Portland in the storm

The office I work for recently upgraded their massively outdated software to a new, ultra modern program that has the staff in mental lockdown because it is so far beyond, so much deeper than the old system that we're like the Neanderthals at the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

To alleviate some of this brain pan pressure, the fine makers of this software hold an annual conference in Portland, Oregon to help their clients learn sneaky tricks and shortcuts to simplify their lives and ease some of those caveman tendancies. Some, certainly not all.

The moral to this story is, I'm in Portland. Ook, ook.

I'm far, far away from the dusty, dirty heat of West Texas and I've never been this far north on the west coast. I was born in L.A. and have been back there many times as well as various other destinations in Cali and it's always been okay. I'm just not a California person, I don't think, and I know that the farther north you go the more mellow it gets. So I wasn't sure what I was going to get here, but I was excited to find out.

First thought was, "How far is Astoria?" because I totally want to see the Goondocks... The answer was not really that far but too far to make it on the time I had available.



Second thought, "Where are the comic shops, music stores and guitars?" (For the record, this is my typical thought process:

-Map out personal points of interest
-Make it as straight forward and simple as possible
-Execute
-Screw the actual reason I'm there.

Once I'm past that overwhelming, obsessive/compulsive urge, I can focus on business.)

I was excited to find that a Things From Another World was here and I'd heard good things about it. The reality was a little disappointing. It's a nice, modern, cool looking store but it wasn't the geek experience I was looking for. I did, however, pick up a copy of The Return of Bruce Wayne and a copy of BOP #1 since I was in Gail Simone's home state.

No, my geek moment came when I walked in the front door of Cosmic Monkey Comics. If you have never experienced the glory that is this fine establishment, I highly recommend you do so. It was everything I could want from a comic shop. The splendiforous graphic novel section that occupies the front end of the shop is enough to make any fanboy drool with anticipation and it's just the tip of the iceberg. The new monthlies area is deep and easy to navigate with selections of just about everything, not just the big companies. A primo back issue room hangs to the right of the main lobby and a little loft for some prepurchase browsing is nestled just above the new issue area. Best of all, it looks like a comic shop should look. I was comfortable right away and had I not had a laundry list of things to explore and a legwork of about seventy blocks to do them, I likely would have camped there for the day.

I found a copy of Robin: Year One that I had been looking for for a couple of years and purchased it. My biggest regret is that I didn't buy one of their nifty t-shirts to proudly proclaim that I, too, was a cosmic primate but I guess that gives me a goal for next year.

Here's a look at the store from last year.



Beyond that, I discovered the wonders of Everyday Music, a wonderful used CD store that is approximately the size of three of my local music stores stacked end to end. This place is large. And they offer listening stations to check out your future purchase and make sure it's of good quality and something you want before you throw down any cash. Great place, I wish we had one here. Found a copy of Pearl Jam's Vitalogy and snapped it up.

The whole trip was fantastic. The sky was gray and rainy, the temperature never went above sixty and the world was an amazing color of green that we just don't see in Texas. I loved the laid back vibe and peaceful serenity that seemed to engulf the city even though there is a population of around two million. The architecture is interesting and there's a nice blend of modern to go with the woodsy charm of the surrounding environment. Put it this way, it rained on me for around twenty blocks while I was walking and I didn't care. I was so taken with the city, I just didn't care. I didn't have nearly enough time to do everything that I wanted to and the thought of a return trip next year has me giddy with anticipation. It won't come soon enough.

Rock In Peace

Today the world has lost a rock n roll warrior. Ronnie James Dio lost his battle with stomach cancer at 7:45 this morning at the age of 67.

I didn't grow up a huge fan but began to appreciate him over the last couple of years. He was a trailblazer, a revolutionary and a legend. He loved the music and lived for it. He didn't bow to trends. He did it the way he wanted to right up until the end. Lighters in the air, horns up and celebrate the man for there is none more metal than Ronnie James Dio. Long may he rock the heavens.

Sundays with Charlie

As a kid, I looked forward to Sunday mornings with the kind of glee usually associated with Saturday mornings. (Which I also looked forward to, let's not muddy this up with semantics.) I would wake up at the crack of nineish, go to the kitchen, get a cup of joe (90% milk), promptly add the rough equivalent of a bumper crop of sugar cane, stir, find a breakfast of some sort, usually sugar saturated, and plant myself two feet away from the television because at ten o'clock in the a of m, central standard time, WGN would run a block of programming any kid worth his geek would sit motionless for. The Cisco Kid and Lone Ranger came on followed by Star Trek, One Step Beyond, The Twilight Zone and then the main attraction, a Charlie Chan movie of the week.

