[postlink]
https://drotesi-miey.blogspot.com/2012/04/i-call-it-jonward-spiral.html[/postlink]
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Tampilkan postingan dengan label jon 101. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label jon 101. Tampilkan semua postingan
One Of Those Things Or Maybe It’s Just Me
[postlink]
https://drotesi-miey.blogspot.com/2012/03/one-of-those-things-or-maybe-its-just-me.html[/postlink]
There are certain things that happen to me in the course of any given day that I find myself convinced couldn’t possibly happen to anyone else.
Most of them are related to clumsiness or the non-functional nature of my hands, and, to be fair, the “this could only happen to me” thing is a momentary thought that has more to do with being bitterly amused than holding a firm view of myself as the butt of the Universe’s jokes (mostly).
In any case, there are certain other things that happen to me that, given that they have nothing to do with my peculiar physical dysfunctions, I’m not so certain could only happen to me, but I’ve never really observed them happening to anyone else, so I’m left to wonder.
The one in particular that comes to mind is something of an assumption that people seem to make when they’re talking to me.
The first time I really noticed it was many years ago, during my drinking days, and at the time I chalked it up to the nature of interacting – unwillingly – with random drunken strangers at a bar.
I was sitting in my regular bar minding my own business (my own business being getting drunk) and waiting for any of the other people in my social circle to show up when I made the fatal error of making eye contact with the desperately lonely drunk sitting next to me who took this as an invitation to – clumsily and drunkenly – engage in some level of interaction with another human being.
As an aside, the force field of hostility I seem to unconsciously generate usually keeps people at bay, whether I want it to or not, but some people – due to drunkenness, general cluelessness, desperation, or some combination thereof – are able to overcome its effect.
In any case, Drunky McForeverAlone, with whom I had never previously interacted, started talking to me about the time he had broken his leg 38 years prior.
As far as cold openings for conversations from random, lonely drunks go, this wasn’t especially odd or noteworthy, but what made it stand out was the manner in which he presented the story. Despite the fact that we had never previously spoken, he related the story to me as though we were old friends and he was simply expanding on the level of detail for a story with which I was already familiar, as though I knew about that time, more than a decade prior to my birth, when he had broken his leg.
He literally started off the conversation with, “It’s like that time I broke my leg…” as though he expected me to say, “Oh, right, that time when you went sledding when you were a kid” in response.
I don’t remember how I eventually extricated myself from the conversation – I ‘m guessing that either my friends showed up or the bartender took pity on me and burst in on the conversation; being a professional drinker, I numbered most of the bartenders among my friends – but I do remember finding the familiar tone distinctly odd, but, at the time, I wrote it off to simple drunkenness and social awkwardness.
However, since that time I find that something similar happens to me a lot with people that I actually know. Essentially, they’ll tell me something that requires a certain amount of background information which I don’t have at my disposal, but which they assume that I do.
My boss in particular does it to me all the time, but pretty much everyone I know does it to certain extent.
I guess I can understand why it happens, particularly with people I know well. I mean, they just assume that they had told me the other thing, or that I somehow knew about it through osmosis or something.
The overall effect, though, is sort of like that episode of Futurama in which everyone was skipping forward through time at random and finding themselves in dramatically different places and situations from where they had been just moments before, having skipped over all of the intervening events. “Off you go…apparently…”
Anyway, I’m curious as to whether this is a Jon-specific phenomenon, or is it something that commonly occurs in the interactions the rest of you non-Jons have with each other?
Label:
jon 101,
question of the day
Get Real
[postlink]
https://drotesi-miey.blogspot.com/2012/02/get-real.html[/postlink]
In 1994, post-graduation, my then-wife and I were living in a very nice apartment that we couldn’t afford, and I was trying to get serious about writing, per the agreement the Mrs. and I had that I would devote a year to writing while we lived off of her meager income as a Manager at McDonald’s.
Well, kind of. I thought that was the deal we had, but apparently she had never agreed to those terms, so rather than getting serious about writing, I was getting semi-serious about writing and semi-serious about finding a job.
