Welcome one and all to my second Ace Backwords Report. I envision this column as a forum for me to express my hopes and my dreams. My tender yearnings. My attempts at humor. And my general disgust with humanity. And much, much more. Consider this column the cyber-equivalent of rifling through somebody's dresser drawers and coming across their personal papers and diaries. Consider this a guided tour of the cluttered closet that is the mind of Ace Backwords. Its almost as good as being with me. Better, actually, because you don't have to smell me....
The only limiting factor is the human imagination. Which can be pretty limiting now that I think of it. And since I'm typing this at the computer library on campus I can't indulge in racist or pornographic writing, which means we can't talk about the XXXXXXs or the XXXXs or the XXXXXXXXXX XXXXers. But, in spite of these limitations, there is still plenty to talk about. Like....uh....well, How about those Giants?!! They won the first game of the National League finals against those wimpy-ass St. Louis Cardinals. The big baseball-related story on Telegraph Avenue is the dispute over Barry Bonds' historic homerun ball. The guy who originally caught it, Alex Popov (sp?) -- the owner of the Smart Alec's veggie restaurant on Tele -- claimed that the ensuing mob of baseball fanatics beat the crap out of him and stole the ball from him by force. The videotape of the melee does in fact show the Japanese guy, who ended up with the ball, biting Popov in his attempts to wrest the million dollar ball free. Now, its a time-honored tradition on both the streets and in the baseball grandstands, that the strongest man out of the scrim is the victor. So its a new twist to add judge-and-jury to the mix. And besides, the food at Smart Alec's is so bland, I'm against the guy on general principal. But my home-town Telegraph boosterism gets the best of me, so I hope he is awarded the ball.
In unrelated news, the other scrap of note is the lawsuit brought by cartoonist Ted Rall against a fellow cartoonist who's name I forget, for a computer prank that somehow sullied Rall's "reputation." Now I confess to be shocked by this whole turn of events. A cartoonist suing a fellow cartoonist??!!! Its almost unheard of. For a cartoonist to act like such a bitch. You'd think they were poets or something. Again, I come from "the streets, man" where resorting to a third party -- like cops or lawyers -- is considered the height of unmanliness, if not downright snitchiness. Whats a matter Rall, can't you handle your disputes man-to-man? Do you really need to use our legal system as a bully club to stomp your enemies. You remind me of the kind of nerds back when I was a kid who could act big and tough when they were standing behind their big brother. Its a shame, too, because I support Rall's stance that got him in this mess in the first place -- the article he wrote in the VILLAGE VOICE that slammed Artie Speigelman -- what a pretentious fake that guy is. But to sue another cartoonist for a harmless prank -- and one that he immediately apologized for afterwards, is just beyond the pale. Over the years I've been involved with many different genres of artists: musicians, poets, journalists, theatre-people, photographers, etc. Of all of them, I will say that cartoonists are the classiest of the bunch by far. Theres the least ammount of competive bitchiness and ego-preening. Largely because (especially in the underground and alternative field of comics) its a notoriously "low stakes" business. This has fostered sort of a one-for-all/all-for-one attitude amongst cartoonists. We're all in this together. I've worked with many fellow cartoonists over the years on compilations and other group projects, and always found them to be easy to get along with; incredibly accomodating and unpretentious. Therefore, I was shocked when I tried to put together a compilation CD of local street musicicans back in 1993. I assumed that working with musicians would be no different than working with cartoonists. But was shocked at the level of preening egoism, self-centeredness, lust-for-center-spotlight, as well as just how drugged-out and whacked-out so many musicians were. So, to see cartoonists like Rall acting like musicians, or, even worse, POETS for godsake. Is disheartening. You're a cartoonist, for godsake. One of the bretheren. I mean, sure, every now and then I'll look over and see a fellow cartoonist like Peter Bagge or Daniel Clowes, who is younger than me, and yet leap-frogged way over my head to a level of stardom and success that I could never hope to reach -- the dirty, rotten, stinking bastards -- and I'll realize that they're making big bucks and they own their own homes and have their own families as well as nubile teenage groupies, whereas I am sleeping in the dirt and eating out of the garbage -- me, Ace Backwords, who has more talent in my little finger than those two-bit punks and frauds have in their entire bodies or in their entire body of worthless so-called work . The scumbags. And yet, I still wish them nothing but the best. Because they're cartoonists and we're all in this together.*
(* see The Ace Backwords Report 11 for and up-date on the Rall/Hellman dispute.)
And so, brothers and sisters, my second column comes to an end, as inexplicably as it all began..... so long and godbless....Ace in Cyberspace