A’course, it’s not really a surprise when the product is shot through with eye-meltingly gorgeous Becky Dreistadt¹ as The Bear just so happens to be. It also doesn’t hurt that the project is driven by comics impresario Ryan Sohmer, who is caught bein’ all sincere in the intro video; heck, that previously-suppressed side of Sohmer was probably worth another US$40-50K of the total.

Anywho, thanks to the support of people buying multiple copies (I know I’ve got holiday gifts for new parents covered for a while), there’s a mountain of bonuses in the pipeline, including prints, wallpapers, greeting cards, bookmarks, dust jackets, Becky signatures (by my count, nearly 3350 books need signing), and a 0.04% chance of walking away with a Dreistadt original. Extra special thanks to everybody that made that last stretch goal possible, as a 0.04% chance of a Dreistadt original is 0.04% more than the number of Dreistadt originals I have presently.

• Sticking with the Blind Ferret family for a moment, Danielle Corsetto gets to so something cool — go back to the ol’ alma mater for official reasons². Specifically, next week she’ll be mounting an alum exhibition at Shepherd University’ Frank Center Gallery from Monday, 1 October to Friday, 2 November, with a kick-off talk on the first day from 5:00 to 6:00pm and a reception³ until 8:00pm. Those of you in/around Shepherdstown, WV (it’s just about where Maryland and the two Virginias meet) should definitely drop by and say howdy.
• Keeping with the themes of both events and higher learning, this weekend (specifically, this Saturday) will see the latest iteration of MICE (or the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo if you’re not into the whole brevity thing) in Cambridge, MA, on the campus of Lesley University in a casual, friendly, first-name-basis funfest. Webcomics and webcomics-adjacent creators like Alexander, Box, Braden & Shelli (who tie things back to Adventure Time, taking us full circle), Chris, Colleen, Dave, Dirk, Jamie, Jason, John, KC, Kevin, Ming, Paige, Ross, Sophie, Stephanie, and Zach will be there, chillin’, and generally being awesome people. Oh, and it’s free, so what are you waiting for?

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¹ Speaking of whom, she’s also half of her usual Becky and Frank pairing in a seven-page backup story in the latest issue of Adventure Time, out today.

² I did that once on a recruiting trip and man, it’s awesome.

³ Read: snacks and booze.

For anybody that’s ever wanted to talk about a creator’s newest work and and put a career in perspective at the same time, there’s adequate writing and there’s sublime¹ writing. A stellar example of the latter dropped yesterday from the highly capable FILM CRIT HULK², talking about Hope Larson, by way of discussing A Wrinkle In Time. If you’ve ever wanted to feel humble about a public hobby as an opinion-slinger, consider that you’ll never be as good as a fictional radioactive ragebeast³, not that I would know anything about that.

• WE’RE DOWN TO THE whoops sorry. We’re down to the last five days of Operation: Let’s Build A Goddamn Tesla Museum, and O:LBAGTM frontman Matthew Inman decided to sweeten the rewards structure a little. As of this writing, twelve of the miniature Tesla Coils are still available, and remain one of the coolest, most mischief-potentialled tchotchkes ever offered up in a crowdfunding endeavour. Oh, and it should also be noted that said offer coincided with Inman’s 30th birthday, so Happy Birthday to him a day late, and also to Penny Arcade’s Mike Krahulik today; Christmas in September, indeed.
• Perennial blog favorite Scott C had a big to-do in LA last week for the upcoming Great Showdowns book, and it went well. In and around his west coast time, Mr C hung out with the author of the foreword of said book, a moderately well-known magician and professional society officer by the name of Harris at his day job. While this particular workplace has a history of being kind to webcomickers, this particular visit went a bit above and beyond as Mr C found himself pitching in on the job. When “day job” equals “starring on a primetime sitcom”, these sorts of things just happen, I guess.
• Speaking of primetime sitcoms, it’s probably about the only medium that Steve Troop hasn’t tried to conquer (yet) in his quest to bring Melonpool to all people, everywhere. The comics end of things are a means to an end, with puppets being where it’s at through all those permutations. Troop’s been pointing those puppets in the direction of movie-making for more than a year of development now, and is moving onto the next stages:
  

  For the last two years, the creator of one of the first webcomics has put down his pens in favor of bringing his sci-fi puppets to the big screen. In the last few weeks, a successful Kickstarter campaign has made this dream a reality.

