Breaking News: Formerly landlocked Kansan leaves the continent, blogs about it

Hello from Portland,
city of giant tomato plants, cabbage-eating-aphids, and two geriatric dogs, one of whom sits in the kitchen while I am away and the other, the basement.

Before I left on my trip abroad, I posted a photo of Beija on Facebook and wrote "Au Revoir Beija
". The lesson I learned in this is: If your dogs is 14 years old and you make any mention of the word "goodbye" (or get a tattoo of her name for that matter), everyone will assume your dog is dead and start freaking out.
I had to tell everyone Beija was not dead, and that I was just bidding audieu online. Okay.

So after years of being landlocked and only crossing the border to see Canada and Mexico, I traveled to Europe (in particular Italy and England) to visit Jeb (who was on tour in Italy with YACHT) and Beth (who is staying in London).

I wanted to show you some comics & food highlights from my trip.

1. Sketchbook pages about the 24 hour trip there (click to enlarge):

I landed in Milan and at my first show of the tour found this:

2. Italian Food Highlights and lowlights

COFFEE: even from a machine in the hotel lobby you have delicious espresso with crema. It is what you get anytime you ask for coffee. I was in hog heaven.

ROADSIDE FOOD: When you stop at a "My Chef" or "Autogrill" in Italy, you will be treated to DELICIOUS olive bread sticks, pasta, some vegetables, possibly focaccia, and always olive oil with balsalmic vinegar in the dining area. This was a food highlight for me after years of touring in the U.S. where ketchup packets and the smell of Subway are the hallmarks of our road food.

PEOPLE FEED YOU. When you are touring Italy, it is customary for your hosts to both house and feed you.
Highlights of this: many courses of delicious food and wine, always finished with espresso.

Lowlight:a delicious but dubious pesto which, after a little post-dinner detective work, appeared to include "fromaggio".

LOWLIGHT: Getting charged $11.00 for two espressos when Jeb & I were set free in Milan with our unwieldy Italian. Damn you, service charge for sitting!

HIGHLIGHT: Eating redemptive gelato (senza latte) for $2.50 and taking a photo with my filthy Food Fight tote bag in front of the Prada store.

HIGHLIGHT: Swimming in the Adriatic Sea

NOW ON TO LONDON

ENGLISH BREAKFAST: Often including vegan sausages. Shown here is breakfast from a hotel with butter-soaked mushrooms but otherwise vegan fare (I hate the word fare).

HIGHLIGHT: BANGERS AND MASH AT THE S&M CAFE.
Kind of like long , sausage-shaped veggie burgers. Delicious ones.

MIXED BAG: SAF RESTAURANT
I went to Saf in London for a late dinner with six people.
If you ever go there, I recommend coming early (our top three choices from the menu were sold out). I enjoyed their drinks (including quinoa vodka) , appetizers (Ex:Caviar Blinis- Beetroot and fresh herb caviars served on sourcream, sweet potato blinis with chives and shallots), and my dessert (chocolate orange torte). Here are some entree details:

BEAUTIFUL, BUT WEIRD, TACOS
This taco trio arrived soggy, with each shell heaped full of a salsa or bland guacamole only. The side salad was delicious.

BLACKENED TOFU
This was the stand out dish from our table. The plating was lovely, and the tofu had all the flavor that I was missing from my sad risotto. Speaking of the risotto....

It's main selling point (from the waiter) was that it was "filling". That feature was missing from the very dainty tofu dish, but when you are fine-ish dining, do you really need it to be a giant hearty vat?

Anyway, the risotto was missing something. Most definitely salt. When we received some salt it was locked inside a hellish and non-functional grinder, maddening each risotto-haver at the table as we ground and ground the salt to no avail.

The longer the risotto sat around, the more oatmealish it became. It was a large, heavy portion that, though complex on it's own, could have benefited from some flavor diversity and something to lighten it up.
I think this risotto deserves to be a strong side, and not a weak main course.

My last meal abroad was this strict vegetarian snack provided by Delta, with it's own sterile grape holder and totally not vegan gelato (first ingredient: skimmed milk). In case you're wondering, there is a very decent mini baguette with vegetables and vegan pesto shrouded in that foil.


I leave you with this buck toothed fellow from the Natural History Museum in London.

Over and out,
n.g.

p.s. Here is a video of Italian highlights.

p.p.s. Here is an interview I did with Radar Productions about my upcoming writer's retreat in Mexico.

Midwestern Adventure

Hi Everyone. I'm looking for a way to procrastinate right now from my (actually very fun) job of drawing dogs and invitations.






So I thought I might tell you about September.

1. MIDWEST

I went to the Midwest & performed in Columbia at the Rag Tag Theater,
afterwhich traveling to a friend's house where I learned (in the midst of a game) that if she had to pick her last meal, it would be Fiddle Faddle. Do you know that that is? Kind of like the poor man's cracker jacks.



I also went to Chicago and Iowa City, where I did not perform but did table with my stuff at Casiotone for the Painfully Alone / Otouto / Key Losers shows.






