Last night I went to Desert Island in Williamsburg for the release party and signing of Megan Kelso’s newly published graphic novel “Artichoke Tales”. The Husband and My Kid went to the Strand the day before when she presented with some other graphic novelists but I was in Philadelphia.
How cool is it that I know someone who was signing her own graphic novel at the store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn named “Best Comics Store in NYC” by the Village Voice in 2009 and “Best Indie Shop 2010” in Time Out New York. The store was in a street I know well, on Metropolitan Avenue across the street from the Brick Theatre where the New York Clown Theatre Festival takes place. There is simpatico between comics and clowns. As it happens one of the graphic artists in attendance was there with his wife who did stand up for years and has a buffoon-like character and knows some of the same New York clowns that I do. Small world!
I am so proud of Megan and her book. She talked about how it took 10 years to finish because life got in the way. She had a kid. She also had some other work, like “Watergate Sue” that ran on the back page of the New York Times Magazine for a while a couple of years ago.
We had dinner at their apartment when My Kid was three years old, and we were all living in Brooklyn. Megan gave My Kid a box of pieces of scrap paper to play with. Some of those pieces of paper had artichoke people on them. My Kid will turn 10 this summer. That’s how long it takes to make a graphic novel. I’m going to hold on to that piece of information for inspiration.
There’s a clown jam this weekend.
I’m going to call my puppet-clown friend to talk about the next time we can get together next to work on our show.
And I’m also thinking about 9/11 because The Husband and My Kid and I got together in Brooklyn with Megan Kelso and her husband and her comic artist friends on the evening of that day trying to process what had just happened.