THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

It's a new year!

And that means

NEW

TABLE DOODLES!

And who better to doodle with than

Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy

creator

and sooper pal

Maxwell Atoms!

He and Deva came over for a 

mega-tasty dinner whipped up

by the fabulous

Meg Gallagher

and then we

got to drawing!

Inexplicably,

I decided to only draw

assorted versions of

Beholders for most of the evening.

Don't ask why.

I don't have an answer.

It's not like I've even played

D&D in the last 100 years!

Mr. Atoms joined in,

but added an

Otyugh

from memory:

And a lot of stuff around it:

Deva got in on the action,

but skipped the 

Dungeons and Dragons crap:

 I gave this guy a very stylish 

orange peel hairdo:

Which got destroyed by

the Death Star:

Man,

I love having a good

table doodle!

SOMETHING WILLEMS THIS WAY CAME

It takes a special kind of person to run

TOWARDS 

Mo Willems

when he's in town.

I always do.

But I'm a glutton for punishment.

I don't know what's wrong with the

 rest of these guys, though:

From left to right there's

Mo 

New Yorker cartoonist Matt Diffee

Cartoonist and Seinfeld/Simpsons writer

Tom Gammill

The handsomest man in the world

Mad Magazine art director

Sam Viviano

And 

writer/illustrator

"I Want My Hat Back"

Jon Klassen

With this many sooper talented people

in attendance

(and me)

I just HAD to start passing around the pen and paper:

And I gotta tell you...

Getting to sit and talk with these hyper creative people is

truly one of the best parts of knowing such hyper creative people.

I'm a lucky guy.

THE BUSHMILLER MUSEUM AND RESEARCH LIBRARY!

YAY!

Mo Willems 

is here in LA!

Yesterday

he visited

Vroman's Bookstore

to read his latest

Elephant and Piggie 

book:

Which,

by the way,

just won a

Geisel Award Honor

this week!

And speaking of awards,

and

this

is

BIG

...

...

Sooper pal 

Dan Santat

won this year's

prestigious

Caldecott Medal

for 

THIS:

But wait...

another friend,

Jon Klassen,

won a 

Caldecott Honor 

for 

illustrating

THIS!

That's a lot to celebrate!

So

ANOTHER 

good friend

had a party for them at the

BUSHMILLER MUSEUM 

AND 

RESEARCH LIBRARY

Which is really just a fancy name

for the home of

Tom Gammill.

Mr. Gammill

rocks beyond words.

He's been a producer on 

The Simpsons 

since 1999.

He's written many an episode of

Seinfeld and written for Saturday Night Live,

David Letterman and Steve Martin.

He's also very involved in

The National Cartoonist Society 

and has a comic strip called 

The Doozies.

So yeah.

He funny.

And yeah.

He's probably the biggest

Ernie Bushmiller

fan in existence.

He has an entire room

dedicated to the man and his work,

primarily Nancy

He even has the guy's

driver's license:

Mr. Gammill also has a 

tongue-in-cheek

museum tucked away 

in a corner:

He even made this handy video about it:

Anyway,

it was a great party for

the medal winners:

Also in attendance were

Lisa Yee,

animator/author

Bob Boyle, 

with Adventure Time artist 

Teri Shikasho,

cartoonist Matthew Diffee and his wife

and 

Mr. Gammill's writing partner

Max Pross and his wife.

And of course,

the fabulous and stylish

Mrs. Warburton!

Tom's unbelievable wife Sandy

made an unbelievable dinner

and then we

TOTALLY

drew all over the tables.

But we'll tell you about that next time!