New Beginnings: The Choice

This is a continuation of Tuesday’s story, just so you know.

The company I interviewed with called me several days after the interview to tell me that they’re working on an offer for me that’s within my range. I made the mistake of telling them a range and in doing so I knew “within my range” meant that it was the low-end of my range. Knowing how the interview went I decided to bring up the fact that I’m broke now and asked if they can throw some relocation money onto that since I had no money to my name and my parents weren’t in a position to help out. David told me the max he can give me to relocate is 3-grand and I jumped on that, thinking 3-grand was going to last me months and I’d still have money to spare.

I told Robin the news and she was a mix of excited and worrisome – I wasn’t lining up any interviews because I liked what this company was doing and I liked the money they were talking. We pretty much both knew that if this was to go down I’d take it.

A couple of days later David called to tell me they sent out their offer letter, contingent on a drug test, and whereas it was the lowest value in my range (with a 3K relocation allocation) my lowest value was most people’s high value.

Again, Robin was excited but she wanted to celebrate by smoking some dope so, you know, there might have been some subconscious attempt to sabotage a brother.

I went and took my drug test – all good, I stopped doing drugs some time ago. The offer letter came in, without the relocation check, and I signed it up and sent it back in FedEx style. Called my parents, told my friends, at this point they all thought I was working for NASA and I was too embarrassed to correct them. My future employer sent me some stuff to read over so I can hit the ground running on May 30th, only a week after graduating, and my first project was indeed for NASA, doing some wind-tunnel acoustic analysis so I didn’t feel as bad about living that particular lie.

I called my company to see when I would be getting my check. Once again, not understanding the concept of “broke-ass mother fucker”, they told me that they’ll reimburse me once I give them receipts. There was no fucking way that was going to work out since I’d be literally living on the streets so I told them I’d have to pull-back on my acceptance if I don’t get some of that money up front. Robin was a bit of a rebel rouser on this one, what type of company wouldn’t send you money upfront – shit like that – she didn’t want me to go.

I didn’t want to go, really, but I wasn’t getting shit in Boston and I didn’t have the luxury of waiting around. Life was pushing me towards DC and away from Robin whether I liked it or not.

The company sent me 75% of the check as an advance which I used to get airfare out there and set-up with a pack-storage-ship type of company. The deal was set, I was going to DC.

Despite the problems we were having, however, and the fact that I had this blank check on my life and the opportunity to start a whole new life in a brand new city, I didn’t want to leave Robin.

So I invited her to come with me. At least for the summer, so we can feel out the whole “living together” thing. Parlay it into a long-distance type of thing; I was making enough money to see her once or twice a month. And then, when she finishes college, if we’re still doing well she can come down and live with me for good.

It says something about our relationship that she said “yes”, almost without hesitation. About 8 months together, no engagement or talks of marriage, agreeing to move with me to DC – no money to our names, only one friend out there (my boy Max from the neighborhood), further from her family than she’s ever lived and staying by me while I got on my feet.

We both knew it was going to be hard and lonely, at least for the first few months, and she took a huge chance on me by agreeing to go.

I took a huge change by inviting her. It was sort of the culmination of my new philosophy – I didn’t need to leave it open, I didn’t need to go out there and make this glorious life by myself, start completely from scratch and wait for the romance to come to me.

I brought the romance – despite how small of a romance it might have been.

New Beginnings: Life

Before I get to today’s story I just wanted to check in with you all – tell you I went to the Buzzscope drink-up and it was mighty fun. Since Guy (pronounced “gee”, believe it or not) shook on it I feel confident in announcing that The Hive, my new column talked about in my last Here’s the Thing, will be hosted by the wonderful folks over at Buzzscope instead of the DCC blog. I’m happy about the move, I think Buzzscope is producing some of the greatest comic content today and after talking about Guy about the site and his vision for it I think it’s safe to say that if there is a comic revolution going on, and I believe there is, this site is going to be our focal point.

I do have a SOLID fucking idea for the DCC blog but it all depends on how much juice I bank off The Hive since that’s going to keep me busy as fuck.

Also got to have a couple of drinks with Jeremy, better known as The Pickytarian, and he’s cool people with a cool little comic blog – he has The Moose seal of approval which is worth somewhere between a Peoples’ Choice Award and George Bush’s word. But, hey, at least it’s worth something.

Ok, folks, story time…

_________

This is a continuation of yesterday’s story, all the information you may need can be found there. After reading over the 423 story I realize it needs some editing and tightening as far as how it ties into me and where I’m at right now but hopefully for the more astute reader this serves as a nice little window into my motivation and philosophies. I can tighten it up when I get some publisher signed on to publish The Moose.

Things were going well with Carolina – we talked on the phone a few times and she came to our first volleyball practice and she was probably the best player on the team. I started talking about things we should do together – feeling out what movies she might like, restaurants she might enjoy. In Boston I had several date restaurants scoped out, different atmospheres and types of food, all depending on what the lady might like.

All the while I was back in my routine. The grades were picking up but I was just sort of fantasizing through life – writing poems about depression and novels that basically had me playing the life I wanted to have. I still had this weird delusion that life was going to hand me everything I ever wanted – that it was all going to drop it on my lap and that what happened the past several months was just a hiccup in the grand scheme of my destiny.

I was seriously delusional, living in a fantasy world, and that’s what you need to know.

After the first volleyball practice, however, Carolina stops returning my phone calls. I wasn’t calling constantly – I called the day after practice to see if she wanted to go to the movies. I called several days later to remind her of our next practice. After she missed practice I called her one last time to see if she was alright.

My perception was starting to fall apart, again.

I talked to her RA, eventually, after several weeks of not hearing back from her. She tells me Carolina’s father pulled her out of school for personal reasons. If I was just a regular ‘ole resident it would have stopped there but I pushed on and used my “friendly fellow RA” label to get more information.

Turns out Carolina was an insomniac. She was taking steps to deal with the problem but this one night she blacked out and fell onto her nightstand – knocked a candle over and started a small fire in her room. She was fine; a little choked up and worried but thanks to thin walls in the brownstones her neighbor came by to check up on her before the fire alarm even kicked in. When word got back to Carolina’s father he sent for her to come home and put her in a hospital closer to home to help her with her problem.

Now, when I heard this, I was shocked. You see – I instantly went back to the dream – where the girl with long back hair was engulfed in flame, holding the piece of paper that read “423”. I started wondering what it meant – if the early morning fire started at 4:23 AM and coming up with scenarios that explained what this means to my life – how this all ties to together with my grand plan, with my delusional sense of importance.

Then I just sort of stopped thinking.

Some would look at what happened and call it fate or destiny or coincidence or a fluke. For the first time I saw it for what it was – a story. That’s all it is, I don’t need to be anyone besides myself to make this story any better – it’s perfect just the way it is. I don’t need to think or fantasize on a point anymore to make it a more viable story.

In other words – life gives you a story every fucking day. I just needed to start writing it.

I realized that everyday life, from the most mundane to the most fantastical shit, is more exciting than any story some Hollywood think-tank can come up with. You can take an ordinary, everyday event and grow it into something that entertains the masses – something relatable and real and personal and therapeutic to put down on paper.

It was a realization that turned me around like nothing ever has before. I stopped dreaming and started doing. I started my quote book that day – a tome of quotes I compiled over the past seven years. I started a journal – jotting down feelings and situations and drawing on them for stories. I stopped writing poetry, it wasn't my thing, I was only using it as an outlet to express my depression – I stopped placing myself into every story, I stopped writing Jason ROdriguez fan-fic which is what I call it now when I look back at it – I started studying other people’s lives and making them characters.

I started seeing stories in people on the train – complete strangers. I’d look at someone and try to work out who they are, what they do for a living, how many kids they have, when they got married. And I started writing it all down.

In my writing books I have stories for hundreds of characters – you’ve been reading a bunch of them for the past eleven months, I’ve drawn a lot of them from my own life.

This may not sound like a huge revelation to you but the minute you realize your life has more substance than the life you fantasize having is the minute you start living. It’s the minute you start taking more chances, appreciating the small things, realizing what’s going on in your own head and how it relates to your own life. It’s the minute you start letting people in – you start to draw from their own stories and find threads to your own life. It’s the minute you start accepting blame, realizing mistakes and become motivated enough to start making something of your life. It’s the minute you really feel hurt instead of finding excuses for it. You start to realize how selfish you’ve been and start taking steps to rectify it. You start to realize how important other people are in your life – how they’re major players in your own story and how their stories interact with yours.

You take on a new responsibility – a story teller in life – someone who appreciates the needs in somebody else’s life and rewrites your own story to fill it.

You start connecting – and you put that down on paper and you can connect with complete strangers within minutes.

I became a writer that day. Not the best writer that ever lived and certainly not the most prolific but I learned how to reach people, which, at the end of the day, is what a writer is supposed to do.

And, in turn, I started dealing with all my shit the way it’s supposed to be dealt with. One day at a time – and always understanding it is what is and it’s that way for other people as well.

