Christina Aguilera Need to Learn About Meddling Kids, Hoola-Hoops, and Onion Rings

My mom called me last night to remind me to watch the tree lighting ceremony on TV. I started watching it a bit late, I caught Sara McLachlan’s rendition of Happy Christmas (War Is Over) which went right into Christina Aguilera singing a song from her new album. The song was called Hurt and, as far as I can tell, it’s about a girl that chases away her boyfriend and the boyfriend could possibly be dead now. Not sure.

And while she was singing this song, Sasha Cohen was figure skating.

And then they lit the tree.

And I watched this, mouth agape, and wondered, “What the fuck does this have to do with Christmas.”

It was a depressing song. I mean, seriously:

There's nothing I wouldn't do
To have just one more chance
To look into your eyes
And see you looking back

Does that say “Christmas” to anyone? Only depressed people and they’re the ones killing themselves on Christmas – they’re probably not even watching the tree lighting ceremony. Would it have really hurt Christina Aguilera to sing, I don’t know, Jingle Bells? Oh Christmas Tree would have been a nice lead-in to the lighting of the tree.

It drove me nuts. But it also inspired me to bump back the story I had planned today and focus a bit on Christmas Music.

There are three Christmas albums I remember from my childhood. I used to get them out in December and play them on my little Fisher Price record player. Sitting under the tree, hot chocolate, cookies, and a Star Wars sleeping bag.

A Scooby Doo Christmas is one of the albums I remember. There weren’t any songs on it; it was a radio play of sorts where some ghost was scaring kids at an orphanage for some reason. Scooby Doo and pals get called in to solve the case and it turns out the ghost was some old man who would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for the meddling kids. I kind of remember Santa showing up in the end although I don’t know why. And I remember one of the clues being footprints in the snow.

A Chipmunk Christmas was another one. My parents hated that goddamn record, mainly because I kept playing Christmas Time Is Near over and over again. It would drive me mad, too, if all I heard was a high-pitched voice singing “Christmas, Christmas, time is near; Time for joy and time for cheer,” ever couple of seconds. I liked the song because one of the Chipmunks sang something like, “Me, I want a hooollllaaa-hoooooppp.” I loved that line. And then all the Chipmunks started fighting and Alvin got punished in the end – classic!

A Disney Christmas is the last album I remember and I still love that record to this day. The entire Disney family singing The 12 Days of Christmas was one of my favorite childhood memories. The song got more chaotic with every verse and towards the end Goofy belts out my favorite line, “Fiiivvveeee Onion Ringsssss.” God that cracked me up as a kid (I was easily amused).

For our first Christmas together Robin got me a working Fisher Price record player. Well, “working.” It plaid the records but the sound was modulating like mad. I got the old records from my parents and we sat in front of our little fake tree and listened to The 12 Days of Christmas while exchanging presents. The record kept sticking; I think we got up to the fourth day of Christmas before we gave up. But it was a nice little callback to Christmas morning as a kid.

We played the Chipmunk album next and it took about two seconds for me to get a headache. How did we tolerate that shit as kids?

‘Tis Better to Give…

I know yesterday I talked all about Santa and how much I love to get presents and what not but I’ve always been a giver. When I was a kid (I’m talking four or five years old, here) I’d go rummaging through the bottom of my parent’s closets and find Christmas gifts for them – wrap them up and bring them out Christmas morning. I distinctly remember this one year I wrapped up some shoes and a purse that I found in my mom’s closet.

When I hit elementary school it was all about the crafts. Making little ornaments for mom out of clothespins and balls of cotton; begging my teacher to let me pull the trigger on the glue gun. Going to the gymnasium armed with the five bucks my mom gave me and buying her some fake diamond earrings for two bucks; using the remaining three dollars to buy a hand-made wallet for my dad and some cupcakes.

