No April Fool's from This Blog
Hey, I'm going to be drawing Swamp Thing again in 2007!
Ha.
April Fool.
OK, so there's one April Fool's line in this post. That was it.
Hey, all.
Just a quick flashback, all true, of previous April Fool's Days, just for the heck of it --
* On this day in 1999, I placed a parody post on my old comicon.com website that was up for only 24 hours. In it, I lampooned my situation at that time: on the brink of pulling out of comics entirely, having closed up shop on SpiderBaby self-publishing completely, I posted an account of my selling Tyrant lock, stock and barrel to Vertigo, and using that hook tore into the whole imploding publishing/distribution/direct sales market scene. It was only in view for 24 hours -- and never again! -- but it still had the somewhat hilarious result later in '99 of almost deep-sixing the negotiations concerning my pencilling the Neil Gaiman 'medieval Swamp Thing' story for Midnight Days -- apparently, some folks at Vertigo didn't find it funny at all.
Which, of course, made it seem even funnier to me.
* Five years ago today, we were hit here in southern VT with a surprising three feet of snow, capping an already intense winter snowfall (our last truly snowy winter to date) with a most memorable storm. At the time, I was stupidly renting a flat-roofed house in Wilmington, VT, which required I shovel the equivalent (I kid you not) of a tennis court each and every snowfall. Though my pecs and arm muscles grew massive, I was a hurting unit after every clearing-of-the-snow-from-the-roof, and miss that not in the least. What a suck house that was! Still, it was good to me and my family in other ways: Dan and I had some great years there (despite the interminable shoveling of snow off the roof), Maia survived her teen years and made a short movie (Girl on Fire) in her room there, and Marj and I became an inseperable couple, easing from courtship to proposal.
* Four years ago today, at about 3:20 AM, my wife-to-be (we were married later that month) Marjory was laying in our new bed in our new home (the first I've ever owned rather than rented) wondering where the hell I was and growing increasingly worried as the rain poured down in buckets.
I was still at the ol' flat-roofed house in Wilmington, clearing out the last of my debris -- boxes and garbage bags full of videos, primarily, along with the last of the books and Maia's stuff (she'd already 'moved out', leaving ol' Pop to repack and move a closet full of stuff) -- and packing my ol' '89 Toyota squareback to its absolute capacity with the final load from our old digs. I did this in a hammering storm, and was absolutely dripping wet from head to toe when all was done, and sweating like -- well, suffice to say, I felt like I'd been dipped in refridgerated mayonnaise by the end of the process.
Since we didn't have hot water yet in our new home (which still had about 10 days of contractor completion work to go), I had to strip down and take my final shower in the old flat-topped house at about 2:45 AM, tossing on a change of clothes I'd held out and then giving the old shitbox one final top-to-bottom search to make sure everything was out. Man, the hot shower felt good -- the dry clothes felt better.
I was, of course, instantly soaked to the skin again once I dashed outside, locking the house a final time and skedaddling for the car amid the pounding torrent of rain.
Thus rendered near-amphibian anew, I finally got out of the house and into the driver's seat at about 3:20 AM, barely making it out of the mud/quicksand driveway (it had already trapped two cars that day) and negotiating the final 5+ mile drive to our present home, the car weighted down terribly, slogging through the deeply-rutted oatmeal consistency of our road with the heaviest load my ol' Toyota ever handled (and that's something, having moved myself and other folks no less than a dozen times in that vehicle, which we just retired last fall). I pulled into our driveway and into our garage at almost precisely 3:30 AM, leaving the loaded car as it was to deal with later and stumbling up to bed -- to a very happy-to-see-me Marj.
Thankfully, I've no such memories of any April Fool's day thereafter.
So, that's that.
No foolin'.
BTW, I did save the digital file of that fateful comicon.com April Fool post somewhere, and hope to post it on my site on this very morning next year. So, something to look forward to, perhaps?
Hey, Happy April Fool's Day, one and all!
