Bug Thug

Tonight at dinner we were talking about various summertime pests--yellowjackets, wasps, scorpions, etc. Less than thirty minutes later, when I got the house and began to roll the garbage can into the garage, one of those aforementioned yellowjackets, a vicious little fellow who was apparently standing guard on the aforementioned garbage can, managed to sink his stinger deeply into the middle finger of my left hand, just below the knuckle. (So much for the myth that yellowjackets are not active at night! This fellow was obviously an insomniac...)

It's been almost five decades since I was last stung by a yellowjacket, and I had forgotten just how painful they can be. The injury swelled quickly, turning into a large white lump with a red dot in the center. (If there's anything to be thankful for, it's that a yellowjacket's stinger isn't barbed, so it doesn't break off in the wound.) The pain continued for several hours, and it still hurts a pretty good bit almost four hours after the fact, in spite of my tries with a variety of folk remedies--tea bags, baking soda, vinegar, crushed aspirin, etc. The only thing that seemed to help was an aloe-and-tea-tree-oil wipe, which reduced the intense pain to... well, to a slightly less intense pain.

Tomorrow I renew my efforts to eliminate the yellowjacket nest that's located somewhere under a shrub near the garage. This is a war I am determined to win...

Working Things Out

"There's a woman at the counter who'd like to talk to you," Buck said quietly.

I walked over to see if I could help her. Even as I approached her, I could tell that she carried a burden; it showed on her face and in her eyes. Her expression was set, but it didn't hide the little hints of anxiety and apprehension that crept through.

She began telling me her story; it was a terse tale of hardship and determination to overcome. The personal details are hers, and I won't share them.... that's up to her. It ended with her explaining that her electricity had been turned off for non-payment, and while she had saved some money, she was $35 short of what she needed to pay the bill and get the power restored. "They won't let you make partial payments," she said as she showed me the bill and the cash she had accrued thus far. "Gotta have it all in cash. I asked about overtime where I work, but they just don't understand..."

What followed wasn't what I expected. "I was wondering if you had any work I could do here, today, to earn $35 to pay my electric bill and get my power turned back on." She didn't say anything further, but her eyes all but implored me for help.

I didn't have to think more than a second before I answered. "I think we can find something," I said. I then excused myself to ask Buck what we might be able to have her do to earn the money she needed. Buck suggested we let her help us break down a few boxes and toss them in the dumpster, then have her alphabetize the dollar comics, which had gotten disorganized since Julie prepared them for sale a few weeks ago.

She worked diligently. She didn't know comic books, but she asked Buck how to organize the books and she paid attention and she did just what he said. "Ignore adjectives like Amazing in Amazing Spider-Man," he told her, and she did just that. A few minutes later, we realized that sometimes adjectives weren't supposed to be ignored, as is the case with The New Gods. We didn't tell her, though; she was working hard, working fast, and doing just what she had been asked to do.

At one point, she got a phone call. After a couple of minutes, she said, "Excuse me, sir," trying to get my attention.

"Yes, ma'am," I said in reply. She stopped for a second, a little surprised. I get the feeling that she didn't expect to be called "ma'am."

"What's the name of this store?" she asked?

"Dr. No's Comics & Games," I told her. She repeated it into the phone; obviously whomever had called wanted to know where she was. She told them what she was doing; there was a little back and forth on the phone, and it seemed like whomever was on the other end of the call was upsetting her. Buck walked over, just to see how she was doing and to offer her a reason to end the conversation, since it was obviously not a pleasant call. Buck said he could hear the yelling coming through the phone from several feet away.

"I've never heard so much hate coming through a phone," he told me.

She ended the call in a moment or two more, then returned to work. "You've got really good air conditioning in here," she said to me after a moment. "It feels good. It was really hot at home." Considering our mid-90s weather (which followed a few days in the mid-100s), I imagine a home without power was not a comfortable place at any point of the day or night.

As she was wrapping up, I took $50 from my wallet and handed it to her. "It's a little more than you asked for," I told her. "Grab something for dinner on the way home," I told her. "And I hope things work out better for you."

"You don't have to...." she said, then cut herself off. She reached out and shook my hand, and said earnestly, "thank you."

