From APEOT With Love

(click on the image to read the inscription, etc.)


Hello friends, family and everyone else:

The other morning I was offered the job of office assistant for HiArt and TimeIn. In need of money and loving to have my mother as my employer, I gladly accepted the job. It was 8:00 AM and we were dashing down the turnpike in our filthy, leased BMW. The job proved to be quite easy, and actually sort of refreshing. It gave me a chance to find some sort of organization in life, just for once.

My mother and I have been reading a famous manga called From Eroica with Love (エロイカより愛をこめて）by Yasuko Aoike. The author has been writing it since 1976 and she is still writing today. It is the story of an openly gay art thief and his love for (and interferences with) a seemingly a-sexual German NATO officer. I read the first three volumes alone, so I had lots of different opinions about it when my mother and I found the time on our recent trip to Germany to sit down and read them together. The thing that struck me the most was my mother's inexplicable obsession with the art thief Dorian's skinflint accountant, James. A note: apparently, Yasuko Aoike was a huge Led Zepplin fan, so she decided to make Dorian look like Robert Plant. Other members of the theft group, Eroica, are also meant to look like members of Led Zepplin. So, naturally the accountant, James, is supposed to be Jimmy Page. He is an awfully far-fetched rendering of him: short, skinny, fawning, comic relief, etc.

Knowing this, I can now tell you what led me to decide to take the job, other than the promise of cash. I decided that, if I were to take a job that the real me swore never to take, I would therefore have to become someone else. So, when I am working as an office assistant, from now on, I will be my alter-ego, "James 'Jamie' Page."

To do this I will need a list of items that may or may not be hard to find.


My TO DO list:

1. Get a vintage Casio Mini
2. Sew myself a herringbone skirt-suit with patches
3. get a wavy black wig with hair over one eye


I hope you will follow my journey as James Page of HiArt and TimeIn.

So, from APEOT with love, GOOD LUCK!!