Month: May 2009

Tell me one interesting or weird fact about yourself, for each letter in your given name

Lorna in Wonderland, who came by my blog a few weeks ago, did this, so what the heck.

R…I had long thought that ROGER was just a random name that worked in my father’s ROG (Roger Owen Green) motif. However, when my sisters were recently sorting out some papers at my mother’s house, there were references in my late father’s handwriting to a Roger that clearly predated me. He’s unknown to my mother. Could he have been a childhood friend, an army buddy? Inquiring minds are frustrated that the trail is so cold.

O…I’ve watched at least some portion of the OSCARS very year as long as I can remember. Increasingly, it’s not to find out who won – I generally don’t even watch them in real time anymore, but what they say, how they say it, and how they look. In the early days of my current job, we used to try to tune the radio to the CBS television affiliate at 8:37 Eastern time one winter morning to catch the Oscar nominations; this was before one could just wait for it to show up on the Internet.

G…I’ve had GLASSES as long as I can remember. One time in junior high, I had to give some report using the outline written on the blackboard in the back of the room. The problem was I couldn’t READ the blackboard in the back because I had broken, or possibly lost, my glasses. So I used binoculars. Everyone laughed, but I didn’t know what else to do.

E…In almost every unfamiliar building I enter, I look early for the EXIT sign, in case of an emergency. I think that is why I volunteer to be the fire marshal for my office, even though I’ll be the last one to the exit.

R…The only reason I ever wanted to be Roman Catholic is that they had ROSARY beads, and they seemed cool. At a church study last Advent, I actually made some quasi-rosary beads, and the device I used to remind me of a pair of Bible verses I remember from my childhood,
Galatians 5:22-23:
But the fruit of the Spirit is
*love,
*joy,
*peace,
*longsuffering,
*gentleness,
*goodness,
*faith,
*meekness,
*temperance:
against such there is no law.

ROG

ROG

Mother’s Day


My mom is a good woman. She’s not particularly flashy; whereas my father would dominate a room, my mom would work quietly in the background. If they were casting The Hare and the Tortoise, my father would be the Hare, running off in all directions , not necessarily along the designated path. My mother would plug along unobtrusively. And you know how that story turned out.

At my father’s funeral, my sister sang “Wind Beneath My Wings” to my mother on behalf of my father. No, my father never sang that, probably seldom said it. (And yes, it’s a treacly song, but one gets a pass when dealing with grief.)

There were lots of adults in my mother’s early life, including at least one uncle, one aunt, and a very domineering maternal grandmother. Then she married this multitalented singer-painter-bunch of other hyphenates. Perhaps this explains that at some level, she’s still finding herself.

I haven’t seen my mom in over a year, though we talk on the phone regularly, but I’ll see her next month, ironically around Father’s Day.

Happy Mother’s day, Mom.

Carol’s a good mom. Lydia and I almost certainly wouldn’t get out the door in time every weekday to catch the bus if not for her. While I dress the child, Carol does her hair and makes sure I have the right accouterments, whether it be blankets for nap time or her swimsuit. At night, she picks her up from daycare, makes us dinner, makes sure she has clean clothes. I usually give the medicines and get her into the pajamas, but Carol makes sure Lydia’s teeth are brushed and flossed before I read stories and sing songs. And on Thursday nights, when I have church choir rehearsal, Carol does all of the tasks above.

It’s not just the functions, though. Lydia feels safe and secure with her mommy, and that makes me very happy.

I’m sure Lydia has made something for her award-winning mom so she can wish her a Happy Mother’s Day as well.
***
Best wishes to Gordon’s mom re: her liver transplant. And to Gordon as well.
***
Jaquandor’s loving tribute to his late mother-in-law.


ROG

ROG

Is affluenza over QUESTIONS

The one thing I eworry about in terms of thee “economic recovery” is that I hope the assummptions are not that people are going to spend like they did a year or two ago. It’s been oft cited that consumer spending makes up 65% to 70% of the American economy. But with people paying off credit card debt and, of all things, saving money, it does not appear to be much room for spending, certainly not the spending we saw not so long ago. Add to this environmental concerns about overpackaging, and unreliable items, many from China, and we may see a new generation not unlike the Depression generation.

