First up are the new DocPop journals. These books feature my watercolor painting of my Handtler Moose in his natural habitat. The quality of these things are great and it’s just the beginning of many future collabos with the folks at Vulto (and their paper crafts company Smuzi).

Then to go along with your Handtler journalhole, you can pick up a laser etched wooden yo-yo. Each yo-yo has my selfportrait on one side and the Handtler Moose on the other. Ever since I’ve gotten these yo-yos, I’ve been non-stop looping with them. These are great wooden yo-yos.

Finally, I’ve restocked my infamous Bolt yo-yos. These are the very last Bolt yo-yos I have in stock… I’ve been hoarding them for years and felt it was finally okay to put them back in the store. I have some blue, some orange (unmodded) and some orange (modified).

This weekend is the annual San Francisco Zine Fest at the County Fair Building in San Francisco. People always ask me why I prefer the SFZF to the Alternative Press Expo. First off, SFZF is free for the public. Anytime an event asks people to pay to get in… which instantly turns those possible consumers into spectators. I NEVER make as much money or have as much fun at events that charge at the door. Secondly, the SFZF has a far more infinite vibe. Even though APE is absolutely packed with attendees, they don’t actually like to stop and talk. They just wanna get through the crowd and find Dan Clowes’s table, but SFZF attendees are there to check out what people have made and how they made it. I always have a bunch of nice conversations there.

This year I’ll be be selling my denim pen wraps for artists, 1″ button sets made from dollar bills, some 24 hour comics, wallets, and my awesome new laser etched wooden yo-yos!

Each yo-yo is laser etched with a drawing of me on one side and my Handtler Moose on the other side. Also: argyle.

I’ll be selling these for $15 each during Zine Fest, then I’ll be putting them on my shop (along with some other goodies) next week.

[top photo of Doc Pop at APE by Laughing Squid]

photo by leef smith

[note: the sale has been extended one more day, see the bottom of the post for new details]

I posted yesterday about my new shoe sponsorship with Colchester Rubber Co. and have had a lot of positive response from friends and readers. In case you missed it, I wanted to re-post about the awesome “Doc Pop Discount” that’s only running for a few more days.

For the next two days today only, you can buy a pair of Colchester Rubber’s “Alpha” shoe for just $18.92. These are the same shoes I bought for $45, and I love ‘em. They are reproductions of a classic basketball shoe from 1892 and look great with denim.

To take advantage of this deal, send an email to docpopoffer@americanheritagebrands.com and you’ll be sent the discount code and instructions. Remember, this deal is only good until April 1st, 2010.

update: Due to some difficulty with the promo codes, the sale has been extended one more day, you no longer have to enter any codes or anything. To get the “Doc Pop discount”, just go to the shop on ColchesterRubberCo.com and the price should automagically be listed as $18.92. Remember this is only good until 11:59pm April 1st, 2010. Thanks for your support.

A few weeks ago I placed an order for a size 12 pair of Colchester Rubber Co. shoes. After exchanging a few emails with lines like “Your shoes have shipped.” and “Your not really a professional yo-yoer… are you?” I was offered my first highly lucrative shoe sponsorship.

I’m being totally for serious… I’m now sponsored by the Colchester Rubber Co., the makers of the original basketball sneaker! (Skip to the bottom of this post to learn how to get a pair of Alphas for $18.92)

What does being sponsored mean? First off, Colchester Rubber will be sending me out to more yo-yo contests. Having been a sponsored yo-yo pro for many years, I’m used to traveling around doing yo-yo contests… but this time I get to use any yo-yo I want! It’s going to feel so good throwing my gold plated H-Spin yo-yo or my titanium Sovereign yo-yo at the Missouri State yo-yo contest without worrying about my sponsor finding out! BTW, Missouri States (or MoYo) will be the first contest I attend as a Colchester pro.

So, you got sponsored for yo-yoing? Not exactly. Yo-yoing will probably be the biggest part of my sponsorship, but I’ll also get to do so much more things too. For those of you who know me, you know I have a lot of weird skills and hobbies. Cartooning, sewing, and maybe even some music will all get tied in with my sponsorship too, but I’ll talk about that later.

Does that mean we’ll finally see a Doc Pop shoe? That’d be awesome, right? Nothing’s certain yet, but a shoe wouldn’t be totally out of the question. At the very least we’ll probably see some clothes featuring my art. Possibly even a re-release of this classic design. Yes, I just referred to my own shirt design as a “classic” and yes I did assume that everybody has been waiting all their life for a pair of Doc Pop shoes.

As part of this big announcement, Colchester Rubber are extending a special “Doc Pop discount” to my Twitter friends and readers of this blog. For the next few days only, you can buy a pair of the Alpha shoe, which are reproductions of the original Colchester Rubber shoes made in 1892, for only $18.92! The normal price of these shoes is $45!!! To get the special discount, send an email to docpopoffer@americanheritagebrands.com and you’ll receive a response with your discount code and instructions. This discount is only good until April 1st, or the first 200 pairs are sold, so if you like these sexy shoes you’ll have to be quick.

The better buzz we generate about this special offer, the sooner I may get to release my pair of Doc Pop designed kicks, so please help spread the wordhole! Besides, if you order a pair you may get your own shoe deal too:)

In what is becoming a yearly tradition, my limited edition “Doc Pop Frozen Yogurt“, is being served throughout March at the YoCup in the Rincon building in SF. The DocPopGurt is a delicious tangy yogurt with bacon, syrup, and cereal as toppings. More nummy pictures here.

