TRAYB

A Delta Airlines horror story (or Why I Never Made it to Africa)

2010-03-18T07:04:00.006-04:00

Airport horror stories are like assholes: Everybody has one.

But the thing that happened to my partner and me last week, well, it's pretty crazy. It's also the kind of experience that makes me think twice about ever flying on Delta again. Not that it's any better with any of the other carriers these days.

We'd been looking forward to our Africa trip for weeks. We had plans to visit South Africa and Zambia, four cities in 10 nights, with a handful of small side excursions along the way. We'd both endured a regimen of vaccinations and had started taking anti-malaria pills two days before traveling. Everything was good to go, or so we thought.

We arrived at the Atlanta airport with plenty of time before our evening flight to Johannesburg — which never happens with us. We're usually the two you see running to the gate just before the door closes.

As we made our way up to the gate, the BF was ahead of me in line. He handed his passport to the Delta agent, a short, spinster-looking woman who might've been Ugly Betty's aunt. The agent took his passport, did a fast flip through the pages, then said, "You're not flying. Next!"

The BF thought she was kidding. So did I.

"Excuse me?" he said.

Ugly Betty took the passport again, did another flip-through, then repeated, "You're not flying today. You don't have any blank pages. Next."

What? No explanation, no sympathy. Just, "Next."

At this point I stepped forward and asked her what the deal was. The BF said, "Are you joking?"

She asked to see my passport and did the same flipping motion.

"It looks like you do have some blank pages, so you can fly. But this guy can't. He'll need to go back to the ticket desk. Next."

I think we were both in shock and couldn't believe that this woman could treat us with such blatant disrespect, such disregard. Ugly Betty gave us a look like we were being irrational and holding up the line.

"Sir," she said to me, raising her voice, "Are you going to get on the flight or not?"

I told her I wasn't about to get on the plane without my partner and that we needed someone to explain to us what was going on. Ugly Betty rolled her eyes and yelled for another agent to come over and take her post.

She hurried us back up to the gate counter and asked for both of our passports again. Then, she sighed and said that it was a rule with South Africa. You have to have two fully blank visa pages in your passport or you won't be allowed to enter the country.

This was news to both of us, obviously.

"How were we supposed to know this?" the BF said.

"You should have done your homework," Ugly Betty said. "If you were frequent travelers, you would have known."

Hello — the guy has no blank pages in his passport! Doesn't that say "frequent traveler" to you?

We asked what the airline normally tells passengers when this sort of thing happens. A tall, heavyset Delta agent who was working next to Ugly Betty chimed in that they usually send folks to the New Orleans Passport Office to get more blank pages added. But all the flights to New Orleans had left for the day, he said.

At least he was friendly. Ugly Betty was giving us a look like she'd like to see us dead. I've never been treated so poorly by an airline employee in my life.

She told us to go talk to the ticket desk in the international terminal, then walked away. I should have written down her name, but I was still in shock. We both were.

We gathered up our bags and went in search of the Delta ticket desk. It was hard to miss: The line snaked back from the center of Terminal E almost to the escalators.

We stood in that line for two impossible hours.

The BF pulled out his laptop and began investigating options for getting more pages added to his passport. Turns out that advice the helpful guy had given us back at the gate was wrong: The New Orleans Passport Office will not see you without an appointment. The first available slot was five days away. So, if we had taken his advice and boarded a flight to Louisiana, we would've been stuck in the Big Easy for a week. (Though, honestly, there are worse places to be stranded.)

After about an hour in the ticket line, the tall Delta guy from the gate came through the line and handed out cups of water to the people waiting. A nice gesture, I'll admit.

We finally made it to a ticket agent, a tired-eyed lady who looked like Aretha Franklin before she gained all that weight. The ticket lady listened to our story with no sympathy. The tall man came over to try and help. Bless him.

After plenty of back-and-forth on what our best options were, we decided to just fly home to London and try to get the passport issue sorted at the U.S. Embassy here. Aretha asked to see our boarding passes then, she suddenly threw up her hands in a motion that said, "Git!"

"Oh," she said, "this ticket was booked on SkyMiles. We can't handle no Miles tickets here at this desk. You gotta use the telephones."

