Been a heavy glasses weekend. Bridge of my nose was bleeding & migraines have been a constant danger. I’ve been eating Excedrin for Migraine like candy. It sort-of works. If I catch the migraine in it’s beginning stages, I can usually dodge phase 2, which is the searing, icepick in your eye, head-spinning pain. Sadly, the pills just push you into phase 3: the migraine hangover. This can last anywhere from 4-24 hours, with symptoms including dizziness, light nausea, exhaustion, and body aches.Fun.

A lot of people tell me to get prescription-strength pills, but I know 2 things from woking in medical publishing and personal experience: #1: My migraines are NOTHING compared to REAL sufferers, and #2: Prescription migraine medication doesn’t make you better. It just dopes you up so you can ride the pain out. You’re LESS functional on the drugs than you are with the pain.

And damn, my nails are long. This is the REAL result of not being allowed to take nail clippers on planes. America is not a whit safer, and my hands are unkempt. In fact, if I was so-inclined, I could probably cut a stewardess’ throat with my thumbnail. That fucker is sharp! I can’t WAIT to get home and clip them. How sad is that? I’m sitting in an airport writing this, and all I can think about is how the first thing I’m gonna do when I finally get home is cut my nails.

Got up this morning. Packed. Checked out. Met Jay & Pum for a $20 breakfast buffet. Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale were at the table next to us. Just far enough so we couldn’t listen in on whatever they were plotting to happen to Batman & Co. Half od DC comics was at a long table behind us, eating the same sausages and watery eggs. Read Y the Last Man while J&P packed. Then we locked up our bags and went to the mall to see the Fantastic Four.

Thoughts on FF:

I went in expecting it to be VERY bad, but hoping to find at least SOMEthing redeeming about it. It was a big risk. Usually, when I love something and they make a movie about it that looks sketchy, I avoid it. I didn’t see the George Clooney Batman, for instance, or EleKtra, Catwoman, or the Hulk. I saw DareDevil and wish I could get those two hours of my life back.

I’m a big FF fan… sometimes. It’s a very hard dynamic to get right because while they frequently do superhero-like things, they are not superheroes per-se. They are a family of adventurers and explorers with super-powers, who sometimes stumble across stuff that threatens the public, at which point they bust its ass.

It’s the ‘family’ aspect that most writers get wrong. The interactions between Johnny and Ben, torturing one another like they were brothers, the deep love between Reed and Sue which is always in danger because she is passionate and he is logical, these are the things that make the FF great. Take that formula, and then have Reed invent some contraption that allows them to explore the molten core of the moon because he thinks the solution to the energy crisis might be there. When they arrive, have some weird creatures living there, and you have a perfect archetype of a great Fantastic Four story.

Sadly, this happens in the comics only about 25% of the time. For good runs of the FF, check out the ones written by John Byrne or Mark Waid. And the classic Lee/Kirby stuff. View the rest with great suspicion.

The movie was better than I expected. In fact, in some ways, it was the oppsite of what I expected. They got the family aspect right and the superhero part wrong. All the stuff with Doctor Doom was stupid. The Doom in the movie is NOTHING like the Doom in the comics. The real Doom is badass and terrifying, and carries himself like a king. He’s evil, but he’s also got class. The guy in the movie was just a douchebag. Plus, in the comics, Doom doesn’t have super powers. Just neat gadgets and minions.

About 75% of the movie was the interpersonal stuff, though, and that was pretty well done. I could pick apart the acting and the special effects, I guess, but I’m in a forgiving mood. I liked it.

The superhero stuff with Doom at the end, though, sucked ass. It was stupid and mostly didn’t make sense. Don’t get me started on the Human Torch’s Nova-flame. The Incredibles, this movie was NOT.

But really, I could just look at that Jessica Alba all day.

Killing time

While we were hanging out at the airport, Puma finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. That’s about 60 hours after he bought it, if you’re wondering.At 650 pages, that’s 11 pages an hour. Not impressed? Well, he slept a good 8 hours on Saturday and Sunday nights, so that’s -16 hours of reading, bringing him to 15 pages an hour. We had breakfast both days (1 hour each), and lunch all three (3 more hours), and he went to around 4 hours of programs on Sunday and Saturday both, plus dinner and drinks on Saturday (say 3 hours). We went to the mall on Monday, and saw Fantastic Four, plus packing. 5 hours. Another -21. Assuming he spent ALL of the remaining 23 hours reading, that puts him at just over 28 pages an hour. Not a record by any means, but still a pretty impressive pace to maintain.

