Posted 10:59 PM by sport

Comics... sigh. Drew 'em for years, I did. At some point in my 20s, Art Spiegelman saw some of my stuff and brutally critiqued it. I agreed, and gave it up. Moved on to music, determined to carry on no matter what. Now, so many years later, few brutal critiques... not from anyone I respect anyhow... but pretty much the same conclusion. Music... sigh.

So, a glance back at the first doomed avocation. Panels, doodles, etc, spanning childhood to my late teens. None of the later stuff that Spiegelman hated, though. I gave away every page I didn't destroy. It is kind of nice that the blog justifies use of this shit at long last, as a friend noted the other day. I feel like it honors, ever so feebly, the dreamy kid that drew it all. And shit, he deserves it, even if it's only his aged self doing it. There are heaps and heaps of these things, really. All that stuff I did for the love of doing. No shame in that.




The oldest one from the current array is from one of these EC/Twilight Zone fixated books I cranked out between 10 and 12 years old. Lots of bitter twists at the end of each tale. Worked REAL hard on these ones. They're not as funny as a lot of the other shit I did then, but the art is better, and it was rare that I used color except in these ambitious strips.

The other one's from a bit later, with a fellow named "Deeds" about to be spirited off by amorphous baddies. Included here for the silly bit of gratuitous self-praise in the corner. Say what you will, at least I was pleased with myself at the time. I could use some of that now!



There's a portion of a page from a small book I did in high school called "Ripstaver." Completed a couple of issues of that one, a 5 by 8 number following the adventures of a bewildered band of mutant-types. Every page included instructions on which music to play while reading it. Forget what this page called for... maybe Grieg or Josef Marais or something.

Posted 11:05 PM by sport

Here's a family group from our living room at 606 17th Street. I reckon that I'm about 4 or 5 here, proudly displaying my Marx Universal Monsters figures on the coffee table, amid the ever-present doilies and magazines. Monsters were very important in those days. These figures were likely purchased at Woolworth's, where they sat irresistably in bins alongside other Marx six-inchers like cowboys and indians, army soldiers (my favorites in these categories were always the "dying guys" ...poor fellows frozen eternally at the moment a bullet or arrow struck them. Bizarre, looking back at it), et al. Dunno if I had already begun collecting the Nutty Mads and Weird-Ohs, but I'll get to those eventually.

Now: left to right. Brother Brian, early in his "hood" phase. Painstaking hair comb (ever after, he'd jokingly comment "bad hair comb" as a way of complimenting one's coif). Tiki pendants were favored on the neck chain, and cologne was liberally applied. Au Sauvage, Old Spice, so forth. Eventually and enduringly, Brut. Next to Brian sit Uncle Freddie and Aunt Sis. "Sis" was the nickname Mom and siblings gave their eldest sister, so naturally we all called her "Aunt Sis." This is indicative of the strange range of relationships in a large, close family where many siblings were born many years apart; cousins as old as Mom who were more like aunts, and of course nephew Pete, who was more like a brother. The tradition continues, with Miles and Lily's brother Alex almost 20 years their elder!

Fred and Sis were sweet, wonderful people. A late memory of Aunt Sis was arriving at her apartment (site of countless holiday bashes in those years) as a teen, toting my freshly purchased copy of Tom Waits' "Foreign Affairs" lp. Just as the sisters momentarily left their tea and crumbcake to come see what I was listening to on the console tv/stereo, Waits barked "...Florence Nightingale stuck her fat ass out the window..." which, thankfully, inspired much laughter instead of the expected chagrin.

Then there's Grandma. Dad's Mom, who then lived at the Ronkonkoma house I'm now emptying. I still hear her Irish brogue... she died when I was nine, slipping and falling in the kitchen. My folks rushed out to the hospital on Long Island, and I was with my siblings Maureen, Brian, Bobby and Petie in this room at 606 when the call came. I recall the people on the tv (Tonight Show, I think) continuing to laugh as we all sat variously weeping and stunned silent. That was a mindfuck. The world just goes on... who suspected? I prayed to her and promised I'd talk to her every night with the day's news, and did so for many years afterward.

Then it's Aunt Ronnie. She kept a big toybox in her living room for all visiting nieces, nephews and grandkids. A complete pearl. Shelley often drove Mom in to see her in the later years, and on her deathbed she roused from near-dementia to embrace me, whisper some of the most beautiful sentiments I have ever heard and promise to watch over me. With a soul like hers, I can almost believe it's true. Wrote a chamber piece for her that was meant for the abandoned followup to "Magic Beans" ...her death sent my Mom into a spiral of depression that set in soon afterward, on Sept 11.

But there she is, Mom Immortal, beaming with Bobby and me between her and Dad. A very happy time... everyone depicted here represents absolute love to me. What a lucky little boy.


