The Demonweasel Speaks

Due to some incredibly personal and devastating personal issues, I’ve been flying solo at the store for the past few, and it looks like I’ll continue to do so for the next week or so. I don’t mind it, per se, because I know how hard this is for Tony, but its exhausting being there by myself for 8 hours a day. Not only that, it’s just…lonely. Sure, there are the customers and some of them are really fun to talk to, but it’s not the same thing as talking to your partner in crime, who you can say anything to, screw around with and just have a good time during the workday. Travis will be coming in the next two days, tomorrow especially to help with the comic shipment, and that would be nice.

It was funny when we came back from Chicago, after spending four days straight with each other, when we all went back to our separate corners, the next time we saw each other we’d be like “Hey, where the hell have you been? I missed you!” Very funny. It beats the alternative of us coming back and hating each others guts.

****

Dawn made a good point when she asked me about seeing Warren Ellis in Chicago. I did, and it was a real blast. I bought a copy of his book and got him to sign one for me, and then on Friday night was the reading/q&a session which was made far more entertaining by the fact that there was a cash bar. Oh lord, am I not going to be able to live that night down. in the hotel parking lot after about 4 or 7 Jack and cokes, I remember Travis calling his work to say that he wasn’t going to come in the next day (a pre-arranged lie) while I was dragging a wooden saw horse over to him, shouting that I had a present for him. I remember this because he won’t let me forget.

Ellis, frankly, is far more robust and energetic than his usual “I’m a creaky old Englishman” emails and blog posts make him out to be. Don’t let him fool you, although I did avoid shaking his hand as he complained mightily over email about how much strain signing and handshaking for 8 hours a day can be. That would be brutal on anyone.

****

Kenzie and I started watching “Dexter” these past few days and just finished up season one tonight. I wasn’t that impressed with the first novel, but I must say that the show is more than quite a bit of alright. The changes they made, from what I can remember, are almost all improvements. Of course Kenzie weaseled the identity of the killer out of me, so I’m glad that I can sit back and just enjoy season 2 and not try to remember what happened in the book.

I was also pleased today to find out that THE EXTERMINATORS, a really fine comic series by Simon Olivier and Tony Moore (among others) that’s ending before its time, is going to be developed for Showtime as well. We sort of looked at each other and said “I guess we’re going to have to get Showtime now.” THE EXTERMINATORS, when it first came out, was often touted as going “to do for the bug killing business what SIX FEET UNDER did for the funeral business.” I don’t know if they’re going to go into the crazy semi-supernatural stuff that the comic got into, but it has a really interesting cast of characters that TV audiences are going to dig.

****

I’ve started hanging out on Standard Attrition, the message board home of really cool superstar and superstar-to-be writers and artists Jason Aaron, Brian Azzarello, Cliff Chiang, G. Willow Wilson, David Lapham, Jock and Brian Wood.

I try not to get depressed that the budding geniuses on there that are now breaking into the next level of comic stardom are almost all exactly my age, or in its close neighborhood. I try to think of it as “This means my work is going to start paying off now” and not “if it doesn’t happen RIGHT NOW then the ship has sailed and its time to pack up this particular dream.”

But that could just be the exhaustion speaking. Or the guilt about being exhausted, when I know that people are going through so much worse.

I think the worst thing about losing the shit on your hard drive is all of the things you take for granted that you had on there. Bookmarks to places that you found that were fun or interesting, or in my case, my list of agents that I’ve queried and what my status is with them. Of course, I’ve got it all in email and I can dig them out with great tediousness, but it’s just a pain to not have it at my fingertips anymore.

There’s the music, which means I now have to listen to internet radio again, which means juggling the same two mediocre pop stations and the 80s station that’s relatively popular. I enjoy “nostalgic” 80s music, but my probably is that I was really only down with about half of it, the latter half, and the rest is kind of just lost to me. Unlike some folks, I’m straddling two decades so I can’t just enjoy one “I Love the…” show to artificially induce memories, I have to watch two. The 90s one is always weird because when it starts I’m like “Oh yeah, high school memories” and then at the end its “Ah, Allie being born and divorce…what a decade.”

Speaking of, I finally got a chance to watch “Fletch” yesterday and today (I’ve been taking a lot of poorly timed naps), which made me happy. It’s one of those movies I’ve seen clips of forever and knew I would enjoy, but I never really got a chance to get to sit down and watch. God bless you, TiVo.

