Disney's Halloween Pump-"Cake" Patch

This is a cake. A Halloween cake. A Halloween cake seen in the lobby of Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel on Friday night as we were heading to dinner at the Storytellers Café.

This cake could feed a small country, as you can tell from the ingredients card on the easel next to the display.

There are also, according to the card, 13 Hidden Mickeys on the display, but I didn’t take the time to look for them. I pretty much counted the one Obvious Mickey and moved on to dinner.

Ooh, I just found one on the back wall…

RTJ

Cheapest by the Dozen: The "12 Movie Action Pack" Pt. 1

Eagle River Rd. coming up on Wal-Mart

Even in my quietest, most reflective moments, I cannot escape the movies.

My recent trip to Eagle River, Alaska was meant as a tonic to my senses, a restorative designed to prompt deeper memories that would aid me both psychologically and in my writing. Such a visit to my secondary hometown (born on Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, but grew up in my prime childhood years in Eagle River) was supposed to allow me to reflect on a period of my life long past. Lunch with a childhood chum was the first order of business, then a stop by his parents' home in my old stomping grounds, and ultimately, a short visit to the then-beloved house we lived in next door prior to my parents' divorce (to which my brothers and I, to this day, always refer as "the green house").

And the trip proved to be exactly as refreshing as I expected. I delighted in seeing my old friend Mike again and catching up on details and rumors of past friends and neighbors, and trying to work out in my head the locations and timeframe of certain events from our past. Following lunch, my erstwhile pal, Robear, and I were indeed intending to make that stop at Mike's parents house (which we did), but on the way there, came the intrusion of something which I had not been planning: Wal-Mart.

The Wal-Mart on Eagle River Road was not built or even conceived before I moved out of the town in my teenage years. But somewhere along the way since, Eagle River's commercial interests expanded, and with it came certain big box stores and chain restaurants, chief amongst them Wal-Mart. I am not saying this as a diatribe against commercialism; I am just merely pointing out that the times changed, and so did the prospects for the shoppers of Eagle River. And it was built less than a mile from my old home. While we had no idea what a "Wal-Mart" was when we were kids, the fact that we had to ride out bikes down from the mountains a couple of miles just to buy baseball cards or comic books from any store in Eagle River should tell you that had such a temple of the free market been erected in our youth, it would have become our Mecca. We would have loved such a place, not all that far from our neighborhood off Eagle River Road, deeply and emotionally.

The shirt that I found at Wal-Mart. The nose
was borrowed. And the mustache was a gift.

The reason for the sidetrip to Wal-Mart was for but a single purpose, which then swiftly evolved into a dual one. Several of my close friends and I were scheduled to march in a parade in Downtown Anchorage in a couple of days for the Fourth of July, and Robear needed to find a couple of medium-sized American flags to go with our banner (for our Invisible Dog Club, a long-standing tradition in our group of friends which had sadly laid dormant for about a decade until the previous year). Since we were already at Wal-Mart, and the company is well-known as being the capital of the Über-Patriot, I decided to take a peek around the store to see if I could find a decent Captain America-style t-shirt to wear for the parade. We found success in both ventures. Robear found his flags, and I found an official Marvel shirt for only $10, which fit my XL belly as well as a shirt with stretchy fabric could, but on my way to finding that shirt, my eye was captured by a rather large bin sitting near the registers. 

In recent years, I have learned to avoid rather large bins that are sitting near registers, since they are only there to trap the impulse buyers among us. Impulse buying is something I have had to resist since moving to California over a decade ago, but especially now that I am without a regular job and have little cash at hand, I have brought such offhand purchasing almost entirely to a standstill. But, sitting there staring at a rather large bin filled over its top edge by a certain product, my past came back to haunt me. Not so much in the DVD years, but when VHS was still the thing, I regularly haunted the rather large bins sitting near registers. In fact, they were rather regular stops for me. I found many of what my stupid brain perceived as incredible videotape bargains in those days, not necessarily at Wal-Mart (where I have rarely shopped) but at various Target, Best Buy, and Fred Meyer stores. A so-so movie that seems unfathomable to purchase at $14.99 seems absolutely perfect and worthwhile at $4.99. (Well, sometimes... it really depends on the movie and/or who the star or director happens to be.) The thought would be, "Well, I have 20 bucks in my pocket. I can bring home four new movies to add to my collection." The quality rarely mattered, as long as it fit into the general scheme of my library, which was heavy with horror and science-fiction titles.