New Beginnings: Not-So-Instantly Refreshed

There’s a big story on this site called “The 423 Story”. Some people love it, some are bored to tears. The bottom line is, to understand what you are about to read you would have had to of at LEAST read this story. If you want to read the whole thing, from alien attacks through self-destruction, you can read, in this order: A Prelude to 423, 423, The Tipping Point, Breakdowns, Summer Money Attempt #1, Hooker Hand, Movie Memories, Sentimental Bullshit, Movie Making, Selling Shirts, The Last Catering, Ithaca, Back to Boston, and The Lack of Communication.

I woke up to the phone ringing. Despite the alcohol and the pounding headache I instantly remembered what I tried to do before going to bed and thought that only a couple of hours had passed and I was still dying. That’s a scary thought, you know – waking up and thinking you were going to die at any moment. You have all this shit running through your head – you think about going to the hospital, calling 911 and getting the whole thing turned around, admit defeat as if you didn’t admit defeat several hours ago. You don’t notice clues – you don’t notice the sun is shining through your window or the alarm clock is reading a little passed nine-AM.

I roll over and answer the phone – expecting my father to be on it – just sort of made sense, made for a great story. My life was always about the story. I’ve said this in the past but I’ve always had a hard time keeping my fantasies in check – this whole story starts with a dream that turns to a fantastical belief that I was going to somehow play a roll in the end of the world. The mind just goes – I was never the kind of guy that can truly appreciate what other people do – I’m the kind of guy who imagines myself doing what other people do. The problem was, then at least, was that I never applied it – never did anything except write crappy poetry and half assed attempts at novels and convince myself it was literary gold – eventually picture myself as a musician or movie star despite never even trying any of those things. Thinking about stopping terrorists during math class. Dream about being a famous scientist. Always picturing my life as a clichéd Hollywood story and doing nothing to live it out, expecting it to come to me.

It was a courtesy call from my cell phone company; I didn’t pay my phone bill since I bought my phone almost three months ago. Here I am, waiting for this almost cinematic moment – that life saving call where my father says a couple of things that turns me around – bring me back from my death and reminds me that life is worth living. Instead I get a girl named Julie, telling me that my cell phone bill is passed due and that I need to send in payment before they cut off my service.

I tell Julie the check is in the mail and hang-up – check my clock already realizing it was the morning and I made it through the night. It’s an embarrassing thing – you can lay in bed all morning but eventually you’re going to have to look at yourself in the mirror. The whole “looking at yourself in the mirror thing” is, admittedly, an overused cliché but until you do something that truly shames you, not just saying something stupid or playing a malicious prank on somebody but something selfish that has the potential to really fuck up a lot of lives besides you own – you’ll be amazed how fucking hard it is to look yourself in the eye.

Head pounding I go into the shower, I need to get to RA training – I’m already late. I take a hot shower and try not to think about anything. I try not to thing about my Uncle Alex or R or Josh or Mickey or my grades or my family or the troubles my friends are going through. I try not to think about attempted suicide. I make a conscious effort to keep a song in my head, to just wash it all off of me and get on with my day as if last night never happened. I try to push everything I wasn’t dealing with aside, not realizing that practice is what got me here in the first place. I’m crying my eyes out in the shower and all the while pretending that everything that’s happening is still not happening.

And I do well with it. I make it through training. I get cheery when I need to get cheery, serious when I need to get serious and through it all I continuously push all my problems aside. My father calls me from Arizona - tells me how everything is going – and I just nod it all away, get a little sad and write some shitty poem about it.

Move-in day comes and goes. I help people with their bags; deliver carts to their cars so they can unload. I make my rounds around the floor and meet all of my residents. I go to lunch with the other RAs, take a break.

About a week later I see Carolina in the dorm – the girl from the dream with the long-black hair. She cut it short, it doesn’t look the same, but she’s looking cuter than she was on the night of April 23rd and I, being single for the first time in two and a half years, work up the nerve to invite her to sit with me on our bench by the Charles River.

She smiles at me a flirtatious smile and says, “yes”.

We get to talking when we’re at the bench. Last time I talked to her was right after a fight I had with R – she had a fight with her boyfriend as well. Over the summer they broke up – as did R and I. It was a piece of information we both found obviously interesting and we started bringing ourselves a bit closer on the bench – flirting a bit more.

I tell her I’m starting an intramural volleyball team for the third year in a row – she tells me she’d love to play and she’s actually quite good. I invite her on the team and use that as a perfect excuse to get her number. I ask her if I can call her sometime and she has no problem with the prospect. We walk back towards Towers together – once we get to Bay State Road she turns towards her brownstone and I make my way to the dorm.

It took some time but I felt happy – I felt refreshed. I was doing better in school, I loved my RA friends and wasn’t missing my old friends as much, the pain of Uncle Alex’s death slowly faded away and the separation between Boston and Ithaca where Mary and Jackie were greatly took away from the impact of that drama. I was protected, again, and it felt damn good.

I didn’t learn anything yet but I was nicely set-up for the lesson life was about to deliver to me.

New Beginnings: The Interview

Christmas came and went – my family got along really well with Robin’s family. Apparently there was a rumor going around in my family that I was going to propose to Robin this weekend – suckers. Seven years strong, bitch! No, no – for the record, if anyone cares, we both decided to wait until Robin finishes school because I sure as hell ain’t planning a wedding and she just doesn’t have the time now. So, it’s either be engaged for three years or wait another year-and-a-half (although, I likely won’t wait a whole year-and-a-half anyway).

Anyway, Christmas was good. Got plenty of fun stuff – got a Sirius radio set up and a home kit, plenty of new shirts, a couple of video games, some DVDs. The nice thing about having Christmas with the two families is not only do I get Robin’s gifts (and we ALWAYS spoil each other) but I get gifts from my parents, my sister, Robin’s parents and Robin’s sister – that’s a good Christmas. The tree was packed with presents for everybody and although I didn’t get Robin an engagement ring, I got her a Coach bag to go with all the little things which, in the end, is what she’d rather have anyway.

Hope you all had a good holiday. I’ll be back in NY Tuesday. I might take G to the Buzzscope drink-up and meet some cats, play some poker some other night and then New Years at my boy Colin’s house followed by bar-hopping on Smith Street. But I’ll be checking in here everyday to drop a story and some words and some of them – they’re going to be pretty revealing.

________________

I went on several pre-interviews when I was in college. Various companies would come in and do quick 15-minute interviews to gauge how good you were at lying about your qualifications so you can get a real interview. Out of three pre-interviews I didn’t get a single invitation for a real interview. Same with job fairs – talked to plenty of people, got plenty of business cards and shook tons of hands – dropped off my resume and never heard from anyone.

It was the GPA – when you’re graduating college all you really have is your GPA – the ability of schmooze could technically get you in but you need to find the right people and have enough time to make it work. I wasn’t having much luck – so I signed on with a headhunter.

I got a couple of calls here and there but nothing really panned out. I was trying to stay in Boston and those were the most contested jobs – no-one wanted to leave Boston. I mainly wanted to stay around because Robin was doing another year of school and I didn’t want to risk losing her during a years worth of long distancing. But the head hunter got a hit for me in Washington DC doing work for an acoustic company (which is what I was doing my research in) and paying the high end of what I was asking for. He also sold it well – he told me I’d be a NASA contractor and, having no idea what the fuck that meant, I heard the word “NASA” and rolled with – told all of my friends and family I was interviewing with NASA.

I have an hour long phone interview with this guy David and it seems to be going well – he finally invites me down to DC to interview. I agree to come down and he tells me to book the airfare and they’ll reimburse me. I stall for a moment and say, “OK”, hang up the phone and try to figure out how the fuck I was going to afford airfare.

In college I had no money and a credit card with a five-hundred dollar limit. I found airfare for around three-bills and almost maxed out my lone credit card to book it. The day of the interview came and I was looking fly in my DKNY suit, sunglasses on and a fresh haircut. Robin was primping me up, wishing me luck and I was feeling confident as all hell.

I fly into Dulles airport in Northern Virginia, get off the plane and look for the limo driver with the white poster-board that says, “Jason”. I don’t see him so I find a pay phone and call David who says he’s glad I made it in and to get a cab and ride it on over to the address.

Suffice to say at this moment I realized the interview process was nothing at all like I imagined it to be.

I guess I just expected them to make a big deal about me and, you know, make it convenient and easy for me – impress me a little bit. I was broke – I hailed a cab and hoped the twenty bucks I had in my pocket was enough to get me to the interview since I had no other cash to fall back on. I get into the cab and go happy when I realize that they take credit cards – the cab ride cost enough to truly max out my credit card but at least I got to the place.

The cab driver has no idea where I’m going, or so he claims, he makes several wrong turns and continuously consults his map. This was out in McLean, Virginia – not a well known part of town for the cab drivers, I’d imagine, and I was on an obscure street.

When I pull up to the office I instantly know where I am. Across the street was the Hilton I stayed in during my sixth grade trip to Washington DC. I kind of believe in omens and I took that as a good one. I go up to the office and the receptionist instantly strikes me as a mildly retarded woman with a cat obsession who won’t shut the fuck up – later on I’ll realize how wrong I was - she’s fully retarded.

