Jason Rodriguez - The Moose in the Closet: Audi 5, Predators, Egg Raid Revisited Garfield and Mass Destruction: The Pool

I will be in Panama City (the Floridian one, not the Panamanian one, but you better believe I’ll be singing “Panama” the whole time either way) all next week for work, sort of last minute. I should be able to update this site regularly with no interruptions but I just wanted to let you know ahead of time in case something comes up.

Chris Piers sent me his comic for the upcoming Spark and it’s fucking hysterical but the last panel had this shady character that made me think next month’s Munday would be a “very special” one. I mean, look at that guy. Look at that evil eye. He’s totally going to rape you.

Jorge and I are going to cowrite an OGN based on yesterday's story. I think it's going to rock. We still need to work out the details. So, beyond that, I'm still working on the novel, cowriting two projects with Josh, still have the baseball book sitting around waiting for the right artist to show up, still mulling over this African ninja book, sitting on Release and Esau until I feel like picking them up again, looking into the logistics and doing the research for a Fredric Wertham biographical comic (what better way to honor the man than using the medium he tried to destroy?), writing an 8-pager for the Shear Terror Anthology, putting together cartoon pages for the Spark, writing my Here's the Thing... column, pumping out these stories daily and editing three projects. And the kicker? I still haven't really "dropped shit" yet. I need to learn to focus.

I found the tool Jim Davis’ “team” uses to create Garfield strips. I pumped out a hundred in five minutes, all variations of an “I hate Monday” joke.

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Sometimes childhood innocence can lead to destruction with said destruction leading to the destruction of childhood innocence. It’s the “cycle of destruction” as I’m sure some psychologist might have called it in the off-chance the phenomenon actually exists beyond my attempt to have a poetic introduction.

I’m going to drop a bombshell now. For 99% of you, this may not feel like a bombshell, but for those of you, like me, that were born and raised in a poor neighborhood in Brooklyn this is going to blow your fucking mind.

My friend had a pool.

She got it when we were in the fifth grade and what a nice pool it was. It was above ground but it had a deck, diving board and water slide. It was larger than most above ground pools, more of an oval than a circle, with this thick cord stretched above the middle of the pool to keep its irregular shape together.

Having a pool in my neighborhood made you King Cool. Nothing was cooler. The only pool we had to swim in was the Red Hook Pool where you had to avoid diapers and hair-extensions that floated by you while you swam, occasionally getting aggressively dunked by a complete stranger just because you weren’t looking. The main pool was such a warzone at times that most of us dorkier folk just opted to cool off in the kiddie pool.

My friend getting a pool made all the Red Hook Pool drama go away. We were there all the time, there must have been a “pool party” five days a week. Her father was a swell guy that would occasionally barbeque and when he didn’t they’d order us some pizza. I think it’s safe to say that any day of the week at least four people would be over her house and swimming in the pool.

For her birthday, however, she had a real pool party. About twenty-five people packed into that pool. Marco Polo rounds that lasted three seconds, losers in Horse and Rider fell onto a sea of bodies, missing the water and the use of underwater goggles allowed you to see much ass.

We decided to play volleyball at one point. It had to be teams of at least seven on seven in this pool – the thing was practically bursting. And we were jumping around, laughing, bumping, setting and spiking. The net, as some of you may have guessed, was the thick chord that went across the pool holding the irregular shape together.

Now I know nothing about pool physics or pool design except one thing. If you hang from that chord, it’ll pull the sides of the pool in. If the water is already stupid high because the pool is packed, it will begin to flow out of the pool. Between the pressure of you hanging from the chord and the water on the bent area – the pool can explode.

Ever see a pool explode? Coolest fucking thing ever. You don’t realize how much water is in those things until it floods the back yard, I’ll tell you that much. Of all the destruction I’ve witnessed, nothing would top that pool exploding and the subsequent “oh shit” faces that went with it.

Granted, it probably was put up wrong. One would hope that, if installed correctly, it would be more durable than that. But either way I was in the right place at the right time and the result was fucking awesome.

We all got kicked out. Birthday party over. No burgers, no ice-cream, nothing. They never replaced the pool and it was back to the Red Hook Pool where our bathing suits got ripped off and thrown around for a laugh. But for that month – that magical month – we had a pool of our own.

Labels: mitc

Audi 5, Predators, Egg Raid Revisited Garfield and Mass Destruction: The Pool

Thursday, September 08, 2005

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