There are only a few zero-cost outs from all professional deadlines, the easiest being “We’ve had a death in the family.” Far from needing a vacation — or even one more deadline-eating non-producing day away from my desk — I spoke the spell to my editor in New York that pushed my comic’s next chapter [...]
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Toucannuí 11: This Will Be Our Year
Inside the mirrored elevator an infinite row of Lillis, all of them dressed identically cute for New Year’s Eve, extended forward and behind forever in both directions. “She always makes the same meal”, Lil snickered as she shook her finger, the thousand copies of her doing the same. “It’s always delicious, and it’s always anchova grelhado [...]
Toucannuí 10: Bonito, Part III (fim)
Before my brains caught up to my hormones, I was a die-hard freshwater tropical fish enthusiast. I maintained my own single 25-gallon tank single-handedly from elementary school through most of junior high, studied tropical fish species guidebooks, emptied and scrubbed the tank, replaced the plastic starter plants with ones I grew myself and lovingly cared [...]
Toucannuí 09: Bonito, Part II
A single early-morning rap of knuckles at our door roused us for breakfast. Like little kids, we’d stayed up too late: the hotel room was too hot after the cool pool and the cheap caipirinhas, and of course a Portuguese-dubbed Star Wars was on late night GloboTV that was just too hysterical to turn off [...]
Toucannuí 08: Bonito, Part I
Honestly I didn’t even know what day it was. I’d been working on my comics day and night, eight days a week, and my mind was swimming somewhere on the other side of the touchscreen in a digital lasagna of layer effects and vector smart objects when she asked me. Maybe I grunted, maybe I [...]
Toucannuí 07: Nova Express
Sometimes a thing just clicks in your brain. Learning new languages by immersion is like that; it’s not a conscious process… although that particular eureka took me a few months to get to. In the beginning I was Augustus Gloop in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Room, furiously stuffing words into my eyes. Everywhere I went with [...]
Toucannuí 06: Ser Estrangeiro
Time passed. It does that whether you want it to or not. My first few weeks in São Paulo were a disorienting and overwhelming blur, every experience dragged across raw pink skin newly-exposed. I remained a stay-at-home artist, uploading comic pages of my dream-project to my publisher from a tiny apartment in a massive metropolis [...]
Toucannuí 05: The Fruits of Feirinha
The sun was still a sliver peeking between buildings on Saturday morning when Lil’s borrowed Nokia bar-of-soap shouted its default ringtone. Grumpy but still eavesdropping I rolled over so the slice of sunlight rested on my ear instead of my eyelid. “Aló? Aaaah, tá. Ainda não. Tá. Tá bom. Dez minutos, sim. Tá bom, então. [...]
Toucannuí 04: The View from São Joaquim
Squeezing between the aluminum sliding door and the top of our balcony, the sun pressed its toasty ass on my eyelids until I woke up. Blinking LED lights around us on the PlayStation, my computer, the alarm clock said the power had come back on in the night. I sat up on my slide-out twin [...]
Toucannuí 03: Tanto Chuva
My favorite thing about landing in a new city is the way it smells when you get outside the airport. Each city has its own: Fort Lauderdale’s is a humid brew of salty ocean breeze and old people’s band-aids; JFK smells like black rubber tires and burning popcorn. São Paulo’s Guarulhos International sits well outside [...]
Toucannuí 02: Bem-Vindo
Com licença, moço aceita a massa ao sugo ou o frango assado? I blinked over the top of my Delta Airlines menu: a young Diana Ross stood over me, a glittering queen in a crisp stewardess uniform, her hair pulled neatly back into a bun, her lipstick moist and perfect. Long-lashed almond eyes fixed on [...]
Toucannuí 01: A Month by the Sea
I’d done this drive in 1998 in reverse, the Verrazano Bridge looming over my yellow Hertz cube truck. My best friend and I were 24, cheering and lighting smokes as Brooklyn (and Manhattan in the distance!) faded in from the background like a videogame showing you where to go next, a new level full of [...]
About Toucannuí
In late 2009, Dan Goldman unplugged from New York City, got rid of everything he owned and moved to São Paulo, Brazil in search of something else. This is what he found.
