Sometimes it is entirely necessary to acknowledge the fool and the helpless, hopeless clown that lives inside us all. Okay, I hear what you are thinking. Not you. There is no clown inside of you… only me. That is one of a myriad of mistakes that makes me acknowledge that I am far short of perfection. I am not a know-it-all. I am a know-it-sometimes who too often tries to bluster his way through like he isn’t completely unsure of himself and terrified that other people will see what he truly is and laugh him out of business. I am a pratfall, butt-of-the-joke, snicker-at-snidely sort of buffoon who never gets it right and deserves every guffaw thrown at him. Clowns are often all blue, squishy, and sad on the inside. That is often the only thing that makes us funny. Do you know what brought on this wave of self pity? Of course you do. No man ever went through a day of stumble-muffs and misquotes, goof-ups and stubbed toes like I did without feeling at least a little bit that way. Oh? Not you, again? I hear you. It must be nice to never make mistakes. 
I have my car registered with the wrong registration sticker. When I tried to get the State inspection done, I found out my car is now supposed to be the old van my wife destroyed in a car accident last spring. My bank’s bill-pay service has twice sent money to the electric company which somehow lost the electronic check. I can’t even handle idiot-proof details any more. My son who was home on leave went back to the Marine Corps early this morning. I took him to the airport and had to bring all his deodorant spray, shampoo, and toothpaste back home with me because soap on an airplane equals terrorist. Apparently that should’ve all gone into the bags we checked, because that stuff only explodes in the carry-on bags, never the baggage compartment. I am called out for my many writing mistakes, even the ones I made on purpose trying to be funny, and my self-editor let me down on several occasions in the past week. So I am depressed. At life I am, at best, a .125 hitter, barely making more than one hit in every ten at-bats. I am a rodeo clown trying to play in a basketball game, and the bulls are all Michael Jordan. (How’s that for a mangled metaphor?) 
But it isn’t all the blues that I am singing. Good things have happened too. Life continues in my unlikely body afflicted with six incurable diseases, and I am a cancer survivor since 1983. The golf-ball sized growth the surgeon removed from the back of my head last week was benign, no sign of cancer. My son was home on leave. Every day is it’s own miracle. And I have gotten some writing done. So what if every editor and every reader doesn’t fall in love with every single word? The story goes on for at least another day.
Tag Archives: goofiness
The Inner Clown
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Midterm Elections
Politics is, unfortunately, a game with rigged rules that you and I need to win, but have only a snowball’s chance in H-E-double-hockey-sticks of winning. Why do we need to win? And why can’t we? It is a matter of how government serves us and who it really belongs to. It is supposed to work democratically, enacting the will of the majority for the general welfare. It is supposed to belong to the American people who vote to make it so. Unfortunately, the Dark Side of the Force has waxed powerful and Darth Dick Cheney and his apprentice Darth Elefans (possibly the Sith Lord name of Ted Cruz) have taken power. The government has become a fascist oligarchy with Sith Lords and corporations enslaving the masses, crushing the middle class, and stripping us of every benefit our tax dollars are supposed to be paying for.
I know that sounds like I am a liberal, and many of my Republican-leaning friends in both Texas and Iowa cringe at the sound of it. To them “liberal” means bad and “conservative” means good. They have all stopped reading this before it reaches this sentence. But to me, liberal simply means that I care. I want to see government help people even if that means that I have to make personal sacrifices to do it. Conservative seems to mean more and more that such a person is only interested in protecting themselves, their profits and their prejudices.
What, you may ask, am I basing this judgement on? I look at what happened in this week’s election. Republicans won a majority in the Senate and retained their majority in the House. The Republican winners have expressed the belief that the Affordable Care Act, so-called Obamacare, needs to be repealed. That basically means that because the Insurance industry, pharmaceuticals, and medical equipment manufacturers make higher profits doing things the old way, they want to take away the insurance that so many people now have that they didn’t have before. In other words, profit is far more important to them than people’s health. These victors have also expressed the belief that global warming and climate change are a hoax, or simply untrue. This means that they reject the scientific evidence that confirms its existence. Science must be wrong because they don’t accept that the recorded facts are true. In other words, they find it more profitable to be stupid and block any attempts to regulate or slow down the highly profitable gas and oil industry. These winners have also stated that the debt and deficit that this country is burdened with (an artifact of a previous Republican administration) needs to be lessened by taking away food stamps, medicare, medicaid, and other social benefits, programs paid for by our hard-earned tax dollars and meant to benefit those among us who fall on hard times or have a need many times created by the wealthy upper class who paid billions of dollars to buy elections and have no need of these services themselves. If we were to return to President Eisenhower’s ninety per cent tax rate on the wealthy, the Koch Brothers and the Walton Family of Wal-Mart heirs could easily reduce the deficit themselves.
