(Bad Art Created With Cheap Office Supplies!)

Bad Art Created With Cheap Office Supplies!

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Seafood Surprise

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My piece for the food-themed Disney group show, which opened last night in the gallery of the Disney TVA building. 


TVA = "Television Animation"

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Monday, November 18, 2013

Lab Rat

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If you hear me cheering, hang up and call my publicist. 

If you hear me gagging, hang up and call an ambulance. 

If you hear the receiver hit the floor, hang up and call a mortician. 

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Friday, November 15, 2013

Gamera vs. Guiron



My piece for this weekend's Japanese monster movie group show: Tokusatsu 2. Downtown at Q Pop Shop (Los Angeles).


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Friday, November 1, 2013

"If you can tear yourself away"

an actual blog post



     This story could have happened anywhere, but as chance would have it, it occurred in the city where I live: South Pasadena California. 

     South Pas is very small. Very safe. And it has good public schools that are close enough to walk to. This last one -the good schools- is very uncommon in the greater metropolitan quilt of Los Angeles. For the most part, the LAUSD schools are hit and miss …mostly "miss", and the private schools are crazy expensive. So South Pas has ended up being a coveted jewel where everybody [read: "Everybody who can afford it"] wants to live. 

     In our family, we aren't high flying, super-achiever people. But those are the kind of people who move to South Pasadena these days. They are also the people who have serious financial means. Which, ho ho, we most certainly do not have.

     The good schools attract affluent families, the affluent families vote in good funding for the schools, the schools get better, the cost of a house goes up, this attracts even more affluent families, and so on. 

     Which, if you like that particular flavor of human: High achieving well educated types …South Pasadena has got those. Lots of 'em! If, on the other hand,  you like a wide variety of different types of artsy people …you're mostly out of luck. Or you seek out the handful of lucky ducks who bought a house back in the days when they were relatively cheap (like us!). 

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     But alas, even in the "good" schools, there are some hiccups. 

     A few years ago, we had some crummy math teachers at the high school. They were old, tired, and had long passed the point where they really wanted to work hard or care much. 

     There were some meetings at the high school library where "Math issues" were to be addressed. You couldn't actually say it out loud, of course: "This is a meeting to talk about the quickest way to get rid of these crummy math teachers" but everybody understood it to be exactly that. 

     Since my daughter was stuck with one of these clunkers and I was a bit worried, I went to one of the meetings. 

     There, I was surrounded by the distilled essence of the most involved parents on earth. Very successful high flyers. The kind of mega-successful fathers that the successful fathers look up to. The kind of super-tiger moms that the tiger moms look up to. They were all there. 

     And I ended up sitting next to some Dutch guy. Or maybe he was from Denmark or Belgium or something. At any rate, he was one of these guys who had this dismissive superior attitude about American education. He would lean over and whisper things like: "Why are these kinds of teachers allowed into the schools in the first place? In all of the schools that I attended as a child, everything was perfect, and our poop came out in little plastic baggies that made no smell" and he kept going on about it: "Europe is paradise. Everything in America sucks. If my hot California wife wasn't  a former lingerie model, I wouldn't have even married her and I'd be back in Holland with some dumpy little frau, wearing my cute little wooden shoes and not sitting here next to you wasting my time here in this stupid meeting". 

     Or something like that. Maybe I'm paraphrasing a bit. 

     Point is, he was exactly the type of guy that you'd expect to be there. At his firm, he was used to getting his needs serviced immediately, and he didn't have time for all of this namby pamby little meeting crap. 

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     The meeting went on in it's dull fashion: Parents would stand up and gripe, the principal would say bland things about "addressing these particular issues". 

     I spent the time doing what I always do in situations like this: I drew in my sketchbook. 

     I was listening too. I heard every word that was being said, but I was also drawing in my sketchbook. In the modern parlance, I was "multitasking". If you work in an animation studio, like I do, this is no big thing. In an animation studio, everybody does it and everybody understands that you can doodle and listen at the same time. 

