completely apropos of nothing - he's not dead as far as I know though glenn wheatley is, as of yesterday

I don't know why but I was just moved to play Alice Cooper's 'I Never Cry', the last song on the first side of ...Goes to Hell. I was mainly thinking of how it is a massively superior song to its closest relation in the Cooper canon, 'Only Women Bleed', which to my mind sucks a big turd. 'Only Women Bleed' is Meatloaf-y; 'I Never Cry' is like 'Without You' or, lyrically of course, it's a little bit of a ref to 'I'm not in Love'. Bizarre to think that a mere four years later he was doing Flush the Fashion. I assume that 'I Never Cry' isn't a record he thinks about much, and that Flush the Fashion is a record he would like to have erased from everyone else's memory but not his own just in case he decided, having forgotten it, that it would be a good idea. 

I give kudos, I suppose, to 'Only Women Bleed' re: all the people who thought it was about menstruation which I think it pretty categorically isn't though of course Cooper and whoever his minions/masters were all knew that it would be considered to be referencing that. Is that worth kudos? I don't know. It is apparently about domestic violence. It seems to me to be so soap-operatic. I think it is a shitty song musically. 

I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure John Farnham used to do 'Only Women Bleed' live. I have to say I pretty much disagree with every song choice he made, since 'Things to Do', anyway. 

for my sins

You know that old shebang about you try to fix one problem and you create two more? Yeah. It's not really a saying so much as a real experience. Anyway, when I realised that part of Persiflage was slightly obscure because Sherman was in the room and then suddenly he wasn't, I realised I had to insert a page to have him leave the room. Steve said no problem but it has to be two pages - because all the chapters have to start on a right hand page. So. I wrote two more pages yesterday, and drew them last night and this morning. I put in a reference to a time when people might have heard the name Alice Cooper and thought Alice Cooper was a girl's name, I felt a bit daggy bringing up more music stuff but in context it had to be done and it's fine IMO because it's a stupid reference but leads to a better joke. Then I sort of fixed it all up this morning including this very complicated string of paper dolls which I actually made, photographed and photoshopped in. 

Then, I realised... I have Sherman leaving the house, saying he's working with the horn section that day but he's wearing something different in the studio scenes! Continuity problem! I rationalised it away, I thought... fuck it, he put on a cool shirt to be with the cool people in the studio, who cares, do you have to show everyone changing their clothes or whatever when it happens? Make a thing of it? No. So I decided to leave it. Then I looked at the next few pages and... what do you know, the scenes of him in the studio are not the same day, they're another day. But what the hell! I've just put in this panel where he says he's going into the studio to work with the horn section! And the next panel refers directly to a horn section too! And I've spent well over an hour photoshopping the paper dolls into the panel after that! 

So I spent some more time arduously patching together a non sequitur statement about horns out of existing lettering (my hand is too shaky, as previously mentioned, to use the photoshop brush to write new stuff; it looks like I did it on etch-a-sketch). It doesn't really make sense but it passes for jargon, you wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't told you. This really is like making a movie. I mean, it's more fun probably and I don't have to worry about using up anyone's money. I think I really have to put this to bed now though... any subsequent errors I'm just going to have to live with. There probably are some. There are probably heaps.