30 Days of Blogging is going to have to take a brief pause. I'm in the mountains for a few days, and the wireless here is terrible.
It's almost like I'm supposed to commune with nature or something.
Friday, April 25, 2014
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Open All the Doors and Let You Out Into the World
It's the happiest, saddest time of the year.
It's graduation season.
The past few weeks, as they always are at this time of year, have been a daily cycle of wrap up meetings, transition meetings, banquet dinners, farewell lunches, award ceremonies, hugs, photos, and any number of other events leading to one thing: graduation.
Lights out.
Closing time.
It's the time of year when we say goodbye.
I work with students, and I love working with students.
I work with amazing student leaders, who have a mission and a vision and a cause, and effortlessly talk others into following them.
I work with students who are going to change the world someday, and students who are already changing it now.
I work with students who are passionate about making our campus a better place, or our city, or our state, or our country, or our world.
I work with students who are amazingly talented, students who are poets and dancers and actors and singers and musicians, artists and builders and makers and world shapers.
I work with students who work for change, and with students who work to preserve and honor tradition.
I work with students who are raising children that I would sit next to in a restaurant.
I work with students who are geniuses, students whose minds move at faster paces and higher levels than I can easily imagine.
I work with students who fight prejudice and inequity, students who strive to live and breathe social justice and positive empowerment, students who want to bring us together and raise us all up higher.
I work with students who will become teachers, doctors, dentists, lawyers, politicians, accountants, chefs, mothers, fathers, writers, photographers, reporters, physicists, soldiers, ambassadors, and any other job you can think of.
I work with students who teach me new things every day, and I hope that somewhere, in some way, I've taught them something, too, and that it was something worth knowing.
I work with students, and then I wave from the doorway of my office as we turn them out into the world.
Then I clean up my desk, straighten my office, and wait for next year.
When I will work with students again.
It's graduation season.
The past few weeks, as they always are at this time of year, have been a daily cycle of wrap up meetings, transition meetings, banquet dinners, farewell lunches, award ceremonies, hugs, photos, and any number of other events leading to one thing: graduation.
Lights out.
Closing time.
It's the time of year when we say goodbye.
I work with students, and I love working with students.
I work with amazing student leaders, who have a mission and a vision and a cause, and effortlessly talk others into following them.
I work with students who are going to change the world someday, and students who are already changing it now.
I work with students who are passionate about making our campus a better place, or our city, or our state, or our country, or our world.
I work with students who are amazingly talented, students who are poets and dancers and actors and singers and musicians, artists and builders and makers and world shapers.
I work with students who work for change, and with students who work to preserve and honor tradition.
I work with students who are raising children that I would sit next to in a restaurant.
I work with students who are geniuses, students whose minds move at faster paces and higher levels than I can easily imagine.
I work with students who fight prejudice and inequity, students who strive to live and breathe social justice and positive empowerment, students who want to bring us together and raise us all up higher.
I work with students who will become teachers, doctors, dentists, lawyers, politicians, accountants, chefs, mothers, fathers, writers, photographers, reporters, physicists, soldiers, ambassadors, and any other job you can think of.
I work with students who teach me new things every day, and I hope that somewhere, in some way, I've taught them something, too, and that it was something worth knowing.
I work with students, and then I wave from the doorway of my office as we turn them out into the world.
Then I clean up my desk, straighten my office, and wait for next year.
When I will work with students again.
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
How to Read at Lunch
People who know me know that I read a few books a year, and a lot of that happens at lunchtime. Twice in the past week (and once for a minute on Twitter) I was discussing reading with someone, and mentioned that I read at lunch, and both times in person the people I was talking to were shocked, as if reading at lunch was some kind of achievement.
"How do you manage to do that?"