We deserve to benefit from the government we paid for. The majority of all taxes have been paid by the middle class and the poor since the Reagan Administration. The wealthy have gotten tax breaks and moved their money off shore or out of the country for too many years. They can now legally (thanks to the Supreme Court which is tilted to the conservative side) buy elections with unreported dark money that corrupts not only Republicans, but Democrats as well. We are left with no one to represent our interests. We are at the mercy of heartless, Dark-Side masters. Whatever can we do?
It is a time for heroes. Senator Al (Han Solo) Franken retained his seat in Minnesota, winning more strongly than he did the last time. There are progressives alive and well and joining the Rebel Alliance in Minnesota. Princess Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks out with authority from Massachusetts (Alderaan) in defense of women’s rights, our right to affordable education, and fairness in politics. And our best hope lies in Senator Bernie (Luke) Sky-Sanders, the Independent Jedi from Vermont. He wields a light-saber tongue that lashes out at the Koch Brothers and their election monkey-madness with dark money. He fights for income equality and the middle class. He may yet bring balance to the Force.
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Walter Mitty
I am still recovering from a heart-attack scare, and as a part of my regimen of rest and fluids, I watched the DVD of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty starring and directed by Ben Stiller. It is a brilliant piece of film art in my opinion. The basic story is about a day-dreaming ne’er-do-well who is so much like I once was that it is practically an unauthorized biography. Mitty daydreams and pines over a co-worker that he is afraid to introduce himself to. He works at Life Magazine at a time when the printed periodical was going out of business. His job is on the line. Then, he loses a photograph from a famous photographer when he has never made such an error before. To correct his mistake, he goes on a world-hopping quest to find the photographer, visiting Greenland, jumping into the ocean from a helicopter, fighting a shark, escaping from an erupting volcano in Iceland, climbing a mountain in the Himalayas, and finally, getting fired for not finding it, though he does find it, and proves he is more competent and brave and daring and heroic than even his daydreams told him that he was. At the end he even gets the girl. It made me cry to realize how much my life was like that. It has been a comedy of errors compounded by the criticism and negativity of the world around me. I fought hard to be a competent teacher. I had to become an advocate for kids. I fought for the good of the students against principals, parents, the State of Texas, three school administrations, politicians, and sometimes even the students themselves. I rose to new heights during my darkest hours. I made a difference. A lot of kids came back to tell me I was their favorite teacher, that they learned things and remembered things from my class more than any of their other classes. I know some of them were lying for sentimental reasons, but not all of them were. So I was, in the end, a success. I had my Walter Mitty moments.
So what is the point of all of this, and of the picture of my messy studio which is also my bedroom and sickroom? If I had died from the heart attack rather than finding out it wasn’t really a heart attack, I would still be successful in the course of my life and career. Three beautiful and intelligent children with my genetic stamp… more than 2,500 students educated and served… thirty-one years of faithful teachering… like Walter Mitty, I have been worth so much more than I have ever been given credit for. And yet… and yet… I am not finished. I am only now coming into my real magical powers over words and ideas. I am only now reaching out and saying what treasures are truly in my heart for all to take away and enrich themselves with. Some of it is in the books I have written. Some of it is in the blog I am here making available to you. I am not bragging. I am old and in pain and very near the end… but I still have love to give… and laughter… and life. Please, help yourself to it while you may. I am not done yet.
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The Uses of Background
In fiction, a good background or setting can be home to more than one character. In art, too, you can use the same background in more than one picture.
Okay, so maybe it is really cheating, but cheating can be fun too.
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Things You Probably Ought to Know about Mickey
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!)
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Making a Meme
Trying to do social media marketing for my book tends to be a lot of sharing of memes. (Is that pronounced “Meeems” or “Meemees”?) I borrow stuff from others and post it based on my values, my politics, and my notions of what is wisdom. But the stuff that’s out there is wild and woolly, strange and fool-y. Quotes from authors and figures I respect are not actually things they said. Some of the memes are positively hateful and negative. I believe in gentle humor… things that make you laugh because they reveal unexpected truth. I don’t like insulting and degrading things. I could call Rush Limbaugh or Ted Cruz names. They make that very easy. But I don’t find that junk funny. So, I decided to try making what I think is a good meme.
There it is. I made that. Share it, or throw up about it, I have no control over that. I have no clue what makes something like that go viral or trend or whatever else they call it.
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More Paffooney Progress!
As you can see, I made a tiny bit of progress over yesterday… but in many different ways. I got my son to finish his week’s worth of online school despite his not being completely well. I got the fake shutters off the windows on the wall where the city is expecting me to put up new siding so the house doesn’t shame the neighborhood. (I wonder if they threaten the other shabby yards and houses in the neighborhood with fines, or am I just special?) I got the dog to choke down 30 per cent of her heart-worm pill. And I added the keyboard and a tiny bit of Chopin to the Paffooney.
