Category: literature

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The Heart Wasn’t What the Heart Wasn’t

I had an appointment with a cardiologist on Tuesday, to follow up on my symptoms from September. Looking over my EKG and checking my vitals, he seemed a little incredulous about my ER experience. I wondered if he suspected me of being an insurance investigator or something. He said that I was perfectly healthy, and supported my theory that the symptoms were a result of the stress-caffeine-anxiety axis. I’ve subsequently finished my two big stress-related activities, cut my daily caffeine consumption by around 45%, and am trying not to give a shit about little things.

(About the coffee: For the last few months, I was drinking 7 cups a day, and have cut that back to 4. I was drinking a 3-cup mug around 5:00 a.m., when Amy & I get up in the morning, a 2-cup mug of French press around 9:30 or 10 a.m., then another 2-cup French press at 2:00 p.m. The mid-morning once was the stress-related / stress-inducing one; I used to just drink the early morning and early afternoon ones, but found myself in the mid-morning routine as a result of “picking up something” on the way to the office. Starting the Monday after my ER experience, I cut the 5:00 a.m. mug to 2 cups, eliminated mid-morning, and retained the 2-cup 2:00 p.m. one. It’s my drug of choice, and I’m sure other people are just as exacting about their booze, cocaine, etc.)

Hearing about my family history of atherosclerosis (Dad and his far less obese brother both needed quintuple bypasses in their mid-60’s), the doctor wanted to perform a multifunction cardiogram (MCG). He left the exam room to check on my coverage, then came back to say, “It looks like your insurance doesn’t cover the test. I think you should have it, but it DOES cost $175 . . .”

“. . . And?” I said, reaching for my wallet.

“Well, you don’t have to pay for it all at once.”

“. . . No, that’s okay. I don’t mind,” taking out a credit card. A nurse took that and rang me up for it. I just spent $180 to get some Joost Swarte pictures framed, so I’d feel like a dolt if I complained that it cost too much to find out if I have early signs of arterial blockage.

The test went fine. It consists of a single electrode on the chest, plus 4 jumper-cable-style clamps on the wrists and ankles. The nurse reassured me that I wouldn’t get a shock from them. I had to lie still for 3 or 4 minutes, during which time I nearly fell asleep. That test, too, came back just fine.

The cardiologist and I made vague plans about a second date 6 months from now, and I drove home.

On the way, I noticed a bookstore. In suburban NJ (Hawthorne, in this instance), those stand out. Well Read was “New & Used,” which I feared meant a lending library of romance and James Patterson books, but I pulled over to check it out.

I was pleasantly surprised by the selection. Sure, no Anthony Powell or Richard Flanagan, but it had a non-pandering array of fiction, and some interesting selection on its comics shelf. Tthe YA section looked to be dominated by vampires, but hey.

I decided, “If they’re willing to keep a bookstore open in the suburbs in this day and age, they deserve my money.” I opened up the Amazon app on my phone and looked over my wish list to find something that I could buy. I was hoping they had Lucky Bruce, the new memoir by Bruce Jay Friedman, but no luck. And the new Neal Stephenson book is too huge for me to buy in hard copy; that’s a Kindle read for next summer.

Eventually, I settled on The Finkler Question, by Harold Jacobson. I hadn’t read it, but thought, “It won the Man Booker, and it’s about Jews in England, so that’ll make a nice gift for Mom.” I picked that up, thanked the clerk for fighting the good fight, and left him to the two old ladies who were trying to find “that book. No, I don’t know the title, but it’s about a detective . . .”

Now that I know I’m “perfectly healthy,” how do I keep from falling back into time-wasting routines? How do I stay up after the wake-up call?

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I Don’t Know How She Does It . . .

“She,” in this case, being Joyce Carol Oates, who has lived with a diagnosis of tachycardia for the past 40+ years. I recall reading an interview with her a bazillion years ago in which she mentioned that the heart condition could kill her at any time, and that the knowledge of that potential sudden death helped her get over any anxiety she had about writing.

But maybe I’m misremembering that last part. Since getting out of the ER last Friday, I’ve been on a rollercoaster. The heart/lung symptoms that prompted the ER visit changed by the beginning of the week; the “weird fluttering” is gone, but I found myself having episodes where I was yawning repeatedly, almost compulsively, never quite able to get enough air. I’ve got a cardiologist appt. early next week, and I’m hoping to get confirmation that whatever-this-is is stress- and/or allergy-driven, and that my heart and lungs are fine.

It’s been a very difficult stretch for me, especially because I spend so much time alone. If I’m not talking to other people (or the dogs), I talk to myself. I’ve spent much of the past week with two voices in my head: one yelling, “You’re a hypochondriac!” and the other yelling, “You’re going to have a heart attack and die tonight!”

(There’s a third voice, actually: my dad’s. He’s been calling every day to see how I’m doing, which is kinda astonishing. At first, I was short with him, because I didn’t want to compare our respective conditions, or because I’m too cool, or because I didn’t want to let him in to see the dread that I’m experiencing. It took me a few days to really get the notion of, “This is your father, man. And, sure, his behavior in your childhood was a big part of the reason that you developed all that guardedness and anxiety, but he’s calling you because he loves you and can’t bear the thought of losing you, even if he can’t say that.” Tomorrow, we’ll go to the Chabad service so he can pray for his parents’ souls. I shouldn’t be writing on Kol Nidre, but I want to get this out because I haven’t really addressed how I’ve been feeling.)

All that anxiety magnified the severity of my symptoms, making it feel like I’ve got a time-bomb in my chest, making it more difficult for me to draw a solid breath and feel at ease, making me believe that the end is nigh. Is my right hand going numb because of an aneurysm or because I haven’t eaten for 8 hours? That crick in my neck from sleeping badly or is it an artery about to go? That stabbing sensation in my chest? Oh, wait, that’s just the itchiness from the hair growing back where they had to shave it for the stress test.

But when I could just talk to people about quotidian stuff, it would take me out of myself and I’d feel just fine. Either the symptoms would abate or I just become less aware of them.

As long as I don’t think about it, I think I’ll be okay.

So one part of me has been trying to maintain my routines and act as though nothing serious is happening, while another part is trying to total up all the things I should’ve done in my life and what I’ll still have time to do. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Quit work and go to an ashram? Be calm and carry on? I’ve got people out the wazoo telling me to relax, not to stress so much, but none of them offer to do my work for me. (And it was a lot of work, with a 150-page issue that had to go out by Wednesday in order to print and ship in time for a big show in Germany that I’m supposed to attend in a few weeks.)

