The Semi-Annual Gala Luncheon of Cognizance

Lin Tarczynski, Cover Design for an Imaginary Book, © 2017 lcmt

Inspired by this non-existent book.

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Paradise in the Large Never Never

The story behind today’s GLP comic could be the history of the band Cingroove, which was not so much a band as dance machine project created in the eighties by Samantha Zivotovsky, known professionally as Sam Zivo. Sam was an art punk (and a blood relative of Warren Zevon) with an abiding love for synthpop electro-boogie fusion, but she didn’t stop there. Sam felt compelled to squeeze several of her erratic musical obsessions into the mix of her soundtracks, including passions for the ukulele, the accordion, and traditional Mariachi string instruments, the vihuela and the guitarrón. When Sam was a child, she had accompanied her Jewish grandmother (who had lived in the same house in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, for sixty years) to Mariachi Plaza to hire bands for parties and weddings. In addition, Sam gave Cingroove a brass section with two trumpets and a trombone, an influence from her mother’s adoration of Earth, Wind & Fire, and Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass.

Cingroove achieved modest success in the eight years of its existence, with several songs popular in dance clubs, and three of them reaching Billboard’s Hot 100. The first was “Acrographinotus”, known as “Miz Lady Goatbug”, which was the popular interpretation of a garbled line in the song’s refrain. Sam never revealed the true meaning of the refrain.

“The tricky thing with my lyrics is that I need people to misunderstand them to get a hit single,” she said in an interview in Spin, May 1986. “Acrographinotus” reached number 38 on the Billboard chart. Cingroove’s second chart hit, “Paradise in the Large Never Never”, from their third album, reached number 24 in 1989, where it stayed for 11 weeks. Cingroove’s last hit, “Whiteface Heroes and Bluesky Gods”, also from the third album, was their biggest hit, reaching number 4 on the Billboard chart.

Cingroove entered the Geranium Lake Properties universe with "Acrographinotus"; Wm. Yost became a fan of the song, and drew several interpretations of the character Miz Lady Goatbug. He collaborated with Sam Zivo on the Cingroove logo, which was based on a graffiti stencil Sam had made of the band's name. Many years later, after Yost had retired and disappeared, Gralie Bohe wrote Samantha Zivotovsky into her novel, The Boy in the Yellow Leatherette Portmanteau. She appeared as a girlfriend of Yost's ex-wife.

© 2017 lcmt

We Will Sacrifice Our Children to Fire

This is the last of the panels in my possession from the Valley of Gheionnim series. If you follow the tag for Gheionnim you should be able to see all five posts.

Yet Another Eikon Basilike

Rain Brings Fire

© 2017 lin tarczynski
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Como el sueño de un niño, como el paraíso celestial

The Five Mistakes We Will Keep Making

A panel from the Valley of Gheionnim series. Reputedly, seven panels from the series exist, and Yost planned to make twelve in total, but I have only five transparencies in the collection I received from Ha Kim Ngoc.

Never Did A Ruddy Linguist Boast a Brick Building

© 2017 lcmt

Found in the hollow of disquiet

Somewhere There is a Country That Awards a Medal for Gallantry to Mushroom Hunters

The Utilapu Benison

No well-brought-up jackalope would dream of beginning a quest without formal permission for departure from their loved ones. This set of paglakaw nga mga papel was drawn up by Jack's fiancée, Alice Aroumbeyski.

Tiamat's Gutboard

Four years after Jack Loki first met the Friendly Neighborhood Haruspices, Wm. Yost began a series about Jack's prophetic journey through the Valley of Gheionnim. The series began with a haruspication made by an entity named Tiamat Choureau, who used a kiGamnch gutboard.

The Haruspication for Gheionnim

Jack Loki Meets the Friendly Neighborhood Haruspices

A Thorn in Your Way (2 versions)

Enci-fa-Quimperie distracts six of the ten Sacristans

SHOP

Sreya Derew Counts Backwards from Ted to Dina

This installment of Geranium Lakes Properties is a collaboration with Phil Openshaw and Tom Magee. I am very grateful to Phil and Tom for giving me permission to use pieces of their work.

The Tale of the Rust-Stained Jug

Six Tales from the Glorious Assemblage of Haberdashers is an imaginary book by Abby Ashier Chertsey. It was a once-cherished but mostly forgotten childhood classic for Wm. Yost, imaginary author of Geranium Lake Properties. Yost accidentally encountered Chertsey in 1995, in her garden on Bryher island, when he was on a tour of small British islands. Yost had stopped to admire a hillside of daffodils, and subsequently was rescued by the 103-year-old Chertsey from the affections of her mixed-breed wolfhound, a very large and exuberant puppy named Penarddun, called Penny, or Bad Penny.

Whatever the Outcome

Detail of this Geranium Lake Properties abstract comic strip, available as a poster or print. Or a miniskirt.

Extract one punctilio from the left-brained munificence