I remember making the stuff for the craft sale – the teachers put us kids to work for a day. About a month beforehand we all go through this craft catalog and pick out the items we feel we should sell. Goofy pencil toppers, Chinese finger traps, picture frames – some items required assembly and some were ready to go. When the crafts shipment came in we had to sort everything out before forming teams – each team was responsible for assembling something. Putting googly eyes on a pom-pom or putting glitter on a Popsicle stick. We were all cogs in the craft sale machine, making the items we’d end up buying for our parents for Christmas and the PTA keeps the profit.

I don’t do craft sales anymore, obviously. I have a job. I make money. And with that money comes better, more thoughtful gifts. For instance, my mom’s favorite toy as a kid was her Barbie Dream House. This was like 1963, I believe. It was destroyed when my mom’s house burnt down and she wanted one ever since. So, I got her a 1963 Barbie Dream House for Christmas one year.

I started doing right by my sister, as well. A good keyboard one year, a computer the next. Robin got spoiled, as well. Fashions, movies, musics, tickets – whatever she wanted plus some surprises every year.

But, like I said, I’m a giver. And a giver gives to those that need before he gives to those that want.

Every year since graduating college Robin and I have adopted a family in DC that couldn’t afford their own presents. We’d get everything on their kids’ lists plus some extra clothes. We’d even get some extra luxury items for the mother and gift certificates for whatever grocery store is close by.

We’d deliver the presents ourselves. One year there were two kids, the daughter was out with her father but the son was home. The boy had a ratty Playstation and he wanted a wrestling game for it. He knew we got it for him and while we sat down and talked to his mother he kept begging her to let him open it. She finally caved and me and the boy went into the kitchen to play video games together (he kicked my ass).

The mother shared with me some letters she was trying to get published by The Washington Post. Pieces she wrote about what goes on in her neighborhood every night and how nobody cares. Letters about the idiot kids that live on her block and make her son’s life hell. We’re not talking high school bullshit, we’re talking guns fired through a window as a prank and severe beatings on the way home from school. About how the cops treat her like a criminal when she calls to file a complaint. How they never followed-up with her and were never able to find her report when she called back.

I don’t know exactly why but I saw my mom. The environment was different, sure. My dad was around and he was as much a part of my life as my mom was. As far as I know, my parents never asked anyone for help – my father worked two jobs and my mom took a job when they needed the extra cash. Our neighborhood, whereas not the nicest neighborhood in Brooklyn, was tight – we had great community. But there’s something about the struggle to be a mother, I guess. Single mom, two kids, scraping to get by – writing letters to the papers because the cops don’t take her serious when she’s trying to protect her son.

Struggling. Asking complete strangers for help. Not money. Gifts. For her son. So that he can have a good Christmas. So that he can play a wrestling game on a used Playstation his absentee father bought him.

That’s a mom, you know? You put my mom in the same situation and that’d be her.

Robin and I stayed for a while. Playing video games, talking – the mother insisted we had some cake and coffee, neither of which were good but we swallowed it all down. She cried when we gave her the grocery store gift card – she thanked us nonstop as we were getting ready to go. We drove away and left them on their doorstep, the two of them smiling and waving at us.

And just like that their Christmas is over.

I’m not going to be the guy who just sits here and says that all my sins are cleansed from one evening of charity work. I’m not going to pretend that two-hundred bucks to spend at Safeway, some clothes, and a Playstation game is going to leave any sort of lasting impact on anybody. But that’s also not going to stop me from doing it every year.

I guess this is part story, part plea. I set you up by starting all warm and fuzzy. I apologize. Yes, this is a trap. But the truth is, there are families that need a break for one day. There are families with lives that are worst than yours will ever be. There are mothers out there who just want their kids to have one great fucking day but they can’t afford to give it to them and it kills them.

There’s plenty of time till Christmas. You can still adopt a family. This year we’re adopting two families. One through the Northern Virginia AIDS Ministry and one through the Arlington-Alexandria Coalition for the Homeless. I’m sure there are plenty in your own communities. See what you can do.

‘Tis better to give, after all.

Making a List

Ah, Amazon. Fucking Amazon. It’s so easy to make a wish list and email it to all of your friends and family. Here’s mine, in case anyone wanted to buy me a present. You click the link, find something that’s under ten-bucks, enter your password, and commit to the purchase. You don’t even need to know my address. It’s that fucking easy.

