What's New On Gabbertoons

December 20th, 2005

Family Visit to NYC : Tim and Lynn came to NYC this year to celebrate their 25th anniversary. Rex also came to a legal conference and got to bring Samantha on her first trip to the Big Knock-off Apple. We all had a great time walking around Midtown together, and Tim and Lynn took us out to celebrate their anniversary at Fresco By Scotto, which was fab as can be. Together we braved chill winds, unbelievable crowds at Rockefeller Plaza, and throngs of rabid shoppers. Tim and Lynn made good use of their Gray Line Tour passes and got about the City (mostly) unfrozen and above ground. Rex and Samantha braved the teeming consumer frenzy of Chinatown to score many Louis Vitton-ish purses, reportedly stored in a vault beneath the earth. That's a Eastern Mysteries experience for you. Sam wheeled, dealed and otherwise demonstrated she's a born New Yorker. The walk from Chinatown and Little Italy up to NYU and Washington Square almost did her in but she persevered like a toughened strap-hanger during a transit strike.

Altogether, I tried to do my duty to take pics, but I must developed spontaneous retardation as most of the ones I snapped were blurred, dark or otherwise challenged. Alas, I missed a few golden opportunities too (such as the anniversary dinner). Nonetheless, I gathered the least jittery of the bunch together and have collected them for one and all in the Gabberts in NYC Photo Album (part of the Rambling History 2005 and Events Photo Albums).

Some new pics have been added to the Rambling History 2005 Photo Album (and where appropriate, to the Random Oddities Photo Album and the future Streets of New York Photo Album (not yet available, but the link will take you to a rather spiffy error page). Christmas pictures from the stores, underground warrens and streets of New York City. Oh, and a couple of fab night time shots from the CBS Building (the Black Rock) in Midtown. Many didn't come out due to the high reflectivity (and the absence of a light switch anywhere), but the two I choose have certain fuzzy, muzzy je nais se qua. Also, most notably, I ran across a mysterious grouping of older buildings in Midtown, one of which appears to have at one time been a private dick's office. All hail Phillip Marlowe!

Larry Mullins (aka Toby Dammit) celebrated a mysteriously enumerated birthday on the 17th at the Marquee Lounge, next door (and a part of in a very intimate way) Marion's Continental Restaurant and Lounge. There were many highlights to the evening: friendly faces, a delish cake courtesy of Dana, very good food from Marion's next door, a dotting bartender named Melissa. But the highlight for most of us had to be the riveting performance by the alluring diva Alexia (her real name and gender). Alexia favored us all with her exquisite singing, luscious looks, and scintillating wit, but she favored the lucky birthday most of all with a to-die-for lap song. Lucky, lucky Dammit!

Big News For Today : Zac (aka, Eggs, aka, The Worker) turned 26! Happy Birthday, Zac! You can see all of Zac's craziness (for now anyway, before he finally lets me create a website for him) in various places. Artwork (and it's mighty tasty) here (MySpace: Eggs) and here (MySpace: Eggbert Ross and The Dellaments), and hear his music here (SoundClick: Eggs) and here (Audio Street: Eggs) and here (SoundClick: The Worker).

Greta made him the fabulous cake by the way.

October 31st, 2005

Halloween 2005 : The home of Kevin, Manche and Ute was the scene of the usual decadence this Halloween. My costume idea could not come to fruition, so I had to buy some last-minute fangs and Groucho glasses. Woulda been great, too, but for the fact that off-the-shelf dental gum (which comes with the fangs)... well, sucks. It must be set perfectly and even then crumbles away. So it was Count Groucho sans fangs. Somehow, people other than me developed a tendency to spill their drinks on my tie and shirt, or my drink on myself. So the Groucho look by evenings end did come close to commermorating the great Ruffus T. Firefly.

Our hosts were Ill Unseen Man, Pearl Diver and Lady Liberty. Attending were Domestic Abuse, Sexy Cowgirl, Molotov Cocktease, Aphex Twin, Satan, Batboy, Devil Girl, Sister Tom (that may be Tomasina, but the five o'clock shadow makes me wonder), Funk Master, Ulti-Goth, the French Stereotype, et al. If I didn't mention you or get our costume right, I apologize. The fake eyebrows made seeing difficult. Also, if you have any pics, send 'em here and I'll include them with attribution, blood type and moving memorial inscription with kittens and angel puppies. NOT. But I will put them here and credit you.

