Woods chips and smoke rings

Hey you - did you know that I have another blog? Let's face it, I'm a man of many passions -- too many for one measly blog to contain -- so I started a new one dedicated to my passion for curing and smoking meat. It's been up and running for a few weeks now and is called Wood Chips and Smoke Rings. So far I've written about smoked pork tenderloin and how to make your own bacon. This here is a pic of a DIY bacon and tomato sandwich I made the other day:

And here's a another of the pork tenderloin I did a few weeks ago:

Recipes for both of these are on the site.

I've been having a lot of fun with this crazy smoking contraption over the past few years and I'm jazzed about sharing it with the rest of the world.Come join me.

A back-stage pass to Pee-Wee's Playhouse

Like many of my generation ("X", if memory serves) I loved Pee-Wee's Playhouse. Along with Twin Peaks, it was one of the few shows I watched religiously -- and that's what the show was like, really, a religion. You either loved it and were entirely devoted to it, or you thought it was juvenile nonsense. Back in the late 80s early 90s, that was the line for me: if you got Playhouse, then I got you. You were my kind of people as they say. (Dumb, I know -- but I was in my 20s for Jambi's sake!)

When the series was released on DVD a while back it was one on the first items I purchased with the intention of watching with my daughter, who was then about two-years-old. One kid later and the discs are still in steady rotation in the household.

For the longest time I assumed that Gary Panter was the man behind the insane design on the show -- and he was in charge. He even won an Emmy for his work on the show. But about 10 years ago I met Panter at a comics convention in Toronto and tried to get him to sign my Billy Baloney puppet (don't judge),  only to have him demure. He said that Wayne White, one of his staff, was actually responsible for designing Billy along with many of the other characters on the show.

I didn't think much of it until a couple of years later I found myself mesmerized by these "word paintings" executed on thrift store paintings by none other than -- one Wayne White. Anyways, White has done a bunch of stuff since then (and is featured in a recent documentary about his career) but the Pee-Wee stuff is still likely his most widely seen and enjoyed work.

I was checking out his blog the other day and came across all these great photos from his time on the  show, including original sketches. Behold! 
  

 

And here's one of Pee-Wee and White on the set:

There's a bunch more over at White's site, waynewhiteart.com. Go check it out!

Review: 'The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist'

I get sent a fair number of books for review. Some are so-so, some are good and a few are great. Then there's The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist. When I received this book my socks were knocked clean off. This monograph on Clowes (the man behind The Death-Ray, Wilson, Ice Haven and Ghost World) is a career-spanning beauty of a book that manages to capture the spirit and scope of the cartoonist's work over the past 30 odd years.

I liked it so much I decided to review it for The Comics Journal. It's up over there now -- and you should go read it. Then go acquire a copy. It's worth it for this alone. And for this photo:

    
 

It's an honour just to be nominated

While I was in Toronto last weekend I learned that a feature I had written last fall for the Canadian Bar Association's National magazine had been nominated for a magazine award, which is very flattering and reassuring. The piece, a profile of Ottawa immigration lawyer Warren Creates, was nominated in the Best Profile of a Person category at the Kenneth R. Wilson Awards, which recognizes the best in Canadian business/trade magazines.

The piece was a  joy to write in large part because of its subject. Warren Creates, as anyone who has been pulled into his orbit will tell you, is a larger-than-life whirlwind of a man who is the real-goddamn-deal. I interviewed Warren twice for this piece and the second time I asked him straight-up: What's the deal -- how do you stay so relentlessly positive? His answer gave me a chill; the kind you get when you know someone is giving you a great closing quote for your piece. But it was also a piece of advice that I have adopted in my own life in the hopes of staying as positive as possible.

Warren invited me to Ethiopia after the article came out -- which led a great friendship and another piece I wrote, but that's another story. 

You can read the Creates piece over here, and let me know what you think about the ending.