Monthly Archives: March 2014

March 30, 2014 · 4:55 pm

The Jester, The Fumbler, The Fool

Much of what I love about good story telling is bound up in the nature of the fool character, or the wise fool, if you will.  Shakespeare is probably the consummate creator of fool characters.  Jaques in As You Like It, Falstaff in Henry IV and Henry V, the King’s Fool in King Lear, and even Polonius in Hamlet.  The fool is essential to the story because he serves several important purposes.  He is a foil for main characters in the unraveling of the plot, providing exposition through dialogue, wit and wisdom in commenting on the events, and pratfalls and innuendos for the further amusement of the audience.  He is the Harpo Marx character, Chaplin’s Little Tramp, any Red Skelton character, Lou Costello, Jerry Lewis, and every foolish talking animal in cartoon adventures like Scooby Doo.

So, I have tried to include the clown in my stories of childhood in Iowa, the land of imagination and corn.  In my newest novel, Snow Babies, the key clown is Harker Dawes, a good-hearted bumbler who has bought the hardware store in Norwall, Iowa and quickly managed to turn it into a bankrupted and foolishly failed business.  He is in control of essential supplies for a small town to use in surviving a raging blizzard, but he is also totally incompetent and capable of creating as many problems as his store can solve.  He is a bachelor uncle living with his brother’s family of three, and he becomes one of the people most responsible for taking in the four orphans from the bus.

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Today’s Paffooney is a picture of Harker in his store.  Of course, I can’t tell you the name of the real-life person that Harker is based on.  But I can tell you that I drew this portrait by combining his real-life mug with the features of Rowan Atkinson.  In fact, if a miracle happens and they make this story into a movie, Rowan Atkinson would be perfect for the part.  His first name is even the real name of the town that becomes Norwall in my story.  Stewart’s Hardware Store is no longer there anymore.  Even the building is gone, but the image in the background is close to the antique feel of that wonderful old place.

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How Did That Happen?

How Did That Happen?

Another celebration is in order. I have been blogging for a year and a half, a little more… And that doesn’t seem like very good progress, but the last 100 have come rather quickly. I think I am picking up momentum. Maybe somebody will get interested in reading my books.

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March 29, 2014 · 9:06 pm
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Snow Babies

Snow Babies

Okay, so I didn’t actually win. I was only a finalist in the YA novel contest. But soon I intend to make certain this book gets published. I owe that to these three characters, Valerie Clarke, Denny Cole, and Tommy Bons. I like to say that this book is a comedy about freezing to death… complete with clowns. Honestly, I hope to make you laugh, and make you cry, and maybe stop and think for a moment… “Isn’t that true?”

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March 29, 2014 · 12:51 am
March 28, 2014 · 12:31 am

Bronco High

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When I was in High School, I was a Belle City Bronco.  There was a certain pride that went with playing football, basketball and track for the mighty Columbia Blue and White.  We went to the state tournament in basketball in 1973.  I was sort of a part of that team.  I sat the bench anyway.  I got to start a couple of games at defensive end in football.  It was a stand-up containment position, like an outside linebacker.  Playing the Britt Eagles, a team that would go on to be undefeated and state champions in 2A; I met my Waterloo in the form of Fullback Bob Swearings.  He rolled over me.  The tight end hit me under the chin with his cast, and I didn’t know where I was when the coach pulled me off the field.  Big Randy Bannerman took my place on the field, and I spent the majority of the next two weeks in the hospital.  The doctor never diagnosed what was wrong with me, but I never got to play in any sport again for the rest of high school.  I never earned the letter I was so hoping to get.

Things went better for beautiful Alicia Stewart, the apple of my eye.  She was elected as a cheerleader in our freshman year and was a cheerleader continually in both football and basketball.  She got the letter for cheerleading that eluded me in athletics.  Don’t think, though, that I envied her.  I pined for her.  I worshipped her.  But, goddess that she was, I never let myself lust for her.  She was too pure and beautiful for me ever to ask her out on a date.  I was not worthy to meet her eyes.  I thought that if I could be an athlete and earn the respect of my classmates, I might make myself worthy, but I never did.  I was a lost cause.  My talent at catching a football and playing outfield in baseball were never known to the people of Belle City.  I was a gifted after-school playground athlete.  I amazed a few of my friends, but I never proved anything to anyone.  I was a loser.

