When I am walking on the street...

...I am often stopped and asked this question, "Dave, you are such a big shot. What do you do at your job that has let you have such an amazing lifestyle? How can I be as big a success as you?"

Well people, that question is not a very easy one to answer. Even for one as clever as me. I have spent a long time mastering many skills to become the poster child of hottness that my fans see me as. I do what it takes to be a success without hesitation and without any regrets. If you are going to rise to the top, you have to do everything that is apart of your goal with fierce tenacity and not allow yourself to take tempting short cuts. It is not an easy road with harrowing twists and turns. The road to success does not always lead to grand rewards. More than once I have had to set aside things that I have wanted, because they would have distracted me from achieving complete success. A tortured soul is the price that seems to be required if you are to make it big. Be cut throat and take full advantage of opportunity when it comes your way. It is not often that circumstances are going to align in your favor. You have to be able to force the world to rearrange itself according to your plans. You have to take what you need and make it yours, but you don't have to be selfish. Do not let yourself be perverted by greed or conquered by ravenousness. Strength comes from being honorable towards you fellow man. Respect must be given before it is received. Be noble, but more importantly, be persistent and you will not have to search for success you will create it.

Seriously, at my job we have to do these very silly staff appraisals every year. I thought it would be entertaining to put mine online. If you have to so something like this for your job then feel free to steal mine. Also feel free to comment on how I make a living, but remember that I am taking names and anything that is said that is nasty will be remembered when I have become a very wealthy writer (that is an oxymoron isn't it?).

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***EDIT***

On second thought it probably isn't a good idea to post something like this...

If you like my blog, may I recommend another...

Mainstream comic books have been in a bit of a renascence since around the time that the first X-Men movie came out (SHAMELESS PLUG: Be sure not to miss X3: The Last Stand!!! In theaters today). One of the better more mature writers (notice that I said more mature and not just mature there is a difference) that is in the industry today is Mark Millar. I recommend The Ultimates. It is good old fashioned superhero fun, but spun in a very modern way. What does that mean? Basically, it is Captain America, Iron Man and Thor uncovering space alien conspiracies while at the same time they are trying to keep Freddie Prinze Jr. from getting smashed by the Hulk for dating the green guy's girlfriend (although Hulk is Gray in the Ultimate world).

Check out his site www.millarworld.tv. He updates his blog less often than I do. His most current post was from last August, but then again he probably has writing gigs that he is busy with and I have this blog. Does anyone even read this? Hello? Is anyone there?

An excerpt from one of Millar's posts...

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Okay, I was reading The Guardian a couple of weeks ago and read a really wanky article by a couple of wanky Guardian types about passing on books you love to total strangers. The idea was that, instead of the book gathering dust on your shelf, you leave it on a park bench or a bus or in a cafe where someone might spot it, pick it up, take it home and read it.

They did a pretty interesting experiment with a hidden photographer trained on park benches and most books were picked up within 30-60 minutes and this made me wonder if the same thing can be applied to comics. I only really hang onto my old, old back issues and tend to box up, lose or give away the new stuff (just grabbing the trade on the books I enjoyed as a comic). So I’m going to try this. I’m going to grab some great mainstream stuff like Joss and John’s X-Men, Ultimates (ahem), Runaways, Superman/ Batman, Geoff and Allan’s JLA, etc, and leave them in public places like cafes and parks. Then I’m going to get some good mature stuff like Punisher, Ex Machina, Walking Dead (which I just picked up and LOVE), the Cal MacDonald stuff, etc, and leave it in any pubs I’m in this week.

Sure, there’s obviously going to be a percentage that ends up in the bin, but there’s going to be a lot that makes it into the paws of new readers and old, lapsed readers too. Even in a worst case scenario, some of the bigger, magazine-sized books I’m going to sprinkle liberally around Glasgow could provide some kind of blanket for tiny, tiny vagrants.

But have a think about this and see what you can spare. We’ve all got stuff we never look at just taking up space and you get bugger all these days when you try trading the stuff in at a comic store.

Do your bit for the cause.

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So I am supposed to leave that hardcover Ultimates Volume One that I just bought at the Pittsburgh Comicon at a park bench? Sir, I think not!

Whose Side Are You On?

