David Malki !

Maker Faire sketches / Next up: Michigan!

Thanks to everyone who said hello at Maker Faire last weekend! It was a whirlwind trip, but what fun it was. Here are some sketches I did for folks at the show!

(Confidential to the Annie E.Z. and Nancy C.D. who got books from me at Maker Faire: Would you email me please?)

Next weekend — I’m in Dearborn, Michigan for the World Steam Expo! It will be my first time ever visiting Michigan, and I’m very excited to meet Eminem. He will be at the airport, right?

The show runs Friday through Monday at the Henry Ford Museum, which I’ve heard is quite the place. I mean the Hyatt! Which I’m sure is nice too. I’ll be doing a special “Making of Wondermark” panel on Sunday afternoon, but if that wasn’t enough, there is also a ton of other steampunky programming, including a “Mad Science Fair.” Oh and I also designed the programs for the show!

Then, on Wednesday, June 1, I’ll be presenting my “True Stuff from Old Books” lecture at the Ann Arbor District Library! I believe it is free to attend. I further believe that it will be amazing? I’ll be signing books and stuff afterward as well.

Finally — I’ll have a little time to kill in Ann Arbor and environs during the trip. Any recommendations of things to check out while I’m in town? Leave a comment or send me an email!

TCAF Sketches / Maker Faire Bay Area this weekend!

TCAF was great! It was super busy (as you can see above) — another reason why it is one of my favorite shows ever. Here are a couple of sketches I did for folks!

My sketches are very self-aware.

We also played a game of Machine of Death Draw & Guess in Toronto! This was mega fun. We have some great pictures, as well as full video, of that event over on the MOD blog.

Also in that same blog post, I talk about the Machine of Death Official Seal Embosser that I’ve started bringing to shows. If you’d like to get your copy of MOD not just signed, but sealed against tampering, come see me at any appearance this year. See some pictures of it in action!

Next on the docket is this coming weekend — Maker Faire, in San Mateo!

Here is a picture of me taken at last year’s Maker Faire (by Flickr user notthatjeffy).

I think it makes me look like a crazy man who makes comics in a canoe adrift on a lake. AM I? Come to Maker Faire and find out for yourself!

P.S. I’ll have these brand-new items at the show! shhhhhh

World Beard & Moustache Championships!

This weekend, Trondheim, Norway hosted the biannual World Beard & Moustache Championships! As reported by BBC News, the winner was German hairdresser Elmar Weisser, who sculpted his beard into a reindeer.

In 2005 he won with with a beard styled into the shape of Berlin’s Brandenberg Gate, and in 2007 with a representation of London’s Tower Bridge.

He said he had begun preparing his creation for the Trondheim event at 7am, with the help of his sister.

“When my beard isn’t styled, it goes down to my waist. It is sort of folded up,” he told the AFP news agency.

There are more pictures (from previous years) here at CNN, and I am also pleased to report that Official Wondermark Beard Correspondent Pat Race is on the scene in Norway as well!

Pat and his Beard Team Alaska Robotics entered the competition as part of the American contingent. On his blog he’s been keeping a travel journal, including a ton of great pics and audio interviews with competition participants.

Pat’s also been updating a Flickr stream with photographs from the trip and the competition. Note that Pat called the winner beforehand, in an email to me — this is a keen beard observer. Or perhaps the reindeer beard was just obviously unstoppable in every way.

Check out more on-the-scene photos from the 2011 (and the 2009) WBMC on Pat’s Flickr!

Smithsonian Beard Survey

Smithsonian.com presents: “Who Had the Best Civil War Facial Hair?” — a gallery of twenty-four incredible face-coifs, with voting privileges. Click on each photo for a neat little bio of each person, as well as wonderful examples of Civil War-era photography, which still looks amazingly crisp even today.

Thanks to Christy, Scott, Frank, Clint, folks on Twitter and the million others who sent this my way! I am glad to have people instantly think, “I know who needs to see this.”

== BONUS BEARD LINK #1: ==

“A Beard’s Eye View of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Politics,” sent in by faithful Marksman Will H., is a description of a Penn State grad student project:

Why did millions of American men begin sprouting facial hair in the 1850s? And why did most of them cut it off by the early decades of the twentieth century? […] To investigate that question, and with some indispensible technical support from my father, I’ve begun putting together a database of nineteenth century politicians and their facial hair.

More here.

== BONUS BEARD LINK #2: ==

Some answers to the questions posed above. Here is a new transcript of my interview with the world’s foremost beard expert, Dr. Christopher Oldstone-Moore. I’ve linked the audio from this interview before — but now I’ve also textified it for greater readability! Since you cannot read audio. Like, at all.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The birth of the Victorian beard — and how its emergence can be traced precisely to 1848
• Both beards and clean-shavenness as signifiers going back to the Greeks
• The reasons for the decline of beardedness around 1900
• What the current Renaissance of beards could mean

“…I do think that we’re in an exploratory era. I don’t really know where that exploration is going to go, but I do think you’re right. There is more freedom, more interest in looking for a new style of facial hair than there has been in a long time.”

The full transcript is here! Enjoy!