Site-seeing

It's cold in Kansas City, and I'm washing down the temperature change with a nice bottle of economically priced port wine. It tastes a bit like cough syrup, but it goes down slowly and smoothly, so I can't complain.

As mentioned earlier, I'm sitting out from blogging activities for a few days, but that doesn't mean I can't recommend a few sites to visit for those with a few minutes and an eye for the original.

First of all, as far as comic blogs go, you can't do much better than Richard's Poor Almanac, maintained by Washington Post cartoonist Richard Thompson. Richard's daily comic, Cul de Sac, is one of the best reads in the paper today. You can read todays' Cul de Sac here, and find some additional comics and musings on his new blog, www.richardspooralmanac.blogspot.com. I got to join Richard and some of my co-workers for dinner last month, and he was kind enough to leave me what was left of his kung-pao chicken, which I devoured several hours later at 3:30 a.m.

Another worthwhile site featuring an entirely different set of sketches is "Pope-by-Pope," a daily sketch experiment carried out by Web designer/old roommate of mine, Matt Kirkland, in which he actually sketched every one of the past 265 Popes. Since the Popes date back to the time of St. Peter, Matt had to base his sketches on a variety of sources, including stained glass portraits and even mosaics. When we lived together, Matt was always building shelving units made out of giant plastic water jugs and scooters made of scrap metal, so it doesn't surprise me that he's taking on unusual subjects in his art. He also has a schnazzy site at www.mattkirkland.com, and does some freelance Web and industrial design. Matt is currently sketching all the U.S. presidents.


I've linked to a few artists lately, and I thought I'd close out my post today with a link to LittlePaperAirplanes.com, an online store and gallery featuring the prints, shirts, postcards and booklets from a variety of incredibly talented young artists. Little Paper Airplanes is based in Los Angeles and run by Silver Lake artist Kelly Lynn Jones, who I met at this year's comic con. Little Paper Airplanes is lots of fun.