Peanut Gallery: The Boss

Don't forget to check the new Live Journal for musings and fun little bits. This past week I delivered an essay on the Gas Face which'll be part of an ongoing feature on the site (the next one will be an Essay on the early 1990's Back to Africa movement).

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Let’s get this out of the way – in order for you all to understand what my four years at TAO was like, you need to understand The Boss.

And The Boss deserves to be the President of the Peanut Gallery.

Pencil necked, tight collar, big fucking head – looked like Mr. Garrison from South Park and honest-to-shit talked like Bill Lumbergh from Office Space. He’d always wear these suits that were too big for him – big shoulders, long sleeves that went well past his wrists – ugly-ass ties, too – red ones with green stripes, homeboy always looked like he was wearing Christmas Wrapping Paper around his neck.

He lived about an hour and a half away from the office so he worked from home three days a week. I have no problem with people working from home, I try to do it once a week, myself – but the dude was a fucking manager. We’d find ourselves needing him – to sign a purchase order or something – and he just wouldn’t be there.

He was a church going guy, even played guitar, I believe, for his church band. Made him tons of fun on business trips. I go to strip clubs on business trips. Whether with a group or by myself. I’d go to strip clubs during lunch time, bring a notebook and get some work done while eating a burger and stuffing dollar bills in a girl’s g-string. Everyone I worked with knows how much I love strippers. And yet every night on a business trip he’d invite me out to some gay-ass thing like a comedy club somewhere in Podunk, Mississippi – I’m sure it’s quality stuff. I’d tell him, “No thanks – I’m going to get some titties in my face.” Come into work the next day with bloodshot eyes and caked in glitter and cigarette smoke, asking how the comedy show was.

One of my favorite quirks with him is that he doesn’t want people to know he shits. We’ve formed the theory after this one time where he was observed walking into our bathroom, seeing there were people in it, and then caught five minutes later walking out of another office’s bathroom. For those who don’t know – that’s the staple move for a shy-shitter. But, in the interest in fairness, we had to test our hypothesis, it’s bad juju to falsely accuse someone of bathroom complexes.

The Boss couldn’t go to the bathroom without passing my desk. Every time I observed him making a break for the restroom I’d go in there about thirty seconds later. Most times he wasn’t going to the bathroom, other times he was just taking a leak, but after a month or so of stalking him I walked in on him shitting. And I put our theory to the test.

I sat in the stall next to him. For about thirty minutes, reading the paper. Not a sound came from his stall – he didn’t even shift for a full half-hour. By the time I was done my legs were asleep, I could hardly even walk. I wiped up (although, after thirty minutes there’s really no need to wipe, you need a spatula to peel it off at that point), flushed, washed my hands and stumbled out of the bathroom, my legs buckling with every step.

Sure enough, two minutes later The Boss leaves the restroom, stumbling. He sat there the entire time and waited until I left to ensure that I didn’t know HE was taking a shit.

There are so many things to rag on him about and we’ll get to them in time but I’ll leave you with this last tale…

My job flew me out to Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona quite often to fire off canons and mortars. We’d set up this sound equipment in the field and we’d occasionally sit out by it and left the firing squad alone to do their thing. We had to rent at least one pick-up truck or SUV to haul shit around in the desert and this one time The Boss goes ahead and rents a minivan.

So we drive up to the gates of the military base in a red minivan, the guard looks at us funny, checks our IDs and passes us through. We’re driving out to our storage shed – this minivan is bouncing like mad, it has no clearance so big rocks keep scraping the undercarriage. Equipment flying all over the place. It was such a fucking mess.

Later in the day we’re conducting firing tests – there are a bunch of gunners on the scene loading up the canons and dropping the mortars – while The Boss sits in the minivan with a portable DVD player and watches THE SANTA CLAUS 2. I will never forget that scene for as long as I live.

