LAST CHANCE TO EVACUATE OCEAN BEACH BEFORE IT IS RECYCLED

Please, if anyone is out there reading this and if you have any comments, drop me a line at depositman@yahoo.com - I'm still not one of those paying blog pro customers yet.

* Took a walk around the Constantine stages - and it's the same situation as before: Didn't see much going on except for one strange trailer that was marked: Joe, The Apostle. I haven't had the nerve to ask one of the rovering producers if I could sit in and watch them shoot a scene. I just want to pop my head in an open stage door and see what they constructed rather than mingle with the actors and stagepeople. I guess my interest in stagecraft stems from a meeting I had out here with a distant cousin who used to construct the sets on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and he used to tell me some wacky stories about Teri Hatcher- but then again, a lot of my senior co-workers had some to tell also when my department used to stationed on the lot and they would use some of the building as a set. One was Teri used to be a pack rat and used to rifle through garbage cans and take props home with her so she could wrap them as gifts for friends and relatives.

I'm going to try something a little different next week- Monday I'm going to a employee screening of Mystic River, the new film with Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon that was directed by Clint Eastwood. After the movie gets out, I'm going to check to see what goes on at that late hour (8:30 or 9?) and just get the gumption to ask someone for any scoops they may have.

* The photos of Halle Berry in her Catwoman costume are just plain awful.
Some designer needs to go back to the drawing board with this one. It would probably help if they brought some actual comic books to use as reference for once.

* The two punch of Smallville and Angel on last night's WB station is the most brilliant strategy the station has ever concocted. I suspect to see soaring ratings in next week'sNeilsens chart. Everything from the writing to the overall look of both shows was nothing short of spectacular. I couldn't stop raving about it on the messageboards. This is a genius move to pit two comic book influenced properties back to back. I wish this did this last year with Smallville and Birds of Prey- and maybe BoP would have had a fair chance at survival.

* When I left off on my last entry- I was telling the true life story that inspired me to incorporate it in my Deposit Man series which I hope will see the light of day when I'm finished with my current mini-series. As I noted before, a supervisor of a previous job I had held of which I was laid off from was helping me keep my head above the poverty level by letting me stay at his place in Ocean Beach, Ca (no thanks to George Bush Sr) - even though he wasn't working himself and keeping up with Top Ramen with help from student loans and grants.

Not wanting to leech off him further when school was about to go in session - I made arrangements to move just across the courtyard with one of the neighbors that we both fond of. She had four year old twin boys that took a shine towards me because I was into watching cartoons (specifically Batman The Animated Series that was just debuting that year) and reading comic books as a alternative to Dr. Suess or Curious George. So things were coming back to speed for me and then David decided somewhere that he needed to go back to Florida for Thanksgiving vacation and wanted me to watch his place a while and just before he left, a new neighbor moved in next door and on a double take, I've could've sworn that he was Al Pacino's double in the movie, Scarface.

The first day he moved in, we all knew- the whole neighborhood knew, that we were all about to embark on a journey of psychosomatic porportions.

It first started when he was moving in all this crazy furniture and cramming it into a teeny tiny one bedroom cottage and he had his obese mother flown in from Brooklyn or Queens to help out- and by the looks of it, she was doing all the heavy lifting while he was standing around barking orders. He came over and introduced himself as Matt and he was a full blown Italian from the East Coast, the New York accent was clearly prominent. He told us that he was an aspiring screenwriter after word leaked out from Dave that I was trying my hand at writing comic book scripts. Matt wanted to know if I wouldn't mind evaluating his script one night. I said, of course, I would be honored to ( I remember that this was the time when I had my first published piece in the Comics Buyer's Guide in the letters section that week- so I guess everyone in the neighborhood regarded me as that professional writer who lives on their block) and he went back to yelling at his mother who was moving his things into the cottage.

Hours later, the yelling and screaming got louder and then there were the sounds of things breaking and objects being thrown around - and then a car alarm went blarring at full blast around midnight that night, repeatly every five minutes or so for all hours of the night - until at around 3, Dave couldn't take it anymore and went outside to see at what all the commotion was about.
The cops were called and Matt was already being led away by handcuffs and his mom had cuts and bruises all over her face and she was being put in the ambulence. The cops also put a stop to the car alarm to a slick Black Corvette Stingray that Matt owned (certainly a car that stood out in this neighborhood).

We didn't know what the hell went on. So Dave, with very little sleep had to get to the airport early for the next AM flight to Florida. And that left me all alone and vulnerable- because Matt came back the next evening and came over and knocked on Dave's door and he had words for me. He said: If he ever caught me or anyone in this neighborhood near his car again, he'll kill 'em. And then to further demonstrate his point, he went back into his house and came walking right back out with a carving knife and impaled it into his front door. Another neighbor who lived next door to the woman I was supposed to be rooming with witnessed the entire exchange of words and told me, that guy is going to get thrashed within a inch of his life if he didn't watch it.

