My Brain Hurts

I just got an inquiry from an administrator at the school I teach coloring classes at.

"The computer classroom you've been using has a conflict on Wednesday nights next year. Can we move the class to Monday or Tuesday during the day?"

"I have a job. Do you mean next year like January-June 2009?"

"No, September 2009 to June 2010."

WHAT? I have to decide now if I'm going to do this through 2010?

Yeesh. I can't do that. Can I? No.

Starring Me

I'm listed on the BookCulture site now... yep, I'm the star of an in-store event in November. The topic? The newly published 3-D children's atlas that I wrote.

Gotta admit that I'm out of my depth on this one. I know how to talk about my travels and comic books and, uh, me. But I don't know how to deal with kids at all and I haven't done any atlas appearances yet. This will be my first.

I might be able to tell stories of interesting places. But how can I talk to kids? Maybe I better take some free comic books along.

Space Frog

Seems that the Daniel Johnston frog is being beamed to potential aliens in outer space.

No foolin'.

That's a little weird.

Coloring School

I've been teaching "digital coloring" on Wednesday nights. Not that there is any other kind anymore. We used to color with paints and markers. Nowadays, comic book coloring is all done in Photoshop.

My only previous teaching experience was in being a classroom guest for friends who teach at SVA, FIT, and AUC (Cairo). I taught a weekly workshop in Kuwait for a while, until my colleagues became too busy to show up and watch me zealously declare "too many colors here looks like vomit on the page." I remember a few people looking shocked. You'd think that would have taught me not to swear in front of the staff in Kuwait or Cairo, but I'm a slow learner.

I managed to not swear in front of the students this time. I am teaching four times over the course of the year, 2x per semester. My first session ends on Wednesday.

Thankfully, it's all worked out. I did not take to teaching naturally, but I have warmed up to it. My first group of students were great—polite, hard-working, and talented. They paid attention when I told them about flatting and trapping. They diligently learned to delete black tones in the color channels and to first choose colors, then use gradations, and finally brushes. Last week, we learned to make custom paintbrushes and then we made a mountain scene using the lasso, gradations, brushes, and filters. It's a lesson I picked up from a coloring DVD by one of the colorists who revolutionized the use of Photoshop for comic book coloring.

Teaching has been surprisingly fun. And as a bonus, I get paid to do it. The only problem is that once I finish this session, it starts all over. And again. And again. That bit makes me dizzy.

The Pendulum

I left writing class tonight with a chip on my shoulder.

The topic was book reviewing. Specifically, for the Times. I listened to a discussion about the Almighty Book, its implied importance oh-so-much more relevant than other media. The power of THE BOOK. All hail the author, all hail the awe with which one beholds the published writer, whose name on the book cover instantly conveys their legitimacy. God bless the mighty editor, the incredible weekly newspaper insert of the vaunted Times, all hail the commonly known names of writers that everyone else knows by osmosis.

"My ass," I thought. I felt a wall of fury and revulsion building within me. It's not books that piss me off. Look, I write books. It's this notion of cultural elitism. I don't come from money and I don't have the benefit of any special access or pass into the arrogant world of anticipated success. I am jealous of those who do have access, those who look down and don't notice the key to the kingdom on their keychain, because after all, it's always been there.

"Why are you taking a writing class?" My ex had asked me back in the spring, before he opted to become a prefix.

I gave him a lame answer but what I wanted to say was that I'd seen how he'd taught at Princeton, in Lebanon, New Orleans, and in Cairo, how he'd worked with his students to open up worlds to them, to facilitate their success. He'd given hall passes to the those who had come in with blank scraps of paper. I wanted to take writing classes with working journalists because of the opportunities he'd given his students. I craved opportunity. But I should have known he was different.

And so am I. I meet people, or go to parties, or even would sit with the aforementioned prefixes friends (many of which have that easy access to elitism that I so deeply resent), and I would think:

I am not of this world.

I have seldom not been alienated. Hell, I was alienated at Antioch. That takes a special skill. I come from a seriously different background to most of my peers, and I grew up early, grew up hard and independent but with a center so gooey and scared that the shell had to harden even more. I am more at home abroad than in my own apartment. I'll take Curves over pilates any day. I have monkey feet. I'd rather take a workshop in bag-sewing than in writing book reviews. I am more JC than Brooklyn, always just a bit offset from the mainstream.

