Month: October 2004

On his website, John Byrne posted the following, which has gotten some notice throughout the internet:

“I have noticed that people have begun referring to
Christopher Reeve as a “hero”. I do not wish to take
away one iota of the courage he must have needed
not to wake up screaming every single day, but the
hard truth is there was nothing “heroic” in what
happened to him, or how he dealt with it. In fact, as
far as how he dealt with it, he didn’t even have a
choice. We could imagine he spent every hour of
every day (when not in front of the cameras) begging
family members to simply kill him and get it over with
— but none of them did, so he had no choice but to
deal with each day as it came.

Heroism, I believe, involves choice.”

John believes wrong.

“Heroism” is a word involving shadings. It has different meanings to different people under different circumstances, as do other words such as “love”…or “hate”…or…oh, I dunno…”prìçk.”

Continue Reading “I shouldn’t…and yet…I must” →

Remember a couple months ago when I talked about attending a taping of “The People’s Court?” Well, my sister informs me that the episodes we attended are scheduled to air.

The first will be today, the 20th of October. Others are slated for October 26, 27, and 28. I have no idea if I’m at all visible. The case to watch for, for its sheer weirdness, is the bus driver who sued the elderly black gentleman, claiming that the latter had been abusive and beaten him up. And the attitude amongst the court was “Yeah, right,” until the defendant opened his mouth, wound up cursing out practically everyone there, accusing everyone of being racists, and threatened to beat up the bus driver again. I’ve no idea how much will make the final edit but, wow, talk about anger issues.

PAD

So I was at a podiatrist’s today, dealing with Ariel having an ingrown toenail. And out of curiosity, I asked, “So what are Schilling’s chances tonight?”

He shook his head and laughed. “Non-existent. There’s no way. A shoe isn’t going to do it. He needs surgery.” He then proceeded to describe the flapping piece of meat that was once the Red Sox ace’s tendon. “If he makes it out of the second inning, it’ll be a miracle,” he said.

Which means that the Sox have exactly one shot: Get to the Yankees’ starter early, knock him out of the game, and then have it boil down to a duel of two exhausted bullpens.

Can the Red Sox really pull out two miracles in the Bronx? I really don’t know. Common sense and history both say no freakin’ way. I predicted the Sox in five. Obviously that’s not happening. But just dwell on this:

Can you imagine if the Yankees wind up owning not one, but two records of futility? Not only do they have that monumental 22-0 loss under their belts, but just think how amazing it would be if, in the same season, they became the first team in the history of baseball to be up 3-0 in a best-of-seven contest and lose. Steinbrenner would wind up looking like that poster from “Scanners.”

PAD

Yes, I’m aware that “Fallen Angel #19” isn’t on the January solicits. Don’t worry about it.

I announced about a week or so ago that DC had given the go-ahead to continue the series past #18. But since we hadn’t started it yet, we had two choices: Try to slap-dash issue #19 together to meet the deadlines, or skip a month and do it right. We opted for the latter.

So you’ll see “Fallen Angel #19” solicited for February release.

PAD

Ariel’s watching “Princess Bride” and we just had the scene where a cackling Vizzini (Wally Shawn) declares, “You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The best known of course is, ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia!'”

So now I wonder if, in addition to making that mistake, George W. Bush has ever gone up against a Sicilian when death was on the line.

PAD