Last month, Pew Research did a survey of what items Americans considered luxuries as opposed to necessities. This article shows that there are a large number of items more Americans believe they can do without from clothes driers to dishwashers and from microwaves to home air conditioners

Certainly I could do without all of those things as well as a cell phone; don’t even have a flat screen TV or an iPod. I might get a flat-screen TV someday, but the 1987 19″ set has to die first. Some people say, “You don’t know what it’s like” to have stereo, high def TV and this is true, but since I don’t have it, I don’t miss it.

But my slowdown in acquiring is fueled less by the economy and more by limitations of both space and an ability to use “stuff”. If I have 1600 CDs, and I listen to them five hours a day, it might take over half a year just to hear them each disc once.

1. What items on the Pew list could you live without?
2. Are you buying more or less than three years ago? If less, is it because of economics, being satiated, some other reasons, or some combination?
ROG

ROG

GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Britten and Brülightly


Three or four weeks ago, I received a package in the mail at work, opened it, thought it looked nice and put it on the shelf. This week, weeding my e-mails, I came across a missive from a woman named Ashley, dated March 17, asking me if I would like to receive a review copy of Britten and Brülightly, “Hannah Berry’s gorgeously drawn and strikingly original debut graphic novel murder mystery.”

So, I thought I had better actually READ the thing. Yes, it LOOKED nice; I could tell that at first glance. But I’ve always been one of those people where the greater issue is the story. Serviceable art can support a great story, but the best art can’t save a lousy tale, IMO.

Now I’ve promised -again – that I’d write a review. But what if it’s just not very good?

Fortunately, it’s very good.

I enjoyed this from the very first sentence: “As it did every morning, with spiteful inevitability, the sun rose.” It conveys a noir mood, but it is punctuated with a certain whimsy, as provided by the interplay between “researcher” Fernández Britten and his unlikely partner, Stewart Brülightly, as they attempt to figure out whether a women’s dead fiancé committed suicide, as the police concluded, or was murdered, as she maintains.

English author Berry has blended characterization and story together in a seemingly effortless way. Upon further inspection, the art does not merely accompany the story, it really enhances it.

There are points where the narration explains the story, lest you miss it in the drawing; ultimately, this turns out to be a good thing. The one criticism I’ve seen is that the cursive narration can be difficult to read; I did not find this to be so.

The book retails for $20, but of course, one can find it for less on Amazon. Go see some sample pages.
***
Beaucoup Kevin’s very positive review.

ROG

ROG

SOLD OUT Part 6 by John Hebert (the conclusion)

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

‘Twas the day before Hallowe’en ’86, and I’d finally finished what was to be my first comic book art assignment and was on the way to deliver the pages to the printer. The girlfriend and I were in my trusty Camaro, speeding along the NY State Thruway toward the printer in Gloversville with the bundle o’ funnybook art nestled in the back seat whilst bad 80’s tunes (then again, was there any other kind of 80’s tune?) blared from the in-dash Delco. It was pretty darned cold that afternoon, but I kept the heater off to keep me uncomfortable and maintain what little edge I had left as the last thing I needed was to fall asleep at the wheel – I’d been up so long that I was ready to drop and I still had miles to go before sleep.

We alternated between exhausted whimsy and dead silence as we drove on, the whole project had been electrifying yet draining and once we’d completed what we assumed to be the final stretch, we were eager for a return to normalcy, never guessing that all things normal were no longer an option in the life I’d chosen. We hopped off of the Thruway and hit the county roads, passing fields, barns, silos, livestock and some beautiful old farmhouses, the kind of which I had always held a grudging yen for, then, suddenly, it came to me – the entire area looked like the farm town in that awful “Halloween 3: Season Of The Witch” where they manufactured the possessed fright masks. Now maybe it was just a combination of exhaustion, the season and the late night cable reruns that had kept me company at my drawing board talking, but the fact that the town not only looked so similar and was virtually deserted gave me a major case of the creeps (much like many of the editors I would later work with!)

