Steve Gerber Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

My blog can drink legally in every state

Dustbury, ABC Wednesday, Forgotten Stars, AmeriNZ

My blog is so old that it can drink legally in every state. So I decided to credit (or blame) 21 people (more or less) who facilitated that. Some I’ve mentioned before.

Won – Rocco, my friend and fellow employee of the comic book store, ran into me in the autumn of 2004. He asked me, “Are you reading Fred’s blog?” I said, “I don’t read ANY blogs.”

Too – So I started reading the blog of Fred Hembeck, the somewhat famous cartoonist with Marvel, DC, FantaCo, et al., which had started in January 2003. He wrote every day, or nearly every day, and he wrote a LOT. Eventually, I started emailing him with ideas for his posts. I know he noted Herb Alpert’s 70th birthday at the end of March 2005, and he credited me.

Tree – Mark Evanier, the guy who was an assistant to Jack Kirby, wrote cartoon shows, and a bunch of other things, appeared on Fred’s extensive linkage page. ME wrote a LOT, though not nearly at the word count of FGH.

For – I don’t know if I came to Steve Gerber (d. 2008) via Hembeck or Evanier. In any case, his pledge to write every day, which he stuck to until he got sick, was the final push to get to start my own blog.

Fie! -When I first started blogging, I was also looking at a number of blogs from Fred’s roster. A fair number of the bloggers seemed to be somehow connected to one Chris (Lefty) Brown. I got involved with a mixed tape exchange, OK, mixed CDs. The group included Eddie Mitchell, SamuraiFrog, Thom Wade, Johnny Bacardi, Mike Sterling, and others, including…

Cease – Greg Burgas, who still writes about his current consumption of pop culture, as well as My Daughter Chronicles.

The game show

Sen – So what would I write about? One of the topics, I suppose, needed to be about JEOPARDY, the game show I appeared on in November 1998. Six and a half years later, I figured I had better write about it soon. So I’ll attribute this angle to Adenia Yates (1908-1966), my mother’s maternal aunt, whom I would see at lunchtime each weekday. She turned me onto the game. I suppose Merv Griffin and his then-wife, Julann, who designed the game’s format, Art Fleming, and Alex Trebek, should get a piece of the credit.

Ate – As I admitted repeatedly here, my wife and I got one or two of those baby books, in which one is SUPPOSED to write down all of those milestones (first step, first tooth, etc.) that the Daughter reached. Well, I SUCKED at this. So I vowed to write about her every month on the 26th. And I have.

Nein – Ken Levine was a writer on TV shows I used to watch, such as MASH, CHEERS, FRASIER, THE SIMPSONS, and DHARMA & GREG. He started his blog shortly after I did. He would solicit Friday questions. I’d ask some, and he answered most of them. He eventually started a podcast. At some point, he stopped blogging and limited his posts to podcasts. Those ended in 2023. You can find the blog – though not the audio for the podcasts – here.

The Times Onion

Tin – In the late 1990s, Mike Huber was involved with these community webpages, housed on the Times Union website. Then he was in charge of the community bloggers on the TU site. Since I was posting every day, he wanted me on the TU blog farm. I resisted for a couple of years, but in 2008, I relented. I wrote about that experience here; the TU community blogs died in 2021.

Leaven- One of the TU bloggers was Chuck Miller. He’s also an everyday writer. After he left the TU blog farms, he has lifted up other local (or local-adjacent) bloggers every Saturday

Too well – J. Eric Smith, once a TU blogger, is now in Arizona but still on Chuck’s roster. Among other topics, Eric writes a lot about music and film. He mentioned me kindly a couple of times.

Thirsty -Charles Hill, a/k/a Dustbury, was a legendary blogger from 1996(!) until he died in 2019. He commented on my blog almost daily, and I enjoyed the interaction. I’m extremely sad that his stuff wasn’t captured by the Internet Archive. I still follow my fellow Dustbury acolyte, fillyjonk.

Every week

Fortran – I came across one of those groups, an abecedarian meme called ABC Wednesday, where one participates with others, literally from around the world, in sharing a picture, a poem, an essay, SOMETHING with the various letters of the alphabet. It was run by Denise Nesbitt. My first post there was in October 2008 in Round 3, letter K. By the end of Round 5, I was assisting her. And from July 2012 to July 2017, I ran the thing, assisted ably by Leslie from British Columbia and others. Then, from that date until the end of 2019, I helped Melody.

Iffy- Arthur Schenck. I found AmeriNZ, a blog and podcast by a US expat now in New Zealand, via the demographically similar Nik Dirga. (How I found Nik, I have no idea.) Anyway, I’d comment on Arthur’s platform and steal, er, borrow ideas.

Cistern – I didn’t even know what a Byzantium Shores was, but I started following Kelly Sedinger regularly. Even my wife, who doesn’t read these things, knows that Kelly is the overalls guy from the Buffalo area. He moved the site to Forgotten Stars about five years ago. He’s a real writer who’s published books! HE’s a budding photographer! But he STILL hasn’t done a pie to the face in far too long.

