For some reason I’ve been stuck on the idea that when I’m drawing, the initial sketch is what’s supposed to end up being the inked final. This is how I’ve always drawn. Habit, I suppose. It’s lead me to having finished pieces which, in my mind, aren’t perfect. After a whole lot of time spent on that final ink, I’ll try shading with crosshatch and fuck it up. All that work, and already there’s something I don’t like about it. Subsequently this ruins my drive to try again, or even start another piece. I’ve only just realized I haven’t been giving myself permission to fuck up. So in trots the Grid Method.
I’ve been desperately wanting to draw a John Waters portrait reflecting the joyous weirdo that anyone who knows him understands what I’m talking about. I’ve done a few other inks of him already, but they’ve yet to accomplish what I truly have in my brain. And I’ve just finished reading Carsick for a second time, so I was truly inspired to do this right.
Phase 1 – The Doodle – A loose pencil sketch, to be inked, puts forward the initial idea. Phase 2 – Doodle Refining – Gridding it out I’m able to copy a larger version to work out details. Another sketch to make it look more like him. This is where I can freely experiment without risk. For instance, I regretted the crosshatching around the eyes (below) so I excluded that from the final piece.
Grid method Phase 3 – Inking the final sketch
Phase 3 – The Final – Now I grid that inking for the final sketch. Here I scanned and enlarged it so I could copy it 1 to 1. This is when I realize what I want to do differently. And without risk I was able to practice things I wasn’t sure about on the previous piece. It was as I was having difficulty drawing Aubrey Plaza that lead me to this technique. And it’s how I hope to improve my drawing skills while I sit at the coffeeshop and draw all afternoon.
Just thought this might interest the people. And the artists, maybe it could help. Let yourself have the freedom to experiment. It’s not cheating… as long as you’re copying your own work, uh duh!
Robb and I were sophomores in high school in 1986. I was 16 years old for one last month, and probably the most obnoxious I’d ever be. As a freshman I was too insecure and overtaken by puberty to fully express my personality disorder. By junior year I was pretending way harder to be cool, supressing myself enough not to be as much a douche as I’d been the year previous. Sophomore Bob however, was the perfect balance of over-confident wise-guy meets witless brat. And this was especially so when I was hanging out with my friend Robb.
Bob & Robb 1986
Robb, in my opinion, was the funniest guy I hung around, ever. He really liked to shock me with the funny/evil stunts he’d pull. Stuff I’d never have the guts to do.
Like, we’d be at a store and there’d be a mother with her six year old next to her. And while the mom wasn’t looking he’d stare at the child and mouth the words, “I hate you and I’m going to get you.” while angrily baring his teeth. Of course the kid would clench mom’s leg in tears. Then, when she’d look over he’d sweetly smile at her, “Your child is adorable… So cute.” Like a harmless admirer.
They’d always smile back in complete belief. Then as soon as she looked away he’d sneer again at the kid and mouth, “I wasn’t joking”.
I was always left gasping for air at how hilariously terrible it all was. And my reactions only encouraged him.
There was the time Robb came to school with pinkeye. And he loved to tease his stepbrother Eric, whom I was also good friends with. And I witnessed Robb wipe his finger in his eye, then poke Eric in the eye with it. The next day Eric showed up at school with pink eye too. It was really funny, I gotta say.
But on this day, in early June of ’86, Robb invited me to come with him to visit his dad who was a couple hours drive from Lakewood, Colorado. Robb had his own car, and as a driver, he was brand-spankin new. His license was as fresh as his attitude. And with me in the passenger seat, it was an easy recipe for trouble.
Details of the following event were taken from the diary I started writing in 1985.
So it’s the middle of the day on the freeway on our way to meet Robb’s dad’s. Two sixteen year olds thrilled to be on our own and on the road. Almost like adults! Then we notice this orange & white Bronco to our left. There’s two guys in it and they’re yelling and pointing at the front of our car like there’s something wrong there. I describe them in my diary as being “beer drinking 20 year olds.”