The receptionist is making me nervous with all of these idiotic questions she’s asking me and awkward attempts at small talk. David finally comes into the lobby, shakes my hand and asks me if I want to get some lunch. We exit the building and he starts listing off what’s around.

“Let’s see. There’s a sandwich shop next door. Another one across the street. The Hilton has food. Or we can drive to the mall and eat in the food court.”

I was getting pretty frustrated at this point but I thought of the money and pushed on.

We ate at the Hilton and it was pretty cool – I remembered the inside of it so well from when I was there in the sixth grade. The two of us just shot the shit for a little bit, David was likely one of the biggest dorks I ever met. There’s a huge difference between school dorks and working adult dorks – a whole new level of sadness to them. But I’m cordial and don’t let my diagnosis of dorkiness affect the interview more than it should.

After lunch we go back to the office to start the interview process. First it’s sort of a gangbang – several guys from the company sit opposite me in a large conference room and take turns throwing questions out at me. They’re interested in the research I’m doing and it turns out one of the guys interviewing me is good friends with my mentor – that’s a breather right there.

I get through the group interview well and they all start to pass me around and talk with me one-on-one, showing me demos of their products, the labs and introducing me to all of the employees. The HR chick goes over the benefits with me and I have no idea what the fuck she’s talking about. All I know is that they sound good, mainly because she’s smiling while she tells them to me and she’s wicked cute.

When it’s all said and done I say my goodbyes and hope a cab back to the airport, use the last of my cash to get there. I thought the whole process would take a lot longer than it did, the flight home I booked didn’t leave for another three hours. But I called Robin, told her how it went – she was excited even though in a way you can tell she didn’t want me to move to DC about as much as I didn’t want to go out there. But I needed a job – I needed to get some money – and it’s hard to argue against that.

But the interview went well, no denying that, and I was talking to Robin on the phone the idea that our relationship was coming to an end was already starting to sink in.

New Beginnings: Times Square

Well, it’s Christmas. I’m a little drunk. I don’t feel like writing a story but with almost a month to go in my iron man writing experiment I sure as fuck ain’t going to let it die now. So, I have no idea how this is going to come out but either way, Merry Christmas ya’ll.

_________

The themes for the last five weeks are going to be pretty vague so I can wrap up storylines before I’m done with The Moose. Just letting you know – it’ll likely have a different feel everyday. Today, however, is “an easy” story that does nothing for the big picture but instead keeps me writing like I said I would.

No New Yorker goes to Times Square for New Years Eve – no respectable one, at least. It’s the kind of thing the tourists do – they all go out in the freezing cold and stand on a crowded block half of a mile away from a stage where the flavor of the month sings some pop-song with the flavor of last year – no bathroom to piss in and no booze to drink unless you had the foresight to sneak some along.

Having said that, me and some friends broke the rule once and went to Times Square on New Year’s1998.

I don’t know whose idea it was to go but we got quite the little crew. Bundled up for the cold, forties in hand, it was Jackie, her cousin, Mary, Ron, Matt, Jerome and I. G, Max and some other people were supposed to meet us out there. This was before we had cellphones – it’s impossible to meet in Times Square without cellphones.

The crew of us gets to Time Square at like 8PM, thinking we’re going to get a spot a couple of blocks from the stage.

The stage is on 42nd ST. We were on 53rd. Four hours early, eleven blocks away. I don’t know how early people get there to get closer to the stage but they’re fucking nuts.

Fucking. Nuts.

But we have our forties, we’re all bundled up, and in four hours we will celebrate 1998 with millions of people. We were having a good time – until we had to pee.

Once you got admitted onto a block, after the weapon checks and dogs sniffing you, you weren’t allowed to leave. The one Korean store on our block took crazy advantage of the situation. As in five bucks to use the bathroom advantage. Whereas there may be some legal diction that explains how fucked the situation was doesn’t matter – the fact is if you’re drunk and putting down forties and there’s one bathroom you can use – there’s no amount of money that you would consider “too much”.

I waited online for about ten minutes. Finally I get in, taking the john while someone else was still pissing in the toilet, and the guy behind me said, “Fuck this” and followed me in – the guy behind him followed him in, too. Two toilets – four guys – what do you do? Well, one of them pisses in the sink. That’s fair.

The other one – breaks THE FUCKING WINDOW and pisses out onto the street.

I’m standing there, taking a leak, and thinking I’m going to be associated with this fucking idiot. The glass breaking was loud, you know? No-one comes in while I’m there, though, I finish up and shake and get the fuck out of there – tell everyone outside what just happened. Jackie swears she heard the glass break and laughs.

It’s getting closer to midnight now, we’re out of forties but it doesn’t matter, the guys next to us brought some dope and had no problems with sharing with us. We smoke some dope, have a good fucking time, and eventually cut down to midnight.

The street explodes at midnight – everyone cheering, ticker tape and toilet paper dropping from the windows. We all start hugging everyone – strangers, friends, doesn’t matter – everyone screaming “Happy New Year”, kissing, hugging, passing joints and spraying 40s into the air.

Within ten minutes the streets cleared out. It was fucking weird – ghost town just sprung up in no times. New Year party favors on the floor, empty glasses – streets lined with colored paper, soaked in beer and piss. Everyone must have ran back to their hotel or afterparties – we had nowhere to go so we just hopped the train and went home.

Holiday Wishes and Junior Summer: The Rest of the Summer

EDIT: A "before I drive to NYC" shout to Greg from Comics Should be Good who spoke well of Elk's Run and my fighting ability. For the record, for those new to this site, I'm actually a lousy fighter. Read most of the stories about me getting involved in some type of fight and it's usually me getting my ass kicked.

Robin and I love baseball. We order the baseball package through our cable provider and from late spring through earlier autumn there is a baseball game on in our house. We hardly see eye-to-eye on teams (she’s Sox, I’m Mets), players, policy or rules but there is one thing we both whole-heartedly believe: Baseball will die without a good farm system.

Indie comics is the farm system for the comics industry. While everyone is talking about the spider-mans and the exclusive contracts and the crossovers we’re down here doing our own thing and playing our heart out in an attempt to bring fresh and innovative ideas to an otherwise stagnant industry. We don’t get a lot of attention but we get just enough to do what we love and sometimes that attention is enough to bring us up to major-league level.

With that in mind, I want to send some holiday love to the comic fans that pay attention to us. To the ones that talk about our books instead of the books everyone else is talking about. Anyone can review a Batman book and almost everyone does. But the comics industry would dry out mighty quick if people weren’t talking about the stuff we were doing. If someone wasn’t noticing us, talking us up, and lifting us up to a point where we can bring our game to a bigger audience.

I’ve always show love for Sean Maher, Mark Fossen and Guy LeCharles Gonzalez for supporting the indie books they liked and doing it loud, making their voices heard. But this holiday season I also want to throw some well wishes to Johanna Draper Carlson, Ian Brill, Jog, Shawn Hoke, and everyone else who seeks out small press and indie work and promotes it. People like you keep our farm system strong and, in turn, keep comics relevant.

Happy Holidays, all.

Story Time…

___________________

The summer of Junior Year came and went.

I took a job in a lab so I can do my senior research project. I was in an acoustics lab – studying how people localized sounds. The interview was pretty informal – I sat down with the professor and we talked for a while – she discussed some project opportunities her lab had and it all sounded pretty exciting. Within no time the conversation went casual – she told me all about her kids and I told her about what I was doing over the summer, mainly the skits and working at Jillian’s. We had a pretty good connection and the year working under her was one of my better college experiences.

I was excited to land the lab job – Robin and I went out and celebrated. I was never really book smart, you know? In high school I was but in college I became more of a problem solver and power talker – my GPA in college was almost touching 3.0 and that was fine with me. But it kept me out of labs; I got several rejections before charming my way into the acoustics lab. I never had an interest in acoustics and in a way that made it a better fit.

My friends and I shot Mr. Sandman – a screenplay cowrote by Guam and I. We pulled it off in three days – had about 30 people bouncing in and out for around 18 hours a day. The Bastard directed it and he had one major philosophy – in order for pain to look real it has to be real. For a romantic comedy that’s a perfectly fine philosophy. But for a slapstick comedy?

We got punched, dropped out of trees, hit with hard objects including some stinky-ass salami– by the time the shoot was over we were all bruised and broken. One scene in particular consisted of Guam getting his ass kicked by a kung-fu fighting female angel. We all cringed every time we heard the dull sound of bone hitting flesh – we felt bad as we watched Guam curled up on the floor after a sucker punch, crying. It’s one thing to get beat up by a girl. It’s another to have it filmed over several takes.

Robin, being the film student, helped us out here and there. She even made the trailer for it as part of a film project. In return she called on us later that year to help her with some of her films she had to make for school.

One day Robin pulls me behind the George Sherman Union to show me a tree she sat in all day. She was working for Buildings and Grounds over the summer and the job was filled with these ultra chivalrous dudes who believed the ladies shouldn’t do much work – so Robin sat in trees a lot, occasionally tended gardens. She shows me where she carved “Robin –N- Jason” into a tree, big letters, put a heart around it.

