People Who Hate Me: Avenue I

Well, here we are. The last day of substantial pre-story plugs. Tomorrow I begin my NaNoWriMo story. Since I won’t be doing long ass plugs what I will instead be doing is linking to a comic blog that I like each day. So it’ll be short and sweet and will direct you to some good comic booking news. If I have something I need to talk about I’ll drop a quick blurb.

And guess what? No comic plug today, either. I’ve been busy, busy, busy this weekend. Saturday I went to a dope Halloween party. Fully catered and full bar with bartender, all free. An honest-to-God tarot card reader, also free (speaking of which, my cards where the Devil for my past, the Hermit for my present, the Chariot for my future and the Wheel of Fortune for my “choices” card – I think that means I’m dope, the card reader gave this whole speech about how statistically improbably my cards where). They also had door-prizes and prizes for best costumes. Robin and I went as 80s Workout Couple:


I want you to appreciate that those shorts are a woman’s size extra-small petite. It took me about ten minutes to get them on (I don’t even want to talk about going to the bathroom) and I honestly think my left testicle ruptured. There’s a mesh tank-top underneath the sweatshirt.

Yesterday I spent about six hours writing 11 Moose in the Closet stories (I now have enough to get me through November), one Here’s the Thing… article and fine-tuning the plot for the novel I’m writing next month. I wrote close to 8000 words yesterday. Fear me.

Story time…

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I’m not a bad guy. I sort of have the tendency to bounce in and out of people’s lives, I cycle through minor friends (and even some major ones), preferring to keep my entourage fresh and interesting. For the most part, once someone is left behind I don’t think they “hate me”. I’d imagine their feelings towards me are a little more along the lines of indifference. Maybe some bitterness, a touch of resentment at the way I now neglect them. I find that I’m amazingly forgettable after a year or so, most people don’t even think twice about me after I move on.

However, there are some people that hate me right now. Some of these people never even seen my face but without a doubt they are harboring strong negative feelings for me – they wish me nothing but pain and misery and heartbreak. You may laugh, you may be thinking that I’m just hyping up the hate to do the whole “humorous exaggeration” thing I like to do on this site but by the end of this week you’ll firmly agree that there are at least five people out there that dream about my demise and hope that it’s a slow and torturous one.

Such as this one lady who had the misfortune of being in my line of sight one day on the corner of Avenue I and McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn.

Getting to my high school was a bit of a trek. Midwood High School was about an hour away from my parent’s apartment in Red Hook. I had to walk to the Carroll Street F-Train stop, take that to either Avenue I or Bay Parkway and then transfer for the B11 or B6, respectively. Whereas the Bay Parkway stop was pretty deserted, the Avenue I stop was an elevated platform right in the middle of a crowded intersection.

We would occasionally throw things off of this platform. Small things, paper airplanes and rubber bands, stuff like that. The biggest thing we ever threw off was this lollipop which landed right in this Mexican guy’s afro as he was selling roses on the street corner. He ran up to the train station (paid the fare, too), just to yell at all the kids up there, asking them which one threw the lollipop and if he finds out who threw it, he was going to “fucking kill them” – as if that would get us to confess.

We all laughed because there is nothing funnier (or more dangerous, really) than an enraged Mexican with a lollipop in one hand and a bunch of roses in the other. He slowly makes his way out of the station, eyeing each of us, looking for the guilty party to crack.

Whereas that was funny, my repeat performance was quite possibly one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.

Picture this scene. A young mother, probably in her early 30s, is putting her newborn child into the car seat. She’s obviously on her way out somewhere – the child is dressed in a nice, white outfit and the mother is wearing a flower print dress and a matching hat –they look like they’re dressed for Easter mass.

Now picture the stupid kid, on the platform of the Avenue I train station, looking down at them as the F-train pulls into the station. Than imagine that stupid kid taking the remainder of his Nestle Strawberry Quick and chucking it at the young mother as she’s fastening her newborn baby into the car seat. Then imagine the direct hit as the strawberry quick splatters all over the mother, her child, and the inside of her car.

Nobody laughed as they pulled me into the train. And, safe to say, that woman hates me to this day.

Things, Noel and The Passion of the ’88: The Rapture

There’s a new Here’s the Thing… up in which I give some insight to this website and some advice about your own. It sort of spawned from Matt’s latest Small Presser article where he gives an artist’s perspective on how a writer should go about looking for an artist. Good article, good discussion – you should check them both out.

Noel sent me the first five pages of Elk’s Run #6 and they’re the strongest pages I’ve seen from him yet. I would share some of them but they contain a good amount of spoilers. I think issue 6 is going to be the best of the series so far, no doubt. But first comes 4 and 5 so keep harassing your retailer about ordering those and the Bumper Edition. Here’s a hand-dandy order form for you, just fill it out and drop it off.

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KRS-One breaks my heart. After Edutainment, which had mixed reviews and a lackluster reception (although I personally love it), he sort of started drifting away from the mainstream. This was one of the pioneers of hip-hop and arguably one of my favorite acts of all time.

When KRS-One stormed P.M. Dawn’s New York concert in 1992 and physically threw the front man off the stage and played his own set, claiming he was offended by hip-hop’s attempts to crossover, I thought it was the coolest fucking thing of all time. He got a lot of shit for it, though, because it went against his whole “Stop the Violence” philosophy. His album sales slumped even more and BDP broke up eventually. Like I said, couldn’t catch a break.

In 1997 I felt alive with hip-hop again. Dr. Octagon forced me to go back and get some of the albums I missed and research the albums that are coming out. Because of this resurgence of hip-hop love, the Tibetan Freedom Concert (which I already had tickets to) took on a whole new meaning for me – KRS-One was going to be there. If Kool Herc was the god of hip-hop, KRS-One was at least King David in my mind. And despite the negative press and the declining sales I was crazy elated by the fact that I got to see him in concert when I was excited about the music I grew up with again.

This was a concert that featured Radiohead, Porno for Pyros, U2 (I actually saw U2 three times that summer), Foo Fighters and more of the top acts of that year and all I cared about was KRS-One.

Between each set people walked around, bought stuff, had some food, smoked some dope. Before the KRS-One set I made my way to the front of the stage and waited. The place started filing in and by the time KRS-One was supposed to come on there was a good sized crowd.

Then, about ten minutes late, one of hip-hop’s greatest pioneers walks onto the stage: Biz Markie.

Biz Markie (who I believe was set to play on day two), in usual mildly-retarded fashion, tells us that KRS-One is running late and he’s going to take over for a little bit. If it was anyone else I would have felt let down but the chance to see the Biz and KRS-One on the same day was quite the treat.

Biz was old. He put on this fake afro and sort of air-guitared his rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner. Then he started doing “You Got What I Need” and kept running out of breath, sitting on a speaker and making fun of people in the audience. He didn’t really try to do any other songs, he beat-boxed occasionally and told some jokes. On the whole, that elated feeling I had was quickly deflated as I was reminded of how run-down and old the hip-hop acts I loved have become.

About ten, fifteen minutes into it Biz just sort of walks off the stage with a quick “peace”. Doesn’t say anything else. The whole place was just sort of cold to the entire set. I didn’t even think KRS-One would show up.

Then I heard it for the first time. The opening to Rapture’s Delight. You need to really hear it to appreciate how amped that song managed to get the crowd, so here’s an illegal sample (now buy the album).

The haunting Deborah Harry inspired vocals came over the speakers. When the beat kicked in KRS-One came onto the stage followed by about ten break-dancers and an entourage of people with microphones getting the crowd live. KRS-One starts pegging autographed tennis balls at the audience – these shits were bouncing off of people’s heads and flying every which way. Then he starts rapping and the place exploded – nobody can rhyme like KRS-One.

After the song he explains the milk-crate filled with autographed tennis balls. He tells us that these balls represent the world and all we have to do is grab hold of it and it’s ours. This was my first time seeing KRS-One in concert and I’m instantly aware of why people used to call him The Teacher. He cares. He cares about hip-hop, he cares about the community.

This was a guy that left home to start a hip-hop career at 16. He was battle-rapping in homeless shelters when he met DJ Scott La Rock (who was also in the shelter system). They cut an album, the first album (that I know off) to feature a rapper holding a gun on the cover. Scott gets shot and killed and KRS-One turns around and says violence is wrong, starts promoting peace when everyone else was touting gun violence. And despite everything he did, the hip-hop community eventually spit him out. The P.M. Dawn thing was his way of saying that these new acts don’t get it – they don’t know where they come from and they don’t know what rap has the power to do. But no-one listened. He didn’t stop trying, he started the Temple of Hip-Hop in 1999 which was designed to be a means to promote social responsibility to today’s rappers. But the Temple was laughed at. KRS-One’s entire life has been motivated towards not just creating good hip-hop, but making it matter.

KRS-One is just a guy that was trying to get the world to listen. He realized that hip-hop was a form of music created by and for the city. That every time a rapper spit lyrics, they had the ear of kids that needed direction. He realized that other acts disregarded this responsibility and because of that, hip-hop became a force for negativity.

It was a great set. The break-dancers were there the whole time, many a tennis ball was pegged, much knowledge was spread and KRS-One sounded exactly how he sounded back when I bought Criminal Minded back in 1987. By this time I fully realized that hip-hop would never go back to the music I fell in love with, I was ready to move on, but it was nice to have this one last moment.

