No, no...YES!

Last year at the end of the year, after the Tigers had gone to the World Series and lost, a little sports collector opened up shop in the local mall. One day, I made my dad go in there with me, since sports collectors are hands on with their customers, and excuse me but I was a bit nervous about being the only one in there looking around.

Anyway, what we were looking at were baseball cards. A bunch of nice Tigers cards, and what I remember the most about that day was that the guy reached down into the case and took out a card he obviously already valued. A Justin Verlander rookie card.



Now, I'm not saying it was the same card. I honestly don't remember. All I remember saying was "Wow, he doesn't even look like Justin Verlander. He looks really old in that picture." Which, actually, makes me believe this card has nothing to do with the card I actually saw. But it works.

The strange thing about this day was that the guy was trying hardcore to get me interested in buying the Verlander card. And it was like twenty bucks or something. Not bad. Of course, I wasn't really looking to buy anything, but I seriously considered getting it. I mean, he'd already won Rookie of the Year, and having the rookie card of a Rookie of the Year...I mean, come on. It's a good thing. Then, I thought..."But it's only been a year. If I buy this card, that means I'm banking on Verlander actually being great throughout his career." I guess I didn't want to bank on that. So we walked out of there without it.

A season later, and Justin Verlander has just thrown his first no-hitter, the first no-hitter in Tigers history since Jack Morris did it in 1984 - the year we won it all.

I watched every pitch of this no-hitter, and I have to have a record of it because I'm 20, and this is the first time this has happened for the Tigers since I've been alive. That's how big this is.

I have to remember some things. Like the fact that in the second inning, I actually thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if he pitched a no-hitter?" Of course, the second inning is too early, and at that point it's pretty ridiculous to even think about something like that, but I want it recorded that I thought it. However, right after I thought that I thought, "Haha. Like that's going to happen."

Well, then all of a sudden it was the fifth inning. And I noticed he was still dealing, and I told my dad to come in and watch, because Verlander was pitching a no-hitter. He laughed. And then yelled at me for jinxing it if it actually was happening. And then didn't come watch.

So I kept watching. The Tigers scored in the sixth, making their lead 3 to 0, but I almost didn't care. I wanted to see Verlander pitch. And sure enough, he still had the no-no at the end of six. And at the end of seven. I started to realize just how crazy this was, just how impossible. I logged in to MLB.com and read the headline: "Justin case you hadn't noticed, No-No in progress." I got chills.

I watched a hard-hit ball shot to right field, and I held my breath. But Magglio knew what was at stake, and put his body on the line to make a very pretty sliding catch.

I watched Neifi Perez scoop an outfield-bound ground ball and shovel it behind his back to Placido Polanco who tagged the bag and whipped around to throw Gross out at first for the inning-ending double play. I watched and I screamed, and I promise I won't say anything bad about Neifi Perez for at least a month, even if he loses us ten games.

And then the eighth was over, and there were three outs to go. "He's going to do it. He's going to do it." I called my parents up to watch, and we all sat holding our breaths as the final three batters came up to face Justin. He struck out the first two easily, as they looked ridiculously lost at the plate. It took his strike-out total to 12, four more than his career high.

Then came the last batter, J.J. Hardy. The Magglio Ordonez of the Brewers.

Hardy stared at a first pitch fastball, coming in at 102 miles per hour - Verlander's 110th pitch of the night, and faster than any that had come before. Right on the outside corner for a strike, with the movement of a snake. The crowd was on their feet, and so was I, and when the next pitch came and Hardy fouled it off, I was elated - Verlander was one strike away from a no-hitter.

Then the ball was off the bat. Justin immediately pumped his fist, and I knew he had it...when the ball went into Magglio's glove for the final out, the crowd went wild. I went wild. My parents went wild. My dad had tears in his eyes, and so did I.

I still can't believe I got to watch it all. This has to be the pinnacle moment of my career as a Tiger fan. It was more exciting, more invigorating, and more satisfying than a hundred Magglio walk-off home runs to go to the World Series.

And I really wish I'd bought that freaking card.