She pointed us toward the bank of red "help" phones beyond the desk — phones that had been sitting open during our two-hour tour of the queue.

"Next!" Aretha said.

The BF didn't lose his temper, though I knew he was about to.

"So what you're telling me is, because I'm a loyal customer and someone who accumulates SkyMiles and then uses them on an award ticket, I don't get to talk to a person? That whole business model is just backwards."

"That's just the way it is," she said.

We were on hold for almost an hour at the red "help" phones. Another hour. It was getting close to midnight by now. I was worried about where we were going to spend the night.

As we stood there waiting, I watched a sorority girl have a complete meltdown at the ticket desk. She had missed her connecting flight while her plane sat on the tarmac for an hour. The ticket agent (not Aretha) talked to her like she was a dog who had peed on the rug. The girl's face was bright pink and snot was coming out of her nose. The Delta agent was as cold as concrete.

All of this happened almost a week ago. We finally made it back to London and have since mailed our passports off to have more pages added. Our Africa trip has been postponed indefinitely.

I guess I'm still in shock. I'll admit that I'm angry. I'm mad that we didn't know about South Africa's passport rules. That's probably my own fault — but I'm surprised that the airline doesn't take the time to alert its passengers beforehand, especially if other travelers experience this same problem. That one tiny oversight led to us losing thousands of dollars in hotel reservations and missed flights, not to mention extending our visit to Atlanta by a few unplanned days.

The passport issue aside, I'm still reeling at the way the Delta employees treated us — and everyone else around us. We've been dedicated Delta customers for decades. The BF is even a Medallion member. It just seems like the airlines don't care anymore. We're not customers; we're cattle. The industry is broken. Next!

John Doh!

2010-01-21T08:43:00.003-05:00

I was having a hard time coming up with ideas for this week's Blotter illustration, which involved a man, "John Doe," who had falsely reported being stabbed. I just kept going back to the old sketch book but nothing seemed to take. That's usually a bad sign. Damn that fickle muse!

Once I decided to relax and just have some fun with it, the main face sort of drew itself. The others followed. I was also surprised with how the colors turned out. It started with an all-white background, but that didn't seem to capture the gravity of the situation.

Blotter: JOHN DOE'S BIG DAY: At 11:20 a.m., an officer responded to a call about a person stabbed at a store on Joseph E. Boone Boulevard. The caller had a male voice and said he was at the pay phone outside the store. "When I arrived on scene, there was no one standing at the pay phone or outside of the location," the officer noted. All the store workers said no one had come inside saying they were stabbed. A fire truck and hospital medics also arrived at the scene. Eventually, the officer saw a man and woman arguing about 50 yards away. The officer asked the couple if there was a problem. A woman yelled out, "Ask him, he's the one who called. I was just walking to get away from him." So the officer asked the man why he'd called to say he had been stabbed. The man said "because" and tried to walk away. The man said he fell on something at his house, and got a small scratch on his shoulder. The man never explained why he claimed he had been stabbed and he would not give police his name. Eventually, the woman walked away – crying, screaming and yelling at the man to leave her alone. Police charged the man with abusing 911 services. The officer wrote, "Mr. Doe had police, fire and Grady [Memorial Hospital] all respond to the call with lights and sirens going, with the roadways icy, for a fake stabbing call."

Favorite Songs of 2009: It's Not Fair!

2009-12-29T10:39:00.003-05:00

Another calendar is about to close, which means it's time for a new Favorite Songs of the Year list.
I started a preliminary playlist back in middle November with the hopes that at least two or three additional tracks would make the cut before January, just to give the lineup a tad more variety.
No such luck.
This year's roster is heavy — like, embarrassingly heavy — on electropop artists. It's weird for me to notice the trend. I blame it on living in Britain, where pop music in general remains a venerated genre.
This was a year when I found myself drifting away from many of the indie folk acts and singer/songwriters who had dominated my headphones for the better half of the decade. New material from Neko Case and Sufjan Stevens, two former favorites, didn't make the final list, nor did several other artists that I expected to be there (Wilco, Rosanne Cash, Monsters of Folk, even Mary J. Blige).
Instead, a quick peek at iTunes tells me that my most often played track of the year was "One Day" by the Juan Maclean. Really? How'd that happen?
As with years past, I'm not being a total stickler for release dates; I know a couple of the tracks technically hit in 2008, but they registered on my radar in '09. So there.

