Anyway, I talk him off the ledge and then he insists that he needs to apologize to Wesley. I tell him “no fucking way” after the scene he created. He is just so pathetic looking and refuses to leave. So I tell him I will go back inside and make the apology for him, “just calm the fuck down, don’t talk to anyone, and stay here!”

I go back inside with no intention of doing anything. Wesley has long forgotten about the situation or is probably already writing a song about it. I get another beer to buy some time, find a crappy show flier for the gig, ask the bartender for a pen, scribble “Wesley Willis” on it and go outside. I give the flier to my friend and say “everything is awesome, it’s all over now, Wesley asked me to give this to you.”

6 years later I go up to B.C. to go hiking and do some water skiing. I go over to visit and he still has this flier, framed on display in his living room to pay tribute to his “wild night in America.” Precious memories.

*for those unaware, Wesley Willis was a diagnosed schizophrenic and weighed ~300 lbs.

In one particular poster, we all stood beneath a stormy sky looking as tough as barely pubescent skinny guys can. Last year my girlfriend (who I didn’t know in those days) told me that she had stolen one of these posters and hung it in her dorm room because she thought it was so hilarious.

Why she dated me, I’ll never know.

my ex-girlfriend was a huge fan, so for christmas one year, i had one of jason’s posters (a mates of state/rainer maria one–link below) made into a jigsaw puzzle for her.

http://www.orangebeautiful.com/blog/post.php?post_id=75

i didn’t want to rip off his work, so i emailed him to ask if he’d be cool with it and if i could pay him for the rights. not only was he cool with it, he asked for the specs and created a custom file to make sure it came out as great as possible.

needless to say, the gift was a hit — it looked awesome and she freaked out. it may be the coolest gift i’ve ever gotten anyone.

and btw, Jason Munn is the man!

Thanks!

This might be a rambling story that doesn’t make me look super great. I don’t know, haven’t told it yet, let’s see how this goes.

So I was in Buffalo NY, a not so great place for a young person in ways (2nd poorest city in the US). A place where social class is divided, and dating sucks for low status people like a broke-ass wannabe artist (probably half of everyone there.) I decided to make an Internet Dating Ad.

First person I ever met that way was a sweetheart of a lawyer. (Sort of, although she made fun of my “homeless van” which was a little odd for someone with activisty pretensions.) We dated a bit but it didn’t work out, although I kept a semi pathetic “thing” for her.

2nd person I almost met traded some fun/arrogant smartypants wannabe-poet email, then blew me off without a picture just a description (yeah I know, I didn’t have much else happening at the time.)

Some months later I went to a rock show at my friend’s co-op house. On the porch I did some random semi drunken blabbing with a person matching name/description/neighborhood of the 2nd.

I fooled around and sent anonymous prankish emails to her email I already had from before. She was mystified who and which party I was talking about (I had actually been talking to someone totally different), which messed with her mind. This resulted in a date.

Impression: super arrogant and made fun of my clothes. (Yes a wannabe poet, who worked at a fashion store.) A cute asshole who was fun to talk to in an adversarial way. Got a goodnight kiss and never heard from her again.

Until, a few months later I went to a party at lawyer girl’s place. Wannabe poet was there and tried to get me into conversation. I snubbed her intensely.

Some weeks later my friends at the co-op organized another party/rock show. I drew them a poster: http://www.patsanimation.com/Portfolio/Illustration-comics/sea2sm.jpg

The night we put posters around, poet girl showed up at co-op dinner. I gave out more intense snubbery. She put up snub-shields and complimented my hips and poster, which resulted in another date.

We went to dinner and she made fun of my clothes. We ended up in her bed where I talked about my “thing” for lawyer girl, which resulted in me going home and things fizzling after a few more ambivalent meetings (probably for the best.)

Lesson: ability to draw posters seems to bring certain benefits, but it takes other abilities to use those, I guess? hope Jason’s book serves him well