I still think back fondly on those bucolic
days at CE pre-Friday Report. How everything’s
changed! From what I understand, Dan
the Man has been swarmed with admiring teenaged
girls, Rob is in talks to get his on TV show
on FX, and Larry, well, Larry is well aware that he
has duties as Minister to Propaganda to attend
to. To be fair, only once or twice did Larry say,
“take a picture of this,” and “Let me tell
you about this drawing; write it down.” And he didn’t
even seem particularly nonplused when I didn’t.
And I did get some of Matt Hollingsworth’s
amazing ale out of the whole deal.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me begin at the
beginning...
Remember those old Quinn-Martin shows?
Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones, the really
great theme music that they had, to say nothing
of the announcer, authoritative as the voice of
God, intoning, “The Streets of San Francisco,
A Quinn Martin Production.” And so I ask you to
conjure that voice, as solid as houses and
as ethereal as time, talking to you from the speakers of
your big-ass imaginary TV: “The Friday Report,
A Quinn-Martin Production. Starring Larry
Young, DJ Parasyte, Jeff Lester, and Brian
Hibbs. With Tom as the Pipe Layer. Special guest
star Matt’s Beer as Lola Falana. And
Konrad as Jennifer Beals. Tonight’s Episode: Too Few
Pictures.”
Yes, impressed with my bad self, and the praise
that I got from last report’s pictures, I barely
snapped any photos Friday. And to make
things worse, I actually screwed up a chunk of those
photos to boot. The auto-exposure on
the camera fixated on the light outside and so there are
photos where not only is everyone unidentifiable,
CE looks like some scary warehouse. All
thanks to your pal Ansel Adams here.
Future editions will be more picture laden, honest.
So Dan wasn’t around, off running errands,
or dealing with girls or whatnot. But both Rob and
Larry were there, waiting for my arrival.
“Hey,” Larry said, “see what I, Lord Bountiful, have
provided for you.” And with that, he
pulled out special guest star Lola Falana. Yes, a
bottle of
Shadow of the Groundhog
Imperial Stout, personally brewed by the multitalented Matt
Hollingsworth. Apparently Mr. Hollingsworth
whips
up a special Xmas brew that he gives to
select friends, and Larry received bottle
no. 5 of 14. “We have to let it warm for an hour after
taking it off the ice,” Larry said, beating
back Rob and I with a chair as we blindly gibbered and
clawed for the bottle of beer. “We
have to wait for another forty-five minutes before we can
break it open.” And
so proceeded to pass the longest forty-five minutes of my life.
“Check out the latest Onomatopoeia,” Larry
said, and then proudly added, “I robbed you of
photo credit.” Sure enough, there were
my photos, fumetti-ized with comical captions and word
balloons and a charming lack of attribution.
“But look how well they turned out!” Larry added.
And this is a sad confession to make, but
it’s true; I was actually charmed by this whole
transaction, as it had a sort of Peter Parker/J.
Jonah Jameson quality to it. Comic books, they
will eat your soul.
For those of you who don’t read Onomatopoeia,
I highly recommend it. It’s a tag-team of
hilarity, lovingly assembled by Mr. Young,
and having a lot more heart than those rather sad
slips of paper that other comic stores assemble
for their subscribers. Larry riffs on upcoming
comics, Brian personally assembles the actual
sub form (and adds, for no extra fee, a sort of
“Where’s Waldo” puzzle where one tries in
vain to find the item that Larry has hyped that Brian
didn’t think was worth the trouble.
Also enjoyable, though not nearly as much of an educational
brain-teaser, is catching those items that
Brian recommends that Larry openly disses), and a
broken shell of a man (me, of course) yammers
on about comic books for, oh, 1100 words or so.
In addition, Larry throws in whatever art
that he thinks appropriate, most of it original unseen
pieces.
For example, the cover
to Onomatopoeia No. 50, out now and flying off the counter at CE.
“Lemme tell you about this cover. You’ll
love this,” Larry said, throwing a brotherly arm around
my shoulders. After a moment, he stared
at me. “Get your pen out.”