My initial thought was, "I open the book. Then I look at the page," but then I started thinking that maybe this really was something that people had trouble figuring out. Since I manage to get in a good hour of reading time three to five lunches a week, I thought about it on my way home tonight and broke down some basic rules of reading at lunch. These are the things that I do when I don't have a lunch meeting or a lunch invitation:
1) Leave your workspace. If you stay at your desk, you are still working. If you shut your door, people are going to knock on it. If you leave your door open, people are going to think you're a slacker who sits around your desk reading instead of doing work. Even if people don't knock, the phone will ring. You can let the calls go to voicemail, but then you know that you're going to have to listen to them after lunch, and you'll be tempted to listen to them now to get them out of the way. Again, there's a simple solution: leave your workplace during lunchtime. Take your book and lunch with you, or take your book to the place where you buy lunch.
2) Own your lunch time. If you get an hour for lunch, take the entire hour. If you have a half hour, take the whole half hour. If the first assistant gets twenty minutes and you get fifteen when she returns, because someone must man the desk and answer the phones at all times, then take your fifteen minutes. It is your time. You have earned it. It belongs to you. Yes, you have a lot of work to do. You'll still have a lot of work to do after lunch. Let it sit for an hour. If you're in the middle of an emergency or your director suddenly needs a report before a meeting in an hour, stay and handle what needs to be handled, but then take a lunch, and take the whole thing.
3) Leave your phone. Unless you're reading a book on your phone, you don't need your phone. What's the point of leaving work to go read if you bring work with you? If you're going to do that, you might as well just stay at your desk.
4) Be prepared to say no to people. I eat lunch at the dining facility closest to my office most days of the week. I know ninety percent of the people who eat lunch there, so at least once or twice a week someone will ask who I'm eating with, and then ask if I want to sit with them. Most days, I politely decline. "No, thanks, I'm going to read," sounds a little better than, "No, thanks, I have a book," but use whatever fits your style.
5) Be prepared to sometimes say yes to people. Every once in a while, when people ask if I want to sit with them, I say yes. If you say no every time, eventually people will stop asking you. If that's your goal, by all means ignore this rule, but if you still want to have friends and friendly coworkers, it's ok to randomly say yes. Just be sure to mention that you were planning to read, so that next time they see you with a book they won't be offended if you say no to their invitation.
6) One hand for food, one hand for reading material. These should not be the same hand, unless you like your books smeared with lunch.
If you're planning to read at lunch, I hope this helps.
"How do you manage to do that?"
My initial thought was, "I open the book. Then I look at the page," but then I started thinking that maybe this really was something that people had trouble figuring out. Since I manage to get in a good hour of reading time three to five lunches a week, I thought about it on my way home tonight and broke down some basic rules of reading at lunch. These are the things that I do when I don't have a lunch meeting or a lunch invitation:
1) Leave your workspace. If you stay at your desk, you are still working. If you shut your door, people are going to knock on it. If you leave your door open, people are going to think you're a slacker who sits around your desk reading instead of doing work. Even if people don't knock, the phone will ring. You can let the calls go to voicemail, but then you know that you're going to have to listen to them after lunch, and you'll be tempted to listen to them now to get them out of the way. Again, there's a simple solution: leave your workplace during lunchtime. Take your book and lunch with you, or take your book to the place where you buy lunch.
2) Own your lunch time. If you get an hour for lunch, take the entire hour. If you have a half hour, take the whole half hour. If the first assistant gets twenty minutes and you get fifteen when she returns, because someone must man the desk and answer the phones at all times, then take your fifteen minutes. It is your time. You have earned it. It belongs to you. Yes, you have a lot of work to do. You'll still have a lot of work to do after lunch. Let it sit for an hour. If you're in the middle of an emergency or your director suddenly needs a report before a meeting in an hour, stay and handle what needs to be handled, but then take a lunch, and take the whole thing.
3) Leave your phone. Unless you're reading a book on your phone, you don't need your phone. What's the point of leaving work to go read if you bring work with you? If you're going to do that, you might as well just stay at your desk.
