Bad Idea Saturday

I've written about Bad Idea a few times before, and by "Bad Idea" I mean the comic book company. I wrote about them in 2021, 2023, and last year, 2024.

Apparently, I haven't unsubscribed from different Bad Idea email alerts, and one of them from a few weeks ago was about a get together in Eagle Rock at a comic shop called Revenge Of. This was a post convention party and you had to RSVP, but it was free. I was not going to whatever convention it was associated with, but I'd thought I'd RSVP anyway. Maybe they wouldn't care. Maybe I could spend a Saturday evening out of the house like a normal adult.

I was on the list, but they never checked. I got my freebie comic, and had it autographed. They had fre pizza and free beer, which was nice. They had many pinball machines and handed out five dollars in tokens to anybody who wanted. They had an event space behind their shop where they had a DJ, a table covered with meat and cheese and fruit, more drinks, the pizza station, and a photo-op mock up of the mech suit one of their characters wears.

On the patio of the actual grounds, they had a themed corn-hole setup as well as wall mounted signage:

I bought two comics from the shop, one for each of my kids. Outside they had a coin-operated claw machine full of stuffed animals, teddy bears and panda bears, both sporting Bad Idea shirts. I was there earlier than the madness of the later times, and I approached the machine. I didn't really have quarters to pump inside, but when I got there, I moved the joystick and the claw jumped to life. A digital readout started counting down from 19. I moved the claw to a nearby pink bear on top of a pile, pressed the button, and caught the bear. It was the easiest claw maneuver I ever had. I moved the claw over the hole, and proceeded to carry the bear for the remainder of the night:

"Ooh! You got a bear!" people would gasp. "Yeah, it's for my daughter..." I would answer. I soon realized that I needed to get another comic for my son, just to even the gift caper out.

Mike, the erstwhile comic shop owner from our building, was there with his cool wife, and we chatted for a bit. It was nice to talk with other adults. It was nice to be out and about on a Saturday, but I would have liked Corrie to have been there. The free beer was nice, but since Long Beach and Eagle Rock are 40 minutes apart in no traffic, "free beer" is more of a concept than a real thing to fully enjoy.

Bad Idea strikes again! Thanks for the fun!

The Robots are Crossing Linden

The supermarket that I and my family visit is about one-thousand feet from our home. We walk unless we're on the way home from points further away and already in the car. Since you can count on two hands the days when the rain has been rough in the last, er, decade, inclement weather generally has no bearing on our grocery store decisions.

So, as was the case, I was making an evening trip to the grocery store. I walk south to Broadway, and then east along Broadway two blocks to Atlantic, where the Vons is. The block between my street, Elm, and Atlantic is Linden. (On a side note, the intersection of Broadway and Linden in downtown Long Beach is my favorite intersection...like maybe anywhere, which is a weird thing to say.)

As I waited to cross Linden at a red light along Broadway, on the opposite sidewalk was what looked like a big rectangular cooler on with serious off-roading wheels. Nice, I remember thinking, have a wheeled cooler would make parts of camping easier. I glanced around on that side of the street for someone getting ready to push it across one the light changed. But then I noticed that it had headlights. Once the light changed, we both started going, me to my coming side, east towards Atlantic and Vons, and it heading west.

What I had originally thought was some kind of pushing handle, was a lit-up touch screen, with four large letters centered on the screen. As we got closer and about to pass each other, I could read these four letters as "Alan."

Alan didn't have any kind of delivery-service company markings anywhere on, eh, it...him? As we passed, I smiled and wanted to say, "Hey Alan, how're you doin?" But I didn't. Would it have been confused? Probably not, but it was doing something, toiling across the street late at night.

As I grabbed the things I needed from the store, I was deep in thought about Alan. Was this Alan a programmable tool? Was it something you said, "Okay, Alan, I need you to go to Vons...get milk and eggs," or "Alan...go to Vons and pick up order #XX-XXXX?" Was it coming from Vons? Was it just a helper machine, and if so, isn't that how all origin stories about AI and the robot-apocalypse start out?

Where was it heading to? Did it have a nice spot to charge it's power core in the apartment of its owner? Could it ever be its own owner? Should it be its own owner? How long before those conversations are had?

I laughed it off---the coming existential crisis about AI and robotics---and marveled at my own lifespan: I'm of that weird in-between generation: too young for Gen-X proper and too old for Millenial...you know, first email account was basically in college, voted in 2000 for Nader, was a twenty-something during the post-9-11 world, now a forty-something parent watching cartoon supervillains taking over the country, AI is a homework cheating app on phones, and robots running errands at all hours of the night.

I mentioned it to Corrie, and she told me about the robot she saw, a taller, trapezoid-looking deal, passing her as she walked home from Vons. Whatta woild, we laughed.

The other night, as we checked out the neighborhood from our balcony, I saw Alan again. At least, I think it's Alan. This time Alan was again crossing Linden, only they were heading east, and was on 3rd, the block up from Broadway in our fair neck of the woods:

I'm not even sure which I want it to be more: is Alan out on a different errand? Maybe mapping out different streets of our shared neighborhood? Or, wait for it, is this a different robot of Alan's type? Are there just a whole slew of robots coming through downtown Long Beach?

Not a terrible decision, by any stretch, except for the feces and urine all over the place and the crowds of unhoused taking up more and more bare sleeping nooks and the occasional unhoused with severe social issues who ends up screaming into the night very loudly and for hours on end, our zone is very cool.

