CAKE 2013

Printing reports seem far simpler to relate than convention reports. But, this one is both - so first, to printing.

I decided to print a new book, Godhead #1, for CAKE. And I will begin by saying, yes, of course, I managed to screw it up. Which is more funny than painful to me now. You'd think I'd have learned to stay clear of simple, obvious mistakes, such as laying the book out incorrectly in the first place, but, hell no. I haven't. And each time at press there was a new issue I'd never encountered before rearing it's nasty little head. "Everyday a new problem," I'd say, before the frustration came boiling up my neck and I'd look for the nearest thing to kick as hard as I could. The only lesson I'd seemed to have learned from printing Sea Change was not to go wailing into failure, but square up and suck down my overreactive emotions, and stop. Still not easy for me.

Printing plates, while also burning my retinas on a loaner computer. 

Laid out the book for 8 1/2 by 14 sheets of paper, which I'd mistakenly picked up for make-ready for Sea Change, and just so happened to have 10 reams for 9 plates. One for each plate, and one left over for make-ready. Made for a square book, but not ugly. Seemingly perfect. Got some good-looking plates out of the HP, and found myself with two days off (in a fucking row, no less!). Two weeks from CAKE at that point. Seemingly smooth sailing. How could I possibly fuck that up? Oh, you...



I printed the plates incorrectly, and without noticing my mistake, went ahead and printed them on my stock. I printed half of the book on Thursday, the 6th. Had I done the odd-numbered plates first, things would have progressed more quickly, but ha! I didn't! I printed the incorrect ones that day (and even put the press out of commission for a hot minute, again, by simply not locking something down tightly enough) and they looked great. Came to press Friday and quickly realized my mistake. Hung my head and slunk out like a kicked dog. Spent the rest of Friday afternoon drawing away the awful feeling in my gut, and then continued into my five-day workweek slinging coffee and food at well-rested yups with all the gusto of a freshly-kicked dog.

But, picked myself up, and went at it again. After working straight through until Wednesday - now the 12th of June, and 3 days before CAKE, mind you - I spent the night trimming down cover stock. By hand, of course, because I'm apparently encoded with stupid that way.

I essentially started over with this book from scratch on Thursday morning, only two days from CAKE and only a day before I had to hit the road. Got out of bed nursing that same, low and persistent dread that I'd greeted so many times in April, looking out into the snow and down at the crumpled paper strewn everywhere. Picked up a new 10-ream box of paper from the old OfficeMax at 9AM, turned up the Replacements on the radio, and picked up caffeine at the co-op. Found another unopened Hi-Ball awaiting me, like angel scat, at the press. Armed with a new mock-up guide and fresh paper, off I went.

Again - a new problem, though mild. Vacuum for the powder on the delivery end was jammed, and didn't fix itself by blowing out the excess powder built up in the tube. Disassembled it, cussing through out, and cleaned it out as best I could before reattaching it and tightening the rig. Still didn't work, so I let the vacuum run and called my "press consultants." As soon as I hung up, having recieved no answer, the damn thing started working. Plowed onward.



Printed 15 plates that day from 9 to 5, like a real goddamn job, and put my cover stock on for the color - with a full bleed black on the back - and couldn't get it to feed consistently. Sheets were getting pulled in erratically, probably either because the 100# cover stock I'd picked up was too heavy? or I'd misdialed the settings? Still figuring that one. In any case wrestled with that issue until the machine had eaten up 10 sheets or so, and threw her into night latch and called for help.

That was lesson number two of Sea Change: ask for fucking help. Leigh again came through at 6PM and threw down a whoppingly prohibitive $0.66 to photocopy me 30 or so covers on the same stock, leaving me with viable copies for the show, and still not wasting the pretty penny I'd spent on French Paper, either.

I ate? I think I ate. Sometime between that and the night, I must have eaten? Jesus. Anyway.

(I remember now probably jamming my craw with some caffeine and caffeinated Clif bars. Probably that.)

Then came the folding and the collating, starting at roughly 7:30, 8PM? Took 30 pages of each sheet, my long-arm stapler, the cover stock and hauled them in my new suitcase du jour, a beat-up French Paper box, and settled at the light table of MCAD's fourth floor, intending fully to fold, collate, staple-bind, and face-trim 30 copies in that same area. Left the overhead lights off, hit the lightbox on, plugged in some Ink Panthers and Inkstuds, and listened to the rain pour down against the overhead glass as I worked.

