Sometimes a patriot

This is my 51st blog post, and but for an eleventh-hour substitution, it would have been the 50th. If that had come to pass, here is how it would have gone:

This is my 50th blog post. I thought this day would have come quite a bit sooner, but it comes now, and I want to post something special. Something classy and respectable, and that best represents the magnanimous spirit of Czardoz Contra World.

Behold, a goat peeing:

As Paul Harvey would say, now let’s hear “the rest of the story.” I spotted this enchanting tableau at Comic-Con this year, on a congested intersection in the heart of the convention’s splash zone (by which I mean, where the Con’s largesse splashes over onto the streets of downtown San Diego). The goat was one of an unholy trinity of protestors calling for the abolition of Anaheim, specifically in reference to our northern neighbor’s attempts to pilfer Comic-Con from us, but perhaps in general terms as well.

I hope all this talk of Comic-Con leaving San Diego for Anaheim or LA or wherever is all smoke and mirrors. The Con is the cultural touchstone of San Diego, and the city needs this event much more than the alleged wooers. Anaheim has Disneyland. LA has Hollywood, among other splendors. Vegas has . . . Vegas versions of Paris, New York, Ancient Rome, the South Seas, and more magicians than you could fit into a clown car.

Lest anyone think this is purely a local issue, one municipality against another, I must remind you that this is a matter of national gravity, nay, of patriotism. This point is driven home by no less than the greatest patriot, Captain America:

Though Cap is looking about as plush as the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man these days, his point is well made.

This controversy actually reminds me a lot of the Lebron James debacle in Cleveland. I’ve been to Cleveland. I’ve seen President Garfield’s coffin lying in the crypt of the exquisite Garfield Monument. I’ve admired Tiffany’s denim jacket at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I’ve stood in the footsteps of the concertmaster at Severance Hall and gazed from his perspective at the podium where George Szell once conducted the Cleveland Orchestra.

So yes, I know that Cleveland has its place in the world. But that place is not at the top of a jetsetter’s hitlist. And if I were some young buck (or cavalier, for that matter) with a bright present, I wouldn’t expect a very bright future staying in a town like Cleveland.

Lebron is just a dude, of course. Comic-Con is an institution, and, like the office of President, it’s much bigger than any one man. But even though I can understand the arguments for moving – the bigger convention space, the proximity to Hollywood, the proximity to Disneyland, for Goofy’s sake! – the loss of Comic-Con would leave a cultural void in San Diego far bigger than the bankruptcy of the San Diego Symphony in 1996, bigger than the loss of K-BEST 95 – the only oldies radio station in town and yet to be replaced, bigger even than the death of Dr. Seuss.

Yes, I understand that this is a crum-bum town in which I reside, and when the Namor-reading nerdlinger grows up to be Tobey Maguire or some kind of expensive Hobbit crap, he needs to spread his wings and fly to a bigger toilet. Hell, I did it myself once upon a time.

So no hard feelings on my end. But Comic-Con, if you really do leave, just don’t think for a second that the gasping culture junkies you leave behind in this wasteland will forget that you pulled the plug on their life support.

I belong to myself

He was the grand salami of the Grand Slam, the lothario of Love-40, the debauchee of the double fault. Leave it to others to reflect on Marat Safin’s career. I just liked the man’s farewell.

After his final match, a loss at the Paris Masters tournament on November 11, 2009, he left his adoring crowd with these words:

“Today I will put all my memories, all my wins and losses in a small box. Today a door is closed, hopefully another one will open.”

A bit more poetry than you’ll ever get out of Federer or Nadal. Sure, they have the Slams and the insatiable drive to be the best that eluded Safin, but it seems like that kind of life and career just wasn’t meant for him. In his words:

“It’s a tough sport. It’s very cruel. What I’ll miss least is the injuries and the pressure. The pressure is what you are going through all these years. Because you are defending your points. You need to achieve, you need to improve, you need to count the points to see if you are going to make the Masters, if you’re going to be seeded at a Grand Slam or not. So you’re completely stressed 24/7. That is what I hate about it. It’s just too much. No rest for the brain at all.”

And now?

“Now I have no schedule, no practices, no nothing. I belong to myself.”

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On a much smaller and less visible scale, I can relate to Safin’s sentiments. I spent almost two years competing as an amateur ballroom dancer, just a pond compared to the ocean of a professional sport, but to me, it was worth any ten sports combined and blended into an unholy smoothie of athleticism.

