Dan Meth's Blog

Kelv was visited by the forgotten dog-faced American novelist Cooper on two occasions.

The first time was when he fought on the frontlines of World War II. He was just a young private in a combat platoon that helped liberate Kelv from Vadok Kaloxzuun’s fascist regime. That was 1948.

Cooper didn’t return for almost 30 years. By 1975, he was riding high on the success of his third book, “The Divided Self” and he was invited by the University of Bladovak to lecture.

After his lecture he was approached by a young woman who announced that she was his daughter. Cooper didn’t know that he impregnated a Kelvic woman whom he had an affair with as a young GI.

This meeting became the subject of a short story that ran in Playboy entitled “The Horn”.

**What the hell is this all about? It’s an excerpt from my upcoming magazine piece “The Kelv Enthusiast” [Read more…]

The Kelvic people are known to love alcohol. But you wouldn’t much want to party with them. When i was backpacking around Kelv in 2003, I’d often find myself in taverns that were somber and a bit threatening. Jukeboxes in Kelv are stocked with either awful Euro-techno or traditional folk ballads that go on forever.

The best selling beer is Métesznech, which tastes like a rum and Coke that is both flat and foamy. Blechh. Yet it is so popular that you often see children drinking it on the way to school in the morning.

I brought that coaster home as a souvenir. I think the woman on it is supposed to be sexy.

**What the hell is this all about? It’s an excerpt from my upcoming magazine piece “The Kelv Enthusiast” to be published in Mammal Magazine, Spring 2007. Tune in for details.

-DAN METH

Above is a storyboard for “Smüki”, the only cartoon on Kelv’s only television network in the late 1950’s.

“Smüki” was meant to be political propaganda for children, but the writers were actually anti-governement radicals and injected a contradictory meaning into the story-lines.

The animators however were secretly in support of a third political agenda. The cartoon ended up having three conflicting layers of propaganda which combined to make a confusing cartoon that kids didn’t much care for.

“Smüki” was cancelled in 1963 and re-launched as a newspaper comic strip called “Shmüki” which was noticeably similar:

[Read more…]

It would be impossible to speak of Kelvic history without mentioning Kalox the Evil One. His legacy is a shadow that has stretched across centuries and continues to darken life in Kelv to this day.
Historians believe he was born in the Dik Mountains. He was trained by masters of the dark arts to have inhuman courage and power. In 1309 AD he was sent to usurp the king of Kelv, Baldov the Third. On the day of his royal wedding, Baldov was murdered by Kalox and the crown was stolen.

(Baldov welcomed this death by dagger since he was only hours from consummating his marriage to his grandmother. The Kelvic royal bloodline was extremely tight-knit).

Kalox became a most hated ruler and for decades conquered all opposition. Finally he was successfully overthrown by Naar the Uplifter. This story was chronicled as a rock opera entitled “The Sekulon” by California rock trio [Read more…]

Before I continue to blog about the history of Kelv, please print out this handy map for your reference. Although I scanned it from a 1983 World Book Encyclopedia, it’s pretty much up-to-date… give or take a city or two.

**What the hell is this all about? It’s an excerpt from my upcoming magazine piece “The Kelv Enthusiast” to be published in Mammal Magazine, Spring 2007. Tune in for details.

-DAN METH

For three weeks now, we’ve been fortunate to have School of Visual Arts senior Joshua Jularbal coming in to the studio and helping out in exchange for school credit. I asked him to create some backgrounds for various projects that I’m working on and he’s done a kick-ass job. Take a look.
[Read more…]

I drew this picture of Kelv’s third-largest city from a hotel room window in Oct. 2003. In a country where the arts are mostly ignored, it’s not hard to be considered a cultural city.

For this reason Baldovgya is known as “The Paris of Central North-Eastern Kelv”

Travelers expecting to experience the cosmopolitan wonder of turn-of-the-century Baldovgya will be disappointed. Today it’s a city of desolate alleys and industrial outskirts. You would really have to permeate the local scene to discover it’s underbelly of poets and painters. This is more difficult than it sounds since less than 8% of the Kelvic population speaks English.

Nevertheless, Baldovgya is a city of beautiful decaying architecture and mostly tolerable coastal climates.

**What the hell is this all about? It’s an excerpt from my upcoming magazine piece “The Kelv Enthusiast” to be published in Mammal Magazine, Spring 2007. Tune in for details.

-DAN METH