Andrew (Andy) Pagana

Posted by AndyFan: I have contacted Google about the following and ask that you all do the same. I don’t believe it to be an impossible tweak to their system, I think Larry and Sergey can handle it. In fact I know they can. And it is not that complicated, it can be right below the existing code.

What I am talking about is an option for “NO, I DID NOT MEAN (fill in the blank)!”

In this case I am referring to that damned Andy Pagano. It’s Andy Pagano that is screwing up the works. Well, I can’t say screwing them up, we rank in Google just fine, but why do I need to see his name when I do a search to validate all the work that Andy and I have been doing to spread the good Andy word. No, not the good word of Andy Pagano. I don’t even know who he is, I refuse to look, because, NO, I DIDN’T MEAN ANDY PAGANO!

Seriously, I think this is possible. Here is why. I use gmail for one of my email accounts. Unlike Andy, who is exhaustively testing it as a new technology (expect truly reliable results around 2045), I am embarrassed to say that it took me a few years to get on board with this. Ok, call me carpetbagger, but I now use it. I remember when you had to be invited by a gmail user friend in order to get an account. How exclusive was that? (No, I was not exclusive, obviously.) But I still watched the hoorah and honor of being on gmail. It almost seemed special just to get an email from a gmail user, even if they weren’t my friend and didn’t invite me to join. Basically I remember when gmail was cooler than cool. Like the iPhone. I remember when that was cooler than cool as well. And right after my Great Auntie Rosie gets hers, and programs in the three numbers she has, and has me download bingo on it for her, then, maybe, I will get mine.

But I am on Gmail, which is why I think it will not be any trouble at all for Larry and Sergey to get this idea working. For non-gmail users here is the logic. If you use gmail through a browser, as I sometimes do when I am off in New York being hunted by owls, you have a decently user-friendly interface for retrieving and sending emails. But, as many of my fellow gmail friends barely notice (no, most of them weren’t cool when it was cool to be cool), it’s what happens in the interface that is amazing. It reads your mind.

Ok, it doesn’t read your mind, but it does read your email. I am sorry, gmail. I will give you an example. For the sake of protecting identities I will change my friend George’s name to “Henry” and will not use his real address. “Henry” sent me an email this morning. “Henry” lives in Maine, I mean Mississippi. Being the out and about kind of guy that I am (otherwise I wouldn’t have had a four day absence from Andypagana.com this week) I was using the browser throughout the day. Tonight, I opened my computer and still had the browser and email from “Henry” open. On the right hand side was a short list of “Sponsored Links” that listed not only the google maps link for 3200 Pleasant Street, Port Gibson, Mississipi for where “Henry” lives and is what he has written in his signature, but also six links for the greater Port Gibson area, including book shops, a B&B and a photographer. Ok, there were two anomalies, I am trying to figure out why it listed ads, I mean “Sponsored Links,” for brake shops in Florida and North Carolina, but at least they were all below the Mason Dixon Line. (Does George live below the Mason Dixon Line?) I think it has to do with the words disk and pad in my reply to “Henry” (people, “Henry” is George and he lives in Maine, please keep up).

So, if you are paying attention to this post, Google reads your gmail. And then posts links for you based on what is in your gmail. Yes, Andy and I do fear we are headed towards a Minority Report world. And while the technology is scary, we really hope Tom Cruise doesn’t pop up in our house and think that we are going to do anything bad (most likely we already did it). Actually, we hope Tom Cruise doesn’t pop up anywhere, but that is another post for another time. Google reads your gmail and sends you personal ads catered to your content. Yes, they read them all. ALL I SAID. They have the right, you agreed to this when you clicked accept after not reading the Terms when you signed up for Gmail. I would tell you what paragraph it is in, but I too did not read the terms.

That said, if they can read your email, why can’t they read you computer files. I have no reference to Andy Pagano on my computer anywhere, because I don’t know the schmuck. Google would know that I absolutely did not mean Andy Pagano since I typed in Andy Pagana and have many, many, many references to him on my computer. There should be an option to click, “NO, I DID NOT MEAN ANDY PAGANO, NEVER WILL” on the search result page. In fact, I think it should be first. Let’s do away with some of the formalities. While they are at it, they should just make it that “ANDY PAGANA” shows up for any Andy search, why should Pagano get all the attention? What has he done? As far as I am concerned there is only one Andy (as Google would notice if they scanned my computer) and his name is Andy Pagana, so there should only be one listing on Google for Andy, and that should be Andypagana.com

Now, by the freak chance that there are other Andys out there (don’t ever mention that I said this to Andy) then Google could just add their standard option “DID YOU MEAN ANDY PAGANA?” for ALL Andy searches. And since you are in there already tweaking around the Google database, why not just make this a default setting for all searches. If someone Googles “unicorns,” the search result would start out with “DID YOU MEAN ANDY PAGANA?” Because you never know who is looking for Andy Pagana and we want the whole world to find him. Easily. Andy likes it easy. It’s just his style.

Posted by AndyFan: Yes, I have another life. I won’t talk about it here, because, well, this is Andy’s life and what’s that got to do with my other life? I will just say that I have been consumed with all sorts of who knows what in this other life. Basically things that keep me away form Andy, which makes Andy sad. And when he gets sad, Serious Andy sends out Angry Andy and the two of them conspire to confuse me and my other life. In the end I feel bad because I have been ignoring Andy, and ignoring Andy is always bad. I repeat, ignoring Andy is very, very bad.

