not much'a nothin'

I'll Side With Santa

2011-12-21T15:18:00.003-05:00

This morning, I saw an egregiously offensive TV spot that cast Santa as a Christmas grinch who ends a nasty tirade with the words, "I don't do poor countries." So who's responsible for the commercial?

UNICEF.

Guess what? I no longer do UNICEF. I'd rather side with Santa instead.

I considered posting a link, but I find the commercial to be so bilious that I chose not to do so. If you want to see it for yourself, search on Youtube. It's still there, for now at least...

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas...

2011-12-21T00:50:00.002-05:00

Tonight I found myself truly moved by the Christmas spirit for the first time this season.

It's been a somber December; various matters have conspired to make it difficult for me to look beyond the immediacy of the moment, to experience something broader than right now. I haven't ignored Christmas, but it hasn't become a part of my life the way it used to so many years in the past.

Tonight, though, I put Comic Shop News #1282 to bed and decided this would be a good time to wrap presents for some of my friends who'll be gathering at the store tomorrow evening. And it was the wrapping paper that truly reminded me of the joys of Christmases past.

The red and green striped paper with a gold filigree pattern overlaying the green--I bought that paper at Belk's in Rome in happier times when we had the Horseleg Creek farmhouse, when Mom and Dad were still in active and healthy, when Cole and Jess were younger and filled with that mixture of sullenness and silliness that typifies childhood, when Kim's laugh filled the holiday house at Marchmont, when Dad would sing along with every Christmas song, and when the den of their home was so packed with Christmas gifts and knicknacks and decorations that maneuvering through the room was at times challenging. I wrapped DVD's for Dad in that paper; I gave Mom a replacement remote for her favorite GoVideo dual deck VHS unit, and it was wrapped in that paper.

The blue paper? Kmart paper from the now-defunct Kmart in West Rome. Kim's computer was wrapped in that paper, and I remember the startled look on her face when we gave it to her.

The heavy, extra-wide roll of NOEL paper in burgundy and gold and hunter green? That came from Costco, when Costco was relatively new to Kennesaw; it has wrapped wall clocks and sets of dishes and sheets and so many other oversized gifts over the years... and I can remember the smiles and laughter and "Oh, you shouldn't have," the sincere gratitude and pleasure that makes gift-giving so wonderful.

So many rolls of paper--a few date back more than a quarter century, fragments that go back four houses now, from our Carillon home to our Milstead home to our Horseleg home all the way to Sumit Wood Drive, the first home we ever owned. I remember wrapping gifts in that paper in the vaulted ceiling living room, with starlight visible through the skylight if I turned off the living room lights... or was it the reflection of Christmas tree lights instead? It was starlight in my memory, so starlight it is...

Gift boxes with tags written by loving hands that are ceased writing tags far too soon. Tissue paper used and re-used so many times it is almost limp, but there's still a little more holiday happiness to be drawn from its holiday pastels.

And I remembered all those Christmases, all that happiness that comes with giving a gift that truly means something to the recipient. I remember the fretful days of worrying that the gifts weren't good enough, or there weren't enough of them.

It's the love, not the gift, that we recall most of all.

And those richly colored rolls of paper overwrap more than gifts. They wrap up moments of happiness so intense that they have embedded themselves in the fibers of the paper, and every time I spread a roll of paper on the floor to trim a piece just the right size for a book or a bottle of perfume or a DVD or a framed photograph, the memories are released.

And it's Christmas again... every Christmas... and every loved one is still there. They haven't left--they're just hiding away, waiting to pleasantly surprise me in an unexpected moment.

And I am overwhelmed by the Christmas spirit, and I truly remember what Christmas joy is...

Sad But True But Sad Still...

2011-12-17T23:28:00.003-05:00

Ever since I read this installment of Crankshaft back on November 27th, it's haunted me... because what Crankshaft (or more specifically, creator Tom Batiuk) is describing here is precisely what I saw happen to Dad as his world grew smaller and smaller with each passing year. Apparently it's far more symptomatic of old age than I ever realized. Even so, it makes me sad to realize that so many of the people who were so independent throughout their lives face a diminishing world as they get older... (Strip copyright 2011 by Tom Batiuk and King Features Syndicate)

POP Doesn't Go Mac.com E-Mail

2011-12-12T00:08:00.001-05:00

For the past two days, my mac.com / me.com POP email account has failed to work. I can't connect to check mail. I know that mail is coming in, because I can log in via iCloud or IMAP service and read the mail. I could forward the e-mail to my Gmail account, but Apple still has an archaic 200-emails-per-day limit, at which point they cut off your account, so I'm just having to let emails pile up in the box, respond to the most urgent via IMAP, and hope that Apple gets this fixed sometime soon.

The first experience was not very encouraging, however. Spend 45 minutes on the phone with 2 reps, and both of them basically said, "Hmmm..." followed by "Oh, well..." I was promised that someone at higher level tech support would investigate and find a solution right away, but that hasn't happened. He also said he was sending me a text transcript of our chat, but he didn't--and for some reason, the "email" button that appeared at the end of our chat was grayed out, so I coudn't select it.

Why is this inconvenient? Because, while I use my mac.com address as my primary public email address, I actually have a Gmail account set up to check my POP accounts and aggregate the email at one central address. I can respond to each email from the address to which the original mail was sent. I can even SEND email from my POP account, I just can't receive email.

At first the tech rep thought it was a computer problem, but I told him that it simultaneously failed to work on a total of 16 different computers using four different ISPs; it also quit working on my various IOS 5 devices and through Gmail. The rep finally checked and verified that it was NOT working to receive mail, although he had no idea why.

I know that things can go wrong--it's how a company addresses the issue that's a real measure of success. I've never known Apple to leave me hanging for days with a problem like this. I've also never known them to fail to contact me right away when they said they were going to.

Hope I can get this working sometime in the near future. I am currently anticipating a Sisyphusian ordeal whereby I have to call Apple again, wait for a while, explain the problem once again, prove that it's not a local computer issue, then listen to another rep go "Hmmm..."

Come on, Apple--prove me wrong and get this resolved!

The Tooth, the Whole Tooth, and Nothing But...

2011-12-07T00:20:00.003-05:00

I have been cursed with bad teeth. I wish that weren't the case, but it seems to be a family thing; both Mom and Dad had dentures because their teeth were so bad when they were younger that they were advised to have them removed and replaced.

Both my sister Kimberly and I have had to deal with frequent fillings, crowns, root canals, etc., over the years. Thursday morning, I'm having to have an extraction and implant procedure done to a tooth that already had had three crowns and a root canal; by the time it's all over, this tooth will represent more than $10,000 worth of dental work and discomfort.

Recently, I've been putting a lot of attention into dental matters, hoping to find a way to reverse this trend; I'm already having my teeth cleaned and checked every four months and still can't get the problem under control. My research has led me to a couple of items: xylitol and glycyrrhizol A. Both of them target Streptococcus mutans, the bacteria that causes dental caries and the subsequent cavities; I'm trying to take an aggressive approach to S. mutans hoping that I can prevent the cavities and save my teech.

In case you want to check any of it out, here's a distillation of the various things I"m using, along with links to some of the articles that led me to give this stuff a try.

As I said, I'm trying xylitol and Glycyrrhizol A lollipops, along with a twice a day baking soda rinse (4 ounces water, one teaspons baking soda) to reduce oral acidity, which is necessary for dental caries) and use of ACT flouride mouthwash and a remineralizing toothpaste. Time will tell if any of this works, but I'm certainly willing to invest a small amount of money and a few months of time to give it a try.

Xylitol is a sugar alcohol extracted from birch bark that has anti-microbial qualities and seems to particularly work against streptococcus mutans, the bacteria that causes cavities--

Here's a good source for low-calorie xylitol mints that offer 1/2 gram of xylitol per 1.2 calorie mint. (The recommended dose is 6 to 10 grams of xylitol per day.) I'm also trying xylitol in crystallized form (use it like sugar--only about 2/3 as sweet, but one or two cups of coffee a day sweetened with xylitol gives you the recommended dose of xylitol).

In addition, I'm using Dr. John's herbal lollipops, formulated by Dr. Wen-yuan Shi. This sugar-free lollipop uses stabilized Glycyrrhizol A, a licorice root extract that has been stablized to eliminate its ancillary tendency to slightly increase blood pressure.

Here's an article extract from a paper that Dr. Shi presented to the International Journal of Oral Science on the benefit of this formulation.

Here's another interesting article by Dr. Shi on oral health and cavity prevention.

This article discusses the benefits of xylitol, offering some pretty strong documentation in support of its positive effects on dental health.

And here's an article that's particularly intriguing and shows a great deal of promise for future developments, as it discusses his work on a targeted anti-microbial peptide (which I suspect is a part of the super mouthwash he is developing).

If you want to know more about that mouthwash, here's the news story that first alerted me to research and development efforts currently underway (and yes, they involve Dr. Shi).

If you want to check out Dr. Shi's credentials, here you go--it's obvious this isn't some herbal-health guru, but a trained professional who knows his stuff.

And finally here's a link to Kiss Your Dentist Goodbye, a book that offers a lot of good info about all of this; it's available in print form or as an eBook.

Hope some of this does some good for anyone else out there who, like me, feels like dental health is a losing battle in spite of multiple daily brushings, flossings, mouthwash applications, etc.

Dan Biggers Passes

2011-12-06T22:10:00.002-05:00

Dan Biggers, an educator, patron of the arts, and actor (who, among many other roles, played Dr. Frank Robb in the TV version of In the Heat of the Night), passed away on Monday. As the news has gotten out, I've heard from several people who thought that he might have been my dad. He wasn't; my father was Don Biggers (full name was Donald Clifford Biggers--and yes, I'm Donald Clifford Biggers, Jr., I'm very proud to say), formerly writer, sports editor, city editor, and managing editor of the Rome News-Tribune and a man who served as a county commissioner and who was active in supporting and promoting high school sports. (Dad passed away in 2007.)

But the confusion is understandable; in fact, Dan Biggers and I often joked about the fact that his move to Rome in the 1960s led to decades of mix-ups. Obviously, the similarities in names--Don Biggers and Dan Biggers--led to many mixups. For years, we got one another's phone calls--and even occasionally received one another's mail!

Then Dan Biggers became dean at Berry College, where he was frequently referred to as Dean Biggers. My mother's name was Dean, so she too was Dean Biggers. You can see the many mixups that might have come from that. I remember when they were introduced at one point--"Dean Biggers, I'd like to introduce Dean Biggers. And Dean Biggers, this is Dean Biggers."

I was lucky enough to get a scholarship to Berry College, which I attended from 1971 to 1975; ironically, Dan Biggers became Dean of Students in 1971--the exact same time that I joined Berry as a freshman. I sometimes wondered if the fact that my last name was Biggers might have worked in my favor from time to time when it came time to get a schedule changed or to get in an otherwise full class, even though I never attempted to use the surname to my advantage (although many friends said I should have!).

Our paths crossed many times over the years. At one point, Dan Biggers was hosting a cable-channel local news-and-interview program in Rome, and he asked me to make an appearance on the show to talk about science fiction, comics, fandom, and to plug a local SF convention that Gary Steele, Larry Mason, Susan, and I were hosting in Rome. As always, Dan was personable and very amiable prior to the broadcast, spending about twenty minutes just catching up. When the show began, though, I witnessed Dan's screen personality come out; it wasn't different than his normal personality so much as it was an intensification of the Dan Biggers I knew, as if he has distilled everything that typified him and made it stronger, more concentrated. At that point, I realized that this was a man who knew how to project for the cameras, so it was no surprise that he found a career in acting as well. I was always proud to see him in a television or film role, and happy that he had found such success in something he loved to do.

I lament his passing; he was a good man who did many beneficial things for the Rome community, and I was glad I had the chance to know him.

Life Is What Happens to You When You're Busy Making Other Plans...

2011-12-03T23:55:00.002-05:00

It's always surprising when life presents you with unanticipated circumstances that force you to re-evaluate everything you have planned. Not ready to talk about the details, but if I seem distracted or preoccupied, there is a reason...

Kindling Interest...

2011-12-03T23:48:00.002-05:00

I loaned my pal Charles my black and white Kindle 3G for the weekend; Charles and I are both avid fans of the printed book, but as I told him, there are some times when the convenience of the Kindle is hard to surpass. A good example of a work that I enjoyed on the Kindle was the new Stephen King book; while I have a printed copy, it's a hefty, burdensome book, and it doesn't balance well on my chest when I'm lying on the floor reading (in fact, my chest actually began to hurt after a while because I kept resting the bottom edge of the spine on my surgical scar, which is sensitive to this day for some reason I can't explain). So I tried 11/22/63 on the Kindle, and found it to be a very pleasant experience. The page width is sufficiently narrow that I don't have to move my eyes from side to side at all--just straight down the page, taking in a line at a time.

Since Charles is now reading 11/22/63 as well, I figured it would be a great way for him to test out the Kindle, too. So I brought him my Kindle and the charger last weekend. He called today and, as I suspected, found the Kindle to be very handy--compact, portable, light-weight, easy to read.

Of course, neither Charles nor I are looking to replace books with Kindles--but it's a nice supplement when you want to take a variety of reading material with you, but don't want to invest in a rolling bookshelf. It's also very handy for public-domain books (thousands of titles right there for your enjoyment, no investment other than the hardware) and I find it to be very useful for non-fiction, where I'm just looking for the information, not the package itself.

I also showed him the iPad, and we discussed its advantages (larger, more detailed screen, color, a more booklike interface that has you "flipping pages" without a black screen in between page builds) and disadvantages (the glass screen is reflective, so glare can be an issue), and it's a little larger and heavier than the small black and white Kindle). If Charles wants to borrow an iPad to test it out, that's easily do-able, too; it's the best way to decide which device meets your needs, after all!

We'll see soon enough whether Charles becomes a Kindle owner...

Midnight Target

2011-11-25T01:16:00.003-05:00

For the first time ever, I decided to venture out at midnight to see what this Black Friday shopping thing was like. Target started their sale at midnight Friday morning, and I was up anyway, so I decided to drive the one mile from my house to the nearest Target and check it out.

When I first pulled up, I thought that it wasn't that crowded; then I realized that I had come in from the less frequented west entrance of the shopping center. The crowd was lined up from the door to the east, and it was at probably 2000 people long.

Nevertheless, I decided to join the crowd and see what the excitement was about. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, so I wasn't going to be disappointed if some "door-buster" item had sold out, so I figured why not?

The crowd made it into the store in less than five minutes; crowd control was excellent, everyone was in a good mood, and there were probably fewer than a dozen line-breakers that I could see. It was very nice to see people doing what they're supposed to in a crowded situation.

Once I got inside, I realized that Target wasn't using their typical layout--that is, the electronics sales items were not in the electronics section, but lined up along the main perimeter aisle. That had confused many, who had headed straight to the electronics section when they cleared the doorway, hoping to find one of the deep-discount televisions that were on sale.

As it turned out, Target was so well stocked that even when I wandered past those electronics items fifteen minutes after closing, there was still a great selection of televisions in 32", 40", and 46" sizes, all at very low prices. No one was fighting over a television, nor was there any sort of territorial behavior going on; people were reasonable, and there were several of us who were willing to help customers load the heavier televisions onto their carts. When you see people taking the time to help someone else buy a bargain item, it restores your faith in human nature.

I ended up buying a couple of bags of Hershey's Kisses (cherry cordial flavor, which I haven't been able to find anywhere else other than Target) and a cheap Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner for vacuuming the hardwood floor (we were very impressed with our previous Dirt Devil, which served us well for eight years when we had the Horseleg Creek home in Rome back in the 90s). Most of all, I had a good time watching people shop with such fervor; apparently there's still a lot of life in the economy after all!

I Shouted Out "Who Killed the Kennedies?"...

2011-11-22T00:15:00.004-05:00

While I'll have to put off a detailed review of Stephen King's 11/22/63 until I have more time, I still wanted to share a few observations now that I've finished it:

(1) While the book deals with a time-traveling English teacher's efforts to stop the assassination of John Kennedy, the book is at its strongest when it's not dealing with Kennedy.

(2) King's view of 2011 in a reality in which Kennedy lived is more of an outline than a narrative--I can't avoid the feeling that it's only here because he feels that it has to be.

(3) I suspect that Stephen King is a big fan of Mad Men.

(4) I really enjoyed the leaner, almost pulp-influenced writing style that King used for the first part of the book. As the story went on, his more complex style and sentence structure crept back in (and that's not a bad thing, either), but the lean style of the early chapters was quite refreshing, and a sort of literary nod to the era.

(5) As is the case with many Stephen King books, his ending isn't as strong as his set-up and plot development. It's not bad, but seems a bit rushed.

(6) I also suspect that Stephen King is a big fan of Fringe.

(7) I bet it would be very easy to convince a person from 1960 or 1961 that the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women" was an obscure country-western song from that era.

(8) In some ways, 11/22/63 comes across as a thought-provoking counterbalance to The Dead Zone.

(9) Stephen King is at heart a fantasist, not a science fiction writer, and you'll realize why I say that once you've finished the book.

(10) Betcha Stephen King has watched It's a Wonderful Life a time or two...

All in all, a compelling read, which is why I set aside most of Sunday evening and Monday to complete this massive doorstop of a book.

At the Tone...

2011-11-22T00:13:00.002-05:00

A sure sign that things have changed: people who once spent hours on the phone with you every week, talking about all the important (and often the unimportant) things in their lives, let your calls go to voicemail and never find the time to return the call...

Electronically Dependent

2011-11-20T23:33:00.002-05:00

Remember the good old days of the VCR?

I was an early adopter: I bought my first VCR in late 1977, just a few months after Mom and Dad bought theirs. I still remember the incredible expense--over $1000 for a machine that could record a maximum of four hours per tape, on VHS tapes that cost $22 per tape if Dad and I ordered them twelve at a time from the Tape Warehouse in California.

But there was one good thing about the VCR: when you made a copy of a show, it was yours. It wasn't equipment-dependent; it could be taken with you from room to room, from one place to another, loaned to friends, and archived. There was no limit to storage capacity, other than the cost of more videotapes.

Sure, the quality was a mediocre 240 lines of resolution, but it seemed okay a the time--and I'm convinced that, if manufacturers had pursued digital VCRs for HD recording with the same tenacity they used to develop the original VCRs, we'd be recording high-def tapes today.

Somehow, though, the programming providers and equipment manufacturers decided that it was undesirable for consumers to have a way of archiving and saving programs on their own. In the late 90s or early 2000's, they began to push the DVR--whether it was a Tivo or a Replay TV or a DirecTV receiver or a Comcast box, it shared the same limitations: it could only save a program to its hard drive, it could not be archived or transferred, and if the equipment failed, the programming was lost.

Over the past decade, we've dealt with hard drive failure on more than a half-dozen DVRs from various manufacturers and providers, and in every case I found myself longing for the simpler days of VCRs, when I could have simply watched my archived programming on other equipment.

I'm aware that there are ways to record programming on a computer, and in fact I use EyeTV and a USB HD tuner to do just that using unscrambled QAM broadcasts (and one Hauppauge box hooked up a cable tuner). But I'm also aware that most consumers have no idea that a computer can record programming and save it in an archival format, and I'm also aware that the entire system is more complex, arcane, and less user-friendly than the simple VCR.

It's a shame. I still have perfectly viewable VHS tapes recorded in the late 1970s--favorite episodes, clips, highlights from talk shows, musical performances, comedy skits, etc. I think far fewer people today have such personal favorites compilations, because it's difficult-to-near-impossible for the average television viewer to save the programming.

I know that a significant percentage of all televised programming is eventually made available on DVD or through various streaming services--but there's a lot of niche programming that never makes the cut, simply because there isn't a sufficiently large audience to make it profitable.

Don't know whether to blame programmer greed, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, equipment manufacturers, the digital TV transition, or all of the above... but I think it's absurd that the technology to independently record, save, edit, and share programming is no longer available to consumers on a practical basis.

Walking Dead Stumbles

2011-11-20T23:28:00.002-05:00

I loved the first season of Walking Dead. The second season, not so much.

Not sure what went wrong between seasons (and yes, I know that Frank Darabont left the show after the first season, but I think there has to be more than that), but this season has been positively lethargic in its pacing compared to the first season. I think the zombies are moving faster than the average episode of Walking Dead Season Two; far too little actually happens in any given week, other than excessive amounts of talking.

The zombie budget seems to be suffering from cutbacks, too; most episodes have a single significant zombie scene, with a scattering of zombie appearances added to remind us that this is, after all, a show about survivors of a zombie apocalypse.

