So, Eeyore, Bootsy Collins and Charles Bronson walk into your childhood...

Good morrow, gentlefolk!

Verily we have arrived at page 24 of "Saturday" the book.

It just so happens to be Saturday afternoon in the world of India McGreevy and her parents.  The Saturday after a long, grinding week.  And while India is outside inadvertently stumbling into some odd situations, her parents Fred and Elizabeth are inside, trying to figure out how to help India out of her funk (the Eeyore kind, not the Bootsy Collins kind):

Being a kid can feel pretty lonely at times.  There's a theory that, behind the wholesome jokes and foibles of "Peanuts", the comic is often a commentary on the alienation of childhood (which is possibly why all the grownups sound like a trumpet when they speak).  When you're a kid, it can feel like no one is listening and no one understands.  Adults might as well be from another planet because they're so much older they can't possibly understand what it's like to be a kid.

This turns out to be untrue.  Usually, they know, even if it's been a while since your parents' days of failed football kicking and amateur Psychiatry (Also, spoiler alert, adults aren't immune to those feelings of loneliness and alienation, they just have to put up with it and keep going).  But your parents?  They're sharper than you give them credit for.  And they know when you're feeling down.  They may not always know how, but trust me: They're trying to figure out how to get you from Eeyore to Bootsy, quick, fast, and in a hurry.

I think one of the amazing things about being a kid is that you often don't see how much work it takes to do things.  Whether it's getting dinner on the table, keeping the house clean, paying the bills or figuring out how to cheer you up, your parents are like a couple of MacGyvers, constantly improvising and trouble shooting and using what they have to get things done.  As a kid, you're more like an audience member, so you can just enjoy the show.

Who put it better than Charles Bronson in "The Magnificent Seven"?  Nobody:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wOxuFrMP1E

"Don’t you ever say that again about your fathers, because they are not cowards. You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there’s nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to. I have never had this kind of courage. Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee anything will ever come of it. This is bravery."

This goes for Mothers, too.  So the moral is: Your parents understand you better than you think they do.  Even if you're a bit strange.

Cheers.

Piranhas: They'll totally eat you. I'm just saying.

Greetings, Friends!

It's time for our weekly fireside chat about the exploits India McGreevy!  For those of you just joining us, I'll give you a brief overview: India is a creative little girl who's had a rotten week at school.  It's now Saturday in India's world and she finds herself out of ideas, out of energy, and (thanks to her parents), out of the house.

Unfortunately, going outside can land you in unpredictable and unseemly places (that's one of the reasons I make it a point NEVER to go out there myself). Fortunately, if you find yourself stuck in the awful out of doors, there are sympathetic ears to be lent:

I'm pretty sure the moment you leave the comfort and security of your home, you find yourself in one of two situations: Either A.) You're immediately descended upon by a group of ravenous piranhas and devoured so quickly that only a surprised looking skeleton is left standing momentarily before collapsing into a pile of bones that sound like a xylophone when they fall down or, B.) You find yourself in a dark cave, holding on to a terrier named Porkchop while you both watch a large pot of vinegar and baking soda bubble up and boil over:

If you're looking for the former scenario, you'll have to wait for the release of "Saturday: The Director's Cut".

If some of these panels seem like non-sequiturs, I can promise you two things: 1.) No matter how strange it seems now, they'll all make sense in the context of the story and 2.) you ain't seen nothin yet.

Buh-buh-buh baby, you just ain't seen nothin' yet.

So, until our next fireside chat, remember: You have nothing to fear but 1.) Fear itself, 2.) Piranhas, and 3.) Cliched references to Bachman Turner Overdrive.

Cheers.

Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes...

It's Saturday in India McGreevy's world.  Probably just before noon.  She's been shooed outside, possibly as a way to help her get out of her malaise.  Possibly just to get her out of her parents' hair for a little while.  Probably both.

