Good Times, Bad Memories, True Friends

It's the only thing that would make me happy….

…besides lots of women, whitewater rafting, mountain jumping, swinging across canyons on ropes……

I was standing in the doorway of Bruce's hotel room on our final night in Dresden when these words were uttered. To put this in some context, I was telling Bruce that the he needs to learn to enjoy his life. This seems to be my main message to everyone these days.

At the school where I teach, I joke that I have become the youth pastor. For some reason kids come to me under the guise of getting help on their homework only to end up spilling their guts to me about the current problems that are rampaging their fragile young minds. My first question is simple, "How old are you?"

When the answer is 17, I cut them off and that's when I say, "You need to forget every last bit of what you are telling me and learn to enjoy yourself because if you don't before you know it you will be in your late 30's looking back on a string of failed and ludicrous relationships, grass smoking, mental masturbation, self loathing, and a whole lot of nothing to show for it." 

"ENJOY YOUR FUCKING LIFE"

"Trust me, things are gonna be a lot different, a lot sooner than you think," I wish that somebody would have told me this when I was that age.  

Now I'm sitting here telling a variation on this to a legendary 65 year old animator. He says that all he wants to do is make films……..and have lots of women…whitewater….

I have the taste of bittersweet forever in my mouth from my friendship with this man. Earlier tonight, we were at the award ceremony for the film festival and I had my German to English translation headphones on just waiting for him to jump ship. We even made sure he had an aisle seat. Our new friend Andre, who bless his heart has been concerned and more than accommodating throughout this trip, couldn't stand it and went out after him within five minutes. I wasn't feeling well so I decided to follow, but I knew before hand that Bruce would have some choice words about the award ceremony.

"It's a fucking award ceremony, what the hell did you expect," I said as we walked up the street. Bruce continued to take a few swings and then I said, "Look Bruce, these folks are really nice and this is the most important thing in the world to them, so just be nice."

"I was being nice, I was trying to be humorous," he said

"They don't understand your sarcasm Bruce. Look, I am not disagreeing with you, but you gotta be nice, you just have to," by this time we had reached the hotel elevator.

"I don't have it in me………..well actually …..I do," he said as we reached our floor.

"On my grandparents golden anniversary, their 50th, the two older boys got to stay back because of school, but me and Steve went to the church with our little suits on. My dad grabbed me and told me to tell grandma that she looks good, I started to argue and he yelled at me to just do it. So I did it." Bruce went on as we went into my room. 

"She came down the staircase and I said, 'You look nice Grandma', and she loved it."  She said, " 'Why thank you Bruce' , and lit up with this huge smile." 

I was facing the other way and Bruce was behind me. I was too tired to look at him, "Sometimes Bruce, you gotta tell grandma that she looks fuckin' nice."

He sat on the bed and said, "God she was a fuckin' crazy bitch."

That story reminds me of the greatest lesson I learned in junior high.

We had a gym and spanish teacher who was an alcoholic prick but thought that his devotion to Jesus exonerated him for being a fat deplorable human being. He was cruel to those who were weak and would humiliate kids in front of the class for no good reason.

There was some tomfoolery that happened in the boys changing room on friday afternoon that he caught right as he came in the door and I was somehow how the focal point of.

We had a few words but I took off and it was left unresolved. 

I had his (absolutely fucking worthless) spanish class first thing monday morning and I knew that when he had his chance to embarrass me in front of the class there would be hell to pay.

It just so turned out that it was the weekend of my grandma's huge birthday party with a mariachi band in the city. 

It was one for the ages even by Guadamuz standards. Lots of booze, lots of madness, lots of dancing latinos...

......lots of stressing the fuck out about how that fat bastard was gonna belittle me monday morning. 

Monday morning, my mom was driving me to school and told me to make sure and tell (the fat hypocritical bastard who shall not be named) about Abuela's party.

Then it hit me over the head.

When I got to "spanish" class, as soon as he came to the classroom I rushed to him grinning ear to ear and told him about my Abuelita's party and the Mariachi band and how cool it was . In my delivery I could not have been more excited. 

I remember his miserable fat face looking down at me and saying.....

How can you thrash a kid who is stoked on his grandma and went out of his way to tell you about her party and how "spanish" it was. He was completely disarmed. 

The bite from the bottle the night before, the unexplained rage that sat on his mind like a jungle cat ready to pounce, the misery that he woke up with each day and had to spread, the lie that is his life and religion, all lifted for a moment. He was actually happy and somewhat bubbly during the entire class period after that. He was, temporarily, a fucking human being. That was by far the best thing I learned at this school. Positivity can go a hell of a long way....

....one of best things you can give is a compliment....