On Tuesday night, things got so bad that I was afraid that I wouldn’t make it through to morning. I found myself regretting, of all things, that I wouldn’t get to read the newest issue of Love & Rockets. I’d heard that Jaime Hernandez had a monumental story in it, and it saddened me that I wouldn’t see it.

There weren’t a lot of other regrets that occurred to me on Tuesday night. I regretted being sharp with Amy during the drive home from the train station that night, but I knew she understood how shaken and scared I was. Once home I decided that, if this was to be my last night alive, then I’d go out with a little joy: having a fine gin & tonic and watching some baseball.

And if it turned out that I was being a hypochondriac, then I figured the G&T would relax me a bit. And I’m a long way past getting worked up about a Yankees game.

I felt fine on Wednesday morning, and pushed on with a positive outlook most of the day. When I got home from the office (and that work-stress from the first three days of this week didn’t help me any), the annual issue of L&R was waiting for me at the door. I took the dogs for a walk around the block, then fed them and lay on the sofa with the new book. I cried like a baby at the final pages. It was that good and I’m that emotionally raw.

Now (Friday night, just about one week from when I left the ER) I’m feeling a million times better. I still get short of breath/yawny on occasion, but I’m almost certain it’s due to anxiety. Among the lessons I learned this past week, the big one is that my anxiety is so much more vast and subtle than I ever imagined. It’s one thing to actively think, “I’m going to die,” and trigger a fear-reaction. But no: I found myself falling into those thoughts only after these episodes began. I got a real taste of how dread works behind the scenes, the chimera obscura. The longer I went without talking to someone or opening myself up to something like music (even when the iPod in my car thought it would be funny to shuffle up Breathe or Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?) or a good podcast or some silliness with the dogs, the more this dread gathered.

Walking the dogs around the neighborhood last night, I wondered what it would be like if I could get those two voices in my head in harmony. What if I could be reconciled that I’d been worrying over nothing, but also retain that immanence unto death? Would there be some way to use it, like Ms. Oates did, to let that specter pervade me, guide me past my dissipated routines, let me face the fear of the end and shatter all this anxiety?

Can I write like there’s no tomorrow?

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Borders Raid

I finally made a foray to the local Borders store. I checked it out during the first week of bankruptcy, when prices were an amazing 20% off list. I felt bad that they were charging more in liquidation than Amazon was charging in regular operations.

But I was next door, picking up some measuring spoons at Bed, Bath & Beyond, so I walked in. “ONLY 7 DAYS LEFT!” the posters warned. Inside, prices were 80% off, with an additional 15% if you bought 20 or more books. Of course, there was scarcely more than 20 books in the joint.

I looked through the remaining comics — sorry, Graphic Novels — but that had been pretty well pillaged. I considered picking up Sophie Crumb’s book, but eh.

The fiction section was pretty sparse; the offerings were mainly contemporary fiction, which I have no use for. I meandered over to the biographies, and it was there that I made my score. There were at least 8 copies of Jules Feiffer’s memoir, Backing Into Forward, on a shelf, so I grabbed a copy of that. I remember wanting to buy it for the Kindle when it was first released, but it was listing (and still is) at $15.99, and there’s no way on earth I’d pay that much for an e-book, unless it had the answers in the back.

Then I noticed a copy of Pierre Assouline’s Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin. It was a hardcover, as was the Feiffer book. I know nothing about it, but at this price (80% off $24.95), I couldn’t go wrong.

I also came across paperbacks of two of Mary Karr’s memoirs, Liar’s Club and Cherry. I’ve never read her, but I enjoyed her recent Paris Review interview, so I thought I’d give her a chance.

On the way to the register, I noticed a “new books” shelf with a copy of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Bed of Procrustes. I gave up on The Black Swan pretty early, on account of authorial arrogance, but one of my magazine’s readers recommended I pick up this book of aphorisms. I bought it for my Kindle this summer, but found that the aphoristic style didn’t work for an e-book; I found myself reading too quickly. I thought it would be better in printed format, so I could scribble notes in the margins and otherwise just look at a line on a page. So I grabbed that, too.

I have far too many books

The damage for all five books, including three hardcovers? Twenty-two dollars. Poor, doomed bookstores.

I did have a laugh on the way out, when I noticed that one of the employees set up the shelf by the entry so that customers would see the following:

Do the No Future

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Last Responder

I was going to write some depressing remembrance about 9/11 for the 10th anniversary, but here’s the best thing I wrote about 9/11, a post from 2009’s anniversary. I don’t think I can improve on it, so much as riff. (Here’s something else I wrote about the towers, from 2005.)

I’ve been thinking of getting my “9.11.01 Never Forget” tattoo removed or covered over. I think I’m ready to forget.

I read today’s installment of Cul de Sac and laughed for a while. Thanks, Mr. Thompson:

Cul de Sac

Do something good today.

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How I Misspent My Summer Vacation, 2011 Edition: Day 4

Sunday, Aug. 14: Lavender gin and Rainxiety

Where was I? Oh, yeah: Hurricane Irene preparation, limping dog, windstorm, multi-day power outage, crazy work deadline, Labor Day weekend. So that puts us back in Vancouver, specifically the Metropolitan Hotel.

I mentioned in our last installment that I had done no research into Vancouver before the trip. So, in addition to not knowing about the French-Canadian vibe, I also didn’t reailze that our hotel was in a neighborhood similar to the high-end boutique region of midtown Manhattan. We weren’t there to shop, since we live about 30 miles from NYC, and, well . . .

As I mentioned in my last “Who Am I?” post, I started a shopping ban in early August. I decided to see how low my credit card bill would get if I went one month without purchasing books, comics, music, liquor-store gin, electronics or menswear. I was doing just fine for the first 10 days, but being in a hotel directly across from Vancouver’s high-end shopping mall was definitely a rehab-temptation moment for me. At one point on Monday, I found myself “just browsing” in the Harry Rosen store, where a Brunello Cuccinelli cashmere jacket just threw itself at me. But I managed to keep my virtue and my money.

You’ll note that I didn’t include “Tim Hortons” on that no-shopping list. I’m not crazy, after all. I got dressed Sunday morning and lit out for Timmy’s. I saw one a block and a half away on the drive in last night, and asked the doorman of the hotel if that was the closest one.

“If you’re looking for coffee, we have a Starbucks next to the hotel,” he said.

“Man, the last thing I want is Starbucks,” I told him. He confirmed that the Tim’s on Dunsmuir is the closest. I grabbed coffees for us and a maple dip donut for myself.

