See You in the Funny Pages

Remember the unequaled pleasure of sitting around on Sunday morning reading the comics as a kid? Maybe, for you, this wonderful, languid time took its place on the floor of your old family room, the newspaper spread out on top of endless acres of shag carpeting or, if you're a bit younger, berber. Perhaps you curled up in your father's favorite armchair, eating dry cereal out of a plastic Kellogg's bowl with your fingers as your youthful, unaided eyes scanned the colorful pages, taking in the latest follies of Calvin and Hobbes, or the misadventures of Dennis the Menace, or the alcohol-infused domestic violence of the Lockharts?

Seriously-- what the fuck was that kind of shit for children to read? That comic strip is singlehandedly responsible for my penchant for attending dinner parties with my tie askew, imbibing single malt liqour, insulting my wife and then punching her repeatedly in the face.

Anyway, I used to love reading the Sunday comics when I was a child. My sister and I would fight over them, of course, and then my father would scream at us for eating our "Cinnamon Toast Crunch" too loudly. The fighting with each other never seemed to bother him, but the loud crunching noises drove him fucking bananas. I loved when he would yell at us, because it was hilarious.

"FACKAN SHEET! VILL YOU SHAT DA FACK AHP WITH THAT CRANCHING SHEET ALREADY?!!"

Oh, Israelis... there's just nobody like them. No. body.

When you do enough of something as a kid, eventually you end up wanting to do it yourself. And I read a lot of comics growing up, and not just the comics in the paper on Sundays, I read the black-and-white ones on the weekdays, too, and, from a very early age, I made my parents buy me comic books. And I'm not talking about that fucking ginger-asshair loser Archie. The comic books I craved, for whatever reason, were Bloom County books, by Berkeley Breathed and Doonesbury by Gary Trudeau.

I was reading these books beginning in third grade, and I didn't just read one or two, I collected them. At one point, I had six Bloom County books on my bedroom shelves. Looking back on my childhood, I'm trying to think of something that I watched or read that wasn't completely age-inappropriate, and I can't really think of anything-- except for, I guess, the Dukes of Hazzard-- but I'm not particularly sure that six-year-old me should have been looking at Catherine Bach's tits as much as I did. I could have told you, at that age, exactly where the mole was on her breast, and what shape and color it was. If she had one. But she didn't.

A... mole, that is... Um...

Right, so: comics. When you read enough comics, you want to draw your own. Obvs. Now, I talk a lot on this here soapbox about my talents. You know what they are by now. Because you've never heard me talk about visually-artistic proclivities, I'm sure you've assumed that I don't have any.

YOU'RE RIGHT!

And yet, I tried. In elementary school, you'll pretty much try anything because you're generally too stupid to care very much about impending and obvious failure. Such was the case with me and comics. I don't remember what my comic strip was called (Dog Days, maybe?) but its star was a balding, middle-aged man in a shirt and tie, and I think his name was Stan. Stan was a hapless schmoe who owned a dog and a car that was perpetually breaking down (was this little me planning for the future?) and Stan worked at a dead-end desk-job and the vast majority of his non-working life consisted of taking his car into the garage. I was drawing these comics when I was maybe eight or nine. Stan's car had a habit of falling off the hydraulic lift at the mechanic's shop, which caused Stan great distress, as it tended to elevate the already steep bill exponentially.

I also drew comics of people having sex. Those were totally unrelated to the comics I drew of Stan. Stan didn't have sex, because, in my young, still-forming mind, there was no room for the concept that even luckless schmucktards still managed to, occasionally, achieve intercourse.

The comics featuring people having sex were, of course, discovered by my friend's mother during a sleepover, and were reported to my parents, who said nothing to me about them. This was the style of parenting they preferred, and I preferred it, too. It molded me into someone who detests confrontation and uncomfortable situations, and someone who still does, says, and writes pretty much whatever the hell he wants.

The drawings of Stan and his nowhere job and his falling-off-the-lift car were, of course, never discovered by anyone. Sadly, no child will ever crunch too loudly on Cinnamon Toast Crunch while reading "Dog Days"-- or whatever the fuck it was called-- while their father screams at them to "SHAT DEE FACK UP ALREADY!" and I guess I'm okay with that.

