Sea Turtles!

The Odialesque and the Sultan's Guard

Some of the specialty clothing used in the strip (like just about everything Gilles wore at Christmas) comes from things designed for other character meshes and then modified to fit my guys, using a wonderful little program called Wardrobe Wizard. Thanks to it, I have literally gigs of stuff to work with, everything from ancient attire to space suits to... uhm... more exotic items of clothing, like these. "What keeps Doc's pants up?" you wonder. Structural engineering, I think.

This sketch, a small fantasia on Arabian Nights themes. is a pretty decent demonstration: clothing originally designed for characer meshes called Michael and Hiro is transformed to fit DnR, thus providing... well, just all sorts of fun times. :-)

Glenn Beck Speaks Out!

Elliot's Letter! (5)

Wind Me Up!

A parking spot for a post on another forum, but you're free to enjoy it as well.

Elliot's Letter! (4)

24 years!

Believe it or not, the very first DnR cartoon was scrawled into a Robert Bateman sketch pad 24 years ago this month. I look at it now and think it's a bit of a wonder this thing ever got off the ground. But now, over two decades later, with the strip and the characters really finding their feet (as well as other things), it's fun to look at those old pieces of work and see what happened as a result. So, with apologies to the musical I Do I Do, here's a little wallpaper souvenir for the occasion — and now the pressure is on for the 25th anniversary next year. Thanks all for being such faithful readers, during all of the strip's many highs and lows. I promise to continue to at least try to make it worth your while.

The REAL stock market indicator!

Islamists and Christians and Sumerians -- oh my!

Single Panels 23!

Elliot's Letter! (3)

Flat Tires! (5)

Flat Tires! (4)

Elliot's Letter! (2)

Elliot's Letter (1)

Dinner and a hot shower!

Catching up on other folks in the DnR universe...

You remember Border Agent Al, that held Doc for an "interview" during the visit to the Grand Canyon, and his mention of his housemate Border Agent Hank?

Naptime!

Flat Tires! (3)

To be continued on Monday!

Flat Tires! (2)

Flat Tires! (1)

To be continued!!!

Tripp Palin!

Montreal Japanese Festival!

We're taking a bit of a break from the Pride activities this afternoon to head down to Old Montreal for the Japanese Festival (which, if you've ever seen kodo drummers, will definitely have its share of hotness on display).



Click the image for a wallpaper with a thought worth considering.

Montreal Pride!

Although it technically started on Wednesday, Montreal Pride kicks into high gear tonight with a slew of parties and events. Thus far it's ranged from a documentary about the dangers of even throwing a pride event in some corners of the world (the footage from Poland and Russia was pretty eye-opening) to "opera karaoke", which will no doubt be exactly what it says it will be. Despite the forecast of rain, Sunday's the big event: the parade and "monster tea dance", at both of which they're expecting an insane number of people.


The boys will be there, getting into whatever trouble they can. Look for a report starting on Tuesday.

Elliot 5

We didnt say anything. Ellie obviously didnt want to talk about it, and we honoured that request. Since it was a Tuesday, we drank our Iced Columbian and kept our months shut.

But as the days passed, Elliot became more and more withdrawn. Bored with his toy, Frank had dumped him pretty hard, leaving an inexplicable text message: "it was fun. kthnx." Phone calls went unanswered. Messages were ignored. It was like, at midgame, Frank picked up the ball and just left the stadium. It was going to be a while before Ellie got over this one. All we could do was watch him ride it out.

Meanwhile, Gordie'd discovered chat sites, and there was someone he'd been talking to online for a few weeks, "Bianchifan". Pretty nice looking guy. An antique book collector. Seemed a little hesitant to talk too much about himself, but finally opened up that morning with a rather surprising email. He'd just gotten out of a big mistake of a relationship but was open to try again. A dinner invitation and directions to his condo... overlooking the lake.

If Gordie had no plans for Thursday, maybe they could go to... the opera.

