Category: Comic books & strips

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Mini Driver

I worked at home today, dear readers, in anticipation of a visit from James Maloney & Son Tree Service. In addition to getting The Raccoon Lodge removed, we contracted a whole lot of other work with them, removing some smaller trees from the front yard, getting a couple of hazardous ones removed from the side of the house, cutting too-low limbs from the big trees to get some sunlight onto the yard, and sawing down some stumps so we can begin the nefarious second phase of Operation: Livable Back Yard.

Since I’d be at home, I took Amy to the bus stop today. It’s a quirky logic, but we’re a quirky couple. Anyway, about 10 minutes before the tree guys were to arrive, I thought, “Hmm. Amy’s Mini is sitting right in the driveway, and I bet they’re going to need to get past that in order to take care of a lot of this work.”

Unfortunately, her car’s a stick-shift, and I’ve never actually driven a stick-shift, outside of the one time she tried to teach me in the bus-stop parking lot. Oh, and the time when I was 16 and my pals Jon-Eric & Todd tried to teach me, before we headed to the Kinnelon Cinema to see The Running Man.

I dug deep into that 1987 version of me and tried to recreate the experience of zooming around the parking lot of my high school, but it was to no avail.

Then I looked again into that geeky high school soul and discovered inspiration from another artifact of that era: the Miller/Mazzucchelli 7-issue run of Daredevil! In particular, I recalled this set of panels from the final installment, in which our blind superhero must get behind the wheel of a car:

Emboldened, I went out to Amy’s Mini, took off the emergency brake, put it in neutral, let it roll down to the bottom of the driveway, tried several times to get it to start, tried several times to get it in gear, and eventually made my way up into the garage!

(Where I, um, stalled out and had to push it in the rest of the way so I could close the garage door…)

(Oh, and, before-and-after pix of the yard are pending…)

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Final Tale of Hofmann

When I was a student at Hampshire College, the annual Halloween tradition was known as “Trip or Treat.” Being a total square, I never partook. For a variety of reasons, I wish I’d tried acid, but it’s a bit late in life for that.

Anyway, Albert Hofmann, the man who first synthesized LSD, has died at the age of 102. But, as Acid Archie sez, “ACID NEVER DIE!”

(written by Grant Morrison, drawn by Steve Yeowell; not sure who holds the copyright, which is 1990)

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What it is: 4/14/08

What I’m reading: Locas, by Jaime Hernandez. Just feeling sentimental for Maggie & Hopey, I guess.

What I’m listening to: She and Him, Vol. 1, but not getting into it.

What I’m watching: A marathon of The Deadliest Catch, in preparation for the premier of the new season.

What I’m drinking: Guinness Extra Stout (bottled)

What I’m happy about: That Starbucks’ new Pike Place roast isn’t anywhere near as offensive as its old coffee. I mean, I still wouldn’t choose to stand on line behind a bunch of people ordering orange mocha frappuccinos, but at least I know that if I DO have to go to a Starbucks, at least I’ll be able to get a decent black coffee. Oh, and here’s an article on their retro mermaid logo. This is not a mermaid.

What I’m sad about: That DirecTV’s installer messed up the installation of my new dish, so a bunch of my HD channels are badly digitizing/artifacting. Now I gotta work at home today so they can get someone out here to realign it. But it’ll be pretty sweet to have all those extra HD channels.

What I’m pondering: Why LeBron James is getting so much MVP consideration, given that his team is barely over .500 in a terrible conference.

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What it is: 4/7/08

What I’m reading: Wrong for All the Right Reasons, by Glenn Dakin. My pal Tom gave me this collection of Dakin’s comics a few years ago, and I kept getting put off by the clunkiness of the first few installments. I tried it one more time, and made it past their sci-fi/superhero trappings to reach some lovely and poetic strips about an aimless life and the wonders of the visible world.

What I’m listening to: Veneer, by Jose Gonzalez (not as good as his new album, In Our Nature)

What I’m watching: Miss Guided. I have a crush on Judy Greer. There, I’ve said it. Oh, and Amazing Grace, starring the guy who played both Mister Fantastic and Mister Miracle. (For the record, it was structured poorly, starting in 1797 and using extensive flashbacks to 1782 to show Wilberforce’s early battles to get slavery abolished in the British territories. Near as I can tell, the only reason to assemble the story that way was so they could introduce the hot wife-to-be early on in the movie. The story would’ve been far more effective if it had been told linearly, with a “15 years later” title coming up after Wilberforce’s initial failure in Parliament. Oh, and Albert Finney should’ve had more screen time. On the plus side, the guy who plays William Pitt is named Benedict Cumberbatch.)