And, so far, mission accomplished on both fronts.  India's barely been out of the house for a good solid half hour and already she's finding herself in some odd places:

This panel?  I like this one.  A lot.  Don't get me wrong: I like almost every panel in "Saturday".  That's because I spend as much time as it takes to make every panel as fun and interesting as I can (that's a big reason this book is taking FOREVER to finish).  But this panel in particular sticks out in my mind when I think of panels I'm proud of.  It's got some pretty dramatic lighting.  The coloring and mood are quite a bit different than any of the previous panels in the book.  And these differences may or may not coincide with a shift in India's story.

And speaking of dark, dramatic themes, let's talk about the love that dare not speak its name.  I'm talking about the kind of thing you keep to yourself.  The kind of thing that both society and shame itself dictate be hidden away in the darkest of dark corners, both literal and metaphorical:

Cupcakes.  Oh, I hear you say, that's nothing to be ashamed of.  There's nothing wrong with a cupcake.  And you're right.  There's nothing wrong with ONE.  Once in a while.  But I'm talking about when you're on your third when you can't even remember eating the second one.  I'm talking about when you peel the wrapper off and shove the whole thing down your gullet.  That's when you even bother eating the bottom part.  Sometimes you just bite the head off and throw the little cupcake trunk away.

Not everyone will know what I'm talking about here.  But some of you know.  Everyone's got their particular flavor of vice.  For me, it's Funfetti.  Have I ever ranted about Funfetti?  Man, how I love Funfetti.  You can have Funfetti cupcakes with Funfetti frosting.  And when it's around, I no longer have my own best interests in mind.  I have only one thing in mind, actually.  And that thing...is Funfetti.

So that's where this rat idea came from.  The idea that a rat would be embarrassed to be caught eating a cupcake in the dark is hilarious to me.  Also, I live in a place where there are massive squirrels (which are just rats we accept).  Once, a friend of mind saw one of these local monstrosities up in a tree.  With a cupcake.

I'll leave you with that.

Cheers.

Thelonius Monk, tuna fish sandwiches, and Delbert Grady's Children...

It's still Saturday, around mid-morning for India McGreevy and company.  We've reached the book's namesake.  The entire week was a day late and a dollar short for the McGeevy crew, and it's left India crabby and morose.  And if you're a loving parent, how do you handle that situation?  Well, first off, you kick 'em outside:

In this scene, India's pet/friend Thelonius has gotten away from her and India's in hot pursuit.  Thelonius has a penchant for disobeying the rules.  Most of the time, he's just improvising, but I get the feeling that he always has a general idea of where he's going and what he wants to accomplish.

 While outside, India and Thelonius run into some schoolmates of India.  I wouldn't call them friends, necessarily.  More like contemporaries, or associates, or arch rivals.

Here, the girls see a neighbor who lives on their street and the twins helpfully inform India of some of the neighbor's biographical information:

Kids say the darndest things, don't they?  Once, long ago when I was in elementary school, I was eating a tuna sandwich at lunch.  The kid sitting next to me told me that the dark spots you sometimes see in canned tuna are ground up pieces of rats.  I was unable to finish lunch.  To this day (no joke) those spots still make me pause when I'm eating tuna sandwiches.

So there's an appetizing bit of imagery for you.  Moving right along...

Speaking of the traumatic: the twins are sorta kinda based on Delbert Grady's twins from "The Shining".  It's one of my absolute favorite movies ever, and the scene where Danny runs into the twins in the hallway still makes me jump.  This particular set of twins do not belong to Delbert Grady.  They're just not all that nice to India.  India would probably get along better with Grady's girls, assuming she could overlook the fact that they were ghosts and all.

Cheers.

Mama Don't Take My Kodachrome Away

We've arrived at page 18.  It's still Saturday morning in the McGreevy's world (probably around 10:00 am).  One of my favorite panels is on this page.  It's a scene where India is walking through a hallway in her house.  The wall behind her is covered in family photos like this one:

There's a lot of me in this book.  Maybe that's a "no duh" statement, considering that I've spent the last five years drawing it, but let me get a little more specific: This drawing of India's dad (Fred) when he was probably a teenager is based on one of my favorite old photos of my dad when he was probably a teenager.

