Tag Archives: nostalgia

Fur Sure

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday, I was leaned back in my office chair, taking a mandated break from the sketchbook painting I was working on, my feet up on my desk. At this angle, the pear-like shape of my body makes a perfect day bed for Newcastle, who was purring and looking at me through hooded eyes, under the spell of the double-ear scratches he was getting. Once he was sated, he rested his head on my chest and drifted off to sleep, leaving me in this position for the foreseeable future, and I did something a little difficult to explain. I cried. I cried heavy sobs as I watched him curled up in a large, fluffy ball on my belly. It wasn’t particularly dignified, but I love this cat, and I don’t know what I’m going to do when he’s gone.

Nineteen years ago, I took a trip to Bloomington, Indiana, to meet my close friend, Kate. During the trip, we realized we were soul mates, and shortly after I returned home, arrangements were made for me to move from New York adjacent to her house on Stoneycrest Road. This was in June, and I would be moving in with her in August.

During this margin, she began to have dreams about a kitten who was about to die. She fancied herself a witch, so she took it as a prophecy and went to the animal shelter. She found the kitten from her dreams, and they were going to put him to sleep. He was a runt with pneumonia and a bad case of the worms. Also, he was ugly, with his greasy brown fur, looking like the transition from mogwi to gremlin. Despite the offers of a better cat, Kate adopted him and spent the next six weeks nursing him to health. She told me over the phone that she knew that this wasn’t her kitten. She didn’t know whose, but it wasn’t hers. This gross little thing was kept in the bathroom until he got better and her other two cats got used to him.

By the time he emerged, he was still a little greaseball, but he was a kitten who wouldn’t sit still for anything until he got tired and fell down to sleep. He’s also rock stupid. She named him Newcastle, after her favorite beer of the moment, because he fit in a pint glass and he had a foamy white chest.

Shortly after I moved in, he started following me around, occasionally taking naps with me when he slowed down long enough. Kate, who didn’t want to support another cat and was planning on adopting him out when he got well, knew she couldn’t break us up.

The runt grew.

And he grew some more.

My theory was that he ate some radioactive kibble. In actuality, he was either a Maine Coon or Norwegian Forest Cat mix. At only sixteen pounds at his largest, though, he was still a runt.

He never outgrew his kitten face, leading to Nicole calling him Baby Cat. (She had nicknames for all the cats when she lived with Kate and me.) Also, the brown darkened into a grayish black, with a spot of brown on his belly with the white chest, so that when we violated the two-pet limit in our high-rise apartment building, we pretended he and Magik were the same.

Like all of our cats while I was married, Newcastle is very social. He loves guests, and he especially enjoys parties, where he can beg for snacks, and he’s not even subtle. He loves people food, except for anything with tomatoes in it. When he was younger, I’d run to the bedroom and jump into bed, and he was right behind me, and we’d lie there together, cuddling. When Kate and I were taking a save-the-marriage quiz, guessing details about our spouses, her answer to “What’s your husband’s favorite animal?” was Newcastle. “You guys have a weird relationship,” she said. In our post-nuptial agreement that was the foundation of our divorce, we split up custody of the cats. She got the other two, and I got Newcastle. I almost lost him, though, because I separated broke and unable to afford his vet bills, which she generously covered for me the first three months following the split.

In 2012, we took him in for an ultrasound, and the vet made an interesting discovery. The reason he was often short of breath was not because of scarring from the pneumonia, as we’d thought, but because almost half of his liver was in his lungs. He recommended “cracking him open” and fixing it, but thankfully our second opinion said that wouldn’t be necessary. He was eight years old by that point, and he was doing fine.

Three years later, the vet noticed a heart murmur, and after another ultrasound, he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. It had grown too big and was folding in on itself, necessitating semiannual cardiology visits and three medications every day to keep it from getting worse. two years ago, they added a fourth. Every two weeks, I cut up the pills and fit them into capsules so I can enjoy my least favorite time of the day, shoving it down his throat. Unlike most cats, he takes it like a champ, though he does look betrayed afterward. Last year, his back legs got really wobbly, and they told us he had arthritis (requiring a monthly shot), and earlier this year, hyperthyroidism (requiring an expensive ear cream). I don’t want to go broke taking care of him, and I considered not treating the hyperthyroidism, but all the pet docs say he’s pretty spry for an old guy (guitar riff). He could have three active, healthy years left if he’s properly medicated.

Sure he’s wobbly, sure he’s eight pounds lighter than he was in his youth, sure he can’t jump on my lap anymore, and sure, all he does is sleep, but he’s nineteen years old, and he’s been the most consistent relationship I’ve ever had. Since he is coming up on the end, I let him have some people food (he loves Fritos), and if he shows up, meowing at my desk, whether I’m writing, drawing, or working, I will scoop him up and give him all the attention he deserves. He’s earned it.

There were tears yesterday, but they were happy tears. He may be a big, dumb cat, but he’s my best friend. We’ve grown old together, and I love him so much.

Chapter 6

Posted on by
Reply

[For context: the narrator, Nora, is a veteran assassin who thinks Julie Andrews is a righteous bitch, and Edgar is the guy she rescued from a suicide attempt.]

“Let me be the first to welcome you back,” Edgar said as he left the PATH turnstile.

I laughed “Well, let me just say I’m honored to be here.”

He led me out of the station. “The financial district is really my hood. I have done a lot of temping here.”

If you draw a shape that cannot possibly exist in a three-dimensional universe, it’s called a tesseract. You could conceivable fit infinity into one. The corridors under the World Trade Center were a tesseract. The only reason I emerged into the plaza between the towers was because I had a guide. I barely found the PATH station on my own from the subway.

We stepped off of the World Trade Center campus and went one block north. “We’re here,” he told me.

I looked around, a frown on my face. “Are you sure, because the only thing I see is a bodega.”

He nodded.

“That bodega makes the best bagel?” I asked.

He grinned and gestured me inside the building. In the back was a guy, probably Armenian, who said, “What you want.” It wasn’t a question.

Edgar reminded me, “They have everything, and everything.”

“I’ll take a plain bagel with butter,” I told the scowling man behind the counter.

While he sliced my bagel in half, Edgar said, “You have the choice of all the bagel flavors in existence, and you went with plain.”

