Knitting The Yarns

White haired women in knitted shawls have descended on the hotel full of comic fans. It's knot a Stevie Nicks concert, rather a knitting convention. The mind boggles. I have to get in there and SEE it. Is it as big as the comic convention? Do they have panels? Do dealers pack them in with the yarn equivalent of 25-cent longboxes of comics? Do B-list knitting stars sign autographs and wait impatiently for coffee to be brought to them by show lackeys? Do they have a program that hypes the newest and highest graded needles yet made? What can be going on over there? What would happen if, in a Xanadu-like moment of colliding cultures, the two came together - hundreds of grannies, housewives and the oddly high percentage of lesbians (who knew they could knit? and where are the gay boys? Is this too gay even for my queeny brethren?) and thousands of unwashed fanboys in zippered tights (it was fatally Distracting to see the zipper pull hanging down from Green Lantern's crotch ... ease of urinating is one thing, but does it need to Hang there, a flaccid metal embarrassment?)? Who would win?

I'm betting on lesbian grannies and their aluminum needles.

Fear and Loathing In Chicago

Muggy and slow in the Windy City. Taxi drivers need their ickets punched to get in and out of the slow moving pick-up lanes of O'Hare. How is this Securing the Homeland? I've promised myself lots of booze tonight, but the blue laws here make finding a Liquor Store a necessity - and it's 1.25 walking miles from the hotel whose 4 elevators creep up and down the meager 8 flights like undecided old people at an turn lane, stunned by the need to rethink their best route to the grocery store. I remain bitter. The walk to the liquor store procures my favorite beer, but only Warm. I am so desperately in need of the brain-fogging effects I am tempted to drink it warm. The refrigerator in my hotel room is one of the vicious pressure sensative ones, that send out alerts to a horde of well-trained krav-maga fighters who will pummel me if I try to assert that I ddin't drink THEIR booze, I merely removed it to make room for my much cheaper boose. I thought about red wine, but jerking off in a hotel room with one fist around your cock and one around a bathroom glass of merlot paints an unmanly picture.

I long for dawn.

fireworks and busts

the fireworks from coranado go off, hurtling thru the soupy smoke of the previous fireworks. after pizza and beer, and several hours away from the pushing crowds of collectors, i am sane enough to say i am not so peeved at the faceless hordes. while waiting for our pizza at a gaslamp pizzeria, we watched police bust a guy and girl in a white van for shooting up. shooting up! on a crowded street?!?! what kind of stupid do you have to be? as 300 plays to the jumbotron audience in the new stadium, i am content with the window open and a chilled out night. i have plans. absolute plans. time is not unified.

variant nation

all of them, scum-sucking variant Hoarders. willing to tongue-kiss homeless people to get their grubby hands on whatever piece of exclusive Plastic is available. exceedingly Seedy. i feel seedy and it hangs on me like the flabby gladiators in their 300 loincloths swathing around in their long red capes, hoping people react to the Fantasy and not the ugly, smelly, stand-in-line-for-an-hour Reality. it becomes about Access and in this pit of 140,000 masturbators of Fantasy, they want to get out of their pimply Reality. what drives them? have they no Fear, no Decorum, that just because you CAN sew a catwoman costume does not mean you should wear it? go to the gym. and in the gym, furtive looks - everyone is Embarrassed because the Reality of hard work is contradictory to the magic words that build their Fantasy. and gods help me, i understand it, but am not Seduced by it, i am wary of that bitch Fantasy. she and her sister cunt Reality will always punch you in the nuts. they are rodents, scurrying and smelly and not even as noble as the rodents of new york and i promised myself i would be Compassionate, but their Loser stink is all over me. i am corrupted by it and appalled and yet i still work this. but i am here to Tell The Story. and i am still looking for the Story and i will keep looking. this Con is filled with people who do not get It. make your own Reality, just don't do it in front of others.

tequila's wretched kiss

oh my god. there were times this morning i actually thought i was going to faint like a girl in the convention hall. the last of three and one half jose cuervo shots were sloshing through my forehead veins, constricting and giving me waves of unreality that kept resolving into overweight people hefting giant warner bros. bags filled with convention exclusives. dear gods ... it was horrific. i felt bad for phil - drunk and stumbling i came home at 1 am, and my room key flashed yellow instead of a comforting green. i had to wake him up - the thought of going downstairs to fix my key was too appalling. got better after a lousy lunch of chips and veggie fajitas at a lobster restaurant and an incredible talk with Ren. Horn likes to yap - i love the guy, but he reminds me of Assymetrical Chest Hagar from CU, who also never shut up.

off to casa roberts to drink more.

