It's hard to explain my friendship with Ryno. There's nothing particularly bizarre about it, but trying to explain it is difficult because most people never had and never will have a friend like him. I assume it's the way Harrison Schmitt must feel when talking about being an astronaut with anyone other than Buzz Aldrin or Charles Duke or the only other nine guys who have ever set foot on the moon.
To oversimplify, Ryno is generous beyond reason. I couldn't begin to guess the number of times he's bought me lunch or dinner, but it's a strong three-figured one. He's had to have dropped well over $1000 on sushi alone. And if you offer to pay your share, he usually waves your money back into your wallet dismissively. When he doesn't, you can't help but feel he's only letting you give him cash to boost your self esteem. After all, odds are he's going to use that $20 you slip him to buy your kid something she mentioned she was passingly interested in the last time she was at his house.
He bankrolled my first year of curling, something I'd been wanting to try since I was in high school, including buying our team shirts and getting me my own broom for my birthday.
And I hate to think of where we would be if his wife, our pediatrician, hadn't provided free medical care for my family during all my unemployed and uninsured years, but I'm pretty sure at least one of my kids would be dead, the other would have polio, and I'd be hobbling around on one foot.
He takes us to Vegas at least twice a year--always for the opening two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament in March and for our fantasy football draft in August and usually once or twice more when he gets free room offers--and when I say "we," our fantasy football league has ten owners. In each of my last five trips to Vegas with Ryno, I have eaten a steak that cost more than I'd spend on a weekly grocery trip. Last year, we're stayed in the Beatles Suite at the Sahara. The year before that, we were in a suite at the Bellagio.
Buying him a present for Christmas.
As you might guess, if Ryno wants something, he buys it for himself on a whim. Afterall, if you want something, there's a good chance he's bought it for you on a whim. If there's something he wants but hasn't bought for himself, it's not something I can afford. Our friend, Hollywood, and I were discussing this two weeks before Christmas, and as the conversation went on, we got downright surly.
"How dare he shower us with vacations to Tampa and Penn & Teller shows and tickets to the Diamondbacks game in Friday's Front Row on Garden Gnome night and opportunities to be on Fox NFL broadcasts and zamboni rides at Coyotes games where we happen to meet childhood idols and tickets to every Buccaneers game in Phoenix in the past 15 years?" I grumbled.
"If he's going to make it this difficult to get him a good gift," Hollywood said, "we shouldn't even try. We should get him a terrible gift. That would teach him a lesson!"
It was a stroke of genius. "What do you get the man who has everything he wants?" I cackled. "Something he doesn't want!"
Hollywood then suggested we book a sitting at a Sears portrait studio and get an awful portrait of ourselves in one of their classic cheesy poses. You know, like one of us sitting down while the other on stands with his hands on the first one's shoulder...
But instead of going to Sears, I called my old friend Tate Hemlock. He's shot my author bio photos and thousands of shots of women in various stages of undress. He loved the idea and admitted to a strange obsession with bad family portraits from the 1970's and 80's. We set up a session for Thursday.
Hollywood drove two hours up from Tucson. We had dinner with Ryno and Teacher Dave, and then drove another hour north to Tate's home. We were introduced to Kennedy, who was hanging out and staying with him for a few days. As we discussed what we wanted to do, Tate showed us some stuff from his most recent shoots, which made Hollywood's eyes go buggy as he realized he was looking at the same girl who'd just shook our hands in the living room.
We set up a backdrop in what would normally be a dining room. The shoot was temporarily delayed, however, because the backdrop had an ice cream stain on it from a previous shoot. Tate sliced off the ice creamy portion and we went to work, starting with the aforementioned pose.
Obviously, we couldn't pick just one image to be our portrait, so I got on Photoshop and created two collages, which we then printed at Costco in 16x20 and 14x18 sizes.
We framed them, but, unfortunately, our plan of buying the same size frame that holds all of Ryno and his wife's wedding photos, taking that down, hiding it in the garage, replacing it with mildly erotic images of ourselves, and seeing how long it took before someone noticed was ruined by the fact said frame is massive and would have cost about $150-200.
In the end, I spent more time, money, and effort to get a terrible gift for someone who has been nothing but good to me and my family for the better part of two decades than I did on any of the "good" presents I got for anyone else this year. So let that be a warning to anyone planning to be my friend!
There's an old adage about the grass always being greener on the other side, but lately it seems the grass is dead everywhere.
Monday, I wrapped up the majority of my edits on Book 4 with no discussion yet about a contract for Book 5 and beyond. Until school is back in full swing and we get a full sales report around October, my publisher cannot even broach the subject. I have another project I'm working on that I can't talk about until Monday, but it's a collaborative project which means any money from sales will be split four ways, and given the nature of publishing, I've decided if I see more than $25 before 2012 from this, I'll chalk it up as a win. Worst case--yet entirely possibly--scenario, Monday afternoon may have marked the end of my professional writing career.
