For the couple of decades I've been blogging, I've marked Christmas Eve with a rousing round of revelry from the man who, depending on the day and my mood, I consider one of the three best cartoonists who ever lived, Walt Kelly. From his great comic strip "Pogo," please accept this gift with my wishes for a good holiday and excellent 2024.
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| "Little Nemo in Slumberland" by Winsor McCay, one of the three or four best cartoonists who ever lifted a pen. |
It was the classic anxiety dream about being in college and late to class but realizing you don't remember where the class is and also you've forgotten to attend the entire semester. Last night's twist was that, within the dream, I thought to myself, "Hey, this is just like that classic anxiety dream about being in college and late to class!" And then I tried to test the situation by examining the world around me and asking myself questions to determine whether I was dreaming or awake--and I concluded I was awake!
It wasn't quite a lucid dream, in which you realize you're dreaming and guide the story. I've had those and they're fun. In fact, it was kind of the opposite, in which I wondered if I were dreaming and decided, "Nah! This is real life! Better get to class!"
Now I'm not sure if I'm really awake and writing this. Further research is needed.
The girls were about 3½ in this photo, which is remarkable because we very rarely dressed them in matching outfits except to make older relatives happy. In fact, this might have been around Christmastime, and I'll bet their grandmother had something to do with it.
The girls themselves were done with the entire "twins thing" at a very young age. If you want to know what it was like being a Beatle in 1964, try pushing a double stroller with two cute, blonde, identical tots through a mall or restaurant. No interest in show business, thanks, although we got offers.
I don't believe in telepathy but sometimes I think they have it.
I also think they have planned the perfect crime but haven't committed it yet--unless they have, and it was so perfect I never found out about it.
In our experience, twins were MUCH more than twice as hard when they were babies but got much easier than twice as hard when they were older. Your mileage may vary.
Happy Twin Day, Chiquitas! No regrets on my end, although you may be rethinking your choice of father right about now. No Take Backs!
A Peek into the Intimate Intellectual Life of a Long-Married Couple, Part 21:
Karen and I notice a covered box, like a small bench, on a neighbor's front porch.
Karen: I wonder if that's for putting packages in, like Fed Ex or UPS, so people don't see them stacked up by your front door.
Brian: Or it could be full of murder hornets that would swarm out and sting you to death.
Karen: Or Christmas presents.
Brian: Or a loaded crossbow! You open the lid and PFFTTT, right between the eyes!
Karen: Really?
Brian: If you open that lid, it's your own fault.
Karen: This is the difference between girls and boys. I was thinking nice things, like ribbons and bows.
Brian: I was thinking of bows, too! Crossbows!
Karen (much later): That bow thing should be a peek into the intimate intellectual life of a long-married couple!
Brian: Really? You don't think it makes me sound kind of stupid?
Karen:
This has been a peek into the intimate intellectual life of a long-married couple.
There is no war on Christmas. One cranky person who once said something to somebody you know is not a "war."
Christmas is healthier than ever. More music, decorations, TV shows (Hallmark channel is nothing but), movies, sales, etc. etc. It comes earlier every year. Big stores like Costco, Target and Home Depot put out Christmas stuff before Halloween's even over. Christmas dominates the culture; no other holiday or event is even close. It's bigger than Thanksgiving, Halloween, the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the Olympics combined. Say "Merry Christmas" to whomever you want. Nobody cares.
Here's the thing: some people WANT you to think there's a war on Christmas. They want to make you mad about problems they completely made up. Think about who those people are and why they want you mad. Spoiler alert: it's not because they care about Christmas.
Karen and I are walking our dog, Riley, when we wave to a neighbor named Jim half a block ahead.
Brian (not loud enough for Jim to hear): Say, Jim! That's a BAD outfit!
Karen (puzzled): Is that a thing?
Brian: It's from the first Christopher Reeve "Superman" movie.
Karen: Ohhhkaaaay.
Brian: When Clark Kent runs into a revolving door to change into Superman, and he comes out and there's a pimp who says, "Say, Jim! That's a BAD outfit!"
Karen: Uh huh.
Brian: Then Superman says, "Excuse me," and flies away.
Karen:
Brian: I think of it whenever I meet someone named Jim.
Karen:
Brian: This is why A.I. will never replace human beings.
Karen: It might be an improvement.
This has been a peek into the intimate intellectual life of a long-married couple.