Refocus and The Passion of the ’88: Dr. Octagon to the Rescue

With 3 months to go before I take a break I decided to change the focus of The Moose in the Closet: Year I. I realized that only a couple of stories focused on Robin so far and Robin is obviously a huge part of senior year in college. So, in order to give me more content for Year II I’m not going to do anymore stories about Robin and make MITC: Year II the Robin/after college story. There probably won’t be a Year III in this format because, well, we all run out of autobiographical stories eventually. So, here’s the plan, subject to change:

February 3rd, 2006 - Over 260 stories told I take a break and call Year I finished.
February 6th-April 28th – The Moose hibernates and gets his other shit together but “produces and occasionally MCs” a new collaborative blog run by three brothers that have an amazing story to tell and where inspired by the Moose in the Closet. It will update three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, each day by a different brother. There will probably be little updates from me on this site twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday, most likely) accompanied by a big ass countdown clock. More on that little project in January, once the details are ironed out.
May 1st-Sometime in 2007 – The Moose in the Closet: Year II. All depends on how many stories I feel I can get out of it until it gets lame.

So, for those that care, there you go. For everyone else (and those that care, still), story time…
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Rap eventually became a parody of itself. The groups that survived the ’88 divide and pushed their gangbanging style on fueled a need for all hip-hop acts to become more and more violent. At least when NWA first started they were angry, oppressed and lashing out. Now they were rich and upping their gimmick to comical levels to keep up with the rappers they inspired.

“Cold” is probably a good word to describe how I eventually felt towards hip-hop.

By the time I got to high school I didn’t even really listen to hip-hop anymore. It just felt like everything that was coming out was a novelty act. Das Efx, Kriss Kross, Cyprus Hill – everyone just looking to be the originator of the next big trend. It might have been different, there might have been some good, deep shit out there – I just wasn’t hearing it. I found myself longing for b-boys and break dancers, graffiti artists and battle-raps.

I found myself interested in the music again the first time I heard Wu-Tang’s Protect Ya Neck. I told this story already, about how NYC was ready for this. There was this video music station back then called The Box which was basically a video jukebox, you call some number and order a video for like a dollar-ninety-nine and it play eventually. When Protect Ya Neck was released on The Box, a couple of moths before 36 Chambers came out, it was the only goddamn thing you’d see on that channel. It felt like the hip-hop community, as a whole, was seriously let-down and was waiting for something like The Wu – 1993 felt like 1988 all over again.

The album was hot, I’d never deny that. Most of the solo albums that followed were dope as well. The follow-up to the solos (as well as the second Wu album) where mainly sort of “eh”. They were good, but they weren’t enough to make me feel like hip-hop was “saved”. It was sort of a marriage of East Coast and West Coast philosophy but the one glaring problem in this born-again pre-1987 enthusiast’s eyes – they were from Staten Island. And whereas that might seem like the most retarded prejudice of all time and whereas hip-hop historians might disagree with me on the impact of The Wu it really doesn’t matter, this is my story, and I fucking HATE Staten Island.

The b-boys of old – the battle was always Manhattan/Bronx vs. Brooklyn/Queens. Staten Island didn’t even exist in the hip-hop picture. So as nice as the Wu was, for me it wasn’t enough to bring me completely back into the fold. Nas released Illmatic the following year and that was a better attempt, Nas was from Brooklyn and Illmatic is most likely one of the greatest hip-hop albums ever made, but hip-hop still wasn’t “my music”. I just didn’t connect; I accepted the fact that I was just some white-boy that had a fixation with a culture that I didn’t belong to. Whereas I loved Nas’ rhymes and the production of that album, hip-hop was a part of my past.

I missed Company Flow’s release of the Funcrusher EP in 1995. I didn’t miss Funcrusher Plus in late-mid 1997, however, thanks to one man. (Funcrusher Plus feels like old-school New York, raw hip-hop, so much so I’m going to give you an illegal sample. Now go buy the album).

Dr Octagon releases Dr. Octagonecologyst in 1997, the album that made me come back for real. I was smoking dope at somebody’s house (much like I did throughout all of 1997) when he put the album on. It was unlike anything I’ve ever heard. The lyrics were off-cadence but still enchanting, the beats were eerie yet head bobbing (just listen to this Blue Flowers sample and then go buy the album). The best part – the last track had this old-school feel as Dr. Octagon gave shout outs to Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Africa Bambaataa and other hip-hop pioneers. The album was fresh, innovative, invigorating and fun. I sat and silently listened to the whole album, then asked my friend “What the fuck was that?”

“It’s this dude Kool Keith. He, like, changed his name to Dr. Octagon and made this crazy ill album.”

Kool Keith – I knew that name instantly.

Founder of the New York based Ultramagnetic MCs who dropped the album Critical Beatdown in 1988. I lost track of the Ultramagnetic MCs through the years but, to me, this album represented what hip-hop could have become if the record executives, the media and the listening audience pushed hip-hop in the right direction. This album was my Sergeant Pepper’s and I instantly realized that good hip-hop wasn’t dead, it just wasn't hanging around the radio anymore.

Eh, Eh and The Passion of the ’88: Thuggin’ It

Got Ultimate Spider-Man for the X-Box. Played it. Eh. Should have gotten The Warriors. Spider-Man sounds like Woody Allen.

Got the first volume of Planetary for my cranium. Read the first three stories. Am I just not getting it? Am I so used to decompressed storytelling that something following a one-and-done model just comes off as lacking? I don’t know. I just don’t feel like I’m connecting to the characters yet – it makes for good bathroom reading where I can knock out a story on the can (which is exactly where I read the first three stories) and not feel the need to go onto the next story. I’m going to keep reading it, though – see where it goes. I honestly think the end of the trade needs to have some sort of hook to it because the overarching conspiracy so far just doesn’t seem to be drawing me into the Big Picture (maybe my problem is that I’m looking for a Big Picture – or even looking for the wrong Big Picture). Please call me an asshole.

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I’ve already talked about my hip-hop fueled attempts of thug life. There was the gang fight that I backed out of, my attempted hip-hop group but I don’t think you all got the punch line yet. You see – I was trying to be gangster. Me. This guy:


Did you see that picture? Short white sleeve shirt, mullet and bolo-tie? Notice that blue backdrop behind me – that means that my father took that picture. He took photos on the side. So that bolo-tie wearing, taking pictures with daddy eleven/twelve year-old kid was tagging up Maze around the neighborhood and representing the Four-Deuced Bishop Crips until I didn’t show up for the fight, moving onto Junior High where I fell in with two new crews: The Price of Fame (TPF) and Fuckin’ Up Toys (FUT). Don’t you get the punch line? It’s funny. Because I was a fucking dork. Look at me! LOOK AT ME:


We all were. Whereas a lot of my friends from Junior High were turning towards Rock & Roll as genre of choice (probably because we received regular beatings from kids that concurrently recited 2 Short lyrics) there were still a bunch of us dorks that instead decided to keep living the lie.

My friend Vinny was likely one of them. Vinny was in Junior High with us, claimed to roll with several crews up in Park Slope. I told him all about 4DBC and asked him if he wanted to be down with us. This was after Dave and I already proved the futility of that crew by ditching on the gang fight – for what it was worth 4DBC didn’t even exist anymore.

He said he was down with 4DBC and asked if I wanted to join a crew he’s in, The Price of Fame, and start a new one with him called Fucking Up Toys.

I hope none of you out there are reading this and say, “Wow, Jason was in a lot of gangs.” Because if you are, you’re still not getting the punch line. LOOK AT ME:

I went to Vinny’s neighborhood to get the tour of the place. He showed me around, told me what crews were in Park Slope and how we fit in. During this entire tour I met nobody else from TPF or the newly formed FUT. Didn’t hear a name or see a face, didn’t even see it tagged up anywhere.

Now, this is all retrospect reflection of a sort but here’s how I see it. Us fakers, we found people that didn’t mind being faked to as long as they were allowed to fake us back. Hip-hop culture became sort of escapism, the music we listened to and the artists we idolized were talking about gangs and having each others backs and here we are getting karate chopped in the throat for Jansport strings.

So we all lied to each other, and we probably knew it at the time. We weren’t fooling anyone but ourselves – our parents weren’t having interventions and lecturing us about the dangers of gangbanging. So I’d walk around the neighborhood with kids like David, sporting my mullet, a silk shirt and a faux-silver peace sign and I’d tag up Maze on the handball court, write 4DBC, TPF and FUT under it. We’d blast boom boxes from our stoops. Say words like “nigga” and “trick” provided no-one else was listening.

We didn’t feel anymore secure but we still felt like part of the culture we loved. With a movement that, for us New Yorkers, started as the battle of the boroughs we adopted a lifestyle that came as close to West Coasters as we can get without being a true thug. We still listened to our socially conscious and responsible Public Enemy, BDP, De la Sol and Tribe Called Quest but we didn’t hear what they were saying. East Coast rap lost in my neighborhood and amongst my friends despite the fact that it was probably the music that was speaking directly to us. It was promoting knowledge, responsibility – doing something with your life. It was what my friends and I were doing – it was the reason why we were getting our asses kicked. But we still wanted to be like the West Coast. Gangbanging and pimpin’ hoes. Like they did in the movies. Like they did on MTV.

Hip-hop became a fucking joke. And here's the punchline, one last time:

New Projects and The Passion of the ’88: What’s a West Coast?

