March 15, 2014
Wow.
I'm really pretty bad at maintaining these blogs...
But, I'm always optimistic that I'll finally get my shit together with these things. Or I'm living in denial.
Anyway, here it is St. Patrick's Day weekend (Mar. 17 is the holiday), and just three days ago, we had about a foot of snow drop on us through the day. I don't know if we still have significant snowfall left in there rest of our Winter (according to the calendar), but counting today, there's only 5 days left of it: the first day of Spring is Thursday, March 20. We'll see what happens.
And we'll see if we get snow when it becomes Spring.
Cripes, it's been a pretty brutal winter this 2013-2014 season.
Well, let me amend that. For the first time in about three or four years, we've had a pretty consistent, snowy winter, which sounds strange since I live in the Western New York (WNY) area, it's most famous city being Buffalo. There are areas to the south of Buffalo that are traditionally known as the snow belt regions because they pick up snow off the Great Lakes. We live north of Buffalo, and in past years, we may have a couple times during the season where we have some significant snowfall but mostly, we've been dodging the bullet in terms of constantly shoveling. Which is good, because I drive an itty bitty Chevy Aveo. I like the car (my wife HATES it, in terms of driving it or being a passenger in it. I think she can live with looking at it.) but come the snow, it's really just a toy car and I can easily get stuck if there's any real accumulation of snow. So, I've been lucky these past few years.
But this season, with the so-called Polar Vortex, etc., we've had more traditional snowfalls, and the guys at my work who live in areas like Orchard Park, Springville, Collins, boy, they've done their share of shoveling over multiple days.
So, this past Wednesday (3/12), we were having predictions for a terrible storm coming through through the night before. As it turns out, my wife didn't have to go to work, so I was able to go to work in the "Supercar," her Subaru Outback. And at work, we wound up just tearing through all our printing jobs and leaving as soon as we were done to try and beat the snowfall that was to come up in the latter part of the day. We wound up leaving about 3 hours earlier, plus, all schools and most businesses were either closed or closing early, so when I left for home, it was kind of cool and weird, because it was like the SuperBowl was on or something-- not many cars were on the road.
It only took me a little over an hour to get home (versus a good 45 minutes during regular rush hour traffic) and later that night, I shoveled our driveway and sidewalk before going to bed. I waited until late in case more snow fell, and I didn't want to shovel too much in the morning before work Thursday morning, especially since I'm really NOT a morning person. Fortunately, we have a fairly small driveway, but we did have about a foot of snow, so it was a solid hour of sweating for a fat guy who doesn't exercise as regularly as he should (uh, I'm talking about me).
April 17, 2017
...And, uh, yeah.
There you go.
I wrote the above three years ago and left it. I just re-read it and have no idea where I was going with it. Sorry.
In hindsight, it’s interesting to know that the following happens in my life, though:
A month later, in April 2014, the place where I work (Metro Community News, which printed weekly shopper papers, like the Pennysaver, although we didn’t print Pennysavers specifically) will be sold to James Austin, the publisher of the Angola Pennysaver. This isn’t a complete surprise because ad sales had been diminishing prior to this. That is, it was a complete surprise that we were sold; I had never heard of James Austin prior to the sale.
Metro’s president, Bernard* Bradpiece (and also president and CEO of Strategic Publications), and Metro’s upper management had been struggling for a while to figure out how to deal with the impact of the internet on classified sales. And at the first company meeting with Austin, my department learned that we were eventually going to be out of work because his plan was to find another printer rather than print our own. We just didn’t know when that would happen (it would be mid-August, 2014).
So, that’s one thing I can add after re-reading this. But, I really don’t know or remember at all what my actual point was. Was it about snowfall? Maybe. Was it about how out of shape I was which I realized when I was shoveling? Maybe.
I have no clue.
However, later that same month, this happens...
Anyway, I saw this draft sitting here (along with at least three other unfinished posts), so I thought I’d formally "tie up" at least one loose end here.
April 19, 2017
You know, it occurs to me that one clue about what I might have been wanting to write about was either comic- or art-related because, hey! This is (supposedly) my comic and art blog! Hey, and also, duh! So, maybe I can figure out what I was going to talk about... maybe I did some drawing? Or was working on a comic book story? If so, I was probably writing...
(To be continued?)
*pronounced BIR-nerd, emphasis on the first syllable.
Monday, April 17, 2017
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
DAY 19: UPDATE - Work and Art Project Status
When I got laid off Feb. 5, one of the things I wanted to do was kind of overhaul my blogs in an attempt to get back into some sort of regular posting. Seeing it's been two damn weeks since I last posted anything here, I can see it's easier said than done.
So, that's why I'm here now.
WORK UPDATE:
Actually, this is a good day to post a work update because... I'm going back to work tomorrow!
I got a call last week from one of the managers in the Distribution Dept. where I used to work. I got laid off from our Maintenance Dept. Well, some of the personnel and hour cuts I knew were going to happen after I got laid off (conceptually speaking, I didn't know who was actually going to be cut) finally happened in Distribution. Two people were laid off outright, and at least a couple positions were cut down from full-time to part-time (2 days = 16 hours). Well, one of the guys who got cut to 16 hours decided to just leave, that part-time wasn't going to work for him. So, that's why they called me, to see if I was interested in working only part-time. In my case I was, but my situation was different than the other dude's. Part of me was interested in trying to make money creatively via freelance/self-employment, although you wouldn't know it by anything I've done since being laid off, other than cleaning up some blog infrastructure among my three Blogger blogs and posting a couple times here. But, I still am interested in trying to pursue that avenue. However, the possibility of having some stable source of income was very attractive compared to having zero income, so I said yes. So, I'm going back to my old company, but I'm working part-time and in a different department. Meanwhile, I have also filed for unemployment and will be theoretically collecting a portion of that as well.
ART UPDATE:
Meanwhile, as I described in a previous post, I hoped to create a mini-comic as one of my first art projects. Thus, in typical Kimmel fashion, I'm not focused on working on one story but I'm actually juggling two different comic stories. In addition, part of me wants to publish these stories in a mini-comic format, but part of me also wants to send it to Ka-Blam Digital Publishing so I can hold a genuine comic book in my hands that I can say I created.
Ugh! I can't fucking decide! (what else is new)
Which is also why I'm working on two stories.
So, that's why I'm here now.