“If they can’t make a good plain bagel,” I replied, “what good are they?”

The Armenian man put the bagel on a rolling toaster and asked Edgar, “What you want?”

“Cinnamon bagel with peanut butter,” Edgar said.

I smirked. “I never took you for a cinnamon bagel guy.”

He smirked back. “How was The Princess Diaries, by the way?”

“On reflection, I did walk into that one.”

We left the bodega and wandered the streets, unwrapping and biting into our bagels. It might not have been the best plain bagel in the city, but it was the best I’d ever had. I swallowed. “I’m coming back to this place as many times as—”

BOOM!

The ground shook under our feet.

“What the hell was that?” I demanded, looking left and right for some answers. South of us, I could make out people screaming.

Edgar looked straight up and dropped his bagel. “Fuck?”

I followed his gaze to the Twin Towers, half of which were on fire. How the fuck did something like that happen? It was probably a plane, a big one. Was the pilot drunk? Having a heart attack? Wasn’t there a copilot to keep this kind of thing from happening? That airline was going to get the pants sued off of it.

What was worse was that whole subway lines were going to be shut down over this. No cab was going to come here to pick me up, and I was wearing heels. How was I supposed to get home?

We stared at the fire for a long time, maybe even a half hour, and then a plane flew into the other tower, making that same BOOM and shaking the ground. The screams got louder.

Okay, that was not an accident. Somebody purposefully bloodied America’s nose. I was actually impressed.

The most important thing I needed to do was get out of there. Anywhere outside of the Financial District, I didn’t care. Just pick a street and go north.

Edgar took a step in the direction of the World Trade Center, and I grabbed his arm. “The way out is that way,” I told him, pointing in the opposite direction.

“I need to make sure they’re okay.”

“Everybody on the top of both towers is screwed,” I said, “and we’re probably going to get lung cancer from breathing in all this asbestos.”

“You think there’s asbestos?” he asked.

“It was built in the seventies, of course there’s asbestos. Now let’s get the fuck out of here.” Not wanting to wait around to explain it to him, I dragged him up the street with no idea where I was going. I needed a cab, a subway entrance, something.

I know I had been doing this a while because the first subway station I saw was City Hall. I pulled out my MetroCard, which was pay-per-ride, not unlimited, so I could swipe twice to get us both through.

While we waited, Edgar craned his neck to look outside, but he didn’t have a good view.

I said, “Look, Edgar, I have no idea what’s going on, but I know I can get you out of here. I will keep you safe.”

“I need to help those people,” he muttered.

“Edgar!” I snapped, holding his shoulders and forcing him to look at me, “the Twin Towers are on fucking fire. All those people on those floors were instantly burned alive or even vaporized. You’re just an out-of-shape writer without a story. I love you, Edgar, but the best thing you can do now is get out. We’ll get you to Hoboken somehow.”

The train arrived, and we stepped onboard. Considering that the previous stop was Cortland Street, inside the World Trade Center complex, I’d expected a lot more riders, but we were alone. Exhausted, I plopped down on one of the hard, plastic seats. Edgar sat beside me.

“I need to do something,” he sighed as the train pulled away from the station.

“Join the army as soon as we figure out who we’re going to war with.” Who would we go to war with? If both towers were struck by planes, that meant terrorists. I didn’t know much about terrorists, just that they attacked other countries, not ours. Destroying two of the tallest buildings in the United States was pretty ambitious for any terrorist. As long as the US treated this as a law-enforcement situation and not as a war, we had a chance of figuring out who did this and bringing them to justice. However, if we went to war with a stateless adversary, then we were in danger of another Vietnam. “On second thought, don’t join the military.”

The driver of the train didn’t announce our stop. They were preoccupied. However, we pulled into the Canal Street station as usual. The doors hung open for a minute, and, just before they closed, Edgar sprang to his feet and outside. I tried to follow, but he had timed it perfectly.

He mouthed, “Sorry!”

“Edgar, you idiot!” I screamed, hopefully loud enough to be heard through the shatter-proof windows. When the train rolled out of the station, I stated, “I’m going to kill you.” Coming from me, that was no idle threat.

I had a lot of patience, which was part of the reason I was so good at my job. I called upon that patience while the train rolled uptown, until we hit the next stop, Prince Street, close to Houston Street, which meaning not that close at all to the World Trade Center, which was where Edgar was headed. I calmly exited the train, walked up street level, kicked off my heels, and ran, barefoot, down Broadway.

Man was not meant to run barefoot on a sidewalk, and I could feel the abrasions on my feet. I’d soak them in Epson salt after I saved Edgar’s life so I could strangle him to death with my own hands.

While catching my breath, I saw one person tell another person, “They got the Pentagon!”

How many planes did these guys have? The amount of coordination involved in this endeavor was mind-boggling. Someone in a cave somewhere figured out how to bring the United States to its knees. If they had asked me to plan a way to freak America out to the bone, I never would have had the imagination to think of this. At the risk of giving them too much credit, these guys were evil geniuses.

Whoever it was, I’d kill them. Save the troops, save the billions they’d spend going to war with an invisible enemy. Just send me in there. Give me a week, problem solved.

I put up with the blisters on the soles of my feet as I started to encounter scores of people going in the opposite direction. But he closer I got, the more people were just gawking. I suppose they had a good reason. What were they planning on doing if the towers fell over? Me, I would be in a different borough, if it weren’t for—

“Edgar!” I shouted.

That was definitely him. He turned around and smiled. “Nora, I have to help these people.”

“There’s got to be five hundred firefighters in the towers right now,” I told him. “What do they want with a skinny, out-of-shape gothic boy?”

He studied the entrance to the South Tower far away and took a step toward it. I snagged his arm with my hand and held him in place. He looked at me with pleading eyes.

I said, “I did not save you from killing yourself so you can turn around and kill yourself.”

“Let me go, Nora.”

“But I barely had you,” I said.

“You don’t know me, Nora.”

I let him go. He ran off into the distance to the tower.

“Don’t you fucking die, Edgar,” I whispered. “I’ll wait right here.” He got farther away. “I’ll wait right—”

I felt like I was underwater, and a muffled roar, groans, and collisions were attacking me, and something shoved me onto my back onto the street, and the world switched to gray, with flecks of black and white, making it look like, as William Gibson would say, a TV tuned to a dead channel. A few feet away, I could make out a hunched-over shadow, and then another and another. The only thing I could think of to do was find something like a wall and anchor myself to that.