October 28th, 2005

Gabbertoons Photo Album Update: It's been ages since I updated the Photo Albums and I thought I should before it's time to add Halloween Party pics.So until those arrive, you can check out a revised Fourth of July 2005 (with a QuickTime movie taking the place of many, many dark photos because they look better in a sequence), a record of Dorothy & Jack's first trip to NYC, and of course the fall out from my 40th birthday party. By the way, I got few pics from the event (few that weren't blurred patches of light or solid black), for obvious reasons. So, if you have any, please send them my way and I'll add them to the Photo Album with proper honors.

Zac has been sending me pics and video clips that I've included in the Photo Album Rambling HIstory 2005. I've also laid out thumbnail pages for 1999-2004. As soon as I complete the individual pages (a tiresome, detail-oriented task only I could love), I will make them live and announce them here. After that, hopefully, I'll be able to scan some older photos from the 1900's up to the 1990's.

Another update to the Gabbertoons Photo Albums is the first of three planned Themed Photo Albums. The newly published album is Kitties. Be sure to have your insulin at the ready for the onslaught of cuteness. The Gabbertoons Kitties Theme Photo Album features my own two sons, Oscar and Impy, as well as the cats of family and friends. Aw... garshk.

Behind the scenes, well... the Photo Albums— already heavily CSS to within an inch of their lives— are now XHTML. Transitional, I'm afraid, for two reasons: One, some things deprecated in strict XHTML (like no border attributes for <img> tags) are too damned useful here in the world of wonky browsers. Sure, giving this attribute to a class associated with an <img> object or even a pseudoclass anchor tag may be best, but sometimes an <img> object is just an <img> object: you want to drop it in with an alt attribute and a properly closed bracket like it should be but not want to type in a damned class for everything. Two, XHTML validation has become a pain in the ass with Dreamweaver 8 (beta) and I've no time to mess with it for now. I usually code by hand when possible but use Dreamweaver for a lot of repetitive grunt work, global changes and so on and it's great for that. But the newest version I have insists you can't preload an image in the <body> tag and freaks out whenever a < or > bracket appears inside a JavaScript function. Later, I'll extricate all the functions to an external file, but for now... Lordy. I hope to pick up Dreamweaver 8's final release soon because this beta release is buggy as Bugsy Malone when it comes to perfectly, properly formatted Dreamweaver templates.

Gabberlog has lain fallow for quite a while. The above rant is proof: I've all this rant pressure built up and nowhere to type it all. Well, no time to type it all, anyway. And there's so much to add: many, many rants about Supreme Court nominees; bad, good and disappointingly indifferent movies to review, food porn; personal piques and providential perambulations; humorous finds and happenings; books to review; dead horses to be beaten from soapboxes and so on. My writer friends are so much more disciplined and productive than I've been lately. Hopefully there'll be more blog entries (and more added to "What's New") more often in the near future. But for now, all five of you* who have read this can rest in peace knowing I truly intend to help you avoid finishing your work by supplying you with puerile humor, photos and blog rants destined for obscurity.

* = including myself.

July, 2005

Fourth of July pics from a Brooklyn rooftop in Greenpoint! Yes, feel the burn as only American-brand Patriotism can make you feel. These lovely photos are available in the Gabbertoons Photo Album for 2005. Kabloeey! Kapow! Talpsrek!

Also available on the June 2005 Photo Album are incredibly cute pictures of His Oscarness. These were also added to the Kitties Photo Album. Other themed albums to follow.

Yes, those were made-up subjects, but it could happen, even here in New York City. And speaking of NYC, having recently been grousing about the West 50s and witnessing some... well, let's not say "art" so much as "interior decoration" in the some of the restaurants there trying to cash-in on the proximity of the theatres, it just occurred to me that there should be a Bad Art Photo Album on Gabbertoons. Nothing like the great Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) whose mission was to present truly bad art that told a story-- found art, if you will-- kicked to the curb, rescued and lovingly hung in its condition of discovery. No, mine should be a chronicle of wretched, mass-produced schlock that passes as some half-assed, dimly attuned attempt to synch with the City or it's neighborhood's popular reputation. Case in point tonight was some astonishingly horrid wall scabs portraying the great stars all sitting around, listening to Sam play it again for Bogey as he leaned over the piano. Criminey, the great Claude Reins's Captain Renault was never meant to be seen hanging out with the Fonz and Pia Zadora.

May, 2005

What's new, you say? A whole bunch of stuff. Gabbertoons has undergone some structural revision, though you'd never know it to look under its bed.