WORK UPDATE:
Actually, this is a good day to post a work update because... I'm going back to work tomorrow!
I got a call last week from one of the managers in the Distribution Dept. where I used to work. I got laid off from our Maintenance Dept. Well, some of the personnel and hour cuts I knew were going to happen after I got laid off (conceptually speaking, I didn't know who was actually going to be cut) finally happened in Distribution. Two people were laid off outright, and at least a couple positions were cut down from full-time to part-time (2 days = 16 hours). Well, one of the guys who got cut to 16 hours decided to just leave, that part-time wasn't going to work for him. So, that's why they called me, to see if I was interested in working only part-time. In my case I was, but my situation was different than the other dude's. Part of me was interested in trying to make money creatively via freelance/self-employment, although you wouldn't know it by anything I've done since being laid off, other than cleaning up some blog infrastructure among my three Blogger blogs and posting a couple times here. But, I still am interested in trying to pursue that avenue. However, the possibility of having some stable source of income was very attractive compared to having zero income, so I said yes. So, I'm going back to my old company, but I'm working part-time and in a different department. Meanwhile, I have also filed for unemployment and will be theoretically collecting a portion of that as well.
ART UPDATE:
Meanwhile, as I described in a previous post, I hoped to create a mini-comic as one of my first art projects. Thus, in typical Kimmel fashion, I'm not focused on working on one story but I'm actually juggling two different comic stories. In addition, part of me wants to publish these stories in a mini-comic format, but part of me also wants to send it to Ka-Blam Digital Publishing so I can hold a genuine comic book in my hands that I can say I created.
Ugh! I can't fucking decide! (what else is new)
Which is also why I'm working on two stories.
FIRST: There's one very strange story that I'm doing for a comic book title I'm impulsively calling:
A FISTFUL OF THIS!
I've been toying with this story for the last month (or two-- hell, maybe longer! Time has no meaning for me, even when I was working full-time, but even moreso now...). It seems to be a pseudo-Superman parody but then it goes... elsewhere. Originally I was thinking it was going to be a one-off sort of deal-- my attempt to just crap out an 8 page mini-comic and get that off my back. But as usual, once I started thinking about it, I could see how I'd be able to continue the story into a series or even a multiple series. And that notion segued into me remembering Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown's YUMMY FUR. YUMMY FUR was this very strange 80s comic of odd tales that after a couple issues, the tales started connecting into a more deliberately longer and continuous narrative which became ED THE HAPPY CLOWN (and if you're unfamiliar with this book, believe me, the adjective "happy" is ironic). Stories that originally seemed to stand alone in early issues of Brown's comic as short, absurd, non-sequitor sort of ridiculous things (such as "The Man Who Couldn't Stop" where a man is shown sitting on a toilet, and then after a few panels of the same image he finally thinks, "I don't seem to be stopping.") started to actually be part of the narrative continuity of the other stories. Until, soon, each issue was focused on telling this bizarre story with Ed as one of the main characters. So, with that thought in mind, I'm toying with using this first FISTFUL story as a springboard into other tales. I guess I'm envisioning FISTFUL as a loose anthology of strangely related tales, for lack of a better term.
Meanwhile, a few days ago another artist friend of mine linked me to one of the products she was selling on Society 6, a website I was unfamiliar with. I had heard of the online Etsy store, and I actually thought she was selling stuff through there, but I guess I was wrong. Anyway, I took a look at some of the things she was selling and, looking to support her, I decided to sign up to the site as well and then "like" her various designs. Check them out yourself (she goes by Lady Tanya Bleudragon). I like this design in particular.
SECOND: After looking at the S6 site and signing on, I wondered about submitting a design myself. My first idea was to use something old, something I've already done, simply to expedite things. I started considering comics or illustrations for concepts I originally began in college. I went to Buff State (Buffalo State College, part of the SUNY system), and although I never finished my degree, one of the great experiences I had was working on the Buffalo State RECORD, the school newspaper, for a couple years. The last year I was there I was Co-Graphics Editor with Joe Wocjik. Anyway, there was this weird sci-fi romance parody I had done to fill up a big space on the comic page one day and it was a personal artistic highpoint for me, not only in terms of creative accomplishment but also because I finished it in time for the deadline. It worked on it 11 hours straight from blank page to finished product. Yeah, I was a totally different person back then!
Getting back to this Society 6 site and coming up with design ideas to sell, the idea of selling T-shirts with my comic designs has been very seductive to me as a goal for a while. What the hell. I'm going to give it a shot. You get a small commission for everything you sell, but you don't have to create the products ahead of time, the site creates the products (art prints, T-shirts, tote bags, etc.). They're the investor. So, I'm going to do a re-make of this one page comic story and try to make a T-shirt design out of it.
The initial idea is to do a full 10 x 15 page of the comic artwork that stands on its own story-wise. The original story was a square image because that was the space I had to fill for the paper. Here it is:
My decision to remake this story as a T-shirt design was also inspired by a few favorite T-shirts I own. One is an off-white T-shirt that I got from Walmart which has great B&W line art by Leinil Yu depicting a visually busy collection of various Marvel heroes engaged in battle, with Spider-man in the center. Also, I have this amazing Paul Pope shirt that has various panels of his artwork on the front and a single character drawing on the back. So, with these brilliant examples guiding me, I'm plunging into this damn enterprise.
Right now, I'm in the re-writing stage of remaking the above little comic story. The title's already been changed from KAREN'S DILEMMA to PATSY'S PASSIONATE PREDICAMENT and I'm creating a "host" character to introduce the story, a la the Cryptkeeper, etc. Part of this overhaul is to improve/update the artwork. Plus, fix up the writing. Like, make the Victorian romance elements in the story a little more obvious (or actually existent), and especially strengthen the end of the story which shouldn't be hard because it's ridiculously inane. Even from the viewpoint of using absurdity as a means to getting a laugh -- the ending is rather stupid and disposable.
Also I'm trying to think/develop other possibilities for designs/self-marketing, like using this host character as a mascot in at least a couple ways: 1) as a recognizable character from an anticipated portfolio of my work; and 2) to also promote the possible existence of an infrequently published series of a space romance comics anthology, which may or may not still be called INTERPLANETARY ROMANCES. I keep going back and forth as to how good or bad a title that is. "Interplanetary" seems like a big, clunky word, but I don't know. Big and clunky is part of my verbose charm...
