EDMO! (Central)

In which I do a trivial thing, then complain about it

So I’ve just gone back to the dentist again after several years in hiding, this is a new dentist, I stopped going when I found out that my old dentist was being investigated by Fair Go. But this guy is supposed to be good, despite having his surgery in Avondale, and the fact that it is in Avondale, although distasteful, means he’s cheaper than he would be in a nicer suburb. I can say these disparaging things because I used to live in Avondale for years, and irreproachable oral hygiene has never been a cornerstone of its reputation. Giant spiders and high school stabbings, on the other hand . . .
Anyway. I go in today to get a small filling in a molar, and to have my chipped front tooth fixed from where it got hit with a bottle (I lived in Avondale for years). My memories of being at the dentist are vague, just about repressed by time and that default revulsion we all had drilled (sorry) into us by cruel, bitter school dental nurses. Do they still have school dental nurses? I wonder. They probably got rid of them along with Bibles In Schools, that great institution that convinced me, at an early age, that God lived in the Carrington Mental Hospital. I must look into that. After a short wait in which I try to figure out what the waiting room smells like, I get shown into the surgery. Mouthwash and fear, I eventually concluded. The dental assistant is very young and very pretty, dark hair and cute glasses, I immediately lose the power of speech.
‘Hi there,’ she says.
‘Mm,’ I say.
‘If you just want to take a seat?’ She gestures at the dentist’s chair.
‘Mm,’ I say, and blush. I remind myself that this is Avondale, she’s almost certainly got three kids at home and a nasty scar from where her Escort-driving boyfriend pushed her down some stairs.
The dentist comes in and introduces himself, makes small talk about my job, I lie to make it sound more like a proper job. He looks like the sort of man your dad would work with, they wouldn’t be friends exactly but they’d be colleagues and get on well in that capacity and not really do things together on the weekends. I’ll bet you anything he doesn’t live in Avondale.
‘So, it’s a filling and that chipped front tooth today, is that right?’ he asks. For a second I panic and convince myself that he doesn’t know, he’s genuinely asking, that if I say the wrong thing he’ll just go ahead and do terrible things to my teeth.
‘Mm,’ I say.
‘Good. Let’s get started then, shall we?’
They cover my mouth with a sheet of purple rubber with my teeth poking through it so that water and bits of filling don’t go down my throat, it seals my mouth airtight so I have to breathe through my nose. Have you ever seen that bit in The Matrix where Agent Smith makes Neo’s mouth go all sort of goopy and closed? It was like a cross between that and a gimp mask. I try not to think of bondage paraphernalia while the pretty dental assistant is leaning over me.
Actually while we’re on the topic, such as it is, let me relate a text message I got sent a few months ago from a friend while she was walking to work:
Haha i just walkd past ths sex shop and theres a ‘sexy’ metallic blue corset thng with ‘9 out of 10 dentists recommend oral sex’ embroiderd on it. Is it meant 2 b a sexy dentist costume? I dnt undastand!
Neither do I, even with such a cute girl hovering on my peripheral vision. Her job as a dental assistant has got to be the least sexy thing about her, out of the few things I know about her. And her boss, although very congenial and professionally capable, has all the wild romantic charm of Jim Bolger. Is it the fact that they spend so much time with their hands in people’s mouths, is that the appeal? Ugh. I don’t see it. I refuse to believe that ‘dentist’ is a legitimate fetish.
Dentistry is basically like masonry, but on a smaller scale. He sorts out my front tooth which seems to involve a brief moment of applying goop, then lots of time buffing and scraping the goop into a tooth shape. There’s a machine that looks like a tiny sander/polisher thing, and I swear to God at one point it sounded like he asked his assistant to pass him the sandblaster.
It doesn’t actually take that long and pretty soon it’s done. As I leave I smile at the dental assistant, but part of my face is still numb so it comes out of more of a sneer. This is not at all what I wanted. Also I may have dribbled a tiny bit. I go out to the waiting room, cursing my life and wiping my mouth.
After the dentist I have a visit to the oral hygienist in the next room who is quietly polite in a way that only middle-aged Asian women can be. The oral hygienist’s job is to clean and polish my teeth and as far as I can tell the bulk of this involves filling my mouth up with water and stabbing me in the gums. Then she flosses my teeth which she needs to put both her fists in my mouth for. Until I’m old enough to need regular prostate checks this is as violated as I will be by a professional. Is this what the dentist fetishists are into? I haven’t checked the prices but surely a real prostitute would be a lot cheaper. After she’s finished she compliments me on my oral cleanliness but suggests I use mouthwash for the next few days as my gums are a little inflamed at the front, I resist pointing out that they were absolutely fine before she began stabbing them. She says that she looks forward to seeing me again in six months and I laugh quietly at her optimism.
When I’m all set to go I ask the receptionist if there’s any forms I need to fill out.
‘What sort of forms?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know, I thought maybe I’d need to sign something?’
‘Um, no. Like what?’
‘I dunno, whenever I go to the doctor or the dentist or whatever I just assume there’ll be forms to fill out.’
‘No, there’s no forms.’ She looks at me like I’m an idiot.
‘Oh.’ I check surreptitiously to see if I’m dribbling. Then I go home.

