Andrew (Andy) Pagana

See, if you are reading the Andyfan posts regularly, and you should be, you may have heard mention of how when I used to paint I would not stretch my own canvases. I want to be clear, here. It’s not that I wouldn’t, it’s that I would rather have someone else do it for me. (I would never buy pre stretched canvas in those days.) And there were so many willing participants to do this for me, to keep me quiet or stop me from making a scene I suspect. I hope so, because that was my intention. It was a way of amusing myself. (Nobody amuses me like me, especially now that ‘The General’ has transcended.) And I do like to amuse myself. And I am most amused when… well.. lets just say, my Tom Sawyer comes out.

And my best work comes out, my best ‘me’ comes out, when I am amused.

Posted by AndyFan: These words are uttered daily by Andy. Possibly even hourly. For any number of reasons at any given point of the day. It could be anywhere. It could be about andything and everything. And I always feel a tremor in the universe when they are (not sure if it feels his pain or is pained by his feelings, he has to work that out with the universe).

Years ago when Andy was working on his independent television show, The Nonsense Box, he would call and complain several times a day about the lack of help he was receiving from his friends and associates. “Don’t they know who I am?” he would ask, leaving off the “going to be one day.”

Actually most often he would call up and say, “Well, no one is helping me, so I have to do it myself.” He said this with, well, we’ll call it a certain je ne sais quoi, and I am not sure who he was referring to, but I have a feeling I was no one. Not sure, but here is why I have that feeling. Today, after a few days away I got a frantic call from our fearless leader. (Gotta love the scheduled posting of WordPress, I could set this blog up to post for the next year and Andy would never know I was gone, oh balls, now he will.)

“Where have you been?” I tried to cut it off at the pass by asking his question for him. I had two messages on my cell phone that were not from Happy Andy. Yes, there is an Angry Andy. He sits next to Serious Andy at the table. Sometimes they confuse themselves for the other, but more often than not it’s Angry Andy talking for Serious Andy.

“What? You are the hardest person to get a hold of. What were you doing all day (yesterday)?” he quipped. (Is that the right word? I like the word quipped. Andy seems like the kind of person who would quip. Now that I write it a few more times I don’t even know if it is a word. Do I have time to look it up, nah, you get the meaning by this point.)

So Andy quipped. Well, long story a little longer (ok lets get real, this isn’t that long yet, or you don’t know me by now). So, he quipped, by now I am not sure about what, I am kind of confused. Too many hats and this one seems to be on most these days. It was something about how I am not around and blah, blah, blah. He really shouldn’t yell at me when I am in the middle of writing his blog.

Apparently he couldn’t find me yesterday, so he didn’t get any help, but I think you all saw that coming. He yelled at me, I said sorry. He gave me some work to do on his latest post (it’s kind of like the canvases for those keeping track). I spent some time doing the work and decided this would make for some interesting reading. Not sure if it is, but I am amused, and sometimes that all that counts, just ask Andy.

It would’ve been the big 34. How I miss how much you made me laugh. Now only I can amuse myself as much as you amused me. With you gone, yes, I am one of a kind.

I know… sounds strange, right? But it’s not. It’s true. The Aztecs and Mayan considered the owl a symbol of death and DESTRUCTION. And look what happened to them. In Kenya they are harbingers of bad luck, ill heath and death. Even Henry David Thoreau summarized how evil Owls are in ‘Walden’ (1854) “I fear that there are owls. Let us stop their idiocy and maniacal harming of men. They make sounds only suited to swamps and the twilight of Hell… they represent the dark twilight and villianous thoughts which all (women) have”.

In fact, I am so convinced of this evilness of owls that I actually researched it. Yes… spent precious time from  my life looking up things on the interweb (very complicated… they should develop a better system) because I knew I would not be the only one who would know this ‘owl truth’. And, in fact, the first place I checked confirmed it. 

In ‘Charlie’s book of Dream Symbols and Meanings’ it says “throughout the ages the owl has been associated with death and SPIRITUAL DARKNESS”. Let me repeat that… “spiritual darkness”. Oh, and DEATH!!! 

That’s enough for me. Okay, maybe not enough. I’m compelled to look elswhere… this is starting to become fun… don’t move. I mean it. This is important.

Okay. Im back. Check this out. “In China, a very smart people I might add, the owl is considered EVIL. See , I knew it. In fact, they say if you look into the eyes of an Owl you will get disease by the next day.

Damn Owls. They should all be destroyed. If I wasn’t such a strong individual I am sure they would have destroyed me. They certainly have tried. It is only now, this date, that I am able to start ridding myself of the poison and disease and curses the owls have cursed me with.