Got through all those smoothly before going to face-trim on the public cutters. Did a copy on the cutter that'd been fine for trimming down Tits!, but didn't quite make the cut cleanly enough to be passable. Kind of ragged. Whether it was the combination of more pages and heavier stock that did it, or my relative strength or sharpness of that blade, it wasn't going to work. And the public guillotine cutter has never worked for me, so, as I stood staring at the damn thing and pawing the ragged edge of my book, calculating, Zak called for an update on how the trip to Chicago was unfolding and asked how it was going. At t-minus one day, all I had to do was trim the goddamn things and it'd be good. He, with more clarity of wit than me at that point, said, "Use my gulliotine cutter, dummy." That was at midnight. 

Trotted down to the studio to use said cutter and piled out of my car and across the lot just as, one, a guy seemingly jogged down Central wearing big winter gloves in the middle of the goddamn night, and Zak emerged from the side entrance on the phone with Grace, one of the CAKE organizers. He'd just had to call off the performance of Pretty Ladies (probably the only real let down of the show, in retrospect) due to a very sick drummer. I went to folding the covers, stapling the books together, and chopping them down on the guillotine cutter as he climbed through a metaphor-mountain of boxes to pack for the show. Managed to finish the books (and even salvage the one's I'd trimmed horribly at first) and get home to pack up myself and lower into sleep by 3 that morning.

Hauled out of bed at 7:30AM and before my alarm exhausted but awake, and met Alicia for coffee at the Seward Co-op. Then got on the road with Zak by noon and east down 94 we went.

CAKE 2: Electric Bugaloo was a great sequel to a great convention last year. Too many good things happened to recount individually, and too many good road trip stories on the way down (and on the way back in the dead of Sunday night with a tired pair of Zak Sally and Tom K. firing off constant conversation until Minneapolis came into view) but the show itself was a wonderful experience. My personal sales were way up from the year previous in Chicago, and better overall for me than TCAF, even. Godhead, which was originally the only debut for the show, got a little write-up on the CAKE site along with Sea Change, and I'd either sold out or traded or consigned all but three of my stock, and each copy of Godhead was off of my hands. At the busy points of Saturday and Sunday both I was backlogged on signing and drawing in books by a couple people for some time. Something I was not really ready for, as I thought I could spent more time putting meticulous drawings in each book. 

The venue was spacious, especially in the space within the rows for exhibitors. So roomy, in fact, both sides of exhibitors could comfortably store their bags, extra chairs, etc., without bumping into each other. Which meant the aisles for visitors sometimes got clogged past the point of comfort, but it was relatively manageable to move about without disturbing people trying to browse through books at a table. The Center on Halsted was beautiful, and apparently also a host to a gay cowboy line dance on the roof patio, which I sadly missed. The Whole Foods downstairs was like a revelation to have, as I was often reaching for an empty coffee cup that weekend. All the satellite events happening that weekend (the Deitch signing, comic battle at Quimby's, music at the Observatory, listening to Blackhawk fans squawk) were fun to attend, but meant I was crawling back to the couch cushions on Grace's floor as a barely-put together bag of bones in the night. Generally, there was a pretty happy and productive atmosphere each day of the show, though the definite trend among exhibitors was that those who'd gone to TCAF a month previous felt so-so on sales, and those who hadn't were pretty happy with them. Sitting in Minneapolis row, with Evan Palmer, Tim Sievert, Anna Bongiovanni, Hannah Blumenrich, 2d Cloud and Will Dinksi at the back of the auditorium didn't seem to pose any logistical problems, either, as traffic was pretty steady. Some of those along the walls of the auditorium itself mentioned a little lackluster attendance for their tables, but not all of them.

The organizers did a fantastic job. Having dipped my toes into that realm now, I see it is no simple, easy, or quickly-done feat. I owe all of them for the wonderful show and overwhelmingly positive experience I had, and especially to Grace Tran, who kindly let me crash on her floor and called me a "wood nymph," which I take as a high honor. 

