Notes From Quarantine

With nearly everyone confined to quarters for the foreseeable, everyone has a quarantine story to tell. This is mine.

I was leading pretty much my normal life up to the week of March 9th. On Wednesday the 11th, I had lunch with my publisher- ordering actual food from a restaurant- and had a studio visit from a friend’s high school-age son in the afternoon. Thursday I had a date to go to the theater to see a performance of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time with my sister Teresa, but had one wary eye on the headlines- schools had already been closed, and the governor had banned gatherings of over 250 people. I checked the theater’s website that morning to see if the show was cancelled, and saw that a planned matinee was going ahead, but that the status beyond that was uncertain. A few hours later they cancelled the rest of the run.

I had my usual Friday visit on the 13th with my hangout buddy and sometime assistant Jacob Mercy, in which we were careful to avoid standing too close or god forbid, shaking hands, but that is the last social interaction I have had with anyone not in my immediate family. The store my wife Eve manages was slipping into closing by degrees- first, closing one day a week, then taking a planned two week holiday, then shutting until further notice.

Our daughter Rebecca flew home from LA on Tuesday the 17th- classes at UCLA had gone online, but she had intended to stay in the dorms through finals week, but we were worried that flights might be cancelled altogether. The three of us stayed in the house together, apart from a two-day trip to the coast, for the next ten days.

David Chelsea is reading: The Last Cruise
by Kate Christensen

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This Week on Patreon: A Curtain Call For ARE YOU BEING WATCHED?, And THE CRUMB BUMS Begin!

drum

This week it’s a bumper crop of posts on my Patreon page. Last week I ended the two-year run of ARE YOU BEING WATCHED?, my webcomic about 24 Hour Comics. I follow it with a personal shout out to my loyal subscribers in comics form:

David Chelsea is watching: 24 HOUR COMIC: The Documentary
directed by Milan Erceg

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End Strips: The Clerihews

manicotti

This week I posted my 70th End Strip on Patreon. End Strips are short comics drawn in a vertical format on random strips of paper, usually ones trimmed from larger sheets by my daughter Rebecca for some school project or another. These have tended to fall into a few main groups: drawings of celebrities from my various clippings folders, short strips featuring my characters Sandy & Mandy, drawings of Facebook friends who share the same first name, rhyming song lyrics that happen to have an anapest meter, and clerihews- short comic poems about famous people with my caricature illustrations.

David Chelsea is watching: Black Mirror – Series 1-2 and Special

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First Thursday on Patreon: Zap Comix 3D Fan Art!

wwanaglyph

Yesterday was First Thursday, when I post Fan Art to my Patreon page. This month I have something extra-special for my loyal Patrons (as well as freeloading site visitors), drawings of characters from Zap Comix, all in eyepopping 3D!!

David Chelsea is watching: Phil Spector
starring Al Pacino

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24 Hour Comic #14: The Crumb Bums

Last weekend, for the second year running, I accepted an invitation to spend 24 Hour Comics Day as a guest at the Imagination International event in Eugene, organized by Ken O’Connell of The University Of Oregon. This year’s event was bigger than last year’s, with about twenty participants, and it attracted the attention of local TV outlet KVAL.

Here’s a story from the KVAL website- there was also a report on the 6 O’Clock News, but they don’t seem to have posted the video.

David Chelsea is listening to:
True Believers: A Novel
by Kurt Andersen

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David Chelsea In Love: “A Minor Landmark”

WHAT did you say your name was?
WHAT did you say your name was?

My first graphic novel David Chelsea In Love made it into the the Onion’s A.V. Club autobiographical comics primer this week, along with such heavyweights as R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Harvey Pekar and Will Eisner. Since the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, I am on balanced pleasedĀ  to be included, even though what’s written is hardly an unqualified rave and even though the writer (one Sam Adams, presumably not the mayor or the beer) got the name of my main female character wrong (for future reference, it’s “Minnie” not “Millie”). Here’s the relevant section:

David Chelsea is listening to:
The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food
by Adam Gopnik

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