My favorite niece - the especially brilliant and beautiful one (Seriously:  Blonde, blue-eyes, gorgeous - could model.  Could give my imaginary heroines a run for their money, not kidding)  - just gave birth to Uncle John’s first Great-Nephew.

Beautiful baby boy.

Like all our family, he’s a genius, of course, and will grow up into a physical Adonis to take the world by storm and be adored by millions.

Not that I’m prejudiced, or anything.

Warm regards,

JED

My lifelong friend Dino (yes, the Dino who runs Soulgeek)  lost his father very recently and, of course, I went to the funeral today. The older we get, as Mary Smich said in her famous column, (wrongly attributed to Kurt Vonnegut)

“Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you

should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and
lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people
who knew you when you were young.”

Dino and I have known each other 35 years, which is scary enough, but we come from much the same place, for all our manifold differences. As depressed as I was for feeling such frank disdain for the place of my birth, especially its current state which is even worse than it was when I left almost thirty years ago, it was curiously comfortable and familiar being in his mother’s little casita with the rest of his family and friends, most of whom were known to me and some even also friends of mine. Some just passing acquaintances, but with whom I could easily converse and pass the time of day or share a remembrance of my dear friend, our shared experience and their basic decency on an important occasion making up for all that divided us by race, language, religion (or lack of it) and all the rest. Funny how familiar the feel of the grass, the sound and smell and touch of the neighborhood and all of it was. It wasn’t my neighborhood - it was in the more brown part of town, after all, and especially in the `70s that mattered (though never really to Dino or his family or mine) but we weren’t richer, smarter, or better than they were. We worked hard, they did too. I was a geek, so was he. We were both weird and neurotic in our own way, which is why, I think, we became and remain friends.

And we still are weird, neurotic geeks at our age, as undignified as it might seem to some. Hell, they say that 50 is the new 20.

(Don’t ask me who “they” are. Just know that most of “them” are over 50. )

And on this very day my eldest niece gave birth to her and her beloved husband’s first child.

Not sure exactly why I am writing this to you, other than that you have all somehow become an extension of my mishpucha (It’s Yiddish, look it up ) and these are some thoughts I had that I thought i needed to share.

Working on the new page. Shouldn’t be too much longer.

Warmest regards,

JED

I’m on a tear! Maybe we’ll actually get to the action sometime before 2015!

Please VOTE!

And thanks!

Yes, believe it or not, I got a new page done in the flim noir epic that will likely be decades in the making at this rate.

But it’s there!

So you have a new incentive.  Thanks so much for voting when all you had to stare at was that same old page 3.

And for those of you who forgot how the first three pages went;

http://www.soulgeek.com/comics/zona/HTMLpages/images/MrDowntownPage1.jpg
http://www.soulgeek.com/comics/zona/HTMLpages/images/MrDowntownPage2.jpg
http://www.soulgeek.com/comics/zona/HTMLpages/images/MrDowntownPage3.jpg

Vote, please!

This is not sexy, not pretty, not heart-warming. Nope.

With luck, it’s sinister and scaaary for the October Holiday.   Maybe I will do another pinup like last year where we get a Trick Or Treat.  This one is because skulls and stuff were on my mind.

Enjoy.

Warm regards,

JED

Well, this weekend was productive.  Worked 12 hours yesterday for The Man and made some extra scratch toward P-Chan’s vet bills.  (He’s doing quite visibly better, now, thanks. We get a checkup on Tuesday.  Hopefully $urgery has been avoided)   And today I got personal taxes finished, laundry done and, oh, yes:

Three new desktops.  Had to start a new page, as the old one was getting crowded.   One is just whimsey, but sure to be popular with those who like the redheads.  One is a request and the other just one of my personal favorite moments I re-rendered in high rez to make it into a desktop

So,  enjoy.

New page on Tuesday.

Warmest regards,

JED

There is a person in my life who is sweet, loving, infuriating, passive-aggressive and pretty much omnipresent.   His name is P-Chan.    He is a friend and constant companion who happens to be a cat.   A big, handsome coal-black domestic shorthair mutt who is extremely mouthy, affectionate, gentle and at this moment the only person who genuinely, physically needs me to be there for him on a daily basis.  A couple years ago, some of you were generous enough to help pay for his initial care, and so I share this.

P-Chan has a huge mass behind his left eye that has been growing for a couple months.  I have been terribly concerned about him and so took him to Veterinary Specialists Of The Valley to have really expensive tests done.  ( you just DON’T want to know) I was very very afraid that, after our brief time together, I would have to send him to Summerland before I was ready to let him go.   He is, after all, eleven years old already and such things are often found to be fatal in cats of his age.

The really great news I got yesterday is that it’s not cancer at all, but an abcess.  It can be treated by drugs, or at the last, by surgery.  I’m really happy about that.  Only someone who has feared cancer in a loved one or pet and been told that it isn’t can understand my relief.

So, he’s on aggressive antibiotics, but it’s only the second dose tonight, and he’s now obviously in pain.  Anyone who’s knowledgeable about cats will tell you that when a cat actually begins to show that he’s hurting, he is really, REALLY hurting.   So, I called the vet (24 hours, thankfully) and they have prescribed some pain meds just to make him comfortable while the other drugs get a chance to work.

So, I may not make tonight’s update, because I will be out getting good drugs for P-Chan.  I may, but maybe not.  Definitely have been working on page 616 - shall have it up before long, but I have something  a little more important to attend to at the moment.

After all, don’t want P-Chan to be sporting wings in real life until he’s ready.

Warmest regard,

JED

Hi, kids!

I know I’ve been kinda falling down on the updates lately, and it started with the piece of hard calcium working its way through my innards (thankfully gone now.)  I really haven’t caught up to my 3-a-week goal in months, and now I have to make it official for awhile and dial back to two.  I have made allusions to my day job from time to time, but the company, unlike many others in this cruddy economy, is growing and expanding like crazy.  As a result, my department is a total victim of our success.  Not to bore the crap out of you with shop talk, but I’ve been working crazy hours as well as interviewing applicants and all kinds of nuts stuff and I am just frigging tired.    So, we’ll be going back to Tuesday and Friday for the next two or three months, at least.   One thing I think this will allow me to do is get back to some of the smaller projects and get some gallery stuff and some desktops and maybe even continue “Mr Downtown” now and again.

So - sorry, but these are the conditions that prevail.

Warmest regards,

JED

(With apologies to Thunt, though I don’t think he’s using the phrase much, anymore.)

Between the malware on Soulgeek, my router going out, having to work on the weekend and all the extra hours during the week, I didn’t also need Poser to start giving me grief again. I have had to start over, practically from scratch on this thing three full times.

And yes, part of it is because I really want to get the image in my head onto the screen.

I think I finally have it licked.  It is possible that, if I do not run screaming into the night before then, page 599 will be up tomorrow night.

My family on my mother’s side has a history of stones.  No, not the fun kind that rock and roll, nor the artistic kind that you use to make Michelangelo’s David.  The kind that make you bend over and holler in agony.  That’s the kind that hit me yesterday night and sent me to the ER.  No, no life-threatening crap, but I am doped up and it is not possible for me to concentrate.  I need to let this pass.   But - I take this opportunity to release something I’ve been sitting on for awhile.  I do commissions, as some of you know, and so I put together a page of them.  Maybe it will encourage some of you to order one yourself.  Uncle John needs him some money, always.  Especially with the price of Vicodin …

Anyway, here’s the link:

COMMISSIONS

Enjoy.  As soon as I can, I will continue.  Right now, I have to lie down …

Warmest regards from a fetal position,

JED