While I was facing this fact, I got a phone call and subsequent interview for a job in an investment firm. It's precisely the kind of job I would hate, but it would pay well, provide me with health insurance from day one, and finally make use of that MBA I still owe $70,000 on. Clearly, if I get the job offer, I have to take it--unless Paramount makes a million dollar offer for movie rights in the next two weeks... COME ON, PARAMOUNT! I just wonder how long it will be between my first day on the job and the day I start window shopping for a pistol with a built-in mouthpiece. I'm putting the over/under at two weeks.
Strangely, I'm not the only one struggling with this same dilemma. I mean, obviously I'm not, but it's strange that in the 24 hours that followed my phone interview, that theme popped up several times from others.
Tuesday morning, Phil Hester tweeted this:
Career diagram: Thing I don't want to do that pays very well. < Me > Thing I love that doesn't pay at all.
Within an hour, Chris Sims reviewed a new Archie comic that uses Veronica and Betty to represent Mr. Hester's two situations, respectively.
In that review, Chris made a reference to his friend, Eugene, who recently walked away from a lucrative law practice to pursue a rap career.
I had two unrelated phone conversations with two friends along the same lines about writing and art. I suppose it stands to reason that given the large number of artistic-type friends I have, this would be a common theme, but it's discomforting to have everyone independently on the same subject at once.
Going back to my opening statement, the idea of the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence is born of wishful thinking. "If I was over there, things would be better," is so old that Moses made a comment about it on those tablets everyone makes such a big deal about. Something about coveting your neighbor's wife's ass or something. But the Valley of Artistic Agony doesn't have any green grass. The wishful thinking isn't about things being better. It's about things not being as bad.
On one side of the Valley live those with money who hate what they do and wish they could pursue their artistic desires. On the other are those pursuing their artistic desires who wish they had money. Each side is keenly aware of the sacrifice needed to cross the Valley, but few are willing to make the move.
And anyone who thinks he can set up camp in the middle and live the best of both worlds doesn't take long to learn why it's called the Valley of Artistic Agony.
I am fascinated by the idea of divergent timelines. I don't believe in heaven, but if there is an afterlife, I hope it offers the answers to all the "What if...?" questions. How would life be different if I'd moved to San Jose in 2000 and married Colleen instead of staying in TV and going to Florida? What would my daughter be like if her mother and I had broken up before she was born? If I'd gotten my GED at 13 and started college at 14 like I wanted to, would I be more or less fucked up in the head? Essentially, I want the afterlife to allow me the free reading of the entirety of the Choose Your Own Adventure book of my life.
That wish, however, is born of a hope that somewhere, somehow, maybe in another dimension or an alternate universe, I'm happy. We want to believe that while life might be miserable, if we'd only made one left turn where we made a right, we'd be in the Garden of Eden. Unfortunately, I know that's mostly not true.
During the rockiest years of my relationship with Colleen, three years of trying to maintain a long distance relationship, I wondered whether things would be better if I'd never bothered pursuing my TV career, took that web design job I'd been offered, and stayed with her. My mind didn't let me follow that train of thought for long before I admitted I would always dwell on wondering how things would be different if I'd pursued my TV career and would probably come to resent her for robbing me of that opportunity.
And that's my fear about reading Choose Your Own Adventure in the afterlife. What if ever divergent path is equally miserable? In a way, that almost worse than if some are particularly horrible while some are only mildly depressing. In the latter case, at least you can be certain that your life wasn't as bad as it might have been, but in the former case, the message is clearly, "Nothing you did mattered. You were destined to be equally unhappy regardless of any efforts you did or did not make."
"I've told you all along, the big problem is money. I feel like I have to do everything myself. I can't rely on you financially," she informs me from the couch I paid for in the living room of the house we couldn't have bought without the down payment I provided while turning up the volume on the TV I bought her because the washing machine I got her is spinning, which makes it difficult to hear the movie she rented with my Netflix account that's in the DVD player I bought for myself but didn't take when I moved out since I didn't need two of them and I knew she'd get bored only watching the cable that I continue to pay for even though I haven't lived in this house for over a year.
It takes a moment for this to register since I just walked in the door from running out to buy the kids some new clothes for the start of the school year, dropping the payment for the doctor's bill in the mailbox--thankfully, it's much less than it would be if not for the health insurance I pay for--filling up her gas tank, and picking up dinner, which she eats off my dishes, with my silverware, at my dining room table.
But I don't have time to debate--or to show her once again how to add new music to the iPod I picked up for her last summer at the same time I bought her computer for that matter. I have to go round up the kids, who are being watched by my sister, who moved into this neighborhood in part to help provide free babysitting for us, and take them up to my one-room shack in my parents' backyard so she can have some alone time for a week or two, so she'll have to call me later with the new cellphone I bought her four weeks ago.
