COVID-19 DIARY - POST #3: : A blast from the past, "The Cat's Meow". Attempt #4 (and hopefully the final, successful attempt..?) (Day 109-248)

July 3, 2020 (Day 109 since the social isolation started) 10:20 am

Yesterday I got paid and for some reason, it seemed like a smaller paycheck than usual. But, I just checked it, and no, it's correct.
I just don't make a lot of money working roughly 24 hours a week at a rate that's less than a dollar more than the NY State minimum wage. But, I also don't really want to work more hours. What I NEED to do is try to focus more on earning money as a freelance artist in the hours i'm not working my regular job.
That's a GOAL, yo.
Meanwhile, yeah. I'm also trying to finally finish The Cat's Meow, the comic story that my best friend Steve D'Addieco wrote for me to illustrate back in... 1984, I think (cripes).

4:34 pm

Oh, man. It's already 4:30???

I'm really not very focused today. I've done a couple productive things, but nothing big and I accomplished those tasks in spite of myself. I'm just meandering through the day, I'm not very focused.
One of the stupid habits I've gotten into is realizing there are some tasks I have to do, prioritizing them, and then... not wanting to do it, But then I don't do anything else because I feel I should do this prioritized thing FIRST. Except I don't wanna. So, I don't and don't do anything else either, etc., etc., fucking etc.
Maybe simply articulating this idiocy will motivate me to get off of my ass and get it over with.
God, I'm stupid.

Meanwhile, in this First Year As A Sexagenarian, I'm hoping to rediscover the impulsive energy I had when I was a twenty year-old, just plunging into projects rather recklessly without much forethought, although this time around, actually following through on them. Self-analytically speaking I think I've gotten more hesitant over the years due to second-guessing myself out of perfectionism AND self-doubt and then, also realizing I tend to procrastinate so being self-aware of this performance weakness ironically sabotages my self-confidence as well (as opposed to informing my self-knowledge and attacking this weakness head on).
Whatever. If I am at all going to get things done, I just have to get through these mental obstacles and self-handcuffing practices.
I have to. I HAVE TO.

Friday, July 17 10:54 am

Yesterday was Thursday, and I actually remembered to post something on Facebook re: #ThrowbackThursday. I took a bunch of pictures from a sketchbook I was working on in 1979 and also some issues of the Buffalo State College RECORD from 1984, mostly. The sketchbook is from when I went to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. The photos aren't the greatest (I don't know why part of it always seems out of focus). But I posted some of my self-portraits, also a drawing I did of a lion from the Buffalo Zoo. Some of the things I didn't post were other pencil figure studies from class, a couple other unfinished zoo sketches, my attempt at caricatures, and then some character design stuff I did later, like, after I came back home from Pittsburgh. The RECORD stuff was assorted cartoons and some spot illustrations. Maybe I'll actually get my ass over to Office Max and properly scan this artwork and re-post these, but for now, here's what I shared last night:

Thursday, November 19, 4:08 pm

Jeez, FOUR MONTHS LATER???

Okay, I need to wrap this post up, publish it, and move on.

Well, catching up a bit, but broadly:

My wife went back to school (she teaches at a private boys high school, juniors and seniors, AP and Honors English) in September but there were a number of new procedures they instituted. Of course, everybody is still wearing masks. The boys had these portable plexiglas foldable cubicle things that they put on the desk in front of them. I've never seen them. They either have only a front and one attached piece (so L-shaped) to keep it upright, or its 3-parts and opens up like a U, so the student has a wall on either side of him as he watches through the front piece, if this makes sense. I believe it's the latter, because that seems to make more sense. Unfortunately, they're not the most durable things. I guess some broke the first day as students accidentally dropped them. Duct tape has come into play to fix these things. After a few weeks, my wife eventually got some rolls of clear packing tape to offer kids who had busted "plastic walls/portable cubicles" (I'm not sure what they actually call them). 

In addition, the school's windows have been kept open to increase air circulation. Of course, it's now November and we're in Western New York, so things have been cold. Except for last week when we had a stretch of delightful unseasonably warm days (high 60s, even 70s!). I don't know how long they intend to keep doing that, but it may have be a moot point now since, as of yesterday, Governor Cuomo has returned Erie County us to Level Orange (from Level Yellow), so next week (11/26) the school starts teaching remotely again to all the students.

But, things have been at a more "relaxed" level for several weeks now. I can't remember when it started. End of summer? Earlier? Sorry, I'm bad at taking notes.

