Jason Rodriguez - The Moose in the Closet: Out of Water, Weird Sister and The Mamms: Learning Lucky

Two more pick-ups from SPX. First one I just kind of caught out of the corner of my eye, heard the pitch and picked it up. Matthew Bernier’s Out of Water is the story about a boy who falls in love with a dolphin. It is a gorgeous book –reminiscent of Craig Thompson in both art style and story telling technique but not enough to be entirely derivative – Matthew has his own voice and it’s strong. Super clean lines, nice and heavy inks and a touching story – I can’t find a website for him but you can order by emailing him at tinglyelectriceelunderpants @ hotmail.com and put “order” in your subject to check this book out – it’s worth the couple of bucks.

Elizabeth Genco writes the always entertaining (and informative) column “The Craft” on Scryptic Studios. I’ve talked to her online a couple of times yet didn’t realize she was at SPX, didn’t realize she had the table right behind mine and didn’t realize who she was until she bought Elk’s Run towards the end of Saturday. Go internet! Anyway, she handed me a copy of Weird Sister, her anthology that follows a modern day witch and her ghost dog (no, sadly, not Forest Whitaker) as they fight evil in Brooklyn. There were three stories in the book and what I found interesting was that you can see her grow as a writer and a producer with each story (I don’t know if she put these together one after the other but it really looks like she did). By the time you get to the third story the layouts, story and dialog (and her phenomenal find of an artist Jeff Zornow) portray a great deal of confidence and competence. On the whole a little more back-story, maybe an intro chapter that gets more into the girl’s head, would have been nice but once I got into a groove with what was going on I found it to be an entertaining read. The other two stories where illustrated by the talented Adam Boorman and Dash Shaw). I imagine you can order the book on her website – it’s worth a check-out

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For starters, in the comment thread yesterday Shane said that I need to find a synonym for “titties”. Part of the joke was to keep using the same word over and over again to sort of play with the juvenile nature of the word but I think Shane may be right. So, from here on out I will never use the same word for “titties” again because there are much more juvenile words I can use.

Luck is an odd thing. Let’s look at gambling, for instance. Back when I first started going to casinos I was lucky if I won 20 bucks on a slot machine. When I started playing blackjack I realized 20 bucks was shit and “luck” meant I was winning somewhere in the hundred-dollar range. On one trip I went to the casino with one hundred bucks to gamble with. I whittled the money down to my last ten bucks playing blackjack and then put my solitary ten-dollar chip on 14 in roulette and won 350 bucks. Luck then became anything better than hitting a single number with ten bucks down. Two years ago I was down in Gulfport and hit the number in roulette 6 times in my first ten spins and then went to chomp down on the best steak I’ve ever eaten. I’ve went to casinos since that magical run but I’ve yet to consider my self “lucky” yet. It’s going to take a haul of upwards of a couple of grand for me to adjust my stance on what “lucky” truly is.

When dealing with tantalizing ta-tas, it’s the same thing.

As a kid, a mere glimpse of a girl’s cans is the luckiest thing that can happen to you. My first glimpse, as mentioned, came as I happened to be looking into a neighbor’s window. Despite being able to cop a feel at the age of thirteen, the let-down of the event didn’t really redefine “lucky” for me – a random glimpse of some 5318008* was still cause for celebration.

Breast feeding mothers always attracted a crowd of young boys. If we were in Carroll Park and somebody put the baby to the nipple, word spread ridiculously fast and within seconds almost every boy in the park was playing over by the breast feeder’s bench, hoping for a glimpse of the diamond cutter before she tucked it back into her shirt.

If the mother in question ever fumbled the shirt or the baby started wigging out – that was a lucky day.

I’ll also never forget the time I learned the basic mechanics behind the wet t-shirt contest. When you’re growing up, there’s always that one girl that lives in denial when it comes to her blossoming bazoombas and refuses to wear a training bra. In our neighborhood, that girl’s was named Alison.

Several times a summer we’d have block parties on Woodhull Street. Brooklyn block parties are insane. We used to have rides show up, fucking ponies, ice-cream trucks, fire trucks, DJs – it was like a mini-carnival on a solitary block. Everybody barbequing and riding bikes, playing football or playing manhunt. One of the real treats during a block party was when we used to open the Johnny-pump up (or the fire hydrant for those non-New Yorkers).

We’d open it up and put the sprinkler cap on it and have hours of fun playing various Johnny-pump games which, I believe, warrants their own story one day. For now I’ll just say that any kid that didn’t want to go into the Johnny-pump gets pushed in. And, as you may have guessed, Alison got pushed in while wearing a white t-shirt and no bra.

She was a good sport, once she got pushed in she just sort of laughed and skipped around and had a grand ‘ole time, not realizing that every boy stopped playing around and stared at her, mouth’s agape, as her tiny chesticles began to show through her sopping wet shirt. Eventually her MOTHER yells at her to get out of the pump and when Alison asks why her mother says, “You’re breasts are showing!”

I’ve never seen anyone turn so red. I honestly felt bad for her and looking back at it now; her mother could have been more subtle (but this is the same woman that, when Alison got hit by a fucking car, she insisted on changing her clothes before taking her to the hospital because she had blood all over her shirt – how’s that for priorities?). She ran off, covering up her lil’ tracts of land with her arms, and ran into her apartment. She didn’t come out for the rest of the day but you better believe she started wearing a training bra at that point.

That was a lucky day.

I used to take Judo and one day a cute girl signed up for our class. The girls obviously took precautions in case their gi ever opened up, they usually wore t-shirts underneath it. This girl had a good set of knockers for a kid my age and I was very excited to pair up with her despite the fact that I’d never get a flash.

Judo is compromised of throws, trips and grapples. The grapples were always the worst, being pinned down and struggling so hard to get back up that you rip a huge fart, everyone sitting around laughs and you’re humiliated. With the new girl, the one with the bombs, you let her grapple you. Most grapples when you’re starting out in judo had you on your back while the person grappling you lay on top. One of the grapples in particular, the most popular one to use, resulted in boobs pressed against your face if it’s a girl doing the grappling. The minute that you laid there and fake struggled while the Sensei yelled, “C’mon! Are you gonna let a girl beat you?” was the best minute of a horny kid’s life.

Despite the fact that the rack was safely hidden behind a layer of sports bra, t-shirt and gi – it was still a luck day.

And then M came into my life junior year. Cute as all hell with double-ds. One of the most sought after girls in High School. Early into our year long relationship the over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder came off, the Annette Funicellos busted out and I then knew what lucky was.

Fucking jackpot.

*Put it in an LCD calculator and flip it upside down.

Labels: mitc

Out of Water, Weird Sister and The Mamms: Learning Lucky

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

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