Every December I get the emails from Amazon telling me my sister or Robin or one of my boys have updated their wish lists. And every year I go and measure-up how much this person’s worth to me, and I buy them something. It’s a Christmas List broadcast to everyone in the world…

Except for Santa.

What the fuck happened to Santa? At what point was he cut out of this gift giving process?

“But Jason, Santa doesn’t exist.”

Bullshit. I tell you what – it isn’t common sense that convinced me to buy a Coach bag for Robin last year despite the fact that it wasn’t on her wish list. It was some portly mother fucker with a red nose whispering shit in my ear. That son of a bitch spends my Christmas bonus every year. Santa exists, ladies and gentlemen. He’s planted in our heads at a young age and he lives there until we die. He’s your guilt, your need to be loved and accepted. So when you’re making your wish list this year, before you click “send”, look north, tell Santa you’ve been a good boy or girl, and ask him to get you everything you want.

I don’t kid around when it comes to Santa. I never did. I don’t care how your opinion towards me is changing right now but the day someone told me Santa didn’t exist was the first day I said, “bullshit.” My parents, my scraping-to-get-by-working-two-jobs parents, didn’t buy a complete series of Star Wars figures and put the time and effort into tying them all to a string that I pulled on Christmas morning, causing the figures to erupt from the side of the couch in a ball of wondrous goodness. That shit was Santa, and nobody’s ever going to convince me otherwise.

And even when I knew Santa wasn’t a physical person that came in through our window because we didn’t have a chimney I still wrote a list for him and handed it off to my parents. Because I knew my parents couldn’t afford a Gameboy but Santa – that evil, conniving, overgrown elf – sure as hell would convince them to do it.

So I made a list. I said, “Dear Santa, I’ve been real good this year. I did good in school and I was good to my mom and dad. I don’t curse at my mom like Tony and I don’t do drugs like Rafael, and I don’t shoot at people on Halloween like that crazy-ass Jamaican Dexter over on Columbia Street. Please bring me a Cobra Terrordrome.” I always made sure I was writing that letter so that it channeled Santa through my parents. Roughly translated it said, “Dear Santa. Please appreciate the fact that I’m not a douchebag like every other kid in this neighborhood. I have a future. I’ll make money. And when you get old, I’ll put you in the retirement home that doesn’t feed you dog food.”

Make a list. Put it in an envelope. Address it to, “Santa Clause; North Pole.” Hand it to my parents. Smile.

Robin’s my primary Santa now – she gets the Amazon wish list. Before I click, “send,” however, I look to the north and say, “Santa – I’ve been a good boy this year. I haven’t cheated, I haven’t taking advantage of you while you were drunk, and I paid for that vacation you loved. Here’s my list.”

I hope you all start doing the same. It’s time to bring Santa back to Christmas.

Deck the Halls

For most normal people, we’re currently at the beginning of the Christmas season. I’m normal nowadays, I think – I’ve purchased a couple of presents online and put some thought into who’s getting what this year. I don’t have a tree yet, I don’t have stockings up. We’ll probably do all of that in two weeks.

When I was a kid, however, I wasn’t at all normal. I was completely queer for Christmas. I’m sure a bunch of you are reading this and thinking, “no shit, what kid wasn’t retarded for Christmas?” But I don’t think you understand how bat-shit insane I was for Christmas.

Let’s start with the decorations, shall we?

Most kids don’t give a shit about Christmas decorations – all they care about is the list for Santa, sitting on his lap to seal the deal, and Christmas morning. That’s it. But for me – the decorations represented what was to come. All of my favorite characters dressed up for the holidays – Superman with a Santa hat, Elmer Fudd hunting in the snow, Spiderman with a sack of presents. It was all of the characters I lived with everyday except they were fighting crime of kiwing wabbits, fuck that, they were getting presents. And, as a kid, that shit was exciting.

