Will Hines Dot Net

I’ve been Freedying on “You Can’t Hurry Love” and “This Old Heart of Mine” — probably heard them 45 times each in the past 24 hours. Long live Holland-Dozier-Holland.

Speaking of great songwriters, every now and then I am blown away remembering that Buddy Holly was 22 when he died. “Crying, Waiting, Hoping” is one of my favorite songs, and he probably wrote it while riding the bus to the Lubbock, Texas Genius Showers or something.

Then again, Jerry Siegel came up with the story for Superman when he was 19, too.

These kids!

I work in an office with three dogs. A Jack Russell terrier, a black lab and a golden retriever/chow-chow mix.
There’s also 10 humans.
It’s one big room with nice brick walls and a lot of light.

It is often very loud in here.

A new Hellboy collection came out last week — a rare and beautiful treat. Kevin had warned me, so I made sure to swing by St. Mark’s Comics and grab my copy. I had heard of Hellboy for years but never bothered to check it out because it seemed like it would be dumb action comics aimed at would-be tough guys who are scared of girls. Cigar-smoking devil-man in a trenchcoat? No thanks. Too much like Wolverine and I haven’t been 12 years old in years. But when I heard there was a movie coming out, I asked Kevin, and he said it was pretty good, lent me all the trades that had come out to that point, and I couldn’t put them down.

It turns out that Hellboy is one of the coolest comics to come out in years. It isn’t a dumb action comics at all. The art is moody, stark and beautiful. The stories are bold and patient. And Hellboy himself is a grumbling, hard-drinking and warm personality — as riveting as his super-bright red hue — which balances out the moodiness of the comic in the same way that Han Solo’s sense of humor balanced out the overly-earnest world of Star Wars.

Hellboy a half-devil/half-human whose destiny was (is?) to bring about the apoclypse of the world, but instead was rescued from hell as an infant and raised by the U.S. Army and a good-hearted occult professor, who adopted him. Pretty typical comics fare so far. But then Mike Mignola the creator/writer/artist, does a couple of great things:

One, no “normal” people are scared of Hellboy. He is treated by all who meet him like a Humphery Bogart character, a street-smart and scruffy detective there to help them. A typical Hellboy comic starts with a frail old lady asking Hellboy for help in regards to some horrible demon visiting her at night. It’s a relief to not have to wade through anyone’s introduction to Hellboy — let’s just get to the story.

Two, the awesome juxtaposition between Hellboy’s salt-of-the-earth persona and the mythic seriousness of the rest of his world. His enemies are invariably centuries-old H.P. Lovecraftian collections of ectoplasm and tentacles, speaking in the third person and demanding the End Of All Things. They’re usually rooted in actual myths or folk tales obscure enough that only Neil Gaiman would have heard of the sources. Then Hellboy responds by punching them in the face and then saving someone’s dog. I think Mignola must feel the same conflict: he has reverence and love for the details of these old myths, but also has a fanboy’s impatience to get to the action.

Three, most of all, the art. Generous swatches of blackness in all panels that would make Jamie Hernandez proud. Stark, simple shapes in full Kirby-esque action poses. Horrific Aztec statues peering from the shadows, faces twisted into screams. Bright colors that make old-school Golden age comics look as muted as a dentist’s waiting room. Frequent moments of calm, filled with tension and anticipation. Dialogue is kept to a minimum, as it is in most confident comics. Terrific fun.

More and more often, Mignola is handing off the drawing and sometimes even the writing duties to other people. Go grab this helping of 100% Mignola Hellboy — the last collection came out in 2002 — it’s a good time.

I’ve been on a CD-buying spree. Yes, I still buy them. I don’t trust LimeWire since my iMac’s hard drive crashed, and my cheapo .mp3 player can’t accept songs from the iTunes store. So I’m kicking it 1998 style. Anyway, I strutted into Earwax on Bedford Avenue Sunday morning — partly because I was hungry for still more music, and partly because it’s one of the only stores that opens in Hipster Williamsburg before noon. It’s a decently hip record store, I guess. I can’t totally tell. There’s no Billy Joel in the store window and there are posters for things like “Vampyros lesbos” so it FELT cool. And I like the name Earwax.

I get a bit self-conscious about what I order in places like that. I asked for the new Calexico CD, and felt proud for knowing of Calexico and that they had a CD (never mind that I had heard of them from a web production company’s blog). Nice start to the order. Then I followed up with asking for the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs. A little predictable for Williamsburg, but solid.

Then I suddenly remember how I’d loved Stickerbook’s cover of Careless Whisper the night before at The Shark Show and I blurted out “oh, how about Wham’s Make It Big?” It was answered with quick beat of silence and then a simultaneous “no” from the two guys behind the counter.

It’s a good album.

I can’t find my second volume of Love and Rockets comics. I had TWO copies at one point and I can’t find either. Does anyone out there have them?

Not that I mind re-buying it. I tend to buy 2 or 3 copies of most of the Hernandez Bros. stuff since it’s released first as single issues and then again as trades.

Two days ago, I fried an egg for breakfast, put it on two pieces of wheat bread, and ate it. I haven’t thought too hard, but I’m pretty sure this is the first non-cereal breakfast I have ever prepared myself. I am 35 years old.

I resent cooking the way all of our parents resent computers. It’s not that I dispute its value as a skill, but I don’t like doing it because I am bad at it. And because I’m bad at it, I never want to learn enough to become un-bad at it. Normally, I don’t like admitting when I fall into classic “man-woman” behavior (“Women be shopping!”) but this is a relevant anecdote: Eliza was over last week and talked me through searing (or something) a piece of salmon.

