Paintmonkey Podcasting!

The day is here!  The Paintmonkey is now in the realm of internet podcast lore!  I told you a couple of weeks ago about the Jack Davis event I attended.  This is the last part of that evening.

After the art opening Robby and I headed over to the restaurant where our friend from school, Jeff,  was at a trivia contest.  It was being hosted by fellow geek, Scott.  Scott is actually a talk radio personality.  He has a good voice for it as evidenced by the fact that he is the main guy in just about every radio commercial in the greater Brunswick area.  More on this later.

The podcast is called Dinner 4 Geeks.  I've discussed them before but this was the first time I had gotten to meet the other three.  We met Ryan at the Jack Davis event.  He had to run by his office before the podcast and when he got there we found out why.  Ryan makes his own action figures.  As a gift to Robby and I, he had made us a zombie head and one of the chilled monkey brain entrees from "Temple of Doom"!

Pretty sweet, huh?  I can swap out the head of a Han Solo Kenner figure and make him an extra on "The Walking Dead"!

So then we started the podcast.  You can either download it at iTunes or listen to it here on Libsyn.  Ours is Episode 31.  I apologize if I babble a bit.  I didn't actually find out what the homework was until right before the recording but I stand by my statement (for the most part) that I can find something amazing about any of the artists put forth.  And I did.  Even Ryan's really obscure ones.

But here are the gifts I gave them.

For Scott (who I still can't believe could tell what year this outfit was from)...

For Ryan...

 
For Ron...

And finally, for Jeff...

Again, it was a fantastic evening, and I had a ball.  Now through all of this, I knew Robby and I were pinko liberals walking into a hotbed of conservatism.  Ron is (or used to be) the head of the local GOP and Scott's DJing gig is on...*shudder*...FOX!  I listened to his show that morning and I actually quite enjoyed it.  I don't agree with everything he was saying but I did think he was quite reasonable.  (He thought it was funny that I said that.)  Even our friend Jeff is pretty much on the right hand side of the political spectrum.  Ryan is...well, I'm not sure about Ryan.  Ryan just...is.

But this got me thinking.  We are all going to disagree about things.  But if we shun the other side we will never find common ground.  We will never truly understand what the other side thinks.  We all need to talk about the stuff that makes us the same.  I had a wonderful time discussing artists and pop culture and geek matters with these guys.  And not once did they hiss at me or call me some derogatory term for liberal.  Maybe the way to healing the country is through Geekdom.  And that night we found that one thing that can bring us together as a nation.

Rob Liefeld is just awful .

Heroes and Friends* Revisited

*Now that Randy Travis is safely out of the hospital, I can use his line without fear of seeming insensitive.

This past week I went down to Saint Simon's Island.  A fellow alumni of Young Harris who lives in the Brunswick area had let me know about a retrospective being put on by the Glynn County Art Association.  The artist: why, none other than St. Simon's resident Mr. Jack Davis!  (Who, as you may recall...I am semi-obsessed with.)

Now unfortunately, my wife couldn't make it down on this trip.  I was forced to doing my secretive "meal drawings" alone.

I thought he was praying over his little continental breakfast for what seemed like a REALLY long time...just head down and not moving.  Then I noticed his phone behind the cup of juice.

Since the wife couldn't go, I had an extra ticket to the art opening and the accompanying panel discussion.  But I knew another of my fellow YHC alumna lives just north of the island in Savannah.  Robby was more than happy to take me up on the offer and Thursday night he headed down.  If you want to read some good stuff, be sure to check out Robby's blog Ramblings From the Tide.  He and his wife are both excellent writers.

Once Robby arrived, we headed over to the panel discussion.  Mr. Davis and his family were in attendance as well as many locals who obviously thought the world of him.

The panel was moderated by Nick Meglin, who used to be a writer and editor of MAD magazine.  Great stories and hugely entertaining, Mr. Meglin was actually interviewed with Robby beforehand by a local television station/internet pornographer/we're not really sure what they were.  If we get our hands on the footage I will be sure to post it.  It was really great.

The other two people on the panel were Mr. Jack Pittman, former president of the southeastern chapter of the National Cartoonists Society...

...and Mr. Tom Richmond, who is a current artist at MAD and is the new caricature hired gun now.  He is also extremely wiggly...

.

...and so he ended up looking like Nicolas Cage in my sketchbook.  (He does NOT look like Nicolas Cage.)

They all talked about Jack's influence and what he meant to each of them personally.  At the end of the discussion, Mr. Pittman presented a beautifully bound art notebook filled with cartoons from many of today's comic artists expressing their appreciation for Jack Davis.  The cover had an image of a self portrait that Jack had done, and they ran it through a 3-D printer to make a plaque for the cover.  Very cool.

We walked back across the street to the Glynn County Art Association.  I highly recommend if you have the chance to go see this exhibit.  Jack Davis drawings are amazing in print.  In person, they defy description.  Just go.  Thank me later.

Robby and I went up to Jack and his grand-daughter was kind of wrangling him and keeping the flow going.  She asked me if I had something I wanted him to sign and I replied "no actually...I have a gift".  I gave him a copy of one of my Bulldog calendars that I had written "thank you" on and signed.  He smiled warmly and seemed genuinely excited as he looked at it.  When everyone refers to him as a "true southern gentleman"...THAT is what they are talking about.  I will carry the image of Jack Davis smiling at my drawing for a VERY long time.

At the end of the evening, Robby got an old Bulldog clipping he had signed and we got our picture made with the man himself.  It was a wonderful evening.

...and it wasn't quite over yet.  More on that tomorrow.