Fear and Loathing at Geauga Lake.

GEAUGA LAKE, JUNE 1993. I was fifteen, working a shift at the Computer stand on a weekday, which, like most amusement park caricature stands, was named for what it was closest to. In this case, my stand was between the Big Dipper and the Computer Photo stand, where customers had their photographs taken by an early digital camera on a template with a hole or two cut into it for the face(s).


I was sticking to my normal daily regimen of standing under my umbrella with my chair and easel behind me, which was par for the course among caricature and portrait artists. My personal routine, however, was the added challenge of appearing as accessible as possible while avoiding the performance of my actual job at all costs.


My motives stemmed more out of cowardice than laziness. I was still in the early stages of picking up the drawing part of my job...drawing, and I was under the impression that every sketch I did had a 50/50 chance of an awkward exchange where my customers had to tell me that they didn't want to buy my sketches. This didn't happen too often, but Geauga Lake had a pretty honest crowd back then. In comparison, a lot of my rookies at Kings Island drew sketches that resembled Sloth from The Goonies during their first few weeks, and people rarely ever complained aside from a wince here and there. They almost always paid for their sketches, whether they were good or not. Such was not the case at Geauga Lake, and I was terrified of getting rejected.


I had been through some pretty rigorous training that spring, sure, but the weeks since hadn't done much for my sketch. In most parks, rookie caricature artists usually learn by working alongside veterans. For whatever reason, the Geauga Lake Caricatures department from 1992 must have imploded; on the rare occasion that I actually worked alongside someone else, the entire crew of nine or ten artists was comprised entirely of other rookies, except for one second-year vet. My supervisor only worked at Geauga Lake on Saturdays and Sundays, and was at Sea World, across the lake, on weekdays. So the opportunity to learn was there, if you were okay with learning from someone who didn't really know how to draw caricatures either.


So I would just stand there. If someone would approach me to ask how much caricatures cost, I would answer them with a smile, but I would make no effort whatsoever to sweeten the deal or try to get them to sit for me. I secretly hoped that everyone would just walk away so I could just collect my minimum wage in peace until I somehow magically got better at drawing. When guests decided to buy a sketch, I would try my hardest to feign confidence during my panic-induced nausea, awkwardly moving my marker around the paper and silently praying that I didn't forget anything. Like earrings. Or eyebrows.


I had ways to pass the time when I was trying not to draw. I would people-watch, and when that got old (which, believe me, takes a while in amusement parks), I would watch the weight-guesser across the midway, another high school kid trying to learn his job like me, narrowly avoid getting slapped by the women who demanded that he guess their weight or age. This usually made me feel a little better, as he was far worse at guessing than I was at drawing caricatures. I would watch the aging monorail make its way into its station, evaluating its status as the "transportation of the future." I would stare at clouds. I would fantasize that the Skyscraper, the space-needle-esque observation tower in the middle of the park, would fall and crush my stand as I dove out of the way.


One day, as I was staring out into space, I heard some shouting behind me in the Big Dipper line, and I turned around to see two men yelling in each other's faces. At the risk of sounding demographically insensitive, one was wearing Cross Colours and the other was wearing NASCAR and a mullet, and both were each surrounded by many more men dressed as they were. I couldn't quite discern what they were shouting about, but I could see their faces as they grew increasingly more aggressive. I could see them gnashing their teeth at each other like rabid dogs. I could see the sunlight reflecting off of the saliva being ejected out of their mouths as they screamed.


The escalating cadence of their voices was made all that much more terrifying by the fact that they were in line for a roller coaster, and when I say "they were in line," I mean that they were inside the confined area where the line is winding between steel railings, banking from straight lines into 180-degree corners. And it wasn't like they were near an edge of the area, either. They were right in the middle, practically dead center.


I remember wondering, as I watched these grown men start shoving each other in slow-motion, how this could possibly end well. The line was pretty tightly packed, and many of the guests were far too overweight to climb over or fit through the railings that were cemented into the ground. The people a few rows away from the action were craning their necks, trying to get a better view of the the developing situation and relaying the play-by-play back to their shorter party members, but they certainly weren't moving.


This was bad. For the people surrounding the two groups of angry men, there was no way out. For the security guards that would be called to break up the fight, there was no way in. This wasn't going to be like the other scuffles, the quickly-dissipating glorified slap-fights that I'd seen while working across the midway from the Beer Garden. This was going to be a vicious, sweaty, no-holds-barred cage match, complete with innocent bystanders in peril. I took a step towards my sales counter to call Security before I remembered that my cart didn't have a phone. And then NASCAR threw the first punch.