Once DVD hit, however, and finding copies of films that had been released in their proper theatrical aspect ratios became the status quo of collectors, the bargain bins rather went away for me. This is mainly because I started caring about which version of a film I had in my collection, and so many of the DVDs in the bins featured blockbuster films cropped down from their respective widescreen ratios to the standard 4:3 format used on television. There were also rumors about certain retailers (Wal-Mart chief amongst them) editing objectionable content out of some films. Of course, to do so is patently illegal without the consent of the creator of that content, so if there were copies like that in stores, it would have been due to the studio releasing a separate cleaner version, not the store itself. But still, the rumors were out there for many years, and I just decided to not get involved in purchasing items which may have been tampered.

So, there I was, inside a Wal-Mart for the first time in about a year (since I visited Idaho), and I was staring anew into the crammed depths of one of those rather large bins sitting near the registers. Inside its thick cardboard walls, the rather large bin held several hundred DVDs, each selling for the LOW LOW LOW price of only $5.00 apiece! "HOW CAN YOU FUCKING RESIST?," the rather large bin practically shouted at me. Since I had a couple of minutes to kill and I was, for the first time in a great while, at peace with the world -- I was, after all, on my own time, on vacation, in my home town, waiting for my friend -- I decided to flip through some of the titles briefly. I saw covers featuring Pierce Brosnan, Julia Roberts, Brendan Fraser, Will Smith... but nothing that I would really consider owning or, if I had seen the film, worthy of another viewing, even at five bucks. I kept dragging my hand through the bin, hoping to find something that could even halfway pique my interest, but it seemed there was little chance of that.

And then I found the 12 Movie Action Pack.

Now, of the DVDs that I am least prone to purchase in a rather large bin near a register, it is usually the movie multi-pack. I don't mean a box set where each movie is on a separate disc and you can be reasonably assured that a certain amount of care went into the transfer, duplication, and design of the materials. If a true box set of certain filmmakers or genres is available at a great price, you can rest assured that I will eye such a product with great interest. No, I am talking about the cheapie sets where several films are crammed onto a single disc or two, and where the quality is probably not as great as one would wish for a film that is nowadays going to be most likely projected onto at least a 44-inch screen or larger. You really do get what you pay for in these instances, and I will tell you from the outset that such a condition is exactly what I planned to find in a set simply titled 12 Movie Action Pack for only five bucks at Wal-Mart.

There were some other factors at play here, however, that made it impossible for me to resist buying the 12 Movie Action Pack. First, there was the packaging. On the front cover, the tiny posters for the first six movies in the set appear, and going from left to right, the leads for the films were Nicolas Cage, Dolph Lundgren, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jason Statham, John Cusack, and Sylvester Stallone. On the back, the stars for each of the second six films were Rich Franklin (some UFC guy of whom I have never heard before), Morgan Freeman and Cusack (again), Kiefer Sutherland and Melora Walters, Woody Harrelson, Cage (again) and Nicole Kidman, and Michael Shannon. The four stars that are touted on the DVD cover with just head shots and their last name, however, in a series of larger pictures, front and back, were Statham, Van Damme, Cage, and Lundgren. I was shocked, speaking of action stars, that "A"-lister Sly Stallone was not among the four shown on the cover instead of more "B"-prone Lundgren, which of course made the set catch my notice even more.

Secondly, on first glance while in the store, I thought that of the twelve films in the set, I had never seen any of them. Not a single one. It's not that straight action films are not my thing, it's just that it requires a pretty remarkable trailer -- such as Mad Max: Fury Road, though that, of course, has major sci-fi overtones, carrying it more into my movie wheelhouse -- to get me into a theatre to see a film in that genre these days. There was also a realization that, in my normal course of movie bouncing, that I was not likely to ever see any of the films in this set without some form of unexpected interference, i.e. my purchase of a DVD set such as 12 Movie Action Pack. 

Third, another intriguing aspect was the fact that I had only ever heard of three of the films in the set: the fairly well-received though financially unsuccessful Rampart with Harrelson; War, Inc. with Cusack, of which I remembered the trailer and that it had actually hit theatres at one point; and The Iceman, a biopic of the infamous Mafia hitman played by the quite often terrific Michael Shannon. [More on this title later...] Of the rest, I had no memory of ever having heard of their titles. I chalk this up to general ennui with the bulk of Hollywood filmmaking, to the point where I can now see trailers several times and still completely forget that such films have ever been released. It is likely that I saw the trailers for half of these films and completely erased them from mind. Or it is just as likely that, except for the three that I mentioned, I truly have never heard of them.

