My #$@! Co-Workers V: Sarcastro

I debated as to whether to include this guy or not. He and I have a complicated history, but in the end he did frustrate me on more than one occasion, as I'm sure I did him, so in he goes. I'm going to use this photo of Baby Huey, not to be insulting, but because that's what this one guy called him in defense of Sarcastro ragging on him. Plus, it's less insulting than a picture of Comic Shop Guy, who is older, bald, and unattractive. He did share his attitude, however.

Sarcastro was the guy that worked at the shop the second longest period of time. Sadly, I believe the longest belonged to me. Thor, I wish I could take that statistic back. Anyway, he started there in his early 20s. At the time, he quit his job doing something in construction where he supervised people, as he wore the standard husky-guy "short sleeve and tie Sipowicz" outfit.

He was pretty popular with a lot of the regulars. Indeed he should've, because for one, Sarcastro was very personable and had a great sense of humor, thus the alias "Sarcastro". He said a lot of things that were "LOL" as the kids say online, and not just comic-related stuff. He was funny all around. Some of my favorite "bits" of his was his reaction to the Stormwatch storyline "Change Or Die", to which he replied, "well, they gave 'em fair warning!" A joke in the same vein was when "Live Kree Or Die" came out and he said simply, "I'll live Kree". He also once had two Captain America toys dancing and started singing the Carpenters hit "We've Only Just Begun". I remember one time on his birthday a group of us saw some sort of IMAX ocean-related movie. When the store owner said it was gay, Sarcastro thoughtfully replied, "it was bisexual at best".

He also had quite possibly the best work ethic that I've ever seen. He was a consummate salesman and seemed to rise wherever he ended up. This guy would've killed as a salesman in the 1950s. For some reason, you don't really see a lot of salesmen nowadays. I blame the internet. I said salesman a lot.

After leaving the shop, he took a job at our local game and sports memorabilia distributor. Unfortunately, they started downsizing before downsizing was cool and he was let go. He later got a job as some sort of pager salesman (post 1996!) and I remember seeing him immediately go into a pitch at the drop of a hat with this guy in the store. My man wasted no time. Ultimately, he ended up at a bank, where he rose to the position of loan officer and ended up making more money than the store owner and possibly the store owner's wife, who always worked in banks.

It wasn't all wine and mint-condition Amazing Fantasy #15, however. Sarcastro could be insensitive at best and pretty much just mean at worst. With the exception of people he thought to be his peers and Chunk Jr, he could lay it on anybody and everybody, and I remember coming under his sights on more than one occasion. It tapered off the older I got and presumably the more respect he gained for me, not necessarily for doing anything but just for getting older, more mature and not really being in the target demo for zings and barbs. Looking back, I don't really feel any anger as I was in his presence when he would lay it on someone else and I realize it wasn't just me, per se.

I think a lot of the vitriol that erupted a lot of the time was just a general dissatisfaction with his life, a twentysomething malaise (as seen in Garden State) and the like. He was a young guy who dropped out of college. He lived at home and lost touch with old friends. It was hard to meet people (namely, women) at the shop. Once on a ride back home he was explaining to my future roommate and myself how it was hard to hang out with various people: this guy had a drinking problem, these guys were married, and my future roommate and I were too young to do some stuff. (At ease, we were in our mid-teens, this isn't the King Of Pop here). So for a good amount of time he probably felt pretty lonely, at least in the existential sense. His situation was probably a lot like the character of Scott Forbes in the criminally overlooked comic The Waiting Place. Do yourself a favor and track these down, then bug Sean McKeever over and over until he makes more of them.

The longer I worked at the store the more I could see why Sarcastro was the way he was. It does something to you, particularly if you're just drifting along. The filmmaker never went through this because while he was employed I think everyone understood it was a temporary situation and he was on the next train out to Anywhereelse as soon as it came by. He was too smart for the shop.

Sarcastro ended up meeting a nice Christian girl in her early 20s who ended up indirectly instigating a life change for him. He traded in his Jeep for a woman's car (according to everyone who saw it), got a new job, started going to church (which was hilarious to those of us who heard him talk about DC Talk and Jars Of Clay, and how just because something is Christian doesn't make it good) and he ended up proposing to her after just a year or two of dating. My roommate, the filmmaker and I ended up going to his wedding. His wife had a kid and last I heard he has twins on the way. He actually emailed me this year and asked if I was on Facebook, and how all the guys had joined. I thought the question silly as even though I'm still in my 20s with some time to go before I head into my 30s I feel slightly older than the typical Facebook demographic, let alone a bunch of guys barrelling towards 40. Needless to say, I did not reply nor seek out friend requests as that's the last thing my psyche needs is to relive the worst years of my life.

