The Official K Chronicles and (Th)ink Website

*COMING VERY SOON: THE 2006 LIFE’S LITTLE VICTORIES MONTHLY CALENDAR!!
here it is!! the one everybody’s been asking for!! the Life’s Little Victories Calendar will contain 24 of your favorite K Chronicles series..FOLKS SHOULD ORDER MULTIPLE CALENDARS FOR FAMILY, FRIENDS, COLLEAGUES, AND FOLKS THAT NEED TO BE CHEERED UP (and that’s a lotta people)!! i’t’s going to the printed this week, and should be in my hands by next.

*ALSO UPCOMING..
-“Road-Strips” Book-signing with Lloyd Dangle, Pete Friedrich, John Porcellino and myself at the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum on Sunday, Nov. 13 1pm-3pm.
-I’ll also be teaching an adult cartooning class at the Cartoon art Museum, the first Saturday, December 13th. Space is limited, so if you’re interested, call (415)car-toon for more info. the info is NOT up on the site (http://www.cartoonart.org), yet.
-Sonoma State University slideshow/performance: Weds. Dec. 7th 7pm, Cooperage
-Mill Valley Library (375 Throckmorton Ave.) Slideshow/performance: Thursday. Dec. 15th 7pm

*BOONDOCKS, THE T.V. SHOW…
I don’t have cable, so i slipped on over to a local pub to watch the new Boondocks T.V. show premiere on Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network last night. it was a good start. the voices for the kids (by Regina King) are really good. i liked Huey with the laser pointer on Ed Asner and the Uncle Ruckus’s song towards the end where the white woman sez “I think it’s all right (to say “nigga”) if they say it.” before applauding the drunken, passed-out Ruckus. The animation’s a bit crude, but will improve as the series progresses. Next week is the R. Kelly episode, and i’ve read the script. the script is great, so it should be a good one. Congrats, Mr. MacGruder. Can i borrow some money?
Okay, so who’s gonna pick up the K Chronicles for a T.V. show?

*OKAY…I’M READY TO SPEAK ABOUT THE TOUR…
sorry folks…it took a looonnng time to rest and catch up to everything post-tour…man..was it tiring..I bit off a little more than I could chew by booking too many cities over too many days. we could have easily done half the cities, did more events per city, and sold the same amount of books, spending less money on gas and accomodation.
money on gas…anyway…here’s the wrap-up:

CHICAGO- Mat Schwarzman (co-author of the “Beginner’s Guide..”) and I flew into Chi-town and went right to the first event at Columbia College: a roundtable of artist educators to discuss. It went well and they bought 15 books!! at twenty bucks apiece, that’s a great start!!
After that, I headed over to the Acme Art Building for a Young Chicago Authors open-mic where i was the featured reader. I think everyone was surprised by me breaking out the slide projector. but the visual thing went over really well. Plus my evil twin sister’s husband brother, Damien, showed up.
After the event, we hit a bar where ess eff writer Beth Lisick was performing. We just missed her, but had a beer with a few of the people over there including Greg Gilliam, who wrote the zine “Yespants”, which is what i based the Marginal Prophets song “Yespants” on. I gave him a cd and he seemed pretty psyched.
The last thing Damien and I did was hit a hot dog place near Wrigley Filed. It wasn’t the greatest, but the place was one of those great greasy spoons that offered everything under the sun. Brilliant!!

The next morning, we hit the road for ANN ARBOR and rolled into the city just a coupla hours before showtime at the main library. the event was sponsored by 826 Michigan, a spin-off of the original 826 Valencia, on whose Board i reside. Anyhoo, the event went splendidly, and I sold a good amount of books..Met some good people..and received a great Zingerman’s pastrami sandwich by one of two Ian’s in attendance. Great stuff.
Okay..so the next day before we left Ann Arbor, we did FOUR more slideshows..one at UMICH (which was taught by cartoonist extraordinaire Phoebe Gloeckner). the other three at a local high school. the funny thing was that the high school students seemed more interested in the apron that the wifey had sewn for me than in the comics. funny stuff.
after that, i had to run to a kinkos, scan and color my latest ESPN cartoon and send it..then drive to dearbor n for a show later in the day.

DEARBORN: This town is just outside of Detroit, and it’s home to Green Brain Comics. Run by this really cool dude i met a SPX. I set up the event really late in the game, but Dan came through with a small but talented and enthusiastic crew of local cartoon folk, including Sean Bieri and Matt Feazell. There was also food and drink!! It was good stuff…and he bought some books for the store.

