Perhapablog
Thursday, August 28, 2008
wendy's trip
okay...everything for a reason, i always say...
i had to go down to marvel yesterday and was up early, running around, getting everything together, and was thrilled that wendy had told me a story a few days before of her trip last week and was kind enough to write it up, giving me the day off and making it easier for me to get things done at marvel. she was having some problems with her scanner the night before and couldn't get the pictures over to me, but i thought it was a compelling enough story without them and we'd run them later when she finally had a chance to get them scanned.
so early yesterday morning, i THOUGHT i published this post.
but it didn't go.
(i've been having some sketchy problems with blogger lately and, though frustrating, this was no surprise...)
so i came home and realized that there'd been no new post yesterday. thank you all for your patience.
today, of course, i thought i'd put i up with this explanation and--because of the delay--wendy's pictures.
sadly, she's still having trouble with them and is, as we speak, running over to a friend's house to send them along.
so here's wendy's story. it gave me goosebumps.
pictures to follow.
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okay...
though she's told me the whole story in our emails back and forth, i practically had to twist wendy's arm to get her to tell her story here on the blog.
You guys are never going to believe what happened to me on vacation last week. My boys and I took a trip out to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon (amoung other things). I love to hike, the boys not so much. During one of my solo hikes I sat down under some shade in a rather remote area (I tend not to stay on the paths .. too many tourists! LOL). I was quietly eating my granola bar and drinking my water when I heard what I thought was music, ever so faintly, coming from the other side of the bushes where I was sitting. I had never heard anything like it before. It was pretty and yet kinda haunting at the same time. So, being the curious person I am I decided to check it out. I ever so quietly moved to a spot that allowed me to peer through a small opening in the branches. There, next to the edge of the canyon wall were two very small “creatures”. I still can’t believe I saw this, let alone am sharing it because you are all going to think I was having a touch of heat stroke or something. These little things stood about a foot tall and had the most unusual colored hair on their heads. They also appeared to be wearing some type of ceremonial clothing. They were standing on two legs and, I think, dancing. I am so glad I had decided to take my camera because if I had not been able to take a couple pictures I think I would have thought this was all some sort of weird dream ... that or someone at the hotel thought it would be funny to spike my water ?? I was able to snap two pictures before I moved to get a better shot and stepped on a twig – at which point they both looked in my direction (and I of course ducked because I didn’t know what they might do if they saw me!!) and when my heart started beating at it’s normal rate again I looked up but they had disappeared. I will try and download my prints and get them over to Todd. Maybe someone out there knows what these strange little things are …. ??
Monday, August 25, 2008
blame spider-man~!
okay...well, we just got word--and thought it would be good to pass it on to you--that PERHAPANAUTS 4 will be in stores september 24!! it is stuffed full of lots of perhapanaut-y goodness and features all the thrills and surprises to lead you right into issue 5, the mind-shattering conclusion to our first story arc, TRIANGLE!
we thank everybody for your patience and your loyalty to us and the PERHAPANAUTS. while we've certainly had some experience at producing our own book, craig and i have discovered that even the smallest of obstacles can sometimes put the book a week--or even two--off schedule! and once you're OFF schedule, it's very difficult to get back on.
as for this delay, well, as the title of this post suggests...BLAME SPIDEY!
with craig and i both doing work for marvel right now--he on SPIDER-MAN LOVES MARY JANE and me on an upcoming run on MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN--we're up to our webs in work!
which is AWESOME WONDERFUL!!!
(i'm especially thrilled at the fantastic work craig is doing on SMLMJ! have ya seen it? you oughta go pick it up!) and while it's great to have actual PAYING work, sadly, it leaves little time to work on our baby here, our labor of love.
we thank you for your understanding.
here are a couple of craig's beautiful pages from spider-man loves mary jane...
and zach howard's cool cover to marvel adventures spider-man #45
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when issue four DOES hit the stands, it will feature, not only a red team back-up story by the talented JASON ARMSTRONG, but this beautiful flip cover as well! hopefully your local comic shop will have the room to display BOTH cool covers, but just in case your store flips them all upside-down and around and stuff...
don't miss it!
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need some funny?
watch this;
http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2007/ellen-gladys-hardy-p1.php?
