RIP, Dave Cockrum

Sad news from the world of comics this hour. Dave Cockrum was always second fiddle to the great John Byrne in the mind of a 10-year-old me rummaging through Donn Erik's magic box o' comics in the 80's, but he did as much as anyone to sling the X-Men to the heights they achieved. Sad to hear he, too, has passed.

On a more solipsistic note, the Good Morning America film crew will be here to film a segment tomorrow afternoon. And I believe Mario Cuomo's youngest will be on premises for Carter to drool on.

Through a Computer Smugly

Up early for a delayed trek to the Eastern Shore -- last night saw 15.5 mile backups at the Bay Bridge and an 8-mile-per-hour speed limit enforced by the guy in front of you (this info courtesy of Traffic.com; I didn't actually see this nightmare). We're taking all two or so gallons of Janine's stuffing, made from her grandmother's recipe, and heading out shortly, no doubt giving self-satisfied nods to all the other wise motorists who slept blissfully when others raged at each other in an immobile haze of monoxide.

Hope everyone has a very, very happy day.

The First Broadcast

>From: xxx
>To: "Janine Davis"
>Subject: RE: Schedule updates
>Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 16:13:12 -0500
>
>Thanks for touching base! We will definitely want to shoot some time
>the week of 11/27...probably toward the middle or end of the week. We
>will then want Barbara to be LIVE from your house Monday morning 12/4
>with you two there. Does that help? Is there a day/evening the week of
>11/27 that will work well for both of you?
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Janine Davis
>Sent: Monday, November 20, 2006 4:10 PM
>Subject: RE: Schedule updates
>
>Dear xxx,
>I just wanted to update you on our schedule. My husband will be
>out-of-state next week on business. Depending upon your plans with the
>show, with ample notice, he can inform his employer to make the
>schedule fit the filming schedule. Please let us know what you have in
>mind as soon as possible. There is some flexiblity with my husband's employer, but they
>also budget time/ billing with every contract he works with and there
>is some advanced planning required. Thank you for your understanding and
>we hope to hear from you soon. Happy Thanksgiving!
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Janine Davis/ Andrew Bockhorst

TV Savage

I'm up too late once again -- I've got to be up at 5 in the morning for a very long week of digging in Roanoke, although it seems like this actually may be an interesting project to be involved in. This comment after month after month of mostly fruitless shovel testing, followed by three weeks of heading an excavation in which I discovered a large quantity of mulch. I might actually get my trowel on a couple of skeletons this week. Yee haw.

And it's now official, we have been asked by ABC to help out with a segment they're preparing called "Dud to Dreamhouse" -- the title might be all you need to put together the focus and how we fit into it. They should be here at the end of this month or the beginning of December to get some preliminary footage of the house, after which they'll apparently be lending us a camera to film the transformation as it happens. Such as it'll be. I've been told the finished product will air sometime in the Spring -- maybe I can do something from the inside about ABC's reported reluctance to permit advertizing on Air America...

Want the TV hounds on your trail, boy? I think this is the lady behind the shakedown.

Stay tuned.

Renovation

I'm feeling wordy once again, and perhaps I may even populate this personal forum with verbiage more regularly now. For some reason, I've gained quite a bit of unearned confidence suddenly over the past month or so. Perhaps it's the increased responsibility at work, perhaps it's just a pleasant side-effect of flipping the chronometer from 32 to 33 a while back (at an Orioles game, no less -- I can't think of anything less inspiring).

Either way, I'm back on the annual NaNoWriMo bandwagon again, which in the past has been a source of equal parts determination and dauntedness. And as I haven't won yet, haven't even come anywhere close, the daunt has been a powerful force. Somehow, this year, this past month, it's seemed markedly less so. The words don't necessarily come any more freely than they have in the past couple of years, and certainly not as freely as they did back when I was writing about zombies chasing candy-obsessed children in high school, the internal critic we all hate seems to not give as much of a fuck as he did in the past. And that's what I've been waiting for.

So I've started, and while the beginning isn't particularly good, and I've got no idea what the middle or end is going to be about, I think I've come to that happy place where I really don't care if it's publishable as it unspools itself across the rows of my word processor. It's just sentences following sentences, coming straight outta that spot in the back of my skull. Definitely, definitely couldn't hope for anything better than that at this point.

Meanwhile, Janine and I may have been selected to be featured on Good Morning America, on a segment about home renovation. We've been contacted through our realtor, we've sent in photos of our house and ourselves, and we've been alerted to the impending phone call and possible interview by the producers. I don't know if there's anything in it for us besides being able to say we were on national TV. Maybe they'll give us a vacation to scenic Washington DC or Annapolis.