Hey, I'm going to be drawing Swamp Thing again in 2007!
Ha.
April Fool.
OK, so there's one April Fool's line in this post. That was it.
Hey, all.
Just a quick flashback, all true, of previous April Fool's Days, just for the heck of it --
* On this day in 1999, I placed a parody post on my old comicon.com website that was up for only 24 hours. In it, I lampooned my situation at that time: on the brink of pulling out of comics entirely, having closed up shop on SpiderBaby self-publishing completely, I posted an account of my selling Tyrant lock, stock and barrel to Vertigo, and using that hook tore into the whole imploding publishing/distribution/direct sales market scene. It was only in view for 24 hours -- and never again! -- but it still had the somewhat hilarious result later in '99 of almost deep-sixing the negotiations concerning my pencilling the Neil Gaiman 'medieval Swamp Thing' story for Midnight Days -- apparently, some folks at Vertigo didn't find it funny at all.
Which, of course, made it seem even funnier to me.
* Five years ago today, we were hit here in southern VT with a surprising three feet of snow, capping an already intense winter snowfall (our last truly snowy winter to date) with a most memorable storm. At the time, I was stupidly renting a flat-roofed house in Wilmington, VT, which required I shovel the equivalent (I kid you not) of a tennis court each and every snowfall. Though my pecs and arm muscles grew massive, I was a hurting unit after every clearing-of-the-snow-from-the-roof, and miss that not in the least. What a suck house that was! Still, it was good to me and my family in other ways: Dan and I had some great years there (despite the interminable shoveling of snow off the roof), Maia survived her teen years and made a short movie (Girl on Fire) in her room there, and Marj and I became an inseperable couple, easing from courtship to proposal.
* Four years ago today, at about 3:20 AM, my wife-to-be (we were married later that month) Marjory was laying in our new bed in our new home (the first I've ever owned rather than rented) wondering where the hell I was and growing increasingly worried as the rain poured down in buckets.
I was still at the ol' flat-roofed house in Wilmington, clearing out the last of my debris -- boxes and garbage bags full of videos, primarily, along with the last of the books and Maia's stuff (she'd already 'moved out', leaving ol' Pop to repack and move a closet full of stuff) -- and packing my ol' '89 Toyota squareback to its absolute capacity with the final load from our old digs. I did this in a hammering storm, and was absolutely dripping wet from head to toe when all was done, and sweating like -- well, suffice to say, I felt like I'd been dipped in refridgerated mayonnaise by the end of the process.
Since we didn't have hot water yet in our new home (which still had about 10 days of contractor completion work to go), I had to strip down and take my final shower in the old flat-topped house at about 2:45 AM, tossing on a change of clothes I'd held out and then giving the old shitbox one final top-to-bottom search to make sure everything was out. Man, the hot shower felt good -- the dry clothes felt better.
I was, of course, instantly soaked to the skin again once I dashed outside, locking the house a final time and skedaddling for the car amid the pounding torrent of rain.
Thus rendered near-amphibian anew, I finally got out of the house and into the driver's seat at about 3:20 AM, barely making it out of the mud/quicksand driveway (it had already trapped two cars that day) and negotiating the final 5+ mile drive to our present home, the car weighted down terribly, slogging through the deeply-rutted oatmeal consistency of our road with the heaviest load my ol' Toyota ever handled (and that's something, having moved myself and other folks no less than a dozen times in that vehicle, which we just retired last fall). I pulled into our driveway and into our garage at almost precisely 3:30 AM, leaving the loaded car as it was to deal with later and stumbling up to bed -- to a very happy-to-see-me Marj.
Thankfully, I've no such memories of any April Fool's day thereafter.
So, that's that.
No foolin'.
BTW, I did save the digital file of that fateful comicon.com April Fool post somewhere, and hope to post it on my site on this very morning next year. So, something to look forward to, perhaps?
Hey, Happy April Fool's Day, one and all!
posted by SRBissette at
9:43 AM
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