Ramblin' with Roger

A Most Peculiar Day

I’ve now been to two conferences this month, which I’ll have to tell you about sometime, both within NYS, but sufficiently out of town to change the schedule. For instance, last Wednesday to Friday, I was at conference #2. Grandpa picks up Lydia, takes her to the grandparents’ house. Carol meets me in Hamilton, NY, then the next day, we’re off to Oneonta, where we go shopping and to the National Soccer Hall of Fame (more about that anon) before we see our daughter. Sunday, church, Mother’s day dinner about an hour away, then home. Spent more time on NY Route 23 than I thought was possible.

But when I’m home during the school week, it’s most regular. Wednesday was a bit of a variation on the theme.
*Take bus #1 – the child to day care. Check.
*Take bus #2 to downtown (that was so late, at some point, it stopped picking up passengers and only dropped some off, saying to bewildered patrons: “Another bus is right behind me”). Check.
*Play racquetball. Check.
*Wait for bus #3 that apparently came early, and there isn’t another for over two hours. Nuts.
*See my friend Bill Anderson, who tells me the Albany Public Library main branch is without power. Oh, and there are people there I need to talk with.
* Run back to the Y, hitch a ride with one of my rball competitors.
* Eat breakfast. Check.
* Work. Check.
* Go to lunch. I often eat with a couple folks, but one had left early, because a woman in her department had suddenly died at age 50, and their group all went to the service. There are maybe 200 people on our floor, and I had no idea who this person was, but felt badly anyway.
* I was working on a lengthy e-mail, answering a reference question, when at about 3:45 pm, the power in my whole building goes out. I mean, there were emergency tracking lights, but everything else was down, including, thankfully, that damn constant white noise that’s supposed to make working in cubicles more “soundproof”. (Note: it doesn’t, just adds to the din.) After about 15 minutes, it was evident that the power wasn’t coming back any time soon. It’s amazing what you can’t accomplish without a phone, e-mail, Internet connection, printer, copier… (Fortunately, the e-mail was saved, mostly intact when I got to work yesterday.)
* Catch a ride. Usually, I’d have taken a bus, but they’re only every 30 minutes. Get to the bridge I would normally take, but there’s a car on the side of the road, a police car and an ambulance, blocking one lane, and a bus, what would have been MY bus, stuck behind it.
* Change course, and go over to the library; the power’s STILL out. Go home.
* Carol arrives home with Lydia, who had her first visit to the dentist. After the appointment, she had gone over to my building, ironically, to finally see our offices – it’s been a year now – only to be asked by the security guard, “Are you sure he’s still there?” They called my number (fast busy signal), and the main number (ditto), then went home.
I suppose the dreariness of the day, plus a couple more ambulances I saw gave the day a very odd cast.
***
NBC has teases of their Fall Preview programs. I’ve watched them all, might check out a few in September, though don’t imagine watching any long-term. Didn’t find such info from the other networks, at least as of Wednesday. Nothing in the description of the CBS shows interested me especially, but I was intrigued by a couple descriptions of some ABC shows. I’ll admit I like the GEICO cavemen in 30-second bites, but to make a 22-minute (plus commercials!), 24-episode season of “sophisticated cave dudes living in modern-day Atlanta (who) will continually find themselves at odds with contemporary society and thus comment on today’s race relations” – how will that play? Then there’s that Grey’s Anatomy spinoff, which will get a short leash from me. Dirty Sexy Money is my “Studio 60” pick; that is, it looks the most interesting on paper. It features William Baldwin, Jill Clayburgh, Donald Sutherland and Peter Krause.

Oh, and speaking of NBC’s most disappointing show of 2006-07, this cheeky piece from AdAge, May 14, 2007, “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the TV Upfront …but Were Afraid (or Too Busy Watching YouTube Videos of Nora, the Piano-Playing Cat) to Ask” by By Simon Dumenco: “It’s worth noting that NBC chief Jeff Zucker has so far declined to apologize for the dramatic catastrophe, though he’s gone on the record saying: “If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have green-lit ‘Studio 60.’ All the available intelligence at the time suggested Aaron Sorkin was a brilliant TV auteur, but of course it turns out he’s a solipsistic schmuck.” Because formal cancellation of the show would involve an admission of an error in judgment, Zucker is said to instead be considering “de-authorizing” its green light.