Marvel's Civil War has begun. The first issue has come out and at the posting of this blog it is another twenty days before issue number two.

Some information on Civil War...

It's being written by Mark Millar who just might be my favorite comic book writer at the moment (sorry Peter David, but I haven't been able to really get into X-Factor). The first comic book that I read by Mark Millar was The Authority. They were a Justice League/Avengers style superhero team who did not affiliate themselves with any government, especially not the United States. They hovered over the planet in their giant space ship and did good where they saw it needed to be done, regardless of anyone else's agenda. Millar's run on The Authory had the team battle other superpeople who suspiciously resembled a lot of Marvel's characters, which caused some controversy between Wildstorm/DC and Marvel Comics (he had an evil Captain American rape an elderly nurse!!!). Another controversial moment that Millar wrote into the title was a kiss between gay characters Midnighter and Apollo, which DC censored. More recently Millar has been writing for Marvel, he wrote the first two volumes of The Ultimates and did an excellent run on Wolverine.

The plot of Civil War involves a crisis caused by superheroes that results in the deaths of around eight hundred civilians. As a result the US government wants superheroes regulated and employed as civil servants. The hero community divides and turns on each other. Captain America leads one side that believes superheroes should remain above politics and not be made into agents that do the government's bidding. Iron Man leads the other side, because he believes that heroes are too powerful to be allowed to deliver wild west-style justice and by regulating them superheroes can be trained and held accountable for their actions. Marvel claims that there is no right or wrong side to the story and has also said that the story is an allegory for the events of 9/11 and the Patriot Act.

The first issue of the series did not reveal anything that was not already known by comic book fans that have been following Marvel's press on the comic. The plot jumped through the New Warriors blowing up part of Stamford Connecticut, to the government proposing registration, public opinion turning against heroes, Captain America refusing to lead a force to bring in "rogue heroes" and then escaping SHIELD by surfing a jet, and concluding with Iron Man assuring the president that Cap will be taken care of.

This series shows more promise than many of Marvel's past big summer events. At a Q&A at the Pittsburgh Comicon, Brian Michael Bendis (New Avengers and Ultimate Spider-man) claimed that readers would only need to read the core Civil War series and be able to enjoy the story. Typically, large scale summer event series come with a lot of cross-overs that meander through many titles. It seems that with Civil War, Marvel has learned that fans don't want to buy thirty different titles to have to be able to follow a plot.

Check this site out...
http://www.needcoffee.com/updates/civil-war-whose-side-are-you-on-ours/

I Fear About What Could Be Going on Inside my Head

There is something going on inside of my head that has me a little worried and I don't entirely know why I am sharing this through my blog, which worries me a little more.

I have been doing so really bizarre dreaming over the past six or seven months. I have been dreaming at a level that I have never experienced before. I am not talking about goals or aspirations that I have been coming up with, I mean that when I go to bed at night some really wacky shit has been going on. I have dreamt about getting robbed and getting lost on mean and pretty nasty streets. I have dreamt about being apart of a political mission to another country and getting caught in a foreign land when a violent revolution occurs. The thing about these dreams are that they seem very real and extremely complex. It seems like there are little dramas that are playing out and I don't know what to make of the roles that I play in them. The dream I had last night wasn't frightening, but it was very strange.

The dream starts with me going over to some chick's place late at night (calling this girl a "chick" isn't exactly sexist when I later reveal who she is). I go over to this girl's place because I am looking to talk to her. This girl and I had a relationship not too long before when this occurs. Things were just beginning between us, but ended quickly because she felt that I was not able to give her the attention that she thought she deserved. In the dream, we split because she wanted something that was more mature than what I was offering. Neither of us wanted to end things between us, but it was a matter of her getting the respect that she thought she deserved and me feeling that I wasn't able to give that to her. The way that we ended it was with a lot of loose ends and I went to her place that night to resolve some of them.

When I got there she let me in. It was kind of late and she was in that stage where she was dressed down from the day and almost ready to go to bed for the night. She was wearing traditional pajamas, nothing at all very sexy or alluring. She was been watching television before I arrived. What she was watching was over and it was that inbetween time, when commercials are on and the next television show is about to begin.

