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As it turns out, I'm going up to Syracuse next weekend instead of this. Which is fine by me since I have about eight billion things to do plus I'm deep in the middle of the extraordinarily engrossing The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls' memoir about the worst childhood in the history of mankind on this planet.
I also need to finish my comic book prototype by Thursday's Big meeting with the Reverend Cal Cooley so I can beg the necessary funding to get it published. My operating budget at this point consists of the $147 in cash donations Jeremy and I took in during last month's food drive. There was some debate over whether this was an entirely honest transaction given that the people donating those crumpled ones and fives thought they were providing Thanksgiving Baskets for Poughkeepsie's Least Fortunate Families (Reverend Cal's rhetoric, not mine), but in fact, I'd made a point of talking up the food cart business in the one-sheeters I papered the supermarket with, so from my perspective at least, I was upfront about what I intended to use the cash for.
One hundred and forty-seven dollars, however, isn't gonna pay for publishing that comic book. Gonna have to pitch the right Reverend C for the additional costs.
Without any of my art supplies, and knowing my budget would probably constrain me to black and white, this is the type of artwork I came up with:
Ancient Rapidograph on a very old drawing pad.
In case you can't tell, the miscreant on the left is conducting a drug deal while the guy on the right is getting an A on his midterm (with the support and guidance of our wonderful youth program, of course!) For propaganda purposes, I figured it was better to make the kid peddling drugs white.
The Glass Castle is a fabulous book by the way, which completely deserves its more-or-less permanent residence on the New York Times bestseller list. It out-Mary Karrs Mary Karr! Its closest analog might be Dodie Smith's great, underrated novel I Capture the Castle, which beneath its Gothic veneer is a terrific look at the instinct to survive and thrive even amidst the worst kind of squalor.
Walls' parents are so monstrously self-absorbed and neglectful, so completely lacking in protective instincts, that one almost has to assume their four children's upbringing was some sort of bizarre social experiment. If so, it had a 75 % success rate. The oldest daughter becomes a successful illustrator; Jeannette first becomes a successful celebrity gossip columnist and then goes on to write a mega-bestseller; the only boy becomes a detective in the NYC police department.
There is one casualty: the youngest Walls daughter, Maureen. She gets diagnosed as a schizophrenic, though one suspects what she is really suffering from is severe post-traumatic stress disorder.
I almost want to write a Young Adult novel about the four Walls children, stranded in that ghastly hole in West Virginia with their two brilliant, monstrously self-absorbed parents. A magical Young Adult novel where they find an ancient coin that grants them wishes like the kids in those Edgar Eager novels I devoured last week.
###
I'm also mildly peeved with a guy I've been seeing who's been sending me these emails: Can't wait to get you in bed again! And I'm thinking, Really? Why would he think this would appeal to me more than, Gee, you really are an interesting person with fascinating opinions about "The Glass Castle," and I can't wait to hang out with you again.
Kind of like the courtship phase, dinner, interesting conversations and pleasant activities, ends when you sleep with them. After that, the relationship is about sex.
Sex is okay. But you know what? Sex without love is actually rather boring. I mean, yes, you have orgasms. So what? I can have orgasms with my vibrator. And then I can read!
I've slept with two new guys in the past month, and in both cases it was pleasant enough but I can't imagine that my sexual expertise is really at such a high level that it leaves them gibbering. Yet, gibber they do. I don't know what that's all about.
One guy – not the emailer – actually showed up here unannounced in Poughkeepsie earlier this week.
"Can I come up?" he said glancing eagerly at the ramshackle house where I live.
"Uh – no you can't," I said. "Sorry. My landlady is a Pentecostal minister. She disapproves of gentlemen callers."
"Well, then, can I take you out?"
I was tempted to say, Sorry, I have to wash my hair, but instead I said gently, "Not a good idea."
