snYder CoMic #9

snYder coMics #8

Go Teach Your Grandmother to Suck Eggs!

From left to right, here's former Boston Celtic and the first man to shatter an NBA backboard, Chuck Conners, Gregory (call me Atticus) Peck, and a blonde.


Let me tell you about an old movie that recently rocked my world, The Big Country.

What a great ride.

The film score is nothing short of epic. The cinematography is mind blowing. The riveting story blurs the lines between good and bad, weak and strong, courageous and cowardly. Charlton Heston, Burl Ives, Chuck Connors, and Jeanne Simmons make up an outstanding supporting cast.
The film includes a fight scene between Heston and Gregory Peck which may be the best ever filmed. The director’s use of wide angle shots is like nothing I’ve ever seen.

Gregory Peck stars as a sea captain who finds himself in the middle of a land feud in the old west. Peck is the quintessential American hero: courageous, strong, determined, hard working, soft spoken, and proficient with his fists, ready to take on any challenge. He’s not about talking; he’s about doing.

Burl Ives won the Academy award for best supporting actor as a tough but ethical old bastard embroiled in a bitter land dispute with a tough but not so ethical old bastard. It’s strange; I can’t help attaching Burl Ives to the voice of the sweet little snowman in the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. It was hard to get my brain around the cute little snow man cussing and beating the hell out of people.

There’s a Burl Ives line in the picture that knocked me right off of the couch, a line that will go down as one of my all time movie favorites.

Gregory Peck offers to clean a pair of pistols before a duel. Ives snaps, "Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs! I've been handling guns like this, flintlock and cap lock, since before you were born."

Teach your grandmother to suck eggs!

Teach your grandmother to suck eggs???

Ignorant and curious, I made it a point to do a little on line research. It turns out the phrase has been around a long time. “You would teach my Grandame to suck Eggs”, was first recorded in 1707.

I guess the point of the old saying is don’t tell somebody how to do something when he’s already proficient. I take it grandmothers were really good at sucking eggs back in the day.

I highly recommend The Big Country to any connoisseur of classic films. You can’t beat bigger than life music, photography, story, and actors; moreover, you get to hear Burl Ives say, “TEACH YOUR GRANDMOTHER TO SUCK EGGS.”

Here's Gregory Peck and Jean Simmons, not the guy from KISS, the stunning movie starlet who was married to Howard Hughes for a while.

Prescott Snow

A snow storm hit the last night we were in Prescott. Living in Phoenix, snow is a real treat. I grabbed my camera and a cup of coffee and took an early morning walk .

The town was so quiet, so peaceful, nothing but the sound of my running shoes crunching in the snow.

Kind of felt like I was walking on clouds.

Magic.

There was a high school basketball team from Santa Rita staying at the hotel. They played for the state championship Saturday night. I had breakfast with the coaches in the hotel lobby. The team's quest for the championship was successful. After celebrating at a local pizza joint, the boys went up to their rooms and a couple of the coaches headed out to Bucky's Casino. Upon returning to the hotel they conducted a room check. No boys. It turned out that the kids were behind the hotel building snowmen and firing snowballs at each other. Coming from the Tucson area, many of them had never seen snow.

Must have been quite an experience, winning the state championship and then experiencing snow for the first time at three in the morning.

I dig Prescott.

Magic.

Prescott Weekend

This is my gorgeous wife, Gail. Every year the two of us drive a hundred miles to spend our anniversary weekend in Prescott, Arizona. We always make it a point to make a few stops along Whiskey Row where local musicians play blues, classsic rock, and country.

As always, we made the most of our time. We spent an hour in Bucky's Casino braving the blanket of cigarette smoke and playing the penny slot machines. Gail lost ten bucks while I won five. Five bucks for an hour's entertainment for two ain't bad.

We had the opportunity to see Crazy Heart, Shutter Island, and Valentine's Day.

