i've gotta say that i'm pretty excited right now. my sister just gave birth to her first baby, my first niece. i haven't been able to talk to her about it yet, since she's in France and 6 hours in the future (and thus most likely asleep already after her certainly grueling day), but i'm excited nonetheless.

my first thought was that i have to get to the baby store and buy something for the little one. i plan to be an uncle of the "spoiling rotten" variety for as long as i can manage. only on occasion will i pull out the "mean as a snake and twice as ugly" uncle role, a part so well played by my own uncle "Red"–a man who, even in his (probably) late 50's to early 60's, still makes me fear the "titty twister," toe yank, ear grab, or good old-fashioned chase-down-bear-hug-tickle-of-death (the tickle-of-death usually consisting of very firm and painful pressure to the ribs and/or large chunks of skin… not so much a tickle as an attempt to break something).

now that was a hell of a sentence. sometimes i surprise even myself.

anyway. i'm excited. i'm an uncle. pictures to follow as soon as they're received.
**Update** as you may've noticed, pictures have been added to the picturebar at the right there, and i've even added 4 *more* pictures since adding the first batch. check out the growing devlin family gallery

now, in other news, i did finally get the pictures from sharon's wedding scanned, sized, and uploaded, so you can go check out the (unfortunately rather small) gallery for some shots of the beautiful bride and the reception.

yes, they're a bit dark. i, being a person who generally hates flash photography, neglected to bring my flash along, and the lighting just wasn't up to the task. this was also, of course, before getting my swanky new digital camera.

i also threw up a second new gallery from the same roll of film, this one of my and paul's cats Zoe and Harriet.

last but not least, i finally updated lucifigousprick.com with information about the last show, which, while fun, was also quite frustrating in many ways. more about that later, perhaps, or just go to the site and you can probably piece it together.

geh. to cover for the ridiculous amounts of time i've needed off work this past month, i've had to trade a bunch of shifts with other people. i'm now paying the ultimate price by sitting here at my desk on a saturday morning. technically it's saturday afternoon, right now, but i wouldn't even be up yet under normal circumstances, so i'll still call it morning.

clyde actually decided to wake me up at 7am, this morning. i was a little pissed off, mainly because i still had two hours left to sleep. i politely told her to go to hell and escorted her back downstairs.

it's also nice and rainy outside, so it feels like time is crawling by.

i guess the good thing is that i'm out of here by 7pm. the fact that 7pm is five and a half hours away is the big problem i have.

i think i'll have myself a nice nap when i get home.

not much else is going on, really. the girlfriend has gone home for the weekend. something about going out of town with her family to visit her sister. hope she's having fun.

paul curry just emailed to let me know that i owe a grand total of $151.50 in fines for my little traffic ticket from a few weeks ago. the reason my case was lost? the cop that wrote the ticket – that didn't need to be there – that i actually never saw that morning (and i was there good and early) somehow took my case jacket out of the docket box and carried it around for 90 minutes, not even trying to locate me. luckily paul was able to locate it and get two charges dismissed, leaving me with the previously mentioned fine.

thanks a million to paul curry. he's a prince amongst men.

it's been an eventful week, i'd say…

we went up to chicago over the weekend to see radiohead. the tickets said the show started at 7pm. we then drove the hour from chicago to the place where the show was. well…then we got stuck in radiohead parking traffic for another hour. not a big deal, though…we ended up getting there at about 7:30. well…not a big deal until we found out that they started the show early and that radiohead was already playing. we only missed about 4 songs, but it was 4 songs too many.

what we saw of the show was great, though.

tuesday was the one year mark for my girlfriend and i. we went out shopping (not my choice) and then out to eat at the place where we had our first date. the dining experience was kinda piss poor, though. we got sat right next to a server station and a side entrance to the kitchen. we basically had to deal with servers stocking all of their glasses and people whizzing by us. the girlfriend's dinner was lukewarm (at best) by the time it got to us. i wanted to complain, but she wouldn't let me. it all worked out, though…she liked my dinner just fine.

so…this morning i had court. i get there at the proper time and i wait. i wait and wait and no one ever calls my name. i ask the prosecutor to check on it, as my name is on the docket in two different listings, so i wanted to make sure things got taken care of. he brushed me off and so i sat and waited some more.