.....and being kind to somebody who doesn't deserve it, but may desperately need it, is a powerful thing that anyone can do.

We really need to get that class action lawsuit going against that school. Hopefully I will be able to keep from busting out laughing when Eyad takes the stand.

Bruce got up and walked to the door, "Ok, I'm going back to the party."

"Be nice Bruce," I said as he left.  

A while later I went over and joined him. For a part of the world that may have a reputation for being stark and cold, People could not have been more warm.

And one last thing...

 I will never in this life have another friend like Bruce Bickford. 

Good by Dresden. 

Day of the Fight

They asked us to get to the museum an hour early because the main German television station was going to be there and they wanted to film Bruce working and talk to him a bit. The day before, I told him to leave a little bit of work to be done so he has something to do when the cameras were there. At first they asked if he could "pretend" to do something the next day, but I told them he doesn't know how to do that.

It became a strange and tense scene because the museum handlers were there to put the glass case on his work, and the producer from the tv station kept wanting more time with Bruce. Poor Andre was sweating because guests were gonna be arriving any minute and all these things were happening while Bruce had turned a corner of the gallery into his personal workspace. 

I'm sure if you asked him he would tell you he has been wearing these since the early 80's

Finally, they finished shooting, the pieces were placed, the glass went on and that was that. At that point I finally got to see what I had worked on for most of the last year. It was deeply satisfying and Bruce and I agreed later that we had no idea if we could even pull this off. I can't believe we pulled this off.

This is a rare piece from the movie Baby Snakes. I'm sure any hardcore Zappa fan would recognize it.

The show opened and it was a great success. Bruce, German animators Walter Spater and Bettina Mathaei, Polish animator Izabela Plucinska, and myself were all honored for our contribution to the exhibit entitled: Wandellust - the art of clay animation. 

Polish animator Izabela Plucinska (who was a real sweetheart) and Bruce

Pics and concept drawings from Allison Schulnick

plasticine + monster = plonsters

German animator Bettina Mathaei

German animation legend Walter Spater

I never get used to the fact that Bruce is like a god to some people. At one point I was going back to the food table to grab another piece of schnitzel when I was told that there were a few people that really wanted to take photos with Bruce but were afraid to approach him. I grabbed my schnitzel and went back to the table where Bruce was sitting and said, "people want to take pictures with you".

"Oh, well, tell them to go ahead." He said

"They are too scared to ask and want you to go over there," I took him over to his fans and thought I was going to be able to get to my schnitzel, but then I got bombarded by more people who wanted Bruce photos. I literally ended up ducking and dodging the camera while trying to eat. It was some damn good schnitzel.

We had one more show to do at the Thalia: Coffee and Cigarettes theater. What a cool place. It was a pretty small screen, but the front is a cafe, bar and there are europeans smoking profusely all over the place. Although I quit a few years ago, I am absolutely pro smoking.

In a conversation on this trip I recalled my first time ever going to Manhattan. A bunch of my cousins and my Aunt Linda were there and she is really close friends with legendary jazz vibes player Bobby Hutcherson and his wife/manager Rosemary. Because of this, we were able to see Bobby perform at the legendary Village Vangaurd the night before we left town. This is a club where all the greats have played, Billy Holiday, Miles Davis, you name it. It was a small club and was filled with cigarette smoke. 

This is something I am truly glad I got to experience. You have to leave the country now to go anywhere with that kind of ambiance now. God bless the smokers. You can tell me otherwise all you want but I will go to the grave believing that second hand smoke is an even bigger myth than mothman, the jersey devil, baba yaga, nessy, tacorda's boy sasquatch, and democracy all combined.

After the show, I took Bruce back to hotel and after searching around a bit for something else, I got some more Kebap. I think that both times I have been to Germany 98% of my meals were Kebap.

 It is everywhere, cheap and delicious.

The next day Bruce and I went to the huge flea market across the river and then to the castle to see what is considered the greatest collection of riches in all of europe. The rooms of weapons from over the centuries was amazing and at one point I commented on how amazing it is that such beautiful metal has been done since ancient times. Unfortunately, no photography was allowed.

I had to take Bruce back to rest up for his final show of the festival. I ended up going back and museum hopping until I had to go back to meet Andre for a late lunch. He is a really sweet and great guy and I could tell that our conversations were pretty foreign and maybe a bit shocking to him.  I realize that this is the only meal I had on this trip where somebody else at the table ate as well. 

Quick note: Yesterday, Bruce was featured in one of the biggest tabloids in the region. It even had all kinds of nudity spread throughout it (gotta love how relaxed those Europeans are). 