What I’m happy about: Getting to see my friends for brunch on Sunday.

Samuel R. Delany and Dennis

What I’m sad about: Dog toys made with such shoddy workmanship that Rufus tears them to pieces within minutes. Last night, we had to stop him from chewing on the plastic squeak-insert in his toy bunny, which he’d received 4 hours earlier. And don’t ask what happened to his toy crawfish.

What I’m pondering: Whether to cobble together a new design for this blog.

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What it is: 3/24/08

What I’m reading:Little Nothings: The Curse of the Umbrella, by Lewis Trondheim

What I’m listening to: Drunk with Passion, This is How it Feels, and Pure, all by the Golden Palominos

What I’m watching: Blades of Glory, unfortunately

What I’m drinking: Not a durned thing

Where I’m going: Philadelphia, for a pharma conference

What I’m happy about: Getting to see some of my pals down in Philly (both locals and work-friends who I tend to see only at conferences, but would hang out with in non-work scenarios)

What I’m sad about: Being away from my wife and my doggie for a few days.

What I’m pondering: How to describe the multiple levels of messed-up-edness in Sunday’s visit with my uncle, who had bypass surgery a few weeks ago. On the plus side, he seems to be recuperating pretty well. On the minus side, it appears that, in addition to my having to worry about hereditary cardiovascular issues, I’ll also have to be on the lookout for the mental instability that my dad and his brother share.

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What it is: 3/17/08

What I’m reading: During the weekend, I finished Love & Sleep, Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha comic and Darwyn Cooke’s The New Frontier. I’m continuing to work on Retired Racing Greyhounds for Dummies. I have 6 weeks until the third volume of AEgypt gets reissued, but this week’ll get spent pounding out the April issue and designing an advertiser’s supplement, so I doubt there’ll be much book-reading going on.

What I’m listening to: Dummy, by Portishead

What I’m watching: 2nd season of The Wire (two episodes remaining), No Country for Old Men, and Super Bowl XLII Champions: NY Giants DVD

What I’m drinking: Tim Horton’s coarse grind (French press style), a gift from my pals in Providence

Where I’m going: nowhere this week

What I’m happy about: Rufus is doing much better on the stairs.

What I’m sad about: Closing the crate door on the poor guy when I go to work in the morning, even though lots of people — including veterinarians and greyhound owners — told me not to get upset about doing it.

What I’m pondering: Whether I should get a microchip implanted that will give me an electric shock anytime I go more than 3 days without writing back to e-mails from friends or family. I feel like a heel lately.

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More like “F”-mail

Back in the 1990s when Tom Spurgeon was editing The Comics Journal, he was kind enough to publish some of my short comics reviews. Since the irascible publisher of the magazine was named Gary “a man should be judged by the quality of his enemies” Groth, some people thought my byline was actually his nom de plume. This led me to write an About the Contributors note reading, “Gil Roth is not a clever pseudonym for Gary Groth. In fact, he’s not very clever at all.”

More recently, and for the same reason, I was convinced that the “comic” strip Gil Thorp is a bizarre prank targeting me, and only me. (Okay, and him and him.)

But none of these odd connections can top the incredible screwup that took place last week, when a drug company’s outside law-firm accidentally e-mailed secret documents about a government negotiation . . . to a pharma-writer at the New York Times. Portfolio, take it away!

When the New York Times broke the story last week that Eli Lilly & Co. was in confidential settlement talks with the government, angry calls flew behind the scenes as the drug giant’s executives accused federal officials of leaking the information.

As the company’s lawyers began turning over rocks closer to home, however, they discovered what could be called A Nightmare on Email Street, a pharmaceutical consultant told Portfolio.com. One of its outside lawyers at Philadelphia-based Pepper Hamilton had mistakenly emailed confidential information on the talks to Times reporter Alex Berenson instead of Bradford Berenson, her co-counsel at Sidley Austin. . . .

Proving that

  1. the auto-complete function was obviously designed by Satan (or Microsoft)
  2. a man should be judged by the quality of his mistaken identity

(hat tip to Pharmalot and S&A)

(UPDATE: Dammit! I knew this was too good to be true!)