     But in the normal world, people have the idea that you can only do one or the other. Also, normal people also don't see the slightest bit of value in art of any kind, and that is especially true of anything that smells of "cartooning". 

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     Along it goes. The meeting is dull. Dutch guy is miffed. I'm drawing in my sketchbook. 

     A clipboard is being passed around. "Parents, please put down your name and email so that we can contact you later".

     The clipboard comes around to Dutch guy, and after he scribbles, he shoves it over to me in such a way that the clipboard is directly between my eyes and my sketchbook. 

     "Here," he says in this really snotty way, "it would be nice of you to put your name down, if you can tear yourself away from your little cartoons". 

     Nice. "Your little cartoons". Just totally dismissive as hell. 

     I gave him a bit of dead eye, then I quietly took the clipboard, put down my info, and passed it along. Then I went back to my drawing. 

     I didn't get mad because…I don't know why. I just don't get upset by things like this. All my life I've had highly educated dick-ish people say dismissive things about my drawings and I'm pretty much just used to it. If I use my time and energy to get upset, then that just means that I have less time and energy to put into my art. 

     Also, to be honest, I do know why. I've been schooled by wise authors and I'm able to ride upon their insightful coat-tails. 

     I once read a great book called "The Big Test" by Nicolas Lemann. He neatly explained the breakdown of American elites into the three categories of Mandarins, Lifers and Talents. I won't eat up your valuable time with all of the interesting details, but it's safe to say that this book did me a lot of good. 

     "Good", because it made me realize that, while I'm not in the elite class, I'm still a Talent living in a town full of Mandarins. And if the Mandarins are baffled by people like me, then the blame lies entirely upon their exquisite -and exquisitely narrow- formal educations.

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     A few days ago, I was having lunch with some of my smart and funny co-workers in the Disney TVA building where I work. TVA is the abbreviation for "Televison Animation". Like me, my co-workers are storyboard artists for one of the Disney television shows. Our show is called Phineas & Ferb and aside from being a smash hit, it's also a lot of fun to work on. Lots of good people. 

     We were sitting there munching away, talking about work and life, and the subject wanders over to raising kids in a world where most mommies and daddies are normal people with normal jobs. At about this point, I tell my little anecdote about the snotty Dutch guy at the school meeting. 

     I thought it would get a chuckle, but I hit a nerve instead. My friends got really mad. 

     "Why do people have to be like that?!" said my friend Kim. "They have no idea how many years it takes to learn how to do this!"

     "That must makes me LIVID!" said John. "People are so disrespectful of artists and …oh…that just makes me so mad!" And he was mad. I kind of regretted telling my story, because I really didn't want to upset our mellow lunch vibe. 

     Oops. Way to ruin the mood, Bernie. 

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     Turns out that John was so struck by my story that the next day, he repeated it to some other friends when I wasn't around. They workshopped some different comebacks to the snotty Dutch guy. 

     The brilliant cartoonist and writer Kaz Prapuolenis came up with the best one: 

     "You know dude, I get paid a lot of money to draw these little cartoons. Do you get paid a lot of money to be an asshole?"

     Oh snap! 

     Too bad I'm not that quick-witted. It probably would have been pretty funny. 

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     Postscript: 

     "No wait! You didn't finish the story! What ever happened to the crummy math teachers?"

     Oh, right. 

     The crummy math teachers were not fired. This is America. Teachers have unions and these unions will go to court if a school administrator has the temerity to actually cashier a teacher in the middle of a school year. I mean, it can certainly be done. A principal can say "You're fired". But a principal has to ask themselves: "Is my time better spent in a courtroom, or is it better spent here at the school, doing my job?"

     So however it managed to happen, somebody somewhere worked within the system. During the summer, the crummy teachers quietly announced their retirement. New energetic teachers were hired. They continue to be fantastic teachers at the school. Ever since then, the crummy teacher problem has not returned to the Math department. 

     Hooray. 

Pull!

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