The morning was pretty lazy. Amy tooled around on her iPad (hotel wifi) while I finished The Soldier’s Art, which takes place during WWII. I was bummed by the sudden ending, the news that a character died during a reconnaisance flight in which he was reporting on enemy camouflage. But I was also glad to have completed this month’s Dance to the Music of Time installment, because it meant I could get started on Zero History, William Gibson’s new novel.

Gibson lives in Vancouver, so I thought it would be nice to wait on that book until I was in the city. Also, I waited for the price of the Kindle version to drop to $9.99, which it did around the same time that the paperback version came out. As I began reading, I discovered that the Macguffin — he’s moved beyond Macguffins, actually, but it’s as close a term as I’m gonna employ to describe the story — was a design for camouflage clothing. I bet I’m the only person ever to transition from Barnby’s death in the name of camouflage to Gibson’s 21st century exploration of how camo and military style inform streetwear. I don’t expect to win any sort of prize for this.

By late morning, Amy had come up with a good restaurant for brunch. The sky was overcast the weather forecast had called for cool temps and some train, so we dressed appropriately and got walkin’. Here’s a set of pix from the walk, or you can click through this guy:

Escape... from Vancouver!

In case I haven’t made this point enough, let me note that I like walking around in cities. I dig seeing neighborhoods, exploring stores, and picking up little place-memories.

For a long time, I would set my maxi-capacity iPod to shuffle and put in my earbuds when meandering around unfamiliar cities during business trips. I’d stroll through neighborhoods further and further from my hotels, with a few destinations in a loose plan. I was pretty good at identifying bad areas (and bad times to walk through otherwise okay areas) and never got mugged or otherwise messed with during my travels.

I liked the notion of having random songs in my head while I explored. That way, when one of those tunes popped up again years later, I’d be transported back to that moment in Madrid, in Belfast, in San Antonio, in Nelson, in Paris, like a geo-aural landscape. The music is like a time-bomb (or is it a land-mine, or an ICBM?).

Years ago, I drove from San Francisco to San Diego with a single Mad Mix CD to keep me company for 2-plus days. I was in a convertible, so there were plenty of stretches in which I couldn’t hear anything over the wind, but I still came to know that CD inside-out by the time I rolled into my friends’ place in South Park.

IPod tourism is a practice I’ve abandoned in the last couple of years. Maybe it’s my discomfort from those earbuds, my incipient deafness, my fear that I’ll get taken unawares by thugs. Maybe it’s my desire to hear the sounds of cities themselves, rather than my semi-engineered soundtracks.

So Amy & I walked down Howe St. toward Davie. My iPhone’s GPS-based Maps app worked just fine, although it wouldn’t be able to provide directions without getting onto the Canadian data-network, at which point I’d have gotten charged ridiculous fees. As we left the hotel, I discovered that the Vancouver Art Gallery was on the next block, and that it was hosting an exhibition on surrealism. I’m not a huge fan, but I thought it’d be nice to check the exhibit out on Monday.

We had a pleasant Sunday stroll down to the Provence Marinaside. The line for tables was long, so we sat at the bar. A Blue Jays game was on the TV in the corner, drawing my attention occasionally. An on-screen graphic noted that the Mariners’ game would be on next. I wondered which team was the “local” one: nearby Seattle or 2,600-miles-away Toronto. The latter had the advantage of being the “national team,” since the Expos had gone away. I didn’t bother asking anyone about it.

Our waiters/bartenders were off-Broadway versions of Robert Pattinson and Michael Fassbender. I ordered an amazing ham-and-gruyere omelet and then noticed a strangely labeled bottle of gin behind the bar. I had no idea what it was, and asked Team Edward if I could see it. It had a hand-scrawled label describing a lavender gin. I asked him to open it so I could give it a waft. He poured me a small glass instead, so I checked out the bouquet and ordered a G&T with it. Amy took the straight gin and gave it an approving sip. I wonder if crack-smokers have this sense of conoisseurship about their product.

After brunch, we walked among the green-glass condos of Pacific Blvd. to get to the Granville Bridge. We wanted to cross the river and check out the Granville Island Public Market. The day, I should note, was not cool and rainy. The sun had come out and it was in the mid-70s, so we were overdressed. Still, we decided to walk on to the market, despite the mild discomfort and just-kinda-sweatiness.

Of course, the bridge was longer than it looked, and of course there was no quick way from it to the market on the island. We walked through the modernist furniture shop quarter (?), past the Afghani restaurant, and into The Throng.

I’m sorry if you’ve been to the market and loved it, or if you’ve never been and want a pretty description of it. To us, it seemed like a nautical-themed tourist trap, and I spent enough years in Annapolis, MD, thank you very much. I know it probably has a lot to recommend it, but we were caught in a tide of shambling vacationers, including “Japanese Snooki,” as I pointed out to my wife.

Granville did have a pretty amazing and extensive food-market. We picked up some wonderful gelatos and made a return trip on Tuesday before leaving town to get some stuff, but it was incredibly crowded on a summer Sunday, and Amy & I both get antsy around big crowds, so we made a relatively quick exit from the market, walked down to the docks, boarded an Aquabus to cross the river and started our walk back to the hotel.

We walked up Granville St., parallel to Howe. I was expecting more of the high-end shopping found on our street and on Robson, our perpendicular, which is apparently Vancouver’s Fifth Avenue. Instead, we got a run-down street with stripperwear stores, music shops, and some cheap retailers. I was happy to see it. A few blocks up, the street was closed to car traffic. A corporate-sponsored trick-bicycle event was going on, attracting a ton of youths from whatever subset of the culture digs bike-stunts. We made our way home, cutting through that Pacific Centre mall, where I noticed the aforementioned Harry Rosen shop, and rested before dinner.

Amy was in charge of selecting restaurants in Vancouver. She’s the food-blogger, after all. Her pals recommended Cru, on the other side of the river. It would’ve been a long walk (I reconstructed our Sunday walk on Google Maps after I got home: 4.4 miles), so we got the car from the valet and drove over. I had to get change for the parking meter, so Amy went on ahead of me to the restaurant. Walking up West Broadway by myself, I noticed several bookstores and a comic joint. I know I’m in a buying ban, but that doesn’t mean I can’t look, right? In fact, I noticed that my pal Ron Rosenbaum’s new book was in a window for half-price or thereabouts!

my new book is da bomb

I also passed a place that I’m only including here because it will make exactly one reader piss herself with laughter:

IMG_1299

(You’re welcome, Tina.)