Meanwhile, in the original comic (above), the story is presented as the concluding segment, but I only did this one installment. For the remake I intend to make the story complete (beginning, middle and end) but if that's the case, I really won't be able to contain it on one page. From a comic book story perspective, multiple pages is fine. From a T-shirt perspective, well, no. But, I think I can work with that, too. Once it's done, I'm thinking I'll just "cut up" the various panels and make a 10 x 15 collage of the story with perhaps the coolest images, etc, in the mix. And maybe I'll draw a new image of the hostess character to superimpose over the whole collage and that might make a cool T-shirt design. So, I got some ideas here...
All I need to freaking do is clear off my drawing table, be able to WALK comfortably in my "workroom" to get to my drawing table, and start drawing.
*takes deep breath*
A FISTFUL OF THIS!
I've been toying with this story for the last month (or two-- hell, maybe longer! Time has no meaning for me, even when I was working full-time, but even moreso now...). It seems to be a pseudo-Superman parody but then it goes... elsewhere. Originally I was thinking it was going to be a one-off sort of deal-- my attempt to just crap out an 8 page mini-comic and get that off my back. But as usual, once I started thinking about it, I could see how I'd be able to continue the story into a series or even a multiple series. And that notion segued into me remembering Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown's YUMMY FUR. YUMMY FUR was this very strange 80s comic of odd tales that after a couple issues, the tales started connecting into a more deliberately longer and continuous narrative which became ED THE HAPPY CLOWN (and if you're unfamiliar with this book, believe me, the adjective "happy" is ironic). Stories that originally seemed to stand alone in early issues of Brown's comic as short, absurd, non-sequitor sort of ridiculous things (such as "The Man Who Couldn't Stop" where a man is shown sitting on a toilet, and then after a few panels of the same image he finally thinks, "I don't seem to be stopping.") started to actually be part of the narrative continuity of the other stories. Until, soon, each issue was focused on telling this bizarre story with Ed as one of the main characters. So, with that thought in mind, I'm toying with using this first FISTFUL story as a springboard into other tales. I guess I'm envisioning FISTFUL as a loose anthology of strangely related tales, for lack of a better term.
Meanwhile, a few days ago another artist friend of mine linked me to one of the products she was selling on Society 6, a website I was unfamiliar with. I had heard of the online Etsy store, and I actually thought she was selling stuff through there, but I guess I was wrong. Anyway, I took a look at some of the things she was selling and, looking to support her, I decided to sign up to the site as well and then "like" her various designs. Check them out yourself (she goes by Lady Tanya Bleudragon). I like this design in particular.
SECOND: After looking at the S6 site and signing on, I wondered about submitting a design myself. My first idea was to use something old, something I've already done, simply to expedite things. I started considering comics or illustrations for concepts I originally began in college. I went to Buff State (Buffalo State College, part of the SUNY system), and although I never finished my degree, one of the great experiences I had was working on the Buffalo State RECORD, the school newspaper, for a couple years. The last year I was there I was Co-Graphics Editor with Joe Wocjik. Anyway, there was this weird sci-fi romance parody I had done to fill up a big space on the comic page one day and it was a personal artistic highpoint for me, not only in terms of creative accomplishment but also because I finished it in time for the deadline. It worked on it 11 hours straight from blank page to finished product. Yeah, I was a totally different person back then!
Getting back to this Society 6 site and coming up with design ideas to sell, the idea of selling T-shirts with my comic designs has been very seductive to me as a goal for a while. What the hell. I'm going to give it a shot. You get a small commission for everything you sell, but you don't have to create the products ahead of time, the site creates the products (art prints, T-shirts, tote bags, etc.). They're the investor. So, I'm going to do a re-make of this one page comic story and try to make a T-shirt design out of it.
The initial idea is to do a full 10 x 15 page of the comic artwork that stands on its own story-wise. The original story was a square image because that was the space I had to fill for the paper. Here it is:
 |
| Photocopied from the Buffalo State College RECORD circa... uh... early 80s, maybe 1983? The direct inspiration for this comic was there was an unexpected snowstorm in early spring that year, and while I was home (snow day!), all I did was read my Silver Age FANTASTIC FOUR issues by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. I was so energized by reading them that it directly led to me creating this comic story at a single sitting when the opportunity presented itself. Okay, the same day deadline I had bearing down on me also forced me to finish in a single sitting as well. |
My decision to remake this story as a T-shirt design was also inspired by a few favorite T-shirts I own. One is an off-white T-shirt that I got from Walmart which has great B&W line art by Leinil Yu depicting a visually busy collection of various Marvel heroes engaged in battle, with Spider-man in the center. Also, I have this amazing Paul Pope shirt that has various panels of his artwork on the front and a single character drawing on the back. So, with these brilliant examples guiding me, I'm plunging into this damn enterprise.
Right now, I'm in the re-writing stage of remaking the above little comic story. The title's already been changed from KAREN'S DILEMMA to PATSY'S PASSIONATE PREDICAMENT and I'm creating a "host" character to introduce the story, a la the Cryptkeeper, etc. Part of this overhaul is to improve/update the artwork. Plus, fix up the writing. Like, make the Victorian romance elements in the story a little more obvious (or actually existent), and especially strengthen the end of the story which shouldn't be hard because it's ridiculously inane. Even from the viewpoint of using absurdity as a means to getting a laugh -- the ending is rather stupid and disposable.
Also I'm trying to think/develop other possibilities for designs/self-marketing, like using this host character as a mascot in at least a couple ways: 1) as a recognizable character from an anticipated portfolio of my work; and 2) to also promote the possible existence of an infrequently published series of a space romance comics anthology, which may or may not still be called INTERPLANETARY ROMANCES. I keep going back and forth as to how good or bad a title that is. "Interplanetary" seems like a big, clunky word, but I don't know. Big and clunky is part of my verbose charm...
Meanwhile, in the original comic (above), the story is presented as the concluding segment, but I only did this one installment. For the remake I intend to make the story complete (beginning, middle and end) but if that's the case, I really won't be able to contain it on one page. From a comic book story perspective, multiple pages is fine. From a T-shirt perspective, well, no. But, I think I can work with that, too. Once it's done, I'm thinking I'll just "cut up" the various panels and make a 10 x 15 collage of the story with perhaps the coolest images, etc, in the mix. And maybe I'll draw a new image of the hostess character to superimpose over the whole collage and that might make a cool T-shirt design. So, I got some ideas here...
