don't distract me from my distraction with things that matter

Sunday night. I'm enjoying the Bears defeat of the Eagles. Or I'm dreading what looks like another second half collapse. Or both. Still, I'm watching football. Then something strange happens. Al Michaels mentions the current financial crisis on Wall St. and makes several references to the bailout.

Tuesday morning. Today. I'm trying to enjoy the SportsCenter highlights of last night's Ravens/Steelers game that I didn't watch in favor of Heroes and actually spending some time with Andi. The SportsCenter crew make what feels like a dozen more bailout references.

This has to stop. I watch sports - and I don't think I'm alone in this - to not think about what's going on in the real world. I watch sports so that, for a few wonderful moments, there's nothing more important than my team's defense coming up huge on 4th and goal or nothing more important than the offensive failures that kept that defense on the field. If my team isn't playing, there's nothing more important than the other games shaking out in a way that favors my team in the standings. If the game has no affect on my team's possible playoff future, then there's nothing more important than the stats of a receiver who's on my fantasy team. In short, sports are a distraction that allow me to get way too heavily invested in something that I can remind myself is actually pretty trivial should it go poorly.

I do not want your references to the real world in my sports. Not during the game. Not when you're broadcasting the highlights. There are at least 5 channels I could have turned to if I wanted to hear what people thought of a bailout plan and its affect on the financial future of this country. When I watch the game, I just want to think about the game.

Everything else will still be there when the clock hits 0:00.

Because I've already sullied a post about watching football with political nonsense, I may as well toss you a link to a video where Barney Frank becomes my hero for pointing out the absurdity of Republicans politicizing the failure of the bailout plan by talking about how Nancy Pelosi tried to politicize the bailout plan(via Catie Braly by way of Facebook, for full disclosure). Enjoy this more than I was able to enjoy SportsCenter this morning.

bootlegging obama merchandise is probably more fun than it should be

I was one of 18,000 people who went to see Obama speak in Greensboro this past weekend. The speech itself was another typical Obama home run and Obama got a little more aggressive than he allowed himself during Friday's debate.

"Through 90 minutes of debate, John McCain had a lot to say about me, but he didn't have anything to say about you," Obama said. "He didn't even say the words 'middle class.' He didn't even say the words 'working people.'"

The McCain spin control has countered with the already tired Palin line about Obama talking about foreign policy without saying "victory," a word that McCain and Bush love to use without ever giving so much as a hint of what victory in the broad "war on terror" or even specifically in Iraq actually means.

I'm not here to talk about whose talking point is better (Obama's is). I'm here to talk about how awesome the bootleg Obama merchandise that surrounded the rally was. Buttons, t-shirts, and rally towels were among the available options. With some Obama stuff already on the way, I was only tempted to purchase two items.

One was a button, featuring a shirtless Obama punching forward with "HOPE" tattooed on his knuckles. In retrospect, denying myself this bit of awesome was a complete misstep. Mostly because I can't find an internet image of this thing, and I'm concerned that no one will believe it existed.

The other item I found a little odd was a t-shirt featuring Obama shaking hands with Martin Luther King, Jr. It read "Dreams Do Come True." While I think that might be a little funny and over-the-top, this rally showed that Obama means much more to many of the attendees than just a presidential candidate ever could.

Hope is awesome.

would you really trust me to write a book about a teenage girl?

While anyone who particularly cares already knows about this*, I still wanted to give my industry outsider opinion on the cancellation of DC's Minx line of comic books. Minx was an imprint that produced comics aimed directly at teenage girls, supposedly inspired by the success of manga and a few other books like Persepolis among a demographic that remains unreachable when it comes to big-time, American-based funnybook publishers.

Given the clueless approach taken towards the creation of this line, I'm not surprised to see that it's been scrapped. The story at Comic Book Resources gives this line:

Multiple sources close to the situation agree...that this development should be seen as a depressing indication that a market for alternative young adult comics does not exist in the capacity to support an initiative of this kind, if at all.

I disagree. I think the audience is out there, clearly. Someone is buying the books that gave DC the confidence to go ahead with the Minx line. Let me toss out an idea that you may do what you will with.

My diligent internet research reveals that the best-selling manga title is a series called Chobits. The creative force behind it is a group of four creators that go by "Clamp." All four are women. Persepolis was created by Marjane Satrapi. In case you were unaware, she's also a woman.

So who are the creative forces behind the Minx books? Mostly men. There were some women involved, but by-and-large the Minx line was guys trying to write comics for teenage girls. In the case of Mike Carey, who does fantastic work with the X-titles over at Marvel, they're 50-year-old guys trying to write books for teenage girls.

So DC(and Marvel, if you're interested), if you want to attract this audience, start hiring the best female creators you can find. Let them do whatever they want to do. Put that product on the shelves of the local bookstores and promote it as its own thing. Not as a big company most known for supplying movie studios with material trying to imitate something...but as something that exists on its own. Let the dollars roll in. Thank me later.

*I wanted to talk about this earlier, but decided that it would be good to let this post hang out up top for a little bit longer.

if pressed, this is what i'd say hope looks like

I registered voters yesterday. I stood for two hours in front of a gas station and registered voters. Two of them. One per hour. I couldn't be more pleased with how I spent that time.

I stood next to Andi with my clipboard, held so that a sign taped to the back of it proclaiming "Register to Vote" could be seen by anyone who bothered to look, and asked passers by if they were registered. My fear that people would be annoyed seemed to be unfounded, at least in this location.* When asked if they were registered, people would respond that they were and then would tell us that they were happy to see us out there trying to make sure more people could answer the same way. Another person informed us that he had just registered and he "can't wait" to vote.

While the support was encouraging, we spent quite some time without anyone filling out the forms attached to our clipboards. Eventually, Andi and I began to wonder if our time would be better spent in a different area. We debated the pros and cons of moving our efforts and tried to figure out what alternative locale would prove to be more fruitful.

As we did this, a sixty-something black man passed by. "Are you registered to vote, sir?" I asked. He stopped dead in he tracks, looked at me, and smiled one of the friendliest smiles I've seen from behind his slightly unkempt, graying beard. "No. Let me run inside and I'll be right back out." His son was with him. The son, a registered voter, was plainly excited that his father was showing interest and assured us that he was in no rush. He would make sure his father registered.

It turned out the old man didn't need any prodding from his son. He came out of the convenience store and made a beeline straight towards me. Since he was without his glasses, he asked me to fill in his information for him.

We all joked around as the old man dictated his responses. When I asked him what party affiliation he preferred, he emphatically stated that he wanted to be a Democrat. They asked Andi and I about our affiliation. I gave a quick look around to make sure our impartiality wouldn't be jeopardized by answering and mumbled that I a Democrat as well, adding that I was "kinda afraid" of what a John McCain presidency would be like.

"Kinda afraid? We're more than just kinda afraid!" came the response.

By the time I handed over the clip board and form for him to look over and sign, the old man's smile widened even more (I have no idea how that could have even been physically possible). I can't imagine what it must have been like for him, knowing what he's seen in his lifetime, to finally be registering to vote(and knowing who he was registering to vote for, assuming that being more than kind of scared of McCain doesn't translate to a Libertarian vote).

The old man and his son thanked us, we thanked them, and they went back towards their truck. Before he got in, the old man looked up and repeated what we'd heard earlier from another new voter: "I can't wait."

Andi and I didn't say another word about going somewhere else.

*See previous post.