Have You Ever Wanted to See Your Favorite Characters Dance? Who Hasn't?

Jesse Lonergan is a comic book writer and artist working straight out of Somerville, Mass. Recently, I interviewed him for a piece I'm working on about local Boston artists, and it went swimmingly. He was super welcoming and even allowed me to conduct the interview from his studio, which no other artist yet had allowed.

During the interview I noticed, from the corner of my eye, a brightly illustrated collection of Spider-Man characters. Because I can't help myself when it comes to Spidey, I asked him if I could take a look. He kind of chuckled and grabbed the poster they were drawn on. "They are for my blog, Dancer a Day," he said and he floated it in front of my eyes.

What I saw, without exaggeration, was glorious. It was Spider-man, Hobgoblin, Doctor Octopus, and various other Spidey characters all drawn-- DANCING. Yes, dancing. Gettin' their groove on. Cuttin' a rug. It was too much for my weak constitution to handle. In fear of nerding out all over him I politely thanked him for showing me and tried with desperation to shield my eyes from its greatness.

When I arrived back home, after what I must say was a very successful interview, I was struck down by the realization that he said it was for his blog. TO THE INTERNET!

To say the least, Mr. Lonergan's tumblr is quite a sight to see. It is pages and pages of your favorite fictional characters bringing the funk it. Plus, they are all captioned so perfectly that I could just die on the floor in pure glee. Jesse, are you reading my diary. This is exactly what I wished for.

So, if you can't tell, I think this blog is great. You should check it out here. Also, you should check out some of Lonergan's other work like Flowers & Fade and Joe & Azat. Plus, if you live in Boston and like comics, you should be picking up local artists anyway. You can use Amazon, but I suggest tracking down copies at local shops.

So if I still haven't persuaded you to check it out, here are some of my faves...

Boston Street Sighting: Snakes in a Restaurant

Ok, maybe it's not nearly as scary or as campy as the title sounds, but it still totally happened.

I was sitting at Scoozi, minding my own business, eating a roasted eggplant...thing (which was delicious, you should totally try it)...when a woman asks me if I can move the empty chair next to me.

"Do you mind if I move this chair? I need to set my snakes down on something."

Her snakes. Two of them. Just tucked away all willy-nilly in two plastic Ziplock boxes.

I stared at them for a moment with my eyes far wider than they would ever be in a snake-less eating establishment, then told her it was ok. I did, however, make my voice go all high and squeaky just so she knew just how not ok this was, and to, of course, to assert my masculinity.

Wait. Hold up. Just a minute. I was overreacting. This wasn't weird. This was fucking awesome. Quite possibly the the most fucking awesome thing I had seen in some time. This chick had two snakes that she carried around with her to go wine and dine. Granted, it wasn't like she was Britney Spears-ing it all down Newbury Street, but she did still have two sizable snakes just hanging around with her.

Granted, they were her boyfriend's, and granted, she was taking them to the vet, but the lady was still basically a Sri Lankan snake charmer in my eyes.

Turns out, snake owners are not all nefarious 13 year old boys who like that feed defenseless rodents to their insatiable killing machines. Some of them are pretty cool. And some of them even get Salad Nicois at Scoozi.