Same spot, different sofa and coffee table. Now I'm maybe 11 or 10, playing the Marvin Glass-designed "Which Witch" game with Brian. Right after Christmas, with wrapping paper and boxes still littering the place. Brian is now in his "groovy guy" phase, and Four Seasons / Shirelles records have given way to Chambers Brothers and Sly and the Family Stone. Dangling in the air above Dad, note the day-glo peace sign mobile. Dad, no doubt caught up in a football game or Efrem Zimbalist on "The F.B.I.", is only tolerating the mobile for the holiday season; I reckon it was a gift from Brian to Bobby or vice versa. Dad is doing his aimless hair-twirling bit; 'til the end he'd repeatedly wind a lock of hair through his fingers as he focused on some tv show. And if the scent of Brut brings back memories of this version of Brian, Vitalis permeates my memories of this version of Dad.


In keeping with the era, Brian and I are sporting mod vests, with fringe on mine! I am obviously proud to be garbed so, sitting beside my purple-trousered bro and wishing I could also grow my hair long so I could be a groovy guy as well. (I did, at about 13, and suffered "are you a boy or a girl" abuses for many years as a result. When I was first marooned in Long Island, a jock hit me with that hated question in the loathed homeroom of my detested high school. Nervous as hell but realizing I needed to show some chutzpah, I replied "Why dontcha suck my dick and find out?") Despite the misery their substance abuse brought into our home, I thought Brian and Bobby were the coolest motherfuckers in christendom.


Behind the sofa is the rickety stereo, before which I'd sit for hours listening to the soundtrack from "2001, A Space Odyssey," the Bee Gees' "Odessa" and other favorites of the moment. Just to the left of the stereo, a GI Joe paratrooper hangs from the wooden bars lining the staircase. These bars were perfectly spaced for getting one's head stuck in between.

Fast-forward to a gathering 'round the sofa at my room in Ronkonkoma, aeons later. Now I'm about 17. Foreground is Maryrose, a gifted gal who was later in the original cast of Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along," and was immortalized by an Al Hirschfeld caricature on the album cover! She's now a successful writer, notably of fiction for young women. I think that's Steve next to her, a guy I spent many many many hours with through the years, some of them sober. Last saw him, along with his rowdy brood, a couple of years back at a party here at the current house.


Frank is chortling next to him. Like Maryrose, he and I recently re-acquainted on MySpace. He does a sort of retro-Vegas comedy and music act around the area. Lovely Karina - current whereabouts unknown to me - is agreeably strangling me as I extinguish a butt in my beer cup. I had just begun that odious habit, which I still relish, unfortunately. And that's Carrie sitting bobsled style between my legs. I can't fathom now why I decided to break up with her; she was a great, sweet, beautiful gal. Probably still is, somewhere.

Doubtless, there was music playing. My guess is Neil Young, Beach Boys or Stackridge, whose album "Pinafore Days" was a group favorite: Tony DeCosa bought every copy he came across and gave them out like new-daddy cigars. We also had a collective fixation with actor Ted Bessell of "That Girl." Fan club buttons, the works. Long story. This sofa was a Castro Convertible... not yet as rank with beer and other drippins as it quickly became before getting deep-sixed for good.

This room became Brian's when circumstance led him to his decline. Last week a truck hauled away tons of shit that had accumulated there... it will soon be the domain of Alex and Cat, who will likely install a new sofa ...and fun will once again reign o'er all, set to Drum 'n' Bass.

That same house, downstairs, another few years along. Now I'm about 22 or so, with Charlie and Bari on the Furry Sofa. It was like cozying up on Robin Williams' back.


We seem to be inebriated on some combination of toxins. Charlie was a dear friend, dead at 33. He and his wife moved to New York City around this time, an unfortunate choice, as it turned out. Wrote a song for him called "The Mighty Sun" ...it recalled, in part, our long nights of deep deep music listening; I turned him on to Tom Waits and he got me into Alan Price. Lotsa Stevie Wonder, Leon Russell, Elvis Costello. Bari, a real salt-o-the-earth type, married a fireman a few years after this photo, and where she is I do not know, but bless her wherever she be.

I was never the Cory Hart sort, so the sunglasses can only indicate something bad afoot. Around this time I shattered my front teeth attempting to play the trombone out the window of Charlie's overloaded VW Bug. Brrrapp! CRACK! Sparks flew as the slide hit pavement at a stupidly high speed... and the brass mouthpiece smashed the ol' incisors like one of them medieval battering rams. 3,000 bucks later I could smile brightly again. No more mescaline, thanks.


Maybe I'll get around to telling you about a week spent in a woodland cabin with Charlie, Brian, and Steve from the previous snapshot. A "fishing trip." Oy fuckin Vey!! But one afternoon that sordid week - sprawled on the cabin's sofa, you betcha - Charlie somehow got the ancient tv to work, pulling in only one channel thru its rusty rabbit ears. We watched Frank Sinatra in "The Joker is Wild" and permanently adopted his toast "Post time!"

And here's a toast to all of them (water, alas), here and gone. With thanks for all the heapin' helpins of their hospitality.