Using some of that patience I rely on, I waited until the air thinned out, and I could see for more than three feet. It was now closer to ten, maybe fifteen. I decided to take my chances, and I headed for the area I remembered the South Tower.

However, when I got there, the only thing I could see was the shadow of a section of the towers’ latticework shell sticking straight up out of the ground. The South Tower wasn’t there. I looked over my shoulder and saw more latticework and no North Tower.

I sighed, “I got to sit down.” I found what appeared to be a corner of the building and sat on that. “Ugh,” I grunted, coughing in the ash-filled air, “I am definitely getting cancer from this.”

You kill one person, you’re a bad guy. You kill ten people, you’re a monster. Is there a word for the six thousand people they probably killed today? I couldn’t think of anything big enough. I could safely say that I was literally a mass murderer, and I looked like a saint compared to these guys, whoever they were.

I got up and headed home. The searing pain on the soles of my feet focused me as I lurched forward, completely covered in ash—the remains of the people in the building, one foot in front of the other. I couldn’t let my mind wander like I usually would because the pain and the effort took so much concentration.

“Step, move my weight, step, move my weight …”

I wasn’t sure how I did it, but I opened the door to my apartment. With every two steps, I shed another article of clothing until I stood in the bathroom, naked. I turned on the shower, let it heat up, and stepped inside. Without a little cold water to cool it down, the water scalded. Good, maybe if it got hot enough, I could scrub the remains of thousands of people off of my body.

With crimson skin, I finally left the shower and laid down on my bed. It was still light out, but I didn’t have it in me to do anything tonight, not even sleep.

He was gone. I felt like I had finally found something I had never been looking for. I knew him for a week, and we only spent a few hours with each other. He got a coldblooded killer to care about something. And now he was nothing but ash.

“I don’t even know his last name,” I told the empty room.

Time passed, and my phone rang. Not my work phone, but my personal phone. I picked it up and barked, “Only one person has this number, and—”

“It’s me.”

Neither one of us spoke for a while.

“I thought,” I said with an eerie calm, “you were dead, Edgar. I’ve been mourning you for hours.”

“I underst—”

“Holy shit!” I shouted as loudly as I possibly could. “You’re alive! I thought I saw you die.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “Here I am.”

“Where’s here?” I asked. “Were you able to get back to Hoboken?”

“I’m at Union Square,” he told me. “There’s plenty of places to rest here.”

“Wait right there,” I said and hung up. I called the number for Brown Limousines and demanded, “I want a car to take me to Fourteen Street, no excuses.”

“Traffic is blocked below Fourteenth Street,” the dispatcher told me.

“It’s a good thing I’m only going to Fourteenth Street then.”

The car arrived in four minutes, and we were quickly at Union Square. The driver generously volunteered to wait for me to pick up my friend, and I quickly found a half-asleep Edgar on the lawn. I had to partially carry him, despite the fact that it was my feet that were destroyed looking for him, and we made it to the car.

The driver wasn’t having it. “You think I want to clean that shit off of my leather seats? Get a cab if you want to drive somewhere.”

“Do you even know what’s been happening today?”

“No, but traffic below Fourteenth is cut off. Is there a marathon or something?”

I closed my eyes impatiently. “Two planes crashed into the Twin Towers, and they don’t exist anymore. Apparently something like this happened at the Pentagon, but I heard that in passing, so take it with a grain of salt. The world is ending, and you’re going to begrudge a guy who was close enough to get covered in ash because you’re worried your car is going to get dirty? You’re going to do this today of all days? Where’s your generosity? Your charity?” That last bit was laying it on a little thick, but I was in a mood.

“I get it, I get it,” the driver muttered. “You can ride in my car. If you come to me covered in ash any other day but today, you’re walking home. Do you understand me?”

“I’ll tell him when he wakes up,” I said.

“This is just great,” the driver grumbled. “All the streets downtown will be closed for Allah knows how long, and the detours are going to go all the way up to the Fashion District. And don’t forget all the emergency vehicles, snarling up traffic. I tell you, I’d be better off getting blown up in the Twin Towers.”

Living in Infamy

Posted on by
Reply

For the first few years, the mantra was “Never Forget.” Cruising through Facebook and Tumblr today, it’s clear we’ve forgotten. Last year, I wrote about how September 11 is fading because it’s not the worst thing that’s happened to this country in the past twenty-five years. But it’s the worst thing that’s happened to me.

After twenty-two years and an assortment of pressures in my current life, I don’t really have anything to say today. This wouldn’t be the first time. For the first ten years I only wrote two journal entries on this day, one in 2005, one in 2011. Since then, I’ve written about it inconsistently. All eight blog entries about it can be found here:

However, as I’ve noted the significance of the day receding in the public consciousness, I think it’s important for me to mark the occasion by not going into work and by writing something.

Last year, I penned a novel in need of a serious rewrite about a female assassin. I wanted to set it in New York, but I wanted to set it in my New York (see September 11, 2011), so I set it in 2001. And because it might be cathartic, I set it in September of 2001. As my memories of the actual event and the TV coverage become blurred, I wrote “Chapter 6: Living in Infamy.” It’s longer than my usual posts, but it would mean a lot if you took the time to read it.

Chapter 6

Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)

Posted on by
Reply

A long time ago, in a state far away, my best friend was Tony, an outspoken, argumentative nerd unlucky in love for being a difficult person to be around, but he had a certain chutzpah that I did admire. We had a lot in common, such as the nerdiness. We fell out of touch when I was in college, but when he joined the army in the early 2000s, he used to visit me in New York/New Jersey, and while he still considered me his best friend, I had a hard time being around him. He made all of my female friends and a few males uncomfortable, and he badmouthed me behind my back to my friends without thinking for a single moment that it would get back to me. He had become–before the term had hit the zeitgeist–a toxic male.

Upon my getting married, my wife gave me permission to quarantine him, but when he made a comment on a FB post calling all women who used birth control sluts, I cut him out. I spot him being an asshole to our mutual friends on their posts, and I don’t regret saying goodbye to him.