I’m working on two new projects, sort of. Two cats that wanted to get something but don’t have the time to go full steam just yet. So I took two projects I’ve been sitting on and pulled 10-page stories from them that can be a pitch for an OGN oh a stand-alone story for an anthology. One of them is a new version of my Esau story, about a cowboy that gets trapped in prehistoric Utah and finds he has nothing left to live for but to kill his brother before the dinosaurs do. The other one is a retelling of the Yoruban creation myth except with mystical animals and African ninjas. It’s sort of smart blacksploitation meets the old kung-fu serials. I already sent the Esau 10-pager off and got a tentative “let’s do it,” Mantis is proving to be a bit harder to pull a ten page story from. But, I figure I can get those 10-pagers out before November and still have the month free to do my novel.

I wonder what the logistics would be of packaging those ten-pagers up with a ten-page sample of the baseball story and sending them off to retailers/diamond reps for free. Maybe even five per retailer or so they can sneak some in their customers’ boxes. Then just self publish them. I’d have to time it so the free comics go out during solicitation month, just something to get people excited and then drop the full projects on them. I wonder if Diamond would be willing to do something like that with a no-name like myself (simple answer is "yes, if you pay them enough"). Just wondering – not like I have that kind of money (yet).

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1988 comes, take a moment to appreciate it:

Public Enemy releases there second and most pivotal album “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.” NWA releases there second and most infamous album “Straight Outta Compton.” Eric B. & Rakim releases their second and illest album “Follow the Leader.” EPMD releases their first album “Strictly Business.” Big Daddy Kane releases his first album “Long Live the Kane.” Rob Base releases “It Takes Two.” Boogie Down Productions releases their second album, the first without DJ Scott La Rock, “By Any Means Necessary.”

Pretty good year, right? Not done. Biz Markee’s first album. Kool Moe Dee’s second album. MC Shan’s second album. Jungle Brothers’ first album. Slick Rick’s first album. Ultramagnetic MC’s first album. Kid & Play’s first album. Eazy E’s first album. Heavy D’s second album. 2 Live Crew’s second album. Salt & Peppa’s second album. I’m not even naming all the acts that dropped albums, just the ones that are considered to be some of the most influential (or simply memorable) hip-hop records ever recorded.

DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince release hip-hop’s first double album.

De la Sol and Special Ed release their first singles. Their follow-up albums come out in early 1989. Q-Tip from a Tribe Called Quest appears for the first time on the Jungle Brother’s album.

“Yo! MTV Raps” makes it debut.

Source Magazine has its roots as a newsletter distributed throughout Boston.

It’s not fair to say that hip-hip exploded in 1988, it was born again. It was a different sound – a different message. It was no longer Adidas and battle-raps – cats are no longer break-dancing. There’s no longer this Brooklyn/Bronx/Queens/Manhattan divide. There’s the East Coast and West Coast. All of a sudden we get roped in with Floridian novelty acts like 2 Live Crew only because it isn’t thug-life from Compton. It isn’t Eazy, Dre, Cube, Yella, Arabian Prince and Ren telling people to fuck the police.

It’s East Coast rap.

Even the New York scene became more global but in a completely different way. DJ Scott La Rock from Boogie Down Productions gets shot and killed trying to break up a fight – I remember seeing it on the news as a kid and being heartbroken. KRS-One teams up with Public Enemy and starts this stop the violence movement. Their rhymes become responsible, calling for the people to band together and rise up, not to kill each other. While people on the west coast were bragging about gun violence, promoting drugs and pimping the talents on the east coast were calling for more socially aware and politically active communities.

I’d sit down to watch Yo! MTV Raps and see Chuck D and Flava Flav rhyming on Rebel Without a Pause followed immediately by Straight Outta Compton. It was a weird time; people didn’t know what to make of rap. Us kids, we were listening to both sides, not really getting much out of either. We weren’t gangbanging or protesting, we just liked the rebellious feel they both had.

My father took away my NWA tapes because of all the bad press they were getting. He didn’t want me wearing certain colors because the paper said they were gang colors (the media had a habit of irresponsibly assuming that everyone who listened to rap had the west coast blood/crip mentality). Here I am, ten years old, a fan of the music and my father’s taking precautions to keep me out of gang troubles.

The media in New York treated West Coast hip-hop like we treat terrorism today. A threat capable of tearing down society – creeping into the cities and into the lives of our youth. If we don’t watch out, if our parent’s are diligent – we’re going to end up just like Compton. It wasn’t a movement or a lifestyle – it wasn’t an expression or a protest - it was a threat.

And my parents bought into it. So did my friends’ parents. A year earlier my mom was buying me Run DMC tapes on Fulton Street. Now my father’s trying to introduce me to Led Zeppelin. And all this did was make us want it more. Sneaking bootleg tapes of west coast rap. Walking around the house rapping, bleeping the nasty parts but letting our parents know it was there.

We bought it and bought it and bought it. We fueled the rebirth of hip-hop with our dollars, killing what we loved about it in the process. I went from idolizing break-dancing and dissing the Bronx to idolizing gats and dissing mark-ass-tricks. A bunch of white executives were getting rich of the shit and they attributed it to the controversy – they wanted more. And as the years passed hip-hop got more and more ridiculous. My friends and I continued to eat it up sight unseen (or sound unheard, I suppose) and we didn’t even look back.

My old mix tapes got put in the shoe box under the bed. Only cassettes from 1988 and up were readily accessible. All the shit from 1987 was too soft – it wasn’t real enough. It didn’t “speak” to me.

NY Report and The Passion of the ’88: There Was Nothing Wrong With ‘87

First off, just wanted to say New York was fun. Saturday night I went to Hanley’s with my family and we had some food and sang some karaoke. G and some other cats met us there. I did James Brown’s I Got You (I Feel Good), Elvis’ Hound Dog and Love Shack with G’s friend Katherine. Afterwards we went to Moonshine where we stayed until 4:30AM. I went home and promptly threw up. Sunday night G came over and brought his PS2 and Dance, Dance, Revolution dance pad and me, G and my sister danced the night away before watching the Sox put the hurting on the ‘Stros. Good times – we sent to house off nicely – my last couple of days in the building I grew up in.

I got some great pictures that I can’t wait to scan in and share, too. I think next week’s stories are going to be me explaining pictures I found this week provided I could wait that long to show them.

Story time….

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There really wasn’t anything wrong with ’87. Seriously.

1987 was a good year. KRS-One, arguably one of the top-3 MCs of all time, got together with DJ. Scott La Rock, arguably one of the most promising producers of all time (he was shot and killed in 1987, unfortunately, well before his prime), to produce Boogie Down Productions’ Criminal Minded – the first non-mix tape hip-hop cassette I owned for longer than a day.

I listened to hip-hop before that. I remember when I was around five or six years old and the older kids on the block would break-dance on cardboard boxes to the fresh beats of Melle Mel or Grandmaster Flash. I was always too young to join them but I loved to watch them. They used to avoid me, though – I wasn’t allowed to cross the street by myself so they’d pick up the cardboard and boom-box and cross the street, force me to watch them from afar.

I idolized these kids. They probably weren’t even that good but I used to watch them do their thing with nothing but love in my eyes. I used to beg my mom to rent Breakin’ from the video store almost every day because I wanted to watch it and learn the moves. I didn’t know the names of the moves (still don’t) and I didn’t know the names of the MCsthat they played (now I do) but I was fascinated by it – as a kid it just seemed so rebellious.

My parents were kind of cold towards it. It was a new language, a new culture. They’d hear me call a friend a Sucker MC and had no idea what I was saying. For my sixth or seventh birthday my Titi Denise bought me Beastie Boys’ License to Ill. I put it on the tape deck and my Titi Sophie overheard a mention of LSD, told my father and my father promptly took it away – that was the end of hip-hop albums for a little while. In 1986 when Run-DMC couldn’t be pushed aside (mainly because they were recording songs with Aerosmith, one of my father’s favorite bands) my parents started to become a little more open to this “hip-hop” thing and allowed me to start listening to it.

I’d get illegal mix tapes down on Fulton Street – my mom would walk me up to the dude that was selling and let me pick out the ones I wanted which in retrospect must have been pretty funny to see.

By the time 1987 came along my parents accepted the fact that I wasn’t going to be listening to Diana Ross or the Beatles, at least not until I was older. My cassette collection started to fill up with tapes by Run-DMC, the Fat Boys, Beastie Boys, BDP, The Furious Five, LL Cool J, Heavy D, Kool Moe Dee and a bunch of other people that are considered the legends in hip-hop today (I even recall having this extremely lo-fi recording of a Kool Herc and the Herculoids session from the 70s although I don’t remember what it sounded like).

It all had an innocent vibe to it, too – almost novelty. The hardcore feel on most of these albums was battle-rap like. People talking about being the dopest MC, stuff like that. BDP’s Criminal Minded was something a little different – there were occasional lapses into more violent lyrics – but for the most part it wasn’t the kind of shit that inspired violence.

It was good time, 1987. Hip-hop was building up steam. It was building a culture, infecting the mainstream. There was a buzz about it in our neighborhood – it was OUR music. There’d be articles in the papers about it; rappers would make appearances at their local block parties (I mean, seriously, could you imagine someone like Eminem playing a block party now?). We became possessive of MCs, even the lyrics at the time portrayed this feeling of ownership:

Manhattan keeps on making it, Brooklyn keeps on taking it
Bronx keeping creating it and Queens keeps on faking it

Were there any old school LL Cool J songs where he didn’t say Farmer’s Boulevard? It’s funny; today Robin always makes fun of how possessive I am of Brooklyn. I’m a well trained and domesticated male and yet if someone tells me they’re from Brooklyn, I’m the first one to shout, “BROOK-LANNNN”. I think it all dates back to this feeling – this style of music that was made just for us and inspired pride in our roots.

