Matthew Wayne Selznick

This is farking genius. I sense a whole new sub-genre of comics mashups coming. I hope Bill Keane has a sense of humor!

Are you enjoying the annotations to the podcast? What do you think of the story so far? Your comments are appreciated!

So… let’s dig into Episode Three…

Chapter Seven:

– “If you can’t walk, how do you drive?”
He frowned, but his eyes were bright. “Not very well, apparently.”

Bah-dum-bump! I crack me up.

– “…I knew this kid, down Glendora. He had this bone disorder, made his face all flat and broad…”

He’s talking about Rocky Dennis, who lived until 1980 and suffered from craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, a disfiguring bone disease. Eric Stolz portrayed him in the movie “Mask.” When I was a young kid living in Glendora, California, I saw Rocky Dennis in the grocery store one day. I confess it was a shock — the movie version didn’t come close to the extent of his disfigurement.

Based On A Real Person:
Denver Colorado

Chapter Eight:

– “I’ll give Ditko over at the Gas ‘n’ Tackle a holler,” Denver said thoughtfully. “He’s the only one old man Lee trusts with the tow truck.”

That would be a little nod to Steve Ditko, who helped create Spider-Man, and drew the first 41 issues of the comic. And of course old man Lee refers to the other creator of Spider-Man, the inestimable Stan Lee. ‘Nuff Said.

Chapter Nine:

Nothing much to annotate here… except to say that one of the real-life people Mel Wilson’s based on actually had a telescope trained on my own house!

Chapter Ten:

– “…blue jeans pegged at the ankles.”

It occurs to me that my younger audience might not understand that reference.

Basically, to “peg” your jeans was to fold the ankle of each leg of your jeans lengthwise, then roll them up until they were just above your high-top sneakers.

I think I’ve said it before… it was the eighties!

– “She wore an over-sized tee shirt for the artsy band Japan tucked into a tartan miniskirt, eighteen-hole Doc Marten combat boots…”

Japan was a New Romantic band with some art-rock pretensions.

Doc Martens were the shoe for the punk rock set… and in some circles, still are. Go here and check out the “1460″ — that’s Lina’s boot!

Recent fortuitous events have placed me in a remarkable position… after ten years and eighty-some days with the same company, I will be quitting what I have semi-sarcastically called my Cursed Day Job on the day after Thanksgiving.

Very strange. I’m alternately very nervous and out-of-my skin excited.

I’ll still have to work somewhere… we can’t quite afford to be a one-income household, and the cats and dog don’t know too many marketable tricks, so that’s not an option. I’ll have to get a part-time job. But it won’t be a management job. It won’t be a bottom-line, responsibility, babysitting for too little money job.

I long to punch a clock! And so I will.

What, you ask, will you do with the extra time and less money?

Make stuff, baby!

Promote “Brave Men Run.” Write my new novel “The View That Comes With You.” Make podcasts. Get extra active with the various associations and groups I’m involved with. Get out and do some culture now and then. Maybe make some music. Be creative.

Additionally, I won’t pass up any editing or story diagnosis work you might send my way. I’m still offering dirt cheap web hosting for DIY, creative folks, and domain name registration. And I’m open to doing “content creation” (writing) for web or print. Ask me!

Episode Two took a while to get going, but I suspect the overall audio quality is better. Also, I’ve shortened the intro and outro sections.

Reply to this post with your comments — please!

And now… behind the curtain:

Chapter Five:

– “Later, we would learn that everything in and around the Monument, including every object in the kiosk down to the smallest paper clip, turned black as well.”

In an earlier draft, I had all sorts of things — like bathrooms — insideWashington Monument. Except there really isn’t much inside the Monument, apart from stairs. Lots of stairs. Talk about a near miss!

– “Channel four brought in a panel of experts, only there were no experts, not yet, so they found Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Ray Bradbury, and Daniel Schor.”

Four men worthy of admiration. Carl Sagan’s gentle teaching blew my young mind when Cosmos first came out on public television. Richard Feynman was our century’s scientist-rockstar… where’s his movie??? Ray Bradbury… elsewhere, I’ve called him my story-father, and that will do here. Daniel Schor has been reporting and commentating on Washington D.C. long enough to have been on Nixon’s enemy list.

— “Now this guy comes around, tells the world all those old comic books are coming to life…”

This, gentle reader, is your first clue that this is not simply our world (plus metahumans.) There are some fundamental differences of history. More on this later.

– “I took another look at the television. Bill Moyers and some skinny old guy were talking about the comic book ban in the fifties.”

Well, it’s later, sort of! Bill Moyers is talking to Joseph Campbell, the remarkable, wise, and brilliant comparative mythologist. Nate Charter’s adventures in Brave Men Run are a deliberate attempt to write in Campbell’s classic “Hero’s Journey” motif.

There was no comic book ban in the fifties, in our history! What’s going on here??? More later.

– “An old black and white cartoon of a flying man fighting robots flashed by.”

That cartoon would be Max Fleischer’s “Superman - The Mechanical Monsters.” It’s a beautiful piece of animation from 1942… and it’s actually in color!

– “…like in Jason’s Japanese Gekiga books.”

Loosely translated, “gekiga” means “super-team.”

Chapter Six:

– “It was a two hour drive five thousand feet up the mountains to Kirby Lake.”, and very lovingly named after Jack Kirby, the man who created many, many super-heroes that went on to make Marvel and DC comics huge piles of money. Thanks for picking up the pencil, Jack.

– “The “Nuclear War Clock” was moved another minute closer to midnight.”

This is actually called the Doomsday Clock, courtesy of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Holy crap… I don’t even know where to begin.

Let’s go with first impressions again, okay?

• MTV can’t sell me on their bullshit, still, more, forever and ever, amen.
• Doug Kaye deserves your help. Some people are done doing it for themselves, and the world’s a better place because of it.
• Dave Slusher doesn’t have much of an accent in real life. What’s up with that?
• There are good lawyers on the side of the angels doing good work, and thanks for that!
• In the movie version of the Podcast Era, Eric Rice will have to be played by a very young Jeff Goldblum.
• Still not sure about Audible… but I am still sure about DRM, so what does that tell me, right there?
• Why does Lance Anderson seem nervous when he sees me?
• The youngsters in AMP are full of piss and vinegar, and they have truth and justice in their souls.
• I liked Harold J. Johnson instantly. And I thought I might!
• Adam Curry needs to relax. And people I’m having conversations with need to relax when Curry walks into a room. The man uploads his podcasts a packet at a time, just like the rest of us, okay???
• It’s wonderful to have passionate conversation with people who were ocassionally glimpsed strangers two days ago, and who I now can’t wait to talk to again. Great way to end two enlightening, energizing, challenging, and inspiring days.

Okay, that’s it for now. I’ll have more to say, I know it. But I’m no citizen journalist; you know by now to expect my biases and ignorances and idealism to color everything!

Okay, maybe that does make me a citizen journalist.

And now to bed.