It’s true… 24 years of my life was spent in the Jungles of Junior High fighting for my life against predatory seventh graders, monkey people, lizard people, and general craziness. If my pictures are loony, and my stories are insane, it is because I have endured where no sane man should ever venture. The pink raptor, by the way… one of my best students.
I recently was advised by a fellow blogger to offer a few writing tips on my blog as a way to painlessly market my writing. Okay, I’m a writing teacher, so I can do that. But in my own writing I have hit a snag. Yes, there are things much, much bigger than my humble skill as a writer.
My current novel project, the Bicycle-Wheel Genius has grown into a science-fiction monster. It is not only about a scientist who has secret government connections, but about time travel and people changing into rabbits… or rabbits into people… or boys into girls… dogs and cats living together… No, that is Ghostbusters.
But it has reached a point where the most important theme is incredibly clear and difficult to deal with. The theme I find myself weaving into this story is; “All men are basically good.” Gongah! Wotta theme to try to write! Do I believe it? Of course I do. Can I put the story together in such a way that I illustrate it to the reader’s satisfaction? Of course I can’t. So what do I do? This story has some of the best villains and evil people in it that I have ever written. I can’t kill them off to solve the story’s plot problems (Well, I can, but I don’t want to). I have to show how evil can be redeemed.
My cast of characters include the scientist himself, calmly dealing with time travelers, invading aliens, government assassins, and a group of young boys known as the Norwall Pirates. There is a time traveler who appeared in a book within a book in my novel Catch a Falling Star. There is also an alien space navigator who has been shot by a local Iowa Deputy Marshall and stranded on Earth. Another character is an artificial man, an automaton who has been crafted as a government assassin made from alien technology. Okay, I know you don’t believe I can make serious science fiction out of such crazy-quilt characters, especially with a primary theme like the one I’ve claimed. So, I have to confess that it is not serious in any way, shape, or form. It is a silly fantasy comedy.
So, how do I generate a theme as big and bold and important as the goodness of all men? Well, here’s a secret recipe;
Of course, if you thought I was giving you real writing advice, then SURPRISE! It turns out I have been making it all up as I go along. That’s how you do it. You write and write, knit it all together tenuously, and then edit the heck out of it, hoping to make sense of the whole thing.
Filed under Uncategorized
Birds are always talking,
And birds are always squawking,
And they are using bird-words,
These are the words I heard.
Twitter-pated – this word comes from the owl in Bambi and means not being able to think straight because you’re in love.
Aviary – is a great big bird house, big enough to fly around in
Feather-dusted – to you and me it means clean, to a bird it means the feathers are dirty
Bird-brained – don’t be insulted if a bird calls you this. It is a compliment.
Fume-fluttered – you gotta fly and get away from that bad smell.
Wing-walking – it’s how you get from here to there if you’re a bird… Duh!
Wakka wakka – it’s those dang ducks again, always telling jokes!
Egg-zactly – as precise and perfect as an egg.
Coo-coo-karoo – that stupid rooster wants us to get up again at daybreak. It’s like a bird can never sleep in!
Clucker butter – Can you believe that KFC place? Butter on improperly cremated dead chickens (ah, well, they were only chickens after all).
Now that you have less than one per cent of the bird vocabulary, please don’t try to tell me what they are saying. I really don’t want to know!
“Who am I?” the Walrus said,
“I have to know before I’m dead.
And if the Cosmos will not say,
I’ll ask again another day.”
“You are a simple Disney clone,”
Said Cosmos when we were alone.
“You draw and color with your brain,
And tell some stories despite the strain.”
“You taught a while in the Monkey House,
And learned that students like to grouse,
But in the end will love your class
And will give you medals made of brass.”
“And your poems are filled with Angel words,
Both quite profound and yet absurd,
Because your mind soars far away
On winds of wild romantic play.”
“I guess that I can live with that,”
Said Walrus as he grew quite fat.
“And Mickey is the name I write
To sign my pictures in the light.
And that is all I have to say
To write myself in the crazy way.”