Next was DETROIT, which ROCKED!! it was destined to be the quirkiest of shows, cuz we were opening for a Hip-HOP group from Toronto. The turnout was good..with a good combo of young and old, men and women… the best reaction to my comics on the whole tour. folks loved it and i was even approached by an editor of one of the local weeklies to submit to his paper. sold a ton of books and made some good cash..Mat came back from a stroll where he cracked his tooth on a slice of pizza ( a comic is coming). Overall, the best show of the tour…great stuff…
Sadly, we could not hang out for the whole show. we had to hit the road because we had a show in Cleveland the next morning!! (this is where we easily could’ve done a closer city like Toledo. this is where i effed up)

CLEVELAND:We drove til about four or five in the a.m. and then crashed at a motel 6 just outside the city. we got up and drove to the Cleveland Institute of Art for a morning event. they had us in the darkest of auditoriums..and i thought i was gonna fall asleep standing up..i was definitely mailing it in. and i know if i was a student, i would’ve been curled up in my seat, snoring..
but i gotta hand it to ’em. they stayed awake and asked great questions after the show. there was also a dude from Buffalo just driving through and he heard about it through the top shelf newsletter and showed up with his girlfriend. that’s really cool..
the coolest thing was that the professors, Dom and John, were the nicest folk. They took us to a great little place in the Little Italy section o’ town..MMmmmm..nice to have food ya can’t get out west..
the next thing we did was head on over to the FUNNY TIMES office over in Cleveland Hts. Ray Lesser invited us to stay at his place and gave us a nice tour of the FT headquarters. It is the neatest cartoon type space i’ve ever seen!! everything is completely organized and neat..it was wacky!!
After dropping stuff off at Rays, me and Mat headed over to HARVEY PEKAR’S house to say hello. Harv is the guy who wrote the intro to “Dances with Sheep” and the creative spirit behind “Amercian Splendor”. It was nice to visit him in his home environment. He is a good man.
After that, we headed out to do our 2nd Cleveland show. this show was booked later than everything else and the turnout reflected that. suffice it to say that the audience had 100% buy-in, which means we sold two books. ’nuff said.
Mat and I headed over to these weird fifties diners that were connected to each other and had the weirdest experience!! (comic coming) they also had all you can eat fish, so i was quite happy.

The next morning, we hit the road for CINCINNATI (again, we could’ve done a show in Columbus)..the Cincy gig was in the main library and they had this really cool comics exhibit going on..so it was a perfect fit.
unfortunately, there was some sewage seeping up through the floor where i was gonna do my show. they had to mop it up a coupla times, and they gave me a can of lysol to spray periodically. it was funny stuff.
the show went well..a small turnout, but folks were cool. Jenny Robb, a former S.F. Cartoon Art Museum colleague, was in the audience and she took me and Matt over to Hamburger Mary’s across the street. It was funny. I live in S.f. and have never received gayer service than what we got in the Cincy Hamburger Mary’s.
Ha!!
shout out to Tyrone, the homeless dude, who was the first person at the event, wiped down our rent-a-car, schooled me on the history of the library, AND had me sign something for his nephew. cool!!

INDIANAPOLIS was next. we finally got our first decent night’s sleep at a red roof inn outside of Indy. I then hit the Comic Carnival for a 1pm show whilst Mat did laundry. not a great turnout, but the guys who worked there bought a lot o’ krappe, and i picked up this great alex ross t-shirt of Bush biting the neck of the Statue of Liberty. Josh, the manager, sez they gotta keep the shirts in the back room cuz too many people complained about the t-shirt!!

BLOOMINGTON, IL followed. we crashed at a grade school art teacher’s apt. who asked me to speak at his school. so it was me and 100 fourth and fifth graders. it was fun..and the local newspaper even wrote an article about it. it was neat stuff.
(article below)

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

He’s quite a caricature

Cartoonist hopes to pass on love of doodling

By Bob Holliday
bholliday@pantagraph.com
Advertisement
BLOOMINGTON — Cartoonist Keith Knight took marker in hand and began drawing a caricature of himself. About 80 grade-school students watched.

When it was time to draw his nose, he warned, “I have a really big nose.”

A few students chuckled, but when he finished, Knight had a message for the fourth- and fifth-graders at Bent Elementary: Drawing is something even children their age can do, and if they have a desire to draw, they should follow their dream.

