I remember talking to Larry about a month
or so ago, and he was sort of chiding me for not
participating me on his delightful forum.
“I’m sorry, Lar, really,” I said, trying to
breathe as the dark power of the Force slowly crushed
my windpipe. “Tell you what, I promise to
submit reports of our Fridays at CE together. Kind of
like what Dennis did way back when.”
Things fell quiet (except for my choked gurgling) and
then precious air flowed back into my lungs.
Larry leaned in close.
“Do not disappoint me, Admiral Lester,” Larry
said, and then spun on his heel and strode off. I
rubbed my neck gratefully. Of course,
this was back in the day, back when I was sure that
everything was going to fall apart and warlike
semi-intelligent gorillas would rise up and make
us their slaves at the stroke of midnight,
1/1/00, so I didn’t think that I would actually have to do
anything about it.
As luck would have it, the gorillas are still
nowhere to be seen, so I guess I’ll be posting this
thing, just to give you all a small idea
of what sort of hijinks ensue at Comix Experience on a
Friday. If response is good, I’ll do
more. If not, well, to quote Ice Cube, “fuck all y’all.”
I managed to make it to CE about 12:20, which
is pretty much the soonest I ever manage to
make it, even though I start thinking about
leaving my house about 11:00 and it’s usually a quick
fifteen minute ride on the freeway to get
there. I try to get there sooner so that I can have a bit
more hang time with Dan
“the Man”, who usually leaves around 12:30 to go to (shudder) work.
Dan, for those of you who don’t know him,
is one cool guy, sort of a cross between Archie
Andrews and a yakuza thug; red hair, easy
laugh, tattoos like nobody’s business, crotch rocket
motorcycle. Dan uses his mighty powers
for good, working with troubled children while the rest
of us are pounding beer and arguing over
who has the sexier facemask, Dr. Doom or Kang the
Conqueror. Dan also likes Savage Dragon
in a kind of “I’m not proud and I’m not embarrassed”
way that makes teasing impossible.
As I said, a cool guy.
Anyway, I show up about 12:20, shake Dan’s
hand, shake Larry’s hand, get money for beer. By
12:27, Larry and
I are cracking open two cold bottles of Bass. Dan, ever the soon-to-be-working
professional, abstains.
We all swap New Year’s Eve stories, the best
of which is Dan’s account of briefly being the
leader of a drunken worshipful mass on the
morning after New Year’s Eve. This is how cool
Dan is; he got his own post-Y2K cult, even
if only briefly. “I’m surprised there weren’t more
guys doing what we were doing,” Dan said.
“The streets were empty. Most of the people I knew
left the city and went out and got wacky
in the woods.”
“You know what I love about Reggae?” Larry
suddenly asked. A Bob Marley tune was playing
over the CE speakers. “You can sing
anything to it. Check it out:”
“Get up/ Stand up/ Wacky in the woods.”
It was true. We had to admit it.
Right around 1:00, Rob
G. showed up, to the cheers of all. If only we had known what
we were
in for, we might have tempered those cheers
a tad.
Rob G. is the ninja of comedy, hanging silently
in the background until the perfect time to strike
has arrived (some of you might remember Rob’s
“Bad Wingman! Bad Wingman!” harangue
from Dennis’s report (88.41)). Bald
and goateed, Rob alternately seems harmless and scary,
kind of like those guys who’ve spent a certain
amount of time institutionalized, or who you find
out later is on some sort of unexpected drug,
but he is the master of the telling observation. (At
one point, we were staring at some Vertigo
promo junk, and he announced, “This new Swamp
Thing is gonna tank. Swamp Thing needs
to be more Thing, less chick.”) Rob is also engaged to
one of the coolest chicks on the planet,
who could probably drink everyone but Larry outta
commission.
Anyway, Rob came in, cracked open a beer,
caught everyone up on the new living situation (he
and his woman just moved in together) and
the Comix Experience Experience (or CE2 as I refer
to it) officially began in earnest.
For a change, I don’t think there was nearly
as much high-falutin’ comic talk as usual. Larry
occasionally broke in with Reggae versions
during Rob’s stories (“Get up/ Stand up/ Hard to
move the couch”), Dan talked about his buddy
who takes S&M pictures of chicks in bondage on
his boat, “three miles out, in international
waters.”
“I thought twelve miles out were international waters,” Larry said.
“No, I think it’s three.” Dan said.
“I thought it was three, and they changed it to twelve,” I said, ever impressionable.
“There are way too many superheroes with lightning
bolts on their chest,” Rob said, looking at a
Zot t-shirt, a Flash t-shirt and a Mage t-shirt.
