The Reluctant America

In an attempt to figure out the mettle of Steve Rogers, Dr. Erskine (played in the movie by Stanley Tucci), the German scientist who created the Super Soldier Serum, asked Rogers (played by Chris "I'm In Every Superhero Movie" Evans): "So...you want to kill Nazis?" This line of questioning, coming from a German, seems odd, and Rogers is taken aback. But after some pushing he finally admits, "I just don't like bullies. Where ever they are."

This is an important sentiment, not just for Captain America's character, which was thankfully well-rounded and intricate in the movie, but for America itself.

Captain America is often misunderstood, and for this reason most foreign releases of the Captain America movie were simply titled, The First Avenger. There is good reason for seeing Captain America (and as you will see later in this entry, all of America) as being this brash, arrogant jerk who tries to tell you how it is all the time: that's how he was conceived. Born from Timely Comic's team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, Captain America was little more than a propoganda piece for an America that was wondering what it's involvement would be in the rising war. The first cover of the first issue that hit stands in December of 1940 showed Kirby's dynamic Captain America punching Adolf Hitler in the face. The message was clear: America needed to do the right thing. Captain America, throughout the war, fought the good fight.

Interestingly, in the movie, Evans' Captain America was originally used to drum up interest in War Bonds, helping to finance America in World War II. This is one way that Marvel does comicbook inspired movies well: it defers to the continuity, while not feeling hemmed in by it. By adding this part of the story to the movie, it pays homage to Captain America's less than auspicious beginnings while propelling the narrative forward.

It also helps to play a useful metaphor in America's relationships with other countries. In the movie, Evans, wearing the original 1940's Captain America shield and costume, tours around America, initially reluctant to be a part of a dog-and-pony show while other Americans (and Europeans) are stuck fighting. However, as his popularity grows, he starts to enjoy his role. At the height of his popularity, Captain America is shipped overseas to perform as part of the USO Tour, and there he is greeted with much less happy crowds.

It's at this juncture in his life, dodging tomatoes from those he's tried to drum up support for, that he realizes he is a sham. At home, punching out fake "Hitlers" for 12-year-old kids did what it needed to: diverted attention from the atrocities to help raise funds to continue sending young men to die on foreign shores. However, hip deep in those atrocities, the same brightly colored costumes and uniforms seem oddly inauthentic. There were real people dying, and the last thing they need is some caricature of an ideal telling them to keep up the good work. It was insulting, demeaning, and frankly unwanted (what they did want, and asked for, was more girls dancing).

Captain America decided there that his role should be more active, and less auxiliary. Donning a leather jacket and helmet, he used his Super Soldier abilities and rescued 400 prisoners from behind enemy lines and the Red Skull's clutches (Nazi Germany's own Super Soldier). For the first time in his life, Steven Rogers acted on his ideals rather than just representing them. He took charge, lead the fight and did good in the world.

Here is where I see an interesting parallel between Captain America and his own struggles to be what he represents, and America's relationship to the world. America has always had a troubled relationship with other countries, particularly those that disagree with her central tenants of freedom and justice for all. Since World War II (and I realize my understanding of World History, even US History, is cursory at best, so I might be off on some dates; the general idea, though, I feel is sound), America has tried to represent all the good that comes from Democracy and Capitalism. And America has been a shining example. In this country, there is (or was, before the Republicans seem to initiate class warfare against the middle percentage of the country) nothing stopping someone from working hard enough to attain one's dreams. Throughout the history of America, everyone has been given (sometimes more reluctantly than others) the right to try and better themselves. If there is some sort of inequality, the country tries to debate the gap in rights, and come to a conclusion (again, sometimes more slowly than it should, but eventually, with enough people pushing, there can be a push towards equality).

But there in lies the problem. At what point does America, representing what it feels is the best form of societal living, turn from shining light of Democracy to overblown, offensive caricature? How can America suggest that everyone demand freedom when such demands might be met with horrific punishments? When does representing an ideal not carry enough responsibility? When is it that America has to walk the walk that it's talk has talked?

This issue, though, begs a question: where is the fine line between liberator and aggressor? In the Captain America movie, clearly he was a liberator, freeing the world from the terrifying, tyrannical nature of the Red Skull. Captain America stopped us all from living under the rule of a mad despot, but in reality the situation is rarely that black and white. Take, for example, Iraq: no one wants to say that Saddam Hussein was just misunderstood, but he certainly wasn't causing much of an international stir when America decided to invade. Granted, he was not providing a life for the Iraqis that jelled with the American understanding of living, and in some sense, our unyielding since of justice and equality should dictate that we go in there and free the people from their own Red Skull. However, not everyone saw it that way. Because of their natural resources, and because Hussein lacked a strong American relationship, some outside observers saw our invasion as more motivated by money than our core ideals. From one perspective, America could be seen in a similar vein as the Red Skull: forcing our views on humanity by use of the Biggest Stick.

