Perceptual Anesthesia

Their hands always locked,
feet struggling to find a mutual pace.
A warm caress, a sideways glance or two,
an oddly timed grin, mouthed words
meant only for each other;
all symptoms of a rare disease,
that affliction that dulls otherwise bright minds;
a perceptual anesthesia as Mencken wrote.

How fortunate we think we are
to have either neglected
that part of ourselves outright,
or chosen that it is best
to never do so again
than to have done so and lost.

Yet we are human and so we do
that which is most human,
we search to fill the quiet moments with.
We look beyond our instincts.
Steel ourselves for disappointment.
We advance cautiously, looking for
the all-too familiar signs.

But if this were entirely new?
A heady mixture
of the familiar and the sublime.
That person with which you feel
a better part of yourself
Looks and admires inexplicably
that better part of herself

Would you not:
lock hands and find
that mutual pace for struggling feet?
Give that unexpected caress,
glance or oddly timed grin?
Tell her, beyond reason,
or by snarky observation,
beyond your hard-won disdain
for perceptual anesthesia,
how much you love?

BfHerbie: What's in a name?

A little explanation about my nickname, there will be an exam later. My name is Armando. I am a recovering nerd, geek, space-cadet, of the sort that used to play Dungeons and Dragons, collect comic books, and go to Rennaissance Fairs in character. I am not ashamed of my past. I still partake of certain comic book conventions; the only important one that gathers every year in San Diego, I watch Summer blockbuster movies without a hint of irony, and I like big-haired anime. I love Hong Kong movies, too. I have two kids who play video games. I have no qualms about sharing my interests with them. The Nerd Revolution was not only televised, we all own the 5 disc box set with the director’s commentary.

It’s a real vindication for my me and homies who rolled through the barren wasteland, taking the abuse from the preppies and the mods, the cha-chas and gangsters, the pocket-protectors in hand. We graduated, went to school, grew up and took over. We built the iPhone, created the Web, invented Windows Vista, shot the Matrix, built Narnia, and crash landed on Lost island.

I’d like to say I’ve grown up. I have greater responsibilities and I no longer immerse myself blindly in imaginary worlds. Yet, there is still a great part of me that can’t forget where I’ve been and that’s why my nickname is Herbie: B(big), f(fat), Herbie (Popnecker) who is a parody super-hero comic from the 1950’s. He’s ridiculous and so am I. It keeps me grounded.

Polish Power

Just finished another book in Duane Swierczynski’s ouvre, roman noir updated for the post-internet age. It’s called Severance Package, to go along with the book I finished last week which was The Blonde, and I’ve got to say: as trashy, black-hearted fun, I haven’t been into an author like this since I “discovered” Andrew Vachss for myself. If that doesn’t mean anythin to you well, I’m sorry let me break it down. Take a little film noir, a little tragicomedy, and a whole lot of the old ultraviolence. Some of it shreds credulity to bits, but hey I’m not too particular for fun Summer reading.

The Blonde is about a guy who gets poisoned in an airport bar by the titular blonde and then needs to help her stay alive amidst high-tech espionage and nonstop action. Severance Package is about aguy who works for a high-stakes financial firm who gets called in for work one Saturday and finds out that the firm is actually an black-ops intelligence front but that the operation has been closed and all involved have been ordered eliminated. It’s high concept, but not high camp, and Swierczynski pulls it off.

Next step for me? I’m reading the Wheelman.

Unrequited haikus:

Unrequited haikus:
So there’s this girl. at
work Curly hair. Piercing. Tall.
Should have asked her out.

My so called love life
Dreaming of a love affair
last night passed out drunk

She walks in beauty
crying she seems very lost
Have you seen my sis?

I am reclining
Talked to her. Minutes ago.
Relieved she walks by

There’s something different
about you today you seem
different happy

You walked by. Happy.
Don’t lie, don’t give me a line
No line. I don’t lie.

Thank you, you’re very
sweet. Want to get a coffee?
Wanted to ask you

The rest images
strawberry lips curly hair.
crinkly. She loves me

I wake to write it
before the haze of morning
takes my happiness

To Sir, with Bacon and Ham

The end of the school year is always fraught with trouble. There are endless assessments, exams you might call them, cumulative folders need filling in, report cards, yadayada; a big mountain that I managed scaling incrimentally over 2 weeks time minimizing the effects of stress and overwork and yet I still jumped headfirst into “Crazyville Canyon”. I can gloat my dear reader, weeks off to watch the glutes atrophy, but I won’t. We all bear professional crosses and mine is to teach, not more or less important than any of yours.