All I need to freaking do is clear off my drawing table, be able to WALK comfortably in my "workroom" to get to my drawing table, and start drawing.
*takes deep breath*
BUT, I'm going to eat something first.
Thursday, February 11, 2016
DAY 4: Holy Crap! I'm 56 today!
If you're wondering what "Day 4" is in reference to, you can look it up here.
Meanwhile, I've been very slowly trying to correct what little personal infrastructure I've already established on the internet.
A few years ago I considered starting a website and actually purchased a domain name for a year (I think) and enlisted the aid of a friend who did websites. Well, I never followed through on the content, so nothing came of it, and then I never renewed the domain name.
Which is fine, for a couple reasons: 1) it turns out the name I chose was being used by someone else, a business, actually; and 2) I didn't have any content, just ideas.
If I ever decide to attempt the personal website route again. I do have another name in mind. But, for now, I'm just going to work with what I've already started: three blogs (well, at least three...) that have been poorly maintained (to various degrees) since their various inceptions.
I've been trying to do some basic maintenance here the last couple days. Besides attempting to post some new content, I've tried to clean up and also make consistent some of the links and layouts of these furshlugginer things. Like, all three blogs now have easy links to each other in the top of the margin. My one blog had it, but the others didn't, so I fixed that. Then, during that process, I realized the one link I had to my film blog (Behold! The Wanna-be Filmmaker!/Full-time Name Dropper!) actually went to my OLD film blog at Livejournal. (But, what I really want to do is direct). So, really, a few very basic things have been neglected.
But, today IS my damn birthday!
So, I'm focusing on some other things today... like maybe going back to bed!
Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, I've been very slowly trying to correct what little personal infrastructure I've already established on the internet.
A few years ago I considered starting a website and actually purchased a domain name for a year (I think) and enlisted the aid of a friend who did websites. Well, I never followed through on the content, so nothing came of it, and then I never renewed the domain name.
Which is fine, for a couple reasons: 1) it turns out the name I chose was being used by someone else, a business, actually; and 2) I didn't have any content, just ideas.
If I ever decide to attempt the personal website route again. I do have another name in mind. But, for now, I'm just going to work with what I've already started: three blogs (well, at least three...) that have been poorly maintained (to various degrees) since their various inceptions.
I've been trying to do some basic maintenance here the last couple days. Besides attempting to post some new content, I've tried to clean up and also make consistent some of the links and layouts of these furshlugginer things. Like, all three blogs now have easy links to each other in the top of the margin. My one blog had it, but the others didn't, so I fixed that. Then, during that process, I realized the one link I had to my film blog (Behold! The Wanna-be Filmmaker!/Full-time Name Dropper!) actually went to my OLD film blog at Livejournal. (But, what I really want to do is direct). So, really, a few very basic things have been neglected.
But, today IS my damn birthday!
So, I'm focusing on some other things today... like maybe going back to bed!
Stay tuned.
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
DAY 2
...of my unemployment, to be specific.
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Yesterday my wife had the day off, so my first day unemployed I didn't really do anything because we were both sort of goofing off during the day.
And to further nit-pick, I didn't count Saturday and Sunday (even though I got laid off Friday) because, you know, the weekend. Yesterday (Monday) I would've regularly gone to work if I was still gainfully employed.
So, today I'm officially considering this my first crack at living unemployed. Got it?
I have a list of things to do today, and some of those things I've been letting slide for months. Because I'm a procrastinating bum.
So, I'm trying to update my three blogs on Blogger and set to work on doing a mini-comic, something I've always wanted to have in my portfolio/resume, but never seem to accomplish. So, that's something I'm going to work on this week. I'd love to be able to "spew it out" in a single week, but I can't seem to set boundaries on: 1) how many pages I want to do (8 minimum) or 2) what size page I should make the comic, either standard comic book size (6.75"x10.25") or mini-comic size, which in this case is an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper folded in half (ie. 5.5" x 8.5" page).
Reasons to work at mini-comic size: The actual mini-comic size is what Jason Karns does self-published comic FUKITOR at, and I love FUKITOR. Some issues/stories are more inspired than others, but the artwork is always tremendous. Also, one of my main inspirations to do a mini-comic was because of a mini-comic that Dan Clark worked on as a kid with his friend, Adam Owen. I worked with Dan at Great Arrow Graphics from 1998-2003. Towards the end of my stint at GAG, a few of my fellow employees and myself formed a group called the Crabapple Club, with the hope of creating a comic book. These founding members were: Dan Clark, Pam Cichoki, Josh Hrizak, Will Rice and myself (Terry Kimmel). We never did put out a single issue, but I remember Dan showing me this little B&W comic book he made with Adam back when Dan was a teenager and he was heavy into the guys who created Image Comics (Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, etc.). The cover itself was black line art printed on red paper stock. Adam wrote and drew the 8 pg. book and Dan inked it. For the life of me, I CANNOT remember the name of the comic but it was about a superhero who had flamethrowers built into his suit sleeves and he burned criminals to death (with the distinctly evocative and awesome sound effect of "FREEEAWWWW!!" as the flames whooshed out of his costume's wrist tubes). Maybe superhero isn't the right word; vigilante is the more accurate word. But the dude did wear a costume and mask. His origins are vaguely suggested: a criminal element destroyed his family and his life (disfiguring him in the process in the final panel reveal--oops! Spoiler alert!) and so the reader is expecting to follow further adventures of our anti-hero as he exacts vengeance on the villains who wronged him.
I actually started writing and drawing a special edition of this comic, a so-called International Version, fueled by my viewing of Italian writer/ director Renato Polselli's DELIRIUM starring Mickey Hargitay and Rita Calderoni. I saw the DVD around the time I first saw Dan's comic, and there are two versions of the 1972 film. There's an additional sequence for U.S. audiences - a framing sequence actually - set during the Vietnam War, and in the International Version, there's more explicit and weird, lurid material. In my idea for re-doing the comic, I was going to create a whole new page (sometimes more than one in a row) that would be inserted between EACH page of the original 8 pages of the comic. These pages were supposedly "cut" from of the more explicit International Version of the mini-comic. In fact, I debated translating the dialogue into Italian or Spanish also, whatever language I'd be able to do. It was a conceptual thing!
