I’m leaving early tomorrow on a 19 hour flight to Ethiopia. Our first stop is Djibouti. I fly to Chicago, then Germany, then Ethiopia. I’m pretty sure I’ll go completely homicidal by the time we arrive. The military gave us the option of staying at the Hilton, or a local flavor hotel where I’m sure there are kids with flies on their eyelids begging for Chiclets every 3 steps. I’m mixing racist imagery here, I know.

So in all honesty, I’m nervous to go to Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Djibouti. Maybe its because we hear fun stories about rape victims being blamed and stoned to death. Or maybe because the only time I see Middle Easterners on tv, they are yelling and sweating. So, obviously I’m biased and I really haven’t heard anything great about their culture. I’ve decided to go into this trip holding dear to my heart the negative opinions that I have about the Middle East. I’m going into this totally not expecting to have my opinion changed at all. I hope I’m wrong and I’ve just misundertsood their culture. But I kinda doubt it.

Stay tuned…

For the last few months, I’ve had the best time working on an animated movie for “Dr. Dolittle”. My roommate was the ridiculously talented Storyboard Artist, Eddie Fitzgerald. He’s worked on most of the cartoons you grew up watching and my favorite of which was “Ren and Stimpy”. Holy shit, right? Anyways, a few years ago we were working on some other project and he comes into a very proper meeting holding this in his hands. He’d taped this head onto a body he’d drawn and was so excited to show it to everyone.

Unfortunately, the people in that meeting were in a meowy mood and his enthusiasm was met with seriousness. But this picture has stuck with me for years. It never stops making me giggle. There’s a million other drawings of his that make me laugh, but I probably can’t put them up for legal reasons.
Anyhoodles, check out his blog,  #mce_temp_url#, it’s called Uncle Eddie’s Theory Corner and has great entries on art, cartooning, clowns and several fun topics!