And we’re back!

(Didn’t know we were away? That’s cool. It was pretty quick.)

We just spent about a week and a half in India to go see our friend’s wedding in Mumbai and then also to check out the Hindu holy city of Varanasi. Like most trips I kept a cartoon log of our time travelling around. Here it is below.

Waiting in Newark for the flight to Mumbai:

Once in Varanasi:

And then once we’re in Mumbai:

(CONGRATULATIONS ADITYA AND RIDDHIMA!!!!)

All for now.

And if you liked these, be sure to check out my last run of travel cartoons from Colombia last July here.

A new magazine hits the stands today: National Animalgraphic!

It’s what came out of a conversation Steven and I were having over the weekend about what would happen if a National Geographic reporter stumbled upon animals from famous kids books doing their thing then lept to conclusions. Steven drew them and I came up with the articles. Many more to come!

Right? We do Shitty Kitty Meet Ups there, we did New Year’s there, we’re often just, ehem, there. It’s a great bar and we’ve had a great two years getting to know the bartenders and owners–plus having a bar named after our old hood in SF really helped us with our move to Brooklyn. So we were really excited when they asked us to make a Shitty Kitty inspired poster to highlight all of their 2012 brewery events. (See below.)

Maybe we had a lot of experience in the bar to work from to nail all of those Shitty Kitty poses? Maybe.

So this also seemed like a good time to review all of the posters we’ve gotten to make in order to promote events at Mission Dolores. They’ve all been a delight to make, and then to do as events.

Here’s the first one we did for a Shitty Kitty Meet Up in July 2010. Doesn’t it look just like Diego Rivera’s “Man at the Crossroads”? There’s even the first ever “Vladimir Lenin Shitty Kitty”!

Next we teamed up Sixpoint Craft Ales to help promote the launch of our book To Timbuktu. Nothing like beer to help get folks buying books right? Yep, worked like a charm. And big thanks to Bergen Street Comics for helping sell all night!

After that one we teamed up with the fine folks at Sixpoint again and helped them launch their beers in can form, or as they refer to them as “nano-kegs”.

More recently we had an “eleven, eleven, eleven” Shitty Kitty Meet Up at Mission Dolores where we harked back to Casey’s early years spent as a figure skater. (She had an ice dance to Sheryl Crow’s “All I Want to Do…”, though she really wanted to do one to Green Day.)

And finally there was this past New Year’s Eve. Such a blast! See photos and such from that here, or just relive the night by trying to pick which face in the matrix best represents you that evening. (“Ashton Kutcher Shitty Kitty” anyone?) (Yes we know all about that as we are semi-proud subscribers to Us Weekly.)

All for now, but we look forward to even more fun times with these crazy folks at Mission Dolores. Happy 2012 everyone!

NYE plans: done.
Just come and hang out with us and the Mission Dolores Bar crew all night long!
And Mission Dolores Bar is here.

We’re crossing the East River on Friday night to have a group show with our friends at Discovering Oz at the La Mama Galleria gallery in the Lower East Side, Manhattan. Well, we actually just crossed the river and hung our work. Here’s a sneak preview:

The show features the work of us, Kanan Shah, Marc Bovino, and Christopher Kalb. We all have done visual work with Discovering Oz for their client, the NYC theatre institution, the La Mama Theatre. At the show we’ll all be showing off the other things we do, plus they’ll be some music and booze. Event goes from 7-10pm. La Mama Galleria is at 6 E 1st between Bowery and 2nd Ave. What’s not to like?

Some of our new work in the show includes new collaborations where we go back to our SF roots: Steven painted some animals and Casey captioned what’s going on. Here’s one of them:

See you on Friday! Here’s the full invite:

Our hearts go out to everyone affected by the recent abductions and murder in Timbuktu. If you’re not familiar with the story, last Friday several heavily armed Malians abducted two Dutch and a South African tourist in Timbuktu. They murdered a German member of the group when he resisted the kidnapping. It’s thought but not confirmed that the kidnappers are part of the Al Qaeda affiliate in North/West Africa, Al Qaeda in the Magreb.