Towards the end of the summer she was getting kicked off campus and I had to report for RA training. I was moving into this newly renovated Brownstone – hard wood floors, big, deep windows, spacious bathroom – it was a great apartment. Robin didn’t want to go back home for a week so I told her she can stay with me. I gave her my key and I used the building’s master key – she came and went as she pleased while I spent ten hours a day at RA training – playing various team building games and taking whiffs of marijuana so we can identify it if we need to – as if I haven’t smelled it before. As if none of us had, really.

But you pretend – you take a big whiff and you make this face like you’re storing the odor in your head. “Oh…so that’s what marijuana smells like. I’m usually too fucking stoned to remember.”

Every night the RAs did stuff together – I couldn’t really bring Robin along all the time because she wasn’t supposed to have a key to the apartment so I didn’t want people to know she was living with me. But she’d come out occasionally and everyone was down with her – she’s a cool chick to be around, that’s for sure.

My senior RA found out Robin was living with me but she didn’t care too much, she just told me to make sure none of the directors found out.

After training Robin packs up and moves into her apartment – across the street from mine. She doesn’t stay there too often – my place was a lot nicer than hers. We stole an extra bed and tied it to the one that I already had, dropped an egg-crate on top of it and covered that with some bootleg flannel sheets and just like that you had a college-grade queen-sized bed. I gave her a drawer, she kept the necessities like undies and pajamas in there - eventually she started moving items into the wardrobe.

She took over half of the medicine cabinet and the shower started getting stocked with all of her shampoos and the four different types of soaps she uses when she takes a shower. She had her own key – all of my residents knew her because she was always over. I’d sometimes come home from class or a meeting and she’ll be cooking up some grilled cheeses

It slowly became comfortable.

I made her a mix-tape, the first step every guy takes before he tells a girl he loves her. “Something in the Way She Moves”, “Here, There and Everywhere” – standard love-tracks. I told her I loved her for the first time shortly after and she smiled a big smile and dropped it back on me.

We rolled around the make-shift queen size bed and kissed each other repeatedly – she’d occasionally stare me in the eye and smile, repeat, “I love you, I love you, I love you…” over and over again. I was the first guy she ever told that to. Although she wasn’t the first I said it to in retrospect she was the first where it was really there. It’s funny how you can look at things differently as time passes, you wonder if it’s your bias that’s slanting your perception or if it’s the honest-to-god truth.

It’s the little things. Robin and I have been together for seven years – I can’t remember a time when I didn’t kiss her on the lips when seeing her or departing – even if we were fighting. Always a kiss – always an I love you. I never really had that before. I actually remember telling R, several times, “Fuck off” or “Fuck you” while walking away.

Anyway, it was a good first summer. Visiting the Gardner Museum, watching movies – we took this three hour long walk to a Friendlies because Robin swore it was close and she really wanted a sundae with peanut butter sauce (we took the bus back, obviously). Drinks at PJs – putting down Killian’s and listening to Cash play on the jukebox – playing strip poker on the Megatouch machine, one of our favorite pastimes to date. I play with naked women, she plays with naked men. I complain that the woman are all ugly, she complains that they don’t show dicks. A seven year tradition that started that summer.

It was a good fit right from the beginning, despite my reluctance to get it started.

Junior Summer: Turn Back Time

I feel like rambling a little – I’ll get to today’s story soon enough but, you know, I got the itchy fingers tonight and I feel like typing out a little extra.

First of all, did you all enjoy Elk’s Run 4? There’s been a few good things on the blog-o-sphere said about it already. Mark Fossen wastes no time in putting his review up and David Welsh pauses to reflect on the Speakeasy happenings and how it relates to issue 4.

I hope you also got to pick up Jay Busbee’s Sundown:Arizona #3 from Arcana while you were at the shop, too.

And speaking of books from yesterday let me just say that I am currently breaking my number 1 rule when it comes to comics which is, if you don’t like something don’t buy it. I first bought Infinite Crisis after someone told me how bad the first issue was – he sold the badness so well that I needed to check it out. I continued on to two and now three – I sat at Five Guys for lunch yesterday and sucked down a cheeseburger with jalapeños and A1 Sauce while reading it. I shit you not – I hardly understood a thing. I had to go online and read a summary to get it. I didn’t realize Atlantis was destroyed, no-idea what was going on with the Lex Luther thing – I didn’t know that Tower thing was supposed to be significant – nothing. I knew nothing. And I READ Detective Comics and Wonder Woman and yet I knew nothing.

It amazes me how people are going ape-shit over this book. There are five different storylines going on, tons of poorly-written exposition-heavy chunks of dialog, storylines that require you to read every DC book ever made to appreciate – what’s so fucking great about this book? I can’t stop reading it, though, I just can’t. I’m captivated – I would use the old “can’t keep your eyes off of a train-wreck” analogy but this isn’t a train wreck – this is a train crashing into the fucking sun and causing it to super nova – turning our solar system into a scattering of atoms. Who could keep their eyes off of that?

Also, I want to give much love to Shawn Hoke who named this site one of the 365 things he enjoyed about comics this year.

I tightened up three of the new columns. I’m excited for this. As of right now I’m calling the column “The Hive” which was sort of the name Jay Busbee, Jorge Vega and I were going to apply to our little group but we never used it and it’s a damn good name. Bit if they object I won’t use that. As far as how I perceive the quality of the columns, I don’t really like to brag so I’ll let the column's PR-representative, Adam Warlock, offer an official statement:


Two more days of Holiday Cheer left. Who makes the list? So far there’s been loved delivered to Josh Fialkov, Sam Keith, David Lapham, Larry Young, Nicholas Gurewitch, Chris Staros, Chris Pitzer, Frank Miller, the DC Conspiracy and a last-minute Holiday Wishes group hug to Saul Colt, James Patrick, Neil Kleid and Carla Speed McNeil.
Today’s sort of a double whammy, a convention and an organization I love and always call on when someone has the nerve to tell me about the irresponsibility of the comic community.

SPX is my local show and although I only went the past two years I’ve had more fun at that show than I’ve ever had at San Diego or Chicago. It’s low stress – the people there are looking for good stories more than flash and megaphones. Everyone’s talking, being sociable – the bar at the Holiday Inn afterwards is packed and if Steve Conley even knows your name he’s giving you free drink tickets. It’s the kind of show where you can have a book with high production values on your table and be able to sell as strong as someone with a critically acclaimed mini – that’s rare for a small press show. Plus the CBLDF auction is always fun.

Speaking of the CBLDF – they get some Holiday Love towards them as well. Talk about responsibility, while we’re all making comics with blood, adult themes and the occasional titty these guys are watching our asses and protecting us when some local prosecutor or federal agency wants to make a name for themselves. Seriously, have you ever seen CBLDF director Charles Brownstein at a convention? That dude’s working harder than us schmucks peddling our books. You go to his table and he’s pushing signed copies of Sin City on you while looking like he was taking into a back alley and beaten. The dude is tireless, and you got to appreciate that.

Well, you can show your appreciation by becoming a member of CBLDF as part of “Yet Another Comic Blog”’s Second Annual CBLDF Membership Drive. If ten people sign become members of the CBLDF (a 25 dollar donation) or renew their current membership, YOCB will donate $250 to the organization. So go, sign up, and then forward the confirmation email to the address given on YOCB. They need three more people and you’ll be helping a great cause.

Story time…

___________________

Cher once said, “If I could turn back time. If I could find a way. I’d take back those words that hurt you and you’d stay.” Now, I normally don’t take anything Cher says too seriously but goddammit that plastic-faced, long-legged, half-breed vixen sure got that one right.

Towards the end of summer I invited Robin down to Brooklyn with me. She never really got to roll in New York the way us natives rolled and she was going to be able to meet my family which is kind of important at some point. We were probably close to three months together and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

My mom had heart problems a week before and she was feeling pretty out of it. They made a request to leave Robin in Boston for this trip and have her come up the next time I visit. Since I already made plans and got her all jazzed I didn’t want to mess things up by telling her we had to postpone the trip.

That was my first mistake.

I was driving down to New York with my pops and taking the Greyhound back up. There was a reason behind this – he had to bring something to me or I needed to bring something home, I honestly forget what the circumstances were. The drive down was pleasant enough, my sister came along as well and we were all just hanging and chatting and Robin was getting her first taste of the drama that is my family.

A little background, here – my mom and I had the tendency to go toe-to-toe quite often back then. It started in High School and carried over through college and was even present the first couple of years after college. We’re all good now, though, time and near-death experiences changes a lot of things. It helped that I grew up a bit too and she calmed down a bit. But, during these years – it got pretty crazy sometimes.

So we get to New York, Robin meets my mom – she doesn’t look that bad, honestly – she’s not laid out or anything, just tired. We all hang out and talk for a while – later that night Robin and I go glow-bowling in the city with Jackie and her cousin.

That could have been my second mistake.

The next day Robin wanted to go into Manhattan but Elizabeth, not knowing that, wanted to go to see a movie with her older brother since it’s sort of a tradition we had every time I was home. I agreed and Robin, Elizabeth and I went to see Iron Giant. Robin didn’t want to see Iron Giant and the fact that I broke our plans and dragged her to see a cartoon – it wasn’t that she was upset, she doesn’t really get upset – but it became obvious to her that she picked the wrong weekend to come up. That maybe I kind of should have cancelled this weekend and done a family thing. And that didn’t make her upset, but it made her quiet.