And I doubt Alan would be too bothered by the occasional hours-long scream fest, in any case.

By Its Cover, I Guess

So, what happened was...

I found a new author, or, rather, I finally followed up with some authorial snooping, in the sense that one of my favorite author's (Pynchon) favorite author, Peter Matthiessen, has found his way into my possession. With a Decemberween gift-card I made the purchase of an early favorite of fans of Matthiessen, Far Tortuga:

While I waited for the book to arrive, I learned about "Shadow Country, another Matthiessen novel, and a winner of the 2008 National Book Award. I picked it up too, and it arrived and I'm 200 pages into it. It's a masterpiece.

Matthiessen is a rather badass writer, and the only person to win the National Book Award in both fiction (Shadow Country), and non-fiction, for "The Snow Leopard." Matthiessen was a travel writer, adventurer, philosopher, and Leonard Peltier supporter---he was the white writer that first brought Peltier's plight (getting hosed by the feds) to (white) society at large.

Back to Far Tortuga...why start a 900 page book (Shadow Country) when this book's right here? Well, while Far Tortuga was the first thing I ordered, it was the last thing to arrive. 

That may have been because of how I ordered it. I found a copy that was within a price range that was acceptable. But the cover wasn't necessarily doing it for me (which is silly and weird), so I kept scrolling down the choices on Amazon and found something that suited my feelings a little more. Hence the cover above.

When it got here, I tore open the package and glanced at the back:

Wait...what?

I started thumbing through it...

I did not order the French version! Dammit Amazon!

I went back to check in to my Amazon account and see what I could do...about...wait, what?

So, it turns out I never actually clicked on the cover above's actual sale-page: it was entirely in French. Apparently, I just clicked on the cover, and put that order through without ever examining it closer.

Oops. But now i have a book for Delphine, so that's cool.

Plus, look how cool it looks inside:

I can't wait to get the English version, which I did order and have it coming.

Until then, there's this:

This is actually a reworking of three novels that Matthiessen wrote and published earlier. His original idea was for a single, mysterious, 1500 page book, but the publishers had him break it up. Later in life he put it all back together after editing it and reworking the middle section.

It follows the framework of Edgar J. Watson's murder at the hands of his neighbors. Well, that's the opening scene, anyway. The first section follows that initial gun-down in the street with personal statements and recollections from all the people who either participated or witnessed the events, or were close in some way with Watson. Each person has their own voice and personal schema, and Matthiessen gives each their own distinct life.

The middle section has, apparently since I've yet to get that far, at its center one of Watson's sons as a forty-year-ish-old trying to figure out why his father was killed. The last section is, I hear, Watson retelling his own life story, from start to finish, so the book starts and ends with the same scene, just from different perspectives.

Homey could write, yo.

Urban Coyotes

The first time I remember seeing a coyote in Long Beach was on a drive to work. My normal routes were impacted by street-work, so while driving west on Anaheim Ave, a major thoroughfare on the way out of town over the river and freeways, a coyote was trotting across the major street.

My first thought as I approached was Stray dog? Out here? because we don't really ever see strays. But as I got closer, the silhouette this 'dog' cut became clearer, and it was obvious this wasn't a dog-dog, it was wildlife. There was a large patch of overgrowth under the bridge over the LA river at Anaheim, in an area they'll probably be filling in with condos or apartments soon enough, that I was pretty sure was this coyote's destination. 

It was a nifty encounter. Ever since college I've had a soft spot for coyotes. I've even named a character I put into two different stories Sin-ka-lip (the Salish name for coyote), who is, in case you're wondering, a talking coyote.

Anywho, a few years later, I was driving down one of our neighborhood streets and saw this sight:

So I trailed it for a while, slowly, and at a distance that kept it from taking off. I was far enough away to see who was keeping it company. Guiding, maybe...?

I was able to capture their friend finally in the frame, on top of the streetlight on the left side: a crow. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it. Coyote and crow chilling together in, er, downtown Long Beach. They were literally traveling together, coyote down the middle of the street and crow flying along side, and I got that picture when crow finally perched. 

Raccoons have been a staple of our downtown LB living for years. A family lived under the house next-door when we lived down the street on 3rd, and I've seen them a few times along the rocks at the marina on evening walks. Coyotes, I read, do exist in urban areas still, they're just pretty out of sight. And then I started seeing them...maybe I'm just coyote-blessed.

So, eighteen months later I'm driving to work again, and a stretch of road I drive along (Lomita Ave) has large encampments of unhoused people. Sometimes there are cops and service workers, with dumpsters, sweeping them all away, but that's not a permanent solution. I've written about it before. That area has large-ish wilderness overgrowth area next to the north-south I-110 freeway, closed in on the west and east by the freeway and Vermont Ave, and on the south by Lomita. Check out the Google Map picture, that shows the encampment on the sidewalk:

I wasn't able to get a picture, but it made sense that the unhoused community would draw plenty of attention. A few days later, I was able to get a picture:

Sometimes I get to thinking about my Sin-ka-lip, about what kind iof sage advice he'd have for Fu-tzu, his student, if they were watching one of these camps, or how society at-large treats them.

Coyote's presence can still be felt all over, if you're trying to feel it.

How Much is That Doggy in the Window?

Um...they're not for sale. They're part of the family...

Nighttime, and still lonely. Poor guy. 

I remember experiencing a little anxiety at the view, but dogs are tough, right? And smart.