  Melonpool: The Motion Picture is slated to start filming in February 2013. The feature-length film tells the story of Mayberry Melonpool, the sci-fi addicted captain of a spaceship full of misfits who must pull together to save the universe from a seemingly unstoppable foe — if they don’t kill one another first.

  Best of luck to Troop, and don’t turn your back on those puppets — they look like troublemakers.

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¹ If somewhat shouty.

² The boldface is mandatory, I feel.

³ Seriously, the finest piece of film writing I’ve ever seen was FILM CRIT HULK’s 7000 word dissection of Eat, Pray, Love. Me, I would have just repeated EAT PRAY LOVE MAKE HULK WANT SMASH 1000 times.

It has been some hours now since Ryan North updated Dinosaur Comics with today’s strip (I am judging here by the timestamp in the RSS feed at 8:07 EDT) and there is still not a Twitter account by the name of doctor_weedfart_haver_420¹. I would have expected one by now! Okay, granted, there is somebody now going by @doctorweed420, but I think that we can all agree that’s just not close enough.

In short, slow day, or maybe not; I’m a bit behind due to some rather extensive funerary circumstances over the weekend, and I must say that both Ryan and @doctorweed420 have done a great deal to cheer me up today, so thanks for that. Back to the usual tomorrow.

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¹ Nor doctor_weed-fart_haver_420, assuming that the hyphen was significant and not just indicating continuation across a linebreak.

Faster your seatbelt, got some weird stuff for you today.

• Following up on yesterday #1: I was trying to avoid giving unnecessary weight to the issue, but my obliqueness confused some people, so for anybody wondering what the hell I was on about, read this, imagine the reaction from people who live to be angrily offended¹, and take it in the context of this. Thankfully this little blowup has had a relatively brief half-life.
• Following up on yesterday #2: Rich Stevens, as of this writing, is alive and triumphant over bacon in the battle of man vs delicious, cured meats. KC Green got a good portion of the ordeal on video for those that want to see the 32-slice battle in motion.
• Following up on yesterday #3: Not found in the NYCC session schedule (because it’s not a session), news that Anthony Clark, Chris Hastings, and a cardboard cutout of Ryan North, will have a major announcement at the ShiftyLook booth regarding a secret project. Before you ask, I already tried to obtain the cardboard cutout of Ryan for myself, and according to Hastings there are “plans” for it². Booth 3374, Thursday at 5:00pm, y’all.

New stuff:

• I’ve got my copy of the Bucko collection, do you? Maybe I can convince you with a peek at the extra-special bonus material! Namely, the full story of Queen Teri Hurricane Bluray-Devastatah d’Gresham, a thing of power and beauty, but tragically omitted from the online serial. Okay, yeah, you also get the promised three, er four-way, which (spoilers!) turns into a six-way. Dudes, it is so hot.
• Since we’ve previously established that Questionable Content is the locus of all webcomics crossovers and thus exists in all their realities, today’s revelation has … disturbing implications. Namely, that Hannelore Ellicott-Chatham is just another way of spelling Tommy Westphall and webcomics don’t exist. Sorry.
• Speaking of sorry, I’m not sure how many of you might have seen the latest update to the Order of the Stick Kickstarter, where we find out that Rich Burlew had a bad encounter between the tendons of his drawing hand and some broken glass. His wife reports that the surgeries went well and he’s expected to recover all function, but for the moment is pretty hepped up on goofballs, delaying both his strip and the Kickstarter rewards that he’s been producing. We at Fleen wish Burlew a speedy recovery and all the goofballs he needs to hepped up on in the meantime.
• Ordinarily, I’d be wishing a happy birthday to several people active in the [web]comics orbit today, including David Malki ! and K. Sekelsky, but I’m afraid that I can’t today. That’s because today marks the 100th anniversary of Chuck Jones, one of the most formative influences on who I am, and today he’s the only one I can wish a happy birthday despite the fact that he’s not around to hear them. Sorry, everybody else, today is Chuck’s day; feel free to insert a paraphrase of the Saint Crispin’s Day speech here if you like.

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¹ AKA, “Tumblr”.

² Dang.

Seriously, internet, you need to refine your personal index of suspicion when something potentially outrageous comes across your screen. Take a breath. Consider the source. Ask yourself, Is it possible that maybe this isn’t meant to be taken seriously? And think twice before you decide to make with the complaints and virtual lynch mobs because, well … yeah.