My mom – she doesn’t like quiet.

My mom is the type of person that feels the amount of talking you do is directly proportional to your happiness. So when she picked up on Robin’s quietness, combined with the fact that, you know, she was emotionally charged back then, her heart was all fucked up, she felt weak and she just wanted to see her son this weekend but I was spending the whole weekend out and about – kind of got her to asking me if Robin has a problem with them.

It’s an honest question, a bit heavy on the drama but if your son brings a girl home and her buttons up I guess you’d ask it. It upset me, though, because I always used to look for an excuse to get mad at my mom – heart problems or not. So when I told my mom it’s fine, Robin’s headache prone and gets tired sometimes, I could have left it at that. Despite the fact that she questioned more and really seemed to pick up a vibe that there was a coldness there

Really, I could have. If I listened to Cher, that it is.

They might have still felt a little bad but it would have eventually gotten better. Instead, when I went back into my old room and Robin asked me what’s wrong I might have nonchalantly said, “I don’t know, I don’t think my mom likes you too much” and by “nonchalantly” I mean “spitefully”.

Guess who I was spiting? Myself, apparently, because that quiet turned to a cold and that cold lasted for quite some time. They’re both stubborn women, or were, I should say, and I keep proving myself to be an idiot.

But we’ve all grown up a bit since then. A lot, actually. This Saturday my parents are driving up to Boston to spend Christmas with Robin’s family so that’s indicative of something. But man – so many stories evolved from that one stupid fucking sentence that I found myself, quite often, saying, “If I can turn back time. If I can find some way. I’d take back those words that hurt you and you’d stay.”

To which Robin replies, “Grow some stones and stop singing Cher, Nancy-boy.”

Junior Summer: Stutter Stepping

Elk’s Run #4 is in stores and Josh has a nice sell for issue 6 (contains cartoon nudity).

This is going to be a quick Holiday Wishes – I’m tired. I stumbled across Perry Bible Fellowship earlier this year; someone was posting cartoons on a message board. I spent a couple of hours catching up on the strips and have read it religiously since. It’s the only webcomic I read right now, the humor is reminiscent of Far Side but sometimes a bit smarter, sometimes more on-the-nose. Either way it makes me laugh every Sunday and for that I’m sending Holiday Cheer over towards Nicholas Gurewitch – in a time when the funny pages are crammed with the standards and suffocating on their own lack of creativity it’s nice to know there are people like you creating strips that matter.

______________

Robin and I – we had problems.

First time she met my friends was a bit awkward. I don’t know what it was – you know when you get together with a bunch of people and they sense the outsider –the jokes aren’t as funny and the chemistry is thrown off. That’s sort of what it was like – Robin just felt like an outsider and the night didn’t go that well – it was just slow and uncomfortable and filled with recaps of events that were apparently only funny to us. It was no-ones fault; really, there just wasn’t a lot of jive.

It was because of our majors.

Me – biomedical. Robin – communications. In BU, that’s the equivalent of Tom Cruise dating a giraffe – it just doesn’t fit. And my friends called me on it when I first told them about Robin – they didn’t understand why I was dating a Com major and not a Physical Therapy major like we were supposed to date. I think she was at a disadvantage from the start and no-one gave her the benefit of the doubt.

But we persevered. My RA friends liked her and I liked them better so, whatever – friends come and go in college.

Then there was the fact that she’s racist.

Not against black people, no. Nor Asians. No, no. Robin hates Puerto Ricans, apparently. When I first realized this I thought she was joking – she kept telling me she wasn’t, she honestly does not like Puerto Ricans. They always try to hit on her, apparently, and molest her in clubs. Five minutes into this I cut her off and tell her, “You know I’m Puerto Rican, right?”

“But…but you’re white.”

“Rodriguez.”

“Yeah…but…”

“Puerto Rican.”

You know she was honestly upset. She thought I was from Spain. She said the Puerto Ricans won. That we tricked her into dating one of them. And I joke about it, even to my family – she does to – but the fact is to this day Robin just doesn’t like Puerto Ricans. It’s kind of cute, really – in a close-minded way.

Great story. One day over that summer we were going out to meet some people for drinks. I needed to take a shower but we were running late so Robin tells me, “Just take a Puerto Rican shower.” I asked her what the hell is that and she told me to put some deodorant on and spray cologne on myself.

“Oh – you mean a Dominican shower?” I asked her.

We laughed and wondered what Dominicans called it. We both agreed upon “Haitian Shower”. So, the loathing for Dominicans my family raised me to have makes it impossible for me to get mad about Robin’s Puerto Rican thing – and she can’t be too serious, anyway,

But, we persevered.

We didn’t connect too well intimately at first, either. My fault, really – I never connect well at the beginning. What goes on in my head as opposed to what actually goes on is usually two completely different things and it throws me off my game a bit. I’ve definitely discovered I’m more of a one-night man in that arena, no expectations and lower inhibitions makes me one hell of a lover.

But, we persevered.

I wish I could say we persevered because of some deep connection we had. Like maybe both of our parents were killed in the same plane crash and the two surviving children managed to find each other years later. But, no, fact of the matter is she had an air conditioner in her apartment that summer and I didn’t – you’d put up with almost anything for that.

I stayed at her house every night, her roommate didn’t seem to care so neither did I. One morning, though, I wake up to find Robin’s not in bed. I go out to the living room and she’s eating cereal in flannel pajamas, playing Genesis.

I think that’s when I fell in love.

Holiday Wishes and Junior Summer: Rewind

I haven’t done this in a while because I always feel like an idiot. I’ve been getting crazy traffic the past three weeks. This site was always a nice little ego-stroke but lately it’s been an ego blowjob. This may seem like a boys club but please check in on the comments section or drop me an email, I’d love to know who you all are.

Anyway, some more Holiday Wishes going out. I discovered Scott Mills this year. When we were putting together the team for Western Tales of Terror #5 Josh told me this cat Scott Mills was going to be doing Steve Niles story and, like a good editor, I went and got a few of books. The following week I got the rest of them. His style is captivating – it’s so loose and free-flowing yet definitive and original. It’s easy on the eyes yet pack so much story. I fell I love with Cells, Trenches, Big Clay Pot, Master Plan and My Own Little Empire.

My Own Little Empire, however, was published under a company I was also unfamiliar with – AdHouse. I tracked down some of their books and discovered Joshua Cotter’s Skyscraper’s of the Midwest which I never hesitate to label my favorite book of the past year. When people ask me what I’m looking forward to in 2006, I say “Skyscrapers of the Midwest #3 and the Eisner we’re winning or Elk’s Run.”

Chris Pitzer from AdHouse can see a good story. Empire, Skyscrapers, Project Superior, Bumper Boy – Scott Morse’s upcoming Noble Boy. I expect big things from AdHouse and I’m throwing some holiday love to Chris and all the fine talent he wrangles up. Please, people, buy every book these guys put out – I want to see them succeed and so should you.

_______________________

Junior Summer was the first summer in which I didn’t go back to New York. After spending Junior Year as an RA (award winning RA, I should add – yes, we had award ceremonies) I made a lot of connections at the ORL and was offered a position doing writing and acting in skits for orientation groups over the summer. I honestly spent about a week or two at the beginning developing the skits and then an hour a week putting them on. This job, this one hour a week job over the summer, got me free housing in a brownstone on South Campus. That’s what we call dope, boys and girls.

The “day job” gave me a lot of free time. I practically worked full-time at Jillian’s to pay for food, nightlife expenses and my cell phone bill. The rest of the money went into the blooming “Closet Elvis Productions”.

For some of you, Closet Elvis Productions reminds you of Closet Elvis Living, the website I was doing before The Moose in the Closet. Closet Elvis Productions was the brainchild of me and my boy Guam and started when the theater troupe we were involved with didn’t want to put its name on our movies we planned on filming. I wanted to call our little group Moose in the Closet Productions, Guam wanted to call it Velvet Elvis Productions so we settled on Closet Elvis Productions.

One of the first things to get the label was my screenplay for a movie called Sleaze which, I can honestly say, was the first attempt at making a movie where a sleazy guy pretends to be gay to get a girl. There have been many people to do it afterwards, and I highly doubt they “stole” my idea because, well, production stalled on that one real quick – I’ll get to that soon.

After the first draft was completed we had a read through over at Warren Towers – the readers were basically a bunch of directors from our troupe that were in town for the summer. There was an uncomfortable moment when this girl Katie read a line that was essentially a vulgar facial joke to which Guam said, “Don’t use any facial jokes,” and everyone agreed – facials are not funny, apparently.

We pulled the female lead from a play we produced last semester and the male lead was actually this recent high school graduate that Guam somehow knew from an instructional improv thing he did, I think. The guy’s name was Matt, we met him for pizza and talked about the movie as if we were Hollywood big shots.

Everything was in place – unfortunately we didn’t have access to the equipment we were promised by our film-school connection. She was going to “lend” us some serious equipment and get us editing time at night but wussed out in the end and landed us this VHS recorder they used in the mock newsroom and could no longer promise us the editing time.

