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Tonight was Caroline’s first serious foray into that festive day when, all across America, America’s youth goes door to door, their faces hidden, begging for food. This violates several laws regarding trespassing, vagrancy, mask wearing, and harassment. Indeed, on any other day and practiced by adults, the authorities would be summoned and the perpetrator taken straight away. Amazingly, the police turn a blind eye to it and thus is Halloween and trick-or-treating perpetuated.

Ariel dressed as Dora the Explorer, the animated pint-sized adventurer who’s got my youngest speaking Spanish before she’s got English down. And Caroline, in a home made costume courtesy of mom, was dressed as Dora’s simian companion, Boots…so called because he wears boots (presumably before he adopted the footwear, his name was “Feet.”) Caroline’s patience for running door to door was exhausted after three houses because, once she realized people were giving her stuff, she got so overanxious that she kept sprinting and thus tripping over either her boots or her tail. Fortunately, I’d brought the stroller along, and so her highness rode from one house to the next in a typical “awwww” inspiring outing.

Best moment was when we encountered a six year old girl also dressed as Dora. But she looked at Ariel and Caroline in amazement, as if she’d actually run into the genuine items. Ariel dutifully collected candy for her little sister as well. Once we got home, we sorted judiciously through the candy to see what, if anything, Caroline could eat. Anything that presented a choking hazard was right out, but I figured we could let her have a Kitkat bar. I unwrapped it for her, and she carefully began sucking on it. Her eyes lit up (not literally, but close) and she started “mmm”ing. And then, as she chewed on it, the Kitkat bar split lengthwise into its two pieces. Caroline immediatley let out an alarmed yelp, thinking she’d broken it, and started trying to mush the two pieces back together again. But then she realized she could hold one in each hand and suck on both, and she was happy. Goldfish crackers were also a big hit.

Boy, she’s gonna have a festive diaper by tomorrow morning.

PAD

Wanna see a really nifty Lee Weeks pencil page that’s going to be in Hulk #77? Check it out…

http://users.rcn.com/lweeks/images/Hulk077022_72.jpg

November 1, 1991

And now, another gripping installment of:

USELESS STORIES

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Welcome back, pardners. Interesting week, highlighted by my eating my words from last week regarding “Smallville.” But before we get rocking, I wish to say that I think it absolutely sucks that–according to darkhorizons.com–Fox has suddenly come to its non-senses and canceled “Tru Calling.” WTF?! For one brief, shining moment, they have the brains to keep an SF/fantasy series going for another season, allowing it to build. And suddenly they revert to the same brilliant form that blew away “Firefly,” left “John Doe” hanging, and send “Wonderfalls” over in a barrel. Not to be confused with the WB which is suddenly trying to find a way to get new episodes of “Angel.” Does anyone on TV pay attention to the fact that the so-called niche market of SF and fantasy, which they treat with such disrespect, is responsible for just about every movie in the all-time top ten moneymakers? Idiots. Well, Hell, maybe an “Angel”-deprived WB will try to make up for it by picking up “Tru.” We’ll see. Anyway, onward…

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October 25, 1991

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At approximately 11:40 last night, Boston baseball fans forever lost the righ tot blame their team’s woes on a decades-dead player. Instead from now on, win or lose, their team’s fortunes will now rest squarely on their own heads. Henceforth no matter what happens with the Boston Red Sox, it’s their fault. If/when the team shows up next year bearing no resemblance at all to their current state, the fans don’t get to claim that Babe Ruth caused over half of them to be up for free agency this year.

This is, of course, a mortal blow to the perpetually victimized Red Sox Nation, whose team is no longer a collection of pre-destined losers who will always break your heart, but instead…just another team. And that may turn out to be the most heartbreaking development yet.

PAD

Bill Liebowitz, owner of “Golden Apple,” passed away this morning of a heart attack.

I’ve known Bill for over twenty years. A top retailer, a great guy, and he and his wife, Sharon, always had time for me whenever I would drop by their store in Los Angeles.

He will be sorely missed.

PAD

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Since this has nothing to do with Chris Reeve and heroism, I’m mentioning it here, just for amusement’s sake.

It was suggested by people here, and by John Byrne himself, that I didn’t have the nerve to show up on the Byrne board to make statements directly to him. I’ve already explained my reasons why I wouldn’t but, just for giggles, I endeavored to register on his board.

This is what I got:

“Sorry, the email address or domain entered has been blocked.
Unfortunately, you will not be able to sign up using Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, Compuserve or any other anonymous e-mail providers.
Due to past abuses we cannot make any exceptions. Please try again with a non-anonymous e-mail address.”

So even though “padguy@aol.com” is widely publicized and known to be me, and is not remotely anonymous, what I would have to do is start an entire separate e-mail account for the single and sole purpose of going on the Byrne board so that he and his fans could then tell me repeatedly to go away.