My girls and I went to the Dickens Christmas Fair on Sunday. Think of it as a Renaissance Faire set a few hundred years later and indoors, at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. The theme is Dickens's "Christmas Carol" but if you hit anywhere within the early to late Victorian era you wouldn't go wrong. Lots of vendors, entertainers, and costumed cast. For taking place inside a large warehouse, it's surprisingly immersive.
One of our favorite things to do there is a life-drawing salon--about 45 minutes of drawing three models posed to duplicate classic works of art. Just 50 people sitting in a room drawing, nothing more frantic or high-tech than that, but it's a fine time.
I try not to post photos of my daughters without their OK, but they don't mind if I make myself look ridiculous. So here I am piloting a time machine (in my opinion, THE BEST time machine!).
End-of-season basil harvest and pesto-making day! We planted three basil plants (all the Emerald Tower variety, which we find doesn't flower as readily as others). While we've plucked their leaves for various purposes all summer, today we decided to chop them down and transform them into the green glop we love so much.
Basil leaves, olive oil, garlic, parmesan, and pine nuts, all immersion-blended in a handy pitcher. We'll have some for dinner tonight, and freeze enough for six or seven meals to come.
There are few things as satisfying as dining garden to table, even in our small, modest way. Very tasty, too.
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| Patrick and our mutual editor Charles Kochman on stage at the Schulz Museum, talking about Patrick's new book, which is a charming look at what Marvel superheroes meant to Patrick when he was growing up and some deeper truths they can maybe teach the rest of us. |
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| Patrick signing books for a long line of folks at the Schulz Museum. He took the time to draw a little Marvel character for everyone, which slowed the line but nobody minded in the least. |
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| Before the Schulz event, Patrick and his wife Karen joined Charlie and me for lunch. |
About that project: Charlie and I spent quite a bit of time talking shop, which is my favorite type of talk, and I don't want to jinx it because I don't yet have a deal on the table but I'd say the odds are very good that Charlie and Abrams and I are going to do another book together! I'll probably go radio-silent on that until I have something new and real to announce, but know that I'm working away on something I'm very excited about.
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| Charlie and I going over my next comic on my dining room table, with my editorial assistant napping at our feet. |
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| Santa Rosa, Calif. is Charles Schulz's town, and you can hardly go anywhere without being reminded of it (in a nice way!). This statue of Charlie Brown and Snoopy stands near the city's historic old train station, which had a big role in the Hitchcock film "Shadow of a Doubt." As I knew Charlie was a Hitch fan, I thought he'd appreciate that. I was right. |
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| Nothing to do with the weekend's events, but Charlie took this photo of Karen and me and it's one of the better ones of us so here it is. |
Here's a terrific article about my friend Jeff Kinney on his current best-selling book tour. Jeff's sold about 300 million books--that's not hyperbole, it's the actual number--and I think writer Mitch Wallace captures just the right tone explaining why that is, what Jeff is like, and what it feels like to do these events.
In fact, his article reminds me of blog posts I wrote in 2009 (!) and 2013 about earlier Wimpy Kid book tours, back when Jeff toured in a luxury rock star bus (IIRC, the previous tenant of his bus was Pink) that he's since simplified to a big van. I think the downsize suits him. I'll put a link to my post in the first comment.
One other thought: Jeff works really, really hard. In fact, I'm lucky enough to know a few very successful authors, and the quality they have in common is they all work hard. Which isn't to say that less successful writers aren't working just as hard, but I don't know any who are sitting back and phoning it in. They all care, they want the next thing to be better, they sit down and grind.
Life lesson. Do the best work you can, then learn and try to do better.
I imagine I'm one of three people reading this who spent the weekend setting up and running a haunted house on an aircraft carrier. Anyone else? Show of hands?
Saturday night, the USS Hornet Sea, Air and Space Museum, where my daughter Laura is COO, hosted an annual Halloween dinner-dance called "Monsters Bash," which includes a tour of the Hornet's historic and reputedly haunted sickbay. In past years, the frights have included dangling spiders and volunteers jumping up and yelling "Boo!" The Hornet wanted to improve their haunted house game this year; Laura said, "I know a guy." Me.
On Halloween night, my front yard becomes a G-rated phantasmagoria of swirling spectres, projected faces, Pepper's ghosts, and any other ideas I could lift from Disneyland's Haunted Mansion. It's fun, but there's only so much I can do with the available space and lighting. Would I like to be turned loose on an aircraft carrier? Oh yes, please and thank you!
