Confessions

New Old Habits

  • by Drew

I have recently rediscovered a past addiction. For a period of two or three years in my young teen years, I became an avid comic collector. I started with a single title, but when a small video store in the next town started selling comics (the owner being a total comic addict himself) I began making weekly visits.

A year or so after I discovered this little haven, the shop closed down. A few weeks later, the video part reopened under new ownership, but the comic racks were gone. Apparently, the comic-loving owner was so into Marvel and DC that he kept two copies of everything he sold. And pretty soon, he was deep in the red. Oh well.

Now, I certainly didn’t stop reading comics. In fact, I maintained my love of comics over the years since, but I mostly stopped reading monthly mags and switched to trade paperbacks and graphic novels. Sometimes these were standalone storied outside of the normal continuity of a particular title, but other time a book like this would simply collect a series of comics in single place, covering a particular story arc.

Recently, though, I have been picking up comics here and there. Mostly old ones at flea markets (old now meaning 80s era – the time period I used to collect) but I’ve also grabbed some newer stuff. And lately I’ve grabbed a couple of cheap ebay lots. Some ebayers will sell books for a fraction of their potential value if you are willing to grab a boxful. Since I am just getting back into collecting, this is a great way to go for me. It gives me a chance to read a couple of issues of a particular title and see if it is something for me. I can either go to a back issue dealer and try to fill in the blanks, or I can, when I am ready, put together some mixed lots of my own and get the comics back out there for someone else to start, or round out, their collection.

Comics have a lot of detractors, but I, for one, am a big fan. In fact, I am so much of a fan that I am happy to see my oldest kid starting to read them. He can still read a novel, about 3 grade levels beyond his age in fact, so if he wants to pick up a comic once in while, that’s cool with me.

I’ve known people who say that comics are a sort of anti-literature because the art keeps you from developing a mental picture. That might be a valid argument if comics were novels, but they’re not. It is a wholly different medium. If a great film can be a great film, in spite of its plain reliance on visual storytelling, a comic, or any sort of story told in a comic format is equally valid. If you disagree, open your mind to The Watchmen, Maus, or even American Splendour. Don’t kid yourself, these are tremendous bits of narrative. They are unique and powerful. At times, even profound. and they do not rely on violence or gratuitous profanity to “shock and awe” their readers. Instead, they use compelling imagery, both as depicted in the art, and in the poetry of the storytelling.

Seriously.

PS Blog

Bug Play

  • by Drew

I saw a funny license plate outside Friendly’s the other day. It was a Volkswagen Beetle with this tag: MyBg4ply. After a while I realized this was probably My Bug For Play, but that was not my initial read. At first I thought it was My Big Foreplay. I can’t say what that might mean, but it sure seemed…well, odd at the time. Big foreplay, after all, sounds somewhat racy, if nothing else.

And considering it was a VW Beetle, something like 80% of which have to be driven by women (that’s not an official bit o’ data, just an estimate based on personal observation) it seems to be an extra-amusing concept. After all, isn’t foreplay supposed to be the big weakness in the male repertoire of love?

OK, maybe I’m making assumptions here. Maybe I need a heavy duty document management system to analyze and understand the real percentages. Who knows? Maybe it’s not a chick ride after all, and maybe it’s some dude who has figured out how to make romantic use of the backseat. But seriously, if that’s the case, this dude has to be one kickin’ little person.

Life

Got Reservations?

  • by Drew

The title of the last post probably didn’t make sense, but as usual, I went off on a bit of a tangent. My original topic, in fact, was about getting a hotel reservation for my hotel. Now, I realize that a lot of corporations have to centralize certain aspects of their client-facing operation. Hotel chains are no exception. People from all over the planet are calling for reservations, so one shouldn’t necessarily expect personal contact with the particular hotel they are going to be staying at. Right?

That’s just a touch of sarcasm.

Here’s the thing. When I was trying to book my reservation with direct bill to my employer, the person on the phone had major problems. First of all, anyone working at the hotel would instantly recognize my company’s name. Not just because at least a half dozen people from my company stay there each week, but our office is approximately 100 feet down the road. even if you weren’t sure, it would have to sound familiar. There is a giant company logo right on the road, after all.

The real annoying part, however, was that the phone operator (who couldn’t figure out how to direct bill the room to my company) kept thanking me for staying at the Chesapeake location. The problem, though, was that she mispronounced the word every single time she said it. And each mispronunciation was unique.

Chekasepe. Chesakeep. Chepakepe. Chekapeace.

Sigh.

I think  it’s time that the general list of iphone accessories include some sort of geographical indicator that let’s you know if you’re Virginia hotel reservationist is actually sitting somewhere across the ocean. Where’s that app?