We plodded on, finally pulling up to the printing company – a very basic, nondescript brick and block building that also functioned as a newspaper office – the freelance printing had been a secondary income, utilizing and minimizing the down times between editions, but turning a nice and not-so-little profit for the company as I was later told. We were welcomed by the manager/editor/traffic manager who whisked us inside and gave us the tour of the place, as I’d earlier inferred, it WAS very basic, yet it was also quite impressive in the volume and quality of work produced there. Skulan really had found a true diamond in the rough for his printing needs. We laid out the pages on a composing table and went over everything, stressing certain things we needed and doing a couple of last, last minute corrections that even Tom and Raj hadn’t caught and took in the almost erotic experience of viewing my…very…first…printed…COVER WORK. Since we’d missed the initial, scheduled print run, the company had run all of the covers to avoid idle presses and a few of them were sitting around on desks, in boxes and trashcans. To this day, I regret that I didn’t grab some of the “rough cuts” that were gracing the previously mentioned wastepaper baskets as even flawed, those covers would have looked so cool pinned up all over the walls in my studio and rooms, but, c’est la vie. I wanted to eat and answer the more and more desperate call of Morpheus which I was finding more and more difficult to ignore.

We thanked the manager and left, stopping at a Burger King and filling up on cholesterol for the long drive home. As we ate, I stared across the road at what must have been the world’s smallest Pontiac dealership – basically the size of a gas station, with only 4 or 5 new cars splayed about their meager lot. I respected the quaint, bygone era nature of the area, but decided then and there that “Mayberry” probably wasn’t for me and that when the time came, I’d probably be NYC bound. The girlfriend and I talked about it as we jumped into the Camaro and headed back east, alternating between moments of giddiness at the prospects of being a real, honest-to-goodness working commercial artist, possibly living in the city, and then shifting back to melancholy at the less positive prospects it conjured.

The relationship had been increasingly more strained since I’d taken on the project, especially in the last couple of weeks when we’d bearded the dreaded deadline doom and now, for the first time, as I drove on I really began to wonder where we were going and if it might end up being “me” rather than “we”. She had another year of school left to complete, we’d all heard the stories and seen the effects of separation on relationships. I know what I was running over and over during those awkward silent moments on the interstate that day, and I think she must’ve been thinking about the same thing- either that or she was just visualizing a cow and pig wearing ballroom attire and dancing to “Turkey in The Straw”, it was so hard to read her.

We made it back to Albany, I said my goodbyes as I dropped her at her house, promising to call later on after some much needed shuteye and headed back toward Stately Hebert Manor with the window open and the stereo cranked to keep me awake and prevent me from thinking too much(it almost made me agree with a couple of Reagan’s policies…for a minute) as dusk began to settle. 10 minutes after swinging into my driveway, I had the blinds drawn and was profoundly out cold, having left a wakeup call for 1988 and grinning at the possibilities my future might hold as I dropped off.

Then my Mom came home. I’d only been asleep for around a half hour when she knocked on my door and reminded me nicely, yet curtly, that I’d promised to pick up a pumpkin for the front porch. Damn! I’d been so wrapped up in “The Project” that I’d let the usual, banal everyday stuff like a simple pumpkin get away from me. “Okay”, I muttered, let’s go get one and dragged myself to my feet. Of course, by the time I’d gotten up, gotten dressed, slogged out to the car and made it to the “pumpkin store”, they were: a. closing up and b. sold out(ironic) of the damned gourds anyway. I promised to pick one up at a farm store the next morning, then carve it and have the blasted thing lit just in time for the little vandals to wreck and headed for home and my bed once more.

