort) and Jon Scieszka (Casey’s dad/author of the middle grade series Spaceheadz for which we are the Digital Team).
Best Post-Presentation Question
“So… are you two married? Or still dating? Or not together anymore?” asks a hopeful teenaged girl to Steven after our presentation to the 9th and 10th graders at Ingraham High School. STILL DATING.
Best Bathroom Graffiti
Hicklebee’s Children’s Books in San Jose! Steven tagged the heck out of their bathroom. Good thing a million other authors and illustrators have had the same idea so we won’t be the only ones getting in trouble.
Best Home Coming
Pitzer College! (Casey’s alma matter.) We had a reading and signing at their oh-so-cozy Grove House and can’t wait to return for Reunion Weekend.
Most Satisfying Photo To Take
Outside our old studio in The Mission in San Francisco where we wrote the book. Look studio, it’s DONE!
Most Beautiful Library
Sammamish Library in Washington has a FIREPLACE and a SKATEPARK and GEOTHERMALLY HEATED FLOORS. Frankly, I’m surprised we ever left.
#1 Unexpected Interview
Angela from Kepler’s Bookstore in Menlo Park, California caught us by surprise for a quick interview about the book. If we sound high on life it’s because we are. We’re also really not used to 18 hour days.
Best New Friends with Basically The Same Name
Timbuk2! The uber cool folks of Timbuk2 bags had us over for a tour of the offices and custom bag factory in our old San Francisco neighborhood, The Mission. We’re working on some kind of cross-promotional bag with them…
Most Productive Bar Experience
Our signing at at our old San Francisco haunt, Shotwell’s! GOOD. TIMES.
This post originally appeared on allthewaytotimbuktu.com, the website for our brand new book To Timbuktu. To see the post there, click here.
We’ve been running around like craaaazy out here on the West Coast talking to kids about Spaceheadz and To Timbuktu! LA, the Bay Area and now Seattle. A more detailed update coming soon, but for now, a taste of the madness:
And by the way, are you in Seattle right now? We’ve got some events for you! Check out the schedule here: http://allthewaytotimbuktu.com/events/
Our cheeks are very red right now.
Publishers Weekly gave our book To Timbuktu a very flattering starred review this week. Not only did they call Casey’s writing “Impressively witty, perceptive, and candid” and describe Steven’s art as “fluid cartoon sketches, seamlessly incorporated into every page” they even took on Dr. Seuss:
Come grad season, skip Oh, the Places You’ll Go!–this will be far better appreciated, with its effortless mix of globe-trotting adventure, romance, humor, and expanding self-knowledge.
Please read the whole review here.
We’re so excited for To Timbuktu to come out March 1st! Come Sunday we’re off to the West Coast for a To Timbuktu/Spaceheadz tour. Watch out L.A., San Francisco, and Seattle. We’re coming your way!
There’s some very important stuff going down this week in the world of net neutrality. In the words of our friends at Public Knowledge:
On February 16th, Congress will hold a hearing on Net Neutrality where Members will make known their intentions to repeal the FCC’s recently introduced Net Neutrality rules. If passed, this repeal wouldn’t just scrap the rules–it would also prevent the agency from taking action on this important issue in the future. While the FCC’s rules are far from perfect, they do provide a framework under which the agency can protect consumers and punish bad actors. Without this framework, internet service providers will be free to discriminate against users, services and types of traffic at will.
Go and learn more so you can contact your Representative here.
And also, we designed the logo for this campaign! You can embed a smaller sized version of the medallion on your own blog with this code:
<a href=”http://bit.ly/internetstrikesback”><img style=”vertical-align: middle; border: 0;” src=”http://media.publicknowledge.org/newsletters/images/ISB_200.jpg” alt=”The Internet Strikes Back” width=”200″ height=”177″ /></a>
It will look like this:
We got to do a guest comic on the librarian-run website Unshelved where got to recommend any book in the world. We chose The Last Musketeer by Jason because we LOVE Jason. You can see the whole post here or the comic below.
It’s party time! We’ll be heading to the West Coast this March for loads of To Timbuktu and Spaceheadz events at schools and bookstores. LA, San Francisco, Seattle… We’ll be putting up details on our Events Map soon, but for now, mark your calendar for a CRAZY LAUNCH PARTY on MARCH 5th in SF!
THE BOOKS ARE IN! THE BOOKS ARE IN! THE BOOKS ARE IN!
Get the full report and photos of our Malian friends reading To Timbuktu who are in it at the book’s website here.
This weekend Shitty Kitty had a date with Dakar. They hit it off right away at hip new club called Must. Even though there were a couple power outages, the beer stayed cold and the comics stayed dirty. Get the whole shebang on Shitty Kitty’s website.
