Chewing on Tinfoil

CHEWING ON TINFOIL

Contemplation of the past is tinfoil on teeth, foil on fillings, yet I am drawn to these painful metals like magnets. -Fragment found scrawled in my own drunken hand on the endpapers of a book of Victorian ghost stones, the very day I completed this book.

CHEWING ON TINFOIL BYJOEOLLMANN

INSOMNIAC PRESS

Copyright © 2002 by Joe Ollmann All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from CANCOPY (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E1E5. Edited by Jan Barbieri Designed and illustrated by Joe Ollmann

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data Ollmann, Joe, 1966Chewing on tinfoil

ISBN 1-894663-15-2 I. Title. PS8579.L55C43 2002

C813'.6

C2002-900744-5

PR9199.4.044C43 2002

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program. Printed and bound in Canada Insomniac Press 192 Spadina Avenue, Suite 403 Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5T 2C2 www.insomniacpress.com

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, SHOUT-OUTS, HOLLERS, ETC. I want to thank all of the following fine people: My brother and sisters, Share, Mare, Sue, Tom and Patsy and all their fine spouses, Luc, Mike, Brian, Frankie and Ginny. I had fun growing up with you guys and will you please drive me to the store? My nieces and nephews, especially Michael and Julie, who are the oldest, and let's face it, probably my favourites. My high school art teacher, Ms. Beausejour, who warned me, "Stay away from the girls if you want to be an artist." I didn't, and only achieved the rank of cartoonist. Brother James Thornton, who offered me spiritual guidance and let me smoke in his office. Joanna Chapman, of Chapman Books, who has always championed my work, and by God, people listened. Wade Hemsworth at the Hamilton Spectator, who always fought for my comic strip that everyone hated and taught me a great deal about grammar. Ian Danzig and Atsuko Kobisagawa at Exclaim!, who signed me up to do a strip for them at a very low point in my life. Thanks. Wayne MacPhail at Contents Under Pressure, who always remembered me when he had a big ol' cheque for a new project. Jim Coates at Kwik Kopy in Oakville, who has always been as generous as a Medici prince in supporting my work. My crew at work, Anthony, Patti, Eric and Joyce, who when we are not hating one another, always make me strive to be a better designer. Andy Edmondson, for all his technical gumdom on so many past projects and for all the socialist debates. Your skull ring is coming soon! The G-Club, Patti and Mark, for all the pints and talk of contemporary Polish composers, "Heigh ho, don't head the hounds!" Mark Furokawa at Dr. Disc Records for all your support and encouragemen over the years. You rock, my friend, in the best sense of the word. Bryan Prince at Bryan Prince Books, for your support and the politest of angry rants about the failures of urban planning. Gianmarco Segato and Christian Desroches, for all the times we sat around 'til three and couldn't believe how many empty wine bottles were left in our wake. Diane, in spite of everything, thanks for all the coffee and encouragement over the years. Jim Munroe, for all the drunken sprees in Toronto and for letting me crash at your pad. Roles have reversed, and you are like a father figure to me now, Jimmy, and 1 want to talk abou my allowance. Also, a holler to his lady love Susan: "It's only 4:30, let's go to a boozecan!" I concur. All the fine publications who printed my work over the years and quite often sent me cheques. All the nice people over the years who bothered their asses to write letters to me. Your kind words were like oxygen in the vacuum that creating art often is. The Lion's Head Pub, for the obvious. Steve's Open Kitchen, The Valley Charcoal Pit and Russell Williams, for all the eggs and homefries. Without you, I am nothing. Teacher's scotch whiskey, which I lived on almost exclusively for nearly two years. The five pillars of strength that have, overtime, made me the scrawny muscleman that I am today: coffee, smoke, scotch, beer and fried potatoes. Mordecai Richler, Edward Gorey and Charles Schulz-what does a man do when all his heroes are dead? Moo-cow, Zooey, and most of all, Tootie, fine cats all of them in their own right. Everyone who I forced to read these stories. Liz Ollmann, for helping with the colours on the cover because I am colour blind. And Meaghan Ollmann because I mentioned her sister in the previous sentence. Mike O'Connor at Insomniac, for publishing this thing. Jan Barbieri, for choosing me to this project and for editing it. Thanks for all your useful suggestions and encouragement, you made this book way better than it would have been. Also, thanks to both Jan Barbieri and Taien Ng-Chan, who both suggested to me the title "Chewing on Moil" instead of "Chewing on Foil,"which obviously sucked. All the people who never stopped being the renaissance-people they were as kids and continue to create art. You people make the world better, albeit in a small, ultimately useless, non-utilitarian way. But still, better. I am probably forgetting a great many people who will notice that on top of slighting them, I furthermore did remember to thank my cats. I apologize in advance and thank them for whatever it was they did that I was ungrateful enough to forget. And you, Scarecrow, I think I'll miss you most of all...

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DEDICATION A three-way dedication: For my mom and dad, Nell and Joe Ollmann, the finest people I know in the world, who taught me to work hard, do the right thing and never wear tight trousers. Sorry about all the swears. I love you two. For my daughters, Meaghan and Elizabeth Ollmann, who often sat with me at the kitchen table while I cursed voluminously and worked on this book, and who may have more than once wished that I was more like the dad on Full House. I love you girls more than you can imagine. For my love, Taien Ng-Chan, who came along at just the right time and made everything okay for me. I love you, baby. You may all now begin to fight over which third of the book is dedicated to you...

