Take Off, eh.

Not really sure what to make of this, but I guess Geddy Lee was right... ten bucks is ten bucks, eh.

Steve Epting is a Good Guy (At Least as Far as I Can Tell)

My friend Ivan (who has run in comic circles for years as both a fan and as a one-time toy business insider) has always said that comic book creators and writers and artists are an approachable lot. Part and parcel to getting my writing in front of as wide an audience as possible, I have been sending links to the Deus ex Comica series to various folks in the comic book industry -- people whose work I admire. And this last week, Steve Epting sent me a quick note saying that he is enjoying the essays, especially because he has had similar experiences in his comic reading past.

I've interviewed my share of minor celebrities and musicians, but it's always a thrill when someone whose work you think highly of responds to something you've done. It wasn't a big deal, and we aren't great friends or anything because of it, but I appreciate the time he took to read my stuff and respond. So with that, I can't encourage you enough to go out and get the trade paperbacks of Steve's work on Captain America with Ed Brubaker (or, better yet, the omnibus), and pick up the monthlies currently on the shelves!

HRC, Agent 99, and Rodent Protectors

True to the name of this blog, here are some random thoughts escaping...

Hillary, enough already. It's time to set your ego aside and get out of the race. You're doing more damage to the party than good.

After seeing The Devil Wears Prada recently, and then the Get Smart trailer out in front of 21, I think Anne Hathaway is the new Audrey. She can pull off haute couture. She is both beautiful and understated in that classic sense.

Finished the Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 trade paperback with my son tonight. What a great read! Definitely looking forward to Winter 1152 when that hits in trade (hopefully by year's end -- the hardcover is due in November).

A House at the Edge of the City

So, my friend David, who wrote a great book on Devo with Jade Dellinger, has a new book coming on May 27 about the 12-year (and counting) journey of refurbishing a near-condemned house into a home. But it's also about family, community, and so much more. I am really looking forward to settling in with All the Way Home soon, but in the meantime there is a great (and I suspect somewhat surreal to him) write-up on his story in today's Home & Garden section of the New York Times to tide me over.

Deus 5: The Beauty of Trades

Part 5 of Deus ex Comica, "Bound for Greatness", is available at Field's Edge. This time around is my take on trade paperback collections. This will be the last one for a few weeks because of vacations and such. Look for a new installment either the first or second Wednesday of May. In the meantime, watch this space for musings on a variety of topics and check out some friends' stuff, too.

A Franchise unto Himself

So I just finished reading Terry Pluto and Brian Windhorst's new book, The Franchise: LeBron James and the Remaking of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and it stirred up quite a bit in me (including frustration with the maddeningly distracting typographical errors throughout the book).

I loved basketball as a kid. Despite my size, I played it in middle school and even made the "A" team. I remember going to the cavernous Coliseum at Richfield to see World B. Free and the Cleveland Cavaliers play Dr. J and the Philadelphia 76ers in the mid-'80s. Then I moved to Central Florida right around the same time the Orlando Magic came into the NBA, and my allegiance switched from a hapless established team to a hapless expansion team.

I followed the boys in blue closely, through Nick Anderson, the drafting of Shaq in '92, the acquisition of Penny Hardaway a year later, the Finals sweep by the Rockets in '95, the lockout the following season, Shaq's departure, the player revolt that cost Coach Brian Hill his job, all of it. I would stay up into the wee-hours and watch games on the west coast swing of a road trip. I would be captivated by Chip Caray's play-by-play coverage alongside Jack "Goose" Given's color commentary. I went to a lot of games at the O-rena, as we once called the Amway Arena. My boss was a season ticket holder, so opportunities presented themselves more often than you might think.

Then along came the lockout of '98. That killed professional basketball for me. I walked away from what I perceived as greed, disrespect for the game, and disregard for the fans. When I moved back to Northeast Ohio in 2000, I attended a few Cavs games at Gund Arena in downtown Cleveland -- it was a new venue to me, hosting a team with new colors. I was working in downtown and my father-in-law has quite a few business connections that have made tickets fairly accessible. While the team was never destined for greatness during those years, it was still a good time as a marginal fan.