I finally ran into Robear again, and as we made our way to leave, I made a second stop at the rather large bin sitting near the registers, and said, "I will not be leaving without THIS!" and grabbed the 12 Movie Action Pack. We made our silly purchases, and then carried on with the rest of our afternoon as planned, seeing my old neighborhood, Mike's parents' house (which had expanded greatly from the old days), and my old house, which was now under new ownership. (Mike had talked to the new owners a couple of days before, and they said they would be happy to show me the place on Saturday, but when we arrived, they were, to my ultimate disappointment but slight, unspoken relief, not home. It would have been a bit odd and out of character for me.)

And the 12 Movie Action Pack? Well, it sat on my parents' coffee table for the remainder of my stay at their home in Anchorage, where I always had the intent of queueing it up in the DVD player but never did. However, on my first full day upon returning back to Southern California, I finally cracked into the DVD to see what potential treasures or horrors I would find...

[To be continued...]

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 11 of 11: "Exquisite Corpse" Drawings 3 & 4

Here's the final post of this series, featuring the other pair of "Exquisite Corpse" drawings done by my brothers Mark and Chris:


I remember my brother Chris was quite amused by the fact that with the Monster Dance Party he had drawn his image going off the page rather than into it. As a result, the drawings are going in opposite directions. Usually the practice is to carry the action towards the next possible drawing.

You will note that this final picture is different from the rest in that, instead of the paper being halved and then drawn on each opposite side, this time it was folded twice, so that there are four separate drawings, two each by my brothers:


Again, I will leave it to Br'er Mark to add his notes in the comment section. All I know is that I love these.

Thanks for the very few comments we have received on these. I hope that while most of you were not reading these posts you were out having a shitty time. We had a ball playing these games, and we were only hoping to share in the experience, and perhaps even get a couple of people to pass the game on or play with us. At least a couple of you got it.

The Cinema 4 Pylon now returns to its regularly scheduled programming...

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 10 of 11: "Exquisite Corpse" Drawings 1 & 2

For the last two posts of this series, I am going to say very little, and let these combined drawings by my brothers Mark and Chris do most of the talking:

Pretty sweet. I love the randomness of their imagery, and how the two separate pieces play off each other in unexpected ways. I am uncertain of the order in which my brothers created all four of these pieces, so please check the comments below. I am fairly certain Mark will provide some notes on their process, and his continued memories of the experience.

Also, if you want to do your own experimenting, please see my first post in this series for instructions on how to do it, or look up "Exquisite Corpse" on Wikipedia. (You can even learn why the game is called by that name, or even how there is a reference to the game in Hedwig and the Angry Inch...)

[The final post will appear in a couple of days, and then the Cinema 4 Pylon will close the art gallery and begin its regularly scheduled movie griping again...]

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 9 of 11: "Bugs" Gone Awry, or References Only Brandon Lawrence Would Appreciate...

I suppose that having eight out of the nine comic pages we created in our road trip drawing experiment come out even halfway readable/enjoyable should be enough. That's a pretty good batting average (for the record, .889 rounded up, baseball card-style). This one, which I shall not even finish giving a complete (or even pun-filled) title out of my exhaustion and frustration with the page, just simply did not work.

Here's the strip, and then we shall discuss:


See? It's sad it didn't work out, because this was the other strip in which we involved my nephew Aerin at the beginning (see the last post). His drawings adorn the first couple of panels, and it starts off with a decent enough premise. But, things went awry with "Bugs" quickly. It just never gets any of that "oomph" going... and then I made the fatal mistake.

I slipped in one of my left-field references -- not so much arcane, but merely aged in variety -- this time to an old vaudeville routine that was popularized in different incarnations by The Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello and many others, often called "Niagara Falls" or "Slowly I Turned, Inch by Inch" or other titles. Personally, I know it as "The Susquehanna Hat Company," being more up on one Bud & Lou movie version than Larry, Moe and Curly's famous one. (Bud and Lou did it several times, including a "Niagara Falls" version on TV.)

So, I worked the reference in, but there were no takers. My brother didn't pick up on it, and I couldn't help him with it, or really elaborate on it until he was done with the panels. Thus, the doom of the strip had been spelled out. I closed it desperately with another reference to the skit, and this was after about an hour or so of staring blankly at the final drawing in the last panel, longing for inspiration. But, none ever came. I resorted to a fall-back plan of little distinction, and so we had the first abject failure of our experiment.

