Cigarettes and Coffee

- Urban Sketchers has been around since late last year, and it's always a lot of fun to look through. The site's members (there are dozens worldwide) upload the sketches they record while traveling or in their home cities, and it's a great place to scrounge for ideas or pick up techniques. The one up there is by Tia Boon Sim, who lives in Singapore and also posts drawings on her blog.

- I mentioned Lynda Barry last week, so here's a text-based interview with her, for those of you who don't have access to 1990s multimedia technology. It completely blew my mind to learn that Kelly Hogan - a fantastic singer and a vital part of Neko Case's touring band - is also Lynda's assistant.

- Speaking of Neko and Kelly....

- My girlfriend is from Massachusetts and I'm from Pittsburgh, so we both know a thing or two about bizarro regional dialects. This page maps American pronunciation and word-choice tendencies by region (soda vs. pop, how caramel is pronounced, etc.), and it's utterly enthralling.

- I guess a whole lot of people read the webcomic Cyanide and Happiness. It's hit-and-miss for me, but I love the little animation gag in the last panel here. I can relate.

- Here's a nice interview with my friend Karen Green, who curates the comics/graphic novel collection (among several others) at Columbia University. I really wish I'd made it to her Comic Con panel, because I've heard nothing but good things about it. Karen also writes a regular column, "Comic Adventures in Academia," over here.

- So close:

- Finally, congratulations to the guys who produce CO-OP, the show that rose from the ashes of the dearly departed 1UP Show. When Ziff-Davis sold 1UP.com to UGO, their entire video-production crew was laid off, but they stuck together and immediately got to work on a new project, which has just been picked up by Revision3. These guys are good - they do video-game coverage that I'm actually not ashamed to be seen watching (cough cough G4) - and I'm happy they've got some cash rolling in again.