I don't dislike the series, but I don't feel like we're really going anywhere, either. Last year, I hated to see an episode end, knowing I'd have to wait a week to see what happened next. This season, there's just no energy to the series at all.

The mid-season finale is coming up next week; let's hope that when they return after a hiatus, they manage to get the series back on track.

Down in the mouth...

2011-11-20T23:21:00.003-05:00

I hate dental work.

And yet it seems I am destined to experience virtually every painful, invasive, and expensive dental treatment that there is.

I found out last week that tooth #13, which has already had three fillings, a root canal, and three crowns in the past couple of decades, will have to be removed by an oral surgeon in the near future. The last crown, which was done less than a year ago, already has decay beneath the gumline. That's not the reason for the removal, though: the upper dooth has fractured way up in the the gum, near the socket, and can't be repaired. So my only options were (a) removal by an oral surgeon, followed up with a titanium implant and a crown mounted on that, or (b) removal by an oral surgeon, followed up with a bridge that would require crowns on the teeth on either side of it (neither of those teeth currently has a crown).

The dentist and the oral surgeon both strongly recommend the implant rather than the bridge, feeling that the bridge might create more problems in the future. I'm accepting their judgment, so sometime the week after Thanksgiving (probably Thursday, December 1st), I'll have oral surgery done.

And to add insult to injury, x-rays revealed two more cavities that have developed in the approximately two months since my last checkup.

All this in spite of the fact that I brush and floss twice daily, use fluoride mouthwashes and antibacterial mouthwashes regularly, and have my teeth cleaned by a dentist every four month.

I'm pretty much stymied at this point. I'm trying xylitol to see if it helps, but I'm not sure if there's anything I can really do that I'm not already trying. Some people seem to be cursed with bad teeth... and I am one of those people...

A Life in Four Colors (Part Thirty-Five)

2011-11-07T23:22:00.002-05:00

One of the problems that every comic book collector eventually has to deal with is the question of storage--that is, where do you put your comic books?

When you consider that my room was basically an 8' x 11' square with a small closet, that became a real problem as my comics collection grew. When I was aggressively trading comics with friends, my collection diversified without growing. By the mid-1960s, though, I was saving every comic I bought, and that meant that I had hundreds of comics.

Today, storage is no problem--a collector can go into any comic shop and buy a long box or a short box or a drawer box or whatever other means of storage he prefers. Those choices didn't exist in the mid-1960s, though. In fact, there were no comic bags, no comic boxes, no boards--none of the storage supplies we take for granted.

Like almost everyone from that era, I relied on discarded grocery store boxes to hold most of my collection. I preferred boxes with grips cut into the side, because they made it easy to move boxes around. Boxes with lids were even better, because they made stacking much easier in my small closet. One thing I learned the hard way, though: avoid waxed boxes that were sometimes used to pack fruit, vegetables, and meats. The wax, which stopped moisture from seeping into the cardboard, would adhere to the comics that were stacked into it, and even if the books could be peeled away from the wax, the oiliness stained the books wherever it touched them. (Even worse, if you were unlucky enough to get a wax box that had been used to ship whole fryers, you ended up with unpleasant smells in your closet and in your books... and yes, I learned that the hard way...)

One day, I came home and found a new addition to my room: a tall, dark-finished bookshelf with sliding doors at the bottom, 12" deep so that comics could fit behind those doors, and wide enough that three stacks of comics would fit behind the doors. I was thrilled; not only did it offer me a more attractive means of storing my comics, it was another verification that my parents not only accepted the fact that I bought a lot of books but were willing to help me in finding a way to store them. (I suspect that Mom had a lot to do with the bookshelf purchase--she had commented more than once that I didn't have room for all my clothes and toys in my closet because of the boxes of comics.)

The bookshelf wasn't real wood, of course--it was the laminate-finished cheap stuff that is often used for office furniture today. The sliding doors were actually plastic, and they didn't slide very well at all when books were stored on the shelf above the sliding doors, because the weight made the shelf sag slightly, and it pressed on the slides, making it tough to move the doors. But as far as I was concerned, it was the finest furniture I had ever seen, because it was all mine. It was large enough that it filled the space between the door to my room and my closet door, and it took up several square feet of precious floor space--but I didn't mind losing those square feet, because I now had a bookshelf of my very own!

A few years later, when I moved to Cedartown, I left that bookshelf with Mom and Dad because it fit the space in the room so well, and our tiny Cedartown house had no room for a bookshelf that large. Mom and Dad kept it in the room that had been my bedroom; it stayed there until a couple of months after Dad passed away in 2007, at which point it finally came to Marietta with me. There wasn't room in the house for the shelf, so I put it in the back room at Dr. No's, where we use it to store supplies. And every now and then I take a moment to really look at it again, and to remember the excitement I felt when I first got a bookshelf of my very own.

Trick or Treat

2011-10-30T22:29:00.005-04:00

Why do they keep ringing the doorbell?

I'm not stupid--I know it's Halloween. But I've done everything to keep them away. The porch lights are off. In fact, every light in the house is off. It's dark. No sign of anyone or anything here in the house.

And still, they keep ringing the doorbell.

I hear the usual Halloween sounds. The giggles of little children, their exuberance tempered by their parents' advising comments. "Watch your step!" "Ring the bell!" "When they open the door, say trick or treat, okay?"

The sounds of older children. "Open the door! Trick or treat!" they proclaim boldly, as if crudeness and confrontation might succeed where childlike glee had failed.

"This sucks, man. Who's not home on Halloween?"

"Maybe they're taking their kids out to trick or treat."

"Ain't no kids here. I used to walk past this house on my way to school; there weren't any kids here. Never saw anybody, in fact. Nah, they gotta be here.

"If you never saw anybody, maybe the house is empty..."

"No, it's not. Never has had a 'for sale' sign in the yard. Still has furniture in it. Just some old asshole who's probably sitting in there ignoring us right now. Open the door! Trick or treat! Give us some damn candy!"

After a while, he leaves.

More children. More teenagers. A few more heavy knocks on the door, even though the trick-or-treaters can hear the doorbell ringing, even through the door. But kids don't like to give up.

I remember what it was like. I was on the other side of that door once. I was dressed in my Batman costume, eager to show off in return for Snickers and Reese's and Skittles. It was my last Halloween to trick or treat, my parents had said. I was twelve, and Dad said that teenagers didn't trick or treat, so this was my last shot at getting all the free candy that I could get.

So I was doing the same things these kids are doing, determined not to take no for an answer. I kept pounding on the door, ringing the bell, rustling through the shrubs to tap on the picture window to the darkened dining room.

"I know you're in there. Open the door! It's Halloween! TRICK OR TREAT!"

I was about to give up when I saw the silhouette of a figure in the hallway. There was someone home--someone who refused to open the door. And I was determined to get what was coming to me. It was Halloween, and he was going to open that door and he was going to give me candy.

I pounded on the glass. "I see you in there! Trick or treat!" I imagine that I was as annoying as the teenager earlier this evening. I went back to the door. I rang the bell. I knocked. I had seen my Halloweeen prey in the darkness, and I wasn't leaving.

"Go away." It was a soft voice, childlike.

"It's Halloween. Open the door. You're supposed to give me candy."

"No. I can't. Go away."

"Go to the house down at the corner--they have good candy. Bit-o-Honey. They have candy apples. They're good people. Go over there." The voice still sounded so young, so childlike, but the words sounded old and tired.

"Nobody gives out apples," I said. "Unless they put razor blades in them. And my mom wouldn't let me eat them anyway. She always said don't take anything that isn't already wrapped and sealed. And 'sides, there isn't anyone across the street. That's the old Litesey house, and they died year before last."

"Dead? I didn't know that." He almost sounded surprised... and sad.

"Just open the door and give me some candy. It's Halloween. I'm not leaving until you give me something!"

There was a long silence. I rang the doorbell six times in a row; I pounded on the door harshly, over and over again. I accepted the challenge, determined to get the candy that was owed me.

I waited a few moments. I repeated the pattern again. A third time. A fourth. I wasn't going anywhere. I no longer argued; no reason to say anything else. I just kept ringing and pounding. I don't know why I didn't just leave; I could have gotten a lot more candy if I'd just kept on walking through the neighborhood.

But I wasn't leaving, even though it was almost midnight. This was a matter of childlike pride, which isn't that much different than stubbornness,

And then I heard the click of a latch. The doorknob turned slowly. The door opened slightly.

"Go away, I said." I couldn't see the face clearly, but I recognized the outline of a cowboy hat, gray against the darkness of the hallway. The person wearing it was no taller than me.

"You're just a kid!" I guess that explained why the voice sounded so young.

"Go somewhere else," he said again.

"I'm not going anywhere. You're keeping all the candy for yourself, aren't you? That ain't right--it's Halloween, and you're supposed to give me some candy." And with that, I shouldered into the doorway, knocking it open a bit.

"NO!" He tried to push the door shut again, but I was bigger and heavier than he was, and I forced my way in.

And I was in.

"You shouldn't have done that," he said.

"Why? Am I going to get in trouble? Are you going to tell on me?" Then I saw, in the gloom of the hallway, a tattered trick or treat bag. "Just what I thought," I said. "You are keeping all the candy for yourself."

I reached for the bag, and he did nothing to stop me. I grabbed the first piece of candy, unwrapped it, and bit into it.

Old. Stale. It tasted musty. I spat it back into my hand.

"This is crap!" I said angrily. "Why do you have this old candy? Where's the good stuff?"

"That's all there is," he said. "It's all I got before I came here."

I dug a little bit more, hoping the better candy was at the bottom of the bag. Next thing I knew, the handle of the bag tore away, and the candy scattered across the floor. I bent over, feeling along the hardwood.

And at that moment, the boy in the cowboy hat stepped out through the partially opened door, pulling it shut behind him.

"Hey!" I said. "Come back here!" I tugged at the doorknob. Nothing. I turned, but the latch didn't let do; the door was stuck. "Open the door!"

"I can't," he said from the porch. "It's after midnight now. Door's shut. It'll stay shut 'til next year."

"Let me out of here or I'm calling the cops," I said.

"Can't. There ain't a phone in there. I tried that."

"Then I'm breaking the window and coming out there and beating your ass."

"Can't do that, either. I tried that, too. I tried every door. I tried every window. I tried yelling. No one ever hears you. Except on Halloween."

My face was getting sweaty under my Batman mask, so I pulled it off. I was mad and scared and about two seconds away from crying. "Let me out of here!"

"I told you to go away. Just like he told me to go away. I was just like you, though. Look what it got me.

"Don't worry, though. The house takes care of you good. You won't get hungry. You won't get thirsty. You won't get old. You'll just sit there and wait, just like I did. Next year, there'll be some kids trick or treating, and you can decide what to do. The first few months, I told myself I'd open the door right away. I'd run out the door and run home.

"But the house told me that it was home now. This was where I belonged, it said. And I started to believe it. So when the kids came around the next year, I didn't open the door. I let 'em knock and yell and ring the doorbell, and I sat here, just like I always do. After a while, they went away. Then it got quiet. Quiet for a whole year. Then they came back. But they always gave up and left. Well, all of them but you..."

"This isn't funny any more!" I knew I was crying, but I didn't care. "Let me out! I want to go home!"

"You got the candy. You got what you wanted. It's all yours. I did my time. I tried to get you to leave, but you wouldn't do it. You should have listened to me, but you wouldn't do it, would you?"

His voice was a little bit softer now, a little more distant.

"Hey, wait! You ain't leaving, are you?!"

"Guess so," he said. "Don't know where I'm going, but I'm leaving. Can't go home any more. You said Mom and Dad were dead now."

"The Liteseys? They were your parents? But they were old people--they didn't have any kids!"

"They did... once. I was their son. They were so worried when I didn't come home. I saw 'em through the window, looking for me. Mom was crying. Dad looked mad and confused and worried all at the same time. I heard them yelling, but they never heard me. They'd walk past here every day. The police would, too, looking for me--I guess that's what they were doing, anyway. And then, after a while, they quit."

His voice retreated a little more, and I ran to the dining room window so that I could see him on the sidewalk. He saw me, too, and he waved. I could see now that he had on a cowboy costume, not just a hat. In the streetlight, the top of his silver gun shone in the holster, and I could see the glint of spurs on his boots.

"You got a year to make up your mind what to do," he said. "You can stay there, or you can trade. Let someone else in, you can go out. Don't know what you'll do, but I can tell you that it's not so bad in there, really. After a while, you get used to it. That's why I stayed for so long."

"What do you mean, so long?" I asked, my voice trembling.

"What year is it, anyway?" he asked.

"What do you mean? It's 2010!" I said, almost frantic.

"2010? I got 47 Halloweens to make up for," he said. And with that, he walked out of the glow of the streetlight and faded into the darkness.

***

I cried. I yelled. I knew that my parents would find me. I saw them looking for me, just like he said his parents did. But no one ever saw me at the window, no one heard me. It was like I wasn't there. No one ever came to let me out.

And just like he said, after a while, my parents seemed to quit looking. I didn't see them any more. I was alone, just me and the house. And it took care of me. I began to think of this as home. The house became my world; the unyielding door didn't matter after a while. And I had my own trick or treat bag, and it had candy in it. Lots of candy. And it never seemed to go empty, no matter how much I ate.

Then one night the doorbell rang. "Trick or treat!" A year goes by faster than you'd think. I ignored them.

I began to understand why the cowboy stayed. This was home now. And I had my candy, and I wasn't going to share it with anybody, no matter how hard they knocked or how many times they rang the doorbell...

Oh Wow.

2011-10-30T21:25:00.004-04:00

I said that I said all I would say about Steve Jobs.

I reserve the right to change my mind, of course--and I have.

Here is a moving tribute to Steve Jobs from his sister, who knew him far better than almost anyone else. What a remarkable tribute it is...

Allusions of Grandeur

2011-10-29T00:53:00.002-04:00

One final thing that reading the Steve Jobs biography has made me realize (and I promise this is the last thing I'll say about that book, although this isn't really about the book itself):

We often don't realize the greatness of those around us as we witness their greatness unfold.

I had only one direct dealing with Steve Jobs, and that related to the problematic Powerbook 5300C computer; I bought one of the units, and it was a dud, filled with hardware issues. I wrote Steve Jobs, whose email address has always been public knowledge, and explained my problems.

Steve Jobs wrote back with a brief email, and he indicated someone would contact me to straighten the problem out. The next day, someone did. Two days later, I had a brand new computer.

I wrote Steve Jobs a half dozen other times about various things, and heard back from him on two other occasions; again, they were brief emails, but I was impressed that he took the time to write at all.

At the time, I knew that Steve Jobs was a visionary; I didn't realize how much I would come to admire him as a genius later on, and I now am pleased to have had even the briefest of contacts with the man.

I have had the opportunity to be around other great people from time to time, although I didn't realize their greatness until long afterwards. Thomas Burnett Swann, the brilliant fantasist and observer of human nature; Jeffrey Jones, the inspired painter and illustrator; Jack Kirby, the visionary who energized an artform; Stephen King, who shared an hour in a poolside talk one morning at a small Nashville convention, before most of the world had ever heard of Stephen King; Will Eisner, the man I credit with creating the modern graphic novel with his Signal From Space.

These are just a small number of the great people I have been lucky enough to have met and to have known to one degree or another. Life has been pretty darn good to me, when I think back on it...

Sic Transit...

2011-10-29T00:39:00.002-04:00

One more thing regarding Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs...

I knew this was a book I would have to read as soon as I received it; the day the book was available for order, I had placed my Amazon Prime order for the book, since they said I would have it on release day. Amazon Prime is remarkably reliable; in all the years I've used the service, I've only had two items arrive late, and both of those were carrier-related issues during peak holiday delivery dates.

So I worked diligently on Comic Shop News, wrapping up the issue days early because I wanted to be free to devote myself to the biography when it arrived on Tuesday, October 25th. The issue was done, store orders were finished, personal tasks completed in order that I could read all night without any nagging feeling that I should be doing something else.

Of course, you can guess what happened: for only the third time in my personal history with Amazon Prime, I didn't get the item on the day Amazon said I should. Instead, I received it on Wednesday--my busiest day of the week, and the day I have virtually no free reading time.

I very nearly purchased the book from Apple to read on my iPad, but I'm still a physical book guy. So I patiently waited, and didn't get to begin the book until almost 11pm on Wednesday night. I read a couple of hundred pages on Wednesday night, then read another 275 or so on Thursday night between Comic Shop News revisions and last-minute corrections, and finally finished it up this evening as soon as I got home from the store.

I remain convinced, however, that the likelihood of delayed delivery increases in direct proportion to one's desire for the product being delivered...

"...And say to all the world, This was a man!"

2011-10-29T00:16:00.003-04:00

I finished Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs earlier this evening, and I wanted to take a few hours to ruminate on it before writing about it. There's so much in here, so many facets of Jobs' personality, that upon completing its almost 600 pages of text, I needed to take a little time to get my thoughts together.

First off, I have to say that it's a truly superlative biography, perhaps one of the most informed and informative I have ever read. Isaacson was given unparalleled access to Jobs for several years, almost to his final days; the result is a picture of a man in multiple phases of his life. We see Jobs as a confident, driven, proud genius; we see Jobs as a private, introspective self-analyst; and we ultimately see Jobs as a man aware that his accomplishments and his life are soon to come to an end. But we never see Jobs as a self-pitying, remorseful man--even in moments of unsureness, he is still proud of his life, and rightly so.

Isaacson began talking with Jobs long before his health took its precipitous decline. He also talked to many dozens of Jobs' friends, associates, colleagues, and rivals, and the result is a well-rounded picture of the life of a man who did more to reshape technology than any other person in the past three decades.

It's not wholly flattering; Jobs had many personal flaws, and Isaacson presents them starkly and without apology. But he never loses sight of the fact that Jobs was a genius, and even his personal failings become a part of the complexity of that genius.

The final segment of the book has one of the most moving and haunting statements from Jobs, regarding both Apple and human existence.

I remember sitting in his back yard in his garden one day, and he started talking about God. He said, "Sometimes I don't. It's 50-50. But ever since I've had cancer I've been thinking about it more, and I find myself believing a bit more. Maybe that's because I want to believe in an afterlife, that when you die it doesn't just all disappear. The wisdom you've accumulated, somehow it just lives on." But then he paused for a second and he said, "Yeah but sometimes I think it's like an on-off switch. Click, and you're gone," he said. Paused again and said, "And that's why I don't put on-off switches on Apple devices."

I've had similar thoughts in the past, and have written about them here. But only Steve Jobs managed to let those ruminations become a formative part of the whole Apple experience.

Anyone who knows me realizes that I have been a longtime fan of Apple's blend of technology and aesthetics; as I heard more about how driven Steve Jobs was to blend the two in perfect synergy, I realized now why I have always been drawn to the Apple experience. I have always maintained that the best technology is that which you use without conscious thought; Jobs was a man for whom that level of technology was the ultimate goal. I can't help but wonder how different the world would have been had Jobs' vision expanded into television (he claimed that, shortly before his cancer cut his life short, he "cracked" television technology--let's hope that we someday see what his new take on television would have been), or automobiles, or home appliances.

The book isn't perfect, mind you; I think that more attention could have been given to controversial decisions like the move from OS9 to OSX, with a totally different software architecture. There also could have been more said about the move from the rounded, tranformative, ebullient iMac and iBook of the late 90s to the precise, minimal, sleek visual designs that dominate the Mac line today. I would like to have known more about where Jobs wanted to take the company if had been given another five or ten years.

But the only criticisms I can make are minor criticism of omission; what is here is fascinating reading, and I found myself emotionally moved at several moments in the book. I think I appreciate some of those moments even more because I remember following Jobs' career--his highs and his lows--as those moments occurred, and even then I realized that important things were happening.

You don't have to be a fan of Jobs or Apple to appreciate this book, however; in fact, those who are unaware of Jobs' accomplishments or aloof to Apple's allure will probably find the book just as fascinating, because it will lead them to evaluate his life in new terms.

(And yes, this was composed on a Mac, as is everything I write...)

Yes, Virginia...

2011-10-18T23:49:00.003-04:00

Just a couple of weeks ago, I got the penultimate shipment of Virginia Edition volumes of the complete Robert A. Heinlein library. These volumes feature the definitive, carefully restored text of Heinlein's volumes, supplemented with collections of letters, nonfiction, and more. As of now, 41 volumes have shipped, and plans call for the final five volumes to be in the hands of subscribers by the end of the year.

I subscribed to this collection almost two years ago, when not even half the library was in print. The $1500 cost seemed high as a lump sum--but when you consider it's between $30 and $35 a book for deluxe matched leatherbound editions, it's actually remarkably cheap.