And, since I cannot stop with the references sometimes, somewhere Chico Marx is saying "I abject!" Or, at least I wish he would...

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 8 of 11: Puppet Snarkiness

There was a certain inevitability to my nephew Aerin getting involved with our surrealist comic experiments. The kid may only be eight, but he draws up a storm. There are even times when it seems like he never stops drawing. Well, when he's not reading or playing with toys or building with Legos or all the other things that kids do. (These are also all things that, admittedly, his dad and uncles also continue to do despite, or because of, their ever-increasing dotage.)

We didn't even really need to persuade him much. All you have to do, in most cases, is draw anything, and Aerin will want to draw along with you. He was more than a little distracted, though, on our road trip with his own drawings to really get involved until we had already started over a half-dozen strips. But, soon enough, there was a lull in the overall activity, and so he and I were soon starting a strip. I took what he was probably thinking as a couple of mice atop a fence to be a pair of puppets and leaped off from there. However, the dear boy lost interest in the process soon enough, and the rest of the drawings past the first three panels were completed by his dad Mark and his Uncle Chris.

I think this one actually worked out rather well, and didn't go too far astride of what was set up in the beginning. This is not necessarily a good thing when the original point is for things to get as wacky as possible. But, sometimes I like it when things work out logically despite the scenario or the looming possibility of a complete trainwreck. (You will see an example of this form of failure when I post, in a couple of days, the final strip we completed on our trip.)

Personally, I love the stances of the mice in the fourth panel, but I truly adore the way the second mouse flashes the chocolate starfish at the puppeteer in Panel #7. I wasn't expecting it at all, and I laughed like mad. And I have, as a notoriously evil puppeteer myself, always enjoyed the notion of puppets rising up to critique their own "master." This might even reflect my overall views towards authority in general, perhaps even the way that I also have to keep myself riled, even just a bit, at whatever management holds the keys to my own employ, even if I actually like most of them and have respect for their overall practices.

While I don't wish to always be the puppet that I fully recognize that I am, I at least, while filling that role, wish to be the puppet that has just enough rebellion in him to poke his oppressors in the eye when they don't expect it, and to be able to summon up just enough voice of my own to tell them they suck. And they stink. And it is very likely that I will always remain just that...

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 7 of 11: The Legion of Something-Heroes

[Edited 8/28/09, 10:00 pm]

Here we have yet another comic where things just went gonzo from panel one onward... what else will happen when you are confronted with a supposed superhero (or villain) wearing what appear to be oven mitts on his hands?

From brother Mark's opening panel, I went with the idea that this Hungryman guy (notice the trademarks on each hero name throughout) was sort of the spiritual counterpart to the real Legion of Super-Heroes' ridiculous but lovable Matter-Eater Lad. The idea is that he cooks constantly for the Legion rather eats everything in sight. I'm glad we didn't go with any true Legion members here, creating what could be another chapter of their Substitute Heroes wing (also a ridiculous concept -- why segregate potential, helpful heroes into a lesser subdivision? Seems like a breeding ground for villainy). We never learn the names of a couple of them... the crab guy -- who seems like a stand-in for Chameleon Boy -- and the weasel thing that constantly drools over Twin Zeppelins' breasts. I told my brothers that the weasel thing reminded me of the one that hounded Foghorn Leghorn ("Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...!" SLURP!) My favorite memory of doing this one was hearing brother Chris bust up over the names "Pail Rider" and "Twin Zeppelins." That truly warmed my heart.

Yes, you can perhaps parse from the above paragraph that I did some time as a Legion of Super-Heroes fan in the past. In fact, I still consider myself a fan, though I haven't read them since the mid-Keith Giffen days. My main experience, as it is with my brothers, is from the early, early Legion stories from Superboy, reprints of which we had around the house as kids. The Dave Cockrum run was where I learned to love them (I was chiefly in love with Shadow Lass and Princess Projectra, or rather, their lack of costumes). The cleavage that ran rampant in the more revealing costumes in Cockrum's run was perhaps why I took to naming our Twin Zeppelins heroine as if she were a new version of Duo Damsel, who also became hotter in the '70s than she had been previously (even as Triplicate Girl, a male fantasy run amok right there). However, how we got her boobs to talk, I don't know...

Here is comic #7, titled "Legion of Something-Heroes." Sequel?