If you know me in real life, you know that I don’t use real names in these stories.  Alicia was not her real name.  The town is not even called Belle City.  But the facts and the feelings are real.  The details and the themes are there to be recognized.  If you know me you can probably figure out who everyone really is.  But fiction is for the purpose of defining yourself by your own perceptions, not those of others.  Alicia never knew how I felt about her.  She may have suspected, but if so, she never let on that she knew.  My life as a loser has been no one’s doing but my own.  I defined my goals that were missed and my successes that were lost.  I am the author of my own tale.  The gawky teenager, who tried so hard, only to be swatted down by Bad Bob on the Britt Eagles’ home field, is only me because I made him so.  I may yet redefine myself as a winner.  Time will tell, and I will tell the story.  I may draw the picture too, as I did here.  By the way, it doesn’t look like Alicia, either.  It is just an anime-style toon.

 

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Some Days the Loonies Are Out

Some Days the Loonies Are Out

Here is a study in Looniness… I have always wondered where the edge is… the border between silly, cute, and creepy. I believe I have found it with this bizarro character study. I attempted to add to the effect by making characters seem unbalanced, off kilter, and even growing out of other characters’ ears. The background pulls at your perceptions and senses as much as the primary objects do. And so… I pull a Salvador Dali with a mixed bag of Dr. Seuss, Disney, and Warner Brothers. Melting and fused toons in place of watches and human bodies. If this isn’t surreal, then I don’t know what is. Okay, I admit it. I don’t know what is!

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March 26, 2014 · 1:26 am
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Window On The Past

Window On The Past

This is a photo of Clan Mickey as it was, not as it is. I’m the porky blue one wearing the beat up old cowboy hat. The Filipina next to me is my lovely wife. Dorin on my right… Henry leaning on Mom… and The Princess with her head on my shoulder. They are all much bigger and scarier now than they were then. I posted this most likely because this photo was lost, but I found it while I was at home sick yet again with a painful malady.

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March 25, 2014 · 12:24 am
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The Wizard Of Firecastle

The Wizard Of Firecastle

This Paffooney is of a game-character wizard. After a hellish weekend of ill health and stress from family and job, I feel much like I am him. My wisdom comes from walking through fires that burned me black. My magic is made from fighting fire with fire. I will continue to walk in the ways of a wizard. My magic is meant to spare folks from my fate by humor and anecdote. But I know that for many, the most I can do is help them recognize the experience and be able to call it by name. I hope that gives them power over it.

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March 23, 2014 · 9:43 pm
March 22, 2014 · 8:13 pm

Chibi Exchange

My last post, “The Time is Coming”, was about as down and depressed as I am capable of getting.  I am better now.  Maybe I should explain how I did that.

I brought myself out of depression by grading papers.  I know, teacher cliché, right?  But there is much, much more to it than that.

In my last period class, I have one precious girl student who has been paying me for my many cartoon drawings on the dry erase board.  You see, I have for many years been using my cartoonist skills to illustrate things on the board and draw attention especially to the lesson focus and objectives.  Kids love these.  It inspires them to commit random acts of doodlery.  They imitate my toons and sometimes create their own.  I don’t do Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny any more, not because I can’t, but because the owners of those copyrights have become unreasonably litigious and have sued teachers for imitating their copyrighted work.  I only use cartoons of my own creation now.  I have developed my own cast of characters.  Some of my students have done the same.

