COJO IOWA PIMPIN' PART ONE 3-3-04
It was a memorable and romantic day, Valentine's Day. Jen and I showered each other with gifts, then went out to a nice Thai restaurant for a cozy intimate meal, not my absolute favorite Thai place-Holy Basil in Manhattan, but a quaint one in Ronkonkoma, Long Island that we discovered and adopted as our own when we used to live there. They make good sushi as well, so we had a mixed culture dinner.
Jen gave me movie tickets as one of my gifts so after dinner we saw that Adam Sandler movie 50 First Dates. Some theaters have this Directors Chair Screenings thing, where you reserve seats in advance online or at the theater. You know exactly where you will sit, and if you come in a large group you can all still sit together cause your block of seats is reserved. If you are on a date, I recommend this, you will be sure to have a good seat, and the seats are plush with an arm in between that goes up "so you can snuggle" (their words).
About the movie, Is it just me or is Drew Barrymore getting hotter, and Adam Sandler getting unfunny-ER? It's a cute date movie, totally unrealistic, but enjoyable. Rob Schneider is about as convincing as a Hawaiian as JLo is as an Italian. All in all, a fantastic Valentine's Day.
Sunday the 15th I had to do some last minute work on three, 3 panel strips for Maxim UK that were all due on Feb 19th. Two "How To's " and one about a rocker's true life story. Later, after I got enough done, I relaxed with Jen, and then started taking a few notes on what I would talk about at the lecture in IOWA. I lay in bed, thinking, and before I knew it I heard an engine idling outside. It was the van hired to pick me up. I was supposed to leave at 5:30AM on the 16th. From Medford it would shuttle me to Laguardia Airport where I would wait a few hours for my plane to arrive, then fly from NY to Chicago, from there another layover of a few hours, then get on a smaller plane to Des Moines, Iowa. The van pickup guy arrived at 4:50AM. With zero sleep, I grabbed my bags, kissed a half asleep Jen good-bye and hopped in.
The driver was right out of Rocky and Bullwinkle but worse. He had the thickest Russian accent you've ever heard. Thicker than Boris' accent, because in cartoons you still can make out what the character is saying.
He kept trying to initiate a conversation with me, but I couldn't understand him (and believe me, I tried. Hopeful this dispels the rumor that I'm Russian). I mainly just nodded and commented on the weather, which was mind numbingly cold. He asked me if I was going to Miami, that I understood. "No, I was down there a few months ago, it's great down there. Actually I'm going to IOWA, they supposedly have 12 inches of snow on the ground already, so I dressed warm." I said. I don't think Russian guy understood what I was saying, so I just settled back. He kept telling me to sleep. I think it was so he could smoke while driving without having to worry if I minded or not.
He had to make three stops. The first was at 7-11 where I bought coffee while Russian guy smoked a cigarette. We were crazy early and had time to kill before getting to the first people he had to pick up.
We arrived at the first residence damn early. After a few minutes, a 30 something couple that was going to Colorado to Ski ambled out heavily bundled up, with all of their bags and gear being carried by the guy's parents. After loading their Skis into the back the driver then asked them if they were going to Miami. Asking me was logical, but this was just retarded.
Lastly, we picked up a girl my age. A little cute coat less and freezing nurse who was headed down to Cancun, not Miami (he asked again) with some other nurse friends to get blotto and stay that way for a week and a half before jetting back up to NY to spend another depressing year caring for the children's sick ward in NYU Medical Center. Of course my curiosity got the better of me, and I learned some of the horror stories of the worst things people have experienced on in the all night shift in the terminal wing. Ah, makes me love my job that much more. I'm reminded of a conversation I had a month or so ago with Jen that went something like this:
Jen: WHATCHA DOING?
Cojo: JUST TRYING TO MAKE AUSTIN POWERS LOOK LIKE HE'S DRINKING URINE.
Jen: -laughs-
Cojo: THAT'S MY JOB
Jen: YOU HAVE A SILLY JOB.
Cojo: BEST JOB IN THE WORLD!
Well, as for the nurse, I didn't catch her name. I'll be sure to look out for her in next year's Girls Gone Wild Cancun video.
I was so tired at the airport, but stayed awake till I got on the plane, where I crashed out till Chicago. I got off the plane and wandered around. In the airport I went to the bathroom, bought a pretzel and walked to the gate where I would board my next flight. I reached for my ticket. It was not in my pocket. I walked back into the bathroom and nada. Now I'm freaking. I walked over to a check-in attendant customer service type person and tell her my situation. She asked me my name and where I was going. Of course I was already in their system dummy-on-me. She printed out a new set of tickets. The whole transaction took less than 30 seconds. They gots-their-shit-together over there, UNITED AIRLINES COJO SALUTES YOU!