Here's the playlist, in no particular order. And here are the previous years: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.

1. "Not Fair" – Lily Allen
I couldn't get enough of this song in 2009. Country twang + off-color lyrics + Lily's angelic vocals = sheer brilliance. Plus, the video is exceptional, with a cameo from Porter Wagoner (!).

2. "Bulletproof" – La Roux
La Roux's catchy debut was easily one of my favorite albums of the year, and one of the few that I listened to on repeat. The video for this song reminds me of a level in Super Mario Galaxy.

3. "Million Dollar Bill" – Whitney Houston
I know, I know. It's just too easy to hate on Whitney, and it shocked me how vicious some folks were about her new album. "Bitch can't sing!" "She looks busted!" "Her dress fell off!" Well, enough with all the vitriol, OK? Admittedly, the comeback has had some issues, and yes, the album is fairly one-note, with way too many "look at me, I survived my struggle" anthems. But not this song, which deserves a place up there with some of the greatest Whitney tracks of all time.

4. "One Hundred Million Years" – M. Ward
I said before that 2009 was a year when I stopped listening to much folk. The new M. Ward is a glaring exception, the kind of album on which every track is a keeper.

5. "Teeth" – Lady GaGa
I'm shocked — shocked, I tell you — that this song ended up on my favorites list. I was a slow convert to the GaGa gang; I stupidly predicted that she would be a one-hit wonder. Then came singles like "Paparazzi" and "Poker Face" and I had to chew on my toes for a while. For me, this song is just so weird and unexpected, more like Shania Twain with lyrics by Anne Rice. I'm dying for HBO to catch wind of the song and use it in the promo spots for season three of "True Blood."

6. "One Day" – The Juan Maclean
As I said before, my number one most played song of the year. Crazy. It makes me think of Human League.

7. "Clean Up Woman" – Leela James
Poor Leela. She keeps trying, but nothing seems to work out -- not yet anyway. Her effort for '09 was an album of covers, which sort of smells of desperation. Still, I loved this version of Betty Wright's "Clean Up Woman," and also found myself singing along to "Baby I'm Scared of You."

8. "Heartbreaker (ft. John Legend)" (Laidback Luke Remix) – MSTRKRFT
Such an interesting combination of vocals and synths. Makes me excited to see what this group does next. (The album version is a lot more mellow, but I love the pounding energy of the remix.)

9. "Heavy Cross" — Gossip
Beth Ditto and co. are on everyone's best-of lists this year. They deserve the acclaim. I didn't love the entire album, but "Heavy Cross," "2012" and "Pop Goes the World" were definitely keepers.

10. "Day 'N Nite" (Crookers Remix) – Kid Cudi
At the last minute I almost switched this track out with Cudi's "Pursuit of Happiness." Either way, one to watch.

11. "Sexy Bitch" (f. Akon) – David Guetta
When we visited America in May, every other gay man I talked to was gagging over that damn David Guetta/Kelly Rowland song. You know the one. But for my money, this was the standout track on the album. I just love how silly the lyrics are: "I'm trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful; Damn, girl, you're a sexy bitch." (Call me crazy, Akon, but I think you need to try harder.)

12. "Please Don't Leave Me" (Digital Dog Club Mix) – P!nk
First heard in '08, but it was the remix and the video for this one that had me hooked. The video is an amazing homage to "Misery." Seriously.

13. "Dance Wiv Me" – Dizzee Rascal f. Calvin Harris
Apparently this was released in the UK in '08, but I didn't catch it until it showed up on Calvin Harris's "Ready for the Weekend" this summer -- hands-down one of my favorite albums of the year. "Stars Come Out" almost made my list and "I'm Not Alone" got played a few times too many in our flat this spring.

Honorable mentions:
"Lala Song" – Bob Sinclar; "New in Town" – Little Boots; "Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart" – Alicia Keys; "My Girls" – Animal Collective; "I Do Not Hook Up" (Bimbo Jones Club Mix) – Kelly Clarkson.