Severed teen -Alan David Doane was one of those FantaCo kids whom I really got to know when he was an adult. Among many things, he convinced me that I could write about comic books on a now-defunct platform. It was challenging and fun!

Irwin Corey’s brother-in-law (really)

Ate teen – Arnold Berman was a kind of relative. Charlotte, one of his sisters, married my maternal grandmother’s brother, Ernie. Arnold’s fascination with his genealogy has made me more interested in mine, which has become a recurring theme on my blog. He died a couple of years ago.

Nein teen -Ken Screven – The legendary CBS 6 (WRBG-TV) newsman was a TU blogger after he retired. He turned out to be more pointed than he was on the air, which probably influenced me to be a little more direct in my opinions. He died in 2022, and I miss him.

Too Auntie – Steve Bissette, the great artist of Swamp Thing and a whole lot of other stuff, met at FantaCo in 1987, I believe. He was doing some horror art, and I did, among other things, the mail order and shipped out items he helped create. We fell out of touch, but reconnected when I found his blog in 2008, which I wrote about here.

Too Auntie One – Amy Barlow Liberatore is Sharp Little Pencil, a blogger from near my hometown of Binghamton, NY.

R is for Ramblin’ with Roger

Steve Gerber, comic book writer extraordinaire, posted about writing in April 2005, essentially saying, “Writers write.”

Since I just hit my 13th anniversary of writing this here Ramblin’ with Roger blog thing, I’d thought I’d describe why I do it.

I’ve mentioned before that my friend Fred Hembeck had started a blog, that friend Rocco had tipped me off to same, and that I read everything Fred wrote, which meant going back about two years.

And Fred was prolific. He wrote every day, usually pieces a lot longer than I write currently. Then I would comment on his blog, and he would mention me therein. I gave him a couple ideas; for instance, I found a page of record album covers based on other album covers, which still exists.

So I thought, maybe I could do this myself. But what would I write ABOUT? I only had two topics that I KNEW I would have to cover. One was the Daughter, who was a little over a year old. I said to myself when she was born that I would write about her in a baby book that people give to parents of newborns, where you track when the child first crawls and walks and gets the first tooth.

There is incontrovertible evidence that I was TERRIBLE at this exercise. Instead, I would write about her every month, on the 26th. And I have, every month, although it’s often been as much about ME having a daughter after I’m five decades old.

The other topic was my appearances on the game show JEOPARDY. It was taped in September 1998 and was broadcast in November, and I was afraid the details were starting to fade.

I started writing in my Blogger blog on May 2, 2005, and I have written every day, at least once a day. In the early days, it was tough because Blogger didn't let me schedule posts. I remember writing at a library in Lake Placid during a break in a work conference.

I was inspired by what the late Steve Gerber, comic book writer of Howard the Duck, Man-Thing, the Defenders, and other Marvel comics I loved, posted about writing in April 2005, essentially saying, “Writers write.”

Oh, the duck. At FantaCo, I was editing something called X-Men Chronicles. I had extra pages to fill, and so Smilin’ Ed artiste Raoul Vezina and I pieced together a story about the rodent buying a case of a popular comic book. I appeared as a duck because… well, I don’t know.

Around that time, Raoul drew the duck for my friend Lynne. In 2010, when I was getting my own URL, Lynne’s husband Dan, who recognized me from the caricature when he met me on the street back in 1985, scanned the drawing, and I have used it ever since, on the Ramblin’ with Roger blog, Twitter, and Facebook.

For ABC Wednesday

The 10th anniversary of this here blog

If someone were to ask me what advice I’d give a prospective blogger, it would to write two, maybe three posts before launching the first.

Today being the tenth anniversary of the start of the Ramblin’ with Roger blog, with content every single day, I thought I would describe how I started blogging in the first place. I’m sure I’ve told bits and pieces of it before, but like some oft-told tales, the details either become clearer in focus or muddier over time.

I had heard about this thing called the weblog – it was in all the standard press – in the early part of this century. However, I had not actually READ any blogs. Therefore, I concluded, without a single strain of evidence, the same thing that most “everyone” else was saying, that blogs were self-indulgent bits of drivel designed for people far more self-absorbed than I.

Then, in October 2004, I see my friend Rocco, who I knew from my FantaCo days. He says to me, “Have you been reading Fred’s blog?” Of course, I had not been reading what our mutual friend Fred Hembeck had been writing, and in fact, I had fallen out of touch with him over the previous decade.

So I checked out Fred’s blog and liked it so much that I read his entire backlog of articles, EVERY DAY, going back to January 2003. Since Fred could be, um, wordy, this probably took about three months.

Once I got the feel for the blog, and what one could write in the venue, he quoted FantaCo stories about which I wrote to him (see February 18 and 23, 2005 e.g.) and I even suggested content (March 31 and April 2, 2005). I figure that if I could come up with material for Fred, I ought to be writing for myself.

