She’s With Me

Let me spell it out for ya. Yeah, she’s cute, but she’s with me so watch your mouth. She deserves all of the courtesies that go along with being a lady. After all – she’s from Everett.

Okay, I know, it’s been awhile. The “We’re from Everett” experience has had to take a back seat while I took care of the many other issues going on in my life, which are far too numerous and complex to sum up here. So if you don’t mind, I won’t even go there.

My current obligations will dominate my time for at least up until the end of this year. Because of that, original postings will be far and few between. I’ll take this opportunity to repost many of our older archives that got knocked off-line when I switched domains.

I’ve recently received many invitations to sign up for various social networking web sites. I do thank you all for thinking of me, but my current schedule leaves me without any spare time to engage in these activities. I’m on somewhat of a steep learning curve in new computer technologies as it is.

I’m posting today because this is one of those times when I desperately needed to get away from it all. This is my break from all of the chaos and the noise going on in the outside world. If you feel like taking a break, then come on in. I’ll put the kettle on.

Let me tell ya a little bit about today’s illustration. You’ve never seen those two characters before. They’re brand new.

The technology behind creating believable 3D characters, and the necessary skills involved, boggle the imagination. It is a concentration that adds many impressive words to your vocabulary. Using terminology like “Volumetric Rotoscoping,” “UV mapping,” and “inverse kinesis,” in a casual conversation will make you sound like you really do know your ass from your elbow.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. It’s something I learned when I was just a little kid living at the bottom of Arlington Street. Everything you do will lead you onto some kind of a learning curve. Never let that discourage you because if you love something enough, it will eventually reveal all of its secrets.

For as complex as creating believable 3D human characters may seem, it is a step-by-step process made up of many simpler smaller steps. And in so many ways it involves a technology, and a skill set, that are constantly evolving – just like everything else. Think back to your tenth grade biology class at Everett High. Didn’t it absolutely blow you away when you first heard the term, “Endoplasmic Reticulum?”

Evolution is a fact of life. It is an inherent trait of knowledge, skills, and technology. Everything evolves beyond its original conception from a simple starting point.

Remember when we only had five channels to watch on TV and they all went off the air before midnight? You had to continuously fidget with the rabbit ears, and the Horizontal and Vertical Hold to stop the picture screen from scrolling from one frame to the next. If you wanted to change the channel you had to get up off of your lazy fanny and walk across the room. And that was only after you had to wait for the picture tube to warm up.

Is that not a far cry from what we experience in home entertainment today? Imagine trying to explain “YouTube,” or an “I pod,” to someone who just stepped out of a time tunnel from 1958. They’d look at you as if you had two heads if you told them that your son-in-law just sent you a picture of your newborn grandchild on his cell phone.

I’ll never forget that day my big brother, Billy, showed us his transistor radio. You’d think we had just discovered a gadget off of the space ship that crashed at Roswell. We hopped up and down in a frenzied excitement like a bunch of knuckle dragging Neanderthals. Over a transistor radio – mind you.

When you think about all the changes we’ve seen in our lifetimes, and all of the hard knocks we’ve been through, you’ve really gotta go out on a limb to even raise our eyebrow nower days. Nothing surprises us anymore. Nothing shocks us. And hardly anything fazes us. We’ve come that far.

We did not come this far in one giant step. Everything was a gradual progression. Many of my experiences growing up in Everett helped lay the groundwork for my learning how to create believable 3D virtual human beings. I had no idea at the time that this was what it was all leading up to. And no matter how many trips I’ve made to the guidance office at E.H.S., I still have no idea as to what it is that I want to become if I ever grow up.

As soon as I hopped up over the crib rails I started drawing on the walls. Instead of praising their little budding artist, my parents blew a gasket every time I create yet another new masterpiece on my bedroom wall. Some people have no culture. That's all I’m saying.

I’m probably talking some time around 1953 or 4. Cars still had split windshields. It took a church key to pop open a Coke. And both the Boston Globe and the Record American had a morning and an evening edition - if you can believe that.

It was not the brilliance of the masters that inspired me to draw. I just started doing it because I liked the way graphite felt when you etched it across textured wallpaper. My earliest recollections of the motifs I used to artistically express myself go something like this.