Happy New Year!

Farewell, Fawcett

2009-12-16T04:57:00.002-05:00

Here's my latest illustration for Creative Loafing's crime report. The doll and the box design are taken from by an actual Farrah Fawcett toy from the '70s, though I changed the layout slightly to make her name pop.

Blotter: A 44-year-old man walked into the Zone 5 precinct and said he hired a moving company to move his stuff to his new apartment on Piedmont Road. He said after the movers left, he noticed that three bins filled with pennies were missing (about $300 worth). The man called back later and added that his 10-inch collectable Farrah Fawcett doll was missing, too.

Merry Mixmas 2009: Everywhere It's Christmas

2009-11-30T07:10:00.002-05:00

About this time each year, I put together a CD of holiday music to share with friends and family. I'm embarrassed to admit how many hours I end up devoting to the annual project, which I started in 1999.

When I started compiling songs for this year’s playlist, I thought about going for the Full English: a CD of traditional carols. Then, 500 downloads later (seriously), I decided to ditch that idea and do what I’ve always done, which is try to put together a playlist that I’ll enjoying hearing year after year. Maybe it reflects the experience I’ve had living in London these past nine months. As much as I love the culture here, all the quirks of London life and the British character, living in the UK has made me realize just what an American I am. Boxing Day? Figgy Pudding? Mince pie? It’s all still a little overwhelming.
Anyway, here's the playlist:

1 Everywhere It's Christmas - The Beatles
2 Polly in the Holly - Dordán
3 Come On Ring Those Bells - Kristin Chenoweth
4 Sleigh Ride - The Three Suns
5 Interlude: It's Father Christmas! (from "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe")
6 Christmas Is Coming - Harry Belafonte
7 Mary's Boy Child - Boney M
8 The 1st Day the Beat Dropped - Dynamix II
9 Bah, Humbug! - A Christmas Carol
10 Nuttin' For Christmas - Sugarland
11 All I Want for Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth) [MJ Cole Remix] - The Nat King Cole Trio
12 Pat-A-Pan - David Archuleta
13 A Child's Christmas in Wales - Dylan Thomas
14 Frosty The Snowman - Fiona Apple
15 Little Jack Frost Get Lost - Peggy Lee & Bing Crosby
16 Winter Wonderland - The Funk Brothers
17 My Mom And Santa Claus - George Jones
18 Another Word from Father Christmas - Various Artists
19 Jeanette, Isabella - Tori Amos
20 Christmas - Teddy Thompson
21 What's Today My Fine Fellow? - A Christmas Carol
22 Angels From The Realms Of Glory - Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band
23 We Wish You A Merry Christmas - The Greentrax Choir
24 I Am Blessed (Wax Tailor Remix) - Nina Simone
25 Life In A Northern Town - Twinkle Twinkle Little Rock Star

Download: Merry Mixmas 2009: Everywhere It's Christmas

Hot Water

2009-10-01T01:23:00.002-04:00

Another week, another drawing. Here's my latest illustration for Creative Loafing. The crime this week: An employee at the Georgia Aquarium admitted to stealing bottles of Vitamin Water — totalling $1,087! That's a lot of water.

Blotter: At the Georgia Aquarium, a security guard called police after an employee allegedly admitted to taking items.

What Should We Call This Crazy Decade?

2009-09-18T04:16:00.004-04:00

Alright people, the countdown is on. We've got 15 weeks to go before the decade ends, and yet folks still haven't settled on a common term for it. The ohs? The aughts? The naughties? Anyone? My guest post on naming the decade is now up on The Critical Condition. Click over and have a look:

What Should We Call This Crazy Decade?

(Many thanks to Mark Blankenship for giving me the chance to chime in on his always thought-provoking site.)

Fashion Police

2009-09-16T05:03:00.002-04:00

As if you can't tell by looking at this week's illustration, I've been a "Project Runway" fan for the last five seasons. By "fan" I mean I love to hate it (and yes, hate to love it). The current batch of contestants may be the biggest group of weirdos we've seen yet. So why can't I stop watching?