4) Be prepared to say no to people. I eat lunch at the dining facility closest to my office most days of the week. I know ninety percent of the people who eat lunch there, so at least once or twice a week someone will ask who I'm eating with, and then ask if I want to sit with them. Most days, I politely decline. "No, thanks, I'm going to read," sounds a little better than, "No, thanks, I have a book," but use whatever fits your style.
5) Be prepared to sometimes say yes to people. Every once in a while, when people ask if I want to sit with them, I say yes. If you say no every time, eventually people will stop asking you. If that's your goal, by all means ignore this rule, but if you still want to have friends and friendly coworkers, it's ok to randomly say yes. Just be sure to mention that you were planning to read, so that next time they see you with a book they won't be offended if you say no to their invitation.
6) One hand for food, one hand for reading material. These should not be the same hand, unless you like your books smeared with lunch.
If you're planning to read at lunch, I hope this helps.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Dreamscapes
I noticed this morning that my subconscious mind is having a hell of a time with 30 Days of Blogging. Add in "Throwback Thursday" on Facebook, when I have to go through my photo albums and find pictures of myself (an actual challenge since my low self esteem usually keeps me from getting in front of a camera), and we're dredging a lot of stuff out of the memory hole.
My brain has chosen to respond to this with some really vivid dreams about people, places, pets, and things that I haven't seen or spoken to or visited in years. This has been a strange experience.
Two nights ago, I had a dream where Vern (who we also called Moose), a dog that we had for (I think) fourteen years who died before I went to college warned me about talking to ghosts in the hallway. He barked until I left the ghost alone.
At least four times this month I've dreamed about Scruffy, the best dog in the world.
I see faces that don't have names.
I've seen the same faces while flipping through my photo albums. These people must have been important to me once, or they were at least people that I knew, because I took pictures of them. I look at them now and grasp for names. Heather? Is that a Heather? I knew a lot of girls named Heather. Still do. Maybe it was a Courtney?
The other night, I visited our home in Alaska. I can't remember the apartment number, but our zip code was 98733. When we moved away in 1988, the boy who lived next door was named Charley. Or Charlie? He was in my dream. Also, I had rollerskates.
I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here.
I just know that I've been waking up, every night, at two or three in the morning. It takes me a half hour to an hour to fall back to sleep. When I'm awake, I look at pictures, and try to remember who those people were. Or are.
I wonder how many of them remember me.
My brain has chosen to respond to this with some really vivid dreams about people, places, pets, and things that I haven't seen or spoken to or visited in years. This has been a strange experience.
Two nights ago, I had a dream where Vern (who we also called Moose), a dog that we had for (I think) fourteen years who died before I went to college warned me about talking to ghosts in the hallway. He barked until I left the ghost alone.
At least four times this month I've dreamed about Scruffy, the best dog in the world.
I see faces that don't have names.
I've seen the same faces while flipping through my photo albums. These people must have been important to me once, or they were at least people that I knew, because I took pictures of them. I look at them now and grasp for names. Heather? Is that a Heather? I knew a lot of girls named Heather. Still do. Maybe it was a Courtney?
The other night, I visited our home in Alaska. I can't remember the apartment number, but our zip code was 98733. When we moved away in 1988, the boy who lived next door was named Charley. Or Charlie? He was in my dream. Also, I had rollerskates.
I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here.
I just know that I've been waking up, every night, at two or three in the morning. It takes me a half hour to an hour to fall back to sleep. When I'm awake, I look at pictures, and try to remember who those people were. Or are.
I wonder how many of them remember me.
Monday, April 21, 2014
Too Funky
Tonight, on Day 21 of 30 Days of Blogging, I've decided to use a topic suggested by my friend Beth, who is a musician:
Talk about a time that music changed your life.