The Pizza Trifecta

Every now and then, Susan and I just can't settle on a single pizza place for dinner. To resolve that decision-making dilemma, we developed the Pizza Trifecta. It's a simple process: we pick three different pizza restaurants and pick up a slice from each We then bring them all home, divvy up the slices, enjoy a pizza variety, and then decide which losing restaurant gets eliminated from the trifecta the next time around (because we have about eight choices, there are plenty of restaurants that can rotate into the empty position the next time around).

Last time we tried it, the restaurants in the Pizza Trifecta were LaBella's, Johnny's, and Capozzi's (we would have included Rosa's, but we just had pizza from Rosa's the week prior). LaBella's was superb--flavorful crust with a crisp exterior and a moderately airy interior, great assortment of ingredients that included a flavorful sliced Italian sausage, rich sauce with a heavy infusion of garlic. Johnny's was excellent with crisp, well-toasted cheese, flavorful crust with ingredients spread to within 1/2" of the edge including a spicy crumbled sausage, and a robust sauce. Alas, Capozzi's didn't stand up well to the competition: the pizza was dry, the crust was much more bready than the other two, the sauce and cheese were minimal, and the ingredients were skimpy. So Capozzi's lost in Trifecta Round One.

This week, unable to make the decision once again, we brought back LaBella's and Johnny's and introduced G'Angelo's into the mix. G'Angelo's is a locally owned pizza restaurant on Canton Road in Marietta, only about a quarter mile from Dr. No's. G'Angelo's also offers an all-day $3.99 "Big Slice and Drink" combo, which is what we tried. Their Big Slice, as it turns out, is actually a quarter of a medium pizza; it's so large that they cut the Big Slice into Two Respectably Large Slices.

When I got home with the slices, we tried LaBella's first, and it was just as good as it was the previous time. Then we decided to sample the G'Angelo's, and we were amazed by the quality. Copious amounts of ingredients; a thick, toasty-brown layer of mozzarella cheese, flavorful crust with just the right density and flavor. We've had a whole pizza from G'Angelo's many times and have always enjoyed it, but the slices were superlative. By the time we finished, we weren't able to eat more than a small bite from the Johnny's slice that remained. It was just as good as always, but it was overshadowed by the intensely rich flavor of the G'Angelo's pizza.

So who was the loser this time? No one, as it turns out; since we couldn't finish the slice from Johnny's, we didn't think it was fair to bounce them out of the competition. So the next time we're indecisive, the Trifecta will once again pit LaBella's, Johnny's, and G'Angelo's against one another... and I suspect that once again, Susan and I will be the real winners...

Merry Mid-Christmas!

It's very early in the morning of June 25th, and we're officially at the Mid-Christmas Equinox, as I have come to call it. The last Christmas was exactly six months ago, the next Christmas is exactly six months away; everything that you wish the holiday had been last year, it can be this year--you have six months to make it so!

Christmases have changed over the years. When we were all younger and thought we had all the time in the world, I tended to think of Christmas as a time when I could do everything I could to bring happiness and satisfaction to the lives of those close to me. Now I know that it's not in my power to do that, no matter how much I'd like to--all we can do it hope that the gifts we give, the greetings we share, the friendship and the love... we can hope that they let those close to us know that we care, that we hope for them, and we want them to find that happiness and satisfation.

I received countless numbers of gifts over the years, but the real gift was the one that I think I took for granted. The real gift was the fact that someone else thought enough of me to want to make my life better, to say, "This is for you" and let me know that I mattered to them.

We all have six months to let others know that they matter and that we want their lives to be better. I'm already making my list...

Something Somber This Way Comes

The news of Ray Bradbury's death wasn't surprising, but it was saddening. Like many, I grew up with Bradbury's imaginative tales. My first exposure to his work came with the haunting Alfred Hitchcock episode "The Jar," but I didn't know it was Bradbury at the time. At those pre-adolescent days, I paid all too little attention to television writers (an oversight I would compensate for later in my life, of course).

The first Bradbury story I actually read was "All Summer In a Day," a tale of dreams and lost opportunities and childhood cruelties. It haunted me; Margot never deserved what happened to her in that tale, and there was nothing that her classmates could do to make up for what they had denied her. Margot's loss stayed with me even more vividly than the death of the young boy in Frost's "Out, Out," which I read the same year. The boy's death was senseless--the girl's loss was heartless, and heartless is always worse than senseless because of it deliberate nature.