as fate would have it, my friend paul curry walks into the court room. somehow it had completely slipped my mind that he was a lawyer. he says he'll help me get out of there in a speedy fashion. he checks all the court cases and can't find mine, despite the fact that i have a case number and everything. he checks a couple of different areas and even goes across the hall to the clerk's office to see if they have it. no dice. at this point paul makes copies of all the important documents and then tells me to go ahead and leave. he told me that if my case didn't show up before he left, that he would be back for another case in the evening. he was fairly certain that it would turn up by then, at which point he could get it put back on the docket and resolved quickly enough.

many thanks to paul for being such an ace guy.

and now i'm stuck at work…

well, it was almost inevitable. yet another David vs. Goliath story, with David on the losing end.

Hawley-Cooke Booksellers, that local bastion of independent business for 25 years, the annual Best of Louisville winner, and consistent home away from home for the literate elite, has finally bowed to the pressure of competition against national and multinational chain stores. the sale of Hawley-Cooke to Borders has a kind of circular and poetic logic to it, but that doesn't erase the sting and air of defeat.

i worked at Hawley-Cooke for a little over 2 years, and, despite the lousy pay (at least, 'til i landed the "webmaster" position, for a time), it was one of the best jobs i ever had, and the employees were some of the best people i've ever had the pleasure of working with. in fact, if i hadn't been fired from that job, i'd probably still be there ('cause i'm not entirely sure i could've made myself quit, even in my own best interest, and despite the ire i felt for one of the owners).

the plight of the locally owned business has always been one of those personal soapbox topics for me, and if you get me started, i'll rail for hours against the Wal-Marts, McDonalds, Barnes & Nobles, and Starbucks of the world.

i will accede that there are certain benefits the national chain stores can bring to the table–lower prices, better selection, and potentially better quality (except, of course, in the case of McDonalds who'd put cat shit in a bun and call it a "new taste sensation!"). but the only thing the national chains can't guarantee, and in most cases are not likely to provide, is the level of service and "human element" that the locally-owned business must provide as a matter of survival.

as a locally-owned business, it is imperative that you provide uncompromising service with a human touch, so that your customers will pick your business over the other options. a relationship must be established that will make the customer want to support you despite the convenience or lower prices they might find with a competitor. this is something Hawley-Cooke managed to do for many years, excepting, of course, the occasional lapse, oversight, or grumpy employee. obviously however, sometimes even this isn't enough. and really, there is no other way for a local business to compete against a national chain, and as it's been proven time and again, the people of this nation will over time almost inevitably choose the plastic apple over the slightly bruised–but real–one. hell, even i've gone into Barnes & Noble more than Hawley-Cooke in the past two years, because it's closer to where i work. it's a difficult trap to avoid, and the sinister aspects are well-hidden behind the wood paneling and fancy signage.

there is still at least one "major" (if you count 2 smallish locations as major) independent bookseller in this town, so, the next time you're in a literary mood, seek out the nearest Carmichael's Bookstore and support local business. i can almost guarantee that if they don't have what you're looking for in stock, they can order it for you.

thanks to ben for gently breaking this news to my non-media-consuming ass in the first place, and for the ready-to-steal link to the news article.

i'm really trying to be better about updating aruond here. i realized that before my last post it had been a full month, so under a week isn't so bad, right?

right?

oh well…

a minor brouhaha has developed over my now aborted attempt to post all the issues of the alan moore/neil gaiman class miracleman online. it's out of print and the rights to the series are currently tied up in court because of a certain ex-spider-man artist who cares more about homerun baseballs and toys than drawing comics. i even got a cease and desist from neil's lawyer. this nice little letter was picked up by a few comics news sites and has been labelled "the nicest cease and desist ever." whatever.

we're going back up to chicago this weekend to see radiohead. they're actually playing in east troy, wisconsin, but who's keeping score?

there's new sets up over at transmission3000. two rocket from the crypt shows from 2001. i've got a rodan set on the way.

here's a few short reviews of some of the comics from last week…

GOTHAM CENTRAL #10:
Great issue, but I thought Batman's involvement kinda ruined it. I'd like to see the cops take care of things on their own.

