I’ve learned two very valuable lessons recently; lesson one is, “don’t take notes for another
Friday Report when you haven’t finished the first one.”  Lesson two is, “don’t expect to do any
work when you’ve bought yourself a DVD player.”

Yes, it’s been a little while since the last Friday Report and I only have three little letters to offer
as explanation: DVD.  After a certain amount of hand-wringing and shekel counting, I bought
myself an APEX 600 DVD player.  The APEX 600 is supposed to be a fanboy’s dream DVD
player, capable of playing VCDs, Karaoke CDs, music CDS (including MPEG3s) and import
DVDs irregardless of their region coding.  This means that the whole world of foreign DVD
discs are available to me, not just the small proportion actually imported into the U.S.  As far as
I can tell, DVD stands for Digital Venereal Disease; like a home electronics version of syphilis,
discontentment for the other pieces of my home entertainment system have screwed through my
entire being.  Two days after getting the APEX 600, I splurged and bought a new TV.  Today I’m
off to buy an S-video converter, and already I’m sort of shopping around for home theater
speakers.  Quick, some penicillin, the mercury cure, something.

And there is the other problem, every time I start writing one Friday down, events from some other
Friday leak into my brain.  For those of you who were there, I apologize now for events that I
somehow managed to garble up. Don’t worry, I’m sure that John Byrne will straighten
everything out when he does the “Friday Report: The Liver of Steel” miniseries ten years down
the road.

So I wheeled into Comix Experience completely late, sure that I had missed Dan the Man.  To
use the proper funnybook vernacular, I’m starting to feel like the Silver Age Flash, who managed
to be both the fastest man alive and always late wherever he went; no matter what time I leave
my house, I somehow always manage to arrive at Comix Experience no earlier than 12:25.  Ever.
I could leave Thursday night and not show up until Friday at 12:25.  In some ways, this is a good
thing. For those of you reading this for tips to ingratiate yourself to your comic retailer, one of
the very few I ever learned on my own is, don’t be the first customer.  From my experience, any
comic store clerk wants a few minutes to arrive, set up, rub their naked bodies on all the new
comics while giggling and yelling, “they’re mine, all mine!” and then develop their countenance
of the world-wear retail clerk in relative privacy.  As far as I can tell, and I really should check
with the experts on this, nothing makes a comic clerk’s heart sink faster than showing up to
work and seeing the guy who showed ten minutes early just on the off-hand chance that the store
would be open.  If comix matter that much to you, then get a pull box.  Everyone will be much
happier all around.

Of course, I’ve learned the more valuable “show up with beer” lesson, so I think I could safely
show up early than 12:20.  But I’ve got this Barry Allen thing I mentioned earlier.  Anyway, so I
show up, and Dan and Larry are there, and there is much handshaking all around.

There’s a little bit of funnybook talk, mainly Larry showing off new AIT stuff to make us drool,
and I think Dan and I talked about movies.  I know that at one point I wrote down, “Dan: Glad
he’s a force for good, not evil.”  I assume this is because Dan told me one of his work stories,
which usually involves an innovative solution to cracking the formidable psychic defenses of
some kid so that they can begin to love and trust and be happy.  Part of the kick of Dan’s stories
is it always seems that he’s very pleased with himself– chillingly so – that he figured out a way
to break this kid’s psyche and that always makes my blood run cold, and I sit there with a frozen
smile on my face, and then I ask a question or two and it becomes apparent that what Dan’s
really pleased about is that this kid is now a person again, and can feel again, and isn’t locked in
this little defensive prison of rage and distrust and fear, and that makes Dan really happy.  It’s
enough to make you shed a manly tear, to steal a phrase from Larry.

As for Lar, I notice that he’s a Homeric sort of fellow, and as much as I love the Simpsons, I
miss the days when you could use the word Homeric without everyone going “D’oh!” (And
someday I’ll launch into my Nathanael West rant, but that’s for later.)  Like Homer, you-know-
the-blind-guy-Homer, Larry takes certain phrases and repeats them over and over in a complex
way that makes me think that, as in Homer, there’s some complex thinking that can go on
uninterrupted while everyone’s distracted.  So, whereas Homer, when preparing his brain to
access a huge honking section of recitation, might say, “And so rosy fingered dawn finds
Achilles, shield smashing Achilles, yadda, yadda....”  Larry will say, “that brings me a manly tear
to my eye,” and “and god bless him, that’s all I’m saying, “ and, for this week at least,
“MONKEY!”

