Nothing to see here

British DJ due Slyde.  That's not me and not him.  Well, the fella on the right DOES look a bit like him.

Because I'm guest-posting over at Slyde's joint today. Or yesterday. Whenever. The point is, I did a little something for a fellow blogger. To help him celebrate his 5-year Blogoversary.

Kind of like what Adam did for one of his bloggy friends*. But less, ya know, generous and gifty.

*follow that link if you are feeling charitable. - Earl

Truth be told, I've never been a fan of the idea of guest-posting.  Most of the times when a blogger uses guest-posts on their blog, I give it only the briefest of skims.  Maybe something will catch my eye or heart and I'll want to know a little bit more about the guest-poster, but generally...no.  The only reason I'm doing it here is because I started out as a guest-poster on Slyde's blog before I started this little exercise.  A little nod to my own bloggy beginnings.


So go check out Slyde's blog this week.  If you haven't done so already.  What else ya gonna do?  Pick your nose?

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Note: Remember to play the Badgerdaddy Trivia Challenge every day. Seriously, picking your nose might be more worth your time.

Dirty Vikings

I watch a lot of crap. Figuratively.

But I enjoy bad movies, good movies, independent movies, foreign movies, extremely low-budget movies...well, just about any kind of movie. It's an obsession. I know that. I'm not a real big TV junkie so when nothing interesting is on any of the channels, I will put a movie on. And the available streaming of Netflix is like crack to a, um, crack addict.

So every once in a while I am gonna come across something unexpected. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. I ran into the "sometimes bad" variety over this past weekend. It's a little film called Severed Ways that I didn't quite make it all the way through for reasons I will go into in a little bit. But it's about two Norse men who were stranded in North America during one of the Vikings excursions west of Greenland around AD 1007.  It was an odd film.  American, for what I can tell even though the men spoke in Old Norse.  Each chapter was punctuated by a brief bit of some black metal music by bands like Dimmu Borgir and Burzum (a pretty disturbing story with that band, by the way). The camera-work was shaky and the pacing was extremely slow.

But it wasn't the pacing, the camera work or the black metal that made me turn this one off.  It was something else entirely.

I remember the only time I saw Caligula some time back.  Slyde and I had gone to over to a friend's house who had just purchased the film on laser disc back when laser disc was the way to go when watching films. And the three of us were totally unprepared for some of the extra hard-core sex scenes that Bob Guccione added to the original film.  Like the brief scene showing one dude giving another dude oral pleasure, if ya know what I mean.  I had somehow managed to make it 30 years without seeing one dude give another dude a blowjob, but there it was.  I'm not a prude, by any means, but there are some things that I would just rather not see.  This is one of them.

Then there was the episode of Oz that showed Christopher Meloni's character peeing in a bucket while in solitary.  Now Meloni was never an actor who was afraid of showing off his hog on camera, but he took it to another level in this episode.  I remember Slyde calling me the next day as we marveled at his "acting ability".  I mean there was no way that was CGI.  He was really peeing in the bucket.  Lee Strasburg can't teach anyone better than that.  Peeing on command on camera.  But this is another one of those things that I really could have done without seeing.

And Severed Ways took it to a whole new level.

About a half-hour into the film, one of the Vikings took a shit in the woods. He took his pants down or his tunic up, whatever, he squatted down and he took a shit.  And then the camera panned down to show a close-up of the actual dirty deed.  Even the cleanup phase afterward with some leaves.

I couldn't get to the remote control quick enough to turn that shit off.  No pun intended.  I was done with this version of 2 Vikings 1 Cup, if you know what I mean.  And I think you do.  I just don't have the stomach for that kind of thing.  The ultimate "I really didn't need to see that" moment, if you ask me.

So, apparently I watch a lot of crap.  Literally.

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Note: Remember to play the Bug-Eyed Trivia Challenge every day. Does a Viking shit in the woods?  Apparently he does.

Random Memory: Billy Squier

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Slyde vs. Moriarty: Final Round

After our last encounter with the dreaded Moriarty (in which Slyde got a little revenge), it was a long, long time before we met with him again. Easily a year or so.

This final time we ran into him occurred at something called I-Con. It's an internationally known Science Fiction convention held at The University of Stony Brook here on Long Island for the past 27 years. Over the years it has grown to include anime, medieval re-enactments and comic-book related events.

