Sad Emails

The local theatre issued a surprising email a few days back. For years, they've hosted a new-play competition in two ranges: the classic three-act play and the one-act. The play I directed was that year's one-act winner. This contest is national, and the theatre takes it seriously. They produce both plays in the appropriate venues; the one-act gets a luncheon performance with the playwright, and the three-act gets a full run with the theatre. It's the most ambitious effort the theatre undertakes, and they get good response from hopeful writers.

But this recent email suggests that may be over. The theatre announced they will not offer a new play performance this year. Citing the lack of a director (for which I may have been solicited recently) and a cool reception by patrons to past winners, the play won't be produced. I wonder how that will affect future submissions to the contest; a production of the winning play was surely a draw for hopefuls. I still hold that they should cut back on the number of shows each year and avoid burning out actors and directors. It seems, each season, they are forced to announce cancellations and a policy to rearrange tickets sold for canceled shows. That has to crimp season ticket sales.

+  +  +

I got an email from my ex a few days back saying her mom, my first mother-in-law, died. I hadn't spoken with her since 2001, and our final words were unhappy. She was of the mind her daughter and I were fated to be together and would reconcile magically if we were patient. I objected, saying any possible reconciliation would require her daughter to step up and act like an adult. She was nice to me, and I suspect she was relieved her daughter found a guy who treated her well. When her daughter and I reunited in the mid-'90s (after she cheated), she said she did a dance of joy. She and Your Sister met only once, at my first wedding. I may have pictures of them together. The only time I talk to my ex is when some one's near death. It doesn't make me enthused to crack open her emails when her name appears in my account.

+  +  +

The sidekick didn't sleep through the night, but he did allow me to put him down and read to him. That's progress.

Picture of the Day
Mister Rogers is a mean art critic.

You Will All Fear My Bat Bomb

Our usual routine for the sidekick is to wind him down around 6:30. He gets Prevacid and Vitamin D, a change of clothes, milk (from the bottle or tap), and a cuddle for sleep. That changed in the last few weeks as he's eaten more solid food. This means he's taking in less milk, and Your Sister is making less. Because she doesn't have to pump as often, there's less milk for me to feed him with. That obliges her to nurse him at night to put him down. He would often wake up after an hour, and a quick cuddle would put him down again. A few hours later we would wake him up, change the diaper, and top him off. And he'd usually wake up at least once throughout the night.

Recently though a few changes have helped him sleep through the whole night. First, because he's outdoor more often, he gets an evening bath to slough off the sunscreen. Then we put him in special overnight diapers -- thicker, more absorbent -- before Your Sister nurses him. Lastly, we don't wake him up. The hope is that his increased day activities (including his new skill of crawling) would wear him out for longer sleep. All of these seem to work. For the past two nights, he's slept for nearly 11 hours.

But because Your Sister has been the one to put him down so often, he won't surrender to sleep without her. He used to allow me to put him down after a bottle. We now have to tag-team him to sleep, and I worry this will make miserable our future babysitters. We need to train him to trust me again even if it means a later bedtime.

+  +  +

I traced the Avengers art and will start inking it soon. I also bought artists "trading cards," blank tiny squares of artboard. I'm going to make sketches on them and sell them cheap at the convention. Some will be drawn beforehand, others I'll do by request at the show. I bought three packs at the downtown art store, True Blue, and was informed they've sold like hotcakes lately. The clerk asked if I knew why there is sudden demand, and I told him about the convention. He hadn't heard about it, and that doesn't surprise me. The convention is relying on radio ads this year, and their visual promotion is greatly reduced. I fear (as does the local comic store owner) that this is a bad gamble, and turnout may suffer.

Well, I at least will pick up the slack with my own fliers and posters about town, including True Blue and the comic store. Wherever I see fliers for bands, Imma gonna put up my ad, using the rejected art for the collector card. I'll also send in a press release to the local paper again. Hopefully, if they're smart, they'll turn it into local-interest story with a small interview. They didn't do that last year, despite the press release I sent them. Last year, I didn't know what to expect at any stage of this. This year, I'm on solid ground, and I intend to make a significant push before and during the show. I intend to be a major local presence.

Picture of the Day
You will all fear my Bat bomb!