I don’t know why (although I can imagine someone sprinkling powdered DC covers from the
‘60s into Larry’s drink (which may explain the checkerboard pattern across the top of Larry’s
head, come to think of it)) but that was the word of the day; alternately an expletive, an
exclamation and an absolution.  “Where have you been,” Larry said, flicking me beer money,
“you monkey?”  And then after a pause, in a boom just begging for 20 point type, “MONKEY!”

By the way, you know those movies where you have the master gunslinger and then there’s his
ridiculously green apprentice?  This is pretty much how well Larry and I are matched up as far as
drinking goes.  Before my Fridays at CE, my nickname was “Two-Brew.”  Now, it would
probably be something like “Five-Bass.”  And the reason, why I mention this is, I drank a lot this
particular Friday.  A lot.

My memories are a blur after probably about 1:00 in the afternoon on.  I know that at some point
I decided it would be really cool to get a picture of the store from behind the display case glass.
I stumbled out into the street to take a picture of Dan’s cool-o keen motorcycle, and if it doesn’t
look cool, well, blame the drunken photographer who was staggering further and further into the
lanes of Divisadero to snap a picture.

I came back in, and Larry handed me another brew and delivered the immortal phrase, “Beer.
It’s like liquid comics!”

“Wow, Larry, that’s....”

“And flannel socks,” Larry added, looking down at his feet.  “Man, I love these flannel socks.
They’re new, and they make my feet feel like happy monkeys.”  And then, in 20 point type,
“MONKEYS!”

Then Brian showed up, downright early and apparently ready to party.  Special Guest Star Tom
showed with him, and also grabbed beers.  Then somebody went and got more beers.  Larry
regaled us with his “On The Road Again” story; “My buddies from college–those monkeys--and
I used to go on long road trips, and we’d sing Willie Nelson’s ‘On The Road Again,’ over and
over.  But we didn’t always know the words, you know?  But we never let that stop us.  Anyway,
whenever I’m listening to the radio, and Willie’s ‘On The Road Again,’ comes on, there’s part
of me that’s secretly dismayed that there is no line that goes, ‘Something, something, something
that rhymes with Omaha.’  The song just sounds wrong without it.”  I should warn you this isn’t
a story as much as a memetic infection.  I’ve actually heard “On the Road Again” since having
Larry tell me this, and now I think the song sounds wrong without the line ‘Something-
something-something that rhymes with Omaha.’  Oh, well.  Too late for you.  Then someone got
more beers.  Then someone took Comix Experience’s foundation and tilted it 20 degrees but
nobody seemed to notice but me.

Then The Friday Report stories started.  Sorry if this is too self-referential for y’all, but they
must be mentioned, if only in passing.  Larry mentioned that Brian had actually made a sale
through the Report because somebody saw a poster in the background of one of my pictures and
contacted Larry and bought it.  And then Larry said, “And, dude, come on, you can’t have
another Friday Report end with you passing out drunkenly.  That shit is played.”

“But that’s what happens,” I protested.

“I don’t care!  Lie!  Have Dr. Doom show up at your door, go to a movie, do something!  Aren’t
you aware that it’s the world’s most cliched ending, right next to, ‘and then I woke up?’”

“You know, that reminds me of something Wittgenstein said...”

“So,” Brian said to Larry, interrupting, “what’s the register look like?”  He of course meant how
much money they’d made that morning, but to spite him, I took a picture of the register, just so
that the next time he interrupted me with that question, I could hand him the photo and say,
“Here.  It looks like this.”

And this is the last piece of meta-Friday Report info I’m trying to pass along.  Like some sort of
quantum experiment where the observer can’t help but have an effect on the observed, I suspect
that the Friday Report has had a minor effect on each of my CE compadres, which, in the
interests of journalistic honesty, I report as follows:

Larry–Homeric phrases, dresses snazzier
Brian–Drinks more, mocks me more
Yakuza Dan–Mentions his motorcycle more, got cool haircut
Tom–Shows up more
Ninja Rob–Shows up less
Me–drops more artsy-fartsy names

It’s true, I admit it.  Part of it is, probably, my desire to draw some sort of secret analogy
between Comix Experience and the salons of Paris, and part of it is probably my way of
intellectually dressing snazzier (I guess in the hopes that some kick-ass woman will read the
page and go, “Wow, he can quote Nietzsche and drink five Bass Ales without passing out.  This
is the man for me!”)