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the answers
to your
"five for friday"
1. what former boxer and sportswriter hosted a sunday evening variety hour for 24 years?
ed sullivan
2. in it's original incarnation, who was the host of jeopardy?
art fleming
3. creator of the dating game and the newlywed game, and creator/host of the gong show, chuck barris also claimed to be working for who?
the cia
4. what city was buried under ash and debris after the eruption of mount vesuvius?
pompeii
5. what is the only marsupial indigenous to north america?
the opossum
smell ya later!
todd
Friday, August 22, 2008
cash cab
okay...so, no secret, i love trivia.
i will find myself going through phases of trying to watch a lot of trivia-based game shows, mostly fast-paced ones, rapid-fire questions. jeopardy, win be stein's money, etc. last winter sharon and i found ourselves preparing and eating dinner with the discovery channel's cash cab on at 6 and then over to the game show network at seven for reruns of the ann robinson hosted weakest link. while the range of questions on link ran from difficult to duh, the cash cab usually had a steady stream of questions to get you thinking.
they changed link's time slot back in the spring, but i think we had already caught the entire run and were starting on reruns of the reruns (i'm VERY good at those...! : )
if i'm done with work early enough, i'll still put on cash cab.
and being that i go into the big apple from time to time, i always have my eye out hoping that i might see the cash cab rolling down the street.
my fantasy goes like this; i'm in the city hanging out with scott for the day or the weekend or something and we gotta catch a cab. i wanna show scott that i know how to do this and i put up my hand. and who pulls up but ben bailey in the CASH CAB!!! we're both pretty observant and so we both notice at the same time, but we also know to play it cool, play it down, act like we don't know. i furtively ask scott what the farthest fare would be (so we have the longest ride to wrack up the most money!) we get in and tell him 125th street (we were in the village--i dunno what we were doin' there...) all casual-like and like we don't know. we act real dumb. the disco lights go off and we act surprised and ben tells us we're in "the cash cab--the game show that takes place right here in my taxi!" and we tell him "ben, we're about to beat your ass up!"
'cause scott and i are the $#!& when it comes to trivia.
somehow we win $4,862, which is unprecedented and weird, and there aren't even any comic book or saturday night live questions. we've broken all of the cash cab records--and the bank!--and ben tells us he's done for the day so we take him out to dinner with our crazy winnings 'cause he is easily the nicest game show host ever!! we even take a cab back to 42nd street to take him to virgil's for the best bar-b-que in new york and grill the cabbie with trivia that he can't answer along the way. he's a nice guy though and i tip him $50 and then scott says that maybe he'd better hang onto the money for now.
people hear about scott and my amazing trivia abilities and we start training for the u.s. olympic trivia team for the 2012 olympics where, because this is still my fantasy, it's an event and we destroy the competition, even when the questions are about their own countries!
we bring home the gold.
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that's my fantasy, well...ONE of them...
anybody wanna share theirs...?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
here are some of the
questions we kicked
ass on...
"five for friday"
1. what former boxer and sportswriter hosted a sunday evening variety hour for 24 years?
2. in it's original incarnation, who was the host of jeopardy?
3. creator of the dating game and the newlywed game, and creator/host of the gong show, chuck barris also claimed to be working for who?
4. what city was buried under ash and debris after the eruption of mount vesuvius?
5. what is the only marsupial indigenous to north america?
have a great weekend!
smell ya later!
todd
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
in the house...of secrets!
okay...i know that i've been preaching to everyone who'll listen that we've got to make summer last, got to make sure we pack this (fleeting) summer with as much summery fun as we can because--around here anyway--winter is long and cold and dark... (actually, i love the cold and dark part--it's the "long" that gets to be too much...)
i got angry at nic (portal comics) a week or so back when he said he felt a giddy delight when he saw the staples back-to-school, most wonderful time of the year commercial. sorry, nic, but as a never-grow-up toys r us kid, even here as a supposed adult, the words "back-to-school" are still a poisonous curse to me and they, more than anything, mean the death of summer! craig, of course, quickly pointed out that i don't have kids and so i wouldn't get it. he loves that commercial too...!