Why is the piano player naked, you ask? (Well, really you don’t ask, that was really me. But I have to connect the idea somehow, don’t I? Don’t answer that.) The piano player, like all writers, story-tellers, performers, artists, and other motley fools must put something of herself or himself into the piece. It has to be the true self, the inner self, the often private self. Having been the victim of sexual abuse as a child, the fear of being naked and vulnerable like that is nearly overwhelming. And yet, in a very metaphorical way, it is what I am compelled to do. (What? You can stop screaming. I’m not going to take my clothes off, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I know how horrifying that thought is.) I am only baring what I feel about the creative process. I am writing that part near the end of The Bicycle-Wheel Genius (the fool novel project I am now working on) where the bad guy must be defeated, the good must be made clear and maybe win out, and somebody dies or does something else irretrievably sad. I did it in Catch a Falling Star. I did it again with a major character in Snow Babies. And now, one of the characters that I have created and loved will die at the climax of this novel. A resolution and a death at the end of the tale, just like some cheap Robert Altman movie. How can you possibly have a comedy where nobody dies at the end? Wait, am I doing something wrong here? Who knows?
So that is the meat of this Paffooney process. I give you the drawing, even though it is not complete. I give you the ideas, even though they are half-formed and goofy as heck. A naked piano player… and, I don’t know if you can see it yet, a tiger swallowtail butterfly. The butterfly will be naked too.
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A New-Old Project
What is the meaning of the naked piano player? Remember the naked guy playing at the beginning of episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus? I had a friend who painted a naked boy playing piano in high school art class. He was a band geek. He later proved to be gay. I asked him why he painted that. He said, “That’s me being creative.”
My oldest son is now in the Marine Corp boot camp at San Diego. He says in his first letter home that things are going great. He was a self-taught piano player. He played beautiful music, including classical pieces by Mozart, by ear. He even composed his own music. That was him being creative. So, why did he want to become a Marine and be regimented and told what to do?
Before I started this crazy naked-piano-player drawing, I had a dream. I was performing in front of an audience, naked. I should’ve been embarrassed out of my old mind. But I wasn’t. I think it was because that was me being creative. Sometimes total randomness and surprise is creativity. Definitely being completely open and honest with the audience, being naked, if you will, is being creative.
So here is the start of another colored pencil Paffooney project. I think I will call it, “Baring the Creative Soul.”
I will keep you posted on my colored-pencil progress. This is just the initial sketch in graphite. It does not mean I am contemplating learning piano, or deciding I have suddenly become gay after 57 years. It means, “This is me being creative.”
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Silly Tyger!
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;
The Tyger
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
Being and Artistry
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.
I inherited art talent from my father’s side of the family. He could always draw fairly well, though he only used the talent to draw things he meant to build or create in his workshop. He was a practical man who loved to tinker and make things work in a useful manner. He had no love or need for that which is fanciful and fantastic. I suspect, though, that he encouraged my artistical flights of fancy because it spoke to an unfulfilled portion of his own creative instinct. My Great Aunt Viola was also an artist. She loved to paint flowers on porcelain and create delicate beauty in items like plates and vases. Her art was more fanciful than my Dad’s art, but it still had a certain Midwestern practicality at its roots.
I hoped early on to be a cartoonist or comic-book artist. I loved to draw wildly imaginative things. The first cartoons I created were all about outer space. I wrote stories and drew pictures of Zebra Fleet, a Star-Trek-like space force that kept peace in an area of space inhabited by dog-headed humanoids. It was fanciful and goofy at the same time. Since then I tried my hand at a Cowboys and Indians cartoon strip, built around the massacre of Custer’s command at the Little Bighorn. I researched the Indians of the Dakotah, Crow, Shoshone, and Hidatsa Tribes for my cartoon. I learned to love drawing feathers, totems, magic men, shamans, shirt men, and lovely Indian girls. Nowadays I draw the adventures of weird little Toons from Animal Town and the various strange places in Fantastica. Teenage Panda Girls go out for cheerleading and fail, seeking to wreak revenge on Animal Town. Hairy Bear is a Grizzly with a tiny body and a huge reputation earned by fantastical hair growths and the ability to make large hair-pieces. The Four Bares are a family of bears who live at Newt’s Naturist camp and turn Animal Town upside down when they insist on their right as top-of-the-food-chain predators to go anywhere they like naked. If you are lucky, I will never be a published cartoonist. I made a serious stab at it. I came close in two different job interviews and one major submission, but I have arthritis, and it attacked my hands at just the right time to make me a school teacher instead of a cartoonist.
Drawing has become for me a hobby and a lifestyle all about the color and the symbol. I try to cram as much story and meaning into every figure or picture I do. Each drawing is precious, and I must squeeze as much as I can from each one, because drawing has become so hard to do and is such a rare thing. I lean towards the blue in my cartoons. There is a certain Blue Period about my melancholy work and life. Things turn out wrong at the end of my stories and there is no happily ever after. When the nighttime comes, I have to go to sleep with the urge to draw more. I’ll draw more in the next life, or maybe in my dreams.
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Catch a Falling Star 