When I arrived in IOWA, I was happy to find that they didn't loose my luggage (as they had when I came back from Miami months ago First class, and this time I was traveling coach/business, so hurrah!). There I met Jason McArtor (check out his website www.mcartordesign.com ) , the representative for THE ART DIRECTORS ASSOCIATION OF IOWA (ADAI) whom then drove me to my hotel, stopping only once at Subway for Subs and Pop. (Pop is what they call Soda. Seriously, they say it with a straight face.)
I got dropped off at this amazing 4 or 5 star hotel called The Renaissance Savery Hotel. I got checked in and entered my room. Amazing! California King sized bed, pimped out amenities, unlimited room service compliments of the ADAI. I only had an hour or two before I had to get out of there though, to give my lecture, which gave me just time enough to make a few calls, shower, shave, ya know, the basics. After I got all of the grooming and touching base over with I still had time to rehearse my opening material into a big mirror over the room's main desk. On the plane from Chicago I decided to pen a few opening jokes for my presentation. Always good to break the ice with humor, show em you aren't going to be a Stiffly Stifferson (We all know what Christopher Walken does to Stiffly Stiffersons-SNL is funny 1/100th of the time).
Mind you, I can be a funny guy, but I've never done standup, so I was pretty much doomed from the start on this one. But I was cracking myself up in the mirror, so I was building up a little self confidence about my material. I'm smiling right now just thinking about it, what the hell was I thinking?!
Well, when the time rolled around Jason picked me up out front the Savery and we shot over to Meredith Corporation's building. This is where I would be giving my lecture and showing my work. Within this building a bunch of magazines are produced, the most popular of which, being "Better Homes and Gardens." No magazines I've ever been in, I know they make a bunch of little dinky ones about quilting and doll collecting and the like. Hell, those magazines gotta come from somewhere.
Well, we got in, and got settled. I was introduced to Jared Christensen, a designer/programmer who works for Meredith. We worked out the kinks with the projector, recalibrating the monitors to make the images sharp. And damn they were sharp, it made my Fat Albert Fubu drawings look like 10 foot paintings. Seamless. The system was top notch. The presentation room was phenomenal. Sorry Milwaukee, this room was built for power presentations. At the lectern where I was to stand, a laptop would sit with a powerpoint presentation of my work, all of which I painstakingly laid out a few weeks ahead of time and e-mailed over. There were buttons all over the lectern that controlled everything in the room, you could dim or brighten different parts of the room by the push of a button, and by percentages. Audience dim 25%, push of a button, it's done. The lectern also had a button that made it rise or lower like a hydraulic transformer...Cool shiz.
So soon people started arriving. I hung with Jason, Jared, and a few other dudes as the Pizza arrived next. The food was served in this way-hip cafeteria just adjacent to the presentation room. The Art Directors Association of Iowa ordered every weird ass pizza you could think of. Hawaiian style, weird cheeses, vegetable, you name it. Shit that I didn't even know they could put on Pizza, it was all there.
I was sitting at a table and started getting approached by a bunch of guys. Teachers students, professionals. It seemed the girls were shy or something. Let me give you a breakdown of the crowd. 80% of the crowd were girls, 95 percent of the girls were students. 18% of the crowd were guys, of which 10-20% were teachers or professionals, the rest of the guys were students. The last 2% of the crowd were parents of some of the students.
About the girls: to give you an idea of what I was looking around and seeing in this room, let me quote Jack Kerouac from ON THE ROAD: "The prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines." These are the typical, if there is a typical ideal of what a "Midwestern" girl is.
Well, I had a chat with a few design professors over a piece of white cheese pizza I only nibbled on. I wasn't hungry, I was only half there in conversation, I was mainly trying to keep all my comedy in order in my mind. The showing my work and talking about it would be no problem, I do that all the time, and am totally confident in it. But now I had given myself the task of standing in front of a hundred people, mostly very pretty, under 21, white churchgoing girls, and try to make them laugh.
The messed up part was that most of the material I had written was kinda blue. Now I'm thinking, maybe this isn't the right audience for this material. I mean, I was supposed to be speaking to a majority of professional designers, now it's students, most of which go to a Lutheran College.
I decided to write down little keywords so I could keep the jokes in order, by this time was starting to get nervous. Soon everyone started siphoning into the presentation room.
First ADAI did a little design presentation, where they awarded scholarships to the top design students at the area's colleges, then after that they ran through some notes about future speakers. Then Jason gave me a grand introduction. Followed from the audience by a brilliant round of applause...
continued in part 2
Just another day in the life of an Art Juggernaut.
-Cojo