Mother Nature's Halloween Prank

Orange County school district superintendents united via conference call last week to deem local air quality too poor for outdoor play until further notice, which has severely cramped my Halloween plans. Our after school program facilitates an annual Penny Carnival and Costume Contest every Halloween afternoon, which is usually run outside, but with the ash from the 2007 Wildfires still spectral in the atmosphere, the festivities will have to come inside -- a challenge considering the, er, quaintness of our facility. We've managed to pull it off for the past week, utilizing our knowledge of indoor games from countless training and workshops, but to recreate the spirit of a definitively outdoor holiday under a roof will be hard -- like "Bah, humbug" Halloween equivalent, I reckon. Additionally, with our Haunted House hidden behind hanging tarps, one of my Staff will have to embrace the assignment of dissuading kids from peeking, a task that sounds scary in itself.

What stinks more than that lingering scent of ash is how clear the weather seems to be, and, as my natural rebel churns, I wonder what standard or gauge the superintendents are using to judge the air quality. Are they more concerned about potential parental backlash if the kids are permitted to play? Do they, and those parents ready to chomp at the bit about their children's safety when they should be making dinner anyway, understand what they're doing to their teachers' day, when students can't storm the playground but rather remain seated for some contrived game of Heads-up 7-Up at recesstime? These lessons should be exploited and explained to children . . .

Because nothing might promote arson prevention and fire safety more than the risk they pose to the pursuit of free candy.

Blogging Fr(ee)

When I was without the laptop for a few days, I replaced the vacancy in my backpack with my good old e.e. cummings compilation, a big, beloved book from my angst-ridden adolescence. Needless to say, e.e. always alters my writing style a bit, as evidenced by this little poem I scribbled a few days ago:

impulse
impact
imprint

im

sorry

Was It Good For You?

Last night's season finale of Californication left my girlfriend in sufficiently heart-warmed hysterics, boasting of the show's greatness, but I found its last-thirty-second twist somewhat disappointing, if only in its definitive sense of closure. Hank, the wayward author with perpetual writer's block and lovesickness for the one that got away, ends his season-long screwfest in a noble attempt to let his soul mate's wedding proceed without incident, which, despite thirteen episodes' worth of flirting and begging, is what his muse needed to flee her wedding after all, of course only after the vows are exchanged. The subplots are neatly wrapped up, too, though destined to take a different direction at some point sooner than later. The hero and the audience get what they've always wanted -- so what isn't there to like?

First of all, the name of the show is Californication, and if Hank's happy ending (no pun intended) holds for the next season, what happens to, uhm, all the superfluous fornicating? Hank's hook-up of the week had a certain Dream On charm to it, with a bit of Charles Bukowski thrown in to maintain the scummy spirit of literary relevance. If, in the first three episodes of season two, Hank cheats, the audience will hate him, and while his pseudo-masochism is what makes him so likable, he isn't blatantly self-destructive. Will the emphasis fall on the title's first half, with a book tour throughout California in Hank and company's future? Oftentimes television forgets how big California really is, that Orange County, Los Angeles, and Hollywood are just sails on a much larger ship.

Also, Hank's love (whose name escapes me) made her life-changing decision off-screen, as Hank and his daughter were driving away. Now, faithful audiences knew to anticipate a last-second twist, so if our two favorite characters weren't barreling toward a car crash, what else really could have happened? The gratification seemed like forced period where we should have simply placed a comma (another unintended pun, if you saw the ep), as if the writers weren't sure if the show was going to be renewed. Still, the characters are compelling to bring me back, if only to see what's in store.

Which is why the show is so successfully, regardless of its title. Sure, they screw around, but they're just screwed up enough to make sense. Plus, it's a precious half hour of television my girlfriend and I can agree on. Thank you, Showtime, for making soft core couples-friendly again.