What I won’t apologize for is the time off. For however many weeks on end (it varies if you’re on a traditional or year-round-school calendar) I put on a daily 6 hour reality show that isn’t televized, and makes no money if the audience doesn’t show up. It has one executive producer, thousands of producers, but one writer (myself). The audience participates to varying levels or degrees, and much of the time is spent on reviewing what was learned the previous years. I’m not complaining, it is an honorable profession and if anything I am an honorable man or at least I try. It is a profession that drives good people to an all-encompassing burnout, and I won’t add myself to that list.

Which is why I will sit at home most days and sleep till 11. I will finish my mediocre American novel about finding love in all the e-places. I will enjoy the time I have with my girlfriend. I will see more films on my top 100 AFI films of all time. I will travel, preferably on my bike as gas is too expensive. I will lose 10 pounds before the new year starts.

Most importantly I will see my kids because everything takes a back seat there. Especially teaching.

A Long Walk Spoiled

It’s been an up and down week tethered to the usual rants and raves from the menagerie of harpies and sicko-phants that exhibit themselves in the gallery. Here’s a slice:

1)a lady I knew, a year or two older than myself, passed away the other day from stomach cancer, the same disease that took her father and her brother. She had 3 kids, little ones.

2)a hanger-on, pretender to the throne, is trying to weasel himself into the good graces of a family member, and I am certain would like a parcel of land, his acres and a mule free, that certainly my brother and I would inherit.

3)my mother continues her descent into reinhabited adolescence, nose ring, small-of-the-back tattoo, is that what comes next?

4)my father continues his descent into the family business, that of melancholic nostalgia, a Cuban-American pitfall.

5)my sons, dueling fevers, left husks of their very active and vibrant selves, left me battered last weekend

6)she who shall not be named, according to the ammended documents of the familial settlement, is suspiciously moving her forces to outflank my battered troops mercilessly.

7)that radio show which takes up so much of my free-time, continues to stubbornly resists making any money back from our investment

8)suffering writer’s block for the first time in memory

9)the shorts on my profile were opened up, a huge gash ripped along the right pant leg, I threw it out

10)despite it all I am buoyed by the sheer lunacy of falling in love again

Wicked

I’m still dragging from the great night I had, a night I’d been planning with my girlfriend Jennifer for awhile now (it was her birthday the night before) and I’m still having the music running through my head.

We saw Wicked (how very upscale), and while I don’t usually like big production number musicals I did like Wicked. Yeah, I guess it was the witty digs at the political establishment and the humorous bits between the showstoppers. There was a bit of Disneyland to the staging, the dragon breathing fire above the actors a bit much, but the shadows of the original stars Chenowith and Menzel were still present despite lesser talents in the L.A. production at the Pantages. I usually hate the Pantages for its big musical histrionics, but this was a musical for the age after excess, controlled yet wooly I would say, and it was in the end: just great. Cool songs that I could sing in the shower to. A bit of snarky commentary at the political and musical establishment and overall another beautiful night amongst many others for me and my girl.

Nothing like the Sun

It’s so much easier to write when life is in flux,
the words a tether, the strands of a life together;
images on a page. A ring, a dress,
a humidor on one. A calendar,
a drawing, wind chimes on the other.
The coral deposits of a life, of love

Not so much when life has turned
the words cast, thoughts in a fugue,
returning instead to a closed eyed smile.
a picture. a place, a dish, a hand held tight.
a turn of a phrase, a secret told. trust.
No, this is nothing like the sun.
Cliched. False. Needy. Unilateral.
All the much better.

Interdisciplinary Studies

Interdisciplinary Studies

I graduated from college at Cal State University Dominguez Hills in 1999. My major was Interdisciplinary Studies. Really, it was called PACE. Program for Adult College Education. It is, as the college handbook says, “a broad-based, liberal arts and sciences major that focuses on developing exemplary skills in written and oral communication, textual analysis, critical thinking, and problem solving.” We studied the colonization of the Americas, the birth of fascism, the rise of the labor movement, the Faust legend throughout time, comparative mythology, oh, and photography, girls and adult beverages, or as much a commuter school like Dominguez allowed.