CAKE 2013, as it grows increasingly small in the rearview, seems to me an up-note ending to the cycle of a year. At the 2012 show, I'd just recieved word I'd gotten the Xeric, and I'd sent in my expense report a week before the 2013, with a huge stack of printed paper and a whole lot of experience and support in the time between. I'd gone from putting out a small amount of work while living at my parents' house in rural Wisconsin post-graduation, to living in Minneapolis again, making as much work as I ever had and becoming competent with the printing press. And in the few days since CAKE, I've only felt buoyed by the experience and the new-found connections with other cartoonists resulting from the show. A lot of good news for my friends has also followed in its wake.

For me, it was good. It was great. It was one not to have been missed.

My tablemate, good friend and hardworking gal Leigh Luna, with none other than -- 

 -- Evan Palmer's back.

The view from the Observatory roof, which was obscenely cinematic.

Time for TCAF!

Time to pile into the mini-van (you read that correctly, mini-van) of nautically-themed cartoonists and get ourselves to Toronto for TCAF!

I am very pleased to say that I will have copies of "Sea Change: A Choose-Your-Own-Way Story," debuting at the show and available for purchase at my table on the 2nd floor, 234! It's been a hard-fought publication, and I'm leaving a very messy studio space, a daunting pile of printed detritus, and a few hundred unassembled books behind me that I will deal with after this wonderful comics-shindig. "TITS! The Spiny Northern Maid," the mermaid-copulation mini-comic companion to Sea Change, will be at my table as well! (If, should Customs not like the, ahem, feeling-laded penetration of that one,  it'll still be available to read online and purchase at my store.)

If you want to connect with me, I'm trying to do this whole "Twitter" thing again... with all the trepidation and confusion of a person born in 1914, but trying! My handle is @caitlin_rude - plus I maintain rosebudskud + talkweirdpress on tumblr, if that's more your thing.

Speaking of which, I'm also delighted to say I'll be in the excellent company of Cathy G. Johnson (tumblr) and Kevin Czapiewski of Czap Books at 233! Hell yeah! If you're not familiar, you should darn well get familiar - you won't regret it. Both are wonderfully talented artists and forces to be reckoned with, and two of my absolute favorites.

Plus, my partner in crime and fellow lover of Spanglish grammar jokes, Leigh Luna, will be selling her comics, "Clementine Fox," and "Banjo Girl," with me at my table (and generally keeping me in line and in one piece). 

I'm sure, scattershot as I am in the post-Maisie Madness of printing this Xeric book, that I've forgotten something, but it's time to go. I'm so excited to see Toronto and meet a bunch of wonderful people there, united in enthusiasm for comics. Uff da.

Howl, who will be slutting it up for pets and love to all my roommates, I'm sure, in my absence. 

 I am so happy to be going - and to hopefully to return to a very green and very gay Minneapolis in a few days! Don't disappoint me, Moony City!

SEA CHANGE: Printing the Xeric, DAY 16 + 17 + 18

 

D-O-N-E!

At the moment, there are about 30-some good copies finished and ready for the border crossing and the comics-shindig in Toronto happening the 11th and 12th. Which would not have happened without the support and schedule-wrangling and generosity of Amaya and Ian, Nicki, Chrissy, Leigh, Zak, Clint, or Claude. I would have been a pile of wet, blubbering rubble without the help of each of them.

I will do my best to put down these days with coherency and accuracy, but the caffeine high of the last 30 hours or so has finally begun to wane and real exhaustion is setting in.

Day 16, Saturday, May 4th

Or, the first of the three days of furious collaboration.

Worked a busy morning at the cafe - but then again, what weekend morning isn't busy? Collated copies of the book in Amaya and Ian's garage before sitting down inside and playing the first few turns of Tokaido, a game about sight-seeing Edo, Japan designed by a Frenchman. Just about eating things, collecting souvenirs and, as was my favorite, sitting in hot springs with monkeys. Had to jet over to Zak's studio to get the covers printed on the larger press, so, when the clock hit quarter-to and the turn in the game became mine, I promptly knocked the old man character I was playing into the water, announced I'd been eaten by kappas, and scooted out the back door.

Printed covers on the 9810, which went better than I think either Zak and I thought they would. A huge favor paid to me by Mr. Sally, by the way, for coming down to the studio and basically printing the run for me with finishing the next book of Sammy heavy on his mind. While I stumbled about beside him, half-way in the way and tripping on stuff. I had no real familiarity with the 9810, even though the same principals apply, and the time spent this month screaming at Maisie still hadn't worn off. Trimmed down the oversized French 80# cover to 12.5x17.5 and got them going on my make-shift too-small left-over already-printed plates.



