Comic for Monday, September 11th, 2006

Posted: 7:30 am, Monday, September 11th

This may be shorter than usual, as I'm feeling a bit under the weather at the moment. But as everyone knows, obviously, today's the five-year mark since the world's changed, so I thought I'd have the girls acknowledge that - it's better them to talk about it than the boys, because the boys are, let's face it, silly. I found it funny that I had actually completely forgotten all about the horrible sound of the fighter jets flying over as I walked over the 59th Street Bridge. It took me hours to work up the guts to leave the office and cross that bridge. (There was an article in Maxim, of all fucking places, the previous summer, about hypothetical terrorism attacks, one of which involved terrorists blowing up the Verrazzano at the beginning of the NYC marathon - and don't think I didn't think about that this past November.) In the meantime, I watched TV with a motley crew of coworkers and e-mailed Tree in short, terrified missives. It was not a good day to have an overactive imagination. One of my coworkers ran sobbing from the room when the second tower went down - his two sons worked up in the nineties. We didn't see him again for a month. Another coworker ran screaming from the office yelling that the National Mall was aflame and that the Capitol had been hit. (You'll never believe this, but she gets most of her news and opinions from Fox News, and is kind of a nincompoop.) I was fine, more or less, until I talked to my mom, who only really has an overactive imagination when it comes to what horrible things could befall people, usually me. When I finally made it back to Queens, I stopped by my friend Jan's apartment. She had just moved to the city and her fuckface boss at the comic book shop made her stay on duty the rest of the day. I hung out with two of her roommates for a while, just staring at the local Fox coverage because none of us had cable and Channel Five was the only one that didn't have their transmitter on top of the Trade Center. (I had to watch 'Good Day New York' for weeks afterwards, and, God, was that a terrible morning show at the time. No idea if it still is.) I watched Jurassic Park that evening because it was the furthest thing from reality I had in the video collection at the time (I guess, really, Star Wars would've been, but a planet blew up in that, so I didn't really think it would help me), and the girl I just broke up with two weeks prior had to crash at my place because she couldn't get back to Jersey. I heard from almost everyone I knew, which was nice, and relatively unexpected because I had just gotten a cell phone and didn't think I had gotten everyone my number yet. All in all, the most traumatic day of my life in which I was actually in no immediate danger myself.

So I evidently thought I'd share that just now. Didn't really intend to, sorry. Obviously, much better and more insightful things about 9/11 are to be had just about anywhere you turn today, and I recommend just about any of them over this site. Re: the strip, I had fun imagining what the girls looked like five years ago.

Anyway, we're off to go see a movie in a few. I ran Dave Letterman's post-9/11 opening a few weeks back - the other one that I remember vividly is Jon Stewart's. I have no freaking idea how I saw this, I don't think I knew anyone with cable at the time. But I remember it being quite good.

The other thing, is the Onion's awesomest moment, their first 9/11 issue, Holy Fucking Shit. The article about the lady baking the cake was what I was going for with Jen's memories. (Proving, yet again, that the Onion is much better at what they do than I am at what I do.)

Back to the same ol' crap tomorrow, gang. Meantime, damn, how 'bout dem Irish?

bullfrog

Drove by the Pentagon last night and they had a pretty tasteful light display shining from the top of it. They also lit all the windows on the side that was hit.

Go IRISH!

The two mega-lights that make up the towers will be lit in New York tonight, too.

I couldn't imagine what it was like in NY. I'm in Illinois and couldn't function. I had the fastest computer in our office and was the only one to get through on CNN.com. Saw the early pictures of people jumping, before they stopped showing them. I watched way too much coverage that day when my wife and I decided to head home (we work(ed) for different divisions of the same company). What struck me most from the cartoon was the comment about the smell. As an outsider, I wouldn't have thought of that.

And, yes, dem Irish looked pretty damn good!

I haven't been able to decide whether to write about 9/11 or not. It seems kind of selfish to me, being that I didn't know anyone involved in it or even live in New York at the time. But I think it's had such a global impact that it's something everybody has internalized, and you can't fault people for how they feel.

Yeah, I didn't think I'd be blogging on it 'til I actually did. On the other hand, I thought it would be weird if the characters didn't mention it at all, since I try to be somewhat lifelife-ical with the strip.

My office, I should've mentioned, was in midtown, so I really was in utterly no danger. (Until the anthrax started up, since the New York Post processed their mail there at the time. )

I think in a way 9/11 (the actual day, not the weeks after) was easier to cope with in New York...at least for those of us who were lucky not to have lost anyone. I saw the second tower hit live on TV. I called my mother and she was beside herself, but I was fine at that point. I had tasks...buy a radio for office (this before we realized we needed to GO)...contact loved ones...walk 80 blocks North to a friends apartment (I decided the Bklyn Bridge was too risky). It all became clearer much later for me. In fact, I was one of the last people I know to have learned about the towers having fallen. I must have been 100 blocks North walking with my back to the South when the first tower fell. Nobody walking with me had any idea.

...but once I got to Claudia's she asked me what I knew, and seeing that I was horribly (blissfully?) ignorant of all that had taken place she sat me down in front of the TV. That's when I saw them fall for the first time. And then she took me to see the empty space in the sky out her bedroom window. Over 100 blocks away you could see the smoke, that's how big those towers were...and the smell Jeremiah mentioned, it lasted for months.

But there was much caring and leaning on eachother here. Floods of firemen from all over the country (world even!) showing their brotherhood with the bravest of our city. In all honestly I have some really wonderful memories, and met some truly inspiring people.

...but of course I'd trade those in a heartbeat.

Yeah, the applause for firetrucks every time they drove by, for the next couple of weeks/months. That was something else.

There are two places I would like to go to when I make my next trip to New York City. The first being "Ground Zero", of course. The other would be the church where all of the firefighters, survivors, and clean up crew spent many weeks piling through the wreckage finding survivors or recovering the remains of the dead.

I read an interesting profile about an Texas A&M linebacker (on ESPN) who was one of the battalions in the Pentagon charged with getting everyone out of the building and dealing with the subsequent fire that with the fire, and recovering the remains of the dead, with a rake at times. As his parents commented afterward, he probably never looks at raking the same way ever again.

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