Somehow, this led to a brief argument about
the nature of sexual fetishes, although, thanks to the
miracle of beer, I can’t really remember
what the argument is about. “All I’m saying is, you’re a
bondage man, I’m a latex man, and that’s
what makes America great,” Larry concluded, in that
“all men are brothers” way that he has.
Then Larry broke open the latest Star Wars
Insider which had pictures of an actual chick
dressing up as Mara Jade, Jedi hotty.
“This,” Larry announced, “is my dream woman.”
She was indeed very, very cute. “That
lightsaber, that armor, that dancer’s body, that take no
shit attitude,” Larry sighed.
“Wow,” I said in agreement, flipping across
the various photos of a sexy redhead being paid to
pretend that she was the Emperor’s personal
assassin. “Hold me closer, Jedi dancer.”
Larry did everything but a spit-take.
“Dude, you have totally wrecked that song for me for, like,
life.” Obviously, a Mad magazine fan
from way back, Larry announced a few seconds later:
“Dude, I may have to spend the rest of the
day writing lyrics for that.” Thank God, he didn’t
take up his threat.
“Alright, you sick fucks,” Dan said, throwing
on his gear, “I’m leaving.” Considering Dan has
the buddy with the boat and the S&M pix,
we took this as a compliment.
From there, it was a very quiet day.
There was a quarter box mishap, where a customer had
found some books that obviously shouldn’t
have been there. Rob then proceeded to give Larry a
load of shit for flaking on getting together
the previous week. And Rob, I learned that day, is
basically a walking shit storm when he wants
to be. He went off on Larry for ten minutes, drank
the rest of the beer that Larry paid for,
then gave more shit for another ten minutes. I haven’t seen
Larry humbled or silent very often, but his
head hung down contritely as he quietly listened.
Or perhaps he fell asleep, I haven’t quite figured it out.
In any event, Rob and I had the Swamp Thing
conversation, and then he told me the Sin City
lunchbox story which I’m recounting to you
all now.
See, I pretty much have a love/hate relationship
with Frank Miller, with things turning more and
more on the “hate” side of things.
I loved his first Sin City story–Marv, Goldie, Nancy–so much
so, that I probably bought every issue of
the next three story arcs before I figured out how badly
they bit. So much so, that I blunked
down an ungodly amount of money for 300, a story so flat
and two-dimensional it’s almost concave.
So much so, that I bought not one, but for some
reason two of the god-damn Sin City lunchboxes,
which does not have Marv merrily burning in
the electric chair as I had hoped, but instead
a bunch of chiaroscuro strippers that Mr. Miller
must have spent at most nine minutes drawing
(as opposed to the Milk & Cheese lunchbox
which is a work of genius, I think).
And none of these fine products of Mr. Miller’s are very
cheap, and like some idiot who fondly remembers
Frank’s non-sucky input, I have spent a
certain amount of coin on them, usually by
ordering them in advance.
Anyway, in early December, the new 300 “widescreen”
hardcover comes out, and I say to Larry,
“You know, I should buy one of those, shit
in it, and mail it back to Frank Miller.” Kind of tit
for tat. You understand.
Anyway, the week after that, Rob and Larry,
laughing over this, decide to take one of the Sin
City lunchboxes, open it, and put a post-it
with a note saying, “Jeff: Shit here.” A pretty good
joke, but I didn’t make it in that Friday,
and so they put the lunchbox away and didn’t say
anything more about it.
So Rob tells me as Larry dozes that one of
the CE subscribers opened his Sin City lunchbox a
week or so ago, and was perturbed to find
a “Jeff: Shit here” post-it note.
Around the time that Rob finishes telling
me this story, Larry wakes up in time for Brian to come
in, interrupting Rob in the middle of his
long “cops don’t know” tuck demonstration,
which
seems to me to be just hiding your beer bottle
inside your coat, but which Rob is assigning all
sorts of magical properties and subtle nuances,
e.g., “see, this looks so much like a tuck that the
cops don’t think it’s a tuck, but it really
is a tuck, and the cops don’t know, see?”
Unfortunately for Brian (or perhaps luckily
for him), we can’t stay around and keep him
company, as both Larry and I agree to trudge
up the hill to Rob’s new digs. There, we see a
water pipe the size of a horse’s leg, a very
disturbing Will Ryker ephemera collection, and
enough old issues of the Micronauts that
I went on to have some disturbing semi-erotic Acroyear
dreams that night, the details of which are
really better left undiscussed.
All material on these pages is © 2000 by Jeff Lester. With the
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