Peter David's Blog, page 25

R.I.P. Dalia Rojansky David

My mother passed away on Saturday.

I received the news while I was at the lovely Phoenix Comic Con. Her passing was hardly unexpected; her mind had really checked out several months ago, and her body finally caught up with her. My sister, Beth, has been the point person dealing with the day to day issues of an ailing parent, and honestly it’s been brutal on her. This is one of those occasions where death is a blessing. But it’s never welcome.

If Dalia Rojansky had been growing up in modern times, she might well have had a very different life. She was a mathematical genius. She worked with Watson and Crick, mappers of DNA. But she set all that aside to raise three kids–me, Beth and my brother, Wally–and always be there for us.

I get much of my sense of humor from her. Every year we would have a Passover seder, which my father took very seriously. But my mother and I would always crack jokes and break each other up, and at some point my poor father would slam down the Haggadah, declare, “We are NEVER doing another sedar!” and storm away, leaving us laughing hysterically. Yet of course next year we would start all over again, with my mom and I swearing that we’d be good this time. Which we never were.

Admittedly, her cooking wasn’t the greatest. She grew up in Haifa in Israel, where food storage was sometimes an issue. So she was taught to overcook everything in order to kill potential germs. I didn’t know until I was older that on Thanksgiving, the turkey leg wasn’t supposed to snap right off. I remember one Thanksgiving Beth and I staged a SWAT-like raid on the turkey. The meat temperature said it was 180 degrees, the little thing had popped to indicate it was done, but my mom wanted to cook it another hour and a half “for luck.” And her Swedish meatballs…she never added breadcrumbs or eggs. She just packed the meat tightly. And then overcooked it. Jose Reyes could hit one out of Citi Field, and that is NO exaggeration.

But she’s your mom. You accept what you can’t change and you forgive that which is annoying. Frankly, I thought she would pass two years ago, within days of my father’s dying. At least now they are back together.

I will miss her terribly.

PAD

My beloved wife

Sixteen years ago today I began my life all over again. The beautiful Kathleen O’Shea stood next to me as we took our wedding vows and began our existence together. The time has literally flown by.

I love you, Kath. Life is good.

PAD

Freak Out Friday – May 26, 2017

You’d think that since he’s out of the country, Trump could manage to stay out of trouble. But no, he can aggravate people long distance.

1). The Price is Wrong. Trump has submitted his 2018 budget to Congress, and they aren’t having any of it. Particularly interesting is the GOP’s reactions: his own party is saying No Way. His $610 billion cut to Medicare (along with the GOP’s healthcare bill of $880 billion cut) is a non-starter, along with his banishing of Meals on Wheels and crop insurance funding (yeah, the farmers love him for that.). However the criticism I must take issue with was Chuck Schumer stating, “The Trump budget is comic-book-villain.” Excuse me, no. We’ve HAD supervillains as presidents, and frankly they’ve done a better job. Can you see Lex Luthor doing away with Meals on Wheels? Seriously? Because I sure can’t. I can personally guarantee that super villains would take a look at the proposed budget and say, “I don’t want any piece of this.”

2) I wanna hold your hand. No matter what one said about the Obamas, no one can be blind to the notion that they are a loving couple. Can’t exactly say the same of Trump and Melania as every time he tries to take the first lady’s hand, she pushes it away. When you can’t make any sort of physical contact with your wife publicly, there is definitely something wrong.

3) Fun in the Hellhole. After having a great old time in the Middle East hanging out with dictators who deplore free speech–his kind of people–Trump went to Brussels, the city he once described as a hellhole. There, after shoving aside the Prime Minister of Montenegro to get to the front of the group, refused to support Article 5 (which states that any member of NATO who is attacked will be supported by all the other members) despite the fact that every president since Truman has done so, and ultimately ignored the core security purpose of NATO so that he could instead badger them about dollars and cents. This from a guy whose budget has a two trillion dollar error in it.

Did he do anything right? He left the country. With any luck, he won’t come back.

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R.I.P.s

A stunned farewell to Rich Buckler. Rich was the first artist that I ever did major work on, illustrating the four part “Death of Jean DeWolff” that ran back in Spectacular Spider-Man #107-#110. He was routinely accused of being an art thief, using the work of others as trace reference for his own art. Nevertheless I can’t think too poorly of him, if for no other reason than that he helped me launch my comic book career.

We must also say good-bye to Roger Moore, which means that for the first time we have lost a movie James Bond (if we don’t count David Niven.). Moore’s Bond had a lot of fans, although he wasn’t my favorite. I totally believed him as a romance machine but didn’t buy that he was a merciless killer. (As opposed to his successor, Timothy Dalton, who I believed as a killer but had trouble with the love aspect.). Honestly, my favorite Moore performance was in Cannonball Run, in which he plays a Jewish guy who believes he’s Roger Moore. His scene with his scolding mother, played by Yiddish legend Molly Picon, is hilarious. You can find it here at around the 2:50 mark.

