Kvetch about Sketch

Had a meeting at Sketch. Sketch is the all-cartoon network. I’d met this alternative cartoonist at a party, and we had gotten along. He liked me telling him about losing my religion at “Honey I shrunk the kids.” I went from agnostic to atheist while watching that movie, because I got so attached to the little ant, that when the ant died, somewhere in the most quiet part of my brain, I had this shaming thought: I hope he goes to ant heaven. I no longer had the perspective I had as a human, looking down on an ant carcass, and knowing it was just an ant carcass. Through the movie, I had been shrunk into his ant world, and had put my empathy and thus ultimately my desire to trump the logic of his demise. So, this lil’ gem, got me a meeting. If anything ever happens out of this, I can say on talk shows “I owe it all to Honey I shrunk the Kids” and atheism. However, I doubt anything will happen, because ….

… the alternative cartoonist invited me to his place of work. Sketch. He really wanted to show me around. I tried to act excited. I’ve been to these places before when pitching ideas, or meeting friends of mine on the inside. My nose is forever smushed against the window pane of these emporiums, it is a kingdom I don’t have the keys to. So being on a day pass usually does nothing but whip up envy in me. Oh look, here’s a cute way I can’t decorate my desk. Oh look, here’s someone’s office where they have a basketball hoop and a fake corpse! Oh look, here’s the show that I don’t think is half-as-funny, or well drawn as my stuff. It’s better now that I don’t work in an accounting office, that I’m actually getting paid (ha ha, more like small bribes) to be in the arts. The gulag of my accounting office used to make these visits even more unpleasant, spending a dangerously long lunch-hour just to get to whatever fabulous creative culture I was visiting, and then walking around thinking, I need to leave this wonderful oasis of people-like-me-doing-jobs-I-don’t-seem-to-be-able-to-get, so that I can get back to the accounting office and get looks for my long lunch.

This guy is a reknowned alternative cartoonist, he’s actually been syndicated in various free weeklies around the country. His wife works for Smash, one of the art-house comic book purveyors. He’s friends with some of my contemporaries of the early 90’s zine scene. I looked at his stuff. Not really funny, but it hits all the right marks of cartoon snobbism, so that a graduate student at art school could give in approving nods. I read a few and laffed at none of them, but I could see he was intelligent and had craft. And we had enjoyed each other’s conversation at the party.

When I picked him up, outside Sketch, he was already telling me about job openings. Job openings I couldn’t apply for, however. It was for someone to do storyboards, and that’s way way outta my drawing league. I explained to him that “I’m like Mike Judge,” ya know? I can draw a funny character, but I can’t do it over again. My one hyper-snobby cartoon pal hates Mike Judge because he can’t do storyboards, because he can’t really draw like a draftsmen, and because his drawings are clunky, not easily replicated or rotatable, which is a key with animation. Lotsa circles that can go around 360 degrees makes the animator’s life easier. Mike Judge does not make their life easy. (“King of the Hill,” “Beavis & Butthead,” Mike Judge).

Anyway, the lunch goes well enuff. I try not to complain TOO much about all my near-misses with animation. Being in development at The Televised Music Channel for over a year, only to watch the animation department fold. Blah, Blah, it never happened, so who the fuck cares. Well, I do, of course, it was my chance to get a funny lil’ cubicle at one of these kindergarten play rooms in creative culture. As we part, I make a joke that I think is relevant to the storyboard for his cartoon he’s working on. It’s a joke actually I use on the Hollywood Death Cab tour, usually gets a laff. He said it was “cute.” Whoops.

So, I get home, write him a thank you, making fun of my anxiety over making a bad joke. I think it’s a clever e-mail, and I manage to shamelessly drop-in a few more of creative credentials. I’m a real Sammy Glick, I am.

He writes back a nice enuff e-mail, offering to hook me up with a guy looking for writers, but in the middle of this nice enuff e-mail, he feels the need to tell me that one of the pitch books I showed him (a pitch book being a somewhat realized look at a potential cartoon show), the pitch book where I did the character design was

TERRIBLE.

No real specific allusions as to why: just so bad that you had to call it “TERRIBLE.”

I was an adult, I responded with gratitude for offering to hook me up with a writer, I thanked him again for the tour, and oh, I also said that I thought most of Sketch’s shows look like they had been shat out of Ren&Stimpy’s ass. I’m sure the e-mail got me filed under the “buh-bye” folder in his mind’s rolodex. I should prolly picked one emotion: fuck-you-very-much or thank-you-very-much-can-I-have-another-swat. But instead, I tried to keep my hand out for a job, meanwhile telling him he could fuck off with his aesthetic, I liked what I had drawn.

Yup, the curse of the artist: sensitive enuff to feelings so that he can calibrate emotions into a medium, and, sensitive enuff to feel every bit of someone's rejection of their work.

If you weren't touched by criticism, you wouldn't have the ability to be an artist, most likely. There are those rare birds who don't give a shit, and still create, but usually an artist is looking for approval, no matter how much he denies it.

I should know better: the guy who gave me the harsh criticsm is ensconsed in the alternative-cartoon gulag, every bit a cartoon snob, like I tend to be a snob about rock. Krazy Kat is poetry! (he said that). I should have known better when I mentioned I'm closer to a Mike Judge, and the Sketch dude’s silence felt like an attempt to control his nausea to that name.

Yup, I was dumb enuff to write a screed back defending myself, and including the fact that I had a development person at the Space Channel who LOVED my desigins, etc., and oh, it was just fucking stupid of me. I can't change his mind, his aesthetic. I was reading about Maxwell Perkins (editor of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wolfe) and how savaged his great three were, and how hard they took each hit, often times writing back critics. Mark Van Doren chastised Hemingway for always writing about himself. If only Hemingway had said back: Well, your son will grow up to be synomous with cheating, so I can understand why you wouldn't want to write about your miserable existence. HA HA! Fucker!

On the other hand, we've all known cases of where someone was irate about a particular criticsm of them, and thinking in our head "boy, they nailed you 100%!" so, I try to not discard the criticsm completely. but, there's not much one can do when someone uses the adjective "terrible" about your work.