McCoffee Oasis

McDonald's in Arizona, and most likely many other markets around the country, are offering iced flavored coffees on their menu, and when I was in the Valley a few weekends ago, I sampled their hazelnut blend. It was sweet and syrupy, but the potential for a tasty morning pick-me-up was evident under the artificial flavoring. Of course, Burger King has a similar iced coffee treat, their BK Joe, which seems to favor a powdered permeation, but again the effort is valiant, if hopefully only foundational.

What impresses about all of these drinks is the size. For two bucks, customers receive a hefty, I'm guessing twenty ounce coffee beverage. The BK Joe is in a deceptive narrow cup, but the McDonald's drinks were like Big Gulps, consuming our cup-holding console. I'm waiting for the caffeinated experiment to reach California in the hopes that the style meets the substance.

Between these iced coffees and their register jockeys actually mixing in cream and sugar to their regular blends, McDonald's is obviously attempting to conquer Starbucks' signature burnt-bean monopoly with customer service and convenience. What's next, a sidekick for the Hamburgler dubbed the Baristoolie? It's barista and stoolie put together, and . . .

Never mind.

I Am the Boss of Them

My Staff was really kind to me on Boss's Day a few weeks ago, presenting me with two sweaters, a wallet, and a lunch from Boston Market, so I drew them this picture as a thank you note, making light of one of the kids in our program that struggles with pooping his pants. Actually, I guess it isn't much a struggle; he poops his pants, damn near everyday.

I erased the logos I drew on our shirts to keep our organization confidential; as I've described in previous blogs, I don't want to inadvertently represent a nationally recognized after school program with my silly little ramblings.

Someday soon I'll probably update this post with a "roll call" style description of my Staff, or, at the very least, liken them to crew members of the Enterprise-D . . .

Things I'd Lose in the Fire

What would you save?

You've been given the 30-minute evacuation warning, and you can see the hillside flames charging your neighborhood so you know it's for real. What would you save?

I've been thinking about that a lot lately. I'm safely cushioned in a concrete suburbia, a man-made, beautifully window-dressed firewall, but if the winds and the heat became too much for even the city to withstand, how would spend that last half hour at home?

Rounding up the cats could take several minutes in itself . . . and I only have one kitty carrying case. The thought of cramming them in such tight quarters in the midst of an already chaotic situation doesn't sit well with me, but a trip to the local PetSmart for another cage would consume my thirty minutes as quickly as the flames rushing toward my apartment complex. Their safety trumps their comfort for now.

With the actual lives I'm responsible for secured, what about all of my stuff? The comics, action figures, and countless collectibles I've acquired over the years? I've happily accepted that they're all completely replaceable. Even the signed comics aren't worth my life, nor the time I could be spending gathering irreplaceable mementos. (Okay, perhaps I'd grab the signed Alex Ross Justice League plate, but only because it's on top of everything else.) Let those comics feed the flames, I say! Watch those poor action figures, over twenty years' worth of toys, bubble into a puddle of lead-ridden plastic. I'd proudly display that multi-colored mold next to its replacements in my new apartment, if only to show those chumps who the real hero is.

So, what are those "irreplaceable mementos" I mentioned? That's the thing -- I don't know. As much as I horde superhero-related stuff, I'm equally possessive about my personal trinkets. Yes, I'm my biggest fan, but I'm as unorganized about it as I am enthusiastic. The fantasy of a "trophy room," more commonly dubbed a "man-cave" by contemporary pop psychologists, plagues every geek, and many have managed to recreate their childhood bedrooms in adulthood "studies" or "dens," much to the chagrin of their girlfriends or wives. I attribute the craze to both Sherlock Holmes and Batman: Holmes, in that his Baker Street flat was a veritable museum to his multitude of solved mysteries, displaying everything from the Irene Adler locket to a fireplace painting of Reichenbach Falls, and Batman, in that he literally dwells in a cave with an attested "trophy room" wing . . . but I digress. Little ol' one-bedroom me hasn't achieved the trophy room dream yet, but the hope is in constant conception on my bedroom floor.