I joined Amy in the restaurant, where we had the following off the small plates menu:

  • Beef Tenderloin Carpaccio
  • Syrah-braised Beef Short Rib (with mac & cheese)
  • Moroccan-spiced Lamb Chop
  • Miso marinated BC Sablefish
  • Side Greens

The carpaccio was fantastic, the sablefish was disappointing (esp. after the awesome miso black cod dish I had at Masa 13 in DC last June). In all, it was a fine meal, with only one problem: my dad called.

I noticed a “missed-call/voice-mail” on the phone when I picked up my jacket after dessert. The call had been at 7:45 p.m., or nearly 11:00 p.m. back at home. I assumed that something terrible had happened to him or to the dogs, so I ran out to the sidewalk and called him back. No answer on his cell, so I checked the voice mail.

He said, “I hope you’re having a good time on your trip. I just want to let you know, there was a lot of rain today. At least 7 inches by JFK. I don’t know if your dog-sitter can take care of the boys with all this rain. Should I call her?”

Shaking my head, I walked back into the restaurant. “What is it?” Amy asked. “Is everything okay?”

“Apparently, it rained a lot. Dad thinks maybe he should help walk the dogs.”

“Rain.”

“Yeah, rain. Seven inches by JFK.”

“Good thing we don’t live anywhere near JFK.”

Now, I’m glad my dad was concerned about the dogs’ welfare, don’t get me wrong. But he knows that the one time something terrible happened to one of the dogs, it was when I was away traveling and a dog-walker just didn’t know which houses to steer clear of. I have plenty of anxiety every time I go away on a trip, because I have to give up responsibility for the dogs and trust someone not to make a mistake.

So you’d think he wouldn’t worry me by calling when I’m out of the country to tell me nothing more significant than the news about a few inches of rain. But then, he’s the same guy who sends me e-mail jokes about airplane crashes when I’m about to fly out for business trips.

We cruised back to the Metropolitan, had a drink at the hotel bar, and turned in early.

Back at the room, I e-mailed Dad that the dog-sitter was probably getting along just fine, but he could call her to check up on Monday.

Certainly, I could have written this day down to, “We walked a few miles, visited a tourist trap, had a nice meal, and missed a ton of rain back in NJ,” but where’s the fun in that?

Coming up in Day 5: Stanley Park Death March

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How I Misspent My Summer Vacation, 2011 Edition: Day 3

Saturday, Aug. 13: Discovery Park & the Cosmic Cube

I loosened the lap-band of the seatbelt, slid my hips down the seat slightly, and repositioned my left leg. The van driver had both hands on the wheel, but I knew I’d only have a second to react if he reached for a weapon. I was close enough to kick his hand from my position in the first row, middle-seat. If he pivoted toward us, I’d likely be able to hit his chin instead. No, I thought, better to go for the weapon.

He had taken us on such out-of-the-way roads, I could only assume that he was driving us to the local Motel Hell for murder and/or cannibalistic fine dining. My right hand creeped closer to the seatbelt buckle, so I could quickly free myself if I needed to dodge a knife-thrust.

Beside me, Amy looked out the driver-side window. I kept my sunglasses on and cursed myself for wearing my Sperry’s; the top-siders had nowhere near the heft of my blue-suede oxfords.

His left hand dropped out of sight for a half-second. I tensed. The turn signal began to click and the sign ahead read “SPOKANE AIRPORT – 1/2 MILE”.

He changed lanes. I relaxed. I hadn’t even started the William Gibson novel yet.

* * *

We had a mid-morning flight back to Seattle, so I spent my morning reading Anthony Powell’s The Soldier’s Art on my Kindle over coffee at the Davenport (purchased at Brews Bros. around the corner, home of the way-too-cheery baristas). Reading all 12 books of A Dance to the Music of Time — one a month — is my Dilettante Improvement Project for 2011. Last year’s DIP was to try a new (to me) boutique/artisanal gin every month. Let’s just say I exceeded my goals:

My Year of Gin

It’s funny, but I still don’t know how to answer my wife when she asks me if I’m enjoying the Dance. I am, but I don’t know that I’d recommend it to anyone in my life. It’s a veritable soap opera of the intertwined lives of some British schoolmates, from around 1918 to maybe the mid-60’s. (The last book was written in 1972, but I’ve deliberately done zero research into what any of the books cover.) I say “veritable” because the narrator, Nick Jenkins, manages to leave out lots of aspects of life that might make for good reading: like the birth of his first child or almost any depiction of his relationship with his wife. But Powell still creates a pretty fantastic tapestry of the social web that ties the four men and their extended friends together.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, back at the Davenport Hotel in Spokane, reading an e-book and drinking coffee. That’s my idea of a vacation. Amy refused to leave the bed for a while. I don’t blame her.

* * *

At SeaTac, we picked up our increasingly heavy suitcase quickly (now with heavier shoes!), and headed over to the rental area. The plan was to pick up our car, have lunch with a pal, drop him off at another pal’s cookout, and zoom on up to Vancouver for 3 nights.

No one was at the Hertz desk, so I had to use a touchscreen kiosk to go through the entire rental process. I got a little frustrated at the repetitive inputs of some of the screens, but my wife cheerily said, “Look on the bright side: you don’t have to talk to anyone!” and I perked right up. Gotta love a woman who knows that her husband would get his hair cut over the internet, if he could.

We got our run-of-the-mill maroon Altima and headed to downtown Seattle to pick up my pal Finkelstein. I was filled with dread. Not because I hadn’t seen Fink in 4 years, but because I had to drive on Seattle’s highways. On our last trip here in 2007, the highway signs were so terrible that we repeatedly missed turns, despite having a GPS unit in the rental. This time, either the signs were improved or the GPS systems have learned to adjust, the way players on the Nuggets learn to deal with the altitude.

We picked up Fink at his office building, as he’d gone in to work for a few hours on Saturday.

“What does he do?” Amy asked.

“Dunno,” I said. I’d never thought to ask. When I met him, he was working in The Smoke Shop in Annapolis, MD. He’ll probably tell you that was the happiest job of his life. I think that’s why I don’t ask him about his gigs.

I don’t know if it’s in the nature of Seattle or of Fink — he grew up there, so it could be both — but he directed us through a bazillion neighborhoods during our Escape From Downtown. We eventually reached our lunch destination: Chinook, a seafood restaurant overlooking Salmon Bay in the Magnolia neighborhood. Fink is enough of a regular at the place that he could banter with the waitress a bit. An ardent reader of Amy’s blog, I think he felt pressured to come up with a really good restaurant. I’m glad my wife’s rep precedes her, when it leads to awesome meals.