Blood Don't Want No Help, Blood Don't Get No Help.

The red blood cell donation appointment was for 8:45 Saturday morning. The local drive organizer called me a few days prior to make make the appointment, and I had already decided to show up to give the larger donation. I had done it back in December, and they need as many folks as they can get.

When I showed up at 8:45, I was given a sticker that had my name on it and another sticker that identified me as a double donor. If I had any more stickers, I would look like a TGIFriday's waiter. I was directed past the pint donors to a special section for double donors. I was told I didn't even need a number for the normal deli system for registration and donation. This was VIP service. I was summoned to a station and asked for my donation card. Within three minutes I was told I couldn't do the big donation. I was one day inside the mandated window between donations.

Apparently this happens often. The organizers jump the gun, ignoring the Red Cross deadlines or forgetting how to count. This local organizer is gung-ho, as I learned when I last made an appointment. I think the area charities compete for the biggest blood drive, and the Red Cross is so desperate for blood that they put up with these hollow scheduling shenanigans. But I was there and sitting in the nurse's station, and I figured I might as well give the usual pint. It was done quickly as always -- I bleed free and easy -- and I ran into my buddy Travis as I ate Swiss Rolls. Breakfast of champions, right there.

A teacher buddy came over that afternoon, and we three talked divorces and failed relationships over beer. Your Sis and I watched Good Night and Good Luck, the Murrow/McCarthy film, and I took the boy for a walk through the neighborhood. I did that again the next morning while Your Sister went to church. And I watched him Monday morning during her ENT appointment.

She was told the vertigo is symptomatic. Nothing irregular was seen or surmised, and she was told to call them if it happened again. If it does within the year, they'll do an MRI. Otherwise, if she's no longer nursing, she might get strong steroids. She's mostly fine now.

I talked to My Mom about plans for the summer and mentioned our second thoughts on taking the sidekick to DragonCon. Would she consider watching him for a few days? She was delighted at the idea. Giddy. I think She's already planning on it.

I am within a day or two of closing up the comic. I've made PDFs of the pages and proofed it and worked on the copy for the inside covers and maybe finalized the cover. The Avengers pencils are done, and now I need to trace and ink it.

I reassembled the lawnmower and started watering the garden with liquid fertilizer. I just ordered sweet potato plants from an online catalog.

Picture of the Day
The cover as it stands today.

Little background on the cover blurb: One of my earliest comics was Magnus Robot Fighter about a future man who fights robots. I wanted to tip my hat to that.

I'll post some preview panels to Facebook within a few days.

Mixed Signals

Turns out Your Sister's ENT appointment was in Asheville, and she discovered this when she arrived at the local office instead. She'll now go to the right office Monday, and I'll keep the sidekick at my office while she get a lookover. She was able, however, to make a school meeting to interview principal candidates.

The county doesn't know what the next school year will look like until the state passes a budget. The town is warning employees that school staffs may be cut, but the local board members are on record as opposing teacher cuts. That's reassuring. The state is also debating a bill that would let homeschoolers and private school students play on public-school teams. Our county already allows this if the students take a certain number of public-school classes, but the new bill, as it stands, would allow them to play if they otherwise never step foot on a public campus. And that's the shit of horses.

If the jersey says "Ox Hoof High," how can someone not attending Ox Hoof High be on the team? How do they represent the school? If one need not attend to play, then I assume I can sign up. No, playing on a team (and ultimately competing for athletic scholarships) is a privilege offered for following that school policies, including attendance and grades. If you reject the school, you also reject its afterschool programs. In for a penny, in for a pound. Otherwise, stay home.

Picture of the Day
This is where I am so far with the museum artwork. It's tight in some places, weak in others. I'd like to have the pencils done by this weekend so I can ink. I 'm still working on polishing the comic and want to take that to the printer by next weekend. That will give them a month to do the job.

I'll bet money that the museum asked for original art donations assuming they'd get whatever was lying around the artists' studios. Maybe a portfolio piece, maybe an elaborate doodle. Now that I know this is an auction, I want to give them art that can bring in the most money. I think some folks will make the mistake of donating material with limited appeal. I mean, I could give them a sketch of eMMA or Focus, but who knows who they are? Why would they spend more than $10 on that?

