around a year ago someone asked me to draw danny devito as a kitty, spawning this terrible terrible image
time passes. a lot of time passes. then two months ago i get an email from a group of people called FPOAFM doing a pottery installation event, and theyre going around gathering artwork from artists to put onto cups and dishes to sell for an event, in exchange for a few pieces with the artists work on them
and i said SURE you can use some of my stuff … . but in exchange.… i want something with kitty devito on it. i dont care if you put it on anything else, but one item that i get in return has to have this cat man abomination
i give them my address and a few images and months pass. i forget about it. THEN literally two days ago i get this big package on my doorstep, and INSIDE OF IT…. is the holy grail
in addition to twoplates is this incredible porcelain cup with the fabled kitty devito on it, proudly grinning his terrible cat grin
the thing that pushes this cup into the Far Reaches of Awful isnt just the image stamped on it. its that it is one hundred percent made from a mold of a styrofoam cup
its finger pressees on the rim, those little lines going around
and all this jargon on the bottom, right under the glaze. the amount of effort that went into reproducing this styofoam cup is incredible and i can stick it in my shelf and drink soup from it at four in the morning with danny devitos smug cat face looking out over everything i do, forever. follow your dreams
i swear iguanamouth is one of the most powerful people on this website
I kept wondering if I should post this but fuck it, I’ve read enough about him to know Stan would have loved it.
The story goes that there was a magazine that wanted to do a story about Marvel Comics, and the reporter showed up with a photographer to shoot some images to use in the article. Someone cracked a joke about doing nude photos, and one of the other artists couldn’t even finish jokingly refusing before Stan Lee was taking his pants off.
He was very saddened that Marvel put the kibosh on the magazine using this photo of him naked with a giant-sized Batman Vs. Hulk comic preserving his dignity. I like to think this is how he’d like to be remembered. Especially the sunglasses.
Stan Lee was a marketing genius, a showman, a storyteller, he was flashy and he made a lot of really…strange business decisions, he made one VERY strange musical album, and he worked for Marvel Comics in one incarnation or another for over seventy-five years. He held some opinions I wouldn’t agree with, but he did a lot of good, too.
He never thought of comics as respectable but he did think of them as important and that’s how I think of him: a flashy weirdo, but an important flashy weirdo.
He chose Stan Lee as an alter ego, like many of his creations. He was saving his name, Stanley Lieber, for the career as a novelist he never quite got around to having, and in the end he said he was proud of Stan Lee.
If you’re new to actions with an arrest risk and you don’t have experienced protestors with you, there’s stuff you can find online about having a legal team, writing the name of a lawyer on your body, saying NOTHING to the cops except the name of your lawyer, etc. That’s all good advice.
But let me give you a bit of advice that is just as essential as all that:
If one of your comrades gets arrested, and you know they can be held for 6, 9, 12 hours, depending on where you are, you get a group of people together and you wait outside the police station.
You may be tired, you may be stressed, it may be freezing, you may need to take turns, but you take whoever can still physically and mentally bear it and you go to that police station and you wait for your comrade. You can spend the time taking care of each other, drinking hot drinks, doing whatever gets you through, but you wait.
And when your comrade gets out, you make sure they do not walk home alone in the dark thinking about the fucked up experience they just had, you make sure there’s a big fucking crowd of their comrades there to greet them with hugs and hot drinks and a cigarette if they smoke.
And whether the arrested comrade that just got out is happy or sad or pissed off, you take that for what it is and give that space and you support that. And you get them a hot meal and you hang out with them and you offer to let them stay at your place or you stay with them so they don’t have to spend that night alone with their thoughts.
You do this every damn time, regardless of whether you really like that comrade and regardless of how you feel about the thing your comrade got arrested for, regardless of how often they’ve been arrested. Because you never know how shitty their experience is going to be in there this time.
Trust me. This is absolutely essential. Once you’ve been arrested and have felt the difference between walking home alone or having your friends waiting for you, you’ll understand.
Be good comrades
I can’t stress how important this is. When my father and I were arrested in Seattle some years back for agitating for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, we were greeted outside the jail by the event’s organisers. They cheered us, had cokes and munchies for us. They drove us to our car and, during the drive, asked if we wanted to stay the night in Seattle with one of the organisers, they filled us in on what had happened after our arrests, they asked about and listened intently to what we experienced from arrest to release. They did so much so well that when another call went out for potential arrestees, we were amongst the first to raise our proverbial hands.
Read the post. Re-read the post. Remember it. And, when the chance comes, do it.
When I was arrested at a Black Lives Matter protest a few years ago, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice were doing Jail Support when I was finally let out of One Police Plaza at around 6am.
They had gotten a klezmer band to stand along the hill you have to go up to leave the jail, and as I walked to where the volunteer lawyers were waiting (they were there to make sure all 200+ people who were arrested that night would be represented at their later hearings. They also were surrounded by volunteers who had food, phone chargers, directions to all the nearby subway stops, and one of them let me borrow her phone to call my mom when I got frustrated with how slowly my phone was charging) the band played music, cheered and applauded.
Honestly? That band playing klezmer for me as I left jail, cheering me on and making me laugh… it’s a memory I really treasure.
It’s also one of my mother’s favorite stories. Before I told her about that band, she got so upset and agitated whenever anything reminded her of my arrest. She’d freak out, cry, start fussing over me, and so forth. After I told her about the klezmer band though? It became something she’d tell her friends about, over and over again, laughing each time. She stopped calling me to beg me not to go and protest every time she knew a big one was happening, and instead would call to make a joke about how if I want to listen to klezmer she has some CDs I can borrow.
When I think about that night, rather than any of the many many terrible things that happened from the moment the cops grabbed me onward, the first thing I remember is the klezmer, and how it made me laugh, and the popcorn someone gave me as I gave the lawyers my name and info, and the kindness of strangers.
After the dehumanization of even a few hours in police custody, those volunteers made me smile, and gave the night a new fun and funny angle to be remembered from. I actually laugh when I think about that night, thanks to them.
Jail Support is a beyond vital part of protesting. It really really is.
Chartreuse Abstruseness Export 