In past Bashes, the Hornet's haunted sickbay displayed a random assortment of store-bought props. My main contributions were helping develop a storyline to pull it together, setting up some commercial projections that the Hornet had bought, and adding some sound and lighting effects. The story: unexplained power surges aboard the ship have drawn spirits into our world. Lots of flickering lights and mournful moans. I also got to do some improvisational acting as a surgeon whose operation isn't going so well.
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| Prepping for the Monsters Bash on the Hornet's hangar deck. How many dinner-dances have you been to that are decorated with fighter jets, a boilerplate Mercury space capsule, and Apollo 14's mobile quarantine unit? Photo courtesy of Russell from the USS Hornet. |
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| Reverse angle on the hangar deck, looking toward the dance floor and bandstand. Amazing how some lighting and decor can transform a gray steel military-industrial space. Our haunted sickbay was one deck directly below. This photo also nicked from Russell/USS Hornet. |
Most people seemed to have a terrific time: lots of screams and laughs. I was surprised by how terrified some people were of what seemed to me a very tame and low-key haunted house. One of our big set pieces was a room of bunks filled with blankets stuffed to look like bodies--not very sophisticated! Still, a few folks only got a couple of turns past the start before they "Noped" right back out the front door.
I confess to a couple of jumps myself. First, when we were setting up in the afternoon, and I was alone in the dark twisting corridors of sickbay, I felt some claustrophobic shivers. All by itself, being below deck in low light is inherently spooky. Second, when I was playing a surgeon, I turned around just as a flash of light illuminated a plastic head on a meat hook behind me. It had been there ALL DAY, but in that hundredth of a second it gave me a real start. I got myself!
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| My operating room was one of the first things visitors saw when then entered sickbay. I had fun bantering with folks. Tying into our electrical surge story, I asked them if they were the electricians I'd sent for. "Because this operation is frankly not going very well. Sure, I graduated last in my class, but I still have an M.D. after my name, and I refuse to operate under these conditions! This started as a simple root canal, and NOW look at him! Honestly, it's not my best work." That's the meat hook head that scared me on the left. |
Just in time to get ready for Halloween.....
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| The skyline of San Francisco around midnight, seen from the fantail of the USS Hornet. Downtown is to the left, with the Bay Bridge spanning off to the right. |
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| Early morning, before any visitors came, I had the flight deck all to myself, with San Francisco beckoning across the Bay. A lovely end to a fun weekend. |
(I am in the garage using a handsaw to cut through a board when the wood unexpectedly gives way and the saw cuts parallel slices across my wrist, a couple of them deep and bloody.)
Brian: Karen? I need help with a wound.
Karen: I'll get the Band-Aids. (Takes a look.) I'll get the bandages and tape.
Karen (while cleaning and dressing the wound with skill and compassion): This could be a peek into the intellectual life of a long-married couple!
Brian: I don't think so.
Karen: Why not?
Brian: It's not very funny.
Karen: It's not very intellectual, either.
Brian: Right.
Karen: Kind of stupid, actually.
Brian: I get it.
(Hours later, we're walking the dog around the block when we see a teenage boy on a skateboard barely avoid deadly collisions with cross-traffic.)
Brian: Idiot! He almost got killed!
Karen: At least he didn't try to cut off his own hand.
(I try to think of something to say to that.)
Brian: I have nothing to say to that.
Karen: Boys. It's a miracle that any of you make it to adulthood.
Brian: With both hands.
Karen: NOW it's a peek into the intimate intellectual life of a long-married couple!
This has been a peek into the intimate intellectual life of a long-married couple.
(P.S.: I am O.K.)
It seems a prudent app to have here in California earthquake country. It seemed less prudent last night when a system test meant to go off at 10:19 a.m. this morning went off at 3:19 a.m. instead. By 3:25 a.m., I had fired off the following email to the MyShake people:
"I understand the need to test your system. Two notes:
"1. What good is a test without some way for us to tell you that we received it?
"2. You don’t test a system designed to jolt users out of bed full of adrenaline IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT!
"Unintended Consequence: I will be deleting the app in the morning."
In the light of day, I probably won't delete the app. If/when I ever really need it, it could save my life, and that's worth a few false alarms. But last night, I was steamed.
My best guess is that somebody screwed up and set the alert time for the wrong time zone. 3:19 a.m. PDT is 10:19 a.m. Coordinated Universal Time (aka Greenwich Mean Time), which a lot of software defaults to. I would still appreciate an explanation and apology. MyShake owes me an hour of sleep.