That’s a Peul joke by the way. Humor got real local real fast.
This weekend we went to the riverside town of Segou where we lived for about three months back in 2007. It was SO. MUCH. FUN. to catch up with everyone!
Unfortunately, the town itself is getting hit pretty hard– like Mali in general right now– by a lack of French tourism. The French government has issued a travel warning against the entire region because of Al Queda of the Magreb activities in the far away north. The Festival Sur le Niger, Segou’s giant annual music and arts festival is usually so packed you have to reserve hotel rooms years in advance. This year, everyone’s got vacancies.
So we were happy to go out and support our friends who are doing great stuff– like our pals at the gallery/book store/shop/cafe Maison Carpe Diem.
That’s them looking at our book by the way. It’s been really fun showing people how we drew them and their towns. Although everyone keeps insisting we need a French version right away!
Our friend Oumar who runs L’Alphabet, the most fabulous little restaurant/music venue in Segou, took wonderful care of us the whole weekend. Here’s a shot of some late night music and dancing.
We also went back to the radio station, Radio Sikoro, where we lived and worked. Everything is still covered in red dust and mostly abandoned, but the DJs are still as cool as ever. (They’re in the middle line of that big group of photos.) Here’s Casey at the door of her office, and Steven with his old easel that he found in the stairwell.
Steven was also especially happy to see his friend Davide who makes stamps and stenciled signs for the whole town. Davide is responsible for Steven’s everlasting stencil obsession. Check out his studio:
For our last day we hit up the weekly market and bargained til our mouths hurt from smiling so much, bought our body weight in super cool fabric, then hit road the back to Bamako.
Before we even left we were already planning how to get back here next year.
Any anyone reading this from West Africa, go to the Festival! Segou is waiting for you.
P.S. We finally found Obama fabric! We met British artist and eco consultant Wren Miller who’s been working on book installations for the Festival and an initiative to get 1,000 children’s books to Mali. Look at that bag!
P.P.S. We want to give a shout out to our new Chinese friends who run the photo studio near our hotel who have been letting us use their USB thingy to upload photos. They rock.
In the morning, Steven had his usual 20 cent instant coffee from a street stand.
Then we took a cab to the market.
The market was crazy as usual. Packed with people and all things plastic.
We were on the look out for fabric.
After much bargaining, we found some to call our own. (A geometric print, a fish print, and bizarre baby in baskets and chicks in eggs one.) A quick lunch later, we headed to our old neighborhood, Djicoroni Para to hang out with friends. Our pal Moussa accompanied us to the tailor.
By Friday our outfits will be ready. I’m getting a traditional skirt and shirt, Steven’s getting a suit coat. It’s going to be AMAZING.
Then our friend Fanta called. She was at the nearby nightclub, Damazon. She wanted us to come and meet the owner. So we did. By the way, it was not even 5 yet.
After more rounds than we were anticipating, we then headed over to our pals’ Fatimata and Mohammed’s where we gave their children colored pencil sets. They got right to work.
So did Steven.
Naturally they decided to start drawing on each other next.
A photo shoot ensued.
We ended the night by taking Moussa to the super authentic Chinese restaurant back by our hotel where he used chopsticks for the very first time.
By the way, we’re getting loads of work done too! The day before yesterday we sorted everything out with the printers, so many books in Bamanankan are on their way into the hands of students.
Here is a list of my (Steven’s) artwork currently for sale.
The following are all of the paintings included in “Chigüiro: The Funniest Things Remind You of Home” with their dimensions and prices. The show will be up at The Littlefield through September 2011. For more info on the show, please see it on the TS blog here.
Scroll down further for work available from past shows.
Please email steven.weinberg at gmail dot com with any questions.
Chiguiro in red and blue 30″ x 40″ Oil on Canvas $400
Chiguiro in purple and green 30″ x 40″ Oil on Canvas $400
The Photographer of Popayan 24″ x 30″ Oil on Canvas $300
Old Folks 20″ x 16″ Oil on Canvas $250
Old Lady 20″ x 16″ Oil on Canvas $250
SOLD– Poker 12″ x 12″ Oil on Canvas $150
Aguila 12″ x 12″ Oil on Canvas $150
SOLD– Two old men in Villa de Llyeva 12″ x 12″ Oil on Canvas $150
Two men watching Caracol soccer 12″ x 12″ Oil on Canvas $150
S. Sebastian M. 10″ x 10″ Oil on Canvas $150
Market scene: drinking coffee 20″ x 16″ Conte crayon and watercolor on paper $150
Market scene: grilling chorizo 20″ x 16″ Conte crayon and watercolor on paper $150
Market scene: dog 20″ x 16″ Conte crayon and watercolor on paper $150
Here are the five remaining pieces available from “Gigante”, August 2011 show at Cafe Grumpy in Park Slope.