To celebrate international Doctor Popular Day (March 10th), the first 20 DocPopGurt customers today will also receive a free comic book.

Today is the last day to get a Doctor Popular signature FroYo from either of YoCup‘s locations in San Francisco. The “deliciously geeky” Karen Nguyen, from Karenism.com, came to the DocPopGurt Launch Party and made this energetic video documenting the experience [embedded above].

I’d love to thank the fine folks at YoCup (Meinoh, Justin, Janet, and crew) for allowing me to experiment with the toppings. I’m so glad we went with the bacon/syrup/cereal combination, but I still think the french fries and chocolate yogurt combo has some potential!

I can’t even remember what my last business cards looked like. I was beginning to think that nobody ever uses them anymore until I started working a full time job again. Last week I decided to whip up the most pretentious card I could think of. I had this idea to print up a card with no real info, just directions telling people to Google me. I had heard that Matt Mulenweg, one of the creators of WordPress, had business cards that famously read “Go to Google.com. Type in Matt Click I’m Feeling Lucky“. My idea was to more subtly steer people by simply showing a Google search bar with my name in it. Since I’m a total iPhone nerd, I built the image from an actual screen shot of my phone. The resolution was only 72dpi, so I delicately cleaned up the image and tweaked the font.

The original idea was to leave the card completely blank on the back, but after taking the screen shot I was struck with the idea of using an iPhone contact page to convey my contact info. Here is better look at the back of the card.

I’m really happy with how the cards turned out and I got them just in time for my birthday party. I ordered 500 two sided cards and 500 cards with just the Google side. I used VistaPrint for my cards and would highly recommend you do the same. Pleased Doctor Popular is pleased.

photo by sofauxboho

Each attendee was gifted with “thank you” bacon bookmarks, watercolored by the everluminescent Doctor Popular himself.

Some celebrity appearances included the classy Karen Nguyen (aka Karenism), one of the founders of Bacon Camp.

photo by sofauxboho

Despite dealing with copious lines of impatient customers, the staff remained utterly enthusiastic.

Thanks to Ariel Waldman and the chipper staff of YoCup for making the DocPopGurt Launch Party a smashing success.

“Why do you hate bacon?”. It’s a question I’ve been hearing since the Doc Pop Sandwich came out at Ike’s Place a month ago. Because the sandwich comes with real ham but fake bacon, people are assuming I have something against this particular pork product (the swine!). So, let me publicly state my affinity for griddled slabs of salted pig side:

I love bacon.

In fact, one of my longer term goals has been to get my own bacon/syrup ice cream into a local creamery (Humphrey Slocombe I’m looking in y’r direction) or even a bacon/syrup milkshake (coughcoughStFrancisFountaincough). So when the chance arose to have my own frozen yogurt at YoCup (thanks to the adorable *Ariel Waldman) I immediately knew what flavor combo to do.

The DocPopGurt, available until the end of March, is a tart frozen yogurt with real bacon, syrup, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. For the uninitiated, the current froyo trend is less like ice cream and more based on natural ingredients sprinkled over a tart unsweetened yogurt (not like that TCBY stuff). While I’ll admit to the irony of serving a healthy snack covered with unsalutary breakfast items is ironic, I assure you the goal was to mix the salt and sweet of the toppings together with the tangy-ness of froyo.

“Because few will ever know what it’s like to sleep with Doctor Popular, but now everyone can experience what it’s like to wake up with him.” You can buy y’r own DocPopGurt from either of YoCups two downtown locations San Francisco.

*not only is she adorable, she’s also funny, sexy, cultured (like yogurt), and cool.

A few weeks ago, when my signature sandwich came out from Ike’s Place, I started feeling tense about how people might react to the “Doctor Popular Signature Sandwich“. In particular I was feeling some weird fears that it would reflect poorly on the restaurant itself. I guess these feelings were subconsciously brewing up and eventually manifested into one of my dreams.

In my dream, it was the sandwich’s big release day and the line of hungry foodies wrapped all the way around the block. The excitement was thick in the air, but as people started biting into their orders I started hearing comments about how terrible the sandwich was.

“We waited an hour for this? Bleh, totally mediocre!” one customer said.
“What is all the hype about this place all about?” Replied the man sitting next to her.

As everyone in the line finally got served their sandwich I heard many similar comments. The line was split evenly in two halves, the “likes” and the “like nots”. After the smoke had cleared and Ike could finally come out from behind the deli counter, I apologized to him for tarnishing his restaurants reputation.

“You said half the people liked it?” He asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure that if the rest of the dinners would have tried a different sandwich they would have been new fans.” I responded.
“Doc, I didn’t recognize a single person here and we sold 200 sandwiches. Even if half of the customers didn’t like it, that’s still 100 new customers that will come again.”

That’s how the dream ended. I woke up the next morning feeling totally relaxed and excited about the sandwiches release. When I was in high school, I taught myself how to lucid dream. In these dreams I would be sitting at a table in a white room. I would spend my dreams coming up with ideas for comics, paintings, songs, etc. If I had a paper due for a class, I could come up with an interesting topic or tone in my dreams. In college though, I lost the ability to lucid dream. In fact I stopped being able to recall my dreams at all. This sandwich dream was the first time I can remember ever working out an emotional problem in my sleep.

I’m curious if I can start controlling my dreams again? If so, perhaps I can work out some dating issues that are weighing me down. Or maybe I can at least come up with some new comic book ideas