Maybe You Have Losergooberaphobia
October 19, 2003 Sunday 11:40 PM
Just saw a TV Land 60 Minutes thing on Charles Schulz. ...sigh...a little depressed. Sparky (as he liked to be called) was/is the whole reason I became a toonist in the first place. (This was back in the mid’70s when I was 7, and his strip hadn’t become lame yet.) Garfield got me back into tooning in late 1986. (It was Jon Davis’ daily salary, not his strip that got me back into stripping.) Clearly Bloom County is the major influence on Loon News:The Comic Strip!, but there’s still plenty of Peanuts in my tooning stool. Eric is Charlie Brown without the athletic aspirations.
Anyway, always wanted that kind of Schulz fame, wealth, and adoration from the world. After I pay rent I’ll have $6 until November 7. I love tooning. I’m not solely in it for the lucrative merchandising deals. Why would I draw over 700 toons, or come back after I tried to walk away from it in 1999 if I didn’t love it? (Unless I’m like a heroin addict and I just can’t give up the sweet, sweet comic strip smack.) But, ya know, I want that fame and wealth. Schulz was inspired by the $1,000 a week Frank King got for doing Gasoline Alley.
He feels the same way I do. Don’t get too happy, cause a bad time will come around and squash it. He basically said that.
Ya know those NIGHT TERRORS I was talkin’ about, well, seemed that he had ‘em, too. I wondered if maybe I was losin’ it. But Sparky had ‘em too, so he saids, and he certainly seemed like a sane, kind man. But I guess it’s easier to deal with the NIGHT TERRORS when your disgustingly filthy rich, and have cemented your place in history in what you wanted to cement yourself in.
Besides dying alone, it scares the life out of me if I never become a paid toonist. What was the point of drawing all these toons then? What if I get to 60 and I’m still drawing toons for free for an audience of 25? What would’ve been the point of that 60 years? Pointless persistency?
As for the NIGHT TERRORS, though, they’ve eased up a lot since I’ve slept and napped pretty well the last week. I still have a sense of doom, though. And I don’t like it. Is this what 34 is? Feeling like time is running out? Realizing you are going to die someday. It’s not just a back of the mind thing. 34 really did come (and damn quick, too.) So you know the other is going to come. Someday there will be just a Mike. No Mike & Eric.
I’m really against dying and death. The whole thing just seems so unpleasant.
I’ll really miss Christmas after I die. I do love it so. Uh, hopefully in the very, very distant future after an extremely long, and very healthy life.
Maybe I just need to get laid.
*********************************
Wendy left a message today. She said, “You must’ve gotten a life. I envy you.” Made me laugh. ‘specially after last night.
I was very bored last night. Didn’t feel like tooning, and I’m so far ahead I can more than afford to slack off a bit. I have enough toons to get me through till January 21. Didn’t feel like writing either. Just didn’t feel like sitting, I guess. Wish I had a girlfriend to go do something with, or cash and a car that didn’t scare me to drive very far from home in. Would’ve gone to a mall or Target and bought myself a new Lego set.
Instead I did what every never-been-married single man in his mid 30s does when he’s bored on a Saturday night. I vacuumed the rug and ironed some shirts. Then I stopped at the store, bought some tomato sauce, Halloween chocolate chip cookie dough, and I made a nice plate of ravioli.
Suddenly I feel like wearing a pastel cardigan, wearing my glasses on a chain around my neck, and opening an antique store.
When she called tonight I was having supper at my parents house. They were in Williams yesterday. Had I knowed that I would’ve gone over to the house and scanned off a steaming pile of toons for the LN:TCS! CD book I’ve been working on. That’s what I really wanted to do last night. I’m down to the last folder of toons to scan. (Only about 150 to go before I’m done.)
*********************************
Thursday was the 9th anniversary of my first night in my first apartment. October 17, 1994. Thought about going to the place, walk around, go by my first apartment. Didn’t get the chance, though. My only open time was 1:30 AM, and at that time I’d much rather go home, have some tomato soup, and go to bed. Maybe for the 10th anniversary I’ll stop by.
Maybe it’s for the best. The last time I set foot there was on the 4th anniversary. 1998. I stood across from my apartment and looked at it. Pondering how things changed in only four years. When I moved in I was a 25 year-old virgin, with no hope of a girlfriend in sight, and hoping I wouldn’t have to move back in with my parents.