So, assuming that my apartment will become some field reporter's smoldering backdrop in a half hour's time, and considering that I've had time to think about it now, what would I grab to launch my coming-sooner-than-later trophy room? In a single pivot in my bedroom, I would grab the Christmas stocking in which my parents brought me home from the hospital and stuff in the Alex Ross plate face down, widening the stocking to carry more stuff. I'd drop in the keepsake box my friends and I were given as complimentary high school graduation gifts from some woodsmith in Arizona, in which is already a host of trinkets I told myself to cherish many years ago. I'd also grab my recently acquired portrait of my mother at sixteen-years-old, haunting painting that stared at me every weekend at Mima and Papa's house throughout my childhood. (The portrait is currently wrapped in my old He-Man bedsheet, which is a bonus.) On my way out of the bedroom, if I still has underarm space, I'd pull the 18" x 24" frame of pictures I have hanging in the hallway -- a montage of memories I collected a few years ago that includes a newspaper article about my old public access TV show Dumbfounded and a picture of me with radio talk show host Bill Handel. In the living room, I'd drop one of my speech trophies in the stocking, if only to ever-prove that I competed in something in high school, then I'd take one last long look at my desk, at which I've written and drawn for over fifteen years. Somewhere in the mess of papers on it now is the keepsake that started it all -- the item that, when I received it, inspired me to start keeping everything: the engraved golden pocket knife my cousin gave me as a thank you gift for being one of his groomsmen.

Two frames under my arm, a stocking in one hand and my cats in the other, and I'm out of there. Of course, this is assuming my girlfriend can take care of herself and also has two arms' worth of stuff to grab. Hey, if she has a free hand, she could always grab my Hall of Justice.

What? Chivalry isn't dead; it was just lost in the fire.

Indeed, therein lies the rub in replacing my, and anyone's, lifelong collection. While I could find a Hall of Justice on eBay or at any convention or trade show, and one probably in better condition than mine, it wouldn't be my Hall of Justice. It wouldn't be the same one my Super Powers figures defended from Darkseid for years, the one that often sat open and ready on my bedroom floor in case my younger self was inspired to recreate a story I'd imagined. Captain Picard was right in Star Trek: First Contact when he described the connection between tactility and memory to Data, just as Danny was right not to sell the house in that one episode of Full House. Four walls and a roof do not always a home make.

Also, if I actually owned a home, I realize that these items would not only represent their respective memories, but also elicit memories of the house itself, doubling their sentimental value. "I remember when I won that trophy . . . and all the others from the shelf in the old house, before . . ." Fire reinforces the importance of that old real estate adage, "location, location, location," because it doesn't discriminate and yet ironically attempts to consume it all.

In a tragedy that completely doesn't compare to the loss of a home, my laptop crashed last week, and in the day our tech guy warned me that all could be lost, I quickly mentally inventoried all of my saved pictures and music. The documents are replaceable, but the personal media hasn't been backed up in a while, and had he not been able to recover everything, years worth of illegally downloaded music and personally preserved pictures would've been lost . . . temporarily. The most treasured images, I assured myself, have been shared on-line and could easily be saved. The two tracks I recently actually purchased on-line have already been saved on a CD and my mp3 player. The only real price I paid was my inconvenient inability to blog at Starbucks -- proof that our society thankfully spoils even its poorest sons.

The lesson in all this is: scan and save those old photos on Flickr. You never know how long they'll last, and the memory is often only as vital as your connection to that image.

With a week's worth of thoughts bottled up here, I have more to blog later, including the peculiar treasure hunt I experienced last weekend. All of these pent up musings are burning me up here.

Too soon?