I started the book on the plane ride home, 110 hours ago, and I’m on page 200 even. Not even 2 pages an hour. Pathetic. S’what I get for going to stupid work instead of staying home reading Harry Potter.

Plane ride home:

Writing this with a chatty Brazilian make-out couple next to me. Pink-jumpsuit cellulite skank and a fat slob who can’t keep his hands off her. They wouldn’t stop nattering in Portugese in pre-takeoff, and passed right out in the air. Fatty put on a Breathe-Right strip, but still snored like a goddamn Harley. His over-perfumed skank seems to be eyeing everyone on the plane for someone to mile-high club her with fatty is passed out.

Across the aisle, one of your more stereotypical Woody Allen hypochondriac Jews embarrassed his people by putting on a neck brace even though there was nothing wrong with his neck, and a surgical mask even though he wasn’t sick. I heard him whining about everything to the poor guy sitting next to him. I had to resist the urge to go over and give him something to really whine about.

He looks about 40. His mother is sitting next to him and glaring at anyone who looks at him funny for wearing the brace and the Sars mask. I have a feeling he lives with her and has never had sex in his life.

This man does to the Jewish people what that patchy-bearded, stinky, 300 pound guy in the Jedi costume who only speaks in movie quotes and won’t extinguish his lightsaber during the movie does to your average comic book fan.

Assholes! You’re bringing us all down! Do us all a favor and tone the douchebaggery down a few notches, okay?

Seeing as how I’ve run out of pictures from this year, here’s a couple from last year’s ComicCon:

This picture is of me and Aria Giovanni.

Aria is the star of a lot of artsy softcore porn movies and photos by Andrew Blake. Blake has an amazing talent for finding perfect, natural beauties to put in his work. No plastic surgery, no bad dye or bleach jobs, all Blake’s women are naturally perfect. Instead of just waiting outside a surgeon’s office for plastic beauties, Blake tracks down that one-in-a-million girl that the rest of them are trying to imitate. My wife and I watch a lot of his stuff together. If you’re looking for beautiful, classy porn to watch WITH your wife/girlfriend, rather than when she’s out of the house or asleep, give Blake’s movies a try.

Anyway, I went into a shame spiral in front of Aria. She’s really nice and friendly, and I had every intention of just chatting with her, getting an autograph, snapping a picture, and leaving. But when I went up to her, my face went hot and my heart started pounding and all the stuff I was planning to say flew from my head. I could barely stutter out “Duh, you shur is pretty!” She smiled politely, and I hated myself.

You can see how uncomfortable I look in the picture.

This over-exposed polaroid picture is starring me and Jesse Cappelli. After the disastrous Aria experience, I felt I really redeemed myself with Jesse. She liked my creepy Frank Miller Fight Censorship shirt, and asked me about it, because she was modeling for a comic book with violence and sex in it, and a lot of parents groups and conservative retailers were trying to stop it from being distributed.

I wound up having like a 20 minute conversation with her about the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and how important a role they played in maintaining free speech in comics. She was really nice and much smarter than I expected.

That’s always been my problem with meeting celebrities or semi-celebrities. I don’t care if you write your name on a piece of paper for me and make small talk. I hate small talk, and writing on paper doesn’t impress me. Anyone can do that. If that’s all that’s offered, I’d just as soon not bother with you. But put me in a position where people actually have something to SAY, and I’m there.

I guess that’s why I didn’t go to a lot of parties in high school, and don’t do well in crowded bars and clubs.

I admit, though, I kept thinking of all the naked pictures I had seen of her while we talked. It was weird.

Thumbnails

I just learned how to make clickable thumbnails. Check ‘em out!

Click the thumbnail for a picture of Jesse with Stan Lee. He likes deep girls, too.

The girls of eAdultComics show us that passive resistance is the key to defeating the Empire.

Dani prefers to just punch the StormTroopers in the nuts.

Oh, and we went to the zoo.