My so-called body of work

DISCLAIMOR: This post is totally self-indulgent (unlike most of my other posts which I do for charity and for the up-lift of humanity). I’m writing this one mostly just for myself. So you might wanna skip it:

I went through several distinct periods during the course of my artistic career (so-called), though the periods often over-lapped.

1. I started out in 1976 as an underground cartoonist. Mostly doing one-page cartoons about sex and drugs and left-wing politics. The usual fare.

2. Then in 1982 I started publishing a punk rock tabloid — TWISTED IMAGE. I envisioned it in the lineage of 60s underground newspapers like the BERKELEY BARB. And I ended up pretty immersed in the whole punk rock scene, even occasionally putting on live shows.

3. Then in 1986 I started doing a semi-daily newspaper comic strip. Which I cleverly also called TWISTED IMAGE. Which I self-syndicated for 10 years, mostly in punk zines and alternative newspapers and magazines (though I did get published once in USA TODAY of all places). To this day that’s probably what I’m most known for: “Ace Backwords: zine cartoonist.”

4. Then in 1990 I started co-publishing an annual photo calendar of the Berkeley street scene, the TELEGRAPH STREET CALENDAR. And I ended up getting completely immersed in the homeless street scene. Gobbled up by it practically. And I got involved in many other projects involving street artists — street art gallery shows, a street artist greeting card project, dee-jaying a radio show about “homeless issues,” and etc.

5. Then in 1994 I got sick of sitting at a drawing board. So I jumped into the music scene, recording a CD of Berkeley street musicians. And recording thousands of demos of my own songs.

6. Then in 2001 I decided I wanted to become an author. Why not? So I wrote a book SURVIVING ON THE STREETS. I was also keeping a daily journal. And compiled hundreds of notebooks of my daily diary. It’s probably my best writing, the most pure. Because I wrote it just for myself, figuring nobody else would ever read it, so I just wrote exactly what I was really feeling and thinking (which is a frightening thought). Some enterprising editor could probably come up with a dozen great books just from compiling the raw material in my journals. . . I ended up publishing one more book — ACID HEROES — and that was pretty much the end of my career (so-called) as a published author.

7. Then in 2009 I started a blog. And that was fun. Because I could post my daily diary to a live audience. Plus I could write about all the different experiences I had had over the years during the course of my life as a human being on planet Earth. Plus. Photos of feral cats.

And that’s pretty much it. So far. My body of work (so-called).