For a time, though, we had each other’s backs. Even when he was being a shit during his NY/NJ visits, there were always moments that charmed me. One weekend, he came to town with a mission: he was going to buy a leather trench coat, and inspired by the recent release of the forgettable Shaft remake starring Samuel L. Jackson, I whipped this up.

Not the B’s! Not the B’s!

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve become kind of obsessed with Scott Adkins.

First, let me back up a little.

I used to really love B-movies. It was one of the few things I had in common with my ex-wife. What makes a B-movie? Well, back when going to the movies was an event, as opposed to the chore it is today (in my opinion), there was a newsreel, a cartoon, a serial (including the original 1944 Captain America), a B-movie, and the marquee film. That’s how people my dad’s age saw cartoons before they were rerun on TV ad nauseam, without the nauseam part. The serial kept people coming back for more. The B-movie had a smaller budget, wooden acting, bad writing, and was usually sensationalist. When TV became ubiquitous, B-movies could be seen late at night on the networks or during the day when the soap operas (or as I called them when I was a kid, “soap poppers”), weren’t on. They also made straight-to-television movies that were often failed pilots, like the original 1979 Captain America, made shortly after I was born, but rerun over and over again, so I saw it in the eighties, back when I was too young to know how bad it was.

During the cable era, they were moved to networks like USA and HBO, and later, Cinemax, where they were known as straight-to-video releases. That horrible disappointment in film, the original 1990 Captain America, was a straight-to-video release. B-movies could be anything, from horror movies (the gorier the better), to sex thrillers (one of two non-scrambled places to see nudity before the Internet), to action (this is where Chuck Norris’s infamy comes from), to raunchy sex comedies (the other place to see nudity), to cheap sci-fi flicks (which were my favorite at the time), and more.

B-horror movies were the most popular overall because they would produce more gems, like The Evil Dead, which did have a minor theatrical release, but found a wide audience on cable and video. Fans were thrilled by the low production values and the over-the-top plots and action. Also, watch enough B-movies, and you begin to recognize the actors, who nowadays will appear in small roles in big-budget movies or on the CW. They are popularly known as “character actors,” I refer to them as “Hey, that guys!”

And that brings me to Scott Adkins. Scott Adkins doesn’t have a lot of roles in big movies. The biggest role (ha!) I’ve ever seen him in was in John Wick 4, where he wore a fat suit and wiped the floor with Keanu Reeves. He’s got a big following, though. He’s good-looking, a gifted martial artist, and a pretty decent actor. I’ve seen him in serious roles, like Ninja 2: Shadow of a Tear (“A man who seeks revenge must dig two graves.” “They’re gonna need a lot more graves than that.”), comedic roles, like Max Cloud, and movies that are both, like The Debt Collector. My favorite of his is Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday, during which he flashes his dreamy smile a lot and fights a clown armed with a cinder block on a stick.

I don’t know why he’s not a leading man. Actually, I attribute that to the fact that actors are no longer chosen for their natural physicality. Instead, they’ll hire an out-of-shape comedian like Chris Pratt, make him lift weights and not eat carbs for six months, make him dehydrate for a day or so, and dunk him in a bathtub of ice water, just to film a thirty-second shirtless scene. Meanwhile, their stunts are performed by wirework or a CGI engine, like in the 2011 original Captain America They didn’t hire real martial artists for The Matrix even, until The Matrix Reloaded, where they found three of the top B-movie action stars of the decade and made them agents probably because they had charisma (not in this movie) and because they didn’t have to train them.

There’s the fact that action starts pushing sixty, like Keanu Reeves and Tom Cruise, won’t retire and still insist on doing their own stunts. Also, Hollywood execs are Gen-X, the Nostalgia Generation, and will only do movies based on comics or toys from their childhood and will drop $300 million on an Indiana Jones movie, despite the fact that only people over forty even care about the character anymore.

As for me, I wanted to watch a movie the other day, and I couldn’t find anything that appealed to me on any of the dozens of streaming services I’m subscribed to. I blame this the single-take sequence in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: Hope You’re Not Here for Anything Fun. I think single-take sequences are really cool. I watched the one from Oldboy over and over again, and when there was one on True Detective, followed by one on Daredevil, it was jaw-dropping. Fast-forward to the last few years, and we had one on Loki, and it was fine, I guess. And we had one at the climax of Guardians 3, which was almost completely computer-generated characters. It was cheating. The single-take tracking shot went from a stunning achievement in directing, choreography, and the persistence of repetition into something you could do if you had enough VFX artists. What used to be a rare treat was turned into something I was getting tired of.

This in mind, I chose a Scott Adkins movie, the goofier, the better, and it had a single-take sequence that was actually fun. This wasn’t because a digital tree was jumping over a digital monster, but because Scott and his co-heroes were in a hallway, beating up a bunch of faceless bad guys. The only special effects (as far as I can tell) were the plasma blasts from the bad guys’ sci-fi guns. Mostly it was Scott kicking space ninjas in the face and hamming it up as an over-the-top video-game hero. I made it all the way through the movie in one sitting. The next day I watched another one, which started with Scott having four fights in the first thirty minutes, three of which he got his ass kicked hilariously, and ending on a note as heartbreaking as watching small animals get tortured and murdered and have it be the most important part of the movie. (Guardians of the Galaxy: A Silly Comedy Series. You know, for kids!)

The appeal of a good B-movie is that, without computers that have the processing power of an entire country and producers cranking out increasingly unprofitable blockbusters again and again, they depend on human beings. Their writers may not have the allegedly witty banter of a Marvel movie, or their biggest star may be Ryan Phillipe, but they’re not afraid to play with the formula. I know a lot of these movies are crap. I’ve complained about them on this blog before. They’re real, though, and they deserve our love. There’s not a lot of Scott Adkins movies on the multitude of streaming services I’m subscribed to, but I’ve put them all in my lists (“my stuff,” “my watchlists,” whatever), and I’m going through them one at a time. I’ve given up on blockbusters, and by the looks of the box office receipts for 2023 (Barbie and John Wick 4 notwithstanding), the rest of the country is starting to as well.