Life

Chekasepe

  • by Drew

I recently had to travel to Virginia for work, it’s been a few months since my last trip. This time, a whole bunch of coworkers who don’t usually make the trip were down there with me. We did a lot of talking, comparing hotel rooms and airline stories. Airport delays and missing towels were among the standard fare we discussed.

We talked about the glory days of air travel, when people dressed up and actually fit into their seats. There were free playing cards and peanuts aplenty. We talked about three course meals and hot stewardesses who would give you a lap dance with a smile if it made your flight a little more pleasurable.

Now they yell at you for breathing too loud, refuse to give you water, and glare if you don’t yank your earbuds fast enough when the light comes on. One of the few exceptions, according to a coworker, is Virgin. Seems Virgin can offer a slightly more old-school travel experience than most of the few remaining carriers. Semi-psycho billionaire Richard Branson is generally credited with kicking it up. One of my coworkers said he called it getting Branson tickets when he got to travel Virgin.

PS Blog

Kapow!

  • by Drew

Recently I’ve been rediscovering an old habit. I’ve been really getting back into comics. That’s not entirely accurate, I guess, because I’ve always loved comic storytelling, but it was only for a very short period that I actually considered myself a comic collector. I can remember the handful of early comics that hooked me some time in 1985, leading to some intense collecting behavior through 1987. Beyond that, I picked up a handful of titles, but I was short of cash and was a little self-conscious about the whole thing.

Yeah, I was a little embarrassed about the whole thing, particularly during and after the whole puberty thing. Still, since that time I have continued to be a comics fan, though my collecting shifted from individual monthly titles to graphic novels. Occasionally in High School and College I would pick up a book. And in the last 15 years, those purchases have not abated. Every year, at least a bit of my birthday Amazon gift certificate goes toward the purchase of graphic novels.

So I’ve kept up to date, at least to some degree, with the goings on of a few favorite heroes. I’ve got a lot of Wolverine and Batman and Punisher books. Maybe I’m a few years behind the monthly mags, but I still enjoy the stories. And I’ve got a pretty wide collection of Marvel Essentials, these huge collections of classic titles they reprint in black and white to save money. There’s nothing like those early Stan Lee Spider-Man and Daredevil titles. And The X-Men collections cover the classic Chris Claremont stuff from the 80’s.

Since my birthday, a couple months back, I’ve been getting more and more back into it, and finally, I’ve taken the plunge and subscribed to a couple of titles. I’ve also purchased a stack of storage boxes and bags, and I’ve spent the last several nights refreshing my old collection and anticipating the new additions.

Maybe it’s because I don’t care anymore about walking into a comic shop. Have I finally put puberty behind me? Let’s hope so. It also helps to have a 7 year old in tow. I mean, as I’m scanning titles I can pretend I’m really in there for him, right? As soon as he’s finished looking at the scantily clad heroines and razor-clawed heroes in all their brilliant color, we can move on to the big box store and browse for patio cushions and gas grill utensils.

Talk about flawless cover, right?

Booze

Body art?

  • by Drew

I have nothing against tattoos. I have  a number of friends who are inked, and many, if not most, have something going on. I mean, thoughtful, creative, colorful expressions of self. And that’s cool. I’m all about that.

I, personally, remain unmarked. I’m not a needle wuss, I actually don’t mind them at all. Partly it was something of a committment beyond what I was ready to consider back before mortgage, marriage and parenthood (in that order). Now it seems a little frivolous…I mean, at my age… But to be brutally honest, the main reason I’ve never seriously considered getting inked is that I’m hairy. Yup, chubby and hairy. There is really no reasonable spot of flesh on my body that is not so covered in hair that a tattoo would require regular shaving. And that, like back waxing, is a relationship I just can’t see myself entering into.

So, it’s not for me, but it works for some people. The thing is, lately, I’ve been seeing some seriously bad work. SERIOUSLY bad work. There has always been way too much flash on the chunky trailer girls and their 90 pound boyfriends (with those wispy starter mustaches and trucker caps) but I’m talking about something altogether worse. The names of children and boyfriends and girlfriends and spouses on necks and wrists and other overly visible spots is not really that endearing to me. It’s up there with memorial t-shirts for deceased children in my book. Just not very original.

But to each his or her own. I won’t judge. If you want to have the names of your children written in script down your boob, that’s your prerogative. Although I suggest you plan better than this one woman I saw who had three names on her left boob and one on her right. It appears she was cataloguing her offspring on lefty, and then she ran out of room. Maybe number four was a bit of an oopsie, so I guess we should give her a high five for getting him on there somewhere. What a mom.