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 6 of 11: Thrift Store Wheelchair

I am going somewhat out of the order of creation by this point, but I have my reasons. Chiefly, I just wanted to get this comic up before the others, because we almost forgot about it when these were being scanned, and we found this one especially amusing while it was being drawn. The twist on this one is two-fold: it related to a story of which I was not aware when the comic was set up (and which I will not fully relate pending the approval of my brothers), but the boys were laughing quite a lot when it reached my hands. Obviously there was a joke that was beyond my ken at the moment, but I went with it, asking them not to tell me the whole story until my participation in the comic was concluded. The second twist is that the first panel was totally completed when I first saw it. I began writing from the second panel forward.

The major kick was how much we were all laughing over Chris beating the snot out of Mark in the comic, and of Chris bulking up to more and more Hulkian proportions with each succeeding panel. It is probably a case of "you had to be there" when I tell you how much fun this was, but you could probably say that about all of these comics, whether you find them amusing or not. We are mainly feeling a residual sense of the joy we found in creating as a team, and of being together again, much older but, as usual, still playing like the kids we have always been and always will be. Nothing better than that...

Here is comic #6, which I shall title "Thrift Store Wheelchair." Have fun...

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 5 of 11: Guppy Hunter

So, this strip was the point where we actually started to do our best to try and mess with the other guys. I still don't how or why the trio of pine trees showed up, but there they are. And I kind of love them, just like a coniferous Huey, Dewey and Louie. I also love the croc and I sorely wish the Rare Monster-Jawed Guppy hadn't, presumably, bitten it at the end, because I really wanted the character to talk. Somehow this silly strip actually worked out, and while I can't speak for my brothers, this was a huge surprise to me.

Here is comic #5, titled "Guppy Hunter" by Mark "Otis", Chris "The Eel" and Rik Tod Johnson. Enjoy...

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 4 of 11: Trick or Treat?

My brothers continued to try and goad me into drawing, but I wasn't having it. I was already having too much fun writing these comics to even entertain the thought of drawing them too. Just not ready yet.

Besides, they served me up a softball of an opening panel. How can I resist a Halloween theme? And this is the only one of the series which came out to a conclusion which more or less represented what popped into my head upon initially seeing the first picture. I suppose that this really isn't supposed to happen when games such as this are played. After all, the point should be to see what lies ahead without considering the possibilities, rather than seek to control or guide the initial story back to where you imagined at first. But I am a control freak in many ways, especially with my own words. So this outcome is not surprising at all.

The question I would pose to my brothers would be: what popped into your head early on in creating this page?

My idea at the beginning was that the guy would be gutted by the jack-o'-lantern, and I wonder how early in the process this thought occurred to either of my brothers. Perhaps we all willed this direction. To me, it was only logical course in a game that should be guided by an utter lack of logic. Did I betray the intentions of the game, or did we all?

Here is comic #4, titled "Trick or Treat?" by Mark "Otis", Chris "The Eel" and Rik Tod Johnson.

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 3 of 11: F'ugly Mermaid

The third of our comics experiment definitely started things going in a direction that I preferred, feeling more like the product of an underground comic than the previous two. This also shows signs of my getting more comfortable with the new game. The truth is that this was being drawn while the first two were still unfinished, so the fact that I consider it more successful derives more from the fact that the experiment simply worked better overall here than in the rougher pair with which we began (though I love how the first two came out).

I asked Mark a couple of days later if his opening panel characters on this page were meant to impart a mermaid and three eels underwater, which is how I interpreted his drawing. He shrugged and said he was just drawing figures and didn't attach anything to it. The "mermaid" could be seen as just a hideous girl in a bikini strolling through a garden while a trio of worms protrude from the top of a flower, and if it is so, I rather like that the drawing actually works both ways. You might note that definite water elements don't actually enter the comic until after I establish that she is a mermaid.

Here is comic #3, titled "F'ugly Mermaid," drawn by Mark "Otis" Johnson and Chris "The Eel" Johnson; dialogue by me.

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 2 of 11: Cranky Weather

[EDITED August 19-20, 2009] - The title of this series -- Comics on the Road to Nowhere? -- can be construed as rather mean, if you live in Idaho and know that I am referring to our road trip there at the end of July.

It's not meant to be mean towards Idaho. It's actually a slap at myself and my preconceived notions about going to places of which I know nothing. The truth is I quite enjoyed my first extended stay in my parents' new home in Idaho, found much to recommend about the place, and look forward to visiting again soon. But on the day on which this artistic adventure began, not knowing the fun and natural beauty that waited ahead of us at Craters of the Moon National Monument as we careened down the highway on a 100-degree-plus day, it seemed like we would never get there, and so the title is appropriate to my feelings. At least I attached a question mark to the end of the title to make my statement indefinite, and to show that our actions on this trip would prove the title a lie.

