Colin's Comment

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Today it rained for the first time in weeks… I’m so happy!

I went in to UBC to meet Robin at the radio station to pre-record the Inkstuds interview with Tony Millionaire, Robin’s busy on Thursday…ah, the magic of radio! First I went to Staples to photocopy reduce those two mini-comics I was telling you about. I love the look of the pages after reduction, the copier is so forgiving of all my little mistakes! The big ones, not so much… As per my usual habit I arrived at the station way too early, I sat down to have my lunch in one of the offices (the Green Room was still wet with white paint, how drab) and I started talking to this nice young woman who was redesigning the stations web site. Turns out she’s a zinester! When I told her I’d been doing small press since 1985 she told me that was the year she’d been born! Ouch! I know I’m too old to be doing this small press stuff but cheez… of course she’d never heard of me (or Tony Millionaire for that matter) so I reminisced on the “good old days of small press comics” sounding like grandpa Simpson: “Well back in my day photocopiers were steam driven and the paper (we called it "paper"but it was actaully parchment) came in gigantic rolls a Welsh yardly wide, you had to feed the ink in by hand with a glass tube and the image disappeared from the paper in a fortnight unless the page was lacquered…“ Well, not really. Mind you she knew enough of her history to identify punk rock as a major influence on the early small press movement. I asked her why do zines rather than a web site and she told me she loved putting together something hand made, something real! There’s hope for the younger generation yet! I knew computers were a passing fad! I told her about Word On the Street (the annual cross-Canada book and magazine fair that happens at the main branch of the Vancouver Library in September), she said she was going to look at getting a table.

Oh, The interview! It went well, I admit I was a little worried at the beginning when Mr.Millionaire told us he was hung over! After a slow start things picked up, and I certainly picked up on his passion for old comic strips, ships and architecture! I wasn’t sure how he would take questions about his drinking but he was open about it. I was even a little paraniod that he might be miffed that I, as a teatotaller, was interviewing him. Robin was eager to point out my straight edge ways, but it didn’t seem to phase Mr.Millionaire. It just proves you don’t have to be a drinker to enjoy and respect Mr.Millionaire’s work, which is extraordinaire!

After the recording I went to my bank machine to discover I’m nearly broke! Arrrgh! Money! I need a job or a to sell some art or something! Eh, like that‘s going to happen… I went to the Buy-Low for groceries and all the cash registers were down, some sort of computer malfunction. Rather than stand in line I sat in a corner reading some commie rag I picked up on the bus (the Marxist-Leninist interpretation of American Imperialistic war atrocities in Iraq… the problem was it that most of it was true… ) until things cleared up. At home I sat on my porch drinking tea, reading , keeping the rain company… don’t worry, I have overhead cover. At one point I put my book on post-World War 2 conflicts down (it gets really depressing when you get to Africa) and just watched the rain, the sent of wet soil in my nostrils and the sound of falling rain on trees… beautiful…

1 Comments:

At 8:26 a.m., Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sorry, that was me up there. Er, watch the videos or something. And, um, do something.
It sounds like you have some good balance in your life. Good. You're not too old for minicomics (he says, puffing dust and folding another mini), you're under the radar and can most effectively stick it to the MAN in that way. You know?
--MC

 

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