We decided to make the most of it and work out the editing problems later – figuring we can transfer it all to digital and edit it on the computer. Quality would suck but, whatever. Except, of course, the first day of shooting was terribly pathetic. Just the look on the actors’ faces when they saw the camera was heartbreaking. I told them it would be fine, we set up the dorm rooms and shot a couple of scenes. I decided to watch back some of them and was hoping to do it in private but my leading lady came in to sneak her peak.

Her comment, and I’ll never forget this, was: “It looks kind of…cheap.”

I had nothing to say except, “It’ll look better after editing.”

She knew I was lying. I knew she knew I was lying.

After the shoot we went back to my apartment and talked over the script some more. I made promises that I’d get some better equipment and sent my people out to lunch one me, told them to talk up some chemistry between the two of them. While they were gone Robin showed up – but I already told that story.

We never shot another scene for Sleaze. Mainly because we could get the equipment we wanted but also because Guam and I had our own little project we were cooking up – Mr. Sandman. Directed by The Bastard. A cast of about thirty people. An hour and half movie that we shot in three long-ass days.

But that’s tomorrow’s story.

And not to depress the fuck out of everyone but Matt, our male lead, passed away around this time last year. I didn’t know the dude that well but Guam was his good friend. I feel kind of cheap talking about him without paying my respects for a moment.

The dude was gold. Seriously, he knew comedy better than a lot of people I’ve ever met. He ended up being one of the main guys in Mr. Sandman and him and Guam became really good friends out of that. After he graduated he moved out to LA were he was making some serious moves in the entertainment business. The guy had it all. He was attractive, funny and a great writer – he honestly had his shit going.

My boy Guam had some serious heart problems a couple of years back, he’s still suffering from them. It wasn’t a result of hard living, it was all biological, and he even made an amazing play based on it called “Tales of a Broken Heart: Not a Love Story”. Shortly after, Matt had a heart-attack as well. It’s kind of fucked up – you don’t think of kids our age having serious heart problems and I knew two.

Matt was getting better but one day last year it caught up with him. He was engaged, had it all going on and just like that the shit was over. I know it’s Christmas time and all and you likely don’t want to hear shit like this but I just wanted to bring home the fact that even though my stories tend to be lighthearted and detachable – these are some real people I rolled with despite the fake names. Matt comes into play a lot this one summer, he’s in a lot of these stories, and I just wanted to honor the man’s memory a little bit.

I just wanted to make sure you all know he was a genius and it’s a shame we lost him. He’d be making us all laugh one day if it wasn’t for how fucked up life can be sometimes.

Holiday Wishes and Junior Summer: After Joe’s

It’s 1AM and I just realized my Holiday Wish for today was more of an insult than an honest to god Holiday Wish and I want to be more positive. Plus, I still have more work to do before I can go to bed. So, I’m going to send some quick holiday cheer to Saul Colt because he’s a good guy and a hell of a publisher. James Patrick who’s Death Comes to Dillinger is currently in Previews, being offered by Silent Devil Productions, which means you know it must be good or else I would not be pimping it (implied negativity – nothing wrong with that, right?). Neil Kleid whose Jewish gangster graphic novel Brownsville is currently soliciting, as well, published by NBM (and he also got engaged yesterday – congrats). And Carla Speed McNeil – I never read Finder until she announced she'll be distributing the single issues for free online – here’s to being innovative and actually doing something about the state of the market while the rest of us sit around and say, “We gotta do something.” It’s inspiring, really.

I also want to say that the response to my new column idea has been huge. The comments are one thing but I've been seeing links pop up everywhere and I've gotten a ridiculous amount of emails. You know what, there's a lot of fed-up people who all agree it's time we start listening and putting our heads together. I think it's going to be a good year. I took a first stab at the FAQ and the first three ideas. I am absolutely IN LOVE with the third one which means it probably has the most holes. But that's where you all come in. I'm excited for this, I almost want to start this Friday but I'll wait until the Holidays are over.

Ok, story time…

________________________

The day after Robin and I first hooked up (and here's her version of the story) I had the blind date from hell, my punishment for being such an ass. The day after that was Joe Sacco’s graduation party. Joe, whom I’ve talked about, was my scooter bound friend in college – he had MD and despite the fact that it made his life hell, he was always this cheery, funny as hell kid that was the first to joke about his affliction. He was a year older than me and was going off to Stanford for Grad School which I personally found amazing – this was a whole new city for him, no friends there and no family – and he’s trapped in a scooter. That’s some brave shit, right there.

A bunch of us pile into several cars and drive on out to Rhode Island where Joe lives. I get into a car with Sleazy Steve and I’m telling him about my night with Robin and the blind date – saying how I think I want to give this Robin thing a shot. He’s telling me I should be careful with her, she has a “reputation” and could be diseased.

Yes, I shit you not, he told me that – but we don’t call him Sleazy Steve (to his face, I might add) for nothing. At the same time he was telling Robin that I’m not the type to get serious and I’ll just lead her on until I’m done with her. Always a cock-blocker, that Sleazy Steve.

We get to Joe’s house and eat some burgers, offer our congrats and spend some time in his pool. Joe does go into his pool quite often but he claimed it was this big ordeal to do it and won’t be going in for his party – I felt a little guilty splashing around in his pool but how often do college kids get to go in one? Besides, there were plenty of people hanging out with him.

After speaking to several people about Robin and what I should do (and after ignoring Sleazy Steve’s advice, naturally), I called her almost immediately after returning home and asked her if she wanted to go out for ice-cream the next day.

It was pretty awkward, really. Here’s this girl that pursued me quite aggressively, finally got me to make my move only to have it followed by me going on a blind date the next day and not calling her for a couple of days afterwards. I know there are all these stupid “don’t call for x-days” rules but we had enough history to ignore those rules and come to terms with the fact that something’s finally happening.

So when I called her, she made had no qualms with informing me that she didn’t think I was going to call. She also had no problem with outright stating that she assumed my blind date didn’t go too well.

To say I was at a disadvantage is a bit of an understatement.

We went to Maggie Moos down on Newbery Street and were lucky to get the tea-cup seat. The tea-cup seat was the actual tea-cup from one of those old carnival rides – the ones were you grab the steering wheel, of sorts, in the middle to spin your tea-cup around. That damn seat is never empty – it’s the most sought after seat in Maggie Moos. We just happened to finish paying and got off the line the exact moment the tea-cup sitters were getting up and we swooped in for the seat. It sort of alleviated the tension, somewhat – any day you get the teacup seat is a special day and usually a sign of good things to come.

We ate our ice-cream – talked a bit. I told her about the blind date and made light of the whole thing, tried to remind her I was committed – I already had the baseball tickets – and I just needed to get it over with. She didn’t believe me, obviously, but I encouraged her to make fun of me and the situation.

After ice-cream we went to Urban Outfitters, window shopped for a bit before making our way back home. I dropped her off at her place and stopped upstairs for a little while. It wasn’t what you think, we were taking it slow at this point, and we just ended up eating Pizza Bites and playing some Sonic the Hedgehog. After an hour of hedgehog goodness I told her it was time for me to go and we decided to go see Austin Powers the next day.

The movie went well – that’s where the hand-holding and kissing started coming back in (taking it slow doesn’t mean that slow) and the following dates were all similar in tone and pace. About three weeks in we got into a bit of a tiff, I guess I in some way questioned her sexual past – obviously inspired by the shit Sleazy Steve was still feeding me which, as it turns out, was basically all untrue (goddamn Sleazy Steve – goddamn me for believing him) but didn’t mean it was easily ignorable. Let’s put it this way, there’s no easy way to ask a girl if she’s ever been tested for HIV. Especially not after you JUST finished fooling around.

I’m an asshole sometimes; you all know that by now.

It was more of an uncomfortable “I gotta go now” than an actual argument. The next time I saw her I brought flowers and we talked it out. Only years later I discovered she was going to break up with me – but the fact that I brought her flowers and acknowledged I fucked up before she told me I fucked up was worth giving it a second shot. I agreed to stop listening to Sleazy Steve, obviously, and she told me all the stuff that he was telling her. Goddamn Sleazy Steve. Plus I pick out really nice flowers, roses are for uncreative chumps.

Now here we are, seven years behind us and doing well. It all started the summer of Junior Year and it took a couple of years of good, hard work before we were able to pop it into cruise control. But that first summer, there were a couple of close calls.

Holiday Wishes and Alcohol Will Destroy You: And the Dining Hall, Apparently

There's a new Here's the Thing... up. The last one, actually. But I suggest the idea for my new article in the end. Please give some feedback in the article's comment section on what you think. It's either going to be this or nothing and I think you're going to like what I have planned - I already dreamed up some interesting ideas. Not great ideas, some aren't even good ideas, but hopefully it leads to discussion and revelations. The first one will run first Friday in January.

Continuing my twelve posting days of Holiday Cheer. So far I’ve giving love to the DC Conspiracy, Chris Staros, Larry Young, David Lapham, Sam Kieth and J.H. Fialkov. Today I’m going to one of the most polarizing men in comics.

