ANDY FISH

ANDY FISH is a comic book artist

Saturday, August 13, 2011

John Wesley Hardin...so mean he once shot a man just for snoring.


My wife looks suspiciously like Mrs Peel
Growing up in the 70s POP CULTURE held a lot of influence over me.  I used to stay up late with friends to watch DARK SHADOWS on Friday nights and the FLASH GORDON serials on Saturday mornings.  We'd see Godzilla and Dr. Phibes movies at the PARIS Cinema back in the days before it only showed X-Rated features.  I loved Batman with Adam West and The Avengers with Diana Rigg and Patrick MacNee.

I remember Time Life Books offering monthly subscriptions to the latest theme title-- and one of my favorite commercials was one about the old west.  Now I don't like cowboys.  Outside of The Lone Ranger and Clint Eastwood's Manco in the Sergio Leone westerns I just don't dig 'em.  But I'll never forget the line from the commercial;  "John Wesley Hardin-- so mean he once shot a man just for snoring."  I thought that was pretty cool.  A guy who would shoot you just because you snored??

It made me want to get the book and I think I was disappointed because Hardin wasn't the live action Yosemite Sam I imagined him to be.

But recently on PAWN STARS his name came up and it got me to wondering what would a book in the future say about me?  Andy Fish...so stubborn he once quit a job just 'cause they asked him to wear pants."

True story-- I was doing this teaching gig-- the kids were great- the school was great.  The faculty was supportive and amazing.  The pay was pretty good--- but there was one thing that bugged the heck out of me-- the dress code.

It wasn't that I had to wear a tie-- I didn't but I would have.  It was the no jeans policy.  You see I virtually live in jeans or shorts and that's about it.  So on the days I would teach there I would have to remember to lay out a pair of dress pants or I'd leave a pair in my trunk and then change them in the faculty lounge before class.  I hated it.

I can't do art in dress pants.  I can't.

One of the requirements of my funeral-- should I have one-- is that jeans are allowed.  No muscle shirts or baseball caps-- please, this is a funeral, show some respect-- but I think a pair of jeans with a sport jacket looks just as dressy as wearing a pair of khaki's.

My wardrobe-- and I'm not kidding here-- is all black shirts and blue jeans.  I assume people think I wear the same clothes everyday like Freddy from Scooby Doo but the reality is I just have multiples of the same clothes.  I model my style on Steve Jobs.