OK, but you're going to have to imagine yourself back to a time and place that few of you remember and some of you may not have been born yet in. Picture it, everyone:
Summer, 1992
It's a leap year. Bill Clinton is running for president, and so is Ross Perot. Euro Disney has just opened. Manuel Noriega is going to prison. "A League of Their Own" is the charming feelgood movie of the year, and stars my friend Lesley's little sister as an extra. This will be very exciting when I meet my friend Lesley in the fall of 1993.
I live on Fort Drum, an army base in upstate New York, on Blout Loop. Our street was supposed to be named Blount Loop, after William Blount, a signer of the US Constitution. Many of the streets in the housing areas on post were named after signers of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, but ours was spelled incorrectly. My father tried to have it changed, but the Army, being the Army, decided that if it said "Blout" on the sign then it was going to be Blout Loop because, hey, they already made the sign.
In a random coincidence, I now live in the same town as William Blount's historic mansion.
I've never been there.
This may be hard to believe, but I am socially inept. I don't speak to a lot of people, and I don't have a lot of friends. I'm about to enter the eleventh grade and I want high school to be over. Tenth grade was the worst school year of my life, but by the end of eleventh grade I will be friends with pretty much everyone that I choose to be. I just don't know it at the time. I don't know where I want to go, but I know where I don't want to stay. Also, I have a problem:
I don't move my arms when I walk.
I became aware of this when I overheard my parents' other child explaining to my mother how embarrassing it was to be related to me, and how the two of us pretended to be cousins at school. "Overheard" kind of implies that there was some effort made to hear this, but in actuality I was in the next room, loading the dishwasher. I didn't catch the entire conversation, but the gist of it was that I was a nerd, everyone hated me, I wasn't good at sports, and I was a freak who loped through the halls like Frankenstein's monster.
Wait, what?
"He doesn't move his arms when he walks. Like, people swing their arms, you know? He doesn't move his arms. He's a freak."
My parents' other child said a number of horrible things to and about me over the years, which we will maybe discuss more in a future entry, but for some reason this one seemed especially damning. Over the next few days, I found myself evaluating my walking, completely self conscious of my arms and my hands and what they were doing and whether it was the same thing that everyone else's arms and hands were doing when they walked and then I discovered that, oh God, it was true. I was a freak who somehow managed to walk without swinging my arms.
Fortunately, at this time I owned Scruffy, the best dog in the world, who slept on my bed every night and never told me I was a freak. I also owned a yellow Walkman with black headphones, and a cassette tape of "Red Hot + Dance", which included George Michael's "Too Funky". Together, somehow, these things added up in my mind to a solution for my non-swinging arms.
Here, watch the video while I attempt to explain:
What are the beautiful, glamorous people in the video doing?
Walking.
And swinging their arms.
And, God, is that not a fantastic song to walk to?
So, every night after dinner, since I had no friends' houses to go to, no parties to attend, and no shows to watch for a couple of hours, I strapped on my Walkman, popped my cassette in, and took Scruffy for a walk around Blout Loop. One trip around the loop was about as long as one playing of "Too Funky" and a few moments to rewind it, so I walked, and while one arm held the leash the other arm swung, deliberate, practiced swinging. I strutted and stomped in time to the music, and each time I got to my house I turned around, switched hands with the leash, and walked the other way.
By the end of summer, I was swinging my arms while I walked, just like a normal person.
And I have George Michael to thank for it.
Talk about a time that music changed your life.
OK, but you're going to have to imagine yourself back to a time and place that few of you remember and some of you may not have been born yet in. Picture it, everyone:
Summer, 1992
It's a leap year. Bill Clinton is running for president, and so is Ross Perot. Euro Disney has just opened. Manuel Noriega is going to prison. "A League of Their Own" is the charming feelgood movie of the year, and stars my friend Lesley's little sister as an extra. This will be very exciting when I meet my friend Lesley in the fall of 1993.