And that went pretty damn well. Debated whether or not to do the second color, which, at the press, was very light. I'd changed the covers because full bleed = pain, and the ever-fluid set of circumstances and setbacks around this book meant I needed to make due with the capabilities I had and things I had access too within the time frame I needed to operate within. Setbacks, mind you, that might have been solved in the designing process months ago, so the lesson is - again! - a stitch in time saves nine. So, we scratched the second layer of light blue for toning the front and back, as Zak had to get back home and we'd been at the press for these covers for four hours.

But my Animal-Farm-draft-horse tendencies to just work harder, just endure more menial labor in the face of hardships (remember everyone, that horse dies well before the end of the book) were not disappointed. Decided to hand-color them instead! All of them.

Woop woop. Neigh.

Day 17, Monday, May 6th

After a 8 to 5:30 shift of insanity at the cafe on Sunday, rose, bones full of ache and energy, and got my ass to MCAD. Where upon I, save for a few instances of having to run an errand and grab the paper out of Amaya's garage so desperately needed, I sat for the last 30 hours. Seeing as it is also the thick of MCADian finals, I was in good company and there was cheap food and good coffee at my disposal. Just like old times. Went to figuring out just how the hell I was going to color these covers A) cheaply enough as not to weep, B) quickly enough to go in to be bound and trimmed by midnight and ready for TCAF on Saturday, and C) to my satisfaction and to the satisfaction of that goddamn voice in my head always bugging me about covers, and markers and that crap. Settled for an acrylic turquoise ink in a water-color brush pen, half-diluted, and colored, colored, colored. Took the majority of the day, all the way up to Leigh calling me up to bat with my books in the Service Bureau, and all the strength in my knotted up hand. Watched a little Adam West Batman in the middle as I did so, thanks to Bob's Intro Class.

Every single person who came close enough to peer at me, with my sprawl of French Paper, French Paper boxes, and ink bottles, I wrangled in to ask them about the covers and weighed all opinions as evenly as I could. Worked on the big tables of the 2nd floor studio and soon found myself swamped with a MCAD finals homework drum circle. Furiously colored 25 covers or so in the 3 hours leading up to midnight.

Then, at midnight, with two energy drinks (totaling 280 mg of caffeine), a large cup of coffee from Dave's, and an Iced Blackout from Le Spyhouse at 11:30 (totaling 400? mg of caffeine? More? enough, in any case, to keep me going until noon today and beyond) in me, Leigh and I went to work.

Or, Leigh did. Again found myself either too damn incompentent (or too damn sleep-deprived to become competent) at any of the tasks required to finish this mini-run for TCAF, except for creasing. Which, still, I managed to screw up on occasion. But Leigh Luna was a star. She was a wunderkin. I pushed her in the river and ella swim-ó. Bound and trimmed my inherently deeply flawed book-shaped things into real, god-damned books. She had also printed, assembled, and bound a run of her own good-looking books, Clementine Fox, before tackling the lumpy disaster box that was my run of books.

Leigh used Bind! It's super-effective! (Yeah, that's just for you, kiddo.)

A night in which we also seriously discussed getting ourselves something like this. This very, very, very nice binder.

Finished at 2:45AM, dropped Luna off at home at 3AM, and finally got my little head under the dark water of sleep at 4AM.

Day 18, Tuesday, May 7th

STILL COLORING. Nope, didn't finish all of it - just the big parts. Went back to color the back to try and balance the annoying color composition I'd saddled myself with. All in all, I'm happy, and they're so damn corporeal it overtakes my perfectionist-streak.

In any case, there's still more to do. Of the 500-750 possibly viable copies of these books, there are forty-some assembled and 30-some ready to go into the mitts of venerable strangers. That's a lot of work. So it is with a noted, obnoxious little asterisk next to my statement I declare this book "done," but I'll take that.

Howl, in the window, on what feels like the first real day of summer. My stomach is eating itself as loudly as a lawn-mower at the time of this picture.

ON TO TCAF!

SEA CHANGE: Printing the Xeric, Day 15

As of 10:28AM this morning, the guts of this book are DONE.