And if things really worked out, this antique book collector sometimes took weekend trips to... San Francisco.

Interesting, this online-chat-responder named...

... Frank.

Gordie's response was a terse "It was fun. Kthnx.".


By the time fall set in, Ellie was pretty much back to his old self, punctual as always and finally conceding to the autumn chill by putting on a t-shirt. Nothing more was ever said about Frank. Elliot continued to amass new "friends". To our surprise, after a few consultations with Ellie about clothes and proper bicep curl technique, so did Gordie. I like to think that Frank would have been humbled by how thoroughly Ellie rebounded, but then as Doc pointed out: "Men. Meh. I've had one or two. That's enough." Sometimes too wise for his own good, that husband of mine.

But then, it always comes back to the four of us, our coffee, our love of a sport that's eleven guys — a team — who just get together and play as one because that's what they do best. And that's much like us: four friends who meet every morning at seven-thirty, perfectly happy to just be together, even though we may play in different stadiums.

By November, we were the only ones determined and foolhardy enough to sit outside. And one Monday morning, with the first snow of the season drifting up the Steps, we finally decided it was time to go inside with everyone else. Besides, I could smell a fresh pot of French Roast, and this being a Monday.....

--------------------------------------------------------------

So there we are, a bit of Elliot's past. And after this, of course, Elliot met Gilles, and, despite the occasional hiccup, things seem to be working out pretty well there. But what happened to Gordie? Ah, Reader, that would be telling...

Elliot 4

The next time we saw Ellie he was wearing — of all things! — a suit and tie! I didnt know he even owned a tie, let alone one made of imported Italian silk, and, as it turned out, he didnt. This and the suit was yet another present from Frank. They'd gone to the opera the night before — not because Frank thought Ellie would actually enjoy it, but because Frank had had this long-standing fantasy of making it with someone in one of the partierre boxes, and Ellie — overly smitten Ellie — agreed. They left right after the sex. Ellie didnt remember too much about the opera itself, save that it was a lot of non-stop singing by people who, in his considered opinion, had missed far too few meals and far too many days at the gym.

Frank, on the other hand, was proving more and more inventive with each passing day. It was almost like he knew exactly what Elliot wanted: every wet-dream fantasy, every you-put-your-left-foot-there-while-I-put-my-right-hand-there sexual position, all of it flowing copiously from this wealthy, walking sex machine named Frank.

Of course, there was the nagging little issue of affection, which, for now, seemed to be traveling down a one-way street in Frank's direction, without much in the way of oncoming traffic. Yes, Frank was generous, but Ellie was falling hard and fast for a man who clearly liked his fully poseable body far more than Ellie himself. However, as we told ourselves, Elliot was having a blast, so who were we to say anything? After all, who hasnt cruised that hunky sales clerk at Home Depot and wished he could be everything we wanted, when though all he really was, was just an interesting package? Nothing wrong with that. Despite the fact that I have a rock-solid relationship, I'm as guilty as the next guy of window shopping. Like everyone else whose formative years as a gay man involved porno loops from Nova or Colt, I've done my share of fantasizing about the cable repairman or the pizza delivery boy or that especially hot cop who walks the foot patrol along our street.

Hell, even as a couple, Doc and I are far from immune from fantasy. We'd be a pair of bored and feisty cowhands trapped in a bunkhouse out on an isolated ranch on a Friday night. Or I'd drive my Jeep on the 401, only to find myself pulled over by this blond motorcycle cop who has his own particular method of dealing with speeders. Or Doc would come home and find this half-naked plumber, respendent in cut offs and work boots, working on the pipes in the kitchen. Or, for a moment of real danger, we'd go to the baths — together, but signing in about five minutes apart — and then relentlessly cruise each other in the halls, even as we pointedly palmed off the advances of anyone else who came near. They were, of course, mindless games we played with each other on those nights we felt like being someone else for a change.

But see, they're only games for us, exercises in mindless erotic fun. For other people, though, the games become so important that, in the end, there has to be a winner...

