Patio Update: Breaking the Fourth Wall

If you know my friend A.T. - and if you're from Sacramento, there's a better-than-average chance that you do - you know a few things about him. You know he loves the color orange to a level that borders on unnatural. You know that his booming radio/carnival barker/game-show host voice can be heard anywhere up to including three quarters of a mile from his present location. And you also know that it's impossible to NOT meet A.T. if you walk anywhere within about a half-block of him. People are drawn into his orbit like so much helpless space debris, powerless to resist being dazzled by his infectious extrovert nature. He will make eye contact. He will say "hi" to you, no matter who you are - man or woman, young or old, Republican or Democrat, it matters not. And from that one simple syllable, you will find yourself - unable to really explain why - having made a new best friend and adding him to your Facebook list, your MySpace list, your cell phone address book, and likely making plans to go out clubbing with him over the weekend to introduce him to your OTHER friends. He is a force of nature, a pied piper of social networking.

So it really should have been no surprise to me when, after A.T. arrived at my apartment to stay a few days with me, he was already on a first-name basis with CGWI before, literally, he had even gotten in my door.

After all my months of chronicling her adventures - viewed and heard (by no choice of mine) from this patio - I had never even spoken a word to her. This is not the A.T. way. I knew that her name was Kayla from the wonderful high-volume arguments with her thick-headed ex. A.T. knew this, now, from introduction. I knew that it seemed strange to me that she was able to get away with all the fights, the open-window THX-quality sex, and, most curiously, the endlessly yapping little dog in a complex that, to my understanding, doesn't allow pets, all without reprisals. A.T., between his car and my welcome mat, had found out the reason why.

Her father OWNS this complex.

NOW it all makes sense...

While I've never met Daddy Landlord personally, he and I have a history. When I first moved into this place, five years ago, it was because my friend Theresa worked for this man, a man who owns two or three complexes, in addition to other holdings, and she knew that there was an apartment open here. I turned out to be eternally indebted to Theresa for this, because I fell in love with the coincidentally handicapped-accessible unit, and it's turned out to be the best place I've ever had. There was a bit of a problem in my first months here, though, and that centered in my oft-drunk apartment manager, a chronically blunt lady who takes no crap but dishes it liberally if any of her numerous and varied rules are broken. I've seen, for example, her have cars towed at 1:00 in the morning on a Friday night for parking in the office parking spaces - an office that's closed all weekend so no one would need to use that parking until the following Monday anyway. When I first moved in and had friends over visiting on my patio (my friends are not quiet), she stumbled over and scolded me like a child on the need for silence right in front of them.

This manager (who seems to have stopped the drink in the past couple of years, I feel the need to add, as I applaud her doing so) is very aware of all the goings-on in her complex. Creepily so. Anytime anyone would come to visit me, she'd appear from the nether before they could reach my apartment and ask who they were and who they were coming to see. One could see this is a bonus - and in my glass-half-full way of thinking, I tried to - as it meant security was always going to be top-notch in my new home. But her obsessions went beyond visitors and spread to me. I found this out when Theresa - who had to deal with the manager on the phone on a daily basis for her job - would relate to me how Rental Unit Hitler would relay details of my life, from what time I came home to how I had boxes stacked up just inside my front door to how I'd remodeled the closet (added a hanging shelf unit so I could reach my stuff) without permission, etc. She had opinions on my friends who visited. She had opinions on my housekeeper and the exact amount of time she spent in my apartment, which clearly wasn't enough to be doing the job properly so she must be ripping me off. Yes, the irony of my blogging on my neighbors is not lost on me, here. But back then, knowing that she was watching every detail of my life - and griping about it - was getting on my nerves. As were some interactions I had with her when I was not yet used to her near-complete lack of social skills. I made these feeling known to Theresa.

One day Theresa's boss was griping about this manager, and how she had angered a real estate inspector who was supposed to be writing something up on this property, and Theresa decided to mention my problems I'd been having. Daddy Landlord, caught at the exact wrong moment, went ballistic. He got on the phone, called the complex, and started screaming at the manager, telling her to leave me alone, stay out of my way, etc. As he didn't want the manager to know that Theresa had said anything, he decided to tell her that I had called him and complained myself.

Wow. Thanks.

I found this out when Theresa called me a few minutes after at my office to warn me, and to apologize for inadvertently setting all this off. Now, suddenly, I - a guy who goes ridiculously out of his way to avoid conflict with anyone - had a major problem with my apartment manager, who now thought that I was ratting her out and trying to get her fired. To say I was stressed for a while was to understate most impressively.

But the good news in that front is that, with time, all that faded away, and I've had nothing but a great relationship with my manager ever since, having learned her personality and how to deal with an accept her (and which buttons NOT to push), and she's been nothing but a help to me in the past four years. But I learned, through my conversation with Theresa that day, what a terror her boss could be, how he often flew off the handle and started yelling at people, and what an unpleasant guy in general he was, per her opinion.

And now I knew that CGWI was his daughter. Suddenly, her daddy issues that I'd heard of through her loud outdoor phone calls all made sense.

So last night A.T. and I were relaxing on the patio, sometime after 1:00 AM, after the rest of my company had gone home. As we talked, we heard people approaching. It turned out to be CGWI, her current boyfriend, and another (very attractive) girl. Their volume and manner suggested they were just coming home from a night of drinking. As they passed, CGWI spotted us, stopped, turned, and, friendly-as-you-please, said hello. Once more, the A.T. spell had proved irresistible, and now, after one brief conversation with him, she thought of him as an old friend. She let the others go on to the apartment and started talking to us. She mentioned that the other girl had just moved in with her - this, by the way, was my final evidence that she was not, as reported, planning to move out anytime soon (and why would she? It was clear now, due to her father, that she had no reason to and certainly wouldn't be getting kicked out). She started talking about her dog, in fact, and hoped that I wasn't one of the people that the dog had bothered. I, of course, lied and said that I wasn't. She said that a neighbor lady had even moved due to the dog (not much question, I guess, about which one of them was going to lose THAT fight, huh?). She told me, at that point, that her father owned the complex, and I wisely decided not to mention my story concerning him and how much of a prick people seemed to think he was.

She then, out of the blue, asked if we played poker, and said that they play at her place every Wednesday night. She said she thought she'd seen me playing poker on my laptop from her window once (she hadn't). Her boyfriend is apparently quite addicted to it, and she's gotten quite good herself. And she invited us to come join them when they play. I, of course, did not mention the fact that she lives on the second floor, but she picked up on that pretty quick, and added, "Or we could come down here". A.T., of course, thought this would be a great idea, and told her so. This, of course, being A.T. She went back upstairs after saying good-bye and giving the poker invitation again.

