Faith Hill - "I can feel the magic floating in the air, being with you get's me that way."

This picture was directly inspired and modeled from emotion/mellow tone and orange-tinged imagery of this song, I especially love the empty almost sad feeling the tone of the very end of the song leaves.. at least on me, just very soft empty fade-out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCmsZUN4r_s

Despite the strong intimate emotion of the song choice, this isn't actually the feeling I'm trying to convey here nor am I trying to hint at any kind of romantic relationship between Callie and her owner. No, it's actually a tragic opposite of sorts.

It's almost like a sad twist on romance or at least companionship. To Callie, being with her owner after the end of a long day on the California coast, watching the sun set over the waves as warm breeze whistles through her grille, is a very close and emotional happy moment. To her owner however, while the day and moment are just as powerful, there's no companionship there, it's just him alone on the beach resting against the grille of his old wagon. It's a one sided relationship in a very tragic sense.

Regardless, this picture IS happy and they ARE both very happy and relaxed here. It's only in hindsight and seeing this in the perspective of a nostalgic memory after the Woodie has long since 'passed away' that it becomes sad.. knowing that their life like this doesn't last, and as I said in the title of her last picture "the blue skies eventually end."



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I have to admit, it felt great going back to Callie and drawing another picture for her, the character that first inspired me to do my TFED series in the first place (Tales From Ernie's Disposal). I don't know why but even after Pinky, Bobby Lee, and Andy, I still somehow feel so much more pity for this character. She fits the persona of the life of your average car, it seems, even more then the others at least the one's I've drawn so far.

You see the original idea for showing these pictures showing the car's pasts were make people feel the full range of tragic sorrow, rather then just the sadness that they died.. which is what you'd feel just from seeing the movie. It's the difference between being sad seeing a bird get shot, and then feeling bad seeing a bird you raised since it was a baby getting shot.. you feel so much closer to the character when you know their whole story you know?

I guess what always seemed so tragic to me was that all the cars in Worthless seem to have had the same passions for the things their owners did. Bobby-Lee shared a passion for speed and the road that his owner did, Andy had the winning spirit in him, Callie seemed to love the beach and the type of people they attracted. So really, their owners had probably the best friends ever, right there, who loved everything they did and adored them.. since they were their masters. But their owners never knew then and never will know the companionship that they threw away. THAT is the passion behind my series!

I guess two good developments I did by drawing this were, for one thing, this is the first picture Callie's been in that's shaded. If you remember when I first started I was still trying to copy the movie's style by not shading the characters. XD The other thing is defining who her owner was, in the original picture I left it ambiguous which of the characters in the picture she belonged to. But to be honest, this guy was the first character I drew in the picture and I always associated him as her owner.


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While not 0 proven, I read on a message board that's been studying Worthless and trying to decode some of the more cryptic lyrics, that one of the people actually got in touch with the guy who wrote the song. Apparently the Woodie Wagon was based off of the well known Jan and Dean song "Surf City." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERrwjR4ZlfI which if this is accurate makes the Woodie Wagon the only character in the song who's actual method of abandonment is actually completely known. The song pretty much says exactly in the last part of the song what happens to her. On her way down the surf-route she breaks down. Her owner, not able to stand being stuck in one place for any amount of time apparently, ditches her beside the road and hitch-hikes his way the rest of the way..why? for surfer girl p**y of course. 9_9 In fact if you take the Woodie in the music video as HER, you get to see her being abandoned in the music video.. quite sad really. :(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IInQ.....ted&t=0m7s


After finding this out I think it only made her that much of a sympathetic character. Like any of the TBLT appliances/cars the have an un-ending love for their "masters." But the song gives you the exact feelings her owner had for her. She wasn't special at all, just and "an oldie but a goodie" that could "get me(him) where I wanna go." Pretty much an old junker that was being used for however long she lasted and then discarded afterwords.

Callie © Jerry Rees
Owner © me