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Boom! And a Bear Comes Out

I wrote a song! It has been running through my mind for a long time, and I finally said “You know what? It is time to FINISH THIS. Time to lay it down. Time to make it the PARTY HIT OF THE SUMMER.”

Boom! And a Bear Comes Out from David Malki ! on Vimeo.

I hope you like it!

If you also have a nagging “cool thing” that you need an excuse to finish, why not submit something to the Machine of Death Talent Show? We’ve pushed back the submission deadline to April 20, and we will accept video performances from remote participants (although if you’re in the Los Angeles area, we’d love to physically put you on the stage)!

More info here. If you can’t submit something, we hope you’ll at least watch the show on the evening of April 26, either live in Los Angeles or livestreamed at MachineofDeath.net. Here’s the Facebook event!

I will tease you with this as well: everyone who’s able to attend the show in person will go home with a very special item that we’ll be unveiling the evening of.

Admission will be free, so if you can’t make it, send your Los Angeleno friends!

Sketches from MoCCA!

Thanks for coming and saying hello at MoCCA last weekend! It was a fun show. I loved being in New York, and it’s always super encouraging and energizing to meet nice people who have nice things to say.

Some of you were clearly nervous, but don’t worry! It was adorable. I get nervous sometimes too. I did not think you were weird. This is the first time in a very long time that I can confidently stamp a show as “WEIRDO-FREE.” I did not meet a single weirdo all weekend! (Until I got on the subway, of course. But that’s a different story.)

Mediocre Sketches

As I normally do, I was offering Mediocre Sketches to all and sundry. As I normally forget to do, though, this time I had the presence of mind to take some pictures!

I usually ask the sketch requester for a suggestion of what to draw — unlike other cartoonists, I don’t have easy characters to just whip out a sketch of. Most people prefer to leave the choice to me (as in the above), which is fine, but I also got some good requests!

“Octopuss in Boots”

“Elephant Chef”

“Dignified Portrait” (click for bigger)

Machine of Death

I also managed to whip up a portable Machine of Death to administer mortality predictions on the spot. Normally this sort of thing is done in a van with an autoclave and a stack of waivers and a full counseling crew on-hand, but in a pinch I made do with a piece of cardboard and a Sharpie.

Dresden Codak‘s Aaron Diaz was my dapper model for this demonstration (with thanks to Chris Hastings for the pics):

WATCH OUT FOR RUBBER DUCKIES AARON

This weekend: I’m in NYC!


Flickr photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

This weekend I’ll be at the MoCCA Art Festival in New York! It’s likely my only appearance in New York this year, so I’m very excited. Growing up in California, I’d gotten a pretty good dose of New York from just, you know, the culture — TV, movies, people I met, and so on. But until a few years ago I’d never been, never had reason to visit.

There even came a point when I got tired of hearing about it. “Everyone says New York is so great,” I thought. “I bet it’s not. I bet it’s just dirty and loud and gross and everything’s expensive and everybody’s rude and it’s just a pain in the rear.” Once I even declared I was “sick of New York City as the default American cultural referent.” I was a man with a bachelor’s degree! I had Opinions.

Then I went to New York, for MoCCA in fact, in 2006. And I realized — yes, it is all those things, dirty and loud and gross and so on. But it’s also super great.

I’ve definitely had some miserable trips; on several occasions it was a million degrees and I hated it. I mean, I still loved it. It was New York, and I got to be a part of it for a little while. But I was okay with coming home too. It’s not all roses and cream, or peaches in butter.

But another time I was walking down the street and then I stopped and watched a man climb right up the side of the New York Times building. Everybody was stopped on the sidewalk, just watching him go. A Sikh gentleman with what appeared to be a lacquered beard asked me what everyone was looking at. “That guy’s climbing the building,” I said.

I bet that kind of stuff happens every day here in L.A., but there’s no way I would have been on the street at the time. That, to me, is the fundamental appeal of New York. In New York, you are right there on the street when that happens.

ANYWAY

I will be at the Lexington Avenue Armory on Saturday and Sunday! Here is a map, and here is more information about the show.

I will be bringing Death Prediction Cards! They will be free for the asking!

There will be about a half-dozen Machine of Death contributors there who can sign your books, if you bring them — or, you will be able to buy one from me! I will have those too, along with the regular complement of Wondermark goods, or some useful subset.

It will be a good time, and if you do not come, I will fight you. I am not afraid. You cannot be afraid, in New York.

Do you have a place you finally visited, and realized you were wrong about? Besides New York, I’ll add Toronto to my own list (which I love, having now been several times, but which I had no frame to understand before I went).

Leave a comment and tell your own story!

MOD Collector’s Sets are almost gone!

I just heard from Jeffrey at TopatoCo that the Machine of Death Collector’s Sets are already two-thirds gone! Less than 100 copies remain in the world. Update: They’re all gone! The regular edition is still available though!

If you picked one up, thank you so much! I really hope you enjoy it. There is a team of people diligently hand-lettering the certificates as we speak.

If you haven’t yet, the sets will only be up till Saturday, or while supplies last, whichever comes first! I expect they will probably sell out before Saturday.

TRIVIA TIDBIT: The hardcover edition includes 78% more sassiness than the paperback. This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and is not intended to cure, diagnose, or treat any disease.

Machine of Death limited hardcover edition + collector’s set

Machine of Death limited hardcovers, talent show, and price drop!

Matt, Ryan and I — the editors of Machine of Death — want to be the kinds of people who do things for no other reason than we think they’re cool. I explain over on the Machine of Death blog:

The point is that, if you simply look at the stats, we have done far better by following whims than by executing carefully-planned strategies, for the simple reason that the strategies eat up time. Matt, Ryan and I love discussing ideas. And letting all the steam out of an idea by talking about it means it’s harder to ever do it. Energy that could be channeled into action sometimes gets channeled instead into hand-wringing.

So we decided to just do some stuff. We now have a little money to play around with — not very much (we funneled most of our immediate profits back into printing more books), but since we all have other jobs and none of our mortgages are riding on this project, we want to play around a little, to buy ourselves a little adventure. Here’s what we’ve done… (more)

• We made a bunch of cool death prediction cards that you can have.

• We have created and released a limited-edition Machine of Death hardcover, packaged in a collector’s set with an embroidered patch and a personalized Death Prediction certificate. Update: These are all gone, snatched up at once!

• We are putting on a talent show on April 26 that you can audition for and be a part of.

• We have temporarily lowered the prices on all of our ebooks — Kindle, Nook, iBooks, and ePub.

We want to live in a world in which “this would be really cool” is totally a good enough reason to do something. So we’re making it happen! We’re very proud of it all, and would very much love for you to take a look. Thanks!