8 things

I just got tagged! Twice! If this was a prayer chain email for some kid in Memphis with cancer, you both would be marked as spammers! Since this is a meme where I talk about me, s'all good in the hood, G.

First things first:

- I have to post these rules before I start.
- I have to tell you eight facts about myself.
- I have to tag eight people to participate.
- I'm supposed to leave a comment telling them they're tagged and to read my blog.
- And the tagees need to write their own blog post, telling us eight things and posting the rules.

Let's do it to it..

"What up, Spiggs."

I have all kinds of stupid nick names. Spiggs. Spiggity. Spence-diggity. Splinter. Speenis. Ol' Dirty Spencer. ODS. Spencedizzle my nizzle. Spencer Con Carne. The Redheaded Stepchild. Howdy Doody. Spencer Carnage is a play off of my last name which I jokingly gave to myself one night when I was skateboarding with my friend Tony. 8 years later, I use it to blog. About comic books.

"Hi. We're Cain Marko from Simi Valley and this song is called Stab Their Eyes."

I have played in a string of really bad bands with equally bad names taken from various pop culture references. Band names I have used are "The Decepticons", "Eeyore", "Cain Marko" and now "Secret Wars." One of those bands covered Body Count's Cop Killer. If I ever get around to starting a sissy rock band, it'll probably be called something like "Westchester, NY."

"Do you work for Fed Ex? Cuz you got a nice package."

I was onced "pranked" on an episode of Girls Behaving Badly by a girlfriend who sent me on my day off to pick up some tickets for the Weakerthans from a friend of hers. While waiting outside a store this "friend" worked at, an old lady with a walker dropped her purse, which I immediately picked up for her. When I bent over to pick it up, she started hitting on me, commenting on my butt and "package." Her grand daughter(played by Shondrella Avery, known to the world at large as LaFawnduh from Napoleon Dynamite) than came up and started berating me about the conversation her Grannie and I just had. Still holding the purse, I just kept saying "I'm just trying to give her back her purse." At that point it was obvious that the "grandmother" was a younger woman wearing a wig, however I was completely baffled as to what was really going on and could only repeat the phrase "I'm just trying to give her back her purse" over and over Seconds later, cameras came out from every where and everyone said 'you've been pranked!' After that, they had me reshoot my reactions, complete with improv dancing and everything. The girlfriend and I both got paid 50 bucks each. I have never seen the episode myself but my friend did and he said I was awesome on it. It was probably one of the most surreal experiences I have ever had.

"Fail!"

I didn't graduated high school on time. Why? Because I ditched! A whole lot! What was I doing when I was ditching? Skateboarding, drinking, and playing the Wildstorm CCG game. In the 12th grade. True story. In a panic, I approached the two classes that I was really messing up in and asked how I could pass. They said to show up for the finals and pass and you're okay. I was going to, however I slept in the day of the final because I went to see my absolute favorite band, AVAIL, play 2 hours away the night before. And you wonder why I like edgey Marvel comics over my dad's DC drivel? Its because I'm all effed up!

"That's supposed to look like Spider-man?"

I'm semi-artistically inclined. My whole life, I've been able to draw. Not very well. Had I nurtured the skill at an early age, I'd could of been the next Rob Liefeld, selling Lee Jeans to your ass right now. Instead, I wasted most of my life getting drunk and reading comics, picking up the pencil for 1 to 2 hours every six months. I have taken a few art classes at the community college level, but could never muster up the drive to do anything outside of the assigned work. Last summer, I told myself that I am going to have a comic out within the next five years with my name on it, one way or another. Putting my free time that I have at work to good use, I have burned through a few books on penciling and inking by Klaus Jansen and Dick Giordiano, and the semi-decent collection of Drawing Tips from various pros that Wizard puts out. Right now, I'm working through Joe Kubert's Superheroes: Joe Kubert's Wonderful World Of Comics. I understand that one has to draw from real life, which I do on occassion, these books really just help me to learn basic rules as well as different ways of solving problems such as "how am I gonna draw this nose?" To show my newfound dedication to drawing, I even set up an art table in my room to be used at night and on weekends. It currently functions as a makeshift table, drowning in clothes and comic books. At this point, the best picture I have managed to draw is one of the Swamp Thing hanging out with a cat, which was inspired by a post from Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin about that exact same thing.

"Cheaters never prosper"

I once plagarized the introduction to the section devoted to Greek Gods in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Legends & Lore handbook for a paper on mythology in high school. Needless to say, I got an A.

"Sorry, dude can't do it. Gotta mandate with Tony tonight."

When we were 19 or 20, my best friend Tony and I would go on what we called "mandates." That's were two guy friends go out together, doing things that you would normally do on a date. Except, we were single and sore at girls so it was just us hanging out with each other. It all started when Tony, a film student, asked me to go to some art house theater to watch Akira Kurosawa's Ran with him. Usually we would also go to some kind of fancy vegetarian restaurant that we had never been to as well. This was the kind of invitation that was open to the rest of our friends, but most of them being home bodies, decided not to go. After a few times of asking everyone, we gave up on them and it turned into a Tony-And-Spencer thing. Much of LA was discovered by these mandates that we went on. Another variation on the mandate is the masterdate; that's when you go to dinner and see a movie all by yourself. You should try it sometimes. Its practically the only way to insure that you don't miss the previews.

"You mean the semester started last week??"

I once showed up a week late for a semester at my local community college, a fact that was discovered only when I asked the teacher in front of the whole class about when were going to get the syllabus. And by "once" I mean yesterday.

With that out of the way, I now tag Jon Hex, Carla, Pachoob, Earth-2 Leigh, Brian Hughes, David Brothers, Chad, and Gorjus!