Knight, 39, grew up in Boston but lives in San Francisco. He sold cartoons for 15 cents when he was their age.

Later, his work appeared in Mad magazine and in newspapers. He’s also worked for Nickelodeon and Disney.

“Once I got into one newspaper, I got into another and it grew,” he said, telling the students “you’ve got to be persistent.”

Knight was in Bloomington Monday as part of a tour to promote his two latest books, “The Passion of the Keef” and “The Beginner’s Guide to Community-Based Arts.”

“It was fun,” said Rebekah Lovell, a fourth-grader at Bent.

Rebekah drew a cat and a likeness of Knight as she stretched out on the floor of the gymnasium. She draws at home regularly and wouldn’t mind being an artist.

Bent art teacher William Raschendorfer expects his students to be inspired by Knight’s message of being creative and striving for your dream.

“If you apply pen to paper, it’s good,” Knight said. “All of you are artists.”

Knight told the students, for instance, there’s no one way to draw a cat and showed them a creative alternative. “A cartoon is a great way to express yourself,” he said.

Knight also expresses himself through hip-hop music, although his “K Chronicles” and “(Th)ink” comic strips are his bread and butter.

A comic strip is drawing, but also writing, Knight told the students.

“It’s important to have a good idea when writing a strip,” he said. Cartooning “has its own language.”

He drew ‘sad,’ ‘mad’ and ‘sleepy’ eyes on a projector screen to illustrate his point.

Students attending Knight’s talk were given pencil and paper to doodle, an endeavor that got Knight into trouble when he was their age.

“Everybody’s got to doodle,” he said.
______________________________________________________

next was THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME. I met professor Augustin Fuentes last year at the Sundance Film Fest in Utah. He invited me to speak to a bunch of classes and then have lunch with some local community folk the next day. It was neat. when one of the women realized what i did, she freaked and said “my daughter LOVES yer stuff”. she then called her daughter on the phone, and started rubbing it in saying” Guess who I’m having lunch with..” After she got off the phone, she said her “cool-rating’ had just jumped up a million-fold in the eyes of her daughter. Sold a good amount o’ books…
And: Augustin and his wife are the coolest professors in the midwest, period.

We rolled up on CHAMPAIGN/URBANA about an hour before showtime. this was sponsored by a paper that runs my stuff called Buzz. small turnout, but some good folks there, including the great R.C. Harvey (cartoonist, writer, raconteur)..Sold some books, had some nice conversation, and then went out for some great thin crust pizza at a spot whose name escapes me. hmm..but it was good.
i would’ve gottne a decent night’s sleep, but it was the night of the extra-inning world series game betwixt houston and chicago..and this school is just full of chicky-chickies..so folks were going nuts for the white-sox. good stuff!!

FINALLY..A DAY OFF!! the show in MADISON/MILWAUKEE didn’t pan out so we spent the day driving to Minneapolis, but took a nice long break in Madison. Madison’s a great town. I was there a few years back for an A.A.N. convention, along with Stephen Notley, Shannon Wheeler, Jen Sorenson and Andy Singer. Next time i come out here, i’m doing a slideshow here.

MINNEAPOLIS kicked ass!! it’s great town..and it would be recognized as such if it wasn’t so g-damn cold!! it seems like the arts are supported really strongly. we hit a whole bunch of different types of spaces (walker art space, inter-media arts, northland poster collective) and they were all so cool. we stayed at Ricardo Levins-Morales place. He’s one of the artists profiled in the Beginner’s Guide. It was nice to meet him in the flesh after drawing his story in the book. He’s a funny, amzingly talented human being.
the Arise Bookstore event was really cool. all seats were filled..people even came just to buy stuff (they didn’t have time to stay for the slideshow)..and it was one of the few places that had a spotlight write-up in a local rag. overall, it was great stuff.

So..we learned a lot. if I do it again, I would hit about four cities in seven days..and do multiple slideshow events in one city. We put something like 3700 miles on the rent-a-car. it was completely insane. oh..and there was roadside gun poetry along the highways in indiana or illinois…not sure which one.

Let me know if you’d like me to speak at your school. I ain’t cheap, but i’m goddamn good.

Roadkill tally:
deer: 13
raccoons 7
cat: 1
unknown: 24

*ALSO DID SAN FRANCISCO STATE UPON RETURN..
their writers on writing class…it was fun..sold a lotta books…and GOT TO SLEEP IN MY OWN BED!!

Cheers!!