The girl, whose name and identity I cannot here divulge (it is the law that protects student identities, but I thoroughly buy into the notion) turned in a paper yesterday with Chibis all over it.  She gives me drawings of her own creation because she likes to repay me for sharing my cartoons with her.  She also covers her papers with these things because of the laws of doodlery.  When you are in a high school English class, your life is at risk because you could easily become bored to death.  The first law of doodlery says that you must use every spare moment of the lesson to draw something.  This keeps both your mind and your hands active enough to keep you alive.  The second law of doodlery requires that you make maximum use of every blank part of your answer page.  The third and final law of doodlery is to draw things that are different.  If you  draw too mundane, or too much the same, your mind goes numb and death by boredom is looking in through the windows of your mind.

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So today’s Paffooney, this offering of Chibis, is the same set of doodles that pulled me out of the darkness.  I copied the pencil Chibis from her paper, as precisely as I could in every way except size.  Then I inked them and colored them.   I won’t tell you what the Vietnamese word means or why it is there.  You are entitled to your best guesses.

A Chibi is a version of a manga or cartoon character that is child-proportioned or deformed by an exaggerated cuteness.  I gave the main figure blue hair because in manga language blue hair means youthful, energetic, cool, and introverted, a perfect description for my little Bishoujo, my little Chibi-doodler.  She is now officially a life-saver, a heroine in my book.

Yesterday’s post was dark and depressing, and I fear the issues that created it are real, and they are not going away.  But don’t worry for me.  I know how to handle such things.  And I do have help.

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March 22, 2014 · 1:33 am

The Time is Coming

The time is coming…  Every career, every life, has an end.   Today, I barely made it through my three, hour-and-a-half classes.  My lesson had to be cut short and I had to show movies.  I can’t breathe.  My diabetes lowered my blood sugar to the point that I was unconscious for brief periods of time while students watched Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.  I know… I know…  I should’ve called somebody.  If I die in my classroom in front of some of my students it is going to traumatize them, some of them severely.  Why did I risk it?

One thing is the money.  Every day I am absent because of health, it costs me a day’s salary, $330. I need to fulfill my contract for the school year because I need the money I am owed for teaching.  I will retire when this year is over… if I survive.  I don’t have a choice.  And I have earned a full retirement from the Texas Education System.  I will not be penniless.  That is not the reason I have to keep working.  Maybe I should quit tomorrow.

Still, there is work to be done.  Critical work.  I have the ability to go into a classroom and provide them with what they need most… belief in themselves.  They come to me with their own individual stories, their own problems, their own labels.

“I’m a bad kid,” says one.  “I get in trouble in every class.  I’m every teacher’s nightmare.”

“I’m stupid,” says another.  “I fail most of my classes.  I can’t learn.”

“I’m ugly and will always be alone,” says the third one.  “No one likes me.  If I were somebody else, looking at the me I am now, I wouldn’t like me either.”

Those three kids are always there, every class… every day…  If I don’t do something, they could give up.  They could drop out.  They could die.  I know for a fact that this is so, because sometimes that is exactly what happens.  And if I am teaching that day… at least there is a chance.  I have said the right words… sometimes.  I have done the right things… sometimes.  We do not live in a world without hope.  I am not without some power.  There are other teachers who do what I do, but they are not plentiful.  I am still needed.

But the time is coming…  I can’t go on much longer.  I’m sorry I am not funny today.  I don’t feel much like laughing.  But I still have the power to write.  I still have the right words.  I have to keep telling the story until there is no more.

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Player #3

Player #3

Over the years as a teacher, you run into a large number of students that you will absolutely fall in love with. And sometimes… they will fall in love with you also. Oh, my! What a potentially dangerous situation! But it doesn’t have to end in hurt feelings or criminal charges. Sometimes you find the perfect balance. The little girl that sits in the front row can be the apple of your eye… and you never actually take a bite… and neither does she. It becomes a silent dance of swirling smiles, and laughter. The occasional tear… the valentine card… Making her parents feel good with your testimony about what a wonderful scholar she is. Nothing ever has to be wrong… and if it isn’t, the picture stays with you for a lifetime. One day you will have to paint it. Sweet, sentimental perfection.

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March 20, 2014 · 12:26 am