I was supposed to go upstate, but my plans fell through. I was grumpy and hateful and especially peeved at the drunk interlopers surging into my neighborhood. I spent a good chunk of the day home, ignoring all calls, and then I decided to visit my friend Aaron, who is the only person I could think of who would be more anti-social than me. I've been wildly unsocial the last two weeks, ignoring everyone (calls, texts, personal visits) and working exclusively on my book. Last night I could no longer work, so I went for a walk. I ran into some friends, had a few beers, saw a beautiful apartment/rooftop, had some excellent enchiladas, saw some fireworks, had decent conversations, and went home to work some more - but promptly fell asleep.
Lee Christmas was a man from New Orleans whose career and reputation was ruined after wrecking a train. He moved to Honduras, started working on the trains again, was kidnapped, and became a mercenary. He was a 'natural' mercenary and quickly climbed the ranks. He was reckless, had a death wish, and had a reputation as unkillable. At one point, he was in front of a firing squad and said, "Don't bury my body, so the buzzards can shit me on your heads." He escaped or they let him go.
When Gen. Bonilla of Honduras was disposed, Christmas and Bonilla escaped to New Orleans. In 1911, Sam "The Banana Man" Zemurray organized Gen. Bonilla, Lee Christmas and Guy "Machine Gun" Molony. They hired a gunship and a bunch of mercenaries, sailed down to Honduras, and took it over.
It will be a historical graphic-novel and I hope to serialize it here. I don't know how long it will be, and I don't know how long it will take to finish. The plot is worked out, but I still need to do a lot of research. I'm spending time in the NYC Research Library looking through their photo collections and digging through books and primary sources. I'm also reading a lot of fiction set in the period I'm interested in.
There's a lot to the story, but for now I'm staying quiet about the specifics until I actually start posting section. The plot is massive and I'm not sure what is staying in and what is going to get cut. I'm going to be posting various research based prep-drawings with only an occasional Book Review. Hopefully in another month I'll start serializing the story.
So I got this job making a comic style illustration for the Italian government. It was for a tech conference, and it was supposed to be a comic showing Italian businessmen the steps behind getting an U.S. patent. The job paid well, and as usual for any freelance gig, went back and forth over and over, until the finished product was watered down beyond recognition. To be honest, I'm not fond of the results, but the client was happy and that's all that matters in a freelance gig.
I grew up working class. We had a triple wide trailer, which made us lower class royalty. (One young girl made her money and came back and bought our family house which she and hers always called "the big house.") I needed to get out, and I did. I joined the Army, lived in Missouri, London, Massachusetts, LA, Vegas, traveled Europe, Mexico, the U.S., and eventually ended up in NYC. And ever since London, I've been surrounded by the upper middle class - kids who always knew they were going to college, kids whose parents had enough to bail them out of trouble, kids who had the glow of security and comfort that comes when you know that there is always a back-up plan if things get too bad.
I felt the patronizing stance my new friends had towards the poor, and the subtle superiority they felt - that their security was born out of hard work and not the lucky result of falling out of a well-off vagina.
This song hit me emotionally! I was completely surprised. Obviously, Shatner's voice is awful, and obviously the video is silly, but I never listened to the lyrics before!
For years I've heard the neutered version of the song and completely missed the original "fighting" version. The lyrics of "Common People" are pissed and up for a fucking fight. They're a nasty slap in the face and a complete fuck you, and they reminded me of how I felt as a dirt-poor young kid trying to figure out wealthy culture while living in London (and later in Massachusetts, and later in NYC).
Instead of the full song, I knew the video. It's bright and colorful and has a sugary bounce. But it attaches glamor to slumming, and suggests the song is simply about fucking some strange hot rich girl. The disdain is clear in the singer's voice, but it's coupled with narcissism and smugness, and in the video it seems more about the singer's predilection for pleasurable sexual conquest, and about his disdain of his one night stand.
But it's not that at all.
And I only found out because of Shatner's version. Shatner's voice is so wrong and he enunciates everything so clearly that I couldn't help but pay attention to the words and practically ignore the music.
And holy shit.
That song's lyrics (but not the song) gets the annoyance and anger I felt. I once tried to tell a friend that the parties in my hometown were some of the wildest I had ever experienced, even though I continued to be and out-of-control party kid and experienced some insane shit in London, Massachusetts, etc. But as I explained to my friends, I've never felt the nihilism I felt when I was growing up. Everyone fucked and got fucked up because there was no future, no hope. There was no college, no good jobs, no possibilities. I lucked out, of course, and will never go back, but yeah... Fuck tourism and fuck everyone who thinks they can "get it."
"Like a dog lying in a corner they will bite and never warn you. They'll tear your insides out, 'cos everybody hates a tourist, especially one who thinks it's all such a laugh. ... You will never understand how it feels to live your life with no meaning, or control, and with nowhere else to go."
The lyrics aren't great, but I'm surprised I never really listened to them before. They would've spoke to a younger me. Hell, they still speak to the younger me, but I know all this shit now.
Last weekend I went to the MoCCA (The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art) Festival which is a big fair for independent comics. Well, not independent, necessarily (DC's 'adult' imprint Vertigo had a small table) but comics that target adults (for the most part).
Weekend Photo Dump: Little Guy, Badminton and random
[Jun. 14th, 2008|05:05 pm]
Weekend Photo Dump
I noticed I don't have many pics of my turtles. I know I took some, but I lost all of my photos when my HD crashed awhile ago. So I took a few more of Little Guy, the last one standing.
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