A sneak preview for your patience

I got started late on Wednesday’s comic and I’m about half done at the moment. On account of having to teach Summer school, I need to get some sleep tonight. I should have it up tomorrow evening, so we’ll just go ahead and turn Wednesday’s strip into Thursday’s strip.

Voilà!

I woke up this morning early afternoon and did my usual online rituals - check comics, check blog sites, check Facebook. Much to my dismay that it was someone’s Facebook status that clued me in on this unfortunate development: Billy Mays, notable pusher of products such as Kaboom, Orange Glo, and SIMONIZ Instant Shine, has passed away at home in his sleep at the tender age of 50 according to several news sources [foxnews.com] [cnn.com] as well as the Twitter account of his son, Billy Mays III.

Now, I never followed his Discovery Channel series, Pitchmen, nor did I ever order anything from his television commercials. I also heard he was kind of a jerk to some folks, but that’s all rumor as far as I know. Regardless, as someone who also makes a living by standing up in front of a disinterested audience with the aim of converting them into loyal “customers” (public school teacher), I’ve got a lot of respect for anyone with the charisma and the cajones to survive in that line of work. Pitchmen and salespersons make a living based on how successfully they can move their product - at least I get tenure after a couple years.

But why post about Billy Mays when other, more notable celebrities have also written their last checks this week? For one, I feel like the recent death of pop icon Michael Jackson, also at age 50, is going to overshadow much in the coming weeks. Case in point, I had no idea that Farrah Fawcett lost her battle with cancer, and that Ed McMahon also kicked the bucket, all within the past week.

This brings me to my second point: The Celebrity Death Curse of Threes. The superstition is an extention of the old belief that good/bad things always happen in triplets, only in this case it is applied to celebrity deaths. Last year, comedian George Carlin was followed in death by Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes merely a month and a half later. The Wall Street Journal has a really fascinating post about this Rule of Three in which author Rebecca Dana explores other close-knit celebrity departures:

Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the “Big Bopper,” all died together in a plane crash in 1959. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison all died in close succession in late-1970, early-1971. In 2003, Johnny Cash, John Ritter, and Warren Zevon all died within the same week.

Bringing it back to Billy - I feel that, given the high profile passings of recent days and the fulfillment of the Rule of Three with Jackson, Fawcett, and McMahon, Mr. Mays might not get the attention that he and his fabulous beard deserve. Unless we’re seeing the start of a brand new rule of three involving Vince Shlomi and Anthony Sullivan, in which case the universe of “as seen on TV” gadgets may never fully recover.

So here’s to you, Mighty Man of OxiClean. May your whites be the whitest they have ever been.

RIP Billy Mays 1958-2009.
(Photo Creative Commons 2.0 by Sharese Ann Frederick)

It’s easy to overlook the benefits of the little things in life.

Specifically, there exists an entire class of “creature comforts” which provide a degree of comfort and a sense of ‘at-ease’ that is greater than the amount of effort required to achieve said creature comfort. Pertaining to the title of this post, before going on vacation to Monterey for a couple days I took the liberty of washing my car both inside and out. I had been putting it off for some time and as a result, (pure laziness on my part,) my 2008 Corolla had accumulated some noticeable amount of trash within and an unsubtle layer of dirt without.

With a freshly clean car at my disposal, my vacation was already off to a happy start. Just knowing my vehicle looked nice was enough to put a smile on my face as I pulled out of the driveway on my way to the coast. I had cupholders free! There was room in the back seat for luggage! I could even see out the front windshield and side mirrors, they were so clean!

Overall, it didn’t take very long to get my car cleaned up, despite my best efforts to procrastinate for months on end. Now, I can take friends for a ride, drive my fianceé to a nice restaurant, or just better enjoy the ride to work in the morning, all thanks to what amounted to an hour and a half of automotive TLC.

It’s amazing how much comfort and happiness one can get out of simply taking care of a few things.

So my computer is temporarily out of commission on account of me having to paint my office. As I type this on my fianceé’s netbook (which is SOOOO awesome, by the way) my computer sits powerless and disassembled on my living room floor. Of course, since I kinda need my computer to finish and publish comics, there will sadly be no comic coming out this Wednesday.

Why don’t I just finish painting tomorrow and hook my compy back up, you say? Well, my eager friends, I’ll be on a much-needed vacation with my lovely future wife and thus will be very much occupied for the next few days.

Oh don’t worry, you should be getting your Sunday fix on schedule. In the meanwhile though, try having some summer fun of your own and I’ll see you all in a few days.

Hasta la bye-bye

Are you going to remember to call your father tomorrow?

I consider myself lucky in that I get to spend quality time with my dad (and the rest of the family) tomorrow morning. In fact, this entire weekend is turning out to be some good quality family time. Granted, it’s been seriously stressful trying to get the house cleaned up in preparation for my folks staying over, but it needed to be done anyway and if anything having my parents spend the night was a great motivator to finally get all that laundry taken care of. Now that most of it is finished (never mind that it should’ve been done a long time ago) I think we can relax just a bit - at least until I have to start painting the last two bedrooms on Monday.

But forget that I’ve actually got more work to do - what’s in store for Sunday? Well, taking my dad out to brunch for starters. After that I plan to relax a bit, and by ‘relax’ I mean ‘do Sunday’s comic’. Yeah, it’s been a long day for everyone so we’ll just go ahead and finish up the comic tomorrow afternoon it looks like.

Ok, Ok, what about dads, right? Well, I don’t know about your dad, but my old man likes Good and Plenty’s and mixed nuts - which is exactly what he’s getting from me. I figure that he doesn’t need another tie, and if he did I would just give him back the tie I borrowed from him last year. He also doesn’t need another plastic animal that poops jellybeans, though I know he gets a kick out of them much to my mother’s chagrin. He also doesn’t need the latest Tiger Woods game because I know his computer can’t keep up with them anymore, and I’m not about to spring for an Xbox 360 because, well, I don’t exactly have that kind of disposable income.

So what did you get your dad for his big day? Did you do anything special? I want to know!