However, if I use established characters, there's a greater chance the fans of those characters will pay top dollar. Hence, the Avengers. Also, the piece features the four Avengers movie franchises -- Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America -- and Hawkeye, who appears in at least one of those films. That could attract even casual collectors of original art or those who want to bank on the success of the two films this year and the Avengers film next year.

So what we have here is a classic Avengers line-up facing the first Avengers foe, Loki, Thor's brother. He's holding a Cosmic Cube, one of Marvel's cosmic-level thingamabobs that make big messes. Marvel loves these things -- the Ultimate Nullifer, the Infinity Gauntlet -- but the cube is the simplest for comic fans to grasp. It's a cube, and it makes wishes real. It's not good for bad guys to have, and Loki is about to bust it out.

Here's the original sketch and the artboard drawing as it was this morning. It still needs the tweaks.

Drawing Hulk doing the Hulk thing is a singular joy.

New Projects

We're still doing daily notes for the sidekick. We chart diapers and meals and small achievements. We've done this since she went into labor. You might remember that I grabbed a pad and jotted down the time since her water broke, and those notes grew through the delivery and recuperation, and just never stopped taking the notes. Your Sister is considering using these to star a book on childrearing. I have two initial reactions:

1) I know she loves writing nonfiction, stretching back to her university research papers. She's got documentation at hand. The boy is content to play by himself for an hour at a time. She has opportunity and motive. If this was a criminal scheme, she'd be Ma Barker.

2) She's ready to go back to work. I think her brain is starving for projects beyond the routines of cleaning and feeding the deputy. Her recent dizziness didn't help.Now that it's fading and he's more self-contained, she's got the itch to get to work.

Not that the childrearing books we have are bad, you understand. But they're dry. They also constantly mention all the ailments a baby might suffer, and it makes us paranoid. We think a baby book can prepare parents without panicking them. We fell victim to that a few times and felt like schmucks when we realized we were paranoid.

She asked if I knew how to get a publisher, and I mentioned the various magazines for wannabe writers at bookstores. I also said some pitches to publishers or agents involve forwarding the first chapters of a book proposal. That way the people who decide to buy a book know the writer is serious and capable. And I think she should sit down and find her tack and voice to see if she wants to see this to the end. She might burn out. I know I skirt that line when I work on projects.

The boy is starting to imitate. He can approximate small words like "belt."

I sketched out the museum art on an 11x17 board, and it went fairly well. I intend to make a detailed pencil drawing before tracing and inking that on another board. So far, this looks pretty good.

Picture of the Day
This is what 25 comic pages on art boards look like.

New Additions

Memo: If you want to make yogurt in a crockpot, and the instructions tell you to insulate the pot with blankets, you must turn off the pot first. Otherwise, the plastics on the pot shell melt, and the yogurt burns onto the pot glaze.We now have a new crockpot. Yogurt was successfully made last night.

We also have a new printer. I was tired of questing for the cartridges for the Epson, and I got an HP printer that appears to use commonly found cartridges. Now I can make comic proofs at home. It's allegedly wireless, but seems to require a connection to a computer that's on for the wireless to work. That doesn't sound wireless.But it prints, as a printer should. And now I must dispose of a printer in addition to other old hardware. Like the crockpot we chucked yesterday.

Your Sister feels good enough to drive now. We see the ENT tomorrow.

Picture of the Day
I contacted the museum, and the requested original artwork will indeed go for an auction, and the bidders become eligible to win a trip. This is a really nice promotion for the convention. I've got my artwork idea roughly sketched. This is the classic Avengers lineup taking on Thor's brother Loki. Now that the party is an auction, I'm getting competitive. I want one of the high bids.

Earth, Give Me Your Nutrients

Your Sister is better but still a bit woozy. The medicine made her sleepy(-ier), and I minded the deputy for most of the past four days. He's eating meat which we mix in his veggies, and his milk intake is much reduced. He has begun bouncing to music, whether it be a steering-wheel toy or Lady Gaga (that was this morning). He is also waving on command. As he becomes more mobile, he's falling more as well. He's constantly bruised or scraped despite our best childproofing efforts.

