This may be the shortest blog I have done to date. My week has gotten away from me and I still have way too many things to do. I have to go to a party tonight for Kristen Gore that is being thrown by her parents. Before you say, "Wow, how rough is it to have to go to a party with the Gore family?" I will tell you in advance, that I will only be there to sell 300 books in a very short time. Pre-sales are not an option and the only equipment I will have with me is a pen and a knuckle-buster credit card machine. I will have to get out of the situation using only my wits and the tools I can fashion from cocktail napkins and those little plastic swords. I am more like Bear Grylls than a social dignitary. If Bear Screws up, he only faces death, I have to face an angry event manager and maybe Al Gore. Or worse, Tipper.

A real thing I wanted to tell you about is a cool event coming up in Dupont Circle next week. I travel. I travel a fair amount, I just got back form Canada where I had a grand time doing nothing. Some of you travel, and I am certain you send a postcard to someone on occasion. I have been known to do the same. What if you found one of these postcards from long ago. The image is faded and the edges are tattered, the ink is smudged and the stamp is gone but you can still see the address and the notation. Have you ever thought where that card came from and what circumstances surrounded it? One man has and he wrote a book about it. Well, not really. See, this man is Jason Rodriguez and he is a comic book (should I say Graphic Novel?) artist. He also knows a load of other comic artists and for fun--now for profit we hope--he and his friends would make up stories about where these cards came from. The book is called "Postcards: True Stories that Never Happened" and it is great.

I have been a comic fan since I was little and it is something that never really leaves you if you loved it. If done well, the stories can open a whole new section of your imagination that you never thought about. They are a beautiful way for people to enjoy art and enjoy story at the same time. If you find them immature and juvenile, I will argue too you that all early art was a type of Comic book. Think of the Sistine Chapel. Important huh? Nice work of art? What STORY does it tell? If you don't know, it tells a whole series of stories from the old testament. The Creation of the Universe, Noah and his children, it is all right there for you to read without a single word.

Jason has put together this great book of stories based of postcards he has found through the years. He is going to bring some o the original postcards and some of his original works to the store so people can take a look at them as well. If thing all go according to plan, he is also going to bring along a fellow artist who will be complete with sketch book and pencils and probably drawing pictures of the Dupont store. You should stop by and see him now, because he s headed to San Francisco for a comic convention right after that where he will join in the fine tradition of stealing Jim Lee's robe and pretending he is Thor while someone flicks the light switch on and off really fast to make it look like a portal to another world is opening up as he jumps up and down on the bed.
Maybe those are only things I do when I am on vacation but if we are lucky, maybe Jason will send us a postcard.

Oh Yeah, Dupont Cirlce 7pm Tuesday the 24th. Be there!