Now Entering Gingerbread Village
Rodeo Jose
Valerie at the Farm
Happy Whatever You Celebrate!
Hello, Good Morning, Welcome to My Classroom
A critical teacher-skill is welcoming students as they enter your class each day. According to instructional leaders and classroom-management experts, you should stand in the doorway, greet them with a big idiot’s grin on your face, call them by name, if you can, and shake their hands if you can, pulling them into your classroom as if they are certainly doomed to be there even if they accidentally walked into the wrong classroom. I realize now that I am retired, how much I miss that ritual.
“Good morning, Sasha. How nice to see you this wonderful day.”
“Hi, Mr. B. Are we going to learn anything today?”
“Of course we are! Wonderful things! You are going to learn the most important lesson of your life today.”
“What lesson is that?”
“That we need to learn something each and every day.”
“Oh, great… yeah.”
“Ola, El Gongie, kay-paw-so, my dude!”
“Ay, vato… remember, you gotta address me like the OG I am. If I gotta respect you, you gotta show proper respect for me and my reputation, dude.”
“Oh, sorry. I thought that’s what I was doing. What did I get wrong?”
“Nothing, my dude. I am jes messin’ wit you. Gotta remind you to do it right.”
“Marissa, good morning! So nice to see you and your smiling face.”
“Don’t talk to me, Beyer. I’m mad at you right now.”
“Oh? What did I do now?”
“You didn’t do anything, but I’m not talking to you today.”
“So, you’ll yell at me about something later?”
“Yeah. But I won’t yell. I just need to talk to you… later.”
“Okay, right after class, just stay put when the bell rings.”
“In front of your next class?”
“No, they can wait outside the door for a minute or two.”
“Ruben! Good morning!”
“Hello, Mr. B. I read that book you lended me yesterday.”
“All in one evening?”
“It was only 200 pages. I read five times that in a week.”
“Well, that’s good. What did you think?”
“It was awful. No way it shoulda ended the way it did. It made me laugh, it made me cry, and then I reached the last ten pages, and I almost threw it out the window. Except I still had to read the last nine pages.”
“So, you didn’t like the book?”
“I loved it. It’s now my new favorite book!”
Now that I am retired and can’t even substitute teach anynore, I don’t have that excitement of greeting them and never knowing what I’m going to get in return. But i am saying hello to everyone I meet on the walking path. And sometimes I get an answer.
“Hey, I like your beard! You really need to be wearing a red hat this time of year.”
“Oh, I know… I get confused with him all the time around Christmas. And I don’t even own any flying reindeer.”
Filed under humor, kids, Paffooney, self portrait, teaching
The Gingerbread Train
I had been promising my daughter for a while that we would build the gingerbread train. I was looking forward to it as an art project. She was impatient to eat it. So, on December 27th, I was finally feeling well enough to do the deed.
So, we prepared the work space on the kitchen table. We laid out the items that we could use for assembly. I made my daughter promise to stop eating elements of the train before we could actually put it together.
I started decorating the Christmas trees that go into the baggage car. My daughter ate several of the sugar-ball decorations.
The baggage car was assembled first. I call it the baggage car because even though it is in the tender position for a steam train if we called it that, that would mean that the engine burned Christmas trees instead of coal. My daughter snuck a few more decorations as we argued about that.
It was encouraging that the first part came together without looking too incredibly terrible.
My daughter decorated a majority of the engine and only ate a few more of the decorations while doing it. This was no small thing given how much she loves to eat gumdrops.
It ended up looking vaguely like the picture on the box. We had a great deal of fun making it. And the last time I checked, portions of it still were uneaten… something I am confident won’t be the case for much longer.
Filed under artwork, family, homely art, Paffooney, photo paffoonies
Mickey, What is all the Nudity About?
“Why are you asking, Mickey? You are only talking to yourself, you know.”
“It’s important to make it clear. Some people think you are a pervert, a creep, or possibly a pornographer because you draw naked people so often and feature nudity at some point in almost every story you tell.”
“Like most people who think of themselves as nudists, I really liked being naked as a child. But that is not socially acceptable in Iowa in the 60’s. Prudish notions chastise you for being naked where anyone can see. You get shamed to the point that you see your own naked self as something detestable and bad.”
“But that kind of social rule is a good thing. It keeps you from having to see naked and nude ugly people or wrinkled old people naked in places like the grocery store or public school buildings.”
“But wouldn’t it be better if we lived in a more open and honest sort of society where even ugly people being naked is acceptable so that no one has to be ashamed of having a human body?”