You know what I miss? I miss being a
little kid and reading comic books and calling the heroes
by the title. As a method, it worked
well. “So then Incredible Hulk runs into the Fantastic Four
and he’s really mad, so...” and here’s where
the method hit its snags, “so Rock-Man runs up and
hits the Incredible Hulk and Stretching Man
says ‘No, Ben, you’re just making him
strong–Arghh!’” Or trying to have conversations
about who’s stronger, Superman or Shazam. You always got some wise-ass
going, "what are you talking about, Shazam is an old guy."
Why do I miss this? Because I’m fucking
senile, that’s why. Larry shows me a beautiful Darick
Robertson drawn picture of Jesse Custer and
Spider Jerusalem drinking and laughing together,
and I actually think, “Hey, it’s Preacher
and, uhhhh........” I know the bald guy’s name is not
Transmetropolitan, it’s, uhhh......... and
in fact Preacher’s name is, uhhh........ Jack Daniels?
James Dillon? Uhhh.......starts with
a J. Jesse! Jesse....Dillon? Jesse..... uhh....
Anyway, in tribute of those happy care-free
days of being five years old, and those apparently
unstoppable days of advanced Alzheimer’s,
allow me to explain the beauty of Darick’s drawing,
partially as Larry explained it to me, and
partially as I understood it. Preacher is laughing and
drinking a bottle of Lone Star, Transmetropolitan
is drinking a pint of fermented monkey sperm.
“No, wait,” Larry corrected himself, “Genetically
altered fermented monkey sperm.” Whew,
that’s a relief. As long as it’s not
a frothy pint of non-genetically altered fermented monkey
sperm. On the other hand, I would be
swigging monkey sperm morning noon and night if it kept
my brain from crystallizing further.
It only took me less than a minute to remember Spider
Jerusalem’s name (because what the hell else
could I mix it up with), but it took me ten minutes
to remember Jesse Custer’s name. Ten.
Minutes.
Fortunately, they were ten minutes during
which everyone was distracted because Konrad
showed up. Konrad shows up infrequently,
or else shows up frequently but I’m never around.
Konrad is a fellow
of monstrously good cheer, and puts me to shame in the booming laugh
department (a fact which would make many
of friends blanch in shock). I’m not really sure
what he buys regularly; more on this as it
becomes available. “Yeah, so, anyway,” he starts
telling Larry, “they’re having open auditions
for Stomp here in San Francisco. And me and
some friends are going to go in dressed as
Jennifer Beals!”
“No!”
“Oh, yeah! We’re going in with the torn
shirt, and these curly wigs and shit, and just let us
loose!” Cue the booming laugh. “We’re
going to bring in a boombox....”
“Just like....”
“Just like the movie!” This all strikes
us as the best idea that we’ve ever heard, except for
opening up the beer, which sounds even better.
So Lola Falana is broken open, poured into three
equal cups, and then Larry, Rob and I toast
Konrad, who is abstaining.
Dear God. Matt Hollingsworth is the
Steranko of beer brewers, you know what I’m saying? A
perfect masterful blend of elements, controlled
and synthesized with an innate understanding
(also, Matt only brewed fourteen bottles
of the Groundhog Imperial Stout, and Steranko only
drew fourteen issues in his whole career,
so there you go). Or, as Rob succinctly put it, “Yo, this
stuff will fuck you up.”
“I’m buzzed on two sips,” Larry says, smacking his lips.
“How much alcohol is in this,” I ask, as the
center of the store starts to waver slightly from side
to side.
“Ummm....” Larry checks the bottle. “Eight and a half percent alcohol.”
“Wow.”
“It’s very nutty,” I say.
“Lemme smell, lemme smell,” Konrad says, coming over and takes a whiff. “Whoa.”
“I’m almost sorry I didn’t keep this all to myself,” Larry says taking another appreciative sip.
“Okay, let me taste it,” Konrad says.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to drink,” Rob says.
“Aw, it’ll be okay,” Konrad says, and then takes a sip from Larry’s cup. “Wow.”