Cross Colours took the blow to the side of his head and reeled backwards, his lower back hitting the railing. Almost instantaneously, he straightened his backbone and, in a Weeble®-like motion, sprang forward and transferred all of his upward momentum to his fist in a right hook. He hit NASCAR square under his left eye, a blow that would have surely would have knocked him down, had there been anywhere for him to fall. NASCAR bounced off of the people surrounding him like a pinball, regained his composure, and lunged back at Cross Colours. At this point, it became a free-for-all. The groups of men who had been taunting one another started blindly throwing closed fists at anything that moved. Women were screaming, children were crying, and people were being forced against the railings by others desperately trying to escape.


A paper cup half-filled with lemonade slush exploded as it hit the blacktop and brought me out of a trance; I realized that I'd been standing motionless, staring for a good five to ten seconds. I looked at my stand again. No phone. I looked at the Computer Photo stand, which had a phone in the back room. Closed, as the computer had inexplicably frozen up the day before, and locked, to protect the equipment. Calling Security clearly wasn't an option right now. The shouting and screaming grew louder, as the back of the line began to break up, clearing a path for the melee to bleed into the midway. The fight was going to be on my doorstep in seconds, I thought, and my tiny umbrella stand would be at the mercy of intense, perhaps racially-based animosity, and preternatural levels of testosterone. What was I going to do? What the hell was I going to do?


And that's when I hurdled over one of my chairs, ripped the cord out of the power strip, picked up the register, and started running.


Let me pause here and make the point that, in my naive, diseased 15-year-old mind, this seemed like the most logical course of action. Escape was imperative, and even though I probably hadn't made much, if any, money, there was still a $170 beginning bank in the register, and I wasn't going to leave it. In my mind, it was a hundred yards or so between my stand and the office adjacent to Portraits, and I had to call Security as quickly as possible before the proletariat started looting the Dipper Gift Shop and the Sand Art booth.


Of course, what I failed to realize then was that if I had encountered any security guards, and thankfully, I didn't, it was unlikely that they would have understood my reasoning for sprinting down the midway with a cash register in my arms. I imagine these events now from a third-person perspective, and I'm sure it didn't look like i was heroically saving the company's money from an angry mob. More likely, it appeared that I was attempting to rob my employer in the most idiotic way possible.


By some miracle, I made it to the Portrait stand without getting tackled by Security and thrown in handcuffs. I slammed my cash register down on the back counter next to a completely bewildered Portraits cashier whose mouth dropped open, seemingly having trouble forming the words to ask me what in God's name I was doing. I flung open the office door, picked up the phone and used the rotary dial to call Security.


Security: "Security."


Me: "There's...uh...whew...a, uh..." (breathing heavily)


Security: "There's a what?"


Me: "A fight...Big Dipper..."


Security: "Yeah, we got that. We already sent them over."


Me: "Uh..."


Security: "Anything else?"


Me: "I...uh..."


Security: "Jesus, kid, get off the phone. You're tying up the line."


Me: "Oh. Yeah. Sorry." (click)

I hung up the phone and caught my breath for a second. What the hell had I just done? I had to get back to my stand. The situation was being taken care of. Had I completely overreacted? I had to get back to my stand. It occurred to me that, since the portrait artists were all drawing, no one seemed to notice me run into the stand except for the one Portraits cashier. This worked out well for me, I thought, since there probably wasn't any way to recount the events of the past ten minutes without making myself seem like some sort of lunatic. Which, it now occurred to me, I probably was. I had to get back to my stand.


Yes, I decided, any attempt to vocally explain my behavior to anyone, especially management, would only result in disaster. The Portraits cashier stared at me in silence as I grinned at her, picked up my cash register, and slowly walked out of the building.


I returned to the scene, expecting to find a bloodstained, smoldering crater where my stand used to be, only to find the area completely unchanged. There were no medics bandaging the wounded and carrying them out on stretchers, the railings containing the line for the Big Dipper weren't mangled or ripped out of the pavement. They weren't even bent. In fact, the sweeps must of just been through, because the area was even cleaner than it was when I left. The entrance to the Dipper was temporarily roped off, a few security guards were still milling around, one of my chairs had been knocked a few feet over, and it looked like someone had bumped into my umbrella, but that was it. It had practically never happened.


I plugged my cash register back in and walked over to my easel, where a little kid had apparently used my color sticks to draw a stick figure, some sort of vehicle that looked like a tank crashing into a train, and his name, "Jason." I wondered if he had sat down and drawn it while his chaperone was being questioned, attended to by First Aid, or in the preliminary stages of getting ejected from the park. I wondered, to that end, if that kid would remember being booted out of an amusement park when he got older.


For that matter, I wondered if I was ever going to really like this job, like the veteran artists from Sea World who trained me. They genuinely seemed to enjoy drawing caricatures. Maybe it was because, at their Anheuser-Busch family-themed utopia, they didn't have to worry about drunken goons punching each other in front of them when they were at work. Maybe the last twenty minutes was a good indicator that my naivete and paranoia deemed me unsuitable for working with the general public. On the other hand, I thought, there was no sense in evaluating my feelings about my job, or the seemingly dangerous people around me, until I practiced enough to get better at this. I had to practice so I could get better. I had to. But not now. Maybe tomorrow.


