25 things about me
This is a meme I did for facebook. There were long lists of names because I was naming facebook friends (and sort of letting everyone know how I knew them). I took most of them out, but left a bunch of the cartoonists. They're kind of public figures.
An incomplete yet overlong history of my short life, done as a "25 things about me" meme.
1. I have given up eating meat three times in my life. First when I was seven or eight, because I had that first realization that meat is made of animals, I love animals, so I'll stop eating them. My mom was supportive, but concerned that I wouldn't get enough protein. Fake meat technology was primitive in the 70's, so i remember some truly awful soy bacon. It was probably a coincidence, but I became sick soon after giving up meat, and I was convinced to start eating it again.
2. I was always the smallest boy in my class in school.
3. When someone asks me about sports these days I explain, "As a very small boy good at art and science, I never appreciated sports." I associate sports with bullying, and I'm mystified that so many people are into them, especially women. I've gotten to where I can watch a football game or baseball game and be entertained, but I have no allegiances, and I almost never seek out a game to watch.
4. I played french horn from fifth grade to seventh. I was never any good at it, in part because I never practiced, but probably also because I have no musical talent. Mostly people who remember it remember this little boy carrying this giant instrument case. It wouldn't fit in the aisle of the school bus so I would leave it at front; sometimes it would tumble down into the steps.
5. Growing up there were hundreds and hundreds of collections of comic strips in the house. At every tag sale my dad would buy whatever they had: Tumbleweeds, Broom Hilda, and lots and lots of Peanuts and MAD collections. My only real exposure to superhero comics as a kid were the collections of Marvel origin stories that were around, until my brother let me read his collection of The New Mutants books. I read MAD and Harvey Comics.
6. I always admired my brother, but we had a typical sibling relationship. He's six years older than me, so I had no chance to physically beat him at anything, so in wrestling matches I would play dirty or yell for mom. But I wanted to do everything he did, which I think is why I took up drawing.
7. Mostly I drew cartoon monsters and animals that don't exist. I always drew from my imagination, and was terrible at rendering from life.
8. The second time I gave up meat was in high school, over a summer. I don't even remember why I did. But I remember exactly where I was when I finally lapsed: I was in the Enfield Mall, during the Sunday flea market that was held there. I broke down and bought boneless spare ribs from the Chinese food place, the kind that are dyed pink. It gave me a huge stomach ache, but I didn't look back on eating meat for another 7 or 8 years.
9. In high school art class I gravitated toward sculpture, away from drawing. There were at least two guys (thinking here of Mike Russell and Howie Porter) who were amazing, and I felt like a jerk drawing in the same room as them. My awesome senior year art teacher Cheryl Bennett coached me to apply to art school so that I could move away from "supermarket sized" artwork, meaning pieces that are the size of things that fit in a shopping cart.
10. In art school I intended to major in sculpture. Instead I had to declare a major in design because you could get a break on tuition (Connecticut had no colleges with design programs, I guess). As soon as I got residency (and the tuition break that comes with it) I switched to a film--no wait, photo! major. Did that for a year, took a SIM class (and had a disappointing second semester photo prof) and switched to SIM. SIM is a great place if you know exactly what you want to do with your art and just need a supportive group to critique you. If you are a kid who isn't sure what he wants to do, well, it was fun anyway.
I did talking performance art, a couple performance pieces on my bike, and spent 24 hours in the building acting like an ape. My final year I did a series of trips to Revere Beach with whoever would come along, and we did some art out there, and I collected trash off the beach. My final piece was an assemblage of the objects I collected from the beach, arranged by color. My final project was a beach party with, among other things, pinatas shaped like sea animals filled with shotgun shells and tampon applicators I collected from the beach. Also my friends' band the Barking Brains played in the room, which was supposed to be decked out like the beach. Anyone who came wearing beach clothes got a free lei made of shotgun shells and tampon applicators.
11. Also while at Mass Art, I was recruited by my cartoonist friend Scott Melchionda (Scooter) to be the representative for the school comic book in Student Government, because he had a scheduling conflict. Scooter then had some kind of family emergency or something and kind of disappeared for a while. The Student Government wanted to know where the comic book they paid for was, so I scrambled together some comics from Nate Carroll, Tom Pappalardo, Rich Mackin, and non-Mass Art student Kevin Dickey. That was the birth of "Don't Shoot! It's Only Comics!"
