Think About Your Troubles

I am caught in a moment of reflection.

Actually, that’s not true; it’s like a few days of reflection, and it’s beginning to annoy me. The one good thing about this prolonged thought process is that it’s not self-reflection; the idea of finding myself trapped on the one train track for days on end that’s all about me is enough to make me want to run screaming for the hills. No, this is comic-based reflection, and an idea that – if I can think it through, if I can understand it, if I can make it work – could be used for work somewhere (Probably in the yet-to-be-announced second new internet home, following last week’s unveiling of SpinOff Online). And so, I keep coming back to it, re-examining this half-baked theory and its orbiting debris and wondering how I can put it all together into something that makes sense and would make others believers, and it’s as if my mind has invented a whole new level of frustration.

I don’t do theory very well. It’s not the way my mind works; I am more instinctual, emotional and most importantly, illogical. It’s not that I have a problem with logic, but that I can’t really use it – I try, and it falls apart in my verbal fingers, turning into little bits that like to mock me as they fall to the metaphorical floor. As much as I wish I was smarter and my brain more sensible and straightforward enough to do this thing they call “thinking” in a more socially acceptable way, it’s not something that comes easy to me, which makes my current predicament even more of a predicament.

The worst part is, I’m almost there. It’s like my brain is driving to a particular destination, and I’ve just passed a sign that says “IDEA – 5 Miles… If you can negotiate all these unmarked sidestreets and roundabouts and diversions that we’ve put in your way. Oh, and there’s a giant radioactive bear with guns behind you. Good luck.” But I know I’m close, and that makes me want to stick with it and not just abandon it because… I’m almost there.

And so, I do other things to distract myself, hoping that all the pieces will manage to fall into place when I’m not overthinking them and trying to worry them into position. I read, and hope that I’m not overwriting important information with unnecessary X-Men stories; I check Twitter, obsessively, as if someone there will say the magic word and solve everything. And I write blog posts, to see if I can “accidentally” juggle my brain into action by pretending to think about something else for a change.

Dammit. I’ve just connected the wrong dots.

You Are Working For The Joy Of Giving

There’s a scene in a relatively early Grant Morrison comic called St. Swithin’s Day where the protagonist, a self-declared “neurotic teenage outsider,” manages to forget his troubles in the middle of everything by putting on a Velvet Underground song – I forget which one, maybe “There She Goes Again”? – and surrenders to it, the way it makes him feel, the way it makes him lose his inhibitions and dance and everything else melts away in the perfectness of the music. Belle and Sebastian’s “Lazy Line Painter Jane” is that song, for me.

It’s not a perfect song, I know that, and they’re not a perfect band. For the longest time, they weren’t even a band I particularly liked – They seemed too twee, too affected, posing instead of honest, a band pretending to be a band, if that makes sense – and it’s taken me leaving Scotland and getting older to appreciate them more (There are many bands I can say the same about, oddly enough). But even when I didn’t really like Belle and Sebastian, I knew that I completely adored “Lazy Line Painter Jane”; from the very first listen, I found myself unable to listen to it without my heart swelling in size, touched by the gentleness and swooning at the organ and jangly guitar at the end, surprised and excited by the rawness of Monica Queen’s voice in comparison with everything else around it (Her first words, the way she sings them, still make my ears stand up even now, years later; it’s like she’s saying “Yeah, this is where the song really gets going”). It’s one of those songs that I could sing from start to finish, but the lyrics that stand out are the occasional lines that ring in my ears and brain as being… I don’t know, honest? kind? somewhere between there, perhaps (“Being a rebel’s fine, but you go all the way to being brutal,” “Boo to the business world,” or the entire “But you read in a book/That you got free in Boots/There are lotions, there are potions/That you can take, to hide your shame from all those prying eyes” section). It’s a song that feels true, for some reason.

With the benefit of age, nostalgia and wishful thinking, I think I’ve realized why I’ve always loved this song; without any reason or specific experience to back this up, “Lazy Line Painter Jane” feels like something that completely describes the experience of being young and optimistic about the world at a point where everything is still scary and new and possibilities are as worrying as they are exciting. But maybe that’s just me.

It’s Clearly A Taste Issue

I am not what anyone would call a foodie – I think that, even if I wanted to describe myself as such, I’d be legally prevented from doing so because of the amounts of foodstuffs that I have unexpected and irrational dislikes of – but the longer I live in Portland, the more I find myself loving the various restaurants and eating establishments of the city.

I say this the day after having an incredibly enjoyable lunch at Olympic Provisions, a place I quickly announced was my new favorite foodspot merely based almost entirely on the evidence of their steak tri-tip sandwich (Seriously, people: It’s so good), but the city seems filled with places I want to revisit and things I want to put in my mouth. This hasn’t always been the case; I’d be hardpressed to think of any great restaurants I went to in Glasgow or Aberdeen, when I lived there, and even the truly foodie mecca of San Francisco only offered up a handful of places I genuinely adored (Those’d be Pizzetta 211, Da Flora, NOPA and Park Chow, for the curious); there were many, many other places I’ve visited that I knew were serving amazing food, but none captured my heart and my stomach at the same time in the way that Portland’s eateries seem to be able to do with such ease.