Robb and I are both looking out at them and where they’re pointing and see nothing, nor can we understand what they’re shouting. I’m shrugging my shoulders at them, and Robb tells me we’re about to take this next exit on the right. We both agree it’d be funny if I gave them the finger after we exit safely out of their reach. What a great idea! So as he’s merging off, and they’re in the far lane over, I flip them the big ol’ bird.
Much to both of our surprise, they steer their truck abruptly across the median through a cloud of dirt and dust and get off the same exit directly behind us. And they’re fucking pissed. They close in fast, bumper nearly touching ours, determined to revenge my disrespect. We can’t believe this is happening, but we also weren’t as scared as we probably should have been. Because as the speeds increased upwards of 80+ mph, they pulled up along side us again, and this time we understood what they were saying.
“YOU’RE FUCKING DEAD! YOU’RE MINE! YOU THINK YOU’RE HOT SHIT! YOU BOTH ARE FUCKING DEAD!!”
Now I cannot say what exactly came over me at this moment. What I chose to do as a response wasn’t logical. And if it hadn’t been Robb sitting there next to me I probably wouldn’t have even considered it. You see, what I did was put my hands on my cheeks and sarcastically mouth the words “OH I’M SOOOO SCARED” to their face. And I remember it was at their faces because the look their faces changed into at that moment told me they were even madder than before.
I remember Robb pointing at the speedometer and the little red wand was at the number 80 as they swerved their truck back and forth at us. Then the guy in the passenger seat started throwing stuff. A shoe, and then bottles. Panicked, Robb slowed way down, to which they pulled in front of us and slowed down even more. We did not want to pass them, so we slowed down until both of our vehicles were bumper to bumper edging onto the shoulder, coming to a dead stop. For a few seconds we were bumper to bumper, them in front of us, standing still on the side of the freeway. Then they began backing towards us. That’s when Robb gunned it back onto the freeway, swerving around them and back into traffic. Of course they started chase again, right up to our bumper. Speed increasing quickly.
We had no idea what to do. How do we get away from this? Then we saw another exit coming towards us. This one down to a shopping district. We agreed that to lose them we should take the exit at the very last second. As the off ramp got closer, with them on our bumper, Robb waited until there wasn’t any space for them to follow and he swerved right across the lines and down the exit. They didn’t give a shit. They swerved across the lanes, over the median, their truck bouncing over the curbs right behind us. It was exactly then we saw the red stoplight ahead of us with a stream of cross traffic that could not be driven through. “Red light!” “We hafta stop!” ”They’re right behind us!”
As we came to a stop behind another car we frantically rolled up our windows and locked the doors. Their truck stopped right behind boxing us in. They both got out and stormed our car. We each had one of these monsters outside our window punching it with their fists. Then somehow, the guy at my door got his fingers over the top of my window, yanked, and pulled the whole glass out, shattering it onto the street. My pink face was there completely naked for him to pummel. Then, by luck, the light had turned green and the car ahead of us moved forward, probably witnessing what was happening. Robb was able to get around and speed away leaving them there standing in the street. They were screaming, laughing, yelling things. I don’t know what, because by then we were scared bright yellow.
We were trying to figure out where to hide when we saw a parking lot with a cop car in it. We ended up filing a police report telling the whole story, except the part about me flipping them the bird that started everything. Just two doe-eyed teens innocently driving to see his dad, when all of a sudden… The same story we told his dad to explain the busted window.
I remember nothing at all about that weekend spent there. Besides getting the window replaced, we probably did some fun stuff. But nothing as memorable as that car chase.
After graduation we totally lost touch. It wasn’t until my 30th class reunion I saw Robb again, and the very first thing he said to me was, “Bob! Remember that car chase?!?”
It was the spring of 2010, and I was in my usual location, Union Square NYC. But right now I wasn’t ready to sit down on the steps. First I had to stop in at Forbidden Planet, which was just a block south on Broadway. It was a place I frequented not only because it’s a cool comic book store right in the neighborhood, but also it’s where I sold my Jesus magnets. On this particular day in the front part of the store was a kiosk set up to promote New York ComicCon! I was briefly stopped by the man at the booth, “Hello! Have you got your tickets for ComicCon yet?”