It was only 16 pages and kind of sloppy, but once people knew it was out there, I got a lot more contributors; Ron Rege did the cover for the next one and had strips in almost all of the following issues. Greg Moutafis had the cover for issue three and was likewise in a lot of the following ones--he also became art director for the thing; any time the comic looked good, it was his doing. I left Mass Art after (I think) issue 4 but took the comic with me, and kept putting it out for 5 years. It was a cool showcase, and had work in it from people like Leela Corman, Miss Lasko-Gross, James Kochalka, Eric Drooker, Ariel Bordeaux, and probably a whole lot of other people I'm forgetting as I throw this thing together. I even went to a few comic conventions and met people like Keith Knight, Shannon Wheeler, and Dame Darcy. It ate up all my money (I had a settlement from a bike accident) and put me into debt, too, but it was one of the best times of my life.
12. For a time (1987-1996?) I went to rock and roll shows every week, sometimes more than one. I think I have permanent hearing loss from it (tinnitus). My favorite local band at first was Dogzilla then I found The Swirlies, Spore, Fuzzy, Papas Fritas, Syrup USA, Slughog, etc etc etc. Again, I wouldn't trade that part of my life for anything, but I don't like not being able to hear very well.
13. Like I said before, I've never had any musical aptitude, but that didn't stop me from buying a talking drum, just 'cause I thought it was beautiful. I was carrying it home on the subway, and a long-haired dude started chatting to me about it. As it turned out he was a graduate student at Berkelee, and he taught drum lessons. I agreed to be his student; he had me play along with "Eye of the Tiger" once--I found it kind of humiliating. I didn't practice enough, and didn't feel like I was improving much. Then he invited me to see him play, somewhere in Fanuel Hall. I went, and about a half hour into it, I realized it was a Christian Rock event. I left and never called him to explain why I canceled. I had taken four lessons.
14. In the late 90's I moved into a big group house in Brighton. The house had a tiny yard, that the landlady had gardened and landscaped in the past. In the summer it was totally overgrown and, I thought, very beautiful. I took it upon myself to try to identify all the wild plants in the yard. I had just started trying to identify birds, and started collecting field guides to try to figure everything out. As it turned out, almost everything in the yard was an invasive species, including black swallow-wort, and Oriental bittersweet, which I tried to train into a vine arbor. It was my first real study of wild things in the city, and became the zine called "The Urban Pantheist."
15. My third time giving up meat I was in my early 20's. There wasn't a single issue that made me make my decision, but the most important was factory farming. I said that I didn't want to be a part of an industry based on the suffering of so many creatures. I maintained that for about 15 years. I was working at a wildlife sanctuary that had a working farm on it, and decided that I could eat the meat from there, since I knew those animals were well taken care of. I came to decide that I wasn't really against animal agriculture at all. I hope that through the efforts of people like Temple Grandin that farms become better caretakers of their animals, but I'm no longer abstaining from eating them. I'm glad so many of my friends continue to be vegetarian, and I still love eating vegetarian food, especially from vegan restaurants like Grasshopper. Michael Pollan is right about how to eat: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
16. I put out The Urban Pantheist zine for a few years, and attracted the attention of a freelancer for the Globe. She wrote a profile, and that got the notice of the Boston Center for Adult Ed., who hired me to teach a class on Urban Nature. It was a pretty good experience, but it's not a subject that should be confined to a tiny, too-hot, closetlike classroom. I pitched the idea of an urban nature walk, and they went for it. They put a price of 40 bucks a head on it, and didn't get enough interest to run it. I decided to do it myself, for free, with some friends and friends of friends. I've been doing it for five years, but I haven't done one in a few months, mostly due to winter depression.
17. Urban Nature Walk has been to The Fens, The Muddy River, The Olmsted forest, Jamaica Pond, The Stony Brook Reservation, Franklin Park, The Forest Hills Cemetery, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Belle Isle Marsh, Mission Hill (including a stop at Flann O'Briens), Deer Island, Castle Island, and Spectacle Island. It's always a great time, and we continually surprise ourselves discovering nature in our own back yards.