So, thanks to A.T.'s mysterious Jedi powers, I have now finally met CGWI. I'm amused by how different my personality is from A.T.'s. I, the introvert, avoids eye contact with neighbors and doesn't feel the need to ever meet them. A.T., my social opposite, could never imagine not meeting all his neighbors and making friends with them. He's moving into an apartment complex next week, and I guarantee by the end of the week he won't be able to walk through it without getting a "Norm!" response on a daily basis. He is the very definition of a people person, an enviable state of being.

Of course, now the fourth wall has been broken here, and suddenly I'm faced with the possibility of the people who are the untouchable terrors of the complex coming to MY place to hang out? How would this, I wonder, reflect on me and the people around me? What if CGWI and the new beau start screaming insults at each other in my kitchen, or sneak off to my bathroom for absurdly vocal carnal knowledge? Or, better yet, what if the immediate worst-case scenario that came to mind once she began speaking to me comes to pass:

1) A.T. befriends her, bringing her into my life.

2) She gets just close enough to find out about my blog and looks it up and reads it.

3) She finds out that I've been detailing her life and love-sounds for the world to enjoy.

4) She calls daddy, and I find a not-surprising eviction noticed taped to my front door?

Time will tell. One wonders, though - is cozing up to the daughter of the owner a mistake, or a smart way to guarantee continued residency, an armor-plating from any future apartment manager complaints of my actions?

Yes, time will tell.

I mentioned that her new roommate is really hot, right?

Night Owl Patio Update

Been a while since I've done a patio update, hasn't it?

Coming up on 5:00 AM here, and still dark out. I've come to know the familiar rhythms of pre-dawn in my complex. The first one each day to emerge from an apartment is always my upstairs-but-not-right-above neighbor, also known as Older Beer-Gut Speedy Guy. He looks to be around his early sixties. His crew-cut hair is a dark gray. He has an unshakable penchant for wearing shorts, even in the morning when he appears to be on his way to work. And though he's overweight and has a pronounced hunch, both things coupled with the gray hair suggesting, to the casual observer, that he's getting up in years and should have a gait to match, his pace is always hurried. Is he in a rush all the time, or is he just a man who knows exactly where he's going in life, so wastes no time getting there?

He's always the first door I hear, right about 4:15 AM. He, in his shorts and polo shirt, carrying some kind of briefcase, makes his beeline for his truck and pulls away while the rest of the complex (except me, of course) seemingly slumbers. Ah, but not all is at it appears, for others, too, are on the rise. At almost precisely 4:30 AM, my next-door neighbor, Dennis, exits his apartment (one that I've been in before, before he ever moved into it, because I used to feed the cat of my previous neighbor who lived there while she was out of town) and heads for his own truck, almost always turning toward my patio while passing and saying "Good morning" to me in a daylight voice, not bothering to whisper as the dark sky and quiet walkways might cause others to. This fits Dennis, as he strikes me as the kind of man who is always himself in any circumstance, not bending to fit the environment, but simply confident that who he is is who he is, and the world can take him or leave him. He's natural friendly, mustached and barrel-chested, quick to share a genuine smile with any in his path. Dennis is a church-goer, a fact I've picked up from the pleasant, short conversations we've had over the past year, over my patio rail or as we're both arriving at our parallel front doors at the same time. I'm not sure, at this point, which church, but whichever one it is, it seems to make him a peaceful, satisfied man. His outgoing nature is the reason that I actually know his name and don't need to make up a silly acronym for him.

There's thirty minutes of silence after Dennis, and then Blond Lady With Good Posture comes walking by, traveling from her apartment at the other end of my building, so I never hear her door open. Her hair is medium length, and I believe she's got a few years on me. Her shoulders are always squared, and she walks as through she trained with books stacked on her head as a schoolgirl. She moves like a graceful, programmed robot gliding easily along her assigned morning path. She strikes me as someone who either enjoys or has just accepted routine in her life, making me wonder, were our walkways made of dirt, if I might examine them after her passing and find that her footsteps have fallen in the same impressions she made the day before, matching them exactly.

After her, the complex is all mine for the remainder of my final writing/reading/thinking shift, with only the sound of early traffic and the hum of surrounding air conditioner units my calm companions. If I stay out a little longer on Mondays, the garbage truck will loudly pull in and do its duty just across from the complex office. This happened yesterday, and on a whim, I decided to, for once, roll forward so I could see the process. The thought that made me do so was realizing how magical the sight of a garbage truck lifting and tipping a dumpster was when I was a child. It's amazing to me how our perceptions change, how the once-extraordinary becomes all but invisible to us as we grow older and our minds fill, instead, with the worries and regrets of everyday adult life. I wanted to see if I could somehow recapture some of that magic, to see if I could glimpse what had so mesmerized me when my eyes were once so much wider. Apparently, I could not. Now it's just a garbage truck, something to resent if its doing its job when I'm inside trying to fall asleep, manned by workers whose jobs I would not want but probably make more at their hourly wage than I ever have.

Remember when I last reported, after hearing her (consistently) over-loud phone conversation from her patio, that CGWI would be moving out in a couple of weeks? That was the middle of June. It's now almost August, and she's shown no signs of vacating. Just tonight, when I decided to roll outside with my iPod as midnight neared, she had a small party going on, with her and several other smokers out on her balcony loudly laughing and talking. She's still around, her dog still barks at all hours, but the change in weather, at least, has caused her to keep her windows closed. So at least the Porn Theater has MOSTLY ceased. For a while it seemed her new guy had reached the level of a platonic friend, or so I assumed from the lack of screaming, God-calling and rump-slapping. But a few nights ago, with the array of air conditioners providing me with a comforting white noise as my background, I heard a sound that didn't seem to fit. After a moment's pause to listen, I confirmed that the theater had re-opened, but at least the show wasn't open to the public. It was understated enough to ignore, and I was grateful for that, at least. I continue to watch, against hope, for a U-Haul truck to magically appear in the parking lot some afternoon.