The Principles of Magnetism

Posted on by
Reply

In the fall of 1992, I said something mean to a very nice transfer student. Nevertheless, a year later, she invited me into her home to have a weekly lunch with her and her mother. We were nothing alike—I was an awkward outcast who thought Kurt Cobain was the height of fashion, she was a pretty, popular, academic achiever. In that time together we became very intimate, not as in romance (or attempted romance), but as in people who were incredibly comfortable being themselves together. Crushes were destructive for me, especially as my mood swung from manic to depressed, but I never developed a crush on her. I saw her for what she was, an incredibly close friend who welcomed me into her life.

Spring of my senior year, I was going to ask her out as a prom buddy, but she already had a date. I spent the evening with Shane, shoveling quarters into fighting games at the local pizza parlor, and calling it an early night. I don’t regret missing prom, since my friend was the only one I would have had fun with. That summer, I stopped by my friends’ houses with a camcorder (whatever that is) and asked them if they were evil. She was the only one who said she was not.

When we graduated, we promised to keep in touch. We didn’t.

Eight years later, after getting off the PATH train in New York City, I spied her getting off a different car. She looked exactly the same as she did when I’d last seen her, and I wasn’t going to let her escape. This was a challenge because I looked like I was in the witness protection program. I was wearing button-up shirt that wasn’t made of plaid flannel—actually buttoned up—and had cut my hair, grown a beard, and filled out. It took her a minute, but she recognized me. We had dinner on Halloween at the Tick Tock Diner on Thirty-First Street, and the magic was no longer there. She didn’t feel like the same person I knew, and I was well aware that I wasn’t tha same person she knew. We didn’t keep in touch.

The next spring, a mutual friend from high school got her number from me and set up a dinner with her. I tagged along (much to his dismay), and that evening, the magic was back. Broke and frustrated with dating, we spent weekend after weekend finding free things to do and cheap places to eat, often accompanied by her best friend who shared her name. This included Coney Island, where a walk on the beach led to a guy with a telescope showing us Mars when it was closer to Earth than it had been or would be in our lifetimes.

I was right on Halloween of 2002—she was different. When I knew her as a teenager, she was studious and reserved, but she grew into an artistic free spirit. I never saw that side of her before, but it was always there. She was also the same, having always been curious, serious, and focused, like Alice in Wonderland. I saw more of her in the coming months than I saw her best friend, who was my roommate. She met a number of my friends and got along with every one of them, who were all impressed with her.

But eventually, she left town for the Southwest, and we didn’t live near each other again.

I’ve seen her a few times since then, including her wedding, when she made a little bit of time to hang out with me (which was, I am well aware, more time than she had), and on the tenth anniversary of September 11. There were a few reunions with her, her best friend, and me, but it always ended with my old friend and me walking around New York, keeping each other company.

I haven’t seen her since October 2014, and we’re both don’t text well. When, at a deep low of depression, I took to Facebook to confess my shame of having taken a retail job, she called me on the phone (which is something you can do with phones, I guess) and made me feel better. I’ll always remember how much I needed to hear from her, and how it parted the clouds over my head.

I prematurely wrote my memoirs in May 2022, and each of the chapters was about an influential figure in my life (Kate got two). There’s an introduction about me to tell the reader who I am, but before that, like the pre-credits scene in a TV show or James Bond movie, is the history of my friend, the pom-pom girl who looked past my asshole tendencies and opened the door to her life.

Inspired by my relationship with her, I wrote an unfinished novel about two socially opposite teenage girls who find each other, lose each other, then find each other again as completely different people in New York City. This is my mockup of the cover, which will need to be redone, after I’ve had some time to work on some other drawings. The background looks great, but the figures didn’t come together like I’d hoped. Their proportions are off, and their poses and expressions are stiff. But if I can get it right on the next try, it will hopefully communicate in one image the kind of relationship my friend and I had.

I will always love her, with all of my platonic heart.

Pop Goes the Culture

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve had a bad attitude about pop culture for a while now, ever since 2007, when they released Hairspray, a movie based on a Broadway musical that was based on a movie. Don’t get me wrong, I love pop culture. I love(d) Marvel movies and TV shows. I learned how to read from comics, along with some very patient teachers. I even bought and assembled a (very inexpensive) Short Circuit MOC Lego set. On the other hand, there are other things going on.

I get it, though. I barely read the news because it’s infuriating. I’ve gotten into shouting matches with people because of the news, and these are people who agree with me. But when I scroll down Facebook, 75-80 percent of the posts are related to pop culture somehow. And they are extremely popular posts. When I post art of a character I conceived and developed and painstakingly drew and colored, I consider it a raging success if it breaks six likes. When I posted pictures of the aforementioned Johnny 5, a character whose only connection to me was that I saw the movie a bunch when I was a kid and I spent less than an hour putting it together via detailed instruction, I got dozens of likes.

While that sticks in my craw on principle, the fact is, I write and draw to impress myself. Do I want more people to appreciate my forms of expression? Of course I do. Can I live without it? Half of the six likes I’ll get are regulars, so I know I have fans. And I know for certain that a number of my friends and family see and appreciate my posts without saying anything. (It’s not like I’m consistent about visibly appreciating others’ posts.) Besides, since I found out how bad writers have it, from novelists, to TV and screenwriters, to comic book writers, I’m perfectly content with a Dropbox full of unread manuscripts.

In my last sentence, I used the word content, but pronounce it differently, and it’s content. Content is what you get on streaming services and YouTube. It’s art as a commodity that can be bought and sold, but most importantly, it’s disposable. Last year, I complained about the Willow TV show on Disney+. Well, it’s gone. If you enjoyed it, tough, because Disney pulled it, and physical media is obsolete. The actors, writers, and directors will never be paid again for all the work they put into it, and the worst part is it’s not because the show was bad (I mean, it was), but because pulling it saved Disney a bundle on taxes. Since art is disposable, there’s no point in paying the “content creators” decently, or at all, for their work. How do you think YouTube got so successful? But that’s okay, if you don’t want to create for pennies, they’ll just find someone else who will. That’s why this strike is so important.

With art as a commodity, you’ve got CEOs and presidents of a rapidly shrinking number of entertainment conglomerates saying that they won’t even consider a work if it doesn’t represent an existing intellectual property. That’s how you get the Fatal Attraction streaming TV show, which was delightful trash to be sure, but it had all the soul of worn-through shoe. Meanwhile, as I’m walking out of the Metro, I see posters of Moulin Rouge the stage musical, based on a movie musical which was based on previously recorded music. There’s a True Lies series. What the hell is the point of True Lies without Arnold and Jamie Lee, but instead a generically attractive couple in just another generic spy show.