What did you think would happen? That there’d be some dental-related disaster, all my teeth would explode, I’d accidentally swallow a drillbit? Or maybe the dental work would go fine, my teeth would be perfect, looking great and able to chew through plywood, but then I’d go outside and the dental assistant’s boyfriend would be waiting for me, somehow he’d seen me leer at her and so then he punches me in the face, ironically knocking out the front tooth I’d just had fixed? Then again maybe it’ll be a happy ending, the said dental assistant would declare her profound love for me and we’d gallop off into the sunset? Come on people, she’s seen my teeth. None of these things happened. As it was I went home and had a sandwich, and it felt a bit weird chewing but not problematically so. It’ll probably be fine by dinner.

Notes from Armageddon Expo 2009

A Stormtrooper takes a photo of another Stormtrooper, then gets someone to take a photo of both of them together. Maybe they weren’t Stormtroopers, they might have been some other variation, Sand Troopers or whatever. A father who looks my age takes a picture on his phone of his son’s facepaint.
We get there before ten, by the time we leave at midday the line stretches a good fifty metres from the doors to the carpark. I’m very glad not to be suffering from the night before. Inside my first response is that I’ve never felt more tanned or cleaner shaven than I do right now. But that’s not fair.

I recognise more of the cosplay than I’m really comfortable with. I’m stoked to see two Poison Ivys and a Harley Quinn just cos they’re not Japanese. In the signing tent you can meet the guy who does the English dub voice for Goku and even get his autograph, if you could see any point.

As usual NZ comics are given a raw deal, forced to look more and more like American or Japanese homogeneity. Or maybe that’s where NZ comics are steering themselves, I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting old. Anyway. The few people doing interesting things do it with enthusiasm and humour that is infectious and heart-warming, but even they talk about moving to online comics.
Give it five years and there won’t be any comics here at all apart from Manga. And even they’ll only be here to explain the DVDs and merchandise

There’s a clear visual overlap between otaku and heavy metal – cloaks, make-up, elaborate beards. Some sort of ideological overlap as well? Not sure, I try and avoid metal and the people who think that way

Several people pushing round babies in strollers. Why are you bringing your baby? What possible enjoyment is it going to get out of it?
I need to stop referring to babies as ‘it’s

It’s like a microcosm of the real world, all condensed into a big warehouse – competition, commercialism, sexuality, racial diversity (although due to space limitations this is represented pretty much entirely by whites & Asians)
On the topic of sex – not wanting to have a go at anyone, I’m all for cute girls in little skirts – but since when is slutty-goth an anime? What exactly are you cosplaying? You know who you are. There’s a fine line between awesome and fail when you’re dressing like a cartoon character, and most people stay just on the right side of it.

I’m not sure which side the guy dressed as Dora The Explorer falls on

I understand and support the argument for video games as valid escapism but – Rock Band? Guitar Hero? What are you escaping from? Your life’s gaping hole where playing the guitar should be? You could fill that with actually playing the guitar. Even worse is DJ Hero, which is a new thing, where you have a turntable thing and pretend you’re making music. Oh no sorry, that’s what actual DJs do. With DJ Hero you can pretend to pretend to be making music.

Speaking of wasting your life – if you’re old enough to have grey hair and teenage children, you’re too old to be entering in the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament. Those teenage children of yours would be so embarrassed of you, if I thought for a moment that they existed. There weren’t many girls playing Yu-Gi-Oh, or rather there weren’t any, not that I could see, and that comes as no great surprise. Any social group that has both sexes in it doesn’t need such an elaborate, convoluted card game.
There’s a constant dull roar, default noise which is at all pitches and therefore sounds like nothing, you don’t really notice it, you just gradually become headachy and grim.