It's fun to just people watch at this thing, or maybe I should say Klingon watch or something. There are always those dressed up as their favorite alien from their favorite sci-fi show or movie. And the guest stars are always fun. Slyde, particularly, had a great run-in with pre-outted George Takei that he wrote about a while ago on his site. I can't link to it but it is the first story in November 2005 on his archive page, if you are interested.

Anyway, so on this one Saturday afternoon, we decided to attend a lecture on "Women in Comics". I'm not talking about Wonder Woman or She-Hulk, but the ladies who create comic books and their unique take on the past, present and future of the genre. One of the guest speakers was Louise Simonson, wife of legend Walt Simonson, and a fairly big-time legend of her own. Not only had she broken through some of the early male-only barriers of the industry, she was also a role model for many up and coming female creators of the present day.

We get there 15 minutes or so before the lecture is set to begin. The guests weren't even present on stage yet. And out of nowhere, Slyde starts to reminisce about Moriarty. He wondered what happened to the guy, did he drop out of collecting due to his over-the-top bullying from the year before, etc...

It's as he is talking about this that I notice an extremely unattractive woman in a black Punisher t-shirt that looked all too familiar. I start looking around because I'm sure where there is smoke, there certainly must be fire.

Now the following events all happen in the matter of micro-seconds:

• I take a deep quaff of some kind of soda or seltzer.
• I find Moriarty and he is a mere 5 or 6 rows directly in front of us.
• I'm about to swallow and let Slyde know that he is here, when Slyde abruptly stands up and shouts:

"THERE HE IS!!!!!!"

Then a whole lot of things happen all at once. Most of the crowd falls silent and turns to look at the maniac screaming at the top of his lungs like Capt. Ahab spotting the great white whale. This includes Moriarty and his evil sidekick, although I'm really not sure if they remember/recognized us at the moment. The guests from the panel started arriving at this exact moment as well, which must have been quite a shock to them since they were all women and they entered to a shout of "There HE is".

But the funniest thing that happened is that I started busting out laughing. Which wasn't a good thing, because I had a mouthful of soda that was about halfway down my throat at time. Yeah...the folks in front of me got the old Gallagher treatment as my soda came spraying out of my mouth and my nose (yeah...that hurts) at warp speed. Splech!!!

Slyde recovers and sit down only to find me hiccuping and crying like a baby. Some of the tears were from the soda exiting my nasal cavity, but it was mostly hysterical laughter that was doing me in. So much so that I couldn't contain myself. I'm covered in soda, snot and tears and I have to get out of there. So I exit my seat and I run blind up the stairs and out the door in search of a bathroom.

Bad timing, because as I am running out the door, Louise Simonson is walking in the door. I run directly into her, but I somehow manage to avoid doing her any permanent harm. Must have been my ballet training as a young adult kicking in. I had to have been quite a sight to her. Soda-soaked and covered in bodily fluids, I probably resembled Jodie Foster after her bad night out in The Accused. I was a mess!

After cleaning myself up in the bathroom and getting rid of my hiccups, I find that Slyde is waiting for me outside the lecture hall. We just didn't have the energy to go back in at this point.

To this day, he doesn't think that what he did was that funny. But it was the sequence of events that really did me in, almost as if it all happened in slow motion. That was the last we ever saw of our friend and his gal-pal. A year or so later we stopped attending conventions all together. But I have to say that we had our share of good times at those things and a part of me misses those weekends.

I wonder if Mr. and Mrs. Moriarty are still out there. Doing there thing. Wearing Punisher t-shirts. Annoying the masses. God, I hope so!

Question: Can someone tell my why the spacing gets all fucked up in Blogger's editor after you use bullet points? Happens to me every time. Fuckers!

Slyde vs. Moriarty: Round 2

Over the next month or so, Slyde and I found ourselves making fun of this Moriarty character more and more. Our fun at his expense didn't mean that Slyde was any less angry with the dude. On the contrary, it grew and grew every time he thought of the asshole. He couldn't wait to see him again, for there would be Hell to pay!

We didn't have to wait long.

We were at a comic-book convention at the Nassau Coliseum the next time we ran into him. Actually, we saw his Punisher-clad girlfriend first. As soon as we did, Slyde began to surreptitiously follow her around in hopes that she was there with Moriarty. After 10 minutes or so, she led us right to him!

I asked him what he was going to do, but he didn't really know. So he decided to ruin his day much the way he ruined Slyde's day a few weeks before, by trying to instigate a fight with him.

