The past few months…

…have been a bitch and a half. This semester isn’t going as well as I had hoped. The sheer amount of work (reading, writing–fortunately, no arithmetic), coupled with things going on at work and at home, have made blogging fall way down on the list of priorities.

So, updates:

• I will try to blog more (for reals this time!). I even have a 75% compeleted post that has nothing to do with comics.

• I adopted another dog. He had been thrown off the back of a truck in rural Virginia, and they were scheduled to put him down because he had mange and a secondary skin infection. So, I drove home with this:

And now have this:

• Classic movie fans: A relatively hard-to-come-by film is airing on Turner Classic Movies Thursday, November 15th at 10PM on the East Coast: Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious. Just a friendly FYI.

• Comics! I haven’t been reading much–hell, most of my MoCCA pile is still untouched, and I stopped by the comics shop and picked up four issues of The Comics Journal that I had missed. I don’t expect to be talking about them much in the next few weeks, because…

• I signed up for National Novel Writing Month. I know, I know–I don’t have time to blog, so why would I have time to do this? The answer is–I don’t. And that’s kind of why I am doing it–it’s going to free me up from my “internal editor,” knowing that I have to get through 50,000 words in 30 days on top of everything else going on in my life. It officially kicked off today, and I started what I’m currently calling “The Critical Approach” on my lunchbreak. I didn’t meet my target wordcount for the day yet, but about 500 words in a half-hour (hey, I had to eat first) isn’t a bad start, I suppose.

If anyone’s curious, here’s what I tossed out:

Vijay Patel’s bodega hummed with the vibrations of coolers filled with soda, milk, and energy drinks. The tiny television behind the counter buzzed in a slightly higher tone–the poorly remanufactured off-brand set’s inner workings were audible even over the Sale of the Century remake WWOR was airing in the afternoons. The few other post-lunch customers weren’t talking either–not to themselves, and not to the other customers, either. And no one was speaking to the crazy brother with the gun; if they did that, he might stop pointing the gun at the back of my head and start pointing it at one of them.

Vijay loved shitty syndicated daytime game shows, which is why I swung by at 1PM instead of 2PM–I knew I’d get the regular discount if I didn’t interrupt Family Feud. Something about how it reminded him of the gambles he played, he told me once–moving to America, starting his first store, opening his new store outside of the Indian storefronts of what gets referred to in Jersey City as “Patel Street.” At least, that’s what I think he was saying–even though we’d shoot the shit as I drank his coffee and buy my Camel Lights, I usually only picked up about two-thirds of what he was saying. If his accent didn’t trip me up, whatever bit of candy he was gnawing at did. Still, I got the gist of it–any new venture, planned or not, is a gamble.

Vijay learned from his gambles, though. A few robberies left him shaken, and scared him enough to install one of those silent alarm systems that runs through the phone line and alerts the authorities. “Next time,” he told me, “none of those fucks are going to be getting off with any of my money again.” At least, that’s what I thought he had said–something like that, at least. The point was, he had a new system and he was dying to use it at the right time.

Vijay had been on the business end of a gun a few times, but not enough times, and definitely not enough times to know that this wasn’t the right time. This was the wrong time–the worst time. The brother was twitchy. Twitchy, big, and young—drugs, probably. And if he was big twitchy, and not scrawny little shit twitchy, it meant he wasn’t used to working on hype or dust or whatever the fuck he took before he walked in and pulled his piece out. It meant that he had narcotic-fueled anxiety on top of all the other anxieties that come when a stick up kid pulls a job.

It meant Vijay should not have given me that look, that cocky look someone gets when he pulls a straight flush on the river or the chance to land “quixotic” in Scrabble on the triple-word score. That “Don’t worry, Harris, my secret will save us all” look.

It meant Vijay should not have pushed that fucking button.

**************************************

Hopefully, this will give me reason to blog some more, despite not having time for comics, movies, or anything else, really.

This and that: quick notes at the end of a long week.

MoCCA was a blast.  There’s just no describing a weekend of awesome nerds, awesome comics, awesome food, awesome liquor, and awesome karaoke.