It sounds like I’m being mean and I’m not, or I don’t mean to be. It wasn’t till we were leaving and I was hungry and noise-fucked and the busted ligament in my foot was starting to ache that I began thinking snide comments to myself about the overweight Caucasian Sailor Moons, and I attribute it mainly to low blood sugar.

So what do you get for your eighteen (eighteen, Jesus) dollars, apart from the right to visit stalls and spend more money? Well, that should be enough for you, shouldn’t it? That and watching other people play pretend guitars over the thump and irrelevant waffle of Mai fm. Well what you get is a community, if you want it – for three days of the year you get to come together with like-minded individuals from all over Auckland, and further abroad, to spend time socialising and bonding face to face rather than over internet forums and Xbox Live. To see that yes, the disembodied voices that say the same things as you do belong to real people with real flesh bodies, real eyes and skin and smells. For these three days you get to come together in a place that specifically caters to you because nowhere else does, you know that, you know your place and your people aren’t found in high schools or office buildings or trendy bars or if they are they’re rare, isolated, few and far between. And more than just catering to you this place belongs to you, here and nowhere else are you the majority, with all the pride and confidence that comes along with that role.
These people looked so happy, so comfortable with who they are and what they do, and how often do you see that anywhere? Pick any person out of the crowd and you can see her as the quiet girl at high school who eats her lunch in the library and is awkward and shy speaking in front of the class and yet here she is, bubbly and radiant in a bunny costume or green spandex or dressed like an ninja that’s obscure but terribly important to her. And once this weekend’s over she’ll go back to being that shy awkward girl until next Armageddon, or until this particular demographic or group of demographics shifts over from being not cool to cool, blinks and is subtly amalgamated into the mainstream. It’s on its way, thanks to video games and the internet and New Zealand’s ever-increasing fear of letting our kids go out in the sun.

Oh and if the guy in the Starscream outfit doesn’t win the costume competition I’ll be outraged.

This is a collaborative sketch I did with thisisrabbit ages and ages ago and forgot all about until I found it over on his site. I thought I’d nick it and put it up here.
thisisrabbit is a cartoonist and street artist who’s been lurking around Auckland for years doing some very fun stuff. His work’s well worth checking out on his site or his flickr account, the address to which I’ve forgotten but it’s probably on his website somewhere.

So the other day (and by that I mean any time in the last ten years) I was reading an interview with Alan Moore about writing Watchmen and the process he and Dave Gibbons went through creating it. I was convinced it had been his interview in Writers on Comics Scriptwriting, until I looked it up today and it turns out that actually he’s not interviewed in there at all. So now I have no idea where I was reading it, and thus can’t quote it or provide references.

Anyway in this interview he makes the argument that if a comic’s writer and artist are both doing their jobs properly you shouldn’t be aware of them. If you notice the art in a comic, even if you’re impressed by it, then that’s taking your attention away from the story, and telling the story, immersing the reader in it should be a creator’s primary aim. Same with the writing – if you’re aware of how well the story is written then that’s taking you out of the story itself. Showing off is counter-productive. Moore expressed it much better than that, but as I say I can’t remember where so I can’t find it for you. I do remember that he uses an example of the page layout in Watchmen, which is based uniformly on a nine panel grid. This means the layout slips into the background, becomes ignored, lets the story take prominence. Or something.

Then today quite by chance I found a post on Coilhouse.net talking about Jack Vance, a fantasy writer who predated Tolkien with a book of short stories published in 1950. The article starts with a quote from Vance:

A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone’s written the story. He’s supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment.

Exactly. This essentially amounts to an argument against post-modernism, and I think I’m fine with that. Just have a look at Kill Bill, a collection of showy techniques and clever tricks that, when you get down to it, has fuck-all of a plot and what little is there is trite. Tarantino has always been a show-off, but whereas Pulp Fiction was look-at-me-use-my-amazing-directorial-skills-to-tell-this-story, Kill Bill was very much look-at-me-use-my-amazing-directorial-skills. If you have something to say (and there’s plenty of artists out there in all genres who, if they stopped to think about it, whould have to admit they don’t) then surely you want your work to express your point as strongly and as clearly as possible. And in some cases doing something tricky may help (Memento going backwards, say), but if it doesn’t add anything to the story then really, you’re just doing it to be cool. And the best artists aren’t cool; they’re invisible.

These haven’t been photoshopped at all, this is just how they came out of the camera. Wellington & Christchurch a few years ago.