Will Hines Dot Net

I’ll tell you what an ineffective subway ad is. The ads trying to convince you to become a NYC teacher. In particular, “Watch their eyes light up as you explain electricity.” The image of a classroom full of students ANYWHERE, paying rapt attention to me explaining electricity is so ridiculous that not only do I stop believing the ad, but I stop believing all subway ads and even in the existence of the subway itself.

The Channel 102 screening happened Monday night. This was the first one I had attended. People did not seem as excited by our latest installment of Fun Squad, but we got renewed anyway. (For the record, I think this is because we focused too much on the life of Freddy Flop, and people want more Fun Squad. That’s a silly sentence, but don’t tell me you’re not glad I’m not writing about iMacs.) This show has taken over my life. The first episode was done on a lark with minimal planning, and now three months later I’ve already had two planning sessions for upcoming episode four.

Also, Kevin is now 3 for 3 in predicting where Fun Squad will rank each month. Eerie.

Being at the screening was an exciting but harrowing experience. When my episode started playing, I shrank in my seat with a fear I haven’t felt since my very first improv show. I’m so glad I made an episode before I saw a screening, or I might have been too intimidated to ever finish one. At the same time, it’s a really fun show and I’m proud of Tony for holding it together. I sat next to “Jesus” from Jesus Christ Supercop, who was very nice and didn’t stop looking like Jesus to me for the entire screening.

My cats are learning to meow. They do it very softly and only in short bursts. And if I look at them after they do it, they run away.

Today it is raining very hard. I, as always, have lost all my umbrellas. But I had to go to Bedford Avenue (the center of the most ridiculously concentrated amount of hipster energy in NYC) to fax something. So I ran a block to my car and got soaked. Then, inside my 1987 Honda, I held up a T-shirt to the top of the windshield to block the increasingly steady leak which has sprung in my windshield, to stop a stream of water from drenching my crotch as I drove. Also, my right headlight is broken and my left turn signal was ripped out recently. Then I parked on Bedford, and stepped out into a huge puddle. It was like a Buster Keaton movie, sans hat and white face makeup.

I need to write in this more. There are like maybe, 10? 15?, people checking this thing for at the very least a mention of their own names every day. And if not that, they’re looking for some kind of seconds-long distraction from whatever work they should be doing on their computers.

Well, folks, the most publicly-discussable topic in my life of late is that I have purchased a new computer, an iMac G5. I’m unemployed and shouldn’t be buying things like this. But the last time I was unemployed, or at least underemployed, was when I lived in Cape Cod in 1995 and at that time I bought a Windows 95 machine. And then I learned computer programming on it. This time I bought an Apple so I can edit short movies. So it follows that this purchase will lead me into a career directing multi-million dollar films. I’m sure you see the logic.

My first computer ever was an Apple II plus which my Dad purchased from his office back in 1983. The Hines boys all used it for such illustrious games such as “Puck Man” and “Zork” and “Beagle Basic” and my homemade games which usually involved an amorphous blob shooting lasers at another amorphous blob after which nothing would happen. I learned how to program on that thing. The income of my last eight years is really mostly due to the presence of that beige machine in our house 22 years ago. More than college. More than the Internet. I learned BASIC on that machine, and everything else has just been more of the same. And now, I’ve returned to the Apple mothership.

That’s nostalgic and warm, except that right now I can’t get anything to work and I want to throw this sleek white piece of plastic out the window. For example, I’m trying to copy songs from my iPod onto the Mac. I’d like to format my iPod as a Mac iPod, but the new machine seems to work with it just fine as a Windows-iPod. (I’m sure this sentence just dropped my readership from 10 to about zero). Anyway, I can’t get it to work. Can’t copy the songs. Can’t get my internet connection to reliably work. So instead I opened the Mac program Garage Band and tried to write a pop song for like 15 minutes, then I played with all the different types of “beeps” I can set for error messages, then I sat on my couch and read Watchmen.

Eh, I’ll figure it out. This always happens with new computers. And Terry’s been helping me, and if I remember correctly there are always Mac evangelists floating around more than happy to help more people join the Cult of Macintosh.

The cats have not had a problem. They sit with me no matter what computer I use. They do not have a bias towards Apple or Windows.

Multi-million dollar movies. I promise.

So I met Peter Bagge, comic artist of Hate fame and Yeah! “fame” on Saturday night. At the insistence of Julie and Neil, I trucked on down to some gallery in the Lower East side. I didn’t want to go at first, since I was supposed to be writing jokes for my return to stand-up comedy later that night, but Julie and Neil got caught up in their momentum of pushing me to go, and I gave in. And I’m glad I did! Bagge was exactly how you’d hope he’d be: funny and verbal and just uncomfortable looking enough to believe that he is kind of like all the characters he writes.

