flashback: January 20, 1980

You may have noticed more than once that this is not one of those blogs that contains a bunch of personal reflections and anecdotes. But it occurred to me earlier this evening that today was an anniversary of sorts.

Of course, every day is an anniversary of sorts. The great part about getting older is that stuff can have happened 30 years ago that you can both recall AND distance yourself from at the same time.

Thirty years ago. [OMFG... we'll just get THAT part of it out of the way right now.]

I think the statute of limitations is up on anything libelous I might say in this post.

So relax a moment and cue up that whooshy flashback sound effect from LOST...

whoooooooossssshhhhhhhh......

January 20, 1980, was sorta-kinda exactly 30 years ago because that was the evening of the SuperBowl that year. I was a year and a half into graduate school at the time, and we gathered at, um, let's call him Dennis... OK, the 6 boys-in-the-lab gathered at Dennis' house for a chili-based SuperBowl party. It might have been 5 of the 6 boys. I am not too sure if Joe was there.

I don't actually watch professional sports at all, so I stationed myself on a set of pillows on the floor, in front of the TV, a few hours before the start of the game. This might seem incongruous. But no: another one of the boys, Mike, was in charge of the Gin & Tonics. I did not even have to move for refills.

At some point, relatively early in the evening, the tonic water ran out; it did not, however, stop the refills.


I don't actually recall what was on the TV before the game. I almost recall the chili coming before the game began. And I never saw a moment of the game itself. I'm assuming I fell asleep. I could be wrong. I recall that after the game there was a special edition of "60 MInutes."

Will and Paul guided me (one on each side, I think) to Will's car, and they poured me out at my apartment building. Paul called after me "Are you going to be OK?" And somehow I keyed the code to the building and made my way to my 3rd floor efficiency.

This was barely a year after I had ever had anything to drink (late bloomer that I am), and it was the first time I was truly drunk. After that night, I was always convinced that we all get one freebie drunken evening that does not involve getting sick, because I didn't (and any time after that, I certainly did... well, except for that time at the beach, but that was different... it's like an anti-immune response or something: the first one is free).


Sometime after I melted into bed, the phone rang. It was the gf... checking in on how the evening went (the gf who, as it turns out, was the former fiancee of one of the boys I was with earlier in the evening - but, that is another story... I think there is an infinite statute of limitations on that one).

I picked up the phone and went to sit down on the chair-next-to-the-phone... and missed the chair completely. I have no idea what I said on the phone; I am pretty sure the call was short. I did end up with a bruise on my right ass cheek that lasted for a month, though.

And that is my most vivid SuperBowl memory.



The fine print: all of the events depicted in this story are true. Names have actually not been changed, and I am pretty sure that brain cells were actually injured, perhaps fatally, during the course of the evening.

February 6, 2010 Black & White & Red (sic) all over

At Episode 11, CerebusTV seems to be settling into its format: a half-hour of video-journalism by Dave Sim, emulating (in process) the goode-olde-dayse where you had to run to the TeeVee to see a show (this time and this time only, no pausing, no downloading, although it is on a continuous rerun loop for a few days before it is welded to its predecessor episodes which then play as a continuous rerun loop...). But I digress. What I wanted to say is that I enjoyed episode 11 quite a bit because it covered just that sort of Cerebus-related stuff that fans of the series want to hear about. In this case, it is a first-person insight into the construction of the Hemingway part of "Form & Void" and, in particular, how we (readers) ended up with pages of micro-panels at the end of the Africa segment. We learn that, like the famous East meets West railroad line, the forward-moving story line from the 250's was on a collision course with the back-written planning for the end of the series, which was moving into the 260s. I suppose we heard this somewhere before, probably in teeny-tiny print, but these reflections on that time were enjoyable to hear from the source.



Speaking of a quaint and bygone era of broadcast teevee (barely), I'm 6 episodes into "Mad Men" and I am definitely on the fence with this one. A period piece with 10 years in mind (I guess), starting from 1960, that is going to observe the social boil-over that is the 1960s, with a reminder that it really does not start until 1964, is a neat premise, and likely to be handled better than either "Happy Days" or "Laverne and Shirley" did. On the up side: it is doing all this. On the down side: standard soap opera is not always easy to watch, the level of caricature seems just a smidge high, it's a good hour-long show that seems like it could be edited to an exceptional half-hour show, and (really, worst of all) there is no one to root for. They are all dismal people. I have a feeling (or a hope) that Don Draper's enigmatic secretary is a sleeping flower who will spring to life in 1966. It would be nice to see someone's story intersect even peripherally with some minority characters (other than the Jewish merchants) just to set the stage for the upcoming era of civil rights... because what we are likely to see coming out of these characters is just going to be unpleasant. I've thought about giving this series the heave-ho, but I'll see how the rest of Season One goes, I guess.