But yes, naps, meaning I get home from work, we eat dinner, maybe watch some TV together, and then when Kenzie goes over to work on the computer I end up sleeping for anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour, which plays merry hob with my sleep schedule. It’s funny because no matter how gung-ho I was to party in Chicago, I always ended up lying down and falling asleep when Travis went to make a phone call or when Lee would get in the shower or something like that. One night I woke up just enough to see that those two had gone to bed, and I just had enough energy to get up and get under the covers, still dressed.

Getting back to dodgy tastes in music and nostalgia, on the way back Travis picked out a CD that was labeled “I Loved the 90s, 1990-94″ and we were mostly pleased with the results…although I did get the disappointed head shake when “Opposites Attract” came on.

I have no excuse, ask the missus…

EDIT: The 80s station is now playing “The Greatest Love of All” (the “I believe that children are our future” song), which is funny, because I sing that softly when small children are around that annoy me. Which is most children, most times…

I’d like to say “Chicago was a blast!” but I can’t really say that since I wasn’t really in Chicago. I was near Chicago, we drove through it on the way to the airport, where the convention was being held, but we didn’t get a chance to actually see and be in Chicago.

The convention? Yeah, that was a blast. Almost a little overwhelming at first, but it was really great to meet the people that make the comics, as well as being around all the comic themed merchandise and all that jazz. I was lucky I didn’t go ballistic with the store money. Right off the bat I got to meet Brian Bendis at the Marvel booth, and he signed a bunch of comics for the store and then my DC Comics hat, which he was happy to do because “there was no hate there.” He encouraged me to go to the panel he was doing with Geoff Johns on Friday, and I assured him that it was already on the agenda.

The panels were cool, seeing all the folks interacting and taking questions and seeing the pure fun that came from almost everyone there. The Bendis/Johns panel really was great because instead of it being a “DC vs Marvel” slugfest, they hijacked their own panel and called up a bunch of people and turned it into a joint Marvel/DC panel. I liked seeing them talk about lateness in comics, how the movies help or don’t help the industry and the different stylistic tones each company has right now.

I also liked seeing and hearing a little about the business side of things, specifically from Jim McCann at Marvel, who took a fairly hostile question about Marvel’s overprint policy (something I’d been wondering about myself, frankly) and turned it into some really good advice for those that want to help their retailer out, like pre-ordering using Previews, communicating with your retailer about what you like and looking beyond “the Big Two” for other good stuff because a lot of it is out there. It was really cool to hear someone from the Big Guy have some actual good advice to help out the little guy.

Handing out the comic to folks was…well, handing out the comic to folks. I did my best to not sound and act like a giant fucking psychopath, but who knows how well that turned out. It seemed like everyone I talked to as I walked away I wanted to go “Oh wait, I forgot…” and then it’d be something like introducing myself, or giving a business card, or buying something so I didn’t look like a self absorbed prick. I know self-promotion is part of the deal but it’s kind of hard when your nervous and you know that these people have probably been dealing with comic people all weekend and they have their own stuff to puddle and try to peddle and make money off of. But y’know, it’s out there now, and I get to check my e-mail on eggshells for the next couple of months before falling into a glum depression about how no one likes me.

Speaking of which, I need to get on the ball with the agent hunt. I decided I can’t sit around and just wait anymore because it’s driving me crazy. I must be proactive. All of the stuff coming up, which seemed like such a mountain before I left, now is just…hey, that’s coming up. Cool.

I’m going to try to find a way to get the .pdf of the comic up on the Writing page, so I can have it there to be browsed lovingly. Or not so lovingly, depending.

Am I relaxed now? Yeah, you betcha. Not a 100%, but way more than the mad dash of skull-fuckery getting ready for the trip was. I talked to Allie on the phone last night and she’s doing well. She’s learning the clarinet (she has an extensive “I tried to learn it” collection of instruments), wants to take hip-hop dance (in addition to the ballet and tap she’s already taking) and, most horrifyingly, in a twist that makes me want to smash my face through plate glass and into a vat of lava, is that she went to go get a haircut and make up and general prettying this past weekend and afterwards BOYS WERE CHECKING HER OUT. Melissia told me because she felt she needed to share this agony with me.

Super.

But she’s doing well, going to camp for kids of officers who have been deployed, and is taking a trip to see her in-laws (well, Melissia’s in-laws) on a cargo plane (again, deployed officers families get to fly for free, apparently). Fritz is doing well in Afghanistan, and they get to talk everyday, which is good.

Maybe, if you’re good, I’ll blog more now that the Crisis is over.

We’ll see.