But everything changed in 2002. I remember my wife and me sitting in our West Akron home, just down the street from St. Vincent-St. Mary High School, watching LeBron James' high school basketball games broadcast on ESPN2. Those games were crazy to watch. He was truly a man among boys. And a year later, the ping-pong balls finally gave the North Coast a break, and The Chosen One became a Cavalier.

A couple years later, I had the opportunity to attend James' 21st birthday party at the Cleveland HOB. I found myself at one point next to him as he walked by with his entourage. His physical presence was absolutely stunning. Now he is building a house around the corner from our current home. It is not a gated community, which is odd for someone of his stature. (I'm used to all those professional athletes living in Isleworth down in Central Florida.) So in an odd turn of coincidences, he went to high school a couple of miles from where I used to live, and is building a home a mile or so from where I now live. He moves in circles I can only dream of, but thankfully he seems to be about as down-to-earth as any twenty-something multi-millionaire from the projects can be. In short, he is impressive on so many levels.

There is no denying King James is the real deal. I hope he stays a Cavalier for his entire career and that it is a long and prosperous one. Although I doubt I'll ever be as big a fan of the NBA as I was in the '90s, the trip to the NBA Finals last season was exhilarating for even the casual fan and hopefully a preview of even greater things to come.

Pop Conference Revisited, Part 2: Academia Goes Pop

Marking the 2008 Pop Conference this week, Field's Edge is publishing for the first time a written version of the multimedia presentation I delivered at last year's conference, "Greatest Hints: How Michael Stanley Almost Made Cleveland Famous". Here is the second of two related entries. Earlier this week I talked about how I ended up involved in the conference and how the presentation was put together. Now here are some of my impressions of what I experienced while in Seattle.


The conference itself was a lot of fun. I met some very cool people and had some great experiences. When a group of us went out to dinner after the opening night hoopla, Daphne and I ended up at a table with keynote speaker Jonathan Lethem and Rhapsody programming honcho Tim Quirk in a particularly animated discussion about the music industry and the '80s scene. At the cocktail reception on the last night of the conference, I met Douglas Wolk who pulled out a copy of his then-yet-to-be-published Reading Comics to share with me.

In between, there were fascinating moments in many of the panels, including Joshua Clover basically filtering Scorpions' "Wind of Change" and Jesus Jones' "Right Here, Right Now" through the historical significance of Tiananmen Square and the fall of the Berlin Wall. His subtle sense of humor really played well in his presentation.

Tim's paper looked at the play statistics he had access to via Rhapsody. Because of the very nature of the service, hip-hop and R&B were woefully underrepresented. Tim knew this going in, prefaced his paper with it, and restated it throughout the heated Q&A, but it was to no avail. The race card was continually brought up and bandied about -- primarily by Clover and Sasha Frere-Jones. Daphne Brooks (who is African American and who was on the same panel with Tim and Robert Christgau) remained ever classy, while Xgau sat with an alternatingly confused and amused look on his face as the audience got more and more hostile. It was one of the most entertaining Q&As of the conference.

Michaelangelo Matos' paper taking a look "Behind the Bob Marley Poster on the Dorm Room Wall" was infused with his signature humor, and Daphne's in-depth look at Hot Topic as the enabler of suburban emo teens was interesting and entertaining. On the same "Iconography" panel as Matos and Daphne was "fashion anthropologist" and author Erica Easley's look at the history and future of rock t-shirts. Great stuff all around!

The panel I took part in, "My Hometown", had some good moments as well. Andy Beta's take on "Is Anybody Going to San Antone?", and Charlie Bertsch's take on the Tucson indie scene were fantastic. My own presentation prompted a dialog with Holly George-Warren around the outlying factors that influenced Michael Stanley's inability to make it big on a national stage, which was very cool.

In all, the Pop Conference was a good experience -- both the work that went into creating my paper and the conference itself. This year's theme of "Shake, Rattle: Music, Conflict, and Change" struck me as more of a stunt than anything else because many of the people who attend the conference love to stir the pot with the race card. Regardless of that, I do recommend attending the conference if you are able. There is some great dialog that should and does take place there that really get to the heart of music, the art of music writing, and the business of the industries.