So he approaches his nemesis who is looking through some back issue boxes at one dealer's table. He situates himself right next to him...shoulder to shoulder...and he starts rifling through another box. Then he starts to lean and push against him. Basically just pushing him out of the way. Now, I'm watching from behind and I can see the guy start to get annoyed. But he doesn't say anything. He appraised the situation and decided to move on, knowing that he would probably get his ass kicked if he said "boo".

The above scene repeated itself four or five more times after he moved on. He would move to another dealer table, start looking through back issues, and then Slyde would move right in next to him and just lean and push him away. With more and more force each time. Then Slyde started just staring at him instead of looking through the bins. Just hoping for him to say something, anything to get into it.

(note: bullying people is bad, but this asshole deserved to be beat down)

Finally, the guy had enough. He gathers his girlfriend and with a sheepish look in our direction he heads out the exit door.

So he didn't get to kick Moriarty's ass, but he did get to ruin the guy's fun for the day. And it made me laugh...so that's good. It maybe even kept him away from conventions for a while. I don't know, because we went a year or so without running into him.

Until.....

Next: Slyde, Louise Simonson, and emergency exits.

Slyde vs. Moriarty: Round 1

One day at work about 15 years ago (we were kids...25 for me, 23 or so for Slyde), Slyde gives me a call or takes a walk over to my office and tells me that his favorite comic-book writer, Peter David, is going to be at a comic-book shop in Port Jefferson signing books for us geeks.

Peter David is an uber-prolific writer, with titles ranging from Aquaman to X-Factor and everything in between. He is also a big draw for the Trekkies for the dozen or so books he has written in the Star Trek-iverse. Slyde, as I mentioned, is a huge fan. Not as much for me, but I was a fan of his work on The Incredible Hulk and Spider-man. So we were both kinda excited to go meet the man. Slyde, in particular, wanted to ask him about a certain sub-plot that he introduced in The Incredible Hulk that he had previously written a letter about.

Wow...that looks incredibly fanboy-ish written out like that. Seriously, it wasn't that bad. Just something cool he wanted to talk to the man about. Something that they had already traded correspondence about, and Slyde wanted to see if Mr. David remembered him. That's all.

So, early one bright Autumn morning, we take a ride into Port Jefferson to see that a line had already formed outside the shop with about a half-hour to go before the signing. We dutifully take our places at the end of the line, behind this tall, unkempt younger guy and his seriously unattractive girlfriend (who was wearing a Punisher t-shirt...this becomes important in Rounds 2 and 3). The two in front of us are almost out of their skin with excitement to meet Mr. David, and they are starting to annoy every single person in the line with their geeky comments and attitudes.

Especially Slyde and I.

We even try turning our backs on the duo, but they just keep at it with inane shit like "Hey, remember when Peter David wrote about the Hulk fighting Wolverine...wasn't that cool?" Yeah, dipshit. It was cool...now stop talking to us, ok?

Now Slyde had a bit of a temper back in the day. I'm talking a long time ago...15 or so years. He has mellowed into a semi-mature adult these days. But back then all it took to send him in a rage was a jackass like this. A jackass who was about to ruin his day. Peter David hadn't even shown up yet, and he (and I, to be honest) just wanted to kick this fuckhead's ass. Just for justifying the stereotype of geeky comic-book fans to the rest of the world.

Finally, the line starts to move. Jackass has forgotten about us for the time being as he is concentrating on the task at hand. He and his Punisher-clad girlfriend get up to the table and they give him a couple of books to sign and they begin to engage in the kind of questioning that comic-book creators must absolutely hate. "So what were you trying to say about the Hulk's state of mind on page 12, panel three of issue 276 when he was playing with the clock?" Just inane shit. See the beginning and ending of Mallrats for clarification.

He was starting to hold up the line, so a store clerk came up and asked him to move on so that Slyde, I and the rest of the line behind us can get our shit signed. He says "Oh, sure...I'll just move over here so we can keep talking." And that's what he does. He stands to the side and he keeps talking while Mr. David, trying to be nice, replies with a lot of "Uh huhs" while quickly signing the rest of our books. You could tell the man just wanted to get out of there at this point.

Slyde is furious now. Peter David signs his books while barely looking up to see us because he has this asshole chatterbox on his hip, firing one stupid question after another. He tries to interrupt, but asshole is having none of it. After a half-minute or so of waiting, the store clerk comes up to us and asks us to move along.