That’s what hip-hop was – it was all about who was the best MC and where they came from. It was about break beats and the ladies. And all the while it was seeping into our language and culture, evolving, growing into something that none of use ever saw coming.

So, like I said, there was nothing wrong with 1987.

It just wasn’t 1988.

The New Tech: I Get Around

First things first, an all-new, all-different Here’s the Thing… entitled “What Do I Do?” Find out the answer!

Second things second, Sean Maher is giving away a copy of Jeffrey Brown's AEIOU and all you need to do is a) go to your comic shop b) check out a Top Shelf book and c) tell him what your impression of the book was. That’s it! So what are you waiting for, go do it. And for you Marvel/DC exclusive types (not that there’s anything wrong with that – even though there are plenty of things wrong with that), Top Shelf is a comic company – Sean wasn’t saying you should take some random book off of the top shelf of your comic shop.

Third things third. I don’t remember if I got to pimp Mark Fossen’s Focused Totality (although I did give him a nice big thank you in the back of Elk’s Run #4 for his review of the bumper). The guy gives good reviews – nice and honest, not affected by strong-arm prone publishers (which even H&B can be at times).

Fourth things fourth, please, please, please be sure to tell your retailers how badly you want to get you some Elk’s Run. Here’s an order form. Print it out, fill it out, give it to him – he’ll know what to do with it.

Fifth things fifth, it’s story time…

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First off, I admit, this story isn’t exactly “New Tech”. However, my original “CD Player Story” was really lame so this is a last minute substitution. If this substitution is lame, I apologize, but I’m not going to do another story.

Sticking with the “evolution” theme that made the video game and computer story a bit more popular than the rest of the week I figured I’d do a little focus on transportation – sounds exciting, aye?

Our original family car was this old, red Oldsmobile that we called “Betty” (after my mom’s love for Betty Boop). My pops loved this car despite its unreliability. It would breakdown every so often; we’d occasionally leave a muffler behind on the BQE and the heater only liked to work when it was 90-degrees and humid out. The ceiling started to sag – you know how the fabric would detach from the roof of these old cars and just sort of hang? Betty’s entire roof was like that by the time we got rid of that car. When people sat in it they’d have to tilt their head to the side or slouch otherwise their entire head would be covered in roof-fabric.

Meanwhile, I wasn’t riding a two-wheeler just yet – I was still training wheels. I was actually a late bloomer with the two-wheeler; I must have been seven or eight when I learned how to ride one. The reason for this was quite simple, really, who the hell would want to learn how to ride a two-wheeler when they had a Knight Rider Big Wheels?

Fucking Big Wheels, was there anything better during childhood (besides bed tents, obviously)? Some genius said, “Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna make the cheapest bike substitute imaginable – it’s going to be plastic. The whole fucking thing. Hollow fucking plastic. It’s a goddamn wiffle-ball bat with wheels. And then we’re gonna put a sticker on it that says “K.I.T.”, another sticker that looks like some computer shit and a fucking emergency break on it so when the kid hits it going twenty miles-per-hour he power-slides for fifty-fucking-yards. And we’re going to sell it for fifty-bucks and make MILLIONS!”

Everyone in my neighborhood had them some big wheels. 95% of us had the Knight Rider version.

Back to my pops, there might have been another used car between Betty and the Audi, one we only had for a little while, don’t remember. But yeah, we had an Audi. Don’t know how we got one. We were pretty poor and all but I can’t fault my pops either way. This is a guy that, when I was growing up, had two things that were “luxuries” and the guy worked hard enough to deserve more. The first one was his Marntz stereo system that he got wicked early during the CD craze – it was the equivalent of getting an HD ready Plasma Screen TV five year ago. But hey, my pops loved his music. His second luxury item was this Audi and he loved that one as well.

The stereo was stolen within months when we visited the Bronx Zoo. The whole car was stolen shortly after.

Meanwhile, I was in my skateboarding phase. I sucked.

My original board was this Thrasher I bought in Toys R Us. The thing weighed about twenty pounds. I eventually got my first real board – it was a Natas deck, Independent trucks and I have no idea what wheels it had. I got it a couple of days after my sister’s baptism. Her party was held in the local Knights of Columbus – they had an illegal slot machine in the back. At the tender age of eleven I hit the trip-7s and won two-hundred and fifty bucks, tipped the bartender and used the rest to buy my first real skate deck. A short time later I traded in the Natas for a two-tailed Valleli.

Despite my attempts at being a good skater, my heart was with the Pogo-Ball.

Yes. That’s lame. I know.

But when friends were over my house they’d love to play the Pogo-Ball games I invented.

Goddamn it. It keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?

I had this book, with tricks I made up in it. And each trick was worth points. And I would keep track of what tricks my friends and I did and keep a running tally of our points. Some of them were standard (Indy with the Pogo Ball) and some of them were, well, dangerous (like pogo-balling down the stoop).

I don’t know, I was awkward on the skateboard. I could ollie and do a couple of flip-tricks but everyone I hung with where going off these monster ramps (like three, four-feet tall!) pulling airwalks and roast beefs. I can’t hang with that.

Meanwhile, my father moved on to the more practical Camry. This was the redesigned one – back when it first became the new-shit. That car was trustworthy, made many a road trip down to Florida or the Poconos. We had that car for a long time, until my father started at his current job, in fact, where he went from full-time printer to printing “consultant and salesman” meaning he plays golf and occasionally visits clients (and gets paid a good chunk more).

Good for him, after working two jobs for most of his life the man deserves it. He’s bought two new two cars since.

Meanwhile I was back to the bike. My Grandma Fran bought me a Mongoose and I was whizzing around the streets of Brooklyn with no helmet, narrowly dodging cars. In college I got this beat-up, old Schwin that I used to pedal around campus. Most of my friends had their licenses at this point; some even had cars, but not me. In fact, the Moose in the Closet Year I spans from 1978, when I was born, until 2000, when I graduated college. Within those twenty-two years I never even got my permit. I actually got my first license two and a half years ago.

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Next week I’m doing something kind of fun. The week is called “The Passion of the ‘88” and it’s designed to be a look at hip-hop from a neighborhood perspective. Up until 1987 hip-hop was all break-beats, battle-rap and this feeling of ownership with certain MCs based on where they grew up. In 1988 hip-hop became huge; it blew up, and drastically changed from the type of shit we were listening to. I hope you guys enjoy, I’ve been having fun writing it. Hopefully I’ll have it done in time, if not I’ll go to the week of stories I already have written.

Also, I’m in NYC this weekend. 49 Woodhull St is about to change owners for the first time in over two decades. My roots – where I grew up – is going to be out of my parent’s control and turned into condos. It’s going to be my last time seeing it. If you’re my people in NYC, come on by and pay some respect. My mom’s making Frankfurter Soup on Saturday. I’ll admit, I’m going to be crying all goddamn weekend, but I promise I won’t make it too awkward.

40s on the roof for those that will be around. For those that won’t, here’s the story of my house, written a couple of months ago.

The New Tech: Button Mashing

I haven’t shared the Elk’s Run #6 cover with you all yet. Script’s almost completed, probably going to be my favorite one behind #3 – you guys are going to love it.


God. Fucking. Damn it. I was all ready to post how us DC locals should pile in a car, drive to the ultra-swank new comic store R!ot, spend some money, give him some free books as a gesture of good will and how we should do this on the day Dean Haspiel and Brian Wood were going to be there. So I went to the website to get the info – November 12th. The day of our festival. Oh well, we’ll have to do it later in November (or early December). For those of you who won’t be coming to our festival, I suggest you go to R!ot – I got to meet both Jason (proprietor) and Dean (signer) at SPX – great guys – and I gave some Brian free books but didn’t really talk to him so I can’t vouch for his greatness. R!ot is a store in Pennsylvania that’s operating under the Isotope model of retailing which is great for us indie guys, obviously, but not as good for his anxiety. You gotta support this dude – so if you’re within driving distance get the fuck out there and buy some books. It’s guys like Jason (and James Sime and Rocketship , which I'll be visiting this weekend for the first time, and all of the other departures from the dark and damp big-2 wank-fests) that are going to make it possible for guys like us to keep creating. Least we can do is buy a copy of Skyscrapers of the Midwest (or the Elk’s Run Bumper Edition, perchance, if you feel so inclined) and a fucking t-shirt.

And, finally, before story time, the talented Jacob Warrenfeltz leant me Hellblazer: Hard Time, first Constantine book I’ve ever read and I have to tell you, it’s one fucking hell of a book. Constantine in prison, sort of a self-penance, and turning that place into hell on earth – it’s like a comic book version of Oz with a twist of the supernatural. I suggest picking it up.

Story time…

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From dildos to video game systems, this site is starting to read like 35-year-old comic book fan's version porn…

Here’s a random fucking memory that could be fabricated or part of a dream. When I was about three or four years old my father’s cousin Ray (the father of frequent poster RJ) came over to my house with a goddamn Intellivision and my father and him played the boxing game (and maybe football) and had a grand ‘ole time. RJ – did your father even own an Intellivision?