I left GAG in 2003, four years before Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's GRINDHOUSE double-feature was released, so I wasn't actually thinking and articulating in terms of "grindhouse" but essentially, that's what I was doing.
[NOTE: BTW, I "blame" the group name on Dan-- I mean, credit for the "Crabapple Club" moniker goes to Dan, ha! Meanwhile, Pam and I still meet semi-regularly in hopes of finally putting out that FIRST comic, which sounds extra pathetic since I haven't worked at GAG for TWELVE AND A HALF FREAKING YEARS now. In fact, Dan is the only GAG member still working at GAG. But our new "splinter" comic book club name is the Apple Corps., in deference to the original name.]
I actually e-mailed Adam a few times asking him if he minded me doing this with his character, and I think for the most part he was fine with it, but as I continued alluding to the possibility of how over the top I might go with the additional pages I think he backed off a little. So, I may do a variation on his anti-hero but make it mine, especially since he's not following through on continuing this comic he created years ago. Actually, Adam started doing another comic, GREEN PIECE, a sci-fi comic with a lizard detective who solves interplanetary crime. I can't remember if he created the character himself, or in conjunction with writer Jason Degroot. I want to say Adam was friends with Jason, and Adam actually created GREEN PIECE, writing and drawing the comic. But I remember Adam sometimes having guest artists? Inkers? But Jason wrote a few of the comics. Well, you can check out some of these comics on Smack Jeeves webcomics hosting here. And although the last GREEN PIECE comic was posted four years ago, Jason seems to still be creating work on the site with other titles, part of his Repercussion comics line.
Alright, I've been wrestling with this damn blog post all morning and there's other crap I should be doing. So, more to come.
Stay tuned, y'all!
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Yesterday my wife had the day off, so my first day unemployed I didn't really do anything because we were both sort of goofing off during the day.
And to further nit-pick, I didn't count Saturday and Sunday (even though I got laid off Friday) because, you know, the weekend. Yesterday (Monday) I would've regularly gone to work if I was still gainfully employed.
So, today I'm officially considering this my first crack at living unemployed. Got it?
I have a list of things to do today, and some of those things I've been letting slide for months. Because I'm a procrastinating bum.
So, I'm trying to update my three blogs on Blogger and set to work on doing a mini-comic, something I've always wanted to have in my portfolio/resume, but never seem to accomplish. So, that's something I'm going to work on this week. I'd love to be able to "spew it out" in a single week, but I can't seem to set boundaries on: 1) how many pages I want to do (8 minimum) or 2) what size page I should make the comic, either standard comic book size (6.75"x10.25") or mini-comic size, which in this case is an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper folded in half (ie. 5.5" x 8.5" page).
Reasons to work at mini-comic size: The actual mini-comic size is what Jason Karns does self-published comic FUKITOR at, and I love FUKITOR. Some issues/stories are more inspired than others, but the artwork is always tremendous. Also, one of my main inspirations to do a mini-comic was because of a mini-comic that Dan Clark worked on as a kid with his friend, Adam Owen. I worked with Dan at Great Arrow Graphics from 1998-2003. Towards the end of my stint at GAG, a few of my fellow employees and myself formed a group called the Crabapple Club, with the hope of creating a comic book. These founding members were: Dan Clark, Pam Cichoki, Josh Hrizak, Will Rice and myself (Terry Kimmel). We never did put out a single issue, but I remember Dan showing me this little B&W comic book he made with Adam back when Dan was a teenager and he was heavy into the guys who created Image Comics (Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, etc.). The cover itself was black line art printed on red paper stock. Adam wrote and drew the 8 pg. book and Dan inked it. For the life of me, I CANNOT remember the name of the comic but it was about a superhero who had flamethrowers built into his suit sleeves and he burned criminals to death (with the distinctly evocative and awesome sound effect of "FREEEAWWWW!!" as the flames whooshed out of his costume's wrist tubes). Maybe superhero isn't the right word; vigilante is the more accurate word. But the dude did wear a costume and mask. His origins are vaguely suggested: a criminal element destroyed his family and his life (disfiguring him in the process in the final panel reveal--oops! Spoiler alert!) and so the reader is expecting to follow further adventures of our anti-hero as he exacts vengeance on the villains who wronged him.
I actually started writing and drawing a special edition of this comic, a so-called International Version, fueled by my viewing of Italian writer/ director Renato Polselli's DELIRIUM starring Mickey Hargitay and Rita Calderoni. I saw the DVD around the time I first saw Dan's comic, and there are two versions of the 1972 film. There's an additional sequence for U.S. audiences - a framing sequence actually - set during the Vietnam War, and in the International Version, there's more explicit and weird, lurid material. In my idea for re-doing the comic, I was going to create a whole new page (sometimes more than one in a row) that would be inserted between EACH page of the original 8 pages of the comic. These pages were supposedly "cut" from of the more explicit International Version of the mini-comic. In fact, I debated translating the dialogue into Italian or Spanish also, whatever language I'd be able to do. It was a conceptual thing!
I left GAG in 2003, four years before Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's GRINDHOUSE double-feature was released, so I wasn't actually thinking and articulating in terms of "grindhouse" but essentially, that's what I was doing.
[NOTE: BTW, I "blame" the group name on Dan-- I mean, credit for the "Crabapple Club" moniker goes to Dan, ha! Meanwhile, Pam and I still meet semi-regularly in hopes of finally putting out that FIRST comic, which sounds extra pathetic since I haven't worked at GAG for TWELVE AND A HALF FREAKING YEARS now. In fact, Dan is the only GAG member still working at GAG. But our new "splinter" comic book club name is the Apple Corps., in deference to the original name.]
I actually e-mailed Adam a few times asking him if he minded me doing this with his character, and I think for the most part he was fine with it, but as I continued alluding to the possibility of how over the top I might go with the additional pages I think he backed off a little. So, I may do a variation on his anti-hero but make it mine, especially since he's not following through on continuing this comic he created years ago. Actually, Adam started doing another comic, GREEN PIECE, a sci-fi comic with a lizard detective who solves interplanetary crime. I can't remember if he created the character himself, or in conjunction with writer Jason Degroot. I want to say Adam was friends with Jason, and Adam actually created GREEN PIECE, writing and drawing the comic. But I remember Adam sometimes having guest artists? Inkers? But Jason wrote a few of the comics. Well, you can check out some of these comics on Smack Jeeves webcomics hosting here. And although the last GREEN PIECE comic was posted four years ago, Jason seems to still be creating work on the site with other titles, part of his Repercussion comics line.
