TIIIIIIIRRRED. ANYWAY.

yesterday (saturday) we (Drine & I) helped to move the poor Everland & Aline from a ghost town to a lost town, where Everland'll get more space to move around his drawings ; the upcoming author is now living in a real quiet eastern France hole, which is cool as fuck, if we forgot about the fridge' weight and the fact that both him and I forgot our muscles somewhere.

today, after an early departure from his place (the end of my last week was pretty weak and all), i was just dead. so i felt asleep outside, in the grass, under a big yellow sun, while reading Hitoshi Iwaaki's "Parasite" #2... and i wake up 2 hours later, totally fucked up, of course...

...just in time for learning that La Nuit Bleue, some wicked electroacoustic event produced by motivated friends, is canceled, or at least deprogrammed for a (maybe) september date ; in any cases, watch this space for more news and update about it.

there's plenty of reasons (good or bad) for canceling some serious show (i don't talk about free parties hotdammit, we're far from poor sucking music here), but the ones that the guys from Elektrophonie (the guys behind the event) are dealin with are nothing but shit ; France is going through an awfull ultra-right-wing political proccess, and as incredible as it seems, it looks like the bunch of baaaad guys we got in the driving booth are quietly, slowly, making France looking their way, which, of course, justs sucks.

i would like to to get the vocabulary for speakin about how ultra conservative and not-this-very-democratic some stuff was decided (not always voted for) in the big old house these last weeks, but for staying objective (friends and maybe readers will say that i'm a poor old neo-communist) (and i'll answer by telling them to fuck anyway), let say that there's nearly no more means (financial or administratives) for culture and education, which are of course some of the main things to work on nowadays. France was huge for that. 15 years of his road and we're done.

massive strikes seems nearly helpless, but governement is of course far from being stupid, and quietly constructing their little repressive mechanisms around a country who really don't need this kind of things for finding some solutions for its future. did i talk about retirement and pensions treatment ? oh my god. ultra liberalism isn't a solution, just another problem. assholes.

this gives me nerves. 8)

speaking of something else ? it seems like french big publisher Delcourt stop publishing his monthly pre-publication and information magazine Pavillon Rouge. i wasn't that much in the last ish, so i guess i don't care ; at last they will stop giving such a few money for its authors working in it... 8)
maybe it can help the excellent Ferraille mag (from the mighty indy french publisher Requins Marteaux) to find a better way in the newstands...

did i say that Joann Sfar is on the cover of the last ish (#395) of Les Inrockuptibles, some culture devoted weekly magazine ? i don't like it usually but this time, it seems that they do a really, really good job about one the best french authors. 6 pages of brilliant stuff inside, too.

hmmm... and that i got only tomorrow for finishing the inking of some contest... some contest with loooaaads of money, so i got to finish it TONITE, as tomorrow is the only day where Seb, Thie and me can work on the next issue of our comicZine, IEPLB?... speakin' of it, don't check the website, the real version is on its way...

and yeah, this very week, there will be some work on the "official construction" of our little comic studio/workshop. stay tuned if you want some details about future french comics scene. bwa-ha-ha.

pffff. i need two lifes, now. really.

TUNES. NEVER ENOUGH.

a few people asked me more tracklisting, which is pretty hard since i still miss my weekly radioshow, and that my weekly nights in bars around don't allow me to play all the tunes i would like to.
so here's a flavour of what is between my ears at the moment :

- Madlib "Shades of blue: Madlib invades Blue Note" (Blue Note)
- Kaidi & Dego "Got me puzzled" (2000 Black)
- Dudley Perkins feat. Yesterday New Quintet "Worship" (Stones Throw)
- Pulseprogramming "Blooms eventually" (Aesthetics)
- L'Atelier "le hip hop c'est mon pote" (Institubes)
- King Geedorah feat. MF Doom & Mr Fantastik "Anti-matter" (Big Dada)
- Why? "Oaklandazulasylum" (Anticon)
- Andre Gurov "Are U Listening" (Electro Caramel)
- Max Sedgley "Happy" (White)
- Snoop & Pharrell "Beautiful" (mca)
- Pole feat. Fat Jon "Slow motion" (Mute)
- Volcov vs Paradox "Soul breeze" (Rush hour)
- NMS "Brave new world" (Big Dada)
- Jaydee + Madlib = JayLib "the red" (Stonesthrow)

HEY, TITLES HAVE A LIFE, TOO.

so. let's forget about the usual "god it's so hooooot" and co. yeah it's still hot. and yes, there's other things to talk about.

- finally, and thanks to my good pal Christian, i'll be working for Les Eurockeennes de Belfort, this year's top festival, on friday 4th, saturday 5th and sunday 6th. of course, Radiohead, Massive Attack, Tricky, but also a lot of nice shit that deserve attention : The Roots, Tony Allen, Jaga Jazzist, Stupeflip, Arto Lindsay, Mike Ladd, Hexstatic, La rumeur, and of course, my own "this-year-event", with some of the Anticon crew : Themselves (aka Jel and Dose One), Sage Francis, and Sole.
i got some of the sweetest job on earth, and i'll talk about it later... 8)
if you want to meet while on the festival, i'll be the one with some glasses and black backbag.