Meanwhile, a genius like Greta Gerwig has to make a movie about a doll to get the recognition she deserves. Yes, it was a very good movie, and there were more layers to it than any of her previous movies, but it was fucking Barbie. Naturally, the studio response to this is not to make more deep movies with important social messages but to make more movies about toys. There are seven Transformers movies, and only one of them is good (Bumblebee) and two terrible GI Joe movies. The Lego Movie was amusing and meta, but had no substance at all.

*deep breath*

I’ve been meaning to rant about this for a while, but I still haven’t formed any really coherent thoughts about it. The reason I had to say something about it now is because I had indulged in some McDonald’s, and I was sitting outside, watching Newcastle creep around our backyard, and I saw written on my iced tea, “The McDonald’s Cup, as seen on” and then it listed over a dozen TV shows and music videos and movies, going back as far as Coming to America, up to Loki, season two, which isn’t even out yet.

What. The actual. Fuck.

The Printed Menace Revisited

Posted on by
Reply

I learned how to read from comic books. My dad had a huge stack of The Amazing and The Spectacular Spider-Man, The Avengers, and my personal favorite, the first fifty or so issues of The Defenders, all from the seventies and early eighties, and I read them obsessively. He had an original copy of Amazing Spiderman #129. In many ways, my dad was awesome.

I stuck with comics through the nineties, and I refused to take sides during great rivalry between adjectiveless Spider-Man and X-Men #1s. I remember my friend Tony telling me I was stupid for not picking up Superpro #1 because it was a NUMBER ONE, DUDE! I foresaw the collapse of the speculator boom when this guy I knew bragged about how he bought five copies of Spawn #1, and I thought, “If he has five copies, and his friends have five copies, who’s going to buy them? (And sure enough, twelve years later, when Chris Claremont did a surprising signing at Jim Hanley’s Comics in New York City, I bought a copy of the gatefold cover of X-Men #1 for a buck, or 20 percent of what I paid for it in 1990.)

When a guy named Robert opened a comic book store in my tiny hometown in 1993, I had found home, as well as Grendal, and I hung out there until 1994, when I went to college and became an intellectual, reading only Sandman. After that, I branched back out into the comics world and discovered lots of new stuff, a collection only confined by the size of the tiny apartments that my ex-wife (X-Wife?) and I lived in. When we moved to the DC metropolitan area, she surprised me with tickets to DC’s AwesomeCon, where I met my first muse, Peter David. But one day, I just stopped reading, even books by my favorite writers, such as Ed Brubaker.

However, my youngest sister, who prior to this point, read only Garth Ennis Punisher comics, suddenly became fascinated by Robin, and from there has become her own encyclopedia. When I told her who Snapper Carr was, she found out quickly that I had no idea what I was talking about. The student has surpassed the master.

Which brings me to the main event. Originally written to pit Brian Michael Bendis and Warren Ellis against each other. I love them both. They’re both very clever, very exciting, very cerebral writers, but they couldn’t be more different. To explain this to my friends (and later to my sister), I let them both write Star Wars. As I’ve revisited this, I’ve added more writers with distinctive voices.

Brian Michael Bendis:
LUKE: I got a bad feeling about this.
HAN: You got a bad feeling about this?
LUKE: I got a bad feeling about this.
HAN: About this?
LUKE: Yes.
HAN: A bad feeling?
LUKE: Yes.
HAN: You got a bad feeling about this?
LUKE: I got a bad feeling about this.
LEIA: This?
LUKE: This.
LEIA: This is what you got a bad feeling about?
LUKE: It is.
LEIA: You got a bad feeling about this?
LUKE: I got a bad feeling about this.
CHEWBACCA: WRAURGH!
LUKE: Chewie’s got a bad feeling about it, too.
LEIA: About this?
LUKE: He does.

Warren Ellis:
LUKE: I got a bad feeling about this.
HAN: Me, too. Let’s shoot it in the head.
LEIA: (Lights cigarette) Bloody right, then.
CHEWBACCA: WRAURGH!

Frank Miller:
LUKE: I got a bad feeling about this.
HAN (In captions): I had a bad feeling about this, too. A real bad feeling. A bad feeling burning ice cold in my gut. It tells me things are bad. Real bad. I watch the boy. Luke Skywalker. Age eighteen. He thinks he knows what he’s getting into, but he has no idea how bad it’s going to get. This feeling he’s got? It’s roses. Roses and picnics and apple pies to how it’s really going to get. Luke Skywalker. Age eighteen. He’s in for a world of hurt.
LEIA: Oh, Han! I can’t stand it anymore! I have to have you! You’re so manly! Take me, you wicked, manly space pirate! Smuggle yourself inside of me! Take me now!
CHEWBACCA: WRAURGH!
HAN (In captions): The Wookie screams a dark, primal scream into the cold, dead interstellar void. A void colder and deader than that bad feeling in my gut. The Wookie screams. I know how it feels.

Joss Whedon:
LUKE: I got a bad feeling about this.
HAN: Then maybe we should go all Buck Rogers on it and kick its evil ass! Set phasers to awesome!
LEIA: Totally!
CHEWBACCA: WRAURGH!

Garth Ennis:
LUKE: I got a bad feeling about this.
HAN: Fuck!
LEIA: Cocksucker!
CHEWBACCA: WRAURGH!

Kevin Smith:
LUKE: I got a bad feeling about this.
HAN: That’s because my cock is in your mouth!
LEIA: You guys are so gay!
CHEWBACCA: Han, I think your bluster hides the fact that you do, in fact, have sexual feelings for Luke, but are conflicted because there is also something there for Leia, as well.
LUKE: Snoochie-boochies!