I settled back into position in front of my chair, imagining the Skyscraper falling towards me.

How to Make the World a Better Place.

I think that the news on television should be read by robots.

But we'll get to that later.

I've been pretty open about myself in some posts on this page, but I generally make a point of avoiding any mention any specifics regarding my personal life or political views on this page. It isn't that I don't feel strongly about things, it's just that I started writing this blog (and have been consistently less consistent about writing in it regularly) to tell stories about stupid things I notice from day to day and the mind-numbingly awkward occurrences that have befallen me in my life as a caricature artist. I haven't intended to eschew my views completely, it's just that I don't think that anybody would really care about what I think in terms of politics or worldview. Which is probably why you've stopped reading this by now and resumed watching videos of wiffle-ball induced crotch injuries on YouTube. Hey, I'd be doing the same thing if I wasn't typing this right now.

Anyway, I've decided to violate my own rule. I know that I'm not, in any way, an authority on the subject, and I'm about as qualified to talk about politics as a violinist is to talk about aeronautical engineering. But I have my reasons.

The biggest reason is one o my new responsibilities at work: comment moderation on the cincinnati.com message boards. You know, at the bottom of articles posted online, you can choose to comment on said articles. Now, I'm one of the people that deems whether or not the comment that you have posted is appropriate in a public forum.


This means that if any comments are:

• unnecessary personal attacks on other posters or anyone that isn't in the public eye,
• making use of language typically considered vulgar,
• racist,
• sexist,
• homophobic,
• or in some other way a violation by the standards of the Terms & Conditions,

then I am one of the people that blocks said comment from view of the public. Personally, I'm not easily offended, but I generally agree with said Terms & Conditions in what I think is appropriate to post in a public forum. I have only been doing this for a week now. And I've already decided that I hate a whole lot of people that live in Cincinnati.

Seriously. I've seen some of the most backward, idiotic, insensitive statements that I could have ever imagined, and that's not just the comments that I've removed. There is something very, seriously wrong with people.

Fortunately, I think I know how to fix everything. Except, that is, for the spelling. Apparently, the strength of one's opinion is inversely proportionate to the person's skill in spelling and use of grammar. Ironically, these are usually the same people that feel that everyone in the U.S. should learn English. Go figure.


Anyway, I have it all figured out.

The news on television should be read by robots.

I'm not saying that robots would do a better job than news anchors; as a matter of fact, I think that most news anchors, especially the network ones, are extremely talented. It's just that any subtlety in facial expression or vocal intonation can be interpreted as a political leaning by people f*cking crazy enough to look for such things so they can discredit it. And believe me, they do.

I'm also not saying that opinions and/or political leanings can't still be expressed in writing. I don't think that has to change. I just think that the subtleties of the written word can be interpreted in more ways than speech and body language.

Therefore, in order to retain the journalistic principle of absolute non-bias, the news needs to be read by robots. Faceless, emotionless robots that look like Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Except that the light is exactly 50% grey, instead of, say, red or blue or white. Otherwise, the color of the light could be interpreted as indicative of a political leaning or racial bias by people f*cking crazy enough to look for such things so they can discredit it.

You might be wondering why I think that the news should be read by cold, unfeeling mechanical beings. I'm not finished quite yet.

Secondly, television or radio shows with any bias towards a political viewpoint, especially those on channels themed after news programming, will be outlawed. All copies, digital or otherwise, are to be destroyed immediately. The time slots will be replaced by 50% Grey Newsbot.

I realize that, as you read this, might ask, "Hey, what will this fix? Because right now you sound like a total sociopath." And you're right. This topic is, admittedly, making me talk and think like a crazy person. I've come to the realization that the problem isn't with the left or the right. The problem is that people aren't listening to the news and then forming their own opinions based on facts. They're just listening to someone else who tells them what to think, because they're either lazy, stupid, or both. And the people that are spouting rhetoric on television are getting about as close to mass misinformation as you can get.

This is why this country is currently so polarized, politically. I mean, come on. People are either behind our president and what he's trying to accomplish, or they actually believe that he's a Kenyan-born Muslim sleeper agent that dabbles in Marxism. 


That isn't normal.

Yeah, the recession has been hard on a lot of people, and I understand that. But health care reform does not make us a socialist country, people. It's just health care reform. About health care. Reform that only affects your freedom to not pay for health care. You're overreacting. Lots of other democratic countries have socialized health care. The rest of your freedoms remain unaffected. No one is going to show up and take away your precious guns. Storm troopers are not going to come to your door to shake you down for your tax payments. Inversely, the Bolsheviks are not going to invade the White House to round up the First Family and execute them, and, if they did, they should have come during the last administration, for no other reason than that Dick Cheney is a practically flawless analogue of Rasputin.