“Competing,” as any athlete knows, is just a tiny part of the commitment. There are the hours and weeks of practice and coaching and lessons, the body aches and alarm clocks clanging far too early, the hustling through rush hour to get to practice on time, and the hustling out to salvage what remained of a normal life – all meant to make you look brilliant for the five to ten minutes you actually spend competing at the competition. And after that comes the self-examination, the questions about how to get better, the questions about what questions to ask, and too often the halfcocked experiments and harebrained schemes to improve one figure or another. No rest.

I was lucky. I had a dance partner who made practice seem like play, who trusted me to make the right decisions on and off the dance floor, and who believed that everything we were doing was worth it. I can’t imagine Safin had anywhere near the same kind of support.

It’s been six months since I’ve danced seriously, and every day that goes by, I can feel it slipping away, the skill, the fluidity, the determination to become better. I know I could slip back into it just as easily as slip away. Unlike Safin, I haven’t run out of gas yet. But at the same time, I haven’t found the peace he’s found. I hope one day to be able to say the words he says so well: “I belong to myself.”

* * *

This is my 50th blog post, and for a while, as I considered how to commemorate the occasion, I was straddling the line between reverence and irreverence, and realizing that it can be difficult to have it both ways. I chose to lean on the former. Tune in soon for the other contender for the Big 50.

Long live the Con!

Who says you have to get inside Comic-Con to have a good time? Here’s what I saw on the outside looking out, walking around in front of the Convention Center and strolling the Gaslamp.

The Milieu

For a few blissful days every summer, Comic-Con turns the Gaslamp District into a veritable tent city of Amazons, Voltrons, Superfriends, orcs, wizards (both pinball and Hogwartian), spiky-haired Japanophiles, Sailor Scouts (yes, they still exist), keyblade-slingers, Pokemon trainers, X-Maniacs, Jedi Knights and other sad devotees of ancient religions – all wearing matching lanyards and packing grossly oversized swag bags.

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The San Diego Convention Center, home of Comic-Con, has fitful dreams, talks in its sleep: “Must . . . grow . . . bigger! Accommodate . . . more . . . vendors! Keep . . . the Con . . . local!”

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Comic-Con is the one event that makes downtown San Diego feel like the hub of a city that is more than a zoo and some beaches. And somehow, it does this by transforming skyscrapers into gargantuan video game posters.

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Yes, more posters!

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Trolley signs in Klingon = a brilliancy! True or False: Klingons hail from the planet Klingonigon!

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It turns out that Skyline is a movie about people floating up into the sky, hence the little white bubble-men in this frame.

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Yeah! Bubble-Man!

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The Denizens

Don’t bears already have enough of an advantage without toting machine-guns as well?

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Now hold the phone there, Michael Eisner. Something’s not quite right about these Disney princesses. I mean, come on, where’s Tiana???

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Mob scene: a crowd hoping to catch Dragon Age 2 blow-up spears tossed from a balcony. Seriously.

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Now isn’t that adorable? It’s a Wonder . . . boy . . . bun . . .?

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Girl with platinum hair and rabbit ears. Now that’s what I’m talking about!

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Before all those bad dreams started, Freddy Krueger was just another carefree kid reading Dick Tracy and kicking it with a Milhouse.

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Ah, the classic “girl being ogled by sleazy dudes” photo. A timeless set piece.

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Hahaha, some of you will get this joke. You perverts know who you are.

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Will someone please give her a cookie, a tiara, and a box full of gold stars?

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Walking among this elbow-to-elbow mess of exuberant humanity, and having cosplayed once myself, I was happy to see how many people had donned costumes (both homemade and store-bought), painted themselves, built accessories, stretched their imaginations to come up with something unfamiliar, and posed proudly for photos.

And then I became convinced of something. These wizards’ robes, metal brassieres, horns, lightsabers, princess gowns, all manner of animal furs – these were not the costumes. These represent something real about what these people care about. No, the costume is that fashion-challenged, mother-approved school attire that these chaperoned kids go back to when Comic-Con ends. The costume is that ill-fitting work shirt and suffocating necktie that the guy in the head-to-toe Vader outfit returns to after he takes his bag of newly bought action figures home.

The costume is that attitude we put on that says we’re okay with the life of workaday monotony, where we have to act like we don’t really know all that much about the things we value most, where we pretend that, yes, those are just little hobbies that we have, those comics, those games, those movie trailers that we wait hungrily for, or maybe it’s music or dancing or poetry or even Latin grammar, mirabile dictu! This is the stuff that makes people distinctive, and it’s the stuff they do when they are being who they want to be.