So, Yeah, I'm Published

Well, not yet. But I did get my acceptance letter today.

It's a really good surprise, seeing as I wasn't quite expecting it (even though in the back of my mind somewhere I really wanted to know, really was hoping I'd be good enough for a university literary magazine (Because if I'm not, who the hell am I kidding?)).

Anyway, I was good enough. It would be interesting to know by how much. (Personally, I like to think all the other stories they got were crap, then they got to mine and were like "OHMYGOD - BEST STORY EVER!")

Uh...here's part of the letter.

Congratulations from the Offbeat!

Sorry about the delay, we received numerous wonderful
submissions and the selection process was a long and
difficult one. The good news is that we would like to publish
your piece:

Leather-Lip Lightman and The Ice Train

The 2007 WCCA's

I did a presentation comic for the 2007 Webcartoonists' Choice Awards.

This is the page for the WCCAs - http://ryanestrada.com/wcca07

This is the page for the comic I did - http://ryanestrada.com/wcca07/ceremony/singlepanel.htm

Adam and Poker: A Look Inside

All right, so a few days ago I played a couple of freeroll tournaments. A freeroll is where you enroll, along with 10,000 other players, to compete for 27 spots to another freeroll, which, if you win that, gets you like a thousand bucks. Everyone starts with 1500 chips and the winner ends up with something like 25 million. There are that many people.

There's like 50 of these freerolls a week.

I played in two of them one night, as well as a 500+30 No Limit Hold'em Tourney with about 6000 people.

Now, one of the freerolls I lost early, within the first half hour.

That leaves the play money (500+30) tourney and the other freeroll.

Now, in the play money tourney, I kept finding myself with more and more chips. Around the 50,000 mark, I check and found that I was chip leader. 1 out of 1000. Sweet. To show how rare it is to EVER be chip leader in a tourney, let me just say that I've played probably 200-250 freerolls/tourneys and have NEVER had the chip lead. This was my first time. It was an amazing feeling. Anyway, I kept getting chips until I had 350,000. By then I was like 7th. And I was playing the freeroll on the side, so the table wasn't getting the best of me. Finally, I went out on a hand of my choosing to a fellow who had me covered by about a hundred thousand. I finished in 35th. 35th out of 6,000. Sweet.

Let's get to the freeroll. This one's out of 10,000 people.

Ok, I've played for about 3 hours...let's see where I'm at.



(Click it - I'm the one on the far right with the Flash outfit)

Now, take a look at the bottom of the Poker window, to the left - in that little box called Stats. Check out my position.

That's right. Chip leader AGAIN. And this time, much further into a larger, more difficult tourney. I almost can't believe it. How come tonight, I become chip leader twice, when it's never happened to me before? Have I been playing poker wrong the whole time?

Well, kinda. Not wrong, just not right.
I used to only play cards I knew would win. But you can't win big pots like that. You can't take a hundred thousand chips from someone if they don't think they have it.

Let's just say this. I called an all in with Q10. My opponent had KK. I figured I'd lose, but that was ok. I had him quintupled in chip stack. (He had 90,000 chips, I had 450,000) On the flop there was a 10. I checked my e-mail real quick, and when I came back I found that both the turn and the river were Queens. I just sucked out with a full house. And added 100k to my chip stack.

I would have made the top 27 too, but I got too addicted to winning. I lost all of my chips on one hand - pair of tens, with a king kicker - to a pair of tens, with an ace kicker. Funny thing was, before I pushed all in, I knew I'd lost. But I just couldn't give up. (Also, I had to be up for class the next day and it was already pushing 3 in the morning...didn't know how much longer I could go before committing to an all-nighter.)

I finished in 77th place. 77th out of 10,000, and here's the thing. When I lost, I was in third place. THIRD. Think about that. 3 out of 10,000. That's the same as .03 out of a hundred. Not even one percent of one percent of the total amount of entrants. Wow. Just wow.

