The Eisman Cometh

As of late I have been thinking a lot about my old Kubert School teacher, Hy Eisman. I think it is a combination of belated guilt and the passing of Don Adams (Hy went to The Art Student`s League with Don and always claimed that Don Adams was the hotshot artist in his class). Maybe a little more on the guilt side because I am teaching now and Hy was my teacher and I was not an easy student. And Hy was the teacher I was least easy on.

The Kubert School was insane at the time. All the teacher were not teachers they were professional artists teaching for the first time. All the students were the best of there little worlds now looking at the likes of Totleben and Bissette and wondering if we could compete.

Hy was doing Little Iodine as the time. He was my teacher. He was the master of the prolonged triple take. I was the proud recipient of a two year long version of his best world class triple take. I would walk in a room and he would look at me like he could not believe I was doing what I was doing, i.e. living.

It started like this. Hy gave us a comic stripe assignment early in our first year at QBU. I went all out and did a duo-shade Beowulf based stripe called Prehensile and Grendel very bad pun ending dealing with coffee and a couple of Danish, got great review when I finally got it published a couple of years later. It is crude by my current standard but at the time is was the best thing I had ever done. And I was proud of it.

No, no, no, I wanted Nancy humanoids He crushed me. Now first off I had sweat blood into this piece and secondly Nancy was an old, dull, has been stripe in the eyes of the hip student I felt myself at that time. I was hurt and I took that hurt out on the next Hy assignment, a full-page stripe due after Christmas break.

Rick Grimes had a character called Weird Dick that was the subject on another Hy Eisman triple take. So I did a stripe called Weirder Dick and I will not go into what that character did to the poor Nancy humanoids. Let us just say that I gave Hy Eisman whiplash on the second leg on his triple take.

My parents lived in Sarasota, Florida at the time and Rick Grime, Steve Bissette, and I did the Christmas vacation trip down from Dover, New Jersey in 24 hours straight (or not so) quick family time with tree and packages and watching Jimmy Steward, and then 24 hours back with everything I owned in the car and my cat. Not enough room to have a spare thought, claustrophobic somebody always with the cat on their lap, tight, tight, insane.

One of the things I brought back with me was a shorthaired wig that I had used for job hunting in the early days of my longhaired rebellion. Another item was a Nauru jacket that was my sole formal wear for nigh onto 15 years.

I wore both into school the first day back showing up about 2 hours into Hy`s class. Hy, I just have been driving for 24 hours straight and I`m about to crash out. I left the assignment on your drawing table. I`ve got to get home and to bed. Hy looked strangely at me in my semblance of a suit like garment and my seeming new shorter hair and mumbled okay

Okay, maybe he didn`t mean to throw the first punch. Maybe he was just speaking another language. Maybe when he referred to Nancy humanoids in some sick way he meant a good thing. Maybe I over reacted. Maybe I shouldn`t of had Sluggo do what he did to Nancy. Things just got stranger and stranger between Hy and me when I showed up to the next class with long hair uncut. And that led straight to me convincing Hy Eisman that I had jumped out of a third story window.

I had always been a climber. And because I had grown up in Florida were everything is flat, flat, flat that meant trees and buildings. The Kubert School was in a three story Victorian mansion and I was suffering a heavy case of Acrophilia from day one at the school.

It was in my second year of Hy Eisman`s famed triple take and the battle of wits had fallen out to a pattern where Hy seemed shocked at everything I did, like breath, while deep down not really letting me see him being shocked at all (I told you he was good) and me trying to really get a rise out of him. I think it was friendly. I always enjoyed his classes.

The second year students had been moved up to the third floor, the maid`s quarters of the old Baker Mansion. My class was broken into two groups. The more favored students in the bigger of the 2 classrooms and my group pushed 12 deep into a room that should have fit maybe 4 drawing tables. Hy had to go back and forth between classrooms.

There was one more empty little classroom on our floor and it was right next to our blackhole. At one time it had been part of one large room. A wall had bisected the space at some time in the past splitting a window in two. There was an old style radiator right next to our half of the window. Outside the window was a two and a half foot wide snow gutter.

I was setting on the windowsill with one foot on the radiator and the other out the window on the snow gutter. One hand was holding the window of the empty classroom and I was all set.

Hy, Hy come quick! Larry`s goin ta jump! Hy showed up in the doorway 9 compacted drawing tables between us. I can`t stand it anymore and it is all you fault! I screaming and I pulled hard on the windowsill of the empty classroom next door. I swung out one window and into the other window and into the empty room.

I hit the floor running and was down the short hall before Hy Eisman was halfway across the drawing table and student packed room. As he stuck his head out the window to look for my shattered body I came up behind him, laid an arm across his shoulder and said Did he jump?

Is there a moral here? I don`t know. Maybe never turn your back on a student? Maybe I deserve to be a teacher even if I haven`t run into a student like me? Maybe don`t step on a student`s artwork because you are stepping on their ego? Look what happened when they wouldn`t let Hitler into artschool. Fund the arts becuase you really don`t want us artist going into another business.  ¶ 4:20 AM