It's been a delight to discover the power of Heinlein's fiction again. I haven't re-read every book, but I've revisited a few--Farnham's Freehold, Glory Road, The Puppet Masters, Stranger in a Strange Land--and have found them every bit as powerful as they were the first time I read them. I'm just now savoring the first two volumes of letters, which offer me great insights into Heinlein as a thinker as well as a writer (I've always enjoyed collections of letters; I sometimes feel that they offer the most undiluted vision into an author's psyche).

If you haven't subscribed yet, it's not too late. Drop by www.virginiaedition.com and check out the library while it can still be purchased. Once these books sell out in their subscription offerings, the prices for these are going to be much, much higher...

Horrible Vs Horrifying

2011-10-09T00:52:00.003-04:00

I watched the first episode of American Horror Story this evening... and I suspect it'll be the last episode I'll watch. Ryan Murphy, the man responsible for that pedestrian series of stereotypes and cliches known as Glee, decided to bring his "everything but the kitchen sink... and maybe that, too" approach to horror, and thus American Horror Story is born. The problem is, the show is horrible, not horrifying...

The first episode is overly full of horror tropes--a potentially haunted house, ghosts, apparent resurrections, a savant, dead twins, sexual possession, and the quasi-sophistication of foul-mouthed teens, masturbation, bondage, nihilism... the problem is, none of it really comes together as an entertaining story. It's horror by numbers, set to a metronome--and every timing click requires another "shocking" image, none of which are truly shocking at all.

A troubled family moves into a haunted house, looking for a fresh start after a miscarriage has strained their marriage. As the story progresses, we learn that there are other strains on the marriage, including a snotty, pseudo-mature teenage daughter who comes across as a prime candidate for miscarriage. Throw in a Bette-Davis-has-nothing-on-me southern actress with a developmentally disabled daughter, an enigmatic maid, an obsessed former resident of the house, and some very expensive head-to-toe bondage suits left by a previous resident (does no one ever clean out a house before putting it up for sale?), and you have a recipe for... well, it's not a recipe for horror, that's for sure.

I have learned from prior experience with Nip/Tuck and Popular that Murphy suffers from David Kelley syndrome (you know--take a concept that seems to work initially, then overdo it to such an absurd extreme that it became absolutely annoying). This time out, though, he threw in the absurdity from the very beginning. I guess I should be appreciative; it saves me the time of having to watch a few more episodes.

In Memoriam...

2011-10-06T01:07:00.001-04:00

I owe Steve Jobs a debt of gratitude for changing my life for the better. In 1987, my partner and I were able to start a comics industry newsletter, Comic Shop News, because of the capability of the Mac SE, the only computer to offer affordable, user-firendly, comprehensive desktop publishing that made it possible for us to produce a weekly newsletter. Thanks to the success of that newsletter, I was able to expand my career as an educator to include a career as a publisher and journalist.

Years later, as my comic shop grew, a key staff member was able to develop a complex Mac-based Point of Sale system for our store--a system that kept the store profitable during a period of industry turbulence. That system was written in Filemaker--a program that wouldn't have existed were it not for Steve Jobs and Apple. It runs on a network of Macs in our store--a network that has never failed us for more than eleven years, growing to meet our needs.

As an educator, I oversaw a writing lab for several years--a writing lab consisting of 35 Macs. While Windows-based labs required constant maintenance, our Mac lab operated nearly flawlessly day in and day out. I also produced the school yearbook using iMacs, Pagemaker, and a staff of students eager to push the Mac's creative possibilities in new directions. At a time when computers in the classroom were unheard of, I was able to use my classroom Mac to prepare full-screen images that could be displayed on a large classroom monitor; while it sounds mundane today, it was unheard of in 1997. It worked, though, thanks to the reliability and innovation of the Mac.

iPods, iPhones, AppleTVs, iPads... all of them have enhanced my life, improved my productivity, expanded my entertainment horizons, and have made inaccessibility a thing of the past. And throughout the years, I could always count on Apple to push the boundaries to make their system more sophisticated, more elegant, and more reliable. Steve Jobs innovated; other imitated.

The only time I had a problem with a Mac (an ill-fated Powerbook 5300), Steve Jobs personally contacted me about the problem, then had an assistant work with me to replace that computer. I will never forget the fact that the CEO of Apple took time from his schedule to ensure that my problem was solved. That's the kind of person that Steve Jobs was--a visionary who looked at the big picture, and a detail man who never forgot his customers.

In the future, Steve will be seen as a technological genius to stand alongside Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, and others greats who changed American life forever. I only wish he could have been with us far longer, to see how his brilliance and drive have continued to reshape our world.

I felt the same intense sense of loss when hearing of Steve Jobs' death that I felt in 1980 when I learned that John Lennon had passed. A world without each man seems emptier. I did may not have known either personally, but I feel as if I did--their influence on my life has been that great.

Rest in peace and satisfaction, Steve, knowing that you left this world a far better place than it ever would have been without you.

New Season Viewing

2011-09-29T01:07:00.002-04:00

I've tried a few of the season premieres, and I've already begun to weed out shows that (a) failed to click right away, or (b) no longer hold any appeal. Here's a synopsis of my viewing thus far:

(1) Playboy Club - an absolute disaster. This could have been a great ensemble cast show set against the backdrop of the changing mores of society in the 1960s, using the music and the cultural influence of Playboy as a pivotal plot element. Instead, the producers and writers tossed all of that out the window to turn this into a tawdry crime drama that seems like a sub-par version of Crime Story set in the 1960s.

(2) Terra Nova - I was more impressed than I expected. Spielberg has never been strong on subplots, so I figured this would be a straight-ahead story of colonists in a prehistoric environment; what I'm getting shows the influence of Lost and other complex science fantasy dramas, and in a good way. Characterization is a bit flat, but there's still time to remedy that.

(3) 2 Broke Girls - Attitudinal comedy with a heavy dollop of sarcasm throughout, this bawdy comedy appeals to me. The show's best asset? Cat Dennings, who plays Max; she's a pleasure to watch with enough credibility to carry off the mixture of raw and risque that defines this show.

(4) The New Girl - Adequate, although I find Zooey Deschanel best in very small doses. She always has struck me as both overly needy and aloof in every part she plays; she frequently fails to to convey either convincingly.

(5) Gray's Anatomy - It's done, whether the cast and producers know it or not. The characters have moved from quaint to unconventional to aggravating; the series has begun to sound like a continual whine, and I find their self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing approach to be so irritating that I'm just waiting for one of the show's crappus ex machina plot devices to wipe them all out.

(6) Two and a Half Men - I've said before that I'm a sucker for sitcoms, and this one has won me over. I enjoyed Ashton Kutcher on That Seventies Show, and I had decided even before Charlie Sheen's career suicide last spring that the show needed something to get it out of a rut. In the early seasons, Charlie Harper was roguishly appealing; in the later seasons, he was Michael Jackson-level pathetic, comedically dead. The show has been funnier in two episodes than it was all of last year. Biggest regret? Jennifer Bini Taylor, who played Chelsea in the last couple of seasons, is no longer in the cast; she brought a refreshing dose of maturity, sophistication, and elegance to every episode in which she appeared.

(7) Ringer - It's got Sara Michelle Gellar, so I'm going to watch it for a few episodes. I enjoyed it well enough, but the story seems more than a little contrived in places, and it amazes me that the same actress can play two roles, but she does such an unconvincing job portraying one character trying to play the part of the other.

(8) Unforgettable - It's not. The "I can play back my memories like a DVR, looking for details I didn't see at the time" approach is daffy, and it takes a way from the believability of the concept.

(9) The Middle - Still the best (and most underrated) family sitcom on television.

(10) The Big Bang Theory - A comedic highlight, and one of the few shows that I would actually watch live, commercials in all.

(11) Secret Circle - It should have remained a closely guarded secret...

Trilegiant Scam

2011-09-23T00:27:00.003-04:00

So today I got a call from American Express wanting to verify some recent activity on my AmEx card. Charge from Games Workshop--check. Charge from Baker & Taylor--check. Charge from Amazon--check. Charge from Trilegiant--wait minute, who?

So while I'm telling AmEx I had not authorized a $1 charge from a company called Trilegiant, I'm also googling "Trilegiant" and "fraud." Google returns "about 34,500 results."

No, I didn't authorize the charge. But now I have to go to the trouble of changing my credit card number and notifying all my automatic charges that there's a new card. And I'm told that Trilegiant is working in conjunction with Wells Fargo to try to force customers with a WF bank account to pay for some fraud protection.

Oh goodie--fraudulent charges for unwanted fraud protection. (Bet it doesn't protect against themselves...)

Tomorrow I'm cancelling my Wells Fargo account; I only kept it for nostalgia purposes, since our very first account when we moved to Marietta was with First National Bank of Atlanta, which became First Atlanta, which became Wachovia, which became Wells Fargo. Now they've become Disreputable, so I'm dumping them and consolidating the funds in one of the two banks I do like--Ironstone and Community Bank of the South.

But you have to wonder why companies like Trilegiant are allowed to continue to operate...

DC=Disappearing Comics!

2011-09-21T23:22:00.002-04:00

Another week dominated by DC sales; customers who were worried about missing out on the DC's started to use our preorder system to pay for next week's books a week in advance, so in the past seven days so many copies of this week's releases were sold that we actually sold through a huge shipment of many DC titles in as little as three hours. Nightwing, Red Hood and the Outlaws, Catwoman, Captain Atom, Nightwing--all sold through before the end of the day. It's really phenomenal when you realize that we ordered a minimum of 5 times the title's prior sales (if it was a relaunch of an existing title, or of a title so similar we could use it for comparison).

Readers seem to be loving what they see in the DC books. I'm thrilled, both as a retailer and as a long-time DC fan who is glad to see others sharing my enthusiasm for the company's books.

We do have reorders on almost all of these titles coming in next Tuesday, so readers will still have a shot at first printings.

Next week is the first week that we were fully able to adjust our DC orders upwards on the entire weekly release list to ensure that our readers find what they want on our shelves. I'm thrilled; I've prided myself for years on the fact that at Dr. No's you can find the books on the shelves on Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Saturday... and the success of these DC's has made that impossible. But it will be back to normal next Wednesday, and customers will be able to find that week's DCs on our shelves for an entire week and beyond.

Thanks for bearing with us during a really dynamic sales period--I really appreciate it!

Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be...

2011-09-18T00:33:00.003-04:00

"Never loan anything you hope to get back."

Those words of advice, given to me by my father and echoed by several friends during the past decades, have turned out to be remarkably true.

I was looking over the list of people who have borrowed significant sums of money (triple digits or above, in fact) or significantly valuable items from me during my life, and I came to the surprising realization that in the past thirty years, only four people have thus far fully returned what was loaned.

Most have made only the most token of efforts to repay anything at all; two have even told me, "Well, you make more than me, so you can afford to do without the money more than I can," as if my willingness to help them at a moment of financial need was a duty on my part and not an attempt to assist.

Bearing Dad's advice in mind, I can't say I'm wholly surprised by this realization--but it's still surprising when I realize how many people who still owe me have no trouble coming with funds for other non-necessity expenses, but can't be bothered to make payments on their debts.

In some ways, I view it as a test of integrity; if I borrow from anything from a friend, I make a point of getting it back to them. If I borrow a book, I return it; if I damage it, I buy them a better copy. If I borrow money, I repay it without asking.

I'm still a little surprised by how few people operate the same way.

This Problem Bugs Me...

2011-09-18T00:21:00.002-04:00

Last week we discovered evidence of termites in the basement storage room.

You can imagine how unthrilled I was by that news.

Now we have the Sentricon termite control system through Arrow Pest Control; I have never cared for Sentricon as much as the old system of pumping enough chemicals to kill off every insect within a quarter-mile radius, but it seems to be the system we're stuck with now that the EPA has set limits on the sort of mass termite extermination that pest control services used to consider standard.

(The old system pretty much put a barrier of death around every inch of the house wherever it came into contact with the ground; Sentricon uses a number of bait stations that are supposed to attract the termites, who'll eat the bait and then die. How good is it? Well, we never had termites at any of our houses under the old system. We've had Sentricon for three years, and we have termites. Go figure...)

Arrow sent someone out who took a look and said, "The bad news? You had termites. The good news? You had termites. Past tense. There's no sign of life there now." The termite specialist theorized that they had eaten some of the Sentricon bait (all of the Sentricon stations around our house are filled with bait rather, so any one of 'em is death on termites, apparently); however, before it did in the colony, they found their way into our house where they did some damage to about six feet of a framing 2x4 and some drywall. Their trail seems to stop there, and no poking or prodding on his part could reveal any evidence of active termites.

Nevertheless, Arrow drilled five holes into the basement floor and injected many gallons of termite-killing chemicals into the ground beneath the floor, then they resealed the holes with quick-drying concrete. That should take care of any termite colonies beneath the concrete floor, they said--and they assured me that there would be no problems with moisture seepage in the drill holes.

They also sent someone out to examine the damage; he made a list of what needs to be repaired, and he said that they would give it eight weeks to ensure that there's no sign of further activity, then they'd fix everything back just like it was.

So while I'm pretty unhappy to have had termites, I guess that this is the best outcome, all things considered. Now I'm just hoping I never find evidence of termites again!...

In the meantime, I'm all in favor of the legalization of chlordane...

DC Domination

2011-09-11T13:18:00.003-04:00

We're now five days into DC's first full-week New 52 launch, and the sales results have been overwhelming. I don't have national numbers, but I know that I'm hearing from dozens of my retailer friends who are scrambling to try to find copies of the books, which are selling out everywhere.

At Dr. No's we've sold out of 7 of the first 14 titles (Justice League shipped on 8/31, while the other 13 shipped on 9/7), in spite of the fact that our orders were 350%-600% what the same titles were selling pre-New 52 (when there were prior titles to compare). We ordered the lowest-selling book in quantities greater than what our best-selling pre-New 52 titles were selling, and yet many of those were gone by the weekend.

As early as September 1st, I could see that this was going to be bigger than I had anticipated, so I turned in advance orders for many of those books (although a couple were already sold out by that time) and I began upping my orders for 9/13, 9/20, and 9/27. The vagaries of comic book distribution (you don't want to get me started on that subject!) mean that we won't get most of those reorders until 9/20, however (unless Diamond manages to include reorders in our 9/13 reorder even though we won't be billed until 9/20).

No doubt about it--DC owns September 2011. And, having read all 14 books so far, I think the quality is strong enough that many of those readers will be coming back for the second issues.

(Just think--up until 8/30, we were selling all 52 first issues for a discount. Now, less than two weeks later, people--including fellow retailers--are offering significantly over over price if we can just find a copy of some of these books for them!)

A Life In Four Colors (Part Thirty-Four)

2011-09-11T12:42:00.004-04:00

While my interest in comics had begun with an emphasis on DC, Marvel moved into greater prominence throughout the early 1960s. As I've mentioned before, the fact that I could actually accumulate a collection of every Marvel Silver Age superhero comic made a big difference; the collecting bug has always had an irresistible allure, and I have a strong completist attitude. By 1965, I had accumulated a complete collection of Marvel superhero books, from Fantastic Four #1 to the present, and that meant that I had to make a point of buying every Marvel from then on. After all, what good is a complete collection if one doesn't maintain it?

In 1965, my Marvel completist mentality led me to send in $1 to join the Merry Marvel Marching Society. For all intents and purposes, this was a Marvel fan club, although the benefits to its members (beyond the initial membership kit) were pretty minimal. Even so, I felt like I had to sign up, just to get that kit. It may not have been a comic book, but it was an official Marvel publication, after all.

When the envelope came in the mail, I tore into it right away and was thrilled with its contents. In an orange illustrated folder, I found an oversized MMMS button; a membership card; a certificate; a scratch pad with border trim depicting Marvel's characters... and best of all, a flexidisc featuring the actual voices of Marvel's creators!

As I mentioned a in Part Thirty-Three, I was becoming more aware of the people behind the comics; I had learned to recognize art styles, and could even tell the differences in some writers' storytellng styles. But this flexidisc added another dimension to the creators: a voice. Suddenly I could hear Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Don Heck and others as people, not merely names on a comic book page. I was enthralled; I must have played that record a hundred times in the first couple of months that I had it.

(What's a flexidisc, you ask? Oh, you CD-and-DVD-era music fans, you have no idea what you missed out on. A flexidisc is a vinyl record pressed in to a thin layer of flexibile, floppy plastic. The grooves are quite shallow, so the sound quality is quite mediocre--but flexidiscs were a boon for advertising and marketing, since they allowed low-cost recordings to be included as part of a marketing plan. Flexidiscs were included in magazines, in cereal boxes.... and in Merry Marvel Marching Society membership kits.)

Here's that recording, courtesy of YouTube:

The only Marvel Bullpen mainstay who doesn't speak on the recording is Steve Ditko; I thought it was just a bit of clever tomfoolery that they referenced his leaping out the window to avoid the microphone, not realizing that even then Ditko was relatively private and reclusive, preferring to let his work speak for him.

(As for my MMMS kit--I actually used very little of the scratch pad stationery; I just couldn't bring myself to waste a single sheet of it. As a result, my MMMS kit is almost complete to this day.)

A bit later, Marvel sent its MMMS members another flexidisc, this one featuring the Marvel Super Heroes theme song and a Merry Marvel Marching Society musical march. Both are hokey beyond belief, but I loved the kitschy, in-groupish feel of these records--I really did belong to the Merry Marvel Marching Society! Here's a YouTube link to that recording, accompanied by a few clips from the lowest-quality animation ever produced for television (but I watched every episode, even as I wondered how a Jack Kirby Hulk could leap into the air, while a Steve Ditko Hulk would land a moment later).

The MMMS was sheer genius on Marvel's part; the company had turned its size into an asset. Whereas DC seemed like a vast company producing a huge line of books, utilizing an army of talent and production staff, Marvel came across as your friends, a group of people who loved comics just as much as we did. There was a feeling of unity that DC never managed to cultivate (although they did have their own club, the Supermen of America, back in the 1950s and early 1960s, and I did actually join that group as well). And I suspect that every MMMS member became a Marvel completist.

Even better, Marvel found yet another way to encourage readers to join: they began printing lists of MMMS members in their comics! Send in your buck, get a membership kit, and at some point you'd see your name listed in a Marvel book.

I remain amazed at Stan Lee's promotional genius; long before the phrase "guerrilla marketing" was coined, Stan was doing that very thing, making Marvel the company you wanted not only to read, but to be a part of.

Maybe It's Not a Mall World After All...

2011-09-11T00:51:00.002-04:00

Last Thursday, I had to go to Town Center Mall to pick up something for Susan. It was a Thursday evening, between 7:30 PM and 8:00 PM. I parked at my usual place--the east side, near the Macy's doors at the end of the mall.

There were seven cars parked in that section. I had never seen the mall so empty. The first three register stations I passed had employees there, but no customers. There were some people wandering the mall, but far less than normal... or at least, far less than what used to pass for normal.

Of course, my mall habits have changed over the years, so it's not surprising that others' habits have changed as well. During the 1980s and the 1990s, I don't think a week passed that Susan and I didn't go to one mall or the other, whether it was Town Center or Perimeter or Mount Berry Square in Rome. I realized that my trip to Town Center this past week was only the second time this year I have been to Town Center, and only the fourth time this year I have been to any mall. As the malls have ceased being the place where a shopper can find everything (look for a bookstore in most malls and you'll be sadly disappointed... the same holds true for electronics, or music, or the many unusual items that could once be found in the less travelled areas of most shopping malls), I have become more disinterested in what the malls still offer.

Of course, the changes in my own life make me less of a mall customer. I no longer teach, so I no longer have to invest in "work clothes." My wardrobe now comes from the nearby Target, or from an occasional trip to Kohl's. We're not furniture shoppers; our house is overfilled with more furniture than we need, because I can't bring myself to get rid of perfectly good chairs or sofas or tables. I am surrounded by a lifetime of conspicuous consumption.

Apparently, though, there is not another generation of consumers ready to follow in my footsteps at the local mall. I don't know if it's the byproduct of a struggling economy, or an indicator of changing habits that will mark the end of the high-density multi-store shopping mall as a mecca of capitalism. But Thursday night made it clear that the mall is no longer the hub of economic activity that it once was...

Maybe I Think Too Much...

2011-09-11T00:36:00.002-04:00

The title comes from a Paul Simon song that has always struck a chord with me; while I've always seen the benefit of analysis, rumination, contemplation, and examination, I also think that there are times when one can indeed think too much. And I think that the growth of free information makes it all too difficult to fall into that trap.