Oh yes. That’s gonna happen.

PAD

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There’s a discussion on Newsarama as to whether comic books were responsible for reversing the alleged Red Sox curse.

Allow me to submit for consideration “Fallen Angel” #14. In that issue, we see a desperate Boston Red Sox fan running through the streets of Bete Noire, seeking the aid of the titular character. Instead the fan encounters Benny the Snake and is devoured. Much like, say the Red Sox encountering the Yankees and being swallowed into a pit of 3-0.

But wait! The Fallen Angel, realizing what had transpired, grabbed Benny and forced him to disgorge the fan. Benny (representing the Yankees?) was forced to choke on the surrogate of the team traditionally accused of choking themselves. The fan survived the encounter and Benny slunk away into the darkness. Granted, the fan was left in shock…but then, so were many Red Sox fans when, given an unexpected lease on life, the Sox came back to beat the Yankees.

Keep in mind, this is the same comic that featured an entire issue of the supposedly heroic lead character torturing a captive for information and featured an entire discussion about how easy it is for even the most well-intentioned individual to dehumanize prisoners for the purpose of torturing them…several months before the Iraq prison scandal broke.

Cue “Twilight Zone” music.

PAD

So we spent the weekend up in Boston for a couple of reasons. First, as always, to visit with my daughter, Gwen (who’s doing fine, thanks, and made the Dean’s list. The good kind, not the list that the guys from “Animal House” always made.) And second, it was the last weekend for the “Lord of the Rings” exhibit at the Boston Science Museum.

While there, we met up with my sister, Beth, and her husband Rande, and their friend Marcie (whose name I probably just spelled wrong) and had lunch. Caroline entertained herself at the Discovery Center, the only mishap being when she was playing in this little water display they have in which the kids are supposed to learn about how water flows, and Caroline–deciding it was bath time–leaped in with lightning speed and soaked herself head to toe.

Anyway, once we go ther dried off, we went to the LOTR exhibit, which was amazingly detailed. And at one point, Kathleen–who’s got Caorline in a backpack and is standing in front of a huge display of a Ring Wraith–calls me over and says, “Caroline said ‘Ring Wraith.’” I said, “Yeah, right.” And she points and says, “Caroline, what’s that?” And Caroline promptly says, “Wing Waif.” So that was pretty impressive.

I also conducted an experiment. I sat at one place in the Museum and counted off how many seconds could pass, over a period of ten minutes, before someone walked past wearing something about the Boston Red Sox. Longest time: Thirty seconds. More often than not, more like three or four seconds. The whole town is nuts for the Sox. The first night of the series, when they won, we were kept up at night by people in the streets screaming their heads off. Bad night to get mugged in Boston; people would just think you were celebrating.

PAD

September 13, 1991

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Suddenly posts are getting punted for “questionable content.” I tried it; it happened to me, too, and my post consisted of “This is just me trying something.” We’ll get it figured out.

PAD

UPDATE: Overaggressive comment spam filtering. It’s fixed now. (And if I ever find this one spammer out, I’m going to break his arms.) Now all I have to do is change the orignal author of this to PAD from Kathleen… –GH

Part 2 of our five issue limited series as Jamie travels to the Windy City to pursue his dupe’s killer. Whad’ja think?

PAD

Yeeeha, kids. From the depths of space to Kansas cornfields to seat of government power, it’s been an interesting week. Lessee what we’ve got. Spoilers follow:

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Grant Di Palma asks in the comments to More Star Trek episode essays

I’m curious to know if the plan here is to gradually reprint all of the BID columns. Or just a few selected editions? It would be nice to have a permanent resource to reference for these columns.

Yes, we plan to reprint most of them (there are occasional guest columns and the like that are still up in the air, and some that we don’t have files for that I’ll be damned if I’m going to retype) at the rate of about one a day. Since we’re currently reprinting columns from 1991, that means it’s going to be about two years before we’re up to date.

As Corey Tacker points out, you have your choice of indexes, in HTML or Excel Spreadsheet, and there’s the sidebar link that will take you to the archives directly.

(If I were crass, this would be a good time to remind you of the PayPal tip jar. Good thing I’m not crass.)

YANKEES AT THE BAT
By Peter David, with apologies to Ernest Lawrence Thayer

The outlook wasn

What else is there to say? The dreaded prospect of being down 3 and 0 in a best of seven contest is no longer an insurmountable obstacle. No matter what happens in the World Series, the Red Sox have already given their fans a triumph they can hang their hats on for quite some time. I would absolutely have killed for a television image of Steinbrenner when the final out was recorded. Being near Mt. St Helens was a cakewalk…indeed, probably preferable…insofar as the Yankee management is concerned.

Hell can start handing out the collection basket, for it will most certainly be paid.

Is anyone going to get ANY work done in Boston today? Or for the coming week?

PAD