OK, I'm really back this time!

OK, crap that was a bit of a bigger break than I thought it would be. Sorry. Anyway, I realize I was about to finish the story of my vacation when my super-cooled, super computer, super died. Now it has been several months and my "memory like a fish" is starting to fail on me. I'm not sure what the hell happened, so maybe Stacy could write in and fill in any holes that I may have left out.

Well, we started the trip by heading up to NYC to see a theater show. Wait, scratch that, it should read, we wanted to start the trip by heading to NYC to see a show but couldn't because Spamalot was sold out for the next three weeks.

So, we started the trip by heading for Boston. This was my first time in Boston and it was great. We headed straight for the downtown area and found the bar that inspired the show Cheers. It is the Bull and Finch Pub and it was great. The atmosphere was very nice (with lots of pictures of the Cheers actors and show) and the food was excellent.

Next we walked around downtown Boston a bit. Talk about historic. This place was so cool! We walked into a cemetery where famous historic people from American history were buried. Who were they you ask? Well, I don't remember, but I do remember that Samuel Adams was buried there. He invited beer I think.

Later we headed up to a small town where the PalaverCon 2005 was being held.

This was a rather large collection of Stephen King geeks (myself included) and everyone was very nice and cool. The guy who is running Donald Grant Publishing's (was that the correct place to put the possessive apostrophe s?) wife seemed to be running the show, and I'm glad she was, because she was very nice and seemed to be dedicated to the show.

The big draw for me was meeting some of my favorite artists like Phil Hale and Michael Whelan. These guys were very cool and did a collaborative art session where they painted 20 pictures together over the course of a few hours (with also cool artist Rick Berry).

Stacy, who had never read The Dark Tower series nor seemed to have a lot of interest in it, still went with me and checked around. At first he seemed really bored, but then some panel members began talking about things like "collecting" and old comics and movies. Suddenly Stacy became very interested.

He got to meet the writer of the The Towering Inferno (Frank M. Robinson), who was this really cool guy who told stories about the '60s and '70s that were very bizarre and really interesting. To give you a taste, he use to be the writer of the Playboy Advisor... that is all you get for a taste, you should go to his website and buy a book and email him for more, trust me, it is worth it! OK, OK a quick story from what I recall.

Frank was the editor of a magazine that was a competitor to Playboy. Every month, Franks magazine would run a comic strip in their issue. Well, as people can tell you (what people, I'm not really sure) Hugh Hefner was a very shrewd business man and wanted to beat his competition. A few weeks before Frank's magazine was about to hit the stands, he gets a call telling him that the comic strip they run has been bought out by Mr. Hefner's company and they could no longer run it.

Now, back in those days they needed weeks to get the layout of a magazine done before it could go to press, not like today where layouts can be changed on the computer in an instant. In essence, Hugh had screwed Frank's magazine big time. Frank was pissed, but he kept his cool. He recalled a story that had been floating around about Hugh regarding a comic strip that Hugh had drawn when he was a lad of 18. Apparently the story went, the comic was so stupid and poorly drawn, it was a source of major embarrassment to Hugh. In fact, no one had even seen these comics, but word on the street was that Hugh wouldn't want anyone to ever see them and do what he could to prevent it. Well having this pseudo-real story and balls the size of watermelons, Frank decides to call his friend, the then current editor of Playboy.

Frank: Hey did you guys know someone bought the strip we usually run in our mag?

PB Editor: Yeah, I had heard about that, that's tough luck.

Frank: Oh, it's not a big deal, we just got a hold of something much better. It's a strip done by a guy named Hugh Hefner. It's not to funny, but I think the readers will enjoy it anyway.

PB Editor: What are you talking about?

Frank: Well, we'll send you a copy of this months issue when it hits the stands so you can check it out...

PB Editor: Uh, wait, what are you talking about?

Frank: Talk to you later.

Of course Frank didn't have any such comic, nor could he even know for sure if such a thing even existed. I think he just knew he had been beaten and wanted to fuck with Playboy a bit. Well to his surprise, the Playboy people call him back and asked him to not run the comic. Well, since Frank didn't even have a comic to run he agreed as long as they remembered that he had done them a big favor. Well a few months down the road his magazine shuts down (as Frank says he saw coming b/c Playboy was killing them in sales) and subsequently, Frank gets a job at Playboy, later becoming editor!

I don't think Frank ever found out if there were any comics floating out there, or even if the editor of Playboy knew if there were. They were just so scared of finding out (and maybe Hugh firing the lot of them) that they just couldn't risk it happening. This was one of the few stories from Frank that I thought was great. Of course, sitting there having him tell it to you live is a much better experience than reading my crappy writing, but sometimes you just have to deal with what you got.

OK, back to the trip. So, instead of spending a day or two at the convention, Stacy started having a good time so we went ahead and did all three convention days there. We had a blast and I ended up spending a ton of cash on some artwork. After the convention was over, we decided to head north to Canada. Nova Scotia here we come! To be continued...

Meanwhile, wet your appetites on this really old review of The Dukes of Hazzard that Chris wrote like five months ago.