Truth is, I’m looking forward to the end of THIS season because I have mucho shows gone unwatched. Scrubs, going back to April 5, The Office and My Name Is Earl from April 12, so I really DON’T what Michael did on The Office that should have gotten him fired, yet. Three Gilmore Girls, a couple each of Brothers & Sisters, Boston Legal, Grey’s Anatomys, several JEOPARDY! and news programs, and special about Ahmet Ertegun and (laugh if you want) Bob Barker. Except for The Closer, JEOPARDY and some news programs, nothing to be added after Sunday, when I tape (probably to watch in June) The Simpsons’ 400th episode and a show I have actually never seen before, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which is focused on an Albany County family.
***
Alan David Doane on the future of Comic Book Galaxy, which mentions, ahem, me.
***
I heard some folks complain that Paul Wolfowitz was driven out of his job heading the World Bank, not because he got his girlfriend a $60K raise, but because he was an architect of the war in Iraq. That’s quite possibly true, and somehow I’m OK with that. Next to go will be AG Alberto Gonzalez, who quite surprisingly, has me longing for the days of John Ashcroft?
***
Happy birthday, sister Marcia!
ROG

Cerebus 1, the Counterfeit

When I first started the blog, someone offered me the opportunity to write a weekly or biweekly column in some electronic publication about the history of FantaCo, the comic book store/mail order house/publisher/convention operator where I worked from May 1980 to November 1988 (actually longer, but that’s another story). I believed I could, because I had come across some old diaries that covered the period. But it proved to be harder than I thought. I still want to do it someday, but at least I want to address one of his specific questions from a year and a half ago, which was, how much did we pay for those counterfeit Cerebus #1s we sold?

For those of you not in the know, Cerebus the Aardvark was a black-and-white comic book by Dave Sim. Interestingly, when Dave Sim and his then-wife Deni came to FantaCon as guests on Saturday and Sunday, September 19 and 20, 1981, we didn’t even carry Cerebus because our distributor, Phil Seuling’s Seagate Distribution, didn’t/couldn’t carry Cerebus; I don’t know why. But this was a problem when Deni, who I didn’t know by sight, came to the FantaCo table on Saturday and demanded to know why we didn’t have any Cerebus. I told her we’d try to get some from somewhere. On Sunday, and this is a direct quote from my journal, “Deni Sim harassed the people at my [FantaCo’s] table re: not having Cerebus there, as tho’ the conversation I had w/ her had not taken place. Tom [Skulan, owner of FantaCo] later got her a ride to the airport, rightly fearing that she’d otherwise make a scene…”

Anyway, we subsequently started carrying Cerebus in the store. Then on Friday, April 23, 1982, Tom bought 54 VF/NM (very fine to near mint) copies of what was purported to be Cerebus #1 from a guy allegedly from Binghamton, my hometown, for $770, $700 from money Tom borrowed from Steve at our neighboring business, World’s Records, and $70 from the drawer. That’s about $14.25 each; I don’t know what a real Cerebus 1 was going for at the time, but I expect it was at least thrice that. I bought one copy for my girlfriend at the time, who was a fan of the book – I never was, for some reason.

On Sunday, Mitch Cohn from FantaCo called me. The Cerebus 1s we got were apparently counterfeit, since the ones Sparkle City had gotten that weekend were deemed so by an underground comics expert.

Monday, Tom, Mitch and I made a number of calls to comic distributors, the South Jersey FBI [I don’t remember why them in particular], and the Comics Journal. We bought our 54, Sparkle City 62, Longhorn Distribution 10, hundreds in the Bay Area, and who knows how many more, all between Friday and Sunday? Jay from Sparkle City believed the culprits were from a syndicate from Detroit. They were selling to Pacific Comics on this day, and somebody got the license plate numbers.