TEEN TITANS #2:
I'm hooked on this series. I thought the whole "I'm the leader" argument was a little truncated, though. I'm guessing Johns wanted to throw it into a few panels and then trot it back out later on down the line.

KINGPIN #3:
Bruce Jones is writing a tight little series, here. I've always been interested in the Kingpin when he's written properly (like in Bendis' current run of Daredevil), and here I think he is. I love Sean Phillips' art, but his Kingpin just looks kinda dopey. There's no real menace there, i guess. This could be just because Sean's only doing breakdowns, but…

MARVEL 1602 #1 (Of 8):
Great first issue. Gaiman sunk his hooks into me right off the bat. I'm really into the various mysteries of this story. Andy Kubert is really kicking some ass on this one, as well. Helped in no small part by Isanove's brilliant colors.

TROUBLE #2 (Of 5):
I don't know why everyone is bitching…I really like this book. It could just be that I'm a total sucker for the Dodsons' art, but whatever.

ULTIMATE X-MEN #36:
Oh boy! Another issue of Ultimate Marvel Team-up! I'd much rather this book actually be about the X-Men, you know. It's actually starting to get on my nerves.

POWERS #33:
Bendis is starting to tie this arc together nicely. I almost forgive him for that whole monkey thing.

PUFFED #2 (Of 3):
Crosland's art blows me away. I'm really enjoying the story that Layman's telling here, as well. That giant dragon about made my eyes pop out of their sockets.

alright…now that i've cheated and made this post longer…i'm out.

i keep on neglecting this here weblog. i blame it on the fact that work has been insanely busy, as of late, and i spend an inordinate amount of time just farting around on the computer when i finally get home. or maybe it's writer's block. or maybe i'm just lazy.

krazy fest was the weekend beore last. we had a lot of fun hanging out and watching the endless parade of good bands. friday was spent hanging out with tall, since it was his last day in town. we had a good time and ended up getting seriously trashed by the time we had to take him to the airport. you know…at 6am.

krazy fest sunday was spent hanging out with bob, since he was in town with that band of his. we basically sat up at the crab shack for a while, drinking a good amount of beer. in the sun. always a good time.

the week seemed to blur past and then we get to this past weekend…

the girlfriend and i decided to go up to chicago for the wizardworld comic convention. this has to be one of the most geeky things i've ever done in my entire life, but i don't care. not at all. it was a ton of fun. i ended up hanging out and talking with a lot of my favorite comic creators and scored a ton of original sketches by most of them. i had my little theme going, so i had them all do hellboy. you can see them all here.

i also picked up some wizardworld exclusive comics that i realized i didn't really want, at all. i've since put them up no ebay, so if you want to buy something, check out my auctions. I'll be adding a ton of old 7" records to ebay in a few days, so make sure to check back.

ummm…yeah. that's about it.

jess' wedding gallery

Day Four: oh goodness, if any day on this trip were a potential candidate for some moderately successful stand-up-comedian to base an inane sitcom on, this would have been the day, or at least the morning.

so, we get up at the ass-crack of dawn, because i in my infinite wisdom neglected to remember that one of my best friends was getting married. i had received the invitation in plenty of time, but hadn't considered the need to commit the date to memory because i a) never plan things that far in advance, and b) knew that as the date approached, it would get mentioned at least once and preparations would have to start being made at some point before-hand.

so, yes, i forgot. not only did i forget, but i planned a trip out of town for that very weekend. luckily, after realizing the utterly inexcusable error i'd made, i was able to wrestle the airline (wasn't that hard, really, they were quite nice) into bumping us up to an earlier flight, but just sara & i–not our traveling companions.

anyway, back to the story at hand, which i believe left off somewhere around the dawn of a stand-up-comedian's ass-crack, or something.

we figure we're doing fine. a teeny-tiny bit behind schedule, perhaps, but still plenty of time to get to union station via the metro, which has a stop only two blocks from the hotel.

little do we know that the Metro doesn't start running until much later than 6 something AM on Sundays.