I started the garden this weekend. The tiller I rented was cheaper and weaker than the one I normally rent, and I shan't get that one again. It was useless. I mixed in 14 bags of manure on the soil, totaling 700 pounds of poo that I threw around. I also earned my first sunburn of 2011. After four hours and a long shower, I discovered two seed packets I forgot to plant: snow peas and pumpkins. I'll save them for later in the year, when it's cooler and I am recovered. I gots the aches, but they are valid and worthy of hanging on my mantle. This is my first real workout of the year, and I intend to build on it  now that the comic is all but done.

Speaking of which, I learned the museum hosting the convention next month is holding a party the night before and it requesting art donations from those selling books at the show. Including me. I have until May 6 to give them a piece of artwork, and I'll make a new one for the show. I suspect the art will be auctioned for charity, but at least for a time, I'll have art hanging in the local museum.

Just as I try to make proofs of my comic at home, my printer is virtually kaput. I'll be looking at new ones this week. It's gotten more difficult to find ink for this one too, and I've been looking at an upgrade for a while.

Last night was WrestleMania, the biggest wrestling PPV of the year, and I drank the pint of Winter Ale you gave me last year. Twas good.

We started watching The Tudors, Showtime's series on Henry VIII. Netflix Streaming is marvelous.

Picture of the Day
This is the costume for the new Wonder Woman TV series. Pants make sense, but these don't look right. Maybe they're cut too high. Also the eagle breastplate is much too small. Still, a new WW TV show!

Hectic

I'm home with Your Sister who has seemingly had a vertigo attack. She was dizzy Thursday morning, and we saw the doctor that afternoon. She was given steroids, an antibiotics, and medicine to fight nausea and dizziness. The worst seems to be over, but the doctor has made an appointment with an ENT before we do a CAT scan, if needed. The doctor is concerned that this happened before, including during the pregnancy.

We also are fighting another ant invasion. We called the local Terminex office, with whom we have a service contract, and we're currently waiting to hear back. I now question the value of our contract.

I'm that much closer to the comic's completion. The cover is mostly colored, and the pages have been tweaked and lettered. I hope to print a proof this weekend after getting the garden started.

I moved the Doom posts to their own blog at Cooking With Villainy.

Did y'all pass around the shirt artwork for an OK? I can send the layers to the printer when it's approved.

It's Almost Happening

The comic is lettered now after a whirlwind weekend of inking. I planned to be gardening, but rain kept us indoors and required us to move the tiller reservation to next weekend. And buoyed by the basketball tourney and a mild-mannered sidekick, I was able to ink and ink and ink. I scanned in the pages and lettered atop them and have printed out the first full-issue proof.

That's not to say it's done. I intend to fix some panels and tweak the script, and I still need to color the cover. But I'm 80% done, and it's not April yet. I'm surprised. But I shouldn't be, I suppose. I've spent virtually every free minute inking.

I'll soon face the prospect of discovering I've committed an embarrassing crime against creativity and commerce. There's a writer named Warren Ellis whose made some headway from comics to novels and back, and his advice is to produce a work, make it public, learn what you did wrong, and make the next thing better. It's going to be embarrassing he says. But if you learn, the next work will surpass it.

I wanted to make a comic of traditional length, and I've done that. I wanted it to be clear, and I think I have. Next year, I'll make the comic prettier.

+  +  +

The sidekick turned 9 months old and had his check-up Monday morning. They painted his teeth with fluoride because our water system removed fluoride about four years ago. They checked his blood for anemia and took his stats, and that was that. The doctor made suggestions for dandruff shampoo and lotion and said his weight seems to reflect his level of activity. So far, he's OK. He's forgotten how to sleep through the night, and the doctor suggested giving him extra protein to make him sleepy.

+  +  + 

And this makes the 1,002 blog post. Hm.

Picture of the Day
The first picture taken from Mercury's orbit. A high school friend of Your Sister worked on the new satellite that's now orbiting the planet.

Let's Talk Cap

The deputy now has six front teeth moving out of his gums. Suddenly, he's very unhappy.

I into the 20s of my comic pages and hope to be done with them by next weekend.

Moving Picture of the Day
Here's the first official trailer for Captain America, one of at least three Marvel movies coming out this year alongside Thor and X-Men: First Class. This and Thor fill out the individual film series with Hulk and Iron Man that will lead to Avengers, the supergroup film coming out next year.