Crazy Heart was excellent. Good story. Jeff Bridges is the man - so much more than just the Dude. I've been inspired to grow a Bad Blake beard. Robert Duvall was very cool in a small but important part. The movie got me thinking about the creative spark, addiction, forgiveness, redemption, and Bridges' love interest, Maggie Gilinhall - I'm thinking she needs to put on twenty or thirty pounds.

Valentines Day was an absolute thumbs down, baby. I sat through two hours of cutesy Hollywood starts giggling and making goo goo eyes at each other, apparently trying to show the world how cute they are. Blechhh.

Shutter Island was interesting. I knew there was a twist going in, so I figured it out right away. The music was a little over the top. It's hard for me to give a true review because the movie experience was ruined by the idiot sitting next to me, not my wife - the guy on the other side. The schmuck smacked and slurped his pop corn nonstop for the first hour of the movie.

Gail and I had some great food and stayed at a beautiful hotel; best of all, we got to hang out together.

My wife did did a little Saturday morning shopping while I wandered the alley behind Whiskey Row.

Above is the back of the Hotel Saint Michael. Tough guy president, Teddy Roosevelt once stayed here; not in the alley, in the hotel.

This is the back of the Palace Bar, arguably the oldest saloon in Arizona. A lot of history went down in this establishment, a place where the Earp brothers drank, Little Egypt danced, and Steve McQueen made a movie.

I've been puttering away at a time travel story that takes place in Prescott.

Walking the alley way behind Whiskey Row somehow connected me with the history of the old territorial capitol.

Looking at the back ends of buildings has a way of taking me back in time.

This spooky old crow kept me company for a solid three blocks. He added atmosphere to the experience.

Whiskey Row Burned to the ground in 1900.

New buildings were under construction within a couple of weeks.

Some of the buildings have held up the last 110 years better than others.

This is Granite Creek where gold was first discovered in the early 1860s. The first makeshift buildings of Presott were constructed along Granite Creek. The winding stream borders the Whiskey Row alley at this point. The original Whisky Row backed up against the the Creek for several blocks. Drunken miners and cowboys had a tendancy to fall into the creek and drown after a night on the row, prompting the proprietors to move the row a block away.

snYder coMics #7

An Exerpt from The Spirit Guide Bar

An excerpt from The Spirit Guide Bar
“Christmas Lights”
By W.Z Snyder
© 2009 William Snyder

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, the day the Christmas lights go up. And this year, because I am 12, my mother has given me the go ahead to hang the lights myself. Somewhere in excess of two hours have been spent untangling the green cords. The lights have been checked and the bad bulbs replaced. The nails have been firmly driven into the wood trim since we moved into the place five years ago. Baby, believe me when I tell you I’m ready to hang some Christmas lights. With the lights urbanely draped over my boney shoulder, I step onto the aluminum ladder, envisioning myself to be some death defying Army Ranger, ascending the treacherous cliffs of Monte Cassino. Safely on the roof, I begin to work the light cord around the nails. My left hand slips on the grey roofing and gravity pulls me off balance. My adrenalin kicks in and my heart rate quickens as I regain my footing. The last thing I want to do is fall off of this roof and break my arm. Those Christmas paper route tips will be piling in next month and that bad ass banana yellow, three speed Schwinn Stingray is waiting for me behind the plate glass window at Phil’s Bike Shop. My heart rate approaches normalcy as I wrap the light chord around another nail.

“Good morning, Billy.”

It is Johnny Torres standing at the bottom of the ladder. This kid is one of a kind. At the ripe old age of 11, he has the voice of a 55 year-old truck driver. It’s really weird; the kid is undersized for his age but he possesses freakishly mature facial features. Appearing something like a kid version of Edward G. Robinson, Johnny Torres is the neighborhood wheeler and dealer. Every Sunday morning he sets out from paper machine to paper machine, dropping in 25 cents and cleaning them out, one by one. Then he stands in front of the church selling his stolen Sunday papers to the parishioners as they leave mass. In the past he’s offered to help me rake leaves or mow the lawn, out of the goodness of his own heart, then gone to my mother and demanded payment. This kid is trouble with a capital Torres.