Posted 11:56 PM by sport

Below is part of a diary entry from when I was 13 or so. The point of interest is the tiny doodle in the upper left corner, depicting Pete, Frank Fulco and me unsuccessfully warding off sleep as we all bunked together in front of the tube. One of our rituals was a Saturday night pyjama hang, where we'd try to stay up all night in order to watch the first shows on Sunday Morning, when the tv stations signed back on the air. The shows we craved were both on channel 5, WNEW: "Reverend Cleophus Robinson" and "Wonder Window." "Rev. Cleo" - as we called him - was a classic southern preacher of enormous vocal power; we'd goof on the sermons and enjoy the singing. Wonder Window was a piss-poor religious kid's show... kind of a "Wonderama for Jesus" thing. Mind you, part of the idea with our stay-up was to achieve a giddiness that enhanced appreciation of these shows.

Soon we applied the same theory to the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon, to which, as you know, I remain devoted. There is always a time during my Jerry-thon endurance ritual when I catch a sweet whiff of those ancient Saturday/Sunday no-sleep-overs. Any man who fell asleep was subject to vile torments and humiliations, as is only right, but evidently on this occasion we all dropped out as one... a blot on our collective escutcheon worthy of commemoration in this diary. The real danger zone for dozing was the brief period when there was NOTHING on the tv (not to be confused with today, when there is a very loud nothing on, every channel, all the time). CBS 2 Signed off around 4:30 or so, give or take, and WNEW came on maybe 5. So figure at least 30 minutes of very bleary attempts to remain up and stoked.

It's a goddamn shame that tv stations don't sign off anymore - don't even get me started on infomercials - and I collect old examples of sign-offs and sign-ons from equally rabid weirdos on YouTube. So far nobody's posted a WNEW 5 Sat-to-Sun sequence for my nostalgic wallowing, but fortunately I found a recording we'd made one of those halcyon overnights, which includes the sound of Rev Cleo preaching and the opening theme from Wonder Window, all with our giddy kiddy chatter in the background. Man, do I treasure those recordings.

Making tape recordings was our passion. We worked that Panasonic cassette machine to death in those years, doing the usual puerile parodys, silly tunes and audio-verite. I still have things ranging from entire pillow fights, vacation travel reports and tv-commentary shenanigans (the reason I never dug MST3K is that I always thought this was a fab party game and still can't understand why anyone would want someone else to supply the wiseassery for them) to audio experiments and original music. Below left is an illustration for a now-lost game show parody I did with Pete, "Manslaughter!" We filled notebooks with visual complements to our audio oeuvre. Who needed blogs and laptops? Pete's specialty was impersonating Nipsey Russell and Muhammed Ali, mainly because of their penchant for rhymes. As Frank did his Evel Kneivel or Bob Eubanks and I'd do my Joey Heatherton or Richard Nixon, Pete would intrude with an inane, improvised couplet that would stop the proceedings cold with a good few minutes of uncontrolled giggling. One of those very crack-ups concludes the "Uncle" album.




Regarding the "original music" - most of the tunes we did were credited to our "band," Hot Turd. Here are some bits of H.T. ephemera:



I assume the illo with the spear was a beginning attempt at an "album cover" The other one, with portraits of Me, Frank and Pete (with our nicknames Sport, Ace and Projie, respectively) includes an inset (see, I'm sparing you full-page scans, so think of how excruciating this entry could have been) of "us" "performing." Properly, Ace's guitar should be a neck-sprung acoustic or a toy banjo, Projie's drums should be a series of toy drums and pots and pans. Me, I'm at the OPTIGAN. Which is also still there, mouldering, at the old homestead. Our sound was sonically adventurous, like, say, chimpanzees covering the Shaggs.



Our work boldly dealt with issues like farts, the other retards at school, boogersnots, the assholes who taught us at school, and of course, turds.




Hot Turd began its fabled career as the "glee club" component of the Viking Club, formed by me and best chum Mike "Woody" Woodworth back in the single-digit days of kidhood. Woody. I smile at the thought of that guy. Not long before Pete's death, he told me he'd run into Woody on the street. Woody gave him his phone number and asked him if he could pass it on to me. I called once, got a machine and hung up. I keep meaning to call. Dunno if I should or not, but I love Woody like a brother, and that's exactly why I hesitate.

You know, I still periodically check to see if the number is active under "Woodworth."






















What can I add? It's getting very late. I miss him. I loved him more than I can ever convey. And I don't give a shit about the date, really, because every day's just another unless you share it with people you love, doing things that make you laugh. Looking forward as Pete did. And for all the laughing days we were cheated out of, we had so many like these. A considerable blessing.
So on to the future and the laughs that'll follow tonight's tears.

Posted 12:34 AM by sport

O.K. Here I am again. I have spent a lot of time immersed in the grueling task of clearing out the old family home. It's tiring, depressing, sometimes sweet and mostly interminable. The images I've combined (and retexted) to the left are among the heaps of old artwork I unearthed during this effort.

I don't think I'll get all detailed about any other old flames, though. But you'll meet a few more, I reckon. Here's some school notebook shit...

Death Cheez Snax / Portly Grad Girl

Yeah, nothing grand, I admit. But that's just it. This is not an art exhibit, it's a biography. Just ad hoc exhumations, and if there are any interesting stories, I'll include them. Skoal, friends.