I'm such a lazy, selfish, ungiving asshole.
Some people wonder why I am the way that I am. To help explain, I offer this example of a 20-second slice of a typical day in the life of Jake.
After putting it off for too long, I've been going through some old boxes in my closet. Most of these were packed up when I moved out of the townhouse I was renting in 2002-03 and weren't ever opened despite three moves since.
I mentioned on Twitter that I'd have some stuff available to the highest bidder/whoever was willing to drive over here and pick it up first, but before I handed anything over, I had to through it all and see what unexpected surprises I might find. I'm pretty sure I hid some naked photos of my ex-fiancée between the pages of one of these comics back around 1999.
As I found some things, I mentioned them on Twitter and Facebook, but of everything, one item garnered the most interest. Not necessarily interest in acquiring it, but more in knowing how the hell someone comes to be in possession of such a thing.
And so we come to the extremely boring story of The Box of Captain Picards.
The origins of this tale are rooted in a nexus of sci-fi geekery and speech-and-debate geekery. In 1992-93, I was a member of my high school speech and debate team. One January weekend, we were headed to Prescott for a tournament to qualify for the state championships and had to stay overnight. We weren't allowed to go out on Friday night--not that there was anywhere to go or anything to do in Prescott on a Friday night even if we were allowed--so several of us hung out in our hotel room watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. But, because we were bored, we decided to mute the TV and each took a character to voice, improvising dialog and making jokes.
Anyway, I did Picard. At the tournament, everyone who'd been in the room that night qualified for state, so to celebrate, I went to Target and bought everyone a Star Trek action figure of their character for good luck the rest of the season. I got this one:
(Ignore any of the junk in the background. It's just there because we're having the carpet replaced and everything from the bedrooms has had to be stacked up in the family room and dining room.)
For the rest of the year, I kept Captain Picard in my pocket for every round of every tournament. And I never lost. I won first place in Humorous Interpretation at every tournament for the rest of 1993 all the way through the state championship.
(Hey, look what other junk I found digging though these boxes!)
I also qualified to go to Nationals in Indianapolis, which is apparently a reward in some cultures. Before I left, a few of my teammates presented me with another Captain Picard action figure for good luck at Nationals. I was quickly bounced from the tournament, though the unlucky new figure wasn't to blame as much as politics (Arizona's style of humorous interp and National Forensic League traditional style are apparently very different and my performance was considered insulting to the tournament) and my generally being burned out on speech and debate and preferring to spend a week of my first post-graduation summer trying to get laid with drama chicks from across the country that I'd never have to worry about seeing again than rehearse and stress about a ten minute speech that judges were going to pan regardless of my performance if only because it was about a cockroach and my haircut was ridiculous, even by 1993 standards.
(For the record, my piece was a recut version of "The No-Wax Killing Floor" from Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children. If you find a copy in the back issues at your local comic shop, pick it up.)
So, long story short, I won a lot of trophies and I displayed them in my bedroom. And with them put the two Picard figures since they were an important part of the year.
Enter my friend Robert, who saw the Picards, but didn't know their connection to speech and debate. Instead, he saw them displayed proudly alongside a cadre of trophies and assumed they must be special to me because of how much I liked Patrick Stewart. At some point in the summer of 1993, he was out at a store and saw a Picard figure I didn't own, so he bought it and gave it to me as a gift. A few month later, someone traded in some Star Trek figures at the comic book shop where he works, so he pulled the Picards and gave them to me. Soon, I had a dozen or so figures and things got out of control.
Whenever a new figure hit the stores, Robert would buy it for me. Whenever old figures got traded in, he would grab it before any customers could buy it. I was just along for the ride, not sure why he was doing so, but finding the whole situation fun. As most comic collectors can understand, there's a completist mentality that kicks in once you own a certain percentage of something and by the time I owned all but a half dozen or so Picard figures, I sure as hell wasn't going to tell him to stop before I found out whether it was possible to own it all.
I had Picard in various outfits.
I had Picard in various sizes.
I had Picard statues.
And once I had everything Picard, various other Patrick Stewart roles began showing up.
Then I started getting customized things like this Heroclix figure Robert made...
And for Christmas of 2002, our friend Jim commissioned an all-Picard nativity scene from Robert. (Note that everyone's hair and headpieces have been painted flesh tone and that one of the wise men has been assimilated by the Borg.
And all told, I've purchased two, maybe three of these for myself. The other 50-60 pieces, including the dozens I didn't photograph, have all been gifts. I used to display them in my apartment in Yuma (1999-2000) and the townhouse mentioned above, but since 2003, they've been living in this box. During that time, I learned the back story for why Robert started buying me the Picards, and I haven't acquired any new figures (though I did have an email alert on eBay for a while in case a rare set from the episode "Darmok" was put up for sale. The only ones I ever saw were from Australia, so I wonder if it was some kind of exclusive down there.)