Fabricated memory or not, shortly thereafter my father purchased a Colecovision for the household – I know that’s true because I still have it (and it still works). The Colecovision was the beginning of what would become a more rebellious video gaming household – instead of bucking to the pressure and getting the “popular” Atari that bolstered hundreds of crappy games and bastardized popular properties – we went with the quality system with the smaller following but better gameplay. This tradition will continue for many a year.

The Colecovision became the centerpiece of our living room. My father loved the football game and Carnival – I was a fan of The Smurfs and Donkey Kong JR. We had plenty of games, though – Burger Time, Q-Bert, Centipede, Popeye, Zaxxon and all of the other classics. We even upgraded to the Super Controllers, they were these huge things that wrapped around your fists and looked like black, plastic boxing gloves when donned.

When it came time to trade-up I was faced with a choice: The Nintendo Entertainment System, the “hot” system, or the obviously superior Sega Master System (for fuck’s sake it even had the word “master” in its name). I bet you can guess which one I got.

Mario was fun and all but nothing compared to Wonder Boy, Alex Kidd, Space Harrier (the true original first-person shooter, if you ask me), Shinobi, Golden Axe, After Burner, Out Run and Phantasy Star. So I got the SMS and despite having a game library that was about one-tenth of the size of the NES I was satisfied. Once my friends finished beating Mike Tyson for the umpteenth time you can bet they were over at my place controlling Wonder Boy while he put the hurting on Medusa in the classic “Wonder Boy in Monster Land”.

The SMS had some really cool accessories that blew the NES shit out of the fucking water (I mean, come on, the Power Pad? The fucking Power Glove? And wasn’t there some robot?). The SMS had some dope 3D glasses and I got them along with Space Harrier 3D, Zaxxon 3D and Missile Defense 3D. That was bad-ass as a kid, it was all high-tech and shit. The light gun, obviously, and a really cool arcade stick.

One of the many home video tapes sitting around the Rodriguez Video Library is me sitting on the couch and holding my new-born sister. I was eleven at the time and I was addicted to Phantasy Star. I tell the camera that Elizabeth was “the best present I’ve ever gotten.” My mother asks me, “Even better than video games?” and I respond ‘yes’ but five seconds later look longingly to my SMS – you can tell I wanted to put Elizabeth down and play it. ‘Bits – I love you to death – but Phantasy Star was the tits!

I wanted a Gameboy for Christmas when it first came out. That Christmas morning I tore through all of my presents and there was no Gameboy. I tried not to show my disappointment as I played with my new He-Man figures. My father says, “What’s that over by the china closet (yeah, we had a china closet and no, there wasn’t any china in it – it had these Disney figurines and a brass elephant that we hid the cash in). I walk over, tear off the wrapping paper.

It was a clothing box. Thanks dad, real funny.

Open the clothing box – Gameboy fucking heaven. I flipped out, running around the apartment like Daffy Duck – kissing everybody and screaming like a pre-pubescent nancy-boy. We have this on video tape, too.

I got the Genesis, eventually. That was a little after the initial release since I still loved my SMS and the Genesis was expensive as fuck. But I eventually got it and played the standards like Sonic, Madden and Mutant League Football.

Believe it or not people who got the Playstation where bucking the trend, as well. At least in my neighborhood, everyone was waiting for the N64. Even the video store that I worked at did not stock Playstation games. I would beg my boss to gets some mainly so I could play them and he kept telling me he was holding out for the N64. This was the guy that got Sega CD games. SEGA CD! And he wouldn’t stock Playstation games.

But I loved the fuck out of my Playstation and if you ask me, N64 was one of the most overrated systems of all time. Sega’s inability to put up a good competitor (Saturn sucked) pretty much opened that market up for Playstation to take over.

Playstation lasted me throughout college until senior year. Robin and I purchased a Sega Dreamcast together. It was our first major purchase, I remember us talking about how it was a big step – a commitment – like we were adopting a kitten or something. But we pre-ordered it (Robin’s sister even asked her what we would do if we broke up), purchased a couple of games and I think it was because of that purchase that we are still together today, six and a half years later.

Ok, maybe not, but it’s fun to trivialize things sometimes.

The New Tech: My First Vibrator

Um…today’s story isn’t for the prudish, just a heads up in case you didn’t get that from the title.

Before I get into this story (and I know that you’re dying to read it just based on the title alone), I wanted to let you all know that I decided to start collecting sketches from artists when I go to cons. I always thought it was a bad idea, I go to cons to network, meet people – stuff like that, but I’ve seen some awesome sketchbooks and I especially love the themed ones so I am going to submit to my inner fanboy. I mean, just picture this scene:

Jason: Hey! Phil Hester! How’s it going?

Phil Hester: Can’t complain.

Jason: Would you mind doing a sketch for me?

Phil Hester: Sure – whatta ya want?

Jason: Well, it’s a themed book…

Phil Hester: Ok…

Jason: So I was hoping you can do a sketch of Reginald VelJohnson.

Phil Hester: I’m sorry, I don’t know…

Jason: Reginald VelJohnson – he’s the guy that played Carl on Family Matters. Sergeant Al Powell in Die Hard 2.

Phil Hester: The fat black guy?

Jason: Yeah, can you draw him? You should see the Reginald VelJohnson Frank Miller did. Looks just like Batman.

Seriously, every time I imagine myself doing that I fucking crack-up.

Anyway, on to my first vibrator…
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Well, not mine, really.

Ok. It was sort of mine, I guess. I bought it the summer after senior year in high school right before college orientation. I was dating R at the time and for some reason I thought, you know, going to college and shit – this is what people DO in college, right?

The answer is “yes, they do” but you have to at least give them until school actually starts and a couple of shots of Jaeger. Orientation – we’re pretty much still High Schoolers at this point. And whereas I can only imagine some high schoolers bust out hardware occasionally – R and I really weren’t those high schoolers. You see – R was a bit inexperienced at this point (not saying I was King Pimp, either), and the whole dildo thing…no, not a good idea.

I really wish I had this funny-ass story to tell about me actually attempting to use it. Honestly, I wish to all fuck that I had that story. But, unless I repressed the memory, I never even told her I had it. Not to say I didn’t find other uses for it. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I bought it in some sex shop in Manhattan, somewhere around 34th and 6th Ave – within a block of the 34th Street Mall. This is likely my second trip to a sex shop (could have been the third) but undoubtedly the first time I went alone.

There were a lot of firsts, actually. For instance, when I walked in there were girls hanging out on this cat walk inviting me into a private booth – that was a first. The prostistripper that called to me was this Amazonian looking black chick – built like a fucking line-backer – and a voice that could have been sexy at one point but now sounds all-scratched up due to what can only be cigarette-induced constant bloody throat. She actually calls me “big boy” which I always thought was more of a joke than a phrase booth-hookers actually used. She asks me if I want to “have a good time” and I politely tell her, “No thanks” and make my way to the sex toy session.

My previous trips to a sex shop consisted of my friends and I picking up 12-inch double-dongs and laughing; we never really paid attention to things like pricing. Looking over the material in the store on that summer day, I realized that people will pay a lot of money for a substitute penis. Everything that looked good (and by my high-school warped porno watching definition “good” meant over 8-inches, veined, vibrating and brightly colored) was in the 30+ dollar range and I wasn’t looking to spend more than 10 bucks. Luckily, I found a vibrator for 12 bucks and decided that it’s good enough.

Now, have you ever seen a twelve-dollar vibrator? It was about 8-inches, off-white and looked exactly like an oversized pencil. The box looked like it’s been opened at least thirty times, all worn and crumply. All it said on it was “8-inch Vibrator”, that it needed two AA batteries (not included) and a warning that said to keep it away from water. It was, by far, the most ghetto vibrator I’ve seen in all my years and I’ve seen quite a few since then. But, you know, it was cheap.

I packed it to go to orientation and it stayed in my bag during the whole trip.

When I got back to NYC, however, I found other uses for it. For instance, this was a really fun game to play with my friends:

“Guess what’s in my book-bag.”

“I don’t know, what?”

“Just guess.”

“I don’t want to guess.”

“For fucks sake, it’s funny. Guess!”

“A notebook.”

“Nope.” At which point I reach in, turn the vibrator on, and pull it out with a stupid-ass smile across my face. “It’s a dildo!”

I never got tired of that game. There was also the whole “sneaking up behind someone and putting the vibrator in their ear” game. One of the better jokes I pulled was swapping my friends hotdog for the vibrator at a barbeque. He got up and went to get a soda and I pulled the hotdog out of the bun and replaced it with the vibrator, threw some mustard on it (only because there was no accessible mayonnaise).

I know this sounds like I took that vibrator with me everywhere and that’s because I did. It was a permanent addition to my book-bag for the remainder of that summer. I threw it out before going off to college.

I actually think I recycled it.

The New Tech: Getting’ Digi Wit’ It

Before I get into the story for today I want to join the ranks of people that are wishing Fanboy Rampage farewell. I always liked that site; content wise, Graeme was tireless in sniffing out the absurdities in the comic community. The comments section, however…

People getting upset because someone’s ridiculously fanboyish outlook on comics doesn’t jive with their own ridiculously fanboyish outlook on comics. You know what it’s like? It’s like going into a chess club and finding the more dominant male beating up on the little chess-tikes. He may feel like the big man but he’s still in the fucking chess club.