She’ll get around to writing about the fish we had for lunch sometime. I will instead tell you about the dessert. Fink & Amy elected to split some sorta shortcake, in which she ate the fruit and some cream, and he had the crust. That’s because she’s on a gluten-free diet. Since I am most assuredly not on a gluten-free diet, I ordered The Bread Pudding.

Amy has photographic evidence of what arrived on my plate, but the lack of depth in the shot doesn’t do it justice. I was served the Cosmic Cube of Bread Pudding. It was about 5″ on each side, and was so dense it should have come with a reinforced fork. I thought the table would tip over, like the Flintstones’ car.

I said, “Clearly, I’m an honored guest, or they wouldn’t have brought me all of the bread pudding they have. It’d be rude not to eat it.”

“And with your family’s history of diabetes, there’s no point in forestalling the inevitable,” Amy pointed out.

“Wait: is that custard or the accretion disk?” Fink asked.

There was some question as to whether I’d fall asleep before I could finish it, but I rallied. Also, the hyperdensity of the pudding caused time to bend. Fink and Amy aged a full week while the bread pudding and I were cruising along at relativistic speeds.

After lunch, it was obvious that I needed coffee, between the incipient caffeine withdrawal and the dwarf star I was now carrying in my belly. We walked over to a nearby cafe and chatted for a while as I refueled.

Seattle’s the first place I ever had coffee, on my summer 2001 trip here. It was some mocha thing my pal Shari ordered for me, and I thought the chocolate-component was somehow necessary for coffee. It took me quite a while before I settled on my perfect coffee: a cup of goddamned black coffee. No milk, no sugar.

I tried ordering that this time, but they said they were out of drip. They’d make an Americano instead, which made me feel a teensy bit like George Clooney in that Anton Corbijn movie he did last year. Amy didn’t notice any Clooneyness about me, sadly.

Conversation: I’m not very good at characterizing what Fink & I talk about. We met almost 20 years ago and have fallen out of each others’ lives a bit in the past decade, but there’s still no one on earth who can grok my thought-processes the way that boy can. I think I wrote about this after our 2007 visit, but it’s possible I never published that, for reasons that I won’t publish now.

So we rambled on our paired wavelength, and Amy seemed alright with the sections that weren’t relatable. I recall us talking about Dylan, Rush, Gillian Welch, the Yankees’ pitching staff and that Fran Lebowitz documentary (he hasn’t seen it yet) before we hit the road. He figured it was early enough that we could stop at a park for a bit before going to his pal’s cookout.

I always forget that he’s not great with time, which is ironic, because he’s a drummer.

We drove on to Discovery Park, a pretty area that looks across the Puget Sound to Bainbridge Island. That’s where I took this picture:

IMG_1297

Amy hung back and took pictures while Fink & I kept talking. I told him about reading The Most Human Human recently. There’s a chapter on chess, which was one of his interests. The writer, Brian Christian, explored the ways in which opening theory had, in a sense, damaged chess by turning it into a game of memorization. That is, if you recalled enough openings, you could keep to a script and wait for your opponent to make a mistake. That sort of approach falls into the non-existent hands of computers, which can be taught to recognize most any opening pattern and weigh the best means to match them. It’s here that Christian makes one of his best points in the book. See, the history of philosophy has been filled with attempts at branding man as “the animal who . . .”, to show that some aspect of our minds are what separate us from beasts. Now, we find computers impinging from the other direction, mastering activities that we considered most human.

So Fink told me about chess and opening theory issues and we hashed out some notions of cognition that neither of us bothered writing down. And we sat on a bench and watched the cruise-liners head out through the Sound. It was beautiful, and peaceful, and starting to get late, but I figured the cookout was nearby, and we’d be okay.

I could not have been more wrong. Fink apparently wanted to show us all of Seattle in a single drive. If we had intercutting dialogue and multiple uninteresting storylines, it couldn’t have been more like Altman’s Short Cuts, except that no shortcuts were involved.

But what’s to gripe? We popped in the new Mad Mix CD I assembled, “Wyvern & Kobold, LLP,” and drove. We made a booze-stop so he could bring something to the cookout, and eventually made our way to the home of Eric S., proto-blogger extraordinaire. (Boy, that sounds gross.)

About that mix CD: Fink was irate that I put The Golden Age by Asteroids Galaxy Tour on it, but was cheered that it was immediately followed by the Eurythmics’ For the Love of Big Brother. It’s a weird mix. If you ask, maybe I’ll burn you a copy.

About the cookout: I’d corresponded with Eric for years, but this would be our first get-together. However, it was already 6:15 and we had no idea how long a wait we’d have at the border crossing into Canada that night. I was in San Diego once with a pal and he showed me what the Friday afternoon traffic to get into Tijuana was. The sign said “5 hours.” I figured Vancouver on a Saturday night isn’t as much of a draw.

So I made apologies to Eric almost instantly upon arrival, although I initially too-exaggeratedly berated him for never having watched the Coen Bros.’ A Serious Man. Then I blamed Fink for our tardiness (as opposed to, say, my talking Fink’s ear off), and asked him, “What are you reading?”

This is just about the only question I care to ask anyone, btw. No one really answers, “How are you?” with anything more than politeness and, unless I know of some dire condition affecting your family or friends, I won’t ask about them till I’ve run out of questions about books and art. I think I’ve always been like that, but I’m becoming more honest about it in my middle age.

Eric was working his way through W.G. Sebald, in order of (German) publication. I’d only read WGS’ On the Natural History of Destruction, and didn’t have any good observations about the work. Boo, me. We rambled for a little bit, although I was conscious that we were the only members of the cookout who didn’t really know anyone there, and I didn’t want to keep the host from performing his hostly duties.

We made a date for Tuesday evening, when Amy & I would be back in town for the last night of our vacation. And then we hit the road.

Fink had given us directions back to I-5 that I couldn’t possibly have remembered, but was sure would take us in the wrong direction. The GPS gave us an ETA in Vancouver of a little more than 2.25 hours, not including border-crossing delays. I asked Amy to call our hotel and let them know we’ll be arriving late.