Blowing Up

I got all of the introductory stuff out of the way – it’s time to start having some fun again. By the way – The Cleveland Plain Dealer named The Moose in the Closet “Blog of the Week”. That’s what I call “dope”.

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I’m a bit drunk right now – I wasn’t supposed to be, Saul Colt’s in town and it was supposed to be one beer. About seven pints later I find myself at home, needing to write a story that I was supposed to write this weekend but the publishing side of POSTCARDS nailed me down. So now you get drunken story. A short one.

In-between the nice 100+ dollar a night hotel and our apartment on Connecticut Ave, Robin and I stayed in a dump of a hotel. We ran out of money, see – my two-grand relocation check didn’t cover the entire month we had no apartment.

I found a hotel we could afford – forty-five a night – at the Motel 50 in Rosslyn (now called “The Rosslyn Inn”).

Dump. Straight dump. That we needed to live in for a week. When the cab driver dropped us off we asked what Rosslyn was like – he told us not to cross Route 50 or else we’ll get killed.

That’s what he said – I shit you not.

Funny thing is - now I live about four blocks away from the Rosslyn Inn, our cab driver was either full of shit or that neighborhood came up real fast.

After a week of living at that shitty motel we moved into our studio on Connecticut Avenue – got the money order on the way up there (and the crooked ass cab driver charged us extra for the two minute stop at Mail Boxes Etc to pick up the money order).

Signed the lease and went up to our new apartment – all we owned at that point was the clothes within our suitcase. We went shopping – got some soda, peanut butter, ramen and beer. We made a bed out of rolled up clothes and tried to sleep – toss and turned the entire night, woke up with stiff necks and backs on fire.

We went to this outdoor store the next day - a wannabe EMS. Bought an air-mattress – forgot the pump. I sat down with a case of Budweiser and blew up a queen size air-mattress with my fucking mouth – by the time I was done I was blue, there was nothing left in me – no oxygen, no energy. Robin kept offering to help out, in-between black-outs, but being the macho man I was I kept blowing that plastic little phallic, slowly filling up the airbed.

We slept better that night.

Probably because I had fantastic “thank you for blowing up the air mattress” sex.

Anyway, I’m not in the proper state to end this right – so I’ll just salute you all and go to bed:

All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

Only stories here from now on. Go to POSTCARDS for production stuff and Live Journal for everything else.

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By the time Friday rolled around I thought I was going to get laid off. I honest to shit thought my boss was going to lay me off after my first week of work. I really didn’t do anything. I read some stuff – sent some emails, met my coworkers and filled out documentation. I left before 5PM everyday of the week.

I was so afraid that my boss was going to lay me off that I snuck out of the office that Friday without saying goodbye to anyone, thinking that would buy me some time.

My relocation check cleared and Robin and I were able to explore the city a bit more. I was excited to look up my boy James, the only person I knew who lived in DC, but he was out of state that weekend at some mini-baja competition. I was the youngest person at my first job, a little over 22 – everyone else was well over thirty and most of them had families. Living in a hotel doesn’t do much for the social life, either. Robin and I were on our own for our first weekend in DC where we actually had some money in the bank.

The concierge at the hotel told us to check out Adams Morgan, the busiest area for DC’s nightlife. We take the metro there and walk outside to find a McDonald’s, a deli and two Indian Restaurants. We were…upset…and figured we just moved to the lamest city in America.

Of course the bumping part of Adams Morgan is about ten blocks from the metro station but we didn’t know that – we just went to an Indian Restaurant, ate well, drank even better and made our way back to the hotel thinking we made a huge mistake moving to this city.

The second day we went apartment shopping but ended up in a whole different type of ghetto. Robin went to look for apartments earlier in the week and came back with pictures of some nice ones but they were all studios – she couldn’t find an affordable one-bedroom in the District that was in a “recommended” area. I was determined to find one, however, so I picked out some places that happened to be in South East DC.

Let me tell you a little bit about DC. One of the worst crime rates in America. People think the whole city is a shit-hole but that’s not true – 90% of the crime takes place in Southeast DC and the surrounding areas.