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A testament to the fact that my parents would get me anything I wanted or I felt I needed is that I had a computer when I was eight-years-old. This was around 1986 or so, not many kids my age had a computer, I don’t think. My parents told me it was second hand (although I don’t think that’s true anymore, more on that later), we got it from my Uncle Joe who purchased a Macintosh and passed his IIc on for a discounted price. With it came a nice collection of games including Beach Head, one of the King’s Quest games and this awesome game that, as I remember it, involved a pig using a blow-dart to shoot down a wolf’s balloons. I fucking loved that game.

This shit was the whole spread – it had the computer itself, a printer, an external floppy drive and a nice box of 3M floppies to start me off with (5.25”, of course). When we started taking computer classes in school I learned about the wonderful world of logo and basic programming and my computer became more than just an expensive game-playing device – whenever you typed “My name is [name]” at the prompt it responded, “Go fuck yourself, [name]”.

I used it for reports, too, obviously. There was some basic word processing program that came for the IIc that I used for school papers. The printer would jam every other page and I would have to realign the paper with the punch-hole feeder thing-a-ma-bob (“reset my scribe” as the IIc instruction manual referred to it) so I can’t say that it made homework any easier.

As much as I liked to make my parents think it was an educational tool, the computer was all about the games. All my friends had Commodore 64s which were basically expensive Atari’s and I was actually jealous of them. They had access to games like Goonies and whereas Beach Head was cool – it sure as fuck wasn’t Goonies. My only saving grace was King’s Quest and I made sure to get every new version the week it came out.

There were some weak games as well, obviously. I got the computer with this Star Trek game that was about twenty floppies long and was all text input. You need to be a trekkie of the highest order to play it and know the layout of the enterprise. This was every game when I turned it on:

>Klingons attacking, what will you do?

>Fire torpedo

>You need to be on deck to fire torpedo.

>Go to deck

> Does not compute

>Go to elevator

>What floor?

>5

>You are in the kitchen. Klingons attacking, what will you do?

>Fire torpedo

>You need to be on deck to fire torpedo

>Make grilled cheese sandwich

>Does not compute. You received a direct hit. You are dead.

It was like a “Choose your own Adventure” but without the adventure or options to choose from. If you didn’t know what level the deck was or the name of the person that was supposed to route your energy shields you were fucked. It might have come with an instruction manual that had detailed maps and commands but I sure as fuck wasn’t going to read it.

I also had this game based on The Mist that was also text input. I never lasted more than three prompts with that game it was so hard.

>You are in the cabin. The mist is coming

>Leave cabin

>You are in the woods, the mist is coming

>Run

>You are dead

Every fucking time. Stay in the cabin, you’re dead. Scream for help, you’re dead. Open the fridge, you’re dead. Worst fucking game ever based off of a Steven King short story.

It got to the point that there were only so many text input games a boy can play so I convinced my parents I really needed a PC (or, as the cool “hacker” kids called it, an “IBM Clone”) to do my homework effectively. So we went as a family to Radio Shack and purchased a Tandy. I’m pretty sure my father got it on a newly acquired Radio Shack credit card and I’m pretty sure he’s still paying it off.

The Tandy was nice – it allowed me to get games like Alone in the Dark and Star Wars: X-Wing. Of course there was a real word processor, as well, now in Microsoft Works. I used to use the Spreadsheet application to keep track of the value of my Rob Liefeld and Todd McFarlane comics.

With the Tandy we started getting the more high-tech accessories like the modem. My boy Max was the first of us to get the modem – this was before the ISP days. His modem dialed into a solitary server that had a couple of message boards on it and some text based games. There was an 800-number printed on the modem box. But with our modem we signed up for AOL and entered the wonderful world of pretending to be 22 years old and rocking a horse-cock and using Persian Kitty to find porno pictures that took several minutes to load, only to find out it’s really a picture of a guy shitting on a girl’s forehead only to have my mom walk into the room while I was looking at it.

And then I was off to college. My dad surprised me with a laptop – once again supplied by my Uncle Joe – so that the Tandy can stay in Brooklyn. My parents were more forward with the source of the laptop this time, honest-to-god telling me that Uncle Joe knew a guy that got it when it “fell off a truck”. Uncle Joe’s “off the truck” connection now leads me to believe my Apple IIc also “fell off a truck”.

People joke about the “falling off a truck” think but growing up in my neighborhood so much of our shit fell off of trucks. We used to have this sketchy guy come into our video store when I was working with this cardboard box filled with video games, systems, VCRs, etc that fell off of the back of a truck. We’d take the games at ten bucks a pop and exchange them for forty Geoffrey Dollars at Toys R’ Us to get the games we wanted. Shit falling off a truck wasn’t just an overused cliché in mobster movies when I was growing up; it was an integral part of our economy.

Anyway, the laptop lasted me all through college. Upon graduation I purchased my own computer. Three years ago I bought one for my sister, it’s like the cycle of life or some shit.

The New Tech: HBO

What a fun weekend. Friday night was dinner at Coastal Flats where I had this rocking crab cake with filet mignon. Saturday night I was in Jon Wye’s backyard in silk pajamas, standing over a slaughtered pig, drinking a beer and talking to this sexy chick in a pink nightie while Evil Dead 2 was projected on the wall behind me (and, I should add, Jon wore nothing but woman's underwear all night). Sunday afternoon I was seeing off some friends that are moving to San Francisco – since they didn’t want to cook they got Famous Dave’s Barbeque to cater. After that it was a DCC meeting with a good turnout – lots of excitement over the Counter Culture Festival. To say this was the best weekend ever, well, that would be a disservice to my "sex marathon weekend" which would likely blow your mind if you even attempted to comprehend it – but it was a good weekend.

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Growing up I was perfectly happy with my network cartoons. On the weekdays I could come home to He-Man, G.I.Joe, Transformers and Thundercats. On Saturday mornings I had the more humorous fare, shows like Smurfs, WWF Superstars and the Snorks. Between the shows and the promotional tie-ins like toys, cereal and comic books – network TV and its kid-friendly output were enough to keep me calmly sedated with my six days a week of escapism (it wasn’t until I got older that I discovered the beauty of Sunday afternoon kung-fu flicks and spaghetti westerns).

But then something happened. A new craze was sweeping the neighborhood – this infectious form of entertainment that hopped from kid to kid like the plague, the only casualty being our parent’s wallets. Jim Henson, the man that gave us our beloved Muppets, had a new show in the works called Fraggle Rock. We were enthused, elated, excited as SHIT.

But it was on this thing called “HBO”.

HBO – Home Box Office. Every kid in my neighborhood knew two things about this strange network: 1) It was new and 2) We can’t get it by simply tweaking our antennas. We begged our parents to no end to get us this HBO. We needed HBO so that we can get our half-hour of this magical Fraggle Rock a week.

And Henson fucked with us so bad. Fraggle Rock comics and VHS releases. Kids who got HBO would tape copies of Fraggle Rock and distribute them amongst their friends. I ended up getting a couple of episodes on VHS – it was obviously a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy.

After endless begging my parents finally caved and got me this HBO thing. I came home from school one day and found it hooked up to our TV. Now, what you need to understand is that this wasn’t cable. Cable hasn’t reached our neighborhood yet, at least I don’t think it did. This was HBO. It was a small brown box that sat on top of our TV with a knob on it. You turn the knob to the right and HBO comes on. You turn it to the left and HBO goes off. (I can’t for the life of me find a picture of this wonderful device on the internet – if anyone else can find one they get bonus points.)

The first time I got to watch Fraggle Rock on this new HBO thing was magic. The way the 3D HBO dropped down from the top of the TV, flashes of light shooting through it, and then the theme song instructing me to dance my fears away. To save my worries for another today.

Let the music play. Down in Fraggle Rock.

I taped all of the episodes, obviously. Watched them over and over again and lent copies of it to my friends. We didn’t have two VCRs so anyone who wanted a copy of my Fraggle Rock tapes had to bring over their own VCR. Eventually other kids in the neighborhood started getting HBO – the kids wanted their Fraggle Rock and the parents liked the fact that they could watch Splash or Romancing the Stone whenever they wanted. Some kids in the neighborhood actually got those big ‘ole satellites only to have Time Warner Cable move in a couple of years later.

Since we had HBO my house became the family hang out for any boxing matches they aired. My Tio Andy was new to the family and a boxing fanatic, some may say our HBO box was the reason he married my Titi Denise. We’d get phone calls from relatives asking if we can tape certain movies for them, they’d be flipping through the TV guide, we became their own private video store (and since there was only one in the neighborhood, Speedos (as I recall, it could have been called Muck-a-Muck for all I know) on Court Street, we got a lot more calls than we could handle).

HBO eventually ended up being dropped by our household until a little show called the Sopranos did to us adults what Fraggle Rock did to us kids.

Dance your fears away. Worries for another day. Let the music play. Got yourself a gun.

Mom-a-dukes: The Patient

Got a busy weekend ahead of me. Pig Roast and Pajama Party on Capitol Hill Saturday night, going away barbeque for a friend that’s off to San Fran on Sunday afternoon and DC Conspiracy get-together on Sunday night. I’m trying to get Robin out of the house on Friday night so I can get some work done – I just don’t have time. The following weekend I’m in NYC, following weekend is Halloween, following weekend Robin’s parents comes up, following weekend is the Counter Culture Festival – what the fuck? I need to quit my job and dedicate my time to writing because I’m losing weekends.

