Again, thanks to all who've sent cash donations for this blog which — and this amazes me as much as it might amaze you — will be twenty years old a week from tomorrow. I still haven't thought of anything special to do for the occasion. Maybe I'll come out in support of overturning the election for Trump or I'll post a great recipe for cole slaw. Just to shake things up.
Things are peaceful here these days. I continue to wince at every new coronavirus record we break and to think how different things would be if back in March, Donald Trump had told everyone to wear a mask and to stop gathering in groups for a month or two. But that might have helped everyone, not just the people who supported him.
Please stop writing and asking me what's going to happen to the comic book industry in the next year or two. You don't know, I don't know and neither does anybody else. I believe there will be an industry and at some point, it will stabilize and there will be some clear business models to follow. Before we get there though, there will be much uncertainty and a lot of executive-types who'll come and go like Spinal Tap drummers.
Comic conventions? They'll happen when they happen. No one knows about them either.
We are in a time when everyone needs two things. I mean, besides paper towels and toilet paper. We need common sense and we need patience. Common sense tells us to stay home as much as we can, wear a mask when we can't and to not go to parties or gatherings, no matter how much shpilkes you may have.
"Shpilkes" is one of those Yiddish words that comes in handier than the corresponding word in English. It means restlessness, nervous energy, sitting on the proverbial pins and needles. I'll use it in a sentence: "He couldn't sit still…he had shpilkes." Some people would say "…the shpilkes."
It goes with the part about having patience. This thing will go away. We will hug, kiss and shake hands as we always did…maybe not as freely right away but one of these days. I don't know when. You don't know when. But fretting about it won't make it happen any sooner…and rushing is probably the reason we're now in a Second Wave or a Third Wave or whichever number Wave this is. We all know this. We just have to keep reminding each other about what we all know.