After looking at one apartment we called the Ellicott House and told them we’ll take the studio. (This apartment wasn’t even Anacostia, either, 90% of the crime in Southeast DC takes place in Anacostia – I have only two stories that takes place there and they’re both fucking excellent).

The Ellicott House on Connecticut Avenue – our first apartment. A six-hundred square foot studio on the fourth floor of a 14-story building. Tennis courts, a gym, an indoor and outdoor swimming pool, a hot-tub – all stuff we hardly ever used during the year we lived there. I took the place based on pictures Robin took and got developed at CVS. We were moving into the place in two weeks. The only problem was that we couldn’t afford to stay in our current hotel for another two weeks – we’ve already been there for over a week and the room cost us over a hundred bucks a night.

So we needed to find a new hotel. And that’s where the Rosslyn 50 or whatever the hell they used to call it came in. Comfort level was about to decrease and it only gets worse.

Decapitating Corporate America

Greater resolution!

The Moose in the Closet, the blog you’re reading right now, will only be for stories. POSTCARDS’ Blog will only be for the production of the anthology (and James Powell is posting there now, as well). And now, The Moose’s Musings will be my Live Journal where I just shoot the shit, occasionally lay down some attempts at comedy writing and try to get a little discussion going. So stop by, if you have an LJ let me know so I can add you to my friend list and feel free to do the same for mine.

On that note, it’s story time…

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I woke up two hours early for my first day of work. The hotel was only a couple of blocks away and my clothes were already ironed – the lead time might have seemed excessive but I needed to tie my tie, something I’ve only done several times before.

It was a smart move; it took me about twenty minutes to get a decent knot put together without having the tip of my tie lie somewhere around my nipples.

Robin made me coffee and asked if I wanted breakfast – I was too nervous to eat and I wasn’t going to kid myself and pretend we can afford to go out for some quality omelets. I grabbed a banana from the hotel lobby on the way out and walked to TAO.

Orientation took the entire morning. My boss, David, took me around to all of the offices and introduced me to my coworkers – most of them seemed like a friendly lot with the exception of this guy Curt who will be featured prominently future stories. Curt’s not a bad guy at all, let me get that out of the way right from the start, but he’s everything a storyteller wants from a character.

I had to meet with the human resources woman who was kind of cute and one of my early thoughts upon seeing her consisted of bending her over an office table and pushing up. It was a great image to juxtapose against her talking about the sexual harassment policy. I can’t help it, though; I think I’ve pictured myself having sex with nine girls out of every ten I’ve ever met. I’m always thinking about sex. Seriously, I went to a therapist because of it.

I remember when I was a kid and I’d say my prayers at night, naked women would always pop into my head. I’d feel so dirty, here I was opening my soul to God and I couldn’t stop pornography from running rampant in my subconscious. I’d argue with myself – I’d be on my knees praying and it would go something like this:

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with [naked woman appears in my head]. I’m sorry, Blessed Virgin. Hail Mary [naked woman]. Stop it! Why can’t you just stop it! Hail Mary, full of [naked woman].”

It would take me ten-minutes to get through one prayer, the Virgin Mary sitting on high and asking me to hurry it up. In order to combat the image, I used to picture a record player in my mind and the record player was reciting the Hail Mary. And then, I shit you not, a naked woman would come and push the record player out of the way.

I had no control in an almost comical way – and it was a pretty destructive behavior in the workplace. Not so much as people knew what was going through my head but that I never paid attention to female coworkers because I kept fantasizing about having sex with them.

I don’t know, remember that for later. I’m actually much better now. Well, better.

After I signed up for health insurance, 401k and life insurance (and I split my life beneficiaries between my sister and Robin in case you were wondering) I had to meet with the security officer. She put this fucking book in front of me, a thirty page application for my security clearance which, as I already talked about, I lied quite extensively on.