I saw a photo recently of Bill Mumy and Jack Kirby; in the background of that photo was a set of Encyclopedia Britannica. I recognized those volumes because they were the same ones found in my high school library. I would have liked to have owned a set of my own, but that was out of the question for us--Brittanica cost far more than my parents could afford to invest in a set of reference books. Instead, we had a 26 volume set of encyclopedia purchased one book per week at a local grocery store as a promotion. They were wonderful books, and I read them and re-read them many times in my childhood; while they lacked the depth and sophistication of the Brittanica volumes, they still offered me a source of information at my fingertips.

Do people even by encyclopedia today? I would have to wonder why. The proliferation of free information on the internet has made paid information a tough sell; why spend hundreds of dollars on books when the same information can be found online at no cost whatsoever (and you don't need a large bookcase to hold the data, either)?

But free information comes with a cost; sometimes we become too accustomed to using it. Even mundane activities change. When I was younger, Susan and I would routinely watch a few minutes of a show to see if we had viewed it previously; now, I merely look up the episode online, scan the summary, and ascertain if it needs viewing or deleting. The spontaneity, the impulsiveness of life is diluted by the constant flow of information. I find myself checking my iPhone when I walk, hitting my RSS feed to see if the world has changed in any significant way in the fifteen minutes I've been walking. News used to be accessible in the morning and evening on television; in five minute intervals every hour on radio; once a day in the newspaper; and once a week in newsmagazines. Now news comes to us in a continual bombardment.

There is all too little blissful ignorance any more. We research everything, because the tools are always there. We investigate a restaurant before trying a meal there; we analyze others' reactions to a book or a film before reading it or viewing it; we sort through dozens of reviews and reactions before buying an appliance, trying a medication, sampling a beverage.

I think there are times when we enjoyed life more when information was more dear, and came in a more controlled flow at a higher price. The problem is, I've always been driven by curiosity, by a desire to know; as much as I see the down side of today's information excess, I'm not particularly willing to go back...

Overwhelming Success

2011-09-08T00:49:00.002-04:00

DC made comic book history at Dr. No's today. This was the first week that we received a full assortment of New 52 titles (13 books, including Action Comics, Animal Man, Batgirl, Batwing, Detective, Green Arrow, Hawk & Dove, Justice League International, Men of War, OMAC, Static Shock, Stormwatch, and Swamp Thing). That's a mix of standard superhero books, former Vertigo books with an occult angle, former WildStorm books with an edgier tone, and more real-world themed titles (in this case, a contemporary war book with only the slightest superhero angle).

Here's the part that made history: by the end of the day, the least-selling of the DC books (Men of War, the contemporary war series) had sold better than the best-selling non-DC, including any of this week's major Marvel titles (X-Men, Wolverine, Punisher, New Avengers Annual, X-23, Moon Knight, and X-Factor). The best-selling Marvel at Dr. No's today could only take 14th place!

Those of you who know comics well understand why I say this is historic; for years, Marvel has dominated the sales charts. DC's best books would take key positions in the top ten, but the average books were relegated to positions lower on the sales charts. Today, a non-franchise-character DC war book beat Marvel's biggest franchises, X-Men and Avengers.

Congratulations to DC! This is the sort of moment that makes you realize we're in the middle of a real transition in the marketplace, and DC's gamble is paying off right now. And after having had a chance to read all 13, I think readers are going to like what they see and will be back for the second issues of most of these books as well.

When the Rain Comes...

2011-09-05T23:32:00.002-04:00

Today it rained for the first time in twenty days. And it actually rained a lot--about 2" at my house, according to the rain gauge. I had a chance to walk in a gentle drizzle this morning, and I walked in a steady rain this afternoon; it reminded me how much I enjoy walking in rain. There's something pleasantly isolating about the rainfall; most people stay indoors, so I'm pretty much alone for the entire walk, shielded by an umbrella. Since I don't want to risk getting rain on my iPhone, I keep it tucked away, so my attention is totally focused on the walk, the rain, and whatever introspective ruminations cross my mind.

I also loved it that the weather responded almost as if it could read calendars: today was Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer, so the weather immediately went into an early Georgia autumn mode--highs in the mid-70s, no blazing sun, lows in the 60s. (This is one of the many reasons why I think that starting school later rather than earlier is the right thing to do; I didn't realize until recently that Cobb County still has no air conditioned buses for the kids who rely on county transportation. Can you imagine spending a half an hour to an hour in a big metal and glass box with no A/C and inadequate ventilation? But that's just what Cobb County Schools students do through most of the month of August...)

If all goes according to forecast, I have an entire week of highs in the 70s to look forward to; the rain may be over by tomorrow morning, but the hint of early Georgia autumn continues! Maybe it's time to keep my iPhone holstered for a week and just enjoy the outdoors again!...

Truth About Justice and the Comic Book Way

2011-09-02T01:05:00.003-04:00

Well, DC brought an end to one era on Wednesday with Flashpoint #5--and they began another with Justice League #1.

And gauging from the reader response at Dr. No's lots of people are interested in seeing what's happening with this new DC.

There's no doubt that Justice League #1 was the book of the day--we sold almost twice as many copies of that title on Wednesday as we did of Flashpoint #1, the second-best-selling title of the day. Nothing else came close--every other book was flotsam in the wake of the Justice League and Flashpoint. And those two were pretty much all that readers were talking about.

It was interesting to see so much buzz about a brand-new comic book; suddenly it felt like we were back in the early 1990s, when customers rushed to come in on Wednesday and buy their comics because they just couldn't wait until the weekend. Our transaction totals were up significantly because of the increased traffic, and that's great news--it means that we sold a lot of copies to a lot of different customers, which is the best news of all. Sure, you make the same money selling ten copies to one customer as you do selling ten copies to ten customers, but the latter can potentially create ten readers, which is what I'd prefer.

Best of all, several people who went home and read the book subsequently contacted us to say, "could you pull the first issues of all those new DC series for me? I think I want to try them all and see how they are."

It's a great week for DC, and a great week for comics.

Earth-Two's Company

2011-08-29T21:52:00.000-04:00

Great news came from the convention circuit this week: DC has confirmed that the Justice Society of America will be returning to the DC lineup in the near future, courtesy of writer James Robinson--and they've confirmed that it will be set in Earth-Two.

Now for those of you who don't read comics (what's wrong with you?...) or don't read DC comics (what's wrong with you?...), Earth 2 was a concept introduced into the DC comics line in 1961, when the Barry Allen Flash of the DC Universe crossed over into the world that was home to Jay Garrick, the Flash whose comic book exploits Barry Allen had read about prior to his gaining his super-speed powers. This Flash existed in a different vibratory plane, an alternate universe that DC referred to as Earth-2 (although I agree with my pal Ed Thomas that it really should have been called Earth-1, since it was the first DC Earth).

I presume that this means that there will be a world in which the Golden Age heroes exist, even though in the new DC relaunch, there were no Golden Age heroes in the DCU. Superman made his first super-powered appearance five or six years ago, according to the revamped DC continuity, so that means that there wasn't even a Superman at any point in the 20th Century!

As far as I'm concerned, the return of the JSA and of Earth-2 is perhaps the best news to come out of this relaunch. When the two Earths became conflated in the aftermath of Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Golden Age heroes lost the distinctive qualities that defined them. These heroes worked best when they existed in a world based on the Golden Age values, drawn from the Golden Age stories. This universe should have its own Batman, its own Superman, its own Wonder Woman--and these characters should reflect the Golden Age values and ideals that defined them when they originally appeared. Trying to fold them into the current DCU removed the most striking elements of that continuity.

What I'd love to see them do is to take the Earth-2 concept one step further: in the world of Earth-2, contemporary time should be the 1940s, the era of WWII and the Hitlerian menace. There's no reason it has to be 2011 in both Earth-1 and Earth-2; if they exist in different realities, their timelines can be skewed slightly, too, so that it is 2011 in Earth-1 at the same time it's 1943 in Earth-2. Don't present the JSA and the Golden Age heroes as old men and women who did heroic things seventy years ago; likewise, don't present their WW2 exploits as the past adventures of much older heroes. Instead, make it clear that the war era is the here-and-now for these heroes. Their Golden Age adventures now become the norm, not the antiquated framework upon which a series of new adventures can be built.

Furthermore, make it clear that the events of our reality are not necesarily mirrored in Earth-2. That is, just because the good guys won WWII in Earth-1's history, there's no reason to assume their victory is guaranteed in Earth-2's history; these are different worlds, and the flow of history can follow different paths.

I have no idea what DC has planned for Earth-2, but I'd love to see them take this approach. Make the Golden Age real; likewise, make the Silver Age real as a part of another multiverse. Let each version of these heroes exist in its own reality; that way, none of the past has been negated by the events of Flashpoint. Instead, we've just seen one modified multiverse rise to a new fictional ascendancy, while the other versions still exist.

(And as a side-note, the project I think most ill-served by this relaunch is the just-completed DC Universe: Legacies, a ten-part series that set out to define DC history from the early days of the Golden Age to the present. Even before the collected volume could make it onto bookshelves, the whole series had been rendered irrelevant.)

"Time hurries on..."

2011-08-26T00:36:00.002-04:00

Fifty-eight years ago yesterday, I wasn't. Fifty-eight years ago today, I was.

Pretty good, when you think about it. All the millions of events that, had any one of them occurred differently, could have precluded my existence. And yet somehow, here I am.

The End of an Era

2011-08-24T23:01:00.000-04:00

That phrase is used a lot, I know... but I feel it is absolutely true in this case. Steve Jobs, the man whose vision took Apple from a niche-market player to one of the world's most successful companies--and whose concepts changed the way people listen to music, interact with their smart phones, utlilize the internet, and intertwine entertainment and computing in their everyday lives--has resigned as CEO of Apple.

Jobs wrote:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

I infer from his opening sentences that his continued health issues make it impossible for him to continue as CEO; I can't think of any other reason he'd leave the CEO position of the company he loved so much. That's somber news, if it's the reason for his departure. Steve Jobs has changed the world of technology as intensely as did Thomas Edison before him; like Edison, he had his admirers and his detractors (as does every man of great vision and influence). I fall into the former category, of course; over the years, I have benefited tremendously because of his foresight, his vision, his innovation, and his determination. Comic Shop News has been done on a Mac since we launched in 1987; were there no Macs, it is doubtful we would have been able to do the publication in the early days. I utilize iPods, iPads, iPhones, iMacs, Macbooks (both Pro and Air), and AppleTVs on a regular basis.

On two or three occasions, I have reached out to Steve Jobs for personal assistance with an Apple-related issue that seemed unsolveable; in every case,he has responded personally, has subsequently had someone contact me on his behalf, and has found solutions to the problems. Steve Jobs took the time to involve himself directly with an individual, and he followed through. That's something that few CEO's have ever done.

I hope that his health isn't as bad as the resignation letter seems to indicate; even if he's not CEO, I'd love to know that he has many years ahead of him, and I think the world can still benefit from his brilliance and insight.

For now, though, I want to say, "Thank you, Mr. Jobs." And I truly do believe I'm witnessing the end of an era, perhaps the last moment in modern techonological history where one man's drive and vision has reinvented and redirected both a company and an industry.

One Step Beyond

2011-08-23T23:43:00.000-04:00

Had a chance to read Superman Beyond #0 tonight (it goes on sale tomorrow), and I was thoroughly taken with the oneshot. Tom DeFalco, Ron Frenz, and Sal Buscema (the team who produced all those great Spider-Girl near-future tales over at Marvel) have done a wonderful job of exploring the future DCU as seen in the pages of Batman Beyond. This story explores Superman's role in this universe--a retired Superman who comes back out of retirement to confront a menace in a manner that is pure Superman. DeFalco may not be a DC writer per se, but he gets Superman--he understands who the character is, how he functions, and what he believes in, and DeFalco manages to convey that in this well-structured oneshot tale. We also get a look into the relationship of Superman and the original Batman in the last pages of this issue, and it's a nice wrap-up to a very satisfying story.

Frenz and Buscema may lack the flash and fine linework of any of a dozen fan-favorites, but these guys know how to tell a story. They convey action in a clear and distinct manner, they communicate emotion, and at no point is the reader visually confused by poor visual design. And their characters actually look the same from one panel to the next; you'd think this would be a requirement for comic book artists, but pick up the average comic today and notice how few artists can actually maintain a uniformity of appearance throughout the entire issue!

If you're looking for a solid, well-constructed Superman story, you could do a lot worse than Superman Beyond... in fact, a lot of writers working on mainstream DCU Superman tales today could take some notes from the pages of this oneshot.

Turbulent Economic Times

2011-08-21T23:40:00.000-04:00

The economy continues to take its toll on comic shops. Late last month we learned that a local comic shop was closing its doors at the end of August. A week after that we learned that another local shop is struggling but hopes to straighten things out. Then I heard this evening that an Arizona comic shop owned by someone I've gotten to know through a comics retailer forum may be closing as well. (And no, I'm not going to name specific shops--it's not fair to them, since in some cases those shops may prefer to notify their customers on their own schedule... and if a shop is struggling, the dissemination of that information can make the situation even worse.)

There's no doubt that economic turbulence impacts entertainment media like comics; the old saw that comics were recession-proof has proven to be totally untrue. I've seen friends who've been in the business for decades forced to close down stores that I thought were too well established to fail. We've seen customers forced to cut back or curtail comics buying because of job losses.

It's not just comic shops, of course. Every small business is facing the same turbulence; some are better positioned to succeed than others, but a few months of severe setbacks can put a strain on any business.

I hate to hear about a comic shop closing; not only does it put friends and acquaintances out of work, but it also means that a certain number of comic book readers just disappear. Even if there are other shops in the immediate area, some readers don't migrate elsewhere--it's a phenomenon we've seen again and again.

I've said a few times that every business has a lifespan; nevertheless, I feel that the current economic climate is killing some businesses before their time. We're very fortunate to have a loyal clientele to carry us through turbulent times; I'd hate to think how challenging it must be for a newer shop that hasn't had a third of a century to build its clientele and inventory.

Garden of Forking Paths

2011-08-21T00:47:00.002-04:00

Jorge Luis Borges' story "The Garden of Forking Paths" has always been a favorite of mine; Borges packs an alternate-realities tale, a mystery, a puzzle, and an adventure story into a very concise package, and each time I re-read the tale, a different aspect seems to rise into prominence. Because of my predilection to alternate-realities stories, however, that's the part that I always remember the most. The main character postulates that life is an infinite series of forking paths, and each time we take a different fork, we create a new reality... but there are nevertheless realities in which we took the other path instead, leading to an all new series of forking paths on their own.

Ever wonder about your life's own forking paths? I recognize many incidents in my life that seemed uneventful at the time, but each of which led to major changes in the direction of my life. What if I had asked my parents to buy me comic books prior to my tonsilectomy; would I have ever become so involved in the medium that helped to redefine my life? What if I had never paid any attention to that ad for a fanzine; would I have ever become involved in fan writing, which paved the way for Comic Shop News? What if I had never bought that issue of Batman and noticed a letter of comment from a high school girl in Cedartown, Georgia; I would have never contacted her, and thus I might have never met my future wife. As a result, I might not have gotten married right away; had I not done so, would I have continued to pursue my future as an artist rather than a writer? Would I have ever become a teacher?

Were Susan and I not married, would I have ever moved to Marietta? After all, we made the move because Susan had gotten a job in data processing in the Lenox Square area, and Marietta seemed like a midpoint between my Rome job and her Atlanta job. Had I not moved to Marietta, I would have never worked with Benny at Book Trader, and later with Artie at Dr. No's, helping them order comics. Had I not done that, I would have never have had the opportunity to buy Dr. No's; then, years later, I would not have produced a store newsletter that metamorphosed into Comic Shop News.

Were I not to move to Marietta, I would have never have become involved in Atlanta SF fandom, and I would have never met my long-time friend and business partner, Ward Batty. I might have instead spent my years in Rome, making a home there; perhaps I would have gone into teaching, perhaps not.

What if, instead of selling our Rome farmhouse/weekend retreat in 1999, we had kept it? Then I would have been there the weekend I had my heart attack, at least twenty minutes away from medical assistance... at which point I would have been permanently dead rather than temporarily.

So many pivotal moments, so many forking paths. Is there, somewhere, a me who took the other fork at each of these moments? How did his life progress? Does he in turn wonder about the other forks he might have taken, and how it would have altered his future?

Comicollecting

2011-08-21T00:34:00.003-04:00

Today I received another batch of Rocket's Blast Comicollector, the comics fanzine/adzine that had been such a vital part of my movement into fandom in the 1960s. I now have #s 43-61 (the entire run to which I originally subscribed) with the exception of #54, a Wally Wood-cover issue that can only be found for an exorbitant price on eBay. While the collector part of me would like to have it to complete the run, the practical part of me said that there's no way I need to spend $60 on a little bit of nostalgia.

It's fascinating to go through these adzines again--not only because I get to remember the excitement I felt when I looked at these ads originally, but also because every article in each of these issues is virtually burned into my mind. I must have read and re-read each RBCC a dozen times while waiting for the next issue to arrive. There are great articles in here chronicling the early development of fandom and the growth of comics as a major part of popular culture; among those whose work is represented in here are Mike Kaluta, Bernie Wrightson, Jim Jones, Roy Thomas, Jerry Bails, Vaughn Bode, Jim Starlin... the list goes on and on, and it's fascinating to see these major talents represented so early in their careers.

The ads are always intriguing, of course; every page is a wistful look at what I should have bought, had I been able to afford it.

(Since I don't have #54, I'm presenting the other Wally Wood cover, the one he did for RBCC #56, depicting Daredevil tossing Dynamo off a skyscraper under construction. Alas, it turned out to be an all too accurate metaphor for the fate of Tower Comics in the towering shadow of Marvel a few years later...)

The Sum of All We Are

2011-08-18T23:29:00.002-04:00

I'll never be one of those who say that family and genetics is entirely responsible for who we are and what we become—but I know it's a factor in my life, and it's one that I appreciate more and more with each passing year.

Earlier this week, my Aunt Carolyn passed away at the age of 72. I found myself wishing I had been closer to her in recent years; I also found myself remembering Carolyn and Uncle Jerry at my grandparents' house when I was much younger, and that led to other memories of family. Holiday gatherings, family get-togethers, Sunday dinners, casual conversations with adults, time spent with cousins... there are so many interrelated memories that rise to the surface at times like this.

When Susan and I went to the family visitation at the funeral home tonight, I had a chance to see Aunt Barbara and her daughter Pam; Jerry, Tammy, and Kathy; and Donna, Martha, and Paul. They're also my aunts and uncle, but I can never think of them as such because we're very close in age (Martha is barely older than me, and Donna and Paul are both younger). They're much more like cousins; we played together as children, we shared summer nights at my granparents' house when I'd stay there for the summer--and as Martha reminded me tonight, we even took baths together when we were young children! You see, my grandmother hated to waste bathwater for three individual kids when we'd all fit in one tub--but she did insist that we wear our underwear in the tub, just for propriety's sake!

Aunt Barbara is a wonder; she's the sort of person you feel close to immediately, and as you talk to her, you want to hear more about her life, her memories, the things that matter to her. She's inspirational in so many ways. And I particularly love hearing Barbara tell us stories of her life because she was so close to my father when they were younger. She is a link to my heritage, and she knows things that I could never know unless she shared them with me.

Because I hadn't seen Carolyn in a while, I wasn't sure how I'd feel when I saw her at the funeral home. When I did see her, though, tears welled in my eyes; this was a soul whose life had touched mine, and I realized that she had lived her life and had left it behind. I felt the loss very vividly, and I felt for her family who had lost her.

I looked at Carolyn's face in her repose and saw aspects of grandmother and granddad and my own father. I see similar aspects in Donna, and in Martha, and in Barbara, and in Paul. They carry the heritage of their parents and their siblings in the contours of their face, in the wrinkles of their eyes, in the bend of their smile, in so many little ways. They truly are a part of me in ways both visible and intangible.

They ended up gently urging us to leave the funeral home a while after the visitation should have ended; had they not, we might still be there, sharing stories and reminiscing and discussing where life has taken each of us (Donna and Tommy, for isntance, have followed a life path that has uncanny parallels with the path that my and Susan's lives have taken--the more we talked, the more surprised I was to learn that we had each made so many of the same decisions and made them come about in so many of the same manners). I'm sure, though, that the people who run the funeral home had their own families they wanted to get home to...