The disturbing trend, in my mind, is the really wretched work I’ve been seeing. Did Walmart start selling home tattoo kits and no one told me? I was on line at the store the other day and I saw a young woman buying prenatal vitamins, folic acid, and assorted creams and powders. What was most noticeable to me, was the tattoo on her arm. She was sleeveless, so it was very clear. It said ANN. All caps, written in a thin line that looked like pencil. There were 8 or ten lines drawn away from the name. Kind of like how a little kid draws the rays of the sun. It looked, in fact, like a little kid had written it. Shaky handwriting, sun rays looking a little bit like Sunday comic stink lines.

Who puts this on their arm? It was hard to believe it was real ink, but it was. Don’t you need some sort of training or certification to be a tattoo artist? Don’t you at least need to show photographs of past work or something? Maybe she was some dude’s first try or something, because this was pathetic.

Oh, and the funny part. It wasn’t her kid’s name or her girlfriend’s name or her mom’s name or sister’s name. How do I know? Her companion, another young lady, used her name several times while they chatted online.

Yup, Ann had ANN tattooed on her arm, apparently by a second grader with poor penmanship. What is this world coming to? How much Cisco did she have to drink? My girl is lowering the bar for white trash ink the world over.

Sigh.

Suddenly Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) peeing on a 24 seems a hell of a lot more clever than it did a year and a half ago.

Life

More than just coats…

  • by Drew

I was at Burlington Coat Factory in Kingston. It’s the only Burlington Coat Factory I remember going to (maybe I was dragged into one as a kid when I needed a Confirmation suit or something, but I don’t really remember) so I can’t say if this BCF is representative of all BCFs, but this BCF is seriously ghetto. Yeah, g to the h to the e-t-o. I don’t think you have to spell it correctly when you’re doing that letter to the letter to the rest of the word lazy, pseudo-rap, rhthym ‘yes I gots my GED so’s I knows my letters’ thing.

Anyway, as I say, the Kingston BCF is rather on the trashy side. You know what a whigger is? Yeah, they got a whole lot o’ those. You ever see a guy with a flattened nose from mulitple breaks and only one tooth in front. That’s right, one. Maybe the guy had molars, but he was smiling a lot and in the whole frontal region there was one single canine. That’s it. Top and bottom. This is the guy to go to when you need to open a soup can without a pop-top. Just don’t let him hold the can himself, because he had at least one hand and sometimes both jammed down the front of his sweatpants the entire time he was on line.

Clientele aside, there is occasionally a deal to be had. Not often for me, though I got a good checkerboard tie once on clearance. If its not FUBU, there’s always a chance that it will make it to clearance, because I’m probably the only person who would even consider buying it. And still, the opportunities are rare. Maybe it’s my fault for refusing to pay $40 for $150 jeans that are stained, ripped, bleached, bearing some sort of vaguely gang-like tattoo art on the ass and gold stitching. I know, I’m such a snob.

Okay, I know I sound kind of like a dick, but you should really check the palce out next time you’re in Kingston. It’s definitely good for a chuckle. And if you get a chance, cruise the big and tall belts. I did, kind of by accident. I was making rounds with the boys, one holding each hand, when I caught site of something that looked like a peep show curtain. Since I knew there was no actual peep show at the BCF, at least not yet, I let curiosity get the best of me and investigated. Turns out, it was a wall of belts. Massive belts. I mean, MASSIVE belts. I mean, if there are diets for quick weight loss out there, anyone even casting an eye at needing one of these belts better start on the s to the l to the i-m-fast. Holy Guacamole.

The smallest belt hanging on this wall was 56 inches.  56 INCHES! How many cows can you rip 56 inches off in 2 inch strips? I love my burgers, but this was enough to make me consider going vegetarian. And then I saw it. The master stroke. The belt to end all belts. It was, I kid you not, hanging from a peg above my head and just barely touching the floor. I had to reach up to take it down.

And yes, I HAD to take it down. Why did I have to take it down? Because I had to wrap this thing around my waist two full times. Dude, it was a more than six foot belt. Now, I’m no slim jim here, but…damn. that’s a lot of Twinkies.

And I’m not talking the cream-filled golden snack cakes. I’m talking about the chubby pole dancers named Twinkie in the employ of your lesser quality strip clubs all across North Jersey.

I think I need a delicious shake for breakfast, another for lunch, and then a sensible dinner. Not for me, just in honor of the dude who is filling out that belt. I mean, seriously, if you are so large that I would not be tall enough to be your belt…I don’t think I can mock you. I think I can only applaud, with an almost silent golf clap, for you, large sir, are a true champion.

Life

Where there’s smoke…

  • by Drew

I’m heading to the dentist today. Just a checkup, along with my 4 year-old’s first cleaning and my 7 year-old’s second filling. I don’t really mind going to the dentist, even when I need work done, but I am a little hesitant this time.