“Good, huh?”
Konrad smacks his lips. “I’ll say.”
Pause. “Okay, I’m gonna go to a liquor store now and hold
it up.” Cue the booming laughter.
“Gimme all your booze! Gimme all your booze!”
“Not really.”
“No, no. I’m just kidding. There’s nothing out there as good as that, anyway.”
And so the afternoon passed, with all of us (except Konrad) drinking our beer slower and slower. It disappeared all too soon, and then I went out and got the usual sixer of Bass. But it wasn’t quite the same, somehow.
Comic conversation was mostly light again,
for reasons unknown. Rob and Rachel had finally
gone to see Princess Mononoke, which I still
haven’t seen. Rachel and I are both Miyazaki fans,
though, and she had finally managed to drag
Rob to it. “Yeah, it was pretty good,” Rob said. “It
starts out great, with lots of totally cool
fight scenes, and then it got kinda dull.”
“Kinda dull, huh?”
“Yeah, it was okay, it got kinda talky in
the middle, not enough decapitations, and then it gotta
pretty cool at the end....”
“More decapitations?”
“Yeah! But it needed more.”
“So, Rachel liked it?”
“Oh, yeah, Rachel loved it.” Rob shrugged, obviously philosophically resigned to the differences that men and women usually have about that decapitation thing, and drank more beer.
We end up talking about what to call the new
decade; the naughties, the oughties, the big zeros.
As is his wont, Larry says something completely
brilliant that I didn’t write down, but something
along the lines of “The Seventies were the
‘Up with People’ decade. The Oughties will
be the ‘Soylent
Green is People’ decade.”
As we all nodded sagely at this observation, he added, “It’s the
repetition that makes that funny.”
Around that time, Brian
shows up and sets himself up. And, around this time, Larry starts
getting a
little cranky. “Man, I bust my ass
putting out this issue,” waiving around the Onomatopoeia,
“and I don’t get any acknowledgment for it.
I want my props.”
“I gave you your props,” Brian said. “It’s brilliant.”
“Fuck the props,” Larry says without a pause, “I want money.”
And so Larry and Brian
go at it, sort of like playful adorable bearcubs, if you armed the
cubs
with knives and lead pipes and copies of
‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ And at this, tender
reader, I myself turned away, and things
could have indeed gotten ugly, but then Tom showed
up.
Tom, as far as I can tell, is to Comix Experience
what the Phantom Stranger used to be to the
Justice League. He shows up at times
of crisis and manages to affect the outcome merely
through his oddly enigmatic presence.
From what I remember, Tom is an old-school Superman
fan, Weisengerian if I may coin a phrase,
and I recall talking with him a while ago about us both
enjoying Moore’s revamping of Supreme.
As is my wont, I ask Tom about his New Year’s.
“It was okay. I was out with a bunch of 20 year old kids who just can’t keep up with me.”
“Tom is the Galactus of pot,” Larry says.
“It’s true,” Tom says
with an utter deadpan. “That’s what the 20 year olds are for.
They’re my
Silver Surfer.”
At this point, the image of the Silver Surfer
riding a big glistening bong through the cosmos
enters my brain and refuses to leave, all
through the rest of the conversation, which is mainly
about Tom’s rather evocative job descriptions.
“Tom’s a pipe layer,” Larry says.
“And a steam fitter,” Tom adds.
“And a steam fitter,” Larry says.
“Wow,” I say. “Pipe layer AND steam fitter. That’s certainly....”
“Yes,” Tom says, again with the perfect deadpan. “Yes, it is.”
And so it went. At this point, my notes
give up and my mind gets blurry. I attribute it to Lola
Falana, or maybe the rest of the pack of
Bass, as my next memory is waking up on the floor of
my room, an umbilical of sleep drool stretching
from the side of my head to the pile of
funnybooks where Transmetropolitan and Preacher,
obviously made of stronger stuff than I,
toast my good health.
All material on these pages is © 2000 by Jeff Lester. With the
exception of non-profit distribution, all other rights are reserved.