Fickle Fans

2011-08-17T00:53:00.002-04:00

On one of the forums that I frequent, there's been some discussion of a very negative advance review of the upcoming Conan film. Most of the responses have been along the lines of "I knew this one was going to be bad," or "I never had any expectations that this film would be good," or "this is just what I expected," or "based on the trailer, I didn't expect anything more."

Problem is, a lot of these same fans were saying something quite different a month ago. "What a great Conan trailer!" "Can't wait to see this!" "Looks like they've finally done Conan right!"

I don't know if a lot of fans are so gullible that their opinions are swayed by what they're reading at the time, or if they're succumbing to the internet tendency towards schadenfreude--an eagerness to see the misery or failure of others. Either way, it makes me aware of what a fickle bunch it is that so many filmmakers and television series producers spend so much time courting...

Back to School Ritual

2011-08-17T00:37:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, Cobb County started back to school--and as I've done every year since I retired from teaching, I got up early so that I could get in a morning walk while the kids were at the bus stops for the first day of school. Since Cobb County staggers the start time for elementary, high school, and middle school in order to utilize the same buses for all three runs, I ended up taking a long, leisurely walk so that I could observe both the elementary and the high school students (I didn't feel like stretching my walk out to see the middle school students as well--because, to be honest, I find "middle school" and "student" to be an oxymoron anyway).

It's always interesting to watch the first-day reactions. There will always be one elementary school student crying because he doesn't want to go to school; there will always be one or two parents who'd made posters for their kids to mark the first day of their school year; there will be some kids very excited to get on the bus; there will be some who look positively dejected; and of course, there will be some with a "deer in the headlights" expression, wondering just how the first day of school got here so very quickly. I saw all of those yesterday, along with a lot more parents than are typically found at the bus stops; the first day of school is sort of a family event, with everyone gathering to make sure the year starts off right. Give 'em a few weeks, and a lot of those parents won't be making the hike from the house to the bus stop--but there are always a few parents who make sure that the kids get off to school safely.

This year the weather chose to be kind; for the first time that I can recall, our morning temperature on the first day of school was 64°--and that's most definitely not a typical August low in Georgia. It reminded me once again why I never thought that starting school on August 1st was a good idea; those school systems that did had to work through extreme heat, burdensome humidity, un-air-conditioned buses, and the inevitable non-functional school HVAC systems. Georgia just doesn't have the proper weather for an early August school start; Georgia's typical hottest period will occur at the end of July and the first week or so of August. For almost the entire time I taught, we brought kids into the classroom on the third week of August, more or less, and I found that to be much more tolerable.

(I also never had a problem with a semester that ended after the Christmas holidays, but now there are some who push for an early start so they can wrap up the first semester before the holidays. I figure that if a kid has learned the subject matter so poorly that they forget most of it in a two-week holiday, then they didn't really learn it at all--and if a teacher's final exams focus on such minutia that the test seems more like a trivia quiz designed to stump the student, then they've missed the whole point of a final exam anyway.)

A Family Loss

2011-08-17T00:01:00.002-04:00

My aunt Carolyn died this morning; from what I've been told, she passed away in her sleep, and the family found her this morning.

I know very little about the cause of her death, but I know she suffered from many of the same health problems that plagued Dad during his last few years. I am thankful that she at least was able to pass peacefully in her sleep rather than living her final days in pain. It is probably the most gracious passing any of us could hope for.

But I still find myself thinking that the world seems a little emptier with each family loss. One by one, it seems that many of the family members I remember with such love from my youth have left this world, and the vacancy they leave is never really filled. John Donne said that every man's death diminishes me; that is all the more true for family, because with their passing we realize that a part of what made us what we are is lost.

I won't mislead you and claim that Carolyn and I had remained close; alas, I am all too guilty of getting so wrapped up in my own world that I don't maintain the contact with family that I should. Facebook and other social media help, but none of that can replace a conversation, a little time spent together. Now I'll never have that chance.

Jet's Soars

2011-08-14T00:39:00.002-04:00

A few days ago, I detailed my disappointment with the pizza we got at the new Jet's Pizza location that opened in my neighborhood (on Shallowford, near the intersection with Johnson's Ferry, in the Publix Shopping Center, for those of you who'd like to try it for yourself).

Well, the manager of that location, Casey, read my comments and immediately got in touch with me. He was most concerned that I hadn't gotten a pizza that was up to Jet's standards, and he said that what I had described in my blog post was most definitely not what a Jet's Pizza should be. He added that one of the people on his team worked at a Mellow Mushroom in the past. "If you got more on your Mellow Mushroom pizza than you got here, we did it wrong," he said. So he asked if I'd be willing to try his location again. I was quite impressed by his demeanor and his pride in the pizzas that his restaurant produces, so I was quite eager to give it a second shot.

Tonight Susan and I tried another Jet's Ten deep-dish pizza, and Casey threw in a pepperoni deep-dish pizza so that we could see the differences in a single-ingredient and a loaded pizza. "We do put a little less cheese on the Jet's Ten pizza, so that it'll cook right," he said, "but it's very, very little difference, and you really shouldn't be able to notice it."

Then he said something that really impressed me: "I watched them make your pizza to Jet's specifications, so that I was sure it was made right." Anyone could have made one pizza that was loaded with extra toppings and extra cheese, but that would only have led to disappointment down the line when the next pizza didn't measure up to the one we got tonight. Instead, Casey made sure that the pizza we got was exactly what every Jet's pizza should be--and that tells me that he is very proud of his store and the franchise. So I was eager to get it home and try both the Jet's Ten and the pepperoni deep-dish.

Both pizzas were impeccable. The crust, crisp on the bottom with a little crunch and a lot of flavor, was well-cooked throughout--no doughiness, none of the heaviness that so often passes for deep-dish pizza around here. The ingredients--including the cheese and sauce--were plentiful and flavorful; I got an abundant variety of toppings in every bite, and the meats and the vegetables were fresh and distinctive.

The pepperoni pizza was a real surprise. I rarely care for single-ingredient pizzas, but the this was an exception. The pepperoni was based to a savory crispness, which perfectly accented the toasted, slightly stringy mozzarella (just the way a real mozzarella should be) and the baked-to-perfection crust.

I have to retract my earlier dismissal of Jet's. By making a pizza to Jet's standards, Casey has proven to me that I can expect this sort of quality in the future--and that means that Jet's is on our regular pizza rotation.

Furthermore, I can't say enough about what an asset a manager like Casey can be to any team. He saw a problem, addressed it, found a solution, and made it clear that he had absolute confidence that his company's food was as good as any other pizza out there... and then he proved it! Managers like Casey are all too rare--Jet's should be glad to have him representing them.

A-List Creators and B-List Publishers

2011-08-13T22:52:00.002-04:00

Steve Ditko has always been enigmatic; in his prime, he was one of the most skilled illustrators and storytellers in comics, a star at Marvel Comics whose genius gave them their most famous hero, Spider-Man (certainly, Stan Lee was involved in the creation as well, but a look at Ditko's body of work makes it clear that a lot of what made Spidey a success came from Ditko); however, at almost the same time he was doing some of his best work at Marvel, he was also working for far less money at Charlton Comics, the industry equivalent of a movie B-studio.

This is the equivalent of a big box-office movie star leaving the major studios to work for a low-budget independent. While it's not unheard-of, it's certainly uncommon. But Ditko always valued respect, autonomy, and creative freedom--apparently more than money. While Charlton was always short on the latter, they apparently made up for it by letting Ditko do what he wanted with minimal editorial involvement.

After Ditko's stellar years at Marvel, he worked for Charlton for a while, creating his iconic objectivist hero The Question and rebooting Captain Atom, among other things. He left Charlton for a short while to work with DC, but the arrangement fell apart, and soon thereafter, Ditko was back at Charlton again.

Ditko's fans know his early work at Charlton, his Marvel years, his superhero time at Charlton, and his brief run at DC... but his 1970s work at Charlton is largely overlooked. Certainly, it's not as artistically appealing as his early 1960s work; by the 1970s, Ditko was generally inking with a pen, using brush very little if at all, and the result was a very even line that clarified the art, but rarely enhanced it. Even so, it's obvious from reading these stories that Ditko was doing something he enjoyed. These tales were often reminiscent of his pre-hero Marvel work (although writer Joe Gill and the other scripters of the stories--perhaps Ditko himself in some cases--lacked the Serling-esque storytelling skills of Stan Lee's collaborations with Ditko), and were always illustrated with great skill and finesse. Even later-period Ditko is better than a lot of the best work from other creators.

I've recently been reading through a heaping helping of Charlton 70s mystery-suspense-supernatural comics, and I've really come to appreciate what Charlton did. Working with a minimal budget, they managed to get great work from Ditko, Gill, Pete Morisi, Sanho Kim, Wayne Howard, Joe Staton, Pat Boyette, and many other talented creators. There must have been something to be said for Charlton as an employer--they managed to keep some top talent working for them for years when many of them could have sold their talents elsewhere.

That's what's missing from the comics field today--there are no mass-market mainstream B-level publishers producing quality material in a professional package targeted not to the collector, but to the mass market reader. While Marvel, DC, and a few key independent publishers get a lot of attention when talk turns to the later years of the Silver Age and the Bronze Age, I think that publishers like Charlton, with their full line of genre comics (war, romance, racing, martial arts, horror/mystery, and humor) are underappreciated. The fact that we see so many Charltons in late 60s and 1970s collections indicates that they had a strong market presence, even if all too few fans gave their work any respect.

Foods From the Past

2011-08-11T22:59:00.002-04:00

Susan and I were talking about places where we used to eat, and that led to conversations about now-nonexistent foods that we ate regularly at one point or another.

Anyone remember the BellBeefer? First time I took Susan to Taco Bell, she had never had Mexican food of any sort, so she ordered the BellBeefer (taco beef on a bun with various accoutrements); it took three or four more trips to the West Rome Taco Bell to get her to try anything else. (This was the early 1970s, when there were no authentic Mexican restaurants in Rome... Taco Bell was all there was!)

Susan also enjoyed the enchirito, a cross between an enchilada and a burrito that Taco Bell offered for a while. Beef and bean filling, along with chopped onions, in a flour tortilla, topped with generous helpings of Taco Bell red sauce and black olives (Susan always asked for extra black olives). That was her Taco Bell item of choice for years. I understand they brought it back for a while in the late 1990s and early 2000's, but we were no longer eating at Taco Bell by that time, so it slipped past us.

At Village Inn, we used to get a shrimp and black olive pizza. I no longer have any desire to eat shrimp, but we used to love getting a shrimp & black olive pizza and a sausage, pepperoni, and mushroom pizza and alternating slices of the two.

The McDLT, one of my favorite McDonald's hamburgers (another place where we no longer eat)--it came in a special container with the meat and the bottom of the bun in one compartment and the lettuce, tomato, and top of the bun on the other. The package kept the hot side hot and the cool side cool, or so the advertising claimed.

From time to time, we ate at Lum's where we'd have a hot dog steamed in beer. Neither Susan nor I drink beer at all, but for some reason this approach made for a very tasty hot dog!

I have hardly ever found a deep dish pizza that I liked, but the Upper Crust at the Galleria in Marietta was the exception. They had a stuffed crust pizza--basically a pizza crust, oodles of ingredients, cheese, and sauce, topped with another crust and baked into an incredibly dense, fully loaded "pizza pot pie," as one friend called it. I mourned the loss of this restaurant, and have never found a deep dish style pizza I liked as well.

Butch's hamburgers. When I first bought Dr. No's in the 1980s, there was a restaurant in the shopping center known as Butch's, run by a burly fellow named Butch (what a surprise!). He made one of the best burgers we ever ate--a heavy, loaded burger topped with generous helpings of mayonnaise, mustard, and ketchup. Alas, Butch got out of the restaurant biz in the late 80s, and nothing ever came along to take his place. Don't know what he did to give his burger such a distinctive taste, but no one has matched it.

Cool News

2011-08-11T22:51:00.002-04:00

The issue with the wall between the dining room and the garage seems to be moving towards resolution. Bob Helgesen from John Wieland came out, cut away part of the drywall, and showed me where the sheet metal venting in the wall (which is there intentionally, he explained, to keep pipes warm during the winter) was very close to the wallboard and thus causing condensation on the outside of the wallboard. Today Coolray (our HVAC company of choice) came out and put some thin insulation between the sheet metal venting and the wallboard. Bob said that they'd send someone out to repair the drywall once we knew the condensation issue was resolved.

Can't say enough about John Wieland and their customer service. We've been in this house for more than fifteen years, so the warranty was long since passed. Even so, Bob came out as soon as I called about the problem and set out to find a solution. That's one of the reasons that we now own our second John Wieland house; I have great respect for the company, like their homes and their construction standards, and appreciate the fact that they stand behind their product.

And I also have to offer kudos to Coolray; they were responsive as well, and worked to find an effective and aesthetically pleasing solution for a very minimal charge. That's the reason they handle the HVAC work for both my house and my business...

Neon News

2011-08-08T21:45:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I got a Facebook friend invite from John Crowe, who used to be a customer at Dr. No's back in the 1980s. Turns out that John is now living in the San Francisco area, where he is one of the principals in a comics and popular culture store, Neon Monster. John reminded me that when he was a kid, he would ride his bicycle to our store almost every day in the summer, looking through the comics and picking up something new and exciting to read.

I never really expected that a former customer would end up opening his own comic shop on the other side of the country. John thanked me for being his "gateway," and it made me feel good that someone enjoyed the Dr. No's experience so much that he decided to become a comics retailer.

(Interestingly, Geoff Johns credited Comic Shop News as being one of the main factors in his professional writing career: Geoff send us a spec piece, an interview with Jerry Ordway that we ran in Comic Shop News. When he got the check, Geoff said that he decided he liked this idea of getting money for putting words on paper. As you've probably noticed if you've followed DC for the past few years, Geoff became very, very good at putting words on paper... and he has, I suspect, earned a lot of money for himself and for DC!)

We never really know how our everyday actions might influence others...

Good Monday

2011-08-08T21:41:00.002-04:00

Two of this weekend's problems moved towards resolution today. First, a representative of the company that built our house back in 1996 spoke to me about the vent problem I mentioned yesterday; he thinks the problem will be an easy fix, and he offered to come by tomorrow, investigate, and if it's what he thinks it is, he said he can have the company fix it for us. This was a most pleasant surprise, and it certainly relieved me to know that the problem might be remedied in a minimally intrusive manner.

Secondly, Casey from Jet's Pizza saw my review, contacted me, and said, "If you got a Mellow Mushroom Pizza that had more cheese on it than our Jet's Ten Pizza, then you definitely got a Jet's Ten Pizza that was mismade. One of our team members worked for Mellow Mushroom before he came to Jet's, and he was amazed at how much more cheese we put on our pizzas." Casey said they'd like a chance to make it right, so we're going to give them a try this weekend.

It's always gratifying when things work out so well!

Happy Birthday, Reed, Ben, Sue, and Johnny!

2011-08-08T21:31:00.002-04:00

Today is the fiftieth birthday of Fantastic Four #1!

Or at least, it's the fiftieth birthday as close as anyone can determine.

Back in the 1960s, some magazine distributors (often called "rack jobbers" because they were the ones who stocked the racks in grocery stores, drugstores, convenience stores, newsstands, etc., putting out the new magazines and pulling off the old magazines) would stamp the arrival date on the cover of comics. The most common date stamp on copies of Fantastic Four #1 is August 8, 1961 (although there are a very small number of copies stamped a few days earlier and a small number of copies stamped later), indicating that this was the date when the bulk of the rack jobbers in the country began to process the book.

Thus, the Marvel Age of Comics is officially a half-century old today.

I remember buying Fantastic Four #1 on the stands, and I was absolutely fascinated by the mix of two different genres. I recognized the cover art style (even though at the time I had no real idea who Jack Kirby was) as the style that had graced so many of the monster comics that I loved; I presumed, therefore, that Fantastic Four was going to be a book pitting four monsters against one monster (after all, that's what the cover looked like). But once I read the book, I realized that these weren't monsters--they were people changed by cosmic rays. They were heroes.

But they couldn't be superheroes, could they? they didn't have any costumes!

Stan Lee & Jack Kirby settled that confusion for me two issues later when they gave the FF their familiar blue uniforms. But even by the end of the first issue, I realized that this was a different sort of hero team... and I knew that I wanted more.

For years, FF claimed to be "The World's Greatest Comics Magazine." And for several years, the claim was absolutely correct. And to this day, I will always see FF as the flagship title of the Marvel line.

Another Vent in the Wall

2011-08-08T01:09:00.002-04:00

Now here's an odd problem I've never heard anyone mention before...

Last week, I noticed a problem with condensation on the wall between our garage and our dining room. Wasn't sure what could cause such an odd problem in one very small area along a sixteen-foot wall--but when I touched the wall, I realized that the area where the condensation was occurring was very, very cold--twenty or more degrees cooler than the rest of the wall. I went in the house and discovered that the wall in the dining room was also very cool--but there was no condensation because that wall was in a climate-controlled area where humidity was much lower. The cold area was only a foot or so wide, but it extended several feet up the wall, warming gradually.

Our AC repair people are sending someone out to take a look tomorrow, but I think I know what the problem is: I am pretty sure that the builder and his contractor ran a flexible duct into the wall in the dining room, intending to put in a vent--and then forgot the vent. As a result, the AC and heat are blowing into a space between the walls, with no way for the air to escape. This summer has been so humid that the condensation has begun to form on the very cold wall.

I'm going to call the builder tomorrow as well. While the house isn't under warranty any longer (we bought it in 1996), this isn't a typical warranty issue. I think we all presume that the builder is keeping up with where the flexible duct tubing has been run and is subseqently ensuring that vents are installed there.

The frustrating thing is that I suspect this will pretty much guarantee they're going to have to cut into walls, replace wallboard, etc., and that's more of a mess than I really wanted to have to deal with--but it'll have to be done, I'm pretty sure.

I'll let you know what the A/C guy and the builder have to say about the problem...

Jet's Crashes

2011-08-07T23:18:00.002-04:00

A new pizza place, Jet's Pizza, opened in our neighborhood a few weeks ago, so we gave it a try (gotta try every new local pizza place, after all). We ordered two pizzas, both Jet's Ten (a pizza topped with ten of their most popular ingredients). The crust was good, the ingredients were okay... but the pizza itself seemed lacking. Virtually no cheese, hardly any sauce.

I figured we must have just gotten a mis-made pizza (sometimes happens with a new restaurant, since the staff has to be trained), so we called again this weekend and I spoke to the manager, Casey, who had helped me before. I mentioned the problem, and he told me it wasn't an error--Jet's intentionally cuts the amount of cheese (and I believe, the amount of sauce as well) on their Jet's Ten pizzas. "With all those ingredients, it would take too long to cook if we put the full amount of cheese on there, so we reduce the cheese." I asked him to verify that I understood him correctly: when you pay extra for a pizza with the works on it, you get less cheese and sauce.

"Yes," he said.

And as a result, we ate at Mellow Mushroom yesterday, where they still understand that a fully-loaded pizza has more stuff on it, not less.

While Jet's crust (particularly on their deep-dish) is quite good, I can't recommend the place, unless crust is the only thing you like... There are too many good pizza places around here to continue to go to a place that intentionally shorts its most expensive pizzas.

Suddenly I'm 14 Again...

2011-08-06T23:00:00.005-04:00

Just got in a package containing several back issues of Rocket's Blast Comicollector, a comic book fan magazine I had ordered on a whim. As I've mentioned before, RBCC was the magazine that first turned me on to the greater world of comic book collecting. In the pre-RBCC days, I was limited to buying back issues from friends, used bookstores, and Marvel Comics (in those days, Marvel actually had a back issue department, and I ordered several books from them).

When I ordered my first issue of RBCC in response to an ad that publisher Gordon Love ran in the pages of Marvel Comics, I wasn't sure what to expect. The idea of a fanzine was foreign to me; I had never conceived of fans writing their own magazines about comics. The concept of an adzine was also unfamiliar; I had never thought of finding other fans (and a few professional comic book dealers) who'd sell me the back issues I needed.

RBCC #53 was one of my particular favorites; the eye-catching John G. Fantucchio cover featuring the Shadow in both his pulp and superhero guises caught my attention immediately. Fantucchio was a fan artist who really should have been pro (and eventually he was, albeit for only a short period--he did a couple of stories for Warren Magazines in the early 1970s). His work was bold, stylish, and distinctive--and in an era when most fanzine artists were little better than I was, Fantucchio stood head and shoulders above the others.