• Let’s talk about something more pleasant, shall we? As noted yesterday, the Hour of Truth is rapidly approaching for R Stevens, and you can follow along his own personal Grand Guignol online. If anybody has access to an emergency services scanner in the Easthampton area, maybe listen for dispatches¹ and let us all know if things go wobbly? Time to smoky, salty, delicious danger is (as of posting), approximately 22 minutes.
• The New York Comic Con is in three weeks, and they’ve done us the service of listing programming, albeit in a pretty inconvenient format. I’ve gone combing through for sessions that are related to webcomickry in general, and have found the following for you; please note that times and locations are subject to change.

  Thursday, 11 October
  Surviving the Public (Unshelved)
  12:00-1:00pm, Room 1A08
  Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum of Unshelved get things off to an early start on Press/Pros/VIPs day, before the show floor opens even, with a keynote on customer service (library focused, naturally) and the immutable truth known to anybody that’s ever dealt with the public: the customer is seldom right.

  Friday, 12 October
  Webcomics – From Hobby to Business
  6:30–7:30pm, Room 1A08
  If you camp out in the room long enough after Gene & Bill, you can see Ryan Sohmer and Lar de Souza recount the story of how they got to a multimedia empire from a humble start in the Canadian comics mines. Bonus: you can probably get Sohmer to talk about his personal ascent into healthy, clean living from the hell of Red Bull addiction. It’ll be like Behind the Music only without Jim Forbes narrating.

  Scott C and The Great Showdowns, from Ripley vs the Alien Queen to Han vs the Green Fellow!
  7:00–7:45pm, Unbound Stage
  Scott C gets the brand-new Great Showdowns book off to a roaring start; this one is going to be so fun you guys.

  UDON Crew: New Titles & Tributes
  7:45–8:45pm, 1A06
  Jim Zub and his studio are all over the damn place these days, what with tribute books, webcomics, licensed properties and every damn thing. The secret to this is that they, like the great and magnificent shark, never stop moving. Okay, they do sometimes (sharks, I mean), but Zub & Co don’t; come find out what they’ve got on tap next.

  Saturday, 13 October
  Kickstarter and Indie Comics!
  4:00–5:00pm, Room 1A08
  Benign Kingdom. George Rohac. Secrets of successful Kickstartering. Just remember one thing: George might teach you everything you know about Kickstarter, but he won’t teach you everything he knows.

  Sunday, 14 October
  I got nothin’.

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¹ Key words to listen for: Man down, smells delicious. If they have to slap paddles on him and shout Clear!, I’ll bet he sizzles.

I thought I was so smart this morning before work, figuring out that today’s xkcd is 165,888 x 79,872 worth of pixels, and determining Randall Munroe’s tile naming scheme, which would allow me to explore the entire, massive environment at my later leisure. Naturally, others had reconstructed the entire image before I’d had my breakfast, including at least one zoomable image of the whole damn thing. For the record, I discovered the secret UFO base by manual clicking and dragging. I think the one thing we can all take away from this experience is the fact that Munroe is never bored if he’s got the time to do stuff like this on random Wednesdays.

• Catching up: the Joe Shuster Awards were given out over the weekend; this page is on record that the Canadian comics awards are consistently well-curated in the breadth and depth of their nominees, and particularly find good webcomics to recognize. That streak remains intact, as the Shusters regonized Emily Carroll for her body of work in 2011 as Outstanding Web Comics Creator / Créateur de bande dessinée web exceptionnel for the second year in a row. Following up on his recent Harvey Award win, the award for Outstanding Comic Book Cartoonist / Auteur de bande dessinée exceptionnel went to Ramón Pérez for Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand.
• Looking forward: rumblings in the twitosphere indicate that the time is nigh. R Stevens, in accordance with the unholy pact he made for the sake of US$1332, and is about to eat two pounds of bacon. Much like ancient samurai would have a trusted retainer act as their second when committing seppuku, Stevens has engaged Anthony Clark and KC Green as witnesses to what is to happen, and may glob have mercy on us all.
• Intriguing: TopatoCo are apparently continuing their march to dominate all in their path:
  

  Just submitted an offer to BUY A TOPATOCO BUILDING.