I guess what makes me the angriest is that the American public is being taken advantage of right now, and I don't think that many people realize it. People are unemployed, underemployed, and stressed out. They're looking for answers, so they turn on the news. They turn on the news looking for facts, but they don't get facts. They get speculation. They get opinions that, rife with exaggeration, rile them up and make them angry, regardless of political leanings. The news networks see that people are watching their batsh*t crazy shows, and the high ratings that result from it, and keep pushing. They push and prod the people that watch these shows disguised as news programs, and viewers start freaking out more and more. The rhetoric starts getting more and more intense, further away from logic.

Then it involves me, because the comments under a news story on cincinnati.com, about the opening of an ice cream shop, somehow start with people talking about the economy and ends with people arguing about how we need to rise up against our socialist president who is actively ruining our way of life because he and his family hate white people.

Come on, think about it. That's f*cking crazy.

That's crazy, and this can't keep going on. People in the American television news industry, you need to realize that you can only push people so far before they snap. All it's going to take is one of these jackass pundits to say something that can be interpreted the wrong way, and some Michigan militia of lunatics is going to plan an attack on the Capitol building, or an unemployed factory worker is going to shoot up a police station, or something equally f*cked up is going to happen. Actually, check that, it's already happening.

And the saddest part is, people are going to get hurt or killed because cable news networks want the ratings that guarantee advertising dollars. It's about money. Let me repeat that. IT'S ALWAYS ABOUT MONEY. You people out protesting with your picket signs need to calm the f*ck down. Television is making you crazy, and we all know it's television because the clever sound byte you've hilariously misspelled on your sign came straight out of the mouth of someone who was paid to antagonize you so you keep watching their stupid show.

Maybe if television news channels focused on other things, like, I don't know, the two wars we're involved in, or maybe even an occasional reminder of how totally f*cked Africa is, we would even out a little bit with our priorities, as far as things we should really care about. We need to remember that other people have real problems in the world. People in other parts of the world are starving, or running from death squads, or getting blown up in subways. They aren't whining about losing a nearly insignificant amount of their personal freedom.So, my theory is that, if you actually force people think for themselves instead of telling them what to think and how strongly to think it, then they'll calm down and we can avert the chaotic breaking point that we're swiftly headed towards right now.
I know, I know...this doesn't give the American public a whole lot of credit for not being mindless sheep. But hey, does anyone remember the lady that told John McCain on live television that she could prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that presidential Barack Obama was an Arab? Not even a Muslim, not even a Muslim extremist, an "Arab". How about that guy the yelled "Kill him!" while Sarah Palin was speaking about Obama at a rally? That's a whole lot of conservative talk radio right there. We're not mindless sheep, but we have to admit to ourselves that:

1. There is a scary number of people that believe everything they hear on TV or on the radio.
2. There are personalities on TV or on the radio that tell people crazy, crazy things so people keep paying attention to them.
3. Television networks and/or radio programs that theme themselves after news programming have an ethical obligation to offer non-biased factual accounts of current events and little else. Some people might call this "news".

Let me gently make the point that I know that the government tends to screw us over from time to time, as taxpayers, citizens, or just people that place trust in our elected officials. I'm not saying that I think the government is perfect, far from it. Even if I lean left of center, I'm still not saying conservatives are wrong. Every effort deserves a look from more than one angle. I just think that we need to concentrate our efforts on concepts based on truth.


The truth.

The truth, as in, not theories that the country is undergoing a complete redistribution of wealth to black people so they can buy crack and abortions with their health insurance. You stupid, awful bigoted backwards redneck idiots.

And yes, a lot of people will come to the same delusional conclusions without any help from television or radio programs. But I think that it's a step in the right direction. Remember fifteen years ago, before the internet was as popular, when there was a certain stigma attached to living off the grid, in a log cabin in Montana writing angry letters to the government? I doubt that doing this sounds anywhere near as crazy today.

In the meantime, I will avoid paying attention to biased programming and continue to take a non-politically-biased stance on moderating comments on the cincinnati.com message boards, even if makes me want to move into a log cabin in Montana and spend my days writing angry letters to people that make idiotic comments on cincinnati.com.

An Open Letter to the Guy who Merged onto I-71 in Front of Me Last Night.

Dear Guy who Merged onto I-71 in Front of Me Last Night,

I couldn't help but notice that you shouldn't be allowed to drive on the same roads as the general public. Maybe it's your sense of adventure or your devil-may-care attitude, but merging onto a busy highway at 35 miles per hour while it's raining after nightfall with no headlights on while you're talking on your cellphone is typically enough for me to lament the fact that you, presumably, are legally licensed to drive.