So that night, the car alarms went off again. And stopped and then went on again. Matt was outside, yelling at someone or something about someone sneaking around his car. I peeked through the blinds of the window and watched everything. From what I was seeing- it appeared that Matt would kick his car and set off the alarm himself and then would run into the house and phone for the police to come over.

And this went on for fucking days.

I found out through snippets of dialogue of heated exchange with other neighbors that his mother, as soon as she was released from the hospital, boarded a plane back to JFK. And in addition, to the self inflicted car alarm drills, I had to contend with the blaring of both his television and VCR which played a videotape of the 'Pope of Greenwich Village' continously without end AND his stereo throbbing Sinatra tunes through the floorboards and walls. And the worst thing was...he kept reciting to himself at the top of his lungs all of Eric Roberts dialogue lines to Mickey Rourke. Everyone on the block must been kept awake all night by the hollering and incessant deliverence of ...PAULY - PAULY - PAULLLLY THEY'VE CUT OFF MY FUCKING FINGER !!
Other incidents too numerous to mention but not excluding more paranoia threats of violence against those invisible forces kicking his car and a barbecue grill being thrown over the fence and smashing out a window - patience was being tested to the limits and blood was about a centimeter from being spilled.

Until I intervened with a plan to end it all peacefully.

And that will have to wait until next week sometime.

~

Coat

FLOP FLOP, OH WHAT A NEW RELEASE IT IS

It's starting to get cold out in California.

Nothing much I could observe tonight on the Constantine action. By the time I got there, around 6 PMish, they were shooting on a stage - but a red light was flashing above the door and that usually means no admittance AT ALL - plus I overheard someone walking around outside saying that they were wrapping for the night at 6:30 sharp and had to go to his trailer and fill out some logs. Chances are that I'll probably be inputting some of those logs into the system before too long. I also happened to stumble upon ''John Constantine's" trailer and the door was wide open, but I didn't see anyone inside or anything.

Everything I feel comfortable with concerning the new book is now entirely in Oliver's hands. I spent all last week when not blogging, writing both the inside front and inside back covers and that includes items such as the indicia (the indicia is a little area that supposed to hold all the publishing and subscription information for the publication you happen to be reading- and since I don't offer subscriptions like most independent comic book people don't- I take the opportunity to ham it up.) and a little recap summary of what went on in the previous books before Last Great Gate of Mortality. I also wrote a section to give thanks to people who have offered aid and insight to my self-publishing past and dedicated a sentence to my one-time roommate and my former editor's brother, who passed away almost two years ago.

So with the next two parts already scripted which should keep my little crew busy for the next six months or so ( I'm trying to adjust to a quarterly schedule once I hear Larry is ready to do breakdowns ), I'm starting to look at polishing off the last four books in the series which will be subtitled PLAYGOD. One particular story that will open up this arc was originally supposed to be the third book instead of what became the Survival Guide to the Afterlife. I held it back due to an joint decision between former editors Scott Goodell and Rebecca Robbins that it would be a mistake to release. And looking back, I could see why. There are a lot of ideas that weren't fleshed out enough. But the main gist of the story and the inspiration came from an actual incident that happened to me while I was in the process of execution in my very first draft of the Deposit Man (which I swear, somehow made it into the Malice issue without my knowledge) in the little white trash beach town of Ocean Beach, Ca - that serves as part of San Diego right near a naval base in Point Loma.

It was eleven summers ago, where the first Bush Administration was fucking over blue collar workers left to right, and I got laid off so many times in a two year period when I first tried to make it in Los Angeles, that I was forced to break a lease on a house with some former friends from Parsippany, N.J. and nearly went homeless for the entire summer of 1992. Smart enough to realize that I'd be easy pickings for gangs and the other deranged assorted people in LA - I went down south because I' figure it would be a easier chance for survival. I made arrangements to shack up with some acquaintance that I knew down there but we got our signals crossed and I misunderstood that she wanted to move up and stay with me rather than have me come down there- so that meant my unemployment checks went straight to limbo because my checks weren't arriving at the address I forwarded them to. It took well over a month for them to change everything to my aunt's address in North San Diego County and I was forced to sleep on the beach and behind churches for nearly a month and then when I started receiving the checks, I couldn't afford to stay in nothing but swanky dives and roach infested motels for another month. This drove me to start hitting the bottle a little bit, as I was beginning to comprehend my own demise until an old supervisor I used to work for at a software company put me up at his place for the rest of the summer, but I had to be out by the time he went back to school. It boggles me to this day how I don't remember how I found out he lived in Ocean Beach, when the company I used to work for went out of business in North County.

So with that background material set in place- it wasn't long till I was ready to move out on my own. I'd been getting temp work and helping out doing some roofing - and living with the knowledge that my roommate was a heroin user didn't seem to bother me too much- heck, my entire block was rifed with heroin addicts and for some reason they welcomed me, even though I flat out refused to take part in any of their rituals, but I couldn't help noticing that neighbors kept coming in and out as mysterious as if they were Soylent Green or something of the sort.

One day, I could've sworn that Al Pacino moved right next door to me..

....and this one will be continued on Thursday.

~

Coat