Please Go Away Christmas.

Wednesday evening was the Florence Rideout Elementary School’s Holiday “Concert”. Yes, I am well aware that Christmas was, like, seven months ago, or something, and no, I’m not self-medicating again. The only good thing (I thought) about school being closed for a week and a half last month was that we got to skip the holiday concert. Lets be honest; even when Christmas is right around the corner I find it very difficult to muster enough enthusiasm and holiday spirit to get excited about a bunch of little kids shouting songs at me for an hour. Three weeks after Christmas it was like stabbing yourself in the ears with a screwdriver. It certainly doesn’t help that i don’t like kids. I’ve tried to like them, but I don’t. When taken as individuals theya re just like older people; some are charming and some are ass-hats. I can think of a dozen kids that I know who are great. but as a group, as a collective thing, I’ve got no time for them. I think that makes me a kid bigot. The Archie Bunker of the second grade parents.

During a lull in the excitement I leaned over to Dorinda and said, “I don’t remember having holiday concerts when I was a kid.”

“Of course not, you grew up in New York. They couldn’t afford it.”

. . .huh . . . wha?

It’s at times like this that my wife -Miss Put Together Cool Kid Artist Lady- exposes herself for the New England hillbilly that she sort of  is. I briefly pointed out that by the 5th grade I was playing saxophone in the school band because I’d found the trumpet to be too boring. And that when I was the Widget’s age I was Peter Pan in our class’ second grade theater production. I didn’t bother pointing out that the most sophisticated instruments being played Wednesday night was a block of wood, or that I was sitting in a gym on a metal folding chair that had caused both my legs to fall asleep instead of in a proper auditorium with real chairs and a sound system -the sort of things that the massively under-funded NYC Board of Ed. provided all it’s schools with. My father, (teacher and musician), had a fucking baby grand piano in his school auditorium for Christ’s sake. Couldn’t afford it my ass . . .

It’s easy and right to hate the place you are from. But when someone else takes a crack at it . . .

I often wonder about my wife and her ideas regarding New York. I know that living inside her head is probably like have Cirque de Soleil performing in yor living room, so I try to think hard about my words before I pick on her, but still. Going to my mom’s house with her is like visiting a foreign country. We shouldn’t drink the water, carry some cash just in case the ATMs won’t take our cards, and will my hair dryer work in New York or are the plugs different? Everything we do seems to be a surprise. “They have resturaunts down here?” Yes dear. NYC has a couple places to grab a bite to eat. Regardless of how fancy the neighborhood we are driving through she always locks the doors in a panic, but she’ll gawk wide eyed and point at the drug dealers we see on the corner at 3am in a shitty part of town -it’s like she’s wearing a big “SHOOT US, PLEASE!” sign around her neck. On our first trip to New York together ten year ago a pigeon crossed her path and she kicked it so hard that feathers exploded off the poor disease ridden thing. They may be flying rats, but really. It was the first time in my life that I’d ever been stared at in the Ferry terminal. This past visit it was the subject of returning items to a pharmacy: “I didn’t know if they did that down here, that, y’know. . .you can take stuff back? I thought they wouldn’t let you.” She’s just too precious.

But all of this is beside the point. The point was, the Widget was singing some gawdawful holiday song and she was proud of herself. And I was proud of her. In this Festival of Medeocrety she had a three second solo and she did great.

We decided after I pouted through the holiday concert like a 5yr old that as parents we were rather different. Dee is able to get past the inherent sucktitude of any situation and simply enjoy it because it is exciting for the Widget. After 8 years of this, I’m pretty sure that is a Jedi mind trick that I am never going to figure out. Oh sure, I got to all the events, and I take the kid to every single after-school activity she does. But most of the time I’m running through a mental list of things I’d rather be doing if I weren’t at Brownies, or Kung Fu, or Soccer. If I’m not mentally calculating the total amount of my life that has been lost forever to these things, then I like to play a little mental game called, “What’s in this room that I can kill myself with?” Dorinda on the other hand loves all this crap, mostly because as a kid she never had any of it. I will probably come to terms with it all right around the time my child no longer needs me in any capacity -except as a walking cash machine. I do try though -I do all the “stuff”. I clap and cheer at the appropriate moments. But you can’t fake out your brain -it knows you’d rather be home playing X-box instead of sitting at Gymnastics Village festering in 30years worth of sweaty girl funk. Hopefully I will at least get points for trying.