I often wonder if this is like a comic book, and I am Andy’s sidekick. So, while I know his private Bruce Wayne to your public Andy Pagana, I don’t know who the hell I am in this other life, because who remembers Robin’s name when he isn’t Robin. Is it Dick something? Really, who came up that name. They don’t have enough working against them with the whole tights thing that they couldn’t go with a more manly name. My apologies to all Richards out there, but don’t shorten it and expect to not get a chuckle. But then I remember that Andy is more Superman than Batman. So I can’t even be old Alfred, waiting on him hand and foot. Superman doesn’t have an accomplice, I mean assistant. Though I do believe that Andy would let me be his Alfred and forgo the rules of Superman if I waited on him hand and foot.

I have so far not been able to not talk about my other life in this post about my other life and how I shouldn’t talk about it here. But there is good Andy reason for this. I found kryptonite. Yesterday I was in my local Hall of Books and was looking through a free donation bin. A little girl walked up and handed me a book, about OWLS!! I am not quite sure what to do. At first I thought Andy was just being paranoid, we’ll cover Paranoid Andy later, this is already longer than it needs to be. But then I thought, if I open the book, it may be like Pandora’s Bo(x)ok and the owls would then be after me. So I ditched the book under the back seat of my car and forgot about it. I didn’t even tell Andy.

So in my other life, the one I shouldn’t talk about here, I went on a business trip today and traveled to New York City. I was getting ready to leave when I looked out and was stunned. Amidst all the AC vents and odd workings of the buildings was an owl. An effing OWL! It was the same color as the rusty vents, hiding there watching me as I went about my morning. It wasn’t real, and I didn’t have a camera to prove this sighting, but I swear this happened. The owl was real, just not alive. In case that wasn’t clear. It was a warning, to who I don’t know. There was a squirrel ten feet away and a pigeon on the owl’s head. I don’t know what else the owl would scare away, except Andy, who I oddly have not heard from at all today. Please tell me someone has spoken to Andy today.

At least with things that I can post without pissing off a lot of people I probably shouldn’t. So… I will take a deep breath and let it go…

Yesterday I walked into the studio in which I spend my days and I see AN OWL embedded into the cover of a leather bound journal on one of my business partner’s desk. I freaked. OWL! He tried to explain to me his wife gave it to him for good luck. “GOOD LUCK”??? Are you effing kidding me?? I tried to tell him about the perils of the owl and how they are hunting me, haunting me, taunting me, but to no avail. He looked at me as if I was a paranoid delusional and went bak to work. I feared the rest of the day. Today… it still stares at me. I can feel its eyes. Staring. From the other room. Peering through the walls. Learning my secrets. My weaknesses. It’s like that damn heart in that Edgar Allen Poe movie… what’s it called? The Raven?

Posted by AndyFan: So, in typical fashion, I talk to Andrew tonight and get a request (read, demand) to put something new and entertaining up for our readers (read, you gotta post something!!), all two of them (come on people, we have to get this thing spreading or our work is simply for our own amusement. Oh, wait, I think that may just be fine. Go back to your business). The problem is that though sometimes it just spews (I didn’t think that was the correct spelling until I looked it up, gotta loves widgets!) from my pores, other times it takes a fine finessing to get Andy onto paper. Or screen. In words. On blog. In other words it’s hard to describe him. I am not Andy, so Andy doesn’t just come to me like it does him. For him it is natural, overflowing, topped to the brim with, well, that is what this blog is about. Getting to the core of what is overflowing from Andy Pagana. There is so much, so many layers. Like an oni…, no I won’t use that one, bad cliché. We hate bad clichés. But what do we share, what do we say. Andy can tell you about his day, or an event, or a moment, something that lets you in on the private workings of a mad genius (I know he gets mad, and he says he is a genius, and I believe everything that Andy says. I wouldn’t be AndyFan if I didn’t. It doesn’t take much more than that people). I have the honor of telling you about the man, or more importantly the myth, since the myth is always more entertaining. Like, what do we call the path that he leaves behind him everywhere he travels? And he has traveled. No seriously, he just went to the Hoover Dam. Why, I am not sure. I mean, it’s a dam. It holds back water. It sounds like something he would ignore in history class, if he hadn’t found a way to get out of history class to go paint on canvases stretched by other people (you know who you are other people). Speaking of other people, I take back what I said earlier, go find other people to tell them about this blog. This is serious business (you gotta read that one if you missed it). Andy is off doing things (read, eating dinner and ignoring paparazzi) that need to be covered by the likes of TMZ. Has anyone seen that show? I mean come on other people. Ok, this post not included, but we are so much more entertaining than that drivel (that took a few trys to get right). Have we seriously gotten to the level that we watch a bunch of bitter Hollywood, never-had-a-chance, rejects sit around dishing gossip about Hollywood, what-have-they-really-done-for-it, success stories. Most of the time it wouldn’t even be entertaining if an animated baby told the story. You know the ones, like that E-Trade commercial. Where the kid is at the computer telling the lay people how to trade like the pros and then throws up. I hate those things. But people really think it’s amazing how they do that. You know what’s amazing, Andy. That is why he has a blog. And Andy has a problem with babys stealing his thunder, so leave them off of TV. A cute baby is like Paris Hilton being rich. Neither one did anything for it, why put them on TV just because they are? They didn’t earn it. Let them grow up and come up with their own ideas. Both of them.

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.