I live on Fort Drum, an army base in upstate New York, on Blout Loop. Our street was supposed to be named Blount Loop, after William Blount, a signer of the US Constitution. Many of the streets in the housing areas on post were named after signers of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, but ours was spelled incorrectly. My father tried to have it changed, but the Army, being the Army, decided that if it said "Blout" on the sign then it was going to be Blout Loop because, hey, they already made the sign.
In a random coincidence, I now live in the same town as William Blount's historic mansion.
I've never been there.
This may be hard to believe, but I am socially inept. I don't speak to a lot of people, and I don't have a lot of friends. I'm about to enter the eleventh grade and I want high school to be over. Tenth grade was the worst school year of my life, but by the end of eleventh grade I will be friends with pretty much everyone that I choose to be. I just don't know it at the time. I don't know where I want to go, but I know where I don't want to stay. Also, I have a problem:
I don't move my arms when I walk.
I became aware of this when I overheard my parents' other child explaining to my mother how embarrassing it was to be related to me, and how the two of us pretended to be cousins at school. "Overheard" kind of implies that there was some effort made to hear this, but in actuality I was in the next room, loading the dishwasher. I didn't catch the entire conversation, but the gist of it was that I was a nerd, everyone hated me, I wasn't good at sports, and I was a freak who loped through the halls like Frankenstein's monster.
Wait, what?
"He doesn't move his arms when he walks. Like, people swing their arms, you know? He doesn't move his arms. He's a freak."
My parents' other child said a number of horrible things to and about me over the years, which we will maybe discuss more in a future entry, but for some reason this one seemed especially damning. Over the next few days, I found myself evaluating my walking, completely self conscious of my arms and my hands and what they were doing and whether it was the same thing that everyone else's arms and hands were doing when they walked and then I discovered that, oh God, it was true. I was a freak who somehow managed to walk without swinging my arms.
Fortunately, at this time I owned Scruffy, the best dog in the world, who slept on my bed every night and never told me I was a freak. I also owned a yellow Walkman with black headphones, and a cassette tape of "Red Hot + Dance", which included George Michael's "Too Funky". Together, somehow, these things added up in my mind to a solution for my non-swinging arms.
Here, watch the video while I attempt to explain:
What are the beautiful, glamorous people in the video doing?
Walking.
And swinging their arms.
And, God, is that not a fantastic song to walk to?
So, every night after dinner, since I had no friends' houses to go to, no parties to attend, and no shows to watch for a couple of hours, I strapped on my Walkman, popped my cassette in, and took Scruffy for a walk around Blout Loop. One trip around the loop was about as long as one playing of "Too Funky" and a few moments to rewind it, so I walked, and while one arm held the leash the other arm swung, deliberate, practiced swinging. I strutted and stomped in time to the music, and each time I got to my house I turned around, switched hands with the leash, and walked the other way.
By the end of summer, I was swinging my arms while I walked, just like a normal person.
And I have George Michael to thank for it.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Easter Evening Lois Lanesanity: Lois Takes the Stand
If you missed this morning's blog entry, you should go back and reread it, because this is a special two-part blog commemorating the two-part story of "Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane" #99 and 100. If you've already read it, let's get back to our story in progress!
He's not kidding:
Also, how is it possible for Lois to be lying in her teeth? I've heard of lying through your teeth, but in them? Is that somehow worse than regular lying?
There's no time to dwell on it, because the trial starts with a parade of witnesses from Superman:
Batman, proving that there's some thing he's not good at after all, can't manage to poke a hole in any of their stories. Noting the obvious inability of her Bat-lawyer to save her, Superman calls a recess and tries to convince Lois to take a plea bargain:
Pardon me while I guffaw.
You've never been insane, Lois? Never?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is issue #100 of Lois' comic. That means I can think of at least 99 examples of times when Lois was fully, completely, and sometimes homicidally insane. Superman starts providing examples, because finding a time when Lois was insane is about as difficult as finding a joint in the lawn seats at a Dave Matthews concert in Colorado, and Bat-lawyer shuts him down and rejects the plea deal.
