Celebrating 2,000 Followers!

Related Post: Celebrating 1,000 Followers!

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Ladies & Gentlemen:

On behalf of my humble keeper Miss G. E. Gallas — I, Mr. Edgar Lawrence Fluffernutter™, would like to graciously thank you for your generous patronage.

Miss Gallas is flabbergasted that our supporters have doubled in a matter of two or three months, and is unwavering in her determination to sustain the quality of this enterprise.

Although I have little knowledge of these newfangled contraptions, it is to my understanding that there are additional entities (thepoetandtheflea.wordpress.com) where one might extend one’s support, and I would be much obliged if you were to kindly do so.

Your modest nocturnal mammal,

E. L. Fluffernutter™

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For more updates, don’t forget to follow me on facebook, tumblr and/or twitter.

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Copyright 2013 by G. E. Gallas

Brief Update

★ Don’t forget to check out my graphic novel The Poet and the Flea!

Here is a brief update on my current creative projects and endeavors…!

Monday, November 26th

1. Recovering! (Details here.)
2. Did some more research on fellowships/internships/jobs and sent out some more applications.
3. Worked on some upcoming blog posts.

Tuesday, November 27th

1. Didn’t get The Chronicle Books Winter/Spring 2013 Design Fellowship. Depending on how things go, I’ll try reapplying for the Spring 2013 Fellowship!
2. Signed up with Amazon Studios. Going to try submitting one of my full-length scripts privately and see what happens!

Wednesday, November 28th

1. Finally, the premiere of The Poet and the Flea!!!
2. Sketched out a few new rough designs for Fluffernutter.
3. E-mails, e-mails, e-mails…!

Thursday, November 29th

1. E-mails, e-mails, e-mails…!
2. Did some more research on fellowships/internships/jobs.
3. Worked on the second rough draft for Elias & The City of Cats.

Friday, November 30th

1. E-mails, e-mails, e-mails…!
2. Sent out some more fellowship/internship/job applications.
3. Worked on the second rough draft for Elias & The City of Cats.

Saturday, December 1st

• Date with Wes! We ran all over the city today. Activities included calendar shopping (“Aw, look at the corgis!”), eating very tasty meals, and going to see the film Hitchcock (while not brilliant, was thoroughly enjoyable).
• Take a look at the super cute calendar I bought. You can get it here!

Disclaimer: I do not own this image!!

Sunday, December 2nd

• Did some more research on fellowships and jobs and sent out some more applications.

Monday, December 3rd

1. My sister Sydney’s birthday is today! So check out her amazing costume designs: sydneygallas.com.
2. Worked on the second rough draft for Elias & The City of Cats.

Etcetera

• The Poet and the Flea: 52 pages of written script (1 page of script = 4-6 illustrated pages), and about 36 pages (1-24, 27-30 completed, and 25-26, 31-36 in progress) of illustrated work.
• The First Reich: about 1-10 pages of illustrated work in progress.

To Do:

• December 8: The East Bay Alternative Book and Zine Fest
• Add more information to my Coroflot.com profile.
• Continue adding blog content to The First Reich.
• Continue to work on The First Reich.
• Continue to work on Elias & The City of Cats.
• Schedule next meeting with Gabe.
• Sign up with Top Web Comics: Comic Rankings.
• Sign up with OnlineComics.net.

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For more updates, don’t forget to follow me on tumblr and/or twitter.

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Copyright 2012 by G. E. Gallas

October 2010: VAMPS at Roseland Ballroom, NYC

I can’t believe it’s already been two years since I saw VAMPS in New York City. I made so many great friends in line, and I still communicate with them via Facebook today! –G. E.

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Waiting for Hyde:

Curiosity Killed The Average New Yorker

It was 7 in the morning when a skinny, middle-aged woman in a tracksuit jogged up to us and asked “What are you guys waiting for?”

Carey, one of many fellow fans I had met for the first time that very morning, asked her friend Shannon to hand her the signs. After receiving the pile of lined paper from Shannon, Carey proceeded to display the first page to the skinny woman. In crude Sharpie marker, the sign read:

We are here for VAMPS.

After staring at the words for a moment with a confused expression on her face, the skinny woman responded by asking, “What is that?” Carey tucked the first page behind the others to reveal the second sign.

They are a Japanese rock group!

“VAMPS” is the popular side-project band of Japanese rock star Hyde. In Japan, “Hyde” has been a household name for over a decade.

