March 16th, 2009: "Dodging Several Bullets"

[Citi]

Wow what a crazy day. This is the closest we have ever come to missing an update. Sorry for the brief tardiness of the strip. Hope you can forgive us.

I had some very nice dinner guests over for some barbecue and that ran later than expected (due largely to my diarrhea of the mouth as usual). Then we had all kinds of site problems on the back end and since it was so late Chadm1n was snugly in his bed and unreachable; so fun for the whole family basically.

Doing this strip with a partner, especially a partner I've never met in person and who lives hundreds of miles away; is a little like describing someone to a police sketch artist. If you've seen those in the movies or on TV then you know there is a give and take to the description that goes back and forth until the witness says "Yeah! That's the guy; that's the guy that robbed the bank, he looks just like that."

I'm always afraid I'm beating Jason to death with too much detail; that he'll grow tired of my constant nagging and tune out my stage direction. But it's the things I leave out, the little details I assume that he'll figure out on his own that usually come back to bite me in the ass.

The hardest part of all of this is, unlike a police sketch artist, Jason isn't sitting in front of me; the give and take isn't instantaneous and it takes a bit of time before I have that "aha!" moment when I feel he's captured what I was looking to convey in the story.

Today we had two of those moments. Actually it started Firday. Initially I had asked Jason to put in a drawing of the front of Hotel Candijar in Friday's comic because it is important to the story that you see the hotel as it is now. Why will become apparent as time marches on and no I'm not handing out spoilers today. But it suffices to say that you as the reader should pay attention to what the hotel looks like (kind of like a HoJo's I think) because it is something of a plot point.

But he didn't put it in the comic and we were so short on time Friday that I couldn't review the comic before it went up for your consumption. Then I noticed that today's comic was also missing an important detail. I wanted you to clearly understand that the young man with the bad eye behind the counter was an older version of the little boy in Panel 3. Hopefully, you got that.

So I gave Jason a call and after some major whining on my part he was good enough to redraw panel one with the Hotel in attendance and he put those fluffy white clouds around little Naji in panel three to illustrate that it was a memory.

So big thanks to the eleventh hour save by our resident Picasso. If he agrees I may throw up the original panel one later on tomorrow. It has a nice interior view of the hotel.

So you got all that? Cheesy, Americanized hotel; little boy all grown up into young man with bad eye. Stay with me now. Things are about to get interesting.

I did end up going down into San Felipe to view a bit of the race. I didn't take any pictures and I'll tell you why. The level of dust around the race made it nearly impossible to breathe, let alone take any pictures of value. I did get a photo of the city, covered in dust and you can see that here.



Check out a larger version of this pic and others from my trip at my photobucket account here.

The traffic was also pretty ludicrous. I'm not sure why folks put themselves through all that for the chance to suck on dust. I was in and out as fast as possible.

What was far more interesting to me was the boardwalk down by the beach. I parked my car after winding my way through some impressive traffic and walked the length of the beachfront several times. The number of vendors, already impressive had grown exponentially. What surprised me was how many of them were selling pretty much the same stuff. They all seem to get their products from the same distributor and few places had much of anything original to offer. If you are looking for a giant stone turtle or perhaps some cheap knock off sunglasses man have I got the place for you.

I did stop by a strip joint. I'm not sure if that will damage your opinion of me. Those are just the chances I have to take. But if it helps it was more curiosity than the desire to see naked women (although like food I never turn down naked women).

I've been to strip joints all over the world. Once you've seen one you've pretty much seen them all; but I don't see anything wrong with confirming that theory when I come to a new place. The theory here was confirmed. Much the same as I've seen in other third world countries is what I saw here. If you are into this kind of thing, you might be interested to know that the girls in poorer countries tend to spend a lot less time on stage naked than the girls in the states.

This might come as a surprise but if you know anything about show business then you know that "you always leave your audience wanting more." In the states "more" can get you a solicitation charge from the cops (followed by being in the police blotter, possibly getting fired and definitely angering your significant other should you have one) as well as the sex you were shopping for. It's also pretty rare that your average stripper is going to sell herself to you and almost impossible to find a club that will support that end of the business.

Here, like in many poorer countries I've been to, the strip show is just a primer to get you revved up to pay for a lap dance, a private dance or an hour in one of the back rooms; all with escalating pricing.

In the states the club exists to sell booze and food and the women make their money off of tips from stripping and their hourly wage (usually there is a drink scam in there as well; buy a girl an $8 drink and in reality the bartender is serving her thirty cents worth of apple juice). Here, the club exists to sell the girls, the girls make the bulk of their money from a combination of tips from stripping, private dances and prostitution and the bar makes money off the booze and their cut of the sex trade for providing a safe environment.

I'm rereading what I've written here and I sound like a cultural anthropologist or something. I don't mean to be dry or sound uncaring. One of the reasons I tend to stay away from strip clubs is I always end up feeling really bad for the girls and if I do talk to them I invariably start asking them why they do what they do or what their dreams are. Even in the states I end up coming off like an ass.

For the most part though, this is life, unvarnished, in your face, no Photoshopping, life. It doesn't need your approval or disdain. It is what it is and the realities of objectifying women won't be changing any time soon if the last bazillion years are any indication.

The girls were pretty hot though. So that was all right.

Have I pulled off the miracle of sounding sensitive and chauvinistic in the same blog? Only you dear reader can say for sure.

Hope your Monday is fleeting. I'll see you back here Wednesday.