Featured comic and a terrific weekend!

Blog 072108

A terrific weekend and a bitch’in start to the week.

Over at Drunkduck.com, my comic book there, The Necropolis Chronicles was posted as a FEATURED COMIC on the front page. This is really awesome. While my page views run around 250-300 a day, because my comic will be on the front page of the website for the whole week views have jumped up over 1200+ for the first day alone. And since I have enough material to update the comic every day for the next month it should really help the comic grow in core readership. So that’s the bitch’in news and it’s totally awesome.

I’ve also started work this past week on doing three panel strips to keep the material fresh and new. I just don’t have the time to work a normal 40 hour a week job and draw, ink & letter a normal size comic page which is 10 inches wide by 15 inches tall. It’s just too much. So by adapting what my local paper does using comics with just three square panels I can at least keep some sort of new and original material coming. So I’m hoping to build up some pages since I have a month’s grace period before I really have to start worrying about it. And unfortunately, the comic will have to go with weekly updates instead of every day. That’ll hurt readership but it’s better than just ending the comic or it going on hiatus.

The weekend was terrific. My friend Rob came back from the west coast to see friends and family. Friday a group of us had breakfast which was cool. It was Rob’s birthday so I picked up his bill not that it was all that much. I had to work that not but Saturday we ended up going to a WWE wrestling show that was in town. I had gone to a wrestling show in years! Maybe something like 6 years or more. So I picked up Rob, pitstopped at the comic store and then made our way to the civic center. Traffic rather sucked so I parked at a nearby hotel. It ended up being $9! But I was expecting something outrageous like that so I had $10 budgeted for parking.

As we walked to the arena there was a lo-o-o-ong line of people two or more curving around the side of the building. We made a quick discussion about our chances at tickets and went to the front of the line. We saw people just walking in but the line wasn’t moving so we walked in. Almost all the ticket booths had no customers so we walked up and asked about tickets. $22 later we each had a ticket and joined the throngs of people heading in. We were able to totally skip that whole freaking huge line of people. It was fairly awesome to walk right up, grab tickets and head right in. I made a comment about maybe seeing people I know there. I didn’t see any. Rob made a comment he wouldn’t see anyone because he’d been gone for around 8 years. Literally a minute later this guy, a former co-worker, says ‘hi’ to Rob and mentions he hasn’t seen Rob in awhile. LOL! Go figure!

A bottle of Gatorade at the consessions stand cost me $3.50. I have purchased the next size up at my local supermarket for $1! But I figured I would be thirsty because it was really muggy out. Rob’s bottle of Aquafina cost $3.25. Inside the arena it was really cool and comfortable. This was a surprise. There are no real bad seats in the civic center since it holds like 9,900 seats. But after the show started I did wish I had gone for the next seat up that cost $37 a pop.

Triple H and later the Hardys got the biggest ovations from the crowd. It actually started to hurt my ears. And I let myself get caught up in the moment which helped me enjoy the show greatly. Rob never really said much other than some comments to me but I was booing the guys I don’t like and cheering the guys I do like. My current favorite wrestler, John Morrison, a Jim Morrison look-a-like scored the pin for the victory in a fatal 4 tag team match. The next night at the pay-per-view he and his partner lost the titles in the same type of match. L

So we got to see a lot of stars like: Batista, CM Punk, Kofi somethingerother (a current champ), Fetus, Hornswoggle(!), Finley, The Great Kali (he sucks but he’s 7 feet tall), The Big Show, Umaga, several WWE Divas who got into a fight, and some others whose names I don’t know. I had a great time and I think Rob had a good time. The only downer was that local boy John Cena was scheduled to appear but didn’t make the show.

We left right after the last match that was CM Punk defending his title against Batista. Batista lost by pinfall after accidentally ramming his head into a steel chair. We hustled out to beat the crowd and missed Batista power-bombing CM Punk after the match was over.

The show started at &:30pm and got out at 10:30pm. We were both hungry as hell and stopped at a Friendly’s restaurant. I got a big burger and Rob got a 5 scoop sundae. It’s called a Reesce’s Pieces sundae and is one of my favorites with hot fudge, peanut butter sauce and whipped cream and Pieces on top. But Rob choose 3 scoops of double chocolate, a scoop of peanut butter crunch and a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Ewwww. He finished it though. My burger was pretty tasty but I ran into my usual onion problem. The onions were round rings. I tried to cut them but didn’t really succeed. So later when I was biting into my burger I failed to cut through the onion and pulled them out so that they were hanging on my chin as I tried to chew my mouthful. Quite embarrassing.

After that we headed back to Dwain’s where Rob’s staying. It was just us so he showed me pictures of his kids. Usually this is totally boring but I have never really seen his kids so it was decent. I left at midnight got home, read a comic and fell asleep.