Had to get up around 6:30 to avoid a parking ticket from the strange, arbitrarily-sanctioned "No Parking by Police Order" signs that seem to be systematically sweeping Whittier for no reason I can see. Probably looking for revenue from ticket fees? However it came about - the only parking to be found last night when I got home was on Grand, a verboten spot. Rose grumpily and got dressed and got out early because of it, though. Got an unhealthy breakfast in and went down to Amaya and Ian's in Seward.

Chatted with Amaya a bit before both of us had to get to work, if in slightly different rgards. Found out shortly after someone had set fire to my elementary school, where my Mom still works. She called me back after I sent her a worried phone call and text message - she was fine, but we were both deeply saddened by the apparent arson/vandalism. Tried to put it out of mind for printing and got rolling about 9:15.

I knew I could knock out the last two plates and a small run of plate 33, which I had accidentally run with too little paper, in what would feel like no time - and it did sort of breeze through. Even with a clear finish line ahead, with Maisie dialed in from 7 hours of printing the day previous, and with a lot of time to accomplish it today, I was sick with nerves. Stomach in knots, as if I had already run into horrible setbacks. Even as the last plate and run of a hundred-some replenishing sheets went through easily and the last sheet fed through to the ending chords of "Eating Paper" by Dave Bazan, I still felt horrible knots in my gut. They had a semi-happy tinge to them, but I can feel them still, reminding that the BOOK is not done YET.

Collated a copy of the guts to show Zak and Leigh at a stop down at the 'CAD (Leigh, who at first did not me notice whistling at her, then throwing the book on her desk, and then knocking on the damn desk, dutifully reminded me she had not seen me since before the beginning of April) and then went back to the task of collating. From that point on in the day, felt exhausted, hungry, sleepy and vaguely pre-illness. Which sometimes happens after a giant stress disappears - my body suddenly releases the illness I'd been too damn busy to have before.

Collated for a couple hours. Ate pizza and chatted with Ian, both worked on stuff in the garage 'till sundown.

So tired. Hard to feel accomplished yet, but let's see how I feel when I know I don't have to get up and print like a madwoman tomorrow.

The total from Monday.

Martian-looking.

The last three.

This mock-cover is as accurate about the content of the book as it was about my emotional state while making the book.

Leaning tower of French paper.

Total of Monday and Tuesday combined - now the counter is being put to use as I collate copies of the book together, but that process is going much, much, much slower.

Plus, Katara the weirdo.

SEA CHANGE: Printing the Xeric, Day 14

Did 14 plates on day 14.

Cleaned/organized and swept the crap out of that garage on Sunday; spent seven and a half hours dirtying it back up today. Roughly two plates in an hour. Really goddamn nice weather.

Got interrupted by a neighbor dude who trounced into the garage as merrily as he pleased and then, of course, had to spend the next hour getting back into rhythm and back on my way. Almost pulped up the rollers. He kept insisting how "cool" it was. I would keep saying, "Yeah, it's cool, but it's not as easy or as fun as it might seem," especially with the machine off. Awkwardly then invited me to "come sit outside and relax in the sun while I do my homework," to which I had to offer a polite, "No, thanks - I gotta get back to this."

When really, I wanted to snap at him, "Take your tea party to the goddamn moon, asshole." And how old are you that you still have homework but think the woman across the street with her head almost stuck completely into a whirring machine wants to be awkwardly picked up in the middle of a run? But, eh. What can you do?

He also proceeded to sit on his back porch across the alleyway and do his homework, but always facing me. For the rest of the afternoon. Cripes.

2 and a half to go. Plus covers. Then a collating party and bind, bind, bind.

The total from Friday.

Only thought this crumpled up wad of paper was memorable because it wasn't part of an ocean of wadded up paper today.

SEA CHANGE: Printing the Xeric, Day 12 + 13

Day 12, Thursday April 25th

Otherwise known as, "getting in the car and driving to Richfield"-day.



It was the first real beautiful day in Minneapolis - filthily sunny as evidenced by that picture and actually becoming warm. A real goddamn relief. A day that never dips below forty degrees means my window for working is expanded to whenever - which, at the beginning of April was about five hours long from noon to five in the afternoon, when the garage was warm enough not to freeze ink to the rollers. Not that I managed to avoid disaster or rookie screw-ups to print for more than four hours at that point (or still).



I'd just started shoveling some breakfast into my mouth at the Seward Co-op when I'd gotten a call from Claude, a pressman I'd heard lauded as a pretty darn good guy and a reliable source for parts. The day previous Zak (and sometimes-Krakken Floss) had come by to help me fix up the idiot mistake I'd made on the press and made a call to Claude about a new part.

