i'm the boy with the poetry power
i'm the boy, smells like flowers
and every time i make a rhyme
i live my life like i wasn't invited
- Wilco, "Candyfloss"

"Idiot Box Up"
You know what I love about summer? Reruns.

Throughout the regular season, I stay on top of things. I'm the guy you turn to when you missed Scrubs, because I taped it. I don't think of it as Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, I think of it as The Day Everwood Comes On, The Day Gilmore Girls and Scrubs Delight Me, or The Day Smallville Stinks Up the Airways. From September to May, my nights are pretty busy.

But once summer rolls around, I've got a nightlife again.

"Missing the Forest for the Trees"
Around 2 o'clock this morning, in the midst of reading Brian Michael Bendis' latest issue of Secret War, I launched into an extended tirade about what I described as Bendis' hackwork, inattention to established continuity, and general suckage that eventually became so vehement, My Crazed Roommate had to sit down and have one of those awkward serious talks with me.

Now don't get me wrong, I like Brian Michael Bendis. I buy everything he writes. I enjoy reading everything he writes, but the seams are showing and it drives me bonkers.

About a year ago, there was an issue of Ultimate Spider-Man entitled "The Letter." Mary Jane and Peter, having called it quits on their relationship (in Ultimate Spider-Man, they're still in high school) end up getting back together after MJ gives him this letter she wrote. Whatever. Not important. What is important, for the purposes of this entry, is that after the issue came out, I was hanging out in a parking lot with Caleb, when he told me that when he read the issue, he thought it seemed like something I would write.

This was a huge compliment. You probably don't know this, but Mr. Bendis is currently considered the top comic book writer working today. He writes about 5 books a month, all of them critically acclaimed top-sellers. I was floored and flattered when he first said this, but it got me thinking.

Did this mean that I have the writing prowess of The Great God of the Graphic Novel, or did it mean that The Great God of the Graphic Novel was but a man? The answer, as I've found it through constant and objective analysis of Bendis' craft, is the latter. I can see the thought processes that drive his narratives. I can see the holes now. The magic's gone. The Great and Powerful Oz is just some loser working controls behind a curtain.

Which gets me thinking about a broader question that hopefully can engage you as a non-comic book reader: When we engage ourselves in the things we're passionate about, do they lose their luster?

When I look at a painting, I just see shapes and colors. When Caleb looks at one, he's thinking about the brush strokes that made it. Does that mean that when Jeffries sees a play, she sees the choices the actors make? Does Dempsey hear evey individual instrument in an orchestra? When Will watches a movie does he see slug lines printed out in his mind? When Jacobs watches Sportscenter does he, um... er... (Sorry Jacobs, I can't come up with a suitable sports analogy.)

There's an issue of Sandman in which Eve (yes that Eve) tells the story of Adam's first wife, whom God created right before Adam so that he saw the muscle and bones and icky fluids all come together to create her, and as a result, he couldn't bring himself to touch her. Is that what happens if we look at the things we love too hard? If we see everything that goes into it, do we lose something?

And if so, can we ever get it back?

"We Had A Good Run"
In my desperate and wrong-headed desire to be the same height and weight as a fictional character, I try to run everyday.

Now, as I've stated before, I'm not the guy who comes back from a run feeling exhilirated. The day it rained was the one run that put a bit of a song in my heart. I don't think I enjoy this exercise in the least, and the last two days have felt particularly awful.

Despite this, however, inspiration struck me as muddled my way down Stadium this morning. I finally have my eleven-page story for Spider-Man Unlimited. It's not great by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a start. I'd tell you what it's about, but I have this horrible fear that doing so might deter me from actually writing it, and we can't have that. We can't have that at all.

Come to think of it, maybe there's a lot of things better left unsaid, but filtered through fiction. I might be less likely to make fecal matter metaphors then. I might be more likely to get some decent writing done.

Maybe it's time to give this weary, broke-down blog a rest...