Anyway. I couldn't resist doing a little "Runway" shout-out with the new crime report doodle. The first two items in the column this week had to do with Atlanta police officers handing out tickets to taxi drivers who were violating the city’s dress code.
Call me crazy, but is this really the best way for the APD to be spending its time? Aren't folks getting stabbed and shot in other parts of town? Hasn't there been a huge wave of homes getting broken into. Seems like a monumental waste of resources.

Blotter: An officer was patrolling downtown Atlanta when he noticed a “Euro cab” picking up people outside the World of Coca-Cola Museum ...

No Parking

2009-09-10T09:30:00.005-04:00

Here's my new illustration for Creative Loafing's weekly crime report. I really struggled with the colors on this one, then came back to the basic blue-brown-red that always seems to work so well. (Maybe too well, in fact. See previous post.)
I worried also that it might be too bawdy for the Loaf, but nobody has complained. Yet.

Blotter: Around 3:15 a.m., a police officer spotted a young couple on the ground of a parking lot on Peachtree Street. According to the officer, the man was sitting on the woman, with his pants down ...

The Devil You Know

2009-08-26T04:57:00.002-04:00

Big news for Creative Loafing this week: The Eason family has lost control of the newspaper company started by Deborah Eason in 1972. A New York hedge fund is now going to be calling the shots.
I'm cautiously hopeful that this is a good development for the alt-weekly that so many of us still ~~love~~ admire, despite its turmoil of recent years. I was a staffer at the paper from 2000-'03 and I've been a freelancer ever since, so I definitely want to see the company prosper.
During my tenure there I always felt like upper management was shifting gears every two or three months and never could decide on the essence of the business. (To be fair, most of print journalism has gone through a similar schizophrenia in recent years.)
The new owners apparently have a respect for editorial since they're bringing an ex-L.A. Times editor to the board. I'm very curious to see what happens to the newsroom(s) in coming months. That's the scary part about new ownership: You just never know what's going to happen. Then again, with the AJC abandoning downtown Atlanta, seems like now's a perfect time for a revitalized competitor to sweep in and fill the intown void.

Anyway, here's my newest illustration for the Loaf's weekly crime report. I know it's a bit of a crutch of mine to fall back on my old blue-white-red palette, but I'm really pleased with how this girl turned out.

Blotter: “While I was attempting to get the facts straight, [the woman] was continuously calling everyone ‘Satan worshipers [sic]’ and stating that she is our ‘superior’ and I was going to be a ‘Satanist’ if I listened to what they said.” ...

Strange Crust redux

2009-08-25T11:26:00.005-04:00

By request, here are both pages of the "Strange Crust" comic strip that I created for Adam over at The Amateur Gourmet.
Response to the guest post was fantastic; I don't think I've ever received so much fan mail for any one drawing — including a lovely note from the folks at The Albion Caff (home of my favorite pies in London!).

Click on the pages below to see them full size.

From Mohawk to Nohawk

2009-08-20T04:51:00.003-04:00

Here's my new illustration for Creative Loafing's weekly crime report. I was really digging the direction this drawing was going in at first, but I didn't love the final. Funny how that sometimes happens.

Blotter: A man with a blondish mohawk and a 20-year-old woman walked into a grocery store on Piedmont Avenue. Store employees say the man went to the wine section and grabbed a $130 bottle of wine ...

Strange Crust

2009-08-04T16:40:00.004-04:00

I'm very happy to point you to The Amateur Gourmet, where you can have a peek at my guest post on British pies. I've been intending to whip up an illustrated entry for my friend Adam's delicious site for sometime now. This is my first time contributing, so let me know what you think of the comic. Many thanks to Adam for the opportunity!
(What appears above is just a little taster. Be sure to click over to see the whole thing.)

That Darn Cat

2009-07-31T12:05:00.004-04:00

The pissed-off puss from this week's Blotter doodle may seem familiar to some of you. I thought it would be fun to revisit my much-loved (by me, anyway) "Adios Gato" kitty, which is still available as an attractive T-shirt, btw.
This is obviously not the same cat, or maybe it's just another one of his nine lives.

Blotter: On Pharr Road, a woman called police to report her cat missing. An officer arrived. The woman said she “has not seen her cat in several days and believes that one of her neighbors inside her apartment complex has kidnapped the cat,” the officer wrote.