Metro's closed. We walk back to the hotel and talk to the desk clerk to explain our situation and ask for advice. luckily, another hotel customer who'd just checked out had hailed a cab, and was on her way to, of all places, the very airport we needed to get to–in Baltimore. so, we asked and were granted permission to share her cab, which ended up saving her some money, and us as well, if we'd ended up having to get our own.

disaster averted, we made it to the airport in time, boarded the plane (finally) and were headed for home.

the wedding is scheduled for 3:00pm. we arrive in Louisville around noon. after sara's mom picks us up and takes us home, i have to leave straight-away and head for the mall to pick up my un-tried-on tuxedo.

no trouble at the mall, no trouble with the tux, i realize i actually have enough time (barely) to head back to the house to kick my feet up for exactly 10 minutes before i have to leave again to make it to the wedding in time to figure out what exactly it is i'm expected to do.

i meet the puffin at home, and we chat briefly, then head out. of course, once we get there, there's still almost a full hour and a half before the ceremony begins, time that will be filled with stuffing ourselves into suits and getting pictures taken with the sun burning holes in our retinas.

that finally out of the way, we retreat inside and watch as the guests arrive. Jess finally takes a few moments to explain to me how the whole processional thing is going to work, and where i'll need to stand, and what direction i should face and whatnot. no problem, i may as well have done this a hundred times. paul & I are, after all, professional best men for hire.

the ceremony / cookoff begins. the sun is beating unmercifully down on us in our plastic shoes and thick ass black clothing. i think i sweated out more water than i typically drink in a week. no one passed out though, so that was a good thing.

the ceremony was nice, if a tad bit long winded… perhaps it just felt that way to me because the time-center of my brain was actually melting and dripping out of my right ear.

after the ceremony, the beer and wine flowed freely, and dinner was served. we (paul, sara, and I) rounded up the rest of the crew (brian & elizabeth, and jim & lori) to share a table in the main guests of honor dining room. the food was quite good, and aside from a moment where one of the employees of the reception hall told me to put away my flask (since hard liquor is against the rules), it was quite enjoyable.

after the dinner, there was a bit of socializing, sara and i went out and took several photos in the gardens, and then hooked back up with the rest of the crew to hang out and chat

most of the guests seemed to depart pretty quickly, probably at least partly because the reception was split up into a "main" room and a "other friends" room. and since the largest portion of the crowd was outside of the "main" room where the dancing was supposed to take place, i think they just decided to call it early and head home.

we stayed and hung out while brian, elizabeth, jim, and lori all drank copious amounts of wine. after a time, we decided it was about time to leave, so i had to run get my tux. the room was locked, and after getting one of the guys in charge to unlock it for me, we found that my tux wasn't in there. i was a bit concerned for a moment, but figured that john had probably picked it up. so, then i had to hunt him down.

when i finally did find him, he & his buddies were all hanging out by his (dad's?) truck, where all the remaining alcohol and other drinks had been moved, and john was offering for the stragglers to take away whatever they could carry.

after asking john about the tux and learning that his best man had taken it (as he was taking others) so that he could return them all to the rental place at the same time. since i didn't have to worry anymore, i ran off to find the drunkards (and sara) to let them know about the alcoholic bounty that was to be had from the back of a truck.

brian & jim, of course, practically sprinted as fast as their inebriated little legs would carry them.

i'm not sure how much brian made off with, but i know that jim landed at least 6 bottles of various wines, and at least one–if not two–cases of some cheap beer. jim was a happy man

finally the day was coming to a close, and sara and i retired to my house to chill out and decompress from the stressful and tiring but still enjoyable vacation.

as we decided though, the next vacation will involve a beach and very little walking/movement. unless, of course, we go to France soon to visit my sis and my soon-to-be niece or nephew

and that, my friends, is the story of my and sara's first vacation together, and our second attended wedding.

don't forget, enjoy the gallery!

due to the clamoring of my adoring public (hi Jennifer!), and since i finally managed to get off my ass and get the newest LP show flyers up on the site and get it updated, now seemed like a good time for a quick update.

in case you're wondering, yes, didn't quite make it to a post about the final day in DC/Jess' wedding yet, but… i'm getting there. maybe tomorrow when i'm taking a lazy half-day off work.

anyway, so… the festival itself kind of sucked. it was a joke really. yes, we are grateful to have had the experience of playing in that kind of an atmosphere, and we did have something of a good time, but the aspects of the festival that were supposed to be kick ass really weren't.