  With George Rohac heading east to represent his employers, the possibility of collaboration — one might say conspirations — between these superstars of webcomics-related success-shepherding exists, and who knows how this will all shake out. I for one intend to be on the right side of history, and I welcome our new, space potato overlord.

Speaking of SPX, the theme of the weekend appeared to be YOLO, as chronicled by webcomics own photojournalist, Chris Yates. I … I think it’s a gang thing, you guys. Meanwhile, Kate Beaton rounded out the last of the major comics awards with another win for the Hark! A Vagrant print collection in the category of Outstanding Anthology or Collection, making more plaques, statues, and bricks than I can recall off the top of my head.¹ The award for Outstanding Online Comic went to Jillian Tamaki’s SuperMutant Magic Academy, which I’ll confess I am not familiar with. A perusal of the category nominees revealed a nice mix of ongoing and wrapped-up work, strip-type serials, panel-type loosely-linked semi-oneshots, autobio, and more — a nice balance of form, story topic, and art styles.

• Speaking of SPX, the national passenger rail system was not very nice towards Chris “Doc” Hastings, involving both a broken train on the way there and a cancelled ticket on the way back. He’s safely ensconced back in Brooklyn at last report, and
  able to share some of the other projects that he’s been working on, including the comic book-y treatment for a pitch packet of a proposed TV series, presently raising production costs over on IndieGoGo.

  You really can’t go wrong with a name like Freelance Beatdown, the brainchild of comedic personage Jordan Morris; given the glowing terms that Hastings uses to describe Morris, It’s unlikely that he’ll ever feel weirded out by Morris or his usual partner (and damn good interviewer), Jesse Thorn. Look, I like Morris and Thorn’s work a hell of a lot, I’m just saying that not everybody agrees with me.

• Okay, this is clever: all of Machine of Death (at least, the MoD that’s associated with the first volume), including the full book in three different electronic formats, stage show clips, the entire podcast series, and more, in a customized USB thumb drive for fifteen bucks. I think it’s just a matter of time before all collections of a certain size/complexity (lookin’ at you, omnibus edition of Skin Horse, whenever that happens) will have thumb drives as a delivery option.

  Look, I love me some big-honkin’ collections, I think they’re beautiful to look at, satisfying to read, and indicative of the value that I place on the work contained within; I’ve got collection series on my shelf that number as high as volume eleven. But not everybody has the wherewithal to drop US$50 (to US$100 and up) on the really big collections, so having a cheaper, more physically compact option² is going to be a value channel that can’t be ignored.

  Anyway, to celebrate the thumb-book and other items just now releasing, MoD honcho and Wondermark impressario David Malki ! is having a contest with fabulous cash and merchandise prizes. Dudes, you could end up a trillionaire.³

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¹ Seriously though — what was with blocking my girl Kate, 2012 Eisner Awards?

² Possibly after a delay to not conflict with physical book sales. Even more so, we’re now getting to webcomics that have run long enough, and have enough books in their catalog, that deciding when to let things go out of print becomes an actual concern. Get a bunch of custom-screened (or engraved, or shaped) USB drives, orders come in for various items out of print, copy master files over and drop it in the mail. Once you’ve got the thumbs in house, the rest of production doesn’t have to be an expense of anything other than the time it takes for file-dragging.

³ In Zimbabwe. Actual value as of this writing: US$27,631,942,525.560 in theory, except for the part where Zimbabwe’s currency has been indefinitely suspended from international trade because it’s worth less than the paper it’s printed on; 6.5 sextillion percent inflation will do that.

Let’s see now — network is slowed to a crawl, electrical is intermittently going out (including lights, including in the bathrooms), PAs sniffily holding up fingers to indicate that you simply can’t go that way now, equipment accumulated in the hallways to the point that access to the fire exits is entirely theoretical at this point, and attitude thrown at my students. If it weren’t for the plentiful snack tables set up, I’d be approaching An Incident at this point. And okay, fine, I hate things like the murder of all my loved ones more, but those situations typically don’t occur at work.

So I’m behind on the details of what came out of SPX, aside from the fact that everybody seemed to be selling a mountain of stuff. I can’t give you a numbers breakdown on the latest Homestuck Kickstarter unlocked tier¹ except to note that it’s caused a pretty significant upwards tick in backing. I can tell you that Order of the Stick, Penny Arcade, and TwoKinds remain the all-time top three Kickstarter comics projects, but that’s because Homestuck is classified as a videogame. With US$1.4million and counting, Homestuck has eclipsed all other comics-related endeavours.