Hyde’s major band, L’Arc~en~Ciel, keeps busy dishing out one hit single after another and playing Tokyo Dome (a venue with more than twice the capacity of Madison Square Garden) for the umpteenth time. This year, the band celebrates its 20th anniversary.

Hyde performing at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City.

Although Hyde doesn’t sport fame in the United States equivalent to that of bands like Green Day per se, his fame among American Japanophiles is enough to earn VAMPS a spot in the 2009 Vans Warped Tour and a 2010 World Tour including four concerts across America.

On Saturday, October 9th, I attended VAMPS’s concert at The Roseland Ballroom in New York City.

After reading the second sign with an increasingly confused expression on her face, the skinny woman asked “How long have you all been here?” Carey revealed the third sign.

Yes, we’ve been here ALL DAY.

VAMPS fan Carey and her signs.

My friends thought me insane for heading over to the venue at 5 in the morning. But I knew better. By the time I got to Roseland, there was already a block filled with VAMPS fans standing in line for the 8 p.m. concert.

By “standing,” I mean fans huddled in blankets, sleeping sprawled out on the dog-piss-covered Manhattan sidewalk.

Chatting in line, I could tell that these fans were truly dedicated.

According to Josh (a friendly, chubby VAMPS fan dressed in a kangaroo costume for some unknown reason), some fans had been waiting in line since Wednesday.

Many had come in from Syracuse, Connecticut and the like. Some – such as die-hard fan Mayline – had flown all the way from faraway places – in Mayline’s case, Puerto Rico – just for the concert. Mayline had even lied about a death in the family just to get time off work.

The skinny woman, confused as ever, continued asking questions. And for every question, Carey had a pre-made sign with the corresponding answer. “7 in the morning, and Carey was already an expert at this,” I thought to myself. “Only 13 hours to go.”

Taxi drivers stopped at the light would shout out their windows at us. We would shout back and, once the light turned green, they would drive away still chuckling.

Tourists stood with their cameras snapping pictures of us. Fans in line would retaliate with their own cameras. Upon seeing cameras flashing in their direction, the tourists would flee.

Theater-goers would ask us, “Is this the line for Jersey Boys?” or “Is this the line for Promises, Promises?” They would leave moping about how young people don’t appreciate Broadway anymore.

Sometime during the afternoon, the VAMPS American tour manager came around and handed out flyers with Hyde’s face on them. We figured the flyers would make our lives easier, a visual tool to show curious passersby.

VAMPS World Tour official flyer.

Unfortunately, the flyer just seemed to confuse people more.

Around 5 p.m. and about the gazillionth curious passerby, VAMPS fans in line started getting fed up with all the questions. Down the line, we started hearing people walking past, complaining, “Why didn’t anyone tell me there was a Justin Bieber concert today?”

By that time, the VAMPS line must have already reached the Letterman Show a few blocks up. I can only imagine the kind of hell that part of the line was getting. “What, you’re not here for Letterman? What’s wrong with you?”

After all her questions were answered, the skinny woman seemed disappointed. As she jogged away, she sighed, “Okay then, enjoy yourselves.” She didn’t even stop to read Carey’s last sign:

Thank you for your time!

Perhaps the skinny woman would have been less disappointed if Carey’s first sign had read “Bette Midler.”

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2012: L’Arc~en~Ciel went on to become the first Japanese band to headline Madison Square Garden. The “WORLD TOUR 2012 LIVE at Madison Square Garden” concert DVD will be released December 26th.

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For more updates, don’t forget to follow me on tumblr and/or twitter.

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Copyright 2012 by G. E. Gallas

Portfolio

★ The Portfolio of G. E. Gallas, Writer & Illustrator

Questions, comments, or requests? gegallas@hotmail.com

Mission Statement

For as long as I can remember, I have been telling stories through words and images. I am a graduate of New York University: Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where I created my own major: a cross-cultural study of storytelling within film, literature, graphic novels, etc. In writing and illustration, I adapt this interdisciplinary approach, pursuing my diverse interests with in-depth research and imagination.

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(Click on images to enlarge.)

Graphic Novels

The Poet and the Flea (Premiere: November 28th, 2012)

Read from the beginning here!

The First Reich (Coming soon!)

Children’s Books

Elias & the City of Cats

For more images, click here!

