Jason Rodriguez - The Moose in the Closet: The Best Comic of the Week, Potential Pitches and La Casa

I think I’ll let the article speak for itself.

I have some new ideas; they’re currently developing in my marble notebook. One is a fairytale, of sorts, about the first ninja coming from the first African tribe and the other is only a title and a basic concept right now, “Snuffed by a Brit”, but you have to admit, you’d buy a book with that title.

Every Friday night, when the family was speaking, we were at Grandma’s house. And not just us as in me, my dad, my mom and my sister. I mean all of us, all the aunts, uncles and cousins that were in town. Aunt Sophie and Uncle Alex lived in Virginia and Arizona, respectively, for the later years. But they came to New York occasionally, and even when they weren’t around everyone else, every Friday, was in Grandma’s house. We ate a huge Spanish meal (Puerto Rican, to be exact), danced, joked…it was a party every time. So many quick stories come out of Friday night at Grandma’s; I think I’ll just go through some of my favorites.

My Grandma is a short woman, probably a little over 5 foot and a bit portly, looks like a Puerto Rican hobbit. Outside of her house one day a plastic bag flies through the air, grabs onto her face and refuses to let go. We try not to laugh as Grandma struggles with the bag for about ten seconds before falling to the ground, the bag still clinging on. She finally tears it off and asks for us to help her up but we’re all too busy laughing, tears streaming down our faces.

Pancho was my Titi Lisa’s boyfriend back before she met Hervin. He’s actually the guy that got me into comics. Rumor has it that now he’s psychotic and got put into a mental hospital because he thought he was Michael Jackson’s limo driver. Rumors are rumors but, if this one is true, we should have seen the signs. He got into paintball and brought his gun over the house one day. We asked him if it hurts to get shot with a paintball and he said no and decided to demonstrate by having him shoot him square in the back, standing only a few feet away. He hardly flinched but instantly developed a huge welt on his back.

Seth Domo Meno Macho was the full name of my Grandpa’s dog, Seth. Seth was an Irish Setter/German Shepard mix, he was huge and slobbery as all hell. He loved to escape from Grandma’s house and every once an a while he’d break through a partially open door and book it down Dykeman Street full speed, panting and slobbering as he went. People would literally drop their shit and run, screaming, thinking that the dog was coming after them. We’d spend hours trying to corner Seth and get his leash on, he refused to come back to Grandma’s house.

Whenever your birthday was coming up the family would throw a “surprise” birthday party for you on Friday. Three things:
1) It’s not a surprise if they do it every year. It’s also not a surprise if you come back from some diversion to hear over 20 people shushing, the lights turned off in the house.
2) Two Grandparents, 7 siblings, 7 significant others and 10 cousins that were old enough to say “shush” during the Friday night years (we now have 14 cousins, total). Either way, that’s 26 people, which meant every other week we had a “surprise” birthday party, on average.
3) When you coupled it with anniversary, graduation and holiday cakes, we pretty much had some sort of cake every week and the cake usually said stuff like: “Happy Birthday, Christina/Congratulations, Jason/Happy Anniversary Andy and Denise/Hoppy Easter.

The back yard was the dog’s toilet, both Seth and Princess. There were two sections, the dirt and weed section which was a minefield of dog shit and the concrete section which was safe and where the pool and barbeque stayed. Every once and a while the cousins would be tasked to weed the backyard and pick up the petrified dog shit, usually on days before a big party when more than the immediate family was coming over (we used to stuff over 50 people in that house). We’d go through the yard with plastic bags and rubber gloves and pick up the dog shit. Particularly hard pieces made for great gags as you can fling them at people as if they were rocks. Nothing like seeing your cousin freak out after getting hit in the face with a petrified piece of dog shit.

Christmas was insane at Grandma’s. All of the aunts and uncles will get each kid present(s) and there would be a pile of hundreds of boxes just waiting to be opened. And we’d always get there early in the morning on Christmas Eve and we wouldn’t open the presents until 8 that night. Christmas Eve consisted of us sitting in the living room and starring at a mound of presents for 8 or more hours straight. We always had adult supervision; no one was allowed to even touch a present. Torture.

I don’t know what it is, but to this day my Grandpa makes the best peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I’ve ever eaten. It was just Wonder White Bread, Smuckers and Jiff but for some reason, whenever he made it, everything was just right. He even topped it off with a perfect glass of strawberry milk. And sometimes, if our parents weren’t watching, he’d let us eat a spoonful or two of the Nestle Quik strawberry or chocolate powder. And not a little taste of the powdery goodness but a heaping table spoon of the Quik Bunnie’s delicious sugar magic. He also let us take a sip of his beer, occasionally.

When we were much, much younger my Titi Lisa got a kick out of dressing us up. Keep I mind she was only eleven years older than me; Luis and I were the younger brothers she never got to torture. Which is why my family has the following pictures:
1) Me and Luis in bikinis
2) Me in a suit, Luis in a wedding dress

We always had one of those cheap plastic pools in the back, the ones that are about two feet deep and five feet in circumference (what the fuck was up with the slide on those things?). All the cousins used to pile into that shit like it was the best damn pool ever invented. One time my parents called me into the hallway while I was in the pool. They told me that they were having another baby after 11 years of trying. My first sibling, I was out of my mind. I ran back to the pool and told the cousins with a mixture of splashing and jumping and screaming. I remember looking into the window of my Grandma’s house as my parents told the rest of the family. They were all covering their mouths and crying and laughing and hugging. My Titi Denise was doing all of them at the same time.

For a family that fought a lot, when we were close we were ridiculously close. And as much as I started to hate the Friday night get-togethers as I got older and began to avoid them, I would love to be able to do it again now. My dad and Titi Lisa still live in New York. Uncle Chris is in Connecticut, Titi Anita is in Jersey. Titi Denise is in Buffalo as is my Grandma and Grandpa and Titi Sophie is in Virginia. Uncle Alex, as I mentioned yesterday, passed away six years ago.

We couldn’t even have the big Friday night anymore if we wanted to.

turn off the metallica, fanboy: Vaudeville Villain

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The Best Comic of the Week, Potential Pitches and La Casa

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

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