Slyde and I aren't going to be beaten that easily. We move off to the side, but this asshole keeps on talking. And Slyde just keeps getting angrier and angrier. You wouldn't like him when he gets angry...just like the Hulk. After 5 or 10 minutes of this we finally decide to get out of there. I literally don't think I have ever seen Slyde this mad. He was so pissed on the ride home, and I have to say that I probably wasn't a big help there. Because when he gets mad, I start laughing. And it just makes him angrier.

Now, as 20-somethings will do, we begin to come up with stupid names for this tool. We settle on "Moriarty" - a nod to Arthur Conan Doyle, and Slyde on that day swears that he will someday get his revenge. Vengeance will be his!

Next: "Someday" comes a few months later at a convention at the Nassau Coliseum.

Slyde vs. Moriarty: prologue

Here it is. The beginning/prologue for the first of three tales about our good friend Slyde and his encounter with someone we only know as "Moriarty". First...some salient, if rather boring, details:

For those of you who don't know, Slyde and I are comic-book geeks. Well, I try to say that I was a comic-book geek as I stopped collecting about 12 years ago, but one can really never escape from one's true self - as the saying goes. So right after college (around 1989, Earl fans) I had my first real job and, for the first time in my life, excess cash flow. I was up in Boston visiting a college buddy. When we get to his house, I see that he has comic-books everywhere.

I find out he has been collecting since he was a kid, and now that he had some extra coin in his pocket, he has started again. And lo and behold, comic-books had grown up since I was a kid. Thanks, mostly, to the Brits in the genre...Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, etc...

I was hooked.

I started out small. Going to my local shop once a week to pick up a few titles and rifle through the back-issues bin. Then I started pre-ordering books from my shop. First a handful, then up to as many as 25 or 30 a month. It was addicting. I would pick up my books on Friday and spend my downtime during the next week reading and bagging my goodies. Good times!

Then I met Slyde, and we kinda took it to the next level. He was only buying a choice few books every month, but he had been collecting since he was a kid. I helped change all that by introducing him to some independent and DC titles (Slyde was mostly a Marvel guy). Soon his monthly pre-orders were rivaling mine.

We would also spend Saturday or Sunday afternoons going to different comic-book shops, going through their back issues, trying to fill out our wish-lists. And comic-book conventions, ahhh....comic-book conventions. We would pack up our favorite books in hopes that our favorite writers/artists could sign them. Total loser fan-boys! Well, we tried to tell ourselves that we weren't but please refer to the second paragraph above.

We certainly didn't look like fan-boys. We didn't dress in Spidey or Dark Knight t-shirts. Well, Slyde had a couple of Dead World shirts...but they were kinda cool. For that crowd, at least. Honestly, we spent just as much time making fun of the crowd as we did looking for back issues of Iron Fist. Really!

This went on for a few years. Then around 1994, I stopped collecting. Cold turkey. I don't really have a reason for it, I just decided that I had had enough. This pissed Slyde off to no end. I ramped up his comic-book buying by a shitload, then I left him out there on his own. Oh, I still stop in to the shop every year or two when something cool comes out. Frank Miller did a second Dark Knight story in prestige format a few years back...had to have that. Last year Joss Whedon wrote a Firefly/Serenity short series that I needed to own. But mostly, I stay away.

Slyde has cut way back too. I think he only gets 1 or 2 books a month, unless something special comes out (World War Hulk), but nowhere near what he used to buy.

But it was during those peak 4 or 5 years that our story takes place. Going to various shops, conventions and weekend shows at VFW halls. Pizza and beers for lunch, lunatic comic-book fans and a lot of money spent on pictures drawn on paper.


Next: Peter David, Port Jefferson and our introduction to Moriarty and his evil sidekick!

A request, then some cat pics

First off...whenever I talk to Slyde about the blogs we enjoy, he always says that he wishes he had more fun stuff to write about. So he posts YouTube videos instead.

I'm here to tell you that it's just not true! He has tons of funny anecdotes and stories from our wacky past that he could write about it. He is either A) too embarrassed about this stuff or B) too lazy to write about it.

Methinks it could be a combination of the two.

So I am asking you, dear readers, to let me know if you would like me, your humble servant, to tell one such of these tales for the poor lad. Well...it's actually three tales, and it involves Slyde, Slyde's arch-nemesis, Peter David, myself and comic book conventions. Interested?

I promise to not place any kind of blame or shame on him. Well, maybe a little...but it's funny stuff, kids! So let me know in the comment section if you would like me to pull the sheet back a little on our good friend Slyde...to reveal the inner-Slyde, so to speak.