She was receptive to see me. She wasn't happy or gushing. She hadn't been longing for me to show up at her door, but she wasn't annoyed by me interrupting her evening. I sensed she was glad that I was there, if only to be able to resolve some things that were left unsaid between us and maybe we would be able to move forward with confidence of what had gone on between us. We started making polite conversation about what each other had been up to.

At this point I am going to say that I am a superhero nut. Further more I enjoy watching cartoons. The are a lot of similarities between the two so to be a fan of both is pretty easy.

While we were chatting, I realize that she was watching the Boomerang Network before I showed up at her door. Boomerang is a sister station to Cartoon Network, it is the station that shows the older cartoons that CN doesn't air any more. I realize what time it is and that I know what is going to be coming on Boomerang next, Justice League. A cartoon about supheroes that has been one of my favorite things on television since for a long time. She knows that I like the cartoon so when it starts she knows what it is. Seeing that Justice League has just entered the room, she immediately feels that any chance that the two of us could have had a mature conversation on what we felt about each other has just gone out the window. I see by the expression that she makes, while the Justice League theme song plays, what she is thinking and I tell her that we can still have the conversation that we were about to have. She indulges me and offers me a seat.

When I sit, the theme is over and the episode is beginning. I have seen every episode of Justice League and I know how most of them go. I can recognize most of the characters, but those that I see on the television were characters that were new to me. The characters are one's that I had never seen, the setting is one that I didn't recognize and what was going on in the story is something that I couldn't figure out. She sees me looking at the screen and sighs. She gets up, picks up a book from a pile that she has, sits back down and makes herself comfortable. I tell her we can still talk, she says its okay if I want to watch the show that she will just read. I want to talk to her. I went there that night to talk to her. I wanted to resolve things and figure out if there was even the slightest chance that she and I could get back together. Things between us ended before they even had a decent beginning and one of the things in life that bothers me the most is not knowing what was going to happen. I came to her place because I was bothered by not knowing what might have happened if we were able to make things go further than they did, but it was also bothering me that I did not know what was going on in that episode of Justice League. I have seen every episode, but this was one that I could not place. It was one that I didn't know who was who or what they were doing in it.

I see that what she is reading is a psychology book. It isn't a text book. It is some sort of analytical book that was written by a guy that I had never heard of. It is around then that the dream ended and I woke up, confused.

I was me in this dream, but at some parts of the dream I was looking at myself. It wasn't one of those dreams where you envision yourself as someone else. I wasn't a fictional character I was myself. However, (this is the really strange part that doesn't sit well with me) the girl that I was dreaming about, the "chick", was a character of fiction. She was Hawkgirl/Shayera Hol from the Justice League cartoon series.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawkwoman

Now in the series, Hawkgirl and that show's Green Lantern have an unresolved romance. I have always thought that if I could be anyone in a comic book that it would be really cool to be a Green Lantern. However, I wasn't Green Lantern in the dream, I was me.

What the fuck does any of it mean? Does anyone have a dream book? What does it say about when you are looking to be in a relationship with a woman with feathered wings and who is from a different world than you? Man, things are strange inside of my head.

E3/Playataion 3/Metal Gear

Mother Fuckers...God Damn Sons a Bitches...Rotten Pieces of Shit... GAHHHHHHHHH!

So this past week was the E3 convention in Los Angeles. It is the big event that occurs once a year where the video game companies show off all the things that are going to rob gamers of their time and money for the next year. This past convention was especially big because it showcased the new consoles, particularly the Playstation 3 and Nintendo's Wii.

I am not a very intense gamer. My friends and I play occasionally, but not very often. I don't play online, because I know all of my free time would be sucked down that toilet and I would never get anything done. No writing, no podcasting, no studying, nothing...it can be an ugly addiction. I have heard stories of marriages ending because people have become too wrapped up in their gaming. I am in too deep with comic books to mess with gaming.

Anyway.