The biggest news on the goings-on here, though, surround the infamous WFK. The news is two-fold - first, he actually HAS a parent, and second, he knows my name! Both of these were quite surprising. I finally found my answer to the question of why I never saw any legal guardian of his coming or going from a job. This turns out to be because this parent works HERE. I finally figured out one day, while he and what I assumed was a friend from the complex, were in the pool. Mike, the complex handyman, came walking by and started talking to the boys through the pool gate. This is when I found out that the boys are brothers, and that Mike is their dad. Mystery solved, and this oddly pleased me. First, because it was now clear that WFK was not somehow living on his own in my complex, an orphan surviving on untoasted Pop-Tarts between his OCD rounds of the property each day. Second, because he had a brother, so he was not all alone in the world (and was not brought to his weirdness by isolation). But third, because I approved of who his father is. Mike is a good guy, a short but muscular (disproportionally so in his upper body) man probably just a little younger than me, who's personable in that salt-of-the-Earth kind of way. He's come in and changed high light bulbs and done toilet fixes for me in the past, and we've had nice talks. He's very proud of his home electronic system and likes to go into detail about it, particularly about his (literally) thousands of videogames that "they" have. I'd never connected the "they" before, and "they" seem to comprise him and his boys. So WFK does have a family, apparently one with the mom out of the picture, but one filled with X-Box games and a library of DVDs that puts my (I once thought) impressive one to shame. I know this because one day while I was outside, Mike came out and showed me a photo of his system and library, proud as a father showing off graduation pictures, which I thought was a nice gesture, since, as he lives on the top floor, he knew he wouldn't be able to bring me up to show it off in person.

What really threw me for a loop, though, was the day not long ago when WFK, his brother and another friend were heading toward the pool (the gate of which is right across from my patio). As they passed, and as I was typing away at my laptop, WFK suddenly spoke in my direction and said, "How's it going, Mike?" This jolted me. The kid I'd never spoken to (as we discussed earlier, it's never good form for single, middle-aged men to start up conversations with children in this day and age) suddenly spoke to me...and knew who I was, obviously from talking with his father. I'm always surprised to find out that people have discussed me - or even have given me a second thought - when I'm not around. I suppose it's a self-esteem thing, but I tend to think my always staying under the radar keeps me OFF people's radar. I tend to forget completely that I'm often the only person in a wheelchair some people have ever met, so I'm not near as anonymous as I seem to think.

So I find myself happy that WFK, who's no longer a child, really, but a burgeoning teen, seems to have a happy home life after all. This makes me worry less about him, and gives me hope that, despite his unusual and very Jack-Nicholson-in-As-Good-As-It-Gets behavior, he has a better than average chance of turning out all right after all. Good for him. Maybe one day I'll even know his name.

Oh, and a quick wrinkle to the morning - I just heard a car accident happen nearby. Its exact location was hard to pinpoint, since the screech and impact I heard happened right as a small plane was flying overhead, but the further squeal of tires afterward makes me think it was a hit and run. Over a decade in auto claims has taught me that this is all too common. It's also taught me that, since I only heard a crash and saw nothing happen, that I'm completely useless as a witness, so there's no point in my being involved, especially since I don't even know for sure where it happened. So there's no point in my pursuing it further. That's life living off of Madison Avenue. I just hope everyone's all right. The good thing that all those claims also taught me? Most of the time, everyone is.

The sky has now gone blue, birds are chirping, and it's a beautiful morning out. A strong breeze has given sway to the trees, and I'm still alone in my little world. Time for me to pack it in and let the rest of the residents here take over and get on with their days. Mine is at an end. Sleep calls, and a handful of errands awaits me later in the afternoon. So as my Tuesday closes, I wish you all a good Wednesday. Drive safely. And if you feel the need to wake your significant other with an intimate surprise, please...keep the windows closed.

Time Savers (Pt. 1)

I'm introducing a segment here called "Time Savers", where I will, though my own life experience, find and pass on to you opportunities to save valuable time in your busy life.

Let's get started.

Time Saver #1:

Imagine that you - like I was - are watching something on the Science Channel about breathalyzers. They've just finished showing you how the thing works, and explaining some of the scientific principles behind it. They're about to go to commercial, and they tell you that, coming up, they're going to test several urban myths on how to beat the breathalyzer and see if they really work!

Turn off the TV. Walk away. Do something else with your time.

Do you honestly think they're going to show you, on the Science Channel, actual successful ways to beat a breathalyzer? Seriously? On a show that gets shown by science teachers to their young students, do you really expect to hear the words, "Wow! Who'd have thought?! We had our drunken test subject eat an entire raw onion, and sure enough, he read as legally sober! Crikey!" (I added the "crikey" because it was an Australian program I was watching)?

No!

So you already know the outcome. Accept that you can't beat the breathalyzer, or at least that the Science Channel isn't going to teach you how (this is what the internet is for), leave the program and go catch up on your scrapbooking.

Time saved.

Stay tuned for more exciting Time Savers, coming soon!

The Great Renuzit Can Scandal

A tulip, by any other name...

...can get your company in a bunch of trouble.

In 1995, I was living in Scottsdale, Arizona, where I worked for the Dial Corp. As the name might suggest, the Dial Corp is the manufacturer of Dial Soap. But they also have many other products under their banner, other brands they've purchased over the decades. Purex Detergent is one. Breck Shampoo is another. They even own a line of canned meats - Armour Star (maker of fine Vienna Sausages. No, they're really not fine...). From bleaches to wood polish, corn starch to hair color, the Dial Corp has it all. And when I started working there, they had even recently purchased a whole line of air fresheners. Renuzit air fresheners, to be exact.

My job title at Dial was "Consumer Information Representative". Here's how my job worked. Let's say you have a bottle of Liquid Dial in front of you. If you were to pick it up and look on the back, you'd find some small print that provided you an 800-number to call if you had any questions, comments or complaints about the soap. I was the person at the other end of the phone, there to listen to your soapy rantings.

People who heard what I did for a living would often look at me with a baffled, amused smile and ask what people could possibly have to call about. You would be surprised. I sure was in my first weeks on the job. I, myself, had never considered placing such a call in my life. But many, many consumers did. Mothers would call to ask if it was safe to wash their cursing child's mouth out with our bar soap (our legally safe answer was that we did not recommend it for that use). People would call when they couldn't find one of our products in their area anymore, trying to track down a store that carried it (this was especially traumatic for users of Breck Hair Color, including one panicked woman who stated that her own husband didn't even know what her real hair color was...and for some reason she didn't want him to find out). Folks with allergies wanted to double-check and be sure certain ingredients weren't in our food products. Observant Jews wanted to know if certain products were kosher. Kids doing reports for school would call to get help on their homework. Women would swear at me for twenty minutes when stains didn't come out of their laundry. People would claim injury from our products - slipping on soap, a sliver of glass in their food, a rash from our fabric softeners. Lonely housewives would semi-regularly call me from the bathtub (careful to point out their location to me at the start of the call) with unimportant questions, just to have the thrill of the clothes-free conversation (I was like Richard Gere, if Richard Gere knew way too much about antibacterial vs. regular soap). People sure they were going to be rich would call with new product ideas they'd come up with, only to see their dreams dashed when I had to tell them that we didn't accept outside ideas. An angry father once called me when, after he'd sprayed some of our air freshener in the parrot's cage, the beloved family pet dropped dead, and the kids were due home in about an hour and he had no idea what to tell them (tell them their father should have known better than to spray a chemical all over an exotic bird?). One of my favorites was when a woman in Arkansas, quite distressed, called me to let me know that we'd ruined a breakfast she'd held for some visiting friends when it turned out that two cans of our Armour Star product called (I'm not making this up, and this sells fairly well in the south) "Pork Brains in Milk Gravy" had been bad, and her guests were so disappointed because they'd been looking forward to some brains and eggs.