Actually it was a rotating Mystery Movie featuring either Charlie or Sherlock Holmes. I was good with either one but always preferred the Charlie Chan films. And I really preferred the great Sidney Toler's films to Warner Oland's. Not that any of them weren't enjoyable, I just liked Toler's take on the character more. He was kind of a smart ass, and more than a little sarcastic and he always knew more than you did. You could see it in his expression. Besides that, Number 2 Son, Jimmy, played by Sen Yung, was just a lot more fun than Number 1 Son, Lee, played by Keye Luke.

Blasphemy, I know.

In fact, the Toler movies were just more fun altogether, but I'll give the edge of better mysteries to the Oland series. It's amazing though how popular the series was at the time, we complain about sequalitis in Hollywood now but there are a remarkable forty four films in the series if you count in the six films starring Roland Winter, who took over the role after Sydney Toler's death in 1947. Unfortunately, I've never, to the best of my recollection, seen any of those. There are also some films from early in the series that just no longer exist and I think that's a shame. This is a wonderful cinematic character that I still enjoy to this day.

They've released several sets of DVD's and I own most of them, I will eventually own all of them and watch them frequently. They are my go to, mood lifter, lazy day, relax and enjoy movies. They remind me of times spent with my mom, who was a super mystery nerd, and they take me back to a simpler time in my life when all I had to worry about was waking up on Sunday, having a mostly milk coffee doused in sugar and watching some great television. Good times.

Dog Tired

My day starts off very much the same, most days. The alarm goes off around 5:30 a.m. and the dogs, of which there are three, react as if the entire planet simultaneously announced it was time for walkies. There is dancin' and howlin' and droolin' to the groovin' and then they hit me and wake that funky lookin' white boy. Literally. Usually either the middle of the chest or the lower abdominal area, neither is overly comfortable.

It starts with my Golden Retriever, Dozer (who is named that because her behavior warrants it), breathing heavily with a well placed whine of exasperation and tap dancing around the bed inserting the occasional paw chop on my nether regions as described above. This alerts the Australian Cattle Dog, Boo (whose name is still a mystery to me but it works) who charges out of the closet where she sleeps and jumps on the bed in the general vicinity of my head. Dances around then jumps back off and runs to the door. This action results in the Miniature Dachshund, Rolo (who practices Blue Steel) to remove himself from the blankets of the bed, shake it off, and jump down.

Now, our house is a lovely combination of both wood and tile flooring, it looks wonderful. It sounds like a herd of tap dancing rhinoceros at about 5:30 a.m. At this time, I remove myself from the bed and grudgingly take the wild ones outside for their morning psychosis relief.





That's most mornings.

Today that all started about an hour early minus the alarm clock. Dozer began her huffing and puffing early, for some unknown reason, and refused to hear repeated requests to lay down and go to sleep. She was ready to go and nothing was stopping her. The only thing saving this from total pain in the assity is that the other two were relatively unresponsive at first, so it was a simple battle of wills between the two of us, I lost. So my day started much earlier than usual and I'll be feeling it before it's all over and chances are I'll grumpily greet the dogs when I get home just to prove a point. What that point is, I have no idea, we are talking about sleep deprivation and talking to dogs, rationality took a left turn out of the room somewhere around the beginning of this whole debacle.

Neverending Games

I'll be frank here, (or Joe, doesn't matter to me) I've always read comics. My mom would bring them to me when I was sick and sometimes she would stop at the Circle K on her way home from work and pick me up the latest Detective or what have you. But I didn't really start collecting until the older guy across the street introduced me to The New Teen Titans. By older, I mean he was in the sixth grade, I was in the fifth. He was practically a grown up... That book just sang to me and that guy showed me all the bad habits I'd have for the rest of my life, bags and backboards, comic shops, dealers, used book stores... It was horrible! Bear in mind that back then, there weren't really any comic shops as we know them now. Mostly you got your comics from drug stores, grocery stores, convenience stores, used book stores and friends who went to all those same places.

I knew of the Teen Titans, I'd read some of the original series here and there and I thought they were pretty cool. Of course, Robin was in it and that's all I really needed to know, but there were some other characters that I really took a shine to as well. Hawk & Dove, the Golden Age Batgirl, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl all became favorites of mine over time, but I just thought they were neat then.

But there was something magic about that NTT issue that Steve showed me. It was issue number 10, not the most fan favorite by any means and nothing that really stands out on it. But it introduced me to Deathstroke, Starfire, Cyborg and the other new Titans. It also put a sizable headlock on an emerging artistic mind by introducing me to George Perez who would influence me for years to come. I actually started buying the series with issue 16 which also introduced me to another book that is still one of my all time favorites, Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew, but that's another story.