I've come across a lot of idiot drivers in my time, but I've never come across someone that has made this many dangerous errors simultaneously. I know Ohio drivers aren't the best. Sure, they don't drive like Jeff Gordon on PCP, as Michigan drivers do, and they don't drive everywhere doing 25 like a lot of folks in Florida. I've had run-ins with moronic thugs on crotch-rockets weaving in and out of traffic on 75, and I've nearly collided with redneck meatheads who think that having four-wheel-drive in their giant stupid trucks means that they don't have to be careful on top of six inches of snow. I won't go into any specific rants in this post about people and their inability to drive in snow around the greater Cincinnati area. They know who they are. Still, none of these people have astounded me quite as much, in terms of total ignorance of their surroundings, quite like someone who, say, might merge onto a busy highway at 35 miles per hour while it's raining after nightfall with no headlights on while talking on a cellphone.

Let me gently make the point that, while I don't consider myself to be an advocate of suicide, I can still think of many, many ways that you can off yourself with no involvement of the strangers around you, other than, for instance, merging onto a busy highway at 35 miles per hour while it's raining after nightfall with no headlights on while you're talking on your cellphone. As a matter of fact, I can even think of at least three other ways you can kill yourself with your car, off the top of my head, that don't involve jeopardizing the safety of those around you. You f#$%ing idiot.

If anyone should notice a man in his early-to-mid 40s that drives a maroon sedan like a jackass and looks kind of like Dante Hicks from Clerks, make sure you take down his license number so we can report him.

Sincerely,

James W. Rockwell

The Most Awkward Interview Ever.

One of my more prominent responsibilities as an assistant manager for Kaman's Art Shoppes was the interviewing and hiring of employees. Since most of the positions could be performed by high school students, the interviewing process was comparatively fast and simple: make sure the kid that you're hiring a) seems like they'll be happy enough at work to talk to people, b) won't prove to be a liability, and c) can draw, if applicable to the position. I don't think that I was all that difficult of an interview, which, I feel, was appropriate, considering that I was the first interview that a lot of these kids had ever had. I, for one, interviewed with Kaman's when I was 15, and I'm pretty sure I almost threw up when Sandy Fogel asked me what my name was.

I probably hired way over half of the kids that I interviewed during my four years at King's Island, and over half of those kids would work more that one season because they liked it. I still feel really good about the kids who we took on that ended up having a great time working at the park, because they prove to be stories about a successful hire. This is not one of those stories.

2004 got off to a rocky start for the Caricatures department at King's Island. Despite being in the capable hands of Nolan Harris, we had hired five artists from the same art school who had all gone through training and had either gotten fired within their first week, not shown up at all, or, in the case of one of them, whined enough about basic job responsibilities to make the rest of the crew hate the f#$% out of him. Keep in mind that a crew at full strength was somewhere in the 20-25 range counting part-timers, so this was a pretty sizable recruiting failure. So when Lisa (Evert, another KAS assistant manager at the time, and my girlfriend) called me, bragging about how she had set up a caricature interview for me, I was pretty relieved.

And so I walked up to Security Post 3 later that week to pick up my interview. I spotted her off of Lisa's description, and introduced myself. She said hello, shook my hand, and handed me her application, which she had already completed. As we walked back towards the office in Mining, I started reading her application while we were making smalltalk. I noticed several warning signs that this was not going to go well.

1. King's Island season passholders who a) are not kids and b) don't have kids of their own are to be handled very carefully.

2. AGE: ___22___ (do not fill out if you are over the age of 18)

3. When you interview high school kids on a regular basis, you get pretty used to misspellings on their apps. This was different.

WHY WOULD YOU LIKE TO WORK IN THIS POSITION? I love Kings Iland and i have always really liked drawling since I was little.

DESCRIBE YOUR BACKGROUND AS IT PERTAINS TO YOUR POTENTIAL POSITION. My art teacher has said that I was the best at drolling in my class this is when I was in Art 2.

Sure, misspellings are forgivable, even if the former copy editor in me (Editor's Note: Before I worked for a real newspaper, I thought I knew what copy editing was. I didn't. I can check for spelling and basic grammar. That's about it. I'm an idiot) shudders when I see them on a job application. But if you can't spell the name of the place that you want to work correctly, and you not only misspell the primary function of your occupation, but you misspell it in two different ways, then we're going to have some serious problems.

4. I know that we aren't interviewing you to put pieces of your artwork up in the Louvre. Having said that, there are many diverse and appropriate ways to transport your portfolio. Tossing it all in a garbage bag, even from a postmodern or Dadaist perspective, is not one of them.

You know when someone on television or in movies comes to the sudden realization that something is horribly awry, and the camera simultaneously zooms in on their face and zooms out on the background? Well, I actually had a brief out-of-body experience and saw this happen to myself as soon as my brain had quantified the above information and added it together. But, being the consummate professional that I was (I wasn't), I didn't have the option of cutting the interview off early, although I briefly considered faking a seizure or lighting myself on fire as a diversion. No, I decided, I should look at her portfolio, in case she's some sort of artistic genius. I had to give her that chance.

