Category: FantaCo

The sport of the gods

I’ve mentioned only briefly that I try to play racquetball every weekday. (That HAS been tweaked somewhat by the arrival of the child, but it’s still the goal.)

What I’ve discovered is that racquetball, in some ways, is very much like baseball. BASEBALL? Yes.

  • You have to keep your eye on the ball
  • You must go where the ball is going to be, not where it is
  • Often, you have to back up to get the best defensive angle on the ball
  • Sometimes you hit it well and you’re unsuccessful, while other times you hit it poorly and luck out
  • You have to change your pace
  • It’s often a “matter of inches”
  • You can be down 14-1 and still come back and win

    I’ve played with a lot of guys, and a few women, over the years, but my main three competitors all have a FantaCo connection. Don Labriola was a FantaCo customer, as was Norm Nissen, best man in my wedding to Carol. Don had to stop playing (his knees, I think), but Norman & I are still at it nearly 20 years later.

    Tom Yanni has a more indirect FantaCo connection. He was going out with a woman named Debbie who had a roommate who was friends with FantaCo’s Mitch Cohn. Tom and I played for about 15 years until he got married and moved to Rhode Island. He has a teenaged daughter and a new son, Sam, just a couple weeks older than Lydia.

    You really get to know people quite well when you play racquetball: how often they call a “hinder” on the shot, how often they hit someone with a shot (someone’s almost always going to be hit by the shot, or more rarely, the racquet), how often they argue a call agreed to by the majority, how angry they get with themselves when they muff shots.
    You’ll see a side of people others don’t often see. One guy who we used to play cursed quite often; he was a minister who has since moved to Maryland. (But another minister we used to play, who has since moved to Pennsylvania, was the same on and off the court.)

    I used to play almost exclusively singles (2 of us) or cutthroat (3 of us), but I’ve played more partners in the last year or two than ever before, mostly due to circumstance. (The singles people used to come earlier and the doubles people later, but now we all show up at about the same time.)

    I know one guy who has a bad knee but plays when he can. His wife hid his racquet, but he found it, took it to play, then carefully replaced the racquet to its original place. Another guy had a stress test and was told by his doctor not to play until the test was over. Well, the day after the test, but before the results were in, he was back at it. The game has a devotion practically religious in nature. It was Norm who characterized racquetball as the “sport of the gods”, and he may be right.

    So thanks, Norm, Mike, Alan, Danny, Stanley, and Sherman. Hope Charlie gets better. Hope the elusive Ted shows up sometime.

    • ROG

    The Force is Trying to Suck Me In

    I ran into one of my FantaCo buddies, Joe Fludd, the other day. Joe did some art for the Chronicles series. Anyway, he asked, “Did you see Sith yet?” And I said, “No,” and that I really hadn’t planned to see it. But he seemed very enthusiastic. “It’s everything that you wanted in Episode 1.” Hmm. And, of course, it explains how Anakin becomes Darth Vader.

    Let me look at the PROS and CONS:

    PRO: I really loved the first three Star Wars movies, or Episodes 4-6, if you prefer.
    CON: I was really bored by the fourth film, Episode 1, except for hating a particularly universally loathed character, which I will not name (JJB). So,
    CON: I never saw the fifth film, Episode 2.
    PRO: The sixth (and final, according to George Lucas) film, Episode 3, is playing at the local, independently-owned, recently reopened Madison Theater, right in my neighborhood. I wouldn’t have to go to the mall and/or to some big chain of theaters to see it.
    The Madison has been around since 1929. In 1994, it was sold, renamed the Norma Jean Madison Theater, after Arthur Miller’s ex-wife (or was it Joe DiMaggio’s?) It was closed in 2001, then opened under new management, only to close again in 2003.
    PRO: Carol would like to see it.
    CON: We’d have to get a babysitter, which isn’t always easy. Indeed, we were invited to view the film with another couple this past Thursday, but care for the child became the deciding factor in not going.
    CON: Episode 3 is rated PG-13, and I know why – one of those parental warning pieces appeared in the local paper. The second Raiders film, a scene from which I found a bit disturbing, practically created PG-13. The Hoffinator, who also saw it last week, said it was very good but “dark.”