He did go through a really rough period, oddly enough after he met his then-girlfriend now-wife. He demanded the filmmaker bring back his Dreamcast that he had left in the shop for a while, which the filmmaker borrowed just to play around with, as it was doing nothing but gather dust. He snapped at me and the owner, who suspected he wanted it back in order to trade in for a better system, something somewhat insulting as the owner had given it to him for a birthday or holiday present. Luckily I think regular sex calmed him down or something.

Overall, though, Sarcastro was a pretty good guy. Certainly ended up being better than the store owner, which would have shocked me then but seems inevitable now. We went to Monday Night Raw, saw some movies, had some bad Italian, laughed at the nerds at the local conventions, and told some jokes. He's a different guy now than when he was angry and 24, and wherever he is, I doff my cap at you, sir.

Welcome, Chums! Think Clean Thoughts!

...what just happened?

So here I am, with my most challenging final being tomorrow, and naturally I prepare by going to this blog and seeing if anyone has commented on it (seriously, Bryan Ferry's Mom? I finally write a strip on the naughty couple that worked there and you don't comment? For shame) and I see tons of people commenting everywhere, because Rich Fuckin' Johnston linked me! Pretty sweet for a guy only getting two hits a week just a month ago.

So to Rich, merci beaucoup (note to self: study for French final tomorrow as well. You have no idea how to ask questions in French, leaving you a life of pissing yourself in Paris because you can't translate the Gallic form of water closet). I was just kidding with everything bad I might have stated about you. Heh heh. In all seriousness, I read your column every week and get annoyed when you take off for American holidays, although by typing that I realize it's probably the American website taking the day off. You stopped giving Marvel so much shit and laid off Millar, too, so good for you! (Full disclosure, I like both Marvel and Mark Millar, and actually find his shameless self-promoting endearing, despite that his being a dirty pinko commie I am naturally inclined to hate him) Do yourselves a favor and go pick up The Flying Friar. Trust me, as someone taking a religious class in a Catholic college you need all the excitement you can get from that genre.

To my new (mostly UK-and-her-former-colonies-residing) readers, 'ello guv'ners! That wasn't offensive, was it? It's odd to find so many comments and such from people across the various ponds, but more than welcome. I would bust a testicle to visit or live in Australia or England, as I'm one of those Yanks that likes and respects the accomplishments of the entire world. And for the record, while the genius of 2000 AD, Doctor Who and even Monty Python escapes me, I am in your debt for the following: Dizzee Rascal, The Streets, Morrissey, The Office, Alan Moore, Peter Milligan, and without a doubt Lucy Pinder. You can keep Madonna.

A couple of quick notes about me: I do not currently work in the comic store. The comic store may or may not exist. I also don't hate England or women. I actually have a lot of friends and am enjoying my much delayed college experience. This isn't one of those things where the guy doing the narrative is blameless or smarter than everyone else or put on a pedestal. Believe me, I will be getting to me later. I don't really keep up with comics anymore, although I know things like Captain America is dead and Iron Man runs SHIELD and everyone is a Skrull. Other than that, I couldn't tell ya.

I'm hearing a lot of recognition on my stories, which is both good and bad. Once I get the time I will be setting up links and stuff, and if anyone wants my (worthless) opinion on something or wants a question asked, ask away in the comments or e-mail me. In the meantime, continue to enjoy the medium of comics, without thinking so much on who makes them, sells them, and reads them. No, not you. The other guy in the store. The creepy one.

Okay, instead of doing the cliched "Welcome To The Jungle" video with Guns N Roses, I'm going to the original "Welcome To The Jungle Scene" from The Dead Pool (Not the Deadpool) starring Jim Carrey and Liam Neeson. Everything goes better with Neeson.

My #$@! Co-Workers III:The Swingers

I know this is a little close to my last post on my co-workers, but I just remembered these people existed and this is too good not to share.

