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Spent the weekend commuting to and from I-Con, the convention at Stoneybrook University that, over the course of a quarter century, has grown from taking up one building to taking up about a dozen. My knee, although on the mend, still hurt enough to make the schlep between buildings tedious and tiresome. But the panels were well-attended and, as always, part of the fun of I-Con is hanging out in the green room where I could shmooze with Terry Brooks, Michael Uslan, Greg Pak, George Takei, Bob Greenberger and many others.

Oddly, most of my panels seemed to focus on comics transitioning into movies, or movies into books. One panel, oddly, consisted of only me, talking about the subject as if it were a dissertation.

I begged off the final panel of Sunday afternoon, since it was about Web Comics vs. Print. Since I’ve never written a web comic, have no intention of doing so, and have no opinion on the subject whatsoever, I didn’t see that my presence would add much of anything to the proceedings. I got home, put a turkey in the oven, and am overseeing dinner cooking while Caroline, Ariel and Kathleen all nap.

Also came home to discover that my VCR didn’t fire for some reason and I missed PBA bowling this afternoon. Seriously pissed about that. Fortunately it’s rebroadcast tomorrow at 10, but still…

PAD

You voted off Kevin Covais, Ariel’s favorite on “American Idol.” My fourteen year old daughter was right in the wheelhouse of his Long Island boy’s target audience, and she was really pissed off this morning. Kevin, if you’re reading this–my daughter still adores you.

PAD

If I see one more article about Alan Moore being “swindled” by DC or how Hollywood has destroyed his graphic novel, I’m going to go on a vendetta of my own.

Most recently was an article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune which ended with the following quote from a retailer:

“If he had been doing novels that were this successful for this long, they’d probably take more care with making movies out of his products. But it’s only comics, you know?”

Aw, c’mon. Putting aside the insanely faithful adaptation of “Sin City,” it has nothing to do with comics and everything to do with Hollywood. I suspect the name “Nathaniel Hawthorne” will be remembered long after Alan Moore, and I, and every other comic book writer are forgotten, and they STILL gave “The Scarlet Letter” a happy ending. Popular movies such as “Oh God,” “Kramer Vs. Kramer,” and even underrated great films such as “The Mighty Quinn,” have huge differences from the novels on which they were based. Disney’s people haven’t met a classic that they couldn’t transform into something else entirely (have you ever actually READ “Pinocchio?” He steps on the cricket and kills it in, like, chapter 2. And P.L. Travers’ “Mary Poppins” is an acerbic, middle aged woman, not the chipper, youthful, dancing Julie Andrews.)

Film adaptations are just that: Adaptations. They often bear little-to-no resemblance to the source material. The benefit of them is that the successful ones put copies of the books into the hands of customers who otherwise might never have heard of the work, much less purchased it.

Alan Moore can refuse all the money from the Hollywood versions he wants, but I daresay he won’t be turning his nose up at the increased royalties such films generate for the books.

PAD

Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #6, first part of a two part story, and Untold Tales of the New Universe: Justice #1, in which I revisit an old friend. Whad’ja think?

PAD

Wake up at 3:21 AM from bizarre dream where Im shaking hands with Gerald Ford for some reason to discover it’s freezing. Check thermostat to discover the temperature has dropped to fifty nine. Go downstairs; same thing. Go to furnace, discover it’s nonoperational. Hit the reset; fires for about five seconds and then goes out again. Call heating company, told service man will be in touch within half an hour. Strip heavy blankets off own bed, go put them on Ariel and Caroline, both of whom are still sleeping, to give them additional warmth. Pull on heavy sweats and sweat shirt, go downstairs to work and wait for repairman to call.

PAD

Kath and I went to a wholly unadavertised 10 PM showing of “V for Vendetta” last night that we stumbled over looking for an early morning showing on Moviefone.com. Maybe 20 people there. Comments with some spoiler aspects follow:

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Chris Ryall at IDW has informed me that issues 1, 2 and 3 of “Fallen Angel” are all sold out both from IDW and from Diamond. They are looking into going back to press with issue #1.