"Moon Atlanta": Now on Amazon

2009-07-14T10:56:00.007-04:00

I'm happy to report that my new travel handbook is now up on Amazon. Yay! The actual publication date for Moon Atlanta isn't until Sept. 1 but you can pre-order a copy now. Or better yet, ATL residents can wait till October and buy yours from Outwrite Bookstore during my release party.

Writing this book was definitely an education for me. I thought I knew a lot about the ATL going into the project, thanks to my years toiling away in the dead-tree media. I quickly realized just how much of the city I'd never experienced, and how much of it I took for granted. Revisiting some of the old tourist haunts turned out to be a real eye-opener. The new World of Coke, for example, hit me like a sugar-coated LSD trip. Ditto for seeing The Cyclorama all over again. I was bummed to discover just how dull Zoo Atlanta is once you're over the age of 10. (No offense to the pandas. Love you guys! Mean it.)

It also made me fall in love with the city all over again. I was forced to consider just how much the place has changed just during my lifetime. I'll save my long-winded diatribe about what Midtown was like during the scary days (wait, isn't that now?) for another post.
Anyway, I'm very happy to see this project finally come to fruition. As I mentioned earlier, look for the release party scheduled for early October at Outwrite Bookstore in Midtown.

Just Tweet It

2009-07-08T09:03:00.002-04:00

"Sure, much of what gets shared on Twitter may seem pointless," writes Lee Gimpel in the new issue of AirTran's Go magazine, "but the micro-blogging site has proved to have bottom-line value." Really? I started using the site once I got the assignment to create an illo for Lee's article, and I'll have to say, I can see why it's addictive. However, I'm still not convinced that it isn't pointless.
In any case, you can now follow me on Twitter (twitter.com/traybutler) though, to be honest, I think my more clever status updates always end up on Facebook. Maybe I'm not doing it right? Maybe I should just sync the two?
I was happy with the drawing. Lots more colors than I usually use. Yay for that.

Cute but a Little Too Wooden?

2009-06-30T06:41:00.007-04:00

Over the past year I've been addicted to Bill Willingham's Fables, a truly epic comic series that puts a modern spin on dozens of familiar fairy-tale characters like Snow White and the Big Bad Wolf. I'm thinking that the story arc involving Pinocchio played a big role in this week's illustration for the Loaf. Yeah, probably.

Blotter: A man said he and his wife were kidnapped at gunpoint one morning – and they were forced to get in a blue van and held in Piedmont Park until almost 11 p.m. ...

Run Through the Jungle

2009-06-19T03:35:00.003-04:00

This week's illustration for Creative Loafing's crime report ended up feeling like a page from a children's book. Granted, a pretty twisted children's book, one where shoplifting trannies run half-naked through the zoo.

Blotter: A 24-year-old man wearing a dress allegedly shoplifted from a drugstore on Boulevard. ...

Paper Cuts

2009-06-09T05:18:00.003-04:00

This month's drawing for AirTran's Go Magazine goes with a column on cutting paper usage in the office. Kind of a vague concept, I thought, so I attempted to come up with an image that put a human face on, um, paper reduction.

Hillary? Hell.

2009-06-09T05:10:00.002-04:00

I had some fun coming up with this week's illustration for the CL crime report, which featured a shout-out to our current Secretary of State. Here's the Blotter item:

"An officer was patrolling Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard when he noticed a woman near a vacant house. She wore a black hoodie, jeans and white sneakers. “As I passed the house, [the woman] started heading toward the rear of the vacant property,” the officer wrote. “I stopped the woman, who stated her name was Hilarey Clinton, with a date of birth of 03-14-1965."

Holmes, We Hardly Knew Ye

2009-06-05T04:58:00.003-04:00

I've been reading some Sherlock Holmes short stories — which no doubt inspired this recent illustration for AirTran's Go magazine. The tech column for May offered tips for inspecting new software packages. The guy with the magnifying glass started out as more of a Sherlock caricature, but later evolved into more of a regular dude.
Meanwhile, I've been shocked by some of the revelations of the short stories. Dirty stuff! Maybe this is old news to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fans, but I never realized Holmes was a coke head. Here's a bit from "A Scandal in Bohema":

"...Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug and fierce energy of his own keen nature."