“Of course not. You wouldn’t want to offend everyone by walking around naked everywhere you go.”
“I honestly think that if it were allowed to occur more often it would become something acceptable as natural and normal. And you know that I have an extra reason to think it would be good if children did not have to believe that being nude is somehow sinful, bad, and shameful. I was sexually assaulted when I was ten. It not only made me fearful of ever being naked, it nearly caused me to take my own life when I was seventeen. I went through a decade-worth of self-loathing and disgust with my own body that made showering after P.E. class a nightmare, romantic feelings towards girls something I felt the need to hurt myself for having, and a general belief that I was secretly a monster.”
“Wow! Your obsessions run deep.”
“And emotional scars become far more visible than the ones hidden under your clothing.”
“Is this next one a picture of you? It doesn’t look like you.”
“The model for this wasn’t me. And he was wearing a wet swimsuit. It only became about me when I added the faun’s horns and made him naked. It was painted after I was exposed to naturists at the clothing-optional apartment building in Austin, Texas by my then-girlfriend and her sister who lived there with her husband and baby. It was a painting that expressed the joy I saw in people who were unafraid to be naked in the presence of others.”
“How long did he have to stand there like that while you painted it?”
“He didn’t. I painted it from the photo I took. Although, not only was he not naked, but he was Hispanic with black hair and a much browner complexion.”
“Did you tell anybody about the assault thing before you painted it?”
“I told my then-girlfriend. She sympathized somewhat. But she was already convinced that being naked was good for you, and so she didn’t fully accept my reluctance to be nude with the others.”
“I overcame feelings of self-loathing and fear of sexual feelings through, first, sex-education classes from the Methodist Minister when I was thirteen. Secondly, through discussions with my then-girlfriend and the nudist friends I made by visiting that naturist apartment building. And thirdly through the patience and love of my wife.”
“So, why are you still obsessed with it now, especially in your artwork?”
“Now I no longer have to worry about losing my teaching job because I am openly associated with naturists. And my sex-life is pretty much at an end for health reasons. So, it becomes a matter of expressing my memories and interior conflicts as they apply to nudity, sexuality, honesty, openness, and innocence. I can actually be a nudist now if I want to be.”
Filed under artwork, autobiography, health, nudes, Paffooney
A Mr. Holland Moment
Life is making music. We hum, we sing to ourselves, movie music plays in our head as the soundtrack to our daily life. At least, it does if we stop for a moment and dare to listen. We make music in many different ways. Some play guitar. Some are piano players. And some of us are only player pianos. Some of us make music by writing a themed paragraph like this one. Others make an engine sing in the automotive shop. Still others plant gardens and make flowers or tomatoes grow. I chose teaching kids to read and write. The music still swells in my ears four years after retiring.
The 1995 movie, Mr. Holland’s Opus, is about a musician who thinks he is going to write a magnificent classical orchestra opus while teaching music at a public high school to bring in money and allow him time to compose and be with his young wife as they start a new family.
But teaching is not, of course, what he thought it was. He has to learn the hard way that it is not an easy thing to open up the closed little clam shells that are the minds of students and put music in. You have to learn who they are as people first. You have to learn to care about what goes on in their lives, and how the world around them makes them feel… and react to what you have to teach. Mr. Holland has to learn to pull them into music appreciation using rock and roll and music they like to listen to, teaching them to understand the sparkles and beats and elements that make it up and can be found in all music throughout their lives. They can even begin to find those things in classical music, and appreciate why it has taken hold of our attention for centuries.
And teaching is not easy. You have to make sacrifices. Big dreams, such as a magnum opus called “An American Symphony”, have to be put on the shelf until later. You have children, and you find that parenting isn’t easy either. Mr. Holland’s son is deaf and can never actually hear the music that his father writes from the center of his soul. And the issue of the importance of what you have to teach becomes something you have to fight for. Budget cuts and lack of funding cripples teachers in every field, especially if you teach the arts. Principals don’t often appreciate the value of the life lessons you have to give. Being in high school band doesn’t get you a high paying job later.
But in the end, at the climax of the movie, the students all come back to honor Mr. Holland. They provide a public performance of his magnum opus, his life’s work. And the movie ends with a feeling that it was all worth it, because what he built was eternal, and will be there long after the last note of his music is completely forgotten. It is in the lives and loves and memories of his students, and they will pass it on.
But this post isn’t a movie review. This post is about my movie, my music. I was a teacher in the same way Mr. Holland was. I learned the same lessons about being a teacher as he did. I had the same struggles to learn to reach kids. And my Mr. Holland moment wasn’t anywhere near as big and as loud as Mr. Holland’s. His was performed on a stage in front of the whole school and alumni. His won Richard Dreyfus an Academy Award for Best Actor. But his was only fictional.