We haven't stopped wearing masks when we go out in public but slowly things have been getting more lax: people eating in restaurants, stores opening, etc. At the grocery store I work at, they had been leeping customers to one line and then peeling them off to the individual cashiers as away to monitor how many customers were in the store. That's stooped happening and returned to a more conventional, open method (people just getting in line at whatever cashier was open) but i don't if that will chaneg again now that we're back to Level Orange. I'll see tomorrow. As it is, yesterday we returend to spraying sanitizer ion the grocery carts we pull in. We had been doing that, then we stopped and left it up to the customer to use cart wipes. Also, we only sanitized the carts every two hours. The cart wipes were always available, it's just that us sanitizing the carts when we brought them in was another level of sanitizing. So, we're back to doing that.

And if they go back to watching how many people are in the store at the same time, well, that's going to be fun as we go into the weekend before Thanksgiving.

So... that's a bit of an update.

Oh, also, we had the election and a couple days after Election Day, since there were so many mail-in votes across the country, Biden was declared the winner but Trump wouldn't concede (the actual election day being Nov. 3, I think Biden was declared winner on Nov. 6). He still hasn't officially conceded, but there are now news stories saying:

“Do not expect him to concede,” one top aide said. More likely, the aide said, “he’ll say something like, ‘We can’t trust the results, but I’m not contesting them.’”

Another adviser said that after the legal battles and recounts, the closest the president is likely to get to a concession is, “he’ll acknowledge the results and that we’ll never know how accurate they are.”

“But we’re not there yet,” the adviser said.

(from NBC News, Nov. 11)

So, we'll see about that.

Anyway, I'm not sure when we actually stopped doing the lockdown thing over the summer. But, it's now 248 days since the original social isolation began. Things were loosened up a bit, but we're still dealing with Covid-19 as we go into the winter.

As for my attempts at trying get some drawing down, I'm still failing spectacularly at accomplishing anything. In late August and the beginning of September, I suddenly went back from working 24 hrs/wk starting in April to working 40 hrs/wk because they were short-handed as kids went back to school. But then they hired a new coordinator for our department and I was able to ease back a bit and I'm more working more like 32 hrs/wk. The additional 8 hours is great, actually, because I got into the habit of buying more stuff on-line this year, especially from eBay: underground comics, old paperback novels, etc.

Speaking of which, I have to stop my impulse shopping for a bit and start saving up for Christmas!

But, I'm digressing again!

I've impulsively started anew project this month: re-making this one-page comic story I did back in '82-'83 when I was working on the Buffalo State RECORD. My original intent was to do an 8-page remake of the original 1-page comic and to set Nov. 31 as my deadline, a specific response to my friend pam trying to write her script for her comic story as part of her Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month, natch!) challenge. 

So, that was my initial goal: re-do the 1-page story, "Karen's Dilemma!" as an 8-page story and finish it Nov. 31. I think i decided to do this Nov. 15, halfway through the month. Okay, I'm already behind, but still, since the original 1-page story was done in 11 hours to meet a newspaper deadline, I thought it was still do-able.

Of course, since I started thinking about this project, it's already going through some structural changes, but I'll leave that for my next post...

Although, I will say this: the (working) title for this 8-Page re-make comic story is, 2145 A.D.: THE PERTINACIOUS ODYSSEY OF STARLA SOLARO.