That part? A latch pawl. Sonorous name, I know. An inch or so long, but yet another crucial linchpin to my sanity.

What did I do, you ask? My problem this time was not that I'd misaligned my feed, or needed some WD-40, or had flipped some lever I was unaware of its mechanism, but made a real idiot mistake. I'd started running the press on a really, really, really simple plate. Two words, mostly white plate. Very little ink needed. Should have been a snap. I inked up on low, left the fountain wide open, and got the feed lined up. Fed beautifully on the make-ready and switched to the good stock - and almost immediately it started scumming up bad in the middle. I was perplexed and, as I turned down the ink and wiped off the plate and the blanket before going again, increasingly enraged as the problem kept returning again and again.

Well, what I did was forget to engage the top fountain roller, which distributes fountain solution on the top oscillating ink roller and the back of the plate cylinder before it hits the rubber blanket. So absolutely nothing was washing the ink off the blank parts of the plate, and ink was accumulating and transferring to my stock. Simple. Had I simply looked up half an inch to where the fountain sat, just slightly above my nose, I'd have knocked it left into place with the heel of my palm, as I've done hundreds of times before, and I'd be done with this book at this very moment (possibly). Definitely wouldn't be out another couple hundred bucks.

As it happened, I instead assumed it was my ink fountain, which I'd loosened on plates past, which were full of lots of dark gray and black, to make sure enough could pass through. I took my screwdriver and tightened that inkwell as hard as I could against the ink roller. AS HARD AS I COULD.

Told you. Stupid.

The machine kept chugging away. Maisie didn't know any better to stop, but then I also cranked the ink up off of zero - at this point I STILL might have saved myself pain and sorrow - but nope. At which point the mechanism which automatically turns the ink roller in the well reached down, settled into the teeth of a gear, and tried to CRANK it back up. That moving part hit an unmovable object, and that energy had to go somewhere. The latch pawl caught, the solid-metal lever assembly it sat within warped to the right and up to try and relieve the pressure, but not enough. The latch pawl bent, fractured, and part of it flew, one assumes, right over my oblivious head and to the floor in what was probably a few seconds. And I missed all of it. I was soon bent over in tears and fury, bereft of another day of work. Three days of work, as it turned out to be.

Hard to see, I know, but the straight bar between those two gears holds the latch pawl. The latch pawl reaches back and rests on the smaller, left gear and uses downward pressure from a spring to catch the teeth - which is turned by the gear on the right to move the ink roller to the left. You can see it's not flush.

The new lever assembly - I really don't know that's the proper term, but that's sort of what Claude referred to it as - is the one on the left. The one I warped is on the right.

The story of Thursday is that I received a call from Claude at 9am, offering me a new latch pawl he'd found in his menagerie of AB Dick parts. I'd ordered one from Illinois on rush (in the desperate hope to get  printing in the next few days. As Amaya can tell you, I do weird things when I really need to work but I can't, like look for Japanese dinosaur dating sims for the iPad). The price on that one, minus the exorbitant shipping, was $99.90. Claude offered me one for $10, with the addendum, "I've got nine more of them!"

I ended up driving to Richfield, the first time, that morning to pick up that latch pawl. I got back to the garage and installed it, but still the ink roller and the mechanisms wouldn't run normally. It did, for a minute! Ian had been home early on lunch break and he'd come out to help me remove the old latch pawl, and for a second, she rotated, but soon lost tension and started sliding uselessly over the teeth again. I then thought it was the spring (I still hadn't figured out what the fuck had happened on Tuesday at this point). So I tried to wrestle it back into fighting shape - with absolutely no idea what that was, mind you - with two pliers and just my plucky, angry resolve.

The one I attempted to "fix" is the left. What that spring should look is the one on the right.

Had another crisis of faith in Amaya's living room, in the middle of which she pointed out, "Well, do you wish you didn't have the press?" And I immediately said, small but true, "No." She continued to say that, and with extreme accuracy, that had I not elected to print this book myself and shipped it off to a publisher, I would be in the same damn pits about how I should be trying to print it myself.