Frank Miller teaches us a lesson every time he puts pen to paper and the lesson is, “Fuck you, this is my story.” He has the Sin City movie, a beautiful film to gape at even if the story doesn’t do much for you, a movie that got him national praise and a newfound interest in the graphic novels. He follows that up with Vicky Vale walking around in panties, talking into a tape recorder, for several monologue heavy pages.

Don’t get me wrong, I love All-star Batman and Robin; I honestly feel it’s one of the most entertaining books to come out in the past year, but you get two pages into it and you just KNOW most people are going to bitch. Frank Miller knew most people were going to bitch. You can almost see the meeting at editorial when Dan Didio must have said to Frank Miller, “You and Jim Lee are getting a Batman book and you can do anything you want.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

And what Frank Miller gave us was page after page of wild, crazy, insane, fucked-up Batman as he should be, as the world he lives in likely perceives him to be, and it fucking rocks. And a lot of people make fun of it. He knew they would. There is no way this man did not know he would get a bunch of people saying “This is not MY Batman.” And he follows it up with Batman calling Robin retarded. Reminding Robin he’s the goddamn Batman.

He followed it up with a “Fuck you, this is my story.”

Happy Holidays to Frank Miller. I’d never want to meet you in a Dark Alley but I love to have your books under my Christmas tree.

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As I’ve mentioned before I was a manager in the dining hall through out my four years of college. The fact that I was the Late Night Café manager meant I got keys to the dining hall, as well. Having keys to a massive dining hall in college is more than just having keys to your own personal kitchen. It really means having keys to your own private, spacious room. And that could lead to some interesting stories.

For instance. Anyone who reads this site ever go to our visit BU? Ever eat in the Towers Dining Hall? If the answer is yes, and you’ve done it after the class of 2000 graduated, I think I should inform you that I had sex on the salad bar one night. Not in the wells, obviously, but I propped her ass up on the salad bar counter and violated every health code possible. Even though it was one of those “heat of the moment” things that just sort of happens, and even though I did wipe down the counter afterwards, I still think it’s safe to say the salad bar at Towers should be replaced.

But seriously, it was the passionate kind of thing you’d see in a Hollywood movie except between two people who aren’t Brad and Angelina. Unlike when I had sex on my bosses desk – that was just to say I had sex on my bosses desk. That was totally planned – like a week in advance at least.

But it wasn’t always about sex. I used to use the dining hall to study. One time, in fact, I needed to get some serious studying done but I was stuck on the night shift. The dining hall closed at midnight and it took an hour longer to get everything cleaned up and shut down. I was kind of fucked, had a test the next day. So I had my friend deliver me some Ritalin, gave him ten bucks and some free chicken fingers (yes, this was my Magic card/drug paraphernalia connection).

This was my first (and only time) snorting Ritalin. Supposedly it’s supposed to make you concentrate. Instead I spent about two hours in my boss’s office, staring at his bulletin board, my leg shaking, and singing a variety of show tunes (yes, I’m a show tune singer). Funny part was that I snorted it with an hour to go in the shift – the people working that night kept knocking on my door and I just shouted “I’m studying, do whatever you want.” I came out of the office once to make sure everything was clean but that took all of two seconds because in reality I only peaked out the office door and said, “Looks good – you can go home.”

I flunked my organic chemistry test because of that which really wasn’t a big deal – I flunked all of my organic chemistry tests. There’s a reason I’m not a doctor right now.

But of all the illegal shit I did in the dining hall, nothing would beat the party I threw freshman year.

It started out pretty simple – the RAs make rounds twice a night before midnight which means you can’t be too loud then. Everyone else is sleeping after midnight so you can’t be too loud then. The dining hall, however, is in the basement and there are no bedrooms in the basement or on the first floor – we can be as loud as we want all night.

We started the party at ten – we let people into the humongous kitchen in the back and served them up alcohol while the unsuspecting people ordered burgers from the grill-man in the front – we had about 20 people in the kitchen. When midnight rolled around we locked the front doors and started letting people provided someone knew who they were. At one point we had close to 60 people in the dining hall.

We had the blenders going, mixing up rum smoothies. We had pizzas in the pizza oven – we turned the Belgian waffle machines on and brought out the batter, whipped cream and strawberries. Everyone had access to all of the tonics and juices they could possibly need to mix their drinks. Someone even supposedly made some “special” rice krispy treats but if that’s true I never got my hands on one.

Everyone had a good time – we had some music, some dancing. Like all parties in college a couple of people drank too much. Like all parties in college a couple of those couple of people left when they felt ill but there’s always that one guy that throws up all over the place.

I don’t even remember the kid’s name anymore – he was a sixth-floorer I believe – but he shot projectile vomit towards the end of the party. We all laughed at first but then I realized that I was the one who was going to have to clean this shit up. I tried to get him to do it but he played drunk and said he needed to go to bed. I look back at the puke build-up and realize, to make matters worse; it was on the rug and not the tiled floor.

I felt kind of bad for every person who’s house I threw up in or near while I was cleaning up some unknown bastard’s vomit at four in the morning – trying to hurry up and get it done before the breakfast crew comes in – but the empathy only lasted about a week.

Holiday Wishes and Alcohol Will Destroy You: RJ, College. College, RJ.

Continuing my Holiday Cheer because brother, we need it. So far I’ve given love to Chris Staros, Larry Young, David Lapham, Sam Kieth and Joshua Hale Fialkov. Today I want to give some love to a group of people who, for the past year, had nothing but love to give.

With comics, it’s easy to get caught up with the online community. There are message boards available for whatever you’re looking for where you can talk to anybody you want, fan or pro, establish a base relationship you can expand upon at a convention and you can seek out people who share the same exact opinions as you and have the same taste in books and creation style.

I hated it.

Around January of 2004 I started looking around for local folks to get-together and talk comics. I stumbled across a fledgling group called the DC Conspiracy which was a collaborative of primarily cartoonists who got together once a month and talked producing comics over beers. I joined the group and, knowing I had a slight disadvantaging by being “just a writer”, jumped on the opportunity to make their webpage/blog before meeting them to give myself a bit of weight.

I didn’t need to – these guys are sociable, friendly and full of great ideas they want to share. You know what’s great about a non-online community? When you sit down with them for several hours you don’t have the option of turning them off. You need to listen to an opinion that might be different than yours and, in turn, you usually learn to see things in a different light. I attribute more than half of my growth as a creator over the past year to the DC Conspiracy.

And we’ve had fun. We organized a convention for fuck’s sake. We took road trips and rolled out support for our respective projects. We created an anthology and are in the process of creating two more. We’ve started columns on our blogs that people actually read and learn from, we share the knowledge we build by talking to each other over a pint of Dogfish Head and a plate of Chicken Fingers.

Happy Holidays to the DC Conspiracy, the lot of ya. I know we all have projects we’re putting together for the New Year and I know we’re all going to help each other make those projects the best they can possibly be.

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Well, this fluff week is almost over and then I start my 7 weeks of solid storytelling to essentially finish The Moose in the Closet. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll beg for more (I already wrote the last week and I will say I’m damn proud of it). But for now, lets get this week’s stories over with, shall we?

This story was sort or told once many months ago in the comments section by my cousin RJ, semi-regular poster on this site. I figure it’s about time it gets the proper Moose treatment.

RJ came to visit me sophomore year in college. His first time visiting up in Boston, he came by himself – I remember waiting for him at the bus station and eating this crappy-ass Quarter-Pounder with Cheese at the McDonald’s Express that got me sick.

The first night we just sort of chilled, I believe. We spent the day after walking around Harvard Square, RJ pulled me into some comic shop which, ironically, I found ridiculously juvenile and was slightly embarrassed (my how the times change). He got some Godzilla bootleg and we made our way out somewhere for dinner.

All-in-all a nice, relaxing, weekend in beautiful Boston.

Then there was that second night. I had this blue plastic footlocker thing in my room; I kept it under my bed. This was where I kept all of my liquor in college. The no-frills vodka that tasted like rubbing alcohol, the peach schnapps for “the ladies”, the bootleg rum, the Kahlua, the mixers – every piece of shit bottle of alcohol a college student typically buys.

That night I bust out the locker and everyone on the floor starts having some cocktails. In college, none of us knew shit about alcohol. There were two drinks: a screwdriver with or without peach schnapps and a rum and coke. That was it. So we were pouring up the drinks when I gave RJ a standard screwdriver. He puts it down and complains, told me I made it too weak.

Now, if you had a footlocker filled with cheap alcohol and someone called out your drink – you’d get a little evil too.

“Too weak? Fine.”

Do you know those super-sized plastic cups you get at McDonald’s? I filled one of those up with a drink concoction that was about 9-parts every alcohol I had in my trunk and 1-part orange juice. You smelled this drink and your fucking nose hairs fell out. It was by far the most disgusting drink ever made. I give it back to RJ and he tells me he’s going to my friend Eric’s room to play Star Wars: Tie Fighter. I make myself a drink and go to Max’s room to smoke-some.

There are several of us in Max’s room, having a good ‘ole party, when not ten minutes later RJ fucking BURTS into the room like Kramer from Seinfeld, trips over himself – his hair is fucking wild, his eyes are huge and bloodshot – and asks us (very loudly) “what’s going on”.

