I didn’t expect to end up at a club after work on Friday, but it was just that kind of day. The problem was, I was dressed for a casual day at the office and so I was wearing my Murrells.  Not exactly club footwear.

Merrells are my new favorite shoes. My parents discovered them in India, and then my brother started going off about how great they were, so I got them for Christmas and now I am a convert.  Merrells are like slippers you can wear outside.  They feel like someone you love is hugging your feet, all the time--except without the creepy foot fetish part.

I was surprised they let me in the club, and then I had to explain to my friends about my shoes.  This led to someone delivering a monologue on what makes trendy shoes:

FASHION EXPERT: They have to be black and pointy. See that guy over there?  His shoes aren’t pointy enough.

ME: Pointy.  Check.

FASHION EXPERT: It’s because you want elongation in your shoes.  It makes you look taller.

This was genuinely new information, and very useful because at 5’8” I can use all the optical illusions I can get.  It’s just that I thought guys liked long shoes because it made them seem as though they had...well, y’know.  Long strides.

The next day I went with my friend Stephanie to Wondercon, a general comic book and pop culture convention.  I was pleased to see that not everyone in attendance was a paunchy 40-year old.  In my day, actual young people went to these things.  Nowdays they’re speaking stops for celebrities.  Well, not celebrities but Ali Larter.  And also Hilary Swank, who was promoting some upcoming horror movie that will likely not add to her horde of Oscars.

The point is that now everyone wants a piece of the pop culture pie.  But won’t someone please think of the children? If you actually pick up a comic book these days you realize that they have become extremely dark--supervillains raping and murdering the wives of superheroes, civil wars, etc.  The problem with making those stories more sophisticated is that you sound the death knell for the medium, because then the stories won’t be accessible to young readers and eventually all the current readers will grow old and die. Therefore, it was nice to see that a few young people were still showing up:

Of course, the guy behind him may have been his truant officer, so who knows how long he got to stay?

On the way back home, I saw a parade full of strange people dressed in bizarre costumes that was so completely disassociated from reality that I figured I had made a wrong turn and was back in the convention:

Whoops, no, just the Chinese New Year’s parade.  Next year they ought to combine the camps. I would really love to see the X-Men beat the crap out of that dragon.