“Striking Sparks” — Page Fourteen
I had to do some research to find out whether they actually still had Gold Records these days. Apparently they still do, although the RIAA seem to include a whole slew of formats — streaming, downloads, overheard being hummed on the subway, etc — as part of the qualifications. Smacks a bit of desperation, IMO, but whatever works for them. Apparently there are even awards for “Master Ringtones.” Hey, news to me! More below!
Bobservations
Clueless Wastrels
Max managed to get this page finished, turned it in, and then promptly fled for Alaska. I’m not sure why. You’d think we had a sufficiency of cold weather already floating around here in the good ol’ USA, but no, he had to run off to a foreign country like Alaska, where it is so frigid that strike-anywhere matches are considered legal currency.
Nonetheless, he seems to have located an Internet connection up there, probably via an ISP staffed by penguins, and send the following missive. I’ll let him take it from here!
— Bob out
___________
Artist’s Notes:
When I can, I like to draw from experience… literally. Ha! But seriously, Its funny how many times I’m able to relate to the projects I work on, because somehow, even at my young age, I’ve managed to do a lot of stuff. And for these past 2 pages I’ve benefited from that wealth of experience: Getting wasted in a limo with chicks, and my time spent working as a clerk at the Van Nuys airport.
Nobody cares about chicks, so I’ll talk about the airport stuff. This was one of those weird jobs you find yourself doing even though you had no interest or talent for the job, and so, in an ironic way, you remember it very clearly, much more clearly than the stuff you would rather remember.
At age 20, I was in between computer repair jobs (I was a Mac Technician from age 19- 21) and needed work. My friend’s Dad owned an avionics company at the Van Nuys airport and they had a traveling salesman who needed a liaison to run errands and do minor tasks while he was on the road. So I got the job and worked at an airport for six months.
Airports are weird places to work. The scale of your surroundings is really bizarre. All the buildings are huge but the distances between them are massive so they look small. From my end of the airport, you could barely see the other side of the runway- although that was probably the smog. And just to look up would induce a kind of vertigo, overwhelmed by the crushingly vast sky.
This was in contrast to the tiny, tiny, office I was given. That’s a very kind word to call the hall closet. I would spend all day in this windowless room, messing around on very old 386 with a black and white monitor. Twice a day I would allow myself to wander out onto the tarmac and take as much expanse in as I could before my mind became upon the verge of collapsing and I had to turn back. Kind of like those free divers plunging into the abyss… looking for oblivion.
That’s all.
-Max
So what exactly did Max DO in that hall closet that constitutes worthiness of a paycheck?
What happened to all the money he dropped on the ground? :L
Max, I’m amused at your being overwhelmed by the wide-open sky. I grew up on a farm in the Midwest with wide-open sky all around. With unobstructed horizons, not only can you see for miles, but daytime lasts a long time since the sun doesn’t come up behind and disappear behind buildings and thickly-crowded trees. That’s how it should be. Now I live in an urban Mid-Atlantic area and I feel hedged in. And the daylight lasts such a short time. :- (
Looks to me like the pilot has decided to ‘end it’ (thus the ‘will’ he was writing when these folks drove up).
Now, he’s got a bunch of really drunk passengers and probably doubts he’ll get paid enough to break the (probably financial) problems he has.
I suspect he’ll end up unconscious or dead and nobody else will be able to get into the helicopter to fly it. Max will have to ‘arrive’ by what’s getting to be his normal method.
But I don’t think 3 minutes is going to be enough time. I guess he’s gonna have to land the craft. I don’t see any pontoons on that helo, so being over water is not a good idea (and so that is where they WILL go)