Because of this excitement I’d start bothering my father to bring the Christmas decorations up from the basement in September. The start of school was the beginning of the Christmas season for me. My dad would bring them up – they were stored in this Peanuts’ pinball machine box – and I’d go through all of them. I’d see which ones were broken and fix them up after crying for about ten minutes. Our porcelain superman ornament would have a broken body part every year – gluing it back together would become a family event. We had this hollowed out egg with a picture of Santa painted on it; every year I’d take it out of the box and expecting it to be broken. It remained intact for most of my childhood – it finally broke when I was around sixteen; I dropped it.

My favorite decoration was this clay ice skater with my name on it that my Grandma Fran made for me. It was always the first ornament we hung on the tree on the highest branch. That worked out well for the first eleven years, until my sister was born, and she got jealous over all of the pomp and circumstance around my decoration.

So I already had the decorations out. The day after Thanksgiving, for me, was all about getting that tree and I’d harass my pops until he took me to get one.

Another tradition in my family was getting a “Charlie Brown” tree. We (and by “we” I mean me and my mom) purposely looked for the ugliest tree imaginable, the one that no-one would want to buy. Again, this tradition went smoothly until my sister was born. I’ll never forget the year we went Christmas tree shopping and decided on a tree with a big-ass bald spot on the backside. My mother and I fell in love. My sister cried all the way home.

The following year I was off in college when the family went tree shopping. My father and my sister teamed up and purchased a nice, full tree. This time my mom was supposedly crying all the way home.

My father would always set up the tree the night he brought it home. I wasn’t allowed to decorate it, though. According to my father the tree had to have time to “open up” before you were allowed to decorate it. Years later Robin and I would buy our first tree together (keep in mind I was 22 at the time). We took it home and set it up. Robin starts to decorate it and I stop her, telling her we’re supposed to let it “open up” over night. She tells me I’m crazy so I call up my dad to confirm. My dad tells me, “No, I just told you that because I wanted to have a beer and watch some football, instead.”

I then realized that the tree always seemed to “open up” about three hours before Monday Night Football started.

My dad would put on the lights and I’d hang most of the decorations (some were reserved for my mom). I’d put the star on the tree; we actually have a picture of me putting the star on the tree from every year, wearing the same ratty-ass Santa hat. Stockings and other decorations would go up – the Frosty the Snowman candle that I partially ate when I was one, the plastic Rudolf that would go in the window, and, of course, this mechanical minx in a Santa outfit that always went in my room. She wasn’t an elf, she wasn’t Mrs. Clause – she was like Santa’s jailbait niece and I had one hell of a crush on her. The movie Mannequin only made the situation worse. I’d lay in bed and stare at that girl as she shook her little ass and I’d pray to Santa saying, “Santa – listen, I know I said I wanted a gameboy but if you can make that girl come to life I’ll be extra good next year. I promise.” I was 11 at the time, I knew Santa was “in our hearts,” but I’d still pray for that chick to come alive.

Never happened. Probably for the best, it’d make for a great “first time” story but I’d likely be locked up for telling it.

“But it was a Christmas Miracle, dammit! A Christmas Miracleeeeeee!!!!!”


As I got older I started decorating my own room as well. This consisted of throwing lights and fake icicles all over the place. Looked like shit. I continued that tradition in college. Looked like shit and distracted my pot smoking friends when we used my room for our smoking sessions.

“Duuuddee…you know what’d be sweet? If that mechanical chick came to life and totally fucked us!”

“Don’t go near her, dude, she’s mine. She’s been mind since I was, like, nine and shit. You don’t know us; don’t judge us!”

Robin and I just do a tree and stockings now. She tries to put costumes on our pets and they hate us for it. We put our presents out weeks in advance and by the time Christmas rolls around we have a good idea of what’s in every box (except for the year she surprised me with an X-box, that mother fucker was out for weeks and I had no idea what it was). No lights on the windows, no half-eaten candles. The mechanical floozy still stays in the bedroom but I’m not allowed to stare at it while we have sex.