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| Alcatraz glimpsed through some cypress (?) trees. There may be more photogenic cities in the world, but none that I live within an hour's drive of. |
At the Sacramento conference, I'd found myself talking with a group when I suddenly realized everyone but me had won a Pulitzer Prize. As they said on Sesame Street, "One of these things is not like the others..." Well, that happened again on Friday, as I had good conversations with Pulitzer Prize winners Ann Telnaes, Matt Davies, Matt Wuerker, and especially Jack Ohman, who's working on a (secret?) project very near my heart that I know he and I will be talking about. Also had nice talks with Pulitzer finalist and Herblock Award winner Jen Sorensen, AAEC parliamentarian (!) Scott Burns and his sister, my friend Jonathan Lemon ("Rabbits Against Magic" and the new "Alley Oop") and comics greats Trina Robbins and Steve Leialoha. Met some nice cartoonists from Canada and New Zealand. And of course caught up with our hosts from CAM, Andrew Farago and Summerlea Kashar, many thanks to them!
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| Pulitzer Prize winner Jack Ohman, late of the Sacramento Bee and just signed as a cartoonist and columnist by the San Francisco Chronicle. |
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| Celebrated comic book creators Steve Leialoha and the delightful Trina Robbins, plus the thumb of the New Zealand cartoonist who couldn't figure out how to not block my camera lens. |
But my main reason for going at all was Mike Peterson. Mike is a comics fan and journalist who lives in New England. He's written the online column "Comic Strip of the Day" for years, except for a very brief stretch when I took it on while he recovered from surgery, and on Saturday he accepted an Ink Bottle Award from the AAEC on behalf of The Daily Cartoonist website, where he's one of two main writers. We've been very good friends for 20 years, ever since he was one of the first people to encourage me to continue my "Mom's Cancer" webcomic . . .
. . . and until Friday, we'd never met in person.
Funny how that happens.
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| Finally, after 20 years, it's Mike Peterson and me! |
Before the AAEC event, I met up with my daughter Laura, whose USS Hornet - Sea, Air and Space Museum set up a booth and jet cockpit on San Francisco's Marina Green for Fleet Week. The green was only a half-hour walk from CAM, so I hoofed it there and back to say "Hi" to her. That explains why I'm red-faced and sweaty in the photos; it was an unusually hot and clear day for the City and I got some sun!
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| Walking over a hill overlooking the decommissioned Fort Mason toward the Marina Green, which is the patch of grass at center left. The Golden Gate Bridge is in the background. Beautiful day. |
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| Walking from the Marina Green toward CAM along the Bay. Ghirardelli Square is well marked; the white ship-shaped building is the Maritime Museum. Lots of folks took to the narrow strip of beach at center left to swim and sun. CAM is in the brick building to the left of the CVS. |
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| Hornet CEO Mark Epperson, COO Laura Fies, and Director of Events and Outreach Russell Moore, with their cockpit in the background. I didn't take this photo but I stole it fair and squre. |
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| Photo is not from this occasion, but it is of us. |
Karen: You have a brown spot on your shirt.
Brian: Could be chocolate.
Karen: Could be.
Brian: Could be blood.
Karen: Maybe.
Brian (dabbing it with my finger): It's moist.
(I lick my finger. Karen is repulsed and horrified.)
Karen: I would never ever do that.
Brian: Soy sauce!
Karen: You're such a BOY!
Brian: Hey, it worked.
This has been a peek into the intimate intellectual life of a long-married couple.
We really liked how the August batch turned out, so we did the same on this one. We stewed the tomatoes with onion and garlic in a big pot for a few hours, then added basil and hit it with an immersion blender. As I said last time, we don't bother removing the skins or seeds; they add body and flavor, and besides that would be insane with hundreds of cherry tomatoes.
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| Basil. |
It's good. "Farm to Table" is very gratifying and satisfying. Now we just need to find freezer space for enough sauce to probably tide us over until next summer.
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| Everybody in the pool! |
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| A few hours and an immersion blending later... |
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| Delicious on the plate. |
Yesterday I had the honor and fun of being the opening keynote speaker at the three-day 2023 After The Fire USA Wildfire Leadership Summit, a national (and even international) gathering of fire prevention and recovery experts that happened to be held less than an hour from my home! I didn't promote it ahead of time because it was invitation only, and an impressive group it was.
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| Photo of me in my red work shirt waaaay up on the stage, taken by and stolen from Jennifer Gray Thompson, who I hope won't mind. My talk mostly comprised readings from A Fire Story, chosen to set the stage for the rest of the three-day conference. |
That seemed apt.
People said I did a good job. The speakers and panels that followed me were interesting and even important. Maui was on a lot of minds. I knew a few of the attendees, as either fire survivors or fire experts or both--and it was good to see them again. Made a couple of new friends. A great afternoon.