Mine was real. It happened in a portable building on the Naaman Forest High School campus. The students and the teacher in the classroom next door threw a surprise party for me. They made a lot of food to share, almost all of which I couldn’t eat because of diabetes. And they told me how much they would miss me, and that they would never forget me. And I had promised myself I would never cry about having to retire. But I broke my promise. In fact, I am crying now four years later. But they are not tears of sadness. My masterwork has now reached its last, bitter-sweet notes. The crescendos have all faded. But the music of our lives will still keep playing. And not even death can silence it completely.
Filed under artwork, autobiography, commentary, happiness, insight, kids, movie review, teaching
Gingerbread Houses 2021
Since the holiday tradition of the Beyer family gingerbread house got derailed by the pandemic last year, this year we did two. Team 1 led by my future daughter-in-law took on the gingerbread castle. Team 2, the pre-built gingerbread house was led by my daughter the Princess (and she did all the work.)
Materials were laid out. Decoration bottles and construction frosting was opened. Squeeze bags that had to be filled were filled and the nozzles were opened.
My daughter used her art talent on the house to turn it into the snowman’s house. One snowman accidentally became a pirate.
The castle was built and ready to start decorating like heck to catch up.
The pirate eye patch turned out to be the Venom symbiote.
The snowman named Ron, the home-owner made of icing, was all melty with sadness over the Venom on the roof.
But the Princess focussed on other details, vowing to fix things later.
The other side started to look better.
The castle was trying to catch up. My son’s art skills helped a bit.
Ron was definitely happier about his house. See him smiling? No? Neither do I, actually. But the Princess declared him elated.
Voila! The finished and fixed snowman house. Ron s sitting there happily in his socks and funky tie.
The castle is gloriously done also. That only left demolition and as much gingerbread-eating as we could manage. To be fair, we had two gingerbread domiciles to consume, and only six of us to do the eating, with at least four of us on diets that don’t allow that much sugar all at once.
Filed under artwork, gingerbread, humor, photo paffoonies
Tim Burton Movies
Last night the Princess and I went to see Alice, Through the Looking Glass, the latest Tim Burton movie. Of course we loved it. Burton is one of the most interesting story-tellers of our time. Did you know he is two years younger than me? And also, like me, he began as a cartoonist and is totally dedicated to the idea that every artist is a surrealist and must exaggerate, elucidate, equivocate, and numerous other things that start with the letter “e” and end with the suffix “ate” simply because that’s how surrealism starts. You notice a little bit of weirdness in real life and blow it all out of proportion with lies and coloring of meaning and relentless “what-iffing?” If you don’t see surrealism in those last two sentences of purple paisley prose… then maybe you can see it visually in Burton’s many masterpieces.
Tim Burton began his legacy as an apprentice Disney animator specializing in stop-motion animation. But he was just another creative nobody like me until the launch of his small-budget monster hit, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.
Of course, any time you can pull in huge profits for little investments, you will have Hollywood executives ramming the heads of their unpaid interns like battering rams against your door so they can get in and throw money at you.
Hence, Batman.
Batman was the first time I actually took notice of Tim. And not just as a director of a film… eventually two films. He was gifted at assembling a cast. And this would work to his advantage as several singular talents attached themselves to him and worked in his movie projects repeatedly.
And his repeated collaboration with Danny Elfman and his music was easily as great a master-stroke of genius as John Williams with Spielberg and Lucas.
He has repeatedly used his movies to describe and rewrite his own life story as a misunderstood genius flubbing horribly in the quest to fit in with a world full of “regular people”.
Poster for the film ‘Edward Scissorhands’ (directed by Tim Burton), 1990. (Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty Images)
His sense of humor, of course, is distinctly and colorfully bizarre.
DSTF-0046r JOHNNY DEPP as Barnabas Collins in Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures DARK SHADOWS, a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
Burton is, just like me, a child of the 70’s. He references things like the old gothic soap opera, Dark Shadows, that were a part of his impressionable youth just as they were mine. He picks stories about things he truly cares about, and that is also just like me.
So, in a rather bizarre coincidence that is entirely appropriate to surrealists, I love any Tim Burton movie simply because it is a Tim Burton movie. He is probably me in an alternate dimension. And as such, I already know I will love his next movie, whatever the heck it is.