Now, in 1998, Wendy and I have been together for 2 1/2 years, we’ve got a very nice apartment together. From there we’ll go to a house, and we’re clearly going to get married and spend the rest of our lives together.
When I came home Wendy brought a Ding Dong with an unblowable-out candle in it. I felt like celebrating four years of liberation that night.
Now, hmm, I’m not sure I wanna go there just now. Right now I would be rocketed back to the days of 1995, a much more pleasant time than now. (Even if they did include Target.) I’ve been getting misty for those mid-90s days. I’d like to go back to November 1995 and work from there. Be right at the precipice when every single thing (except syndication) just effortlessly fell in my lap. The Beatles reunion. The first conversation with Wendy in December 1995. The car wasn’t as worrisome. I was younger, 15 pounds lighter, much less concerned with my own mortality and hairline. Still had time. And of course, breakfast and lunch with Gramma every day.
Eventually I’d have to be jolted back into today. Probably as soon as I started my car and the engine raced more than it’s s’pose to.
Maybe in 9 years time I’ll look back on today like that. Perhaps I’m on the edge of everything going my way again. Things have felt differently lately. A little off, slightly askew. Everything’s familiar, but different. Like I walk into my apartment and everything's where it should be, except my keys are on a different peg. Things could be setting themselves up for a turn around. I ‘spect to have a little more money next year, and soon I’ll start drawing a series of toons where my cartoon counterpart gets a girlfriend. The last time I fooled around with the format, in 1995, and made Eric the babe-getter for a few strips, two girls came out of nowhere and I dated both of them for a month. Picked the far superior one of the two. (YES! YOU!) It’s a Twilight Zone conundrum: Does the cartoonist control the real universe through his comic strip universe?
I’m not giving Eric a girlfriend hoping that it will get me a girlfriend in real life. I’m doing it to close up some separations between me and my cartoon counterpart.
Even though I’m getting a doom vibe lately, I get a good one from the next year. Most likely some false hope, but also because I am WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYY overdue for a good year.
So here’s to 2004. I don’t want to be 35.
Just saw a TV Land 60 Minutes thing on Charles Schulz. ...sigh...a little depressed. Sparky (as he liked to be called) was/is the whole reason I became a toonist in the first place. (This was back in the mid’70s when I was 7, and his strip hadn’t become lame yet.) Garfield got me back into tooning in late 1986. (It was Jon Davis’ daily salary, not his strip that got me back into stripping.) Clearly Bloom County is the major influence on Loon News:The Comic Strip!, but there’s still plenty of Peanuts in my tooning stool. Eric is Charlie Brown without the athletic aspirations.
Anyway, always wanted that kind of Schulz fame, wealth, and adoration from the world. After I pay rent I’ll have $6 until November 7. I love tooning. I’m not solely in it for the lucrative merchandising deals. Why would I draw over 700 toons, or come back after I tried to walk away from it in 1999 if I didn’t love it? (Unless I’m like a heroin addict and I just can’t give up the sweet, sweet comic strip smack.) But, ya know, I want that fame and wealth. Schulz was inspired by the $1,000 a week Frank King got for doing Gasoline Alley.
He feels the same way I do. Don’t get too happy, cause a bad time will come around and squash it. He basically said that.
Ya know those NIGHT TERRORS I was talkin’ about, well, seemed that he had ‘em, too. I wondered if maybe I was losin’ it. But Sparky had ‘em too, so he saids, and he certainly seemed like a sane, kind man. But I guess it’s easier to deal with the NIGHT TERRORS when your disgustingly filthy rich, and have cemented your place in history in what you wanted to cement yourself in.
Besides dying alone, it scares the life out of me if I never become a paid toonist. What was the point of drawing all these toons then? What if I get to 60 and I’m still drawing toons for free for an audience of 25? What would’ve been the point of that 60 years? Pointless persistency?
As for the NIGHT TERRORS, though, they’ve eased up a lot since I’ve slept and napped pretty well the last week. I still have a sense of doom, though. And I don’t like it. Is this what 34 is? Feeling like time is running out? Realizing you are going to die someday. It’s not just a back of the mind thing. 34 really did come (and damn quick, too.) So you know the other is going to come. Someday there will be just a Mike. No Mike & Eric.