Alright, I've been wrestling with this damn blog post all morning and there's other crap I should be doing. So, more to come.
Stay tuned, y'all!
Sunday, February 7, 2016
Hello? Hello? Is this on?
Holy crap.
Has it really been over five years since I last posted here?
That's beyond lame.
Just this past Friday (Feb. 5) I got laid off at work. The place I worked for had been having trouble for a while, so something like this was a possibility for several months. In fact they filed for Chapter 11 about a month ago, so leading up to that event there was already a lot of "writing on the wall." I figured it was a race between either me being cut to save money or the company just going under.
In this case, it was the former.
But I'll be honest, the two guys in charge still have a big challenge in front of them trying to get the company to make enough income to stay viable. So, we'll see how that works out.
But, as for my new unemployment status?
Well... que sera sera.
I'm now going to look at this new "freedom" as a temporary opportunity to catch up on some things, especially trying to do some more drawing and some more writing
We'll see how that goes.
So, basically I'm just saying: I'm back!
Has it really been over five years since I last posted here?
That's beyond lame.
Just this past Friday (Feb. 5) I got laid off at work. The place I worked for had been having trouble for a while, so something like this was a possibility for several months. In fact they filed for Chapter 11 about a month ago, so leading up to that event there was already a lot of "writing on the wall." I figured it was a race between either me being cut to save money or the company just going under.
In this case, it was the former.
But I'll be honest, the two guys in charge still have a big challenge in front of them trying to get the company to make enough income to stay viable. So, we'll see how that works out.
But, as for my new unemployment status?
Well... que sera sera.
I'm now going to look at this new "freedom" as a temporary opportunity to catch up on some things, especially trying to do some more drawing and some more writing
We'll see how that goes.
So, basically I'm just saying: I'm back!
Monday, November 22, 2010
Grrr!
Hey, as usual, I'm growling!
Today's Monday and uncharacteristically, I have it off.
I have a bunch of stuff I want to do today and besides some domestic chores, I'm trying to push ahead and make some significant progress on the FINAL NIGHT AND DAY movie prequel comic book I'm both writing (based on a short script by Adam Steigert) and drawing.
I am WAY behind on my progress on it, considering that I technically began working on it in June!
Well, typical. For me, that is.
Anyway, this month, somewhat inspired by NaNoWrimo, I'm trying to flesh out the outline for the entire book, so that there's something concrete to refer to, not just my verbal ideas.
So, an outline of all the pages and roughly laying them out as well, so that December's focus will be finishing up these pages so that they're ready for publication.
Right now, the anticipated page count is 24.
The release date on the comic is March 18 (and more specifics on that event to come), which is roughly a week before the movie's premiere, March 26, 2011.
Okay.
Gotta go.
Today's Monday and uncharacteristically, I have it off.
I have a bunch of stuff I want to do today and besides some domestic chores, I'm trying to push ahead and make some significant progress on the FINAL NIGHT AND DAY movie prequel comic book I'm both writing (based on a short script by Adam Steigert) and drawing.
I am WAY behind on my progress on it, considering that I technically began working on it in June!
Well, typical. For me, that is.
Anyway, this month, somewhat inspired by NaNoWrimo, I'm trying to flesh out the outline for the entire book, so that there's something concrete to refer to, not just my verbal ideas.
So, an outline of all the pages and roughly laying them out as well, so that December's focus will be finishing up these pages so that they're ready for publication.
Right now, the anticipated page count is 24.
The release date on the comic is March 18 (and more specifics on that event to come), which is roughly a week before the movie's premiere, March 26, 2011.
Okay.
Gotta go.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
The Apple Corps! Issue 1: “My brain is wrestling with itself!”
I really don’t want to take a lot of time writing this post, so to catch people up, check out these links out first: The Apple Corps! Issue 0 and my FebComChall.
Yesterday we had another meeting of the AC, we being LT and I. WE have been meeting regularly ever since I first posted about our meetings. I just never followed up on it.
Anyway, during my disability leave since Dec. 14, 2009, we started meeting on Fridays during the day, because I was already off and LT happened to work only until 2:00 pm Fridays. Generally, “during the day” means earlier than 7:00 pm, which is when are meetings usually seemed to start prior to my surgery. So, we’re talking between 3:00 and 4:00. I shoot for 3:00, but usually get there late(r), LT usually beats me there, adjusting for my proclivity for tardiness, yet still waiting for me because I’m Lucifer personified when it comes to “apunctuality.” Then we usually leave around 9 pm when they close the upstairs café at Wegman’s.
Well, anyway, next week will be our last Friday “day,” since I return to work the following Monday (March 8).
Bla bla bla.
So, the last couple meetings I’ve been supposedly working on this FebComChall story.
I thought I got off to a good start last meeting, which is when LT flipped through the National Geographic magazine and I slyly picked the Kahlua ad on the back cover.
(In fact, it occurs to me now, typically, THAT particular post probably should have been “The Apple Corps! Issue 1!” Ah, well.)
I thought I moved along pretty well coming up with ideas “inspired” by that ridiculous ad (ridiculous to be used for a comic book story, that is) at that meeting, and I was pretty sure I’d have my outline finished by the end of the meeting.
That didn’t happen.
I got sidetracked by trying to get some work done on this other commitment (the CD design).
But also, part of me thought I should work on some other story, specifically a fragment of something I’ve already started.
This seems to be part of my trademark modus operandi in terms of “my most common ways of not finishing something”: either 1) jump ship from one project and work on something else I’ve started before, or 2) jump ship from one project and start on something else, but completely from scratch, and work on that.
Of course, finish none of them.
Man, I SO want to do that now.
So, this is what’s going through my head today and as a game plan for this weekend.
By the end of this weekend, I commit to a storyline AND come up with an outline for my FebComChall story.
Right now, three stories are dueling in my head.
They are:
The Kahlua ad inspired story.
A unfinished story I started years ago called “Trisa”, that LT knows about because supposedly it was something I was working on before we even splintered off to be the AC (Man..! That is so pathetic…)
A brand new story that I was wrestling with the week before last week’s AC meeting where I picked the Kahlua ad. This particular story, with the cryptic working title, “El Tiara,” was an attempt to write a story for my FebComChall. If anything, I probably should have done LAST weekend what I plan to do THIS weekend: uh… that is, what I said before—commit to a storyline AND come up with an outline for my FebComChall.