I’d just dosed off when, off in a hazy distance, the phone rang and a unicorn delivered it to my door, announcing that it was Tom from Fantaco. He was very excited and explained that in the “lag time” we’d created by being late with the pages, the printing company had run every other assignment they’d had on “tap” just as they’d done the covers and now, with nothing else scheduled, they were actually going to print the entire run of “SOLD OUT!” #1 overnight, having it ready the very next morning. The girlfriend and I could drive back out to Gloversville the next morning, pick up a few cases of comics, drive back to Albany, and have them available for the inevitable influx of Friday afternoon customers. Wow! That’d be great…if I wasn’t A. exhausted, B. pissed off at the world, and C. numb from the shoulders up. Somehow, though, I heard my self agreeing to do it, hanging up, then calling she-who-was not-to-be–ignored and telling her of the great adventure we had in store for us the next morning ( AFTER getting a pumpkin of course!), then I hung up and headed for my bed. Of course, I was now so overtired and yet wired that I couldn’t sleep, so I stayed up and cleaned and organized my studio, finally sacking out at around midnight. I’d been up for something like 36 hours at this point and I had another long drive ahead of me.

At around 1 p.m. on Friday, October 31st, 1986, the girlfriend, several cases of my first published work, and a pumpkin, pulled up in front of FantaCo in that very same dark green Chevette that had been a part of the beginning of all of this fiendish plot, somehow coming full circle. We trotted into the store, announced our presence and the FantaCo crew surrounded us, cracking the cases open, diving into the books with joy, satisfaction and relief, just as I when I’d picked them up at the printing plant some 90 minutes before and when I’d stolen more than a few looks at them while driving back and steering with my knees. It had been a job well done, they all agreed and now, it was time to let the general public get a crack at the comics. We opened up a case which Tom personally placed on the floor in front of the main display racks which he always did with whatever was the “hot” book of the week like Miller’s “Dark Knight” or one of the never ending array of X-Men titles and the customers descended on them, picking the proverbial bones clean to a politely positive collective response and more than a few requests for signed copies. I’d done good. I was happy.

Roger wanted to take some photos of the auspicious occasion. We agreed, but first decided to slip into our Halloween costumes that we’d secreted away under the cases of comics…and the pumpkin in the car. A few minutes later, there we were, in full “Rowdy Roddy Piper” and “Cyndi Lauper” attire, leaning up against the logo’d front window of FantaCo, capering for Roger’s camera and…loving it, even when some Tony Danza-esque lobotomy scar wandered up and asked where we were wrestling that night. I told him it was a costume, he started naming venues, again, almost demanding where I’d be in the ring that night. I politely asked him what day it was. He said “Friday”. I asked the date. He said “October something”. I said “It’s HALLOWEEN!!!” He seemed to finally get it, then told me he hoped I’d win my match and wandered off as did we a few minutes later. Fortunately, I had the legs for the kilt.

That night, after all of the relatives and friends had gone over the comic with fine tooth combs (as had we, like, a thousand times), and the evening meal was done and the stream of annoying trick-or-treaters had died down, the hastily carved pumpkin burned on, casting its eerie, yet inviting light across my front lawn, she-who-must-remain-nameless and I lay on my bed, watching “Transylvania 6-5000” on cable, grinning a thousand, satisfied grins. I had never been able to visualize what my first publishing experience might be like although I’d waited, hoped and dreamed on it for so long, and now it had happened, and it was exhausting, exasperating, trying, stressful, draining, straining and countless other “ings”, but, as I dozed off my thoughts trailed off to that quote in “Where The Buffalo Roam” where Bill Murray summed up not only Hunter Thompson’s life, but my own now as well, when he uttered the immortal last line “It Never got Weird Enough For Me”. I couldn’t agree more, even now, on the other, back side of that long lost, sometimes lamented, sometimes not so much, career, but it was ONE HELL OF A RIDE!

John Hebert


Thanks, John. John is living happily ever after with his bride, who is NOT she-who-shall-not-be-named and working on the comic book Captain Action. There was a second issue, the conclusion of Sold Out, but that tale will be told another time.
ROG

ROG
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