Are You Jimmy Ray?

Something that occurred to me the other evening is that it's not really fair for anyone to experience a post-coital glow while your cable music station is playing '90s one hit wonder Jimmy Ray's "Are You Jimmy Ray?" That shouldn't happen to anyone anymore.

At the bagel shop the other day, I made a joke to a woman in front of me ordering smoked salmon on hers that she just couldn't get enough of that smoky taste in her mouth. This was a reference to the ever-present smoky air we were all breathing from the wildfires. It doesn't take me long to start joking, I guess.

So long and good luck to Johnny Bacardi, who has called it quits after five years of blogging. Johnny is a nice guy, from what I remembered in our brief time corresponding about Comic Book Galaxy stuff, and I wish him the best. It was kind of a tough gig editing that site, because some guys you would have liked to be your friends ended up not being friends (not enemies, just not buddy-buddy) due to the ol' creative differences. It's tough to get what you want when you're A) not paying money to your talent, and B) your talent has their own venues for their best material. This is not a criticism of anyone who came and went at CBG, because if your vision doesn't fit with your editor's, and you're doing it for free but being asked to spend that free time on stuff you're less interested in writing, why not just leave and do it on your own terms? Who could blame you?

What is kind of interesting about group sites and blogs is seeing the battles for supremacy on them. For a time, I tried to really set a tone for CBG, including coming up with jokey or odd blurbs to hype the latest material on the site by others, and while I don't think it was a bad idea, it's not like I ever asked anyone if they liked it. A few minutes ago I checked out SavageCritics, which I hadn't seen since it initially started its group format, and clearly Graeme MacMillan has become the dominant voice there. Dominance has as much to do with sheer volume (see: Ray Tate on SilverBullet) as it does with talent or vision, but at least Graeme is frequently amusing (note to Abhay: yes, CRY YOURSELF TO SLEEP is a bad'un). On the other hand, how hard is it to have fun with NOVA? It's like reviewing Dinty Moore Beef Stew--it barely qualifies as a product for human consumption. Mankind should only indulge in NOVA or DINTY MOORE when drunk. If you can pronounce the "t" in Din-Ty, then you're not drunk enough to be eating it. They can horses, don't they? And why is he (Gramick Millma, not Dinny Moah) or anyone reviewing work by Dan Jurgens and expecting anything? I realize we're leaving Earth to our children in worse shape than we found it...but does that have to apply to comics, too?