18. I have volunteered taking care of captive wildlife at the Boston Science Museum, the San Francisco Zoo, Drumlin Farm, the Trailside Museum, and at Helping Hands Helper Monkeys for the Disabled. Lately I've thought maybe I should look into becoming a volunteer coordinator.
19. Despite my love of nature, and the fact that I describe myself as a Pantheist, I really really really really really really hate winter. I could list 500 things that I hate about it, but that's even more boring than what I've already written here. But here's two: 1) I miss the insects 2) It's by far the longest season.
20. My mom has had early onset Alzheimer's disease since (probably) I was a teenager. She started showing it by forgetting she had cigarettes burning in every room of the house. Then she started getting scared of the world--scared to drive, scared to leave the house. One day she just kind of freaked out and my dad asked "Do you want to go to the hospital?" and she said yes. That was over 15 years ago and she never returned home. She's in a nursing home, slowly losing faculties one by one. She cannot walk or talk, and recognizes no one and no thing, so far as anyone knows. She now can not feed herself, and few people are able to feed her without her aspirating her food. She weighs about a third of what she used to. I'm fairly sure she will die this year, probably sooner rather than later. I want to write a eulogy, but I keep putting it off--I need time alone in the woods to do so.
21. A large part of my job is killing animals. Mostly rats, mice, and cockroaches, but these are three of my favorite animals. I have come to terms with it, since I am protecting the health of the captive animals.
22. I teach mushroom classes for Drumlin Farm; I teach what mushrooms and other fungi are and what their role in the ecosystem is, and how to identify different species. I have taught it twice a year for the past couple years, and will be teaching it four times this year.
23. I like teaching adults, but I'm not fond of children. It's too bad, because I would have liked to become a teacher. I have no children of my own, and do not intend to have any.
24. My father has taught for 50 years and does not intend to retire, despite having a massive heart attack last November. He is the person I admire most in the world.
25. I feel guilty for forgetting everyone and everything that I forgot off this list. Sorry.
An incomplete yet overlong history of my short life, done as a "25 things about me" meme.
1. I have given up eating meat three times in my life. First when I was seven or eight, because I had that first realization that meat is made of animals, I love animals, so I'll stop eating them. My mom was supportive, but concerned that I wouldn't get enough protein. Fake meat technology was primitive in the 70's, so i remember some truly awful soy bacon. It was probably a coincidence, but I became sick soon after giving up meat, and I was convinced to start eating it again.
2. I was always the smallest boy in my class in school.
3. When someone asks me about sports these days I explain, "As a very small boy good at art and science, I never appreciated sports." I associate sports with bullying, and I'm mystified that so many people are into them, especially women. I've gotten to where I can watch a football game or baseball game and be entertained, but I have no allegiances, and I almost never seek out a game to watch.
4. I played french horn from fifth grade to seventh. I was never any good at it, in part because I never practiced, but probably also because I have no musical talent. Mostly people who remember it remember this little boy carrying this giant instrument case. It wouldn't fit in the aisle of the school bus so I would leave it at front; sometimes it would tumble down into the steps.
5. Growing up there were hundreds and hundreds of collections of comic strips in the house. At every tag sale my dad would buy whatever they had: Tumbleweeds, Broom Hilda, and lots and lots of Peanuts and MAD collections. My only real exposure to superhero comics as a kid were the collections of Marvel origin stories that were around, until my brother let me read his collection of The New Mutants books. I read MAD and Harvey Comics.
6. I always admired my brother, but we had a typical sibling relationship. He's six years older than me, so I had no chance to physically beat him at anything, so in wrestling matches I would play dirty or yell for mom. But I wanted to do everything he did, which I think is why I took up drawing.
7. Mostly I drew cartoon monsters and animals that don't exist. I always drew from my imagination, and was terrible at rendering from life.