PAD

On another thread, a poster said that Iraq was “on the brink of a bloody civil war,” and I realized that I’ve been hearing that a lot lately. “On the brink of civil war.” “On the edge of civil war.” Lots of commentators have been saying that.

And it made me wonder: Is there a tipping point of some sort? Are we waiting for some type of official declaration? Because people of the same nationality are busy aggressively killing each other. What makes them NOT at civil war already? Do they need uniforms, flags, and a catchy anthem or something? Putting aside the notion that “civil war” is right up there with “jumbo shrimp” as an oxymoron (or “President Bush,” which is a plain old moron), at what point amidst the rapidly ascending body count, explosions, beheadings and murders, does someone say, “Okay, that’s it, they’ve jumped over the brink and it’s civil war.”

PAD

Every so often I read a headline, and my first impulse is to laugh. And I do, and then I feel incredibly guilty and like slime because it really isn’t funny, it’s terrible and tragic, but it still seemed like horrifically sick irony. Such was my reaction to the following headline off AOL:

“Miss Deaf Texas Killed by Train”

And it’s exactly what you’d think: The poor woman was walking along the tracks and didn’t hear the whistle blowing. How she didn’t feel the vibrations, I can’t even begin to comprehend. But she didn’t, and she got killed, and I feel badly for her even though I didn’t know her, but…sheesh. What a headline.

PAD

Y’know…I almost wish the show weren’t called “Battlestar: Galactica.” It’s just that much more difficult to convince people that this is one of the best dramas, bar none, currently on the air.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will reiterate that I’ve written a BSG novel. I don’t believe it shades my opinions; in fact, if I didn’t like the series, I wouldn’t have written the novel, so that tells you something. Spoilers follow:

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So Bush’s numbers are dropping and dropping and dropping and are now around…what? Thirty percent approval? Something like that?

Here’s what I don’t get: Two years ago, when people voted for him…

WHAT THE HELL DID YOU THINK HE WAS GOING TO DO IF NOT CONTINUE TO SCREW THINGS UP?!?

I mean, honest to God. NOW nearly four out of five people are expressing disapproval? NOW?! What the bleeding hell were you expecting two years ago when you pulled the lever or filled out the ballot for him? Did you think he was suddenly going to get smart? Did you think he was going to stop screwing the country up?

For crying out loud, I’m not the brightest penny in the box, and *I* knew things were just going to get worse. Anyone with a brain should have figured it out at the time. It took TWO MORE FRICKING YEARS for people to realize that, in the words of John Cleese as spoken by Jamie Lee Curtis, there are sheep that could outwit him? That there are dresses with higher IQs?

Jeez, people. A little forethought next time, okay? That’s all I’m asking.

PAD

Just turned in the manuscript for the “Battlestar Galactica” novel, “Sagittarius is Bleeding” which is scheduled to be published by Tor in August. So it was one of the tighter deadlines I’ve dealt with.

I was constantly having to make adjustments to the manuscript to accommodate stuff I didn’t know about on the series (they’d sent us outlines of upcoming episodes, but there were specific sequences and events I didn’t know about ahead of time that conflicted with the book.) But, hey, that’s one of the hazards of doing a tie-in to a still-in-production TV series. Indeed, just getting the initial premise approved was tricky since I had several plot points that were turned down on the basis of, “No, we’re actually doing stories about that next season.”

PAD

Update, added at 3:50 PM EST: I was misinformed. It turns out that a different BSG comes out in August; mine is in October.

PAD

I was considering keeping a running blog of the proceedings, but to be honest, the past couple of years I’ve fallen asleep, so I didn’t want to start something I couldn’t finish.

I needn’t have worried. Granted, I haven’t seen a single one of the movies that are Oscar nominated (I’m sorry, I still can’t take “Brokeback Mountain” seriously ever since Eric Cartman dismissed all indy movies as being about “gay cowboys eating pudding”) but there was no way I was going to miss the ensembles (the women were VERY tastefully adorned for the most part, I thought), the odd moments (Jennifer Garner tripping, apparently thrown off balance by her brand new enlarged lactating breasts; Tom Hanks coming out and sure looking pissed off about SOMEthing) and to see just how many categories Ariel got right in her guesses (impressively Ariel–who likewise hadn’t seen any of the films–nailed every single winner with the exception of best picture, which pretty much surprised everyone with the possible exception of Eric Cartman).

