Basically, the purpose of this page is to chronicle all the unlikely incidents that led to my becoming a member of Lucid Comics. Some things may not connect immediately, but will make complete sense later on. I may eventually turn this into a short story for an anthology or something.

Last day of school 1986: As a last day of school project for my third grade class, the teacher taught us to draw Mickey Mouse, straight up Lee J. Ames style, with all the circles. Mine was the only one that came close. All of a sudden, everybody thought I was cool, even the kids who had beaten me up just that morning. I never got used to that kind of attention.

Summer 1988: I was enrolled in a program allowing me to spend the summer on the Texas Tech campus taking courses since I was such a nerdy geekball. I was even gawkier then the other dorks there, if you can imagine that. The actual summer is worthy of it's own story that I'm not gonna go into here, but basically the important part is: Texas Tech, and drawings. This was the first time I ever made money off of art, selling drawings of weird monsters for 10 cents a piece, which was something I continued to do all through junior high. I also first discovered punk rock music here, though it was too much for me at the time, being that my parents were still involved with that cult (another story for later).

Summer 1991: My parents divorce. We move from Briggs, Texas (pop. 25, no kidding) to Copperas Cove, Texas (pop. 25,000). I get my first kiss and lose my virginity within a year (at the ripe old age of 15, how pathetic is that).Side note: I actually wore a long black trenchcoat all through high school, and hung around with a bunch of doofuses who also wore black trenchcoats 4 years before Columbine. Pathetic. I blame Jonny Blaze from Ghost Rider, and Gambit from X-Men. Ok, I'm already getting sidetracked. BTW: At this point in my life, what I wanted most to be was a video game programmer.

Spring 1995: Nearly out of high school and I never even chose a college. At the VERY last minute, I send an application to Texas Tech, remembering what it was like when I was 10, and was approved. (If you want even more proof of how much of a dork I was at this point: 1) I went to every band banquet. 2) Hearing of an anecdote of a high school kid getting Metallica to play at his school by sending them a graduation invitation, I atually sent graduation invitations to a) and b) Metallica and Steven King, who both sent me form letters and c) Richard Garriot, aka Lord British, from Origin Systems, who actually sent me a very sweet letter that I still have) BTW: My brother's favorite band at this point was Sponge; remember that for later.

Summer '95: Somehow, I balanced taking 34 credit hours in one summer semester at the local community college (something I wouldn't reccommend to my worst enemy), playing in a garage band with the future DJ K Phoenyxx Dan Oliver (does that name sound familiar?), and a relationship with my high school sweetheart. I have tapes of that band. Trust me, you don't want to hear them.

September '95: Here's where things get a little complicated, keep in mind the sheer unlikeliness of all these events...Okay, I'm a month into my courses, and I'm this totally gothed out geekball. So I decide I want to dye my hair black, you know, go that final step. So when I'm walking to the store to pick up some black hair dye I run into...the band Sponge, or at least the singer and lead guitarist, going into the same Sally's Beauty Supply. Apparently I was the first person to recognize them since they got there, so I got to hang out with them for the afternoon, which would make another good story that is completely irrellevant to my main story. At their show that night, I wound up hooking up with DJ Sailor Moon from the Tech college station, or actually her best friend, but since I started dating her best friend, for that whole month I got the priveleges of being one of Sailor Moon's +1's for backstage passes and stuff. One of those nights, for the pre-show, we stopped into a club (which turned out to be the legendary Einstein's) where I was introduced to Mary, who was the first person I ever saw with a tongue barbell. Remember her for a second, because nothing relevant happens until...

Halloween'95. Sailor Moon's friend dumped me the week before (because, apparently to me now, she just wanted to have sex with me, and I was too clueless to notice; that's okay, I just realized that she was my age now. Crazy.) so no more backstage rompings, and I needed something to do for Halloween. So I went to the Halloween show at Einstein's (which turned out to be one of the most relevant career moves towards what I'm doing now). Maybe I'm just getting misty eyed and old, but I can't remember anytime recently when there was so many beautiful people crammed into one tiny place. There was 8 bands playing that night, but I only remember one. It was a singer, a keyboardist, and an accordion player, and the singer set head on fire for the climax of a song called "Cowboy Nazis" or something like that. But the improtant thing is, that was the night I met Rod (who would later be the original author of Bethy Gloom) and Beth, along with a bunch of other funny sexy cats that I'm way too tempted to try and remember. Basically we had a lot of fun together. You would not believe how awesome Beth was at imitating Tori Amos. The reason that I wanted you to remember Mary is because she introduced me to Rod and Beth, plus her, Beth and Leigh all wound up with a crush on me at different times. Lots of interesting stuff happened, but nothing relevant to the story until...

Dec'95: I move back to Cove. I was on financial probation at Tech (funny thing is, I probably would have passed all my courses if I had opted for Honors Calculus instead of regular Calculus, but I don't have time to explain that either). I also convince my high school sweetheart to move down here too, and then nothing relevant happens until...

Spring'96: Rod and Beth come down to visit me. Me and Rod compared sketchbooks and stuff. Funny thing is, when they came down, they had no idea where I lived, so they pulled up to the high school to ask around. It just so happens that the first guy that they found that knew of me was Jeb Stewart, who I eventually started a band with that summer, and who drew the border around the back cover of issue 4.

Summer '96: DEVIANCE forms; it was basically, me, my brother, my girlfriend, Jeb, and whoever else happened to be around. We switched intruments practically every song. It was the most successful of all the garage bands I was ever in. By the time we were playing shows, I was sure that this was what I was meant to be doing with my life. And it was so much FUN. We were partying all the time. I still have like 16 hours of 4-track tape from this time period, of varying quality. Playing music, drinking beer, dropping acid, doing grafitti, and shrooming took up all my time outside of school (Oh, yeah, I was going to Art school at the time, just in case you didn't know.)

Summer'97: Everything goes wrong. Some horrible stuff happened to the lady who's house we were practicing in. The band breaks up. Me and my girlfriend break up. Jeb moves to Austin with his satanist girlfriend. My brother literally dissappears off the face of the earth. Too much, too much. And the summer had just started.

June 21, 1997: My friend Brad picked up tickets for me to go with him to Rockfest on my birthday, but my stepsister decided to get married that same weekend, so I'm stuck at the house watching our dogs. My ex-gf calls me that night, and it cheers me up a little, but mostly I'm incredibly bored and depressed. That night, however, I sketch up what eventually became pages 1, 3,4, and 5 of Why I'm Not An Artist.

July 25, 1997: Last and worst hardcore drug experince. Spent time in the hospital and in jail, to give you an idea what it was like. The worst part, though, was that I got flashbacks and panic attacks for like a whole year after the incident.

October 1997: Spent a week at Zendik farm when they were still in Texas. Trying to figure out what I was going to do with myself. Was still going to college, but kinda running in circles. So on a whim...

December 1997: Semester was over and I decided to go to Lubbock for some reason, don't even ask me why. I stayed for a week with my friend Heather and her husband John. On a whim, at the end of that week I called Beth's old number, and managed to get a hold of her. So I spent the week with her in this punk rock community household. Well it turns out that at the time, Beth and Rod were working on a little book called "Bethy Gloom" and they were hanging out with these cats that were meeting once a month at Wendy's and calling themselves Lucid Press comics. And the rest is history...

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