I’m trying to climb out of this deadline hole on the Richard Corben script for Swamp Thing #20, but I’ve felt like shit all day and mostly slept. Now I have a strong and sudden urge to start posting to this site. Procrastination is the writer’s worst enemy. It doesn’t help lube up the old creative machine that Corben is a mad genius and a legend either, in fact, it makes getting to the task of writing a script for him downright daunting.

This weekend was the LA Wizard World convention in Long Beach. I have no pictures of it because my digital camera broke in San Fran last month at Wonder Con. Please forgive. Long beach was cool though. Hung with friends, made new ones, all that shit. Survived it easy enough.

But I only barely survived yesterday. Bright eyed Andy Lee and mischievous Kenneth Lillie-Paetz came by to poke around my pad and ended up launching me on an entire day of toxin imbibing (I knew I was in trouble when Ken rolled in with a bottle of Disaronno at fucking noon). It was great fun though; I never get to spend time with comic book friends away from the con madness. At some point we ended up in a shaded courtyard off the beach, drinking wine and watching Andy being filmed while he painted on this chick’s handbag. It really doesn’t get much cooler.

About the time I got those cats on a plane, Charles Brownstein from the CBLDF sent out a transmission telling me his airline had screwed him out of a flight. He was stranded in Santa Monica. So off I went to a blues bar next to the evil cardboard empire that is the 3rd street promenade to meet him. The spiral of substance abuse was impossible to deny at that point. By 3:30 AM I was exhausted, stripped of paint and pouring myself into a cab, desperate to get home and crash.

Now I’m just trying to make it from “Once upon a time…” to “The end” in my script while the buzzards pick at my bones. At least the unusual rainy season is tossing another storm at the Southern California coast. It was awful nice to nap away the day while the rain shuttered against my windows.

It’s late, and the rescue helicopters are pounding the rubbery black sea with their harsh searchlights and gasoline breath. Hope everybody’s okay… if they’re not, then at least the brine will eat well and be able to marry their sweethearts.

Despite this entry, I promise not to make my journal just some murderous log about my useless day-to-day existence. I’ll try to keep it lively. Politics, poetry, photographs, web comics, that sort of stuff. We’ll see how it goes.

But for now I hear a distant lullaby sung on a restless wind, calling me off to dream of rain. Goodnight.

Detail of my apartment.