I had a really bizarre dream influenced by the comic I read just before going to sleep. There was a futuristic ad for a sci-fi gladiator game and my dream brought it to life with me as the main character. I was kicking some serious ass using, of all things, a glorified fireplace poker as my weapon. I was then facing three level bosses essentially. These were three opponents all about twice the size of my dude and more powerful. All were different and seemed like something out of Power Rangers. One looked sort of like the goddess Kali, a woman with 4 arms. I stabbed the wench right in the Adam’s apple as she tried to cast a spell on me. It was very cool and gratifying. Better yet, she could still case her spell since it was mainly a dance step or something but the dream ended so I never suffered the ominous threat to me.

I had another dream the same night. Since Rob and I were checking out babes at the wrestling show and just before going to sleep I was thinking about Jaina from my comic (see above) I had a dream where I was alternating between star and director. This style of dream for me is common actually. Sometimes I’m seeing things first person and then in the dream I’m seeing it as if I’m a director on a movie set following the action but controlling it at the same time. On a quick note I think I had a dream come true at work where I saw the events in my dream unfold before me in real life. I have like 6 of those types of dream or less a year.

So in this second dream I was in avatar form which was female. My avatar had a semi short black skirt that was business-like tight and knee high black boots with stiletto heels. She also had a white blouse. Her hair was essentially exactly like this woman sitting near us in that it was maybe middle to the back and straight and dark glossy brown. She had it parted sort of on the side. I was walking with Dwain and Rob. They had to take a leak and my avatar almost walked into the men’s room with them! The area we were walking in was sort of an outdoor, almost modern day kind of Ancient Rome with lots of arches and thin streets were everyone was walking. Still, “I” had to pee. Guys always say piss so in my dream I was trying to make the avatar more female as if I was writing a script.

I had to walk around the whole outside bathroom structure and finally found the woman’s bath. I remember feeling awkward and not wanting to go in not wanting to see pissing women and not exactly sure how to conduct myself. LOL! I was shocked when I went in. It was like a stone old folks home or something. Women of all ages were there but the oldest women, some decrepit, seemed to live there! It was like having a stone bed with a hole to shit in right next to you. The whole place really stunk bad and was totally unclean and gross. I had to walk around the joint in almost a full circle before I found and open stone seat to piss in. I remember something like starting to pull down the skirt and don’t recall what else. I think I woke up. But later on I was walking around the open market area again except now it was like a common department store with current shelving and whatnot. I was strolling through a toy department area where my co-worker was buying stuff for his son. I was going to say hello but he was too busy. Not sure if he would’ve recognized me or what. Better left unvisited I guess. I started looking at Star Wars stuff and reminiscing about my own Star Wars toys and I think I woke up.

I took a piss 2 hours after I went to bed after the wrestling show. I must’ve digested the burger because I had a lot of trouble getting back to sleep. I think I tossed and turned until I finally rolled out of bed 3 or 4 hours later Sunday morning.

My brother and kids headed out to the beach and later I went to Rob’s parents’ place for his birthday party. Rob told me about it the night before after wrestling. I got to see his brother Ron there and his kids. It had been almost 2 years since I had seen Ron in person. We used to be great friends. We still are but I never see him anymore. He’s got a family with four kids and I work nights so there’s never much time to get together. Some of mutual friends came over and we had a decent time just sitting around shooting the shit. One thing that was amusing was Rob’s uncle. He’s older, probably in his sixties from the look of him. But he has an XBox 360 and he was just right along with us about games hardly missing a beat.

I left before the pizzas arrived having made plans earlier in the week to eat at my parents. Goodbyes took awhile and I got to my parents a little late but supper was still warm. I chilled with the family and slunked home for some internet and Rockband before bed.

I’m stuck in Rockband. I really suck at the drums but I love them. I’m now stuck on two songs that I can’t get past on medium. So I’m about halfway through all the songs on drums on medium and I won’t be going farther which rather sucks. I can practice the songs but I don’t even make it halfway through them and I struggle just to make it that far. My problem is that I play music and sing by both feel and ear. Rockband is very visual in that you hit notes as they scroll towards you. So it’s a real challenge for me to play the instruments. But Rockband 2 is due out soon and I can download some songs I don’t have from the internet which is sweet.

I bid on a second shift job at work this past week but I can only win it if nobody else has bidding rights. I actually like where I currently aim and like the job but I’m going to get laid off since it happens in my department every year in the winter. The big lay-off has been delayed but it will eventually hit and I could my job permanently in my current position. The job I bid on is ‘skilled’ labor which means someone would have to past a test to get into the room and them bump me out if they aren’t trained already like I am.

Okay, a 4 page blog in enough. I’m done.