So come back tomorrow, hopefully the film crews will be out of here, and I’ll be able to share more, like how Raina Telgemeier has managed to snag the #1 and #2 slots on the New York Times bestseller list for graphic novels, which is normally the sort of thing that requires you to be named Rowling or King or Gaiman. Everybody celebrate by getting a copy of DRAMA to go with their copy of SMILE — it’s seriously that good, and well deserving of the acclaim and sales.

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¹ Although I will say: Homestuck-themed tarot deck? Genius.

We have a winner! Alert reader mwk found the wrong item in yesterday’s post:

1.55 days per puzzle, 0.644 puzzles per day.

What, you thought it was the presidential slash fiction thing? Pfft, that’s nothing compared to a math error.

Today’s Homestuck Kickstarter update is going to look at tiers and supporter counts. One may recall from when the goal was met back on 5 September, there was a breakdown on supporters. One may also recall that a day later, one of those $5000¹ backers bumped up to $10,000. I’d like to show what the numbers are like as this piece is being written; to make comparisons easier, I’ll be repeating the numbers from the 5th, with new values/items interleaved in boldface:

• Backers: 7701
  Backers: 12,369
• Total raised: $700,049
  Total raised: $1,229,969
• Dollars per backer: $90.95
  Dollars per backer: $99.44
• Dollars per hour: $21,819.60
  Dollars per hour: $5124.87

• $15 and up: 2118
  $15 and up: 3489
• $25 and up: 1693
  $25 and up: 2586
• $55 and up: 794
  $55 and up: 1152
• $80 and up: 280

  $80 and up: 406

• $105 and up (unlimited): 579
  $105 and up (unlimited): 793
• $105 and up (limited reward #1): 671 of 1000
  $105 and up (limited reward #1): 1202 of 1500
• $105 and up (limited reward #2): 132 of 1000
  $105 and up (limited reward #2): 187 of 1000
  $130 and up: 286
• $180 and up: 84
  $180 and up (reward #1): 195
  $180 and up (reward #2): 40
  $180 and up (reward #3): 107
• $255 and up (unlimited): 141
  $255 and up (unlimited): 165
• $255 and up (limited reward): 600 of 600
  $255 and up (limited reward): 700 of 700
  $330 and up: 52
• $405 and up (limited reward): 458 of 1000
  $405 and up (limited reward): 415 of 750
  $505 and up (limited reward): 309 of 750
  $1000 and up (limited reward): 80 of 100
• $5000 and up (limited reward): 3 of 25
  $5000 and up (limited reward): 2 of 25
• $10,000 and up (limited reward): 0 of 10
  $10,000 and up (limited reward): 2 of 10
• No reports of God Tier rewards 2 ($100K) through 6 ($1B) yet
  No reports of God Tier rewards 2 ($100K) through 6 ($1B) yet

Smart moves by Andrew Hussie and the Mysterious Kickstarting Genius advising him:

• Limited rewards at naturally-occurring popular tiers ($105, $255) were expanded to pull in more support (the latter of which was sold out, and then promptly did so again after expansion)
• New tier at $330 added, incrementally adding to the value of the unlimited $255 tier
• The popular but stalled limited reward at $405 was reduced from a limit of 1000 to 750, but tiers at $505 and $1000 incorporating the high-demand items from the $405 tier were added; although 43 backers dropped at the $405 level, there were nearly 400 backers added at those new, higher tiers for a net increase of nearly $220,000
• Recognition that this project doesn’t adhere to the normal rules of high-value tiers; as of this writing, 393 people have pledged $500 or more, for a total of $266,045, or 21.6% of all money raised from 3.2% of all backers

We’re a third of the way through the campaign, in the doldrums section where there’s little movement (relatively speaking — on the slowest full day of the campaign so far, Hussie raised more than $26,000), and the right tier adjustments could cause the sudden uptick that’s often seen on runaway successful Kickstarts. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a quarter or more of the total raised in the last three or four days.

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¹ All dollar figures are in US currency.

Now that Apple isn’t making everybody sit in front of their computers and hit compulsively refresh their browsers every ten seconds, maybe we can talk about some webcomics things?