I'm surprised they spend so much time on his origin here. I'm particular about the way superhero origins are done in films, and mostly I'm against turning a film into one long origin story. They all end with our hero finding a resolve to improve at least the world around him with his new powers. That's a given. The second Hulk movie did it right: Show the origin in the opening credits and get on with an actual story. Captain America should work the same way, and the trailer shows his origin can be communicated in about two minutes.

Now, as a longtime reader, I'm happy to see two things with his origin:
1. It follows the comics, except for one new wrinkle, which is
2. It adds Iron Man's dad.

The fight scenes don't get as much attention, and they, so far, look thin. So do the city street scenes. Marvel is happy to make their hero films on the cheap, and it's mostly worked for them. I worry the veneer will be obvious in this film. Still, a WWII superhero movie -- and a big-screen Captain America film -- may be too good a notion to miss.Even if he seems to be fighting someone other than Nazis.

You may wonder just how a WWII hero can find himself alongside heroes in the modern day. I suspect the film will end with that explanation. I hope they maintain that story from the comics too.

I'll Be Glad to See March Go Away

It's been a harried few days.

Someone I met after I moved up here died Saturday after a very quick hospice set-up at his home. He had been sick off and on for years now, but he was diagnosed with cancer late last year, and his body was weakened from the treatment. Your Sister drove to Asheville numerous times since Friday, and I spent Sunday watching the sidekick so she could visit the family. He was twice surrounded by strangers and shaken from his schedule, and he was miserable. We had horrible nights afterward where he was anxious and inconsolable. We could only fill him full of milk until he passed out. He showed some separation anxiety before all this, but that was mild in comparison. He's exhausted, we're exhausted, and we're on the periphery of another family dealing with another cancer death. It's rattled loose the memories of 2008 and navigating My Mom through two family funerals within a month.

He's settled into two verbal patterns. We all know the traditional baby talk sounds of ba-ba and ga-ga, but his sounds are distinct. He strings together the hard consonants like a mantra or a drum loop.

we bought the beginnings of our garden supplies: potatoes to quarter, seed packets, and ground cover. Your Sister put up black netting on the back deck to keep the sidekick from shoving his head through the bars.

I'm making progress by switching time between inking and lettering. I'm up to page 18 of the 24-pager, including time needed to rewrite entire scenes atop the artwork.

The sketch of page 8.

The artwork with lettering.

I spoke to the father of a student spending time in Japan this semester. Her foreign-study group is bringing everyone back home early seemingly so the dorms can be used by refugees from the areas near the nuclear plants.

I filled out a March Madness bracket on ESPN and correctly picked 9 of the Sweet Sixteen teams. I have UNC winning the whole thing. We also learned a student who requested recommendation letters from Your Sister got into UNC on Friday. She's one of three we know of going there in the fall. I spent many an hour last week drawing the comic while listening to basketball

The time change seems to have dusted off my initiative programming. I'm getting up very early and want to do everything. That may be why I drew and inked the shirt artwork all last night. Check your email. 

Cold Busted

All three non-furry members of Chez Debacle have colds, making us a clanging household of head-gunk noise. How welcoming we can be to three people over the weekend remains to be seen. I am downing orange juice and various cold medicine, including Cepacol lozenges that should be labeled as Pickled Anesthesia.

I lettered five pages of the comic now and hope to have another five finished before the guests arrive. I assume I will get no comic work done while we host them. That's not so bad. I could use a break, and I'm in a good spot to halt; I have mostly fight scenes ahead of me. Those are easier to work than panels with lots of talking heads and backgrounds.

Picture of the Day
Ring up my sick candy, good sir. And hand me a pack of your finest medicinal tobacco.

Picture of the Day

From Bill Rhodes, the photographer of the Blue Ride Rollergirls, comes this shot showing off the official jersey logo based on my submission. More can be seen here.

I'm very tempted o pint up my own shirt with the original logo and put my Jeff Leppard name on the back. And maybe the number 19 to represent the band's number of arms and legs.