    The logical solution is to rent Episode 2 (I heard it was on broadcast TV recently, but broadcast TV is a TERRIBLE way to see most movies), THEN go to Episode 3. Based on the box office for the first DAY ($50 million), it’ll probably be around a while.

    And now, this message from the Organic Trade Association, featuring ObiWan Cannoli, Cuke Skywalker, Princess Lettuce, C3 Peanuts, and Artoo Tofu. (Thanks, Anne.)

    ROG

    The culprit

    Rocco Nigro, it’s YOUR fault.

    Rocco was this obnoxious kid that used to come into FantaCo, the (now deceased) Albany comic book store, and haggle over the prices of the back issue comics when I started working there in 1980. Eventually, though, I grew to like him, as did the others, and he started working there, staffing the front of the store occasionally, but also mostly doing mail order. Rocco, incidentally, probably knows more about the Beatles than anyone I know who was born after the group first appeared on Ed Sullivan.

    When Mitch was fired in 1983 (for reasons now lost on me), Rocco was outraged, and he quit. But when I was buried in mail order sometime in 1987, Rocco came in with me one Sunday afternoon, and we all but obliterated the backlog. He did that out of loyalty to me, in spite of his (then) continued enmity towards the store owner. I always appreciated that.

    I worked with him again occasionally at Mitch’s Midnight Comics in 1991 and 1992. And I visited him in HIS store, Crypt O’ Comics, in the mid-1990s. I’d see him occasionally in a couple of book stores he worked at.

    But it had been well over a year since I had last seen him when I went into The Book House an independent book store in Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany in October 2004 looking for my friend Norman, who wasn’t there. Rocco, however, was.

    FGH

    We talked at length about many things, but most intriguing was his high praise of this website by one Fred Hembeck, an artist who had done work published by FantaCo with whom I had lost touch at least a decade earlier. I checked out Fred’s site, liked it, got intrigued by this blogiverse, and the rest is electronic history, and, as I said, Rocco’s fault. You can find out more about Rocco here (May 14) or here (May 14) and, as I understand it, here (May 14).

    Happy birthday, Rocco. BTW, you’re turning 41, in case you’ve forgotten.

    Funny books

    Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day. I’ll probably go over to Earthworld Comics in Albany and pick up SOMETHING. For me, going into a comic book store is often like going to see an old girlfriend. Will I remember why we fell in love? Will I be reminded why we broke up? Or will it be more like, “I’m happy for you in your new life. I’ll see you in another decade or two”?

    I fell in love with comics fairly later in the game. In 1971, my new best friend in college, Mark Klonfas, was into comic books. I wondered why an adult would be into “funny books.” (I won’t say he was a grown-up; he used to perch on the end of his desk like Peanuts’ Snoopy, feigning to be a vulture.)

    But get into comics I did, first with Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1, then Sub-Mariner #50. Luke Cage (Nicholas Cage’s namesake, REALLY) appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #122. Then I noticed that Cage appeared in shadow at the end of #121, and I picked THAT up. That happened to be “The Death of Gwen Stacy.” I got particularly hooked on the web-slinger, and much of the Marvel Universe. (Curse you, Klonfas!)

    Eventually, I worked at FantaCo and for a brief time at Midnight Comics in Albany. This is where the romance soured. There were all of these #0s, and silver and gold “special” editions. I’d be asked, “Is ___ any good?” but it wasn’t about the artwork or the story, it was about whether it would increase in value. Bollocks! When I left Midnight to take my current job in 1992, I quit comics cold turkey.

    I always read in the entertainment press to see how comics are doing, seeing them get reviewed regularly in Entertainment Weekly and the like. And I’m very happy for the industry. But I can’t afford to get into it like I used to, so I view the trip to the store warily, fearing the siren will suck me back in…

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