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We all get to that point when you start to experience firsthand the frailty that comes with old age. My mom’s not old, by any means, but she’s certainly at that age where things begin to fall apart and if you don’t track your health, it’ll all fall apart ridiculously quick.

It was the summer between junior and senior year in high school, we were going to my Titi Lisa’s apartment out in Bay Ridge. The whole family was there, as usual, and we were just going to eat some good Spanish food, dance around a little bit and most likely end up playing some Pictionary or Trivial Pursuit – standard family get-together.

My mom is afraid of elevators. She’ll rarely get into a modern one and if the thing looks old or moves slow she’ll either take the stairs or simply turn around and go home. My Titi Lisa was on the seventh or eighth floor, the elevator looked sketchy, so without hesitation my mom decided to walk up; my sister went with her. My father and I get to my Titi Lisa’s floor, ring the bell – they ask where my mom is. We tell them she’s taking the steps, crack a few jokes about my mom and elevators and make our way inside.

Except my mom never made it up.

My sister comes and gets us, tells us mom wants to talk to my dad. My father and I both go into the hallway and my mom is sitting on a step two flights down, breathing heavy and complaining about her chest hurting. Shortly thereafter she’s in an ambulance and making her way to the hospital. A couple of days later she’s having stents put in her arteries. A couple of months later she’s repeating the procedure. Later still is the bypass surgery.

Over the course of a couple of months my mom’s health got worse and worse. It was the Chronic Artery Disorder on top of the hypothyroidism on top of the newly developed diabetes. And it was just weird watching this woman that’s always been the strong constant in your life - the one that fed you as a kid and took you to school and brought home the Superman comics when you’re sick – just fall apart like this over the course of a year.

She needs to lose weight. She needs to work out. She needs to eat healthier. She needs to limit her stress. She needs to take medication. She needs to eat less salt. She’s reacting badly to the medication. The stent didn’t take. She just needs rest.

My mother, except for little things here and there, never needed anything. She gave. She provided. For almost twenty years of my life, from childhood straight through college, my mom was the person I went to when I needed something. If she was broke she’d still give me money. If she was busy she’d still make time to help me out.

On Christmas, you ask my mom what she needed and she’d say a new pair of socks. Now she needs to got to the doctor monthly and see specialists whenever something seems out of whack.

But we rallied behind her. We supported her, adjusted our lifestyles to better fit her new one. She lost the weight. She limited her stress. She started getting healthy. She looks better now.

But that still doesn’t replace that image of seeing my mom in the hospital, hooked up to tubes, pale as all hell, in pain, scared out of her shit and trying to hold herself together, holding back her tears as she told my father she needed me to leave.

Mom-a-dukes: The Compassionate Nurturer

The Counter Culture Festival is coming together. The page has been updated with attendees and bands – we’re going to have a pretty good mix of people.

Josh and I are finalizing the script for Elk’s Run 6 and it’s shaping up to be my second favorite so far behind issue 3. Depending on what Noel does with it this issue can easily become my favorite of the bunch. We’re putting away issue 4 right now, should be ready for print by week’s end.

And I forgot to plug two things – first of all there’s the new edition of the collaborative column I take part in over at Buzzscope. This one focuses on Diamond’s new policy to cut books that no-one’s ordering from their catalog. The second thing I wanted to plug was Mark Fossen’s tremendous review of Elk’s Run. I just like hearing someone get this jazzed.

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Being the compassionate nurturer also means having a ridiculous amount of patience. When we’re kids, we really don’t have a good handle on our emotions, especially not in conjunction with things like “plausibility”, “logistics”, “time” – things that, as an adult, tend to keep our reactions balanced.

For instance, every Christmas Eve we went down to my Grandma’s house deep in Red Hook. It tended to be a late night, the whole family came by and we opened up presents after mass - an ordeal which, with twelve grandkids, took the better part of the evening. We’d usually head home close to midnight.

This one magical year, on the car ride home, I actually saw someone dressed in a Santa Claus suit going into somebody’s front door. As a kid that believed in Santa at the time, that was the most insane mind-blowing shit I’ve ever seen (as an adult, I can’t believe the odds of this happening). I remembering freaking out in the backseat, worried that Santa already passed our house and insisting that my dad sped up so I can get home and get to bed.

My parents had no problem with that, they were beat to shit. But as we went down Imlay Street, a mile long strip that’s populated with warehouses (although I heard they’re being converted to condos), I spotted a stray dog with a litter of FUCKING PUPPIES. And if you think I freaked out when I saw Santa, you should have seen me freak out when I saw these animals huddled on a street corner in the cold winter night.

Crying like you wouldn’t believe. My father keeps trying to get my mind off of the shivering puppies, telling me that we have to get home or else Santa will pass our house. He’s tired; he realizes there’s nothing we can do for a pack of homeless dogs when our apartment barely fits us. He keeps trying and trying and trying and all I can say is, “But it’s Christmas and they’re cold!” That was my logic.

My mother took a different route and attempted to nurture these strong feelings I was having. She told me that, if I wanted to, we can come back with some food and old blankets for the dogs. Now, I wasn’t paying attention to my father’s reaction but I’m pretty sure that if I were to look at his face there his expression would be along the lines of, “Are you crazy woman? It’s midnight on Christmas Eve. We still gotta leave the cookies out, read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, put the kid to bed, get the presents from the basement, wrap the presents, put them under the tree and eat some of the cookies only to wake up in two fucking hours. And you want to come and feed one of the hundreds of stray dogs in our neighborhood.”

I know that’s a lot for an expression to say, but I guarantee you that had to be what my father’s eyes were projecting.

No matter what my father may have felt about my mother’s plan we drove to Pathmark, got some dog food, drove home and got some blankets (my old Smurf sleeping bag included), left it all out for the dogs and then went home, left out Santa’s food, read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, put me to bed, got the presents from the basement, wrapped them, left them under the tree only to wake up an hour later to me jumping on the bed screaming, “Santa came!”

But, that was my mom’s job. Who knows how I would have turned out if my father got his way? I could be roaming the streets of DC right now, punting kitties onto the highway and shoving bottle rockets up a stray dog’s ass. Which, technically, would allow me to fit in just fine down on Capitol Hill but that’s not how we roll in Northern Virginia.

Mom-a-dukes: Judge, Jury, and (Lousy) Executioner

Mom-a-dukes: Judge, Jury, and (Lousy) Executioner

If you want a letter published in Elk’s Run #4 either post it in the comments section or email it to me by tomorrow at around 5PM. Putting the book together now.

Also, just sort of feeling this out. “Moose in the Comics”. Four sixteen-page stories where four artists adapt their favorite MITC stories. Someone suggested it recently (not a publisher, unfortunately, so I’m not all yay-yay-gun-ho); I’ve obviously thought about it in the past but decided against it. But I kind of like the idea of not actually doing a lot of work for it, just signing off on the final product, editing it, maybe providing some guidance and reference for the artists – not having to actually write anything. I don’t know, thoughts?

Before I get to the story for today I wanted to share a humorous little story from the Orlando trip. Robin and I found a bar on Monday night where they had five-dollar pitchers of Bud Light – needless to say we got thoroughly sauced while watching the Angels kick the Yanks’ asses (and this was after a bunch of top-shelf margaritas with our dinner).

So we’re walking back to our hotel and there’s this little man-made swamp looking thing with mushrooms all around it. Robin (who’s wearing sandals, mind you), runs into this swampy area and kicks the biggest mushroom as hard as she can and it fucking explodes. Not only does it cake her foot in mushroom gunk but her sandal flies off into the swamp and a bunch of lizards that were hiding in the grass book it and run all around her causing Robin to freak the fuck out because she’s afraid of reptiles. In between my uncontrollable laughter I manage to ask her why the fuck she decided to do that. She told me she thought the cap would fly off like a discus.

She walked home, one sandal on, her other foot covered in absolutely fucking disgusting mushroom pulp. It was the funniest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen. Life would suck without alcohol.

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The mother has to lay down the law because the father hates to be the bad guy. When a boy spends his childhood blowing shit up, breaking things and cutting elementary school he’s going to get caught every once in a while. And when he does, the responsibility to punish rests firmly on the mother’s shoulders.

At least in my house it did.

It wasn’t that my father didn’t get involved, he was just working two jobs most of the time and it was my mom who tended to get the bad news first when it came home. So in order to make the consequences of my actions immediately known my mother had to gauge what I done, decide how bad my decision was and set the appropriate punishment, even if it was only a temporary “go to your room and wait for your father to come home.”

My mom was good at getting me to confess to shit, too. My first time drinking alcohol was at my friend Dave’s house – we were around eleven or twelve. His parents weren’t home and we raided their liquor cabinet. We mixed Bacardi with cherry Kool-Aid, quite possibly the worst combination possible but what did we know? We were so paranoid that we would be discovered that we were mixing around one-part Bacardi, one-hundred-parts Kool-Aid. It was like a quarter of a thimble of alcohol poured into a souvenir sized cup of Kool-Aid. My mom’s chicken rollatini had higher alcohol content.

Well, I get home and ring the bell to be let in. This was before I had keys – my mom kept tabs on my comings and going by making sure I relied on her to get back in the house, a wise move I might add. She comes down and I play it cool (I think). As an adult I realize there was no way that I smelled like alcohol and no-way that I was even slightly buzzed. But, nevertheless, the instant my mom looks at me she says, “You were drinking!”