We hit the road, immediately regretting not bringing a headphone cable with us to connect the iPod to the car stereo. Fink had taken the new Mad Mix, so we had to resort to terrestrial radio. At best, we got to hear lots of classic rock. Closing in on Canada, we started to hear DJs talking in that mongrel French they speak up there. For some reason, I hadn’t thought of Vancouver as particularly French-Canadian. Don’t know why I thought that. Maybe I should’ve done the slightest bit of research before this trip.

One thing I did read up on was the drive up to Canada on I-5/Rt.99. It was supposed to be gorgeous, but Amy & I were both unimpressed. Maybe it was the dusk-hour, the overcast skies, or the fact that we live near some pretty great hills and wooded highways, but it just wasn’t as pretty as we’d heard. Still, it was nice to be out of a city and cruising on open roads.

The border crossing signs said it would be a 35-minute wait to enter Canada. They were correct, down to the minute. Near the end of our wait, I got nervous that I’d somehow failed to bring some token that we needed to cross. I mean, I had our passports, but I thought maybe there was some bureaucratic form that everybody knew about but me, and that we’d be laughed at by the border guard and turned away. Maybe everyone knew that it’s illegal to cross the border in a rental car. I don’t know. I imagine this shit all the time.

I am, as I’ve said, no fun to travel with.

Our passports were just fine, but the border guard was a douche. He looked at us suspiciously as he checked our information, then asked, “What were you up to?”

Not “What brings you to Canada?” or “Are you on vacation?” or “Do you like indy comics?” but “What were you up to?”

I told him, “We’re on vacation. A friend got married in Spokane and now we’re headed up to Vancouver for a few days to see the city.” I was irate at getting glared at. I wanted to say, “I pay your salary!”, but I don’t. Still, I worried, if they’re this weird entering Canada, how much worse will the U.S. guards be on Tuesday?

He waved us through, and we zoomed on another 35 or 40 minutes to the hotel, the Metropolitan. We checked in, greeted by the person Amy had phoned when we first hit the road. She was of Asian descent and had a French-Canadian accent. Maybe it was just a long day, with hours of driving and a 40-minute flight and a lump of bread pudding and everything else, but I literally stopped understanding her while she was greeting us.

She was talking and talking, and I realized the words weren’t sinking in, so I just looked at her mouth for at least 15 to 20 seconds. Amy, realizing that my brain had shut off, chimed in, “That would be great, thanks!”

The girl broke out a local map and drew a bunch of Xs in one area and told us, “Don’t go down this street. It’s the only really bad area you have to watch out for.” I understood that. We took our key-cards and headed for the elevator.

It was around 10:00 p.m. as we got to the room, unpacked, considered the minibar, and slumped into bed. The bed was awfully nice (albeit not as wondrous as the Davenport’s).

Amy said, “I meant to ask: did you have ANY idea where that taxi-driver was taking us this morning?”

“No, but FBI agent Burt Macklin had everything under control, Ms. Snakehole.”

“Call me Janet,” she said, mock-cigarette holder between her fingers.

Coming up in Day 4: Granville Market and Lavender Gin!

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How I Misspent My Summer Vacation, 2011 Edition: Day 2

Friday, Aug. 12: Dead Men & Funnybooks

After a ridiculously wondrous night’s sleep at the Davenport, I had to get to work.

Shannon, one of my work-pals, was picked me up to take me to her office, so I could interview John B., another one of the guys. (Thus turning this leg of the vacation into a business expense for me.) We went with a 9 a.m. start, so I could get work out of the way and Amy & I could spend the rest of the day in the city before the evening’s Royal Wedding.

About the wedding: my pal Dave was marrying a co-worker (not in his department; I’d never met her before the previous night’s dinner). He’d gotten divorced around 2 years ago (so did she), and I gave him a sympathetic ear while he went through that process. He’s a great guy, and has been the primary parent for his 2 daughters since the split. Dave’s also half-black, half-Japanese, and was the only non-white person I saw in my 2002 trip to Spokane. When we got together in NYC last March, he showed me an iPhone picture of him with chef Morimoto at Nobu. I asked him which one was Morimoto. (What did I tell you yesterday about taking the piss?)

But the wedding was a few hours off. At the moment, I sat down with John in his office to shoot the breeze a while. We’d planned to record a little Q&A about managing customer expectations during facility expansions for a writeup in my October issue (I live life of excitement, I know), but I had a secret motive for this meeting. I was going to interview John about what it’s like to die.

John didn’t attend that NYC trade show in March; companies frequently pick and choose / revolve staff for these events. On the second morning of the show, I stopped by the company’s booth to say hello. My pal Peggy said to me, “Something terrible happened to John. He’s going to be fine, but his heart stopped last night.”

John, who’s an athletic, fit guy in his early 40’s, was playing soccer with his team that evening, felt light-headed, and sat down. And promptly died.

That is, his heart had stopped for 15 minutes. Lucky for him, several doctors are on his soccer team, and they were able to keep him pumping blood till the EMTs arrived and he got zotzed back to life. But he was, as he’s the first to say, dead.

At our dinner the night before, he told us, “I found out recently from my cardiologist that when he got the call that I’d died, his wife, also a doctor, asked what was up. He said, ‘One of my patients just died,’ and she asked, ‘Well, is he still dead?’ Only a cardiologist would ask that . . .” He was laughing when he told this story. If I were in his position, of course, I’d be looking off into the distance, pausing dramatically.

Which is why I wanted to talk to him about it. He was a cheerful guy before this episode, and didn’t seem any different the two times I’d seen him since, so I was hoping that a more in-depth conversation might reveal whether he’s looking at things differently now. My plan was to bust out the audio-recorder for our pharma-interview, but also conduct another conversation with John about his death, and how he’s lived since.

(He said the doctors have no idea why his heart stopped, so they’ve installed a defibrillator in his chest to zap him if it happens again. The day after his death, he told Peggy that he was planning to come to the office the following Monday. She threatened to fire him if he did, but he managed to make it in for a few hours anyway, broken ribs/sternum and all.)

But a funny thing happened on the way to the undiscovered country: we started talking about comic books.

During our pharma-conversation, I mentioned a comics-related anecdote about John’s CEO, prompting John to ask what sort of comics I read. Now, this conversation can be pretty fraught. My comics are, um, “non-mainstream,” which is to say, “not superheroes,” but many people tend to equate comics solely with costumed crusaders. So I offered up an early gambit by saying, “I like more indy, art-fare, like Clowes, Bagge and the Hernandez brothers.” This used to be the holy trinity of art-comic surnames to cite; a little out of date now, but I didn’t want to go hardcore geek, in case John was a big reader of, say, Spider-Man.