Her: “Put some butter in a pan.”
Me: “How much butter and which pan?”
Her: (holding fingers apart) “This much.” (pointing) “Your only pan.”
Me: (wanting an exact number) “How much is that?”
Her: (doing it herself) “That much.”

And I realized that dealing with me in the kitchen is like what I feel like talking people through with computer problems.

Me, on phone with client: “Close your web browser.”
Client: “How?”
Me: “You see how your web browser is a rectangle, and there’s an X in the upper right hand corner. Click that X.”
Client: “Why didn’t you just say that?”

I have always felt those people HATED their computers, and that if they just LIKED them a bit more, it would all be so much easier. But I realize now that to them, it’s not hate. It’s disinterest and an discomfort with being completely at sea. They would order all their computer service to-go if they could.

Many times in my life, I’ve been willing to put myself out of my comfort zone and learn despite the awkwardness of sucking: traveling through Europe, moving to NYC, learning improv comedy, learning computer programming, trying new types of clothes, exploring new types of music, approaching near-strangers at parties where I know no one.

But with cooking, never. Sometimes I think it’s because I don’t care enough about food to even know what I like and don’t like. Or it’s the time: I invariably run from my day job to some sort of comedy nonsene, not getting home until 10:30 at least, at which point cooking will always lose when it’s a choice between spending an preparing a bland salmon and getting sticky chicken and broccoli in my hands in 10 minutes. Or something more personal and powerful? I sometimes wonder if it’s because my mom died when I was 16, and I’m waiting for her to come back and teach me how. Then again, it wasn’t like I had any interest in learning when I was 16, either.

Whatever the reason, I don’t have the foggiest notion of even the most basic cooking tasks.

But I’ve been trying to write every morning. And I’m starving, right away upon awakening. And if I go to a deli, my momentum of writing is broken.

So two days ago at 7:15am, I lumbered over to my skillet. I turned the flame on high, and rubbed about four Scrabble tiles worth of butter along the bottom. After two minutes, I could feel the heat coming off of the pan. I cracked an egg and spilled its contents in the pan. Because my apartment is badly sloped, everything pooled to the side in a thick pool, and that’s normally where I’d quit. But instead I tilted the pan and held it so everything was even, then turned the flame down as low as it would go. In two more minutes, the egg started to harden, resembling a novelty fried egg that you’d leave on someone’s desk or something. I flipped it, and laid on some pre-sliced cheddar cheese, whose edges softened into the whiteness until it looked like a patch in a quilt. I scooped everything out onto a piece of wheat bread and gobbled it like a rude child. Twas a bit rubbery in spots, runny in others. But edible! Decent, even. And fast. Including rinsing the pan so the butter wouldn’t cake, the whole thing took about 15 minutes.

I guess that wasn’t so hard.

I setup another page of links. I need a better title for it. Right now it’s “Elegant Solutions”:

http://www.willhines.net/mfn

If “My Fellow Jerks” = “people i know” then “Elegant Solutions” = “things i like.” Right now it’s just techy stuff and comic book stuff. I would add anything else if it were a blog/page that I would check a lot. Like a good baseball blog, maybe? A good comedy one (doubt there is one). Or anything you guys suggest?

[EDITED: I am taking Mitch Magee's suggestion of making this page "My Fellow Nerds"]

Apple Computer announced today that they will soon have, or maybe already have, software that will let people run Windows software on their Macintosh (the new Macs which have Intel processors).

Why is this such a big deal? And more particularly, why are the Apple Fanatics so happy about this? Why are they PROUD of it? It doesn’t mean that Apple BEATS Windows by being able to run their software. If anything, it means that Mac is trying harder and harder to BE LIKE WINDOWS. You can’t love Macs, decry Windows for years, and then turn around and BE HAPPY that you can suddenly run Windows.

It’s like saying Latrell Spreewell is the worst thing to happen to NBA basketball, but then throwing a parade when he gets traded to your team. It just means you loved him all the time and wished you’d had him from the start. My sports references are outdated because I don’t know anything.

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I am exhausted today and seem to kinda hate everything. I’m listening to The Mountain Goats. I liked them well enough yesterday, but today they are annoying the crap out of me — the worst of Dashboard Confessional combined with the worst of They Might Be Giants. I think they might be meant for Girls Who Like Geek Guys.

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Everyone in my office is stunned and freaked out at the snow outside. It’s just snow in April. It’s not flames filling the sky or even a bush on fire.

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Sites that purport to teach good web design often tell you that to put a link that says “click here” on your web page is a dead giveaway of your amateurism. But what’s wrong with saying “click here”? If your site is for new web users “click here” might be a great thing — they want to be told clearly what to do. “If you want more reports — click here” just might be better than “Here are more reports.” Don’t give me any rules that are just meant to impress other people who make rules.

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It’s like improvisers who won’t start a scene pretending to dig. They’ve just been told by other improvisers that it’s a dead giveaway that you don’t have any ideas. But you know what? There’s nothing wrong with digging at the start of a scene. Really, it’s okay. Honest.

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I am like an old man today, peering out of his living room window, just waiting for some pre-teen to walk across his lawn so he can step out and scream at him for defacing property. I’ve been drinking too much coffee, staying up too late and exercising too little. Sue you, sue everybody!

More pictures like this in the “pix” section, for those interested.

I jammed my fingers during improv practice on Sunday, while pretending to be an upside down plane. I told my boss and he remarked “You should probably just tell people it happened during basketball.”

I don’t play basketball, folks! It happened during playtime.

Also, my second knuckle has swollen dramatically. It looks like a closed eye, stuck in the middle of my hand.

Added after Foster complained in the comments. Hey, this isn’t even half as bad as it was!