Is this thing on?

Joe Gallo was a friend of mine, one of few, and one of the best. He was fat and cynical like me, but smarter, funnier, and at least as good a writer.

He was the only friend I've ever had who could compete with me for being joyously gross — meaning, we shared the same appreciation for fine fart jokes and barf jokes and the details of sticky testicles and leaky ass-cracks.

Joe died suddenly and voluntarily, almost a year ago. I miss him, and can't think of a better way to remember him and say hello, Joe, than by reprinting some essays he wrote on his blog.

Let's start with his first entry...

Is this thing on?

by Joe Gallo
a/k/a Captain Hampockets

Friday, November 16, 2012

I kind of feel like King Douchebag sitting here typing things from my feeelings, but I think that it's time to start writing again.

I used to write a couple of zines. They were like blogs, but on paper. I had to write or type on an actual typewriter, cut the paragraphs out of the pages, and lay them out in an aesthetically pleasing format. Then I literally pasted in humorous or illustrative pictures onto the paper itself.

When I had an entire magazine-length amount of material, I had to use some kind of Devil's Math to figure out how to lay out the pages so that the finished product looked like a real thing, and not a slow monkey's BM diary. If you look at any magazine or catalog that's held together with staples, you'll see that the pages are actually as large as two pages, and have four page surfaces per piece of paper. Page one, on the left half, is also the last page, page 2 is also the inside back cover, etc.

Well you can see the problem already. I'm good at math, and somewhat intelligent in general, and I felt like an infant trying to paste-up the zine. And the resulting feeling of pride when it all came together was wonderful. I haven't felt that kind of real creative satisfaction in a very long time, and I think I should.

Anyway, that's what I had to do to get people to hear me back in the 1990s. Now, my last fried egg fart has a blog, with 40 readers. It's crazy how widespread everyone's opinions can reach these days. Might as well add to the deluge.

11/16/2012   
Republished by me 8/4/2024  

Captain Hampockets
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