“What do you want Torres?” I ask warily.

“Nothing. I don’t want nothing at all, Billy. What are you doing up there?” he asks with his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

“I’m stealing papers to sell at church. Now get the heck out of here, Torres.” I sneer in my most spiteful voice.

“I’ll help you. I don’t got nothing else to do, Billy.” he says, sounding something like Lurch from The Adams Family.

“Yeah, I don’t need you’re kind of help. Now get the heck out of here.”

The kid defiantly places the toe of his tattered PF Flier on the bottom step of the ladder.

“What are you doing down there, Torres?”

“I told you Billy, I want to help you.”

“And I told you Torres, I don’t want your kind of help.”

Torres takes hold of the ladder as I shout, “Don’t come up here. If you fall, you could sue my mother.”

“I won’t sue you’re mother. Just let me watch.”

It becomes evident that he plans on coming up no matter what I say when he tightens his grip and places a PF Flyer on the second step of the ladder.

Taking firm hold of the cold aluminum at top of the ladder, I shout, “I said don’t come up here, Torres!”

He takes a second step and quite brilliantly, I shove the ladder hard with both hands. Torres steps down and the ladder flips over him – pulling me forward, still hanging onto the top like some out of control pole-vaulter. It feels very much like I am flying - for just that split second before I come crashing, wrists first, to front lawn. There is the sound of bones in my wrists popping and snapping. Strangely, I feel nothing at all – for about a second and a half. And then the white pain explodes like a crashing freight train. I scream in window rattling anguish and the slightest movement makes the excruciating torture even more excruciating. My hands hang from my wrists like broken chicken necks.

Torres stands over me and asks in his freakishly low voice, “What the heck did you do that for, Billy?”

To which I reply, “Ahh, my arms! I broke my arms!” and then I remember, “There goes my banana yellow, three speed Stingray.”

My mother bursts from the screen door and promptly tells me to shut the hell up. She doesn’t believe me until the two-bit criminal from around the corner confirms in his Lou Rawls voice that I have indeed plummeted, palms first from the roof. He assures her that he indeed did hear the bones crack.

My mother screams at me for falling off the roof during the entire ride to the emergency room. Somehow the Munchkin version of Paul Robson has talked my mother into letting him come along. At the emergency room, I cannot, no matter how hard I try, get a word in edge wise as Torres explains in great detail how I fell from the roof. The doctor shushes me when I demand to be allowed to give my side of the story. The doctor is in fact quite fascinated with Torres’s creepy voice.

“Exactly how long has it been since your voice changed, young man?” marvels the doctor.

My voice ain’t changed.” Torres bellows.

“You mean you’ve always sounded like this.”

‘That’s right, doc.”

“This is absolutely captivating. Would you mind waiting right here while I get the other doctors?”

“What about my arm?” I demand.

I abscond from the emergency room with my broken wrist in a cast and my sprained wrist in a sling. The next day, there is a knock at the front door. It is Torres. He explains that, under the darkness of night, like some kind of demented Christmas light elf, he has taken it upon himself to hang the lights. When my mother asks if she can pay him, he says the charge is 10 bucks - cash. Upon collecting 10 crisp ones, he gloats that the doctor gave him a card and UCLA Medical Center is going to pay him 60 dollars to scrutinize his vocal chords. The good news is I won’t have to do any writing in school for at least a month. Of course the bad news is I’ll have to give up the paper route. Frank Louder graciously agrees to take over for me. Frank will collect my Christmas tips; there will be no banana yellow sting ray. Is there no justice in this world? All I can say is I hope you’re satisfied wherever you are, Mr. Johnny Torres.

snYder CoMic #6

This cartoon is inspired by a former student who happened to be from Russia.

I drove the poor kid crazy with lame remarks like, "Slow down, Dmitri. Oh that's right, you can't help it - you're Russian."

As if the 600 hurryin' Russian remarks weren't enough I peppered him with a crack about his name.

"Hey Dmitri, da fish tree and da poultry tree were looking for you."