Black Friday Gifts

This year I celebrated Black Friday by going to the Gamestop in the Ballston mall at 2PM to see if they had any Nintendo Wiis left. The guy gave me a cold, dead stare and said, “no.” I went to Chevy’s with my coworker and had a beer and some fish tacos before going back to work.

Black Friday!

I honestly didn’t even know what the fuck Black Friday was until I met Robin. Thanksgiving 1999 I was in NYC and she was in Framingham – I called her the Friday after Thanksgiving to learn that she’s been shopping since 6AM. I thought she was fucking nuts – who the hell goes shopping at 6AM? Apparently most of America does, I just never realized it.

Anyway, the following December was our first Christmas season together. We didn’t spend Christmas together (last year was actually the first year we were together on Christmas Day, our 7th Christmas) but we had a little thing the day before we left BU in my dorm room – a potted Christmas Tree and presents underneath for each of us.

I got her typical “First Christmas” stuff. Something from Victoria’s Secret. A bottle of perfume (Truest, from Tiffany’s, she still has some of it). I think there was an Indigo Girls CD thrown in there. She got me the typical presents as well: boxer shorts, a funny shirt (Superman using his X-Ray vision to see what Batman got him while thinking, “Great, another tie”), some books, and, of course, several things that she picked up on Black Friday. It was at that moment that I realized what Black Friday really was: five strong sellers discounted and extreme markdown on everything else the stores couldn’t get rid of.

It was all cute stuff, don’t get me wrong, but it was stuff that I would have never have thought to get for myself like a remote control racetrack and electronic battleship. I thought it was cool, still think it was cool, but Black Friday gifts certainly have a signature about them.

I’ve stayed away from Black Friday – never did the early morning specials thing. Robin still does it on occasion and you can still tell the Black Friday gifts. Last year it was 24 Season One. A couple of years ago it was a pair of two-way radios. A non-brand name MP3 player. Risk: Lord of the Rings Edition.

Black Friday gifts.

Our First Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving 2000. I was living in DC and Robin was still up in Boston going to school. We decided to spend Thanksgiving together, as a couple. I really don’t remember whose idea it was but I remember my parents not being happy about the decision – this was my first Thanksgiving away from them and it wasn’t even like I was passing on the feast at Uncle Chris’ house for someone else’s big feast.

I was passing on it for Tofurky.

Ok, let’s back that up. Robin was a vegetarian when we first started dating. I believe she first went veggie back in high school, made it through college, and then tacked on a couple of more years after college as well. She kind of rubbed off on me and the second half of my senior year in college I went veggie as well, lasted about two years. When I started eating chicken and fish again, however, Robin came along with me (she still doesn’t eat any red meats).

Anyway, our first Thanksgiving feast together didn’t even consist of us gathering around a turkey. It was shaped like a turkey. Sort of. A processed turkey. And it had a drumstick with a plastic bone. You baked it in the oven, smothered it with gravy. And if you closed your eyes tight enough, it looked like a turkey.

Sure as fuck didn’t smell or taste like one.

I remember pulling it out of the oven and putting it on a plate alongside mashed potatoes, corn, stuffing, and cranberry sauce and being afraid to eat it. I thought it would taste horrible. I was surprised to learn that it actually didn’t taste horrible. It tasted like nothing. It tasted like the gravy we covered it in. Seriously, you put it in your mouth and it tasted like a chunk of gravy.

A chunk of gravy with the worst imaginable texture. The type of texture that made you gagged. And Robin and I both gagged upon trying to swallow our first bite of tofurky. Chewed it, swallowed it, and chased it down with a beer. We each took a single bite of tofurky before throwing it in the trash. Our Thanksgiving meal consisted of the fixings – we didn’t even have the foresight to buy a pie.

My family called me up to see how our Thanksgiving was going. I told my dad about the tofurky fiasco and he couldn’t help but laugh. They were eating turkey with all the fixings alongside my Grandma’s fantastic Spanish food. Everyone there was laughing and having a good time – dancing like my family always did when they got together. Watching football. Playing darts and dominos.