What I was getting really serious about, however, was becoming depressed. Many people think that my depression – and descent into alcoholism – were the result of my marriage ending a year later. That certainly didn’t help matters any, but it wasn’t really the cause so much as the catalyst.
And even the end of the marriage was not, in and of itself, the catalyst. There was a lot more going on, and it wasn’t so much losing her that really pushed me into the abyss – it didn’t take long, after all, to realize that, despite our eight years together, I wasn’t really losing much, which may seem cruel and smack of bitterness, but the truth is the truth – but rather, it was the very concept of losing, and, by extension, of being a loser.
That is not, however, the point of this rambling narrative, and I will now attempt to get back on course.
So. 1994. College graduate. Nice apartment.
At that time, my friend Joel was a frequent guest in said nice apartment, as he had a girlfriend – whom he’d met through my wife – who lived in Marquette, so he would regularly make the 100-mile trek to visit us, or rather, to drop off his stuff and crash on our couch.
One afternoon while our respective significant others were at work, Joel and I were sitting around watching the 10,000th rebroadcast of the latest episode of MTV’s The Real World. This was the season that featured the likes of the late Pedro Zamora, the disgusting and irritating Puck, and a young aspiring cartoonist named Judd.
This particular episode had a focus on Judd, with the cameras following him as he pounded the pavement with his portfolio of work in tow, meeting with editors and publishers in a dogged attempt to get paying work.
Joel had turned to me and said something like, “That’s what you should be doing.”
I pointed out that it didn’t actually seem to be working out so well for Judd, and that even if I had an actual portfolio beyond a few unfinished, poorly-drawn pages of a Fontaine comic, and my other mostly-unfinished sketches and doodles – most of which consisted of scenes and character designs from the various unfinished stories I had been writing – I wasn’t certain where it was he thought I should be showing it off. The mean streets of Marquette, Michigan, didn’t, so far as I knew, contain any sort of publishing district.
(It’s worth noting that Judd did, in fact, break into the world of publishing, though primarily as a writer rather than as an artist. He’s something of a polarizing figure, and I myself find his work to be of varying quality, but he’s generated a lot of sales for DC Comics over the years, and remains a major figure in the “New 52.”)
In the real world that I lived in, I didn’t have anything to show off, and there was nowhere for me to show it anyway.
And every day I was faced with the growing belief that the reality was that my dreams would never come to pass, and it became harder and harder to muster up the energy to even pretend to try.
As much as I didn’t want to, I recognized every time I struggled to force myself to pick up a pencil, it was time for me to – to borrow a phrase – start getting real.
Well, kind of. I thought that was the deal we had, but apparently she had never agreed to those terms, so rather than getting serious about writing, I was getting semi-serious about writing and semi-serious about finding a job.
What I was getting really serious about, however, was becoming depressed. Many people think that my depression – and descent into alcoholism – were the result of my marriage ending a year later. That certainly didn’t help matters any, but it wasn’t really the cause so much as the catalyst.
And even the end of the marriage was not, in and of itself, the catalyst. There was a lot more going on, and it wasn’t so much losing her that really pushed me into the abyss – it didn’t take long, after all, to realize that, despite our eight years together, I wasn’t really losing much, which may seem cruel and smack of bitterness, but the truth is the truth – but rather, it was the very concept of losing, and, by extension, of being a loser.
That is not, however, the point of this rambling narrative, and I will now attempt to get back on course.
So. 1994. College graduate. Nice apartment.
At that time, my friend Joel was a frequent guest in said nice apartment, as he had a girlfriend – whom he’d met through my wife – who lived in Marquette, so he would regularly make the 100-mile trek to visit us, or rather, to drop off his stuff and crash on our couch.
One afternoon while our respective significant others were at work, Joel and I were sitting around watching the 10,000th rebroadcast of the latest episode of MTV’s The Real World. This was the season that featured the likes of the late Pedro Zamora, the disgusting and irritating Puck, and a young aspiring cartoonist named Judd.