ComicCon was something I’d never really considered at this point, and at the moment I was here for other purposes. As usual, I strolled around the store to find the magnets and how many sold. But they weren’t in their usual spot, or anywhere for that matter. So I go to the front counter and see my guy Matt who manages there. “I think you’re sold out of my magnets? I don’t see them anywhere.”
Matt checks the computer and tells me there’s still some here, somewhere. So together we start the search. The guy from ComicCon overhears our struggle, and gets interested in whatever this is that someone would go through the trouble to hide. A few minutes pass and Matt shouts “Found ‘em!” picking a pile of them off the ground where they’d been tucked behind a display. “It happened again!” He was referring to the other time an offended customer hid my offensive product within the store. To inhibit sales I suppose. The guy from ComicCon was asking to see what the hell this product was. His name was Mark, and when he saw the Jesus Dressups he laughed, “We’ve got to have these at ComicCon!”
I explained how that was pretty much out of the question. Booths were well out of my price range. “I’m just one guy, and this is pretty much my only product.” Not enough to cover $2,400+ for the smallest, cheapest booth. And this year was actually going to be a far bigger event than just ComicCon. They were combining the Anime Festival and the BookExpo, all 3 in one huge event at the Javits Center. It was just out of the question. “I cannot sell $3,000 worth of these in 4 days.” I told him.
As he held it in his hand he said, “I really want you to consider it. I can get you half off on that booth, $1200. These are just too funny.” And he gave me his card. I went back to Union with that card in my pocket, and decided then and there, “I’m going to make this happen.”
It was taking place the first week of October, so I had months. Enough time to get a brand new set printed up special. A Limited Edition Star Wars Jesus Dressup! I was going all out. My friends could dress up as Jehovah’s Witnesses & Catholic schoolgirls to take part! I would print banners and flyers. It was all very exciting.
ComicCon / October 2010 One of the silly brainstorms I had was to have a couple friends dressup as Jehovah’s Witnesses; white shirt, black tie, shoes & slacks, and of course, name tags. Searching the internet I found a place that could print buttons exactly like the ones JWs wore. It was in Utah, and I had the button design all worked out. I called and placed an order for all 6 in our group, and it read:
NORMAL BOB SMITH MINISTRIES THE CHURCH OFJESUS DRESSUP REFRIGERATOR MAGNETS “Just Google Jesus!”
Oh, I thought I was so clever. Unfortunately, just days before the event the button place returned my money and sent an email telling me they were refusing the job due to conflict of interest. Of course! This was a place run by Jehovah’s Witnesses who manufactured buttons for other Jehovah’s Witnesses, of which I was clearly not. I can only imagine the discussion that took place when they Googled Jesus. Luckily I was able to find another place last minute, right in midtown Manhattan to have them ready the next day. Leave it to New York City.
Owen, Amanda, Kenya, Bob, Mary & Christine
We were ready! The shipment of Star Wars JDUs arrived on time, looking fantastic! My cousin Owen flew in, plus my roommate Christine and her friend Amanda donated themselves. And two friends from Union, Mary & Kenya, all agreed to take part. We’d gotten a couple magnetic boards so people could play with Jesus inside our booth. Printed up posters, and flyers to be handed out. Then I rented a UHaul truck for all the stuff to set up.
SETUP Wednesday October 5th was setup day. I had rented the smallest UHaul to transport everything from Bushwick Brooklyn to the Javits Center on the west side of Manhattan. I knew this was going to be the next challenge. These boxes of rubber magnets are heavy. At the time I had six versions; The Original, BDSM, Xmas, Superstar, Halloween and of course the new Star Wars. One box of these holds 40 sets and each box is about 20 pounds. My expectations were high, so I brought 4 or 5 boxes of each. A quick rounded approximation was about 600 pounds of boxes to be transported from my 3rd floor apartment through the city to booth 2868 at the convention center, by foot. It was a lot.