So after just over a year of this kind of thing, I'd thought I'd heard it all in my job.

Ever notice how the minute you think something like that, the universe snickers and rubs its hands together?

We started getting some strange calls one morning. More and more of the same call kept coming in. Soon enough, management had to call us in for an emergency meeting. Apparently, we had a problem. And it was clear from the look on our manager's face that it was one she did not feel comfortable discussing.

The Renuzit line is made up of many products, varying by scent and by type. There is, for example, the Citrus Sunburst fragrance. If you like this fragrance, you can get it in a variety of product types, ranging from aerosol sprays to "adjustables" to plug-ins to carpet fresheners. Consumers were quite apt to call and let us know which fragrances they loved and loved not so much, and we'd take their comments, thank them, and send them coupons for future purchases. That was one nice part of the job that I never got in any occupation thereafter - the ability to brighten a customer's day with the promise of an envelope full of coupons at the end of the call. People who call 800-lines LOVE coupons. I feel that if 976-numbers had offered coupons, they'd still be around for heavy-breathers to this day.

One popular fragrance was Fresh Cut Flowers. And why not? What person (who is not a guy, who could therefore care less) doesn't enjoy the scent of flowers, much less the freshly-cut variety? The graphics on cans and other containers for this product made its title clear - it was a photo filled with a pleasing variety of wild flowers, one that promised a veritable florist shop's-ful of nasal delight for the purchaser. This photo was a recent change to the product, one that, I'm assuming, tested well with focus groups, and had shipped some time before, gracing all the different product varieties of Renuzit Fresh Cut Flowers (or "FCF", as we of the Consumer Information Center knew it, as this was the code we typed in on our DOS-based computer system when we took a call concerning it).

There was a problem.

On the aerosol spray can, a metal seam ran down the length of the can, top to bottom, and that seam cut off the photo in a spot that was not cropped on any of the other FCF products. The part of the photo it dissected, on one portion of the can, was the curled petal of a tulip. Just a tulip petal, nothing scandalous, nothing that would have raised an eyebrow in the art department when the photo was being approved.

But when that seam cut off the tulip petal, a situation created completely by chance? It no longer looked like a tulip petal.

It looked like a penis.

There was an ensuing period of "Where's Waldo" in our meeting at that point, all of us looking at the cans and trying to find it, believing this must be some kind of joke. It was no joke (even though most of us were trying hard to remain professional and not snicker). If you knew where to look, you could find it. Now, seeing as how we, in the Center, all had access to the other products, we could pick up, say, a can of the powdered carpet freshener and see the uncropped photo, and clearly see that it was a rolled up tulip petal, as we could see the whole flower there. But that unfortunate seam had done its work, and done it well enough for someone, in some store in America, looking at cans and trying to decide which scent would best accentuate their trailer home, to spot it, do a double-take, and become convinced that there was clearly a veiny, tiny penis in the photo.

As the old 70s shampoo commercial goes - they told two friends, and they told two friends. And so on, and so on, and so on...

Word had started to spread, and quickly spread far enough to start reaching a couple of morning radio shows. It was then the fires were really lit, and the Renuzit Penis urban legend was born. As the concocted story went, the photographer responsible for that photo had found out he was losing his job. Disgruntled and vengeful, he decided to get a little payback on his last day on the job, and he...well...inserted himself into the photo. It was a story with absolutely no basis in anything even close to a fact. But it was a GOOD story. A story with a penis in it.

And thus began the Renuzit scandal, and the living nightmare for all of us who worked the call center at the Dial Corp. Calls started flooding in. Some were just people trying to verify the story, and we were MORE than anxious to dispel the myth, and offer to send them a color copy of the entire photo to review, or recommend that they go to their local Wal-Mart and pick up the carpet freshener and see the uncropped photo for themselves. People, of course, didn't want to do that, because the false story was, let's face it, much more fun. Add to that the fact that many of these people had been telling this story to every friend and relative they had, with an air of insider information in their confident reporting, and didn't want to sound the fool for being duped.

Others calling in were not curious, but outright angry. There was a rising fundamentalist rage over a trusted consumer product manufacturer introducing pornography to unsuspecting store shelves. You expect that kind of smut in the cosmetics aisles with all the half-naked hussies posing on the boxes, but the air freshener aisle is supposed to be a family aisle! Many of these angry callers were also parents, as this story spread through schools with ridiculous speed, and children were impressing each other with this shocking (yet giddily pleasing) tale, often bringing their mother's can of X-rated air freshener to class with them. One distraught mother told me that her young son, since finding this out, had been unable to keep his hands off the can...or himself (her words).

Most, however, were callers that completely eroded my faith in the American adult public, something that not even people calling to scream at me "It doesn't SAY anywhere on the bottle of bleach not to wash your dog with it!" had accomplished. Some of them couldn't even make it through the call they were snickering so much. Grown men and women became sniggering adolescents at the sight of an imaginary winky. Some even tried yelling while they were doing it, threatening to sue, but couldn't contain their laughter and pull it off. Some calls were less humorous and more...well...sexual. This was the hardest part for me - not for me personally, but for how I felt for my fellow workers, who were almost exclusively women, who spent the next few months going through their work day in a state of, essentially, constant sexual harassment. Guess we were cheaper than a 976-number. Plus, you know...coupons.