The security officer told me to get it in to her “within a week or so”. It took me about two months – paperwork and I don’t get along very well.

Then I finally got to see my office. It’s a great moment, walking into your first office. I had a nice one, too – it was designed for two people but I had it all to myself – it was long and had floor to ceiling windows running its entire length. My computer was already set-up and there were some supplies on my desk already – my nameplate was already attached to the entryway.

My boss told me to take some time to set-up my office and read over the company handbook, a hundred page document that got shoved in my drawer the moment he left, never to be seen again. I called Robin first, I put my feet up on the desk and turned towards my window to try and emulate the executives you see in the movies. I told her all about my day so far, everything except the whole wanting to have sex with the human resources woman, and let her know some of the guys from the office were going to take me out to lunch.

After talking to Robin I emailed my parents, my mom wrote back within minutes to tell me how proud she is of me. I went to lunch afterwards with some people, came back and read some of the stuff the HR woman gave me and left early, around three, telling my boss I needed to go apartment hunting.

My first day at work and I left two hours early. TAO was the kind of company a man can take advantage of, the tales of my exploits at work that I’ll be laying down over the next couple of months will both shock and inspire you. Corporate America is a fucking piece of cake.

On the way home I spotted something out of the corner of my eye, lying in the gutters – it was a New Years 2000 refrigerator magnet. Big fucking deal, right?

Robin and I had the same one back in Boston. But I’m sure they made plenty of them, you know?

Well, the one we had in Boston – it was a gift from Robin’s mom that fell off the fridge, causing the head to break off – it’s the reason we threw it out. The magnet I found on the street didn’t have its head, either. I naturally took it back to the hotel me, Robin would never believe it if I just told her that I saw it, and we still have it today – prominently displayed on our fridge.

I get to the hotel, excited to tell Robin about my day. She’s not in the room, unfortunately – she went into DC to look for apartments and left me a note – she didn’t expect me to be home so early. I leave her a note and go down to the bar, start munching on free mozzarella sticks and putting down Bud Lights on the hotel’s tab.

Robin meets me about an hour later – big kisses and excited talk about my first day at work. She found some apartments that I might have been interested in, but that’s for tomorrow’s story. I told her about the magnet and she naturally didn’t believe me until I showed her the decapitated body of the pudgy woman that played music when you pressed her tits.

We got drunk and passed out early in the comfort of our hundred-plus dollar a night hotel room – having no idea that there was only a couple of weeks of comfortable sleeping left for us before we spend several months with back pains and stiff necks.

Fun and Games in McLean, Virginia

I went to my third baseball game of the season last night, Mets vs. Nationals – it was also my third ballpark. So far I’ve been to Camden Yards, RFK Stadium and whatever you call the park the Phillies play in. I’ll be going to Fenway, Shea, Wrigley, Cleveland and Colorado to catch some games as well this year. Last year I did Shea, Yankee Stadium, Fenway, Camden, RFK, San Francisco, San Diego and Chicago White Sox. I’d love to catch a game in Milwaukee but I really can’t come up with an excuse to visit Milwaukee beyond going to see a baseball game. At least Cleveland has the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Anyway, I guess what I want to say is, LET’S GO FUCKING METS!

Story time…

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Five days.

That’s how much time I had between the day I arrived in Virginia and the day I started work.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

Five days to get out and explore our nation’s capital (and its outlying neighborhoods). Five days to meet some new people and see some sites. Five days to sample local restaurants, bars and neighborhoods – try and decide where we wanted to live. Five days to stake my claim, to adjust myself – five days to get comfortable.

I was fucked.

We had no money. We had a credit card with a modest limit that we were using to hold the hundred+ dollar a night hotel room and that’s it.

A 75% relocation advance was mailed to me in Boston; unfortunately it didn’t get there before I moved out. I needed to get TAO to issue me a new check that I picked up my second day in the DC area. I had to open a bank account with that check, because I closed my Bank Boston account before moving. It was going to take a couple of days for the funds to clear – I had a couple of bucks cash on me and that was it.