All pieces are watercolor on paper, 9″ x 6″ (or vice versa) and $100.
Adrian
Marta
Jose
Fence
Cascada
And here are a few pieces from Timbuktu and Mali.
Baba 16″ x 13″ Oil on paper (framed) $800
Soukous 16″ x 13″ Oil on paper (framed) $800
And here’s an example of the how these two are framed. It’s a slately blue wood with a cream matte:
Ibrahim 16″ x 13″ Oil on paper $350
Hans Bethe 16″ x 13″ Oil on paper $350
BDM Bank 16″ x 13″ Oil and conte crayon on paper $350
Donkey Man 2 14″ x 13″ Oil on paper $300
Donkey Man 1 9″ x 13″ Oil and conte crayon on paper $200
Green Watertower Man 9″ x 12″ Watercolor and conte crayon on paper $200
Barrada 10″ x 10″ Oil on panel $200
We keep saying “wow” because it’s so great to be back on the road again, but it turns out we’re also saying “yes” in Wolof all the time. Ah well. At least we seem agreeable. Our itinerary so far:
Stop #1 New Years Day layover in Madrid. The Spanish did not let us down. Yes, that clock says 9 am. Yes, those are beers that people are drinking.
Stop #2 Dakar, Senegal. It looks like Mali! But with many more paved roads, lots more skin showing, and ads for beer all over the place. We have not taken one of these buses yet but are they not the COOLEST?
Actually, the wrestler Yekini is apparently the coolest. We went to his big match vs. Bombardier and the crowd not only waited devotedly for him for more than 4 hours, they went completely wild when he won and everyone talked about the match all over the city for the entire next day. We felt pretty in. (Yekini is on the left.)
Stop #3 St. Louis, Senegal. I taxi’d it up north to the old capital, Steven and our friend Noah who is teaching in Dakar took a plane.
We saw our friend Patrick who’s doing good on a Rotary grant up there and going to Akon concerts. Sand streets, fish, and supposedly a view of Mauritania!
Kind of like a lot of this region, this building looks like art and the apocalypse all in one:
Stop #4 Petit Cote, Senegal. Beachyness.
Stop #5 Bamako tomorrow for a big fat reunion with all of our Malian friends who are in our book To Timbuktu!
Steven and I are going to ring in the new year in Africa! Well, to be more precise we’ll be in the air for the actual changing of the year, but for the first three weeks of this new year we’ll be in Senegal and Mali.
Like just about everything we do, this trip is part business, part pure fun. The business part involves our nonprofit Local Language Literacy Inc. We’ll be checking out the results of our first project– the printing and distribution of more than 1500 copies of this Bamanankan language book to students in Mali:
We’ll also be looking for Senegalese authors, researchers and fellow nonprofit-ers to partner up with on a Wolof language book project. And thanks to super cool people like YOU we raised $1650 in just three weeks! Thank you, thank you, thank you! We’ll of course be letting you know how this project develops.
As for the pure pleasure part of this trip, that involves traveling around Senegal for the first time (yassa chicken! dance parties! crackin’ live music!) and returning to Mali where we lived in 2007 to see some great friends we’ve been missing dearly.
We are SO excited to hang out over tea and peanuts and catch up and show these guys a copy of To Timbuktu! Everyone is going to want to see how Steven drew them. Everyone is also going to be REALLY disappointed that we still don’t have like 10 children yet. Oh well.
We’ll be checking in occasionally, so come back for updates! And thank you again to everyone who donated to LLL. We really appreciate all the support.
Most of the school day in West Africa is taught in French, then students go home and live the rest of their lives in a different language like Bamanankan or Wolof.
Being able to speak and read French is a valuable skill in this region, but having the opportunity to learn in the language in which you dream/bargain/joke is essential to any student’s success and sense of self-worth.
As most of you probably know, we lived in Mali in 2007 and that’s when we came to care deeply about local language issues. We co-founded LLL in 2008 and for our first project raised enough money to print nearly 1600 books through the generous support of people like you!
This January we will return to West Africa to document the results of that first project in Mali and to begin a new one in the neighboring country of Senegal where the school system faces similar language issues.
Your donation will be used to fund specifically the translation and printing costs of this still developing project. For reference, the previous project’s cost per book was $3.
Thank you for your support! Check out LLL’s website for more information, photographs, and updates.