A few years later my sister taught me how to spell my name so I could sign my masterpieces. No matter how hard she tried, my letters kept coming out of me in the opposite direction. Because of that, my big brother, Billy, kept calling me, “Lop.” What a wise guy – huh?

My faces became more articulated because of a TV show my mom and dad used to watch every week. It was called “Your Show of Shows” starring Cid Caesar and Imogene Coca. They were so ugly that they were funny so I started drawing them. That’s when I started drawing people with only one eye on either side of their nose. I was purely Picasso before that.

My mother had this genuine talent for wallpapering. She could wallpaper with the best of them. She was so meticulous that not one square inch of her wallpaper ever wound up mismatched, crooked, or out of synch with the overall concept of it’s room.

Even more intriguing is how she handled her corners. She made sure that the design never bent at the corners, and that the wallpaper edge ever landed in the corner. She never creased into the corners. Instead, she rounded the corner with a curve that was so tightly accurate that you couldn’t tell that she rounded the corner.

When my mother wallpapered everything got moved out of that room except her folding table that she pasted on, her stepladder, and a living room lamp with the shade removed so not to cast any shadows. My dad stood at the ready with brush and bucket in hand slopping on the paste and carefully handing the next roll up to my mother at the top of the stepladder when she called for it.

In the meantime, they’d plug in the kitchen radio and set it on the floor in that empty room which gave the music a hauntingly hollow sound. I liked that. It added a new vexing dimension to songs like, “Little Jimmy Brown,” “Sixteen Tons,” and “The Little Blue Man.”

By the way, did you guys know that “Hugh Downs” was the voice of the “Little Blue Man” on that record? It’s true. Google it if you don’t believe me.

My mother would work well into the night to finish that room. She wasn’t one to stop halfway into anything. I’ve seen days when she was just finishing up just as we were getting up out of bed for the morning.

And no, she didn’t go back to bed to sleep the day away either. She went right on with her motherly duties for that entire day and did not stop until she tucked us all in for the night. What a workhorse. I’m telling ya.

So now you know why she went ballistic whenever she found another one of my cave drawings on top of her wallpaper. After a couple of episodes like that they made damn sure that I had plenty of drawing paper on hand. My dad lugged home reams of scrap paper from Tufts for me. There was usually printing on one side of it, but it was quality paper – if I do say so myself.

My mother’s passion for perfection is only one of many examples from my Everett childhood that made a big impact on me. For you see, if I must concede anything at all to the Everett Public School System, I must admit that they put me in touch with some very intuitive people, who, over the years, kept hand feeding me tidbits of information that I instinctively knew would serve me well sometime into the future.

Miss Blake, my sixth grade homeroom teacher at the Horace Mann taught me the “uniformity, order, and direction” principle of the number line. Say what you will, but if you apply that principle to any aspect of your life - you’ll do just fine.

I met my friend, Billy, from High Street, in Miss Dyer’s fourth grade homeroom at the Horace Mann. He also made a profound impact on me. I wrote about him in my article entitled, “The “Technology Bug.” It’s one from my archives that got knocked off line when I switched domains. I’ll post it again in the near future.

Billy was an electronics whiz back in elementary school. This kid fascinated me to no end. He could completely pull apart a television and put it back together again. And he’d make it work far better than it ever did before. I kid you not.

This kid built a sound oscillator from scratch. It was a little electronic box with a couple knobs, a speaker, and a whole lot of capacitors and whatnots inside. With it, you could oscillate a sound wave from very high to very low frequencies. It was much like a Theremin.

Just in case you’re not familiar with that term, a theremin is an electronic instrument, invented back in 1919, that looks much like a tabletop radio. You make music by waving your hands around its antenna. It’s named after its inventor, a Russian physicist named, Leon Theremin. Actually, that's the English interpretation of his name. In Russian his name is Lev Termen.

So if building a sound oscillator while only in elementary school isn’t enough to stagger you back to the ropes, then just wait until you hear this one. Billy’s dad brought his oscillator to work to have one of the engineers check it out and evaluate it for him. I remember sitting at the kitchen table with them while his dad explained what that engineer had to say about it. Here’s the clincher.

That engineer praised his design scheme, but said that his wiring technique was a bit messy. Gimmie a break – right? I couldn’t see one wire out of place.