I’m really against dying and death. The whole thing just seems so unpleasant.
I’ll really miss Christmas after I die. I do love it so. Uh, hopefully in the very, very distant future after an extremely long, and very healthy life.
Maybe I just need to get laid.
*********************************
Wendy left a message today. She said, “You must’ve gotten a life. I envy you.” Made me laugh. ‘specially after last night.
I was very bored last night. Didn’t feel like tooning, and I’m so far ahead I can more than afford to slack off a bit. I have enough toons to get me through till January 21. Didn’t feel like writing either. Just didn’t feel like sitting, I guess. Wish I had a girlfriend to go do something with, or cash and a car that didn’t scare me to drive very far from home in. Would’ve gone to a mall or Target and bought myself a new Lego set.
Instead I did what every never-been-married single man in his mid 30s does when he’s bored on a Saturday night. I vacuumed the rug and ironed some shirts. Then I stopped at the store, bought some tomato sauce, Halloween chocolate chip cookie dough, and I made a nice plate of ravioli.
Suddenly I feel like wearing a pastel cardigan, wearing my glasses on a chain around my neck, and opening an antique store.
When she called tonight I was having supper at my parents house. They were in Williams yesterday. Had I knowed that I would’ve gone over to the house and scanned off a steaming pile of toons for the LN:TCS! CD book I’ve been working on. That’s what I really wanted to do last night. I’m down to the last folder of toons to scan. (Only about 150 to go before I’m done.)
*********************************
Thursday was the 9th anniversary of my first night in my first apartment. October 17, 1994. Thought about going to the place, walk around, go by my first apartment. Didn’t get the chance, though. My only open time was 1:30 AM, and at that time I’d much rather go home, have some tomato soup, and go to bed. Maybe for the 10th anniversary I’ll stop by.
Maybe it’s for the best. The last time I set foot there was on the 4th anniversary. 1998. I stood across from my apartment and looked at it. Pondering how things changed in only four years. When I moved in I was a 25 year-old virgin, with no hope of a girlfriend in sight, and hoping I wouldn’t have to move back in with my parents.
Now, in 1998, Wendy and I have been together for 2 1/2 years, we’ve got a very nice apartment together. From there we’ll go to a house, and we’re clearly going to get married and spend the rest of our lives together.
When I came home Wendy brought a Ding Dong with an unblowable-out candle in it. I felt like celebrating four years of liberation that night.
Now, hmm, I’m not sure I wanna go there just now. Right now I would be rocketed back to the days of 1995, a much more pleasant time than now. (Even if they did include Target.) I’ve been getting misty for those mid-90s days. I’d like to go back to November 1995 and work from there. Be right at the precipice when every single thing (except syndication) just effortlessly fell in my lap. The Beatles reunion. The first conversation with Wendy in December 1995. The car wasn’t as worrisome. I was younger, 15 pounds lighter, much less concerned with my own mortality and hairline. Still had time. And of course, breakfast and lunch with Gramma every day.
Eventually I’d have to be jolted back into today. Probably as soon as I started my car and the engine raced more than it’s s’pose to.
Maybe in 9 years time I’ll look back on today like that. Perhaps I’m on the edge of everything going my way again. Things have felt differently lately. A little off, slightly askew. Everything’s familiar, but different. Like I walk into my apartment and everything's where it should be, except my keys are on a different peg. Things could be setting themselves up for a turn around. I ‘spect to have a little more money next year, and soon I’ll start drawing a series of toons where my cartoon counterpart gets a girlfriend. The last time I fooled around with the format, in 1995, and made Eric the babe-getter for a few strips, two girls came out of nowhere and I dated both of them for a month. Picked the far superior one of the two. (YES! YOU!) It’s a Twilight Zone conundrum: Does the cartoonist control the real universe through his comic strip universe?
I’m not giving Eric a girlfriend hoping that it will get me a girlfriend in real life. I’m doing it to close up some separations between me and my cartoon counterpart.
Even though I’m getting a doom vibe lately, I get a good one from the next year. Most likely some false hope, but also because I am WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYY overdue for a good year.
So here’s to 2004. I don’t want to be 35.