This particular episode had a focus on Judd, with the cameras following him as he pounded the pavement with his portfolio of work in tow, meeting with editors and publishers in a dogged attempt to get paying work.
Joel had turned to me and said something like, “That’s what you should be doing.”
I pointed out that it didn’t actually seem to be working out so well for Judd, and that even if I had an actual portfolio beyond a few unfinished, poorly-drawn pages of a Fontaine comic, and my other mostly-unfinished sketches and doodles – most of which consisted of scenes and character designs from the various unfinished stories I had been writing – I wasn’t certain where it was he thought I should be showing it off. The mean streets of Marquette, Michigan, didn’t, so far as I knew, contain any sort of publishing district.
(It’s worth noting that Judd did, in fact, break into the world of publishing, though primarily as a writer rather than as an artist. He’s something of a polarizing figure, and I myself find his work to be of varying quality, but he’s generated a lot of sales for DC Comics over the years, and remains a major figure in the “New 52.”)
In the real world that I lived in, I didn’t have anything to show off, and there was nowhere for me to show it anyway.
And every day I was faced with the growing belief that the reality was that my dreams would never come to pass, and it became harder and harder to muster up the energy to even pretend to try.
As much as I didn’t want to, I recognized every time I struggled to force myself to pick up a pencil, it was time for me to – to borrow a phrase – start getting real.
Label:
jon 101
Okay…So Why DIDN’T You Go To Art School?
[postlink]
https://drotesi-miey.blogspot.com/2012/02/okayso-why-didnt-you-go-to-art-school.html[/postlink]
In my previous post I mentioned the momentous day upon which I learned of the existence of a school, founded by and named for a legendary comic book artist, which specializes in preparing aspiring artists for careers in comic books and animation, and how it had been my fondest wish to one day be a student there.
But that didn’t end up happening. In fact, I didn’t go to any sort of art school at all, and I view the fact that I didn’t get any sort of post-secondary art education to serve as a foundation for developing my artistic talents as one of the reasons why I don’t work in a field even remotely connected to art.
So why didn’t I go to art school in general, or the Kubert School in particular?
The answer to the second part of that question is pretty simple and straightforward – New Jersey is a long, long way from Twin Lakes, Michigan, and there was no way that I was going to be able to scrape together the money to move halfway across the country and then somehow manage to pay tuition.
And even if I could have managed that, as a kid from the middle of nowhere with very limited exposure to the larger, more densely-populated world, I was not in any way prepared to venture that far from home.
Does that make me a wimp? Maybe, but honestly, as smart and as cynical as I was at eighteen, I can’t imagine that I would have done well on my own in a completely alien environment.
And while in hindsight I admit that it’s foolish, my girlfriend was a major consideration in most of the decisions I made back then. Her post-secondary education options were…considerably more limited than mine, and I wasn’t prepared to abandon her – or try the long-distance relationship thing – so I chose to limit my options as well.
To be clear, I’m not not blaming her – it was my choice, after all – and honestly, I doubt that I would have done things much differently anyway, but she definitely was a factor in my decision-making.
As was the $1,200 per year scholarship I got from the state – provided I went to a state university in Michigan – and the additional assistance I got from another state agency as a result of injuries I sustained in a car accident when I was sixteen.
“Okay…so maybe you couldn’t go to the Kubert School, but didn’t they have an Art program at the university you did attend?”
As a matter of fact, they did. Further, comic book artist Norm Breyfogle was a graduate of that program, though I didn’t know that until sometime around my sophomore year.
So why didn’t I enroll in that? Didn’t I even consider it?
As a matter of fact, I did…up until I saw the requirements for enrollment.
“Port-what-io?”
At some point when I was a kid, my mom acquired this huge stack of blank newsprint that had been cut down to letter-size sheets. I don’t remember where she got it - from the newspaper, I imagine, though I don't really remember the “why” of it - but we used it around the house for years as scrap paper, and, for me, as drawing paper. It was thin and fragile and gray, and not exactly an ideal medium for artwork, but it was what we had, with the exception of the art supplies my older brother – who had gotten a degree in Commercial Art* before joining the Navy – had left behind.