I then figured out my lever assembly was bent and surmised the real events of Tuesday. Called Claude back and described my problem - a second later he hummed and said, "Yeah, I've got that. Another $10 bucks." I told him, "I'm willing to pay anything at this point to get this machine back in running order." And again, into the car I clamored and rushed out into 35W in the thick of the rush-hour clog. I got to Claude's and he showed me around the garage a bit and explained he had an enormous stockpile of AB Dick parts that were too numerous to ever sell, so he felt no need to rake me over the coals for a latch pawl at a nine-time mark up. I wrote him a check for ten bucks and he graciously offered me a new spring for it and an old catalog of parts, which I was so happy to accept.

He also kept assuring me that part was often broken off, but I still have a hard time seeing how I didn't make a really dumb mistake that Tuesday afternoon. Now you all have to read this horribly long blog post instead of looking at a picture of me holding a printed book up. Bleh.

Claude was great. Gracious and patient and really willing to help me out. Because I also left my folder, holding my replacement-computer iPad and the comic I'd been working on since March, sitting in a patch of sun on his garage desk. I of course didn't realize this until safely navigating rush hour back to Seward. And for the third time, called Claude and clamored into that damn car and back into rush hour.

Also lost the ring clamps on that bar that connects the gear to the lever assembly as well, and mechanically-clever Ian improvised some for me. And figured out that damn spring and how to enact tension on the thing, which I'm sure I would still be wrangling with stupidly. 

"Same day service" is the damn truth. I'd still be grounded without Claude, which is good, because the back up plan I'd had for the book - Zak, also having graciously offered me to use his press to finish my plates if need be, called to let me know that his press had also gotten fucked up. He wished me luck with Maisie, now that I'd fixed it back up, and hoped everything would go well. I said, "Well, it kind of has to now..."

Day 13, Friday April 26th

The Day of No Fucking Crying

Got into the garage, after breakfasting in the Co-op again, around 9:30. Jogged and sorted paper to the new Ink Panthers episode, put them into the boxes from whence they came and labeled them. Finished around 11:30 - ran to shove some pasta into my mouth, having planned to print for as long as physically possible. Maisie was feeding without problems and the ink fountain was back in running order. Cranked some Arcade Fire and went to it.



The paper for the remaining odd plates - five of them, needing varying amounts of paper run through.

Ran the odds and was finished with half the book at roughly 1:30, 2. Plowed through onto the evens, or the back sides of these sheets, and did 4, 6, and 8 before I did something screwy to the feed side and started getting dog-earred sheets and interrupted feeding of sheets. Something was wrong with how I'd set the vaccuum settings, the buckle - something. Because it stopped feeding. And, in my attempt to fix it, around 4 or so, I'd thrown a sheet up into the ink rollers and it was pulped-up to shit. Quit for the minute, went to eat dinner, and came back at 5:15, ready to go again.

Still ran into the same feeding problem, but I was not going to stop. I'd already screwed up one perfectly good plate - and, considering I only have three extra blank ones left at this point, I wasn't going to quit in the middle of another one. Printed through the feeding problem, lost a couple sheets, dog-earred a bunch, but the ink/fountain balance was pretty goddamn beautiful. Also got image-quality loss from the accumulation of anti-offset powder on the rubber blanket from the previously printed sheets going through. But, at this point, I want books that are imperfect but exist, rather than the dream of a better-looking book. A really tough pill for my overwhelming perfectionist-streak to swallow, but...

You can't build a couch out of a blanket draped over a stack of dreams. And you don't have to check a dream with Canadian customs.

Printed 12, 14, 16, 18, before it hit 9:00 PM and a nine-hour run of printing. I seriously debated putting on plate 20, but I knew if I did I would have to commit to finishing it, no matter how badly things went. Or how long.

But my favorite Yo La Tengo record (and one of my favorites, period) Painful came on, and, taking the cue from the drowsy echo of "Big Day Coming," decided to put everything to bed.

I'm keeping that crumpled old Kinko's sleeve just for this, Sally.

A really gorgeous Minneapolis night. Nothing quite like it, especially with the products of a solid day's work covering all the flat surfaces.

A sheet that, having gotten stuck to the rubber blanket while I was crap-shooting the feed problem, that instead of flying up into the rollers or going flat-footed into the pile of good sheets, flew cleanly out back between the rubber blanket and plate cylinder like a paper airplane and straight into my open hand.

Tried to write this post last night around 11:30, but couldn't focus. Howl and I equally ready to conk out.

Until Monday.