first off, first thing we get there, we drag our shit up to the gate, and whaddaya know? there're no dollys, no hand trucks, no big burly guys with bandanas waiting to help us lug our equipment to and from the gear storage and stage areas. these were things our festival brochure and the coordinator himself promised us would be there. so, in light of this first and most telling lie, who's glad that we decided not to pack that big ass Farfisa organ? i am, that's who.

i did take the initiative and accosted a Six Flags employee who was pushing around two dollys, and practically begged him for it. it worked, and i was happier. of course, our big grey tub is so damned heavy that it was still a major chore to haul it, even with a dolly. nevertheless my back and arms were mostly saved for the show.

we got to the stage, and the stage manager wasn't around, just his able bodied non-meal-voucher having assistant who was actually fairly helpful. we didn't get our meal vouchers that day because a) the stage manager wasn't there at any point while we were there, and b) because when we got done playing we were just too damned tired to give a rats ass, so jim, lori, and brax all went home. (i stayed and enjoyed the park for a while with my lovely sara).

anyway, i digress. after jim dropped the keyboard (at least 50% of our sound comes from that keyboard) and scared the crap out of us all, we mounted the stage and set up in record time (under 20 minutes, i do believe), then proceeded to have technical difficulties for the next five minutes after we tried to start playing.

once we got the technical issues worked out and got into our first song, it became apparent that we were going to have more issues, dealing with the stage monitors being adjusted for a mental patient with bad hearing in one ear but a good imagination. the monitors sucked. now, admittedly, as paul has pointed out, we could've gotten on the sound guys case a bit and had him adjust things, but my guitar was already feeding back as it was, plus the fact that we've never even worked with a "real" sound guy before, and we just kind of went with it. of course, come to find out after talking to the Pine Club the next day, they had similar issues with the monitor setup ("we couldn't hear shit up there") and they at least have quite a bit of experience between them of working with an engineer on a sound board. so, my conclusion is that the sound guy who was supposedly so experienced really either wasn't, or just couldn't compensate for the crappy equipment or stage dynamics. apparently, it sounded just lovely off-stage so i guess it's not all bad. it's just too bad we couldn't hear the beat and were guessing where we were in the songs half the time.

we did make it through though, and with at least half-a-minute to spare before our scheduled stop time. we hauled ass off stage with bile on our tongues, broke down, and got the hell out of there.

as i said, sara & I stayed and enjoyed the park for a while, if you can call getting bruised and cracked ribs enjoyable. my advice, if you go to Kentucky Kingdom, no matter how simple and "fun" it looks, do NOT ride the Roadrunner Express. that is probably the most violent coaster i've been on, and it's just a step above a kiddie coaster. we walked around for a while after that, but it made my head hurt, and we didn't feel like waiting in long lines, so we left the park and headed back to the house for a movie and some popcorn.

the next day, brax and i headed back out to the "festival", and we also walked around quite a bit. we finally managed to make it to the "big" "main" artists area the Paramarx Arena, and found to our utter lack of surprise, that it was two booths, a stage, and a smaller stage where some lawyer was talking about "how to make it in the music industry" to a crowd of maybe 15 people. yaaay louisville music! there were probably a total of 25 (this is me being generous) people in the "Arena" altogether, including brax & myself. one booth was for the mutual-admiration club called LMIA, the other was for a local recording studio. outside the arena was another stage with a girl doing karaoke… well, it was supposedly original music, i'm sure, but she was just singing over a tape. despite the promised in the festival promotional literature, there was no booth or tent set up for band photos, there was no catering, there were no "industry reps" within eyeshot, at least none set up in any sort of obvious or approachable place. so, with another 90% of the festival promises shattered, brax & i walked back to stage #5 to catch the Pine Club, get some water, and rest our baked and weary bodies.

post pine, we went and rode some roller coasters. Chang is highly recommended, T2 not so much. we walked around a hell-of-a-lot, but when we came up on some long lines at some of the other coasters we were moderately interested in riding, we decided to forego it, and to head home. all-in-all, we were there for maybe 3.5 hours.

it was a worthwhile experience, and we can now say that we've played a theme park, but it's not something we're looking to repeat. no more festivals. only dark, cool, small places where people are there for a reason (those being either a. to drink, or b. to see a rock show).

right now, of course, we're looking forward to August 9th. and you should be too.