Remembering that Steve Rogers is eventually found again, reanimated and inserted into contemporary culture, it's important that Captain America dies at the end of World War II (more so in the comic than in the movie, which was really just a way to set up the Avengers movie). Captain America and his black and white sense of justice might not make sense in contemporary America. With the end of the war, Hitler and the Red Skull went the clearly defined bad guys of comic book lore. Today's America is faced with an endless sea of gray choices which ripple into other decisions and force even more cloudy, blurred and gray dilemmas. Captain America can't just punch Hussein in the face, since that act will be scrutinized for it's agenda and motivation. What seems like a bad guy might not be as bad to other people.

Or it could be that Captain America's approach to foreign policy is exactly what is missing in this world: punch the bad guys, protect the good guys, and never back down from bullies.

What is certain, though, is that America can learn something from Captain America: doing the right thing is always going to be hard, but doing nothing will be much worse. All that's left is the far more complicated issue of deciding what's the right thing to do.

Comic-Con: A Retrospective

Sitting in the San Diego Airport, waiting for my flight to Denver and the connection to Chicago, I looked around at the other passengers. Most everyone was sitting around reading comic books or fantasy novels (a lot of George R.R. Martin). One guy near my had a Pan-Am collectors messenger bag stuffed with Comic-Con collector big bags. People were carrying on rolled posters and signed prints in safety tubes, and there were countless t-shirts, some of which were exclusive to Convention. There were a lot of knowing smiles and nods passed between strangers whose only connection were both being one of the 145,000 people per day that went through the Convention. Everyone looked tired, overstimulated and ready to go home, happy and full of new collectibles, books and t-shirts.

This is what the Convention, known to pros as "The Con," does to people: provides a sense of belonging on a massive scale. Hundreds of thousands of people descend upon the San Diego Convention Center, turning the grey, concrete structure into an epicenter of popular culture. Everyone is there for the same reason: to be at the crest of the next wave of popular culture. There were panels for new seasons of popular shows that have a connection to comics (some more tenuous than others). Actors and producers for shows like Game of Thrones, Big Bang Theory, Twilight, True Blood, Archer, Community, and the Adult Swim line-up showed clips from the new seasons and answered fan questions.

There are two massive ballrooms at the Convention Center that hold near 5000 people, and for the panels in these ballrooms, the lines started queuing hours before the doors opened. For the sneak preview of the next Twilight movie, dedicated fans lined up and camped out for two days, sleeping outside the Center in the warm San Diego nights, just for a twenty minute clip that these said fans could then claim to have seen while others have not. There were a few panels I wanted to see in these ballrooms, namely the Bones panel, so that I could kidnap David Boreanas for my Mom, and the Game of Thrones panel so that I could kidnap Emilia Clarke for myself (just kidding Catherine...or...am I?). However, as it becomes apparent to anyone having attended Comic-Con, these panels are essentially an all-day wait. Standing in line, alone, for upwards of four or five hours is not really why I went to the Convention. Ultimately, I had to pass on Game of Thrones for other activities.

My interest in the Convention is to find out about new books. All the publishers, both the massive, multinational conglomerates like DC and Marvel, and the smaller, more independent presses like Top Shelf and Drawn and Quarterly, have booths selling their wares. A good number of the books are unreleased yet. For example, Top Shelf was pimping Kagan McLeod's Infinite Kung-Fu, Nate Powell's Any Empire and a re-release of Craig Thompson's seminal Blankets in hardcover. The larger booths have a lot of name recognition, and lines for meeting and getting signatures from people like Alex Ross and Geoff Johns were quite long. However, smaller artists like McLeod, Powell, Anders Nilsen (and his INSANELY beautiful collected volume of Big Questions, which was just released by Drawn and Quarterly for the show), and even Thompson, on whose book Blankets I presented a paper, were at their respective publisher's booths signing books and answering questions.

This was a better use of my time. As an academic who is writing about living authors, it is essential that I make connections with these authors and artists so that I might get heads-up, early releases, interviews and what not for my work. Having these connections to living writers will give me an edge over other academics, both when I need to pull one in for a Convention or to help give my writing a more human touch.