Feeling the Crunch

Thursday was an odd night for the boy. He had a late nap that afternoon and hadn't eaten for hours. I thought he'd have his milk and immediately conk out. But no. He was wired and/or cranky. Orajel did nothing. It took much, much longer to put him down than usual, and we had to trade him off to keep our tempers steady. We tried cooling him down and giving more milk and leaving him in his crib to wind down on his own. It took almost three hours before he finally slept, and only today did we learn the reason: He's now teething four upper teeth, not just two.

I learned this while holding him upside down in the daycare parking lot. I took a lunch break and met Your Sister and My Mom there for a tour. It seems solid. It's a clutch of classrooms around a large common from. Each class is broken into development levels, and the classes are small. If he were to go into the daycare now, he'd be one of eight in his class. We put down a deposit today, and he'll start in July. We'll take him for a few hours that first week to get him adjusted to our absence.

Speaking of which, we got a sitter and attended the roller derby season opener Saturday. Between the jerseys, the program, the scoreboard, and the season passes, my team displayed three variations of the logo I created. But still, I got to see my typeface and design (that logo is 80% my work) zoom around the track. It also just happened to be the most competitive bout yet seen in Asheville, and Your Sister got to watch. We sat with some ECU alums and left right after the second bout began.

I stayed home yesterday to mind the boy and moved from office stuff to comic stuff to household chores. I am on page 13 now, inking and scanning as I go. I can work on lettering when I can't put pen to paper, and I feel the crunch to get this comic done. My breath quickens. I try to prevent myself from redrawing panels, but in some cases it must be done. For instance, page five was planned to have a schematic of the typical robot fighter. I even drew it on the page, but just as I was to ink it, it looked flat and thoughtless. I quickly changed the image but kept the idea of the panel.

The sketch.

The limp pencils. 

The salvage job.

I can't do this for every page or even every other page. I had my chance to draw, and now I have to ink. Things need doing.

Your Sister was diagnosed with severe tendinitis in her left wrist and told this is common in nursing mothers. She's relieved to hear it. She took a cortisone shot.

We might be hosting one of her longtime friends and her two daughters this weekend. I wonder who will be exhausted the most at the end of each day: them or our boy.

Overthinking It

I'm trying to come up with a catchier title for the fundraiser, and the closest I've come is turning Pirates of the Caribbean into Pirates Who Are Caring Beings.

So, yeah.

I'll have sketches Monday. Sans title.

Progressing in a Progressive Manner

The deputy is now able to sign "milk" with one hand. It's simple for us: You curl your fingers like you're milking a cow. But he's only recently built up the dexterity to do this with one hand. Before, he was bending his fingers with the other hand. Now, he stretches out his arm and signs away when he's hungry. He still has to master the appropriate audience for this, however. Last night, he was asking Conan O'Brien. I suppose he was confused by the beard.

He seems to be past the worst of the new teething. Neither of us had to give him Orajel yesterday.

We may have found our daycare center. There's one near the Asheville Sam's Club, meaning I can take him there and pick him up during my commute. Depending on the weather tomorrow, Your Sister will take My Mom there during their weekly visit.

+  +  +

I started sketching the golf logo, and I'll have at least two versions of the requested image. I'll see if I can break off some other designs for variety's sake. Hey, does this event have a name? I can maybe make a banner with the name in the logo design.

Picture of the Day
From Bad Astronomy comes this picture of sunspots. It's the beans.

Skyline

Constant Reader writes:

Here is the actual idea, in the words of the committee chair (and feel free to jazz this up...whatever you would want to wear as a T shirt with maybe 2 colors of ink):

"So my idea was to have a pirate (and it doesn’t have to be peedee the pirate) swinging a golf club at a golf ball. The shaft of the club says ‘fights’ and the golf ball says ‘cancer.’"

That's doable. I'll work up some sketches through this weekend and send you them via email.

The inking slowed down a little as I redrew panels, including the schematic I mentioned yesterday. The latest panel was a birds-eye shot of an arena, and just thinking about making the perspective grids that made my eyes cross. I instead redrew a close-up of the caged ring on the arena floor.

The comic's biggest perspective challenge ended this weekend. I had in mind a specific shot of a skyline with the superhero HQ towering above it. I ran a similar image in last year's comic, but it was from below. That allowed me to limit the skyline and tower to one corner of the panel and use negative space for the rest of it. It was a lazy cheat I justified by saying it was an arty camera placement. This time, I needed to establish the city and the tower's prominence. Also, I wanted heroes flying about on their daily patrols. And it happened thusly:

This sketch is about four inches wide. In the bottom left will be an editor's note revealing the theme song of the radio show that bookends the story.