This issue is also one that I actually ordered from.. and a few that I wish I could have afforded. Robert Bell had a complete set of Flash #105 up for $35; a complete set of Brave and Bold for $45; a complete set of Green Lantern for $20; and a complete set of Justice League (in mint condition!) for #30. Fantastic Four #1 could be had for only $14; Spider-Man #1 for $7; Daredevil #1 for $3.

However, I had a complete collection of Marvel superhero comics at this time, so my interest was focused on DC back issues (and alas, I couldn't afford those high prices for complete series). So, from advertiser Edward Gee, I actually did order and receive Aquaman #s 3, 4, & 5 for 40¢ each, Showcase #34 (first Atom) for $1.25, and Detective #275 for 75¢. I think I ordered a few other books as well, because I remember the total cost of the order being over $10, which was a substantial amount at the time. Shipping was 25¢ for orders under $5, but my massive $10+ order qualified for free shipping.

I also ordered at least four different fanzines from this issue: Comic Showcase, Fandomonium, On the Drawing Board, and Star Studded Comics. These weren't just fanzines about comics; most of them featured original comics produced by fans like me! My inspiration for fanzine publishing came from those early issues of RBCC--and from that, my involvement in science fiction fandom, my owning a comic shop, and the launch of Comic Shop News--in addition to my meeting the girl who would eventually become my wife!

Great stuff here--and while I can't order any of the books from these more-than-four-decades-old advertisements, I can still vividly remember poring over every page, marking the books I hoped to buy in colored pencil. And I still can feel the excitement and exhilaration that accompanied my discovery of the world of fandom...

A Thorny Problem

2011-08-05T23:24:00.003-04:00

The strangest thing happened a few days ago. I was removing miscellaneous weeds from a bed of day lilies when I ran across several thorny weeds like the one pictured here. I wadded up a paper towel to protect myself from the thorns (which are located along the length of the stalk) and went to work removing them. One of them, though, wrapped slightly around the paper towel, jabbing a thorn into the large middle joint of the ring finger on my left hand (well, it would be the ring finger if I wore a ring, I guess).

Okay, I got stuck by a thorn--no problem. But it turned out that there was a problem. Within three hours, the finger showed every symptom of being severely jammed (although it wasn't): the joint itself became stiff, reddish-purple, and painful to move, while flexibility in the joint was severely limited. (Susan commented that the symptoms were also remarkably similar to osteoarthritis.)

I've never had this problem before. I've been stuck by this plant's thorns in the past with no odd side-effects; in fact, I was stuck on the back of the hand by the same plant on the same day, and no reaction at all.

Took about 24 hours for the hand to return to normal. When it did, it was rather sudden; almost 23 hours later, all the symptoms were still there. An hour after that, they were pretty much gone.

Have no idea what caused the odd reaction to a routine thorn scratch... Probably never will. I've considered sticking another finger with a thorn from the same plant to see if I can duplicate the reaction, but it was unpleasant enough that common sense tells me to reconsider...

Dinner With Friends

2011-08-04T00:40:00.002-04:00

I know I've mentioned our Wednesday night dinners at El Rodeo here before, but tonight was so enjoyable that I thought it was time to mention them again! We've been eating at the same restaurant almost every Wednesday for more than two decades now, with the lineup changing over time. I think the only people who have been constants throughout the entire time are Charles, Ralph, and me; over the years, we've also shared our meals with Brett, Chris, Ed, Jim, Lanny, Buck, Trish, Jared, Jenny, Allyson, Angie, Whitney, Amy, Jason, Josh, and others. Tonight, in addition to Charles, Ralph, and me, Jim Moore came back from a two-week trip through New England, sharing tales of his journeys; Chris joined us to catch us up on goings-on in his life; Ed helped us to remember how much fun comics always are (the conversation turns to many topics when Ed is around, but politics and comics are the two mainstays--and tonight, Ed gave me one of my favorite lines, via his brother Joel: "I collect stamps, coins, and rent. I find rent to be the most profitable.").

A always look forward to Wednesdays--and while the fact that it's new comics day is a big part of my enjoyment, the chance to visit with old friends is an even bigger part of the my enthusiasm for mid-week.

I Think I've Made My Point....

2011-08-02T23:32:00.002-04:00

...regarding AccuWeather's inaccurate forecasting, but I'll end this little analytical experiment with the results for 8/1 and 8/2 (forgot to post yesterday's results).

8/1 - 80 - 84 - 78 - 79 - 79 - 84 - 93 - 94 - 96 -

8/2 - 76 - 79 - 82 - 88 - 86 - 84 - 97 - 94 - 95 -

And the real temperatures? 8/1 topped out at 83° thanks to some unexpected cloud cover and a surprise rainstorm. 8/2 came in at 89° and sunny.

Now take a look a the forecasts. There was a a 17° spread in the 8/1 forecasts and a 19° spread in the 8/2 forecasts The closer we got to the actual date, the more inaccurate the forecast was; in these cases, they actually had two days' worth of guesses that were pretty close, but they seem to be just that--random guesses that they abandoned a day or so later.

If you ask me to guess your age and I start throwing out years in a 17 to 19 year range, odds are I'll get it right at one point or another, but I'm not going to be dishonest enough to claim that there's a science to this system. Too bad AccuWeather isn't so frank about their weather guesswork.

Mexican Mishaps

2011-08-01T00:53:00.002-04:00

There's a new restaurant, Chepe's Mexican Grill, that opened up about a mile or so from the house; we tried it for the first time two months ago, and have gone back three more times since then. When they're on their game, Chepe's is quite good (although their food is not very spicy--they have a pleasant, fresh taste, but it's on the mild side); however, the past two trips have revealed the restaurant's weaker points.

Two weeks ago, they were out of Sweet and Low. I know--most of you didn't even know they still made that pink stuff. The thing is, that's the only artificial sweetener I use, and I don't care for the taste of sugared drinks. I was surprised that a restaurant could run out of Sweet and Low--particularly since they share a parking lot with Target, which sells the stuff, and there's a Kroger and a Publix right across the street from them. Sure, they don't want to pay grocery store prices every day for their Sweet and Low--but since they said a delivery was coming on Monday, they could have bought a $2 box to get them through the day.

A good manager could have turned this loss into a win--either by saying, "We'll send someone over to buy a box if you don't mind waiting a few minutes," or by saying, "We're sorry we're out, but I'd like to offer you a free Diet Coke to make up for it." I don't much care for carbonated drinks with my meal, but the gesture could have done a lot to convince me as a customer that they were willing to go a little extra to make me happy. (And while I'm not an extravagant tipper, I often leave 30%-35% tip--but in this case, I reduced that 30% tip by $2, the cost of the drink. The staff still got about 20% as a tip, but it could have been more--and I could have gone away very happy with their extra effort.)

Today, we tried 'em again (and I carried my own Sweet and Low, just in case). They had Sweet and Low this time, but they also had very, very scorched refried beans; it gave an unpleasantly harsh burned overtone to the beans, which are normally quite flavorful. I mentioned it to my server, who said something like, "Huh." I mentioned it to the assistant manager, who said, "I'll check it out," but never came back. And I mentioned it to the manager ten minutes later, who said "I'll check it out" and did--he came back and said, "You're right--those are bad. It tastes like they burned something," which was exactly what I had said.

And that was the end of it. He never said anything about taking them off my ticket (which he did--but I had no idea if he was going to or not), nor did he say anything about offering another side dish as a replacement. Since the final bill did not include the bad beans, I tipped the server 30%, because it wasn't her fault (although offering me another side dish would have been another great way to turn a losing situation into a win).

As it stands, I think we're going to pass on Chepe's Mexican Grill for a while; they can be excellent, but they apparently have little idea how to deal with a problem when it does arise. Neither situation left me thinking the restaurant was bad, but both situations left me thinking that the management and staff could think things through a little more fully and see how to make customers happy when things to wrong. That's a flaw that I hope they address--for the sake of the customers and for the sake of the restaurant.

Another Day, Another AccuWeather Fail

2011-08-01T00:48:00.002-04:00

Sunday was a warm late-July day, topping out at 90° at about 4pm and holding there for about two and a half hours. So what was AccuWeather's forecast for 7/31?

81 - 85 - 81 - 89 - 83 - 94 - 92 - 95 - 96

Early on, they forecast extremely cool temperatures, as is AccuWeather's "tease the customer" norm; as the date got closer, their forecast temperatures soared. As it turned out, their lowest high forecast was 9 degrees below the actual temperature; their highest was 6 degrees too high. Again, they never actually forecast the temperature we had, instead just offering scattershot guesses so that no matter what the weather was, they could say that they were pretty close on one day or another (when you forecast highs have a 15° range, it's pretty easy to find at least one day that's close to the mark).

This is telling me that I need to create a subscription weather-forecast site. Apparently there's lots of money to be made in being wrong.

InAccuWeather

2011-07-30T22:28:00.000-04:00

Another day, a lot more missed forecasts.

Today's high was 87 (in fairness, it might have gone higher had a cloud front and scattered rain not moved in at about 2:30, dropping temperatures into the low 80s and the high 70s for the last part of the afternoon). Here's what AccuWeather forecast for today:

80 - 83 - 95 - 91 - 94 - 94 - 94 - 95 - 96

And once again, the actual high was very, very near the midpoint of the lowest high forecast and the highest high forecast--and once again, AccuWeather never once forecast this as the high. The shotgunned all around it, but thus far not a single one of their forecasts has been accurate. Not one.

Pretty pathetic, isn't it? And these guys have the audacity to include "Accu" as part of their name...

Jobs for All...

2011-07-30T22:22:00.000-04:00

Steve Jobs, that is.

I see in a recent news report that Apple actually has more cash on hand than the US government. That got me thinking about the benefits of having Apple take over the government; maybe having Steve Jobs running the US wouldn't be so bad after all.

(1) The US government would be offered in an improved version for a lower price every twelve to sixteen months.

(2) We'd each be able to buy the level of government we wanted.

(3) For the first twelve months, if the government failed to work, there would be geniuses on hand to fix it or to advise us on what to do to make it function properly.

(4) The general trend would be for the government to get smaller and lighter as time went on.

(5) We could invest money in the government and we'd actually make a profit on it.

(6) When the government held press conferences, people would be so eager to hear what they had to say that they'd have people fighting for the right to live-blog the event.

(7) Best of all, the government would just work.

More Forecasting Folly

2011-07-30T00:36:00.002-04:00

July 29th came and went, and with it came a high temperature of 87 degrees once again ( I thought it would get up to 88, but some afternoon clouds held us at the 87 mark). So what were AccuWeather's forecasts for 7/29?

80 - 84 - 92 - 93 - 93 - 93 - 92 - 94

Once again, their forecasts ran the gamut from 7 degrees too low to 7 degrees too high--but never once did they forecast 87. Even more interesting, they get no better at weather forecasting as the date gets closer. They're just as far off a day or two before as they were a week earlier... just in the other direction.

Must be nice to have a job in which the only accuracy you display is in your trademarked company name...

An Unpleasant Anniversary

2011-07-29T00:49:00.003-04:00

Today is July 29th (just barely--I happened to be up past midnight, working at the computer, when I noticed the date). It was four years ago on this date that I got a call from Floyd Medical Center in Rome informing me that Dad was there, and that he had collapsed at WalMart. I won't run through all the details of that horrible day; you can read about it and the subsequent sorrows by going back to my 2007 blog entries.

But I will always envy my sister Kimberly on this date. You see, back on July 29th, 2007, she and Cole and Jessica had a very pleasant lunch with Dad--they got to see him smiling and happy on that last day, they got to talk with him, they got to do all the things that I wish I could have done one more time. I will always envy that.

I miss you, Dad. You left us far, far too soon...

More Weather Numbers

2011-07-29T00:44:00.002-04:00

I'm not going to continue to list AccuWeather forecasts, but I will do a running tally of their predictions vs. weather reality for a few more days.

Here were their predicted highs for 7/28:
80 - 81 - 93 - 92 - 92 - 92 - 90 - 92 - 95

And what was the high? 87

Once again, almost exactly in the middle of their high and low forecasts. And once again, it was a temperature they never forecast--they had a few temperatures significantly lower and then a whole bunch higher, but I'd give them a FAIL on this forecast, too. Keep it up, AccuWeather, and you're going to have to change your name!

Weathering the Data

2011-07-27T17:43:00.002-04:00

Okay, let's take a look at the "accu" part of AccuWeather.

High temperature for Marietta 30066 - 89° (measured with three separate thermometers--two wireless and one standard thermometer, all located outdoors but out of direct sunlight). Forecast highs:

82 - 94 - 94 - 95 - 93 - 93 - 93 - 95

So, by predicting a 13-degree range between the highest high prediction andt he lowest low, they managed to more or less miss it totally, since it was almost exactly midway between the two extremes. At no point did they ever forecast 89.° I'd say that they failed the "Accu" part today.

Now, as for their forecasts:

7/28 - 95° (3° higher than yesterday)
7/29 - 94° (2° warmer than yesterday)
7/30 - 96° (1° warmer yesterday)
7/31 - 96° (1° warmer than yesterday's forecast)
8/1 - 96° (2° higher than yesterday's forecast)
8/2 - 95° (2° warmer than yesterday's forecast!)
8/3 - 95° (5° higher than yesterday's forecast)
8/4 - 96° (16° warmer than yesterday's forecast)
8/5 - 91° (9° warmer than yesterday's forecast)
8/6 - 97° (14° warmer than yesterday's forecast)
8/7 - 93° (6° warmer than yesterday's forecast)
8/8 - 96° (8° warmer than yesterday's forecast)
8/9 - 97° (5° warmer than yesterday's forecast!)
8/10 - 88° (and once again, the coolest forecast temperature is 15 days out)

Fourteen and sixteen degree jumps in forecast temperatures? Over a 24 hour period? If that doesn't qualify as random guessing, nothing much does...

More Meteorology

2011-07-27T01:02:00.002-04:00

I'm aware that some of you are horribly bored by this, but rest easy--I'll be done with this weather stuff in a few days. I just want to see if my suspicion is correct and AccuWeather's 15-day forecast is nothing more than random guesswork.

Now let's look at the forecasts as of 7/26 (I'm not posting 'til 7/27, but I did a text capture of these in mid-afternoon Tuesday).

7/27 - 95° (2° higher htan yesterday)
7/28 - 92° (2° higher than yesterday)
7/29 - 92° (1° cooler than yesterday)
7/30 - 95° (2° warmer yesterday)
7/31 - 95° (2° warmer than yesterday's forecast)
8/1 - 94° (1° higher than yesterday's forecast)
8/2 - 94° (3° cooler than yesterday's forecast!)
8/3 - 90° (3° higher than yesterday's forecast)
8/4 - 77° (6° cooler than yesterday's forecast--and where di these 70s come from?)
8/5 - 82° (4° warmer than yesterday's forecast)
8/6 - 83° (7° cooler than yesterday's forecast)
8/7 - 87° (1° cooler than yesterday's forecast)
8/8 - 88° (1° warmer than yesterday's forecast)
8/9 - 92° (a very hot forecast for 15 days out--surprising!)

Tomorrow I'll actually compare the 7/27 forecasts for the last week or so with the real temperature and see how far-ranging their forecasts were, and when they were closest to the real temperature.

Weather or Not You're Interested

2011-07-25T22:06:00.003-04:00

Another day's worth of Accuweather forecasts; with 7/27 only two days away, they're starting to settle in on a more specific forecast, but there's still time for them to change everything.

7/27 - 93° (same as yesterday)
7/28 - 90° (2° cooler than yesterday)
7/29 - 93° (same as yesterday)
7/30 - 94° (same as yesterday)
7/31 - 92° (2° cooler than yesterday's forecast)
8/1 - 93° (9° higher than yesterday's forecast)
8/2 - 97° (13° higher than yesterday's forecast!)
8/3 - 87° (11° higher than yesterday's forecast)
8/4 - 83° (3° higher than yesterday's forecast)
8/5 - 78° (9° lower than yesterday's forecast)
8/6 - 90° (3° higher than yesterday's forecast)
8/7 - 88° (wow--there are no cool temperatures in AccuWeather's forecasdt, which is a first!)
8/8 - 87° (another aberration for AccuWeather--the cool day comes 12 days out, not 15)

More Meteorology

2011-07-24T22:39:00.002-04:00

Another day of AccuWeather forecasts... and as I had predicted ahead of time, as we get closer to 7/27 (the first day I began tracking in my blog posts), the warmer the forecast is. Here are today's forecasts for 7/27 through 8/7:

7/27 - 93° (same as yesterday)
7/28 - 92° (same as yesterday)
7/29 - 93° (same as yesterday)
7/30 - 94° (same as yesterday)
7/31 - 94° (11° higher than yesterday's forecast)
8/1 - 84° (5° higher than yesterday's forecast)
8/2 - 84° (2° lower than yesterday's forecast)
8/3 - 86° (same as yesterday)
8/4 - 80° (same as yesterday)
8/5 - 87° (10° higher than yesterday's forecast)
8/6 - 87° (11° higher than yesterday's forecast)
8/7 - 88° (wow--there are no cool temperatures in AccuWeather's forecasdt, which is a first!)

Summer Samhain

2011-07-24T00:48:00.002-04:00

Forgot to note this last week: on Sunday, July 17th, I saw the first Halloween candy of the season (can I say "of the season" when it's still the middle of the summer?). At the local Walgreen's, they were putting out bags of Brach's Autumn Mix--the cousin to candy corn that includes pumpkins, corn, and other autumn-themed candy. If you want to be a stickler, I guess we can call this "autumn candy" rather than "Halloween candy," but seeing as how they only put it out during the pre-Halloween period and they mark it down the day after Halloween along with all the other Halloween candy, I think I can make a convincing case that this was indeed Halloween candy.

Scents of Summer

2011-07-23T23:58:00.003-04:00

This afternoon, I did something a bit different as I enjoyed an afternoon walk through our neighborhood. Rather than using the walk to catch up on email and do a little reading on my iPhone, I put the device in its belt-clip and actually paid attention to the walk itself. Not with my eyes, however; instead, I closed my eyes for a few seconds at frequent intervals and enjoyed the varied scents of summer.

It's amazing how redolent the season's smells can be, and how little attention I normally give them. The heavy, loamy smell of wet earth following yesterday's rains, underscored by the subtleties of molds that accompany the wet soil and leaves and pine straw; the muskiness of the flowers and fragrant plants along the route, accented by the sweetness of recently-cut grass; the slight tang of the the light breeze wafting through the woodland area around the creek; the distinct woody smells of oak and poplar; the sharp scent of pine. And of course, there were the other smells--the colognes and/or soaps, floral and sweet, from the two women joggers who passed me heading in the opposite direction; the heavy, overhanging smell of diesel fumes from the truck that drove by on Gordy Parkway; the sulfurous smells of auto exhausts; the acrid odor of cigarette smoke that trailed from the window of a passing truck, hanging along the roadway for almost a hundred yards; the heavy smells of animal droppings from an area frequented by dog-walkers; the immediately identifiable odor of death from the roadway remains of a small animal (probably a squirrel) hit by a car a day or two earlier; the bouquet of fabric softener wafting from a house where someone was drying clothes; the distinctive smells of grilling hamburgers and grilling chicken from two different houses where lunch was obviously being prepared. I noticed that the air even smelled different in shady areas and in areas that had been in full sun for a while; it's difficult to define, but the smells were subtly distinct. All these scents, fragrances, and odors were there this afternoon, just as they probably are every day. The difference, of course, was that this day I paid attention to them, and I remembered what it was like when I was young, not so jaded, and these smells seemed such a vital part of being outdoors.

More on Not-so-Accu-Weather

2011-07-23T14:07:00.003-04:00

Okay, another day has passed, and here's the Accuweather forecast for 7/27 through 8/6. Notice that once again, there are very cool temperatures forecast at the end of the 15-day period.

7/27 - 93° (2° lower than yesterday)
7/28 - 92° (same as yesterday)
7/29 - 93° (same as yesterday)
7/30 - 94° (3° higher than yesterday's forecast)
7/31 - 83° (6° lower than yesterday's forecast)
8/1 - 79° (same as yesterday's forecast)
8/2 - 86° (2° lower than yesterday's forecast)
8/3 - 86° (same as yesterday)
8/4 - 80° (9° lower than yesterday's forecast)
8/5 - 77° (9° lower than yesterday's forecast--and once again, there are very cool temperatures at the end of the forecast period)
8/6 - 76° (AccuWeather's wondrusly cool 15-days-out forecasts return!)

