"hello benjamin, is this a recording?"
02/06/2002 3:30 pm------------------------------
Buzz is gonna call again soon. I just know it. He's called like 40 times in the last two days asking how I'm treating his comic.
Buzz (P.J. O'Ross) is a guy I know who does a comic called Stinkfish in the CityPaper. He's quite a character. He's full of energy. I met him at a CityPaper party about a year ago, and we've been hanging out ever since. When I met him he was drunk on boxed wine, was wearing these crazy thick rimmed black glasses with no lenses inside them and an american flag tie. He was taking pictures of everyone with a Nickelodeon Fun Blaster camera. He drives the messiest station wagon in the world, and noone really knows if he's homeless or a millionaire. It doesn't make much sense. He originally got his cartoon in the paper by paying $400 a week to run it as an ad. He apparently did this for months before they finally just told him that he could have the space. If you met him, you'd probably think he was homeless, but he always tells me that he owns a bunch of houses and has a lot of money. One day I asked him where he got all his money from and he paused for a second and said. "I can't tell you that. Maybe when I know you a little better... I assure you it was nothing illegal though." He paused again and then said, "I will tell you this though... Let's just say that I took a string and tied it to something and put it out into the Gulf of Mexico... That's all I'm gonna tell you..."
???
For a while last year he was running my head in his cartoons. He made me into the young version of his characters the "Schwarm Triplets: Buzzy, Lefty, and Runt Schwarm". The comic itself is quite a hard thing to describe, so I'm just gonna scan one and put it
here so you can see it for yourself. Buzz also has a
website. I saved it from getting deleted by one of the free hosting sites a while back. I have a few pictures of him, but they aren't very good. There are a couple of them on his website. He's the guy with the drawn on purple mohawk. Here's one that's up on josh's site of
him playing with my gumball machine.
Anyway, Buzz is in the hospital, and he asked me to do his cartoon this week. It was pretty hard to do. I can't imagine making something so insane every week.
Buzz has been doing Stinkfish for like 5 years now or something. He has called me from the hospital every 30 minutes or so telling me things to put in the cartoon. He has also called EVERYONE else at the paper several times. He called Josh yesterday too. He's on a phone abusing frenzy. It's just a matter of time before he strikes again. Last night Jason told him that I had decided to just run an old Garfield cartoon in place of his cartoon... and that it really wasn't even a funny one. He kinda freaked out over that. Anyway,
here's what I came up with. I think it kinda captures the spirit of a Stinkfish cartoon. It's one of the craziest things I've ever made though. I think I'm gonna try to go visit Buzz in the hospital. I need to find some wheels.
5:30 pm------------------------------
So I think Buzz has officially called everyone who works at the paper. He got someone to fax him the cartoon that I made for him. I think he quit calling me directly because of it. Now I keep getting transcribed notes from random people who work here that I barely know...
02/08/2002 (by josh)------------->
We visited Buzz in the hospital last night. The Southern Maryland Hospital in Clinton, Maryland. He was pretending to sleep when we got there, shirtless and with monitors stuck all over him. Tubes were running out of his nose. He was in good spirits, though- he even re-enacted his sprint through the halls to escape the nurses for us, so we could take pictures. He made us bring cameras so he could put the pictures in his comic later.
We were regaled with stories, like how he was the Senator's chief high school prospect for awhile, how he knew the guy that owned this hospital, and Vic Edwards, a midget who owned the competing hospital and who flew his plane into it one day to prove it wasn't safe.
The midget got arrested.
Buzz loves Ben. He told Angele that she was really lucky, but he didn't know if Ben was lucky or not. Ben is a genius, and Jason, well Jason is a damn good worker. I am normal and Angele is too normal. Ben and Angele will have good-looking kids because Angele is good looking. Ben and Angele will stay together because Ben is smart and Angele is beautiful. I should be weirder because I am from Louisiana, and Jason should be weird because he is from Arkansas, but he is funny. And a good worker.
Buzz likes Richard Simmons.
While we were re-enacting his run through the halls, he had Jason and Angele stayed behind and pretended to talk to him. Ben and I followed him from a distance as he wandered the halls, trying to shake off the nurses. His nemesis, a severe looking nurse, asked us what we were doing and Buzz replied:
"I'm just showing them the room where my mother died."
What do you say to that? It was true but incidental to our real goal for the outing, but regardless, she just closed her mouth mid sentence, turned around and walked off.
We got the pictures, which
Ben will no doubt post, got back to the room and listened to stories until well after visiting hours ended. After, we got ice cream. I tried to keep my visitor's pass but the guard was looking at me, so I gave it back.
--------------------------------------
Buzz called me a little while ago. It was like 4:30 am when he called.
"Hey am I calling too late?"
"Well, kinda, yeah."