What really brought this event home for us, besides the fact that the incident occurred in a town that Casey and I spent a month in and ultimately left because of security concerns, is that early reports indicate that this all happened at one of our favorite hotel/cafe spots in Timbuktu. When we were living there I painted a portrait of our friend Malik (see below) who was a waiter there. He was probably the funniest guy we met in Timbuktu and he played a role in several chapters of the book. (See pages 436-7 and 446-447.) Over the years we’ve lost contact with him and can only hope he is well. Luckily, none of the reports suggest any Malians were hurt in all this.

(I tried really hard to nail his skeptical look that informed much of his humor.)

Beyond, of course, the loss of lives, the tragedy here is that this has such a ripple effect for so many people throughout Mali. Specifically our friends in Timbuktu and in the country’s tourist industry.

We hope as soon as possible Mali will once again be a safe place to travel. We made so many amazing friendships living there for ten months and hope more people can have that opportunity as well.

UPDATE: 11/30/11
On 11/30/11 we heard from Miranda Dodd, owner of the Sahara Passion Hotel in Timbuktu that the incident took place at Camping La Paix, not the hotel/cafe where Malik works (or worked). Miranda also told us that no one, besides the German murdered and others kidnapped, were hurt in the incident so he should be fine.

UPDATE: 12/14/11
We just wrote a straight news piece for the newspaper Global Post about the reaction of folks in Timbuktu to all this. You can read that here.

Mission Dolores bar is here.

More about Shitty Kitty is here.

And we’re BACK! After two weeks and nine plane rides, we now feel all too comfortable 30,ooo feet up in the air. That said, we’re happy to be back in Brooklyn, feet on the soggy fall-time ground.

Thank you sooo much to everyone who came out to our many events– it was great to meet all of you and answer your questions about everything from the state of our non-existant marriage to Twilight and to hear about all of YOUR adventures!

Here’s a quick round up of some highlights from our tour:

NASVHILLE: Land ‘o honky tonk and readers, Nashville you are TOO MUCH FUN. The Southern Festival of Books was the perfect kick-off!

MIAMI: We love you even though your rained on us the whole time. And all you Miami Dade College students we met, keep on rocking like you do!

BALTIMORE:  Crab cakes? Check! Super engaged audience and great fellow panelists and speakers at Books for the Beast? Check! Copies of our book to sign? Kind of check… Hey Paul Auster, I hope you don’t mind that we signed two hundred copies of your book Timbuktu. They’re basically the same book anyway, right? (Book store mix ups happen, and to NO fault of the amazing folks behind the festival!)

AUSTIN: We’re coming back for you…One panel at the Texas Book Festival and one beer garden visit is simply NOT enough.

LOS ANGELES AND OJAI: So many school visits and absolutely no homework! Just the way we like it.

Thanks again to everyone who invited us to their festivals and schools and to everyone who came out and supported us. As our book heavily suggests, we LOVE to travel so this was great fun– and if we missed your city/school/library/bookstore this time around, feel free to drop us a line here and we’ll work something out!

This Friday, Steven and I hit the road again! This time, instead of trekking through Colombia (Missed that? The tall tales are here) we’ll be criss-crossing the good old US of A to present at book festivals, colleges, high schools, and bookstores around the country.

Details for each event are posted on our Events page, but here’s the general plan:

Friday-Sunday, October 14-16,  Nashville, TN

Monday-Friday, October 17-21, Miami, FL

Saturday, October 22, Baltimore, MD

Sunday Austin, October 23, TX

Monday-Wednesday, October 24-26,  Los Angeles, CA

Come bother us! Make us sign books for you! Ask crazy questions during the Q&A sessions! We’ll be happy to see you.

We’ll be hitting the road this Friday for three weeks of To Timbuktu book touring (more on that tomorrow) so we’re very bummed we’ll be missing this 50th anniversary party for our friends at The La Mama Theatre. It’s this Sunday on East 4th Street between Bowery and 2nd Avenue. More info is below.