8. The second time I gave up meat was in high school, over a summer. I don't even remember why I did. But I remember exactly where I was when I finally lapsed: I was in the Enfield Mall, during the Sunday flea market that was held there. I broke down and bought boneless spare ribs from the Chinese food place, the kind that are dyed pink. It gave me a huge stomach ache, but I didn't look back on eating meat for another 7 or 8 years.
9. In high school art class I gravitated toward sculpture, away from drawing. There were at least two guys (thinking here of Mike Russell and Howie Porter) who were amazing, and I felt like a jerk drawing in the same room as them. My awesome senior year art teacher Cheryl Bennett coached me to apply to art school so that I could move away from "supermarket sized" artwork, meaning pieces that are the size of things that fit in a shopping cart.
10. In art school I intended to major in sculpture. Instead I had to declare a major in design because you could get a break on tuition (Connecticut had no colleges with design programs, I guess). As soon as I got residency (and the tuition break that comes with it) I switched to a film--no wait, photo! major. Did that for a year, took a SIM class (and had a disappointing second semester photo prof) and switched to SIM. SIM is a great place if you know exactly what you want to do with your art and just need a supportive group to critique you. If you are a kid who isn't sure what he wants to do, well, it was fun anyway.
I did talking performance art, a couple performance pieces on my bike, and spent 24 hours in the building acting like an ape. My final year I did a series of trips to Revere Beach with whoever would come along, and we did some art out there, and I collected trash off the beach. My final piece was an assemblage of the objects I collected from the beach, arranged by color. My final project was a beach party with, among other things, pinatas shaped like sea animals filled with shotgun shells and tampon applicators I collected from the beach. Also my friends' band the Barking Brains played in the room, which was supposed to be decked out like the beach. Anyone who came wearing beach clothes got a free lei made of shotgun shells and tampon applicators.
11. Also while at Mass Art, I was recruited by my cartoonist friend Scott Melchionda (Scooter) to be the representative for the school comic book in Student Government, because he had a scheduling conflict. Scooter then had some kind of family emergency or something and kind of disappeared for a while. The Student Government wanted to know where the comic book they paid for was, so I scrambled together some comics from Nate Carroll, Tom Pappalardo, Rich Mackin, and non-Mass Art student Kevin Dickey. That was the birth of "Don't Shoot! It's Only Comics!"
It was only 16 pages and kind of sloppy, but once people knew it was out there, I got a lot more contributors; Ron Rege did the cover for the next one and had strips in almost all of the following issues. Greg Moutafis had the cover for issue three and was likewise in a lot of the following ones--he also became art director for the thing; any time the comic looked good, it was his doing. I left Mass Art after (I think) issue 4 but took the comic with me, and kept putting it out for 5 years. It was a cool showcase, and had work in it from people like Leela Corman, Miss Lasko-Gross, James Kochalka, Eric Drooker, Ariel Bordeaux, and probably a whole lot of other people I'm forgetting as I throw this thing together. I even went to a few comic conventions and met people like Keith Knight, Shannon Wheeler, and Dame Darcy. It ate up all my money (I had a settlement from a bike accident) and put me into debt, too, but it was one of the best times of my life.
12. For a time (1987-1996?) I went to rock and roll shows every week, sometimes more than one. I think I have permanent hearing loss from it (tinnitus). My favorite local band at first was Dogzilla then I found The Swirlies, Spore, Fuzzy, Papas Fritas, Syrup USA, Slughog, etc etc etc. Again, I wouldn't trade that part of my life for anything, but I don't like not being able to hear very well.
13. Like I said before, I've never had any musical aptitude, but that didn't stop me from buying a talking drum, just 'cause I thought it was beautiful. I was carrying it home on the subway, and a long-haired dude started chatting to me about it. As it turned out he was a graduate student at Berkelee, and he taught drum lessons. I agreed to be his student; he had me play along with "Eye of the Tiger" once--I found it kind of humiliating. I didn't practice enough, and didn't feel like I was improving much. Then he invited me to see him play, somewhere in Fanuel Hall. I went, and about a half hour into it, I realized it was a Christian Rock event. I left and never called him to explain why I canceled. I had taken four lessons.