Otouto is one of my new favorite bands, who've traveled here from Australia and are currently touring the US with Casiotone (on his very last tour ever).
Someone said they sound "like Dirty Projectors covering the Blow".




Onward.

1.5. KANSAS CITY REVIEWS

CHINA TOMS felt wrong for the first time in the 13 years since I started eating there. The dining room was empty and hot, sort of muggy and the soy sauce container appeared not to have been cleaned since I dined there in high school. Bummer.

GENGHIS KHAN is always right.

BROADWAY CAFE even better than before. If only it were closer to our hotel...


LA QUINTA INN in Lenexa, Kansas, featuring a very very friendly front deskman who recently immigrated to Kansas from Zimbabwe, and whom I would befriend if only I lived there. He was so much nicer than the people at...

SUPER 8 MOTEL in Lenexa, Kansas, which featured a muggy room of bad smells and a la-z-boy chair speckled in who knows what sort of invisible debris (see photo). The bed had a couch pillow masquerading as a sleeping pillow, which I exchanged for an unleavened cotton-clad matzoh to lay my head upon.

HY VEE GROCERY STORE in Lenexa, Kansas had an amazing salad bar with delicious fresh fruits, no lie. The salad bar also had some classic midwestern fare (like Oreo pudding and glazed strawberries) which I decoded for a very curious and mystified Jeb.





THE GROCERY STORE IN COLUMBIA MISSOURI was a land unlike we've ever seen. Where "garlic" is a specialty item kept safely in the back room, "canned pumpkin" is an unstocked delicacy (leaving one to make sweet potato waffles in lieu of), and broccoli is charged at $3.50 a head, no matter if you have a head or not.

WINSTEADS on the Plaza in Kansas City held up to the test of time, serving a small gravy boat of french fries and a frosty chocolate coke. The waitress had amazing false eyelashes, and I only lamented the lack of table-side juke boxes.


FUD is a new vegan restaurant in Kansas City, where I had trouble wrapping my head around the idea of no table menus, only a chalkboard and a thorough verbal description from the waitress/owner of the restaurant.


I dined on vegan nachos with "jack fish" (phish?) (made of jack fruit), Wild Rice meat, cashew cheese (very nacho cheese like, no lumps), and a generous helping of guacamole. BUT LO! As I finished the first layer of nachos, the owner came out and instructed me that I needed more cheese. In a stupor I agreed and she whisked my plate away, only to return it with the 2nd tier of chips replenished! More cheese & guacamole! Had I died and gone to a vegan heaven ? Perhaps. But I needed a nap after eating what was possible 3 pounds of jack fish.

COLUMBIA MISSOURI READING

Nicole J. Georges | Sister Spit.mov

Reading about my first job as a karaoke jockey. Recorded in San Francisco on the first day of the 2010 Sister Spit Tour!

WARNING: ADULT LANGUAGE
NOT FOR MINORS!!!!

Nicole's Dress | Sister Spit.mov

New Advice Post

New Advice Video is Up!

FOR ADULTS ONLY

A video from our live advice stage show at the Bedlam Theatre in Minneapolis, featuring special guest Leo Plass can be found HERE.

Things of Note

Ten Things You Should Know:

1. I had to take down my advice videos because they conflicted with my day job, which is teaching 5th graders. More details once school is out.

2. My dear Volvo Gandalf was struck by another car and totaled recently. Comic to follow.



2.5 Here is my new car (both images are weird reproductions of my Volvos in toy version)



(i wish it was this color)


3. I saw a 104 year old participant of the "Tell It Like It Tiz" zine today after getting my eyes dilated at the Doctor's Office. If you don't know, Marc Parker, Meg Storey, Diane Gasperin and myself do a zine workshop each week with a senior center and have produced two issues in which we interview the participants, do comics about our adventures, their adventures, and more. You can get it by clicking on the link above (click on the title) and harassing Marc Parker for a copy.
This link is to an article about us from the Oregonian.




4. Teaching some workshops at the Portland Art Museum this summer.

5. Going to Europe with Sister Spit in November!

Wow!

6. Only 30 pages left to draw of my graphic novel (knock on wood knock on wood knock on wood).



6.5. HARLAN is helping me with scanning and advanced photoshop/indesign tomfoolery.





7. I was in the Oregonian Newspaper this week as they checked in on some stories from years past. Please note: I do not live near Mississippi Street.


8. Look for me in the anthology comic Dope Flounder, which will appear on Free Comic Book Day in selected establishments for FREE! It will also feature these dudes:
David Wein
Tom Lechner
Sean Christensen
Ian Sundahl
Jesse Reklaw
and will be published by Sparkplug and Tugboat Press (together!).

9. I found out that Wishbone came to me knowing how to shake. I was trying fruitlessly to get Beija to shake hands by grabbing her paw and saying "Shake!" and giving her a treat, when Wishbone stepped in and basically said "you mean like this?" and offered her hand (paw). No Joke! What other secrets does she hold?

10. No Pet Portraits until after May. I'm booked up.

xoxo
n.g.