I don't know what happened to my poker game that made me start winning like this...but it must have been something. Because I wasn't just chip leader once...but twice - in the same night, in two different tournaments, when I hadn't even been chip leader EVER before. I'd always just tried to stay in the middle of the pack. That isn't good enough anymore. It's not for me, and it shouldn't be for you either.

I'm trying to figure out what this means...if it's a fluke, or what. I'll let you know when I have more experience.

Hey ComicSpace and Sara Holwerda

ComicSpace is like MySpace...only for comics. Not cluttered with ugly backgrounds or unwanted musical performances. Instead, they give you an easy way to host your comics. Each comic (series) you do goes into a separate "comic gallery" so technically I could host ALL of my comics there. Right now though, all I have up is JGotSpys. Which is up to Episode 13 by the way.

Check me out - http://www.comicspace.com/adamholwerda

Oh, and then my sister's website went live today. Check her out at saraholwerda.com

(She's not quite done tweaking it to perfection yet, but if I link to her she'll finish earlier.)

Oh, and today is Hourly Comics day, and I'm doing it. Badly. Hey, shut up. They're my hours for Pete's sake.

Hey Guess What - Pay Me

A post from Craigslist - thanks to Smarbaby for the tip, and to the person(s) who wrote this. You are so right.

Every day, there are more and more Craigs List posts seeking “artists” for everything from auto graphics to comic books to corporate logo designs. More people are finding themselves in need of some form of illustrative service.

But what they’re NOT doing, unfortunately, is realizing how rare someone with these particular talents can be.

To those who are “seeking artists”, let me ask you; How many people do you know, personally, with the talent and skill to perform the services you need? A dozen? Five? One? …none?

More than likely, you don’t know any. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be posting on craigslist to find them.

And this is not really a surprise.

In this country, there are almost twice as many neurosurgeons as there are professional illustrators. There are eleven times as many certified mechanics. There are SEVENTY times as many people in the IT field.

So, given that they are less rare, and therefore less in demand, would it make sense to ask your mechanic to work on your car for free? Would you look him in the eye, with a straight face, and tell him that his compensation would be the ability to have his work shown to others as you drive down the street?

Would you offer a neurosurgeon the “opportunity” to add your name to his resume as payment for removing that pesky tumor? (Maybe you could offer him “a few bucks” for “materials”. What a deal!)

Would you be able to seriously even CONSIDER offering your web hosting service the chance to have people see their work, by viewing your website, as their payment for hosting you?

If you answered “yes” to ANY of the above, you’re obviously insane. If you answered “no”, then kudos to you for living in the real world.

But then tell me… why would you think it is okay to live out the same, delusional, ridiculous fantasy when seeking someone whose abilities are even less in supply than these folks?

Graphic artists, illustrators, painters, etc., are skilled tradesmen. As such, to consider them as, or deal with them as, anything less than professionals fully deserving of your respect is both insulting and a bad reflection on you as a sane, reasonable person. In short, it makes you look like a twit.

A few things you need to know;

1. It is not a “great opportunity” for an artist to have his work seen on your car/’zine/website/bedroom wall, etc. It IS a “great opportunity” for YOU to have their work there.

2. It is not clever to seek a “student” or “beginner” in an attempt to get work for free. It’s ignorant and insulting. They may be “students”, but that does not mean they don’t deserve to be paid for their hard work. You were a “student” once, too. Would you have taken that job at McDonalds with no pay, because you were learning essential job skills for the real world? Yes, your proposition it JUST as stupid.

3. The chance to have their name on something that is going to be seen by other people, whether it’s one or one million, is NOT a valid enticement. Neither is the right to add that work to their “portfolio”. They get to do those things ANYWAY, after being paid as they should. It’s not compensation. It’s their right, and it’s a given.

4. Stop thinking that you’re giving them some great chance to work. Once they skip over your silly ad, as they should, the next ad is usually for someone who lives in the real world, and as such, will pay them. There are far more jobs needing these skills than there are people who possess these skills.