When I'm 74

2011-07-23T00:46:00.002-04:00

As part of a complex series of negotiations that I'll discuss in more detail further down the line, I've proposed a lease amendment that would allow me two six-year options for renewal of the Dr. No's lease--one at the end of 2015, when the current lease expires, and the other at the end of 2021, when the first option would expire. Can't say for sure if those negotiations will come to fruition or not, but it was a bit sobering to realize that, if they do, I'm talking about lease options that will continue past my 74th birthday.

First off, it's hard to think of myself as 74 years old--although to be honest, I rarely think of myself as being 57 right now. And it's even more startling to realize that, if the lease amendment goes through and I choose to take advantage of those options, I will have been a comic book reader/fan for seventy years at that time (got my first comic when I was four years old... oh, I was three months away from five at the time, but that's still four...).

It's also a bit off-putting to be making any sort of plans that will run through the time I'm 74. I've learned first-hand that life has an interesting way of re-mapping your plans for the future, so who knows what might happen between now and 2027.

Even so, the fact that I'm even negotiating something that involves me and 74 years old is proving a bit difficult for me to fully accept...

Boocoo of Blues

2011-07-23T00:25:00.004-04:00

I haven't been satisfied with eBay for a long while--too many charlatans and scam artists, too much merchandise that doesn't live up to its description, too many fly-by-night sellers. But everything that's wrong with eBay is amplified exponentially on Boocoo, an auction site that I've dealt with once and will never buy from again.

Whereas you always have nagging doubts about some eBay sellers, it appears that the honest legitimate vendor is the exception on Boocoo. I bought a single item--a USB flash drive--and even on something that mundane, what I got was a bootleg flash drive that didn't actually offer the storage space that was indicated. I sent it back to the vendor, who promised a refund, but nothing ever came of it. I contacted Boocoo, who ignored me. And I wasn't even able to post feedback regarding this, because Boocoo had (until today) a rule that you couldn't post feedback after fourteen days. However, it took me longer than that to discover the crooked nature of this seller.

The fact that Boocoo not only failed to deal with my problem, but let this seller continue to post more dishonest auctions for a while, implies that they prefer to look the other way as far as unscrupulous sellers are concerned. Of course, the seller is no longer active on Boocoo, so now that I can post negative feedback, it's irrelevant. He may be operating on the site under another name, but I have no way of knowing that.

I find myself buying more and more from Amazon retailers and less and less from auction sites; Amazon seems to have a higher standard of conduct for their retailers, and they are very helpful when a problem does arise. If you do have a desire to take part in online auction sites, though, remember that Boocoo is the poorly-lit back alley of the internet...

Ah, for the days of a VCR

2011-07-22T23:14:00.003-04:00

Remember the VCR? Oh, the picture quality wasn't great, but it had one major advantage: you could record a show on a physical medium that survived even if the device that recorded it failed.

Today, we have the DVR--a totally device-dependent means of saving shows that makes it impossible for you to create useable backups that can be viewed on other media. Unless you have the means to record programs on your computer and then back them up, there's no practical way to save programs from your cable DVR, satellite DVR, or Tivo in any form other than on that machine. And that means that it is absolutely guaranteed that, at some point, you're going to lose some of the programs you want to watch.

So far, in the almost ten years that we've had DVRs, we've had six units fail. Some of them have failed in less than two years, some have lasted almost seven before going dead. (Oddly enough, the longest-lived unit we have is a Motorola DVR from Comcast; we got it in 2002 and it's still plugging along, so that probably means its days are numbered.)

"But we have DVDs and iTunes and the Amazon store," people will say to me. Yes we do... but I can absolutely guarantee you that there are shows on some of my DVRs that have not been (and most likely never will be) offered on DVD or via digital download. Conversely to what many people would like to believe, not every program attracts the sufficient number of viewers and/or audience demographic to make it worth producing for sale--and in some cases, rights issues make sales problematic. Also, news programs are hardly ever offered for sale on DVD, because most people have no interest in viewing old news broadcasts. Same for a lot of local programming.

While I have the ability to dub off some of my DVR programming as an AVI or M4V file, I would venture to guess that about 90% of all television viewers have no ability to do so, nor the slightest inkling of how they'd go about doing it.

It's ironic that I still have a large library of programming from 1977-1985 that I can view when I wish to, but I have no handy, convenient way of maintaining such a library today. Of course, that's just what the networks and programming providers wanted, I'm sure...

More Forecasts, Weather You're Interested or Not...

2011-07-22T23:07:00.002-04:00

And here we are, one day later and ever-closer to 7/27, when we'll see which of AccuWeather's many divergent forecasts is the proper one. In the meantime, let's see how their forecasts have changed from yesterday:

7/27 - 95° (1° higher than yesterday, 9° higher than Wednesday's forecast)
7/28 - 92° (a1° down from yesterday)
7/29 - 93° (1° higher than yesterday, 9° higher than Wednesdays forecast--notice the AccuWeather trend to promise cool temperatures, then continue to push them back?)
7/30 - 91° (4° lower than yesterday's forecast, 11° higher than Wednesday's forecast!)
7/31 - 89° (8° higher than yesterday's forecast)
8/1 - 79° (1° higher than yesterday's forecast)
8/2 - 88° (6° higher than yesterday's forecast, 10° higher than Wednesday's)
8/3 - 86° (10° higher than Wednesday's forecast!)
8/4 - 89° (3° higher than yesterday's forecast)
8/5 - 86° (don't worry, that forecast will increase as the date gets closer)

When 7/27 gets here, we'll also look at their forecast trend for that date and see how far-ranging their forecasts were.

An Overly Colorful Look Back

2011-07-21T10:16:00.003-04:00

Yesterday DC released the first three of their DC RetroActive oneshots; these books, which featured Batman, the Flash, and Wonder Woman, were more or less written and illustrated to capture the look and feel of a bygone decade. Batman was quite well done, Flash slightly less so, and Wonder Woman read like a 70s "Emma Peel" issue, but the art looked was far too cartoony and animation-influenced to properly evoke the era.

I was surprised to see that DC chose to use contemporary coloring for the books, though; the more nuanced computer coloring seemed out of place. I think the RetroActive concept would have been much better served had the colorists been told to imitate the color palettes, styles, and limitations of the appropriate decades. Apparently DC didn't agree with me there, and I'm sure they had their reasons--but it seems to me that if you're trying to coney the spirit of a bygone era, you should try as much as possible to make it look as much like a previously-unpublished work from that period.

More Not-So-Accu-Weather Stats

2011-07-21T10:05:00.002-04:00

Continuing to monitor the incredibly changeable Accuweather weather forecasts for Marietta, just to investigate my hypothesis that not only are their 15-day forecasts inaccurate, they're also totally inconsistent with their own forecasts as each day passes.

7/27 - 94° (same as the adjusted forecast from yesterday, 8° higher than Wednesday's forecast)
7/28 - 93° (a sudden 8° forecast jump from yesterday)
7/29 - 92° (an 8° forecast jump from yesterday--gee, the cool weather forecast is fading away!)
7/30 - 95° (12° higher than yesterday's forecast, 15° higher than Wednesday's forecast!)
7/31 - 81° (4° lower than yesterday's forecast, 1° higher than Wednesday's--and as I had mentioned before, the cool weather is always lurking at the end of the 15-day forecast window)
8/1 - 78° (6° lower than yesterday's forecast, 2° lower than Wednesday's forecast)
8/2 - 82° (3° higher than yesterday's forecast, 6° higher than Wednesday's)
8/3 - 83° (7° higher than yesterday's forecast!)
8/4 - 86° (well, at least there's not danging the mid-70s meteorological carrot before us 15 days out)

And this all tends to support my theory that there isn't the slightest bit of accuracy and/or science to a 15 day forecast--pure guesswork, apparently. And with temperature swings as much as 12° in the forecast temps for the same date, no matter what the weather is, they can point to one of their guesses and claim it was right.

No-So-Accu-Weather Stats

2011-07-20T18:09:00.002-04:00

This will be going on intermittently for a few weeks, so just skip the weather reports if you're bored (and you probably already are). My goal here is to see if my suspicion is correct, and Accuweather does indeed tend to offer impossibly rosy forecasts 10 to 15 days out, pushing them back with each passing day.

Accuweather's forecast highs as of today:
7/27 - 94° (eight degrees higher than yesterday's forecast--and notice that the cool temperatures are now forecast to arrive one day later than they were yesterdays))
7/28 - 81°
7/29 - 84° (four degrees higher than yesterday's forceast)
7/30 - 83° (three degrees higher than yesterday's forceast)
7/31 - 85° (five degrees higher than yesterday's forceast)
8/1 - 84° (four degrees higher than yesterday's forceast)
8/2 - 79° (three degrees higher than yesterday's forceast)
8/3 - 76° (golly gosh, there's that 76° forecast, 15 days out, just as it was yesterday!)

And Now, a Weather Report

2011-07-19T22:58:00.002-04:00

Almost 11pm, and it's still 81 degrees. Welcome to Georgia summer.

And I've renewed my habit of following Accuweather's "back 7" weather prediction just to see how phenomenally wrong it usually is. You see, Accuweather is the only site I know of that offers a 15 day forecast; however, I'm convinced that they pull the predictions for the last 7 of those days out of a box, because they hardly ever have any relationship to reality. For instance, they're now telling me that we're in for highs in the upper 70s to 80 degrees in that period. As we move along, I suspect that those 70s and low 80s will continue to remain 7 to 10 days out, but will never actually get here.

Just for posterity, here's what they're saying for the highs a week or so out:
7/27 - 82°
7/28 - 80°
7/29 - 80°
7/30 - 80°
7/31 - 81°
8/1 - 80°
8/2 - 76°

(For the next two weeks I'll continue to list those forecast highs a week out, along with the real highs for those days, so we can see how their long-range predictions reflect reality. If weather forecasts bore you, you'll probably want to skip these posts. If weather forecasts and prediction accuracy intrigues you--well, you're probably related to me.)

Taking Good Financial News Wherever I Can Find It

2011-07-19T22:19:00.002-04:00

Today, the Cobb County Board of Commissioners approved two new businesses in the shopping center near my house: a Chik-fil-A and Kroger Fuel Center, both to be built in the upper parking lot of the center where Kroger is located. I walk through this area every day, and the area has seen no real growth in several years; this is the first significant addition of businesses, and I'm hoping that's a good sign.

Through the 1990s and the early/mid 2000s, there was a lot of business churn; some new businesses came in, a smaller number faded away, and the area grew. Then came the Era of Economic Turbulence, and new business growth pretty much disappeared, while several established businesses struggled and failed.

Like many other communities, Cobb County has struggled as well. Business failures mean a diminished tax base and decreased sales tax revenues, and that strains the county's budget. As a result, county services have been cut, budgets are tight, and there's talk of a tax increase in the immediate future. Two new businesses certainly won't be enough to end the county's problems--but if this is a sign that business growth is starting to return, then perhaps we are in the early stages of an era of improvement.

I've lived through several eras of economic turbulence--the wage and price controls of the early 70s, the stagflation of the late 70s, the recession of the early 80s, the recession of the early 90s, the recession of the post-9/11 period... but none of those have had anywhere nearly the societal impact of the current recession. I suspect that, years from now, this will be viewed in the same way that the Depression was viewed historically in the decades after it ended. I know several people who have been out of work for far longer than I (or they) ever imagined they would be. The people I know who have weathered the recession best are those who have been willing to abandon their old professional views of themselves and take new positions in new (and often less rewarding fields)--but "weathering the recession" certainly doesn't mean "thriving in the recession."

I'm always looking for good signs--and I'm convinced that they're going to have to come from the private sector. Locally, the addition of these two businesses is just such a good sign. I've heard rumors of other business expansions in the area over the next few months as well; if they come to pass, it may signal a true turning point.

(Several of my neighbors were less thrilled than I with the addition of a Chik-fil-A and a Kroger Fuel Center, fearing that they would create traffic problems and be a nuisance to the neighborhood. I don't dismiss their concerns, but I think the benefits of these businesses far exceed any potential drawbacks. Hope that's the case, because the businesses are definitely coming!)

Earth One=Earth Lost?

2011-07-19T00:23:00.002-04:00

Now that DC is relaunching the entire DC Universe with an updated comics continuity, younger heroes, and a more contemporary take on the whole line, what happens to the Earth One graphic novel line?

Last year, DC launched the line with Superman: Earth One, an original graphic novel by J. Michael Straczynski & Shane Davis that proved to be such a successful seller that JMS abandoned his Superman comic book arc in mid-story to devote himself to telling the story of this younger Superman in a world that has had no prior heroes.

Geoff Johns & Gary Frank were already working on a Batman: Earth One graphic novel, while Straczynski & Davis were making progress on the next volume in the Superman: Earth One saga. But now that we're resetting the DCU in this post-Flashpoint relaunch, what is the purpose of the Earth One graphic novels? Is there any need for these books set in a quaint continuity that seems absolutely irrelevant in the light of September's New 52 from DC?

Even more importantly, if it is published, will there be an audience? The first book sold surprisingly well because it was something different--a sort of Ultimate Superman, so to speak, using the same formula that made Ultimate Spider-Man the best Spidey book in the past thirty years. People were drawn to the book because they wanted to see how it changed the Superman mythos.

When the second volume comes out (if the second volume comes out), however, it will be the "old guard," so to speak. Its continuity will date back to the bygone days of 2010, while DC's New 52 will reflect the hot new continuity of 2011 and beyond. Will readers want a "retro" book that takes them back to that quaint continuity reboot of a year earlier? Will they care about a continuity that they can only visit for an hour or so every year or more, when they can get 52 invitations to DC's new continuity every month? (That's the biggest problem as I see it: you can't build "brand loyalty" to a graphic novel line that comes out so infrequently that it doesn't seem to be anyone's first priority... Even if the New 52 hadn't happened, I'm not convinced that a second Earth One graphic novel could have recaptured the cultural gestalt that made the first one so surprisingly successful.)

Can't say for sure, but I suspect that the Earth One line may have already seen its shining moment; if it continues at all, I think it'll be difficult to convince anyone they should care. Like the ill-fated and haphazardly executed All-Star line, it's one of those great ideas that got lost along the way, and it already seems like it could become a footnote in DC history.

In-Digest-ion

2011-07-18T23:14:00.002-04:00

And now comes the news that Reader's Digest is up for sale, and the company may break itself up (Reader's Digest publishes a large number of magazines), and there's no guarantee that Reader's Digest itself will continue.

From the time I was old enough to read, Reader's Digest was a mainstay in our house. Not only did my parents subscribe to the magazine, but both my parents and my grandparents had a selection of Reader's Digest Condensed Books on the shelves. (For those who missed out on that unusual bit of publishing history, Reader's Digest Condensed Books were just what the name implies: they offered abbreviated versions of recent books, generally edited to about half or two-thirds their length. I thought of it as the book version of a fast-forward on a VCR or DVR--it made it possible for people to condense the entertainment experience. Sure, authors hated the idea that someone else had thrown away portions of their work... but I guarantee you that it led to a lot of casual readers discovering authors that they liked enough to buy in individual volumes later on, because my parents and grandparents did just that.)

A lot of people described Reader's Digest as the best family magazine ever--lots of short articles on a variety of subjects, which meant that almost every family member could find something to read. My parents always kept a copy of Reader's Digest on the magazine rack for just that reason--if anyone in the family was bored, Reader's Digest was guaranteed to offer a few minutes of idle entertainment.

And Reader's Digest was a neighborly institution. When everyone was finished with an issue, it was never thrown away--instead, it was given to a neighbor so that the magazine could entertain others.

Today, if we want a lot of brief articles on a variety of subjects, we just click on internet links for a while--but in the pre-internet days, Reader's Digest was the best source for diverse reading. And I appreciated the fact that it, like the comics that I read as a child, it instilled positive ethical values and educated while entertaining.

Not sure that Reader's Digest will fail, but it's just one more bit of bad news for readers and for the publishing industry... and it's another part of my childhood that may be fading away.

No Bookstore Is An Island

2011-07-18T22:43:00.002-04:00

"Guess you're glad to hear that Borders is going out of business, huh?"

The customer who asked that seemed a little surprised with my response. "No, not at all," I told him. "I hate to see them go."

He couldn't believe it. "But they're your competitor--that's good news for you, isn't it?"

I explained to him that, first of all, I didn't consider Borders to be much of a competitor. That's not intended to be arrogant or dismissive--simply a statement of fact. Borders was a full-line entertainment store, we're a specialty comics store. Their entire selection of comics, graphic novels, and collected editions wouldn't fill even a small corner of our store; our selection in those product areas exceeded theirs by at least thirty times, probably more--and that's not counting backstock comics (ever try to find a Silver Age Flash #123 at Borders?).

But Borders was a great bookstore. They made it possible for people to walk into a store with money (or credit cards) and walk out with books. Making it easier for people to buy books is always a good thing. Also, Borders enabled kids to discover the allure of comics--and then, when they were hooked, we did everything we could to make sure those kids could find us.

I shopped at Borders. When they were in their prime, I preferred their selection to Barnes and Noble; they seemed more diversified, and maintained a larger number of titles in inventory (in the Marietta area, at least--can't say if it's true everywhere).

But most importantly, they employed a lot of people. They pumped money into the local economy. I know that we had customers who worked their as cashiers, as inventory stockists, as media specialists... and now those customers are out of work. That's not a good thing for any of us.

I know that many people buy books online, and many others buy ebooks. None of those do much to put Marietta people to work. None of those do much to excite young readers (and would-be readers) about the wonders of books. A bookstore does that, and much more. It helps to build a community of readership, and it helps to develop a dedicated clientele that supports that bookstore and its staff.

That's not to say that I liked everything that Borders did. One of the most grievous of all Borders sins (and I blame Barnes and Noble for this as well) is that they convinced many that bookstore was just a library where readers could go in, manhandle the merchandise, read the books without paying for them, and leave. I blame Borders for the eventual collapse of a large part of the manga market, because they convinced manga readers that no one should ever have to pay to read manga--they should just go into a store, grab the book they want, then sit down in the floor and start reading, bending the pages back and mauling the book in the process. Borders could do this, of course, because they paid nothing for damaged merchandise--they just returned it and took full credit. But they devalued the books in the minds of their readership, and that was devastating.

But that notwithstanding, I think the bookstore market was better with Borders than without it. And I'm not convinced that the collapse of Borders will do anything to help assure that Barnes and Noble will survive--they have their own business demons to exorcise. And should Barnes and Noble fail as well... let's just say that it will be a dire day for the bookstore market indeed. The big-box bookstores largely destroyed the independent bookstore market, and I don't think that there's anything that will bring that market back to health. I think that this is the latest bit of bad news for a business that I love, and I lament Borders' passing.

It's a Smallville, After All...

2011-07-18T22:10:00.003-04:00

DC has put a lot of effort into their major relaunch of the entire DC comics Universe beginnning in September. One of the characters most affected is Superman--in this continuity, he will be single, Lois will be dating someone else, his parents will be dead, and he will be as much isolated alien as ethical human. For a lot of people, this will be a Superman so unlike the one they've known in the past that it'll seem like a totally different character.

I wish DC the very best of luck with this, but I find myself curious as to why they're embracing a concept of the Man of Steel that seems so different from the concept we saw in the most popular Superman project in the past couple of decades, Smallville. In fact, I wish they had used Smallville's alien-instilled-with-American-values-and-ethics concept as the model for the DCU. The series focused on the "nurture versus nature" argument, coming down strongly on the side of nurture--it was the Kents that made Clark a true superhero, not his alien background.

I had suggested at one point that DC should do a Smallville Season Eleven comic, continuing where the series left off. I still think it would be a great idea--and I have to admit that I find that vision of Clark Kent to be closer to the Clark that I've known than the version I've been reading about in news reports recently.

AAIIEEE! IKEA!

2011-07-17T14:57:00.002-04:00

I am convinced that, if Dante Alighieri were to wander through an IKEA store, he'd throw away his draft for Inferno, muttering, "Oh, this is a much better design for hell..."

We made our first (and presumably last) trip to IKEA today. I was perfectly content never to set foot in the store, since I had read unfavorable review after unfavorable review about the store and the customer experience, but there was a $6.99 cutlery tray that Susan was looking for, and the IKEA people assured her they had ten of them, so we decided to drive down there, just to see what it was like.

Wretched, that's what it was like. (And no, they didn't have the tray Susan wanted, even though their system said that they did. Apparently, what IKEA has and what its system says it has are two totally different things with little correlation...)

IKEA has tens of thousands of square feet of space--but rather than opening it up, they block it off to create a rambling maze of a store, with arrows encouraging customers to move in only one direction. Along the way, there are kiosks where you will find employees steadfastly determined to offer no help whatsoever, even if you ask.