The Bradbury story that haunted me, though, was "There Will Come Soft Rains." It's a vivid story, filled with images that will not go away--images every bit as vivid as he outlines of playing children burned into the walls of a house by the nuclear flash. It was the plainness of the narrative that made it even more disquieting.

That plain yet poetic narrative style propelled me into The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Fahrenheit 451... Bradbury's voice was distinctive, evocative, cautionary, and disturbing as the story demanded.

I discovered his comics adaptations when Lancer collected them in a pair of EC trade paperback reprints; the stories and the images worked together so well that it was as if Bradbury had written them with visual accompaniment in mind. That's when I learned that Bradbury loved comic books and comic strips as much as I did; it never occurred to me that an author of his stature would share my passion for comics, but it made him seem all the more human and all the more appealing.

Years later, I saw Moby Dick and was enthralled by Bradbury's script. He brought Melville's story to life for me, making me appreciate it for the first time. I now appreciate Melville's Moby Dick, but I absolutely love Bradbury's interpretation of Melville's Moby Dick.

Bradbury wrote all too little in the past thirty years, but every time a new piece by Bradbury appeared, whether fiction or non-fiction, I sought it out. I felt obligated to do so; I owed it to him as repayment for all that he had done to brighten my life.

Bradbury was 91; his health had suffered, and there was no surprise in his death. But there was so much loss. He found the poetry in everyday prose, he evoked the fantasy in science fiction, he conveyed the wonderment in horror. He filled my life with prosaic imagery that will stay with me forever. While I can enjoy all that he has written over his vast career, I am left with an empty feeling when I realize that there will be nothing more from this man.

Poli-ticked Off

I've come to the conclusion that there are few blog and/or social networkssubjects more polarizing than politics.

There are people I've know for years whose blogs I no longer read because of their intolerant political postings. There are friends whose Facebook and/or Twitter feeds I no longer follow for the same reasons.

There is something about the internet that seems to encourage the most extreme means of expression. It doesn't suffice to present one's political viewpoint; one most condemn and excoriate the opposition, dismiss them as sub-human, accuse them of unethical and even criminal action, berate them...

I'm tired of playing that game. I used to post political points of view here, but I see no reason to do so further. If I find myself unsubscribing from the blogs of longtime friends because I grow weary of their political posts posts, then I suspect they probably would feel the same about my posts.

Life is too short. I'm not looking to make more enemies. I'll discuss politics in person with friends and acquaintances because in-person conversations tend to be more tolerant, less offensive, and far less condemnatory in their tone. But no more discussion in print; I'll make my opinions known at the ballot box instead.

Movie Mishaps

Susan and I went to see The Avengers on Thursday. Now if you know us, you realize what an unusual thing that is: I haven't been to a movie theater in seven years. I like movies, but I generally do not care for the experience of patronizing a theater. Most of my complaints relate to the audience, but there have been bad experiences with things wholly within the theater manager's control (stuffy and hot, exceedingly cold, muffled and/or low volume sound, aggravating bleedthrough from the explosion-fest next door, bad print quality, etc.).

When I mentioned this to one of our distributors, they were kind enough to send us two passes to see The Avengers, urging me to see it in a theater. So we went to Park 12 Cobb Theater, a Georgia Theater Company venue about a mile from my house, to see the 1:30 showing. Sat through the usual lead-in stuff (basically commercials for products mixed with commercials for teevee shows) until 1:30 arrived. The surround sound kicked in...

...And after 15 seconds, the screen went black while the sound continued to blast from all speakers.

After a couple of moments, the sound stopped, the digital projector was rebooted... and the same problem. Then a third time, with no solution in site. Finally, at 1:47, the theater manager came in, told us that the showing would have to be cancelled, and offered us a free ticket to a later show.

Since our only options at this point were other Georgia Theater Company theaters, we decided to drive over to Merchant's Walk, eight miles away, to catch the 3pm showing. Thankfully, their projector worked just fine (although during that first 15 seconds, I kept expecting another blackout to occur), the movie ran without problems, and all was good.