So, it seems the time is right to cut my ties to the past. I think I'll keep the original figure, but the rest will be better off in some Trekkie's house where they'll get the love and appreciation they deserve.
Back in 2002, my general manager took me off the air for a month or two in an effort to make me and my fellow sports anchor, Scott Rossman, miserable enough to quit. However, my news director found ways to get me on the air doing feature stories in which I didn't actually appear. My motivation for most of them was to piss off my GM. Since Jack, the news director, was kind of fed up with the GM as well, he thoroughly enjoyed using me as a not-so-silent weapon.
One morning during spring break, Jack brought me a press release about a promotional booth Calgon was running on the beach. The "Ultimate Shower" offered the opportunity to shower with a model (and learn all about Calgon products). I decided to make it all about pissing off our ultra-conservative viewers by being news on small town television.
We did get complaints about the story, but not because of my nudity. People called to say the girls were "nasty." When producer Rebecca pointed out, "You do realize they were wearing bikinis while Jake was naked," no one seemed to care.
Does E! still do "E!'s True Hollywood Stories"? I haven't watched anything other than "The Soup" on E! for the better part of a decade.
NARRATOR: Beloved children's author Jake Bell pursued his dream of being a writer from early childhood... but when his first book deal came along at the age of 34, Bell quickly fell into the trap of glitz and glamor.
JAKE BELL INTERVIEW: I knew my advance was coming... and I couldn't stop myself. I was like "Hey, my glasses broke. I'm going to go buy a new pair." I figured my contract would be finalized in a week or two and I could float a pair of glasses on my credit card for that long.
NARRATOR: But Bell's taste for extravagance got the better of him. Not only did he get an eye exam to update his prescription, but he also got a second pair of sunglasses...
EYEMASTERS CHICK: Mr. Bell came in and had a coupon for two pairs for $99. It was clear he had money to burn.
JAKE BELL INTERVIEW: You're looking at yourself in those little mirrors and you don't even recognize yourself--not just because you're wearing different frames but because you're so out of control. The girl asked if I wanted polycarbonite lenses and UV protection and I just went with it!
NARRATOR: And the spending didn't stop there...
RUSS FROM MIDAS: Jake came in here with his 2001 PT Cruiser and the battery was completely dead. There was a flaw in the battery so we replaced it, but the warranty was just over a year old, so he had to pay $12 to replace it. He looked me right in the eye and said, "Why don't you go ahead and change the oil while you're at it."
JAKE BELL INTERVIEW: I think when I started to realize how far over the edge I'd gone was when I was getting in the car to go to get my hair cut. I've cut my own hair since 2002--back then free haircuts were part of my contract at WJHG--and can't remember when the last time I paid for a haircut was. Here I had a few hairs touching my ears and I was ready to go drop eight dollars? Who was this mad man?!?!
NARRATOR: Bell estimates he may have squandered up to $300 on indulgences like car insurance, prescription eyewear, and some cans of soup.
JAKE BELL INTERVIEW: My book's not even going to be published until 2010. What's next? A trip to the dentist? A non-emergency doctor's visit? Where does it end?
I spent--if not the majority, then a huge portion of--Saturday and Sunday turning my daughter into a box of take out Mongolian Beef for Halloween.
I still have to finish the fortune cookie hat and see if I can secure some chopsticks to her back.
Robert Baker
Dan O'Leary
Dan Sheldon
Sam Adams
And while everyone except my grandmother calls me Jake Bell, my given name is Jason Bell.
Also, I have a friend named Brian Birch and apparently there was a soccer player with that name and in other countries soccer is called football, so I'm going to say that counts.
And no, there was no point to this post. Move along.
It's exchanges like this that guarantee I'll never get my book on parenting ("You Were an Accident: A Bad Father's Guide to Parenting") published:
The kids are squealing in the living room.
Griffin: EEEEEeeeEEEeeeEEeeEEe! I'm telling!
They come running into my office.
Jake: Christ, you two, what did you do now?
Taryn: I was sitting on his face.
Jake: Why were you--
Griffin: She farted on my head!
Taryn: I was only pretending. I didn't really fart on him.
Jake: Yeah, well don't even pretend. That's not funny... well, actually it is kind of funny. But your mom probably would get mad about it so knock it off.
Anyone who knows me will understand these two pictures mean today represented one of the ten greatest moments in my life.
Public Enemy was scheduled to sign at our Phoenix store this afternoon before doing a show. The show got canceled, so there was a question whether they would even bother doing the signing.
Not only did they sign, but they also did a half hour show in the parking lot. I was five feet away from Chuck D while he did "Fight the Power," "Welcome to the Terrordome," "Bring Tha Noize," and about any other PE hit you can name.