What I saw there were hundreds of furniture items and home goods, the vast majority of which I'd have no desire to own. IKEA's style reminds me of the blond Scandinavian furniture set my parents had when I was about eight years old--not unattractive and fairly functional, but cold and sterile and uninviting.

We did see the cateteria style restaurant, and it was busy. I had heard from others that the restaurant was the only redeeming feature of IKEA, but for me, it couldn't sufficiently redeem that store. If I wanted adequate food at a reasonably low price, I could always buy food in a hospital cafeteria--it looked like the same quality food that I got at Floyd Medical Center when Dad was there after his stroke, at only about 25% higher prices. (Yes, I know they have a 99 cent breakfast, but I can't think of any crime deserving a punishment as severe as having to be at IKEA at 9:30 in the morning.)

Blood Disorder

2011-07-16T23:12:00.002-04:00

Remember when Twin Peaks was the show that had everyone talking? Then it was X-Files, and Ally McBeal, and Sex and the City, and House... there are a lot of shows that present such strong characters and such a distinctive narrative voice that not only do they burrow into the popular culture collective unconscious, they become an avatar of media coolness.

True Blood was just such a show. For the first couple of seasons, it was the show that everyone felt they should watch, even if they didn't find it particularly appealing, because it had become a trendy cultural touchstone.

Problem is, a lot of writers and producers have no idea what to do with this onset of trendy fame. And Alan Ball is having just such a problem with True Blood. The show was supenseful, with a unique narrative voice, in its first season. It began to digress a bit in the second season, losing some of its edge but still retaining its pop-cultural prominence. Each subsequent episode has seemed to drift farther and farther from the show's original intensity, however. Three episodes into its fourth season, True Blood has become a parody of itself. Many speculated that the series "jumped the shark" (thanks, Happy Days, for giving us this delightful term for a series that has gone too far from its original focus, passing the point of no return) near the end of the third season; the fourth season proves that to be the case.

I'm still watching, but only intermittently--that is, I listen as much as I watch, using the show as background entertainment while I'm working on Comic Shop News. In its first two seasons, I couldn't do that; True Blood demanded your attention. Now, an hour with True Blood is like an hour with an addled friend; you listen to the rambling in hopes that something meaningful will come out of it, and afterwards you find yourself wondering what led to such a sad state of affairs.

When You're Smiling...

2011-07-16T22:34:00.003-04:00

Jim Moore has been a friend of mine for a long, long time—and as long as I've known him, Jim has been a writer. I witness his career even before it was a career--when it was a dream that he was determined to make real. And with each book, Jim has become more skilled at his craft. Smile No More, his latest novel, demonstrates just what a powerful storyteller he has become. This novel brings back one of his most popular creations, Rufo the Clown. This is Rufo's story—a story of a quest for vengeance, of a bizarre bond between hero and villain, and of the strange interrelationship between life and death (a relationship that takes several surprising twists and turns in this tale).

Jim utilizes one of my favorite story structures in Smile No More; since I was a teenager, I'd described it as the "braided rope" approach, because that's the way I visualize it as I'm reading. He presents the reader with what seem to be three unrelated story lines; soon, he begins to braid these three storylines together until, by the end of the book, his story has become a single tightly-woven rope of a tale.

Jim also mixes narrative voices; one of his storylines is told in first person--narrated by Rufo himself, in fact. The others are told in third person, sometimes from differing points of view. It's a complex narrative approach that many could prove too challenging for many writers; Jim makes it work well.

The story follows Rufo as he sets out to find his sister, whom he hasn't seen since his death a half-century earlier. Rufo soon learns that there are multiple generations of family on his sister's side--but the discovery proves to be bittersweet, launching him on a mission of vengeance and discovery.

While there are portions of the book that will lead the reader to sympathize with Rufo, Jim never lets the reader lose sight of the fact that Rufo is inherently evil. There may have been an essence of goodness here once, but this is a being who found a way to escape death itself... but in doing so, he left his humanity behind.

Rufo fans will love the revelations that Smile No More offers regarding the evil clown's origins and the nature of his seeming immortality. And the book's final chapters establish a nemesis for Rufo--a man whose future seems inexorably linked to Rufo's, no matter how much he wishes it weren't.

Smile No More is currently available as a limited edition from Morning Star Books; I certainly hope that a mass-market publisher makes a mass-market edition available, because fans of Moore's Serenity Falls tales are most definitely going to want a copy of this dark, twisted tale.

Apples & Spice

2011-07-16T19:01:00.002-04:00

Everyone who knows me well can attest to my intense affection for spicy foods; one of my guilty pleasures is a hot pepper raspberry jelly that Susan found for me years ago. It's intensely flavored and pleasantly hot--not "burn your mouth" hot, but "my, that jelly had a kick!" hot.

I've tried for years to find a way to create a hot apple jelly that has the same heat while maintaining its rich fruit flavor. My first solution was to blend jalapeno jelly with apple jelly. Alas, it didn't work very well; no matter how careful I was to find a jalapeno jelly that had no other ingredients but jalapenos, sugar, and pectin (you have to watch out--a lot of companies put bell peppers, onions, and other ingredients in their jalapeno jelly, probably because they never imagined that someone would try to have it on a bagel or a biscuit for breakfast), I still noticed the jalapeno taste blended with the apple taste. Not what I was looking for...

Last week, on a whim, I tried a different approach--and lo and behold. it worked! I took crushed red peppers--the same stuff I apply liberally to my pizza--and crushed it even finer with a mortar and pestle. I then mixed that with a flavorful apple-cinnamon jelly I found at an Amish bakery in Blue Ridge, Georgia. Bingo! The end result was a spicy jelly that delivered a kick while maintaining its apple and cinnamon taste. No adulteration of flavors at all--just what I was hoping for!

Yeah, I know that I'm probably the only person in the world who will celebrate my culinary discovery... but I'm quite pleased, and will soon try the crushed red peppers in peach preserves and other jellies.

Chill Out

2011-07-16T18:58:00.002-04:00

...And as if the weather actually reads my blog, the very next day after I talked about maintaining my exercise routine even in Georgia's summer heat, we have a surprise cool spell that kept Friday's weather in the low 70s and gave me a Saturday morning temperature of 67 degrees as I set out for my morning exercise. All good things come to an end, of course, and this afternoon it warmed up to a closer-to-normal 85 degrees, but oh what a wonderful day and a half it was! This must be what life in San Diego is like...

Exercising My Demons

2011-07-14T23:29:00.002-04:00

Anyone who knows me well is aware that I am truly committed to exercising. While I don't overdo it--I walk far more than I jog, and I work with light weights rather than doing heavy lifting--I am dedicated to a twice-a-day exercise schedule. Except for the few times that I physically couldn't (once when I had pneumonia, and once when I was recovering from oral surgery), I haven't missed my two-a-day schedule since May of 2001, when Dr. Mike first cleared me to begin exercising after my heart surgery.

(At one time, Dr. Mike said, "If every patient who promised me he'd love weight and exercise regularly actually did as well as you, I'd have a lot more free time...")

Georgia summers can be a little challenging, though. I don't mind exercising in Georgia heat, but I really try to avoid prolonged exercise periods in direct sun. I have a relatively shady morning route mapped out (it's just half my full route, but I walk it twice to avoid the sunny half of the circle), but the afternoon route still has more summer sun than I want, so I've begun walking in the evenings instead. By 7:30 or 8:00 in the evening, the sun is low enough on the horizon that the route is warm but comfortable, there's little direct sun on me, and I can enjoy the time outdoors.

An evening walk is almost a victory lap. It's a way of celebrating the fact that you've successfully conquered another hot, humid Georgia day. There's a feeling of accomplishment, as if you're proving that even oppressive Southern summers can't stop you from living up to your personal obligations... nor can it stop you from enjoying them.

War Is Over

2011-07-13T00:47:00.002-04:00

"War of the Green Lanterns" ends in this week's Green Lantern #67... and what an ending it is! There are two major game-changing events in this issue, and I only vaguely foresaw one of them; the other (the most climactic of the two) took me totally by surprise. And when you've read as many comics as I have, that's an accomplishment! I understand that there will be relatively few changes in the Green Lantern family of books when DC does its relaunch in September, and that's a good thing; I have a feeling that Geoff Johns has a long, complex storyline planned that builds from this, and I want him to be given as much time and space as he needs to tell that tale!

X Marks the Spot

2011-07-13T00:29:00.002-04:00

I can't tell you how long it's been since I really enjoyed an X-Men comic book--or maybe I can, since the answer would be "since Joss Whedon wrapped up his Astonishing X-Men run." I've found the tangle of continuity threads that intertwine the X-family since then (and even before then in virtually every other X-Men book) to be impossible to sort, and for me they haven't been worth the efforts. Many of the characters who have played important roles are virtual cyphers as far as I'm concerned; I couldn't even bring myself to try to remember who they were, much less why they should matter.

But I can't say enough good about X-Men: Schism #1. Jason Aaron has done the virtually impossible: he's constructed a well-crafted, plot-driven X-Men story that makes perfect sense to someone who has found most X-Men books incomprehensible.

The story, which deals with human mistrust of mutants and the desire of some mutants to push back against the bigotry and discrimination, is deal with in a manner that no one has touched on since Chris Claremont and Brent Anderson's God Loves, Man Kills. Even better, though, Aaron tells his story without mimicking theirs; he takes a different approach, laying the groundwork for the inevitable split that will be at the heart of Schism. (That split is no secret; Marve has already revealed that the mutants will break off into two teams, one led by Cyclops and one led by Wolverine, and the differences will be both philosophical and operational.)

I'm thrilled that Marvel has put together a new X-Men project that's so accessible to those who have been shut out of the X-Men in recent years. I'm equally thrilled, though, that Marvel has put together a book that is so integrally focused on plot rather than on characterization nuances and continuity threads. Aaron has a story to tell, and he tells it remarkably well.

If you ever enjoyed the X-Men before, X-Men: Schism is the book you should read.

Sepulchral Ruminations

2011-07-12T00:30:00.003-04:00

From time to time, late at night, my thoughts turn to the time when I will cease to be.

Death and I are not strangers; we met for a brief time just over eleven years ago, but we parted again soon after. I know that we'll meet again sometime--and I don't fear the meeting, although I would just as soon our reunion be delayed.

My mind always works with numbers and patterns, though, and I find myself calculating even in thoughts of my own passing.

Should I live as long as my mother, I have already passed the halfway point between my first death and my next. Every one of those days that I remember--every morning walk, every waking, every sleeping, every accomplishment, every failure--those would be how many days I would have left to me still.

Should my years equal my father's, then I have still seventeen years left--but seventeen years ago was only 1994, and I feel like 1994 was so little time ago. I remember 1994, not as a distant time, but as a distinct, almost tangible series of moments. I recall the house in Rome, and I remember the hot dry summer, and I can recall the Christmas tree and the ornament that broke when Asia knocked it from a lower branch, and I recall Friday night meals when we arrived at our second home in Rome, and I remember Susan's look of happiness as she drove her Miata for the first time... how can seventeen years seem so brief?

Mr. Steele lived to be 92; if I am granted that same number of years, then I have 34 more years to fill. 34 years ago, I had just moved to Marietta with Susan, filled with enthusiasm and optimism at our new life away from the confines of Cedartown. We were still relatively poor, but we were too happy with what life had given us to fully realize it. I remember weekends with friends, trips to Rome, excursions in our yellow Honda (my first new car), explorations of Marietta, snow days that were promised by prognosticators and never came... Could that really have been 34 years ago? And if so, how quickly will the next 34 years pass by?

One of the gifts that death gave me eleven years ago is that I no longer fear the end of my days; I have been there once, and there was nothing frightening or terrifying there. But I also have seen others die since then--my mother, my father, my cousin Frank, friends, other members of my larger family--and I know the emptiness that their passing has left in my life. Some of the holes left by their absences are vast abysses, unfillable and impassable; others are smaller chasms, but they are holes nevertheless. It is the worry that my passing might leave such yawning holes in the lives of those I love that worries me far more than death itself.

But sometimes, late at night, it's the nagging worry that my passing might leave no holes at all.

In Memoriam, Mr. Steele

2011-07-09T23:53:00.003-04:00

While I was at my high school reunion, Deb Johnson told me that Mr. Leroy Steele, father of my old friend Gary Steele, died a short while ago. I was taken by surprise by the news, although I shouldn't have been; Mr. Steele has been in increasingly poor health for several years, and had finally been forced to leave his house and stay in the care of others. Even so, I had assumed he would improve under the watch of people concerned about his health; apparently he went into a rapid decline, however, and passed soon after.

Deb and I went to school together, but I got to know her even better because her family lived right next door to the Steeles. Gary and I were steadfast friends through high school, and I spent many weekends at Gary's house; as a result, I got to know Deb relatively well, even though she didn't have many classes with me.

Ironically, I had spoken to Deb's mother just after Mr. Steele's health forced him to leave his home; when I was unable to reach him, I looked up her number and called, and she told me about his condition.

I wish now I had left her my phone number so that she could have called me when he died; I would have liked to have been at his funeral to show my appreciation for all the role he played in my life. I frequently benefited from his hospitality, and I learned a number of skills from him.

Deb's husband told me that he thought Mr. Steele was in his 90s, which may be true; he was older than my father, and I sometimes wondered if those extra years contributed to Gary's emotional rejection of his parents. I will never know; Gary is no longer in contact with me or any of his old friends, and in fact Deb said that finding him to let him know that his father had died was next to impossible. They got the feeling that he had no interest in ever returning to Rome again, and they did not anticipate his accepting any attempts at contact from those of us who once knew him.

Thanks, Mr. Steele; know that you were never forgotten.

Journey Through the Past

2011-07-09T23:23:00.002-04:00

Tonight I spent a few hours with friends from my days at West Rome High School. Each year, an impossibly energetic woman named Deb Joyner Denneman puts together an All Chiefs Reunion (West Rome High School's team was the Chieftains, thus the name). There is no West Rome High School any longer; Rome City Schools sold the land for East and West Rome to Kmart and Walmart respectively, creating a single Rome High School located on the outskirts of civilization so as to be near neither East nor West Rome (it's better to be inconvenient to everyone, apparently).

It was wonderful to see so many old friends again--and in particular, it was great to see some of those I knew best in high school: Pam Astin, Greg Carter, Jamie Cook, Ken Barton, Mike Blanton, and Nancy Corlew. You'll notice that all of those last name begin with the first three letters of the alphabet. That's apparently a side effect of alphabetical seating throughout junior high school and high school: the people you get to know best are the people who sit near you, so we tend to develop friendships with those in our alphabetical vicinity, apparently.

Pam, Greg, Jamie, and Ken were particularly close friends during school, so we spent some time catching up. Jamie is the only person I knew well who was in class with me from the first grade at Garden Lakes through the twelfth grade at West Rome; Pam was my best school friend of the opposite gender; Greg and I were such good pals that he was in my wedding; and Ken and I had about eight million things in common. It's nice to see that life has treated them all well; everyone seemed happy and settled into a comfortable life. That's what we all hope for, isn't it?

I also saw a favorite teacher of mine, Ann Spears; Mrs. Spears was an English teacher who always made English both challenging and fun, and knew better than to let me coast. When I got a job teaching at East Rome High School a few years later, Ann was working in the city school system office, so I got to know her professionally as well. She remembered me as a student and a teacher, and was most gracious in her comments regarding both.

There were many others there, but I spoke to very few people other than those from my class; I hope no one took it as aloofness on my part, because it wasn't. In the eleven years since I quit teaching, I have become less comfortable speaking in crowded situations, and sometimes feel a bit awkward in social situations as well. It's not something that bothers me when I'm around friends, but it results in my sometimes seeming a bit withdrawn.

I've come to the realization that I really loved my high school years. Don't think that high school was all great for me; I had a number of unpleasant experiences, mostly brought about by high school athletes who frequently targeted me for their frustrations when my sports-editor dad picked another team over theirs in his weekly local sports predictions. But I also had hundreds of great experiences, and I have come to realize over the years that everything that was really important in shaping my life I learned in my public school years. West Rome inspired me, educated me, andinfluenced me. I always feel bad for people who talk about how miserable their high school years were; I wish they could have shared my high school experiences instead.

Mono a Mono

2011-07-09T00:36:00.002-04:00

Anyone who knows me well is aware that I love multi-channel music. I've bought a lot of stuff in surround sound--even music from groups I don't normally follow--because I think that 5.1 channel music has an enveloping quality that is positively captivating.

So it might be surprising to some that I've been listening to a lot of stuff in mono recently.

I credit the superlative sound quality of the Lexicon system in the Equus for part of that. Mono sounds so good in the Equus that I decided to transfer a lot of mono recordings to mp3 so as to hear how the Lexicon could play up the nuances of mono from music that I normally preferred to hear in stereo. So the Beatles Mono Box Set got transferred to my iPod, as did early Dylan in mono, early Association, early Stones... and I've been doing a lot of listening.

When the Beatles CD's first came out, there was a lot of controversy over the first four being in mono, but the explanation given was that the Beatles put a lot of time into supervising and approving the mono mixes, but had little to do with the stereo mixes. The problem with that logic was that the early Beatles CDs weren't taken from those mono mixes, but were mono fold-downs from the stereo mixes. But the 2009 mono box set is the mono mix as the Beatles approved it way back then. In many cases, these are different takes and/or different mixes, so there are musical differences as well.

I compare it to fine reproductions of classic comic art. Sure, in the new high-resolution reproductions, we appreciate the fact that the detail is so fine that we can see the yellow and cyan dots that comprise the green field. But sometimes we just want to see the green field. So as much as I appreciate the fact that stereo and multichannel sound allows me to hear every instrument, the multichannel mixes also give me some after-mastering control. I can adjust balance to left or right, boosting one channel over the other; I can even turn up the volume to the individual channels, boosting the instruments in the right rear, or the voices in the center, to create a customized mix that lets me hear the music in new ways.

In mono, though, I have no control other than volume. However I play the music, I am hearing the instruments mixed exactly the way the artists wanted them to be heard.

I still prefer multichannel, but there's something about mono that's appealing, too. So for the next few days, I think I'll be listening to a lot of Beatles in mono, savoring the differences between these recordings and the stereo versions I've loved for so many years.

Clear No Longer Clear

2011-07-08T00:58:00.002-04:00

For the first year or so that Clear offered 4G coverage in metro Atlanta, there was no coverage at my house. I have a portable Clear MySpot modem that I would occasionally bring home from the store to see if it worked at the house; the service would get weaker and weaker, finally ending two or three houses away from me.

Last November, the Clear modem began to work from the upstairs rooms of the house, offering second-string backup internet service that worked tolerably in the event of a power failure that took out the other internet services.

But this week, the MySpot modem is once again blinking red, indicating that whatever tower Clear had activated that offered service at my house is gone. Why they've shut it down is not Clear, however...

In Short There's Simply Not...

2011-07-07T23:27:00.001-04:00

... a more frustrating King Arthur interpretation than Starz' short-lived Camelot series.

I see that the series has been cancelled after its first season, and I completely understand why it failed to thrive. The show butchered the Camelot legend, transforming Arthur into an ignoble king responsible for the flaws that would ultimately lead to his kingdom's downfall. Morgan becomes the true necromancer of the series, while Merlin is for the most part a charlatan and buffoon with only the slightest skill in magic.

While the series had two superlative cast members--Joseph Fiennes as Merlin and Eva Green as Morgan--the rest of the casting was far, far less impressive. Jamie Campbell Bower was wholly unsatisfying as Arthur; he was awkward, wooden, unheroic, and uninspiring as the king who would become England's inspiration. For the most part, he would have been more suited for a dinner theater version of Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Fiennes, though, was brilliant, pulling every nuance out of Merlin's character. I admit that he showed all the subtlety of William Shatner in his portrayal... but the brashness was a part of Merlin's nature, and it fit in perfectly. Green was for the most part captivating as Morgan--alternating between regal and conniving as the role demanded. And she was far more entrancing on screen than was Tamsin Egerton as Guenevere--a bad bit of casting when Guenevere's Helen-esque beauty is supposed to be the cause of Camelot's downfall. Green's only distracting screen moments come when she is at her most machiavellian, at which point her voice drops to a coarse, nuanced growl that sounds amusingly like Fringe star Anna Torv doing her Leonard Nimoy impression.

I watched the entire series, because I'm an Arthur devotee... but I have to confess that at times I found myself hitting the fast-forward button a couple of times to get through some of the series all-too-frequent moments of tedium. Alas, it didn't help that much...

Let's hope that, after a few years passes, someone will realize that there is still a good Arthur story to be told in television series form... but neither Merlin nor Camelot have succeeded...