The media had fun. Morning radio was practically born for moments like this. We got wind of one "wacky" morning show doing a live broadcast from the local Target, handing the can to unsuspecting passersby and asking them to take a close look at see what they saw. The brief pause would then be followed by an "OH MY GOD!", and hilarity would ensue. This got so far that the then-undisputed king of morning radio - yes, Howard Stern - picked up on the story. He called our center and got Danette, the girl who sat next to me and a good friend, on the line. Danette was a very sweet girl, whose whole goal in life was to become a contemporary Christian singer. And she had to be the one Stern got on the line. I was sitting there when it happened. She calmly and emotionlessly said, "Please hold". And she put him on hold. She looked at me, told me who it was, and said, "There's no way I'm going to end up being 'The Renuzit Girl'". She took off her headset and walked to our manager's office to discuss it. In the end, she left Stern on hold so long he hung up. That probably didn't help much with casting doubts on the photographer story.

So we took the abuse, as such was our duty. Day in, day out, the phallic phone calls came, with callers enraged, aroused, or enjoying themselves immensely, and none of them believing our explanation of innocence. I felt bad for the poor folks with valid Pork Brains issues that couldn't get through to voice their lament. The Dial C.I.C. became All-Penis, All-The-Time. Even my personal, and sizable, adoration for being a part of anecdotal awesomeness like this could only last so long. There are only so many ways to say "It's not a penis, ma'am", and only so many times you can say it before (hard to believe, I know) it gets old. I became a dork-denying drone, going through the motions, praying, for once, for a finch to drop dead to break the monotony. There was no joy in Dialville - we were not a happy group of workers.

Thankfully, the United States of America is held up by two unifying foundations - individual freedom, and short attention span. The calls did eventually trickle off. Bill Clinton was in the White House, after all, so there were other penis scandals to be found. And we had O.J. to thank for further distraction. By the time I left the employ of the Dial Corp to move back to California, only a handful of penis (I'm interrupting the sentence right there to make you chuckle so you can feel like one of our callers) queries (I chose that word for the same reason) were slipping through (bwahahaha!), but they would no longer be my problem. My days of bar soap rashes, laundry disasters, spoiled Brains and Fresh Cut Penises were over.

Oh, but you can bet your ass I took one of those cans with me. I may have given up on Brains, but I'm no dummy.


NOTE: As with all urban legends, even ones that come from such a doubtless source as me...always double-check them on Snopes.com.

Comic-Con without me

Feeling a little sad this weekend. Why? Because this is the first summer since 1994 that Comic-Con International in San Diego is going on without me.

There's a good chance that you've heard of this event by now. Some of you may not have. For that latter group, I recommend you go to Entertainment Weekly's website today or tomorrow, and see how many times you see the words "Comic-Con" on that page and in the big Hollywood stories. Or check CNN.com. Or MSNBC.com, where the first photo on the page right now is from Comic-Con. This should give you an inkling of the popularity of this thing.

And what IS this thing?

Outside the San Diego Convention Center

This is, in short, one of the greatest spectacles you're ever likely to see if you're lucky - and smart - enough to attend. It calls itself a "celebration of the popular arts". While it started small and simple back in San Diego in 1970, a convention focused heavily on comic books (back then it was simply known as the San Diego Comic-Con), it has grown to a four-day event that all but takes over downtown San Diego, with over 100,000 people attending each year (tickets for the event now sell out months in advance), and is the mecca for all things comic, film, television, videogame, card game, science fiction, fantasy, animation, anime, horror, and many other genres of fandom. It fills the ridiculously large San Diego Convention Center from one end to the other. For four days (five, really, since they have "preview night" the night before it all begins, which has essentially turned into another half-day of convention), fans of all that stuff get to check out a mind-boggling array of merchandise, meet and get autographs from celebrities ranging from A-list to obscure-but-embraced, attend a vast array of panels that run the gamut from Hollywood studios (and stars) showing off their upcoming films and TV shows to Q&A talks with popular writers or artists or actors, and just wander like wide-eyed cattle amongst the massive display booths and tables with their video screens and life-sized Batmobiles and pounding bass from massive speakers, while countless others attendees wander by in Stormtrooper, Batgirl and Transformer costumes. While fandom as a whole is divided into many camps - comic fans, Trekkies, Star Wars fanatics, anime junkies, Hollywood star-addicts, Harry Potterheads and Twilight zombies, to name just a very few - this is where they all come together, the United Nations of nerdity.

A very small portion of the convention floor. Notice how long those aisle signs keep going on. The imagine turning around and seeing the same thing going in the other direction.

It used to be a relative secret to the world outside San Diego and fandom. And this always amazed me. Some people go their whole lives waiting to see a celebrity in person. At Comic-Con? For $25 bucks a day (or for free, if you're designated an industry professional like myself), you don't just get to waltz into ballrooms and see household names speak and joke and answer your questions, but you often bump into familiar celebs on the con floor, in the elevator, or just in the john (there is no celebrity loo...they have to pee in the same place as the rest of us). I think it was the year that Halle Berry showed up that the media collectively went "WTF?!", and suddenly, Entertainment Tonight and E! and TMZ were swarming the place. That's when things really took off. Up until just a few years ago, you could just walk up the day of the convention and buy a ticket and walk in. Now, not only are you not getting in if you don't get your badge reserved months in advance, but you're simply NOT going to get a hotel room anywhere within miles of downtown that week unless you plan almost a year in advance. Yes, it's that big.

Some have complained that the Con has "gone Hollywood". I rejoice at this truism. The studios and the TV networks are all there, as are their stars. Halle was a big piece of news at the time, but now those kinds of appearances are the norm. Just this year, on Thursday, Tim Burton was presenting a panel on his upcoming "Alice in Wonderland" film, and in the middle of it brought out a special surprise guest - the film's star, Johnny Depp. Christian Bale has been there more than once. As has Angelina Jolie. Sam Jackson. The list goes on and on. Fans of TV shows are always in for a treat if there's a panel for their favorite program, because often the entire cast shows up for it. The "Lost" panel is always a huge favorite for this reason. If you're a Twitter person and follow celebs, chances are one or more of the stars on your follow list are tweeting about what they're doing at Comic-Con this weekend. "Swingers" star and "Iron Man" director Jon Favreau is on my list, and updated while he was loading up on his minivan and getting ready to drive there, and has updated from the Con floor regularly. My favorite notice thus far has been from Academy Award-wining screenwriter Diablo Cody (of "Juno" fame), who wrote "OH MY F***, I met Stan Lee!" (she added a photo of her and the godfather of comics to the tweet). "Firefly" and "Castle" star Nathan Fillion is home in L.A., but has promised that if his follow list reaches 100,000 by this weekend he's going to pack up the car and head to the Con and meet with fans.