That engineer didn’t dissuade him any. All that did was encourage him to get tighter and neater in his design schemes. I saw that when he got up into the Parlin Junior High School and built a super dooper sound snooper.

Sound Snoopers are a dime a dozen today, but how many did you see back in 1966? And they’ve still yet to build one that could equal the clarity and the distance that this kid achieved some 45 years ago.

And you talk about perfection? I’d challenge you to scan that kid’s perf board with a microscope to find so much as a microdot of solder out of place. Tight design scheme isn’t the word for it. This was perfection at its finest.

Oh, I learned a lot from that kid - let me tell ya. Criticism? Bring it on. The more you tear it down, and the more I build it back up – the better it gets – until there’s nothing else that can compete. That’s the value of constructive criticism. Billy knew that ever since he was a little kid. I learned that from him.

Out of all the Mechanical Drawing teachers I had over the years, Andy Mastrangelo stands out leaps and bounds above the rest. His influence on my understanding of the concept of 3D design is an invaluable resource that I shall cherish every day of my life.

My tenth grade geometry teacher also deserves notable recognition here. His name was Mr. Brogna. What he taught me about Boolean Operators plays a significant role in nurb modeling. Without going into any unnecessary details, nurb modeling is what you do when you create realistic 3D virtual human beings.

I could go on almost indefinitely about so many people I’ve met from Everett during my childhood who played a significant role in my life, but for now, let me introduce you to just two more.

My friend, Jon, grew up at the top of Pleasant View Ave, not more than a stone’s throw from the Horace Mann School. I started kindergarten with his older brother, Glen. When I repeated the eighth grade, I wound up in Anthony Sarno’s homeroom with Jon. We became almost inseparable after that.

Jon’s pen & ink illustrations were so true-to-life that you’d swear they could reach out and grab you. He dabbled in the more fantastic and surrealistic avant-garde genre, illustrating trees with human form and common objects in unusual settings. His illustrations were much like that of M.C. Escher’s, in both detail and composition.

Black ink, Bic pens were Jon’s medium of choice. He’d use nothing else. And you would not believe the finite detail in gradient shading that he achieved with those pens. It was phenomenal. You could even see the fingerprints on his subject’s skin. It was that amazing.

Perhaps one of the most disappointing moments in Jon’s artistic career was the day that Bic stopped producing metal collars to the ballpoint of their refills, in favor of the cheaper plastic materials. That loss in quality made a substantial impact. He began to drift away from pen & ink after that.

I was on my way up to Freddy’s Music Shop on Norwood Street on the day that the Rolling Stones released their “Flowers” album. Being Everett’s biggest Rolling Stones fan at the time, it was only natural that I’d be the first to buy their latest release. Just as I rounded the corner from Broadway onto Norwood, there was Jon walking towards me from the opposite sidewalk.

“Hey, where you going?” he asked.

“I’m on my way up to Freddy’s Music to get the Stone’s new album.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” he roared while holding up the copy he just bought at Freddy’s Music. “You mean I got the Stone’s new album before you did? That makes me a bigger fan that you,” he laughed.

Then he said, “I’m gonna run home and play this album before you do. Wait till everybody hears this. I’m the new number one Stone’s fan in Everett,” he said running and laughing all the way down the street.

Not having an actual picture of Jon, I’ve recreated his likeness as I see him sitting at his desk in Anthony Sarno’s eighth grade homeroom. It’s not an exact likeness, mind you, but it’s pretty near close. I’ve got to keep tweaking it until I get it to an exact likeness.



Jon is now a 3D virtual charter with hair, and teeth, and the whole nine yards. He can walk and chew gum if I want him to. And I’m free to keep tweaking his likeness to my heart’s content.

I only need to create a character once. From then on I can take a gazillion snapshots from any angle, in any pose, with any light source, and in any environmental setting I so choose. That’s the glory of 3D design. So Jon, you are now a bona fide 3D virtual character.

Which brings me to last person I’m going to introduce you to. It was only just recently that the impact this person made on my life reached its full potential. And in so many ways, she leaves me with the most import lesson of all.



Her name is Elaine. We called her “Lainey.” She lived next door to me on Arlington Street. She was the baby sister of my best friend, Stanley. Stanley had an older sister, named Karen, who is my age exactly. Karen and I graduated from Everett High together.