As the first comic page continued to be created and those of us without the page sat around waiting eagerly for our turn, brother Mark decided to start another page to have something else on which to work. As my turn came, staring at a picture of two clouds of differing attitude, without any thought as to how the story would proceed, I applied two sentences to the opening panel: "Fair amount of weather we're havin'!" and "A-yup!" Just the first things that popped into my head, but what else would clouds say to each other upon meeting? This is part of the fun of the game: sheer improvisation. The other fun in the game is not knowing where it will actually go, even though you can imagine where it might, and then seeing what will worm its way into the other participants' heads leaping off from what you had put down onto paper.

A third comic started very soon after that, and so on. Before long, we had a pile of comics slowly trading hands for the duration of the trip.

Here is comic #2, titled "Cranky Weather."

Comics on the Road to Nowhere? Pt. 1 of 11: Tod's Balls

As a placeholder here on the Pylon until I get myself together long enough to actually go back to writing regularly again, I present the first of several posts which could, were I more inclined to the obvious, be entitled "How I Spent My Summer Vacation." Since I do not recall ever having to create such an essay educationally, it will not happen. But this is how I did spent part of my summer vacation, which encompassed a four-day gathering of my brothers, sister-in-law and nephew in Seattle, a boys-only road trip through Oregon to my father's home in Idaho for his 70th birthday party.

Out of a brief camping trip to the Craters of the Moon National Monument (a stop that I highly recommend, and of which I did not know previously), came this: a series of comic pages mostly drawn by my brothers Otis and the Eel (Mark and Chris) and written by yours truly, at first on some very bumpy roads, then gathered around a camp table while being assaulted cutely by chipmunks, pikas and increasingly weird bugs, and finally in a severely sleep-deprived state in the dwindling light around a cramped Winnebago dining table.

The comics arose out of a surrealist game in which my brothers love to engage called Exquisite Corpse, which I have participated in before at parties chiefly in a literary sense, though I have also drawn them before. Assuredly, the game popped up again midway on our journey to Craters of the Moon, as Mark and Chris each took turns finishing halves of a folded page, in which the first artist leaves small lines trailing over onto the remaining half for the second artist to complete. The unfolded page reveals the full work of art, created by divers hands but representing an artistic whole. They played the game with both a single fold into halves and two folds into quarters.

But they wanted me to play. My current discomfort with drawing is a far cry from my old state, where I would gladly scrawl out anything despite all evidence pointing toward my having a decided lack of talent in that area. When I did draw, it came with a torrent of grand insecurity, and every line, redrawn over and over until imperfectly perfect in my mind, was suffused with the torture of my actions. And now, after years of inactivity though with a longing to pursue it once more to provide myself with an additional font of creation, I am at a standstill. I cannot force myself to draw.

And neither could my brothers. Chris especially pleaded with me to join them, but I was happy to read my book on the Air Pirates v. Disney trials and leave them to the pleasures of drawing.

But then, via a massive adaptation to the game, they got me involved. On an empty sheet of paper, with his line given an unwanted but oddly compelling flourish by the steady bump of the RV on the Idaho highway, Chris drew the opening panel to a comic page of a homely looking sad-sack buzzing a doorbell. He offered it to me to fill in a caption to the panel, but I turned him down. The comic page sat on the table for several minutes while I slowly realized what a sourpuss I was being after having an initial six great days to this trip. Finally, playing off a road sign we saw as we wandered around Oregon looking for a reasonably attainable picnic spot (we were a little lost), I filled in the opening panel, and then left a caption in the next wholly empty panel, leaving it to await its own picture to be created.

The game was afoot. Mark then picked up the next two drawings, it came back to me for a flurry of words in panels 3 & 4, back to Chris for drawings in 4 & 5, and so on. It was played without the secrecy element so necessary to true Exquisite Corpse -- no folds here -- but this game evolved, after a while, into trying to subtly influence the following panels with slight changes to your next efforts, or using them to bring a story back to that which you imagined nearer the beginning. There were more developments to come that night and over the next couple of days over how we approached the game, but more on that later.

For now, here is the first comic Mark, Chris and I created as a group, based on the sign we saw that read "TODS BALLS 400"...