February 5, 2010

eBay no. 220548574734
Seller: tatteredjeans42 on behalf of DVS on behalf of CerebusTV
Buyer: unknown for now
Price: $374.00

February 4, 2010

Tuesday: LOST - the Winter premiere
Wednesday: my brain - the creamy filling in this sandwich
Thursday: FRINGE - the Winter finale

February 2, 2010 Happy Cerebus Day

Ground Hog... Earth Pig... that is close enough for me.

February 2... that day, every year, when Dave comes out of his self-imposed exile, glimpses reality, understands his mortality, and then goes back inside for another year of remorse.

[Oh, lighten up... it's a joke, for Set's sake. It's not like anyone claims they have FEELINGS to be hurt, right?]

January 22, 2010
eBay item no. 280452103085
Seller:tatteredjeans42 on behalf of DVS and CerebusTV
Buyer: A Phang
Price: $338

February 1, 2010 Cerebus 20 p 13

This was up for a significantly higher Buy-It-Now price, and someone (not me) made a reasonable offer on it that was accepted. The offer is definitely in the right ballpark.

Cerebus #20 p 13
eBay item no. 140375688298
Seller:mschmidt10k
Buyer: unknown
Price: $800

January 31, 2010 LA_X

Spoilers.

On hopefully upcoming Project #1 - the reason for meeting with that publisher in Boston, who knows all about cartoon aardvarks and is trying the whole creator's rights thing, so it gives it a marginal connection to Cerebus.

On hopefully upcoming Project #2 - one of the reasons for having lunch with Jef "Frazz" Mallett, yesterday, and it also has a less marginal but still marginal connection to Cerebus.

On my sabbatical request for 2011 - if it all comes off, you better enjoy this past 3 weeks of postings, cuz a year from now there is not going to be too much posting going on from where I will be.

At 6:00 PM Hawaii time last night, ABC previewed episode 6.01 of LOST, which officially launches on Tuesday. From a hotel room across the street from this super-duper big screen, using high-tech audio-video equipment, someone recorded it and posted it, and as of about an hour or so ago, it was still up there... for those of you, like me, who read the last few pages of mystery books first... who read the movie spoiler sites before going to a movie... and so on. It only enhances the whole experience for me when I read/see because it reduces my anxiety. And I can pay attention better. Whatever. It's my way.

That image up top?

Figure it out.

Or not.

January 30, 2010

So I'm sitting at a meeting with a potential publisher, a few weeks ago, in Boston, the day before meeting Margaret for brunch. It's an interesting company because they are trying to solve the problem of textbook publishing by using a combination of creator's rights philosophy and print-on-demand technology to keep the copyright in the hands of the author and the ultimate decision to print in the hands of the student. Sound familiar? Okay, so, that was all fascinating to learn.

Later in the conversation, figuring that this publishing guy would not really know that much about comics, I figured I would convey my support for what they were doing by expressing general support for this mode of operation in the history of the independent comics, and the way comiXpress is built on exactly the same thing.

HIM: "That's interesting. I did not know that. But we should talk about comics sometime."

ME: "Really? Why?"

HIM: "I was always a big fan. Mostly a Marvel guy from the Big Two, but my real love was for the independents..."

(he pauses here long enough for me to have an entire series of conversations in my head about what might or might not be coming next, including the option that he was actually about to say "...like Cerebus.")

HIM: "...like Cerebus."

ME: "Holy shit. Do you have any idea who you are sitting across the table from right now?"

I suppose he could have thought that I was anyone from Gerhard to a indy-comics serial killer. I started to talk aardvarks, Aartvark, and the collection. And then he jumps in with his favorite stories, issues, characters... and the next 30 minutes is spent on all things Cerebus.

January 29, 2010 Cerebus #13 p 01 (prelim)

. . . ...1.

Thanks for tuning in to 23 days of prelims on issue #13. I think there are some quite interesting differences between the prelim version and the final version that give a little bit of insight into the creative process (that would be PROcess, with a long "o" sound, Canadian, that is). I presume that one day we'll hear the analysis from Dave himself, if Cerebus Archives is still around (which, ever since I cannot just check it off on my Capital City Comics order, is unordered, figuring to wait for a few issues to accumulate before ordering).

January 28, 2010 Cerebus #13 p 02 (prelim)

. . . ...2...