The very first day I started kindergarten, I walked to school with Karen. I’d have been lost without her. And on that very morning is one of my earliest recollections of “Lainey.”

As Karen stepped boldly out of her front door to walk with me towards our appointed destiny with the Everett public school system, there stood Lainey peeking out at me with her bawbaw in hand one hand, and clutching onto her diaper with the other. She smiled ever so bashfully, and drifted back behind the opened door when I waived to her. I remember that moment. Don’t ask me why.

My memories are filled with hundreds of images of that girl. She was the sweetest kid you could possibly ever meet. Never an unkind word, or even a frown, ever crossed her lips. Every image in my mind’s eye is that of a radiant smile, accentuated by the brilliance of light that reflected from her eyes.

I’ve got to be honest with ya. When it comes to telling you everything I know about her, it adds up to very little. I can’t even begin to scratch the surface. She was my best friend’s baby sister. That’s about all I really know.

In the early part of 1991 when my brother, Billy, was going back and forth to the Mass General during his bout with that dreadful illness, at one point he shared a room with Karen and Stanley’s father, who was also under similar circumstances. They both eventually lost their battle with that illness.

So I began this journey playing with Karen and Stanley on the sidewalks of Arlington Street. As the years pass by we keep inadvertently coming back together again. If nothing else, that just goes to show you how we do make this journey together, and that we do need each other.

When I was visiting with friends and family back in Everett during the summer of 2005, I ran into Stanley and Karen’s mother outside of the Stop & Shop. We bundled her groceries into my car, and talked about the good old days all the way back to her house. It was then that she asked me if I had heard what happened to Lainey.

Because of a weakened porch railing, she fell two stories to the sidewalk pavement. She did survive the fall, but she was permanently paralyzed from head to toe. After carrying her groceries into the house her mother asked, “Would you like to go see her?”

I couldn’t say no, but I was very apprehensive. I wasn’t sure if I could bear to see that sweet little kid in such a traumatic state. “She’d be tickled pink to see you,” her mother said. I certainly couldn’t refuse after that.

Lainey lived just across the street from her mother. The walk across that street to her house seemed like a million miles. I had no idea what to expect.

What happened next touched my heart beyond anything that I had ever experienced before. Yes, she was strapped motionlessly to a bed that was angled upward so she could watch TV. She couldn’t even feed herself anymore.

But you know what she did do? She smiled ever so sweetly, just as she always did. I spent the better part of an hour having a good heart to heart gab with a valued friend. She loved the New England Patriots with a passion. Together we laughed about all of the things we did as little kids growing up on Arlington Street.

For a person who had every reason to be bitter with life, she had far more of a positive attitude than most of the people I know. On that day, she gave me one of the most cherished moments I ever shared with a friend. She never once lamented over her current situation. And the smile never left her lips the whole time I spent with her.

The lesson she taught me is self-evident. Be thankful for what you do have. Count your blessings. Accentuate the positive. And put on a happy face. You do that, and you’ll light up the world all around you.

I’m telling you about “Lainey” because just a few days ago I spoke on the phone with someone who holds a very special place inside my heart. Her name is, Martha, and she grew up right across the street from me. She’s like a member of my immediate family.

My heart broke when Martha said, “Lainey passed away today.”

I’m counting my blessings now. That precious child touched my life in monumental ways. Her memory lives on in my heart for all of the days of my life.

Like the caterpillar, we make this journey with folded wings. When the caterpillar rolls up into its cocoon, it thinks it’s dying. It has no idea that it will reemerge as a far more beautiful creature with more abilities and freedom than it could possibly ever imagine. Why should we expect anything less?

In my heart, Lainey will never be gone. She has spread her wings and taken flight, as a far more beautiful creature with more abilities and freedom than ever before. She now casts her light and inspiration all across the universe. It is a joyous day in Heaven.

When our time comes to cross over beyond that far horizon, she’ll be there, along with all of our other friends from Everett. You’ll know her when you see her. She’ll be right there at the front of the crowd with that adorable smile that lights up the whole world around her. You’ll see that alluring light that shimmers from her eyes.

They’ll call out to you when you get there. They’ll waive you over. They’ll say, “Over here. This is our little corner of eternity. This is where we belong because – “We’re from Everett!”
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