More Rearrangements, Thoughts of Big George!

I have been sluggish all week. Meant to get to the Waverly Job Center (DSS office on East 16th) on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, but didn’t go. I want to drop off paper copies of the key documentation I uploaded a week ago and on Monday. Also get my benefits card. It appears I now have $808 in “food stamps” but can’t spend it because no card. And $21 in cash for…for utilities? Didn’t go today, Thursday, because wasted all day after double dose of DXM cough syrup last night. No alcohol withal though. A Resin two nights ago. A full liter of Vesica (!) on Saturday and Sunday, knocking me out after shifts on Governors Island.

Current plan is to get to TMPL at 6 when they open, good workout, shower, dry hair (may have to do that properly at home), then down to East 16th St. Larry Darby from FB is in town with daughter, thought we might meet up Friday or Saturday.

Saturday May 10th it was 5:15am at the warehouse. Leslie L, Senka, and Jess S were already there, looking for the medical iPhone. Couldn’t find it, it wasn’t there. We loaded ice and coolers and cream cheese into the UHaul. Leslie and I drove to the ferry. The tunnel was closed, so she followed the alternate GPS directions over the Brooklyn Bridge. Helped unload some bases and delineators. To the island, still riding the blue van. We set up clocks on H-frames at the mile markers and turnarounds for the 10k. Then, two hours for me marshaling at Division and King, familiar corner by Liggett Hall, at the 6 mile mark near the home stretch. Collect the clocks in the UHaul, transfer to the blue van, pick up delineators near the landing. I was going to ride back to the warehouse with Leslie, but Halloran needed a ride more because he’d parked his car in Brooklyn. So I said, You take it. I rode the ferry back, IRT 1 to Columbus Circle, stopped at Chinawoman’s thinking I might have $5 in my waistband, but I didn’t, so paid $20 for the liter. It was odd waking up around 8pm and realizing that it was back to work again soon and I couldn’t catch any more sleep in the meantime.

Dressed at 4:30am and off to Columbus Circle with a mug of tea and a slug of vodka inside me. 18 minute wait for the 1, got to South Ferry just before 5:45. Long spell helping to set up corrals at Start/Finish. We got all the French barricades up in about fifteen minutes. I have not been used for my audio or timer-mat expertise lately. I stole off to my marshal position, on far-western side of the island, by 8:30.

Sometime after 11am, when the trucks were 3/4ths reloaded, most of us were released if we wanted to leave. Taco Vista was giving us free tacos, so I stopped in and had two. All the chafing dishes were empty, but they soon came out with two more. Very good tacos, I must say. I didn’t clock out on Deputy until about noon because it was supposed to be a 5:45 – 12:30 shift and I hate being short-changed on these things. Appreciation here is perilously close to the situation I felt myself in 10 years ago during the Volunteer days. (At the ferry terminal on South St, Erica R noticed my white nruns cap from that era, slightly different from the more recent ones you see around with Adidas branding. None of these white caps have been distributed for a while, and that may have been what caught her eye. I told this one was 2014-vintage. “Did you run, or what?” “Yes, I ran…and I also was a volunteer for a while.”)

Rode back on ferry with Yelena and Mark D and others who’d dined on the back picnic tables at Taco Vista. At Manhattan Y sort-of invited me to go on a long walk with her up to SoHo. Some cosmetic or moisturizer she used to get at Sephora but which Sephora no longer sells, but this place in SoHo does. She’s gained a lot of weight, trying to work it off with jogs and walks. At another time I should have said yes, but I was eager to get home to vodka and bed.

One productive effort this week: last night I decided to start creating a decent workspace for me and the drawing board. WHY did I put the Moki’s terrible Metro Shelving, the world’s worst clutter-catcher, in between a row of three red 2002 bookcases, and a fourth one in the northwest corner? I don’t know. But now I’ve changed that. Whole library wall on the north side, opposite similar thing on south side. Metro over in northwest corner, complete with Natalie Wood mounted on the old melamine desk top. How crowded and compressed things were after Moki filled the place up with extra file cabinets and the Metro and the storage bins.

Ought to bring up the trunk from subbasement. Moki’s clothes, my clothes, all out. I wonder if the drawing board would work better perched on that big anodized-metal trunk?

Anyway the place is still very messy and crowded. I’m not comfortable or secure over at Moki’s desk. To make it my own I’d have to move Moki’s old iMac. Move it where? Move it to the top of the Metro Shelving, and put the turntable on next shelf down, or even one below that. Keyboard on 2nd shelf perhaps. Leave old Pismo there.

A good place to work standing. Also a good place to have the HD monitor, either as monitor or as pseudo-TV, where you could watch Prime or Sling or OAN while working at a desk or drawing board.

I have not been able or have wanted to draw. Partly because I haven’t been forced too. I think I good running strip on the web could net me $1000 a month, which would make a big difference. The lizard one, Iggy, has been on my mind for a long time, but I did not have an attractive style in mind. I thought of Midcentury Modern, something like UPA. Going through old Herald-Tribunes I was reminded of Big George! by Virgil Partch. Hated the strip when I was little, but it would be perfect for Iggy. Much more animated and adaptable than a Harry Henigsen style. Virgil was a somewhat gormless-looking kid who started out as a Disney animator. He had what became a UPA sensibility. Drew odd-shaped panels, wasn’t limited to boxy oblongs, would put a character’s foot outside the frame. This sample, and above, is from July 1960. Iggy the character could look a little like George here, move a bit like him. I’d use some Arnold Roth influence as well. Always loved Roth’s stuff. (Poor Arnold’s Almanac was also in the H-T on Sunday.)

Other possibilities: Mister Shadrach’s Memory Lane, with the Rocky Stoneaxe fantasist neighbor running a talkshow with forgotten comic-strip characters (Peanuts, the nonexistent title character from the Schulz strip; Pigpen, who disappeared because he was drawn similar to the later negro character, Franklin). And Focus on Fact, a strip based on one in Private Eye 50 years ago. This I could do mostly in AI, using the 19th century Punch cartoon-engraving style. Maybe three intricate panels, no balloons, just narrative captions.

I’m watching a lot of The Sopranos, nearly nonstop. I’ve gotten to be like Moki in so many ways. Going through the 21-episode final season (6) now. Haf the major characters get killed off. Tony may or may not get offed in the final blackout. Keith P thinks he does.