Last night was the first time that we’ve actually bothered to watch the World Series, because thus far it’s between two teams I don’t really give a dámņ about. But hey, any Series that features near-death rescues of wandering uniformed three year olds certainly gets my attention.

It was a really good game, unless of course you’re a Giants fan. Having no real vested interest in either team, I could admire the play from both sides. However, being a latecomer to all this, and knowing pretty much nothing about the Angels…

Would someone please explain to me what the hëll is up with the monkey?

I’m sitting there watching people waving stuffed monkeys and wondering if it was a stuffed monkey giveaway day or something, and suddenly there’s this frickin’ uniformed “Rally Monkey” on the screen, holding up a sign reading “Believe in the power of the monkey.” And the announcers are discussing this in a matter of fact, everyone-knows-about-this manner, in the same way that they could make a reference to Babe Ruth’s calling his shot and everyone gets the reference. Me, I’m totally out of the loop.

How long have these monkey shines been going on? Whose bright idea was it? How the heck did it catch on, anyway?

PAD

Kathleen, Ariel and I hauled our sniffling selves to “Dance of the Vampires” last night, now in previews on Broadway. Based on Roman Polanski’s “The Fearless Vampire Killers,” it stars Michael Crawford as Count Von Krolock and Rene Auberjonois as Professor Abronsius.

If you have any interest in Michael Crawford, Rene Auberjonois, vampires (dancing or otherwise), or a fun evening of theater, you should definitely go. Soon. Because if you have an interest in what the NY Times will say, they’ll probably hate it.

They will probably say that there’s a few songs too many (there are.) That certain aspects of the book never really come together (also true; a story arc involving a flamingly gay vampire, for instance, draws laughs but ultimately goes nowhere). That the show starts out strong in terms of a tongue-in-cheek tone, but gets patchy after the first half hour (‘fraid so.) That composer/lyricist Jim Steinman’s songs are for the most part unmemorable. Well…yeah.

That’s the most depressing aspect, really. Early on in the show, Steinman–who wrote songs for Meat Loaf–slides about sixteen bars of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” into the middle of Krolock’s first song. It draws huge laughs as the audience slowly tweaks to the self-referential digression. But when kicking off Act II, they do a full blown rendition of “Total Eclipse.” It’s great to hear. They do a terrific job with it. The problem is that it really points up the fact that no other number in the show can touch a song he wrote at least two decades ago, because that’s the song you’ll come out humming.

The thing is, all of these thoughts occur *after* you’ve left the show (which is, of course, when reviews are written). *During* the show you’re having a great time. The songs are bouncy (if forgettable), and some of the lyrics are genuinely hysterical (particularly an early song about garlic and Auberjonois’ Gilbert & Sullivan-esque patter song about Logic.) And it may very well be that legions of Crawford fans alone will be sufficient to keep the show going.

Furthermore, this *was* still previews, keep in mind. Trims and fixes may yet be made. Such typical preview glitches as effects misfiring or poor sound mixing or mikes going out will presumably be cured by opening night; perhaps other aspects will be fixed as well.

But just in case they’re not, go anyway. If nothing else, it’s the first genuine Grand Guignol to hit Broadway since Sweeney Todd. And there’s just not enough Grand Guignol out there to excuse supporting it when it meanders along.

PAD

Tom Brevoort passed this along to me. I’ve never run a fan letter here, but this is pretty cool in a geeky sort of way:

To the Crew,

Month after month I see people praising every book Brian Bendis and Grant Morrison put out…but people are missing out on the best read of the month, bar none. Mixing pulse-pounding, universe-ending, balls-to-the-walls action with hilarious, fall-over-laughing, satire on the comics world as a whole, and still being able to tell the story of a guy in love with his wife.

Amazing. Spectacular. Uncanny.

Peter David deserves an award for almost every storyline so far (and probably those coming up), and ChrissCross (one of the most underrated pencillers in the industry) should have an award named after him. I have been able to get about 20 to 25 people to pick up the book, and try to convince everyone I see to pick up the (in my humble, geeky opinion) best book of the month.

Keep up the wonderful work, and until Rick Jones combines atoms with Captain Ultra, Make Mine MARVEL.

Oh what the hëll, even then.

Alan Korsunsky

Comedy Centrals’ “Beat the Geeks” Comic Book Geek

Now I feel kinda bad feeling so satisfied when the comic pros wiped the floor with the Geek team in the trivia competition at San Diego.

PAD

I’m not much fun today. I’m fighting off a headcold. I was up until 3 AM last night working on the next NEW FRONTIER novel, then collapsed into bed, crawled out around 7 AM to get Ariel off to school, took some night time Theraflu ’cause that’s all we had in the house, and fell back into bed. Just woke up. Still coughing up interesting things from my lungs.

PAD

Been having some baby excitement the last few days. Kathleen started experiencing serious Braxton-Hicks contractions for the first time over the weekend…which is pretty much normal. And at work yesterday, she almost passed out a couple of times, probably because of abruptly dropping blood pressure. Again, normal, but it’s obviously disconcerting.

A guy at work poked her tummy, obviously thinking it would be marshmallow soft. He was astounded to discover that Kath literally has rock-hard abs. It’s all muscle and baby. Then the baby shoved back, and the guy actually saw the rippling of her stomach surface, and was totally skeeved. See, that’s why men couldn’t carry children. It has nothing to do with pain. It’s that by the third month, the moment it started moving around, guys would be flashing on “Alien” and would be screaming, “Get it out of me! Get it out! Ahhhhh!” for the next six months.

We’re going to the baby doc today. And no, we don’t know the gender. Brian Stelfreeze thinks it’s a boy. Julie Caitlin Brown thinks it’s a girl. And Harlan Ellison thinks it’s a tricycle. Maybe we’ll name the kid “Schwinn.”

PAD

A retailer in North Carolina has contacted me, informing me that due to distributor error, he was shorted his entire order of CAPTAIN MARVEL #2. Reorders are, naturally, not available. Several customers have outright told him if they can’t get #2, they won’t be collecting the series.

He needs a dozen copies minimum to fulfill subscriber requests. Any retailer reading this who is interested in moving some extra copies of CM #2, please contact me immediate at PADGUY@AOL.COM, and I will put you together with the North Carolina retailer. Obviously the sooner the better on this.

PAD

I keep hearing people wondering why the current administration is so hot to go after Saddam Hussein…so hot, in fact, that we’re pretty much the only country in the world interested in doing so (England’s supporting us, sure, but if we dropped the notion, does *anyone* think Tony Blair would continue to bang the drums?)

To me, the answer is pretty simple:

We know where he is.

At the very least, we have a pretty good idea.

We don’t know where bin Laden is. We don’t know where the former heads of the Taliban are. They could be anywhere. But Saddam? He’s in Iraq. Him we can find.

A year from now, Bush will be gearing up for reelection. The odds of the economy still being in the toilet at that point are much higher than the odds of bin Laden et al being in hand. If the Democrats are able to drive home the message of “You’re no safer from bin Laden now than you were two years ago, and the economy sucks besides,” Bush might hemorrhage electoral support. If the Democrats put forward the notion, “Eight years of prosperity and peace before Bush, and now look where you are,” Bush might follow his father as a one-term president. On the other hand, if we’re in the midst of a war, well…Americans might not want to switch horses at that point.

Is the current “Get Saddam” drive politically motivated. I don’t know. What I do know is…we know where Saddam is.

Roughly.

PAD