Initially, I wasn't expecting so many creators to be at their respective booths. As I wandered the small press booths, I ran into the Flight booth, where Kazu Kibuishi and friends were selling their awesome anthology (now in Volume 8). There were a few other books published on Random House imprint Villard, one of which was Tory Woollcott's Mirror Mind. The book, with a stark black-and-white cover, caught my eye. The book tells the story about Woollcott's struggles with dyslexia while in primary school. I had been kicking around the idea of a paper on the representation of mental illnesses for a while, so I started to flip through. A woman behind the counter smiled at me, and asked if I was dyslexic (which I don't think that I am, but sometimes see letters and words upside-down). We got to talking, and I decided to buy the book. She asked who she should sign it to, and I paused.

"You're Tory Woollcott?" I asked.

"Sure am. And you are..."

"Keegan. This is great. I'm buying this because I want to write about how authors represent mental disorders in comics. Also, I want to look at how comics can be used to convey stories in a medium that might help those who struggle with reading."

We talked for some time about her choice to write the story in the comic form.

"Is there a way I can reach you later?" I asked. "Do you have a card or something?"

She proceeded to write her email address right in the book and told me that I should contact her if I have any questions. Which I do. And I will.

I went on to meet some other artists and authors. Some were new to me, like Nate Powell, whose book Swallow Me Whole has been on my Amazon Wish List for a while. Some were my favorites, like Nilsen and Thompson, both of who said they would try to make my talk (neither did, though Thompson signed a copy of his book for me, even saying as much in the inscription). Some were surprising, like Ryan North of the very excellent Dinosaur Comics. I got cards and email addresses for many of these authors and creators, and now can pepper my papers and publications with interviews and quotes from the authors I write about.

Beside meeting writers and cartoonist, the Convention also gave me an opportunity to meet with other academics. Peter Coogan and Randy Duncan have been putting this event together for several years, and every year there are more and more impressive academics that present papers and pimp their latest books. This year, I was really excited to hear David Beronä would be present, talking about his work in woodcut novels. Beronä, who has a book out, Wordless Books, is a formalist critic that I make use of in my own writing. His work on early woodcut novels of Lynd Ward and Frans Mansereel is groundbreaking.

One day, overwhelmed by the mass of people milling about the Convention Center, I decided to take a walk and get a sandwich. As I was cutting down a pedestrian path, I noticed Beronä crossing the street in the same direction, by himself. Now, randomly approaching strangers on the street has never been my forte, but this was an opportunity that I needed to take. So, with a deep breath and my balls up in my chest, I got his attention, introduced myself and started talking. We walked along the pedestrian path, discussing the Convention, comic criticism and San Diego. I found him to be far more approachable and down to earth than a lot of critics and academics who spend their time enshrouded in books and journals. Like the contacts I made among the creators, knowing Beronä is bound to help my career (in fact, he asked that I send my paper to him to discuss possible avenues of publishing).

On Saturday, when my friend Jonathan Talbert and his fiancee Lisa came to visit me, hearing my talk, we went to a party thrown by the Comic(s) Art Conference. I sat at a table with young academics, many of whom presented papers and posters at the conference, and we all reveled in our nerdity. One academic from North Texas was blissed out over having met Scott McCloud. Another was just excited to meet a popular and credible feminist critic. We talked about the new comics we bought and the panels we attended. I had gone to the party knowing Talbert and Lisa, but left having a table full of new friends.

Comic-Con, for all the press it gets for the weird things that happen at it (the costumes, the fanaticism, the stabbings over seats), is really a place were fans of comics and comic-culture can come together to enjoy the company of like minded individuals. On the bus one morning, three guys dressed like characters from Star Wars boarded the bus and made their way to seats behind me.

"Dude...nice Thundercats shirt," one said as he went by.

Sunday, at the Denver Airport, waiting for my connecting flight, I sat on the ground, watching the mass of strangers mill about going to hundreds of locations around the US. Most people didn't make eye contact, kept focus on finding their next terminal, the baggage claim, a taxi or what not. I started reading Ryan North's Dudes Already Know About Chicken when a young man walked past carrying a hard cover edition of Blackest Night. We nodded at each other, understanding the shared experience, and he disappeared into the disinterested crowd.

Repopulating

One of the first video games I truly loved was Super Metroid (on the Super Nintendo, who very cleverly just added "Super" to all the titles on the original Nintendo). I loved everything about it from the cutting edge graphics, the tight story and the easy game play. Because the Super Nintendo was the first game system I had after the Atari 400, I was pretty easily impressed.

One thing in particular that separated game systems by Nintendo from those by Atari was the saving capability. This allowed for much, MUCH longer games. It also allowed for some sort of character development. When you played Pac-Man, the little yellow circle with the wedge missing never changed. He continued to eat the little pellets, continued to chase ghost, and continued to hunt for the elusive fruits. In Super Metroid, Samus changed over the course of the game. Not only did her character encounter a litany of disastrous problems which altered the players emotional attachment to the faceless Samus, but her weapons systems were upgraded, her armors enhanced and so on. In the end, Samus was a veritable fortress storming after Space Pirates in search of her stolen Metroid Larvae.