Like I said, it has nothing to do with fear of pain or anything like that. It’s actually because I have a health savings account. Weird, huh?

Yeah, usually I love this thing. I have pretax money set aside form my paycheck and when I have any medical expense, I just use the special debit card. The problem is, whenever I get dental work done, I start getting letters form the provider. I need to prove that it was a legitimate medical expense. And thus begins the paper war.

See, my regular health insurance provides Explanation of Benefit forms, my dental does not. And without these EOB forms, it is a struggle to find the correct piece of paper to make the debit card people leave me alone. I have gotten itemized lists of services with handwritten notes from the providers, all kinds of stuff, but they want that EOB. and I can’t get one.

Want to know what is so special about the EOB? Even though they say it is proof of “legitimate” expenses, the EOB does not necessarily itemize the work. It’s actually pretty vague and often coded. What it does show, however, is a crucial few numbers. It shows the cost of the procedure, the amount that insurance paid, and the amount that I paid. See, they don’t want me to attempt some sort of fraud by double-dipping and getting reimbursed, tax free, for something that was covered by insurance.

OK, yeah, like I’m going to risk my job and insurance and serious medical fraud charges to get a few hundred bucks pre-tax. I mean, remember, the only way to get access to this money is to put it aside from my paycheck. It’s my money, the only benefit is that it is essentially untaxed income. And there’s a $5000 cap or something like that, so what is my maximum takeaway possible? A few hundred? Maybe a grand?

Yeah, that’s worth it.

Anyway, I don’t begrudge the provider because they are supposed to police this stuff and make sure the expenses are legitimate…but that’s not what they’re actually doing. That’s what everybody says they’re doing, but it’s not true. They’re not interested in the legitimacy of the procedures. Refusing my itemized list of services proved that. They are only interested in making sure that I’m not trying to get away with income tax-avoidance on $150 or so.

How’s that for  valuable use of time?

Noise

Is there anybody here…

  • by Drew

who’d like to change his clothes into a uniform?

No? Don’t know the old protest songs. Well, kid, keep wearing your wife beater tee and you sideways baseball cap. Keep doing 60 on our little country street, blasting Eminem and Slipknot. Keep coming home with new dents on that ridiculous import with the Battlestar Galactica spoiler. Keep shooting nasty looks at the neighbors who shake their heads at your pathetic, juvenile display.

Pretty soon getting an auto insurance quote or polishing your spinning rims will be the least of your worries. Pretty soon the cops are going to get tired of cutting you breaks. Pretty soon your teachers and counselors are going to write you off. Pretty soon your parents are going to throw your delinquent ass out.

Then what are you going to do? You going to try and run with the big boys or are you maybe going to turn your wife beater and baby banger kicks in for a pack and a bayonet. Gonna put some decent kids’ necks on the line while you try to figure it out in the big boy sand box?

Please.

I wanna see him. I wanna wish him luck. I wanna shake his hand, wanna call his name, put a medal on the man.

Life

Relapse

  • by Drew

I was writing about my last bout with poison ivy, and yeah, it sucked, but there’s more to the story. I guess I shouldn’t say it was my last bout, it was just my last confirmed bout. Or, maybe semi-confirmed. The thing is, in the years since, I have had these relapses.

I haven’t been able to confirm another contact with the vile weed, but these annual relapses made me suspicious. It seems that whenever the sticky heat of summer descends for the first time, I get a recurrence of the rash. I have chalked it up to heat rash in the past. It is far less severe than my episode 5 years ago, but it seems to manifest in all the same places. I get a few bumps on my wrists, a concentration of bumps on my calves, and a few other spots.

This year, however, my annual relapse is a little out of control. It seems to be waning now, and I have a scheduled doctor visit in a couple days where I plan to discuss it all, but I am not a happy camper. I am covered, literally covered, in little red dots. Even the skin on my face and neck feels dry and leathery. Thankfully there are no bumps on my face, but my forehead is bathed in red splotches. I’m seriously surprised that someone in public hasn’t yet suggested a treatment for acne. Even without bumps, I’m looking rough.

The worst part of it all is that the closer I get to the end of the rash (at least, it seems the end is near) the worse it looks. Particularly on my hands and arms and legs and feet. The bumps have gone dark red while my surrounding skin looks exceptionally pale.

Did you ever see Steve McQueen in the movie Papillon? There’s that scene where he’s in a leper colony and the leper tests him, but Papillon knows the leprosy is no longer contagious. I feel like that leper. Totally. So Steve McQueen can come chill with me anytime he wants.

© 2026 Drew Bancroft. All rights reserved. Totally.