Filed under humor, Paffooney, poetry, Uncategorized
As Mickey’s go, the one who is writing this is a moderately interesting example of the breed. Still, there are things you probably ought to be made aware of. A sort of precautionary thing…
First of all, this particular Mickey is an Iowegian. That means he comes from Iowa, the State where the tall corn grows. It is a prime reason why his jokes are corny and his ears have been popped (oh, and he does actually have two, unlike the picture Paffooney where only one is showing). His fur is not actually purple. If anything now, it is mostly silver-gray. But the Paffooney is a magical portrait, and purple is the color of magic. He has a goofy, and sometimes fatal grin. You may not be able to prove that he has ever actually grinned someone to death, but it is likely he could always dig somebody up.
Another irrefutable fact about this Mickey, unlike many many Mickeys, is that he used to actually be a public school teacher. He taught the little buggers for thirty-one years, plus two years as a substitute teacher. He did twenty-four of those years in middle school… twenty-three of those in one school in South Texas. His mostly Hispanic students managed to teach him every bad word in Spanglish… err, Texican… err, Tex-Mex… or is it Taco Bell? Anyway, they taught him every bad word except for the word for cooties… you know, piojos. He learned that word from an old girl friend.
A despicable thing about him… (you know despicable, right? It’s that word that Sylvester the cat always uses) is that he actually likes kids. That’s just not normal for someone who teaches them. Teachers are supposed to hate kids, aren’t they? But he never did. It is true that he yelled at them sometimes, but he never did that because he hated them. He did that only for fun. And he actually apologized to kids sometimes when they got into behavioral trouble, because he said it was the teacher’s fault if kids are bad, and, besides, the kids are so surprised by that, that they forget all about the behavior and can be flammoozled into acting good.
The last and most wicked thing you need to know about Mickey is that he cartoons up a storm sometimes. He loves to draw everything that is wacky and weird. He has more goofball colored pencil tricks than a Charles Shultz and a Dr. Seuss rolled together in a sticky lump with a George Herriman stuck on top in place of a cherry. He steals ideas and techniques from other artists and steals jokes from comedians, undertakers, and random juvenile delinquents. He also puts together lists of wacky oddball details that don’t quite fit together and weaves it into purple paisley prose (somewhere in this whole messy blog thing he has also defined purple paisley prose and how to make it… in case you were curious.)
So there you have it. The Truth about Mickey. The sordid, simpering, solitary facts about Mickey. The straight poop. (wait a minnit! How did poop get there? Not again! I thought I had cured that!)
Filed under Uncategorized
Much of what I draw is inspired by Maxfield Parrish, the commercial artist who created stunningly beautiful work for advertisers in the 1920’s and 30’s, and went on to paint murals and masterworks until the 1960’s. He is noted for his luminous colors, especially Parrish Blue, and can’t be categorized under any existing movement or style of art. No one is like Maxfield Parrish. And I don’t try to be either, but I do acknowledge the debt I owe to him. You should be able to see it in these posts, some of mine, and some of his.
Mine; (In the Land of Maxfield Parrish)
His; (Daybreak)
Mine; (Wings of Imagination)
His; (Egypt)
Believe me, I know who wins this contest. I am not ashamed to come in second. I will never be as great as he was. But I try, and that is worth something. It makes me happy, at any rate.
Filed under Uncategorized
Today’s Paffooney is a tribute to a childhood hero, Aquaman. I drew the picture from a comic book inspiration source coming from DC Comics in the 1960’s. Aquaman is a B-level superhero with not nearly so many fans as the big three, Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. He was, however, my second favorite after Spiderman. He was more important to me than the Avengers. And this was strange, because I only had the chance to read the sacred comic books in the old barbershop in uptown Rowan. I only remember about two different issues that I was able to read during the long wait for a haircut. (Haircuts on Saturday took forever, because all the bald and crew-cut farmers would take forever getting their hair cut. And they hardly had any hair! I think the barber cut each hair individually.)