MY SUMMER 2019 BUCKET LIST

Thursday, June 13, 2:01 pm

Okay, I'm just taking five minutes (if that) to start yet another (possibly unfinished) post.
I'm taking five from cleaning up the house. My wife's upstairs working on cleaning and other things and I'm focused on the garage area (sun room, TV room, downstairs bathroom).
I more or less finished the sun room, which was mostly vacuuming, and now I'm slightly goofing off before getting into the TV room.
Mostly, I want to say "out loud" that I'm going to make a comic book this summer, somehow, some length, some way. I'm going to be fucking SIXTY YEARS OLD in pretty much eight months! So far, for my 59th year on this earth, I've notched a couple good personal accomplishments.
First, I directed my first play in 14 years: ANNAPURNA, a two-hander starring Lisa Ludwig and John Profeta and produced by the New Phoenix Theatre in downtown Buffalo. Although I was very stressed out during the entire rehearsal process, it wound up doing okay. Getting a 4 out of 4 star review in the Buffalo News didn't hurt, either.
Second, shortly after doing the play, we finally sold our old house in Lockport! We moved to our "new" house* in the fall of 2017, but the old house sort of became this albatross hanging over our head for, like, 21 months. Part of that delay was mostly my fault because I still had a bunch of cleaning and moving to do. My wife moved her stuff out but my belongings were so disorganized she left that entirely up to me. Plus I had some additional cleaning up of areas in the old house, too. Anyway, due to circumstances (like going back to work when we moved in 2017) and mostly my dragging my feet, it just took forever for us to finally wrap things up in Lockport. And, boy, did that pose problems, mostly financial as we were then saddled with the expenses of two houses in that period of time. About the only positive aspect of that situation was in 2017, when friend and actor John Karyus needed a place to stay briefly before he left the area to move back to L.A. (long story) and we let him live in the old house from, uh, I think, a few weeks in November to very early December. And it was during that stay that just before he departed for the West Coast, I shot some footage of him (and me) for a ridiculous and spontaneous movie idea called THE RESURRECTION OF THE BLUE AGOUTI. But, that's a whole other (and currently unfinished) story. ANYWAY, I finally got my shit together and this past spring got around to doing what I had to do at the old house, then Amy and I finally got the house straightened out to have a realtor come through and we put the house up for sale and it sold.
It sold.
IT SOLD.
We weren't exactly confident that that was going to happen, what with no home-inspection, and selling it as is, warts and all. We sold it and we also made a small profit, in terms of what we were expecting and the bills we had to pay, but the upshot is: no more mortgage to worry about, no more Lockport utility bills, no more going back and forth to Lockport to cut the grass and shovel the snow, etc. That era of our lives was finally over and we could finally MOVE ON.
So, two huge accomplishments!

Now, I'm just trying to capitalize on that sense of achievement and keep the "momentum" going this year, dammit!
Alright, gotta go.
More later.

Friday, September 27, 5:04 pm

Well, summer's over, man!
And even though I didn't work on a comic book at all, let alone complete one, I DID work on and direct this year's Team BM-VM entry for the 2019 Buffalo 48 Hour Film Project. It happened the weekend of August 9-11. Our entry was called THE CASE OF THE MISPLACED HERRING.

Meanwhile, I still have to get into some sort of habit/routine of doing artwork and making films.
ARGHHH.
But back to housecleaning.
(I know, I know! Two and half months later, and I'm still doing housework!)
Still, I did a short film and it was for the Buffalo 48 Hour Film Project. Yay! That's accomplishment #3!

Friday, November 1, 1:56 pm

Howdy.
Okay, well, this year is just hurtling along.
And I'm still looking to get into some sort of regular work routine. "Work" meaning drawing regularly, writing regularly, filmmaking regularly. Plus my regular household chores AND finishing up with the various stages of remodeling on our house.

Getting back to drawing and artwork...
So, I've done a lot of squat so far this year in that area.
More recently, I was hoping to do something for Inktober 2019 and I did nothing. Well, I started three drawings and jotted down ideas for other prompts. But I didn't finish penciling any of the drawings and I didn't get close to even inking, the whole purpose of the month-long event! But, also, I hoped to get some work in on the my Apple Corps Comics story. And update my portfolio.
Yes, I'm just re-hashing here what I haven't done so far this year.
Which hasn't stopped me from having new, additional ambitions: possibly being a guest artist on a Numina Comics comic, and inking some pages (officially) for Mark McElligott and John Warren's comic, GOOD CREATURES.

Re: the Numina Comics thing.
During October, I got re-acquainted with local artist/writer Aaron O'Brian on-line mostly through Twitter and followed his daily progress as he did Inktober 2019. Which he did! I know Aaron mostly through the Visions comic anthology from Queen City Book Store (a local comics shop owned by Emil Novak, Sr., whom I know through the store and then through some filmmaking projects he did years ago (THE ACCUMULATOR and BANSHEE) that he enlisted me to help him with, and then BM-VM which he introduced me to). Aaron had a self-published comic he did called RETURN TO SNAKELAND. Anyway, I wound up re-checking the website to Numina Comics of which he is one of the creators. I guess they started it in 2017 and as far as I can tell, they haven't created an actual full issue yet. There is an introductory on-line comic, though. So, I'm wondering if they could use an artist..?
Of course, I should NOT be one of those artists because I NEVER DRAW. But that fact NEVER stops me from suddenly having some ambitions to get involved, my usual impulsive, unrealistic, over-extending m.o.
In addition, there's GOOD CREATURES, the comic that Mark and John are doing. And I'm wondering if they could secretly use the help of an inker over Mark's pencils?
I think both of these are legitimate ambitions, BUT before I officially ask both parties and offer my services, I should:
1. FINISH MY ACC (Apple Corps Comics) COMIC BOOK STORY.

