Terribly Happy

When your job involves a lot of constant deadlines, you have a lot of, “If I can just get through this week…” moments. Sometimes it’s a whole month and last year it actually got to the, “If I can just get to mid-December…” point.

Last week, I knew that I had a very large story due for the Sunday paper and that as soon as that was done I was going to have to turn around and produce my weekly column, too. I spent about a week trying to knock out smaller assignments and to get everything else out of the way so that freight train could pass without any interruptions.

Things worked out fine, like they always do. I knew this, inside, that things would work themselves out one way or another.

But there’s always that scary moment when you wonder if you really have any idea what you’re going to write and if it’s going to come out in what my mom sometimes calls a chorro (a flood or torrent in Spanish, or if you’re being gross, a diarrhea) or if you’re just going to sit there and wait and nothing magical happens.

Luckily, as happens most of the time when I’m under pressure, it was the chorro.

This is a weird story, so bear with me. One of the articles I wrote last week ran in Sunday’s paper. It’s about a very popular website called Total Frat Move. That website, which is based in Austin, has turned into a very successful web empire which spawned a book that is already a New York Times bestseller and will likely become a movie.

I met with the guys who run the site a few weeks ago thinking it would be no more than a short blog post or book write-up. An editor instead suggested I do it as a Sunday lead story. Then the pressure started and I tried to figure out a way to say something more than “Here’s a website, here’s a book.” I transcribed my interview notes and did a lot of online reading. I read the book itself, which was kind of a disturbing and problematic read for me being that I have two daughters I hope will go to college one day. There’s a lot of ugly humor on the site and in the book, stuff that even in the guise of being a joke or satire is still really rough to read for even a jaded-ass, South Park-watching vulgarian such as myself.

I tried to convey that in the story, a story that ended up being much longer than I anticipated and written in a tone that tries to be neutral in the face of material that we would normally not highlight and put in front of our readers.

Clearly, it wasn’t what the subjects of the story expected:

Article on Total Frat Move in the Austin-American Statesman, written by a bitter never-nude: m.statesman.com/news/lifestyle…

— W. R. Bolen (@WRBolen) January 28, 2013

But I’m kind of proud of this weird, long story I wrote. I don’t know that anyone else would have written it the way I did and sometimes that’s a pretty significant kind of victory when you stick words next to each other for a living.

The other piece I wrote last week was a Monday column about taking a break from or giving up social media completely as Vicki Flaugher is doing.

Like anyone who’s been using social media for more than a few years, I’ve fantasized about massively pruning the number of people I connect to, taking a long break or just walking away. The work I do doesn’t really allow for not using social media and most of the time (OK, half of the time), I really do enjoy and get a lot out of these online connections. But it can be tiring, stressful and time-wasting.

Speaking of exhaustion, last week, I wrote a column about transmedia storytelling, specifically authors who are mixing book writing with online game worlds, interactive games, real-world events and other new media. This is not new, of course. Authors have experimented with this kind of stuff even through the early days of computers and CD-ROMs and all through the Internet era. But the sheer ambitious some of these authors are showing in carrying out their vision is inspiring and a little intimidating.

I say this as someone who’s spent the last couple of years trying to write a Goddamn Book™. The idea that instead of working on one book or two, you just up and say, “How about 7 or 10 plus an MMO?” makes me want to go down a gigantic popcorn bowl of amphetamines. (No, not really, it actually makes me want to nap.)

Other bits: I wrote about a woman who won a billboard from Ben & Jerry’s for an Instagram photo she shot. In the Digital Savant Micro feature, I defined “Gorilla Glass” and explained Facebook’s Social Graph.

We’re still diligently working to revitalize our “Space Monkeys!” franchise after that very long absence.

Comics come out every Wednesday, like these two recent ones.

In addition to the Facebook page I’ve mentioned, they now have a Twitter account, too, where Bobbo and Meany talk about ship and space stuff. Give ‘er a follow, why not?

Other random things that happened recently:

I bought a swing set for the girls. That’s an adventure I’ll probably write about in full after it’s set up.

We went to the circus! It sounded like it might be terrible but instead it was the opposite of terrible, which is CIRCUS AWESOME! Seriously had a great time and these daughters of mine loved it.

I wrote 50+ pages of something in less than a month which must mean I’m pretty excited about it. If it keeps on at that pace, I hope to have some news of it to share by summer.

Started playing around with Vine and made this video:

playing around with Vine vine.co/v/b505qWjJWhw

— Omar L. Gallaga (@omarg) January 26, 2013

Took this picture of the girls on a beautiful walk around the neighborhood:

So it’s been a good January. A good year so far.

Hello!

The last time we talked, we had just announced the re-launch of “Space Monkeys!” and I was about to go back to work after a lengthy vacation that was both stupid-lazy and incredibly productive. Those were good times.