The instructions we’d received from the event told us everything we needed to know about delivering our goods to the booth. They even encouraged us to use the people working there to help. When we arrived there were signs directing us to the back of the building, and sure enough, there were guys there telling us where to back the truck up and unload. Inside the building on the loading dock my friends and I were told to unload everything onto a pallet ourselves, then they used a forklift to carry it into the building to our spot. We were all extremely happy that it was all going by forklift.
The Jesus Dressup booth ComicCon 2010
The event was the most crowded convention I’d ever seen. Tens of thousands showed up to fill up that building to/and over its capacity. It was so crowded that often people wanting to stop at booths could not because the crowd was too thick and would whisk them away. There were nearly a hundred thousand people at the convention that year!
It also turned out that I may have dressed my friends a little too realistically. Christine, Owen and Kenya who I’d sent into the crowd dressed as Jehovah’s Witnesses carrying clipboards and promotional supplies had trouble getting anyone to pay them attention. “Everyone we approach tries to avoid eye contact and get away from us!” No one at ComicCon wanted to be evangelized too! Go figure. So yeah, that idea of mine kinda backfired.
SATURDAY At conventions like these, Saturday is the busiest. It’s assumed that Thursday and Friday most people are doing more browsing than buying. Saturday most people have the day off, and because it’s nearing the end of the event, everyone shows up and spends. Sunday is a shorter day, and most booths pack up early to beat the mass exodus. There’s always a palpable feel in the air that this circus is about to leave town. So Saturday morning we show up ready to rock, and there’s an envelope on our table addressed to me. It was a bill for $4,400 from the Javits Center for services rendered in transporting 600 lbs of product via forklift to our station. I was crushed.
We’d befriended the couple who were running the booth to our left, who sympathized, “We had precisely the same thing happen to us at another convention. We learned our lesson.” It included a letter stating that before the end of the day Sunday we’d be required to make payment, or provide the means in which to do so. What would have been a great Saturday was totally affected by that wretched invoice.
If that bill wasn’t bad enough, sales weren’t as hot as I’d hoped. Both Thursday and Friday we were having trouble getting people to stop at the our table and participate. There were just too many distractions. Fact is too we weren’t performing well enough to attract anyone’s attention. Our group was mostly introverts, and to get people’s attention in chaos like this wasn’t easy. As Saturday progressed, I got more and more agitated by what had happened. A couple guys from the docks stopped by to make sure I’d received that invoice. They knew exactly what they were doing. They’d even made us do all the lifting from the truck to the pallet, then off the pallet again while they all watched. Then it took one guy to drive that forklift 50 feet. Frustrated and desperate, I started to hatch a scheme to get out of paying that hustle.
But first, I realized I knew exactly how to attract attention to our booth. No different than how I did it on the street handing out flyers. Except that I’m supposed to be yelling at this crowd.
“GOD IS FAKE! MAKE NO MISTAKE! NO PEARLY GATES, NO FIERY LAKE, NO TALKING SNAKES! GOD IS FAKE! IT’S A PIECE OF CAKE!” “HE’S A ZERO NOT A HERO! HE’S A ZERO NOT A HERO!” There’s video of this, if you’ve not seen it before.
Having a shake-down that morning drew it out of me. I came in like a rocket. Standing out front of our table I just stopped giving a fuck. “HI! I’M NORMAL BOB SMITH, THE CREATOR OF DRESSUP OUR CREATOR! WE’RE NUMBER TWO ON A GOOGLE SEARCH FOR JESUS!” And by god, it worked! There’s a fun video of this going down as it happened.
It was that Saturday afternoon, my friends saw my example and we all became an effective selling machine. When I asked Christine what she remembered from that weekend, she said that the moment she saw me turn up my volume and ranting like a carnival barker, that’s what inspired the rest of them.
At the end of the day Saturday, Christine, Owen and I came back to the apartment, and I told them my plan for Sunday. The way the place was set up, all trucks had to load at the docks in the back of the building, through those union guys, where all final checking out happened. The only other exit was the front doors. The ones everyone else at the event goes through.