Once I finished that game, the first thing I wanted to do was start over and do it again. I turned the game on, clicked new game and immediately tried to use all my armor and weapon upgrades, but instead found my newly re-oranged Samus essentially useless. I eventually quit playing because repopulating my armor and weapons systems seemed like more work than was worth it, knowing that I had already beaten the game.

In this same light, I find Google+ to be kind of annoying (though, I still have invites, if anyone wants to join me there). As far as I can tell, Google+ is essentially the same as Facebook: I can chat, I can post messages to my friends, I can share news and information, etc. Except in Google+, I have limited friends and a spotty understanding of the user controls. It just took me ten minutes to figure out how to post a message to two specific friends (Jamie and Rachel) regarding a Skype call. I wanted just to go to her wall, type in the message and tag Jamie in it. On Google+ I have to go to MY way, choose the friends I want to contact from my circles of friends (which are sparsely populated at the moment), and then type out my message. I can only assume it made it, though, because when I went to Rachel and Jamie's separate profile pages, there were no messages.

Like when I got tired of trying to get my less-optimized Samus to do wall jumps, I find myself just getting frustrated with Google+. Yes: Google is internet Utopia, and most of what they do is amazing (the Google Netbook looks sexy, and the Android is like the iPhone for regular people); Yes: Google's stuff works really well on average; Yes: it's nice to have options so that Facebook can't just decide what it wants and force us to all use their free program how they want to (which is another problem I have with people who complain about Facebook - no one is forcing you to use it; if you don't like the interface, don't use the program); Yes: the lack of ads is nice...for now, but honestly, ads have become such a ubiquitous part of my life I barely register seeing them anymore.

I guess my issue here is that I don't understand the difference or the need. Facebook works pretty well. There have been privacy issues (but why would you list information on-line that you didn't want everyone to know?), some of the games have asinine restrictions (I can only play Scrabble when I am here in the States, which puts my Epic Scrabble show down with John Zwarich on hold for six months at a time), and the ads sometimes assume that I am a lonely fat many in need of women and games that feature castles (which is only half true, and I'll let you figure that out); I get these issues, but again, Facebook is free, has been free, and shows no indication that it will be anything other than free. All these complaints about Facebook seem to me like someone complaining about the free cupcakes he or she has just eaten, and demanding more variety in the free cupcakes offered. Maybe a free cupcake that doesn't come wrapped in a paper that advertises for a dating service and is more open source.

As I type this, I realize that I sound quite crotchety. It might just be that I am getting old, and don't want to keep jumping around remaking friends in virtual spaces. I am fine working within the confines of Facebook because all my friends are there. It's a lot of work to reestablish these virtual friendships, making sure I don't leave anyone out. I find it especially redundant considering all of my friends on Google+ are on Facebook, too.

But, again, I realize the old-manish nature of these complaints, and in reflection it seems that my issue with Google+ is really just an issue I have in my life here: I am constantly jumping between two places that are filled with my friends. Both Chicago and Aberystwyth have people that I like to be around, and both places are places that I wish I could occupy at one time. In fact, I wish I could just take the two places and a roll of duct tape to make some sort of Franken-city filled with British and American people that I like to be around.

Like with Google+ and Facebook, though, this just seems to be the inevitable progression of my life. I wanted to live in the world for a while, and because of that I am going to have a wide net of friends cast about the world. No one made me move to Aberystwyth, make friends with people, and then return home to Chicago where I have other awesome friends (including some new ones I made this summer).

What I need to do, both in my life and my virtual social media outlets, is learn how to manage both. I have to spend time with both Google+ and Facebook, getting to know the ins-and-outs of the new guy while returning to the appreciated familiarity of the old guy. Neither one is better than the other, and neither one is a replacement for the other. If I can fit two separate cultures and two separate circles of friends in my life, I should have room for two social networking sites.

Exposed Houses

In an effort to update the house my Mom moved into a few decades ago, the siding is being redone. This is not a complicated process: take off old siding, put on new siding. Of all the things that can be done to a house, this is probably one of the least complicated.

That said, it is really becoming quite an issue in my life.

My Mom smartly hired outside help to do the siding, Champion Windows and Siding (if you need a referral, please let me know). That is, after all, what champions would do: hire Champion to repair your house. The first thing that the contractors did was strip my house of it's siding and backer-board (the Styrofoam padding between the plywood of the house and the siding). At one point, I wandered outside to see how the work was progressing, and there was my house, exposed to the elements, it's siding strewn about the yard.