Part of me wonders if this is an age thing; that, as I get older, my taste for food gets more refined to the point where I appreciate good food more easily, while my taste for experiences becomes broader and I can dig more places more expansively. It’s definitely the logical suggestion, which probably explains why I shy away from it so much. I’d much rather believe that it’s Portland itself, and just another sign of how well suited I am to Portland, and vice versa. Any city with a waffle window, Voodoo Doughnut and my new sweet crush, Saint Cupcake has to be more than a little special, after all.

We Are Here

It strikes me, with the force of a soft, much-cushioned, blow, that I haven’t really directed many people to SpinOff Online, (one of) my new internet home(s) now that I’m no longer with io9. And so: People! Go read SpinOff Online and make it very popular and then I shall be successful and the world will be good. For those who wish to stalk me, I’m still writing for Savage Critics, hopefully will have more on Comics Alliance before too long, and will be officially joining Robot 6 next week, as well. Oh, and hopefully some other places, too (Conversations to that end will be happening this very day, true believers). I’ve become an internet vagabond. Sorry, all.

Built On Shifting Sands

There are many things to admire about Paul Weller. For one thing, there’s his haircut, which seems to have essentially stayed the same all throughout the years with only minor variations in length and color. For another, there’s his longevity, managing to stay something close to contemporary from his origins in the Jam, through the Style Council and then the solo career that crested the wave of Britpop and earned him the nickname of the Modfather. But what I really admire about the man is that he managed to recycle the same guitar riff into two different songs that I still actually like.

And the best part? It’s not even his riff. It’s not even, as many people have said, “Dear Prudence” by the Beatles – well, it is, but there’s something that’s even closer than that: It’s ELO:

Seriously, there’s something I genuinely love about the shamelessness of not only stealing from Jeff Lynne and getting away with it, but doing it twice and having both attempts be hit singles. No wonder that this era of Weller, the early Modfather days, is the one I love the most, the one I feel that all of his interests and talents came together, even in side projects like this:

It’s all just 1960s retro and Beatles love, of course, but… I don’t care. It’s what I would do, if I could play guitar and had such good hair.

Here I Was

Yes, I know; I’ve been quiet for a long time. I blame the psychic aftermath of WonderCon, although there were plenty of other things to keep me busy this week as well (including, yesterday, a mild case of food poisoning that firmly taught me the error in my ways when thinking “I’ll get a salad, that’ll be healthy.” Hello, irony), including the still-unable-to-talk-about new work. By way of apology, I’ll send you to James Sime’s photos from the Isotope WonderCon bash last weekend, wherein you can find two not-so-flattering photos of me which – seemingly by accident? – have me talking to two people I wish I got to talk to more: Mindy Owens and Geri-Ayn Gaul (whose Sidewalk Surprises should beloved by all, by the way). Back with real content soon.

Superheroes Don’t Do Funerals Well

Just think about the design of this cover for a second: Yes, the floating heads are from different strips in this anthology series, but still: Didn’t someone realize that putting their smiling faces above the corpse of Earth-2 Batman make it look like they were very happy he was dead? At least the Justice Society members have the manners to pretend to be in mourning.

Gone Conventionin’

WonderCon is around the corner; the first (or second, perhaps? I’m not sure if Emerald City Comic Con counts for everyone) big comic book convention of the year, and an old familiar haunt for me. After taking last year off – having just moved to Portland and having neither the time nor the money to be able to go back to San Francisco for a weekend – I’ll be back this year, in part to report for CBR (and other places of which I can’t speak, just yet. But soon) and in part to further provide proof that my public speaking skills are embarrassingly poor by appearing on David Brothers‘ Comics Journalism panel on Saturday evening (Strange but true: When the panel was announced, I was still with io9. By the time the panel happens, I’ll have been gone from the site for two weeks and feeling like a fraud for being listed with that credit), and I have to admit: I’m really strangely nervous about the whole thing.

It may be because last year’s San Diego Comic-Con was so overwhelmingly strange and… well, overwhelming; five days of constant everything that left me and everyone else I know who attended in a state of shell-shocked daze. That my last two cons have been SDCCs may have colored my idea of what it means to do a convention, and turned the idea into something terrifying. Or, maybe it’s that this con will be my first as a freelancer who’s looking for work, as opposed to writing for io9 or writing for fun while having a day job that pays the bills (Will I have to… *shudder* network?!?). It could be either, or both; it could even be the knowledge that I’m sure I’ll say something stupid on one of the panels, for all I know. But there’s something about the whole thing that makes me as nervous as I am excited about getting back to SF and seeing all my friends again.

Here’s hoping this is just some kind of Karmic Radar Wire Crossing, and that WonderCon actually holds all manner of wild and wooly excitement for me, and I come back next week full of work, optimism and randomly upbeat futurism. Or, at least, that I don’t manage to piss off even more comic professionals.

Back on Tuesday.