• Yesterday saw the debut of a very impressive Big Round Number:
  

  It only took 8 1/2 years, but I’ve finally created 2000 puzzles!! http://www.flickr.com/photos/30135689@N05/7980598350/

  Let’s do the math to properly indicate just how busy Chris Yates has been: eight and a half years and 2000 Baffler!s comes to 1.55 Baffler!s per day, and while some of them are pretty simple, that doesn’t preclude monsters like ol’ 2K here, with its more than 550 pieces spread out across nine fields and eight layers.

  In that time Yates was also making ghosts and POOP signs¹ and SLÜGs and t-shirts and prints and the designs for mass-market Baffler!s and the iPad Baffler! app and a few zillion Baffler! commissions not to mention a whole mess of terribly excited photocomics.

  For those interested in seeing exactly how damn much art one can cram into 3105 days, there’s a photo archive for your perusal. If you should see Mr Yates this weekend at SPX, tell him I said hi, be sure to smile for any photos you end up in, and ask him when the hell he sleeps.

• Know who else is gonna be at SPX? Well, a whole damn lot of people, but for the moment I’m thinking about Becky and Frank, who will but a week later make their way back LA-wards for a book launch at the world-famous Secret Headquarters. Tiny Kitten Teeth’s print version has been a long time a-bornin’ but now it’s here and it’s going to be gorgeous and you can get in on the fun of the launch at 3817 W Sunset Blvd (also known as Historic Route 66) in Los Angeles at 7:00pm on Friday, 21 September. Books, prints, fun times, and sophisticated adult beverages will be present in copious amounts.
• Speaking of book launches, (in this case, literally so), I believe it is a matter of public record that this page is fully in the tank as far as Sailor Twain goes, as it is beautiful, and melancholy, and atmospheric in a way that few comics manage. It’s still a few weeks before the very handsome and substantial print collection drops, which makes this the perfect time to note that there will be a special to-do to mark the launch of the book.

  Even more exciting, this celebration will be taking the form of a sunset sailing trip aboard the Clearwater, a replica of the mighty Hudson River sloops of the 18th and 19th centuries. A sloop that was dreamt up, built, and launched by the legendary Pete Seeger² to act as a literal platform to remind people of the need for clean waters in general, and the Hudson River in particular.

  The Sailor Twain Sail departs from the 79th Street Boat Basin in Manhattan at 5:30pm on Friday, 5 October.

• New site, tangentially related to webcomics in that David “It’s!” Willis did the logo, and also because it’s the brainchild of webcomics friend Josh “The Comics Curmudgeon” Fruhlinger. Hail to the Slash [Not Safe For Anything] is devoted to … well, let’s just quote Josh on this one:
  

  2012 has been one of the most homoerotic presidential elections since JFK completely discombobulated DIck Nixon with his sexual charisma live on television. This site is a repository of the same-sex presidential fan fiction our nation needs right now.

  Also:

  [I]n the days leading up to the 2008 U.S. presidential election, this civility broke down as a number of nasty political fights broke out. In attempt to stave off further unpleasantness, I demanded that my readers funnel their political passions into Taft/Roosevelt slash fiction, because it was the only thing I could think of off the top of my head.

  This worked better than I could have ever imagined, both in terms of stopping arguments and in producing legitimate masterpieces of Taft/Roosevelt erotica. I always had in mind that, come 2012, I would return to the idea. This site is that return.

  In case you still have some shred of innocence in your soul and are casually wondering if Mr Fruhlinger could really put together something truly depraved and soul-searing, consider this description of the very first entry at HttS:

  Heart and Soul (Cheney/Bush/Cloned Cheney/Crown Prince Abdullah; WARNING: EXTREME HORROR)

  Cloned Cheney. I’m warning you, there isn’t enough bleach in the world to get that image out of your brain. So tread carefully and if y’all will excuse me, I’ll be over here with the jumbo bottle of bleach and the cleansing fire.

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¹ It will remain one of my life’s most cherished memories will be the time I watched Lynn Freakin’ Johnston try to convince a complete stranger to buy a POOP sign. The only thing needed to make that day perfect would have been for that stranger to be wearing some form of “Roadside” clothing.

² One of America’s great social consciences, a musician of incredible importance (largely responsible for the preservation of folk music and the modern development of the banjo), hell-raising for all the right reasons still in this, his 93rd year.