Jason Rodriguez - The Moose in the Closet: Reading, Writing and Political Assassinations

Anyone watch 24? How’s that for fucking housecleaning?

I’m trying to figure out what I want to do three weeks from now. Fact is, The Hive looks like it’s going to be taking up a lot of my time (there are plans - oh, there are plans) and I really need to get some comics going.

The original plan was to take three months off and then get into Year II which would basically be the DC years, after college. I was going to do it three days a week instead of five and once again keep it going for a full year.

But now I’m looking in my notebook at the list of stories I planned to tell about the pre-DC years and realizing there’re close to fifty stories left to tell. So here’s what I’m thinking – after this month is over I come right back and do more of these stories but only twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday, maybe pop in every once and a while to do an update on the comic thing. I do that until whenever and after whenever is done I take on the second year of storytelling.

This way I still have a steady schedule, I’m still putting stuff out, but I free up time to work on The Hive and various comic projects. I also want to do guest stories again like I did last summer – maybe Wednesdays can be guest story days or something. How does that sound?

Ok, for now, story time. The next two weeks have no real theme; I’m just telling whatever the hell I want to tell. Third week ends a lot of stories and sets-up the DC stories for whenever I get to them.

__________________________

It’s funny how your brain remembers some things – not what it actually remembers but how little details make no sense to the big picture and you’re not sure if you’re making it up or if something similar happened. Looking back at Preschool, for instance, it all seems like one big acid trip.

I got accepted into the Brooklyn College Tutorial preschool program – it was this program that was almost impossible to get into and parents from all over Brooklyn tried to get their kids in. It was a bit progressive; we called our teacher Kathy and spent a lot of time studying art and watching plays.

There was a test we had to take before going to this school. We had to make an appointment, it was me and Kathy and she asked me all types of questions about shapes, tested to see if I at least knew the alphabet and was able to do basic math. There were also all of these memory tests and puzzles, it was all so odd but at the same time it’s one of the few memories I actually have from that far back. After she was done testing me she sent me to this backroom and this part is one of those “tripping balls” things I alluded to in the introduction.

Kathy’s assistant teacher was there, I forget her name. The room was all black like a sensory deprivation chamber and for some reason I remember it having these shapes projected on the wall and moving all around. I remember the lady testing my hearing and music perception, asking me how certain songs made me feel and if certain beats were faster than others – things like that. I shit you not I think she put some type of psychic trigger in my head, like when I turn 30 I’m going to start assassinating people when I hear the word “zucchini” or some shit. It was just fucking weird as I remember it – Clockwork Orange weird. You don’t think about shit like that as a kid but as an adult I look back at it all and wonder what the fuck that preschool was up to.

Other little memories – I remember board game time. Every so often we got to play board games, games like perfection and checkers – not Chutes and Ladders of Mouse Trap or other games kids wanted to play. We had fun, no doubt, but again looking back at it they were all games that inspired concentration and strategy.

We used to do a lot of arts & crafts type of stuff, too. Complicated-assed Christmas decorations – reindeers out of clothespins and these little Christmas pillows that someone sowed and I’m not sure if it was me. This wasn’t glitter and paper shit; we were busting out glue guns to get the reindeers eyes to stay on. Cards for our mom’s using photographs and a variety of mixed media.

Pipe cleaners were huge during arts & crafts, we used them for everything. Another one of those weird memories that makes no sense is running through these sheets that were hanging from the ceiling for some reason and this kid Nick running up behind me and jabbing me with a pipe-cleaner repeatedly while laughing.

Just weird shit, man.

They actually taught us to cook. I remember Kathy’s assistant making this zucchini dish and telling us what she was doing step by step – what’s really crazy is I don’t recall there being a kitchen in the school but there was obviously something there that was capable of cooking up the zucchini.

We put on “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and I got to play Santa Claus. The set was this large piece of canvas that we pained to look like the wall of a house, window, door and chimney. I remember they had us contribute to painting the set – what the hell kind of school has four year old kids painting sets? I look at pictures of the set now, though, and think we were either wicked talented or our “help” consisted of them telling us exactly where to paint what color and then fixing it up when we were done.

And I think that’s it, that’s the extent of my memories from preschool. Just weird little pieces of a story that, when taking out of context, make preschool look like a scene from The Manchurian Candidate.

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Reading, Writing and Political Assassinations

Monday, January 16, 2006

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