Figure Drawing

Mixed Media

Abstract Painting

Acrylic on Colored Paper

Costume Design

Three costumes from Cyrano de Bergerac

Paper Cutout

Cartoon

Colored in Adobe Photoshop

Created in ArtRage App

Animation

Coming soon!

Sketchbook

Markers

Pencil

Photography

For more photography, check out Plastic Journey on Vally and Odd Playground.

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For more updates, don’t forget to follow me on tumblr and/or twitter.

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Copyright 2012 by G. E. Gallas

Plans for Halloween

I have always loved Halloween. Dressing up, trick-or-treating, jack-o’-lanterns, et cetera, et cetera. Perhaps that’s because I would watch Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas on VHS over and over and over again as an impressionable 6-year-old.

I believe my all-time best Halloween costume as a child was The Patchwork Girl of Oz. I read L. Frank Baum’s book that summer — I think I was most impressed by the idea of the “Square Meal Tablet.” For the costume, I just remember my mom helping me stitch “doll seams” into pink stockings — a bit like Sally from Nightmare.

I love Halloween so much that, in high school, I wrote a graphic novel called Every Day Should Be Halloween. The basic premise was about a high schooler plagued not only metaphorically but literally by a monkey on his back. I never finished the series… But I completed the written script, the character designs, the costume designs, and a rough sketch outline (see above) of every last page (a little over a hundred in total).

Disclaimer: I do not own this image!!

Now, my default costume is Daria Morgendorffer, as in MTV’s animated series Daria (see above). I label this “default” since I just pull from my closet a number of articles from my high school days and voilà!!! This year, it’s a particularly fortunate costume since Wes told me his very first crush was on Daria (´∀｀)♡ (okay, I admit it — I totally had a crush on Trent; and Wes does an uncanny impression of the Mystik Spiral vocalist).

Anyway, here’s a sneak peak of my costume…

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Copyright 2012 by G. E. Gallas

Brainstorming: Web Series, Etc.

This list was originally intended for web series ideas, but has gotten off track a bit. So it’s more of just a brainstorming list intended for various mediums.

(This is just a rough list of ideas for my personal use. In no particular order!)

• My short story entitled “Inside the Display Case,” about a Siberian pit viper named Peter.
• Crime/mystery/thriller genre: perhaps a modern version of “Bluebeard” or “How the Devil Married Three Sisters“…?
• Supernatural/Vampire/Werewolf: not my favorite topic in the universe, but I would like a chance to completely reinvent it.
• Perhaps a quirky series with a cynical heroine like Daria or Ghost World…?
• “The Chronic Argonauts” (1888), Tono-Bungay (1909), etc. by H. G. Wells.
• “The Modern Prometheus,” more widely known as Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.
• The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe and/or The Poe Toaster.
• San Francisco history [Found SF].
• Cliff House and the Sutro Baths.
• Oscar Wilde in San Francisco.
• A story about a bored widow…?
• Tchaikovsky’s Voice: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Julius Block, and Thomas Edison.
• “Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me.” — “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen.
• Exquisite corpse and other parlour games [Victorian Parlour Games]: Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai (百物語怪談会), Wink Murder (Vampire), Snap-dragon, etc.
• Kaidan (怪談) [Hyakumonogatari]: Yotsuya Kaidan, Botan Dōrō, etc.
• The Japanese Village in Knightsbridge, London.
• The Devil’s Trill Sonata by Giuseppe Tartini.
• “Victorian Funeral Customs and Superstitions”
• The ancient Greek goddess Melinoe.
• The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
• The Plague Doctor and his costume.
• 「…夢が現実の領域（りょういき）にまで溢れ出し、夢の氾濫（はんらん）が起ってしまったのだと。」” ‘…[My dream-world has] spilled over into reality. They’re a flood that’s sweeping me away.’ ” Quote from “Spring Snow” by Yukio Mishima.
• The Demon, an opera by Russian composer Anton Rubinstein.
• The works of Mikhail Lermontov, including Demon and “Death of the Poet.”
• “The Earl of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth happened to let a Fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to travel, seven years. On his return the Queen welcomed him home and said, ‘My Lord, I had forgot the Fart’” –Aubrey’s Brief Lives.
• “A Visit to the Haunted Chamber,” painting by William Frederick Yeames.
• …?

To be continued…

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For more updates, don’t forget to follow me on tumblr and/or twitter.

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Copyright 2012 by G. E. Gallas