Robin wasn’t in any better shape – her parents gave her some cash but it was essentially enough to cover really cheap meals for a couple of days.

So whereas we got down there early to explore the area, our limited funds restricted us to packing a book bag with bread and peanut butter and staying close to the hotel. McLean, Virginia, unfortunately, didn’t have a lot to offer a couple of 22 year-old kids excited to be in a new city.

That’s where Tyson’s Mall comes in. It was a fifteen minute walk to get there and we could spend a couple of hours there – slowly walking around and planning what we’ll get for our eventual apartment. Checking out Crate & Barrel and picking out a headboard for our bed – the one piece to a standard bedroom-set we have yet to purchase in the past six years. Why buy a headboard when you can buy a 42-inch plasma HDTV is my motto – priorities.

We’d ask the kiosk guys if we can use their computers to check our email and they almost always agreed – we’d spend a couple of minutes searching online for apartments because we didn’t learn our lesson the first time around.

Dinner at McDonald’s – Robin and I were practicing vegetarians at the time (well, Robin was, and I was trying really hard). French fries, salad cup and a drink of water was the standard dinner for those five days (peanut butter sandwich for lunch, obviously).

The hotel had a bar and we were able to charge up our drinks to the room – no matter how broke we were we always found a way to drink alcohol – I think that’s a universal constant. That first Saturday night we tried to go to the hotel bar but they were having some comedy show and there was a cover – we ended up crossing the Pike and going to Mr. Smith’s where we actually had a decent meal and decided to use the credit card, figuring we’ll deal with the potential “insufficient funds to pay for hotel room” when and if it happens.

We found ways to pass the time – we made up theme songs for each other, for instance. Robin’s was sung to the beat of TALK’S TO ANGELS and went like so:

She never takes the tags off
The clothes that she buys
That’s so she can return them
If the neeeedd arise

She says she talks to sales clerks
About their return policy

Mine was sung to the beat of a generic children’s song:

I’m a sensitive homo erectus, a sensitive homo erectus
I have a hard on all day
I’m a sensitive homo erectus, a sensitive homo erectus
Won’t you come out an play

I’m a sensitive homo erectus, a sensitive homo erectus
I got something I’d like you to touch
I’m a sensitive homo erectus, a sensitive homo erectus
I’m sorry that it isn’t much

Ah…inside jokes. This one isn't tough, though - you see, I tend to always be ready to go.

We made it into DC once. The first time was to go apartment shopping – we took the train to the U Street stop because it was the closest stop to the first apartment we were going to check out – our first exposure to DC was a touch of the ghetto. Now, I have no problems with the ghetto, but when you move to DC everyone reminds you how bad the crime rate is there. You just brush it off, say it’s fine, and you step out of the metro to be surrounded by a touch of ghetto – you get a little worried.

I get a little worried, at least, Robin starts walking faster.

We checked out a couple of apartment in the Adams Morgan area but didn’t settle on anything – we made our way to the Mall and saw the monuments for the first time, fed the ducks with the bread in our backpack. Robin discovered the wonders of the Mall popsicle stands – these Asian guys who sell every popsicle ever made, it seems. I shit you not – I actually purchased one of those WWF cookie/ice-cream pops, shit had to be made in the late 80s. Had Jimmy Superfly Snuka on it. There was no way it wasn’t expired but I ate it anyway – Robin had a Pink Panther popsicle with gumball eyes.

That was really it. Tyson’s Mall, hotel bars, theme songs and one trip into DC. No closer to finding an apartment, no money in the bank. I started work on a Tuesday – ironed my clothes the night before and went to bed early. It was time to start making a living.

The Return of the Moose: Denying the Projects

Early March I wrapped up my year-long, 5 day a week writing experiment where I told true stories about growing up in Brooklyn and going to school in Boston. POSTCARDS was in the early development phase and I figured I needed time to publish the book. I decided to update this site twice a week for a while and eventually come back to the storytelling once I had the time.