My first 6 years there were a slow decline back to the working class rut out of academia. I entered academic probation and disqualification in a haze of failed expectations, experimenting with majors, artistic techniques, and long haired brunettes.

The one constant was David Heifetz. He was my academic advisor, my friend, and my Jiminy Cricket. He was a gnarled little gnome, tufts of gray hair coming out of his ears, bald pate and a surly disposition. I remember glasses, he was always misplacing them, and his academic advisement sessions he was always going long on. He always had time for me.

I disappointed him, I took 6 years off when I should have been listening to him. He saw something in me, in everyone but he saw something in me in particular, that reminded me of himself I guess, that he would not let slide. He knew I was in for trouble with my grades and instead of saying I told you so he gave me a tonic, a plan to get back, to the school, to the program, to the way. He was my master Jedi.

5 years later, after struggling through the junior college system, a mess of trade programs and underwater basket-weaving classes, I returned to University, was accepted to the program, and David Heifetz was back as my advisor. It was like Rocky only really corny. Three years of hard work, and a renewed sense of my ability, plus faith in myself earned from a fall from grace, and a hard-fought rescue, left me with a degree in hand. It opened doors and I was now his colleague in the academic system. I could never be his equal.

Dr. David Heifetz passed away on May 24th 2006. Thankfully I thanked him for what he did for me 7 years earlier. He was my friend and my Obi-Wan-Kenobi. I’m writing this because one of the great things about the Internet is that we can find anyone anywhere, reconnect with others that we have 3, 4, maybe even 5 degrees of separation from. His sister Lila contacted me today, wondering if what she found on my recently changed myspace bio was correct, that he was as much a hero for me as Jackie Robinson or my grandfather. Without a doubt.

I’m sad for her and her family, and I’m sad that I can’t call my friend anymore, but I’m sad for those who didn’t get to know David Heifetz, or if you did, never got to know him like I did.

Rest in peace my friend, get some sleep, you look like you’ve been sleeping in the office again. hahaha.

Fallen Heroes

It seems like all we do here on The AV-Room is count down the lives of our heroes who we have passed. I’d like to think that life after 40 is more than that, that we can look at the culture we live in and think that our lives are ongoing, but it just isn’t so. In the past six months since my friend CJ and I started the AV-Room we lost Steve Gerber, Gary Gygax, and also recently a personal idol, I won’t call him a friend even though I met him 15 years ago and bonded with him while he was still drawing his strip for Eclipse Comics: Dave Stevens.

Dave Stevens was the finest illustrator I have ever met personally. He adored the early American illustrators, as much as Steve “The Dude” Rude, or Adam Hughes or even Frank Cho do today, but he was the first. His strip “The Rocketeer” was a fetishistic rite into early airplane culture, a return to the time of the pulps and the serials that it was clearly based on, but also an adaptation and a modern distillation to whatever is modern and nostalgic about the culture that our parents or our grandparents were obsessed with. It was a yesterday filtered, filled with the adolescent yearning of planes, adventure and pretty women.

Oh, and the specter of Betty Page. Dave and Betty, Betty and Dave. Tied together, his pictures captured her and translated her essence to a kid too young to have ever seen her at her best. I talked to one and yearned for the other through my teens. I yearned to draw like Dave though, and in the end that is what we can all aspire to. To have touched someone enough to have driven them to follow in our path. I’m sure the Adam Hughes’s, and Steve Rude’s will cite him as a primogeniture, but me I’ll look at his splash pages and his pinups and wonder what might have been if he had lived.

He was born 10 blocks from where I was raised. Him and Weird-Al Yankovick, just ask me who I’d rather have around right now,  He assisted Russ Manning on Tarzan, helped Doug Wildey in Saturday-morning animation, and kept alive the image and likeness of every pinup model who ever lived, or he had ever loved.

He was an inspiration, as much for him as Jack Kirby was even though I didn’t have half the talent he did. I am thankful for his art and for The Rocketeer, and for Jennifer Connelly as Bettie Page, even if they couldn’t get her likeness for the movie, although we all pictured her in fishnets and chains, and all that we have Dave Stevens to thank for.

I know he had given up on his greatest creation, embittered by his Disney vacation, but I’d like to say that he was an inspiration. Rest in peace Dave. Thanks for the memories. It was a pleasure to have met a true gentleman.

-Herbie P.