|
|
|
any of David's cuteness thunder
Saturday, May 21 2016
David (of Susan and David) is a professional illustrator with a sporadic (though often lucrative) workload, which he handles from a makeshift office (until his separate mancave is completed). In the past he's done design work for Pixar movies and Spongebob Squarepants, though more recently he's illustrated a series of children's books. The most recent of these was to be launched this afternoon at the Golden Notebook in Woodstock, and I had to go separately because Gretchen had something she had to do up in Albany first. On the way, I stopped at the Tibetan Center thrift shop, which had a good selection of vintage optics today. Though, at $12, it ended up costing nearly as much as the sum total of all I have spent there, I couldn't resist buying a pair of binoculars so old that they had been manufactured in Japan. Though there are already three working binoculars there, these will now be the best binoculars in the house.
It being a nice day, Woodstock was mobbed with people, and parking was difficult to find. In such situations, the best bet is to park illegally on the street (where parking enforcement is almost nonexistent) or in a lot with signage saying only customers can park there and threatening towing. I found one such lot near the little park where the Wednesday Farm Festival is held. I'd been picturing it mostly empty, since that's how it is during a Wednesday farm festival. But on Saturdays, the park is host to a bigger event, and today it was completely occupied with vendors. I'd brought the dogs with me and was wondering if they needed to take care of any business. So I took them on a stroll through the festival so as to give them an opportunity to piss, meet other dogs, and be fussed over for their inherent adorability. Unfortunately, Neville decided he also needed take a shit, and of course I didn't have a bag. But a nearby vendor was very nice and fetched me one.
I parked illegally on Tinker Street near the Golden Notebook and, inside, soon came upon Susan and some of her friends who were up from the city specifically for this event. I brought an armload of David's new book upstairs to the reading room and soon we got started. First David read the book, which was a tale of how some adorable partially-dressed bipedal animals dealt with a group of bullies destroying their sand castles. Somehow they built an entire theme park, though how they got the money and construction skills is left a mystery. The name of the book sounds like a description, but no, it's the name: Extremely Cuτe Animals Operating Heavy Machinery. Another fun fact about the book: the bullies are named after actual bullies who tormented David when he was young. The reading took no longer than five minutes, after which David did a live drawing based on requests shouted from the audience. Someone wanted his character to be supporting Bernie Sanders, so he drew one arm holding a "FEEL THE BERN" sign, while (on my request) he had the other arm going into a polling booth to pull the lever for Donald Trump.
I hadn't wanted Neville to steal any of David's cuteness thunder, but when David had moved to just signing books, I went and got that incredibly cute animal (Ramona, who is also incredibly cute but behaves poorly, would have to stay in the car).
Afterwards a group of us (including one of David and Susan's friends who is deathly allergic to "dogs") all went to the outside part of the Garden Café. I'd brought a bottle of Scotch Bonnet Dave's Insanity Sauce, which proved disappointingly mild; I had to add at least a teaspoon of it to my lentil soup to bring it up to code. But Susan seemed to like it, so I said she could have it. I've been having much better meals at places like Plantae and the Garden Café since remembering to bring my own hot sauce.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?160521 feedback
previous | next |