Yes, it's a big Hollywood spectacle (even though it's a couple of hours away from L.A.), but it's so much more to me than that. It's been a staple of my summers since 1990, when I went to my first one, and I've been going as a pro since 1995. I've flown from my homes in Sacramento and Phoenix, and, even better, have simply hopped in my van and driven downtown during my years living in San Diego. It's a place where I get together with old friends, many of whom have moved away. It's our excuse to get together and hang out again, even if it's only once a year. We wander the Con together, attending panels - or often do so separately, attending different panels that meet our individual interests, and keep in touch via text and cell on where we're at and decide where we're meeting after our panels have ended. We walk across the tracks to the Gaslamp downtown together for lunch and drinks and catching up on old times. We get together in the evenings, either at a restaurant or bar or at someone's home (these days it's at Tony's since he's the only one still living in SD). We swap celebrity stories and photos and laugh and debate which new shows or movies look good or look horrible. It's a fantastic time, start to finish. And, yes, it makes me sad that this year, it's going on without me, me being without a job and therefore without any dough. I'm not alone. Many folks I know are in the same boat and just couldn't make it happen this year, so we're all sullenly sitting around our own hometowns, getting emailed photos from Tony of all the familiar sights - Tony, while being lucky enough to be there, is sad himself because he has no buddies to share it all with.

The standard Comic-Con trip these past few years has gone like this: I fly into town, either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning/afternoon. The Con runs officially Thursday through Sunday, but Wednesday, which used to be just the night for pre-registered people to pick up their badges, has become another day of Con since they started opening the floor early for "Preview Night". I get there and either get a rental car, if I'm traveling with someone, or just wait for a pick-up from Tony. We all get our badges. Some people hit the floor and check out Preview Night, but that's never a big thing for me, since I know I'll have four days to see it all, so I don't like to waste it early. There's usually dinner downtown and the initial catching up with the gang - those that have arrived already, that is, as some, due to work or whatever, can't fly in until Thursday or Friday (some of our regulars come from Seattle...Idaho...Iowa...D.C...North Carolina). Then it's off to Tony's house up the freeway, and to my room that Tony's family graciously offers me each year. There's usually two, sometimes three of us staying there. The next morning, it's time to rise, get the backpacks and satchels together, check and make sure you're not leaving your badge behind (you're not getting in without one), and then load up the car and head downtown. We've discovered that the best parking is to hit the lot across from the ballpark (go Padres!) and walk it to the Convention Center. That's the best moment - coming around that corner and seeing the Center - and the streets in front of it filled with countless thousands of Con-goers - and knowing the week is officially about to begin.

Writer/Director/Offender Kevin Smith up on the video screen at one of his panels

In the old days before the internet, the most important part of the night before the Con was getting out the Con schedule of events - the one you get handed when you pick up your badge - and everyone circling all the different panels they want to see, and finding out which ones two or more of us might be attending. But since the web, the schedule is published and updated regularly on the Con site, and plans can be made before even leaving for San Diego. Some of us don't even bother with the paper schedule, mostly, as we cut and past our panel lists and info into our PDAs. So the great Con experience begins as we either split off or group up for panels, or wander the floor to check out the booths together. I laugh, now, wondering how we used to manage to coordinate in the old days, before cell phones. Back then, we picked a meeting place (it became the DC Comics booth, as that big logo is easy to spot), and would set a time at the end of the day when everyone would group up and meet, and the arrangement that if anyone wanted to find each other, people would drop by the booth at the top of each hour and see if anyone else was there. Now? Coordination is a snap, and even among all those thousands, we're always able to know where our other pals are if we want to track them down.

The best part about this event for me, as a writer, is the inspiration. It's a chance to see booth after booth, table after table, filled with creators and the comics, books or films they make. You realize, there, that despite all your fears about making it and getting something produced, that there are plenty of people doing just that, and seeing what they're doing really sparks your own imagination. It's also a great networking place. There are a number of artists I've talked to, year after year, who know me by name (even without the badge). And the panels are the biggest inspiration. I've taken writing seminars from some of the biggest names in comics over the years (Chris Claremont, Peter David). There are panels made up of numerous writers that answer questions for upcoming writers, and their insight is priceless. I never miss a panel by comics guru Scott McCloud, whose panel on web comics years back inspired me to start the "Nice Guy" web site. And it's not just comics. It's screenwriters and filmmakers, too. One of my favorite moments back in my early years, back when you could just wander into a panel room without waiting in a line, was an hour-long panel with John Carpenter talking about his films and filmmaking in general. Another can't-miss panel each year is from my creative hero, Joss Whedon ("Buffy", "Angel", "Firefly", "Dollhouse"), and those are always more fun when he's in the middle of producing something, as he often brings stars along with him. One of most memorable Con moments ever was after "Firefly" had been canceled, and the "Serenity" big-screen continuation was announced, and he brought the entire cast with him right from the filming location.

An example of what it looks like inside one of the panel rooms. This is only the left side of the room.

I tend to miss a lot of the "big" stuff, on purpose. Most of these events are held in the massive "Hall H", where the big Hollywood things happen, and there are often people lined up outside it the whole night before. They're just too crowded and complicated for me (though I do go to some). One of the craziest ones, for example, I completely avoided - the "Twilight" panel with the writer, the film's director, and the whole cast. I watched video on the web of it later, and it was like a Beatles concert in there, with thousands of screaming, bawling teenage girls. I do make my way in there each year for the never-to-be-missed Kevin Smith panels, always the most entertaining (and foul-mouthed) panel each year. Often you'll find yourself going into a panel early there just to make sure you've got a seat for the panel that comes after, and I often enjoy the irony of me showing up in the middle of a Nicholas Cage talk, just waiting for him to shut up and get off stage so the panel I'm really interested in (usually with much lesser-known stars) can begin.

I'm more about the smaller stuff, my favorite things. When it was announced that there was a panel for HBO's brilliant but little-known sketch show, "Mr. Show", with stars Bob Odenkirk and David Cross hosting it, I was all over it, and loved the fact that I was sitting right behind "Lord of the Rings" star Elijah Wood, who was just there as a Mr. Show fan. As a fan of David Boreanez (of "Angel"), I decided to go to the panel introducing his new show, "Bones". With both him and co-star Emily Deschanel there with us, we got to watch the pilot episode months before the show's release, and the star answered questions about it afterward. I've been introduced to a lot of popular shows like this over the years.

