You may recall that a few weeks ago, I said I had tickets to see the musical Something Rotten on 11/28 but another event came along and seemed more important so I sold my tickets here and bought new ones to see that show next week instead. The more important event was the annual meeting of the Writers Guild's Animation Writing Caucus. Each year at this ceremony, they present the Lifetime Achievement Award to someone and I didn't want to miss the presentation to my everyone's friend, Len Wein.
Here's a picture from that evening. The gent at left is Craig Miller, the Chair of the A.W.C. The wonderful lady holding the flowers is Christine Valada, the widow of Len. The others are past winners of the award and left to right, they are Christie Marx, Patric Verrone, Mike Reiss, Len Uhley and me. I have no idea what was happening at the moment this photo was taken to make me look so suspicious.
It was a fine evening. The acting troupe that does the Thrilling Adventure Hour shows did a live reading of Len's first Swamp Thing story. There were video messages from Neil Gaiman and Hugh Jackman. DC Entertainment Head Honcho Dan Didio made the formal presentation of the award. Len's beloved Chris accepted it with a witty and touching speech. And the place was packed.
I guess it's inevitable at an event like this but I found myself thinking about past times with Len…mostly silly, little moments that would not constitute an engaging anecdote but which will nonetheless always be there when I think of the guy. A lot of laughing. A lot of talking about comics, the good and the bad. A lot of time waiting in airports, going to or from some convention…
…mostly, the laughing.
This has been a rough year of losing friends and we still have an entire month to go.