New Year's Eve 2006 --

New Year's Eve 2006 --

I have to stay in and write!

I've been writing for the last two days straight about pretty much the most painful stuff stuffed deep within my secret utility closet. Perhaps some readers of "Goodbye To Comics" may think that I blew my wad with that bloggy memoir in terms of writing about pain. But, as I delve deep into the uncharted territory of my earlier adolescent years, more gems are popping out of the dirt.

And it's all good, it's good that I'm writing this. I feel it is my duty to write this.

Helping me along this literary journey, at least for tonight, is something called "Korbel."

There is a superstition that whatever you do when the clock strikes 12 on New Year's defines the rest of the upcoming year.

I was writing, which I guess was good. I was writing about a time in my life when I felt a great deal of fulfillment, when I was in college. I hung out with a group of women then -- intellectuals, radicals, rebels. I had come from a background almost completely devoid of female influence, my heroes being Howard Stern, the wrestlers of the WCW, and the titans that graced the comic books I read. These women I met at the college, including professors, introduced me to a whole new way of looking at things.

Through these women, I could conceive of the female as being powerful. Not powerful in some cheesy, pseudo-Wonder Woman way, but truly empowered and knowledgeable of themselves.

And now I am thinking of this woman I met in Union Square yesterday. She was selling T-shirts and art featuring a character she created, Pupella. Pupella was this really cool Goth/Wicca type girl with a really big female empowerment message. And talking to this woman, I remembered the idealism I felt so many years ago.

***

So if you ask me what I was thinking about on New Year's Eve, I would say the preceeding was a pretty accurate rendition. Of course, I'm leaving some things out. You always do with blogs, even a wild-card like mine. I mean hell, I've just drank a fair amount of Korbel. I should be setting the Net on fire. But this will do.

***

I've been periodically playing a YouTube clip as I work. It has a fair amount of meaning to me, but, as a close friend has offered, I don't need to blog every damn thing that happens to me. So I will leave it a mystery for another day.

Maybe you'll read my story one day and understand.

God bless you, and have a wonderful New Year.

And that Dick Clark guy you saw on "Rockin' New Years Eve"? That was a Gerry Anderson puppet. I'm tellin' you.