It was hard not to feel an tinge of embarrassment looking at my naked house. There were spots were the plywood had rotted from weather damage. Some mold damage blackening other spots, generally near where the rotted sections were. Insulating spewing from the vents that lead to the attic and washer/dryer. It was like accompanying my sister to a gynecological exam: I knew all of this stuff existed underneath the siding, but I would rather not have that theory quantified in front of me (and the neighborhood, for that matter). Thankfully, the workers were quick, and within a few hours, the rotted pieces were replaced, the vents were covered, and the whole house was wrapped in a moisture resistant layer of Tyvek.

Besides exposing my house and all it's physicality to the neighborhood, the contractors are required to sporadically bang on my house with hammers. Obviously, many hands make light work, so there are at least three hammers at any given time going to town on the house. For a fun experiment, put your head in a hamper and then pound on it with a shoe. That's sort of what it's like. The walls are rattling constantly, requiring my Mom and I to go around the house and take all the pictures off outside walls. In the hamper experiment, though, there is one important difference: you know when the blows are about to happen. There is no discernible pattern to the workers hammering (the they use actual hammers, so each individual hammer stroke is different). The lack of a pattern makes sense - what with all the up and down ladders.

This starts every morning around 7:30. Now, anyone who knows me (or most of the Lannon family for that matter) knows that the morning is not the best time to engage me in any manner. I tend to be one of two things: 1) really amiable just to get whatever is happening to stop so I can return to sleep (I lived with a girl who abused this horribly, getting me to take out the trash, move the car, and walk the dog); 2) really grouchy and testy. Because there is nothing I can half-assedly do to make the banging stop, I imagine I am leaning toward the second one.

But upsetting my sleeping patterns is not the only problem with having the siding people around the house. The main problem is that they are up on ladders near all the windows.

I woke up the other day and the house was unusually dark. My Mom likes to keep all the shades and curtains pulled tight when the weather turns hot so that the house stays cooler (ostensibly, this is to save on running the air conditioner, but because the house is so dark we have to run all the lights; in the end, I imagine it balances out). Recently, though, my Mom has taken to sitting in the corner of the living room where no one can easily see what she is doing.

I thought this was crazy until this morning when I was sitting in the family room, still in my pajamas at 11:30, watching The Colbert Report. Suddenly, I was really anxious wondering what the workers might think if they caught sight of me eating cookies and watching television in the middle of the weekday. I quickly turned off the TV and started reading.

Then, I started to worry that the workers would start to judge my taste in literature. At the moment, I am reading Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman. Catherine, a friend of mine from high school, and I have recently been talking about writing non-fiction, and it got me thinking that I hadn't read any for a little bit. Anyone familiar with Klosterman's work knows that it is basically the ramblings of a pop culture critic who has seen too many movies, read too many books and listens to too many CDs. He also has an ease with drugs, and writing about his use of said drugs. I was worried that the workers might notice this and assume I was some pretentious snob that would rather listen to The Postal Service and discuss the merits of PBR than do an honest day's work. I could have read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code but I don't want the workers to think that I am a slave to popular literature or that I found that type of writing engaging. I wanted something that said I was intelligent, but not pedantic, like Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao or Jennifer Egan's My Life with the Goon Squad. So I did what any rational person would do in this instance: work out.

I was really athletic in high school (another thing that talking with Catherine made me realize has dropped from my life almost entirely), and I used to be able to run long distances at better than average speeds. If pressed, though, I would pick track over cross-country as my favorite sport, and the one I was better at. Cross-country was nice, in that it kept me in shape and gave me a community to belong to, but I really don't have it in me to run miles and miles without complaining. The rational part of my brain realizes that I could drive the same distance much more efficiently. Or walk it, if a car weren't available, and still reach the same result. Running seems to be one of those things that needs to be done in emergency situations only.

Despite this recent change in demeanor, I found myself compelled to use the treadmill that collects dust in the family room. I returned to The Colbert Report, and undertook a thirty minute (or so) walk-run routine. Exercise, I thought to myself, ain't nothing strange about a man running on a treadmill in the middle of the afternoon. Or rather, running on a treadmill makes me less of a loser than sitting in my pajamas mid-day, watching TV and eating cookies.

Or did it? As I cooled down from my impromptu exercise program, I was suddenly worried that maybe it sent the wrong message. Who runs inside on treadmills? Am I the sort of person who is so distant from the working class that I have to run inside on expensive machinery when the world is free to run on? Was my workout suggesting that I was an elitist? I jumped off the treadmill and tried to both make use of the kettle bells and the Ab Circle (my Mom's house is something of a museum for exercise equipment), but neither I felt portrayed the "salt of the earth" sentiment that I wanted to suggest.