- ...but for those of you who want to try something different (do you know Rechenzentrum ?), the very same saturday, here's the deal.
i spent yesterday evening sticking posters for this, with friends, and it was fun at its best as we met with cops (in car, starsky style), who were checking vandals, dealers, and co ; at first we run (i had 400 kilos of pure columbine on me, not speaking of the +400 LSD tablets my friend Laulau got with him...), alongside our bucket of adhesive/glu, but we saw them another time, which was pretty funny again. anyway.

more tomorrow, i got to drink. 8)

SUNDAY LINKS.

- Chris Bachalo, one of my favorites "mainstream" (?) comic book artist, is featured on a very tiny interview thanks to Comicon. he speaks about this upcoming New Xmen story written by the still infamous Grant Morrison, and it seems pretty cool to see both of them working together again...
Comicon also features words on the next SPX anthology, as Jennifer M. Contino wrote :
"The line up for the SPX Anthology was recently announced and THE PULSE thought now was the perfect time to introduce some of the creators involved in the anthology to the rest of the comics universe.
Although many of the names involved are comics household ones ... yet, there's no reason each couldn't be. So sit back, relax, and get to know some of comics current and future stars."

- it's future hip hop we talk about ! as Teki Latex (from TTC), James Delleck (from La Caution), Fuzati (from Le Klub Des Loosers), Cyanure, Para One and Tacteel, join forces for bringing us some of tomorrow 's music must look like...
L'Atelier is the first release on new progressive-beefsteack-electro-hip-hop-banana label Institubes, and the EP is already available through Pias. it's pure weapons of mass construction that we got here. so check it out.
oh, and the pencillistik blingbling monkey, Akroe, himself did the art for both logo and sleeve. buy it now.

- nice words, nice sentences, interesting ideas with this conversation betweenAlan Wall and Michael Moorcock, thanks to Fantasticmetropolis.

- an interesting post on Blogcritics, about, uh, comics... writer Sean T. Collins says :
"Since comics is something only a few people care about, I sorta feel like I should warn people when I'm going to start talking about it. So face front, true believers--it's time to talk about comics again. (The rest of you philistines can go watch CSI or something.)"

I LOVE MY GIRLFRIEND.

soon, Sandrine will make some nice comics, seel'em by thousands, and get loads of money.
i'll stay home and take care of her career... 8 )



anotha artwork from Drine (06/2003).

HOOOOT.

(note : i'm using some baaaad public cpu at the moment, and it will take me hours for uploading html tags for giving this words a nice look - come back tomorrow if it feels boring for you... see sidebar for links...)
no, still no porn pics here, sorry.
it's just too damn hard to move my hand on this computer' mouse : the weather here is incredibly HOT, and i mean, moist, hot, moist, moist, hot and moist. and hot. and moist. and hot.
it's the perfect time for having some drink out there, in the shade of Besancon's trees, and this is exactly what i'll do later in the day, a nice mission to complete with some new comics and my brunette. sounds great.
right now, i'm hanging around on what's-www-must-be-more-often, the mighty barbelith, and i'm also finishing writing construction/lay-out for the next installment of a story i wanna draw before the end of the month, a little 8 pages or sumthin. i decided to impose myself some deadlines, as i cannot do anything without a little pressure. tooooo lazzzzzy 70's child, i know. guy of the 21st century, who haven't got the idea of what's life... "gettajob !" ??? come on... anyway, fuck you. 8)

this means also that it will not help the good following of the 1568421 projects i currently work on...

- first off all, there this project of comic/illustration workshop we thought of with friends who are comin to (or near) Besancon in september/october. we'll start some kind of collective association, and hope some cool moves from our looooved town for helping us on the place topic, which is something that'll not be easy, from the financial point of view. we'll see.
alongside this project, there's already ideas/dreams/strong desires of printing something, probably on the ashes from this ooooold fanzine who's pretty...uh, dead, since 1994. some friends are already enthousiastic about the idea, and we got some interesting connections about working on a comic festival, more on a alternative way. more about it soon (i hope so).

- the label. uh ? which label ? oh yeah ! so i'm still waiting for answers from the place where we'll probably do the mastering of the 12". i gotta admit that if i'm still real enthousiastic about the original tune that Zo did, i wonder how i went into this story in so bad timing. our last ministry for the culture came into the game at the exact time i decided to work on it, and everybody must know that France goes through bad, bad times with its new government. not the ultimate place to ask for help when it's about help from "powers" that be...
the best solution is probably to don't give a fuck and let's spend thousand euros in something that will be strictly ours, but either me or the people involved in this story can help, of course.
(note to myself : this reminds me that i gotta take lessons with the crew of Lykill Records ; not only these guys are delivering stuff -good, good vinyl...- on a extra quality standard, on a regular huge artists schedule, but they also nice to hang around. ok, they got some big belly, due to loads of cheap beer, but it's ok...)
anyway. we'll see. more news soon, too.

- fuck i'm sagitarius : www.theonion.com/onion3920/horoscopes_3920.html

MINI-LINKS OF THE WEEKEND.

my "these days best ressource", some new york photo blog,
some of the best french speaking comics artists playin with the OuBaPo concepts,
best error page of the week, and its little sister,
some brilliants postals cards/posters from Mexican horror movies from the 70's (real funny pics here),
this year's MIP bring us to urine control videos,
beaaauuutiful (but hard to get !),
some temporary tattoos.

(french digga, go visit Heures Creuses, which is a place to hang around for hours... all the above links comes from Chryde. go and says hello.)