Well, guess what? An unstructured blog is much more time-consuming than a structured one. The Moose in the Closet was easy to write after a while - I'd knock down a story in ten minutes. So, I'm going back to the Moose starting today. I won't be doing it five days a week but between this site and the POSTCARDS Production Blog I'll be putting something new up every Monday-Friday. If I was to guess at a schedule, I'd say POSTCARDS and the Moose will alternate between Tuesday/Thursday and Monday/Wednesday/Friday updates.

I'm probably going to try to do this round of stories in chronological order - there's a bit more structure here, this is the story of moving to DC, building a life and, more importantly, building a healthy relationship with Robin. I'll probably drop back to the Brooklyn/Boston stories now and again, there are quite a few stories left to tell.

Anyway - let's just get to the stories, shall we?

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We left off with Robin and I spending our first night in DC - a hotel in McLean, Virginia, actually, several blocks from my first job out of college - a company we'll call TAO. They gave me a two-thousand dollar relocation account and our hotel was over a hundred dollars a night. We realized we were cutting it close but the apartment we secured (online without ever seeing it) will be ready for us in two weeks.

Our friends warned us about putting money down on an apartment but the rent was 800 a month in Arlington - supposedly the hip and trendy DC-metro area.

Let me tell you about Arlington. Ten, fifteen years ago, all of Arlington was straight ghetto. As communities built up around the orange line certain neighborhoods began to become more affluent. First Rosslyn, a quick walk from Georgetown across the Key Bridge - its closeness to DC and the fact that buildings within Rosslyn are actually allowed to be taller than the Washington Monument made it primo location for business development. Following the orange line you hit Courthouse, Clarendon, Virginia Square and Ballston (which is now being built up quite rapidly).

My current apartment is between Rosslyn and Courthouse - I live within a block of eight restaurants, three bars, four fast-food joints, one video store, one grocery store, three coffee shops and one 24-hour CVS - it's everything I expected from the Arlington apartment we found online for 800 a month.

That apartment, however, wasn't on the orange line. It wasn't on any train line, actually - it was an hour long bus ride from our hotel. After trekking across Arlington to get to the building we notice the area around it - it's kind of run down, pawn shops and check cashing joints line the strip malls. Our apartment building has a seven foot iron gate topped with barbed wire. I grew up in Red Hook when Red Hook was bad - but there was always this sense of neighborhood - I rarely felt unsafe walking around Red Hook as a kid - I never felt like people were trying to keep me out. This part of Arlington was filled with ugly mid-rises and people who didn't want to live there - people who didn't feel safe.

We buzz the office from outside the gate and explain to the intercom that we're moving into the building in a couple of weeks and wanted to take a look around. We get rung in and make our way to the lobby - the smell of curry and sofrito hit us like a brick wall. We go to the office and ask the building manager if we're allowed to see our apartment and she tells us, "No."

That's really it. "No." No reason, no apologies. No offer to see a different apartment. Robin and I just decide to check out our floor at least, we get into the elevator that's littered with trash and sticky substances and ride up to the seventh floor.

The place reeks - the hall hasn't been cleaned in a while. Within several minutes we see a variety of bugs. Loud music - people yelling. I grew up in Red Hook, I remember visiting my Aunt Sophie's apartment as a kid - I knew what this was.

It was the Projects. It cost 800 bucks a month, they were probably trying to attract people with money - change the demographic within their building one renter at a time, but beyond that there was nothing about this building that didn't scream Projects.

I need to put you in our mindset and in order to do that I need to disclose some information that I'm not entirely comfortable disclosing. Robin and I both grew up in struggling families - you all know that. I got through college on grants and loans and stipends - the first person in my family to go through the four years. My first job was paying me a healthy 50k a year with a raise after six-months if I was performing - at the time I was making about the same amount of money my father was making.