So, there's my first goal in order to achieve yet another goal.
Of course, I've already insinuated myself into Sam Qualiana's affairs by asking (quite some time ago) if I could adapt his short zombie film, SWAMP SQUAD OF THE DEAD (to which he said, "Sure!" and I promptly did NOTHING with it). Or Steve D'Addieco's short comic story from the mid-80's (!), THE CAT'S MEOW, that I've been meaning to illustrate. Obviously, I need to do some shit first before I move on to other projects.
And I should move quickly if I'm serious, because re: GOOD CREATURES, Mark is cranking out the pages and John is cranking out post-production: inking, lettering, coloring, publishing. They've already published two comics so far.
So...
TIME WAITS FOR NO MAN, motherfucker.

Sunday, November 3, 9:15 am

Speaking of Time, today is Daylight Savings and so we all "gained" an hour. Yay.
Oh, some catching up: Who is Sam Qualiana and Steve D'Addieco? What are Apple Corps Comics?
Why is my computer table only standing on three legs? Oh, sorry, that last one's a new topic (but something I do have to address today before my table goes boom and my computer goes, well... I need to address this issue TODAY...  stupid wood screws...!).
NOTE: My apologies if I'm repeating myself (and I'm sure I am) for the following background info. I'm sure the Apple Corps Comic Book Club and Sam and Steve's names have come up before somewhere at least once in previous blog posts, not necessarily with THIS blog, but maybe here, too. Anyway, some catching up:

1. Apple Corps Comic Book Club: I've mentioned this group before in previous posts, but myself and another artist/aspiring cartoonist, Pam, have been supposedly working on a comic book for well over a decade (!) with no comic book to show for it yet (!!!). We call ourselves the Apple Corps Comic Book Club. We both used to work at Great Arrow Graphics (aka GAG. I left there in 2003), a greeting card company that prints all their cards through silk-screening. We started a comic book group there called the Crabapple Club (don't ask!) and the additional members were Joshua Hrizak, Dan Clark and Will Rice. Well, the group eventually fizzled out but Pam and I tried to continue and fulfill the goal of making a comic book and we've met infrequently ever since. "Apple Corps" is a nod to that original group ("corps" being a homophone of "core", get it?).

2. Sam Qualiana is a WNY filmmaker who I first met at the first Buffalo Screams Horror Film Festival (which eventually became defunct, but also evolved into the current Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival). Sam and I became friends through the local filmmaking community and he actually became our trusted cat sitter when we were living in Lockport. He's perhaps most famous for this Youtube trailer of his first feature film, SNOW SHARK: ANCIENT SNOW BEAST (815,000 views!). He made a number of short films prior to SNOW SHARK and one of them is a compact, straight-to-the-point, effective short zombie film called SWAMP SQUAD OF THE DEAD.

3. Steve D'Addieco is my best friend from high school. He's still my best friend, but I've been shitty staying in contact with him consistently over the years. Although we did see each other last summer to celebrate our 40th high school reunion which he couldn't actually make (so we met halfway in-between just to catch up along with another classmate). He also was a Marvel comics fan (thanks to Bruce Allen, another classmate, for introducing us!). During high school we talked about doing a comic book together, something called Dimensions, an anthology comic. I think I may have roughly drawn a page or two for a couple stories. One was called, I think, "Life: A Universe Away, A Thought Away," and then there was this barbarian character we were talking about called Myrak of Cyrania and the story was sort of a cross between sword & sorcery and The Tempest. Steve actually went to film school and has written a few unsold screenplays. Post college (well, maybe during), Steve wrote this comic book script for me of a short story called The Cat's Meow. We're talking over thirty freaking years ago! I actually started drawing it a couple times back in the 80s and then again around 2000 when I was working at GAG. I took some pictures of GAG colleagues Jim Cole and Joel Menter as references for the two characters.
Still never finished it. One of the big drawing albatrosses around my neck. Still have a few cool ideas for illustrating the story. And, I think I actually found the script to the story while cleaning out the house for moving. Now, if I can remember where I put it...

Okay, I'm going to post this for now and just move on.

* Our new house is pretty much my family's home since 1969. We moved there and I lived there pretty much through the rest of elementary school (I was 9 when we moved), middle school and high school. I lived in Pittsburgh for two years (1978-80) when I went to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, then I moved back home for a couple more years (I can't remember exactly how long). My parents stayed there until they both passed (my mom in 2007 and my dad in 2016). And then I inherited the house outright. But we remodeled it before moving in. So, that's the "new" house.