Aquaman and Aqualad would journey together in an incredible undersea world of sea monsters, giant fish, scuba divers, villains like Black Manta, and Mera, a real hot underwater babe. Topo the octopus could play comic relief by playing musical instruments or getting drunk on old lost kegs of pirate rum. I became a part of the adventure. I’m not sure whether I imagined myself more as Aquaman himself, or Aqualad. Aqualand was dressed all in red and blue, my favorite colors. I liked his blue swim-trunks. I myself could never wear swim trunks without a fatal case of embarrassment over my knobby knees and hairy legs. I admired Aqualad’s smooth and muscled boy-legs, though not without some shame and embarrassment. Some suggest that the relationship between Aquaman and Aqualad was a homo-erotic thing just like Batman and Robin. But, hey… NO IT WASN’T! It was a hero and sidekick that mirrored the complex relationship between a father and son. My father and I could never talk at any deeper level than Aquaman talked to Aqualad. Yet my father had super-powers for solving my problems and helping me do things and make things. Yes, I think I loved Aquaman because he reminded me of my own father in his quiet competence.
And I had a Captain Action Aquaman costume, a Christmas present and wonderful treasure. I played with it so much that only the broken trident, mask, and swim fins remain. The rest was all broken and unraveled and disintegrated from being played with. The Aquaman in my Captain Action collection has replacement parts in it to make it more complete. Yes, I spent time and money putting that toy back together so that I might play with it yet again.
So why is the super-powered King of the Sea so important to me? After all, his super powers are to breath underwater and telepathically talk to fish. I think, reading back over this stupid little essay, that the most important theme is the father-son thing. I never owned a single Aquaman comic book as a kid, but I watched him on Saturday morning TV. He was one of the Superfriends. And my father had been in the Navy on Aircraft Carriers. Yes, Aquaman is my favorite because Aquaman is secretly my father.
Filed under Uncategorized
Being an artist is a matter of genetics, luck, and loads of practice. I began drawing when I was only four or five years old. I drew skulls and skeletons, crocodiles and deer on everything. My kindergarten and first grade teachers were constantly gritting their teeth over the marked-up margins of every workbook and worksheet. I drew and colored on everything. I eventually got rather good, drawing in pencil, crayon, ink, and as you see here, colored pencil. I loved to draw the people and things around me. I also drew the things of my imagination. I drew my best girl, Alicia, and I drew the half-cobra half-man that lived in the secret cavern under our house. I drew a picture of the house across the underpass from Grandma Mary’s house. I drew cardinals, and I drew Snoopy cartoons. I drew my sports heroes in football and hockey, Donny Anderson and Gordie Howe. I drew monsters with fangs and fuzzy animals with huge soulful eyes. I still draw and it’s mostly the same things that I drew when I was a child. I will post more of the drawings here in the near future to dazzle you with my talents and ridiculous sense of the absurd.
Filed under Uncategorized
This is actually a writer’s literary site meant to promote novels, and one day possibly earn money from writing instead of simply filling my closets with prose and old manuscripts (along with the wife’s many, many shoes). But since I am also an amateur artist of the irradiated subspecies known as “cartoonist”, I also have many visuals to share. I think in pictures as often as I think in words. So one of the features of this blog is that I tag artwork with a made-up word I coined myself. It allows the curious (or those immune to nightmares) to get an almost instant idea of how afflicted I am with cartoon-ism.
Yes, I tested it out. If you do a picture search on Google using the words “Beyer Paffooney” you get a free gallery of my artwork, the good, the bad, and the ugly. You might even find my picture of Clint Eastwood… but beware, he shoots first if you try to “make his day”. If you are brave… or foolish enough to try it, it should come up something like this;
So, there you have it. A cheap and easy 200-word post from a bad idea that’s still out there working.
I think I posted this picture once before and told you it was inspired by William Blake’s poem The Tyger! That is still true. I wasn’t telling a lie, at least, I don’t believe I was. So the poem goes like this;
Apologies to Bill Watterson for stealing his cartoon for this post. I needed a more dangerous-looking Tyger than the one I had.Filed under Uncategorized
Catch a Falling Star 