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Freak Out Friday – May 19, 2017

I have to admit, when I first launched Freak Out Friday, I honestly thought that there would at least be SOME weeks where Trump would neither say nor do anything that prompted commentary. Yet here we are, over a hundred days into his presidency, and every damned week there’s something.

1). Someone needs history lessons. Trump is naturally incensed that former FBI head Robert Mueller has been appointed as special counsel to investigate whether Russia helped Trump to be elected. Trump declared that “It also happens to be a pure excuse for the Democrats having lost an election that they should have easily won because of the Electoral College being slanted so much in their way.” Right. The Electoral college is tremendously slanted toward the Democrats. That is why twice in this century, Democrats have won the popular vote for the presidency while the Republicans have won the Electoral College. The fact is that the Electoral College favors the GOP, if for no other reason than that Democratic voters sat on their damned hands during the election while the GOP turned out in force.

2). Seriously?. Trump declared this investigation to be “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!” Really? Really?. Hillary Clinton having to endure months of testimony over a terrorist attack that she had nothing to do with? Barack Obama constantly having to endure Trump and company’s obsession with proving that he was not born in Hawaii? Trump declared “No politician in history has been treated worse or more unfairly.” I think Nelson Mandela might have had something to say about that.

3). Gee. Who to believe? It seems that we are being left with a real head scratcher. On the one hand, we have James Comey who stated that Trump asked him to drop the investigation into Michael Flynn; that Trump demanded a loyalty oath; that this whole Russian investigation be dropped. On the other hand, we have Trump, who easily has the record for the most lies told by any president (not to mention Presidential candidate) in the modern era, if not the history of the country. So it’s a real toss up as to whose side we should come down on here. Wait…no. It’s really not.

4). Yeah. That’s how to get Jews to love you. Trump’s popularity in Israel has been plummeting, and his upcoming trip is not going to help. When Obama went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum there, he spent at least an hour. Trump’s people want to limit his time there to a brisk fifteen minutes, long enough to sign the guest book and give a fast speech. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both took helicopters to the base of Masada and then rode cable cars to the top. Not Trump. Once he was told his chopper couldn’t land on the top of the fragile fortress, he canceled his trip entirely. Because when you’re a president who neglects to mention that the Nazis killed Jews and your press secretary is clueless that Hitler used gas on his victims, you absolutely want to do everything you can to curtail your visits in the Jewish homeland. That’ll put the anti-Semitic accusations to rest.

Did he do anything right this week? Well, he didn’t get us into a war. Which shows how low the bar is for measuring success.

PAD

The Orville

So apparently Fox’s next to-be-cancelled SF series is “The Orville,” from and starring Seth MacFarlane. It basically seems to be “Galaxy Quest” as the TV series would have been.

The part I like the most is that the ship’s captain (MacFarlane) has, as his first officer, his ex. All I could think of is, Wow, I wish I had thought of that twenty years ago when I created the crew for the Excalibur in “New Frontier.” Would that I had made Calhoun’s first officer his ex.

Oh. Wait.

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Freak Out Friday – May 12, 2017

Wow. What EVER shall we discuss today?

Federal Bureau of изучение: I remember when all this happened before. The Saturday night massacre, when the Nixon tapes were more than just a throwaway reference in an X-Men movie. Back when Nixon fired Archibald Cox, the Watergate investigator, and hey, didn’t THAT just put an end to the entire Watergate scandal. I swear to God, I wish James Comey’s last name was “Waters” because it would literally be the Watersgate scandal, and how perfect would that be. I mean, when even the Nixon library is tweeting “Fun facts” to distance themselves from you, then how far off the reservation have you wandered?

I must admit, I initially had mixed feelings about this. God knows that Hillary Clinton did enough to herself to help her lose the election. People have written entire books about it. I’m waiting for Kate McKinnon to star in an SNL mockumentary on the subject. Nevertheless, Comey’s last minute announcement that he was reopening the investigation into her email was definitely a factor in, at the very least, convincing wishy-washy voters who were seeking one last reason to stay home to do just that. And let us not forget that when he did it, Trump was endlessly praising of Comey for doing so.

Yet now Trump asked us to believe that Comey was fired BECAUSE of what he did to Hillary? That half a year later, his actions were deemed so unforgivable that he had to be fired? While he was out of town, addressing FBI recruits? So that he could find out over the television news? At the suggestion of the deputy attorney general who immediately threatened to resign because his memo on the subject–written at Trump’s request–was initially portrayed as being the reason for the firing in the first place?

I say “initially” because after several days of the White House claiming that that’s how it happened, Trump stepped forward and said, No, it was entirely his idea to fire Comey despite whatever recommendations came down. Why? Because according to Trump the “rank and file” of the FBI had lost confidence in Comey, a claim that was rebutted by, naturally, the FBI.

Which again leaves us with the question of why Trump fired him.

The obvious answer is because of the investigations into the Russian involvement with the election, which is drawing all the comparisons to Nixon and Watergate. The timing would seem impossible to ignore: Comey being fired days after asking for additional resources to conduct the investigation, something that Trump desperately wants to go away.