The scary thing is he really wasn't. Just about everyone here was up, but just in case he thought it might be a good habit to start calling every night at 4:30, i told him it was too late. Buzz is funny. He was at his dad's house and he was whispering cos he wasn't supposed to be on the phone. He was talking about buying waterfront property for me and Angele to live in. Then his dad woke up and he freaked out.
"I have to go! My dad just woke up!"
-----------------------------------
Just got off the phone with Buzz...
me: Hey Buzz, I bet you can't guess what I'm doing right now?
buzz: I bet you're putting my cartoon in the paper!
me: yep. It's gonna be on page 128 this week.
buzz: Wow! Oh wow! That's really a coincidence. You see, my great grandfather died at exacty 1:24 in the morning and I remember I was there sitting there next to him when he died and the last words he said were: "NO FUCKING CAJUNS!"
(long pause)
...yeah. I'm not really sure what he meant by that.
...128, huh? Alright, well I'll look for it.
------------------------------
Buzz just called and I told him that Angele and I have split company and I think it broke his heart worse than mine. He just said "Fuck Fuck Fuck! Oh fucking god damnit!" over and over again when I told him. And he's been calling me every 15 minutes with new ways to make me feel better. He just called and said "I was just watching the millionaire show. You ever watch that? This fella was on there that looked like you. Coulda been your twin. And the fucking jackass just lost $125,000. He didn't know where Joe DiMaggio met Marilyn Monroe. What a fucking nimrod! He's a disgrace to his family! I know they didn't say it, but they are ashamed to have him as their son. He's gonna commit suicide! You think you have it bad? That guy is gonna commit suicide! Let me tell you seriously what you need to do to get away from your women troubles. You need to shoplift something and get caught and go to jail for a while. Get away from that woman. She'll drive you crazy. Shoplift and go to jail!"
-----------------------------
"Hey! Can you give me a little feedback?"
I've been asked this question almost daily for the last 4 years.
"Gimmie some feedback on this week's cart-un..."
Buzz always wanted "feedback". I never knew what to tell him. Neither did Jason.
"I like the pictures."
"I like that this one's crooked and hard to read."
I still don't know what to say now that he's gone...
He left me with a lot of good memories.
...laying horizontally across a pile of crap in his station wagon inches from the roof while he drove me around...
"Why do you have a board on your roof that's tied to the front and the back of your car, Buzz?"
"I don't know. I just figured it needed it."
...the day he dressed me up like Elvis and brought me all over town...
...how proud he was of Angele and I when we ate 5 prime rib steaks at the all you can eat steak buffet and caused them to run out of steaks
...how he insisted I was gay and that Angele was a coverup, always referring to her as "the Beard" (which also worked after we broke up cos I became Beardless Ben)
...watching him eat a plate of bacon on one of the many breakfast buffets he treated us to at the 94th Aero Squadrant
"And Carla can come, and Jandos, and Janet, and the Beard, and Jason, and Josh...Oh wait. No. Fuck Josh, we got Bruce now!"
...how he would tell me that he became a homosexual for three months while I was away in California
That smelly fat man meant a lot to me. I'm pretty sure Jason and I were his best friends in the world. He had more excitement and energy in him than anyone I've ever met, all the way to the end. He called me all day long on Sunday. I knew something was up. He asked me to take over the cartoon for him. I told him that I would try to, but it really wasn't up to me. He said he would call the paper the next day and ask them if it was alright if I took it over. Then he called 10 more times with ideas for the first cartoon I would do, insisting that I say that he was my mother.
"PJ O'Ross could be a woman! No one knows if PJ O'Ross is a man or a woman! You could say that I am your mother and you are taking over the cartoon for me!"
That was the last time I spoke to him.
In a lot of ways, Buzz was the mother / father I never had. He was bizarro dad. The more I got to know him the more I could make sense of him. His cartoon even started to make sense. Every now and then while hanging out with him I'd have to stop and think...
"Good God, what the hell am I doing right now? How did it come to this?"
Buzz had an enlarged heart. And I don't say that to be cheesy. I mean yeah, he did have a heart bigger than most, but he also really did have a big heart. That's what killed him. He was in and out of the hospital for the last 2 years or so with congenital heart failure. His body would fill up with fluid and he'd have to go to the hospital to be drained of it. Somehow he remained optimistic and happy until the very end though. There was nothing that could have taken the smile off of his face...or keep him from turning absolutely everything into one big joke.
And that's what was best about him. He died a mystery to most everyone. Was he homeless? Was he a millionaire? Did he really buy that waterfront property for me and Angele? Did he really make all of his money selling inflatable frogs that he floated out in the Gulf of Mexico? Was he really an advisor to President Bush? A pitcher for a DC minor league baseball team? Did the American Taliban really design his website for him?
Even if I knew the answers to any of these questions I wouldn't tell you....
I'm sure he's laughing in his grave.
I'm gonna miss that silly bastard...