Starts with S

Last week's 52 Comic Challenge was to draw all five seemingly unrelated elements from a Pictionary card in one strip. Like some of the other participants, I only had access to Pictionary, Jr. cards, most of which contrast the challenge by listing themed items, like "A Day at the Beach," etc. I pulled a few cards until I stumbled across "Starts with S," and the words, though initially random (besides starting with "s"), became connected instantly through the scenario I illustrated above: a quick look at a child's struggle with the concept of justice. (I really wanted to avoid more autobiographical fodder this week.) Since the sequence wrote itself, I wanted to play with my pens and pencils a little bit, to see if I could generate some depth in the strip, versus my pencil sketches-filtered-thru-Microsoft Paint pages I've posted most recently. I experimented with thicker lines, shading, and even strategic erasing. I hope the results are the gateway to more consistent, linear, detail-oriented personal projects. Let me know what you think.

Bat-er Cooler

Havin' fun in the office.

Cool Bat-Merch

Thanks for the hand with this one, Ruthie.

Kids Make the Darnedest Things

I confiscated this lovely item this morning:



These pictures are intentionally blurry for the sake of national security, so if you can't tell, it's a dual slingshot: one made by a paperclip, the other by a creatively reconstructed mechanical pencil and a pen shaft. Masking tape holds the whole thing together surprisingly well, assuring equally surprising distance and accuracy.



My friends and I used to make things like this (I wasn't capable of this kind of craftsmanship), which resulted in The Mrs. Long's 6th Grade Class Great Staple War of 1990, but in light of recent headlines (recent being, like, this week), how can I condone this kind of homemade weaponry, despite its ingenuity? Is a paperclip taped to a mechanical pencil a gateway weapon to something more, say, automatic?

The Last Ride

I wheel you around
to the other side of the table
and we get a handle on the day
over a morning cup of coffee.
Soon and completely unexpectedly
I will release you into the world,
but in these, our final moments together,
we remember the good times:
mutual early morning sluggishness
and moonlit examples of perfect synergy --
the seams in the sidewalk
flickering underfoot
like frames of film,
each telling the microsecond story
of millions of travellers before.
Nearby a flower
loses its petals to the autumn chill
and rests naked but assured
of spring.
Two blocks over
a schoolboy's heart breaks
which will ironically
never stop him
from letting it happen again.
In the factory district
an assembly line
moves in the expert precision
that had always been intended.
You'll be in good hands.
This world was made
for the likes of you;
it knows what it's like to turn
on a rusty old axis.
Don't go down without a fight.
Kick.
Stand,
and remember that somewhere
someone wouldn't be where they are today
without you,
and that without you
he'd never have found his way home --
at least, not as easily.
I was the needle,
you were the thread,
and we wove the streets of this
tired, old city
into a patchwork blanket
until today,
when I must tuck you in
to the folds of its bedrock.
Bye, cycle.
Thankfully, you taught me
what to do with life's little punches.

Roll.

My Silent Sneeze

The sixth and seventh 52 Comic Challenges were to draw a comic in sneeze theory (with a definitive three parts) and a silent comic, respectively. I didn't accomplish either, so I combined the concepts to express my frustration in this, a quick sketch of a thing done in the final moments of my Monday. Enjoy.

My Lost Lunch

Check out my contribution to Young American Comics' "Lost Lunches" project at my ComicSpace. All of my contributions to YAC's 52 Comic Challenges are there, too.

The Way I See It #282

The quote on my Starbucks cup today, their "The Way I See It #282":

"Childhood is a strange country. It’s a place you come from or go to – at least in your mind. For me it has an endless, spellbound something in it that feels remote. It’s like a little sealed-vault country of cake breath and grass stains where what you do instead of work is spin until you’re dizzy." -- Lyall Bush, Executive director of Richard Hugo House, a center for writers and readers.

Police State

Saw this sticker riding my bike home last week.

