The Konamis is a webcomic by Jack Crawford and Bookmans own Tavis Maiden (@tavismaiden). Updated each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, follow the adventures of The Konamis, a real comic tale about the real comic adventure of The Konamis (meaning "little waves"), the little ol' rock band that makes a big splash!

The Konamis: Christmas Special

by guest blogger Wendy Reese

The season of consumerism is upon us. This year has been one enormous eye-opening experience rolling into another and another of how unaware I am of my own finances and truly what is most important to me. I watched signs going up for fresh Christmas trees before Halloween and Christmas decorations already took their prominant section in every retail market. It is time to re-establish the revolution.

Mother and daughter in Jamket, India. The mother opened this market through a women's group microloan. Photo by Wendy Reese

The Konamis is a webcomic by Jack Crawford and Bookmans own Tavis Maiden (@tavismaiden). Updated each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, follow the adventures of The Konamis, a real comic tale about the real comic adventure of The Konamis (meaning "little waves"), the little ol' rock band that makes a big splash!

The Konamis: Checkers

Bookmans gives thanks to our customers, community partners and the ability to share that love in amazing outdoor settings such as the Certified Local Fall Festival Presented by Local First Arizona. Once again the festival showed off more than sixty fantastic local businesses and vendors. All day long everyone shared in free food, free music, and the warmth of supporting the state of Arizona! A few of the Bookmans staff favorite booths were America's Taco Shop, Smeeks, EcoSaurus and Souvia Tea. Honestly though, there were too many to mention! Everyone who stopped by the Bookmans booth shared with us what they are thankful for on our community gratitude wall. Many of our younger attendees created their own giving tree photo frame to take home and share with their families. The weather could not have been more perfect for this pleasing start to the holiday shopping season. Huge thanks to the spirit behind the event at Local First Arizona, we are proud to support you!

Find us on Flickr for photos from the Sixth Annual Certified Local Fall Festival.

The Konamis is a webcomic by Jack Crawford and Bookmans own Tavis Maiden (@tavismaiden). Updated each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, follow the adventures of The Konamis, a real comic tale about the real comic adventure of The Konamis (meaning "little waves"), the little ol' rock band that makes a big splash!

The Konamis: A Rested Development

The Konamis is a webcomic by Jack Crawford and Bookmans own Tavis Maiden (@tavismaiden). Updated each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, follow the adventures of The Konamis, a real comic tale about the real comic adventure of The Konamis (meaning "little waves"), the little ol' rock band that makes a big splash!

The Konamis: Coffee Break

My mom was not a cook. She did encourage us to cook though, and never made the kitchen off limits, which is possibly the best gift I ever received. My mom cooked on holidays. It was a production that we went through two or three times a year. The Ducharme Household Presents: The Holiday Meal! It was memorable, but not for the food or even for the production. It was great because we were together. When I was fifteen, I became a vegetarian. To my parents’ credit, they were very supportive. I spent a lot of time explaining to people that I was a vegetarian, especially at Thanksgiving. For fourteen years I had the same conversation with my mom. It went like this:

Mom: It’s Thanksgiving, what are you going to eat?

Me: Food.

Mom: But it’s Thanksgiving! We’re having Turkey! What are YOU going to eat?

Me: Mom, you’re having one turkey and seventeen side dishes…of VEGETABLES. I’ll be fine.

My mom is in no way alone; many people think Thanksgiving is a Turkey Holiday. Turkeys don’t and neither do I.

The Konamis is a webcomic by Jack Crawford and Bookmans own Tavis Maiden (@tavismaiden). Updated each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, follow the adventures of The Konamis, a real comic tale about the real comic adventure of The Konamis (meaning "little waves"), the little ol' rock band that makes a big splash!

The Konamis: The Great Inquisitor

It may be early in the game for most, but for us pop-culture junkies the 2011 Phoenix Comicon Kick-Off Event was exactly what we needed! I was still riding the high from this past May, but now I'm even more jazzed with all of the announcements I witnessed this evening. It's amazing that with just nine events under its belt The Phoenix Comicon has gone from 400 estimated attendees in 2002, to almost 14,000 in 2010! It's rumored that expectations for 2011 attendance are for 20,000 fans.

Lots of Tricks and plenty of Treats! October 30, Bookmans Speedway hosted our annual Family Halloween Party. Magic, candy and costumes! Patrick the Magician dazzled us with his spooky magic show! He made a bunny appear out of thin air, turned a tiny piece of gum into the longest starchiest piece of bubble gum you ever saw and made coins appear and disappear right before our eyes! All the children filled up their sacks with tons of candy and lined up for pictures and a costume contest! Thanks to all who came down and partied with us for Halloween! What a blast! The costumes were amazing! It was hard to pick winners, they were all so awesome!

Find us on Flickr to check out the pictures from the event! See you next year! PeaceLove

Sometimes, I feel like 2-year-olds and 32-year-olds aren't all that different. Looking at Facebook after the elections, I've seen verbal tantrums of all kinds: some using expletives, threats of death and dismemberment, some claiming the sole right to use and interpret historical documents and personages. Almost everyone was throwing mean metaphors and calling each other “stupid heads.” I'll admit, maybe some folks and political systems are stupider than others (most of us think so, regardless of our leanings) but that doesn't mean we should run around the playground calling each other morons.

Hokey smokes and alakazaam! We sure had a sweet time at our Halloween Hootenanny! It's days like this that have us feeling that cool, electric, Fall Festive Feeling! Mrs. Witchway whisked into Bookmans Grant weilding her mighty facepainting flourishes and had all the kids looking extra special in their crazy costumes and funny faces. She even popped out a couple of scare-rific balloon black cats! And the fun was just starting as she (and her puppet pal) spun tale after tale of specacular spookiness! Kids and adults alike were thrilled. Next we played a game of Cat's Eye (pin the eye on the cat), Spooky Pokey (the Hokey Pokey, but creepier) and gathered up our noise makers to prepare for the Groovy Ghoul Parade! Man, did we make some noise! We creepy crawled our way through the store sounding like an old Halloween record played backwards! We screeched, howled and boo'd our way to the front only to mob our Mummy host for a treat at the end! Boo! You had to be there!

Thanks to all of you who made the first Groovy Ghoul's Day Parade a HUGE hit and don't eat those wax lips, K? See you next year for more spooktacular fun! Yiiieeee! Find us on Flickr for more ghoulish images from the Bookmans Grant Halloween Hootenanny!