I love Peter Bagge’s stuff. His comics are the only things besides Ivan Brunetti which are guaranteed to make me laugh out loud at least once per issue. They had my favorite all-time Bagge page for sale, in which Lisa plays truth or dare with uptight Seattle roommate George and demands that he let her sit on his head, which for some reason is the silliest, most hilarious thing to me. I was this close to buying it, but I’m unemployed and I couldn’t justify dropping $500 for a piece of art. Neil got obsessed with trying to talk me into it, which was undercut in a hilarious way by his continual munching on huge bread sticks they had out. But I bet I’ll go back and get that page. You heard me, practical instincts, I’m going back.

What do you say when you meet people whose work you like? I sort of never want to meet people I admire, because I never want to be a creep. But Bagge was easy to talk to. We talked about Hate, Yeah!, Murray Wilson — then I asked him what he thought of recent Love and Rockets stuff and Dan Clowes stuff. It was — well, it was like hanging out with other people I know who love all those comics, except this guy drew half of them. I ducked away when two girls approached wanting to talk to him. Not that Bagge seemed like he was there to pick up comics groupies, but I figured he’s had his share of balding geeks quoting his own stuff back at him for one lifetime.

I also met, via Julie, Charles Burns, who seemed pleasant enough. His Black Hole comics are the most compelling and creepy things since Twin Peaks was something you’d mention in a complimentary fashion. Julie had fun and met Sophie Crumb, who maybe she had met before, I forget. And I had described it earlier as Julie stalking Sophie, but it’s not really stalking, it’s just that Julie thought Sophie was cool and I like making fun of nice things.

That’s a goddamned good album.

Father Danger’s show went up last Monday.
Shooting Fun Squad #3 on Sunday.
Eliza’s show goes up Monday.

My schedule is clearing up. I feel like I need a week in North Dakota in a native American sweat lodge to decompress. Anyone have access to one of those? No? Hello?

I ordered an iMac. It’s in an interesting decision to lay out a few grand on a new toy when you’re not working. A special kind of impractical is Will Hines, he is.

I responded to the guy who thought I was the Tony Danza site, and gave him the URL of the ACTUAL Tony Danza site so he could send his message. There’s no email address at Tony Danza’s site — you have to register online to send comments, so I just gave my correspondent the URL. Today I get this:

“COULD YOU PLEASE SEND MY E-MAIL BACK SO I CAN FORWARD IT? ITS HARD FO ME TO TYPE WITH THIS DARN STROKE”

Somehow, I feel like this is going to escalate into me moving in with this guy.

So I used to publish a webzine with my brothers called Spite Magazine. In September 1997 we published a short piece making fun of Tony Danza.

An Open Letter to Tony Danza

Today I got an email written TO Tony Danza from a man who clearly thought that page was somehow an official Tony Danza web site. Why a page which contains the phrase “Dear Tony. Please stop working. You are awful” would seem to be a site for Tony Danza is beyond me. But anyway, I got this email, presented unedited (except I starred out his wife’s name):

“HI TONY JUST NOTE TO TELL HOW MUCH MY WIFE ******* ENJOY YOUR SHOWI THINK IT OULD BE NICE IF YOU HA A WHO’S THE BOSS REUNION ON YOUR SHOW YOU HAVE A GREAT ATTITUDE KEEPIT UP.I WANT TO KNOW IF YOU COOK A MEAL FOR MY WIFE I’M A HONORARY ITALIAN I HA A MASSIVE STROKE LAST YEAR AND IHAVE NO USE OF MY LEFT SIDEIT HAS BEEN REALY A ROUGH TIME FOR THE WIFE AND A BREAK FOR HER.”

Poor guy. Tony Danza, if you read my blog, please cook a meal for this guy!

It’s 4:20am.

I’m tired.

I just spent fifteen minutes picking out a CD that I could play while I took a crap, which lasted about 2 minutes. That is an inefficient way to spend time.

Good night.

My toilet’s broken. The hose from the wall that fills the tank just snapped out of its brace, spraying water all around at a high pressure. My bathroom for one moment looked like a Blondie comic strip or an episode of Perfect Strangers.

I’m a great problem solver when it comes to abstract things like computer programs or picking directors for imaginary movies I haven’t written. But as soon as a problem-solving task requires that my hands get involved, I’m a moron. My landlord told me how to turn off the water, and after I did that I sat and stared at the hose trying to figure how I could fasten it to its brace temporarily until Repair People could arrive and fix things. I stared at it for fifteen minutes. It looked like the most complicated machine I could ever imagine. How did it EVER stay fastened to the pipe? There’s water shooting through it, for God’s sake! There’s no way in nature that this hose could ever stay fastened to the pipe, I determined.

Now I need to shower and perhaps, if I may be crude, poop.

Somewhere there’s a tent of dying refugees from some war-torn country telling me to shut the fuck up.

Added a few hours later: Hey, I fixed the toilet. I’m amazed at myself. I feel like I should win the Nobel Prize for Competence. This must be what my father felt like when he figured out how to send email.