Now, I grew up thinking Owls were pretty cool and smart, like the owl in the tootsie roll commercial (selfish prick now that I think about it) or the one in Winnie the Pooh. What was his name? Owlly the Owl? Yet I should’ve known the truth when ‘Hoots the Owl’ became a regular on ‘Sesame Street’ and single handedly set a chain reaction for the utter destruction that that show. (Don’t get me started on Sesame Street)

Andyway, the first evil owl instance that I can remember, which is recorded in one of my many volumes of handwritten journals, takes place on July 19th 2006. A day now that I will never forget. Keep that in mind folks… JULY 19TH 2006. I want to know what the else happened on that day. I know it’s the 200th day of the year. There are 165 days left of the year.(159 shopping days till Christmas). But I am sure this is not random… it’s as if that date inherently contains some sort of ultimate good vs. evil significance, as if it were the temporal junction point for the entire space/time/good/evil continuum.

It was just after 11:00 pm. (Eastern time). I was driving home from filming at a friend’s house when all of a sudden a huge bird soared from the dark trees and landed smack dead center of the road. I also was driving smack dab in the center of the road. (I like room when I drive). So I had to stop short, and I probably stopped about a foot away from the damn bird. (Why didn’t I just keep going?)

It was a giant white owl. Giant! And at the time emotions ran through me the likes I never felt before. From my journal: “It slowly turned to me and stared at me with it’s big black eyes. Just pierced me. Looked right through me.” 

I was stunned by it’s beauty (it’s a trick) and the power of its eyes. (Don’t look!! Don’t look!!) I think I stopped breathing. Then it calmly turned it’s head and flew away.

I admit I thought it was awesome.  Truly awesome. But over the years that followed owls stalked me, haunted me, laughed at me, tried to get me. Truly tried to destroy me. 

They were everywhere. Sitting in trees watching me in Simi Valley, plastic ones perched in trees of houses I walked by, ceramic ones in stores I frequented. Eventually they creeped into my drawings and doodles. One ‘real’ owl even followed me on a horse ride through the Hollywood hills last year. Followed me and hooted and howled. 

I even found a brass owl statue in my grandfather’s basement after he passed. Damned brass owl, perched on a shelf, piercing though me. Warning me… it’s coming.

It’s not until now that I realize how they were out to get me. But now I’m aware. And Im way too powerful. Way too strong. I would drop kick an owl if I saw one today. But I thought I needed to warn you. Its my duty to warn the world.

No need to thank me.

Posted by AndyFan: So, many people have asked just why in fact it took Andy so long to get on board with the whole internet craze. Let’s just call it a good healthy dose of hopeful skepticism. I will explain.

While Andy is a progressive user of new medium and technology, he is waiting his own final verdict of the world wide web to make sure this internet thing is going to stick. So far he is not convinced. He is not quite sure that the whole social networking scene is what the people want. Andy knows what the people want, and he is not sure this is it. He thinks it may be a conspiracy of the man or men, since you need more than one man to have a conspiracy, to dissuade the good people from more rare and useful activities such as sitting and the more unique, lying about. Andy likes to lie about. For no good reason. He just does and that is that.

But I drift. He has been burned too many times in the past to just hop on with some new fad and watch it fade as others pass him by with the newest most hip thing to do. (An aside, what the hell is a tweat or a twitter. Is it something from Bambi? Because Andy has not seen Bambi. So stop twittering around him until he does.) He just wants to make sure that the internet falls in line with his dreams of a better tomorrow. For him of course. I think we have covered the fact that he is not concerned with you or me, at least not in terms of the internet and this blog. This is about him and his world domination.

Case in point: The Computer. Andy is very mad that he ever invested in such a device. He was told that it would make his life easier. That it would make him more productive. That he would have more time to create. In fact it has done quite the opposite on all accounts. Prior to the computer Andy had no trouble splicing film, shooting photos on film, hell, he even painted on canvas (no, he didn’t stretch it himself, Andy is not archaic, just old fashioned). Now he feels as though every time he shuts his computer down he will find some new glitch to consume the next day when he decides to start it back up. I tell him it is his Computer Karma, he rolls his eyes, which only pisses off his Computer Karma even more. Wouldn’t you get mad if you were flicking someone on the nose all day long and they just refused to believe you even existed. That would piss me off. I would flick harder, so would Andy. So why he doesn’t believe me is beyond me. It makes perfect sense. But andyway, because of his experience with the computer Andy has come to believe that anything invented since 1950 has not been thoroughly tested and needs further research, so now he is reluctant to try new things. Victrola, great invention. DVD player, seriously what is with all the menus and why can’t he just push play the moment he pops in the DVD? Really why? No one reads the FBI warning, even when they have to wait for it.

