FIFTEEN MINUTE BREAK July 31, 2003

Well, tonight will be the night when I will do my major touchups to my first submitted article in a little over five years- then zoom! off to Maggie Thompson (editor of the Comics Buyer's Guide) 's e-mail box it goes. Then over the weekend I will print up a hardcopy and send off the photographs I've been shooting for the past six months! My daily weekday routine for the past few weeks has been this: Wake up at quarter after 6 in the morning. Shower, shave, feed the cat, and try to catch the new Rapid line bus out to Van Nuys which I'm lucky to catch at least once or twice a week because I'm too busy pissing around loading up my knapsack with CDs and comics I'm going to read throughout the day. And when I do fail to catch that bus- I'll have to take a less quality bus that are usually operated by driver who likes to pull over to take a nap or drivers with weak bladders who have to stop at every goddamn Starbucks all along Ventura Blvd just to relieve themselves. It's a good thing I try to get in to work at least thirty to forty-five minutes early now that I'm perm. When I was contracting, I had a problem of getting in on time because of these incompetent
overpaid low esteem MTA drivers who feel they can do whatever the fuck they feel like.

From 8:30 AM to usually 5 PM, I'm mostly on the job- sometimes shit will come in late around 4:30 when it's supposed to come in at 3- so I'll probably spend an extra hour to get it all posted. Then one of my co-workers will give me a ride to the main lot (I don't work at the fortress that is associated with my place of employment- I have to hold court at a annex building two to three miles up the road close to the Burbank Airport) and from there, I will walk the entire length of Toluca Lake to my 'secret writing location' where I concoct articles and ideas for stories, or take over Larry Nadolsky's artwork for the Deposit Man where I correct the misspellings in all his word balloons. Or some nights, I just go to jerk around on the net if I'm not in a working mood.

Once I've spent two to three hours there, I will walk to my busstop (I'm naturally handicapped in California these days, can you tell?- that's what happens when you don't own a car in LA- you walk and are therefore labeled as a 'loser' due to my political viewpoint in not supporting Bush and Cheney's war by not being dependent on their middle eastern brewed black tea) and take the bus home to Sherman Oaks- and once I'm there sometimes I will spend an hour going over some old scripts stored on an old matrix dot computer that hopefully will see the light in comic book form. Four down and six to go. Or if it's too hot, I'll work out some cramp by jamming on one of my synthesizers.

Then I sit down to read or if's it really too hot, I'll go and do a few laps in the pool in my backyard. Risky, I know since there's no one to supervise me at that time of day. But what I'm really whizzing over now- reading material ( that was not intended as bathroom humor by the way) wise is that I took out my entire collection of the old mid-eighties series of the Question written by Denny O'Neil and drawn by Denys Cowan and Rick Mayger ( I usually bump into Denys a few times since I live across the street from my company's animation division and he happens to be the executive producer on Static Shock. I'm proud that this show gets plenty of award noms) and have been re-reading a issue a night- sort of aids me in clearing the doldrums out of my system. It was a comic book back in the day that was not afraid in taking risks with both a political and philosophic slant - each issue id sort of like sitting down and getting a lession in zen mediation, but with lots of violent horseplay thrown it for good measure. You can't walk away from an issue and not get something euphoric out of it. I miss the saga of tee vee reporter Vic Sage and his schizophrenic twin alter-ego, The Question of whom he became by simply applying a little dab of a blank face mask and a squirt of gas to change the color of his hair and clothes and then went around and kicked ass. The conflicts that most plagued the Question were simply this: corruption. Corruption is prevalent throughout the series- either it be through the politicians or the police themselves. The Question's sole purpose in life is to simply to make his environment breathable again. An idea has come to me to revive this character (and I got it just by reading the old letter columns Remember the good old days when comic books had fan letters? Sadly those lamented days are now long gone). And it would be just 'tits' if I could talk to Denys in getting involved.

But, bugfuck, I can dream, can't I ?

~

Coat