There is only one game series that I am a devoted fan of, Metal Gear Solid. Metal Gear a totally different gaming experience than GTA or your typical First-Person Shooter. Where those games want you to gun down as many people on the screen as you can, in Metal Gear it is actually a bad thing to kill. The object of Metal Gear is to get through the game without being detected, of course if someone does see you the option to shoot them in the head is still there. Just don't forget to stash the body someplace where others might find it, because then there is evidence that you are there. It's a spying game, you mission is to get into the area, gather information, sabotage the newest version of the Metal Gear super weapon and get out. It is a hell of a lot of fun. The game is also extremely plot heavy and showcases a lot of long cut scenes. In fact it is often criticized for having too much plot and too much time where you are just sitting there watching the character develop the story when you should be sitting there blowing people away. The thing is when there is a plot that makes you care about the character you are taking the role of and care about the characters that are interacting with you, the game becomes so much more exciting than when you are machine-gunning through hundreds a crackheads and Satanic monsters. Metal Gear is a step in the right direction for gaming to become something more than it has been. Gaming will become an art form, just as film has.

Now if you are still reading this then you are probably wondering what that outburst was at the beginning. Well, I was almost done with video games. I did it before. I walked away after Sega and didn't get into the Playstation 1/Sega Saturn generation of gaming. I had plenty of other distractions to keep me entertained, comics and the internet waste a lot of time. Then by random I was able to play Metal Gear and it was a very different experience than Super Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog. The sole reason I bought a Playstation 2 was to play Metal Gear: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear: Snake Eater. I was thoroughly satisfied with both and believe that the experience I have had playing and replaying those games was well worth the couple of hundred dollars that I spent for the PS2.

So at this year's E3 convention Sony announced that Playstation 3 is going to cost SIX HUNDRED FUCKING DOLLARS. I can't justify spending that much money on games no matter how much entertainment I get from them. So I walk away from video games. It wouldn't be that big a deal for me, personally. I only play when a new Metal Gear is out or when I have my friends over. I don't think that I am turned on my PS2 in almost a month. So at the beginning of the week I am feeling pretty good about myself, I am going to give up on games and it isn't going to be a big deal. Hey, maybe I am getting more mature. Right? Then the trailer for the new Metal Gear was released. "Guns of the Patriots", is what they are calling it. Holy shit does it look sweet! I know that trailers usually make the thing that they are advertising look better than it really is, but if this Metal Gear is at least one third as good as that trailer makes it look, then it will be great. I have to know how the story ends or at least what the next chapter is about. It's sick. Just when you think you have found and out those Sony bastards pull you back in.

Here is the deal. Before I spend that much money on a new video game console that I will likely play less than I did the last one I owned... Before I sacrifice more time for entertainments sake...Before I get suckered into dividing myself more than I already have there has to be a significant step forward. Before I buy a Playstation 3 and before I get into Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriots, I will have either written a complete short story that I am proud of or I will have written a decent beginning to my novel. Otherwise, Sony be damned I won't be your whipping boy anymore. I am not letting go of these things that I want for entertainment sake.

I am putting my game face on. This is it. I am not entirely sure what exactly "it" is, but here it is...

Podcasting is Hard to Do

So last week Chris and I recorded our second episode of "That's Good to Know" and had already made extensive plans for our third episode. Well, the day after recording I went onto my computer and worked my podcast magic. I won't reveal my secrets, but it takes some juggling and some shrinking of files to get these episodes uploaded. I was all set to upload, but I could not log onto Switchpod.

Apparently, web traffic for our first episode was so intense that our podcast shut down all of Switchpod. Our in-depth analysis of the Pittsburgh Comicon and my father's guest appearance drew so many listeners to Switchpod that their systems were overloaded and we single handedly shutdown the site. Chris told me he was in contact with the people at Switchpod and that they were flabbergasted by what had occurred. They accused us of sabotaging their network and Chris got into a pretty heated argument over them denying us space on their servers. Chris' quick legal mind snapped into action. He is some sort of Parry Mason-like genius. Citing some obscure bi-law concerning Al Gore's intentions for the internet when he created it, Chris got them to agree to give us space on the network. However, Chris is a renaissance guy and knows more than legal tricks. He gave them some suggestions on how to improve their computer systems, something about reversing their Heisenberg Compensators, and so Chris was able to bring Switchpod back online.

The short of it is this...

Last week I went to upload our second episode onto Switchpod so that our loyal fan(s) could listen. Switchpod was broke and it remained broke throughout the weekend. I couldn't upload anything. The network went back up earlier this week and now the show is back online. You can download our special coverage of this summer's blockbuster movies. Enjoy.