I’d say this one is personal, but, okay, they’re all personal. I think my audience for this week’s Brainiac On Banjo may be restricted to the hardcore. I hope not.

As you know, Alan Coil, one of our regular commenters here at Michael Davis World, died a week ago Friday from a heart attack at the age of 55. Alan also frequently commented at other sites as well, including www.comicmix.com and Harlan Ellison’s place. As is often the case, a lot happened since then. We’ve had the world’s stupidest terrorist try to blow up Times Square (idiot left his getaway car keys at home forcing him to use the commuter train as his escape vehicle after building a “bomb” so ineffectively your average seven year-old Jon Sable Freelance fan would have known better). We’ve see another devastating off-shore oil disaster, another one of those things that we were promised could never happen – you know, like the unsinkable Titanic.


We saw the great world evil the New York Stock Exchange plummet nearly a thousand points in 16 minutes and then fail to recover due to paranoia about Greece’s economy taking down Spain’s economy which would take down Ireland’s economy which would take down Europe’s economy which would take down the world’s economy which, as history tells us, would put the fascists in power once again. We saw Great Britain fail to reach a decision about which political party should lead their nation. Nashville is still under water, and Memphis isn’t looking very good either.

But, mostly, I’ve been thinking about Alan. A man I don’t believe I’d ever met. It’s possible – I’ve done quite a few conventions in his general area, but I’ll never know for sure. The intimacy he and I have shared came strictly from the Internet, from this forum and to a lesser extent from ComicMix.com.

It’s a curious bonding experience. I’ve lost more than a handful of friends during the past several weeks, including Dick Giordano and Peter O’Donnell. Death comes in clusters; I don’t know why. Yet my feelings for Alan are no less powerful than they are for those with whom I have broken bread, chased deadlines and jabbered in person.

This Internet stuff is powerful. Is it the same as personal contact? Well, probably not quite – but prior to Alan’s passing I would have suggested that distance was far greater. Now I know different. We get brave new worlds all the time; sometimes it takes a while to realize the street signs have been changed as well.

I value and treasure the friends I’ve made here online. I appreciate the ease with which I can communicate with old friends and acquaintances from all over the world. I can’t come even close to keeping up with Facebook and Twitter gives me the heebie-jeebies (I can’t even order lunch at McDonalds within 140 characters), but the discussions here at Michael Davis World are, to me, priceless. By and large we treat each other with great respect, more than we tend to see in personal contact. Even though we tend to be, oh, a bit left of center – that’s Russ you hear giggling in the karmanet – we converse freely with those holding other views. In today’s political discourse, that’s nothing short of amazing. I wish we had more folks on all different sides of issues; I hate it when things break down to left or right, democrat or republican, white or black.

That’s boring.

So I thank Alan for his participation here and everywhere else. I’ll miss your comments, and I’ll never forget that you were always out there with something interesting to say.

And that, my dear friends, is the highest compliment I can pay.

•     •     •     •     •

The Arizona state legislature is considering a bill requiring Barack Obama to show his birth certificate to state officials if he runs for re-election. I strongly suggest you download the real thing at http://hyerstandard.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/bo_birth_certificate.jpg and e-mail it to the bill’s sponsor, Judy Burges, at jburges@azleg.gov.

Media metaphysician and www.ComicMix.com editor-in-Chief Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times). Likewise, his Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants pop up each and every day at the same venue.

[Facebook] [MySpace] [Twitter] [Email] More »

Related posts:

  1. There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #98
  2. World’s Finest Scum, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #109
  3. The End of an Urban Nightmare, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #216