SDCC It's still fairly early in the morning, and already it's hot. I'm on the trolley and I'm beginning to see the sort of people I'm spending the day with. They come in khaki shorts and ill-fitting t-shirts with superhero logos. They come in spider-man button up shirts and cat ears. Around their necks are lanyards, orange, points of pride. The kid in front of me is sending a text message. "were packed in here so tight i feel like i'm going to aushwitz" I begin to wonder what I'm getting myself in to.

As we pile off the trolley the local commuters breathe a sigh of relief. The heat is still kicking up, and the slew of Darth Vaders, stormtroopers, Boba Fetts and Klingons don't seem to be amused. A voice behind me. "Man there's so many of us. We're like the zombies in Resident Evil. You know that part where the zombies are all bunched together? The zombies in Resident Evil are all bunched together." He's talking to a girl. How did he talk you in to coming? I wonder. Escape! Escape while you're still outside!

I register, get my lanyard. I try to keep it tucked away as well as possible. I then proceed to get terribly, terribly lost trying to find the mezzanine level. I begin to keep mental lists to distract myself.
Number of Klingons spotted (6)
Jedi Knights (20+)
Naruto headbands (about a dozen)
probable virgins (untold)

There are lightsabers, flags, cardboard signs and kitty ears. We are a mass a hundred thousand strong, packed into a convention center to the brimming. I glimpse a stratification of the nerds. There are the middle aged sort, who wander between the vintage comic booths that do some serious transactions. There are a few, like me, who are slightly dazed and overwhelmed, completely unsure of what we've staggered into, yet so hopelessly enamored that we have to keep staring. The teenagers, acne riddled, some desperately clutching to boyfriends and girlfriends, all out to prove something, anything. And then there are the hopeless. One stands behind me while I look at an art booth. He turns to the artist. "I never knew you were the artist of Force of Will. That's sooooo huge. That's really cool. That's really important."
The artist composes. She looks to find words. I look to find a retreat. I stumble into a news crew interviewing a man in full plate armor. "So, your company makes armor? What's your armor made of?"
"Well, this is beaten aluminum, which is pretty light and easy to wear."
"How much would a suit of armor like the one you're wearing sell for?"
"A suit of armor like this would start at around $10,000."
The anchorman composes. He looks to find words. "People BUY that?!"

Yes, people do. And that's the root of the matter, really. Some people want Red Sox season tickets, some people would prefer a semi-authentic 13th century functional suit of armor. I don't think I'm particularly qualified to judge which one is the wiser purchase, but I think I know which one is more fun to watch.  ¶ 7:37 PM 0 Comments

  Oh man Star Wars I love that movie. If you strike me down, I'll become more powerful than you could possibly im-


SHUT THE FUCK UP!   ¶ 12:57 PM 0 Comments

  Story Time Again

Arc of Fire

I’m sitting in a sidewalk café in my flight suit, and a girl named Jeanne is staring across the table at me with a look of bemused curiosity. I fish into my breast pocket for the pack of Lucky Strikes I left there before we lifted off from Liverpool this morning. I extend a cigarette to her, and she smiles and waves it off. She doesn’t speak any English, which is kind of a surprise. Rouen is one of the more metropolitan cities in the area. My cigarette lights easily. The weather is completely different than it was this morning- the mist and fog that was all over earlier has been replaced with rich, warm sunlight that seems to hang in the air. I decide to try talking to Jeanne again. I fish out my chit and look for the words I want. “Where are the Germans? Où sont les Allemands?”

“Allemands?”

“Oui.” Either Jeanie is playing with me or I’m talking to a crazy. Either way it’s a waste of my time. I take a drag from my cigarette and start walking down the street. Eisenhower’s boys must have blown right through here after we hit it, because there’s no sign of any military activity. It should be pretty safe to shack up for a while, and then I ought to look for a radio to make contact with Liverpool for a pickup. Just my luck to run into one of the last squadrons of Messerschmitts that Jerry threw up before we hammered the runways.

This is my first time flying into combat, and I’m jumpy. The B-17 is a hell of a plane, and the hop down from Iceland was pie, but we don’t have any sort of escort and the Limeys have a lockdown on the night sorties. I’m sitting in the briefing room with the other pilots, staring as the major runs his walking stick up and down a map of Europe. Our target is a factory block in Hamburg, which means a few hundred miles of flying in broad daylight without any sort of protection. I hope my gunners are up to a little work. I step out of the briefing room and start heading down the flight line to my bomber, stopping to admire her from a fair distance. She’s ugly as sin, bristling with fifty-cals and sporting a tail the size of a small building, but she’s tough and reliable. I walk up to the beast and kick out the chocks. A mechanic is tinkering on the number one engine, and he looks up. “Going for a spin?”

“Yeah, just a quick jaunt across the continent.” The quaver in my voice makes it sound anything but easy.

“Well, it looks like these clouds should hold, so flak shouldn’t be a problem today. First sortie?”

“Yeah.”

“Best of luck, mate.” He nods quietly and claps me on the shoulder. It doesn’t make me feel any better. I climb up into the cockpit and start the takeoff checklist. The mechanic drives off in his cart as the motors roar to life. An assistant is guiding me to my place in the flight line. The lead bombers are lining up at the end of the runway and my hands are shaking. I close my eyes and pull the throttle.

My cigarette is about finished, and Jeanne is walking down the street behind me. I turn and let her catch up. She’s dressed in rags, which isn’t much of a surprise these days on the continent. As soon as she meets me, she tugs on my sleeve and beckons me to follow. I oblige as she jogs around a corner. A few steps later and I’m standing in front of an alleyway. A man steps out of the shadows, a rifle cradled in his shoulder. My hand flickers to my sidearm, but Jeanne swats me down. The soldier steps into the warm light and I recognize the olive drab of an American uniform. “You one of Eisenhower’s boys?” I ask.

“Eisenhower? Never heard the name…I fight under Pershing.” I suddenly realize how old his uniform is.

“How long have you been in Rouen, soldier?”

“Couldn’t say, mate…bit of a time, though.”

Life in Liverpool has become a routine. I head back to my quarters after a staff meeting outlining this month’s targets and planned sorties. I’ve shacked up in a fairly nice tent with Havermeyer, my bombardier, and he’s set about making it into something really classy. I’m just thankful we don’t have to shoot any rats out of it like some of my squadron mates. Havermeyer is sitting on his cot, scribbling on a note pad. “Letter home?” I ask.

“Nah, just writing down names I thought up.”

My crew and I have six red bombs painted on the nose of our beast, and it still doesn’t have a name. Blanchard, my copilot, wants to name her Bella May, after a girl of his back home, but the rest of us don’t particularly like it. Then again, I’m not sure any name will really cut it for the lady that takes us to the jaws of hell and back. I still get the shakes every time we spin up our engines. We’re slated to fly over Hanover tomorrow, and the last raid there took out half a squadron. “Well, we ought to come up with something, it’s bad luck if she flies nameless.”

“Well, we’ve done okay so far. Why should we get to it now?”

“Supreme Command wants another raid on Hanover.” Havermeyer looks up at me.

“They can’t be serious…Jerry chewed up half a flight the last time we tried to hit that place!”

“I know,” I say grimly, “evidently we didn’t hit it hard enough for them.”

“Of course we couldn’t hit it hard! There must have been at least three squadrons of fighters around the factory we were gunning for!”

“Well, nothing we can do about it except to name our bomber and make sure our guns are all cleared.” Havermeyer stares at me, shakes his head, and fishes in his pocket for a cigarette.

The American’s name is Harvey, and he does his best to explain what’s going on. We start walking, him on my left and Jeanne on my right. Evidently there are a number of soldiers in this town, milling about for who knows how long. Jeanne is something of a local, having been here longer than anyone else. The weather is always sunny, the days are always warm. It’s like some sort of soldier’s paradise, a Fiddler’s Green for the grunts. I’m introduced to Meyer, a German corporal who was slated to leave his tour of the trenches in 1915, hopped in a truck, and stepped out onto the streets of Rouen. Hicks is a British private who was fighting against Napoleon’s forces when he stumbled into town one night. Follette was a French soldier who was assigned to guard Rouen by Robespierre. One night he went to sleep and woke up in a new village. For whatever reason, this town seems to call soldiers out from the surrounding countryside and gives them a place to live. I could get used to it here. Jeanne smiles at me. The sun hangs in the air like water.

A mile above Hanover and the air is on fire. Thousands of tracer rounds tear through the sky and we’re twirling through it like some sort of suicidal dancer. The voice of Jacobs, my tail gunner, crackles in my headphones. “Jerry on the six!”

“Copy that, copy that,” I say as I thumb my intercom, “Havermeyer, how close are we to getting out of here?”

“Gimme thirty seconds, Cap.”

“I don’t know if we have thirty seconds,” I growl. Tracers are whipping by either side of the cockpit. I key Jacobs and get no response. “Havermeyer! Open the bays, we gotta get out of here!”

“Roger.” The plane shudders as two thousand pounds worth of explosives comes pouring out the belly. I pull the B-17 up into a tight corkscrewing climb, trying to shake the fighter that’s clinging to my tail. I scream on the radio for help, I scream to Jacobs, I scream to God. Bullets scream through my left wing, blowing out the number one engine. The Messerschmitt peels past us as we go into a stall. The plane rolls, and I look up and see the city above me in minute detail. I catch my breath, goose the throttle, and finish the roll, leveling out the plane. The enemy fighter pulls away, and starts to go into a lazy turn to finish us off. Havermeyer hops on the nose gun and opens fire while my turret gunner joins suit. Jerry throws himself into a tight barrel roll and jerks around to face us. For a brief second we are flying headlong at each other, guns blazing. Then Havermeyer rakes his gun across the Messershmitt’s engine and it goes up in a sudden blast. A mile above Hanover and I’m alive in a nameless bomber.

Jeanne is staring at me with a strange look in her eye. I turn to Harvey, who nods reflectively. “Have you learned the long and short of this place, mate?” He asks.

“What are you talking about?”

He chuckles. “I guess not. There are secrets in this town, and it’s time for you to learn them. Follow her.”

Jeanne walks down the main boulevard, heading towards the center of town. I catch a whiff of smoke on the air, biting at my tongue. As we get closer to the town square the smell of smoke thickens and coalesces until wisps of ash are visible. I turn to Jeanne, who meets my gaze and takes my hand. We walk to the middle of the town square, and now the smoke is too thick to see anything. I stumble through the haze, and realize I can no longer feel Jeanne’s hand. For a brief second, the smoke clears. Through the hole in the smoke I see a large pile of branches and brush- an unlit pyre. The smoke has a life of its own, lazily tracing circles around me and the pyre. Now I see Jeanne from a different time and place. She is dressed in a simple shirt and trousers, her hair cut like a man’s, and iron shackles are on her hands and legs. She is being led by two men in helmets and spears. As they lead her to the pyre, a priest intones a list of crimes. The look on her face is calm, tranquil, beatific. The realization hits me.

Jeanne.
Joan.

The pyre fades and I see the flaming wreck of a B-17.

High above Rouen, I’m smiling to myself. Jerry is on the run, and we have a cloud of P-51’s to fly cover for us. This war looks winnable, and already bomber crews are getting letters from Supreme Command saying they’re deactivated. My radio crackles. It’s Bluth, the point bomber. “Looks like I missed the target. Wings, line up for another pass.”

“Copy that. I’ll set this one up.” The rest of the squadron peels off and goes to a higher orbit. I drop a few thousand feet and start cruising in. Out of nowhere, my plane shudders. “Gunners, gunners! Eyes open!”

My ball-turret gunner responds. “Messershmitts on the seven!”

This isn’t good at all. Three planes come streaking up from below, and peel around to line up a second pass. I break out of the bomb run and attempt to roll some evasive maneuvers. The rest of my squadron is coming around to assist me, but it’s too late. I can hear my heart beating as a Messershmitt’s cannon pounds through the bomb bay.

The blazing corpse of my plane tears a streak of fire across the sky.

  ¶ 5:46 PM 0 Comments

  I don't have to explain myself to any of you.  ¶ 3:21 PM 0 Comments