Later in life, I worked on typing paper.
We didn’t have a lot of money to throw around on things like art supplies. Not, at least, if I wanted to keep reading comic books, and there wasn’t much of anything that could have gotten me to give those up.
The high school I graduated from was not actually accredited by the state, and did not offer AP classes, foreign language classes, a proper library, or, most significantly, art classes.
Enrollment in an art program required a portfolio, with work in an assortment of media. If I had gone to a high school that had art classes, I might have been able to assemble a portfolio at some point.
But I didn’t go to such a school, so somehow I doubt that a handful of drawings on newsprint and typing paper that consisted mostly of reproductions of heavy metal album or Conan novel covers and images from comic books, and a few poorly-executed “original” images would have passed muster.
Hell, even the boring, lifeless oil and acrylic paintings I had done in my grade school “art” classes, which were, based on our instructors view of what constituted art, limited to reproductions of saccharine postcard images, had been lost in the house fire we had in my freshman year of high school, so I didn’t even have those to present as part of a “portfolio.”
You may find yourself thinking that none of that matters, that if I’d had enough grit and determination (and pluck and spunk and …) I could have overcome those obstacles. That smacks of the just world fallacy to me, but even if it’s true, and not a philosophical fallacy…well, I didn’t have those things. Whether it was a matter of willingness or ability is kind of irrelevant.
And ultimately, the fact is, by the time I was at a point in my life at which I could make the decision to go to to art school, I didn’t really want to go anymore. Justified or not, I didn’t have confidence in my talent. I didn’t believe that it was something I could really make a go of, something that would ever be anything more than a hobby. By that time I had considerably more confidence in my writing ability, and I decided that, between the two, pursuing writing was more likely – if only by a very narrow margin – to provide me some options if and when the time came that I had to abandon any hope of a life of creative pursuits in favor of something more pragmatic.
So I guess that’s what it boils down to: simple pragmatism won out over hope.
If that sounds depressing, it’s because it is, and you begin to understand why it bothers me so much when people, with the intent of complimenting me upon seeing my artwork, say things like, “Why are you working here?”
*My brother went to a different high school than I did, one that did have art classes. In fact, Norm Breyfogle was a contemporary of my brother, and had attended a rival high school. The two of them were often competitors in local art competitions.
But that didn’t end up happening. In fact, I didn’t go to any sort of art school at all, and I view the fact that I didn’t get any sort of post-secondary art education to serve as a foundation for developing my artistic talents as one of the reasons why I don’t work in a field even remotely connected to art.
So why didn’t I go to art school in general, or the Kubert School in particular?
The answer to the second part of that question is pretty simple and straightforward – New Jersey is a long, long way from Twin Lakes, Michigan, and there was no way that I was going to be able to scrape together the money to move halfway across the country and then somehow manage to pay tuition.
And even if I could have managed that, as a kid from the middle of nowhere with very limited exposure to the larger, more densely-populated world, I was not in any way prepared to venture that far from home.
Does that make me a wimp? Maybe, but honestly, as smart and as cynical as I was at eighteen, I can’t imagine that I would have done well on my own in a completely alien environment.
And while in hindsight I admit that it’s foolish, my girlfriend was a major consideration in most of the decisions I made back then. Her post-secondary education options were…considerably more limited than mine, and I wasn’t prepared to abandon her – or try the long-distance relationship thing – so I chose to limit my options as well.
To be clear, I’m not not blaming her – it was my choice, after all – and honestly, I doubt that I would have done things much differently anyway, but she definitely was a factor in my decision-making.
As was the $1,200 per year scholarship I got from the state – provided I went to a state university in Michigan – and the additional assistance I got from another state agency as a result of injuries I sustained in a car accident when I was sixteen.
“Okay…so maybe you couldn’t go to the Kubert School, but didn’t they have an Art program at the university you did attend?”
As a matter of fact, they did. Further, comic book artist Norm Breyfogle was a graduate of that program, though I didn’t know that until sometime around my sophomore year.
So why didn’t I enroll in that? Didn’t I even consider it?