I decided the best thing to do was show these judgmental day laborers that I was contributing to society. I was going to take a shower and then get to work editing a document that I need to have submitted by tomorrow. See, I would say with my actions, I am TOTALLY like you.

Unfortunately, the workers by this point had scaled to the part of the house where the bathroom window is, and had, no doubt, begun making judgments about my choice of shampoo and body wash (Shampoo and conditioner in one, eh? Too lazy to use two bottles. Or, Suave Professionals? Is he too good for the regular Suave?). There was no way I could possibly take a shower with these people on the other side of the window, no matter how nontransparent the shower curtain is.

At the time of posting this, I am sitting in my room, away from the prying eyes of these contractors who, probably, have not noticed anything about my tastes in literature, movies or music, and who have more to worry about then what all of these choices say about me. In fact, unless I make my presence known, these workers are more interested in the outside of the house, rather than the two people knocking about inside of it.

That said, I have yet to shower.

Relearning and Redoing

Remember a while back, there were a series of ads that suggested a person could relearn how to perform certain activities without cigarettes that are associated with cigarettes, like driving and drinking coffee. Though these ads seemed to associate smoking with intelligence (that is, when you stop smoking, you forget how to do common every day things like driving or drinking a beverage; in fact, the effects of quitting are so crippling to one's mental capacity, that said quitter needs to relearn, like someone waking from a coma, how to do easy things), the point is worth examining: activities associated with other activities seem off when done solo.

Today was my sister's garage sale. I was not looking forward to it for a few reasons: 1) all forecasts suggested dangerous heat in and around the city. Some weather people suggested that it might get as high as 100, with humidity making it feeler even more uncomfortable than a temperature nearly high enough to slowly cook beans. In the end, it got to 72. As one of my friends said on Facebook, "I wish I had that margin of error at my job."

2) Garage sales are not really populated by awesome people. There are two agendas at odds here: I want to sell my crap; they want a good deal on things that are between gently and heavily used. For my sister, she fits into a nice little niche: little kids clothing. Anyone who has had kids knows the inherent problem with clothes other paraphernalia, like high chairs, bouncers, car seats, etc.: children grow out of things quickly so that shirts, pants, jackets, seat, and so forth are only good for a short period of time - a time much shorter than the life of the product. That is, a high chair is perfectly usable for many years after your kid can no longer sit in it. After a while, there is a pile of perfectly good clothing and kids gear that sits washed and folded in a bucket in the garage. Enter the garage sale. It gives my sister a chance to unload some of her goods while it gives new parents a chance to buy clothes and gear at discount prices.

Unfortunately, the value I put on goods is generally higher than the value the buyer places on the same goods. Thus, the negotiation. I hate haggling over prices, but I also hate taking home a TV that is taking up space in my Mom's basement. That said, I also like getting money for stuff I have lying around not making money. So I have to quickly balance the price I place on an item with the price offered and the potential price I could get. Generally, I tend to push the multiple item discount. Buy two things, and I'll cut the price on the two. This way we both win: I get money for my goods and said goods leave the sale; the buyer feels like he or she has gotten a deal. Win/win.

3) The third reason brings me back to the beginning of this entry: last year, Erika and I contributed some of her old belongings to help earn some walking around money for the summer. He manned the sale together, and it was a good time. I enjoyed myself. It felt weird manning this years garage sale, which like last year was overcast and sparsely attended, by myself.

Let me take a minute to describe a recent dream I had:

While waiting for an elevator in a large balcony decorated in a shiny, contemporary glass and chrome way, I struggled to arrange a large number of shopping bags. These bags were like those fancy bags you get at boutiques: odd shaped and strange colored with ribbons and braided strings for handles. I was really worried that when the elevator got there, I wouldn't be able to get on, and hoped that when it arrived it was empty. It arrived, and true to my concerns, I couldn't get all my bags onto the elevator easily. The doors opened and there was a really attractive woman on her way down. I wanted to get onto that elevator with the woman, but I was also worried about my bags. There was no way to take the elevator and get all my bags on at the same time. The woman, who had a British accent and looked not unlike Emily Blunt, keep urging me to leave the bags behind and get on the elevator.

That was when I woke up.

It's weird being in Chicago, or rather Bolingbrook, and doing things I did last year, but this time without a fiancee. I keep looking around and saying to myself, "Last year, Erika and I did this," or "I remember when Erika and I did this." And so on. Sometimes, it's not too big a problem; sometimes, it really sucks to be reminded of the really good times I remember from last summer. I haven't been able to bring myself to go into the city, though I'd really like visit some of my favorite comic stores.

