Month: October 2004

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

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