I was gratified to discover that he actually knew what I was talking about, and that we could have an intelligent conversation about funnybooks, art, and storytelling. He even tossed a Cerebus reference into the conversation (!). Stupidly, I didn’t turn on the recorder for THAT segment, because it would’ve been pretty entertaining. At one point, he mentioned seeing an episode of True Blood (which I haven’t watched), and said, “I don’t know who the writers are, but they owe a huge debt to the southern gothic vibe that Alan Moore had in his run on Swamp Thing.”

To which I (internally) replied, “Daaaaaamn!” and decided to break out my story of the time I met Frank Miller at a party but didn’t realize it was him for half an hour or so.

So, rather than have a mopey conversation about death (which I’m not sure John’s capable of, since he’s so damned upbeat), we talked comics for at least an hour. He had an 11:00 a.m. appt., we took care of our pharma-interview, and I made a note that I have to bring him one of my favorite art comics when he comes to NJ for our conference in September.

(The last time I mentioned my comics interests in a work context was at a trade show in June. That advertiser-exec took it as an opportunity to ask me what I thought of the Green Lantern movie. I haven’t seen it and don’t plan to, but do have strong opinions about it.)

After we wrapped up, Shannon took me back to the Davenport. I unloaded some of my work-stuff, like the big-ol’ Zoom H4 audio recorder that I brought from the office, and headed out to find Amy.

She was back in Riverfront Park, outside the brazenly named Sugar Shack, shooting pictures. The island was a run-down railyard something in the old days, but had been given a make-over in 1974 as part of the World’s Fair. Which was held in Spokane, WA. No, really. The new park has some nice walkways and rides and fountains for kids, as well as a shit-ton of concession stands dedicated to furthering childhood obesity and diabetes.

Amy & I meandered around the park and downtown, stopping in at Auntie’s, a nice, multi-level indy bookstore that Shannon had mentioned. I had to tell myself, “I have more than 1,400 books at home, along with a Kindle; I’m not buying any books here.” But it was nice to see that sort of store seemingly flourishing. I looked for a copy of The Leopard, so I could give it to Shannon, but they didn’t have it in stock.

After the bookstore, we had a wonderful lunch next door at Sante, where I had a burger that made up for the awful one in the SeaTac airport. Because I keep score.

I liked the vibe in downtown Spokane (which I realize I haven’t discussed). It felt very mid-century to me, with lots of brick buildings, and there were plenty of local shops alongside the inevitable global brands. There was a bit of a college-town vibe, which I miss. The baristas in the coffeeshop around the corner from the Davenport were unreasonably cheery, but I could overlook that.

During our drive to the company’s site that morning, Shannon mentioned that European trade shows the last two years gave her her first opportunities to travel outside America. I told her my theory that Bush II wanted a weak dollar during his presidency to make it more expensive for Americans to travel abroad. That way, we wouldn’t have anything to compare our lives to.

Shannon said she was amazed by the sheer history in these foreign cities, coming from an area that was so recently settled. I told her I felt the same way, even though my town was founded in 1742 and had a ton of Revolutionary War history. We’re both going to a big trade show in Frankfurt in October, but she and her husband are making a side-trip to Prague after. I told her that Amy will kill me if I go to Prague without her. She told me that she likes to read novels about the places she’s visiting. I told her not to read Prague.

Anyway, after our meander around downtown, we headed back to the Davenport, read for a bit (who watches TV?) and got ready for the wedding. Rather than get a ride from Shannon, we decided to walk. However, since our wedding shoes weren’t too comfortable (I brought a pair of black Johnston & Murphy brogue wingtips for the occasion), we packed them in my tote bag (freebie from Monocle) and wore comfier kicks to walk to the wedding venue. In my case, that meant pairing my navy suit (Rubenstein’s) and yellow striped shirt (Brooks) with a pair of white SeaVees. With a seersucker Alexander Olch tie and a white silk pocket square tucked in presidential-style, I felt invulnerable to criticism.

The route we chose put us smack dab in the “club district,” such as it was. It went on for a block and the activity at that hour (6 p.m.) consisted of band-members hauling their equipment out of vans and hangers on hanging on. We drew some looks, but no one made any comments. Even though we deserved them. I credit the tie and pocket square. (This is the closest you get to any Mean Streets of Spokane reference. That pic I posted yesterday was from two blocks away from our hotel, when I was out for coffee. It looked like someone had it in for a car window, the night before.)

At the wedding, we got to meet all my pals’ spouses and kids. It’s funny how much more real that makes people. I mean, it was one thing to see John B. as “the guy who died” and build a little theoretical framework about how that experience might have affected him. It was another to meet his wife and 2 teenaged daughters and to think about how close they were to losing a father last March. The pictures keep getting more detail.

The wedding ceremony was lovely, and included this colored sand rite, in which Dave participated with his new bride and his two daughters. It was meant to illustrate how their lives would blend together. Since Dave’s company performs lyophilization of injectable drugs, I thought he could’ve come up with something that involved freeze-dried particles in suspension, but I guess that’s a little too “inside pharma.”

I don’t have any great anecdotes from the wedding. The food was good, the conversation was fun, and the view of the river from our venue (the rooftop of the Spokane Convention Center) was gorgeous.

It struck me that second weddings should feel different than firsts, but I’ve only been to two or three so I haven’t been able to characterize them “‘Til death do us part,” seems kinda silly to keep in the vows, but what do I know? I only got hitched at 35.

During a conga line, we put on our comfy shoes and walked back to the Davenport and its comfy bed. I wanted to thank Dave for inviting me and wish him bliss & love, but he was already there. Plus, I was afraid of getting sucked into that conga line.

Thus endedth day 2!

Coming up in Day 3: Discovery Park and the Cosmic Cube!

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Virtual Memories Radio: the missing tapes!

I just discovered that I have a podcast from last May that never posted! I could’ve sworn I posted this one shortly after Ernesto Sabato’s death on April 30, but there’s no sign of it anywhere on the blog!

The files were posted on the morning of May 4, but there’s no sign of the post I must have written to link to them! In fact, a pal of mine cited the podcast on his blog on May 14! Grar! I’m really hoping that other posts haven’t gone missing, too!

Anyway, here’s what you need to know about the time I posted this piece:

Anyway, here’s episode 3 of Virtual Memories Radio (mp3 and m4a). It’s about 10 minutes long and recorded in several different locations in my house, so the audio has some jumps in quality.

I’m planning to record a new one this weekend, but it’ll be another solo joint. Boo. . .

