Friday, November 19, 2004

So... now what?

Sold the house this week, which has resulted in a strange feeling of 'now what?' It's odd, knowing that sometime in the near future we won't be living here, and that it'll be someone else's house soon. This was the first house we'd ever owned, I guess I'm really just a big old sap, because I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for this place. We saw this place when it was nothing but a piece of land marked off by a couple of stakes and some twine. We watched it being built. It's kind of like our kid.

Well, a kid that we really wanted to get rid of so we could buy a better one. Do people ever do that?

It's awesome that it sold so quickly. Having people call every twenty minutes throughout the day wanting to show it was starting to wear on my nerves.

The thing is, the whole deal doesn't close until December 16, which leaves us in a kind of limbo as far as our living situation goes. We have to figure out exactly what we're gonna do, and then make that happen. All this around the holidays, a time when you don't want to be running errands or moving. The good news is that the buyers intend to make a rental property of the place, so we might be able to actually rent our own house back from them until our new place is ready next spring. Neither of us is jazzed about the prospect of moving twice in six months. But, on the other hand, it would be really cool to just be able to live downtown. Much more convenient, and I really am ready to be done with that commute. There's lots of things I could do with that hour and a half that we spend in the car each day, and I'm starting to think that, if we're going to own a gallery downtown, it might make more sense to become more familiar with the neighborhood and the community of galleries that are in our new neighborhood. It'd be easier to do that if we got an apartment in that neighborhood.

We'll probably just have to wait and see what happens with the buyers.

Still, I don't want to have to move twice.


Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Return of Chore Boy

When will it ever end?

Last night was all about those last two chores that we couldn't get done over the weekend. Steam Cleaning the carpet, and touching up the paint on the inside of the house. So, for a few hours last night, it was me and the rug doctor. Rhonda did the paint touch ups and repainted this little wall for some reason that shall remain a mystery to me forever. It had been beige, then she painted it yellow to match the kitchen. Then last night, it became beige again. I think that wall has been painted at least fifty times in the five years we've lived in that house. The cat hid out under the bed in the bedroom. He hates any sort of carpet cleaning or vacuuming device, so last night was a bad night for him.

Anyway, we're done now, we can put the house on the market and get rid of it. Thankfully, we aren't dealing with carpet in the new place.

Maybe now I can get back on track with Hold My Life. Second episode is completely done, just waiting for me to put it on Karmic Calamity. This week, for sure.

Friday, November 12, 2004

Birthday Gal

Tonight's Betty's birthday.

For those of you who don't already know, Betty is the bartender at Kricket's bar, which is nestled inside the Ramada Inn on First Street and Polk in scenic downtown Phoenix. Krickets is our local bar, the one we find ourselves at most any night of the week. Or every night of the week, depending on what week we're talking about. And, as far as I can tell, it's the only bar on the face of the planet that would ever let us just take over once a month and play.

Betty is the best bartender in the world, and an all around cool chick. Hope she has a good birthday.

Returning to captivity once more...

Well, I'm back at work today, Chore Boy won't be reappearing until tomorrow.

I didn't get around to Denny O'Neil's Iron Man run, which is a total bummer. I haven't read that run since the books originally came out in the 80's. I sold a bunch of comics in 1990, and my Iron Man run was one of them. It was a big mistake, selling those comics, I know that now. At least now, I'm able to replace a bunch of those books that I got rid of 14 years ago.

I've really been looking forward to reading these books once more, I remember them fondly, even though it just tore me apart reading them at the time they were published. Denny O'Neil put Tony Stark through hell during this run. In the span of a few months, Tony Stark lost his company, his personal fortune, and flat out gave the Iron Man armor away. He lost, quite literally, everything, even losing his starring role in the Iron Man comic for a time. I don't know how much lower a man can sink than to be relegated to the part of 'supporting character' in your own comic book. The entire story spanned over three years of monthly comics, and there wasn't a single character in the book who was left unchanged at the end.

I can remember every single month, getting that book and thinking "this is the issue where Tony turns everything around again. He'll get the armor back now for sure!" I was naive, what can I say? I was also wrong every single month for quite some time, but man, I was along for the ride every single month, and when we finally came to the resolution of the story, it was a truly great payoff, and one that was well worth waiting for. Even if it did result in one of the goofier armor designs of Iron Man's long history. The freelancers currently writing for Marvel could learn a lot about writing comic books from this story, or any number of stories that came out of the Shooter Era of Marvel comics. Unfortunately, I don't think they're interested.

Well, at least it's Friday. Maybe I'll have time to get that in this weekend sometime.

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Chore Boy (conclusion)

And so, as our afternoon draws to a close, we find a weary and smelly Chore Boy winding down for the afternoon.

I was able to get some of the stuff done, and I managed to get the house straightened up so Phil could take pictures for the listing of the house. We even got all the paperwork taken care of, so we can put it on the market say, Monday-ish after we get the rest of our stuff taken care of.

The question is, will I get to read a single comic book today? Hard to tell, it's 4:00 and I've still got a Chicken Pot Pie to craft. It's looking pretty grim for Chore Boy.


Chore boy, part deux

The adventures of Chore Boy continue! After joining forces with the enigmatic being known as Handyman, Chore Boy sets out to defeat the forces of... uhhh, stuff breaking and, oh screw it I'm too beat to come up with good stuff here.