5. Students DO need “experience”. But they do NOT need to get it by giving their work away. In fact, this does not even offer them the experience they need. Anyone who will not/can not pay them is obviously the type of person or business they should be ashamed to have on their resume anyway. Do you think professional contractors list the “experience” they got while nailing down a loose step at their grandmother’s house when they were seventeen?

If you your company or gig was worth listing as desired experience, it would be able to pay for the services it received. The only experience they will get doing free work for you is a lesson learned in what kinds of scrubs they should not lower themselves to deal with.

6. (This one is FOR the artists out there, please pay attention.) Some will ask you to “submit work for consideration”. They may even be posing as some sort of “contest”. These are almost always scams. They will take the work submitted by many artists seeking to win the “contest”, or be “chosen” for the gig, and find what they like most. They will then usually have someone who works for them, or someone who works incredibly cheap because they have no originality or talent of their own, reproduce that same work, or even just make slight modifications to it, and claim it as their own. You will NOT be paid, you will NOT win the contest. The only people who win, here, are the underhanded folks who run these ads. This is speculative, or “spec”, work. It’s risky at best, and a complete scam at worst. I urge you to avoid it, completely. For more information on this subject, please visit www.no-spec.com.

So to artists/designers/illustrators looking for work, do everyone a favor, ESPECIALLY yourselves, and avoid people who do not intend to pay you. Whether they are “spec” gigs, or just some guy who wants a free mural on his living room walls. They need you. You do NOT need them.

And for those who are looking for someone to do work for free… please wake up and join the real world. The only thing you’re accomplishing is to insult those with the skills you need. Get a clue.

Hey Tigers...

Hey. Tigers are on again tonight.

Game 2 of the the ALDS at 7 P.M. FSN Detroit.

I'm gonna watch it and do homework and stuff. Going to eat first though.

Love ya's!

Just Guys Off The Street Indeed

If you're a fan of myspace.com, then you'll enjoy this.

I started a comic there, using just a personal profile and a page editor. It chronicles my life at the UPS Store.

You can read it here - that's http://www.myspace.com/jgotspyscomic - bookmark it, read it, love it. It's up to Episode V already.

Oh, and one more thing. My dad's website, bruceholwerda.com is once again up, now for the 2007 art show season.

And there's a page for our book.

A Few Christmas Thoughts

Why is it still called shipping when the only two options are Ground and Air?

Stephen King: Didn't you retire?

Is ham supposed to be served cold? And is orange jello supposed to be made from Tang?

If you spend six hours in the car in one day and seven hours at the destination for that day's trip, how much is minimum wage?

What kind of day did I miss at work - more gifts shipped or returns shipped?

W.E.B. Griffin: Do you like it when people just call you Web? Because I wouldn't. And did you make your book green just so it would easily coordinate with Stephen King's red one and subliminally convince my Grandfather that the two books together = Christmas present?

Which is better - The new Bond movie or the new Rocky movie?

What kind of new year's resolutions will I actually keep? And if the answer is reliably "none," should I still make them? And if not, what should I do instead - new year's probablynotgonnadoitlutions?

Which is better - finding a twenty-dollar-bill in a library book or finding a book on how to counterfeit perfect twenty-dollar-bills in the dumpster behind the library?

How do you spell just one elf? Is it elve?

Tired and Sick

Is it just because this is the week I have to work 40 hours?

Or because I have a dentist's appointment tomorrow at 11?

I mean, what is this all about? These chapped lips, these raw nostrils. What the hell? A nose that sneezes at least seven times per hour, a pair of eyes that make me look like I've done more drugs than Courtney Love, a head that all of a sudden feels like it weighs at least three more pounds...what is all this?

And my ear...my right ear...you know how in the summer when you swim and water gets caught in there and makes you feel like you have to shake your head really fast to get it out? It feels like that right now. Only there's no water. I just sneezed and it was like that. Do they make plungers small enough for ears?

Why does my nose run? It must hate me, because you know what? I hate it. I hate that I can't breathe through it, that I can't keep it from dripping copious amounts of watery mucus onto my shirt, that I can't even really touch it. Why a nose, anyway? I just want gills.

Just give me freaking gills.