Toonerville, a Place I Once Lived In
There is a place so like the place where my heart and mind were born that I feel as if I have always lived there. That place is a cartoon panel that ran in newspapers throughout the country from 1913 to 1955 (a year before I was born in Mason City, Iowa). It was called Toonerville Folks and was centered around the famous Toonerville Trolley.
Fontaine Fox was born near Louisville Kentucky in 1884. Louisville, of course is one of the two cities that claims to be the inspiration for Toonerville. Apparently the old Brook Street Line Trolley in Louisville was always run-down, operating on balls of twine and bailing wire for repair parts. The people of Pelham, New York, however, point to a trolley ride Fox took in 1909 on Pelham’s rickety little trolley car with a highly enterprising and gossip-dealing old reprobate for a conductor. No matter which it was, Fox’s cartoon mastery took over and created Toonerville, where you find the famous trolley that “meets all trains”.
I didn’t learn of the comic strip’s existence until I was in college, but once I found it (yes, I am the type of idiot who researches old comics in university libraries), I couldn’t get enough of it. Characters like the Conductor, the Powerful (physically) Katrinka, and the terrible-tempered Mr. Bang can charm the neck hair off of any Midwestern farm-town boy who is too stupid to regret being born in the boring old rural Midwest.
I fancied myself to be just like the infamous Mickey (himself) McGuire. After all, we have the same first name… and I always lick any bully or boob who wants to put up a fight (at least in my daydreams).
So, this is my tribute to the cartoonist who probably did more to warp my personality and make me funny (well, at least easy to laugh at! ) than any other influence. All of the cartoons in this post can be credited to Fontaine Fox. And all the people in them can be blamed on Toonerville, the town I used to live in, though I never really knew it until far too late.
Filed under art my Grandpa loved, artists I admire, cartoons, Toonerville
The Necromancer’s Apprentice… Canto 11
In a Bed with Bob
She was not hard to care for as she slept. She didn’t snore loudly enough to hear. In fact, I leaned in close to her mouth and nose about three times to make certain she had not simply stopped breathing. I was ready with water and food that I had made Mickey get so I could stay close to her and tend to any needs that she may have had.
Her body, which I cleaned gently with a moist rag, was perfectly formed for an adolescent Sylph. She had no wings to worry about. No scars. No tattoos. No insect appendages or patches of mouse fur…
“Bob, what are you looking at?”
I sat up with a start at her unexpected question. Then I supposed I must’ve turned red in the face, since I had been admiring her most private parts.
“Um, I…”
“You were thinking about me the same way Mickey does, right? About having your way with me?”
“Oh, no, I…”
“If you really want to take me now, no one is here to stop you.:
That made me slightly offended and defensive.
“I would never. On my honor…”
Her eyes were leaking tears again. “You treat me better than I deserve. I was sent here to kill you.”
“Kill me? The necromancer said Kill Bob? Specifically?”
“Well, no… not specifically you.”
She began looking around at Master Eli’s sleeping chamber. It was, of course, completely different than any typical room in a Fairy Castle. It had many things in it that could only be acquired by stealing directly from the homes of Slow Ones.
“What kind of bed is this?” she asked.
“It is what the Slow Ones call a doll bed from a doll house that belongs to a Slow One known as Grandma Elizabeth Sears. She lives in a medium-sized Slow-One’s fortress on the Eastern side of the Hamlet of Norwall.”
“Whatever is a doll house?”
“Oh, it’s a toy for little Slow Ones. It is a small version of what is meant to be a domicile for full-sized Slow Ones.”
“And how did this toy bed come to be here?”
“Grandma Elizabeth gave it to Master Eli. She is old and has dementia, so when she tells other Slow Ones that she talks to fairies, they don’t believe her. But the Master returns kindness for kindness with her. He gives her potions that improve her eyesight and help to fix her mostly broken mind. He steals those potions from things the Slow Ones call medicine cabinets.”
“This Master Eli of yours is a much nicer master than mine was.”
I looked at her in a way I hoped was reassuring and said, “I can’t say this officially yet, but I think Master Eli wants to take you on as an apprentice along with Mickey and me.”
“Why would he want to do that?”
“You passed all his tests, including the Magic Hat.”
A smile flickered briefly across her face. I had never seen her smile before, so I wasn’t sure if it was real or not. But it gave me hope.
“Why have you been so kind to me, Bob? Do you want sex like Mickey does?”
“Um… no. I only do what the master asks me to. But I like being kind to you. I think you are good at heart. And I want to be your friend… Mickey brought food and drink up here at my request. Are you hungry?”
She looked at the dandelion leaves, honeybee sandwiches, and marmalade. “No, not really.”