A further example. Andy has penned several volumes of material that he is quite satisfied with in his books and journals. Unfortunately many people ask for it to be typed up. Though the typewriter was a perfectly sufficient device, someone decided it lacked editing capabilities, thus rendering it obsolete. Andy is very protective and does not just let andyone read what he has written. So far he has found few he can trust. So he types it himself. I am sorry, word processes it. For lack of a better explanation than I can give, I present the following. Andy emailed himself a short, 75 word paragraph he had written once and upon retrieving it found that it was 3791 pages of the following:

:¢∞ñ2ôù2–ÒM„„†âele–ÊU∑(Wy~’„‘ O±´Æ’]}¢’ˇÔÌõ¶7¯‡Õ€ÄéŒD»∆;™Ùfi”õÍÿ”)8é2&y¢X”—hyãGÇo=øZ4â¯wß

What does this all mean? No really, Andy can’t remember what he wrote, what does this mean?

As I began to list all the things Andy has found fault in in his lifetime, suddenly I found a common link, they all have a computer somewhere in there makeup. The automobile: if it wasn’t perfect to begin with, why add a non-perfect computer to it to fix it? Doesn’t that seem like you are just asking for more trouble? Seriously people, consult Andy before you do andything, he knows of what he speaks. Digital photography. Have you ever erased an entire roll of film? Not likely, its really hard to get those metal ends off the film canister. By the time you get a good grip on them you realize, hey, I am going to ruin this roll of film before I get into the darkroom. The telephone. What was wrong with a land line in your home? Why do we need to call each other all the time just to find out that we aren’t really doing anything important? Makes us feel less important to just point it out all the time. At least when we were home you knew exactly where we were and most likely that we weren’t doing anything important, or why would we have answered. The modem. Seriously, if the phone/cable company can’t get someone who knows what they are doing when we call, well, Andy cancelled his internet service months ago. Really, I don’t know why you are even reading all this. Andy is more than likely to realize this is all run by a computer sooner or later. I can’t promise this will last forever. Get all the Andy while you can.

I swear some idiot expert once told me if you drive over a fire hydrant it wouldn’t explode a geyser of water into the air. Well, they were wrong, and here is the proof. Or maybe this is just something that happens to fire hydrants in Hollywood.

Posted by AndyFan: AndyFan would like to apologize for his lack of editing in Andys’ absence. It is true that there were several misspellings over the weekend and that I was infact told when his return would be, but lost track of the calendar (It must have been all that chocolate). I have revised the pages (the magic of blogdum) and made good on the good name of all things Andy here at Andypagana.com. I would also like to kill the rumor that I started that Andy is pregnant. Boys can not get pregnant. We all learned that in 5th grade health class. Or was it 4th. It doesn’t matter, Andy is a boy and he can not get pregnant. Boys can not get pregnant. They just can’t. Don’t ask why if you don’t know. We can’t explain it here. We barely maintain a PG-13 rating as it is. We would lose too many subscribers if we were forced to an R rating.

I would like to thank AndyFan for continuing to post while I was on my peregrination. He (or She), in their playful way, continues to enlighten me about myself in a great many ways, despite the poor spelling. (And despite the fact they they clearly do not keep a careful watch of my movements since they didn’t know accurately when I would be returning). I apologize for their ignorance, laziness and lack of research. They are trying. (Very trying).

Andywho, onto my journey. I traveled to glittering Las Vegas for a few days of… well… let’s just let that just stay in Vegas… and had a few days of peace, relaxation, and gambling at every Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade  slot machine I could find. (There are A LOT of them). $6,000 later (I won’t say if that’s poorer or richer) I traveled onward, but not before checking out the famous Boulder Damn (or the Hoover Dam for you vacuum cleaner hero worshippers), where I met one of my many fans. (See above) I not only afforded her the pleasure of a picture with me, but I combined my art of showing off my belly in that photo as well. (see photo, again.) (No, really, look again) For those of you that are unaware, (you are not TRUE fans) I often expose my Matthew Kelly (as the cockneys would say) in front of historical landmarks or events for the purpose of a photo. Call it… Art. (Why not?) There will be more in this series as I scour my archives for your pleasure. In the meantime, enjoy the first of this series from 2009.

Posted by AndyFan: So Andy returns today. But you should already know that. We have spoken about this already. Stop reading what I have to say and go tell Andy how much you missed him. I hate to be so demanding, but we all have to do our part here. I am doing mine. You go do yours.