Toren Atkinson’s Absolute Blog

The letter I got from Word on the Street said that load in was from 8am-9:30am, which I thought was ridiculous considering the book & magazine festival didn’t start until 11. Obviously a lot of other people did too since I got there at 9:30 and only a couple other tables were set up.

I set my table up with some shirts, the Cloudscape anthologies with my comics in them, Spaceship Zero RPGs, Thickets CDs, giant squid lightswitch covers, and of course the ever-popular pinback buttons. I made my table rental & cab fare back and then some, so I consider it a success. Doubly so because the only RPG I sold was to a 13-year old kid who ONLY had enough money to buy one thing and that was it. That was inspiring.

The annoying thing about the venue was that the panels were, while generally interested, really loud and disruptive towards all of the vendors. I do think that the panels drew in some more potential customers though so it was a trade off.

I also met the owner of the Captain Carrot yahoo fan group “Doc Quantum” who I was astonished to learn lives in Burnaby. I’ve been a member of the group for a couple years now and post my World Wildlife Federation of Justice updates on there. The files section alone is a goldmine for Captain Carrot & His Amazing Zoo Crew fants. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zoocrewonearthc/

Thanks to everyone who came to my table. See you NEXT weekend at V-Con!!!

Now that we have the capacity to do full colour process art on dark shirts at work, I’ve been thinking about doing an homage to the Iron Maiden/Slayer style shirt for The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. Lots of gore, human sacrifice (or possibly unicorn sacrifice?), lightning & fire, Cthulhu, elder signs…all the tropes mangled together. The bad photoshop party below is using stuff stolen from several different website, but it has the feel of what I’d go for in the final version, which presumably would be drawn by me.

I’ve got at least a month’s work of art assignments ahead of me, but if enough people request this, I’ll fast-track it as much as possible. Probably would be $20/shirt.

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Here’s a good one from passiveaggressivenotes.com

nick in tampa, florida says the sodas in his small office used to be free, but now they cost 50 cents. and yet, when they’re left out “unguarded and unsecured, naturally, people steal them,” nick says. eventually, one coworker thought instilling the fear of god would make for a good theft-deterrent…which inspired another coworker to quote scripture in protest of the new drink policy.

Speaking of Jesus, why am I still awake?

This one’s good too:

I awoke in Shaunavon with a very special request. Deanna’s nephew had asked her teacher if I could come and teach his class art. Everything was in place pending my consent, which naturally I gave.

I was chauffeured over to Christ the King elementary school and welcomed to a group of 15 kids. In the limited time I had to prepare I came up with the idea of quickly going over a simple lesson on head proportion and then creating a pirate & her mascot. This quickly devolved into me simply drawing whatever the kids shouted out, mainly Batman, Spider-Man, a transformer, and suchlike. I did draw a few World Wildlife Federation of Justice characters. I managed to restrain myself from slipping in any anti-theistic innuendos but I did make a point of having the gamma-irradiated mutant cyborg parrot be environmentally friendly.

Poll-E gets ready to take his bottles in for recycling

With the class consisting mainly of 12 boys and 3 girls I did make a point of having the pirate be female, and I talked extensively of Octopussycat’s origin and powers.

I reviewed all the kids’ drawings and noticed some real talent. One kid was obsessed with drawing swords and he even had an earth sword with an earth at the tip of the blade, the pommel, and both ends of the crossguard. Another kid made his own Superman comic (don’t tell DC)! At the end of it all I got a Christ the King pen and bookmark.

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A reprieve from the kids allowed some much-needed internet time but after that I drove the two boys (Layne had tap practice – more crying commenced) to the T-Rex Discovery Centre in Eastend. There they have “Scotty” – one of

Ammonite drawing courtesy tonmo.com

the finest tyrannosaur skeletons in the world, plus various other exhibits including a brontothere, T-rex coprolite (fossilized poo), and ammonites (they’re all the rage in the Selandian age). I was very disappointed in the lady who gave us the tour because she not only mispronounced ‘ammonite’ but she also mistook a mosasaur fin for a plesiosaur fin. Perhaps I should take the $40k/year job posting there.

We stayed as late as they’d let us and got some souvenirs – I got a “COPROLITE HAPPENS” T-shirt. Who doesn’t love a good paleontology joke? We drove back to Shaunavon and enjoyed some pizza that Deanna’s sister made (brownies too) and then whiled away the evening painting more dinosaurs and watching The Simpsons.

More crying commenced when Layne’s bedtime came around, so I had to tuck them in. They’re so cute standing on their hind legs like a little Rory Calhoun.

Not my photo, not our food

On Wednesday morning I had the good sense to spend 3 hours at the library catching up on important e-things and of course blogging this.

In the afternoon it was another round of “High Tea” at the art gallery with me, Deanna, and the septuagenarian gossip posse. They served a scone, some fruit and various condiments on a multi-tiered tray which was either ridiculous or elegant depending on your point-of-view. The scone was tasty though. And did I mention home-made? Also: devonshire cream.

A hug from my new gramma sent Deanna, her mom and I into the boat for the big drive to Shaunavon, the town where Deanna grew up. A big to-do was made out of the fact (to me, anyway) that the sisters’ kids had cancelled their hockey practice so they could spend time with us, but upon arrival we found that only Layne, the youngest of the siblings at 5, actually had the evening free. We drew a book together and she made me a crown, so finally I could make some royal decrees!