“Anneliese will be bringing gingerbread later. And I want you to meet her. She’s a beautiful immortal Storybook.”
“Storybook Fairies are real? I thought they were a myth.”
“Oh, no. They are very real. Besides Anneliese and her mother, General Tuffaney Swift lives here. And Silky the Chestnut Fairy, and sometimes Ariel the Mermaid visits. They are all very real.”
“Am I a prisoner here? Or can I go out in the sunlight?”
“I can find out fairly quickly. Hansel! Come here, please.”
The gingerbread boy assigned to the tower as the gofer, came in the bedroom at my call.
“Yes, Bob. What are my orders?”
“Ask Master Eli if I can take Derfentwinkle out into the sunshine.”
“Right away, Bob.”
He disappeared out into the hallway.
“Do we have to wait for permission like that? I’ll settle for going out on the nearest balcony.”
I looked at the glass door that led to the tower balcony.
“I guess we can do that…”
She didn’t wait for me to lead the way. She leaped out of the bed and was opening the glass door before I could even get to my feet. I tried to catch up. But as soon as I reached the door, I saw her being snatched up into the air by a pair of crow-claws.
“Derfentwinkle!”
“I promise not to betray you, Bob!”
Well, that left me no choice. I had to trust she was as good of a little person as I thought she was. I leaped over the balcony rail, out into the empty air high up in the willow tree. And then I was plummeting to my death.
Filed under humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
Catch a Falling Star 
Mr. Grumpy Holds Forth
(This is an idea that comes from Bruce the Bottle Imp, so, don’t blame me if this humor blog-post isn’t really very funny.)
The thing I am grumpy about today, besides the dog chewing up last night’s pizza box and spreading the shreds all over the kitchen before I had a chance to take it to the trash barrel, is the fact that it seems like the world is ending.
I know, the “How can you say that?” crowd are going to argue with me if I say it’s because we let Adam Sandler get away with making too damn many movies. But in spite of the existence of Jack and Jill, I actually kinda like the cartoons where he plays Dracula and Selena Gomez plays his daughter. So, Sandler doesn’t give me the feelings of existential dread his movies used to provide.
No, I think the reason is because when I went out to walk the dog this morning on a sunshiny and blue-skyed dawn, and took a deep breath of fresh air, I nearly coughed up a lung thanks to that yellow-gray patina delicately painting the horizon.
We are running out of time.
President Grandpa Joe, the mildly confused one, is proposing a huge infrastructure bill that is even larger than the one he rammed through congress without a single Republican vote in order to keep the poor and the middle class from starving and becoming homeless… and potential fuel for the zombie apocalypse. The infrastructure bill will provide a starting point for building green-energy projects, providing thousands of green-energy jobs to an ailing economy, bullet trains and healthcare improvements, and life-changing transformations to rival FDR’s New Deal, which Republicans will also vote against. And he might actually do it if Senator Turtle McConnell doesn’t convince Senator Grumbly-Grampa Joe Manchin to vote against his own party in dismantling the foofy filibuster and then voting down the infrastructure bill both to fully insure the extinction of the human race.
For some reason, probably involving dark money, Republicans want so badly to see all middle class and poor people die a horrible death that they are willing to sacrifice the lives of their own grandchildren and great grandchildren. After all, they will mostly all be undead and undying critters by that time, and they won’t want pesky younger generations to support using money from their treasure hordes that they are planning to swim in like Scrooge McDuck for eternity.
I am also deeply grumpified by the whole Congressman Eddy Munster… er, I mean… Matt Gaetz thing (seen pictured in the Vampyr Paffooney above.) That happy-go-lucky blood-sucker is facing child sex-trafficking charges involving a 17-year-old girl, and the investigation was started under Attorney General Bill Barr, Trump’s Fred-Flintstone-impersonating, Yabba-dabba-doo collusion-denier. Senator Al Franken(berry) of Minnesota, a leading Democrat, had to resign from the Senate over a picture where he wasn’t actually touching the sleeping Republican-lady’s boobs, just making a crude joke-photo the way former Saturday Night Live comedians will often do… er, well… doo doo. But
EddyMatt Gaetz doesn’t have to resign, or even give up his assignment to the Judiciary Committee. And that’s because we’re okay with unindicted criminals running our country, just not Democrats.I hate to say it, but, now that we have gotten rid of the Orange Prexydent at long last, if we still can’t prevent human extinction, we deserve what’s coming to us. We have work to do…. and things to grumble about… and Republicans have acts of vampire-evil to commit.
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Filed under angry rant, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney, politics, satire