Then Bat-lawyer does something that should immediately qualify him for Bat-disbarment: He puts Lois on the stand to defend herself.
Superman responds by destroying her:
She seems totally innocent, right?
And also not insane?
Recognizing that she just punched her freedom to death, Lois offers to take a lie detector test. Bat-lawyer, in a continuing show of incompetence, fails to object.
Nobody saw that coming, right?
Batman, remember the Top Chef Season 3 Holiday Special, when Betty Fraser, hateful cheftestant from Season 2, stared at the camera in panic over the top of her overcooked dinner course and blurted helplessly, "You can't uncook lamb!" You can't uncook lamb, Batman, and you can't unring a bell. The jury isn't going to forget the lie detector even if the judge tells them to. The time to object was before Lois got hooked up to it.
Realizing that he's the worst lawyer ever and has completely blown this case (although, really, it's not like Lois helped by jumping out of the witness box to slap Superman across the mouth), Batman resorts to one last tactic:
Dragging Lana's days-old (but still with great hair) corpse into the courtroom.
And here's where this tale of death goes completely off the rails, even by Lois Lane standards.
For starters, it's not Lana:
Batman knows, because he and Superman dug her up last night:
But then, who is it?
For reasons which are unclear, Superman's solution is to build a Lois android:
Wouldn't it have been easier just to inspect the lie detector?
I think Superman just wanted to build a robot.
After examining the Lana-bot, Superman traces its origin to the Sahara desert, where he discovers a domed spaceship with a giant chessboard:
Aliens framed Lois, as part of some sort of chess game. Why? Oh, they never explain. They're too busy getting punched out by Superman, who rescues Lana:
who is quick to find the silver lining:
Drop her, Superman. Just leave her in the desert, let Lois get convicted of murder, and go marry Wonder Woman, a nice sweet lady who isn't insane.
Superman instead takes her back to the courtroom, where Lois is cleared of all charges and only one question remains:
I bet she was guilty.
Happy Easter.
He's not kidding:
Also, how is it possible for Lois to be lying in her teeth? I've heard of lying through your teeth, but in them? Is that somehow worse than regular lying?
There's no time to dwell on it, because the trial starts with a parade of witnesses from Superman:
Batman, proving that there's some thing he's not good at after all, can't manage to poke a hole in any of their stories. Noting the obvious inability of her Bat-lawyer to save her, Superman calls a recess and tries to convince Lois to take a plea bargain:
Pardon me while I guffaw.
You've never been insane, Lois? Never?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is issue #100 of Lois' comic. That means I can think of at least 99 examples of times when Lois was fully, completely, and sometimes homicidally insane. Superman starts providing examples, because finding a time when Lois was insane is about as difficult as finding a joint in the lawn seats at a Dave Matthews concert in Colorado, and Bat-lawyer shuts him down and rejects the plea deal.
Then Bat-lawyer does something that should immediately qualify him for Bat-disbarment: He puts Lois on the stand to defend herself.
Superman responds by destroying her:
She seems totally innocent, right?
And also not insane?
Recognizing that she just punched her freedom to death, Lois offers to take a lie detector test. Bat-lawyer, in a continuing show of incompetence, fails to object.
Nobody saw that coming, right?
Batman, remember the Top Chef Season 3 Holiday Special, when Betty Fraser, hateful cheftestant from Season 2, stared at the camera in panic over the top of her overcooked dinner course and blurted helplessly, "You can't uncook lamb!" You can't uncook lamb, Batman, and you can't unring a bell. The jury isn't going to forget the lie detector even if the judge tells them to. The time to object was before Lois got hooked up to it.
Realizing that he's the worst lawyer ever and has completely blown this case (although, really, it's not like Lois helped by jumping out of the witness box to slap Superman across the mouth), Batman resorts to one last tactic:
Dragging Lana's days-old (but still with great hair) corpse into the courtroom.