... and a loser.


To be continued...

Elliot 3

We didnt see Elliot again for two days: Frank had taken him on a weekend jaunt to San Francisco. It was his first trip there, and, to hear Ellie describe it afterwards, it was virtually a honeymoon. Frank made sure Ellie's every need was met, and Ellie did... well, what Ellie does best to return the favour. It was actually kind of fun watching a self-described "heartless bastard" discovering he indeed have a heart after all.

The next time we saw him, he was dressed head to toe in brand new leathers: chaps, harness, boots, even — despite the heat (or maybe because of it) — a jacket, all of it custom-made to Frank's specifications. He and Ellie had played out a few fantasies the night before, and Frank had surprised him by giving him the entire outfit. This wasnt too out of the ordinary, we told ourselves. Men had given Elliot things before: clothes, jewelry, tickets to Europe. But what made this all the more exceptional was that, for the first time we'd seen him that summer, Elliot was wearing something above the waist.

This bothered me, for some reason. Ellie worked too hard in the gym to waste the effort by covering it all up. But I held my peace on the matter.

For days afterwards, we watched Elie act like a fourteen-year-old who'd just discovered what to do with his hands. It was a bad case of Cupid-hits-a-bullseye first love, and I found myself vicariously enjoying Ellie's romance blossom... perhaps a bit too much. Oh, sure, Doc and I had been together for a long time, long enough for both of us to know that, despite the occasional hiccup, we were in there for the long haul. But as much as I might have preferred otherwise, he hadnt been my first, and it got me to thinking about the ones that came before him...



Like Jerry — aspiring model by day, waiter by night. He wanted me to tie him up and threaten him with a professional purgatory of covers on the catalogues for canola seeds or heavy industrial equipment.

I just couldnt get into it.

Or Lowell... sweet, innocent Lowell, who knew we were right for each other by the end of our first dance and then manifested his undying love with a possessive streak a mile wide... and then, because he was Catholic, would go home and feel incredibly guilty about it all.

Oh, and Carl. Big, tough Carl. A former lumberjack and oil field worker, now a cop, who could never accept just how much he truly enjoyed women's underthings.



Anyway...

To be continued

Elliot 2

Elliot finally showed up at ten till nine, just as Gordie was headed off to work and Doc and I were going home. He looked a bit worse for wear but grinned like crazy. So go figure: he got laid. I mean, that's no major surprise — Elliot knew how to get around with the best of them...

... except there was something about that grin...

On Thursday, he was there before any of us, with a grin far wider and more annoying than yesterday's. Instead of lounging in the sun as he usually would, he drank his Irish Dark in record time, then ran off to the gym before any of us could ask anything...

... not that we would, of course, but...

By Friday, things seemed normal — or at least, more or less so. Ellie was there, enjoying his Costa Rica Decaf like the rest of us, but at the same time he was far, far, far away. He kept grinning to himself, which was starting to seriously get on my nerves, since no one knew jack about what was going on, and Ellie being Ellie wasnt about to come out and just tell us. Instead, he just sat there, staring at nothing as usual and grinning, while Gordie and I argued why this summer had been especially mild...

... when suddenly Ellie interrupted, in a voice barely above a whisper, "It's just so damn hot..."

Hot? It wasnt hot at all. What on earth was he talking about?

We might have guessed. He'd met someone. No, not just someone. The one. A towering hunk of masculinity, an insatiable love god, a... man named...

Frank.



To hear Ellie describe him, he was Tom of Finland, Albert Einstein, and Saint Augustine all rolled up in one neatly pressed, incredibly built package. Handsome. Witty. Astute. Ruthlessly nice. Almost pathologically well-mannered. And one of the Truly Great Kissers of Our Time.

