Miscellany

Just some random thoughts from the past weekend and today:

My daughter complained about my goatee, so I shaved it, but am basically growing a full beard back since Saturday. I like to keep it in a state of flux.

Right now I'm downloading The Complete U2 from iTunes for the second time, as I had it last year and accidentally erased all of it. Yes, I was a mite upset. So I really haven't listened to their music for quite a while and it will be cool to dig in again.

Also bought, in "real" cd format, the 3 disc Complete Reprise Sessions from Gram Parsons, which is his two albums GP and Grievous Angel, plus a disc of alternate takes. I love his stuff. I also just ordered the documentary on him, Fallen Angel, as well as the doc on another great country flameout, Townes Van Zandt, Be Here to Love Me.

Byproducts of SDCC: I bought still more books. I got the two Dupuy & Berberian books from Amazon because they were a lot cheaper and I didn't have to carry them around in my already heavy SDCC bags. Also, courtesy of reading Seth's 40 Cartoon Books of Interest, I finally decided to go for that big hardcover (with 2 cds) of The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker.

I had to do a bio of myself for our quarterly company newsletter, and I made it essentially a humor piece, with shtick about therapy I'm not actually in, favorite movies ("anything with animals playing sports"), and fake books I'm reading ("Nancy Brew: Spring Break Detective" and "Dr. Phil's Let This Book Be Your Dad!"). There's little in there that's true, and yet it's so much more ME than the boring bios of other no doubt interesting-in-their-own-ways coworkers are of them.

Some friends noted at SDCC that my blog really hasn't had much personal stuff in there recently, which is true. Part of that is that very little was happening for quite a while, and part of it is that I'm a little more careful about what I want to reveal. I will say that I'm totally crazy about someone right now but there is a major stumbling block in the way--for once, not my fault--so there's no telling if anything will really happen, but it would be great if it did and I'm not giving up on the idea.

Bought the Venture Bros Season One dvd and it's okay. The title sequences are wonderful, the series pretty good at best. I mean, there are only a couple LOL moments per episode. It's fine, but could be better. It needs to get a little freakier or something.

Very disappointing Padres news on this, trade deadline day. Todd Walker? That's it? Division rivals the Dodgers got three big-to-very big names, so they could really be trouble down the stretch to the playoffs, and we just get an aging third baseman. Hmm.

Had lunch the other day with a female friend (not that kind, just a good friend), and she's into country music, which was playing in her car. A Land Rover, go figure. Anyway, the song was this hokey ode to the old days, those simpler times of fried baloney sandwiches and, unsung but in the very genetic matrix of the song construction the old days of tree branches full of dead black men, and it made me think of growing up with my mom in a little apartment in Illinois, she divorced since I was one and remarrying when I was six, so a crucial period of development with no father. She would make fried egg sandwiches for dinner sometimes, with ketchup on them, a meal so vile I couldn't eat eggs for years after that except, oddly, soft-boiled eggs at my grandparents, but that's another story. So I'm telling her about this, and my parents' divorce, and she, being from Denmark, is searching for the phrase, "abandonment issues," which I finish for her. And in so doing, I actually got teary-eyed and had a mini-crying spell. I mean, I was laughing and talking at the same time, but the tears were definitely there. Embarrassing and alarming at the same time, to know you've got this button that's so easily pushed, so close to the surface. I couldn't shake it for at least another half-hour.

So I guess I'm a mess. Anyway, just finished up editing the latest Comic Foundry, which I think will mostly unroll tomorrow with maybe a piece or two coming later in the week or next week. Pretty good lineup, though some things exceeding expectations and others not, but all at least decent.

Up way too late now, trying to compile a playlist and then a burn a cd of it for the girl above, based on a discussion earlier today of dark, romantic songs. I kind of want a similar feel, which is largely acoustic or piano, not overly produced, with the voice upfront, for the most part. It's taking a long time, plus I come across songs I just want to hear even if they don't fit...