And here's where this tale of death goes completely off the rails, even by Lois Lane standards.
For starters, it's not Lana:
Batman knows, because he and Superman dug her up last night:
But then, who is it?
For reasons which are unclear, Superman's solution is to build a Lois android:
Wouldn't it have been easier just to inspect the lie detector?
I think Superman just wanted to build a robot.
After examining the Lana-bot, Superman traces its origin to the Sahara desert, where he discovers a domed spaceship with a giant chessboard:
Aliens framed Lois, as part of some sort of chess game. Why? Oh, they never explain. They're too busy getting punched out by Superman, who rescues Lana:
who is quick to find the silver lining:
Drop her, Superman. Just leave her in the desert, let Lois get convicted of murder, and go marry Wonder Woman, a nice sweet lady who isn't insane.
Superman instead takes her back to the courtroom, where Lois is cleared of all charges and only one question remains:
I bet she was guilty.
Happy Easter.
Easter Morning Lois Lanesanity - Part 1
I know that yesterday I said that I would post twice for missing Friday's blog entry, but I decided to hold off until today, because I have a fantastic story of death and resurrection to share this Easter.
It's also a story of insanity.
Let's jump right in, shall we?
Ferro Lad, like me, is only happy about solid bunnies. We both understand that hollow bunnies are lies. They promise that they are thick, delicious chocolate, but then you bite and they explode into shards. Shards of lies. Chocolate lies.
Like nobody saw that coming.
Our story opens with Lois, as is often the case, babbling something about herself at Clark while he wishes that there was a horrible emergency somewhere that needed responding to.
Lois is excited to be on this television show about Superman and his secret life, until she discovers that she's not the only one who might know about Superman's secrets:
Lana's eyebrows are not those of a friend who's happy to see you. Sensing animosity, the host immediately begins poking the hornet's nest of jealousy with a stick. He's a brave, brave man.
Lana, slightly less insane than Lois, attempts to take the high road:
but the host immediately begins dredging up the past:
Before Lois can do more than hmmph, though, he goes right back to poking:
which ends up going about how these things usually go. Lois and Lana get mad, but still decide to go get some lunch together, because they are the original Best Frenemies.
Lunch quickly turns sour:
and then the hair-pulling starts:
And, of course, the one threating murder is Lois. As I said, Lana is the slightly more sane of the two, although in this pair that's like being the slightly less burning log in the fireplace. Still, faster than you can say, "Violent, irrational mood swing," Lois is calling to apologize:
She wants to take Lana on a drive.
Alone.
In the rain.
On a bridge.
You see where this is going, right?
And off the bridge they go.
Lois, as good a friend as she is a driver, hauls herself out of the river without bothering to check on Lana, and hitchhikes back to her hotel, just in time for Superman to show up:
The police are trying to recover her car, and asked Superman to check on her. They're having a little trouble, though:
And then we all see what Lois has done:
Lana's dead. And she still has great hair.
What follows is a scene so horribly written that I couldn't take pictures of it. I was too busy face-palming.
Lois ends up in the county lockup, where she is visited by Bruce Wayne. Bruce informs her that he's got the perfect lawyer for her, if she'll just wait right here in this room while he goes to another room to get the lawyer. Bruce leaves and then Batman comes in, because Bruce Wayne is Batman and Batman is Lois' lawyer and HOW THE HELL DID NO ONE EVER FIGURE OUT BATMAN AND SUPERMAN'S IDENTITIES WHEN THIS IS THE BEST THEY DID TO COVER THEM?
Superman joins them with some terrible news:
So, Lois is going with the Ted Kennedy defense, then. Who knew that the writing pool at DC Comics was following the "Law and Order" "ripped from the headlines!" school of plot construction? I'm not just being facetious in bringing that up, either. This comic is from February 1970. Chappaquiddick was barely months old at that point, and probably still in the newspapers.