“Where’s your drink, dude?”

“I finished it.”

“You fucking finished it?”

“Wooooorrrrddddd!”

“There was like a liter of alcohol in that shit!”

RJ was fucking bouncing off the walls all night – we couldn’t stop laughing. Eventually he just crashes, hard, falls asleep on my floor and doesn’t move until the next morning. It was RJ’s first introduction to how we roll in college and I don’t recall him ever letting me mix a drink for him again.

Holiday Wishes and Alcohol Will Destroy You: Dad, College. College, Dad.

I’ve gotten a couple of emails asking me about the Speakeasy thing, for those unfamiliar the always impressive Mark Fossen has a nice recap. Whereas I do have a couple of things to say, I don’t have them prepared yet. I’d expect a mammoth Here’s the Thing… by Friday at the latest and I don’t think it’s going to be what anyone is expecting. But for now, Holiday Cheer, following the love I’ve given to Larry Young, David Lapham, Sam Kieth (who has a righteous looking Batman mini coming out, thank you GOD) and Joshua Hale Fialkov I have some love to give to a man who’s editorial vision I have nothing but respect for.

I wanted to thank Rich Koslowski for The King, my favorite OGN of the past year. I wanted to thank Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele (who has a blog now) for The Surrogates, an entertaining read so far. I wanted to thank James Kochalka for Superf*ckers, a lighthearted, entertaining romp that tickles the part of my funny bone that hasn’t grown up yet. I wanted to thank Alex Robinson for Box Office Poison which I read this time for the first year, Andy Runton for Owly and Kolchalka, Brown and Thompson for their Conversation books. And after trying to sort out who I was going to thank over these twelve posting days to Christmas I realized I should be thanking Chris Staros.

Chris Staros is in a difficult position; he’s the publisher for what can arguably be called the largest American comic company that has significant indie-cred. Which means he’s expected to take a chance and break new ground with every book he puts out while at the same time not going completely broke. In a market dominated by superheroes, Hollywoodization and dumbed-down plotlines that play with the fact that people don’t want a good story – they want something they themselves can do, Chris Staros continues to publish stories that people need to work for – that don’t come easy – that don’t necessarily have a movie coming down the line.

Happy Holidays to Chris Staros, for being an innovator, a risk taker and a tireless promoter of comics that take full advantage of what the medium can be instead of trying to figure out what other markets want the medium to be. It’s a tough industry yet Chris Staros has found his niche in it, despite putting himself at a disadvantage from the start.

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My dad didn’t go to college. He entered the Navy at 18, did his four years, came out and married my mom who also didn’t go to college. Now, he has some Navy stories – the man went all around the world and partied like, well, a sailor should. But despite trips to Amsterdam and Germany and being stationed in Hawaii and living what would be considered an ideal 4 years of life if it wasn’t for the whole “on a ship with a bunch of dudes” thing – my father wasn’t ready for a night as a college student.

Freshman year he drove up to Boston by himself and spent an evening hanging with me before taking my back to Brooklyn, presumably for one of the breaks – I’m not sure which one. He just wanted to have a night out without the rest of the family – father and son stuff. He even stayed in the dorm, first time he ever did that.

He gets to Boston and we just spend some time around town, get some dinner, and see some sights. On the way back to the dorm we stop off at the liquor store because my pops wants some beer to bring back to the room. Seeing this as an opportunity to restock the microfridge I tell him to get a case and we’ll have a couple of beers together. We have to sneak the case into the building because, you know, I’m not allowed to have beer in the dorm at this point but we put it in my trusty bookbag I carry everywhere and the guard doesn’t think twice about the Jansport on my back shaped exactly like a case of Bud Light.

We get to the dorm and have a couple of beers. Then a couple more. Some of my friends come by and the case is polished off in no time. My pops and I are both feeling a bit drunk so we decide to get out for a bit instead of hanging out in the dorm all night.

I take him to Lansdowne Street which, as anyone from Boston will know, is the street right next to Fenway Park packed with nothing but clubs and bar – it’s where everyone goes out on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. We’re going to Jillian’s which is the bar I used to work at. Jillian’s was three stories, nightclub on the first floor, arcade on the second and pool hall on the third. We figured we’d play some pool, have a couple of more beers (I needed to bust out the ‘ole fake ID), play a little skee ball and head in for the night.

On the way to Jillian’s, on crowded-ass Lansdowne Street, my pops and I are walking along; I’m talking about something or other when he just drops out. Seriously, he was in my peripheral one moment and then he was gone. I look back behind me and he’s sprawled out on the floor – he was taken out by a fucking parking meter. Everyone walking by is laughing and my father is on the floor, cracking up, his gut and balls hurting because he slammed into a chunk of metal.

I help him up and he can hardly walk and I’m just ragging on him. I mean, seriously, how do you walk into a parking meter? It’s like walking into a wall. You grow up in New York City, every street is lined with parking meters, you think you’d learn to look out for them.

After making a spectacle of himself we get to Jillian’s, play some pool and have a few more beers. We don’t spend too long there – he’s starting to get tired – so we go back to the dorm after an hour or so.

At the dorm we start drinking again. There were a couple of dudes in the lobby having some cocktails so we join up and tip back. We’re all telling funny stories, my father is telling us tales from his Navy days and those are always fun to listen to, all the while putting down beers and vodka shots.

After an hour or so of that my father says he has to go to bed, something about getting up early the next day to drive my ass back to Brooklyn but it was pretty obvious he was feeling more than a bit tipsy. I roll-out the flip-flop and he crashes – KO’d in like two minutes. My friend Max asks me if I want to step outside with him and dope-up and I, obviously, agree. We continue partying while my father slept, his crotch bruised and swollen from taking a parking meter to the nuts, likely dreaming about all the fun he missed by not going to college while we all talked about how cool it would be to go into the Navy.

Alcohol Will Destroy You, despite how hard you were in your past.

Holiday Wishes and Alcohol Will Destroy You: Fuck ‘Em

Before I get to today’s story I want to continue my 12 posting days of Holiday Wishes. So far I’ve sent love to David Lapham, Sam Kieth and Joshua Hale Fialkov. Today I want to send some cheer to a man who’s an integral part of the comic production business.

I can’t deny the fact that indie comics needs a Larry Young. I’ve been to a lot of conventions and talked to a lot of people. I think it’s safe to say I’ve heard every word in the English language applied to Larry Young. Every word of praise, every insult and every declaration of neutrality possible from all walks of the comic community.

In a world were publishers try to run their business by emulating Vince McMahon (owner of the world wrestling federation for those that don’t know), Larry Young opts to be the Bill Gates of comics. The Martha Stewart. The Donald Trump. A business man through and through, with all the positives and negatives that come with it – someone with a public image that’s endearing to the masses but intriguing to the people who like to steal a peak behind the curtain and make conjectures of their own.

Larry Young is a man who views comics as a business and because of that, he keeps the rest of us on our toes. There’s nothing more embarrassing than a Larry Young burn and you can’t fight it, publicly, because more people listen to him than listen to you. So you step on eggshells, double check your steps and no matter what you think of the man you ask yourself “What Would Larry Young Do?”

Whether or not you follow that guidance or do the opposite is a matter of preference.

So Happy Holidays to Larry Young, for introducing new talents, producing entertaining books and constantly remind us comics, at this level, is a business and not a hand-job.

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Alcohol brings out the worst in us, that much is true. Sure, you can have a few cocktails and get a little playful – loosen up a bit and have a good time. Or, you can drink a lot of cocktails, get belligerent, throw fists and, occasionally, become guilty of attempted homicide.

Jackie’s parents had a timeshare in the Poconos. Now, the Poconos was the middle-class vacation destination of choice for New Yorkers. For some reason the thought of spending the weekend in the woods, living in a cabin near a lake, is the definition of fun. This one summer, several of our friends went up to the house in the Poconos for two nights of drunken debauchery.

The first night it was a smaller gathering – I think there were maybe 4 or 5 of us there – playing monopoly and drinking cans of Miller High life. It was an innocent enough night, no-one really got stupid drunk and many a laugh was shared. The second night, on the other hand…

Let me preface this by saying our friend B never drank in high school. He was proud of his ability to turn down the alcohol and we didn’t care too much, he was just the driver every night. He started drinking freshman year in college because it’s impossible not to at that point. So, he wasn’t learned in the ways of booze.

I’m sitting outside with a beer, grilling some burgers, my friend Jimmy and I taking turns spraying each other with a hose to cool off when B pulls up in his car, busts out a bottle of Goldschlager, open it up and chugs about a fifth of it and declares he’s ready to get “fucked up”. This was our first time seeing B drink, mind you.

We should have cut him off then.

As the day goes on B gradually polishes off the entire bottle of Goldschlager while the rest of us were putting down cans of High Life. I took a break from the group to talk to Jackie for a little bit – I might have mentioned this before but I had this huge thing for my friend Mary, it was one of those “Should we be more than friends” things and it’s been bugging me for some time. I was asking Jackie if I should say something to her. Whereas the correct answer was, “No. You’re drunk.” she instead told me I should go ahead. And I was going to, who knows where my story w