Robin and I found ourselves spending the evening at the apartment. My friends were out of town (and Robin didn’t actually live in DC yet) so we just had a quiet night of board games and movies.

At the time, it was sweet. Robin and I did the long distance thing for a year and when we got a chance to see each other we tried to spend as much time together as we possibly could. So lying on the futon, playing Uno, and watching Half Baked while drinking beers was a great way to spend Thanksgiving.

At the time.

In retrospect it was the worst Thanksgiving ever. I think Robin would agree.

I’m going back to DAILY!

I’m going back to daily for the holidays. Starting tomorrow and through the 22nd of December I’ll be posting a new story every Monday through Friday. Each of the 22 stories will tell you all a little something I’m thankful for. I think that’ll make up for my laziness with this blog as of late.

I hope you all enjoy…

Making Something From Not Much

I’m down in Southern Virginia this week for wineries, postcard shopping, and Bed & Breakfasts. I’m getting some work done as well, have the laptop with me and I’m taking in the brisk air, the smells of fall – the pumpkin cake and cider – and letting the creative juices flow.

I had a memory today and, since Robin’s taking a nap, I decided to turn it into a story. I got a whiff of chlorine today while driving from Williamsburg to Petersburg. Not sure where it came from, there are chemical plants along the way, but the instant I smelled the chlorine I was reminded of this pool we had back in Brooklyn. It wasn’t a large pool by any means. It was rectangular – probably around 12-feet long by 4-feet wide and around 2-and-a-half-feet deep. My family couldn’t afford a big pool but this was really all the pool we ever needed, anyway.

We used to load up this plastic container with chlorine tabs – it would bob around in the pool and, supposedly, clean the water. There wasn’t a filter on the pool so I’m still not sure how this processed worked but all I remember is how strong that water would be after the chlorine tablet dissolved. It would sting our eyes and burn our nostrils but we didn’t care, it was still the only pool on the block.

We treated it like any other pool. We found a way to dive into it – it was more of a head-first slide but it felt nice and smooth. Cannonballs didn’t hurt your tailbone too much, either, so we’d occasionally drop a cannonball in the pool. We actually played Marco Polo in that thing – it still amazes me. It was two-on-one and the polos got to stand and the marco had to stay on his knees. We played a baseball type game where the corners of the pool were the bases. I’m sketchy on how the ball was pitched and hit, I’m pretty sure we did it stoopball style off of the metal bar that went around the top of the pool. We even played that ring toss game except the people looking for the rings at the bottom of the pool were supposed to stay on their bellies and they were supposed to keep their eyes shut.

My parents treated it like a real pool as well. We had a skimmer to pull the bugs and leaves out of the pool. A pH kit to test the water levels. My parents would have the neighbors over and they’d all sit in the pool and have beers. Cleaning the pool was the best. We’d do it every couple of months – we’d start by siphoning the water out with several hoses. Once the water level was low enough we’d lift the pool 90-degrees and rest it on its side; spray the lining with the hose and scrub it down nice. Then we’d fill it back up – we’d sit around and watch the water level rise, anxiously waiting for it to get high enough so that we can take the first dive into the crisp and clean water.

It’s just funny – how kids learn to make the most out of what they have. Is there really any basketball hoop better than a metal garbage can? We can adjust the height of the garbage pail so that we can dunk on it and write the score along the side of the can in chalk. Kids didn’t need tall rims, a net, and a painted court – we just needed something we can throw a ball into, easily, that made a cool sound when we scored.

With a rock you can scratch out a hopscotch court and then used the same rock as your tossing stone. And, yes, the boys played hopscotch mainly so we could beat the girls as a substitute for kissing. If we found a piece of plywood we’d turn it into a skateboard ramp by just resting it on top of a curb. It appeared to give us a bit of lift and provided some fun before the inevitable break that caused someone to take a face-first digger on the sidewalk.

I think the happiest days where those when we found broken or discarded city property. Traffic cones where great for slalom biking or skating; payphones were great for breaking. Every throw a payphone off of a roof? It’s like the Juggernaut vs. Blob argument except the Juggernaut fucking explodes.