He, of course, complained about the picture they chose

Chillin' in the GDP

The next day at the museum turned out to be as equally fascinating when I found out that the floor above us was a museum of old sound recording equipment, including a fully functioning recording studio with a bunch of vintage german mixing desks, preamps, microphones, phonographs, you name it.

I asked what the mixing board was used for and I was told that back in the day this desk was actually used as a sound system for a factory during the gold old days of the GDP (communist east Germany).  Factories actually had somebody who would  play music, relay announcements and have messages of national pride and communist propaganda throughout the day. 

Across the hall from the sound equipment exhibit was an exhibition of old computers, calculators and computing machines. Some awesome looking stuff. Some of it was steampunked out like it's name was Joel Tacorda.

this typewriter is steamed out like Tacorda

At one time, this was an iPad to somebody

the new user friendly model

I was talking to Ines Seifert from the German Institute of Animated Film as she gave us a ride back from the museum and asked her what life was like under the GDP. She said that she didn't really notice it much but they had a great sense of community because people depended on each other in different ways.

Bruce and Ines Siefert

I asked if it bothered her that she was not able to go to most of the world and said how where I came from (especially in the Reagan era) that communism was and still is the great satan and the picture that was painted of them was that they were living in a giant prison over here.

She said that the main thing was that they were into music and now they would be able to see the bands that they liked so much. I did realize later that she is my age, so it was different for us. We were teenagers when the wall came down, and at that point we were not traveling far from home much if at all. It apparently was really oppressive on the older generations. Imagine not being allowed to travel the globe….. bummer.

Under the GDP all women worked and had careers and schools payed for all extracurricular activities of the kids. Also things like animation studios were able to have 250 employees and not worry about where the funding for the next project was coming from. So next time you are rushing off to call our fearless ruler a pinko swine, think about the bill for your 5 year old's Esperanto lessons and intro to homoerotica classes.

I have only been to this side of the earth a few times but I must say that when Europe is beautiful, it is obscenely beautiful. I spent the day exploring Old Towne. Just simply amazing.

We had the first of Bruce shows on thursday night and it went well. We were interviewed pretty extensively for the festival podcast but, as you can see, I'm in a few of these shots but my interview ended up on the cutting room floor.

After the show I had to return the theater to drop off some materials and I had a true east german avante garde experience. Andre Eckhardt who is the main guy behind bringing us here, was just about to introduce the Experimental Cinema program and was so glad I was there so I could watch it with him. I politely went inside and took a seat. It was about 70 minutes of unintelligible, shaky camera, sound effect driven, low in the disguise of high concept short films. I was already tired, but I now needed  a coffin.

Back to Duetschland

and so once again…..

I got to Bruce's house in Seattac saturday morning and was instantly amazed at what he had prepared for the show in Dresden, and then that amazement faded into concern when I realized how much work still needed to be done on everything. Then I had to figure out how we could possibly get everything into two carry on bags and get everything to Germany safely. All par for the course when dealing with Bruce.

During the first night of preparations, bruce and I had a conversation about A Clockwork Orange in which he told me that he saw it when it first came out. I could tell by his tone that it was not something that he was really impressed with and I asked him if he liked it. He said that he hated the way that there was no sympathy for the characters that were being attacked and violated. He hated the Ludovico treatment scenes and generally disliked the photography. I argued all the regular stuff, for it's time….., wasn't Kubrick known for photography…..blah blah, but then it hit me over the head.

"I find it extremely curious that you would actually have a moral issue with a film or anything artistic," I said.

He said in the way that only Bruce can, "Why, because my films are so immoral?"

I paused for a second and replied, "I actually really had not thought about it, but now that you mention it…." 

It took a ton of work but somehow we pulled this off. I talked bruce into doing the final assembly in Dresden so we could get it packed. The next day was going to be an intense day of hellish travel and I was about at the end of my wits and energy. I did what anyone would do, drove down to bigfoot java for a sasquatch special with an espresso double shot. Everything got packed into a couple of carry ons and now it was time for airport hell.

After an intense airport run that rivaled the end of the movie Bullitt and running through the human rat maze that is Frankfurt airport, we arrived in Dresden. I was actually amazed at the amount of abandoned, graffiti covered buildings around where our hotel is. It actually looks likes something straight out of A Clockwork Orange.

YOU TELL EM!!!

I was so tired I could hardly speak, but everyone who we had dealt with from the festival and the institute of animated film was extremely nice.  We got checked into our hotel and I was thrilled to have a nice big room all to myself. 

Although all the buildings around our area are very eastern european and cold looking, I could see glimpses of beauty in the distance. 

