My Spidey sense is tingling

Just got a telemarketing call that was more interesting than most. A young lady from Greenville said, "I’m calling on behalf of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’."

Well, I couldn’t hang up on her after a beginning like that. If Spidey needs me, how can I turn my back? He’s suffered enough at the hands of a fellow newspaper editor, and I am no J. Jonah Jameson.

But when she started thanking me for being such a loyal subscriber, I told her that would be my son, the serious collector. Some of his comics still come to our house from when he still lived at home, but it would be up to him whether to renew at the terrific new price they were offering.

I gave her his number. I hope it was the right thing to do. But how could it not be? I’ll bet she looks just like M.J.

4 thoughts on “My Spidey sense is tingling

  1. Gordon Hirsch

    With Dogonomics followed by the Spidey posting, there’s a sense here Brad that some PTSD is creeping into your psyche as demise of the Saturday Op-Ed pages triggers a classic Kubler-Ross response …
    The stages are:
    Denial: “It can’t be happening.”
    Anger: “Why me? It’s not fair.”
    Bargaining: “Just let me live to see my children graduate.”
    Depression: “I’m so sad, why bother with anything?”
    Acceptance: “It’s going to be OK.”
    …. of course there’s always the Network response alternative of “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
    McClatcy probably has a 12-stepper for that, too, which most like leads to early retirement.
    Fight back.! Screw the company line. We’ll help you find a new job. 🙂

  2. Brad Warthen

    The truth is, it’s stuff like this that actually interests me.

    I’ve tried off and on over the past three years to get conversations going about Top Five movie lists and such, with little success. I think life needs leavening, but my core readership seems mostly to want to argue about politics.

    It’s not that I want the whole blog to go into Pop Culture Feature mode; I just like to take these little side trips because I like stuff like that — and because I get really, really bored going on and on about the same stuff all the time. And if you can’t have fun on a blog, why go to all this trouble?

    Then occasionally, when I’m least expecting it, I get rewarded. Remember this post, when I asked y’all to help me remember where this tune was coming from? Suddenly, we were off on a Favorite Movie discussion (the very kind I had unsuccessfully tried to start in the past), and we went on for 38 comments.

    It was great…

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