I was proud - my family was proud. I could not have them visit me to find me living in the Projects. I told Robin I can't live here, she agreed - we walked away from our 300-dollar deposit, hopped a cab and made our way back to McLean, realizing that we'd need to find a new apartment as quick as possible.

Nothing's ever that easy, however.

Just Comic Stuff

Sat down to watch my first Mets’ game of the season only to realize it’s blacked out because Baltimore’s asshole owner, Peter Angelos, continues to block Nationals’ games from playing in DC if the Orioles are playing at the same time. The real kick in the ass? I pay extra for MLB Extra Innings only to have the one game I want to watch tonight blacked out. And the kick in the ass times two? I’m going to an Orioles game on Saturday and supporting that piece of shit Angelos. Even though I’ll be cheering for the Sox, I still feel empty inside.

Seriously, how can Major League Baseball allow this?

Anyway, comics, right? That’s all we’re talking today, I'm spent after Tuesday’s horribly racist post.

There’s a new Hive going up today, part 2 (of 3) of The Neighborhood. Go check it out.

Neil Kleid is going into pimp mode with URSA MINOR – Tom, Dick & Harry running around in high-tech robotic bear suits. You can’t go wrong with that premise. Available through Slave Labor Graphics, there’s a free preview up on their site.

Remember last Thursday when I was agonizing over this one guy that would be a dream come true to have in the book but I was “90% sure” would not contribute to POSTCARDS? Well, now I’m agonizing over what artist to pair him with. You can congratulate me now and thank me when you read his story.

I’m not going to go through the Eisner list and pick who I think will win but big, public, congratulations goes out to Tom Beland. I remember spying his threads on the Bendis Board when he was talking about how difficult it was to sell TRUE STORY SWEAR TO GOD and now here he is with two nominations. Make good comics and keep pushing them out, eventually people are going to notice.

I’d also like to include Bob Tinnell on the public congrats list – Bob was consulting me early on with POSTCARDS, telling me stories about his own experiences marketing FEAST OF THE SEVEN FISHES outside of the DM. He gets the Eisner nod and deserves it, it’s a fantastic book. (Excuse me, I mean it’s a fantastic food memoir.)

Speaking of Eisner’s, you have to have respect for Warren Ellis. In a time of bogus press releases, PR reps for a guy with one book out and people pushing a positive review from some cat on a message board named batmanbitches03, one of the most commanding comic writers working today can humbly lay it out like this:

“Anyway, I got around to looking at the list five mins ago. Any year in which Chris Ware, Alan Moore & Grant Morrison are working is a year in which I may as well not be there. I can ignore this whole thing now.”

After receiving six nominations that he deserved regardless of who else is in the running. Either way I think congrats are in order, to Ellis and all the other guys and girls who got nominations and a “fuck the Eisner’s” to everyone who should have gotten a nomination but didn’t (I mean, seriously, did DC just forget to send in THE QUITTER?).

Speaking of Eisner’s, we weren’t nominated. But, you know, BAM! (I’ll come back in a couple of weeks and update that “BAM” so that it links to something.)

Tony Fleecs sent me a PDF of his new book IN MY LIFETIME and it’s fucking fabulous – just a gorgeous autobiographical book with some phenomenal storytelling. Silent Devil’s putting it out, between IN MY LIFETIME, DEATH COMES TO DILLINGER and some of the rumblings I’m hearing amongst friends I’m finding myself feeling pretty stupid for breaking on SD all the time.

Chip Zdarsky’s ACT-I-VATE contribution is worth worshipping. Dean Trippe also joined up with Wave Two and he’s one of my favorite illustrators coming up today.

I think that's it. Have a good weekend and watch out for Dominicans.

Finding Wisdom in the Oddest Places and My Future

Last night I had to go for a little ride and left the Sirius radio receiver in the apartment. Instead of going back in for it, I decided to dig through the collection of scratched up CDs in my car to find one that’ll play for me. I ended up pulling out ODB’s THE RETURN TO THE 36 CHAMBERS – an album I haven’t listened to in years.