So when I took over for the last full-time employee, there was a couple that worked on the big gaming day, Saturday. They had been longtime customers, and presumably started working there to help pay for their habit. The guy was a heavyset bespectacled guy with a lisp, and his wife was an about ten-years-younger gal. They were nice enough, and I had run into them a couple of times at conventions. One time the wife was wearing a costume with no pants and when she sat down it looked like she was using the potty. Hee. Also one time at a convention, the owner ran into them and the guy was covered in so much sweat he might as well have showered with his clothes on. When asked where the guy had walked from, the husband replied "*pant* *pant* the hotel next door". Sometimes, cliches are true.

They were fine, for the most part. I hated working Saturdays because all the kids and the Pokemon craze and the mess and everything. They eventually quit and he got transferred to the Pacific Northwest working for a company that actually made some of the games, they had a kid, and now they're out there doing something somewhere. It's what I found out later that makes them noteworthy.

I overheard a conversation my senior year of high school between the owner, the old manager and a friend of their who was a judge talking about a legal issue. It seems the couple had an amateur website displaying amateur sexing. All the guys knew about it while it was going on except me. This thing was wild. I looked it up thanks to the handy-dandy Internet Time Machine and saw her getting sapphic with a girl in a wheelchair, sexing one of her college professors and getting more BBC than an English citizen. They were swingers. Not Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau swingers. Your creepy aunt and uncle swingers.

It was so weird. She was fairly young, in her mid-twenties when this was going on, but she wasn't really what you picture when you picture amateur porn star. You might think of porn stars looking like this (okay, how in the hell can you post pics where you actually want them? Write in and help a brother out!) In any case, she did not fit the look of the prototypical porn star.

I always wondered about their life. Did they continue reenacting Eyes Wide Shut when they moved? Do they find a sitter for the kid and go to a local motel to get the wife some huge schlong? Do they ever play Heroclix where the winning team gets a crack at her? I wonder...

I think it goes without saying that the swinger chick did not look like Bettie Page...

My #$@! Co-Workers II:Sally Brown Make You Go Down

This is my second installment in my series on my co-workers. This one was yet another teenage girl, and yet another huge mistake.

I'm going to call her Sally Brown. Like Sally, she was a blond girl, and like Sally she had a ginormous head.

Sally Brown used to come in with her high school chums when the bus would drop them off in a K-Mart parking lot and wait for her parents to pick her up. She was remarkably self-assured, and would talk and sass total strangers and people much older than her. She started to ask for a job, and eventually the owner figured he could hire her cheap to do the stuff I didn't want to (it should be noted she predates the Phoenix). We pretty much trained her to run the register and set her loose on the weekends. We thought surely someone so nerdy looking had to be smart. Wrong. Mistake. She had the common sense of Gomer Pyle.

This was probably a mistake in hindsight. Sally Brown was about 5'0, and had a penchant for sitting on a footstool hidden from the public eye. An old co-worker came in one time, went to the back, changed, came out and stood in the front for a solid minute before she looked up from whatever manga book she had her nose stuck in and asked, "when did you get in?" Yeah. This was a common problem. Sally Brown wanted to work, but not "work". She wanted to get paid reading comics and sitting around.

She could be weirdly abrasive and sensitive at the same time. I remember once she called the owner crying because she casually tossed a pack of cards at a kid that turned out to be "special" and was yelled at by the mom. Her dad later complained to the owner about the mom complaining at his daughter, and eventually everyone was advised just to calm down. I'll always remember Sally Brown being extra nice and helpful towards the dimwi-new owners, and subtly (or not) asking about what her role in the new store would be, and being told none.

The family, while being conservative Catholics, also had a weird sexual undercurrent to them. Her older sister (Charlene Brown?) used to come in and flirt heavily with the owner, and regale him with taking guys home and them being rough with her. Once, I had found a notebook and thumbed through it, hoping to get a name or contact info for whatever kid left their Social Studies homework there. Instead, I found the beginnings of a classic hentai tale of a man with tentacles in his overcoat confronting a woman in a bathtub. I thought it was something the Phoenix had written, until Sally Brown called and said she left a notebook up there. To know her you would never had guessed tentacle sex was on her mind.

She probably has watched this video to do the opposite. You know, to ensure tentacle rape...

My #$@! Co-Workers I: Beware The Phoenix

Oh, I've been waiting for this one.