No idea how she does it. I just fucking freeze and stutter out a “no” but at this point she got those hot eyes, the ones that burn my fucking soul, and she presses on.

“Where were you drinking? What were you drinking? Where were his parents?” And I try to fight it, I don’t want to get Dave in trouble, but it’s impossible – my mom has a built in lie-detector like no other. When I lie she pauses, stares at me with one eye cocked, and very quietly says, “Liar.” The most intimidating shit imaginable.

So she got it all. What we drank, how much, where we got it from – everything she needed to know to get Dave punished. She comes back from Dave’s house after ratting him out and tells me what my punishment is.

Two weeks. No TV, no playing outside. In my room for two fucking weeks.

Later that day she’s sitting on the stoop with her friends. All my friends are outside playing football. This was in Junior High School when I was in the band, baritone player. I sat in my open window and played the fucking baritone. My mom was ignoring me although her friends kept looking up, wondering if she was going to say something. Finally she turns to me and says, “Just put that thing away and go out and play!”

Victory.

But, you see, it was always like that. I can’t recall a punishment that ever lasted longer than a day. Because besides my mother’s amazing detective and crime-fighting skills she couldn’t stand me being in the house and annoying her all day. So I’d just find something to do that annoyed her, baritone was always a good call.

Singing was also a good call. As was breaking something, reading out loud, sighing at the dinner table while she peeled potatoes. Punishments never stuck no matter the crime.

Even when Ross and I got caught ring-and-running this old lady, sent home by our school and forced to come back with our parents where cops met with us and told us that the lady wasn’t pressing charges but how Ross and I are going to turn into “bad apples” if we’re allowed to keep this up – even then the punishment lasted a couple of hours.

She wouldn’t talk to me for a couple of days or she’d give little jabs here and there but nothing that really threatened my schedule of fun and games. She was like Judge Judy mixed with Jesus Christ (Mathew’s Jesus, not John’s)

Mom-a-dukes: The Doctor

Still in Orlando, come back tomorrow – no blurb.

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Every mother has to occasionally play the roll of doctor. As kids we used to eat everything in our path, play with dangerous objects and spend 80% of our day running around the neighborhood, sliding across concrete every time we took a spill. A mother needs to be adept at basic first aid – rapid application of band aids, gauze, and antiseptic – the day-to-day things that were readily accessible in your medicine cabinet.

There were the actual sickness’ that needed to be treated as well. Children’s aspirin, cough medicine, chicken soup, coloring books and Superman comics – each item having its own healing effect and a mother must now when to use the proper remedy. For instance, Superman comics work well for general fever and malaise but Fraggle Rock videos worked better for nausea and headaches.

Despite the routine healthcare stuff a mother must also has to know how to handle emergencies. My mom was 50/50 with this one – her inherent hypochondria made every little thing an emergency but at the same time it’s not like she was waiting around to see if my symptoms progressed any; nothing every progressed towards “real bad”.

I had a fair amount of the real emergencies – the open wound type with plenty of blood in which a hospital visit was the obvious course of action. One of the more memorable ones was when I slipped and fell in my bedroom and part of the radiator punctured my cheek. I pretty much woke up in the hospital right before the doctor was giving me stitches. My mom got me there nice and fast.

Certain emergencies came about because I fucked up and was afraid to admit to it. When I was around ten I wanted to play with my father’s razor, for instance. The only hair on my face at the time was on my head so I decided to take down some of my sideburns. Well, I took a huge chunk of hair out the side of my head without even realizing it.

When I emerged from the bathroom my mother instantly saw it and asked me what happened. I had no idea what she was talking about so she showed me my bald spot in a mirror – it was quite large. I said I had no idea how it got there and she flipped out. Screaming about cancer and radiation and chemicals and God knows what else. She’s calling my doctor who tells her to call for an ambulance and I’m sitting there debating if I should end this now or ride it out.

Finally I decide to confess, before she calls for an ambulance. I do it all nonchalant, “Oh! I was practicing with dad’s razor! Maybe that’s how it happened!”

Nice try, buddy. Punished.

As I got older and started dealing with more complex shit my mom started to lose her position as family doctor. She was phased out. Superman comics don’t do much for psychological illnesses. A coloring book won’t help with my itchy testicles.

Certain remedies my mother didn’t understand. She suggested my first therapist but obviously regretted the decision when I first started going. She didn’t understand it, thought that Dr. Dean was blaming all of my problems on her. I understand this is a common fear with a lot of mothers; I’ve met several people who had similar experiences including Robin.

My mom was also a bit touchy with sexual stuff. She constantly lectured me about using a condom but if she ever found one she would lecture me about how I was too young for sex. It was a no-win situation; I was always getting lectured when it came to sex. I remember one time, when I was dating M, I complained how there was always someone in the apartment when I was here with M and we’re old enough to have sex and make our own decisions. My mom disagreed, obviously, to which I told her, “Wouldn’t you rather us have sex here than in some alley somewhere?” Made sense at the time.

My mom still tries to be my doctor from time to time and I find it more cute than annoying. She has all these friends that work in doctors’ offices and she collects sample medications from them all. So if I was in college and complained about a headache she’d send me a box of sample aspirin packs. If I sprained my ankle she’d send me sample pain killers. If I was feeling down she’d send me samples of Prozac. My medicine cabinet in college was filled with illegally obtained medications.

When she found out Robin had allergies, she literally sent a season supply of two types of allergy medications in case one worked better than the other for her. A big fucking box of individually wrapped allergy medication arrives at my door.

And she still tries, even now. If I tell her something with my body is acting funny she’ll tell me what it could be. I thank her and get a second opinion.

Mom-a-dukes: The Cook

I’m in Orlando today and tomorrow – just story, no blurb.

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I subscribe to the clichéd ideology that the most important job in the world is being a mother (followed by father, teacher and then my cleaning lady since this place would look like a sty if it wasn’t for her). They have to be so many things, a nurturer, a judge, a teacher. Over the next week I’m going to be talking about my mother and convey to you had she excelled in all of her responsibilities. Today I’ll start with My Mom: The Cook, not because I believe a woman’s primary job is cooking but because it’s a funny way to start the week.

But it doesn’t hurt that a woman’s primary job is cooking. Anyway…

My mom wasn’t the best cook in the world. She had her signature meals that would have people coming over just to get some (like her Chicken Rollatini) but for the most part we were a poor family with access to the basic ingredients. What we didn’t have in terms of flavor and variety she made up for in excitement – every meal had a story.

Take Macaroni Junga-Junga, for instance. Probably my favorite meal to this day, it is shell pasta, tomato sauce and chopped meat, covered in cheese and baked. Sort of home made Hamburger Helper except the shells would burn just enough to give the bottom of the casserole dish a little bit of crisp. Whereas it was a simple meal with cheap ingredients capable of providing two nights of dinner and one day of lunch for a family of four, my mom always sold it as an old family recipe. Handed down from our family in Napoli, several generations back, straight down to our little apartment on Woodhull Street. As an adult I realize that Macaroni Junga-Junga was no more a family tradition from Italy than Spam & Eggs but as a kid, it made the meal special.

Same goes for Frankfurter Soup. According to my mom, Frankfurter Soup was a traditional Irish meal that her mother used to always make. It was basically frankfurters and onions cooked in a spiced up tomato broth but as a kid it was more than just delicious – it was my heritage. Frankfurter Soup was my mother fucking roots. My great-great-great-grandmother used to bring home a package of Sabrett hotdogs, slice them lengthwise into quarters, drop them into a boiling pot of Cambell’s tomato soup, add some onions and spices and let it simmer.

Old Irish recipe or not Frankfurter Soup was a staple in my house and we all loved it (especially with mashed potatoes). When I’m home and my mom asks me if I want something “special” for dinner I request Frankfurter Soup, the meal that costs five-bucks to make, and the whole family gets excited.

St. Patrick’s day, however, wasn’t as fun. Whereas the corned beef was fine the cabbage was gag-inducing and my mom insisted we cleaned out plates for “luck”. That was one tradition I wasn’t happy to follow. It would be soggy and noxious. I’d douse it in ketchup to drown out the flavor (I used to douse everything in ketchup; I think the excessive use of ketchup is an actual Rodriguez family gene).

My mom’s sauce was fantastic, however. Even now when I eat it I can’t help but think she should bottle it up and sell it. It’s an all day ordeal for her, making sauce. She would start it early in the morning and it’ll be ready in time for dinner. If we were lucky she’d throw some sausages from Esposito’s in the pot, nice plump ones.

She also had a knack for Mozzarella sticks. No idea what it was but when she prepared a batch we ate them like it was nobody’s business. She’d make fifty at a time and freeze them and they’d be gone within a few days.

Her biggest cooking talent was Spanish food. My Grandma (father’s mother) taught her. She makes the second best rice in the family now (my Grandma makes the best) and the third best pernil (pork shoulder - Tio Mario making the best, Grandma in close second). But she can also hold her own in all of the other standards and recently perfected her pasteles (pork and plantain based meal, wrapped in banana leaves) recipe which has always been a Grandma stronghold. No-one else even attempts to make pasteles in our family.

My mom would stink up the whole house with her Spanish food, our upstairs neighbors would complain about the sofrito smell that permeated the entire building but they stopped complaining when we brought them up a plate of pernil and a little bit of chicharron (the ultra seasoned, hardened pi