Earlier today over at io9, Charlie Jane Anders posted about Archy and Mehitabel, the philosopher cockroach and the alley cat created by Don Marquis 99 years ago in the pages of the New York Sun. Back when I was a teenager living in Brooklyn, I was so in love with the prose poems purportedly written by Archy as he bounced from key to key on a manual typewriter that I did an homage for the student newspaper of South Shore High School.

Here’s what I looked like back then. Here’s what I sounded like back then. And below, from the February 1973 issue of Shorelines, is what I wrote like back then, when I was but 17 years old.

Well … what I wrote like when I was 17 and channeling a cockroach anyway.

If I’m recalling correcting, the piece won me some sort of student journalism award from The New York Times. And no, I don’t know what they were thinking either.

But now that I’m in the fullness of my powers, however, it occurs to me that it might be time for another homage.

Hmmmm …

Apparently, the Internet trolls have their knives out for John Scalzi tonight. (But is there ever a night during which the Internet trolls don’t have their knives out for John Scalzi?)

After he posted a dashing photo of himself wearing Rachel Caine‘s red shoes at the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention, “The sexist dipshits are passing around the picture of me in high heels, as if I did something shameful. Because they are sexist dipshits.”

So to give those sexist dipshits a distraction that might take some heat off John, and to show I’ve always been willing to do pretty much anything and not care what anyone else might think, may I present—

Me as a high school junior. Wearing a tutu. And a black-and-white sequined bra. A black-and-white sequined bra that needed to be heavily stuffed with tissues.

You’re welcome.

Let’s step into the Wayback Machine, shall we?

The photo below, taken at South Shore High School by pal Barry Chaiken, shows me a few months before my 18th birthday, just as I was about to head off to SUNY Buffalo. It had been scheduled to appear in our high-school yearbook along with other casual student photos until (of this I am convinced, do not attempt to dissuade me) I refused to make an edit our faculty advisor requested to one of my poems.

I’d already been writing for years, and had by then been rejected from F&SF, Analog, and all of the other fine (and not so fine) magazines of the day, many of which no longer exist. Marvel Comics, my wife, Clarion, my son, Science Fiction Age, and the Syfy Channel (along with so many other things) were all waiting for me in the future, hiding around a bend where I could not see them.

Who knows what else waits just out of sight on the winding road ahead?

After my breakfast with Sean Howe at Shopsin’s Saturday morning, and a brief visit to the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art, I headed north for lunch with high-school friends at Nice-Matin, proving along the way that I am no longer a New Yorker.

First, I mistakenly took the 6 train to 77th Street, ending up on the East side rather than the West side, which meant I had to hike crosstown through Central Park. A pleasant walk amid the falling leaves, but still …

And then, after I came out of the park at 81st Street, I was so turned around that instead of walking two blocks south to 79th Street as I needed to, I walked two blocks north and wondered why I wasn’t finding the restaurant. Eventually, after much bewilderment, I realized I was on 83rd Street.

East, west, north, south—they were all blurred together. I guess when I trekked to New York this time, I left my mental compass home. So I got to the late lunch later than I expected.

Here we are at the other end our lengthy lunch which was so engaging it ran until what should have been dinner time: Donna Grant (the best-selling author), Mark Diamond (the lawyer), Barry Chaiken (the doctor and vintner), Marc Frons (the journalist), and me (whatever the Hell I am):

If you’re in the mood to, you can see what four of us looked like one year ago when we had our first mini-reunion. Not much difference, eh? (more…)

As much as I enjoyed my brief visit to the annual meeting of the Lewis Carroll Society as recounted in my previous posts, the primary reason I’d headed into Manhattan occurred later that day—a mini-reunion of writers and editors from my high-school newspaper. I was part of the first graduating class of Brooklyn’s South Shore High School, which meant that it had no newspaper before we got there, and so it was up to us to invent the paper’s journalistic traditions instead of having any to follow. The writers and editors of that newspaper, which we dubbed Shorelines, were advised by a teacher named Ernie Seligmann who is no longer with us, but whom we all loved. We were a tight bunch then, but as the years went by, time, as usual, tore us apart.

For the last few years, we’ve been trying to arrange a reunion of those staffers, but until Sunday, we were never able to achieve even the smallest critical mass. Finally, four of us were able to be in Manhattan on the same day. We gathered at Marsielle restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen on 9th Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets to finally catch up. Below you can see Barry Chaiken, Donna Grant, me, and Marc Frons.

Though I’d seen Donna within the past year, I hadn’t seen Barry since 1993, and hadn’t seen Marc since 1985. (more…)