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GIANT

STRAWBERRY FUNLAND

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GOD

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ItfiUU

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LIKE SOMETHING AKIN TO THE SISTINE CHAPEL, BUT WITH COWS...

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DEATHWEARS INEXPENSIVELOAFERS

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QQ KffilrH

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NOTES, TRIVIA, EPHEMERA, BORING ANECDOTES, WHATEVER... GIANT STRAWBERRY FUNLAND I often start a drawing, against conventional artistic wisdom, with a nose and build the figures and scene around that single central image. The same thing happens with a story sometimes; a long, complicated story can be based around a single image or one good sentence. I was driving my daughter and her friend home from a cottage we had rented and I was full of chip wagon fries. We had the windows open and one of her famous mix tapes in the deck, and I was full of summery good will. We drove past a Mennonite barn-raising and suddenly this phrase occurred to me: "Giant Strawberry Funland." "Write this down," I said, tossing her my wallet, which she did on the back of an ATM withdrawal slip. I carried that paper around in my wallet for two years and then wrote and drew this story in ten feverish days around Christmas. Remarkably, my bank statement showed a balance of $2,000 in the height of summer holidays. Nothing autobiographical in this one except that I did grow up on a farm where, incidentally, many of our animals happened to be named after Hollywood hookers, including ponies named Star and Ginger, and alarmingly, a goat named Trixie. GOD Just a mildly amusing story with a naked, fat, floating God. Jan Barbieri, my editor, on reading this script, surmised that it was an allegory on the awakening of conscience. "Sure," I said. Ha ha, God's naked and fat. I would like to apologize for the wavery quality of the line work in the last few pages of this story. The fault lies with Curry's Art Supply store for passing off absorbent paper towels as Mayfair Double-thick Cover Illustration Board, and my own laziness for not redrawing them.

CAKE Originally written and drawn for a literary magazine out of Toronto for their fetish issue. This was as kinky as I could manage, a man who bakes pee into cakes. Sexy stuff indeed. The fetish issue was never published and I was never paid. Sigh. No one, I think, will be rushing to eat any cake that I bake after reading this one. LIKE SOMETHING AKIN TO THE SIST1NE CHAPEL, BUT WITH COWS... My attempt at writing a romantic story turned inevitably dark and tragic. I worried that it might be too heavy-handed and earnest, but I think black people still deal with this kind of shit on an all too regular basis, so why pretend otherwise? FIRE SALE I always wanted to write a story involving the rare and used book world that I have always hovered about the edges of and the used bookstores and the book men that own them. Angry, sarcastic, mercenary and knowledgeable old sinners mostly, they just might consider stabbing an old woman with a steak knife to obtain a book and then quite possibly refuse to sell it. They have nothing but disdain for anyone doesn't know and love books, and I have always wanted to be one of them.

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DEATH WEARS INEXPENSIVE LOAFERS One night, jogging in a graveyard, I saw a pale, gaunt man in a futuristic David Byrne Talking Heads suit, loitering near the exit He was well-dressed, all in black, with flourwhite hair and skin. And I thought, is this Death? Have I already had a coronary on my second lap, and he's waiting for my spirit to stop running? When I got closer, however, I noticed his cheap, faux-leather shoes, and Death, where was your sting then? I was also, at this time thinking about (ha ha) a gangsta-themed coffee shop, and so, combined the two. FISH STORY Another, possibly overly earnest story, but this time based on true events-not the sexual harassment part, but the fish. We had fish like the Tiger Barbs in the story and one of them was always biting the others. Well, one day, his bullying so pissed me off that I scooped him out of the tank and put him into a smaller "jail tank," where he promptly turned belly-up and died in a spasmic fish heart attack, and I was the jailer turned executioner. My kids were not impressed even though he deserved it. FIREFLY Jogging in the graveyard again one night, I was surprised to see fireflies flitting about between the graves, something I hadn't seen since I was a kid. I hadn't thought about them, but if you had asked me, I would have assumed they were extinct. I was glad they weren't, and their presence in a graveyard suggested this story. C.O.P.S. This is straightforward autobiography. Taken straight from my journal and that is exactly how it went down. Stranger than fiction, indeed.

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Joe Ollmann is a cartoonist based in Hamilton, Ontario. For the past four years he has had a strip in Exclaim!, Canada's national entertainment tabloid where he has been allowed to fill the printed page with absolutely filthy words. Inexplicably, his much despised, overly wordy, decidedly un-Garfield strip Job's Palace ran in The Hamilton Spectator for five years before someone was wise enough to pull that particular gravy train from its grease-stained tracks. The strip also appeared on America Online for some time because, Lord knows, what the average Internet user wants are overly verbose, wry observations on the foibles of the human condition. For the past twelve years Joe has irregularly published Wag!, a small-format series of books full of precious poetry, comics and typographical errors. His animation has appeared on the Comedy Network and on the Canadian Comedy Awards. Joe has been a box maker, a truck driver, a barn painter, a greenskeeper, and for several suicidal years, he was a machinist. He sold socks from the trunk of a car once for approximately seven minutes but presently works as a graphic designer. Joe has been known to dabble in the gentlemanly art of ventriloquism.

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