I'm telling you, the Russian Dmitri cracks never got old - for me.

Uncle Emily

My American Literature students have been reading the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Got to tell you, I really dig teaching Emily Dickinson, this is partly due to the fact that her quatrains can be sung to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme song.

It’s true, try it.

We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statues touch the skies.

Uncle Emily, as she liked to call herself, was truly a quirky cool human being. The woman rarely left the house. Some think her self imposed house arrest had something to do with her tendency to fall for married guys, but no one knows for sure. The bottom line is she spent most of her adult life writing poetry and letters at her bedroom window overlooking an old grave yard.

I suppose what intrigues me most about Dickinson is the fact that she lived out her 56 years unpublished. She did submit her poetry, but they said her stuff was too unconventional, that she would need to make revisions, that her poetry was not marketable. So she sat at the window, looking at those tombstones pounding out beautiful poems.

After she died her relatives found countless neatly wrapped packages containing almost 1,800 brilliant poems. Her poetry wasn’t published in its intended form until 60 years after her death.

Emily Dickinson never backed down; she never played the game; she never worried about agents or editors or publishers. She just wrote – she just wrote amazing, beautiful, mind blowing poetry.

Curmodgeonly Behavior

I’ll be turning 50 later this month and the process has begun. Clearly I’m starting to morph into a curmudgeonly old bastard.

I recently spent a Saturday coaching a group of high school students in an academic competition. My team was on track to place dead last, a fact that undoubtedly had affected my attitude. Three key students recently quit the team. To make matters worse, one of the top performers called off sick at the last minute. Another kid missed the bus Saturday morning. When she showed up late, missing four of the ten events, I asked what happened. She looked me dead in the eye and told me she couldn’t find her phone. She was ;ate because she couldn’t find her phone.The bottom line is we competed with students in just four of the nine slots. Now wouldn’t you call this a bad way to start a Saturday?

The students were off for two hours of testing, leaving me with a reasonable amount of time to regroup. There was a gas and gulp joint down the road and I figured I might walk over and pick up a cup of coffee. A long transcendentalist walk in the fresh morning air might help me clear my cranium. Before I made it out the door another coach stopped me and pointed me toward the teacher’s lounge.

It was like nothing I’d ever seen. There was an enormous bay window overlooking cool green athletic fields and cow pastures. Facing the window were eight leather recliner chairs. Fighting back tears of joy, I filled up a cup of joe and dropped my bag beside a chair. Falling back into the chair, I reclined, sipped and opened up the paper. Teacher Heaven, baby – nothing less than Teacher Heaven.

At the time I hit the recliner there were perhaps five coaches in the room. Within five minutes the lounge was filled with coaches, all but one from a particular school district on the other side of town; I’ll call it District X. The District X people filled in the recliners and commenced to hooting it up. The conversation was cliquish so I tried to make small talk with the other non District X teacher. To say the coaches from District X were loud would be an understatement. One guy had the loudest voice I’ve ever heard; he kind of sounded like Darth Vadar, only nerdier and much louder. And then there was the woman sitting next to me. When she laughed she cackled like a chicken with a pitch so high it should have broken the bay window. This lady’s cackles absolutely pierced my skull. Every time she cackled, I shuddered - and I got a little angrier.

After one particularly noggin blasting cackle, I sprung to my feet.

“That’s it! I can’t take it.”

I headed for the door. One of the District X women asked me if I left my computer. I didn’t answer; I just waved her off and got the hell out of there. It wasn’t long before I realized I’d left my bag. The woman was talking about my bag. When I returned to the room my chair had been filled and the district X people had settled into a calm, quiet conversation.

I snatched my bag up and the woman asked, “What’s the matter with you?”

This is the part where I turned into the cartoon thermometer and the mercury exploded through the top.

“Lady, you’re asking me what’s the matter? You know what the hell’s the matter. You wanted the chairs, YOU GOT THE CHAIRS!”

Not exactly witty, but I got my point across.

Actually I felt pretty stupid.