St. College and Chapman

He looks about my age.
Shave an inch off my gut
and put it on my head
and he could be my height.
He's been living on the corner
I inhabit during my lunch breaks,
bumming change in front of
the Chinese food place
and spending it on small coffees
at the collegetown Starbucks.
He's been trying to sell a CD player
in front of the 99 Cent Store.
For five days, he told me,
he's been living on the corner.
Churches won't help him.
The donut lady's scraps
are too good for him.
The Goodwill gathers up
their donations
before he can sift through them.
He's quickly become exiled
from the very corner
he now calls home,
from the very corner
where I pass away my lunch breaks.

I've been watching him.
I gave him some change,
but not enough to really
make any.
Just like me,
he sips a morning coffee,
double-takes at girls,
and tries to look busy enough
not to look helpless.
We dwell on the same corner
and frequent the same stores
but we're a world apart,
like moons in orbit
on opposite sides
of the same planet.
I've been learning from him,
in case a pink slip
alters my course to his.
I hope it goes
the other way around first,
that he finds a place to clean
the underside of his fingernails
so he can pass the day biting them
behind some computer.
Maybe when I see him tomorrow
we can talk over our cups of coffee.

We already have enough in common.

My Favorite Lyrics, part 1

An old girlfriend and I once debated which was more important in a song: lyrics or melody. I argued for the former and don't remember if I won (probably not; she was a smart one), but I still believe whatever I said back then. If I can't mean the words I'm singing along to, the song just isn't that good or important to me. "Meaning the words" ranges in depth, from fun bubblegum fare to intense emotional introspection -- and though I lean toward the latter, I'm not immune to the likes of Li'l Mama's "Lip Gloss," either (which, incidentally, I heard on my way to the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco earlier this year -- on an Oakland station, of course -- and I warned my friends that it would sweep the country in no time . . . nice to be ahead of the curve). But I digress; below are a few of my favorite lyrics from songs I've been replaying in my office lately. Yes, I listen to the same dozen or so songs for a solid few weeks before altering the mix, just because I'm a little possessive and obsessive like that. After all, if the music makes your foot tap, lyrics make your heart beat, and I can use all the help I can get.

"Left and Leaving," The Weakerthans: My city's still breathing (but barely it's true)/through buildings gone missing like teeth./The sidewalks are watching me think about you,/sparkled with broken glass./I'm back with scars to show./Back with the streets I know/will never take me anywhere but here.

"I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love with You," Tom Waits: Well, the night does funny things inside a man/These old tom-cat feelings you don't understand/Well, I turn around and look at you, you light a cigarette,/I wish I had the guts to bum one, but we've never met,/And I hope that I don't fall in love with you.

"Operator," Jim Croce: Isn't that the way they say it goes?/But let's forget all that/And give me the number if you can find it/So I can call just to tell them I'm fine and to show/I've overcome the blow/I've learned to take it well/I only wish my words could just convince myself/That it just wasn't real/But that's not the way it feels.

Transportation Center

I can take the 2:20 away from here
and the 5:15 to you
from the transportation center
in my backyard.

I can be in San Diego by lunchtime
or New York City by the middle of the week.

I can live off of
shrink-wrapped bagel sandwiches and cold coffee
until I've saved enough money
for the meal that makes a city
worth connecting to in the first place.

The train's painfully outdated whistle
is a siren song to millions of middle men,
leapfrogging from see-you-laters
and keep-in-touches
just enough to remember
their native and nagging humanity,
while many millions more
laugh at or envy them.

Any of us is
one all aboard away
from joing them.

The only difference
between mankind and the animal kingdom
is our incessant need to overstay our welcome
in any one place.
The wheels our ancestors
toiled to create
go nowhere but to symbolize
the circles we talk around ourselves.

Home can be as close
as the way I kink my neck
to see the same old stars
every night
that dot the map of the their light's travels
in the cosmos.

I can be in San Francisco by midnight
or Portland tomorrow.

I can be in Los Angeles in an hour
or Miami by this weekend,
but you aren't going anywhere.
Neither am I.