more drama at the comic shop

So this employee that works Saturday mornings for 3 hours tells the owners that he doesn't want to work this Saturday. This is apparently becoming a somewhat common thing. If I recall correctly, this is the 2nd time in 3 weeks he doesn't want to work. It's the only hours he puts in at the store. He's also a friend of the owners and mine too but not a close friend. So now the owners are scrambling. One is going on vacation and the other works 12 hour shifts for the Coast Guard as a supervisor. He also drives like an hour + each way to/from work.

So for now, I volunteered to work this Saturday. And it'll be a killer. I work Thursday & Friday nights. I get out at 7am Saturday morning and currently am scheduled to work at the store 10am until 6pm. They stay open to 8pm normally but I said no way. It's always dead on a Saturday night and I will be up for about 23 hours straight. I did tell the owners I want actual pay this time - not just a store discount. I probably could've pushed for more but I settled for 4 boxes of Heroclix. They retail for $8.

On the funny side of things. One of the owner (T) had put on a video that he had downloaded from the internet. He had it pretty loud and when we decided to play some Heroclix he lost his attnetion on the video and accepted our invitation to play. It got busy since Wednesday is new comics day. Well, at some point the video ended. Or at least, the paintball part ended. At some point I happened to look up and see a guy stripping on the video. Not paintball or nothing. Just a guy stripping at a strip club. Seeing how gay jokes are a constant at the comic store I just put my head down at seeing the guy's bare ass and then full bodyshot from behind and didn't say a word. I knew I would take a beating from my friends about it - So Jim! You're the only one to notice a naked guy dancing!.

Nope, I wasn't leaving myself open for that one. So I kept my mouth shut and kept playing Heroclix with them. So some time passes and the stripping music is still blaring away but the other three guys haven't noticed because we're so intent on the game. I notice the video again. Didn't say anything. Then a few moments later I'm a little shocked to see full frontal nudity of the dance dancing around and then a blonde - hot looking from the back - enter the picture and start giving the guy some quick oral sex. That's when I spoke up. I said something to the effect of 'oh man, look what's on the screen,' with a sort of 'this is going to be trouble' voice. The owners immediately got up and turned off the video.

I thought it wasa funny incident but T didn't think so. He was really wooried about it and i can understand why. I believe everyone in the store during the striptize was an adult but still - you don't expect to see a dancing naked man with blaring sound right above the new comics wall. LOL!

So for the rest of the night T was all worried but we still kept cracking jokes. D made sure to say something to the effect of 'Jay sees a cock on the screen and runs towards it,' which was escatly what I was trying to avoid bearing myself. LOL!

If any customers saw anything nobody mentioned it so it's possible only we saw it. But it would be funny as all hell to hear what they thought if they had seen it.

Nothing great for dreams. :(

Saw the movie Descent. It's about a group of young women that go spelunking (cave exploration). The clips looked pretty good. While I did chunks of the movie it did get overly 'Hollywood' in many parts to the point of where I had to stifle laughter. I guess one character was suppose to be a lying bitch but she was otherwise a strong character and I liked her. The main character I was so-so on and really didn't care if she lived or died. The other characters were actually fairly decent.

I got nabbed by the super loud shocker noise in one scene. As a viewer, you know it's coming but it was so loud and in your face on the screen that I actually cringed somewhat.

I had some problems with the antagonists in movie. They were entirely consistent with what they were protrayed as. So you had some scenes where it was like - whua? you're kidding me and the film lost big credibility during those scenes. I liked the concept of the bad guys but the exeuction for shock value and 'wouldn't you hate to be in THIS situation' only made them pretty unbelievable in parts. It also had some standard Hollywood cliches like the bad guy isn't really dead and attacks after taking bodily harm that should've killed him.

I also totally disliked some of the fight scenes. The coordination seemed cool but the almost strobe light effect made it really hard to tell just what the hell was happening. I asked myself a couple of times 'how did they get there?' or 'what just happened?'

More drama on a comic book forum I frequent. There was some drinking at bars after the biggest comic con of the year. I wasn't there so all this info is from two people posting there about this. This one girl is trying to get into mainstream comics but is a rookie on the con scene and pimped herself too hard at the bar about her portfolio. Depending who you talk to this is a huge no-no. It reality sounds like a huge no-no if you are not a recgonized comic creator - then it seems okay to talk business at a bar.

So the people at the table sharing drinks with the girl decide to play a prank on her. They pretend one of their friends is a editor at Marvel Comics. Editors hand out work. So the girl runs and grabs her portfolio after her 'friends' lead her on. After she pimps herself they reveal their joke as a way of showing her how not to act in a bar with other comic professionals. The girl gets very upset and leaves.

So she mentions her trip in blog and the incident but leaves out all names. This guy that participated in the joke learns of this blog and then rips her a new asshole on a public forum calling her totally unprofessional for her conduct at the bar and how she's telling everyone about it in her blog and how she is conducting slande against the company he works for for which they can sue her. She rebukes that she didn't mention any names and that only he did and contests him on several factors of his recollection of the incident and calls him out on his. His second post is this rant on her personally and professionally and then claims he was drunk and may have said some things that prove her case and it was also the recent he particpated in the stunt. But he apparently remembers all the other fine details perfectly.

I don't know either of them personally but this guy's conduct really pissed me off. Yep, she made a rookie mistake but the public humiliation and the utter bullshit this guy is spreading is really weak. This is a dude who's biggest accomplishment in comics is a 8 page story for Marvel in a title that regualrly uses new or unknown talent. The company he wroks for may have screwed several artists over with totally unfair contracts. He's a name dropper (I know THIS guy and THIS guy), has stated he doesn't see a problem with lying to promote a product (he's the PR guy of the company he works for) and went around to various comic boards literally begging people to buy the comics he wrote because sales were dropping by 1/2 with every new issue and his limited series might not have seen print for their entire run because sales were so weak. In other words, this guy reads like a pollywog in a big pond pushing around tadpoles. And if you say any negative about the 4 or 5 person company he works for, he seems to have little problem using slander and libel to try and discredit the person he is attacking. I've seen him do it before on the same message board.

Can you tell that I think this guy is a total hypocrite, stooge and underhand human being? LOL!

Anyways, like I said, this guy just really pisses me off.