But I think it was this: When Comey, in his testimony to Congress about his announcement of the email investigation reopening, stated, “It makes me mildly nauseous to think we might have had some impact on the election.” Now technically that’s grammatically questionable since “nauseous” actually means to make others feel sick. He should have said “mildly nauseated.” On the other hand, since his actions partly resulted in Trump’s election, and Trump’s presidency makes me feel sick, an argument can be made that what he said was accurate, so I’ll let it slide. He went on to state that it wouldn’t have caused him to do things differently, but Trump was never much for context. What Trump heard was that his being elected made Comey feel ill, which is–let’s face it–a reasonable interpretation of what he said. I think the moment Comey said that, he was immediately on Trump’s Hitlist. That the Russian investigation was just one more reason, certainly, but Trump is someone who demands unstinting loyalty. You know that whole thing about a smart president surrounding himself with smart people who disagree with him? That’s not Trump. Trump wants people who walk in lockstep with him and are 100% loyal, which is why nepotism is his go-to hiring maneuver. He even demanded at a dinner that Comey swear loyalty to him, and Comey refused to do so.

And so Comey was axed, and Trump is so confused as to why he’s getting negative blow back for this that he is threatening to put an end to daily press briefings, a suggestion that his puppet master, Putin, would wholeheartedly embrace.

Meanwhile there is still a call for an independent prosecutor to conduct the investigations. I know a good lawyer who isn’t doing anything: Hillary Clinton.

Did he do anything right? Yes. He bashed Stephen Colbert, which undoubtedly drove Colbert’s ratings even higher.

PAD

Thank God, it’s Over

I am happy to report that I paid off the IRS. Every dime that was owed to them. For the first time in this century, I don’t have to worry that the mailman is going to bring a certified letter saying the government is seizing all my property. For the first time in my marriage to Kathleen, we don’t have to worry about finances.

The lion’s share of credit naturally goes to you guys. To the hundreds of people who came through and got us to within range of the goal.

Further credit must go to Erik Larsen, who asked me if I had any artwork from some of the comic book greats. I did have a couple of pages that I had acquired twenty years ago for a couple of thousand dollars (back when money wasn’t a problem.). I had no idea that the prices for such things had skyrocketed in the intervening decades. I sold the pages I had and that income enabled me to cover the remaining gap.

I have some money left over, but that’s gone straight into the bank to hold onto for next year since I have NO desire to let this happen again. I initially got into trouble because money I had set aside disappeared: the equivalent of heading to the bank to deposit a briefcase full of cash and getting knocked out from behind. With my finances now fully in my control, I can assure everyone this won’t happen again.

In order to make sure it doesn’t, I will be starting a patreon account to ensure continued income even during slow writing periods, so be sure to keep your eyes out for it.

And thank you all again for your support. The letters of support I have received have been deeply moving. I cannot begin to express my gratitude.

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Freak Out Friday – May 5, 2017

Happy Cinco de Mayo for those few of you who still have health care.

1) At least chicken noodle soup is cheap. Remember how seven, eight years ago the GOP was going batshit crazy because they declared that Obama was ramming through his medical plan from hiding? Despite the fact that it went through a year’s worth of hearings? Well, apparently the House decided to live up to the scenario that they painted years ago by rushing through their own version of health care with no hearings and not even text of the bill available to be read. House members have freely admitted they didn’t read it before giving it a big thumbs up. Conservative estimates indicate that 24 million people will lose their coverage, and the fees for older patients will go up as much as 750%. Furthermore the states will have the option of doing such things as allowing insurance companies to jack up rates on people with pre-existing conditions, and Medicaid will be slashed. But hey, don’t worry: if you’re in the top 1% you will get a big tax cut, and Congress passed a bill that makes them immune from the health care changes. So the only ones who will be affected is people who voted for Trump and people who voted for Hillary. I’ve no idea whether this thing will pass the Senate, but if it does, the GOP may want to kiss goodbye to their jobs because when the full ramifications of this screw fest manifest over the next two years, 2018 is going to be a really bad voting year.

2). Whoever said he wouldn’t last 100 days in the pool lost. So Trump made a whole slew of promises during the campaign about everything he would accomplish in his first hundred days. Of all of them, the only one he managed to accomplish was to fill the Supreme Court seat that they managed to steal from Obama. The rest of them remain unfulfilled. Not that he hasn’t tried: his Muslim ban keeps running into court trouble, his endeavor to build a wall has zero support in Congress, ISIS is still doing just fine, thanks. So his attempts typically fall short because his ideas are almost unilaterally stupid.

Did he do anything right? Well, he didn’t attend the press dinner on Saturday. Good thing. It would have been like inviting a senile Mohel with Parkinson’s to perform at a bris.

PAD

Yes, we’re watching “Star Wars.” Also, Free Comics Day.

It’s May the 4th, after all. It’s kind of an obligation.

Oh, just to mention, I will be appearing on Free Comics Day at Fourth World Comics in Smith Haven, New York, from 10AM to 12 Noon. See you May 6th.

PAD