The Cliff Notes. Some facts may be vague, exaggerated, minimized, obfuscated, forgotten or poorly written. I’m not a freakin’ historian. The events below take place between 1969 and last week.
Raised in the farm country of Maryland steeped in the values of good manners and cow manure. I made my escape at age 17 by joining the Navy—a family tradition extending back to my great grand father. After boot camp I was shipped off to Meridian, Mississippi where I discovered that there were places way more redneck than my hometown. Eight weeks training to learn how to supply my shipmates with the $600 dollar hammers that rocked the news about that time (it’s spark proof!™) then off to the fleet!
Once aboard the ship it was a rollicking 4 year cruise of exotic ports of call…Mayport,FL; Newport,RI; Philadelphia,PA. Yeah, we went to Puerto Rico and Cuba too, but only in the summer and only to do Mass Conflaguration Training during which time they’d shut off all the ventilation wrap me in an insulated and fully sealed fireproof suit and make me run a 60 lb sack of wrenches up and down the ladders of the ship for a week. Good times, good times. I think we drank.
Four years later, having drunk away my G.I. bill’s value I surfaced penniless and married in Boston. I began bartending (to stay ahead of the drinking) and doing freelance illustration. My then wife decided to become a cop and had a pistol on her at all times. That was all the information I needed to get the hell out of the house and the marriage.
After the divorce my life improved dramatically and I had a lot more money and time for drinking. I quit bartending and got a real job designing album covers for virtual unknowns who would soon rocket up the charts to complete obscurity. Nothing like taking creative direction from six dropouts who are stoned out of their minds.
Wasteoid: “Dude, can you make it like… blue?”
Me: “It is blue, wasteoid.”
Wasetoid:“Yeahhhh…I like it! Twinky?”
Me:”Good. And stop calling me Twinky.”
After three years of dialogues like this I had lost most of my IQ, making it the perfect time to get a job in advertising and move to southern California. The thing about San Diego is this—the weather is the same every day. Which causes this—I have no idea when anything happened.
So basically, my time there looked like; drive across country, terrorists, go to the beach, anthrax, get a dog, go broke, go to the beach, car stolen, dad died, get a job, wild fires, sunshine, get drunk, go to the beach, Bush declares victory then starts a war, go to the beach, car stolen, sunshine, “i can see Mexico from my backyard, I’m a diplomat!” go to the beach, drive back across the country to NYC .
I now serve as Lead Potted Plant in a creative department in a very boring, very cubicle financial company. This graphic novel pulls me out of that creative hell. Please enjoy it.