Yesterday, Irene and I visited Marie Severin and whisked her away to Blackstone Steakhouse to celebrate her 80th birthday. As I’ve told you before, we both love Marie. She’s the nicest person we ever met in comics, one of the most talented, and easily the funniest. When Irene and I realized during our last visit that such a momentous milestone was moving toward her (uh-oh—one evening with Marie and I’m alliterating like Stan again), we decided that attention must be paid.

So we told Marie that unless one of her friends had already made plans, we wanted to take her out to dinner. Heck, if a friend had already made plans, we’d take the friend, too! But luckily for us, Marie was free last night, and so we had her to ourselves for a long and hilarious evening. Here we all are after having demolished an amazing meal:

Before heading to the restaurant, we spent an hour or so at her apartment, and one of the things we did was show her printouts I’d made yesterday morning of sites which had wished her a happy birthday. She was astounded by the outpouring of love, and astonished by some of them, particularly the lengthy write-up at fanboy.com of her career. When I read her part of it aloud, such as the sentences— (more…)

I had two dreams last night in which Irene was in danger in some way, either hurt or lost. I’m not sure where these dreams, separated by several hours, came from, particularly since she is in better shape this week than last from her broken ankle, so you’d figure my dreams wouldn’t be filled with fear, but they were, several hours apart.

In the first dream, we were walking through the woods nearby our home with another couple I don’t think I was ever able to properly identify, perhaps even my parents (which would be odd, since my my father is no longer with us, having died in January), when a couple of deer ran toward her and crashed into her, staggering her but not knocking her down. As Irene screamed, calling for me to come help her, the two deer kept between us so that I could not reach her.

Only now they were no longer deer, but rather some deer/moose hybrid, with big bulbous snouts melded with their otherwise deerlike bodies. In the dream, I didn’t think there was anything odd about this transformation. I kept running up to them, trying to get past them, punching them in those bulbous snouts, but they would not yield. I kept swinging at them, trying to dance around them, but I was never able to reach her. I woke with her cries still in my ears.

In the next dream, hours later, we were in a completely different environment, a large city, leaning on a railing watching some huge public event. Fireworks, perhaps? I don’t think it was a parade. The specifics are gone now, but as the crowded event, whatever it had been, breaks up, I lose track of Irene. No problem, I figure, I’ll just call her, and we’ll decide where to meet. So I pull out my iPhone, but no matter what I do, I cannot make a call. Either the screen freezes, or skips on the horizontal and/or vertical like an old-fashioned TV, or simply keeps turning itself off. I walk along, cursing at the phone, wondering how I’m going to find her.

Eventually, I do wander across her, with no sense of whether it had been through some deliberate action or accidental, somehow having found her on an upper floor of an apartment building whose hallways were just as crowded as the streets we were in at the beginning of the dream. I’m relieved to have found her, but we’re densely packed together, unable to move, and everyone around us is arguing how to disperse, whether to walk left or right, up the stairs or down. We’re not getting anywhere, and as I wake, we’re still trying to figure out how to get out of there and home.

Both times when I woke, she was right there next to me, which is all that matters.

Whatever it was my subconscious was trying to tell me, I’m not sure I deciphered the message.

Reading of the death of French pastry genius Gaston Lenôtre in the pages of The New York Times brought me immediately back to mid-’70s Manhattan, when I first met the woman who was to become my wife and love was in bloom. I need no madeleine to bring back my past; give me an inspired Lenôtre creation any day.

The obituary refers to Chateau France, an 80-seat restaurant and pâtisserie, which he opened on East 59th Street in April 1974, the same month Irene began work at Marvel Comics, and two months before my start date. I don’t remember ever eating in the restaurant, but the pâtisserie, which in my memory was simply called Lenôtre’s, was immediately next to the restaurant, and once Irene and I discovered each other it became somewhat of a hangout for us.

I can close my eyes and remember specific pastries, Irene and I holding hands across the table as we ate. There was a swan encased in spun-sugar. A large orange filled with cream. Irene and I would walk there during our lunch hours, or after work, and enjoy Lenôtre’s amazing confections, and our budding relationship. Lenôtre was a culinary god, and his pastries were so sensual that eating them was almost a form of foreplay.

Lenôtre apprentice Michel Richards is quoted as saying about the restaurant, “It closed a year later. Americans weren’t ready for his pastries.” Irene and I surely were. You may remember what music was playing when you fell in love. I remember what I was eating. And often, what I was eating was the brainchild of Gaston Lenôtre.

Continued Richard, “When you’ve been at Lenôtre, it’s like a drug. You’ve been injected with his recipes that you have to carry your whole life.”

I have. I do. And almost 35 years later, I’m still high.

Since in my previous post I shared a photograph of the happy couple on our wedding day, I thought I should let the world see what 32 years has done to us.

Due to a dreaded deadline doom, we celebrated close to home in a subdued, though still joyous, way.

(Subdued compared to our celebration of the 25th anniversary, anyway, which began with a backyard party for 125 people and ended in the Galapagos Islands!)

We had dinner in Inwood at a local, non-chain, family restaurant, played 18 holes of miniature golf, and then wore ourselves out with several energetic rounds of air hockey, the last of which always leaves us laughing hysterically.

Then it was a night spent going through old photo albums, and remembering all the twists and turns, both good and bad, which brought us here, still smiling.

This photo, taken 32 years ago today, is what I see each time I open my wallet.

I look forward to seeing what our next 32 years together will bring!

While looking through the March 1977 issue of Omega the Unknown yesterday in order to write about Jim Mooney, I came upon this blurb in the Bullpen Bulletins page that issue. It would have run in all Marvel Comics published that month, which meant you would have been reading this in December 1976 or January 1977, depending on the lead time off the cover date back then.

(And depending on whether you were born yet, as well. And if you’d been born, whether you were old enough to read. Yes, I’ve been married a long time.)

Considering the fact that I was the one who wrote the Bullpen Bulletins pages at the time (well, except for the Stan’s Soapbox section), I guess there was no way that announcement wouldn’t have been there!

And I also guess that considering Irene’s recent behavior (as I reported earlier), there’s no arguing with the fact that I seem to have made the right choice over 31 years ago!

OK, so contrary to what I’d said earlier, I guess there’ll be one final Stoker-related post …

Two things happened in the hours after the Stoker banquet to remind me of what truly matters.

First, immediately following my loss to Gary Braunbeck, I received the following e-mail on my BlackBerry from my parents in Florida. They’d somehow managed to figure out how to watch the live web cast, and so sent me these words of commiseration:

We managed to stay up and watch the awards. We love you and you’ll always be a winner to us.

Later, after I returned from post-banquet partying, I was chatting with Irene, who had gone back to the room once the ceremony was over, and I noticed a small box on my pillow.

“What’s this?” I asked. (more…)