An Old Spoof, Then Spain

I did, I’m happy to say, get to have fun with Tumbleweeds, Momma, Snuffy Smith, Broom Hilda, and Rex Morgan, M.D. in the magazine’s pages before the axe fell on my brief and unlikely stint as a Playboy cartoonist.

Other Breaking News

This week I received an invitation to be a guest a couple of months from now at the VINETAS DESDE O ATLÁNTICO Comic Con in A Coruña. The convention’s exact dates are August 11-17. An especially cool touch is that Eddie is invited to come along, too, also at the convention’s expense.

And because Spain legalized gay marriage a few years ago, our marriage will remain intact for the whole trip. Yippee!

Hmm. On second thought, that may not be true during our hours aloft. Who knows what laws regarding same-sex marriage hold sway above the Atlantic Ocean? Is that neutral territory, gay marriage-wise? I’ll have to ask a flight attendant about that. And unless we fly directly eastward out of Boston (a direct flight from the Bay State to Spain? I don’t think so), Eddie and I may well begin feeling ourselves becoming temporarily unmarried as soon as our plane leaves Massachusetts’s air space, depending on which state houses our connecting flight’s air field.

Various permutations are possible. Last I heard, we won’t continue to be married while in Connecticut air space. Even though they have civil unions for gay folk in Connecticut, Massachusetts marriage certificates don’t automatically into civil union documents. But we will remain wed during any time we spend flying over Rhode Island. I think.

There’s a good chance we’ll first fly southwest to connect to an overseas flight out of Kennedy International Airport in New York City, of course. If so, that means that (thanks to the enlightened intercession of New York’s new governor David Paterson) we will continue to be a married couple while making our way across the Kennedy tarmac. We still wouldn’t be allowed to actually get married in New York in the first place, it must be noted, but the blame for that lies with illogical reasoning by the state’s Court of Appeals back in 2006, not Gov. Patterson.

As I say, we’ll need legal advice concerning Eddie’s and my right to enjoy marital bliss as we soar above the ocean waves, exchanging coos of solidarity with the lesbian seagulls winging below. But eventually we’ll touch down on Spanish runway, and whatever feeling of marriedness we’ve been forced to surrender en route will return.