But, in light of my dream, I realize I have to move on. If I want to get on elevator with the beautiful, accented woman I need to drop my baggage and just get on with my life. After all, there are only so many elevators, and not all of them will come with beautiful women.

On the Unrecognized Aspects of Our Parents

I've been helping my Mom clean out some of my Dad's belongings this summer. It will be four years since his passing and every day there are more things found to deal with: to shred, to file, to store, to destroy, etc. etc.

As I was cleaning out a box that was full of miscellaneous paperwork in desperate need of filing, I ran across an envelop addressed to my Dad from the American College of Surgeons, dated 1967. There is a myth about how my Dad, as a young construction worker, fell on a pipe and was nearly killed, but because my Dad never talked about it, the story always seemed surreal. When I opened the envelop to see what was to be done with the contents, the reality of my Dad's story was visible in a picture taken by the Fire Department of Chicago.

In the picture, a younger version of my Dad (who looks a lot like my brother Kevin and I) lays on a stretcher, his faced wrenched in pain. He was surrounded by a lot of concerned looking officials and one guy smoking a cigar (which dated the picture, as no one these days would smoke a cigar around a bleeding neck wound). There, centered in the picture, is a pipe protruding from my Dad's neck, piercing his bloodied shirt - the pipe that was never really talked about, but clearly existed. My first though: Shit. My Dad's a badass.

With the picture was the March and April, 1967 edition of the Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons, Vol. 52. This issued dealt with ambulances and trauma, and featured a small write-up on my Dad in the section titled, "What's New in Trauma in Your Area?" Here are the first two paragraphs:

Keep the Wound Plugged. Just two months after Chicago Fire Department ambulance drivers were instructed in the technique of handling a person who has been impaled they were summoned to give first aid to a construction worker with a reinforcing rod through his neck, and take him to the hospital. A tuckpointer, the man had fallen 16 feet onto the rod.

As instructed in the annual course given by the Chicago Committee on Trauma for those who are first to see the injured, the firemen left the rod in the tuckpointer's neck. With an acetylene torch the protruding part of the rod was cut off a given number of inches from the man's body, and he was gently transported to St. Luke-Presbyterian Hospital where doctors removed the rest of the rod. He recovered, returned to work, and is now in college.

It goes on to say that the procedure done in the hospital was to be used as an example in future courses taught on the subject of impalement.

My Dad had a lot of admirable qualities. He was a hard working, loyal man who cared a lot for his family - both his brothers and sisters, and his own children. Finding this picture and the clinical, emotionless retelling of the events added a lot of shading to the picture I had drawn of my Dad. He, evidently, was the type of man who could take a pipe to the neck - a pipe THROUGH the neck - in stride, not letting a near death experience detract from his work, school or family. Hell, if that had happened to me, I would have had turned completely inward, seeing life through some sort of pseudo-religious lens. I would have talked about the wonderment of fate, and questioned what my role in life was.

I have had three "serious" injuries in my life: I tore my hamstring in my junior year of high school (a class two tear, the size and depth of the average pinky finger) while running track; and I dislocated the second knuckle on my right index finger, fracturing the joint - this happened while playing pick-up basketball as a sophomore in college; my forehead exploded when I bumped it against another man's forehead at a Flogging Molly concert. When I tore my hamstring, six weeks of electro-therapy fused the muscle back together; and while I never regained the spring in my jump, I walk just fine now. In college, my finger was bound for a few weeks, a bone fragment fell out some six to eight weeks later, and then was fine. I had five stitched put in my forehead, which left a now mostly faded scar.

I like telling the stories of these injuries because they make me feel athletic and, at times, a little tough. I mean, I took a blow to the head that required the concert venue to close down while they mopped up the floor; the in-house doctor said he could see my skull. That's tough, right?

In light of my Dad's injury, documented by a major medical bulletin, which he never talked about and was only made obvious by a thick scar that sometimes was seen above the collar of his shirt, I find two things are true: 1) I now don't feel so tough; 2) I have more respect for my Dad who lived his entire life like he never had a pipe pushed through his neck. Regardless of the reason why, that he never talked about it speaks volumes about how my Dad lived his life: he bore his problems and hurtles with a quiet resolve to continue moving in his life, focused on what was more important. [Note: later in his life, diagnosed with a terminal, muscular degenerative disease, my Dad would rarely complain about his lot in life, working until he could no longer physically make it to the building (and even then fielding phone calls). In light of the neck injury, this makes a lot more sense.]