Some kid wearing the shirt I made her for Christmas

Oh how she did cry when she had to go to bed, but I didn’t, because I played Super Mario Bros on the Wii. Despite the kid’s offer for me to sleep in her bed, Deanna and I went to her Mom’s place to crash, and so endeth the least boring day so far of the trip, owing primarily to the fact that I was not surrounded by old people talking constantly about other old people I have never met.

The Shurniak Art Gallery here in Assiniboia was founded by some rich local who collected artwork from all over the world. Both of Deanna’s grandmothers wanted to take us there so naturally we had to make two separate trips two days in a row. Yes, the gallery is THAT good. Part of our visit to the gallery was to the tea room where they have home made (a point made by everyone who we spoke with) baked goods.

Afterwards we went back out to the farm and I spotted a huge owl just off the road on grandpa’s land, which I followed and tried to get some snapshots and a movie of. It was amazing, and looked something like this:

We went to the local tiny graveyard which, like the rest of the area, was coated in grasshoppers and locusts. The locals say it hasn’t been this bad since the 80’s (the grasshoppers, not the cadavers).

Monday we had breakfast at a place called New Moon Cafe. This is apparently a staple of Assiniboia cuisine and features what one might politely call Canadian Chinese. I would call it the worst breakfast I’ve ever had. Heavy onion rings, soggy oversauced caesar salad, three different kinds of very deep fried chicken, overdone fried rice, and chicken balls preside. The neice had ‘dino buddies’ which are freezerburned, deep fried, vaguely reptilian-shaped chicken.

Afterwards we hit the library. This is the only place that we know of where I can access the internet, so naturally there’s been a round of jokes at the grandparent’s place about whether or not I’m off to the library. There’s no service out here for either my cell phone or Deanna’s Blackberry. I’ve been checking my emails to keep tabs on presales for BLAST! and if there’s any updates to my art assignments.

Though we’re staying at Geriatric Manor across from the swimming pool, we spend most of our time at Deanna’s grandparent’s place. This involves being overfed and managing many subtle layers of guilt. After drawing a dinosaur for the neice I was then charged with the task of drawing a chalice for Grandma’s cult meeting, which I completed even though it flies in the face of everything I believe in. Oh yes, Deanna’s family is steeped in the rich history of the masons.

At the local ice cream shop, this big city boy blew the staff’s mind. I noticed they had a licorice shake so I asked for a licorice sundae. She said they didn’t have those, so I had to ask for the finer details of how a licorice shake is made. Is it a syrup? Then take that syrup and toss it on a helping of softserve. “I’ve never done that before.” Yeah well carpe diem, sweetheart. The result was not quite tiger tail ice cream, but it hit the spot.

On Sunday we flew in a plane.

I think it’s been about 8-9 years since I’ve been on a plane. Less than a year before 9/11, I went to New York and stood between the twin towers. But I used to work at the airport, and in that time the edict was you were supposed to be at the airport 2 hours before your flight time.

Deanna, on the other hand, has flown several times in the past two years and she told me that we should be at the airport an hour before our flight.

So naturally we spent a lot of time rushing here and there and waiting in lines that were longer than Deanna expected. They took my dollar-store screwdriver set which I bought so that I could fix my glasses when the lens falls out, as it does from time to time. Deanna was outraged that I was holding up the show.

But we got on the plane and were lucky enough to catch the episode of “Rogue Nature” that featured the humboldt squid (also known as ‘jumbo squid’ and commonly misnamed as the giant squid). The trip was two hours and we landed in Regina where we met with Deanna’s mom, sister, brother and family and had what we would call lunch and what Saskatchewanites call dinner (they call dinner supper) at Earl’s. It was surprisingly good and the awful music wasn’t very loud. This is contrary to all my previous experiences of Earl’s in Abbotsford and Vancouver.

Deanna’s family are mostly Christian and all breeders. This makes me love Deanna more because she is neither of these things. But her sibling’s kids are the closest thing I have to nieces and nephews since my brother Merrick and I are cut from the same cloth, which is to say from a highly dysfunctional family which instilled in us at a very young age an undeniable urge to avoid having kids.

After ‘dinner’, Deanna’s niece wisely bailed from the truck with her parents because they have just had another baby which makes, as babies do, an ungodly racket. So on the hour-plus-long van ride to Assiniboia we took on the 5-year old girl in the back seat and discussed the merits of Candyland vs Ice Cream World. We picked up KFC in Moosejaw and tried unsuccessfully to get the chewing gum off the kid’s neck.

We drove to ‘the farm’ outside of Assiniboia and said hi to Deanna’s grandfather who was ’swathing’ the fields of wheat with his combine. We caught some grasshoppers and Jack showed me how to get the grains out of the wheat sheaf. And then he couldn’t get his antique combine started up again and there was some awkwardness.

Off we went to hole up at Grandma’s house where I mostly watched people watch the baby drool on everything for several hours. Oh, and there was the football game to watch so that was exciting. But eventually I had staked out a place long enough that I gained access to the remote control and I was able to enjoy more shows in the Discovery Network or TLC or something, about grizzly bears and Mythbusters.

We drove in the old folks car to the old folks home where we are renting a room for $15/night ($5 more if you use their towels and sheets). Seriously. And they don’t have a DVD player in the room – but they DO have a VHS. Too bad I didn’t bring any.