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| A reverse angle on the room, also by Jennifer. This was at the Hanna Center in Glen Ellen, Calif., and the back of the room opened up onto a patio where vendors set up tables. Perfect weather for it. |
I am reliably informed that today, Monday, Sept. 25, is National Daughters Day! As you may know, I have two of them. Also, in another twofer for me, it is also National Comic Book Day! WOW!
I am in the rare position of being able to celebrate both events simultaneously by sharing examples of my daughters appearing in comic books--not coincidentally, mine. Happy Comic Book Daughters Day, Robin and Laura! You've already been drawn into the next one, too.
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| Celebrating Mom's birthday in Mom's Cancer. |
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| Inside the Perisphere at the 1939 World's Fair, in Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow. |
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| Swooning over the Cosmic Kid with the rest of my coloring team, Kelly and Kristen, in Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow. |
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| Providing refuge in A Fire Story. |
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| Gaping at the magnificence of Sparky the Mad Inventor (in his dreams) in The Last Mechanical Monster. |
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| The Disneyland train station at the entrance to the park, with two tunnels to the left and right separating the real world from "the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy." |
We had a very nice time.
It had been eight years since our last visit, and both we and the parks have changed. They added some rides and rejiggered some lands, including the new Avengers Campus, a fairly sterile and unengaging chunk of California Adventure even for a lifelong Avengers fan like me; and Galaxy's Edge in the back corner of Disneyland, which everyone calls "Star Wars Land." The latter is a brilliant and immersive environment that I still think was put in the wrong park. But nobody asked me, so I'll enjoy it where it is.
I saw three neat innovations in ride technology. First, more sophisticated use of projectors in ways large and small, from giving characters completely animated faces to adding a bit of background visual interest to creating an entire universe (e.g., Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway, which places riders into an animated world much like Toon Town in "Roger Rabbit").
Second, they've somehow figured out how to simulate a 3D environment without glasses. It's not quite full 3D but it's close: call it 2.5D, such that when you look out a spaceship window in Galaxy's Edge, you're not just watching a big TV screen. The other ships and planets and such have some dimension and distance from you. Kind of like those old lenticular bubble-gum cards? I don't know how they do it, but it's pretty keen.
Third and most impressive, they've got trackless ride vehicles that can travel anywhere within a space, giving each group of guests a unique experience. The tech was put to good use in both the Star Wars Rise of the Resistance ride, in which escape pods full of riders careen through an Imperial spaceship pursued by Kylo Ren, and Runaway Railway, in which what appears to be three linked train cars separate from the engine and cartoony hell breaks loose.
As I alluded to in my book "Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow," I think Disney is important. I don't think you can understand 20th century America without grappling with Disney, both good and bad: risk-taking entrepreneurship, technological innovation, evolving labor relations, the invention of the teenager, historical myth-making (pro and con), TV and film history, futurism, culture, entertainment, intellectual property law. All of that is distilled into a few square miles of Anaheim, California, the only Disney park with Walt's fingerprints all over it. Or you can just forget about that and ride "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Haunted Mansion," still delightful gems of peak 1960s Disney.
In addition, in our experience last week, Disney still earns its reputation for terrific customer service. Several cast members went above and beyond the call of duty to solve problems and make sure all our needs were met. There's a story that Walt Disney nearly fired an executive who told Walt he didn't need to pick up a piece of trash because a custodian would get around to it. Walt thought that park quality and guest experience were everyone's business. That work ethic and company culture still seems widespread.
Just a few representative photos that have no images of Karen, Robin or Laura because I think at least some of them would rather I left them out of it.
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| The Matterhorn in the background, submarines (recently re-themed to a Little Nemo ride), and a Monorail track circling to the right. |
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| For a few months around Halloween, the Haunted Mansion gets a "Nightmare Before Christmas" overlay. It's fun, but I still prefer the classic 99 Ghosts and Paul Frees narration. |
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| Walking through a tunnel into the immersive Galaxy's Edge, a hive of scum and villainy. The full-size Millennium Falcon (not in this pic) is stunning. |
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| I got my first Avengers comic at age 10 and at one time had a collection of every issue of the Avengers starting with #1 (guess what happened to that collection?). So it actually meant something for me to pose as superheroically as I could muster wearing cargo shorts and my dork hat. One reaches an age when vanity is outweighed by the wisdom of preventing skin cancer, particularly when one is a pasty person with thinning gray (silver?!) hair. |
