elizaskinner.net – the jambox

I used to have panic attacks on trash day when I was a kid. I would hear the truck rumbling down our block at 6am and suddenly realize that I hadn’t done any arts and crafts projects with last Sunday’s Family Circus. That could have been an amazing placemat for my grandparents! Shit! “I really fucked this one.” I’d think, lying in bed in hand-me-down Holly Hobby pajamas. “I could have done so much…decoupage…paper mache! Ugh. I’m a real asshole.”

Don’t get me wrong – I didn’t LIKE Family Circus, but it’s expansive oversized Sunday edition inspried me, craftwise. I found the little trails of activity between the treehouse and tire swing visually interesting. “Not Me” made me very uncomfortable, though. The idea that the ghost of dead child could fuck up your house and get you blamed for it really bothered me. The kids even knew the ghost’s name, and told their parents about it – but no one believed them!! This is the stuff of psychological horror movies! It was like the pictures of skin disease in medical books – too upsetting to enjoy or ignore. But since I couldn’t make placemats out of photos of rampant staph infections, Billy’s afternoon in the yard would have to do.

Lying in bed, the self-abuse and regret would build until I jumped up and ran to my parents bed. “DID YOU THROW OUT THE FUNNIES???” I would whisper feverishly. Week after week, they would mumble “No….” and I’d go back to bed, calmed. Once, though, they were exasperated enough to sigh “Yes. Yes we did. That is trash, you don’t ever do anything with it anyway” and I lost my shit. They peeled me off the carpet and never threw away another funny paper. I assume.

I never made anything with a single Family Circus. I made a good deal of Bloom County cardboard decoupage “jewelry”, and some very attractive Calvin and Hobbes pencil holders (tin cans).  But that is the problem with being an artist – no matter how much you’re succeeding, you’re always failing at something. How many Family Circus placemats did YOU make this week? Thought so, loser.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.