Now for some kitty pics:

Here is another shot of Big Syd sleeping away the day. He is literally starting to grow hair on top of his hair. Sometimes when he is sleeping he tucks his face into his under-mane (?) so that you can't even see the little fella. 1...2...3....awwwwww!

This pretty, little kitty is named Mina. It's short for Thumbelina (not sure how that becomes Mina, but OK), because she is a Hemingway cat. Six toes, ya know. She is one of Gia's mom's cats, and this is her favorite place in the world. Don't be fooled by her come hither stares. She's a killer. All the birds and chipmunks in the area fear her. Even hanging bells on her collar doesn't stop her from her critter rampage. She is Death incarnate...in a grey coat.

Pissers and Shitters

OK...just to state it right here and right now so that I don't hum and haw about it later on:

I peed on the carpet in the corner of our hotel room over the weekend.

My God! I still can't believe it. Even when I see it written out on the screen right there. I peed in the corner of our hotel room on the carpet. Lemme 'splain.

So on Saturday, I had a "guys day out" planned with some of my friends. We went into the city and did our version of a pub crawl. Hit a bunch of great bars. Had some decent food. Walked around alot. It was great fun.

Now Gia had a few days off and wanted to come in as well, but there were no ladies allowed on our "guys day out". Not my rules, but those were the rules. So we got ourselves a hotel room (a beautiful one-bedroom suite with a separate living area complete with a sofa-bed) for the next few days with the intention that we would pretend to be city folk. Gia asked my sister to join her in the city on Saturday and they would do their thing, while the guys did our thing. Great plan!

Well, I get back to the hotel sometime after midnight. We had been drinking since around 2:30 in the afternoon. Drinking hard at times! So you could imagine my state.

The girls weren't back yet, but I got a call saying that they were on their way. Once they arrived, the three of us headed back out to a local Irish pub a few blocks away. More good stuff flowed as Gia told me HER embarrassing story of the evening.

You see, her tummy wasn't doing too well, and she, er, well, she kinda sharted before dinner. Undergarments had to be thrown away, and the clean-up effort took about a half-hour. They were nowhere near our hotel and they had a dinner reservation just around the corner from where they were.

She was mortified, but somehow she made it through the night. Did I ever mention that this was the first time she was hanging out with one of my sisters for the evening? Niiiiiiice!

Anyway we head back to the hotel. I set up the sofa-bed for my sister and we all headed to sleep.

The next part of the story is something out of The Twilight Zone.

I had, apparently, shed all my clothes before hopping into bed because the next thing I became aware of was coming to consciousness while I was standing in the corner of our bedroom. Naked. Peeing on the carpet. WTF?

I immediately stop, and hop into bed hoping that Gia hasn't noticed. She has. She is wide awake and saying stuff like "You just peed in the corner? WTF?". I try to distract her with warm snuggling and utter gibberish, but she is having none of it. She keeps repeating "You just peed in the corner." Nothing like stating the obvious, huh?

I soon pass out once again, and I'm gone. For like 5 straight hours.

When I finally wake up, I have this strange recollection of a dream that I had last night. I had dreamed that I peed on the carpet in the corner of the room. Weird. I looked under the blanket. Naked...check. No urine stains...check. I peer into the corner of the room and there is no tell-tale wet stain...double check (but the carpet was dark, so maybe...). Phew! I HAD dreamed it. Weird dream.

Then I turn over and see Gia staring at me. Her first words were "You peed on the carpet last night." FUCK!!!!!

I gotta tell you there is no explanation in the world for this. I have been much drunker, MUCH DRUNKER, in the past than I was this particular evening...and I have always managed to make it to the bathroom. Sure, I've puked in some odd places, but peeing? This is crazy! And as Slyde keeps reminding me...I'm 40!!!! No excuses can be made.

What's weird is that everyone we have told this story, almost to a person, has laughed and said "Oh yeah, my boyfriend/husband/brother/whatever has done that when he was wasted!"

Really? It's like an epidemic or something. I do remember my older brother doing that when we were younger and sharing a room. Middle of the night. Gets up. Pees on the rug. But he was wasted and like 19 at the time.

But not me...I've always been pretty particular about where I pee.

Let's hope this doesn't start a trend.

PS - Do you like how I added Gia's embarrassing tale in the middle of mine to lessen the impact? Also, I thought real hard about posting this, but it was way too funny. And this blog is mostly anonymous. Only Gia and Slyde from my real life read it, and they already knew about it...so WTF.