Friday?!

  

Sometimes I come to the end of the week and it feels like nothing has happened in the studio.  Progress is slow when you are in the "Good Things Take Time" business, and when you have weeks that are hijacked by life and its attendant activities and concerns (read: doctor appointments, fights with banks and insurance companies, etc.etc.etc.) even a little progress resulting in something shoddy or thrown together seems like it might be welcome.

Plus, I am working on something I don't want to think about, let alone talk about....

It involves the "C" word.

 

 (ahem! Christmas, of course.)

 

 Speaking of which, remember the nativity piece 

I made for a Christmas cd?  

The cd is just coming out -- you can find it here!

 

Now where was I . . .

Oh yes -- On weeks like this, I feel like 

I am trapped in the Mark Trail comic strip.

Russ and I started reading Mark Trail a long time ago, for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and quickly realized that it was so ridiculous, we couldn't possibly stop.  We can't believe that someone gets paid to produce it.  And that people read it (which seems silly since we read it, I know, but -- )

Because NOTHING EVER HAPPENS.

 here's a sample of the progress Mark has made this week

We can go on vacation for 10 days and come back, and we haven't missed a beat because the story has not advanced.  It's worse than a soap opera.

I thought it was bad when I took 20 years off from TheYoung and the Restless and then was able to pick up immediately, but Mark Trail makes Y&R seem like it's moving at warp speed. (I am currently on another multi-year Y&R hiatus, incidentally. Hopefully they will cancel it before my next 20-year check-in).

Mark Trail still feels like something 

that would step out of the pages of my 1950's magazines.

It actually started in 1946, originally drawn by a cartoonist who worked as a national parks guide, and focused on nature/environmental themes.  In the 1950's, there was a Mark Trail radio show, as well as a series of comic books and a magazine.  And then the world moved on.  But Mark stayed in Lost Forest.

For years Russ and I have wanted to take Mark Trail strips and swap out the dialogue for something much ...  racier! ... and publish them online.  Turns out someone already does that.  Rats.  In fact, I didn't have to search long at all to figure out that there is an entire underground Mark Trail world populated by self-described "Trail-heads".

I'm not sure I'm a full-blown Trail-head yet, but if you'd like me to catch you up on the story so you can pick up Mark Trail yourself, let me know and I'll send you a sentence or two.  That's all it will take.

 In the meantime, I'm going to stay here 

in Lost Studio and conduct a safari of my own,

trying to find what I did this week -- 

I'm sure it's buried somewhere 

on this mess-of-a-desk . . . 

Mark sez:

Happy Weekend Trails, 

one and all!