Wednesday, we believed we would be able to get our money back. Here are notes right from the journal: “the guy who sold them [to us] (who says he got ’em from Big Rapids) didn’t know they were frauds. Somehow, Silver Snail has something to do with this as well as one of Glenwood’s employees.” (Those companies were comic stores and/or distributors.)

Now that’s the last journal mention of the incident. In all likelihood, we discovered we wouldn’t get our money back – I have a vague recollection that the FBI wasn’t all that concerned over phony funny books – and we decided to sell the counterfeit Cerebus #1s as counterfeits for $20 or $25. I seem to recall that we eventually sold out of them.

Recently, I came across this discussion over the ethics of selling a counterfeit comic. Sure, we had over $700 invested in the product, but I never had any moral discomfort about selling them since we were very clear that they were fakes. Anyway, here’s a piece that describes how to tell the real one from the fake. ADD, that’s pretty much all I know on this topic.

Oh, not coincidentally, today is Dave Sim’s 51st birthday.

EDIT: Since the above link to the article that describes the difference between the real one and the fake one has occasionally overloaded that website from time to time, I have appropriated the piece and copied it here.
***
And now I see Cerebus has purchased Chrysler. No, wait, that’s Cerberus. Never mind.

ROG

Good Deed

Sunday, April 29: I”m riding home on my bicycle from church. Lying in the street is a checkbook. It’s face down, but I can still tell what it is. It’s located at what I call the “change line”. Quite often, I find loose change lying on the street about a car width from the curb, which I suspect has fallen out of drivers’ pockets.
If the address on the checkbook were in my neighborhood, I would have dropped it off at the address, but it’s not, so I ride home. Call the number on the checkbook, which is a person in Watervliet, the next town over.
R: May I speak to [X]?
X: This is [X].
R: I found your checkbook.
X: What?
R: I found your checkbook.
X: I don’t know.
R: It’s an HSBC checkbook.
X: Oh, that’s mine. I’ll call you back in 15 minutes.
R: O.K. [I figure he needs to get a ride.]
[15 minutes later]
X: Hi, this is [X]. O.K., I’m coming over. What is your address?
[I give it to him.]
[10 minutes later, while we’re eating lunch before I get picked up to go to my conference in Utica an hour later, the doorbell rings, and I go to the door.]
R [to person at the door]: Here you are.
[In my peripheral vision, I see two Albany policemen.]
P1 [in his best “talking to a perp” voice]: What’s going on here?
R [stepping onto the porch, trying to stifle a sigh]: I found his checkbook on the ground.
P1: When was that?
R: Right before I called him. It took me five minutes to ride home, oh about 30, 35 minutes ago.
[At this point, the second policeman takes X, who seems to be jumping up and down as though he’s helped in the bust of the century, onto the sidewalk.]
P1: Where did you find it?
R: On the street, on Western Avenue, about two car lengths beyond Ontario Street.
[By this point, my wife and daughter have come to the door. P1’s tone lightens.]
P1: Usually, in 90% of these cases, there’s some kind of shakedown.
Then they leave.

As it turns out, X had been robbed of his wallet and checkbook, I inferred; this was never stated to me outright.
O.K., what could/should I have done?
1) Leave the checkbook there on the ground – unacceptable. If I had lost mine, I would have wanted someone to do something.
2) Mail it back anonymously – not optimal. I thought he was missing it, and would want it back right away.
3) Drop it off at the police station; there’s one on the way home – what I probably should have done, an idea I had dismissed at the time because I was trying to save time to get ready for the trip, and didn’t want to have to go through the bureaucracy of filing a police report.

Being a Good Samaritan has become such a hassle.

BTW, and I didn’t know this until I was retelling this story to some friends, my wife and daughter coming to the doorway was not a happenstance. The wife heard the policeman’s first utterance and decided to make herself and our child known to him. “See, he’s a family man,” the message would be. Smart wife.