(traitors!)
but the nights are already getting chilly here and it IS time to start thinkin' about what you're gonna be for halloween--whatcha gonna be?!?--and a & e has started a new season of paranormal state. and while i still want summer to hang on for a few more weeks (months?), a couple other things have been tugging me toward the season of spooks and chills--
last week i picked up the showcase house of secrets and have truly devoured it! on the cover it proclaims "over 500 pages of comics!" is that all? i could eat that in one sitting when it's these wonderfully chilling, gothic (yes, on some "dated" would be a better term...) stories by some of the most talented writers and artists back in the early 70's! bernie wrightson, gerry conway, len wein, mike kaluta, alex toth, steve skeates, nick cardy, john albano, tony dezuniga, and jim aparo! maybe they appeal to me because, though they were actually before MY time too, they resonate with a feeling of the day, they reflect all of what was happening in comics--and the world--at the time! i love 'em!
also getting me cranked up for fall creepiness, is the book weird hauntings, sent to me by my pal, mike estelle, who even got it signed for me by awesome artist, ryan doan! thanks mike! you shouldna.
weird hauntings is put out by the weird nj people, the magazine that has spawned a great series of weird books chronicling weird places and events in many of these united states (weird new york, weird pennsylvania, weird new england, weird usa,...you get the idea...) it's a great book with a great many first hand accounts of some really creepy places. and ryan has created some really great photos/illustrations/paintings for many of the stories! great stuff! thanks again, mike!
so while i'll hang onto this summer with the last of my strength, start letting a little creepy into your schedule. wendy, who has just recently joined out little family here, was just asking me if I'D ever seen something strange, which made me realize that we ought to have a round of sharing our own personal weird and creepy experiences again. anybody up for that? if you have a strange or scary story to share, send it over to me at todd@perhapanauts,com and i'll post it up here on the blog. i know we've heard from a lot of you before, but let's dig 'em out and scare each other again. you could even cut and paste them from last time. this could be lots of fun.
and i now know that wendy's got one...
think about it.
smell ya later!
todd
Monday, August 18, 2008
polar pals
okay...so the bigfoot in the freezer turned out to be not bigfoot (dna said human and...possum?!), the montauk monster is still viable, but there are a lot of things about that that sound hinky, and the dewitt county chupacabra is SOMETHING--some kind of devil dog...the dewitt devil dog?...but it's no chupacabra by the definition i go by. is it a summer of hoaxes? i hope not. hoaxes don't help the cryptozoological cause one bit.
plus they're stupid.
the bigfoot story--which was featured as a press conference on cnn--just proved how poorly prepared and unprofessional tom biscardi and his "searching for bigfoot, inc." is. this claim should have been better documented and researched before the media was let in--and why not wait a day and have the dna results AT the press conference?! what a black eye for biscardi and ALL of us who believe in the possibility of sasquatch/bigfoot/yeti.
that the carcass of the montauk monster was allowed to be carted off and no one knows where it went...is anyone doing some investigating on that? i understand that the police probably don't have time to follow this up, but somebody...?
and shouldn't the deputy in dewitt county--and those around him--be held responsible for actually knowing a little something about chupacabras before calling their dog one...?!
here's my chupacabra.
okay, so maybe i sound a little bitter. (but only in a "having fun with it " way.)
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so, from what i've heard, the polar bear is supposedly one of the most vicious creatures on the planet. reports have them traveling miles out of their way just to kill something. they, like grizzlies--like any other living thing for that matter--become extremely violent when they believe their young are in danger. what we hear of polar bears interacting with any other animal is usually not good news.
so, of course, the guy who owned these sled dogs was thinking about where he was gonna get a new set of sled dogs when this polar bear wandered into his camp. he was also wondering if the polar bear was gonna stop when it was done tearing them to pieces...
apparently, the bear returned to the camp several nights in a row to romp and play with the dogs.
ya never know...
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here are the
answers to the
"five for friday"
some tough ones this week.
hope you'll give 'em a try.
1. in the english alphabet, what is the dot above the lower case "i" or "j" called?
a tittle
2. although jobless throughout much of seinfeld's run, apparently kramer was actually on strike. what job was he striking from?
a bagel shop (h&h bagels, to be exact)
3. what do carol burnett, eric clapton, robin williams, jack nicholson, lisa marie presley, and tiger woods have in common?
all are/were the only child.
4. what was jimmy hoffa's middle name?
james riddle hoffa
5. in a standard deck of cards, which king does NOT have a moustache?
the king of hearts
bonus question: in the history of baskin-robbins, they have only ever made one flavor of ice cream based on a vegetable. what was the flavor?
ketchup
(i know. eww, right?)