14. In the late 90's I moved into a big group house in Brighton. The house had a tiny yard, that the landlady had gardened and landscaped in the past. In the summer it was totally overgrown and, I thought, very beautiful. I took it upon myself to try to identify all the wild plants in the yard. I had just started trying to identify birds, and started collecting field guides to try to figure everything out. As it turned out, almost everything in the yard was an invasive species, including black swallow-wort, and Oriental bittersweet, which I tried to train into a vine arbor. It was my first real study of wild things in the city, and became the zine called "The Urban Pantheist."
15. My third time giving up meat I was in my early 20's. There wasn't a single issue that made me make my decision, but the most important was factory farming. I said that I didn't want to be a part of an industry based on the suffering of so many creatures. I maintained that for about 15 years. I was working at a wildlife sanctuary that had a working farm on it, and decided that I could eat the meat from there, since I knew those animals were well taken care of. I came to decide that I wasn't really against animal agriculture at all. I hope that through the efforts of people like Temple Grandin that farms become better caretakers of their animals, but I'm no longer abstaining from eating them. I'm glad so many of my friends continue to be vegetarian, and I still love eating vegetarian food, especially from vegan restaurants like Grasshopper. Michael Pollan is right about how to eat: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
16. I put out The Urban Pantheist zine for a few years, and attracted the attention of a freelancer for the Globe. She wrote a profile, and that got the notice of the Boston Center for Adult Ed., who hired me to teach a class on Urban Nature. It was a pretty good experience, but it's not a subject that should be confined to a tiny, too-hot, closetlike classroom. I pitched the idea of an urban nature walk, and they went for it. They put a price of 40 bucks a head on it, and didn't get enough interest to run it. I decided to do it myself, for free, with some friends and friends of friends. I've been doing it for five years, but I haven't done one in a few months, mostly due to winter depression.
17. Urban Nature Walk has been to The Fens, The Muddy River, The Olmsted forest, Jamaica Pond, The Stony Brook Reservation, Franklin Park, The Forest Hills Cemetery, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Belle Isle Marsh, Mission Hill (including a stop at Flann O'Briens), Deer Island, Castle Island, and Spectacle Island. It's always a great time, and we continually surprise ourselves discovering nature in our own back yards.
18. I have volunteered taking care of captive wildlife at the Boston Science Museum, the San Francisco Zoo, Drumlin Farm, the Trailside Museum, and at Helping Hands Helper Monkeys for the Disabled. Lately I've thought maybe I should look into becoming a volunteer coordinator.
19. Despite my love of nature, and the fact that I describe myself as a Pantheist, I really really really really really really hate winter. I could list 500 things that I hate about it, but that's even more boring than what I've already written here. But here's two: 1) I miss the insects 2) It's by far the longest season.
20. My mom has had early onset Alzheimer's disease since (probably) I was a teenager. She started showing it by forgetting she had cigarettes burning in every room of the house. Then she started getting scared of the world--scared to drive, scared to leave the house. One day she just kind of freaked out and my dad asked "Do you want to go to the hospital?" and she said yes. That was over 15 years ago and she never returned home. She's in a nursing home, slowly losing faculties one by one. She cannot walk or talk, and recognizes no one and no thing, so far as anyone knows. She now can not feed herself, and few people are able to feed her without her aspirating her food. She weighs about a third of what she used to. I'm fairly sure she will die this year, probably sooner rather than later. I want to write a eulogy, but I keep putting it off--I need time alone in the woods to do so.
21. A large part of my job is killing animals. Mostly rats, mice, and cockroaches, but these are three of my favorite animals. I have come to terms with it, since I am protecting the health of the captive animals.
22. I teach mushroom classes for Drumlin Farm; I teach what mushrooms and other fungi are and what their role in the ecosystem is, and how to identify different species. I have taught it twice a year for the past couple years, and will be teaching it four times this year.
23. I like teaching adults, but I'm not fond of children. It's too bad, because I would have liked to become a teacher. I have no children of my own, and do not intend to have any.
24. My father has taught for 50 years and does not intend to retire, despite having a massive heart attack last November. He is the person I admire most in the world.
25. I feel guilty for forgetting everyone and everything that I forgot off this list. Sorry.