Now that I was caught up reading Fred’s blog, I started reading some of the many blogs Fred was linked to. One of the professionals was the late Steve Gerber, scribe of Howard the Duck, the Defenders, Man-Thing, and other Marvel fare. He wrote in his inaugural blog post on April 4, 2005, less than a month before I started mine:

I make my living as a writer. There is only one characteristic that distinguishes writers from non-writers: writers write. (That’s why there’s no such thing as an “aspiring writer.” A writer can aspire to sell or publish, but only non-writers aspire to write.) Anyway, writing for a living requires writing every day. Writing every day requires discipline. Discipline requires enforcement.

I’ve lost the habit of writing every day. I need discipline. I need enforcement. You’re looking at it.

I intend to post something on this blog every day. If I fail to do so, that failure will be very public, and I’ll be embarrassed by it. I don’t enjoy being embarrassed. So maybe, just maybe, making this obligation will help transform me into a habitual writer again.

Not that I viewed myself as a “Writer” at the time, or even now. For one thing, I didn’t, and don’t, own any tweed jackets. But I did have a couple of things I wanted to write down. One was about my appearances on the TV show JEOPARDY!, which was taped in September 1998 and aired two months later.

More importantly, though, was a narrative that involved the Daughter, who was born in March of 2004. I had promised myself that I would write something in my print journal regularly; I penned three entries in nine months; clearly, this was not viable. Thus, the promise, to myself, to write about the Daughter in this blog at least once a month, on the 26th, and I have kept to that.

When I actually started blogging on my own, friend Fred plugged my humble efforts, the first time on May 5, 2005. Still, it was tough in the beginning. If someone were to ask me what advice I’d give a prospective blogger, it would write two, maybe three posts before launching the first. Blog post #1 is EASY. Writing the next one is harder. This was made more difficult by the fact that Blogger, my platform at the time, didn’t allow me to schedule ahead, which it does now, thank goodness.

Writing for myself (and Fred and his wife Lynn Moss) was fine, but I started looking at other people Fred was linked to. I’d read their blogs, comment, and eventually built up this coterie of Internet acquaintances such as Lefty Brown, Greg Burgas, Eddie Mitchell, Thom Wade, and Gordon Dymowski, who I actually met in person in 2008 in Chicago. We created a mixed CD exchange for a few years, and through this, developed relationships.

People, some I didn’t even know, such as Scott of the Scooter Chronicles, kept commenting on my blog. Looking back, I have no specific recollection of how Arthur@AmeriNZ or Jaquandor, or SamuraiFrog found me, or maybe I found them. Nor do I recall how I tripped over ABC Wednesday, the meme I now manage.

I DO know how I found Dustbury, though. I was writing about the Warner Brothers Loss Leaders albums that the label put out from about 1969 to 1980, two LPs for two dollars (later three dollars), and he had written the authoritative list. Even better, I got to add an item to the list, an ECM jazz collection, Music with 58 Musicians. From there, I found his blog.

That experience fits into a very comfortable narrative for a librarian of expanding the knowledge base. This blogging thing could be informative, useful.

People who don’t read my blog ask me what my blog is about. I’ve stopped answering, “Why don’t you just read my blog?” Basically, it’s whatever I see on my Bloglovin feed every morning. I look at links from Daily Kos and BoingBoing, but then I tend to read some blogs alphabetically
A for Arthur@AmeriNZ
B for Byzantium Shores (Jaquandor)
C for Chuck Miller
D for Dustbury (Chaz Hill)
E is for Evanier, Mark (News from Me)
F is for Frog, SamuraiFrog
G is for Geek, Eddie Mitchell, the Renaissance Geek

Then I go to my old blog I abandoned in 2010 in favor of this one, and see who else might have updated recently, such as my CD exchange buddies, plus Dan Van Riper’s albanyweblog, Tosy and Cosh, Nippertown, Pantheon Songs, Lisa’s Peripheral Perceptions, Anthony Velez, and Melanie Boudwin. I skim all of that, and if they’ve not written what’s on my heart that day, I write it. If they have, I link to theirs.

That’s how I blog every day. EASY!

Gerber, baby

Steve Gerber, the writer of fine comic books such as Man-Thing and Howard the Duck (but don’t blame the movie on him!), wrote in his inaugural blog on April 4, 2005:

“I make my living as a writer. There is only one characteristic that distinguishes writers from non-writers: writers write. (That’s why there’s no such thing as an “aspiring writer.” A writer can aspire to sell or publish, but only non-writers aspire to write.) Anyway, writing for a living requires writing every day. Writing every day requires discipline. Discipline requires enforcement.
“I’ve lost the habit of writing every day. I need discipline. I need enforcement. You’re looking at it.
“I intend to post something on this blog every day. If I fail to do so, that failure will be very public, and I’ll be embarrassed by it. I don’t enjoy being embarrassed. So maybe, just maybe, making this obligation will help transform me into a habitual writer again.”

But I’m not so disciplined.

Besides, Thursdays are LONG day during the church year:
Get up and keep Lydia company (read: distracted) until Carol showers and dresses
Get dressed and go play racquetball
Go to work
Go to Bible study
Go home and take out the garbage

It’s pretty much a 16-hour slog. But when the choir’s off for the summer, I’m eager to get back into it.

Like I’ll do with this blog…tomorrow.