Steve Purcell

The other night my old friend Steve Purcell came to Montreal. I hadn't seen him for twenty years. We both went to CCAC (now called, pretentiously, CCA) and he went on to work with ILM, Marvel and now Pixar.

We went, Brigitte, Steve and I, to L'Express, because I could only think of that as the quintessential Montreal eatery. It was a great evening. Here are some of the pics. It's so bizarre that he had the same hat as me, just tan instead of black. But it was a blast.

Brigitte and Capo di tutti capi

Steve giving his "Forever" stare

We gon' hoit you

In another life, they coulda bin a couple

The Steve trademark "Sidelong glance"

Whaddya lookin' at?

The two muscleteers

Sometimes meeting old friends is a real drag, but Steve, the creator of Sam and Max, which happened to be his weekly strip in our college newspaper, of which I was the editor, turned into a phenomenon. And it wasn't a drag. You know how meeting old friends after many years can be awkward; you have nothing in common any more, just the old stories, but Steve isn't like that. He was a consummate communicator back then and he still is, even though he shirked his writing assignments for the paper and instead sent in these mad comics. That's called canny. You really owe it to yourself to get a copy of Sam and Max -- I had the privilege to watch him draw it. A lot of it will go over your heads, but that's Steve.

It's weird. I'm surrounded by people that I knew, sometimes very well, who went on to dynamic careers -- my old friend Mike Mignola, with whom Steve and I shared a friendship -- and who went on to make the Hellboy movies.

And here I remain, on shallow ground. But Flock, I bought some folding chairs for my next GI Joe vs. Gumby installment. You should be proud of me for that. Next episode: The Briefing. And the introduction of the evil Spymaster, Pokey. I may never make Pixar, but I'll sure get even with Gumby. I'll bend him into a green pretzel with bullet holes in it.

I Want a Rat.

I want a rat. Cage included. A young rat. Under $20, please.

("Where did he go. Where did he go")

What Will It Be

This is not a lyric for a song, just a poem I came up with.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

What will it be
When I am gone in a song
I won't hear your tears
But they will be long.

After I've gone
The trees will still grow.
The sun will still shine
And that you should know.

It's not me but you,
Who'll mourn my demise
And for that I have sorrow
For Hell has no fries.

Just beer after beer
But you will not know
That it's hot down the pit
But I'll enjoy it.

So don't waste your tears
Just save all the pain
And keep it inside
I'll see you again.

Christ, 155

I weighed myself today and I weighed only 155. At 5/9. This is impossible. I used to weigh 188 15 years ago.

I don't seem to do anything differently that I did 15 years ago, still eat the high-fat Caesar salads, pizzas, cheeses, carbs up the wazoo, steaks . . . what on Earth could be going on?

I don't work out. The most I do is go to Metro to buy food and beer. A ten-minute walk every day, maybe twice a day, maybe a little further some days.

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?

I'd say leukemic prostration with hyper-elevated triglycerides. Wouldn't you?

Prescription, please.

I Remember The Little Boy

I was basking in the Russian River in Northern California on a camping trip, and a little boy, maybe 9 years old, came to the shore. It was odd, because he was bald. There was no one with him. So I asked how he was doing, and he said "I have brain cancer."

At the time I didn't particularly like kids, but I felt like crying. He said it so matter-of-factly.

I never saw him again.

Another time, I took Tai-chan, who was about 3 at the time, to ER in Oakland, California because he was vomiting. He had Norovirus. But we stayed there only about seven hours. But during that time I saw a little boy in the corridor with his parents; he was screaming in pain, relentlessly, but there seemed to be nothing broken, as he could walk fine and wasn't holding, say, a broken arm.

I was horrified, because he wouldn't stop screaming.

I get so traumatised by kids in distress that I could never be a pediatrician.

But I remember that little boy at the river's edge. I wonder if he survived.

Boys With Toys

Oh, the boys like to play, don't they? Automatic rifles, IEDs, RPGs . . .

Well, my opinion is that the states of Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia should be bombed into smoking craters all at the same time. Oh, toss in North Korea for goodwill.

It would just take, say 20 bombers to do the job.

 

Bye Bye, terrorism

No more Al Qaeda. No more Jihadis. No more cockroaches scuttling on this good green Earth.

Yep, that would all assemble their twenty virgins at the same time. (How do the women suicide bombers get twenty virgins, anyway?)

Curry Dreams

I don't know what it is with me lately, but I don't eat much during the day. No breakfast at all, very rarely any kind of lunch, and usually a peck at any dinner, restaurant or otherwise.

God, that looks good

But at 6 a.m., the dreams come. Like my sushi dream (below) I had an intense curry dream tonight. I think it was a shrimp curry, but I was making up the recipe, step by step, thinking about just how I was going to do the rice, all the way to sprinkling on the cracked papadams, and as Brigitte says it, "Kusbarah" (Cilantro).

It was as real as if I were in the kitchen actually doing it.

So what did I do? Wake up and heat me up a slice of lousy pizza from the restaurant down the street that we'd ordered the night before.

Okay, formally on my to-do list:

Christ, I could use one now

A Caesar Salad, big, with ALL the trimmings. I might even consider sardines.

Curry, preferably shrimp, with fantastically prepared basmati rice and papadams and a nice sambal-cucumber salad.

Sushi, glorious sushi, the best in the city from god-knows-where.

Smoked salmon on a bagel with cream cheese and capers, as only Brigitte knows how to do it.

Pizza, done my way, not the loser mozzarella-laden-crap you get from the restaurant.

This is the stuff of 6 a.m. dreams. Learn, Flock, what dreams may come.

AND THEN ACT UPON THEM.