Due to my quirks, I don't want to run consecutive types of posts, so I don't want to run two "I hate ____" in a row. However, enough posts have been made since my first (and definitely not last) asshole customer that I can now talk about the types of dipshits I worked with. Different subcategory, similar posts.

There is a type of person that exists in the dank, smelly culture of fandom that is one of the most ruthless and despicable of all the scum found within it. That is the (often self-appointed) Cute Comic Chick™. I know what you're thinking. "Who in their right mind has issues with attractive females reading comics?" "Who would have an issue with any female reading comics?" "This is sounding increasingly misogynist, I'm going to place a notice to all the Friends of Lulu. And frankly, this loser is probably bitter because he asked her out and he turned him down or something." Oh, you sad, deluded fools.

The industry is rife with so-called "cool" comic fans who would sooner burn their original copies of Watchmen than not worship these chicks. For reference, see the reaction of the Taki Soma scandal and go search around Suicide Girls for these people.

All of this will be fodder for another example in another post another day. For now, let me regale you with the tale of the Phoenix.

Why the Phoenix? Well, for one Jean Grey was this chick's favorite character. Probably because for two, she bore a passing resemblance to said character. Dyed her hair red, though.

The Phoenix first came into the shop seemingly at random one day, I dunno, probably spring or something. Me and another co-worker were bagging books on Wednesday, and she came, sat down, babbled on about crap and left. We were flabbergasted. Who was this broad? Why was she in here? Did she seem a little "off" to you?

Over time, I got to know the Phoenix. Well, as much in that one can truly know her. She was underage at 17 (you know what they say-Dad says she's too young, but she's old enough for me!-Kip Winger) but seemed to attract a steady stream of dudes in their mid-20s. She was cute, but I recognized that in the comic world she was stunning. Curvy, relatively height-weight proportionate, aforementioned dyed red hair. It was the classic ego-boost of hanging with the nerds. Guys who love George Perez would worship her, guys who love the Patriots would poke her if slightly inebriated. Big diff.

Before too long, she was employed. We thought we had an ace in the hole. A cute chick... working the counter! Getting vulnerable young nerds to spend money! Yeah, didn't really work out like that. She favored spending time on her computer doing who knows what, or using her credit to pay her friends way into the Magic tournaments ensuring we didn't make any money.

One of the weird things with Phoenix was her lust for lying. She loved to lie. A lying liar that lied. Her parents forbade her from passing out flyers in front of a movie theater for fear of being arrested or fined or something, yet she told tales of dating a middle-aged gay with AIDS. She talked of attending an orgy, and yet her most interesting story regarding the orgy was visiting the locale a year later with her friend and finding a condom in the balcony. Whaaaaa? Has she ever heard of an orgy? Seen "Caligula"? Read an issue of "Penthouse Forum?" And bear in mind, she's telling us these events of her past when she's only 17. Apparently her parents were dead, shot down by Joe Chill inspiring her to date middle-aged gays with AIDS and attend orgies but not to screw, see, or hear.

She had quite a temper, too. After I insisted (on the orders of the boss) that I would collect and keep track of the Magic tournament participants/losers, she complained to the boss and threatened to take the Magic tournament with her. Towards the end of the reign of the store, she built a website proposal for us. Pretty much spent a weekend in bed doing it, and wanted something like $600 for it, and blithely informed us that if we didn't accept it that she would shop it around to all the other local comic shops. Needless to say, we didn't acquire her webmastery and neither did any of our competition. Imagine that.

She happens to be the other person from my involvement from the store that has written about their experiences (that I know of). I've read a few entries before my temper told me I should quit while I'm ahead and unarmed. Nothing too upsetting regarding me, but some definite truth-related exaggerations. When in doubt, make shit up. And lo and behold she has a fanbase ready and willing to trade in dignity for a chance of a "cyber"... if the kids still do that.

The stores changed hands at least twice since I worked there, and I go to a better school than she does, so I consider myself at least partly avenged, with the added bonus of being able to sleep at night.

The moral of the story: a lot, not all, but a lot of girls that read comics are weird. If someone tells you shit that sounds made up... they made it up. It's weird to date someone in high school if you're not in high school. And sooner or later everyone gets what's coming to them, whether in the form of a relationship ending, a firing, a changing of schools or the loss of friends. You can't be a weirdo without some form of karmic retribution.