And then there was Jon Stewart. I can’t remember any time in the past where I’ve been actively pulling for an Oscar host to do well (as opposed to just hoping they won’t bore the crap out of me.) I was not disappointed. The Oscarcast has not had a host this urbane since Johnny Carson. Less smug than Steve Martin, less aggressively vaudeville than Billy Crystal, less dead than Bob Hope, Stewart became visibly more confident as the evening progressed. Best line was his comment to Steven Spielberg, director of “Schindler’s List” and “Munich”: “Speaking on behalf of Jews everywhere, I can’t WAIT to see what happens to us next.” Close second was his comment after yet another assortment of clips illustrating yet another arbitrarily selected theme: “Coming up next: Hollywood’s salute to montages.” Third was his wry observation: “For those of you at home keeping score, that’s Martin Scorsese, Zero Oscars; Three-6 Mafia, One.”

Also got a huge kick out of the Daily Show-esque attack-ad commercials that turned Academy Award lobbying into adverts evocative of such notorious election-smearing endeavors as the Swift Boat Veterans (improbably named British women claiming that Judy Dench was no Dame, with the commercial paid for by “The Committee of People who aren’t at all connected with Felicity Huffman.”)

I hate to admit I also miss the former Academy head, Jack Valenti, if for no other reason than that Robin Williams dubbed him Jack “Boom Boom” Valenti and the nickname actually stuck. You could hear the new guy sucking the energy out of the room.

Oh, and Jamie Foxx stated in the pre-show that he needs to get his bowling game in order. Jamie, if you’re reading this, both Ariel and I would be more than happy to give you pointers. Just drop me a line.

11:30. Jeez.

PAD

I’ve noticed an unusual amount of misunderstandings this week in various reviews and comments upon my comics. So I thought I would jump to a spoiler space below and clear some stuff up. I’m not sure whether I was simply unclear in my writing, the artists were unclear in their visuals, or fans are just reading-impaired. Or maybe all three. Anyway, Snopes-like, I offer the following clarifications (see below)…

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Ariel had her Friday Scholarship bowling league today. It’s two man teams and she and her partner, Sean, bowl together fairly regularly. She threw an uninspired first game and lost by four sticks.

Then the second game, in her first frame, she rolled a ball that got what we would call a sloppy strike–the ball went opposite pocket and the pins just kind of tumbled into each other with a bit of lucky carrying them. But, hey, they all look the same on the score board.

But her opponent, a tall teenage boy, smugly said, “THAT was a shitty ball.”

She turned to face him, eyes wide for a moment, and then they narrowed and her expression darkened. “That was NOT a shitty ball,” she said, then turned to me and said loudly, “Okay, NOW I’m pissed off.”

She proceeded to tap dance on his face for the next nine frames and beat him by thirty pins.

Before the thirdgame, the two guys on the other team tried to switch their order. In other words, Ariel’s opponent wanted to shoot against Sean instead of Ariel. They went to the screen and started reversing the order of their names.

Instantly I called out, “What do you think you’re doing?” They said, “We’re changing our line-up order.” “You can’t do that.” “Yes, we can.” “No,” I said firmly, “you can’t. League rules. Once play has begun, you can’t change the order of your line-up.” ‘Yes, we can.” “NO, you CAN’T. Want me to get the league director? ‘Cause I will.” The kid trying to make the change looked at his father. His father shrugged. Kid backed down, which was smart ’cause I was right.

Ariel then whomped him for another ten frames. The last two frames he was so rattled that he missed two five-pins. Any bowler will tell you, a single five pin is the easiest spare in bowling. She ended up beating him by forty pins this time.

Don’t be dissing Ariel’s strike ball. It won’t go well for you.

PAD

5 books total ties my personal best.
So whad’ja think?