And finally, I miss my Dad quite a bit now. There were times I really fought with my Dad who did not really understand me. It sucks that now, almost four years after he's gone, I'm finally starting to put together a picture of the man. I wish he were here now so we could talk about how badass he is.

The Art of Wearing T-Shirts

Comic-Con, like most of you would assume, is packed full of nerds. Despite the fact that the convention has been drawing a less nerdish crowd, and despite the fact that comic books in general have been gaining cool people credibility, the majority of people who read comics are generally more concerned with knowing the minutiae of fictional worlds featuring a surprising number of super powered people than they do about social conventions, like showering and the art of conversation that does not revolve around the question of who could beat whom in a fight.

I know that all of you who see me a suave, globe-trotting academic will find this surprising, but these are my people (and for those of you who know me, you can stop laughing now). Take for example, my high school obsession with The Simpsons. I came into adulthood with The Simpsons, both of us maturing and growing old together - both of us fading from relevance at about the same time (and I know that they are still making new episodes, but really...when was the last time The Simpsons mattered?). This was also the time that The Simpsons were really popular, appearing on Fox at least three times a day. I knew everything about that show, could quote most episode from beginning couch gag to end credits, and would have endless discussions about the cultural relevance of each episode. I once dated a girl that said I quote Simpsons episodes like Catholics quote the Bible.

Because the show was so much my life, I tend to own quite a lot of Simpsons paraphernalia: Simpsons Chess, Simpsons Clue, several releases of Simpson toys, Simpsons ties, Simpsons boxers, etc. etc. I owned all The Simpsons episodes released on VHS, and up to Season 5 on DVD (I was really bothered by the DVD packaging on Season 6 because it does not match the rest of my collection; Homer's head was not at all like the neat, cardboard packaging that I was used to, nor did it fit on the shelf as nicely; and I can't buy the seasons out of order - that would be crazy). I owned and read all The Simpson encyclopedias that detail all the episodes. My friends and I used to have Simpson's parties where we would watch hours of The Simpsons; this was in the age before DVD players, and before they appeared sporadically on VHS, so I would bootleg the episodes off the TV. Armed with boxes of VHS tapes, we would watch, quote and discuss the afternoon away. Hell, I wrote a paper on how The Simpsons comment on American masculinity, and I have been crafting a cultural theory class around the show.

So, I can really appreciate the crowd at Comic-Con. I get waiting in line for hours to see your heroes. There was certainly a time when I would have waited hours to meet Dan Castellanetta or Hank Azaria.

One thing that I like best about Comic-Con are the t-shirts. I am a man that likes t-shirts. If ever you are thinking you would like to buy me something that I would 1) appreciate, 2) love, and 3) get a lot of use out of, then find a clever t-shirt (such as those found at Snoorg or TopatoCo [especially those at TopatoCo for the webcomics I like]).

But, as any one who has studied rhetoric can tell you, there is more to a t-shirt selection than one might imagine, especially when the t-shirt features so prominently in your cultural group (here, read: comic nerds). The key is: you want to show this community that you belong, that you speak it's language and share it's interest; while at the same time, you want this inclusion to seem natural and unforced. In other words, as anyone who has seen PCU knows, you never wear the shirt of the band you are going to see (I looked for the clip where Jeremy Piven said that line, but it wasn't on YouTube; I thought this clip was relevant). In this case, when going to hear about comic books, I find it overkill to wear comic book t-shirts (though I do own several). So, to show that I am part of this community, I need to pick my garb carefully. In fact, I am nearly as worried about what t-shirts I am going to bring with me as I am about the talk I am giving at the conference.

So what I am left to do now is rifle through my closet stuffed with t-shirts making esoteric references to associated nerd things like video games (like my shirt that has a huge, ultra-green Triforce of Power emblazoned on it), and cartoon shows (like my Aqua Teen Hunger Force or Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law shirts); or t-shirts that are clever (like the t-shirt I have with a Venn diagram on it, the consonants in one circle, the vowels in the other, and "y" in the intersection).

It might seem like I am making a lot out of very little, that the clothes one wears couldn't possibly matter that much, but think about going on an interview: the clothing choices made speak a lot about the individual. Wearing a tie could say that you are a professional person, or could suggest that you are stodgy. If a woman wears pants to an interview it could say that she is a modern woman dressed to be taken seriously, or it could suggest a lack of femininity that may or may not be true. This convention is like an interview for me. Here is where I will meet with other academics and publishers who take this stuff very seriously. If I show up looking like I've never read a comicbook, or am distant from that culture, I might not be taken a seriously as if I show up wearing a shirt that features a large dinosaur in a mortar board, clutching several large books with the words "THESAURUS" blasted across the bottom.