As a matter of fact, I did…up until I saw the requirements for enrollment.
“Port-what-io?”
At some point when I was a kid, my mom acquired this huge stack of blank newsprint that had been cut down to letter-size sheets. I don’t remember where she got it - from the newspaper, I imagine, though I don't really remember the “why” of it - but we used it around the house for years as scrap paper, and, for me, as drawing paper. It was thin and fragile and gray, and not exactly an ideal medium for artwork, but it was what we had, with the exception of the art supplies my older brother – who had gotten a degree in Commercial Art* before joining the Navy – had left behind.
Later in life, I worked on typing paper.
We didn’t have a lot of money to throw around on things like art supplies. Not, at least, if I wanted to keep reading comic books, and there wasn’t much of anything that could have gotten me to give those up.
The high school I graduated from was not actually accredited by the state, and did not offer AP classes, foreign language classes, a proper library, or, most significantly, art classes.
Enrollment in an art program required a portfolio, with work in an assortment of media. If I had gone to a high school that had art classes, I might have been able to assemble a portfolio at some point.
But I didn’t go to such a school, so somehow I doubt that a handful of drawings on newsprint and typing paper that consisted mostly of reproductions of heavy metal album or Conan novel covers and images from comic books, and a few poorly-executed “original” images would have passed muster.
Hell, even the boring, lifeless oil and acrylic paintings I had done in my grade school “art” classes, which were, based on our instructors view of what constituted art, limited to reproductions of saccharine postcard images, had been lost in the house fire we had in my freshman year of high school, so I didn’t even have those to present as part of a “portfolio.”
You may find yourself thinking that none of that matters, that if I’d had enough grit and determination (and pluck and spunk and …) I could have overcome those obstacles. That smacks of the just world fallacy to me, but even if it’s true, and not a philosophical fallacy…well, I didn’t have those things. Whether it was a matter of willingness or ability is kind of irrelevant.
And ultimately, the fact is, by the time I was at a point in my life at which I could make the decision to go to to art school, I didn’t really want to go anymore. Justified or not, I didn’t have confidence in my talent. I didn’t believe that it was something I could really make a go of, something that would ever be anything more than a hobby. By that time I had considerably more confidence in my writing ability, and I decided that, between the two, pursuing writing was more likely – if only by a very narrow margin – to provide me some options if and when the time came that I had to abandon any hope of a life of creative pursuits in favor of something more pragmatic.
So I guess that’s what it boils down to: simple pragmatism won out over hope.
If that sounds depressing, it’s because it is, and you begin to understand why it bothers me so much when people, with the intent of complimenting me upon seeing my artwork, say things like, “Why are you working here?”
*My brother went to a different high school than I did, one that did have art classes. In fact, Norm Breyfogle was a contemporary of my brother, and had attended a rival high school. The two of them were often competitors in local art competitions.
Label:
jon 101
Distinctly Vague
[postlink]
https://drotesi-miey.blogspot.com/2012/02/distinctly-vague.html[/postlink]
In an IM conversation with Scott the other day he made a reference to something – fittingly, I don’t recall what it was – and I said, “I think I vaguely recall that. Then again, vaguely is pretty much how I recall everything.”
I used to have a good memory. I don’t know – or remember – what happened to it. I would say that it was probably booze, but I think my ability to remember things had started to fade long before I started drinking heavily, so who knows?
In talking about the amazing memory I had when I was younger, a woman who had worked at my elementary school made a reference to her belief that I had a “photogenic memory.” I can’t say whether or not that’s true – I don’t know what pictures of my memory would look like – but I certainly never had the photographic memory she meant to say that I had.
Still, it was a pretty decent memory, I think.
To this day, there are still some things that I remember distinctly, even decades later. I don’t think it would surprise anyone to learn that most of those things actually revolve around comic books in some fashion.
Not all of the details are clear – I don’t remember specific dates, necessarily, or even issue numbers – but there are a lot of surprisingly specific things that I do remember clearly.