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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In Search Of . . . Gargantua

So back in April, I added the two hardcover collections of Madman comics to my Amazon wish-list. I used to read the Tundra issues of Madman back in my college days, and thought it would be nice to catch up on almost 20 years of work from Mike Allred.

Problem was, the newer volume, Madman Atomica, is still in print, but 2007’s Madman Gargantua isn’t. Its list price for the 850-page book was $125 but used sellers were asking around $150 and higher. I could afford it, but it wasn’t that big a priority. Maybe it’ll get reissued sometime, I thought. And maybe it’d be more fun to stop in or call comic stores and see if they had it in stock.

Now, I have no idea if normal people experience anything like this, but for a comic reader, there’s a great joy in finding This One Book I’m Looking For.

I don’t even know if the thrill is gone, since we live in a world of near-infinite, and infinitely available, entertainment. Everything can be ordered online, or downloaded for immediate gratification. Do back issues matter anymore, if everything’s been collected in a reprint?

And it wasn’t just comics for me; I also used to hunt down books with the same in-person fervor. Of course, there’s a greater disappointment in finding the book you’ve been searching for, because of the realization that it’ll take a lot longer to read than a long-sought comic will. There’s also the disappointment of finding the object of your quest in a boring location. In my sophomore year of college, I finally stumbled across a copy of William Gaddis’ first novel, The Recognitions, on the shelves of a Brentano’s Books in a suburban NJ mall. No dark, dingy used bookshop or literary salon: just fluorescent lighting and blue-gray carpeting in a mall of Rt. 206.

One of my best finds was in my college years, when I stopped into The Paperback Exchange, a since-closed comic store in Nanuet, NY, on the way home from college. I asked the owner, “You got a comic by Kyle Baker, called, ‘Why I Hate Saturn‘?” That one was impossible to find, but every cartoonist I liked was praising it to the heavens that year.

He said, “We’ve got one in the back room, but it’s a little dinged up. You still wanna buy it?”

“. . . Sure,” I said, trying not to betray the fact that I was ready to knife the guy and run into the stockroom to find that book.

I bought it, and was the envy of my geek pals back at Hampshire, until the second printing finally came out a few years later.

I have no idea if people still prowl for out-of-print comics and books. I mean, I’m allegedly a grown-up and don’t spend a lot of time hunting for comics, so none of this is meant to reflect the attitudes of the comic-reading world at large. But seeing “Available from these sellers” on Gargantua’s Amazon page reminded me of how I enjoyed scoping out shops for That One Book. I decided to make it my not-too-imperative mission to find that book.

Over the last few weeks, I called a number of NJ and NY comic stores about the book, but no one had it in stock. I didn’t expect much luck from suburban comic shops, since they tend to be mainstream-oriented. But they tend to have just one or two little unappreciated gems on the shelves. Perhaps the owner took a flyer on a certain paperback, figuring that one kid might buy it when he’s back from college. But it was to no avail. Shop after shop in the area hadn’t seen the book since it was first in print. Understandable, since a $125 book in a non-returnable market is quite a commitment for a store-owner, and it’s not like Madman was a household name or had a movie coming out.

On Tuesday evening, Amy & I went out for dinner. While she was in the restroom, I flicked through the Twitter feed on my iPhone. A tweet from Madman creator Mike Allred scrolled by: “Any comic shops out there still have MADMAN GARGANTUA at cover price or below? I know isotopecomics.com has a picture of it on a shelf…”

Then one of his followers tweeted “funny books in lake hiawatha new jersey does! I just saw it there”

I didn’t recognize the town, and immediately typed it into my Maps app. It was about 20 minutes away from the restaurant, and 30 minutes from my home. As Amy returned to the table, I searched the store online. Without looking up, I said, “We may be making a detour to Lake Hiawatha. It’s not too far out of the way.”

“What’s there?”

“A comic store that has This One Book I’ve been looking for.”

I can never tell if her knowing glances are as filled with pity as I think they are.

I called up the store’s site and discovered that it’s closed on Tuesdays. (That’s a standard practice for comic shops; since new comics arrive on Wednesday, Tuesdays tend to do the least business.) I decided to hit the store immediately after work on Wednesday.

Before calling the store in the morning to make sure they had the book, I started thinking about how high I’d go over cover price. After all, $125’s already pretty steep for a comic collection, and he did have me over a barrel, since it’s not like I could just go to another store down the street to buy it. I concluded, if the price got anywhere near the used sellers on Amazon ($165 today), I would bail.

Around 10:30 a.m., I rang the store up. I asked the owner if he had the book in stock. “Sure do! Now this is the first one, the out-of-print one,” he said.

“That’s the one I’m looking for. What time are you open till tonight?” You must understand: I actually thought that either Mike Allred or some fan was going to swoop into this little town in suburban NJ and buy this rare treasure if I didn’t make the trip that very day.

“Nine p.m.”

“Great! And how much is the book?”

“Well, the list price is $125 . . . but I can let you have it for $100.”

God bless comic shop owners and their failure to grasp supply-and-demand.

After going home and walking and feeding the doggies first, I drove down to the shop. It was one town over from where I occasionally bought comics in high school. The owner took the copy of Gargantua out from the counter — yes, I’d asked him to put it aside when I called — and gave me the brief tour of his shop. It was small, but well frequented on New Comics Day, with several customers coming through during my 10-15 minutes there. He tried to gauge my interest in LOST, the Captain America movie, and DC Comics’ impending relaunch of 52 (!) of its titles, but soon figured out that my interests were on the indie side of the scene, not the superhero end of things.

He showed me a shelf or two of books that were part of his 50% off FAIL SALE, and I scoured that for overlooked treasure. I wound up with a recent Trondheim children’s book (I hear it’s not great, but it is Trondheim), a Beto Hernandez collection I didn’t own (hard to believe), and KIRBY FIVE-OH!, an oversized book collecting pieces from the 50 years of Jack Kirby’s career. Nothing I needed, but lots of things that I’d enjoy, esp. at half price.

As he rang me up, the owner tossed a freebie comic in my bag: it was a preview of the aforementioned relaunch of DC’s titles. I looked in horror at the cover of the preview — a new, “modern” Superman, who apparently wears patched jeans, leather boots, and grey knee-high socks (?) — tumbling into the mix with my purchases. I figured that six months of Kirby’s career showed more creativity and vitality than all of the 52 “creative” teams and titles previewed in that comic. At home that evening, I flipped through the preview and revised my opinion: two months.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get to the ginchy adventures of Frank Einstein . . .