The difference being, I should never have done the National Geographic thing. I should’ve just picked one of these other two stories.
But I was so whiny at the meeting, the National Geographic Story Generator Roulette suggestion was LT’s in her effort to help me out and crack the whip, and I simply went along with it.
Hmph.
So, I have three stories dueling in my head.
Since I damn well ain’t going to have my FebComChall actually done by the end of February (uh, which is tomorrow), I’d like to at least have my story chosen and outlined before the end of February.
That will have been some real progress. For me.
Here are the story candidates and their specific pros and cons (in order of “seniority”):
1. “Trisa”
This is a sort of post-apocalyptic tale in a microcosm setting. Basically, someone has set off this nerve gas bomb at a political rally in the city. It seems like a terrorist attack, but from within our country, not foreign forces.
The drug seems to affect people by reducing them to a feral state. Obviously, there’s some 28 DAYS LATER/modern zombie-genre/THE CRAZIES vibe to this.
I imagined a research/medical/homeland security setting where a number of different people are housed: doctors, soldiers, civilians/patients.
But there are some additional secrets behind the nerve gas and what it does, behind the motivations of the terrorist attack.
I more or less know the beginning and ending of the story, but the middle needs some developing. Because I more or less have an ending for this story, this makes “Trisa” a front running story candidate for me.
2. “El Tiara”
This story just sort of came up in my head, and actually, I should say these characters just came up, because I’m actually flailing around trying to GIVE them a story.
I came up with the barest nothing of an idea for two characters some time ago, months ago. But nothing came of it.
Then, two weeks ago, while trying to commit to something for my FebComChall, I decided to try and throw something together with these two characters. As I started working on the story and dialogue, I grew to like the characters more, but seemed less successful with any sort of story for them to operate in.
If anything, what little I have reveals my totally arbitrary, absurd philosophy of plotting and character development—just keep making stuff up and think of things I want to draw and throw that in, too. See if I can somehow be 100% arbitrary AND still have it make some sense… which sounds stupid, but to be honest, I’ve recently realized that this reveals a strong philosophic approach to Life, that I find things in the world absurd, and our challenge living here is to find meaning in these absurdities, because contrarily, I also feel that Life is NOT meaningless. Really, but—huh? That’s just the way it is, baby.
I guess that’s another way of saying that I think our view of the world is so limited, that what we think is meaningful may actually be shortsighted.
Perhaps, ultimately, I may discover that Life was never absurd, but my various attempts to define meaning with my puny experience and narrow perspective on things WAS absurd.
As a sort of example of this, when Galileo’s objective studies in astronomy led him to believe the heliocentric view that the Sun (and not the Earth) was actually the center of our “universe,” this proved to be problematic for philosophers and leaders of the Church at the time who felt that the logical conclusion of their belief systems was that everything revolved around the Earth (the geocentric view, natch!).
Whatever.
Anyway, the basic elements of “El Tiara” are: romance between the protagonists, Marty and Dr. Marisol Fleming; bizarre secrets; action; horror; softcore pornography; and a malevolent metallic lifeform (an unholy rip-off hybrid of TRANSFORMERS and THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS—and my inspiration for the latter flick are posters and photos since I’ve never seen the movie. Okay! I haven’t seen the two Transformer movies either, but I basically know what Transformers are!).
The problem is I have no real story. I just like the characters.
“The Savage World of Planet Venarus!”
This is actually the working title for my “Kahlua ad” story. Yeah.
Where it stands now, it has a sort of total plotline to it, and by “total,” I mean it has a (rough) beginning, middle and end. However, my stumbling block is that the setting, a pre-historic alien world, seems to beg for more explanation for my characters and settings. So, though I only want to do a regular size comic book, like, 22 pages, this threatens to go much longer than that.
It features vampire-like creatures, shapeshifting humanoids, a sort of pulpy Edgar Rice Burroughs meets Warren horror comics (Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella) meets Heavy Metal magazine.
(Meanwhile, I’m sure LT is reading this and going, “Are we still talking about the same Kahlua ad I was looking at???”)
Part of me says, go with seniority and finish “Trisa.”
Part of me likes the lunacy of what I’ve come up with for “El Tiara.”
Part of me says, stick with “The Savage World of Planet Venarus,” because it’s the most recent thing I’ve started, PLUS I started it with LT’s suggestion and she was there when I “picked” the page of the magazine she flipped, and ALSO, screw “seniority”! If this whole exercise is to FINISH something, then, I’ve already started it. Now FINISH it!
And if it turns out sucky because I’m cutting corners to get things done, the point IS to get it DONE. If I feel that strongly about its suckiness, and I can always redo certain pages for a future date.
Okay.
Also, it’s not like I don’t want to do the other stories, or that by choosing one of them, I’m throwing away the other ideas. That’s not the case. I intend to finish those, too.
So stop dawdling and finish this ONE story and start by doing the freaking outline now, jerk!
Huh.
I guess I picked my story.
Yesterday we had another meeting of the AC, we being LT and I. WE have been meeting regularly ever since I first posted about our meetings. I just never followed up on it.
Anyway, during my disability leave since Dec. 14, 2009, we started meeting on Fridays during the day, because I was already off and LT happened to work only until 2:00 pm Fridays. Generally, “during the day” means earlier than 7:00 pm, which is when are meetings usually seemed to start prior to my surgery. So, we’re talking between 3:00 and 4:00. I shoot for 3:00, but usually get there late(r), LT usually beats me there, adjusting for my proclivity for tardiness, yet still waiting for me because I’m Lucifer personified when it comes to “apunctuality.” Then we usually leave around 9 pm when they close the upstairs café at Wegman’s.
Well, anyway, next week will be our last Friday “day,” since I return to work the following Monday (March 8).
Bla bla bla.
So, the last couple meetings I’ve been supposedly working on this FebComChall story.
I thought I got off to a good start last meeting, which is when LT flipped through the National Geographic magazine and I slyly picked the Kahlua ad on the back cover.
(In fact, it occurs to me now, typically, THAT particular post probably should have been “The Apple Corps! Issue 1!” Ah, well.)
