Saturday, May 14, 2011

Baby Steps. . .

Eddie Fox and Buster Keaton at the graveside of Roscoe Arbuckle.
From chapter eight of "Tinsel*Town."































Today I took the bull by the horns and began assembling content for the new website. Instead of just re-posting the same old files, all of my comics are going to be "remastered" to a significantly larger size, and reframed to reflect a whole page of story instead of the original 3/4 page serial installments. The computers are faster than when I started doing this, the screens are bigger, and I think the new sizing is pretty darn nice. When I post an update, it will be an entire chapter of each series, instead of just a page at a time. It will still take a while to get everything online, so I'm not in danger of having to create anything new for a while. That's a good thing. I need to take this slow.

In order to do all this, I had to un-stuff the original files from my old computer, and while I was at it I burned them onto CD -- the first time I've ever had a really proper back-up of this material.

I dreaded starting on the work, but it was time. Once I got into it and started seeing the new results, it became enjoyable. But it sure is hard to work with graphics when you have a persistent pussyquat determined to sit on your lap!

*

One year ago tonight, I was at my mother's bedside in the hospital, holding her hand,  while she seemed to get farther and farther away. I refused to accept what was happening, was still hoping for the best. That's what I do.

Around seven o'clock my sister came in. She stood at the foot of the bed and started talking. With one thing and another, her usual "wonderful" bedside manner and the fact that she didn't have any trouble at all accepting what was happening and was determined to "help" me reach the same stage, I ended up having a not so small meltdown, and was politely asked by the hospital staff to leave.

At home, I fed the cats and poured liquor into myself, repeating as necessary until I fell into bed.

Shortly after one AM, I woke and could not get back to sleep for thinking about Mom. I decided to get up and go back in there to be with her. I took a quick shower first, which I needed badly.

As I was getting out of the shower, the telephone rang.

One of my mother's favorite songs was "Somewhere," from West Side Story. She kept the lyrics by her side in the last years of her life.

I was going to play it at her Memorial Gathering, but I goofed somehow, or there was a technical glitch, or something, and that one never got played.

So I'm making it up to her tonight. She never heard the version that I'm going to post here (performed by Tom Waits, of all people), but I feel certain that she would have liked it, maybe even loved it.


-- Freder.

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