Phil Lewis, 1925-2010

Last month my uncle Phil Lewis died, and the weekend of the 19th I went to LA for his memorial service and career retrospective, organized by his daughter, my cousin Janet. The above mixed media piece isn't typical of his work, but I wanted to include it on the blog because it's such a great picture of Phil.

The memorial service was everything it should have been, laughing and crying and the palpable sense that Phil was present among us. And in a very real sense he was--the artwork that was his lifeblood from the 1940s right up until the end hung on the walls of the gallery, and almost all the people still alive in his circle were there.

David Thompson

I try to stay away from real life as much as possible, on the blog and as a general principle. Today, though, I got the rotten news that my good friend David Thompson died suddenly, and I'm going to piss and moan for a paragraph. He was a bookseller and publisher and a friend to many dozens of people. He was married to a wonderful woman he loved very much, and he was as joyfully engaged with his work as anyone I've ever known, and he was only thirty-eight. Above is a picture taken the last time I saw him, when he made a trip to St. Louis to help set up BoucherCon 2011. He was one of the best people I ever met in the book business, and nobody had an unkind word to say about him.

I owed him an e-mail from last week. There were books I wanted to recommend that he publish. We had plans, goddamnit.

The amazing and hilarious Tim Gilbert and the art of shaving your junk

Some of you Wichita hepcats may remember musician, actor and Kirby's Beer Store fixture Tim Gilbert, who decamped many years ago for London. Here's Tim explaining in a British TV commercial about pube-shaving (thanks to Michael Carmody for posting this originally):

the Basement Sublet....of Horror!

This week creator/writer/director Joel Sanderson has posted for your viewing pleasure the entire "Atomic Brain" episode of the Basement Sublet of Horror:

http://www.basementsubletofhorror.com/

This is one of two episodes that I guest-hosted. In this one I play regular host Gunther Dedmond's meth-addled landlord. Here are some Basement Sublet trading cards, including the two associated with this episode:



And I get the card right after Herc "Carnival of Souls" Harvey!