It was then that I started trying to get the back issues I'd missed and discovered that there was actually a term for those back issues. I found out there was a man who lived down the street whose daughter went to school with me. He was a collector and would sell me a copy of the first issue for $25. That was amazing to me. Not so much for my parents who would have to uncork the bills. I was in the fifth grade, I didn't have cash, what are you thinking? But they paid the ransom anyway and I would just stare at that plastic covered marvel and cherish it.

Then the dog jumped on it.

I thought my head would explode.

It may have... I'm still not sure.

Anyway, I followed the series through all of its success and when the powers that be decided to spawn a deluxe format, direct sales only second series, I went into full geek panic because, like I said, there were no comic shops like what we have now. It was a whole new market that was just starting to blossom and we'd had a shop but it had closed down due to nefarious in store pillaging and I didn't know what I was going to do. Then a miracle happened.

Elves Hollow opened. And it was run by one of the employees from the old, closed down place. I was saved. I could have just bought a subscription, but that would have made some kind of logical sense.

At this point I was pretty well full fledged fanboy, I was at the shop once a week to pick up my pulls and just hard core comic book guy. I was learning who these creators were and developing an aesthetic sense for the art form. Unfortunately, around this time, Mr. Perez decided to leave the book to do the, at that time, unheard of mega event maxi series Crisis on Infinite Earths with the promise that he would return once he was done. I stuck with the book throughout and months turned to years and his return was becoming less and less likely and the book just wasn't the same book anymore, for me. But I still hold it near and dear to my heart and anytime someone talks about revisiting those stomping grounds I feel a little burst of happiness followed by heavy disappointment because, for some reason, no one gets those characters like Wolfman and Perez did. There's no magic.



There was talk of that team coming together again to do a graphic novel featuring those characters and then the talk became truth, the book was to be called "Games" and would be published when Mr. Perez could finish the pencils. And once again, months became years and nothing came of it. It's been like a teenager learning how to drive a standard stick shift, stop, start, stop, start, stop and finally start again. The book is fast tracked now after nearly twenty years and I've got that feeling in my gut, that feeling like it might be magic again. But that fear of disappointment is hovering, stage left, waiting for its cue. Either way it'll be nice to see the masters at work again on one of their defining moments. The biggest difference will be that I can now preorder the book from Amazon and I won't have to stress too much about it.

Wait...

There's a convention in Austin right around the same time the book is supposed to release. I wonder if George or Marv will be there? Autographs? Ooooh... Maybe I do have something to anticipate after all.

The root of the problem

I blame Adam West for my nerdity. The 60's Batman series had such a huge impact on my early childhood development, it's almost humerous. At one point, around the age of eight, I made my dad buy a letter "B" from the hardware store because I fully intended to build my own Batmobile, out of wood mind you, and put it on the side. Because "B" stands for Batmobile.

I know. Facepalm doesn't even get there.

Throughout the vast expanse of my youth, my number one main goal each day was to survive until 3:30 and watch Batman. But it didn't stop there, I had anything and everything Batman related that you could have in the seventies, Mego action figures and every (and I do mean every) accessory to go with them. Comic books, t-shirts, books with records, records without books and Underoos. I made my Grandma make me a dark blue cape with a big yellow bat on the back, I ran around with that thing tied around my neck for years. I was hopelessly spiralling into nerdness without even knowing.

Of course, as I grew older I realized that I was an outcast in a sea of normality and tried unsuccessfully to blend. Thankfully the rest of the world has finally caught up with me and it's fashionable to be into comics and, thanks to Chris Nolan and his Bat films, Batman. But I still don't really fit and that's okay, I'm too old now to care but still young enough to enjoy all the things that send me into geek meltdown and fortunately, my wife thinks it's cute... sort of. Sort of because I'm pulling her down with me. You should see the look on her face when she realizes she's done something nerd. Priceless.

But she's doing it willingly and even surprised me by dropping an interest in learning about D&D which I haven't played in twenty six years or so because I knew absolutely no one that would play with me. Let me correct that, no one that would DM for me and let me play.


Selfish, I know. But now I'm trying to relearn some of the ins and outs and I'm finding that it might just be easier to get her into online RPG's and forget the rulebooks. But then again, you can't have cool little miniatures that way.

But I digress, my nerd runs deep and isn't limited to comics, Batman or D&D, in fact it's virtually unlimited. So you've been warned, there will be vast amounts of fanboy on display here and, if my wife is any indication, it's contagious.