Penny and I (we'll call her Penny to protect her anonymity) walked in to the office and sat down at the desk, where John Roessner was working on one of his infinitely long inventory reports for the Rivertown Mining Shop. I introduced the two of them, and he dutifully reverted to typing numbers in as I sat down next to him. She took a seat on the other side of the desk, and we continued the interview.

ME: So, tell me more about yourself.

PENNY: Well, I really, really like King's Island, and I love drawing. My teacher said that I was the best in my class!

ME: Yeah, I noticed that on your app, that's great. So, you're talking about high school, which was a few years ago...how many years of art classes did you take?

PENNY: One!

ME: ...uh...huh. Right on. And this "Art 2" class you were talking about...was it more geared towards illustration, or...

PENNY: We made pottery! And I drew Garfield! It's in my portfolio...I'll show you in a minute.

ME: Ah. Right. Yeah, let's go ahead and get started.

She opened her garbage bag, rooted around in it for a minute, and pulled out her first portfolio piece. Any hopes that I had that this girl was some sort of artistic idiot savant disappeared rapidly, as I realized that it was a series of cat heads drawn on lined notebook paper, complete with torn fringe on the side. She handed it to me.

ME: Ah...so, these are...uh...cat heads?

PENNY: Yep. Bobcat heads. I like bobcats...not like, a pet or anything, but like...I don't know. I just wanted to draw their heads. Not their bodies.

ME: Yeah, I can see that. Um...yeah. Very nice. Let's move on.

Now, I realize that those of you reading this that aren't caricature artists, or never have interviewed caricature artists, probably think I'm some kind of elitist asshole, but let me assure you that I'm not. Please understand that a typical interview portfolio for this job contains art projects, typically completed in either a high school advanced placement course or a college-level drawing class, that show a definitive understanding of facial anatomy, or at least human heads in general. A lot of kids actually give caricatures of celebrities a shot and bring them to the interview. Sure, there are going to be projects in there that show a broadness of talent; a pastel landscape drawing, or a first crack at oil painting that won a Gold Key award, or something to that effect. Point is, most of the people that we interview show us original, completed pieces. There have been many notable exceptions. Again, this isn't one of them.

She pulled out another sheet of paper. This time, I was relieved that it wasn't drawn on notebook paper, but I was again perturbed by the subject matter. It was a vertical green oval with two horizontal black ovals on top of it, drawn in crayon. I recognized it as a crude drawing of an alien head, but, in retrospect, I really didn't have to put that together myself, because she had scrawled "Alien" next to it and drew an arrow pointing to the head.

ME: Hey...an alien...head.

PENNY: Yeah. I draw aliens sometimes!

ME: Really. I've...um...I've always been kind of scared of aliens.

PENNY: I'm not!

Next, she confidently handed me a cut-out piece of paper. I unfolded it and saw that it was a pencil drawing of an elephant, again on lined notebook paper, that she had cut out with scissors.

ME: Wow, an elephant. What...um...what made you cut it out?

PENNY: I don't know...the rock, I guess.

ME: The rock?

PENNY: Yeah, the big rock at the end of his trunk.

ME: Ah. right. What about it?

PENNY: Well, that used to be a baby elephant, but I cut it out so it was a rock instead. Check this one out!

ME: Oh. Uh...cool. It's Snoopy.

It was about this point that I noticed that John had stopped typing and was staring wide-eyed at the computer screen. I looked at the drawing of Snoopy, which had been drawn off of a sticker. I know this because the sticker itself was stapled to the drawing.

Next came the Garfield drawing that I had heard so much about. The drawing of Garfield was probably the most accurate reproduction that I had seen thus far, but she had gone through the trouble of adding Jon Arbuckle, Garfield's owner, who was now portrayed with a lazy eye and a prominent hunchback. I began trying to think of questions to ask about her drawings, just so I could feel confident that I had conducted a full interview once this was over. This was probably a mistake on my part.

PENNY: Look, here's Garfield. He hates Mondays!

ME: Yeah, I...uh...I remember that about him. You also wrote it on here, "I hate Mondays." Very nice. What's next?

PENNY: Here, it's Tweety Bird.

ME: Oh, right on. Uh...why did...um...why did you choose to draw this one on...uh...blue card stock?

PENNY: (visibly excited), Oh, I'll show you in a minute! But first, look! A horse!

John Roessner had stopped moving altogether and was visibly shaking, presumably trying to try to contain inappropriate laughter. I looked at the drawing of the horse. It was a comparatively accurate pencil drawing of a horse in the sense that it had a head, a tail, and four limbs. What disturbed me about this particular piece was that she had obviously drawn and erased the horse's penis multiple times, and at varying sizes.

ME: Yep, that sure is...a horse. You like horses, don't you, John?

JOHN: Y-YES...YEAH. YES I DO.

PENNY: Look!