High Rise

A friend of mine-- actually, a "Friend" of mine-- posted a picture on Facebook of her driving over a rather substantial-looking, architecturally intriguing bridge. Actually, she probably wasn't driving, or maybe she was, and her passenger was taking the photograph. I like to think that anybody with whom I'm "Friends" on Facebook isn't stupid enough to drive over a large body of water whilst taking a picture of themselves doing so.

At any rate, viewing this picture made me think about bridges-- which is as good a thing as any to think about if you're not thinking about sex or food, or are trying to convince yourself that it's probably time you gave thinking about sex or food a bit of a break. For the time being.

So, bridges... Where were we?

The first bridge I can ever remember going over is located approximately three miles from my house. It's not much of a bridge, really. It doesn't go over any body of water, and it doesn't even elevate traffic over a perpendicular street below. As far as I know, what's below is basically a long-ago closed off road and a lot of overgrown scrub-brush. Truthfully, I don't know what the hell's underneath it. The more that I think about it, actually-- maybe it's railroad tracks for the local line. I don't know. Anyway, what's underneath isn't finally the point. What I remember is that going over this bridge in my father's Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera or the Buick Century or whatever piece of shit it was at the time, was that I thought going over that bridge was the coolest fucking thing in the world.

If my entire family was in the car, as we often were in those days, and conversation was loud and engaging, if we were approaching that little bridge, I would immediately shout, over the din,

"SHHHH!!!!! EVERYBODY SHHHH!!! HIGH-RISE! HIGH-RISE!"

In those days, I wielded a lot of power compared to my curb weight, and everybody in the car always complied. If they didn't, I had my mother and father for back-up, but their intervention was never necessary. Everybody would shut the fuck up respectfully as we drove over the bridge. I loved the sensation of going up, not in a risky way, for I knew it wasn't very high and all the tires were staying on the street surface, but because there was grating underneath the tires when you reached the apex of the bridge, the noise underneath the car changed to a sort of soothing, buzzing sound that I was absolutely in love with.

I have no idea why I called it a "high-rise." It wasn't anything of the kind. It wasn't very high, and it didn't rise, either, like I suppose a draw-bridge does. I had never seen a draw-bridge, though-- not in person anyway-- so there's no reason to think that I thought it was, or could have been, a draw-bridge. But, for years I was fascinated with that bridge.

"HIGH-RISE! HIGH-RISE!" I would cry. High-rise.

Kids go fucking bananas about the craziest shit, and nobody knows why. If anybody'd bothered to ask me, back then, what got me so jazzed about that rinky-dink, shitty little bridge, I have no idea what I would have said in response. "I just like it," is probably the likeliest answer, but that would have clearly left the questioner wanting more. The truth is, there's probably no good reason why I loved that bridge so much, and the noise the car made as it drove over it. No good reason at all. But it stuck, to a degree. Years later, when I would drive myself to high school at some unchristly hour in the pre-dawn morning, I would go out of my way to take the route that would take me over that bridge, and I would smile as I drove over it, noting the changing sounds emanating from beneath my tires.

High-rise.

I was fifteen when my middle sister went to U-Mass. My father rented a van and we all drove her up there. He took the Tappan Zee bridge and I almost sharted myself with fear. This was no fucking high-rise. This was a real goddamned bridge, and it seemed to go on forever, and what was much worse was how close it seemed to be to the water below. I suppose, logically, driving on a bridge that is much higher up ought to be scarier, because, were you to veer off it, you'd have that long, terrifying plunge downward to your certain death, but logic doesn't often go dancing with fear. And logic certainly has less to do with a bridge than fear does, unless you're building one.

When I experience bridges now, I'm still filled with a sense of awe and fear, and often dread, too, because, when you reach the end of most of the more substantial ones, there's usually a toll to be paid. You can still cruise the old high-rise by my house for nothing, though. But you have to be quiet if I'm in the car with you.

Them's the rules.