Free at last!

Parris and I finally felt strong enough to escape the Westin Waterfront and make our way down to New York. Neither of us is at 100% yet, but I’m feeling well enough to make my scheduled appearances at the NYC Comicon.

See you there!

Current Mood: null

Wednesday morning in Boston, and matters have gone to bad to worse.

I am feeling much better this morning, though I still have a touch of whatever it was. I’m running at maybe 85% of my old self.

Unfortunately, Parris woke up with a full-blown case of whatever the hell I had. (Guess that proves it was indeed a stomach virus of some sort, and not food poisoning). She’s where I was back on Monday morning, which isn’t good. We’re not going to be able to travel.

We’re still trying to figure out what this does to our New York plans. Maybe some of them can be salvaged, but…

Boskone should never have have left the Sheraton. The new con hotel appears to be the Hotel California — we can check out any time we want, but we can never leave.

Current Mood: null

Forgive the brevity of this. I am not feeling so well at the moment, and don’t have the energy for a long post.

I am going to have to cancel out on the pizza crawl.

I am still in Boston as I write, and may or may not be moving on to New Haven. Boskone was a lot of fun right up until last Sunday night, when I came down with . . . well, Parris thinks it’s a stomach virus, and I’m thinking it’s just plain old fashioned food poisoning. I blame a bad shrimp.

Whatever the cause, I’ve spent the last day and a half running between my bed and the bathroom. The worst is over, I think, but I’m still pretty weak, my stomach is very tender, and I seem to have lost my sense of smell. None of which bodes well for a day of eating pizza.

I am bitterly disappointed to have to post this. As sick as I felt yesterday, I have been hoping that by today I’d be back to my old self. I have been looking forward to this pizza crawl for weeks,

My sincere apologies to anyone who gets this message too late, and shows up in New Haven to meet me. If I could be there, I would be.

I still hope to have recovered in time to make all my scheduled appearances at the New York City comicon… but just now, nothing is certain.

Current Mood: null

The pizza crawl is only a week away, so it is time we nailed down our plans.

So here’s how it is going to go (we hope).

Tuesday, February 20. We hit three of New Haven’s most famed pizzerias, to see if their pies are truly world class. We’ve learned that Sally’s, one of the city’s most famous joints, is closed for two weeks, taking them out of the running. Their loss. We still have plenty of great pizzerias to try out.

At 3:00 pm, we meet at FRANK PEPE’s on Wooster. Everyone says there will be a line. Okay. Those who are going, turn up and get in line. Parris and I will do the same. We could have anywhere from twenty to fifty people turning up for the crawl, so there’s no way we can all sit together, but we’ll make do. Parris will eat with one group, I’ll eat with another, we’ll both try and tablehop while we’re grabbing a few slices. If we have to wait an hour in line, we wait an hour in line and make friends there.

After we’re done at Pepe’s, we play it by ear, find someplace to hang out, have coffee and a drink or three.

At 6:00 pm, we adjourn across town to MODERN APIZZA for our second round of pies. Maybe there will be a line there as well, maybe there won’t. Same drill.

And for the true pizza lovers and the late night crowd, come 9:00 pm, we head over to BAR to try mashed potato pizza amongst “Alternative Lifestyle Night.” I’m told that BAR has private rooms upstairs. Maybe one of you locals can call them up and see about reserving one for us from 9pm until whenever. We’ll end the evening with some brews and pepperonis.

That’s the plan.

So… who’s coming? I know a lot of you responded on the last thread, but time passes, plans change, etc, so let’s hear from you again. And, if you can, please let us know whether you will be along for the whole crawl, or just for part of it… and if so, which part. That will help us figure out how many pizza crawlers to expect at each joint.

My thanks to all the locals who posted comments in the last thread, made phone calls, and helped put this together. You’ve all been great. We need one point man to coordinate all this, however, and it can’t be me, since I’ll be on the road as of Thursday… ergo, I hererby appoint ZEN BLADE, aka Dennis Mishler, as our semi-official Master of the Games for the Pizza Crawl. Zen Dennis (ZenDen?) was kind enough to post his contact number in his long message in the last thread. If you want to come and have questions, call him.

Zen Blade, I hope this is okay? And please, if you would, double check and make sure the plan as I have outlined it will actually work, and all these places will be open when they say they will, etc. If you can reserve that room for us at BAR, that would be great.

A few final comments. If you’re coming on the crawl, dress warmly and wear comfortable shoes. We may be walking, and there may be a lot of waiting in line.

It might be good if we had some way to recognize one another, since there will be lots of eager pizza eaters who aren’t part of the crawl. How, though? Ice & Fire t-shirts? No, too cold, the shirts will be hidden under jackets. Wear our baseball caps turned sideways?

Also, please, BRING CASH. We will have to pay for these pizzas, after all, and the pizzerias aren’t going to want to do separate checks for fifty, or handle twenty different people tossing in credit cards. Have some folding money so you can peel off your five bucks or ten bucks or whatever when the bill comes round.

And speaking of that bill… my experience with large groups is that things tend to go much better if everyone just pays an equal share. So if you’re one of these “oh, I didn’t have a coke, and I only had one slice, but he had two, so my share is two bucks less” people, be warned… that kind of stuff drives me buggy. My advice: order a coke and eat the second slice, and pay the same as everyone else. Nothing ruins a good evening more than spending an hour dividing up a check down to the last penny between fifty people.

Pepe’s! Modern! BAR! Who will be the best? Let’s see…

Current Mood: null

It’s our last night in the city, and I’m typing this from our hotel room while Parris naps.

Tomorrow will be a long day. We’ll be headed home, but not until the evening, on Continental’s night flight out of Newark airport, the only direct flight from the NYC area to Albuquerque. Leaving that late in the day is a bit of a pain, but worth it, usually — not having to change planes shaves at least three hours off the travel time, and makes it less likely that we’ll miss a connection and wind up stranded at some hub somewhere. (The hub system is another of the crimes against humanity by the airlines). Even so, it will be a grueling day.

We’re both looking forward to getting home, however. Our annual midwinter visit to Boskone and New York City is normally a high point of our year, but this year’s version was more exhausting than usual. Nothing like a nice dose of norovirus to slow down all your fun. Neither of us is completely recovered even now. Just when you think it’s all over, you eat something you shouldn’t and your gut gives you a little reminder that no, it’s still feeling tender. I’ve been running at about 80% of my usual energy, and Phipps at no more than 50%. She had another bad bout last night and missed a wonderful dinner at Peter Lugar’s, the best steakhouse in the city.

We have had some fun, of course, but maybe only about half as much fun as we planned on having. NYC has so much to do that we always leave town regretting the stuff that we didn’t get around to doing, and this time we didn’t get around to even more than usual. Never got to a Broadway show or the IMAX theatre, never had a hot dog at Papaya King, no rides on the Staten Island ferry, never got over to Bayonne, never touched base with a bunch of our New York friends, etc. etc.

I did get to see my family, however, which was wonderful, and we also had a good time at the NYC Comicon, despite the crowds. We finally got to announce the new WILD CARDS comic series that we’ll be doing with DBPro and Marvel (to be scripted by Daniel Abraham), and we met the rest of the vast, charming, and very talented Dabel clan. Les and Ernst had some penciled pages and a cover on the SWORN SWORD comic as well, and it was great to get a look at that… and we touched base with some wonderful artists who may be doing covers for us in the future.

Well, Parris is stirring, so I’ll post now and see if she’s feeling well enough for dinner. More later, or maybe when we get home.

Current Mood: null