A lot of my celebrity moments, and there have been many, are lost on a lot of people, but have meant a lot to me. Running into "Quantum Leap" star Scott Bakula in an elevator (one of many elevator moments I've had, including being kicked out of one so Mark Hamill's handlers could get him "safely" up to a panel). Talking with Go-Gos bass-player Jane Wiedlin while she ate her lunch. Getting web-sales advice from 70s Battlestar Galactica star Richard Hatch. Shaking hands with James Hong, best-known (to me) for playing David Lo-Pan in "Big Trouble in Little China". Standing next to my buddy A.T. in the pro registration line when he turned around too quickly and ran right into the chest of the "Incredible" Lou Ferrigno. Also with A.T., meeting the comic book chick from "The Real World: Miami". Those are just the actual meet-'em moments. There are countless ones where I didn't want to be annoying and talk to celebs (but should have), as I sat next to Danny Bonaduce, had Neil Patrick Harris almost bump into me, and watched some of my favorite modern film guys - Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen and "Superbad" Jonah Hill - walk right past me. I really should have talked to Mr. T. (I pity me, fool!), but opted for just videotaping him instead. I had the aforementioned Nathan Fillion sitting on the floor right next to me during a Whedon panel, and felt like a failure for not saying hello to one of my favorite actors, but luckily got to meet him later at the "Serenity" world premire in Hollywood (great guy).

Yeah, baby, I hung out with Ponch!

The celebs are literally everywhere. Some are just there for their event or autograph signing, some are just wandering the floor seeing the sights, some are outside smoking and talking with fans. You could wander the streets of L.A. for months and not see so many of them. It's a hell of a thing. And it's funny, to me, how it's become so normal for me. I was once sitting at a table up on the upper level, outside and under the sun, having a cigar and relaxing with a few of my buddies. Brent "Mr. Data" Spiner came walking by on the way to a panel. My buddy Russ said, "Hey, Spiner." Spiner smiled and said "Hey, how's it going?" We all casually nodded and said "Good", and he went on his way, and we went back to smoking. There's this weird connection that that just makes you feel like the Con is the celebrity, and all of us, famous and not famous, are just there to see it together.

One of my favorite years was the one year I got to BE one of the celebrities (kind of). This was the one year that Tim and I got ourselves a "Nice Guy" table on the Con floor, and spent our five days behind it, pushing our comic, making new fans, and even finding a fan or two we already had (?!). We didn't get to see much of the Con that year - we only allowed ourselves two panels each, and separately, because one of us always had to be behind the table - but it was a great experience in and of itself. After all those years attending, I finally got to see what the behind-the-scenes stuff looked like, watching - while setting up our table - as all the big companies moved forklifts around to set up their booths. That, and the camaraderie of getting to meet many other cool independent comic creators, made it an awesome experience. We'll have to do that again one of these years...if we ever get our second comic done.

But, alas, no table and no new celebrity stories for me this summer. No flirting with Xena's gorgeous stuntwoman (yes, I did). No sitting with thousands through another Battlestar panel with Edward James Olmos and listening to him go on about the coming pandemic (?). No buying tee shirts that I just HAD to have, only to realize, after getting home, that I'd never wear such a shirt in public (and yet would end up buying a similar one the next year). No grabbing up as many movie poster postcards as I can find (a hobby of mine). No meeting awesome, enthusiastic alternative comic creators, the generation still coming up in the biz. No heading up and down Artist's Alley and getting sketches done by some of my favorite pencilers throughout the years. No spending $12.oo for a sandwich, chips and a drink up on the mezzanine level because of being too lazy or pressed for time to walk to the Gaslamp for a reasonably-priced meal. No hilarious lunches with the guys at Dick's Last Resort. No sitting down for dinner at an Italian place and realizing Mr. Chekhov is at the next table. No Jean Claude Van Damme showing up the floor and causing a near fan-riot. No girl at the costume contest losing her top up on stage, allowing 95% of the crowd the near-religious experience of seeing real boobies for the first time. No Sunday night wind-down on Tony's back porch with stogies and Guinness, reflecting on another amazing Comic-Con experience, and another great few summer days spent with old friends.

Me and some of our regulars - Tony, A.T. and Russ - relaxing outside between panels

No, this summer I'm home, sweating in the Sacramento heat, waiting on Tony's latest emailed photos from the Convention Center. It's a sad thing, true, but it's really okay. I've been very fortunate to have been able to keep showing up, year after year, through flush times and tough ones. I figure I'm due for a year off. But next year marks the 20th anniversary of our trip together to the Con, so you can be sure, one way or the other, that I'll be there - wearing my badge (but remembering to take it off before going to lunch to avoid looking like a nerd even though the entire CITY is filled with nerds), filling my backpack with purchases, roaming the autograph area to meet celebrities from my youth (Erin Gray is still looking good), waiting in numerous lines (but bypassing many by playing the wheelchair card), and getting my quality time with my old gang.

Next summer, San Diego. I'll be there.

And hopefully, Xena's double will be, too.

Oh, come on...you'd have flirted with her, too...

ADDENDUM: Just as I finished writing this thing, I decided to check email before completing and uploading it. I found two mails from Tony...with two pieces of video he recorded. The first was one with those actual "Nice Guy" fans I mentioned - the amazing Suzi, who got me and Tony in to the "Serenity" premiere in 2005. Tony ran into her this afternoon at the Con and recorded a message from her to me, reminding me I need to be there next year, and "no excuses!". That was awesome. And the second was addressed to all of us buddies who couldn't be there with Tony this year. Tony had just gotten out of the panel for the upcoming ABC remake of "V", and he stopped the cast of the show on their way out and explained that his friends had backed out and hadn't made it this year, and recorded a message from three of them (including actress Morena Baccarin, best-known for "Firefly" and "Serenity", whom Tony and I had met at the "Serenity" after-party) telling us that we should have made it, and that we'd better make it next year. And, of course, reminding us to watch "V". I think Tony just nicely, and amazingly, made my whole point of this writing for me. This stuff only happens at Comic-Con, folks. Do like the aliens from "V" say to do...and come to Comic-Con!

P.S. A tweet from Tony: Overheard at Comic-Con: "I just saw Bon Jovi in the mens' room." Probably true.

Thank you for watching "The Running Man"!

THE RUNNING MAN has been brought to you by: Breakaway Paramilitary Uniforms, Ortopure Procreation Pill, and Cadre Cola; it hits the spot! Promotional considerations paid for by: Kelton Flame Throwers, Wainwright Electrical Launchers, and Hammond & Gage Chainsaws. Damon Killian's wardrobe by Chez Antoinne: 19th-Century craftsmanship for the 21st-Century man. Cadre Trooper and studio-guard side arms provided by Colchester: the pistol of patriots. Remember: Tickets for the ICS studio tour are always available for Class-A citizens in good standing. If you'd like to be a contestant on THE RUNNING MAN, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to: ICS Talent Hunt, care of your local affiliate, and then go out and do something really despicable! I'm Phil Hilton! Good night, and take care!