This is the pencil version. I laid down a perspective grid and sketched the structures and figures atop it. Who are these heroes? I don't know. Doesn't matter. I needed flying bodies.

Here's the inks. I randomly delineated building structures, but I think I got across the idea of a metropolis. But, of course, not THE Metropolis.

The convention organizers are promoting the revelation of this year's special guest. They'll spill tomorrow. I can't get too excited as I probably won't get a chance to see whoever it is.

I may have tried another perspective angle after watching the recently released police helicopter footage from 9/11. I saw it yesterday, and it conveys the incredible size of the buildings. As a lifelong country mouse, I can barely fathom structures that large and tall. The footage gets me dizzy, and I wonder if it somehow trips my brain's depth perception in a way little else does. It's possible I'm not afraid of heights after all, but those instances of vertigo are the lone times my brain actually computes depth.

Bossh Office: Social Network

The doctor said our deputy might have the diarrhea for another week, and it was normal. He suggested a diet to settle his stomach and sent him on his way. And the problem cleared up almost immediately. He's fine now. However, he's teething again, and we expect to see his two front top teeth any minute. He responds well to Orajel, and his sleep isn't affected.

We spent Friday night on the couch as we began a new routine of catching up on the 2010 Oscar nominees via DirecTV's PPV service. It was all her idea, and we kicked it off with Social Network. So let's bring in our blog movie experts to chime in.

Chipper Bossh: Social Network was written by Aaron Sorkin of West Wing and Sports Night. It was directed by David Fincher. The soundtrack was cowritten by Trent Reznor. I loved it before I watched it.



Surly Bossh: And it starred a whole bunch of nobodies and Justin Timberlake.




Chipper Bossh: Who were all great. I can see why the lead actor was nominated for an Oscar. He carries the film.




Surly Bossh: Yeah yeah. Now let's talk about what the film does wrong. It ends abruptly. Just as the lead character finally has to confront inconvenience and failure, the film walks off  and leaves him there. We get text to fill us in on what happened after, and that stinks.




Chipper Bossh: I gotta agree. The story reaches a truly dramatic conflict -- what would normally be the end of a proper film's second act -- and poof. Credits. But otherwise, the script is sterling. Even the stock bad guys --



Surly Bossh: Who are straight out of every '80s college comedy.







Chipper Bossh: Right. Even they are sympathetic. Likable even. Although one wonders why such allegedly smart business students left themselves vulnerable to losing their online creation by not drafting a contract with the protagonist. Still, the film flies by, buoyed by crackling dialogue and big doings (legal, technological, political, social) made very accessible. The movie earned my interest and kept it. If I wasn't so enthralled, I wouldn't be so bothered by the ending.

Surly Bossh: There are some who bitch about the depiction of women, all groupies and drunks.







Chipper Bossh: Not true. The film's two most important women bookend the film and tell the lead what he needs to hear, not that he'll believe them. They may be the most sensible people in the film because they refuse to be sucked in by the lead's enigmatic brilliance. 



Surly Bossh: Just saying, the film fails the Bechdel Test.







Chipper Bossh: But those allegedly unappealing women are what those guys attract. They are buried in their work and looking for pretty companions to bolster them. If you don't like the women, you have to consider they reflect the tastes of the men we're watching for two hours.

Social Network is about earnest folks, not folks with the best judgment. In fact, had the lead displayed even a touch more humanity, none of this would have happened. Like Fincher's Fight Club, this is a movie about a  smart manchild who can't bring himself to deal with his feelings for a woman and channels a successful, angry campaign based on that inability. Except he winds up richer than Lucas.


Surly Bossh: Whoa.






Chipper Bossh: Tell me about it.

 +  +  +

Your Sister attended a weekend GOP town hall meeting with great hope as she walked in and disappointment as she walked out. One of the two featured speakers no-showed, and the other had no interest in feedback from people, like her, who spoke in words other than talking points. Wisconsin has turned teachers into a polarizing profession, and she hoped she could bring an inside perspective to the state representatives and townies. But no. They were entrenched, and left her deflated. This meeting was set up to conduct official party business and rally new folks to the cause. They may have shooed her away. She made a crockpot bean dish for the potluck dinner, and she was at least happy that most people liked it.

