The Heroes We Deserve

It has been an… eventful week so far here in Boston. We had the awful events at the finish line at the Boston Marathon on Monday, followed by an outpouring of support from around the country on Tuesday – the New York Yankees, a baseball team that, on a normal day, no Bostonian would admit is staffed by a single legitimate human being, played the Red Sox’s victory song, Sweet Caroline, during the third inning at Yankee Stadium last night – and all the late night comics were extremely supportive, despite carrying humiliating memories of being eaten alive at Nick’s Comedy Stop on Warrenton Street back in the 90s (and as someone who was a comedian back in the 90s, trust me: they were all eaten alive at Nick’s).

But now it is Wednesday, and as you might have read, Boston is not your normal American city. We’ve been here longer than almost any other city in this country, we were the first ones to chuck a hearty “fuck you” to out British overlords in the 1770s, and we were the setting of America’s greatest sitcom, where every single character drank in a bar all day and then went to work because even the most incredulous TV viewer had no doubt that not even hours of drinking could prevent a Bostonian from getting up and going about his fucking business.

This is my personal proof that Boston is not your normal city: I personally know one guy who was actually at the Marathon on Monday – a day job buddy in his 60s – who came back to the office today, only to engage in this exchange with me:

“…you okay?”

“Yeah, I wasn’t that close to the bomb.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Because I went to all that trouble to hire an explosives enthusiast, and you’re still not dead.”

“Fuck you, Rob. You finish your part of the framework while I was gone or not?”

My point is that Boston is gonna be fine. And while it might have been nice to have a superhero around on Monday, we didn’t really need one… although having watched the crime scene video about a hundred times, it would have been nice to have one.

But on the positive side: the cops say they have a picture of the bomber, they have a cell phone number to trace down, and regardless of it all, it is Wednesday. Which means that if you want superheroes? We’ve got them. Which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

And it is a decent week for comics, with a new (but non Bryan Hitch drawn) issue of Age of Ultron, a new Daredevil (not to mention the penultimate Daredevil: End of Days), the issue of The Superior Spider-Man where Ock-Spidey fights The Avengers, plus a bunch of other cool stuff.

So if you want superheroes to make you feel better about Boston, they’re out there… but while we love them, we don’t need them. And I know this based on the conversation I had with the owner of our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop offering to show them my explosive sack:

“Hi Rob… you know anyone hurt at the Marathon?”

“Nope.”

“Me neither. So…” and his eyes kinda twinkled, “any idea who won the marathon?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling, “A Kenyan guy. And we offer our sincerest and deepest congratulations to his family and friends.”

So yeah, Boston as a whole will be fine… but we also offer our sincerest and deepest condolences to those who were affected by the explosions.

Anyway. See you tomorrow, suckers.