Stop signs – oh God I loved stop signs. Someone crashes into a stop sign and knocks the pole clear off and you have a great room decoration and a new grind pole for your skateboard.

I remember one time my friend David and I found a discarded LP deck. A real piece of shit, it hardly worked. We brought it into the house and spent the whole day using it to scratch my old records. “Pump Up the Volume” was no longer playable after that day.

Deserted cars – holy shit. If you were real lucky there were still some unbroken windows left behind – there’s nothing more satisfying than getting that front windshield to shatter. Looking back now, I wonder how many parked cars we smashed because some kid before us broke a window and slashed the tires – we just assumed it was deserted.

We were just all about making the most out of our environment. Good, cheap, wholesome fun.

Smart People and Stupid People

I really don’t have the time to do this but I’m going to do it anyway. Once this gets posted, I’m going to receive angry emails from at least five people demanding to know why I don’t have time for their stuff but I have time for this. Honestly, sometimes I just need to write, and that’s what I’m going to do.

I hang around Digital Webbing still. I have nothing against the place, occasionally I find an artist with potential there and, sometimes, I’ll find a writer that deserves a boost. But that’s honestly not the only reason I hang around there. The other reason I hang around there comes from one of the two pieces of advice my first boss gave me the day I left my job at TAO.

I worked at TAO for about four years. I was getting bored with the technical life, I wanted to do more marketing and managing (plus I honestly thought TAO was trying to sell themselves), so I signed on with a headhunter and I let him find me a new place. Within a week he sets me up with an interview with a very, very large government contractor, we’ll call them BFC as in “Big Fucking Company”.

BFC had some good people working there and they saw me in a bit more of a leadership role, sort of the think-tank guy that dispatches ideas and orders to the entry level guys (which is pretty amazing considering I was only 25 at the time and, technically, still entry level). It wasn't exactly what I wanted but it came with a 20k pay raise and, well, money makes decisions a lot easier sometimes.

I put in my resignation with TAO. They asked me how much BFC offered me and I told them, they flat-out told me that they couldn’t match that and wished me luck. I filled out my exit interview with TAO and wrote how I think they’re looking to be bought out. The HR woman told me that wasn’t true – I’m only saying this because 8 months later they were bought out (and my stock in the employee-owned company, which I decided to hold on to, doubled).

Anyway, it was my last day there. Everyone takes me out to lunch – I have a prime rib smothered in horseradish, one of my favorite meals. It was a good last day, no hard feelings – I liked most of the people I worked there with, after all. After lunch was when I went into my bosses office, the VP of TAO, and he tried to impart some of his wisdom onto me. I follow his advice like the bible, in my current job and in comics.

1) Always surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. It sounds like you’re shooting yourself in the foot, right? When he first told me this I sort of smiled, thinking it was a joke. But then he explained it – if your group does well, you do well, and they’re your group and people will recognize that. And, if someone from your group gets promoted above you, that’s someone that you helped out along his or her way to the top. That person deserves to be there, they would have gotten there anyway, and now you now have a friend in a powerful position.

You apply it to comics and you see why I still hang around Digital Webbing looking for the occasional diamond in the rough, why I latched onto Josh Fialkov, and why half of Postcards is filled with writers and artists that I believe in and why I’m pumping those guys up, trying to make them stars. It’s because I surround myself with people who are more talented than I am. And, if I invest in them early, not only will I potentially make a good friend out of it and help comics and all that jazz, I’ll also have someone thanking me down the road and, hopefully, helping me get gigs if I need them.

2) You get great ideas from two sources: Brainstorming with smart people and arguing with stupid people. Brainstorming with smart people is an obvious one, but why arguing with stupid people? Because stupid people have stupid solutions and they can’t understand why they’re stupid. If you argue with them, you usually have to counter every stupid argument they make with a well thought-out, intelligent response. Oftentimes, these responses are better than the position you held earlier. In other words: stupid people make you think better.