The next morning, Bruce and I were taken to the museum where the exhibition was being set up. It turned out to be in a building that used to be a camera factory and was now a camera museum. It was also an old animation studio that produced several animated films from the 60's to the mid 80's. It was now an archive to that work and the coolest museum I have been to of it's kind since Masako and I went to the Studio Ghibli museum in Tokyo.

Being a camera enthusiast and a collector of old cameras myself, this place was heavenly. 

The exhibit being constructed was amazing. It had the work of several renowned clay animators from Europe and the United Stated including Allison Schulnick, who Bruce and I met in LA earlier this year. Bruce got set up at a table where he began to finish the work. I tried to help him as much as I could but it is pretty much impossible for anyone else to do Bruce's work for him. 

Imagine somebody telling you to go through a pile of hay, arrange the different straws by length and then begin to bundle them together. You proceed this utter tedium to the point where you feel despair (an important part of the artistic process) and then when you present it to the person you are doing it for, he basically does everything you did over again and has criticism for everything you did. That is what it is to make hair for Bruce Bickford replacements. Although doing this for hours when there is a beautiful city to explore outside can definitely mess with the mind, make no mistakes about it, this is what it is to work with a true master of his craft.

All of that worry that I had of everything being unfinished turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Since Bruce had a lot of work to do, it caused a lot of press attention and people got a glimpse of something that has become all too rare these days. That is Bruce working with clay. He has pretty much been drawing for years but said that this project has given him the desire to work in clay again. 

I think everyone who I talked to before I left for this trip can attest that my only hope for this trip was that it was "not a disaster". I had no idea that after 8 years of personal triumphs and failures, learning to deal with some of the most difficult circumstances, human beings, and settings, that this exhibit in Dresden, which I have been working on for over half a year, would be the crowning achievement in my work with Bruce. They really did this thing right. 

At one point, Bruce had the paparazzi all over him as he worked on his part of the exhibit. 

Last night, Bruce and I walked across the river to Old Towne Dresden, which was absolutely gorgeous. We walked around and I tried to search out some good German fare. 

Two years ago on the plane to Stuttgart, I guy told me that I have to try this one dish that is basically a huge piece of meat on a bone, sour kraut and potato cakes. I didn't get the opportunity on that trip. When I saw it on the menu tonight, I had no choice but to order it.

A few minutes later, this thing of beauty arrived at the table. It is actually the calf of a pig. Then Bruce proved that I can still be shocked. He lit up like a xmas tree and asked what it was. Then he asked if he could cut it. I was starving at the time, and reluctantly pushed the plate across the table. He grabbed that knife and started chopping into it, and was getting super excited cutting through all the different layers of meat. He kept saying, "This is soooo cool…this is so cool". I looked over and this German couple were staring at us with their jaws glued to the floor. 

I finally cut him off, and said, "ok Bruce, that's enough…that's enough", and he slid the plate back over and sunk into his chair like I took an 8 year old's favorite toy away. 

It is always weird eating a big meal in front of a guy who doesn't eat. In fact it makes me downright nervous, but halfway through eating I asked him if he would like to cut the rest. He smiled and gladly took the plate back. He explained that growing up he always cut the turkey at thanksgiving, and he often cuts the meat and serves people when he goes to dinner parties. I must say, he did a hell of a job. He cut everything into the perfect sized bites and managed to surprise the hell out of me with this little known fact that he enjoys cutting meat. NOW IF I COULD ONLY GET HIM TO TAKE A FUCKING BITE!!!!!! 

Strange and worthless cosmic incident

If you scroll down on this blog you will see that last year I wrote the following:

"a drunk topless guy made it on to the field at a Fresno State Bulldog's game last year and danced until security got within a yard of him and then jammed. He soon had about 20 or 30 guards chasing him and went several yards until he was tackled and arrested. It was by far the best action on the field that night."

Last night when I got back to the hotel, I turned on the tv and although I was beat there was one of those sports blooper shows on that is endlessly entertaining and gives you no chance of falling asleep. It was called Eurosport top 10 and literally the first incident that I saw on the screen was the incident that I described above. The category must have been fans rushing the field, and it was #2 on the list. It was only beat by a naked guy who was running across a cricket match and got slammed by a player.

I know that it may seem like it was a similar incident, but it was undoubtedly the incident from Fresno State vs. Nevada at bulldog stadium from the season before last. This show had bloopers from all over the world including american college sports. This being said, let's quickly examine this.

I was at that game in Fresno (a 1 point loss on the last play during the last season when Pat Hill even pretended to give a crap), I wrote about that incident in Japan last year (for really no reason), and then it is the first thing I see when I turn on the tv in Dresden, German this year. It is strange that the cosmos would throw something so worthless my way. I didn't really need to be told that it is a small world but, Lord, thank you anyway.