Things settled back into the work groove where a lot of things are up in the air as more changes (these are positive ones, I think) come our way. Our newsroom is getting remodeled, so there is exciting new carpet to look forward to and I’m almost caught up after being really far behind on emails and column ideas after I was away.

At home, I’ve tried really hard to keep up the momentum that started at the end of 2012 to move forward into this year a bit spring-loaded. I feel like I stumbled creatively in 2012, especially the latter half of the year, and since November, I’ve really been pushing to get back on track.

That’s been going well. The comic re-launching has given me something recurring to focus on and the two other things I’m working on (three if you count a March sketch comedy show I’m helping write for Teatro Vivo) have kept me writing every night instead of crashing out, watching TV or wasting time playing iPhone games.

Usually when I’m working full time, I have to be mindful to save energy to do the things I want to do on my own. Lately, it’s been the opposite. I’m trying to maintain my energy and focus at work to match the things I’m suddenly really excited about on the writing-for-me side.

Just producing pages every night makes me feel like things are happening and getting done, even if they’re pages that only one or two other people get to see right now. That’s OK. I feel like I’m building a little bit at a time and I can see the structure of what’s being made. That helps immeasurably to keep me going.

Photo by Julie Jacobson / Associated Press

At work, I’ve had two columns run since I got back. Last week’s was a how-to on getting rid of duplicate files (songs, documents, photos) you probably don’t need to save space and keep organized. Tomorrow’s column is a sum-up of the big Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (which I did not attend because except for SXSW Interactive, I don’t do those gigantic press release-driven expos anymore), giving percentage odds on whether a lot of the technology will really matter in our lives this year. I’m proud of that one because I was able to get like three poop jokes into one paragraph, which I’ve never been able to do in 16 years at the paper. Times are changing, I think!

Photo courtesy of Microsoft Games

The Digital Savant Micro features recently were a piece defining the game “Minecraft,” which apparently every pre-teen is mandated to be playing right now, and one running tomorrow offering advice on how to clear off and donate an old PC

I also had a few updates about SXSW Interactive (Aisha Tyler is coming!) on the work blog.

And I spoke at a country club to a women’s group about technology which was, no joke, perhaps the highlight of my week. (Photo at the top of this blog entry.) It is very nice to be treated like a visiting dignitary by ladies who lunch and the food they serve at these things is no joke. It was nice to make those connections and they told me if I ever have a project or book or something to promote, to please come back and share it with them. “How do you feel,” I asked, “about comics detailing the comings and goings of homicidal monkeys from space?”

I’m pretty sure they love me.

Way back in early 2004, my brother Pablo and I started an online comic called Space Monkeys!

It was built on a very simple premise. Meany, his second-in-command Bobbo, and a ragtag crew of space-faring simians are bent on defeating the stupid humans on Earth and taking over the planet. In the history of the comic, they had very little success doing so.

We produced the comic, in the background of various other projects we were working on, until 2009. That year, we started doing the Trailers Without Pity videos and that took all the extra time we had to work together.

Space Monkeys!, as much as we loved it, went on hiatus and never came back. We posted one last comic in 3-D right after Avatar came out and that was it.

But we missed our monkeys. As we were working on the videos, we kept promising that if we ever stopped doing those, we’d go back to working on the comic.

Last summer, we ran out of steam with the videos and gave up a paying gig due to logistics. A few months later, as things were slowing down for me creatively, I approached my brother about getting the comic going again. He was excited about the idea, but we both knew we had a lot of work ahead of us.

So, quietly, we’ve been doing just that.

We built an entirely new website using WordPress, transferred (manually, due to the flakiness of our old database software) more than 250 archived comics and hundreds more blog posts and began working on new comics.

We registered a new domain name, spacemonkeys.me, which will be the new home for the site. Our old website, actiongravy.com, still works, but we’ll be phasing it out over the next few weeks and eventually it’s going to redirect to the new URL.

There’ll be new comics once a week and we’ll keep expanding and adding things as we get our feet under us. We added a Facebook page, even! The first new comic in nearly three years was published late last night. There’s also a “Story so far…” page to catch you up on the story and all the characters.

Part of the whole process of moving over the archive — a task I took on while Pablo worked on the web design — was that I got to reintroduce myself to these characters we love and this weird universe we created. I was thrilled to learn that there was much more possibility in it than I remembered.

In fact, in a few months, after the comic is back on its feet with regular updates, we hope to announce something in addition that will help flesh things out even more. It’s something I’ve been working on every day that I’m enjoying as much as anything I’ve done creatively in a really long time.

For now, we hope you enjoy the comic. We’ll be posting new strips on Wednesdays.

The new site:

The old site: