That's So Cold Hat

You know, instead of saying "That is old hat." Ahem...

My friend Lauren and I had agreed to each do a booksketch from Sombrero Fallout, a novel by Richard Brautigan. If you'll scroll down you can see her great entry. Here is my sketch; better late than never, right?

The sketch is based off of a section of the sombrero storyline, where the mayor, his cousin, and an unemployed man are debating about who will pick up the strange black sombrero that has just fallen out of the sky in front of them. The mayor's cousin sees this as his chance to gain politcal influence and cement his future as a leader. The mayor wants to keep his hold on his power, of course, so letting someone else pick it up would be a sign of weakness. The unemployed man sees this as his opportunity to impress someone enough to get a job.

All of them want to pick up the sombrero, but they also have doubts! Eventually the mayor's cousin touches it and finds that it is ice-cold. This freaks him out and things escalate and people start crying. And then all hell breaks loose. I won't spoil anything else that happens, but it is very, very memorable!

I'm laughing just thinking about it!

Asian Invasion!

"To some men the most beautiful sight in this world is a sleeping Japanese woman. The sight of her long black hair floating beside her like dark lilies makes them want to die and be transported to a paradise that is filled with sleeping Japanese women who never wake but sleep on for all time, dreaming beautiful dreams."

Sombrero Fallout is about a writer who has lost his girlfriend of two years, a 'sleepy' Japanese woman. Three story lines are intertwined: his story of crushing depression and painful memories, the story he began to write about a sombrero that falls from the sky (which is probably the most entertaining one- ending in mass bloodshed), and the story of his ex-girlfriend- who is sleeping and dreaming throughout the entire book.

The imagery of the sleeping woman is amazing, as is the fact that he wrote several chapters on someone sleeping which were actually entertaining and not boring- as you would imagine several chapters on a sleeping person would be. Yukiko (the girlfriend...as you can probably figure out) sleeps with her black cat and her dreams are powered by the cat's purr. When the cat gets up at night to get a drink of water her dreams fall apart until the cat returns. The sketch is from the opening passage- The Japanese women are supposed to be short and tall and mostly skinny (IE-beautiful...just kiddin'), but there is also a fat one (if you're into that sort of thing). I was also going to draw a Japanese girl in there snuggling with a teddy bear, then I realized that the passage had slightly sexual tones, so I figured that would be unnatural and very very wrong. The middle woman is Yukiko (the one with the cat) who is said to be the "queen of such a paradise."

It's a very good read! I read it in one sitting- partly because it's short and mostly because it was just good.