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.
