{"id":13270,"date":"2008-09-07T08:34:47","date_gmt":"2008-09-07T12:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=13270"},"modified":"2014-01-23T16:26:31","modified_gmt":"2014-01-23T21:26:31","slug":"13270","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2008\/09\/07\/13270\/","title":{"rendered":"Big John"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a dream this morning, Irene and I were working for the same company, though I had no idea what it was or what we did there.  We were getting ready to leave for the day, but before we did, I had to find my jacket.<\/p>\n<p>When I finally did, it was one of my leather ones, but sadly, it was covered with a white mold.  I looked further and found a second one of my leather jackets, and that one was also covered with mold.  As I began wiping away the mold, someone walked by out in the hallway, and I when I turned I was startled to see that it was John Verpoorten.  He was hectoring some poor freelancer for being late with an assignment.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/JohnVerpoortenDream.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/JohnVerpoortenDream.jpg\" alt=\"JohnVerpoortenDream\" width=\"238\" height=\"249\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-13271\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But &#8230; he&#8217;s dead,&#8221; I said to Irene.  (In the real world, John, who&#8217;d been the production manager at Marvel Comics, died in 1977.)<\/p>\n<p>Irene explained to me that it had become the fashion nowadays for people to disguise themselves as John.  Everybody was doing it.  Only those of us who&#8217;d known John could see through the disguise.<\/p>\n<p>The bogus John moved on, and Irene and I moved out into the hall.  Paul Levitz was there, who in the real world I&#8217;ve known since the early &#8217;70s, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/2008\/02\/04\/d-c-yesterday-denver-tomorrow\/\" target=\"_blank\">as this photo proves<\/a>.   This Paul was the Paul of today, though, and I suddenly realized that the office we were in belonged to DC Comics, and that I had just started working on staff there.  <\/p>\n<p>I asked Paul whether I&#8217;d now have to salute him, and jokingly raised my fingers to my forehead.  (Paul had edited some of my comic-book stories when I freelanced for DC, but unlike Irene, I was never on staff, so this was the first time he&#8217;d officially be my boss.) He said that it wouldn&#8217;t be necessary.<\/p>\n<p>And then I woke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a dream this morning, Irene and I were working for the same company, though I had no idea what it was or what we did there. We were getting ready to leave for the day, but before we did, I had to find my jacket. When I finally did, it was one of my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,468,20],"class_list":["post-13270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dreams","tag-john-verpoorten","tag-marvel-comics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13270"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13329,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13270\/revisions\/13329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}