The Plot Needs Thickener

So, how's this for a plot.
This guy wakes up, taps the alarm clock before it rings off the third snooze. No word of the day text on his phone yet. He pulls his pants on, fumbles for his glasses, and shuffles into the kitchen. His dog can hardly sit still for the leash to be snapped on. The man grabs a roll of doggie bags and a dim flashlight, and heads outside. Overcast. No stars this morning. A sprinkler drones against a lamppost down the street.

Ok. That's all I could come up with this morning. It's pretty much every weekday morning for me. Except for seeing that UFO. That's not every weekday.

Long Lost

Before Tink: The Best Super Hero in the World

I needed forget Jacksonville is sometimes just like Hazzard County, GA complete with Boss Hogg and Roscoe P. Coltrane.

I'm glad we still have comic book stores for that. My boy, M, saw my two boxes of old comics, and decided he wanted a couple boxes of comics, too. I thought he should start with one-- to add to his Sonic comic. His mom gave him $5 dollars, and off we went.

It'd been awhile since I've been in a comics store. M would pick up a book, and start to GENTLY flip through it, like I showed him. I hadn't seen the T+, and the A on the covers before! It's probably been on there a couple years. It could be a way to keep the comics industry from being totally stamped out by other people trying to protect my son's soul. BUT, I used it to find a story arc that M could sit through without becoming bored, or ask a gazillion questions I can't answer. ("Daddy, where do super heroes go when they die? If there is a zombie swamp monster under my bed, do you have a super power to get it back into the swamp? Or, at least into the neighbor's backyard? Why not?")

ANYWAY, M's new favorite character is Wolverine. Weapon X is T+ (Teens and over). But, he did find X-Men First Class, rated A for Anyone. He likes all the X-men. He knows their names and powers, thanks to an old video game he found, and a couple cartoons he saw. He managed to sit through 1/2 the first movie, too. I'm sure all his friends swap X-Men stories and make up new ones. I wonder if Socrates and Plato did the same thing regarding the gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus?

My favorite super hero of all time is Storm. (See pic by Aaron Lopresti which I found here.) She's the BEST X-Man. The greatest super hero EVER. She even beat Scott Summers-- WITHOUT her weather-controlling super powers. I had collected a lot of Storm stuff. I still have an empty can of Dr. Pepper with her picture on it. I wonder if my boy will become just as nuts for the X-Men.

M proudly paid the $5 for the comic, and "Dad! I got some cents back!" He took my money, and paid for my comic, too. He's getting so big. I picked up the current issue of Echo, by Terry Moore, who wrote/drew Strangers in Paradise. I opened up Echo, and the love of his art gripped me again. It was like looking at an old friend again. Now I need to get all the other issues of Echo. Dang. Back into the comic obsession...

It did made me smile to take my boy on a comic book trip, though. Dad and boy time.

Say, they just started drawing Pride and Prejudice, for all those Jane Austin fans out there.

A Nose for Art

My wife had to work from home today, so I needed to take my boy out and give her some peace.

My friend K.C. and her daughter took us downtown to the Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). And, I had a freaking blast!

There were these ultra realistic resin cast sculptures of humans by Marc Sijan. Very cool. The guy knows how to paint skin tone. Though, I don't recall any but caucasian sculptures in this installation. Seriously, some pretty awesome work. The detail in the ballerina's toes with calluses. The slightly sun burnt skin of the overweight bald man in swim trunks (Standing Man). I loved the one called Hands on Shoulder (though the figure had one hand on her foot. Must be a zen thing. Or, a misprinted tag.) It was almost a classical or yoga pose, and I was trying to figure which muscle groups were flexed, and which were relaxed, and if the sculpture really reflected that. It was a pensive pose, yet so relaxed and inviting. I mean you have to really look closely to find any thing off about the sculptures.
KC took the kids, and let me wander through. I had finished studying the full figure of the big guy in swim trunks, when a family passed me toward him. I stood at the balerina and listened to the family mock his appearance, and the dad pulled out a slim, red camera. He took two steps back, and snapped the big guy's photo. At the count of two, a security guard swooped out from no where, and marched straight to the dad saying, "I thought I told you to stop taking pictures!" Whoa! He had to delete the pix, or get his camera confiscated.

I went up to the fifth floor to meet KC and the kids. They were making sculptures out of aluminum wire and Model Magic. Her kid made hearts, mine made two alien heads, and a loop-de-loop. I made a few different noses. I like noses.

Then we had lunch at the library next door, went to the library where I didn't find the book that I was looking for, but found two others. My boy got a kids book on Neil Armstrong.

Fabulous time. I want to get some Crayola Model Magic and spend next weekend making noses.

Next Saturday is Art in the Parks! Downtown. I hope I've got nothing else planned.