Fear and Loathing in San Diego

Loaded only with beer, bottled water and active Manuka honey for the dime-sized splotch of staph infection on my face, I Face the demon of the ages - Comic Con. Every year this scene seems to get worse. Degenerate geeks celebrating their geekiness by harnasssing the collector mentality into an Exclusives Only mania that would make my Plantation Owner Forebears giddy with discriminatory glee. I refuse to let this poopheaded subculture Get to me this year. Almost every year its some life-altering disaster and the day has already plunged into chaos - the signing sheets have not been printed, Shawn is staying (though that may be a blessing - less to worry about as I Descend into the underbelly) and the staph has still not subsided. It rages under the skin, pustulating like the sweaty throngs outside the convention center. I am unworried. I have beer enough to drink through it - god willing.

T-shirt of the day:
Winners train, losers complain.

To which I might add, Fate continues to Refrain.

More later.

Throne of the Phoenix

Didn't write for over a month, due to being in my first play. It was a great experience - now I await to see if I got a part in Merchant of Venice and Taming of the Shrew. Also, been waylaid with a cold, where I plenty of time to stare enviously out at the sunny Los Angeles sky and feel sorry for myself that I'm not farther along in my career. But two bad scifi books from the library both had author's notes how they had trouble writing them. I forget it is a process. To that end, I now figure I will get back on schedule.

Once I'm well.

300 and 1

lots of thoughts on 300. great flick, incredible abs on everyone (hopefully 24 hour fitness will start a "spartan workout" program) and the coming comparisons to america vs. iraq. the difference, of course is, leonidas wasn't an insane fuck like george bush. he fought against a very real invasion.

i also pondered the spartans sense of identity. they defined themselves (no ab jokes here) by their ability to take pain and be tougher soldiers. it was like that in rugby - we defined ourselves by who could take it. i was never good at it, but i understood the philosphy.

so when i hear whiny high school girls text on their sidekicks about britney's lack of hair, i wonder - do we have 300 who could protect us ... and why would they want to defend our right to gossip.

i will endeavor to be more spartan in all things.

Deadly Hands of Trek Fu

I have read nada but super hero comics and indy humor comics for most of my 41 years. Now, I'm obsessed with Karate comics. Why? Who knows. There is something appealing about that martial arts mysticism, for sure. I also bought some Rook and Vampirella mags. Very fun. Again, how I can have nostalgia for things I never personally encountered (though my friend Ray, titlliated by Vampi at age 12, did buy some and sneak them out to the apartment complex grilling shack to show me), is odd, but there you go. I love all the ads for sci-fi crap merchandise in the back.

Also, I've been writing. I'm happy.

writer's glacier

it's in no way like a block. blocks are cute wooden things with letters on them. this is a big fat torrent of frozen striated emotions and ideas that (insert famous ice climber name here) wouldn't stick a pickaxe in.

i have these ideas, but for days, hindered and crippled by the emotional torrents in my head and in this hateful life, i've been unable to coherently write more than just journalbabble. i know there is a magic word to transform me into something more - ive yelled it out into the screendoor gray of the sky, hoping for an illuminating bolt of lightning, but so far nada. so. maintenence is the biggest part of life, which they never bothered to tell us in college.

now what?

and the glacier fills the valley...

Numb3rs of Ugly Galactica Anatomy Idol Chefs

i'm quitting all these shows. while i'll miss the humor of ugly betty, its just too tedious for an hour. idol has degenerated into all bizarros and sob stories all the time, galactica is as ponderous as trek, only with bloodier (but prettier) actors, numbers was always on the fence due to rob morrow's two expressions (neutral and scowl-when-confused gear), grey's is so predictable (and the bts gay-bashing is more fascinating - can bigots rehab?) and the injustice of marcel making it into the finals of top chef is on par with jeffrey winning runway. clearly there is no television tribunal dispensing fairness to viewers, and i don't have a holographic cylon in my head to jerk me off while i'm snoozing through these shows. so. i quit.

oblivious to the obvious

so i'm drinking coffee and reading the new astonishing x-men tbp (i can't stand whedon's tv stuff, but his emma frost/kitty pryde dynamic gives me hope for comics in general) and this whole thing illuminates why cyclops could never control his power. as a kid, he decided not to, so that conversely, he would always have to remain in control of his emotions and never really feel them.

too close for comfort, sez i, and i don't posess destructive eyebeams or a ruby quartz visor.