Chris Claremont:
LUKE: I got a bad feeling about this.
HAN: Of course you got a bad feelin’ about this, old friend, because the evil we face is the Empire, which has caused us no end of difficulties. If you’ll recall, Darth Vader has revealed himself to be your father as part of his master plan to overthrow his lord and master, Emperor Palpatine [See The Empire Strikes Back—Ed.]. We’ll need to face this together …
LUKE (In a thought bubble): Han’s talking tough, but it was only recently that I was able to rescue him from the clutches of Jabba the Hutt, and he may still be suffering from the side-effects of carbonite hibernation [See The Return of the Jedi—Ed.]. He can’t keep pushing himself like this. Hey, is that an Imperial Storm Trooper about to shoot at us? It is! I’d better warn the others. (Out loud) Look out!
LEIA: (Thought bubble as she jumps over the blaster fire): Incredible! It was only months ago that I was a helpless princess in the clutches of Grand Moff Tarkin [See A New Hope—Ed.], but now that it has been revealed to me that I am the daughter of the once-noble-Jedi-turned-evil, Anakin Skywalker [See The Return of the Jedi—Ed.], and with the training I’ve received with the rebels, I can easily evade this blast! (Out loud, still mid-jump) Luke! Use your lightsaber and Jedi training to deflect the blast! Chewbacca! Use your crossbow gun to stop the Storm Trooper before he can get another shot off!
CHEWBACCA: WRAURGH! [See The Revenge of the Sith—Ed.]

Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner
LUKE: I got a bad feeling about this.
LEIA: What are you gonna do about it?
LUKE: Are you going to wear the metal bikini all the time now?
HAN: I have no objection to this.
CHEWBACCA: WRAURGH!

Ed Brubaker:
LUKE: I got a bad feeling about this.
HAN: It’s about to get a lot worse. (Shoots Luke in the back) Now we can be together, Your Highness, without him standing in our way.
LEIA: (Points her gun at Han) Oh, Han, don’t you see? It was never about you and me. You were the one standing in my way.
HAN: No!
LEIA: (Shoots him.) Now, Chewie, we can take the money and get away from it all! Just you and me.
CHEWBACCA: (Strangles Leia) WRAURGH! (Wipes a single tear from his cheek.)

Neil Gaiman:
LUKE: I got a bad feeling about this.
NARRATOR: The bad feeling drifts through the hearts and minds of the galaxy, like the smell of something foul, yet bittersweet, like kimchi. The words cross their lips as the feeling overcomes them. The Correllians know it …
HAN: I got a bad feeling about this.
NARRATOR: The Mon Calamari know it …
ACKBAR: I got a bad feeling about this.
NARRATOR: The Gungan know it …
JAR-JAR: Meesa got a bad feelin’!
NARRATOR: The Hutts know it …
JABBA: Botaka! Hoo hoo hoo …
NARRATOR: The Ewoks know it …
WICKET: Yub yub!
NARRATOR: The Wookies know it …
CHEWBACCA: WRAURGH!
NARRATOR: But never is it more real than in the dreams of the exiled royalty of a world that is no longer there …
LEIA: I got a bad feeling about this.

Peter David:
LUKE: I got a bad feeling about this.
HAN: Are you sure it’s not “More Than a Feelin’”?
LEIA: (punches Han in the shoulder) Han, this is serious.
HAN: Oh, dry up, Princess.
CHEWBACCA: WRAURGH!

Grant Morrison:
LUKE: I got a bad feeling about this.
HAN: The only way we can get through this is if break the parsec barrier and cause a chain reaction. This will require everything we got, all of us. And if we fail, we run the risk of turning every living creature in the galaxy into yarn.
LEIA: (turns to camera) That is if it’s okay with the writers.

Ben Edlund:
LUKE: As he stares out across The Galaxy, the galaxy far away, our intrepid hero stands there, asking himself the same tough questions. What is it far away from? If Darth Vader is indeed his father, why don’t they have the same last name? Do they have Chinese food in space? It’s these questions and more that make him think. They make him cry out to the stars! The warring stars! I! GOT! A! BAD! FEELING! ABOUT! THIS! AND I’M OKAY WITH THAT!
HAN: Who are you talking to?
LUKE: Hello there, old chum. I’m just setting the mood.
CHEWBACCA: WRAURGH!

My favorite writer is Matt Wagner, but he doesn’t have any consistent tropes to hang one of these on. I was also going to do Mark Millar, but thinking about it made me want to throw up a little.

The Truth Is Way out, Man

Posted on by
Reply

I saw a UFO between twenty-five and thirty years ago. My dad was performing one of the DIY projects he had no expertise in but managed to pull off because he taught himself how to do it, pre-internet, and the radio was on. The hosts breathlessly announced that an unidentified flying object could be seen above my neighborhood. A pair of binoculars in my hand, I ran across the gravel street to the undeveloped land where I had a clear view of the cloudless sky, and there it was. It was hard to figure out its size and shape, as there was nothing to reference it against, and it seemed to bend the light around it, like the Predator. I watched it to see what kind of cool UFO shit it would pull. And I watched it some more. And it didn’t do anything.

Later, authorities identified it as a weather balloon. A likely story. That’s what they always say.

This will be my most controversial post because most people tend to get offended when I spell out my belief system. As if by having them, I’m an asshole. That by telling them my philosophy, even though I’m not actively challenging theirs, I’m attacking them. The truth is, I’m a skeptic. I don’t believe anything that can’t be explained with the scientific method. The usual response to that is “There are things that science can’t explain,” to which I say, “Duh.”

Some go so far as to claim that people like me are dogmatic, and they compare us to the religious figures during the Renaissance—you know, the ones who used to execute scientists. Nothing could be further from the truth. A true skeptic looks for anything that challenges their beliefs, but we have a very high bar for what we’ll accept. What skeptics are dogmatic about and dismissive of are claims made with a lack of evidence, which pretty much defines UFO culture.

First, some definitions. When I use the term UFO, I mean aliens, which is pretty much how the term is used in American culture. People will ask, “Do you believe in UFOs?” Well, there are things seen in the sky that have not been identified, that’s an actual fact. What they’re really asking is whether you believe they are otherworldly. On the other hand, if I spell it out as “unidentified flying object,” I mean exactly that—something in the sky that no one can figure out. One term I won’t be using is the in-vogue UAP, or “unidentified arial phenomena.” It means literally the same thing, except it adds the term “phenomena,” which has a mysterious flavor to it. Besides, UAP reminds me of the late twentieth century when Trekkies tried to change their name to Trekkers because “Trekkie” has such a goofy connotation that no one will admit to it, unless they have a good sense of humor about fandom. “Trekkers” did not catch on.