To make matters worse, I kept running into those people all day. When I passed a couple of younger District X women, they put their heads down. I heard one of them stifle a laugh after they passed.

Pretty curmudgeonous, huh? All I needed was a cane to wave around.

Then again, those District X people were behaving rudely.

The truth is I could have quietly turned to the cackler and asked her to tone it down. Or I could have quietly got up and left. But the pendulum could have swung the other way. I could have called them all sons of bitches and tipped over all of the recliners before I left. That would have been cool – curmudgeon cool…

SnYder CoMic #5

Going Bananas on Mill Avenue

The yellow one was with the Justice League on Mill Avenue.
Here's of a shot of the big yellow guy making his presence known to Clif the Lawyer.

Clif the Lawyer likes a good time just as much as the next guy. But the banana just wouldn't leave him alone. Big Yellow actually caused Clif to miss a nice bus shot. But did Clif lose his cool? Heck no, Clif the Lawyer's got enough patience to be a doctor.

Here's the the banana with four runners warming up for the P.F. Chang's Marathon.

One of the girls shouted in a German accent, "HEY, WHY ARE YOU PHOTOGRAPHING A BANANA?"

To which I adeptly replied, "I, I DON'T HAVE THE SLIGHTEST IDEA!"

The big guy looms high above Mill Avenue in the high rise parking garage with Clif, Rick and Casey.

Here I am trying to get artsy with the banana and a windo reflection shot. Looks like I'm all about bananas and reflection shots.

The big banana didn' make it to the end of the shoot. I got hungry. There will be other bananas and other shoots.

SnYder CoMics #4

SnYder CoMics 2010


For years, the common No Checks sign in restaurants has compelled me to do a bad Steve Martin and Dan Akroyd wild and crazy guys imitation and make a scene similar to the one portrayed in my comic. It never gets old for me. As for my wife, it's another story...

The Arizona Justice League of Photograpers On Mill Avenue

The Arizona Justice League of Photographers recently ventured out to Mill Avenue in Tempe
From left to right are Rick the I.T. Guy, Casey the Chef, Clif the Lawyer and Yours Truly.

Mill Avenue runds along the Western side of Arizona State University. Lined with gorgeous ficus trees and dotted with coffee shops, book stores, restaurants, bars and funky curious characters, it's a fantastic place to take a few pictures on a crisp January morning. It's also a great place for a date. My wife and I took a cozy stroll along Mill Avenue on the night we met.

These two characters were kind enough snap a few pictures of our crew. They introduced themselves as Lucy and Ricky, a couple of wandering Bolivian billionaires. It's not every day you meet wandering Bolivian billionaires.

This is Mill Avenue's name sake, the Hayden Flour Mill. The structure is nearly a hundred years old and rumored to be haunted.

I tried to get artistic this time around.

Clif the Lawyer came up with the idea of climbing up to the top floor of a parking structure for some top of the world type shots. My acrophobia was in full swing.

Here's a reflection shot into a glass building. If you look closely you can see Clif and me snapping away from the top of the structure.

Here's your run of the mill girl with a cat on a leash and kid holding a sword with a cat on his shoulder. I asked him what the sword was for and he just laughed, scary like. I laughed too, as I walked away, real fast like.

No big deal - a picture of a guy standing in front of a phone booth talking on a cell phone.

How about a picture of a guy standing in front of a phone booth talking on a banana?

Yeah, that's what I thought...

Here's Clif the Lawyer under the lush cover ficus trees having a conversation with one of the Mill Avenue regulars.

Really don't know what to say about this head shop window photo. Just thought it looked kinda cool in an every little thing goanna be alright kinda way...

This bus obviously made it's destination. I'd like to know what the launch point was.

This is a shot of All Saint's Catholic Church across the street from ASU. Over a hundred years old, it's the oldest house of worship in greater metropolitan Phoenix

Here I am trying to be mister artistic photographer guy.

I thiught the light flashes between the orange tree leaves might make a good picture.

I know what you're thinking. Where the heck are the goof ball banana shots?

Next week, friends. Next week.