Oh.

Well, it’s entirely possible that I’m just full of piss and vinegar. My bad.

I do agree that we’re sexy. Every one of us.

And BTW…next time your in Framingham/Rte. 9, stop in to the British Beer Co.! They just opened and the food is great and they have a beer menu that stretches 2 pages!!! WHOOO-HOOO!

My vitamin store is right next door, so stop in first and grab me and we’ll get drunk and gossip about all the other TDC alum(shhh…between youse and me)

So shoot up 495 and let’s raise hell and drink beer!

No, but we can always decline to give advice based on those facts. Just a thought.

“We should get credit for making the lemonade from the limited lemons we were supplied.”

The types of comments that sparked my comment:

“This kid is surrounded by failures….his parents and his teachers. His parents came to an English-speaking country and they can’t succesfully function as parents because they don’t know how to speak English.”

“It sounds to me as though this soon-to-be young man may very well be autistic.”

“His parents need to be “parents”. Man, I hate when people don’t have the “balls” to raise thier kids properly.”

Really? Three paragraphs and the kid is diagnosed with autism, has lazy foreigner parents, and a teacher who’s a failure and just wants to get rid of him? That’s some bitter lemonade.

“For future potential seekers of advice here at the TDC, we should come up with a questionaire that would provide the random folk here more 411 to formulate their armchair POV’s with…”

Yes, your hyperbole is delicious. Duly noted. We don’t need his life story before we dare to speak. But my intent wasn’t to offer up a blanket rebuke to everyone here. I was just pointing out that the extrapolation some are using in diagnosing this kid’s problem is unfair and/or premature.

And despite the hang ups over my use of the word “random”, I stand by it. I think we are fairly random people to ask advice of regarding a withdrawn student who is flunking out of school. The fact that he’s artistically inclined doesn’t automatically qualify us to be his life coach.

His rents can take this up with his teacher. He’s the one that asked for assistance. And it’s not our fault that we only got a few sentences. We should get credit for making the lemonade from the limited lemons we were supplied.

For future potential seekers of advice here at the TDC, we should come up with a questionaire that would provide the random folk here more 411 to formulate their armchair POV’s with…

…and speaking to Jay’s point, when I was in high school in the late 80′s, drawing evil was just plain cool! Eddie from the Iron Maiden covers, Motorhead, Slayer…any band that had evil-style artwork was what bwe drew because it rattled our teachers and parents cages!

On the questionaire, we should ask what music the person listens to…

This teacher should focus on his education. The teacher thinks because a kid can draw he doesn’t need to be able to read, write or speak? Not even mentioning contracts, these are day-to-day skills everyone needs. Obviously. Well, obvious to everyone but his teachers.

Of course, we can only respond based on the teacher’s report and so it’s naturally incomplete and tentative, but (1) the kid is doing nothing in his classes — not making that burst at the end, not goofing around and disrupting things — just tuning out and flunking, and (2) his parents are seeking medical and psychological help. So it’s not like he’s functioning anywhere else, it’s not like his folks aren’t aware and concerned. Something is going on here.

What throws me off is that he’s apparently able to have some kind of conversation with this teacher, though he doesn’t know what he wants out of life. That’s why I think, if he’s on the autism spectrum, it’s at the more functional end of Aspergers rather than in Rainman territory. I suggested the teacher ask him to do some illustrations for the course, for two reasons.

One is to help him see that he can channel his talent into a potential career and the other is to see if he is able to draw more than evil clowns. Autistic kids fixate on certain things, but he may just be an Insane Clown Posse fan. And I’d like to have someone other than a science teacher evaluate the work, because there’s a difference between long practiced doodling and the kind of eidetic reproduction some autistic artists can come up with — total detail from a brief glance.

In the end, however, it doesn’t matter if he’s full-blown autistic, Aspergers, clinically depressed or just chronically pissed off. He’s flunking, his parents are concerned and he’s apparently willing to talk about it, though not able to simply change his pattern. Encouraging him to draw the subject matter can have a couple of benefits –

1. Break him out of the cycle of overall failure. If he’s going to change his pattern, this might be a way to do it — get him to draw something for someone else instead of just amusing himself.

2. Help him start to learn. I’ll bet there are people here who, as students, liked the assignments where you could draw a poster or create a diorama instead of writing a paper. But beyond preference, there are students who really don’t absorb information very well in written form. Help him break through a little and he may be able to tackle the written form, just as, when you start working with a new computer program, the manual then begins to make more sense to you than it did when you were looking it over straight out of the box.

3. Show him that the thing he enjoys has some wider application. Whether he becomes a cartoonist or an illustrator or simply someone who creates really good reports and proposals, it’s important that he not see a wide gulf between what he enjoys and what the world will reward him for.

That’s not armchair psychology — that’s practical advice even if the teacher is missing some of the details. Which, of course, he likely is. But my guess is that he’s got the basics nailed and I hope we’re not his only source of input anyway.

However: telling this kid “hey, study hard in math and literature, they’ll make you a better artist” probably won’t get any traction. Once a kid that age gets on the “quit caring and drop out path” it’s hard to get them back on the road. Given that, my advice would be to take advantage of modern resources and technologies to get his work out there. Put it on the Web, start a Webcomic. Do mini-comics or a ‘zine; he’s lucky to be in the Bay Area, where there’s a thriving underground comix scene. The discipline of producing something plus whatever feedback he gets would be a big step.

Encourage him to attend the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco this November, he will be sure to see two dozen people just like himself. (Maybe one of his parents could go along and be reassured that their son isn’t such a freak.) Encourage him to get his GED so that even if he doesn’t graduate he can go onto a good community college. I know a lot of kids who did lousy in high school but blossomed at a JC where they could follow their own passions, and JCs often have a more vocational, hands-on focus (e.g., Photoshop training) that would really help him out.

Now. you use the phrase ‘random people’ to describe the posters on this thraed, which includes you. ‘Random’. ‘Random’, Norm. Just let the word settle…random…
randomness.

Of course it means a lack of order, purpose, cause, or predictability. And I have to say, given that about 95% of all cartoonsists (statistics backed by my fellow armchair alumni)are borderline Rainmen themselves, I think it was wholly predictable and in no way random that we would posit the hypothesis that we are faced with someone with similar afflictions.

Yours,
Doctor Rod, Assistant Head of Brainiacery, Bangalore Institute of Assburglers Syndrome.

One of the rare times I disagree with my friend Ted.

All we need to hear is that he’s 16 years old. The only thing one is prepared to do at that age in the real world is manual labor, and even that there needs to be constant supervision.

And angry, underachieving kid from a screwed up family who likes to draw is the profile for 99% of us in cartooning. All he needs is encouragement to keep drawing and exposure to training in art. This is the R&D part for someone who wants a career in cartooning or as an illustrator, and it’s a part that takes many years.

Ultimately, it’s up to him to find his way. You can help point the way, but it’s a long, difficult trip that he has to take, and no one can do it for him. And it’s that long journey that will make him a better cartoonist or illustrator.