Penny had pulled out a picture of a reclining Mickey Mouse, also drawn on light blue card stock to match up with Tweety. As I wondered what these two might have in common besides being a "Cartoon Characters That Adults Really Like When They're Off Their Meds" diptych, she grabbed the Tweety drawing off of the desk. As she picked it up, I noticed that it had handwriting on the back of it. She held the two drawings side by side, one in each hand, and began reading dialogue off of the back of them, moving them up and down as each one "talked."

PENNY: "Hey, Tweety, could you help me get up?" (pause) "No, Mickey, I won't...you get up yourself."

(a good five seconds of silence)

ME: ...

JOHN: *cough COUGH...cough* w...WOW.

ME: Oh-kay!....we're good. Thanks for showing me your stuff! Lot of good stuff in there.

PENNY: So, am I hired?

I thought for a moment about how to respond. The normal thing to do would be to give an honest critique of the portfolio, tell the interviewee why you don't think they're quite cut out for drawing strangers for money, and tell them what they need to work on. That's what you do when you're interviewing someone and you think that, if they work on a couple of things and come back, they have a shot at getting hired. Penny here was a notable exception, because she, for whatever reason, seemed to have an emotional maturity level way, way, WAAAAY below what would be normal for her age. I could see that being honest would likely result in seriously hurting her feelings and, possibly, severely damaging her self-image.

Plus, I didn't want her going to the park to complain that we didn't hire her, resulting in an angry inquiry as to why we would interview a barely functioning adult to perform an extremely specialized job involving relatively high and complex levels of customer service. What would happen to Penny the first time she drew a $30 sketch of a couple as Garfield and Jon of Notre Dame? People are only nice to a point, and typically that point falls well short of shelling out $30 bucks for a drawing that doesn't look like them. Amusement park patrons would uncaringly devour her, whether the park understood that or not. So I did what I thought was the right thing: the wrong thing. I lied through my teeth.

ME: Uh, actually, we're pretty...uh...full in Caricatures right now.

JOHN: *COUGH* WE JUST HIRED SOME PEOPLE...EARLIER THIS WEEK.

ME: Yeah...yeah, we did. I'm going to keep your resume on file here, and if a spot opens up, we'll call you.

PENNY: Okay! I really want to work here!

ME: I know...well, do you want me to walk you back out to Secu--

PENNY: No! I'm going to go on the water slides! And the Vortex!

ME: Okay. Thanks for coming in, it was really nice meeting you!

PENNY: Yeah. Bye!

I shut the office door. I looked at John, whose face was completely flushed. He looked back at me. I opened the door, looked out, and shut it again to confirm that she was gone.

JOHN: *GUH!!!* (gasp) How...how did...you keep a straight face that whole time?

ME: God, I don't know. That was completely retar...oh. I...I mean, ridiculous.

JOHN: Nice.

ME: Oh. Oh, man...am I a total asshole?

JOHN: *cough* I don't think so. Do you think that she would have been able to do the job?

ME: Of course not.

JOHN: Then you have nothing to worry about.

ME: Yeah...I guess so.

And so ended the worst interview I have ever conducted, and certainly one of the most awkward scenarios that I was privy to while I still worked full-time in the parks. And that's saying something. I, of course, wind-sprinted over to Portraits, Roessner in tow, to yell at Lisa for what I had assumed was a mean practical joke of some sort. Lisa thought the whole thing was pretty funny, but amidst her laughter, she told me that honestly thought that this girl was on the level. "Stop yelling at me! God, she said that her teacher told her that she should draw here. How the hell was I supposed to know?"

Obviously, I still feel pretty awful about the whole experience, but I still can't put my finger on why. Some things just stick with you, I guess. I'd like to think that Penny promptly forgot about coming in for an interview minutes later while she was enjoying the mind-numbing speed of the Vortex. I can only hope.

Why My Generation Should Be a Lot More Screwed Up Than It Is.

Some friends of mine had a '90s-themed party last weekend that I couldn't attend because I was working. I did see some pictures, and while the costumes were painfully accurate, I can't say that I see all that many radical differences between the '90s and the '00s. Maybe that's the most surefire sign that I'm getting older in my relatively young adulthood, and, as you're reading this, you might be thinking about what a ridiculous, f$%&ed-up thing that is to say, considering all the massive cultural changes that have taken place. I have my reasons.


I was born in 1978, meaning that while my more socially formative years took place in the '90s, my early development took place in the '80s. Sure, maybe denim shirts and high-waisted shorts seem dated now, but come on. I grew up thinking everyone wore leotards and Hawaiian shirts to high school, and my biggest heroes were two rednecks with a confederate flag airbrushed on their car and Mr. T.


All things considered, I can't believe that my generation isn't more screwed up than it already is, just based on what we were watching when the logic centers of brains were developing. At this point, I'm kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop because we all simultaneously lose our minds, the delayed result of the mental conditioning we were subject to. Don't think my fears have any basis in reality? Well, here's this.