Have you seen this bike?

DOWNTOWN SACTO PEEPS ALERT!

My friend Cindy just had her bike--which is currently her ONLY means of transportation--stolen out of a friend's back yard.

This fact sucks.

So if you're roaming around downtown Sac in the next few days, keep an eye out for a crackhead (I'm just guessing) riding on a pretty pink bike. It's a custom-made Kosmopolitan Cruiser, and disappeared today (Wednesday, 7/15). If you see it, call the coppers and tell them you think it was stolen from famed Sacramento photographer/filmmaker Cynthia E. Jones. They'll take care of the rest (hopefully). And if this happens, let ME know right away. Email is fine, text is fine, call me if you got my number.

Let's bring this pink beauty back to its happy home!

The Mourning Glory

Psst! I started a novel...

As some of you may have heard, some of my...let's call it "free time"...has gone into starting a novel. Didn't mean to do it. It just happened. And as of now, the first act of that novel (at least the first draft of it) has been completed. And I thought, before trudging onward, that it might be nice to get a few opinions on how it's going so far.

So I figured I'd post it up when it was done and just provide a link. But, this being me (marketing-minded guy I am), I went ahead and built a little web page around it, just to make the experience a little more fun.

The novel is called "The Mourning Glory", a title which will make sense by the end of Act I, I promise. This here is one of them science-fictiony novels you hear about, so if that's not your speed...well, you might give it a try anyway. I like to think I have my own little twist on sci-fi, so it may not be what you're expecting. There's only one way to find out. Hey, what a nice segue to posting up the link!:

www.themourningglory.net

Note four distinct possibilities for screwing up that address if you're typing it in: 1) Forgetting to add the "the" at the start, 2) forgetting to use the "U" in "mourning", 3) getting confused by those two g's right next to each other and forgetting one, and 4) trying to type .com instead of .net. Yeah, some other joker got the .com one before I could. Ah, well. Let's pretend a .net address is cooler, shall we? So it's a URL fraught with possibilities for misadventure, so maybe using the link above might be best. Or, if you ever forget it, you can always go to michaeloconnell.com, got to Exposition section, and you'll find a link there.

Once you get to the Mourning Glory home page, you can read the pretentious, wordy introduction I made for it that goes into the history of this story (what led me to writing it, and how its origins are nearly 20 years old) and a rant on my impatience with Earth-based spacey sci-fi stories. So I won't go into all the history here and repeat myself (you lucky dogs). You'll also find a dedication page, and then you can jump right into Act I itself!

I was going to translate the story into HTML, but thought better of it. I remembered that a lot of people don't like to sit and read at their computer screen, so I wanted to allow an easy print option. I was originally going to do HTML with a .PDF option, but after creating the .PDF file, I realized people who want to read at the computer can just read the damn .PDF onscreen just as well, if not easier, than the HTML. And it looks prettier, too. I've found on both my computers that Adobe opens it at 130%, which is a little overwhelming, so you might want to drop that to 100%. Or, if you're like me, you might want to go a step further and knock it to 75%, which makes it (to me) look a lot more like a paperback novel. That's the other thing I like about .PDF. You can re-size it all you like to fit your preferences.

After I finally formatted everything down from my Word doc into the .PDF, Act I came out at 57 pages. It's split into eight "parts" (I'm not really going with "chapters", per se, but these kind of act like chapters, and are numbered), so you can read a few pages at a time, if you like, and go back to it later without having to spend too much time looking for where you left off. Just remember you were about to start section "3".

I also added a "News" page and a "Contact" page. Both of these are strongly connected to the idea of people being able to contact me and let me know when I've screwed something up, and then I can let people know when the fix is done. And if you're a regular reader of this blog and are aware that the 2009 Great Typo Contest is currently underway, you know what THAT means...a 57-page GOLD MINE of opportunities for points!

Yes, I would LOVE for people (please, please?) to make note of any errors they find (typos, spelling, whatEVAH) as they're reading along and let me know about them. Once they (by "they", I mean "you", of course!) let me know, and I can make the change in the Word doc, re-save the .PDF, and post up the fixed copy. This is why the News page is cool, because you can check it and see if you've got the latest version. I'll be posting dated entries each time a new one goes up.

Please note that this IS science fiction, so there's some stuff typed in there that's meant to be spelled/written wrong to fit atmosphere of the setting, so no points for "there's no such word as 'vidscreen!'. You get the idea. Also, as always with the contest, the points go to the first person who spots the error and reports it, so if I were you, I'd start reading early!

I've meant to do something like this for a long time, ever since I started michaeloconnell.com. I've always meant to crank out some fiction for my Exposition page, but just haven't gotten around to it. So, this'll be the start. My plan here is to keep on writing until a whole novel is done (however long THAT takes...), and to keep putting up the different "acts" as I go. Along the way, your opinions can make a huge difference. Every heard that old "forest for the trees" phrase? Sometimes it takes a fresh set of eyes to spot things that the guy in the middle of the woods misses completely (staring at the trees like a doofus as he is...). I'd like to know if anyone has what I refer to as one of those "wait a minute..." moments. These are those moments when you spot something in a plot that just doesn't make sense, or is contradicted by something else in the story. As the whole version that's going to be up on my web page is a first draft, this is the perfect time for me to find those and deal with them, and maybe even correct them before the second draft begins. But beyond just finding typographical and logical errors, I'm really curious to find out what you think of the story. I don't want you on board here just as an editor. I want you as a reader, and I want to take you on a journey that will hopefully be a great and exciting ride for you. Writing, for me, is always about customer service. I want to do everything I can to make sure you enjoy the product.

So, all that said, I do hope you're intrigued enough to jump in and give The Mourning Glory a try. Be prepared - it's not going to jump right out of the gate with epic space battles and blaster fire and flying fists. Oh, that's coming, don't worry. But one of the main themes in this tale is life being about the journey, not the destination, so there's a progression to it all. I'm going to ease you in, introduce the world, the story, the characters, the teases for what's to come. I hope you'll find those parts captivating on their own. But this is no novella - it's a big story, and it's going to take you a lot of different places before it's done. So enjoy the ride, as I hope to make it one well worth your time.

So strap in, kick back, and let the ride begin. Your journey awaits.

** WARNING ** There be spoilers in the comments of this entry! Proceed at yer own risk...and after you read Act I!