First of all, the Home Page is sporting a new look. Gone is the fine French version of "Captain Spaulding", mainly because unsolicited music, however odd, is always a nuisance. There are actual categories on the front page now, too. Whatta concept, eh?

The Home page now ambiguously points the way to the Gallery of Humor, the Photo Albums, Gabberlog, the Gabbertoons Store, and the desolate and empty Links page (haven't' gotten to it). More on each of these sections as I prattle on below.

More items have been added to the Gabbertoons Photo Albums, and the Photo Albums have been organized by Year, Event and Theme, as evidenced by the main page for the Photo Albums. You can enter any year and see thumbnails for the entire year. The ambition is to eventually go as far back as possible, including wood cuts from my Pomeranian ancestors, cave paintings, and radio emissions from the Big Bang. But for the immediate future, my goal is to fill in farther back than 2004.

Certain thumbnails will rest within a tinted square: that's your clue to know there's a whole mini-album lurking beneath documenting a major event from that year. (Yes, all events are major, but these are extra-major, mainly because I took hundreds of pictures.)

Finally, there are more or less cross-organized albums centered around Themes. So far, there are three: Random Oddities, the Streets of New York, and Kitties. I know, you're saying, "Pinch me, I must be suffering malarial fever."

Next up, I have begun to organize my most embarrassing works into one easy place to find them, the Gabbertoons Gallery of Humor. Here you'll find some of the first Flash I ever made (and it certainly shows), silly video clips, and creepy animations. By creepy, unfortunately, I do not mean wonderfully Charles Addams. I mean creepy as in you'll probably be glad I'm not your blood relative (and my apologies if you are). Of course, the legendary, the mysterious, the surreal and quite appalling Fruit Colored Rings has a place of prominence in the Gallery under Animations.

The Gallery is organized at this time as Animations, Comics, Pictures (including a separate b3ta.com gallery), Video and Random Silly Bits (which all probably is, really). Past the wall of fog that is the future, there is a hazy chance that more than one image will appear in Comics (along with Cartoons and such). As if that weren't exciting enough, Audio humor and selections from the Gabbertoons Sketchbooks may appear, and random bits of Writing will debut with the head-turning pace exhibited by some of the larger stalactites in the Ozark Underground Laboratory.

Also in the near future, the loathsome and seldom spoke-of high school videos of Greg Benitz, Mark Felts and Christopher Gabbert will be digitized and available here for all the world. There's no good reason, so of course it must be done.

A major overhaul has been in the structure of Gabberlog. There are three Gabberlogs, you see: Reviews (for all and sundry media), Food & Drink (all things culinary and comestible), and News & Views (the catch-all where I laugh, I jest, I vent spleen, and I cuss in a most unseemly fashion-- in other words, a traditional journal). All three may be previewed from the main Gabberlog page where you may marvel at the eldritch manipulation of MoveableType through PERL fancy-schmancy CSS. (Yeah, it's really not that amazing, but it sure hurt.)

Each of the Gabberlogs have standard shared links, but these will diverge over time. Each also feature ways to browse them by categories, dates or a master list of entries. You can use Google to search the archive, too. I've left the MT Search in place for now but will probably scrap it. Of course you'll note it's replete with Google ads. I couldn't resist. It's too fun to see what goofy things entries will call in from the ads. That's half the fun of Google's AdSense.

And speaking of naked greed, there is now a Gabbertoons Store. Actually, several stores on Cafe Press, but all them given a happy home on the local store page. Each store has items based around one theme so as to offer as much gimcrackery as possible and still meet Cafe Press's rules for a free store. So far, there's the Gabbertoons Joker Store (my alteration of a Renaissance French joker card I've used as a logo before), the Gabbertoons Jester Store (the painfully aged picture of me in full days from my own Renaissance days), and of course the Gabbertoons Fruit Colored Rings Store. Just imagine the possibilities. I sure have. Be sure to snap up your Fruit Colored Rings urinal cakes and doggie naps before they're all gone.

Yes, I know, not even my own mother will buy anything here. In fact, even I won't buy anything here. But if you need to scam a temporary insanity alibi, click on over.

That should be enough for now, but just in case you're still curious: there's a Site Map, this What's New? page, an About Gabbertoons page, and many, many broken links and missing elements for you to kvetch about. Also, with the exception of most of the older Humor Gallery code, everything's been done over in CSS, just to be pissy.

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