(but i'd definitely try it...)
smell ya later!
todd
Thursday, August 14, 2008
any random friday
okay...here's a mish-mash of random stuff; items that i've been saving on my desktop to share and never finding any common theme or reason to slap them up here. call this a series of "random pictures of the week".
oh, and there's a "five for friday" at the bottom...
the other day, matt sent out an e-mail with a bunch of funny --twisted--motivational posters. they were all hilarious, and a couple kinda gross, but this one was both funny and intriguing; i'd never seen this picture before.
i can only echo..."what the F#@& is that?!"
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i laughed and i laughed when i first saw this, sure, as i was doing it, that i'd be going to hell for it.
i tried to stop.
i couldn't stop.
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my pal, dani, sent me an e-mail featuring some funny t-shirts. these are the ones i dug the most.
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i have been told since that that picture of ray charles above was actually ray having some fun.
(so it's okay to laugh...)
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in my wednesday post, i alluded to a certain huge, purplish/greyish, favorite marvel character featuring features similar to that of the snapping turtle and ernie cooper nailed it.
(i am the #1 dragon man fan!)
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PLEASE NOTE: i have really dropped the ball these past few weeks and, once again, need to apologize and post a correction to one of last week's answers. as my 12 year old nephew pointed out--using the words "idiot" and "dork" as he did so--the three major sections of the brain are the cerebrum, the cerebellum, and the brain stem (not the medulla oblongata, which is part of the brain stem, but not the whole thing...)
apologies.
wendy and ghost of tom you had it right!
thank you, tyler. dork.
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"five for friday"
some tough ones this week.
hope you'll give 'em a try.
1. in the english alphabet, what is the dot above the lower case "i" or "j" called?
2. although jobless throughout much of seinfeld's run, apparently kramer was actually on strike. what job was he striking from?
3. what do carol burnett, eric clapton, robin williams, jack nicholson, lisa marie presley, and tiger woods have in common?
4. what was jimmy hoffa's middle name?
5. in a standard deck of cards, which king does NOT have a moustache?
bonus question: in the history of baskin-robbins, they have only ever made one flavor of ice cream based on a vegetable. what was the flavor?
have a great weekend!
smell ya later!
todd
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
the dewitt chupacabra (?) and the snapper!
okay...the chupacabra hubbub down in texas
so last summer, that woman found a weird dog or something down in texas and dubbed it the chupacabra without, i'm guessing, actually doing a little research first to see what a chupacabra is all about. okay, these things happen--sometimes, i'm told, history is MADE.
so now this deputy down there captures this footage on his dash cam
http://gmy.news.yahoo.com/v/9256876
and calls it a chupacabra 'cause it looks just like what he saw on the t-shirt.
(way to check your facts, deputy)
weird, whatever it is, but i kinda wish they'd give it a different name.
call it the dewitt county devil or something...
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so the other day i was talking with my buddy, sanford greene, who is currently finishing up the art on one of the issues of marvel adventures spider-man that i wrote. he's doing an incredible job--wait 'til you see his spidey! and his prowler! and, well, hell--the whole thing!! he told me that he had had a little trouble getting started on one of my absolute favorite marvel characters (who is huge and purple!) and i suggested that he look at some pictures of snapping turtles for reference! --anybody know? guesses...?--
anyway, sanford showed me that he'd already gotten past it--and did an incredible job on that too!--but, later, i found myself doing a google search to see if i could find some cool images of snapping turtles. while browsing through some of those, i realized that i have--and always have had--an affinity for these prehistoric-looking reptiles, have always been drawn to them in one way or another, and that i actually have quite a few stories that involve them.
in searching around for those snapping turtle pics, i stumbled across a very cool blog called ugly overload at www.uglyoverloadblogspot.com
it was full of some really cool photos of some really cool...and, okay, creepy critters that i thought i'd share. this one might not look like much, like a couple of eels suckin' on the glass...
but, wait, look...this is what their mouths look like...!
i know--right?
a giant leaf-tailed gecko
and this is some sea dwelling thing called a giant isopod. there's nothing to really get a reference of size in the pic, but i can tell you now i would NOT want to run into this in the hallway in the middle of the night when i'm getting up to pee.
gotta go!
smell ya later!
todd
