Lynda Barry!

Is!
Going to be!
At Comic-Con!

...aw, f**k.

Here i was, all thrilled that we weren't going this year. I mean, last year was great: getting to meet Los Bros. Hernandez was definitely a high point in my life. But the crowd was a tad much. And when i say "tad", i mean like tens of thousands of people too much. It was somewhat... stifling. Plus, i had left Nat's debit card at home, and we only had enough money on us to get us both home.
Okay, that's not entirely true- also, we had two whole dollars. So, famished, we purchased an ancient bag of nasty trail mix (-$1.00) and something to drink, water probably (-last dollar). And the saddest part? No, it wasn't choking on decades-old pumpkin seeds or masticating shriveled pieces of pineapple, but the fact that we had to spend Nat's lucky two-dollar bill. I think i gave it to him years ago, when we first started seeing each other. i had a couple of two-dollar bills, pieces of treasure from my childhood, and thought it would be charming, or romantic (see how delusional love can make you?) somehow, to present him with one.
Anyhow, he kept it in his wallet all these years. We never spent it. It was something we would get down to in the wallet, glance at, and not even think of as legal tender. It would just make us smile at each other.
And we had to spend it. The horror! We were so cranky from not eating that the day was almost ruined- you know how those little things can do that to an all-day excursion. Inwardly i told myself that i would never go again.

But for Lynda Barry, i could be persuaded to spend my remaining two-dollar bill ;)

She's such a charmer; we saw her once and only once, at "Diesel, a bookstore" (hahaha- every time i think of that place, i hear the lady with the funny accent [swedish?] on the answering machine) on College Ave. in Oakland. It was for her release of One Hundred Demons. She was very nervous, so she explained that she would be starting out the evening with a solo rendition of "You Are My Sunshine". The reasoning was, if she could belt out that song in front of more than a hundred complete strangers, she could do anything. The rest of the night would be cake.
It was awesome :) She sang sweetly and earnestly, and we waited in a long line after the reading to get our copy of the book signed and tell her (us the nervous ones, now) how great she was. I think i even managed to scrawl out a few of my own demons during the following few evenings. I miss Ernie Pook's Comeek more than anyone i know, except maybe Nat.
(So it looks like she has a new book out, What It Is. That's it- we're going!)