I get to the sixth track – RAWHIDE – and ODB drops out some wisdom that I’ll be using as my motto for the road ahead. He says:

Tired of sitting on my fucking ass, niggas I know you run around with mad fuckin’ cash.
Who the fuck wanna be an MC if you can’t get paid to be a fuckin’ MC?

Replace “MC” with “publisher” and you got some words to live by. Albeit words that really don’t flow well with a beat behind them. Of course, ODB goes on to say:

I came out my momma’s pussy, I’m on welfare 26 years old and still on welfare
So I gotta get paid fully, whether it’s tru-fully or un-tru-fully

So, much like I do with the bible, I’ll pick and choose what ODB wisdom I take with me while publishing POSTCARDS.

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Thursday’s post about my new food shopping habits inspired Mark Fossen to write this in the comments section:

Once/If you have kids of your own, all those lovely organic goods in your grocery sack get replaced by hot dogs, mac 'n' cheese, and chicken nuggets. It'll go full cycle ...

I realized that I never disclosed mine and Robin’s horribly racist plan for our future. Now, whenever I tell this plan to anyone they think I’m joking. Please, make no mistake, this is the plan – this is what we’re going to do. This isn’t a joke.

Ok, we may or may not get married. I was kind of prepared to, she wants to finish grad school first and now I don’t want to anymore and she seems to agree. I’m sure that’ll change once we hit thirty but, for now, no marriage.

But we’ll still have kids. Three, actually – two adopted kids and one “real” child (what’s the PC term for the non-adopted kid?).

For the first kid – well, Robin and I love baseball. We fucking live baseball. Every season I order up the baseball season pass on cable and we just watch games all the time – doesn’t matter who is playing. Last year alone we went to eight different pro-stadiums. There is nothing that would make us more proud than having a kid who plays baseball professionally – so we’re adopting a Dominican.

Now, that may sound horrible but I’m allowed to make that stereotype because I’m Puerto Rican. And, as some of you may know, Puerto Ricans HATE Dominicans. Can’t stand them. We think they all smell and run through caves barefoot (whether or not there are caves in the Dominican Republic is irrelevant). I am genetically predisposed to hating Dominicans – my family reunion consists of a hundred Puerto Ricans making fun of the darkest family member by calling him Dominican. As kids, when we played tag, you weren’t “It”, you were “Dominican”.

Adopting a Dominican kid, even if we don’t enroll him in school but instead force him to play baseball twelve hours a day, would be considered an act of charity in my family. When he starts making that baseball paper we may even let him eat some pernil.

Now, if the Dominican kid doesn’t quite become the next David Ortiz, we really don’t want to support his ass – especially since we won’t be sending him to school. Last thing we want is some uneducated Dominican sitting around, stinking up the sofa and whistling at girls that walk by our window. Wearing some denim, Dominican flag shirt. So we’re going to adopt an Asian kid and make sure he’s real good at math – make sure he gets some cushy government job crunching numbers for the rest of his life. This way he can support his Dominican brother and Robin and I can focus our love and attention on our real kid.

Our real kid is going to be a healthy male because we already have the name picked out and because we don’t have the time to deal with a sickly kid – a kid is a novelty, not a job. Ty Rex Rodriguez – T. Rex for short. We’ll use our adopted kids as teaching tools to help shape T. Rex into a man – teach him valuable lessons like, “You’re lucky you’re not Dominican” and “The Asian kid’ll do your math homework for you if you twist his nipple.”

Best case scenario - one son’s a famous baseball players, one son’s a noble prize winning scientist, the other son has a hot wife I can hook-up with since I won’t be married. Worst case scenario has me going out for cigarettes and never coming back – admitting that the plan has failed – and never having to file for a divorce.

It’s a good plan.