The one area that I do really well as a dad with is “kid adventures”. I’m the one who takes her hiking, sledding, and biking, and exploring “stuff” around town and NH. I’m also the one who yanks her out of school once or twice a year because a Tuesday is always better spent at the Museum of Science, or the Children’s Museum, rather than in a stuffy classroom -though my wife disagrees, because missing a day of eating glue sticks might warp the child. My Grandpa was always big into this sort of stuff, and my really positive childhood memories come from doing “stuff” with him; a trip to the top of the Empire State Building, visiting Scotland, and countless road trips in his candy-apple red ‘75 Chevy Impala. We loved that car. I was 15 when my Grandmother made him get rid of it, and so at 19 it was a totally gay 1988 powder-blue Buick LeSabre that I inherited. Thanks Gran.

Now that I think of it, it’s time to start planning another day of educational hookie for me and the Widget.

In other news. . .

Atomic Robo: Fascism & Nerdvana.

Life has been getting very busy lately. Between my kid and my 81yr old father-in-law, (both of whom seem to require more and more of my time), I’m finding it really difficult to get work done on Atomic Robo. My little trips to the gym aren’t helping either, but when I consider the hours I’ve put in over the last three years, and what I actually get for all that time and effort, I decided that 5hrs a week not sitting on my fat ass was well deserved.

Part of the reason Robo is taking longer these days is because I’m putting a lot more into it. I’m no Geof Darrow but I’ve gotten better. And better takes more time. One of the ideas we’re kicking around is switching the art style a little. Nothing super-major, but instead of inking Robo pages I’m going to see how it looks in really tight pencils. I was really pleased with the way my Popgun Vol.2 story came out. Hexbreakers Inc. was my first attempt at pencils-only, and even though it was a learning process with lots of mistakes, I liked how it worked out. Here are a few pieces I did this week exploring the idea -you can see how Crankshaft really tightened up from the blueline sketch I posted last week.

As an experiment I’ll be doing the “B-Story” for 3.5 using only blueline and HB pencils. We’ll see how it works out. I hope it does, because if I can be honest -I really hate inking.I really, really, REALLY hate doing it. Something is always lost in the transition from pencils to inks and it drives me nuts. A couple of old hands told me when I started out that all the magic is in those first few pencil lines, when things are still forming and open, and the raw nut of what you are trying to express is just taking shape. As you tighten things up you refine that vision, but the wild moving visions that were in your head get cordoned off and restricted. I know that there are artists whose work really comes alive once they pull out the brushes and it makes sense -those are the tool they are most comfortable with and are adept as working with them.

At the end of the day, I want to make the switch if possible just because it works better for me. Even after all this time I am very uncomfortable working with inks, and my attempts to work with inkers have been disastrous. I guess I just don’t play well with others. In my hand a pencil feels like a brush -flexible and with something like a mind of it’s own. When I break out the inks I revert back to childhood as I shakily try to reproduce my quick pencil strokes with slow deliberate movements of the pen. I think a part of that is the fear of making a mistake -because cleaning up a mistake in ink takes about ten times as long as it does with a pencil.

Anyway, I’ll keep experimenting and posting the results here.

This last bit should probably be “Random Splendor” but since that section is usually reserved for mocking hilarity I’m putting it up here -it’s related anyway. I was visiting Eric Canete’s blog the other day (link in the side bar) because I though Iron Man: Enter The Mandarine was done in pencil, then colored. As far as I can tell now, I was wrong. Eric is one of those guys who is such an amazing artist that the brush comes alive in his hands. In my hands the brush becomes an epileptic with a chainsaw.

For those not interested in visiting Eric’s blog here are a couple pieces that I really enjoyed.

RANDOM SPLENDOR

Get It On -With Durex (NSFW).

Star Wars Retold. . .by a moron.

Your Day. Let me ruin them.

I forget who sent me the webpage full of painfully honest movie posters. But thank you.

It would be funny if this image were out of the ordinary for old comic books. But it’s not. It’s pretty par for the course. Even as a kid I think I would have called bullshit on this, so how the fuck have superhero comics survived into the 21st century?