Yikes. So maybe we'll see Robert Downey Jr. blowing rails in the new Sherlock Holmes flick?

Adios, Gato: Now a T-shirt!

2009-06-02T12:52:00.008-04:00

"Why don't you ever make any TRAYB T-shirts?" many folks have asked me over the years. (OK, mainly just my mother, but who's counting?)

Well, the long wait is finally over.
Today I posted what I hope will be the first of many TRAYB designs over at MySoti.com, a very cool site for buying quirky shirts and prints. Get yours today!
(If nothing else, go to the site and give my gato a positive vote. He could use the moral support.)

Meanwhile, I'm weighing options for the next T-shirt design. Any requests?

Breast Wishes

2009-06-01T07:41:00.002-04:00

I know next to nothing about tattoo art, but I spent a lot of time scouring the internets to find the perfect specimen of a tattoo to reference for this week's crime report drawing. I wanted a rose that had a classic jailhouse sort of feel, not some tribal B.S. or anything too abstract. Ditto with the font. I'm pleased with how it all turned out.

The item: A 25-year-old man said he was walking in Buckhead around 1:30 a.m. when a blond woman — with a tattoo possibly of a rose on her left breast — pulled up. He said the woman seemed distraught — she said she was lost and needed directions. The woman said she was staying at a hotel downtown and asked him if he could get into her car and help her find the Rio Bravo restaurant on Roswell Road ...

The Lightning Round

2009-05-07T04:46:00.004-04:00

Cranking out a weekly drawing for Creative Loafing's crime report is such a strange and occasionally tense assignment. I never know what material I'm going to get. The Blotter Diva, Lauren, sends me the text on Tuesday or Wednesday. I have until Friday to whip up a doodle. Sometimes the Gods of Crime are feeling generous and I'll receive maybe five or six items to choose from. I love those weeks.
Lately, though, I've been getting just one. Which is like the Blotter Lightning Round, especially when the item is as distasteful as this week's:

A 73-year-old woman said a man grabbed her right buttock while she was walking on University Avenue. Then, the man reportedly stuck out his tongue at her, grabbed his crotch and shook it.

Um, wow. Classy!
(As a side note, I was happy to see that Blotter got top billing on the Loaf's site today. Love it when that happens.)

Grand Theft Uh-Oh!

2009-04-16T09:30:00.006-04:00

During my time in NYC, I had the pleasure of getting to know Robert W. Richards, a talented illustrator whose work is nothing if not provocative. I was surprised to learn that he'd done some of the original art for the Grand Theft Auto posters and packaging -- worlds away from the lusty-eyed twinks and scruffy man-meat seen in his (NSFW) book, Allure.

I was thinking of Robert when I saw this week's crime report. The item had to do with an apparent marketing kit for the latest Grand Theft title gone way wrong. I couldn't resist cranking out a parody cover of the newest game, but I knew better than to try and mimic the realistic style that's become the GTA trademark. (Robert no longer does the game art, but it retains plenty of his sensibilities.) The result is above, and it made me smile.

The Blotter item:

SEEING BLOODY RED: At Chastain Square Shopping Center on Roswell Road, a 29-year-old woman said she went to the Dumpster to throw away some cardboard and discovered a box on the ground filled with bloody clothes. So she called police. An officer arrived to investigate. “As I approached the box, I noticed what appeared to be bloody clothing inside,” the officer wrote. Then, he looked closer. “The suspected blood appeared to be some type of red syrup. It also had a sweet smell to it. … To make sure that the substance was not blood, I [got] an ID unit to come out and take pictures of the scene before I started removing contents of the box.” After photos, the officer fully opened the box. “Inside the box was a plastic fake head, pants, a white shirt, and rubber flies and worms. It appeared that someone may have used the items to advertise a game of some sort. The reason for this assumption is because I also found a Chinese to-go box with a bloody fake hand inside. On the box, it advertised a game called ‘Grand Theft Auto in China.’ The game is believed to be full of blood and gore from the display on the box.” The officer discarded the fake bloody contents and filed a police report.