There are smart people to brainstorm with on Digital Webbing as well as The Engine. But there are plenty of stupid people to argue with on Digital Webbing as well. Just don’t let them get to you; keep countering their stupid arguments and you’ll keep coming up with better ideas.

I follow that advice in the real-world as well, obviously. After six months at BFC (which I like to refer to as my “Comic Making Internship”, I saw the writing on the wall the day I started working there and decided I won't actually do any work) I left (along with two of my coworkers) for a large, employee owned company that I’ll call GFC, Great Fucking Company. Same salary I had at BFC, more creative work, marketing, proposal writing, and management. And I constantly surround myself with people who are smarter than me and my bonuses are thick because my group does good work. I brainstorm with these smarter people and I seek out the stupid people in the company to argue with them.

And our little group is rapidly growing.

Anyway, I realize that I came here to write a story but ended up laying down the foundation for a future “Making Lemonade” column. I’ll go now. Sorry if I haven’t been responding to your emails/finishing the work I said I’ll finish.

Script. Flipt.

Update: Postcards is being delivered by the end of this month. It's been KILLING me. So much to do. Don't even have time to write good stories. Soon. Soon.

I'm in NYC this weekend, if anyone's around shoot me an email.

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Last night, after my “Golden Age of Cities” class at the Smithsonian, I went to Mr. Days and put down six-pints, ate a good portion of a two-pound prime rib, and watched as the Dems flipped the House and, essentially, flipped the Senate. If this was 1990 and if I was still some young wannabe hood living in Brooklyn, I’d have said, “We flipped the script.”

It’s amazing to me how this election wasn’t about issues, really. I’m not even a “vote-the-party-line” type of Democrat but there was nothing Jim Moran or Jim Webb could have said that would have made me vote against them. Because, to me, and to everyone I know, this election was all about sending a message. To the Bush White House to let them know we’re not happy with the way the country’s going and, in my case at least, to the rest of the world, to let them know we’re not all warmongering, self-righteous politicos and oil-barons.

This isn’t going to change anything, obviously. I’m just looking forward to two years of nothing happening because everyone’s going at each others throats. No laws passed, nothing to veto, no new Supreme Court judges going to the bench. Just two years of exactly where we’re at right now. The Dems getting the House and the Senate was the only way to truly “Stay the Course”. There’ll be no new wars, no new amendments – no nothing. Two years of mediocrity and lowering the deficit. Enough time to regroup and come up with a new strategy for 2008.

USA! USA! USA!

Last night got me to thinking a bit about my own platform I’d run on in I ever ran for office. I’d start my own party called the “Free Will Party” or something except, secretly, I’d call it the “Tough Love Party.” Essentially, I’d run on a platform where we become more Republic than Democratic, drastically lower federal taxes, and only use federal money for our military and their supporting offices (DoD, intelligence agencies, etc), intrastate regulation and transportation, federal employees left over, etc – the real brick and mortar and defense stuff that the country needs.

What I’d stop putting federal money towards is welfare programs, research, etc – all of the social programs. I’ll leave that up to the states, along with all laws governing social practices. So taxes will likely remain the same, federal taxes will go down and state taxes will go up. But each state will have the right to handle issues like abortion, gay marriage, welfare, affirmative action – fuck it, even the separation of Church and State – however they see fit. If Alabama wants to make abortion a punishable offense, let them. If Kansas wants to make it so that homosexuals have to go to Jesus Camp, let them.

Essentially, we’ll give the people the right to choose the state that’s right for them. And, what’ll happen, as these backwards state start to fall apart, unable to muster a stable economy to pay for all of their out-of-work residents, the progressives will move to the New Yorks and Californias of this world, shifting the power base even more to these large, liberal states, getting us more electoral votes, and making America a more progressive country.

Tough love. A lot of folks in these red states don’t know what they’re asking for, exactly, when they’re asking for themselves to be distanced from our politics. So, we distance them from our politics and, at the same time, we cut off the money we’re sending to them. Everyone’s happy, at first, until these red states realize they can no longer put food on their table.

Vote for me.