(I need Elk’s Run letters for issue 5 – any takers can email me.)

8 Days and over 19,000 words written for Complex (18k posted). It’s cool, I’ve tried to write a novel before but usually end up tweaking and editing and just give up because I don’t like the way it was coming out. It took a little getting used to but now I’m just writing and I’m honestly shocked with how good it’s coming out. Don’t get me wrong, it needs a really hard edit, I think it’s safe to say chapter 12, which I posted yesterday, might have went too far but as far as putting out a coherent novel in a month where I haven’t lost site of the ending and I’m happy with how I’m getting there – I think it’s coming along really well.

For those that are reading the book, you know how vile the main character is – he’s beyond douche. He’s every evil thought you’ve ever been ashamed about, every horrible story you’ve read about in the news or seen on the internet – he’s literally pure blackness and just when you think he’s heading towards retribution or at least considering it, he gets a lot worse. And what’s crazy is, it’s all first person, and in order to get in this guys head I need to just get myself super fucking angry, I look a things the way I would never consciously look at them and just channel him – I literally trance out and just type like a maniac and don’t hold back for anything. When I’m done writing a scene I feel so low, but I just detach myself from the character – maybe take Robin out for a drink or call up a friend – and post the chapter for the world to see. So far no-one has accused me of being an asshole, so that’s good – but I still feel like one when I write this guy, it’s like I have him in my head, you know? Anyway, it’s been an interesting experience and I love the prose probably more so than the comics because with the prose it’s my creation dependant on no-one, it’s not like my comic ideas which sit around and wait for the perfect artist to come along. No offense to the artists out there but man, prose is so liberating.

I was kind of doing projections on my output for this year. The average Moose story is 700+ words long and I’ll end up doing 260 stories, that’s 182,000 words. Add to that the 60,000+ words I’ll be putting into Complex, and over a years time I’d have written AT least 242,000 words. That’s about 4 industry-standard novels. And that’s not including Here’s the Thing… or the comics I’ve worked on. And this is all while working 8-10 hours a day at a pretty stressful job, going out pretty hard on weekends, traveling a lot and keeping the lady satisfied which I love to do, no complaints there. By March I’ll have enough material in hand to take a serious stab at this writing thing – that’s right, a serious stab, as if 240,000+ words isn’t a serious stab.

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There is no single piece of gear in a New Yorker’s closet that makes a greater statement than a pair of sneakers. In the late-80s, early-90s you would get jumped for having bootleg sneakers and mugged for wearing nice ones. Many of us New Yorkers took the walk of shame home, riding the F-train with your socks sticking to some unknown substance on the floor because your Jordan’s got yanked out in Canarsie.

Eventually a market seemed to open up for sneakers that only cost 40-bucks but still had a stylish “feel” to them. For instance, Reebok Pumps where a guaranteed mugging; something about being able to inflate tiny air pockets in your sneakers had people going ape-shit. Whereas I never owned a pair of Pumps, I had the Patrick Ewing sneakers which had a plastic basketball on the side that looked like the trademark “Pump” but was absolutely useless. Nobody wanted the Ewing sneakers, I was safe in that regard, and no-one would disrespect Patrick Ewing in the early-90s and call his sneakers ghetto. Win-win.

Another pair of sneakers in this category, which I also owned, where the L.A. Gear Catapults. The commercial for these were fresh – there was a catapult in the sole of the sneaker that will propel you through the air and allow you to dunk a basketball! Everyone in my neighborhood wanted these until they realized that they didn’t work. At all. (Was there ever a class-action suit against L.A. Gear for those pieces of crap?)

So it was safe to wear L.A. Gear Catapults. At one point they were the hottest shit and nobody wanted to go against their early hype so they were still “cool” – it was just that nobody actually wanted them. They were cool on paper.

The L.A. Lights, however – ass-beating. I learned that one. You can’t wear sneakers that light up when you walk. In my neighborhood, that was worse than skating with a helmet on…while sucking somebody’s dick. My L.A. Lights found their way into the back of my closet real fucking fast.

In college I didn’t care about the gimmick as much, I wanted sneakers that no-one else had. Unfortunately, that meant buying really ugly sneakers. I had these Nike’s that I bought for like 20-bucks at Model’s. They were bright yellow and had this plastic orange netting like material covering them. They were horrendous. But hey, no-one else had them.

No-one had my bright red suede Reeboks when I first got them, either.

At the time I thought my sneaker taste was me being an individual. Fact is, nobody wanted these ugly ass-things but me. I would try to donate them to the Salvation Army when I was done with them and get dirty looks, like I was mocking the homeless by making them wear these ridiculous sneakers.

I also had the “Jesus Kicks” throughout College. My mom got them for me – they were these rubber slippers that had this whicker-like pattern across the top and this weird pattern on the bottom of the soul that was made to look like the bottom of the foot. They looked like sandals circa 33 AD which is why we called them Jesus Kicks. They were quite ghetto but I wore those things everywhere. Bars, Red Sox games – they weren’t comfortable, weren’t stylish and weren’t attractive but I was the only dude wearing the Jesus Kicks.

I wore these things until they fell apart. Chunks of rubber hanging off and flapping as I walked. I strutted all over Boston with these damn slippers, they were black and crusty on the bottom, smelled like shit, but it’s all good, baby – they were Jesus Kicks. I was turning wine into water with them bitches.