#55 "A Day at the Beach" In Color. April 24, 2013

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I wasn't allowed to watch "Jaws" when I was a kid. In fact, I never even saw the full movie until last year. I thought it was okay, kind of like two movies in one, with the first one being about a shark killing people and the second about people hunting for said shark. Nowadays, Lil' Stevie Spielberg would've broke it up into two (or three) movies and it would probably still be a summer blockbuster. I give it less than 10 years until they remake it. My uncle Jigger had the novel and I read the first couple chapters this past summer. It's pretty bad, although with the subject matter, it's no mystery how the movie became the blueprint for all future blockbusters.
I spent a lot of time on the beach as a kid, and so it's no wonder my mom didn't want me watching that movie. It would have probably scarred me a little bit and made going to the beach a chore for her, as I would be scared to go swimming because Jaws would obviously be waiting in the water and ready to eat me. I knew about the movie, of course. It was mythological to all kids my age, and kids would talk about it with the same reverence as King Kong and Godzilla. In the early 80's it was as famous as any previous movie monster had ever been (I know that it came out in 1975, but I wasn't born yet and by the time I was able to discuss these important topics in elementary school, it was almost 10 years old). But the thing that probably made Jaws scarier than the Wolfman or Dracula was that Jaws was real, sort of. Granted, Jaws was a caricature of the Great White shark, but (s)he was based on a real live living thing that actually is a threat to humans sometimes. People are still scared of sharks, and every summer, one of them attacks someone, chomping off an arm or nibbling on legs. This fact makes Jaws a timeless movie monster that will always be scary.
In this picture, however, the real monsters seem to be the people. I mean, there isn't even a shark pictured; or is there? Yes, there is a giant squid present but that is more out of the 1954 classic "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." That movie, I was allowed to see. I was allowed to watch a lot of Disney movies and those classic ones are sometimes pretty crazy. I don't remember much about the movie, but the squid attacking the Nautilus will always be with me. It might even be where this squid came from, although now that I think of it, there have been a couple of squids in my life that have been influential. The first, and scariest is obviously the one from the aforementioned movie, the second would have to be from the cover of They Might Be Giants album, Apollo 18. This album came out in 1992, a couple years after I was introduced to the band and listened to them almost solely until high school. The squid on the front cover is attacking a Sperm Whale, not unlike in the Museum of Natural History in New York City. Above the aquatic battle scene is the Apollo 18 moon landing craft. I always liked the bringing together of space and sea. I still do, as I find the two places eerily similar and sea creatures to be incredibly alien. In fact, more people have been to the moon than have been to the very bottom of the ocean. I think that is why people are so afraid of the ocean and the creatures that live within the ocean. The ocean is vast and seemingly endless, and then when you think of all of the things beneath the surface, it is a bit unnerving. The same can be said about space; the size is almost too big to even imagine and the lack of knowledge of what exists out there is fodder for a million more movies.
However, the guy at the end of the food chain seems to be the surfer dude. This seems unlikely, since most surfers seem to be pretty laid back and have a respect for all of the creatures of the ocean. This is not always the case, and there have been numerous accounts of surfer dudes being pretty awful, but the prevailing stereotype is that they are not actually monsters. Maybe this guy was in Swayze's surfer gang in the movie "Point Break" and he was the last remaining dude after Swayze caught the 100 year wave. Either that, or the guy really loves sushi style calamari. Regardless, the whole scene could be a pretty bizarre scene in some extremely surreal summer blockbuster.

#38 "Poseidon Adventure" In color!

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I never worked at a place like Cafe Loup before. I always call it a big, dysfunctional family because it really is. Someone on the interwebs once said, "You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family." This is indeed true at the old Cafe Loup, except our bosses choose the family for us. But once you are in, you can stay forever. I have been working there for 11 years now. That's right, eleven; with two ones. There have been others like me in the past that are still there in one form or another. We thought this would be a temporary position before something great happened to us and we would move on. Others like me thought that one couldn't possibly work in the same restaurant for more that a year or two. I had worked at several restaurants before the Cafe Loup, but most were seasonal places or places for me to save up a bunch of money before moving on to the next city or ski town. When I started at the Loup I intentionally didn't get close to my co-workers because I truly believed that I wasn't going to be working there for more than a year. I eventually became friends with a lot of my coworkers even when I "quit" the Loup in 2004. I moved to Cape Cod to shoot a movie and thought I was done with the Loup forever. However, after the movie was shot and it was time to edit, I realized I still needed a job, and the Loup took me back. In fact, I got all my old shifts back and it was as if nothing had happened. I did this for the next couple of years; quitting in the summer and getting rehired in the fall. I would go off on extended vacations and tours with my band and the Loup would always welcome me back with all my shifts intact. What other place on the planet would do that? Not only that, but no one ever gets fired. I have said that before here on this blog, but I have to reiterate because it is one of those things that is simply mind blowing. If you want to leave the Cafe Loup, you have to either die or quit outright. There are cases of people getting fired, for sure; but if you have been there for more than 6 months, you can expect to have a job there for the rest of your life, if you'd like. Whether you are good at your job or not; whether you are sober at work or not; whether you show up to work or not, you will always have a job at the Cafe Loup. It's an amazing place. My friend and ex-coworker Sara would freak out every 6 months and very sternly and very seriously tell me that I had to get out of there; that the Loup was a trap and I would never leave. Like the Hotel California, she said, we were all prisoners of our own device. The money is always good, so you never want to leave, and then there you are, eleven years later writing about it on the interwebs. Sara is right on the one hand; the Loup can be a Mobius strip of a place, with the same problems and solutions returning every week. However, on the other hand, it can act as a lighthouse and guide you into safe haven. I'm not saying that is what this drawing is about, but it damn well could be.