You may have noticed last week that telephoneandsoup.com was hacked. It’s true. Somehow we became a malware site and we had sift through a whole lot of code to fix it. No, this was not very fun. Yes, now the site is virus-free and stronger than ever. (We also promise this has nothing to do with WikiLeaks–though we are loving Bill Hader as Julian Assange on SNL.)
We couldn’t have done all this without our friend Nick Stielau, Interneter extraordinaire. To say thanks we’re sending him some of his favorite spirit animals from our holiday gift shop. We also realized the shop’s images of these animals don’t really show off how the paper cuts themselves will actually look. So check them out below against our windows on this gray morning.
If you want one for yourself of someone else this holiday season check out all the animals at the holiday shop and drop us a line.
Yep. We got hacked. And now Google and the whole Internet thinks we’re an infected site. We’ve been working on it for quite some time now and it had better be fucking fixed. All we need now is for the Internet to agree. Hopefully Shitty Kitty can help with that.
It’s official! Shitty Kitty now means biz-nass ALL THE TIME. She’s got her very own website:
It was put together by our hardcore web genius friend Rae Macker pictured below on the right.
Yeah, she’s got a pretty big thing for gnomes. And Shitty Kitty too luckily!
Loads of other folks came out for the Shitty Kitty love as well. As usual it was a fun, lewd, disgusting, hilarious, enlightening, disturbing, rockin time!
Here’s one of favorites of the night:
Check out the rest of the photos here, and be sure to check out shittykitty.biz to see TONS more photos of Meet Ups and comics! (We’re still working on a few aspects of the site, but the heart of it is there.) And of course, HUGE thanks to the great folks of Mission Dolores Bar. You guys continue to rock.
Still have a hankering for MORE comics today? Swing by the Brooklyn Comics and Graphic Festival in Williamsburg today!
You + Shitty Kitty + all your friends + Missions Dolores Bar + $10 pitchers of Sixpoint = THE BEST NIGHT OF YOUR LIFE AT THE SHITTY KITTY MEET UP TONIGHT!
5:30- 8:30pm, Mission Dolores Bar, 4th Ave Brooklyn.
As always, you just bring yourself and your filthy sense of humor, we’ll bring the drawing supplies.
For those of you who haven’t been to a Meet Up for a while or never before, here’s a little reminder of how to draw Shitty Kitty:
And to really show Santa some respect, come by the Shitty Kitty Meet Up tomorrow, this Friday, at Mission Dolores Bar 5:30 to 8pm. Draw, write, drink, laugh, maybe even make someone their very own shitty Hanukkah present. There’s eight nights. You got to get creative.
Not sure what to get your Mom/Grandpa/BFF/Lover/Co-Worker/Secret Santa Pick?
Get ‘em our big fat graphic novel To Timbuktu!
Sure it doesn’t come out until March 1st BUT you can pre-order it online here and we’ll send you this nifty little card that you can print out at home to give to that special someone.
Email us and we’ll send it along. And if you want to have a non-postcard back we can arrange something too. Did we mention this is all totally free? Yeah, we ain’t no Scrooges.
If you want to read a few more excerpts before you pull the trigger, check out the book’s website here: allthewaytotimbuktu.com
But we’re telling you, it’s great for ANYONE! Our publisher might tell also you there’s swear words, booze, and sex and therefore most appropriate for folk 14 and up. (But we know your 5 year old nephew is bad ass enough to handle it.)
This product does come with one very serious warning though: IT WILL MAKE WHOEVER READS IT WANT TO GET ON A PLANE/TRAIN/BOAT/CAMEL AND GO SOMEWHERE IMMEDIATELY. So with that in mind, maybe you can supplement your To Timbuktu gift with a traveler’s gadget of sort. The NY Times Frugal Traveler Seth Kugel put together a great list of travel gifts from $10-$60 here.
Be there, which for the Mission Dolores Bar is on 4th Ave. between President and Carroll here:
View the map larger.
Attend the Facebook event here.
Or like her here:
And, of course, reminisce about all those Meet Ups you’ve loved in the past here.
Your Cartoon of the Week:
Your entertainment for the evening:
Go rent Eat Pray Love and play the Drinking Game that Steven and I made up last Saturday. If you don’t feel like getting absolutely wrecked, we recommend cutting Rule 4 (A shot for tears)
Get the rest of the rules and more photos of the madness here.
Vamos a Colombia!
People always ask us where we’re traveling to next. And now we have an answer…
COLOMBIA!
We can already picture ourselves in the streets of Cartegena. Literally.
So send us your must-sees and the contact info of all of your Colombian friends!
Vamos Gigantes!
(Sorry– my only Spanish lessons to date took place in the streets of San Francisco.)