We had stacks of these 20 pound boxes of magnets still at our booth. I’d completely overestimated how many we’d need. So we were going to spend Sunday trying to sell as many as possible, at great discounts to lighten the load, while I transported everything, somehow, to the front sidewalk. Then Owen was going to stand guard of that pile until we came with a truck to load it all in. Then we scram.
The booth next to ours offered us use of their dolly for the task, and that day it took four hours to walk all our remaining boxes and stuff across that gargantuan building. Our booth was in the farthest corner back from the main entrance. I could fit 4 boxes max on this smallish dolly, then I had to travel the full length of the convention center, from back right corner, to front left corner for the exit. To make matters worse the escalators stopped running about halfway through. They’d busted on account of too many people! Back and forth with 80 pounds of magnets through this unforgiving crowd. I forget how many trips it took but by the time I was pushing the last load, the dolly was a bent mess, and so was I.
As the afternoon grew late I noticed the line of vans and trucks being held way back on the street by uniformed traffic attendants. They were blocking all vehicles from approaching the curb where Owen sat with those boxes. “They haven’t let anyone pull up here all day.” He informed me. And that line of waiting cars was easily in the dozens. I had no idea how we were going to do this, and praying was obviously out of the question.
When all of our stuff was finally moved out of the building to the front, of which we were the only people with a pile of stuff in the front, Christine and I headed to the truck parked a few blocks away. At the truck we looked at each other completely void of ideas on how we were going to do this. “Are we just going to drive up to the front of the line and see if we can talk our way in?”
Looking at us both, I realized these passes around our necks might actually be the problem. “What if we take these off? I bet only people with these are made to wait in that line.” So we removed our ComicCon passes and drove past the lineup of drivers, all with their cynical stares as we rode by. We went right to the security guy waving his hands in the air telling us to stop. “You can’t come in here. You have to get to the back of the line!” “We’re not part of this” I explained. “We’re just here to pick up those boxes over there. Is this some sort of convention going on?” The guard looked at me confused, gestured at the stack of boxes Owen leaned against and said. “Those are yours?” “Yeah, I’m here to get those. That’s all.” “You with fud?” he asked me. “Yes, I’m with fud.” I confidently responded. “They’re with fud. Let them through!” And he waved me on to my boxes.
I’ll never forget Owen’s dazzled expression of amazement as we pulled up. “How in the hell did you do that? Everyone’s been trying to get through for hours! What did you say to him?” “I told him we were with fud.”
Christine and I exhausted after ComicCon
As fast as we could, we threw everything in the back of the truck, and drove back to Bushwick. We had pizzas delivered and an evening of stories and celebration. We figured that “fud” was probably referring to food delivery – the only vehicles they let through. But we’ll never know for sure.
Just for the record, the couple in the booth next to us, I emailed asking the cost to replace their dolly, and mailed them a check the next day. They were happy it worked out as well as it did.
Weeks later I received that $4,400 bill in the mail. By the way, they’re a completely different company than ComicCon who I purchased the booth from up front. This invoice was only for those forklift services. I spoke to Mark about how everything went down, and he was sure sorry that had happened. He said there were others who complained about getting the same sort of invoices. There was nothing he could do however.
Something Shaggy told me once about a thing you can do in NYC, is walk into any attorney’s building and get a free consultation. So one day on my way down 14th Street I stopped in one of these places at random and told a lawyer there about what had happened. His advice was to write a detailed letter with the whole story, and the reason why I don’t think I owe them that money and mail it back with the bill. He explained to me how important it is to respond to every bill they send me because there’s print at the bottom of each stating that not responding is an admission of guilt. “Just keep mailing back that story you told me, and be sure to update the date on each letter you send. That’ll probably work for a bill that small.” He told me.
That’s what I did. I wrote a letter telling what happened and how they would never see any money from me because I felt ripped off. I knew they did it on purpose, and I’d never pay them. I’d rather go bankrupt. They mailed that bill to me twice, and each time I responded with the same story. Then I never heard from them ever again.
In the end I pretty much broke even. We sold about $2,000 worth of stuff, and about $2,000 in total was spent. I learned a lot, and I tell myself over and over again it was worth it. Looking back now 14 years later, it definitely was.