TEN EXAMPLES OF FLAWED '80'S LOGIC THAT MADE MY CHILDHOOD A LIE:


1. Spastic dancing will never make you look like a complete idiot.


I don't know what it was about dancing in the '80s, but flailing around wildly was so cool and deviant that it was banned in entire towns. What the hell happened in the '70s that dancing became so risqué? Apparently, everyone hanging out doing 8-balls at discos was Amish. I wasn't in high school in the '80s, but when I was in third grade, I heard that some freshman had a seizure, and they gave him a Trans Am and elected him senior class president based on it.




2. Technology evolves at breakneck speeds, and computers are capable of anything.


Sure, it's one thing when a scientist devotes his entire life to building a time machine out of an obscure hatchback sportscar, and in the event that you accidentally discover artificial intelligence, there's a 50/50 shot that it'll go rogue on you and kill your whole family. That's almost plausible. But Weird Science? Two high school kids created Kelly LeBrock out of thin air using an Apple IIe. Of course, this is also the same decade when MacGyver was on, and I'm pretty sure there was an episode where he built a particle collider out of a Pogo Ball® and a couple of ketchup packets.




3. Every hero needs a useless sidekick, who occasionally presents him/her/itself as a dangerous liability.


He-Man has Orko, and the Super-Friends have Marvin, Wendy, and a dog with a cape (or Zan, Jayna, and that blue monkey thing, depending on the episode). The Transformers hang out with a ten-year old kid with no discernible talents. The Thundercats...oh, sweet Jesus, the Thundercats.


Scenario: You and your friends are all anthropomorphic talking cat people. You already have two preadolescent talking cat children that do little else than fly around on hoverboards and get kidnapped. For the love of God, why would you keep Snarf around? Snarf isn't even a person-shaped cat. He's a cat-shaped cat. Not only that, he doesn't really talk, he just whines loudly and incessantly. I realize that sidekicks are good for merchandising, and that 80's cartoons were little more than 30 minute commercials for action figures. But really? Snarf?


Marketing Guy #1: "All right, we've got Lion-O, Tygra, Panthro, Cheetara, and a couple of kids. Lemme double check the universal 1980's marketing formula here...hm...muscular male protagonist, check. Girl on the team, check. Couple of relatable kid sidekicks...wait, we need a minority."


Marketing Guy #2: "Panthro's black...well, kind of. He's grayish. But the voice actor is black."


Marketing Guy #1: "Awesome. We're all set. Let's make some money."


Ronnie the Intern: "Wait! Wait, I have an idea! What...what about...a cat who kind of looks like...uh...like a fat lizard?"


Marketing Guy #2: "Wh...what? Why?"


Marketing Guy #1: "Ronnie, come on. Why would we need--(sigh). Fine. What does he do?"


Ronnie the Intern: "Um...he...uh...he says his own name over and over!"


Marketing Guy #1: "..."


Marketing Guy #2: "Jesus."


Ronnie the Intern: "My dad owns LJN!"


Marketing Guy #1: "Yeah, we know, Ronnie. Your dad also said that you're not supposed to take your helmet off, even--check that, especially--during creative meetings. You know what? Fine. Ronnie's goddamn fat-ass whining lizard-cat-thing is in."


Ronnie the Intern: "Yaaaaaay!!!" (bangs head on table)




4. Antagonists are always blonde jocks with money.




5. Nerds are only a two-minute montage sequence away from complete social dominance.


Sorry, you're a nerd. BUT WAIT...you can immediately redeem yourself by taking your glasses off, blasting yourself with a can of hairspray, and ripping the sleeves off your shirt.* Don't worry, everyone will accept this newfound coolness immediately and unquestioningly, except for that blonde jock and his sycophant sidekick toadie bastard friend in the corner, who have, by now, rapidly tumbled all the way down the popularity ladder as a result of their inexplicable hatred of you.


* - Bonus cool points are awarded if you're wearing a headband, and/or are covered in glitter.




6. Analog strap-on keyboards are the music of the future.


Because nothing matches asymmetrical plastic sunglasses and red leather pants better than a piano stuck to your chest.




7. Doppelgangers of you, of alien, robot, or mystical origin, look, sound, and act exactly like you down to the finest detail, except that they're either evil or socially retarded.




8. Any altercation can be resolved quickly and peacefully with breakdancing.


This especially includes any situation involving gang fights, orphans, fundraisers, or gangs hosting orphanage fundraisers. You'll be able to tell the difference between each gang because their colors are always bright pastels.




9. Leg warmers are useful for...something.

And, last but not least...


10. The leading cause of social alienation and missing persons is post-traumatic global amnesia, a result of sustaining a massive head injury.


But not to worry. This is always invariably cured, with no side effects, as a result of another massive head injury.