I was wandering off on some quiet street (I walked from the El Paso airport to the Juarez bus terminal because I’m a cheap bastard) when a guy came up and asked (in Spanish) for some pesos. I politely said “no hablos espanol”, and kept walking. He walked up alongside me again, and demanded “MONEY! GIVE ME MONEY! NOW!” “No, sorry.” I said, as I kept walking. “NO?! NO?!” he shouted, a little bit of spittle hitting me in the face. “No,” I politely replied. He marched in front of me, put his hands on my shoulders, and said something that I’m sure would have been threatening if I understood a word of Spanish. He then, using simple English words, and hand motions, explained that if I did not give him my money, he would karate chop me in the neck. He then put on his most exxageratedly intimidating face, pointed to it and huffed “muy serio.” to proclaim how deadly serious he was about the upcoming Karate attack.

“So you’re a karate master, eh?” I said as I continued walking, well aware he could not understand a word I was saying. “I’m into Kung Fu, myself. Tae Kwon Do, Muy Thai… I did Gumdo for a while, but they took away my belt because I accidentally killed a man.”

He was getting more and more frustrated that I was attempting hold a casual conversation, and showing no sense of awareness that he was attempting to mug me. “MONEY! MONEY!” “I hear that,” I responded, “those karate lessons can’t be cheap. You know, I’ve got to admit, this is pretty exciting. I’ve never been mugged before- well, I suppose I still haven’t. I guess in order to even call it an attempted mugging there would have to be some perceived threat, and to be honest, you had to get up on your tippy-toes just to show me the Karate chop, so I’m not feeling it.”

As I continued casually rambling in English that he couldn’t understand, he continued threatening me in Spanish I couldn’t understand. We went about 5 blocks before we passed a market, and I finally said “Well man, it’s been great chatting with you and all, but I’m gonna go buy me a mother-freakin’ Torta.” I turned, went inside, and never saw him again.

For a while, I’ve been alluding to this infamous trip to Vegas I was going on. Well, I just got back, and I’m ready to spill all the sordid details. First of all, you may be wondering…. I don’t gamble, i don’t drink, and I’m not particularly interested in seeing showgirls or Elvis impersonators… so what the heck brought me to Sin City?

Well, as most of you know, I work with a guy named Frank Frisina and illustrate a couple of poker comics… Life’s a Bluff, and Livin’ on Poker Road. Now, within the webcomics community, these may just be considered a couple of minor works by an artist who’s just under the bar of notability (in the words of Wikipedia). But in the professional poker community, that’s enough to make Frank and I VIPs, right alongside Olympic gold medal winning athletes, NFL players, actors, and poker pros.

We got invited out to the Jennifer Harman Charity Poker tournament. Not just invited, but flown out and put up in private suites. Unbeknownst to me, they even put up the money for me to play in the tournament, to which I had to explain that I have no idea how to play poker, and politely ducked out. I was supposed to walk the red carpet, but opted to instead hang out at the end of the red carpet and gather celebrity signatures on the drawing I was auctioning off to raise more money for the charity (The Nevada SPCA, a no-kill animal shelter)

As we got closer to the event, more people RSVPed, so I drew a second companion piece to include all of them.

My goal for the event was simple….. I had heard many, many times that the piece Brandon J Carr had done the year prior had been the second highest bid-upon item in the auction, second only to Doyle Brunson’s hat, right off his head. This year, I was going to beat Doyle Brunson’s hat.

The hat was auctioned off around the middle of the tournament, and went for $1000.

When it came time to auction off my drawing, I was a little terrified. It was several hours into the tournament, and 90% of the players had already been knocked out of the game and gone home. It was down to about 3 or 4 tables, and the pressure was on for the players to pay close attention to the game, because they were very close to the final table. So even those few people were not paying much attention to the auction going on at the same time as they were playing. Not to mention, that just about everyone who was featured in my second piece hadn’t shown up, so we decided just to throw it in as a freebie to whoever won the first one.

Shortly before ours, there was an auction for dinner for 2 with the Olympic snowboarding team, which not a single person bid on, and I imagine it must have been a painful experience for those snowboarders to watch the emcee spend 15 minutes begging the crowd for just one single bid.

But even though the pressure was on, my piece started to gain interest, as crowds looked closely to see who they could recognize, and to see if they were in it themselves. Some even found Waldo, hidden in the crowd. (The drawing was printed on all the programs, but seeing it close up, people were finally able to skim through the crowd.)

In the end, the drawing went for $1750, to that excited gentleman pictured below.

MAN, it’s been a long time since I’ve drawn those dang aliens!

I was sitting, working on comics when he followed Pete (a guy who’s visiting the commune this week) home. The conversation had started about the band Daksha had been in, back when he was known as Oscar Zapata. But with Daksha, the conversation does not go where you want it to go, it goes where he needs it to go. And he needs to tell everyone that he is one of the 27 chosen people, who will help lead the true believers after humanity comes to an end on December 22nd, 2012.

Being with him gets more and more surreal, as he ignores every word you say and thrusts handfuls of notebook paper at you, covered in manic scrawlings right out of a cliche Hollywood conspiracy theory movie, shows you how everything can be mathematically related to the number 27, or shows you his infected green toe that proves he was once a dragon.

Daksha had dreamed that he would meet us. He made us all disciples (I believe I was #85), and tried to commission me to translate his backpack full of scrawlings into a custom comic to act as the new Bible after the world ends.

And then, he offered to take us out the next day to show us UFOs. That was one offer that I was sure as hell not going to turn down.

We met him at around 5, and he had two other disciples, around 16 years old, with him. In order to show us the UFOs, we would have to go to a hill in Guadalupe. But it didn’t even take us that long. We saw our first two UFOs on the way, right above the Office Depot.

Daksha assured us that while they looked like airplanes, they were UFOS that had transmutated into airplanes. He busted out a specially carved stick, ran into the middle of traffic, and started waving the stick while chanting in the 7 languages that he learned through astral projection.

As we watched the UFOs, he kept shouting back at us “this is the first time you have ever seen a UFO guys! You must take advantage!” We watched until the two UFOs disappeared over the horizon, but obviously we didn’t have the right reaction.

Daksha seemed a little upset with us as we continued to walk to the hill. But everything changed when a phone call came. The phone didn’t ring, but Daksha suddenly put it to his ear, and spoke in a loud, clear voice “WHAT? ONLY 3? REALLY? THEY’RE NOT READY?”He put the phone back in his pocket, and turned to us. “Sorry guys, I just got a call from my friend in Sweden. The UFOs sent her a message in her dream. You two are not ready to see the UFOs.”

Apparently, the UFOs were testing us with their early appearance, and we didn’t have the right reaction. We were officially uninvited to the meeting of UFOs atop the hill. We were shot down by the aliens. And Sweden, who despite being neutral, had decided to take the alien’s side.

Daksha turned to Pete. “You have my number, right? And my e–mail?” he then turned to me. “Have a good life” and disappeared into the sunset.

Pete and I had already blocked out our entire night for UFO hunting, so we decided to take a road trip for a bit. And while we were gone, John (who had stayed home), had a special visitor back at the apartment.

Apparently, the phone call from Sweden had given Daksha one more piece of information. That John would be alone at the apartment, and that he was the real chosen one. He hung around for a few hours, telling John more about the end of the world. He also talked about what bad vibes I had given off, being so materialistic and all. Oh, and that our cat was from Mars. He then covered my desktop in pictures of UFOs from his iPod.He also forgot his USB cable on my desk. Which means Daksha will be back.