ROG

Eight years of wedded bliss

I think when I was lavishing praise on my wife at some point on this blog, indicating that her only real flaw is that she’s sometimes (OK, often) late,usually trying to squeeze one more thing in, someone scoffed mightily. Well, it is about the only one that I notice now. Well, that and her need to tell me more about Dancing with the Stars than I need to know (which is to say, nothing). Or that innate ability to talk to me about something important just after I’ve turned off the lights. But this is all minimal stuff.

The more substantial problems we had in the past – the reason we broke up for a time (1996-1998) before we got back together – has to do with, for her, me being too judgmental (if this is wrong, she can clarify it in her OWN blog, if/when she starts one), and for me, her operating on assumptions not in evidence. I can think one specific example of this. She was visiting my apartment and she and/or I were cooking. She put the hot pan or pot on the counter, assuming that it would be heat-resistant; it was not, and the paint began to melt. One does not like to leave visible damage like that in a rented apartment. It made me crazy, not that she scorched the surface, but that she assumed.

Oh, and the other thing was that she didn’t keep up with current events. At all. I’d make comments about something that had been in the news for a month, and she didn’t understand what I was talking about. She’s much more on top of things, especially about politics and government, just by listening to five minutes of NPR news in the morning. I was listening to former CIA head George Tenet on one news program, and she rightly noted that it was pretty much the same as the stuff he said on another, even though she wasn’t even in the room either time. She even delves into other areas: when she told me (SHE told ME) Roger Clemens was re-signing with the Yankees, she knew he had been with the Houston Astros during the previous season; the 1994 version of Carol would neither have read/heard that nor would have been interested enough to retain that.

So, I’m less of a pill, and she’s more engaged, and we have a great kid together. It’s all good. Happy anniversary, honey.
***
Most New Yorkers vote today on the school budgets; some vote on school boards, though Albany do not. Albany does vote today on the library trustees, 17 candidates for four slots. A good friend is high on Dennis Gaffney, but at this second, I haven’t decided fully on the other three. Polls open 7 a.m.-9 p.m.

Underplayed Vinyl: The Talking Heads

While I liked the Talking Heads well enough on the radio in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I’m not sure I reached that critical point necessary to actually buy one of their albums until I saw the group at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, August 3, 1983, still one of my two favorite concerts ever. After that, I HAD to buy some of their music, and ended up with most of, if not all of their output. I started with the then current selection, Speaking In Tongues, released in June of ’83.

Here’s the playlist:

A1 Burning Down the House 4:00
A2 Making Flippy Floppy 4:36
A3 Girlfriend Is Better 4:25
A4 Slippery People 3:30
A5 I Get Wild / Wild Gravity 4:06
B1 Swamp 5:09
B2 Moon Rocks 5:04
B3 Pull Up the Roots 5:08
B4 This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) 4:56

I LOVED this album. I practically played the grooves off. “House”, of course, was supported by that strange video. I don’t know which of the next two songs is my favorite. “Slippery People” has a beat that evokes Tom Tom Club. The Progressive Ruin feeling of “Swamp”. The vulnerability of the vocals in “This Must Be The Place”.

Eventually, I had to replace the LP with a CD, at some point after 1987. I was playing it, but only half listening, since I was so familiar with it from repeated play. Yet it sounded…different.
Burning Down the House 4:00
Making Flippy Floppy 5:50
Girlfriend Is Better 5:41
Slippery People 5:02
I Get Wild/Wild Gravity 5:15
Swamp 5:09
Moon Rocks 5:40
Pull Up the Roots 5:08
This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) 4:56

It WAS different. Cuts 2-5 and 7 were longer, sometimes substantially. “Flippy- Floppy” even has an extra verse.

When CDs were introduced in the early 1980s, the record companies were trying to induce buyers to purchase this shiny new technology. Synchroncity, the Police album that also came out in June ’83, had an extra song, “Murder By Numbers”. Other albums did likewise.

The longer versions, to my ear, have now become the standard. Now I listen to the TH LP and the songs sound truncated, incomplete. I wouldn’t be surprised if one can buy yet a different package with both versions, but I’m not purchasing it yet another time.

Oh, not so incidentally, David Byrne turns 55 today.
***
Shoulda known Fred would remember Rocco’s birthday.ROG