And so I sat, working my stomach into knots. I shouldn't have wasted my money on this writing class. And yet, it's good for me. It's good to be forced to write beyond your repertoire. But I hate it. But it's good for me. Is it? Why did I think the prefixes responsibility as an instructor would be repeated elsewhere? Was I doing all right with the students I was teaching at the arts school ten blocks away? What would I teach them tomorrow night? I worried about Kuwaiti comic books, about a trade show in Dubai, a theme park near the Iraqi border. I felt anxiety and panic inside as others blithely talked about a book they'd read.

How the hell can I be so alienated at my age? What am I supposed to do to get past this? Why did I not read anyone else's reviews?

And back home, I considered the two essays I had to write for Friday, and the lesson plan for comic book coloring school.

And froze up.

I washed dishes. Messed around with Facebook. And finally, sat down to cut fusible interfacing to sew a new bag.

Writing. I can do it.

Tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow.

But cooling down and behaving normally in society?

That one might take a while.

The Eminently Quotable Persepolis

I am sooo far behind the curve on this one that it's ridiculous. Here I am a comic book professional and I didn't get around to reading the Persepolis graphic novel until now. I've even been to Persepolis! Ridiculous. And I missed the movie altogether.

I loved the art and graphic storytelling, sure, but some of the words were priceless. The first is a quote from the author's grandmother, the second from the author.

"In life you'll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it's because they're stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance... always keep your dignity and be true to yourself."
-Grandma

"Today, in retrospect, I no longer condemn him. Markus had a history, a family, friends. I had no one but him. I wanted him to be at once my boyfriend, my father, my mother, my twin. I had projected everything onto him. It was surely not easy for a boy of nineteen."
-the author herself

Broadway Afternoon

How is it already October? I feel that this year is passing by far, far too quickly.

In other ways, not quickly enough.

Bag Lady

During lunch on Thursday, I went to one of the many fabric stores in Manhattan's garment district. Which are conveniently located a few blocks from my office, which is in the Korean karaoke district just off of Herald Square.

I bought enough fabric to sew four more bags! I'll pin and cut at home, but I don't really think I'm ready to buy a sewing machine, so I'll go back to the Flirt-Brooklyn open studio night to sew them. Which is probably a good thing, since I would benefit from having the teacher nearby. I carefully memorized the pinning and cutting techniques last time, but I can't quite remember the right order of steps after that.

If I can master bag-making, I'll move on and take their skirt-making class. Plus Denise wants me to go to knitting school with her at the new cafe up the street. I don't really have any burning desire to learn to knit, but what the hell. It'll be fun to go to knitting school with Denise, plus I owe her (and Liz) one for going to bag-school with me.

Another Chunk of My 15 Minutes

Isaac, who is shooting a documentary about my day job, interviewed me in May or June. Today he showed me some of the rough footage.

I looked silly, but not too bad overall. I always appear kind of exaggerated on video, as if my cheekbones were 5x broader than they are, and as if my eyes don't just roll, but roll back into my head like a cartoon character.

Still, I came off pretty well in the footage, though I'm not sure people will want to hear my ideas about superheroes being retro and based in the needs of a different era. Oops. Maybe that wasn't the smartest thing to say...

Pirates of the African Horn

The Somali pirates are confusing me. I know you can't go around stealing cargo off freighter ships. I know that pirates probably do very bad things sometimes.

But damned if it doesn't sound like something cool and right out of another century. There's even a pirate village, where an entire infrastructure has sprung up around piracy. I have to admit that it sounds so romantic, so Robin Hood. Like many people, I have an affinity for the underdog (which works less well in dating, but that's another story).

So I'm watching the pirates who have the Ukranian ship right now, and I'm reading about their grand statements, and as romantic as it sounds to "only die once," I'm guessing that they have seen too many movies, and maybe don't quite understand that being surrounded by US warships and having the EU organizing an ass-kicking means that yes, you only die once, and that time is likely coming to them quite soon.

Should have quit while they were ahead. Should have walked away from the Ukranian ship once it sparked so much interest. Instead, their entire pirate-ville and way-of-life is going to get stomped.

Silly pirates.

I posted a gallery of photos of freighter ships from my 2001 trip around the world. I traveled on four ships that year, though no pirates happened to board.