Holy Shit How Did It Get To Be So Late?

Every once and awhile I think, if only for a second, that I know exactly what I am doing.

Yesterday was James's graduation. He's a great kid, going to be a great man. I wish I could have given him some sort of grand advice, told him something that would help him on his way...but I couldn't.

I'm pretty happy with the way my life has worked out so far. If I died today there would be a lot of things I'd regret not doing, but very few things I would regret having done. When I'm tired I sleep, when I'm hungry I eat. When I'm lonely I call up one of my many friends, and when I want to be alone I shut myself off in my little fortress of solitude. I work hard when I have to, often harder when I don't have to. I know the value of a dollar, but I know it's worthless if you can't spend it on something that makes you happy. There are a lot of people I care a great deal about, and a lot of people I believe who genuinely care for me. I know a little bit about a lot, and a lot about a little bit. Never too much, usually just enough to get by. I'm fat, and I'm ugly, and I hurt entirely too much in entirely too many ways for someone who hasn't been around long enough to earn the right to feel all these things.

But I'm lucky.

God damn lucky.

Because I can see so much.

So how do you give advice to someone who you know is going to be a great success? Someone you know will far exceed any and all of your accomplishments? What advice do you offer them?

None really.

You just let them know that you're around in case they need to ask.

~
I fucked up the Antioch Team Outing for this Saturday. Totally my fault. I should have figured something out a long time ago, should have reminded people sooner, should have just tried harder. But I fucked it up. My first idea had been to arrange a dinner party at the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo. I know you can set it up for small groups, but it turned out to be a lot more difficult to get information that I had thought. And by the time I would have been able to pull it off, it would have been too late. I had thought about going to the beach for the afternoon, then taking a boat down the Barnegat Bay and docking at my uncle's restaurant for dinner. But the guy who owned the boat told me that he could only go so fast on the bay so a 3o minute trip by car could take 2 1/2 hours by boat...each way. And that not all the little harbors could take a boat of his size, but he wasn't sure about this particular harbor and though he was both very nice and very understanding in explaining numerous things to me,(Despite years of "sailing" with my father my knowledge of boats is limited to the fact that if they sink you've probably done something wrong) we weren't able to work anything out. My third idea was to find something that fit the date and go with it. The last leg of the Triple Crown is Saturday, but if I told any of this group we were going to The Belmont they'd probably assume I meant the tavern. So I'm sort of stuck. I still want to do something, but mostly I just don't want to drag everyone out and then totally disappoint them.

~
One of my busses got into an accident yesterday...in NYC...with a yellow Ferrari. It wasn't his fault, but still...a Ferrari. Fuck me.

~
Today was long, and sort of sucked. The Rookie/Psycho came by the office for a bit this afternoon. Talked to Goldberg for a few minutes, and then heard from Clopp who I haven't talked to in what? A year maybe? Good to hear he's doing so well. I was getting ready to leave when I realized there was something I had forgotten to do. So I finished it up real quickly, careful not to make any mistakes because I know when you're this tired you can get careless. Just as I'm getting ready to log out and shut down I see I have an e-mail. My first thought is that it's junk mail and I've been chasing junk mail waiting for e-mails from certain people all day. Who else would e-mail me at 2 in the morning? I was going to let it sit till tomorrow, but instead I opened AOL (yes I still use AOL for my e-mail, and frakkin pay for it too) and checked it out. Sure enough it was a response from The Shifletts.

If you don't know who The Shiflett Brothers are, well, then you're probably like about 99% of the rest of the population. And you're missing out. They are these two really cool sculptors from Texas who have done quite a few sculpts for bigger companies like Bowen Designs. I'd been checking out their website for a little while now, but most of their stuff is kits. And I can neither paint nor glue (how I passed kindergarten is still a mystery) so I was SOL. Then a little under two months ago they released a bronze of a kit I particularly liked called Ol' Scratch. Now, he's not technically a comic book character, but it's still cool. It's also pricey. And I don't like buying something unless I've gotten a good look at it. Problem is they were only making 18 of these things, and these guys are going to be huge soon if you ask me. So I couldn't wait long. I knew from following the site that the first statue went to Richard Taylor from WETA, but then I never heard anymore about the rest of them. Going into Wizard World this Saturday I was excited to meet The Shiflett Brothers (and Clay Moore as well) seeing as I admired their stuff so much. I had sort of given up hope on getting an Ol' Scratch though. I'm out of room for stuff like this, and I figured they'd sold all 18 pretty quick. So when I got to the Shiflett booth and saw an Ol' Scratch bronze sitting there a little hope swelled up inside me. First it's a lot smaller than I thought, which means it won't take up much room. Second, even if it was an AP, here one was sitting a few inches from me. Goldberg must have watched me stare at it for a good three minutes before he even bothered to interrupt. I don't know how long the guy sitting at the stand was talking to me before I realized it. We talked for a few minutes before I saw his tag and realized it was Brandon Shiflett (just like with Clay Moore I have no idea what these guys look like, I just know their work). I mentioned that I'd been thinking of getting one of the statues, but that I wanted to see it in person before I did. And then I asked how many he had left. When he replied that they'd only sold three I was sort of shocked. He reminded me pretty quickly (and somewhat defensively) that they'd only been for sale for a few weeks. I knew the first one went to Taylor, Brandon told me that the third one had just gone to Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame. We talked about the price for bronzing and the whatnot and then I asked if they were taking orders, he said sure, I could order right then and number 4 would be mine. I asked if they took Visa. He looked sort of disappointed. I wasn't about to drop that much cash right that second, so I regretably told him I'd have to send him an e-mail about arranging payment when I got home and just sort of hope that they hadn't sold #4.

The minute I got home I sent out the e-mail and began to eagerly wait for a response. I'm damn near anal about stuff like that. When I'm waiting for an e-mail I literally check my mailbox every ten minutes. Around the clock. Realistically I knew they wouldn't be getting back to me till after Wizard World ended, but I didn't care. I kept checking. I didn't even really care what their reply was, as long as their was a reply at this point. All day Sunday went by and nothing, all day Monday went by and nothing. I'd sent out the e-mail to the Antioch Team about Saturday and was slowly getting responses from them, but nothing from The Shifletts. I wasn't really expecting to hear back for at least a few more days, but then as I was getting ready to lock up...that e-mail.

This E-Mail:

Chris !

Trememdous! We're very excited. As I may have told you both Weta Workshop head Richard Taylor and Director Peter Jackson have just ordered a couple. But now we have you down for nubmer 4.

Hit us up with any more questions and thanks again.
Brandon and Jarrod Shiflett

Yeah...I guess if you stay up long enough on any given day something will happen that eventually makes it worth it.

It's just whether or not you can manage to stay up that long I suppose.