"Of course," I said. "You used only white beans."

 +  +  +

I made headway on the comic, starting page five this morning. I need to pencil a panel again; it's weak and thoughtless. It's schematic of a robot woman, and I dusted off my anatomy book to approximate the muscles and bones which will be adjusted for a robotic undercarriage.

Picture of the Day
Behold, the taxonomy of rap names. 

Spooky Ooky

Though Amazon, which I have realized is the world's bazaar, I have received two books that shaped my young brains.Now, remember that the '70s turned the supernatural into as valid an outlet for curiosity and speculation as any then-current events. As prevalent as today's reality shows, stories about weird encounters abounded. Bigfoot was Osama Bin Laden. The Bermuda Triangle was yesterday's Snooki. New Age mysticism and fringe psychology made anything seem possible, and aliens and vanishings powered conspiracies reaching everyone from Elvis to the world before Jesus. Consider Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Many approached it as a documentary. Those weird Batboy stories in the Weekly World News? Yeah, that was the 1970s, except the evening news did the reporting. And then there as In Search Of ... and Project UFO.

While scifi remained verdant as ever, the mainstream interest in scifi movies and TV shows stemmed from a semi-earnest hope that the filmmakers were onto something. The inclusion of the Force in Star Wars wasn't just a handy plot device; it was an acknowledgment of psychic events allegedly happening all about us. Late-night talk shows frequently featured Uri Geller, a supposed telekinetic and psychic. He was considered legit. His "powers" were a matter of constant debate.

So my little mind had no cynicism about such matters. Ghosts, the Loch Ness monster, aliens -- all as real as Lite Brites. When I found the above books in the Blackstock Elementary School library, I read them repeatedly, desperate to commit to memory documentations and suppositions that I took as gospel. I hadn't seen the books since I left the school. Until very recently. I found the ghost book at the local library, and it inspired me to see if I could buy used copies. New editions had no appeal. I wanted books that once moved through libraries. Luckily, you can buy almost anything from Amazon.

In a nice melange of Your Family and mine, I discovered only upon opening the shipping envelope that the ghost book came from Edwards Air Force Base. That gives it a slight patina of credibility. It's a government copy.

 

I considered that I was trying to mold the deputy into a new version of me, but I dismissed that. No, these books are for me, and he's welcome to them with no obligation of going as bonkers for them as I did.

+  +  + 

I stayed home Thursday to help Your Sister. She had a school appointment in the afternoon at the same time she was supposed to take My Mom and the boy to the weekly family-center visit. She was scrambling to polish her resume, and I could tell Wednesday night that she needed back-up. I took Mom and him to the family center for my first visit. It's a free activity center for kids, and the regulars and employees knew him. He doesn't seem to recognize them yet. Mom brought a heaping pile of photos to show Your Sister, many dating before me.

He is going to the doctor Friday morning to see about this stomach bug he seems to have developed. It's a horror show in his diapers, and he's refusing solid food. He's downing milk as normal, hopefully keeping him hydrated.

+  +  +

I started inking, and it's fraught with peril at every turn. I move slowly for now. In a few pages, I'll have the hang of it again.

Pencils Down

I worked for about a half hour on the cover image before deciding that I couldn't focus so tightly on it. I had to start inking so I could start lettering so I could start coloring. For better or worse, I need to move on. I tightened the pencils -- darkening the contours and filling the shaded areas -- before tracing it on a lightbox. And here's the final pencil version after the earlier sketch work.

I'll ink it after I work through the pages. That way, my inking muscles will be the strongest when I tackle the cover.

We spent the evening with the TV set on a satellite radio station for '80s music. She organized work and tax information while I drew at the kitchen table.

The gun-control debate continues in the newspaper, and it's drifted again into people quoting long-dead presidents who never saw a revolver. I also got something in the mail I'll talk about in a few days. It deserves its own blogololy.

I picked up a new babygate and perused the Babies R Us safety section. We'll probably need to buy teething guards for the crib find a way to secure the TV. Tall widescreen TVs are wobbly.