Getting back to the story, Superman informs Lois and Batman that he'll be serving as the prosecutor, since Batman's skills as defense attorney require super skills on the other side of the aisle as well. Also, you know, Lois killed his other girlfriend, so he's a little upset.
Lois, being Lois, immediately starts ignoring the advice of her lawyer and making things worse for herself:
and the Langs are, not surprisingly, not at all happy to see her:
And that's where we leave things, for now. Lana's dead, Lois is going to stand trial:
and I'm going to go eat some of Ferro Lad's chocolate bunny.
It's also a story of insanity.
Let's jump right in, shall we?
Ferro Lad, like me, is only happy about solid bunnies. We both understand that hollow bunnies are lies. They promise that they are thick, delicious chocolate, but then you bite and they explode into shards. Shards of lies. Chocolate lies.
Like nobody saw that coming.
Our story opens with Lois, as is often the case, babbling something about herself at Clark while he wishes that there was a horrible emergency somewhere that needed responding to.
Lois is excited to be on this television show about Superman and his secret life, until she discovers that she's not the only one who might know about Superman's secrets:
Lana's eyebrows are not those of a friend who's happy to see you. Sensing animosity, the host immediately begins poking the hornet's nest of jealousy with a stick. He's a brave, brave man.
Lana, slightly less insane than Lois, attempts to take the high road:
but the host immediately begins dredging up the past:
Before Lois can do more than hmmph, though, he goes right back to poking:
which ends up going about how these things usually go. Lois and Lana get mad, but still decide to go get some lunch together, because they are the original Best Frenemies.
Lunch quickly turns sour:
and then the hair-pulling starts:
And, of course, the one threating murder is Lois. As I said, Lana is the slightly more sane of the two, although in this pair that's like being the slightly less burning log in the fireplace. Still, faster than you can say, "Violent, irrational mood swing," Lois is calling to apologize:
She wants to take Lana on a drive.
Alone.
In the rain.
On a bridge.
You see where this is going, right?
And off the bridge they go.
Lois, as good a friend as she is a driver, hauls herself out of the river without bothering to check on Lana, and hitchhikes back to her hotel, just in time for Superman to show up:
The police are trying to recover her car, and asked Superman to check on her. They're having a little trouble, though:
And then we all see what Lois has done:
Lana's dead. And she still has great hair.
What follows is a scene so horribly written that I couldn't take pictures of it. I was too busy face-palming.
Lois ends up in the county lockup, where she is visited by Bruce Wayne. Bruce informs her that he's got the perfect lawyer for her, if she'll just wait right here in this room while he goes to another room to get the lawyer. Bruce leaves and then Batman comes in, because Bruce Wayne is Batman and Batman is Lois' lawyer and HOW THE HELL DID NO ONE EVER FIGURE OUT BATMAN AND SUPERMAN'S IDENTITIES WHEN THIS IS THE BEST THEY DID TO COVER THEM?
Superman joins them with some terrible news:
So, Lois is going with the Ted Kennedy defense, then. Who knew that the writing pool at DC Comics was following the "Law and Order" "ripped from the headlines!" school of plot construction? I'm not just being facetious in bringing that up, either. This comic is from February 1970. Chappaquiddick was barely months old at that point, and probably still in the newspapers.
Getting back to the story, Superman informs Lois and Batman that he'll be serving as the prosecutor, since Batman's skills as defense attorney require super skills on the other side of the aisle as well. Also, you know, Lois killed his other girlfriend, so he's a little upset.
Lois, being Lois, immediately starts ignoring the advice of her lawyer and making things worse for herself:
and the Langs are, not surprisingly, not at all happy to see her:
And that's where we leave things, for now. Lana's dead, Lois is going to stand trial:
and I'm going to go eat some of Ferro Lad's chocolate bunny.
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