As an example – and as part of the ever-lengthening and roundabout path I’m taking to get to my actual point – I remember a Friday in May of 1982* that was a good day in general, and a kind of momentous day as well, which is why, almost 30 years later, I remember it as clearly as I do.
It was a good day, first of all, because it was Friday, and summer was rapidly approaching. Reason enough for a 10 year-old to be pleased, I should think.
But it was also a good day because my mom had made a trip to town and picked up a bunch of new comics for me. This was always a dangerous proposition – my mom didn’t keep track of my comic book purchases or the titles I was most interested in, so there was a good chance that she would, in her random purchasing, buy me something I already had, or something that I wasn’t interested in, though the former was more a danger than the latter. After all, as I often say, there’s one thing that could be said about my taste in comics when I was a kid: I didn’t have any. I happily read pretty much anything back then.
In any case, on this particular day my mom had done very well, picking up the latest issues of Swamp Thing, The New Teen Titans, and The Flash, which, at the time, were all favorites of mine (I mostly liked The Flash because of the Dr. Fate backup story that ran in every issue).
Still, while the selection of comics was very good, they were not, in and of themselves, what made it a momentous day.
At least, not for the stories they contained.
That month, all of the titles published by DC (such as the ones listed above) ran an ad for something that, to my young mind, was the most extraordinary thing in the world: The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art.
A school.
That specialized in teaching people how to draw comic books and cartoons.
It was on that day that my fondest wish was born.**
”In eight years,” thought young Jon, as he looked at the ad over and over again, “I will be living in…Morristown, NJ, and will be a student at that school.”
And, of course, as we all know, that’s exactly what happened, and I went on to put by education to good use by becoming a superstar comic book artist.
Oh, wait.
So, yeah, that didn’t happen. Still, at the age of ten I could hardly be expected to think, “One day I will be an Integration Manager at a cable company and will be a Subject Matter Expert*** for something called Netcool and will spend most of my time developing and conducting operational readiness testing and creating document templates and writing Ops Guides and looking at spreadsheets.”
What is the point of this stroll down memory lane to the cul-de-sac of abandoned dreams?
I suppose that, in part, it’s an attempt to answer the question, “How did I get here?” and possibly the follow-up question, “And how do I get out?”
Mostly, however, it’s my very circuitous way of getting back to examining another set of similar questions, not asked by me, that keep popping up:
”What are you doing here?”
”Why aren’t you working for Marvel, or Disney, or someplace like that?”
”Why are you wasting your talent doing this?”
…and so forth.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, I understand that these questions – and the assertions, such as “You’re in the wrong line of work.” – are intended to be complimentary, but they feel more like criticism, or an indictment, and they’re not questions I can quickly or easily answer, and hearing them over and over again begins to wear on me after a while.
”I have my reasons,” I say, which is usually greeted with puzzlement, or dismissive head wags.
One of those reasons is that I didn’t, as young Jon had hoped and expected, move to Jersey and go to the Kubert school. Or any art school, for that matter. I never developed a formal basis from which I could fully explore and develop my talent.
This, of course, raises the obvious question of “Why not?”
That is, I’m afraid, the subject for a later post.
*I must confess to cheating a bit here; I remembered that it was probably 1982, and I knew that it was sometime in late spring, but I had to actually look up the cover date for one of the comics I remembered getting that day in order to narrow it down.
**That is, until later that summer, when my reading of X-Men, and the discovery of one Kitty Pryde, dovetailed with the onset of puberty, and a whole other set of fondest wishes developed…
***The notion that I’m a “SME” for anything – and I’m actually considered to be a SME for a lot of things – is laughable, given that most of the time I have no idea what I’m doing or talking about.
I used to have a good memory. I don’t know – or remember – what happened to it. I would say that it was probably booze, but I think my ability to remember things had started to fade long before I started drinking heavily, so who knows?
In talking about the amazing memory I had when I was younger, a woman who had worked at my elementary school made a reference to her belief that I had a “photogenic memory.” I can’t say whether or not that’s true – I don’t know what pictures of my memory would look like – but I certainly never had the photographic memory she meant to say that I had.
