First things first, I’ve been following the Daily Grind Iron Man challenge and I have to give them some front page pimpage, these guys are awesome. The premise is simple, a cartoonist posts a new comic every Monday to Friday, and if he or she misses a day they are out of the competition. Every cartoonist pays a twenty dollar entry fee and the last cartoonist standing takes the pot. All of these guys have been doing amazing stuff but I wanted to give a little extra shout out to the DCC’s own Jeff Skinner, Joseph Bergin the III who illustrated Saul Colt’s story in Western Tales of Terror 4 and Jamie Dee Galey who has been muchos helpful in all thing Hoarse & Buggy related. I also recommend checking out Jeff Bent, he’s being doing some super funny stuff.

I also want to give a shout out to Rich Aidley, who just sent me this beautiful page. Click the thumbnail for a full-up look:


And lastly, a little pimpage over toe Guy LeCharles over at Comic Book Commentary that gave WTOT good marks, interviewed Josh, and bought some shit linked off my site. Thanks much, Guy.

Omar lived across the hall from me freshman year in college. Nice guy, big into hip-hop and highly intellectual. His father was a professor at MIT. We would always get together late at night and just talk philosophy and religion. Omar was Muslim, Josh was Mormon, Eric was Jewish and I was your run of the mill Catholic. Many heated but good discussions.

One day a couple of us were all going to go out. It was my, my college friend Max (not to be confused with Max the twin), this guy Mike, Eric, Nico from Rico and several other people whose names I don’t remember, the random friends you hang out with in college because they can get you weed. This was my dope-smoking crew, but this particular day, Omar asked if he can go out with us.

Omar never smoked dope, it just wasn’t him. Despite his hip-hop mentality he was very Muslim, very into keeping the body clean and all that kind of stuff. But he insisted so we let him come.

Mike took us to this guys house who gave us weed. Now, I don’t remember why it went down like this although I’m sure it was a pretty funny story but for some reason we smoked the dope inside this guys wall. It was like this weird secret passageway, a little room with a light bulb that didn’t look like it was supposed to be there. In retrospect, the guy was probably doing some illegal shit in that house (besides selling dope, that is) and need a hide away to store the kids he was kidnapping or something. At the time, however, it was perfectly normal, and we lit up and passed it around.

We all got pretty toked up, some of us believed the dope might have been dusted, we were feeling it pretty strong. We stumbled out of the wall and began walking to Newbury Street.

Something happened to Omar. He changed. It started innocent enough, he just began freestyling some funny lyrics. But then the lyrics started getting violent. He started grabbing his dick and rapping about bitches, drugs and guns really, really loud. We were all high as shit so we were laughing our asses off; this was intellectual Omar, son of an MIT professor, proud Muslim. And he rhymed about shooting people and taking women by force if they don’t comply with his sexual advances.

And then he stopped freestyling and began dropping Method Man's “P.L.O. Style”. He kept turning back to us, telling us how he should join the P.L.O. because it would be dope to blow shit up. We were still laughing, this was pre-September 11th, mind you, and we were stoned and so was Omar.

Then he started getting a little aggressive to people passing by and we had to take him home, it was still funny, but he was throwing rocks at frat houses and yelling how he’ll pop a cap in their asses and he didn’t have the steal to back up his mouth, never a good idea. While dragging him away from the frat house I told him, “You gotta chill out, O-Dog,” and the name just sort of stuck. He was no longer Omar, he was O-dog.

The next day he apologized for his behavior, told me that he didn’t really want to join the P.L.O. When you’re friend needs to tell you the next morning that he really isn’t going to join the P.L.O., you know you had a wild night.

O-Dog smoked with us a few times after that with us and he was much calmer. He was supposed to room with Eric Sophomore year but the kid just disappeared. We never heard from him again, he didn’t return out emails or our calls.

And that’s the end of the story. Sorry, no big reveal with O-Dog being a terrorist. None of us know what happened to him. If anything, the revelation here is sometimes your friends just leave, and you have no idea where they went. O-Dog was the type of guy I could have chilled with for the rest of my life, some of the most intelligent conversation I ever had. And I’ll probably never see him again and I’ll never know why.

read a book, fanboy: Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays - Steve Martin