For all those people who kept telling me how much better the experience is in a theater, I say "not so much." Had we chosen to sit in the back are of the theater, where everyone else was sitting in stadium seats so as to be more or less level with the center of the screen, the actual perceived screen size would have been no larger than the screen size of the upstairs television where we watch most programming. Certainly the theater screen is larger--but when you're almost a theater-length away, it's not that encompassing an experience at all. Susan and I remedied that by moving down to the floor, about twelve rows back from the screen, so that the movie filled most of my field of vision.

Did I enjoy it? Certainly--the film was light-weight high-energy entertainment, and I thought it was one of the best superhero films I'd ever seen. But it didn't convince me that I needed to add regular theatrical screenings to my schedule; I guess I'm one of those homebodies who prefers his own large-screen surround sound experience, which I can start and stop any time I wish, to the whole off-site theatrical thing.

(As for the crowd--with the emphasis on showing movies on a lot of screens at a lot of times during the first week, it seemed that the vast number of people who wanted to see the film already had. There were fewer than 20 people in the theater with us. Nevertheless, two of them were teenage girls who insisted on sitting one row behind us and mindlessly kicking the seats in rhythm with some song playing in their heads--exactly the sort of thing that soured me on the theatrical experience to begin with. At least they quit when I asked them to do so... or else they moved another row or two back, where their seat-kicking wouldn't disturb anyone else, since there were at least eight empty rows between them and the next occupied row behind them.)

Showcasing Things Out

I'm a big fan of DC's Showcase books; these are hefty 500+ page collections of comics, reproduced in black and white, priced at less than twenty bucks. After a bit of a lean spell, we've had three great weeks of Showcase volumes: The Losers, All-Star Squadron, and The Spectre.

I enjoyed these three books in different ways. Showcase Presents the Losers was a real treat for me, since I had read fewer than 10% of the stories in this book. Even better, the stories that I hadn't read yet were almost entirely ilustrated by the incomparable John Severin, one of the finest comic artists of the past half-century And after several pleasant evenings of reading, I came to one unavoidable conclusion: if you're in trouble, you never ever ever want to be rescued by the Losers... it's about as worrisome as being given a spare red shirt by the crew of the USS Enterprise while on a Federation mission. The Robert Kanigher stories are similar enough that they don't fare as well in large helpings as some tales; there is a similarity of structure that makes these guys seem like the WWII equivalents of Garfield or Ziggy... .they just can't get a break! But each tale functions well on its own; I enjoyed this book more when I decided to break down into smaller reading installments, enjoying four or five stories then moving on to something else to cleanse my literary palate, returning to The Losers once again the next night.

Showcase Presents All-Star Squadron is a collection of 1980s-created stories set in the Golden Age; this is prime Roy Thomas storytelling, with some great early work by (among others) Jerry Ordway, an artist whose linework I have loved ever since I saw his earliest professional art.  These stories are the sort of stuff that Thomas does incredibly well; it's obvious that he has a deep appreciation of the Golden Age, and an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the era; he demonstrates both in his storytelling. (I should also note that the early issues feature art by Rich Buckler, a skilled illustrator who seems to have become a very polarizing figure in the industry; I always thought that Buckler was a capable visual storyteller with a polished style, so I enjoyed seeing his work here.) It's rare to see DC publishing Showcase volumes from the 1980s; the line generally focuses on books from the late 1950s through the early/mid 1970s, so this is a pleasant surprise from a more recent era.


Showcase Presents the Spectre was a wonderful chance to revisit some wonderful stories from the past. I loved the Spectre from those cosmic Showcase tales through his own book into the Adventure Comics run, and all those eras a represented in this volume. There's some great art by Murphy Anderson, Neal Adams, Jim Aparo, and some of the first professional work of one Berni (now Bernie) Wrightson. The best-known tales are the Michael Fleisher-Jim Aparo tales of guignol-esque justice/vengeance; these are harsh Old-Testament-esque "eye for an eye" tales, and it's interesting to see how the Spectre metes retribution on the wicked.

Three different books, three different eras, three different sorts of stories--but all great fun, and at a bargain price. If you want to revisit comics' bygone days without spending a small fortune, these are the books for you!