We hired this guy, Billy, to fix our jacked-up door that leads to the garage. Billy was cool, he saved us a couple bucks by fixing a door that we thought we'd have to replace, so I asked him to look at that bathroom fan that had been vexing us so this past month or two. He was done with that in a half an hour. Paid the man (gladly) and he was off. I wish I would've taken pictures,but he probably would've thought I was a freak.

Anyway, I patched cracks, and was planning to patch more, when Phil called. Something about taking pictures of the house. Great, now I have to clean. That stack of Iron Man books is just getting farther and farther away.

Will Chore Boy get to read a comic? Tune in later to find out!

Chore Boy

Man, being a grownup is such a drag sometimes. We're putting our house up for sale, which means there's little things that have to be 'taken care of' before we can list it. Little cracks in the stucco outside, we have a couple of ugly little trees that need to be trimmed, the sort of stuff that doesn't take all that long, but when everything's combined, it makes for a day you want to have to go through. Well, I don't want to have to go through.

So, basically, instead of being able to spend 8 hours reading the complete Denny O'Neil Iron Man run, I'm chore boy today. Wonderful.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Waiting for the Trade

So, now I've got all this Ebay crap flowing in on a regular basis, and of course, I'm reading this stuff as it comes in. I just finished a 50 issue run of Marvel Team-Up from the mid to late 70s. Started out with a couple issues of Bill Mantlo/Sal Buscema stories, which were cool enough, but the meat of this run is an extended arc of stories written by Chris Claremont. Most of those were drawn by John Byrne, with Sal Buscema ably finishing up the run. It's a great bunch of stories, from a great era of Marvel Comics.

I think this is gonna be the first thing I review over in the reviews section on Karmic Calamity.

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

I decided a couple of weeks ago to take a break from new comics for a little while, and devote the money I'd normally spend on new comics to buying back issues on Ebay. Going all 'back issue' is something I do from time to time, usually whenever I'm feeling particularly underwhelmed by what the publishers are putting out there on the shelves, or overwhelmed by what they're charging for them. This time around, it was a combination of both factors... but that's a self-involved rant for another day.

The comics category on Ebay is a very strange land. Go there, and you'll see brand new comics, even some that aren't even out on the stands yet, listed with the starting bid above cover price. Brand new book. One that you could go to a comic book store and pick up for cover price. One has to wonder if the seller is on crack, or if they're just expecting to prey on a buyer that is. I mean, really... who wants to pay $4.95+shipping for the latest issue of Brian Bendis's Avengers? To be quite honest, I don't even want to pay cover price for that, which is why I'm on Ebay in the first place.

The truly bizarre thing is that, while people are listing brand those brand new comics at inflated prices, they're practically giving away back issues, comparatively speaking. I decided to concentrate my search on late 1970s to late 1980s stuff, paying particular attention to the Marvel Universe of that era. This has totally paid off for me. By concentrating on that era, and only bidding on complete lots of 20 or more books, I've been able to scoop up some good reading for anywhere between 11 to 75 cents an issue. For example, I recently got Fantastic Four #147-222 for around 25 bucks, and followed that up with a fifty issue run (#49-99 in case you're interested) of Marvel Team-Up for $11.25. Hours and hours of classic Marvel stories, purchased (in these two cases) for less than cover price. In the past month, I've bought a total of 216 comics for under a hundred bucks, and that's including shipping.


To me, it's kind'a like hitting the quarter boxes at the local comic book store, only here you can find a complete run of books, and here you can conduct your search from home, or even better at work when you're bored out of your mind. The average Quark Monkey can spend upwards of about six hours a day on Ebay on some days, plenty of time to dig through all the active auctions for that rare run of Power Man and Iron Fist from 1985. The only problem is that some of this stuff is so cheap that I've found myself bidding on comics that I really wouldn't buy if I was in my right mind. For example, Sunday night I bid on 30 issues of Dazzler... and won. Now, I'm not a huge Dazzler fan, but I saw that someone was gonna get these books for like, seven bucks, and I just couldn't help myself but put in a token bid of my own. Before I could stop myself, I had put in a maximum bid of nine bucks, figuring I'd be outbid before the end of the auction. Within seconds I was staring at a screen that said "congratulations, you are the high bidder!" Ten minutes later, I was staring blankly at the monitor, realizing what I had just done.

I'd bought a bunch of Dazzler comics. I don't remember much about Dazzler, but the one thing I do remember about it was that it sucked. And now, I was about to be the owner of 30 issues of this thing. At least I got 'em cheap.

Ah nostalgia. I think from now on I'm gonna stick with Power Man and Iron Fist. Maybe Rom.



Election Day

Longest day ever, and I'm trapped here, in my horrible gray box, bored out of my skull.

Great.


Monday, November 01, 2004

Gee, karmic calamity is a nice website, too bad nobody ever updates it, huh?

Having a real life is a drag. Being a grownup is a drag.

Okay... I got sidetracked for a couple of weeks with Halloween preparations, and preparing for our train-wreck of a live show this past Friday at the Pit. Also, my friend Barry told me that I seemed like a self-important asshole on my blog. The truth is, I asked him if I seemed like a self-important asshole, because I'm self-conscious about that sort of thing, and I knew he'd be honest.

Afterwards, I realized that I actually am a self-important asshole, and decided to continue.

Anyway, new episode of Hold My Life this week. It's done, I just haven't had the opportunity to post it. Also, a couple of additions to the website, spectacular Ninja Ducks Episodes by Greg, and more self involved blathering from me, right here.