But those bastards at CE will have none of it.  No less than three times I tried to mention this
cool quote from Wittgenstein, and no less than three times was I shut down.  In fact, the last time
what happened was, I said, “It’s like Wittgenstein once said...” Larry blurted, “Should I steal
from Jack Kirby or Johnny Craig?”  And then he paused for a moment and said, “Oh no, wait,
that’s what Lichtenstein once said.  I always get those two confused.”

Much laughter as I stood there fuming.  Of course, I could have the last laugh, but I can’t really
remember the Wittgenstein quote anymore, so I guess it’s not that important.   It was, uh,
Something-something-something that rhymes with Omaha....

Tom and I end up talking about the San Francisco Labor Union woes, covering the whole gamut
from his being unable to get stolen away by another company than the one he’s at because the
Labor Union did a flip-flop on letting union members take better work.  We also talk about a
favorite topic of mine, the strong Californian public bias about Latin American immigrants
“taking all the jobs” and working illegally when, in fact, there’s a thriving community of Irish
immigrants, both legal and illegal, working under the table in construction.  “They’re very
popular,” Tom told me, “because when the INS guys show up, they never get asked to show their
green cards.”

“Because they’re white,” I said sadly.

Tom nodded.  “Because they’re white.”  And there really wasn’t anything else to say about that.

And then we got drawn into a conversation that Roger is having with Brian and Larry.  Roger is a
CE customer that shows up every so often on Friday, and is enjoyably old-school.  I didn’t see
what comics he was buying, but I imagine that it’s probably some Vertigo, a few “thanks for the
memories” Marvels, and some more sophisticated stuff.

This is a generalization that really is probably more applicable to myself than to all of San
Francisco, but I will happily apply to everyone anyway; it used to be when San Franciscans made
small talk, it was about the weather.  Now there are three topics of small talk in San Francisco:
how insanely expensive real estate is; who we know who have recently gotten rich; and the
weather.  I managed to get in on the conversation just as Roger was telling us the obscenely high
price he and his partner had paid for their new house, but since this is Comix Experience, the
conversation took a strange turn.

“If you think that’s opulent,” Roger was saying, “you’ll hate me when I tell you what I just
bought for it.”  He lifted one hand.  “Keep in mind that I bought it on Ebay, and the proceeds
went to charity.”

“What is it?” Larry asked, opening another bottle of beer.

“Guess.”

Larry thought for a moment.  “Is it comic book related?”

“Yes.”

“Is it DC related?”

“No.”

“Is it Marvel related?”

“Yes.”

“Is it Jack Kirby related?”

“Jack Kirby worked for DC too, remember.”

“Oh, right.  Is it Stan Lee related?”

“Yes.”

Larry thought.  “Is it Stan Lee’s toupee?”

“It’s bigger than his toupee.”

Larry didn’t even hesitate.  “Is it Stan Lee’s liver?”

“No.”

“Hmmm.  I give up.”

“His desk.”  We were all silent a moment, and Roger looked both proud and embarrassed and
like he was trying to look like neither.  “I bought Stan Lee’s desk.”

“Wow....”

“I know, I know, as I said, pretty silly.”

“No way, dude,” Larry said.  “That’s rad.  I mean, that’s Stan Lee’s desk.”  And the fact is, I
think we were all awed.  Even Brian was respectfully quiet, until “Roxanne” came on the radio.
“This song,” Brian said, in that sort of tone he has that suggests that he’s poking a finger in the
air emphatically even when he’s not, “This song can totally be sung like a Celtic ballad.”  And
God help us all, he demonstrated in a high lilting voice, “Roxanne/ you don’t have to put on the
red light.”

“Please stop,” someone begged.  But Brian continued, with an even more malicious lilt.  “Those
days are over/ you don’t have to– sell your body to the night!”

“Dude, please.  I just picture you filking at a convention somewhere.”  And this unleashed every
cheap filking joke or parody everyone in the room had, at once, a cacophonous torrent of
ludicrous phrases and tunes, like the tumult at the Tower of Babel which then ended at exactly at
the same moment, except for Tom, who apparently sung his last phrase, “and then Mr. Spock
arrived without his pants,” slower than the rest of us, perhaps for poignant effect, I’m not sure.