A Problem of Bilirubinesque Proportions

This morning, shortly after I got up but before I went out for my morning walk, I got a call from my cardiologist's office to let me know that the results of my blood test were in. I thought it was odd when she said, "You may want to write this down." So I opened a text document and began typing in the numbers. HDL, great. LDL, low. Triglycerides, excellent. Bilirubin... extremely high, health-endangering high, indicative-of-major-problems high.

What was that again?

Now I always have elevated bilirubin. Something called Gilbert's Syndrome, which has nothing to do with Gilbert Gottfreid; my bilirubin has been in the 2 to 3 range as long as I've been taking these tests. But this was many, many multiples above that.

"We need to do a conjugated bilirubin test as soon as you can come in," she said. It had to wait a few hours, I told her; this was the day I had scheduled pretty much every appointment I could think of--annual termite inspection, monthly pest control, estimate for lawn maintenance, and so on--so I had to wait for the retinue to arrive and depart. Then I'm off to the lab again, get the blood test done, and try to get some idea how I'm going to adjust store schedules if surgery is needed to send my gall bladder on its own merry way (that's one of the better potential outcomes from all of this, I'm told... as if anything involving more surgery sounds better!).

In the meantime, the cardiologist's office has faxed the results to my doctor, who has in turn forwarded the email to me. I look over the PDF, and as is my wont, I begin reading all the numbers on the printout--multiple pages of them--and looking for any patterns. And there, on the third page, I see it...

The very same value for calcium as for bilirubin. It's one of the few numbers on the five-page document that is repeated.

So, in my head, I quickly begin alphabetizing every measurement on the blood test results, and I realize that calcium would have come directly after bilirubin if the results were alphabetical.

I contact my doctor, who said it was an interesting theory...

I contact the cardiologist's office, and leave a message explaining my weird observation...

And I call the lab, where I'm told that I shouldn't pin any false hopes on that and data entry errors like that hardly ever happen.

And then, a half-hour later, I get a call. "We're so sorry--somehow your calcium levels were entered in the place where your bilirubin levels should have been. Your actual bilirubin level was right where it's been on almost all your other tests--elevated slightly, but within Gilbert's Syndrome range."

You know, your day gets immensely better when the options of surgery or even more dire problems suddenly fly out the window on little flapping wings!

Mistakes happen; I've certainly entered the wrong data in the wrong field from time to time. I really appreciated the fact that, to humor a worried patient, they were willing to pull those results and look at the raw data again, even when no one thought it was very likely that there was any sort of an error.

And I am appreciative of the fact that my cardiologist and his staff were concerned enough to contact me immediately upon receiving the results, rather than wait more than a month for my followup appointment to tell me.

But I will point out that there are easier ways to elevate my heart rate--I can just run on a treadmill, guys!

Out of Storage...

Over the past few months, I've been sorting through various items that have been stored away--some for a few months, some for a few years, some for more than a decade.

Among the items that I ran across recently were one of Dad's typewriters and an old heavy-duty typing stand; both of these date back to Dad's years at the Rome News Tribune, before the newspaper moved to computers. The typewriter was dirty but functional; some cleaning and oiling got it working just fine, although the ribbon is a bit worn and I'm not really sure where to find a replacement.

Since we have more than a little empty space at Marchmont, I figured it would be nice to set these up as I remember them being used for so many years. Of course, Mom and Dad kept the typewriter in their bedroom (this dates back to a time when their bedroom furniture was much smaller than the heavy furniture suite that they purchased in the late 70s or early 80s). Even so, I remember using that typewriter many times before I got a portable of my own; during the afternoon and early evening, I'd grab sheets of the newsprint trimmed down to 8.5" x 11" size that was always stacked next to the typewriter, and I'd type away--stories, letters, copies of articles that I liked, retyped copies of books that I borrowed from friends (I typed out the entirety of a Barton Werper Tarzan manuscript that way, in fact).

My eventual plan is to finish the corner out with some photos of Dad from the same years that he used the typewriter; even better, Kimberly mentioned that she had found some of Dad's AP plaques and awards, so I'll get one of two of those to complement the photos. I will always remember Dad working away at the typewriter, whether at the house or at the Rome News office, and now I'll have a window into the past whenever I see this typewriter sitting on ready.