Still, it was a pretty decent memory, I think.
To this day, there are still some things that I remember distinctly, even decades later. I don’t think it would surprise anyone to learn that most of those things actually revolve around comic books in some fashion.
Not all of the details are clear – I don’t remember specific dates, necessarily, or even issue numbers – but there are a lot of surprisingly specific things that I do remember clearly.
As an example – and as part of the ever-lengthening and roundabout path I’m taking to get to my actual point – I remember a Friday in May of 1982* that was a good day in general, and a kind of momentous day as well, which is why, almost 30 years later, I remember it as clearly as I do.
It was a good day, first of all, because it was Friday, and summer was rapidly approaching. Reason enough for a 10 year-old to be pleased, I should think.
But it was also a good day because my mom had made a trip to town and picked up a bunch of new comics for me. This was always a dangerous proposition – my mom didn’t keep track of my comic book purchases or the titles I was most interested in, so there was a good chance that she would, in her random purchasing, buy me something I already had, or something that I wasn’t interested in, though the former was more a danger than the latter. After all, as I often say, there’s one thing that could be said about my taste in comics when I was a kid: I didn’t have any. I happily read pretty much anything back then.
In any case, on this particular day my mom had done very well, picking up the latest issues of Swamp Thing, The New Teen Titans, and The Flash, which, at the time, were all favorites of mine (I mostly liked The Flash because of the Dr. Fate backup story that ran in every issue).
Still, while the selection of comics was very good, they were not, in and of themselves, what made it a momentous day.
At least, not for the stories they contained.
That month, all of the titles published by DC (such as the ones listed above) ran an ad for something that, to my young mind, was the most extraordinary thing in the world: The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art.
A school.
That specialized in teaching people how to draw comic books and cartoons.
It was on that day that my fondest wish was born.**
”In eight years,” thought young Jon, as he looked at the ad over and over again, “I will be living in…Morristown, NJ, and will be a student at that school.”
And, of course, as we all know, that’s exactly what happened, and I went on to put by education to good use by becoming a superstar comic book artist.
Oh, wait.
So, yeah, that didn’t happen. Still, at the age of ten I could hardly be expected to think, “One day I will be an Integration Manager at a cable company and will be a Subject Matter Expert*** for something called Netcool and will spend most of my time developing and conducting operational readiness testing and creating document templates and writing Ops Guides and looking at spreadsheets.”
What is the point of this stroll down memory lane to the cul-de-sac of abandoned dreams?
I suppose that, in part, it’s an attempt to answer the question, “How did I get here?” and possibly the follow-up question, “And how do I get out?”
Mostly, however, it’s my very circuitous way of getting back to examining another set of similar questions, not asked by me, that keep popping up:
”What are you doing here?”
”Why aren’t you working for Marvel, or Disney, or someplace like that?”
”Why are you wasting your talent doing this?”
…and so forth.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, I understand that these questions – and the assertions, such as “You’re in the wrong line of work.” – are intended to be complimentary, but they feel more like criticism, or an indictment, and they’re not questions I can quickly or easily answer, and hearing them over and over again begins to wear on me after a while.
”I have my reasons,” I say, which is usually greeted with puzzlement, or dismissive head wags.
One of those reasons is that I didn’t, as young Jon had hoped and expected, move to Jersey and go to the Kubert school. Or any art school, for that matter. I never developed a formal basis from which I could fully explore and develop my talent.
This, of course, raises the obvious question of “Why not?”
That is, I’m afraid, the subject for a later post.
*I must confess to cheating a bit here; I remembered that it was probably 1982, and I knew that it was sometime in late spring, but I had to actually look up the cover date for one of the comics I remembered getting that day in order to narrow it down.
**That is, until later that summer, when my reading of X-Men, and the discovery of one Kitty Pryde, dovetailed with the onset of puberty, and a whole other set of fondest wishes developed…
***The notion that I’m a “SME” for anything – and I’m actually considered to be a SME for a lot of things – is laughable, given that most of the time I have no idea what I’m doing or talking about.