For years, that photo was tacked up on a bulletin board in our hallway, along with other great photos, pins, stickers, old tickets, and hundreds of other little odds and ends collected over the years.  You couldn't even see any part of that bulletin board anymore, such was the coverage of objects.  It was a family history of sorts, but one that kept changing and growing and getting richer and richer until it was bulletined so much it could be bulletined no more.

It was like a language, really.  One that only my family spoke, because no one else looking at it would know the things on the board or understand what those things meant or who those people were.  You can't get much more specific or personal than that.  And yet, I'd bet that just about everyone reading this had some kind of equivalent, right?  A place in your home where there's a pile of memories.

It's a little strange and also a little comforting to think that the most personal aspects of my life are also sometimes the most universally understood.

Anyhoo, here's another panel from that same page.  This one isn't one of the hallway photos, just a panel of India looking out the front door:

Cheers.

Problems can be SO insensitive.

It's here.  Finally.

The McGreevys have made it through the frustrating, disappointing, infuriating, no good very bad gauntlet of the previous week.  It's Saturday morning.  Everything should be fine now, right?  Saturdays should be safe, like home base in freeze tag.  A border across which the stresses and anxieties of the week dare not tread.

Except that problems have a super inconsiderate way of not recognizing the sovereignty of Saturdays.  It's like they don't even understand the concept of home base.  Which means that sometimes you wake up on a Saturday morning and it feels like waking up on any other morning:

Being down in the mouth usually feels like a pretty lonely affair.  But the people who love you?  They noticed:

They may not know what do do.  At least, not right away.  But they're not about to just stand around and let problems disregard the rules of freeze tag.  That kind of aggression will not stand, man.

Cheers.

Estelle Getty and Frozen Dinners

It's now Friday evening in the McGreevy's world.  The week has finally, mercifully, ended.  Everyone's home and things are starting to look up for some.  For others, not so much.

I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but food is a big thing for me.  I love food.  I love eating it, of course.  I love making it sometimes; the process can be a lot of fun or grueling (heh heh...gruel-ing).  One of the things I find interesting about food is the emotional element.  Food is nurturing.  We use food to sustain us in lots of ways.  It's one of the reasons there's a whole category called "comfort foods".  And food can be a way to show you care.

In the beginning of "Saturday", the dinners are all healthy and delicious.  As the week progresses and conditions worsen, so too does the food.  By the end of the week, the McGreevys are eating sandwiches and canned soup.

Tonight they're having frozen dinners, but it's not because Elizabeth McGreevy has given up on life.  In fact, it's the opposite.  She spent part of her day thinking of ways to apologize to Fred:

Which didn't leave a lot of time for dinner prep.  Dinner prep tonight looks like this:

Tonight's dinner isn't much more than a calorie delivery vehicle, and it's probably not going to be a pleasant vehicle at that.  We're talking about the Chevy Citation of dinners here:

This panel was particularly fun to think up and draw.  Mama Sodium, for instance is based on Estelle Getty (an actress from "The Golden Girls" and "Stop or My Mom Will Shoot") and my grandma, who had a professional-grade frown.

If you want a look behind the curtain that is my imagination, in my head this photo is meant to look like it was taken in an Italian Kitchen, but was probably taken on a poorly-constructed set.  And whoever designed it is really laying the Italian on thick.  Out the window looks like an Italian village, there's garlic hanging from the wall, and there's a map of Italy.  I'm pretty sure the people who actually live in Italy know where they are and don't need the reference point.

So that's (part of) Friday evening at the McGreevy's house.  There's a lot more to this page, as always.  And the day you'll get to see it keeps getting closer.

Cheers.