I could provide a number of examples, including Britain’s most famous and enduring UFO sighting, believers of which neglect to mention the nearby lighthouse. However, I’m going to focus on the most spectacular example of modern times: the Phoenix UFO invasion of 1997. Thousands of eyewitnesses saw lights descending on the biggest city in Arizona. Some people even filmed the display with their camcorders (whatever those are). The National Guard later explained that some of their planes dumped flares over the city for some reason, but certain witnesses scoffed. Flares don’t bank, rise, fall, and quickly zip away.

Except they didn’t do any of those things. Really bright light can burn an image into the human eye. What about the cameras? They leave light trails on videotape. Ask anyone who’s ever filmed at night. Therefore, while the flares were falling straight down and fading out, witnesses were looking around, and the burned-in images were following them. Even if you don’t know the scientific method well, you can use Occam’s Razor, which states that the simplest explanation is usually true. Ask yourself which makes more sense: dozens of aliens unseen on radar dropped in on a densely packed city and just zipped around like a bunch of Tinkerbells? Or that bright lights are altering our vision, as anyone who’s ever had their picture taken with a flash can tell you?

I can already hear my friends who might soon be my ex-friends objecting. But with what? Verifiable science has already stated the most natural explanation. If someone is making a claim that goes against that, the burden of proof lies on their shoulders. Are there any reliable photos? Is there any physical evidence of the flying light show? Of course not, and the lack of evidence is what proves it to them. (The flying saucers are so advanced they don’t leave evidence behind. The military is obviously covering everything up. Men in black, people.) And finally, with the irrefutable proof provided by the UFO enthusiasts, why is this the first time you’ve heard of this in twenty-five years, if ever? Is it the cover up?

Something cannot be proven by coming to a conclusion and finding evidence to support it. (I’m guilty of doing this. We all are.) You cannot make a claim that you saw something weird in the sky and therefore, it’s up to science and the government to prove that it’s not UFOs. The proof that tends to be presented is eyewitness, or anecdotal evidence, and science will not accept that. Human memory is flawed. Google “The Mandela Effect” for some examples. If anyone is being dogmatic, it’s those who refuse to except any other explanation but flying saucers.

Another scoffed-at fact: most unidentified flying objects are clouds. Going back to retina burn, the moon and sun are also culprits. Another fact: a number of witnesses are lying. Barney and Betty Hill are the mommy and daddy of alien abduction, being the first to report the big-headed, bug-eyed aliens we all know, and they have been thoroughly discredited as conmen. Hypnotism is completely unreliable, or it wouldn’t be considered fringe (and no, it’s not discriminated against; imagine how useful it would be if it worked). And whether consciously or not, Barney was describing the aliens that appeared a week earlier up in an episode of Outer Limits. They weren’t disproven by the government hiding the truth, but by doctors looking for evidence of aliens because aliens are the holy grail of science.

A couple of years ago, enthusiasts celebrated when it was revealed that the government was spending tens of millions of dollars to investigate unidentified flying objects. Of course they were. Anything in our skies that can’t be identified is a security threat. And what enthusiasts don’t point out is that the government has identified nearly everything previously unknown. But just because you don’t know what it is, you can’t just jump to the conclusion that it’s aliens. That’s just not reasonable. Also, for such a tight, organized cover-up, a shocking number of those who do the covering tell their stories on UFO documentaries and don’t get stuffed into unmarked vans.

I don’t believe in UFOs because there is no evidence to support life on other planets. From what science can determine, the emergence of life on Earth is a side effect of a number of unlikely coincidences and phenomena that put our planet in the exact place it needed to be not to cook or freeze, as well as to develop the chemicals necessary. The odds against this happening elsewhere are astronomical. However, there are an astronomical number of worlds out there, so who knows? As a skeptic, I say there is no proof that we are being visited by aliens, but I’m crossing my fingers that one day we find it. How cool would that be?

Simply the Best Man

Posted on by
Reply

I met Shane in 1992, and he was a year and a half older than me. I quickly looked up to him as a mentor. My senior year of high school was full of a lot of new and old friends and adventures, but sitting in his studio apartment while he painted, and chatting and bullshitting was probably the highlight.

When I moved New York adjacent, he was there for the first several months. He showed me around, including a method of buying weed that landed us in the middle of Louis Farrakhan’s Million Youth March. While I taught myself how to draw, he was my biggest cheerleader, and the first person to call me an artist.

He and his family moved upstate, which is where I spent my three-day weekends, working on two screenplays, one of which was lost to poor archiving and a then-sixteen-pound Newcastle sitting on my laptop. The other was completed, and because it was absurdly long, he and I spent a week last summer lengthening it into a five-episode series.

Our relationship had its ups and downs, and he’s not the best at long-distance communication, but we have stayed tight. An eternity ago, he was my Best Man. My ex-wife hated him and schemed to keep us apart, and it worked. However, we’ve reconnected since then, and I’m constantly sharing with him some of the many little drawings I’ve been doing.

I’ve prematurely written my memoirs, with each chapter representing an important character in my life, and you can bet Shane got one. With his help, I was able to correct a lot of the misinformation drilled into my head by someone I was married to, and now I have an accurate chronicle of our relationship until June 2022. I should probably update that.

The reason I’m calling you all here is because Shane is an accomplished painter, with shows across the US and a distinctive style I’m proud to say I’ve watched evolve, from awkward (but still beautiful) nudes of Sherilyn Fenn to the Cubist/Outsider style that is his brand, which seem to feature the same woman. I can’t judge because I frequently draw the same woman. Long story short, nobody paints like him.

As artists, we couldn’t be anymore different. His medium is oils and large canvases. Mine is pencil, ink, and watercolors. His subjects are deserts and cityscapes and surreal costumes. My subjects are characters from my writing oeuvre. He’s a painter, I’m more of a cartoonist.

Even though we see each other as equals and have been mistaken as brothers, I still look up to him, and I thought it would be really cool if I drew one of his paintings in my style. The result isn’t nearly as good as the original, but the process was fun and engaging and exactly the reason I’m an artist. (Mine’s on the right, in case you couldn’t tell.)