For almost an hour and a half, Ellie continued describing Frank in some detail, and the rhapsody grew less Gershwin and more Montiovani. Of course we had our doubts: we all knew what Elliot liked, and there were three, perhaps four men throughout all recorded history that could meet his demanding standards of masculinity. But Ellie was thoroughly and hopelessly convinced he'd met his very own Mister Right. They'd met at a bookstore — one with real books in it — and Ellie'd been swept off his feet over a shared love of Tom Bianchi photography. Frank's penthouse apartment, overlooking the lake, was the nearly too perfect site of their first kiss. The sex that night was, in Elliot's words, the best he'd ever had: Frank's catalogue of positions exceeded Ellie's own.

That alone was no small feat.

To be continued...

Elliot 1

MONDAY, it was French Roast. It's always French Roast on Mondays, you see, and, well, this being a Monday... we all had French Roast. Eliot complained as usual: he prefers Dark Irish. But we drink Dark Irish on Thursdays.

And this was a Monday.

And on Mondays, we drink French Roast.

The very best place to catch up on the local news -- or gossip, as others might call it -- is on the Steps, outside the Starbucks at the corner of Fifth and Monroe. Like, who's dating who, who's sleeping with who, who's living together, who's not living together, who gave who the boot when he caught him playing with him in the dark corner at end of the hallway at the Black Eagle.

And you can find all of this out at seven-thirty in the morning on the Steps where, on Monday, Gordie, Eliot, Doc and I all have French Roast.

What had brought us all together those many months ago was, strangely enough for a bunch of fags, a mutual love of football. We'd all played, either in high school or college. Gordie had been a centre, as was Doc. I was a defensive lineman. Eliot, ever Heaven's accidental joke, was a tight end. We followed our favourite teams with near-religious fervor and an enthusiasm that others in our circle reserved for Barbra or Renata or Diana. We could reduce our conversations to a string of statistics, a shorthand so arcane it left the outside observer bewildered at best.

Somehow, over the months, this obsession evolved into an elaborate ritual. First, we would check to make sure the day's preferred blend was being served, along with a guilty (and self-denying) check of the pastries. Then we would grab the papers left by earlier customers and scan the sports pages to see how the Cowboys or the 49ers or the Browns had done the night before. Then, and only then, it was time for coffee.

On Tuesday, we had Imperial Blend. Normally, it would have been Iced Columbian, but it was Gordie's birthday, so we made an exception.

On Wednesday, it's Cinnamon Hazelnut. And on this particular Wednesday, Elliot still hadnt shown up at eight-thirty, which was somewhat unusual for him. Despite everything else, Elliot was relentlessly punctual, no matter whom he might have picked up the night before. Even some of the regulars, who lived in vain hope of ever catching his eye, saw fit to make comment. "Now just where could that girl be? Overslept in the steam room again?"

Gordie and I chose to ignore them, but Doc refused to let it pass. "Some of us dont need to immerse ourselves in our friends' private lives, so dry up."

They did.

To be continued...

This weekend...

... I'm traveling by bus to Montreal for Pride Week, so there wont be any postings on Saturday or Sunday. There may be a posting later tonight if I get it finished on time, but we'll have to see about that. However, I wanted to let you know what to expect next week.

Friends who remember the print version of the cartoon might recall the little novella that came at the end of the second anthology, "The Steps". This was Elliot's story, told through the lens of life at a now-gone Toronto landmark, of his world before he met Gilles. Because I'm in the process of reframing the Doc and Raider universe a bit, "The Steps" will be slightly rewritten for geographic changes, but the story will remain the same.

I've always had a sweet point in my heart for this tale. Now that it's been re-illustrated in the new style, it's time to share it with all of you again. We'll be starting on Monday, and I really want to hear what you think of it.

Road Trip 5!

Road Trip 4!

Congrats!!!

With luck...

... today is the day we hear the decision on Prop 8. For myself, I'm cautiously optimistic. Not overwhelmingly so, but enough that I think it's safe we took it at this level. The SCOTUS, however, is another matter, and all bets are off when it gets to that bunch.

Road Trip 3!

Road Trip 2!

Road Trip 1!

Back to unemployment...

There's no business like it!

Naked people over here!