 So, in other words, I’m not even going to try.

 I didn’t buy half of the things I had planned on buying, as is the case–after I made my purchases at First Second’s table, I realised that many of the books on my list could be purchased at local comics shops or bookstores, so I changed my buying plans and stuck mainly to purchasing minicomics and the like.  Here’s my haul, minus a couple of superhero comics purchased at Rocketship the night before (The P.L.A.I.N. Janes and The Re-Gifters were purchased at Rocketship, however):

I am now seriously considering a trip to TCAF in August and SPX in October to hold me over until the next MoCCA.  As of yet, I haven’t read anything–this has been kind of a hellish post-MoCCA hangover week–but I’m dying to dive into those piles and swim around.  I know I’ll be reviewing at least one thing in that stack, so maybe I’m not as far out of comics-blogging mind as I had thought I was.

• Via the lovely John Jakala, I found the P.O.W.E.R. in Comics organization.  Readers of my old blog may remember my inherent distaste for comics activist organizations–by which, I mean people hell-bent on making a significant impact in the industry via the least amount of effort–but I think this group may be a little different.  Unlike other groups–the kinds that generally draw my ire–this one doesn’t appear to have “let’s get more people to buy comics so we can make more money and be really successful yay!” as a goal.  Further, this group doesn’t appear to be the type to seek out the easy, half-cocked solutions that come from the same part of the lizard brain that daydreams Powerball lottery fantasies (“If I had millions of dollars, I could totally MAKE PEOPLE LOVE COMICS LIKE I LOVE COMICS! It would be AWESOME!”).  And that’s a great thing–people motivated by passion rather than fame or their own egos tend to be the type to stick with their plans over the long haul, rather than giving up when they’re not making in-roads fast enough (you’ll notice that the group that prompted the discussion on my old blog hasn’t updated since April of 2006–hell, even I update more often than that).

 So far, P.O.W.E.R. in Comics seems like a diverse group of comics fans, bloggers, creators, and retailers commited to increase the role of women and minorities in comics any way they can.  It’s a big goal, but P.O.W.E.R. in Comics creator Lisa Lopacinski appears to have the right idea about doing things:

This community is a positive one, where people can share ideas on how to increase the activity of women and minorities in the comic book industry rather than just complain about how it hasn’t happened yet.

This community is one of sharing, where creators can help those looking to become creators attain their goals and where artists and writers can find each other and team up; also where creators can come to promote their works. Here blogers can post links to their blogs dealing with issues important to POWER members. Here artists and writers can post samples and get opinions. Here podcasters and video makers can post segments to get reviews, opinions, and support.

This is a community of networking, where creators can find publishers, where publishers can find retailers, where readers can find stores and items they might enjoy.

This is a grass-roots community, where people can share their ideas and experiences about getting comics into new communities and share letters, press releases, and blogs about not just what’s wrong with the comic book community, but how to fix it.

In the P.O.W.E.R. in Comics community we don’t just complain, we try to find solutions by Promoting Ownership, Writing & drawing, Editing and Reading by more women and minorities in the comic book industry.

I think the community basis could work well, and using a social networking type of format facilitates that.  Good luck, Lisa and crew–I’ve joined up, for whatever that’s worth.  Anyone that knows me knows that white heteronormativity is one of my pet issues, both academically and personally, so I think this group will be a good fit for me.

 • I didn’t have the time or energy to do a TCM preview for this week.  Sorry.  You probably missed a bunch of good shit because I was lazy.  I’ll bring it back next week.

• For all it’s faults, Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps managed to make ADD sing Gwen Stefani tunes.  Indeed, dear friends–the shit is bananas.

Like Alan, though, I did kind of enjoy World War: Hulk. Alex at Rocketship made me buy it and, for a superhero comic I had no interest in buying until his enthusiasm for it broke my spirit, I enjoyed it thoroughly.  Remember that the next time someone whines about “those fucking elitist douchebags in Brooklyn,” or whatever people say.  I’ll even give the book a photographic endorsement:

• Also, I may bring back that annoying “Ask me things and I answer them” game, because I’m that egotistical and, er, bored with my life.