He scowled. I suppose he saw his behavior as an impulsive, romantic gesture, but I just thought it was stalkerish. Which just kind of verified my initial take that all along, in our respective minds, we'd been starring in two very different types of movie.
I also need to finish my comic book prototype by Thursday's Big meeting with the Reverend Cal Cooley so I can beg the necessary funding to get it published. My operating budget at this point consists of the $147 in cash donations Jeremy and I took in during last month's food drive. There was some debate over whether this was an entirely honest transaction given that the people donating those crumpled ones and fives thought they were providing Thanksgiving Baskets for Poughkeepsie's Least Fortunate Families (Reverend Cal's rhetoric, not mine), but in fact, I'd made a point of talking up the food cart business in the one-sheeters I papered the supermarket with, so from my perspective at least, I was upfront about what I intended to use the cash for.
One hundred and forty-seven dollars, however, isn't gonna pay for publishing that comic book. Gonna have to pitch the right Reverend C for the additional costs.
Without any of my art supplies, and knowing my budget would probably constrain me to black and white, this is the type of artwork I came up with:
Ancient Rapidograph on a very old drawing pad.
In case you can't tell, the miscreant on the left is conducting a drug deal while the guy on the right is getting an A on his midterm (with the support and guidance of our wonderful youth program, of course!) For propaganda purposes, I figured it was better to make the kid peddling drugs white.
The Glass Castle is a fabulous book by the way, which completely deserves its more-or-less permanent residence on the New York Times bestseller list. It out-Mary Karrs Mary Karr! Its closest analog might be Dodie Smith's great, underrated novel I Capture the Castle, which beneath its Gothic veneer is a terrific look at the instinct to survive and thrive even amidst the worst kind of squalor.
Walls' parents are so monstrously self-absorbed and neglectful, so completely lacking in protective instincts, that one almost has to assume their four children's upbringing was some sort of bizarre social experiment. If so, it had a 75 % success rate. The oldest daughter becomes a successful illustrator; Jeannette first becomes a successful celebrity gossip columnist and then goes on to write a mega-bestseller; the only boy becomes a detective in the NYC police department.
There is one casualty: the youngest Walls daughter, Maureen. She gets diagnosed as a schizophrenic, though one suspects what she is really suffering from is severe post-traumatic stress disorder.
I almost want to write a Young Adult novel about the four Walls children, stranded in that ghastly hole in West Virginia with their two brilliant, monstrously self-absorbed parents. A magical Young Adult novel where they find an ancient coin that grants them wishes like the kids in those Edgar Eager novels I devoured last week.
I'm also mildly peeved with a guy I've been seeing who's been sending me these emails: Can't wait to get you in bed again! And I'm thinking, Really? Why would he think this would appeal to me more than, Gee, you really are an interesting person with fascinating opinions about "The Glass Castle," and I can't wait to hang out with you again.
Kind of like the courtship phase, dinner, interesting conversations and pleasant activities, ends when you sleep with them. After that, the relationship is about sex.
Sex is okay. But you know what? Sex without love is actually rather boring. I mean, yes, you have orgasms. So what? I can have orgasms with my vibrator. And then I can read!
I've slept with two new guys in the past month, and in both cases it was pleasant enough but I can't imagine that my sexual expertise is really at such a high level that it leaves them gibbering. Yet, gibber they do. I don't know what that's all about.
One guy – not the emailer – actually showed up here unannounced in Poughkeepsie earlier this week.
"Can I come up?" he said glancing eagerly at the ramshackle house where I live.
"Uh – no you can't," I said. "Sorry. My landlady is a Pentecostal minister. She disapproves of gentlemen callers."
"Well, then, can I take you out?"
I was tempted to say, Sorry, I have to wash my hair, but instead I said gently, "Not a good idea."
He scowled. I suppose he saw his behavior as an impulsive, romantic gesture, but I just thought it was stalkerish. Which just kind of verified my initial take that all along, in our respective minds, we'd been starring in two very different types of movie.