Anyway, Roger then launched into some stories of living in New York back in the ‘70s, hanging
with the Marvel bullpen.  Roger knew his target audience well; his early story involving David
Cassidy and Andy Gibb in some musical fell upon reasonably deaf ears, except when I said that
David Cassidy seemed like a nice guy, Roger said, “He is,” and Larry said, “Most guys with their
own lunch boxes are nice guys,” which, as a truism I find a bit debatable, but as an insight to
Larry’s psyche I found absolutely indispensable.  If any metalsmiths out there want to make
Larry the happiest guy in the world, I bet an AIT lunchbox would do the trick, and pronto.  When
Roger then switched to the Marvel Bullpen, I, anyway, was riveted.  “Yeah, I helped Tony
Isabella move out of the Hotel Consulate, which was this completely scary building on the edge
of [lost to the beer, I think he said Hell’s Kitchen] at three in the morning, from a seventh story
apartment, with the elevator not working.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.  I was actually there when Steve Gerber flipped out and went berserk.”  He paused.  “Of
course, in those days, everybody got to be there when Steve Gerber flipped out.”

“It happened that often?”

“Oh, yeah.  Probably half of Manhattan in the later half of the ‘70s got to see Steve Gerber flip
out.”

“Wow.”

And I have to tell you, of all the things that everyone says is missing in comics these days, I think
I miss that mythic quality the most.  Not just the mythic quality of the comic characters, but the
myth of their creators.  Back when I was growing up, far away from any conventions and long
before Wizard or I knew of the Comics Journal, I had a strange mental image of so many of
those creators back then; their names were in the credit boxes, but they gossiped about each
other on the Bullpen Bulletin pages, they confessed things in the first person plural in the letter
columns, they popped up as characters in their own stories, their fates intertwined with those of
their small, odd characters; Superman or Man Thing, The Flash or Howard The Duck.

I don’t think it’s just that I live in the Bay Area; I don’t think it’s just because I hang out at a
comic book store where I get to hear about the time Garth Ennis went to the bathroom at CE and
screamed like a girl; and I don’t think it’s because I get emails from Matt Hollingsworth
bragging about how much of that wonderful Shadow of the Groundhog stout he brewed all for
himself and how much he’s going to drink when he’s throwing sending the particular email
informing me of such.  I think it’s because as readers, we used to have comic creator myths.
Now we have celebrities, their pictures all over Wizard magazine, buying Mark McGwire’s
balls, even, yes, it’s true, hosting their own forums on the Internet.  The fact that I can virtually
kiss Jim Hudnall’s ass, should I be so inclined, is be kinda sad, even as it’s rewarding.  I
appreciate being able to hobnob, question and criticize the creators whose work inspires and
delights me.  But I have to admit, I sort of miss those years where, after reading my favorite
issue of Jungle Action for the 15th time (I think it was that issue where T’Challa wrestles the
crocodile), I’d wonder what kind of guy Don MacGregor was.  And so, Roger’s tale of moving
Tony Isabella reminded me of a different time, a time that was surely his flesh and blood past
but was also surely my mythical past, a time when New York was filled with, if not actual
superheroes, then a bunch of crazy madmen who wrote and drew and fought about them.

And so I leave you all here, hopefully in a similar fog of legend, where that day at Comix
Experience never quite ended but exists somewhere still, with the cop coming in and threatening
to shut down the store “for not having a liquor license.”  And more beers being defiantly
drunken, and my Wittgenstein quote interrupted once or twice more, to say nothing of this really
good Sartre quote, and everyone writing all over my notes when I was in the bathroom, so that I
can still see a Spider-Man sketch and a terrifyingly good John Byrne signature, and FUCK YOU
written in what I suspect is Hibbs’s inimitable hand, and me not going home and passing out
drunk, nor me waking up and realizing it was all a dream, because it was like a time that never
quite ended because it never quite began, like funnybook Valhalla, with Larry leaning far over
the register and bellowing “Monkeys!  MONKEYS!” while the beer poured through our hands
and onto the floor, like liquid comics, flowing again to the drains, to the gutters, flowing again to
the unknown places of home.

Back to Home

All material on these pages is © 2000 by Jeff Lester. With the exception of non-profit distribution, all other rights are reserved.