I thought I moved along pretty well coming up with ideas “inspired” by that ridiculous ad (ridiculous to be used for a comic book story, that is) at that meeting, and I was pretty sure I’d have my outline finished by the end of the meeting.
That didn’t happen.
I got sidetracked by trying to get some work done on this other commitment (the CD design).
But also, part of me thought I should work on some other story, specifically a fragment of something I’ve already started.
This seems to be part of my trademark modus operandi in terms of “my most common ways of not finishing something”: either 1) jump ship from one project and work on something else I’ve started before, or 2) jump ship from one project and start on something else, but completely from scratch, and work on that.
Of course, finish none of them.
Man, I SO want to do that now.
So, this is what’s going through my head today and as a game plan for this weekend.
By the end of this weekend, I commit to a storyline AND come up with an outline for my FebComChall story.
Right now, three stories are dueling in my head.
They are:
The Kahlua ad inspired story.
A unfinished story I started years ago called “Trisa”, that LT knows about because supposedly it was something I was working on before we even splintered off to be the AC (Man..! That is so pathetic…)
A brand new story that I was wrestling with the week before last week’s AC meeting where I picked the Kahlua ad. This particular story, with the cryptic working title, “El Tiara,” was an attempt to write a story for my FebComChall. If anything, I probably should have done LAST weekend what I plan to do THIS weekend: uh… that is, what I said before—commit to a storyline AND come up with an outline for my FebComChall.
The difference being, I should never have done the National Geographic thing. I should’ve just picked one of these other two stories.
But I was so whiny at the meeting, the National Geographic Story Generator Roulette suggestion was LT’s in her effort to help me out and crack the whip, and I simply went along with it.
Hmph.
So, I have three stories dueling in my head.
Since I damn well ain’t going to have my FebComChall actually done by the end of February (uh, which is tomorrow), I’d like to at least have my story chosen and outlined before the end of February.
That will have been some real progress. For me.
Here are the story candidates and their specific pros and cons (in order of “seniority”):
1. “Trisa”
This is a sort of post-apocalyptic tale in a microcosm setting. Basically, someone has set off this nerve gas bomb at a political rally in the city. It seems like a terrorist attack, but from within our country, not foreign forces.
The drug seems to affect people by reducing them to a feral state. Obviously, there’s some 28 DAYS LATER/modern zombie-genre/THE CRAZIES vibe to this.
I imagined a research/medical/homeland security setting where a number of different people are housed: doctors, soldiers, civilians/patients.
But there are some additional secrets behind the nerve gas and what it does, behind the motivations of the terrorist attack.
I more or less know the beginning and ending of the story, but the middle needs some developing. Because I more or less have an ending for this story, this makes “Trisa” a front running story candidate for me.
2. “El Tiara”
This story just sort of came up in my head, and actually, I should say these characters just came up, because I’m actually flailing around trying to GIVE them a story.
I came up with the barest nothing of an idea for two characters some time ago, months ago. But nothing came of it.
Then, two weeks ago, while trying to commit to something for my FebComChall, I decided to try and throw something together with these two characters. As I started working on the story and dialogue, I grew to like the characters more, but seemed less successful with any sort of story for them to operate in.
If anything, what little I have reveals my totally arbitrary, absurd philosophy of plotting and character development—just keep making stuff up and think of things I want to draw and throw that in, too. See if I can somehow be 100% arbitrary AND still have it make some sense… which sounds stupid, but to be honest, I’ve recently realized that this reveals a strong philosophic approach to Life, that I find things in the world absurd, and our challenge living here is to find meaning in these absurdities, because contrarily, I also feel that Life is NOT meaningless. Really, but—huh? That’s just the way it is, baby.
I guess that’s another way of saying that I think our view of the world is so limited, that what we think is meaningful may actually be shortsighted.
Perhaps, ultimately, I may discover that Life was never absurd, but my various attempts to define meaning with my puny experience and narrow perspective on things WAS absurd.
As a sort of example of this, when Galileo’s objective studies in astronomy led him to believe the heliocentric view that the Sun (and not the Earth) was actually the center of our “universe,” this proved to be problematic for philosophers and leaders of the Church at the time who felt that the logical conclusion of their belief systems was that everything revolved around the Earth (the geocentric view, natch!).
Whatever.
Anyway, the basic elements of “El Tiara” are: romance between the protagonists, Marty and Dr. Marisol Fleming; bizarre secrets; action; horror; softcore pornography; and a malevolent metallic lifeform (an unholy rip-off hybrid of TRANSFORMERS and THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS—and my inspiration for the latter flick are posters and photos since I’ve never seen the movie. Okay! I haven’t seen the two Transformer movies either, but I basically know what Transformers are!).
The problem is I have no real story. I just like the characters.
“The Savage World of Planet Venarus!”
This is actually the working title for my “Kahlua ad” story. Yeah.
Where it stands now, it has a sort of total plotline to it, and by “total,” I mean it has a (rough) beginning, middle and end. However, my stumbling block is that the setting, a pre-historic alien world, seems to beg for more explanation for my characters and settings. So, though I only want to do a regular size comic book, like, 22 pages, this threatens to go much longer than that.
It features vampire-like creatures, shapeshifting humanoids, a sort of pulpy Edgar Rice Burroughs meets Warren horror comics (Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella) meets Heavy Metal magazine.
(Meanwhile, I’m sure LT is reading this and going, “Are we still talking about the same Kahlua ad I was looking at???”)
Part of me says, go with seniority and finish “Trisa.”
Part of me likes the lunacy of what I’ve come up with for “El Tiara.”
Part of me says, stick with “The Savage World of Planet Venarus,” because it’s the most recent thing I’ve started, PLUS I started it with LT’s suggestion and she was there when I “picked” the page of the magazine she flipped, and ALSO, screw “seniority”! If this whole exercise is to FINISH something, then, I’ve already started it. Now FINISH it!
And if it turns out sucky because I’m cutting corners to get things done, the point IS to get it DONE. If I feel that strongly about its suckiness, and I can always redo certain pages for a future date.
Okay.
Also, it’s not like I don’t want to do the other stories, or that by choosing one of them, I’m throwing away the other ideas. That’s not the case. I intend to finish those, too.
So stop dawdling and finish this ONE story and start by doing the freaking outline now, jerk!
Huh.
I guess I picked my story.
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