Aftermath

I walked Gwen, the Cappie, home after she found out Captain America was killed off, and then I didn't hear from her for two days. She didn't return any of the messages I'd left on her machine. I was worried.

I made a trip over there, just to try and cheer her up. I had a whole host of speeches in mind: everything from "he'll live on in your heart" to "they'll probably just bring him back to life when sales are low."

I hesitated when I got to the door. Was I ready for this? Dealing with sad people's not really my forte, you know?

When she answered the door, I could see in her apartment an open suitcase. Dear Lord, was she running away?

"Hey, I was just gonna go over and see you. What are you doing here?" She said.

"I... um... I was just in your area."

"Sorry I didn't return your calls, I was up in Durham, Maine, visiting my cousins, and I don't get service there."

She's not upset?

"You know, your messages were kind of weird," she said. "Things like 'How're you holding up' and 'call if you need to talk, I'm here for you'. Have you been hitting the coke again?"

"What? I thought you were upset because they killed off Captain America."

"Yeah, I was disappointed, but it's not the end of the world. He's a comic book character, they'll probably bring him back to life sometime soon; maybe when their sales are low. Why did you think that? Did I seem upset when we left the shop?"

"Well, not exactly, but I thought you were just trying to keep a stiff upper lip for me."

"You're a moron. Let's head over to Penang's and grab some food. I'm starving."

Undercover Dungeons and Dragons

I accompanied Gwen, the Cappie, to a local comic book and Dungeons and Dragons store. Gwen was always looking for obscure back issues of Captain America and even more obscure cameos he had in comics like Moon Knight, and those comics were in the back room: where the kids held their Dungeons and Dragons games. While Gwen was knee deep in the hooplah, I took inventory of the players. One of them look familiar. He had a big moustache, black-rimmed glasses, and this odd blue baseball cap with no logo. He looked like an extra from the "Sabotage" video. But he looked familiar.

That's because he was Ashton Kutcher. What was he doing there? I asked him.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"C'mon, Ash, you're not fooling anybody with that obnoxious disguise. Where're the cameras, huh? You punkin' someone?"

He took me aside.

"Look, I'm here to do a little research for my Beauty and the Geek show. I'm thinking of maybe having the girls do something like this for a challenge."

"Keep telling yourself that."

"What's that behind you?"

"What?"

Like a moron, I looked, and when I turned around, I was hit in the eyes with some small rocklike objects, which temporarily blinded me. I found out later they were his 8-sided dice. I regained my eyesight, but not before he had made a clean getaway. That's when I heard a scream. It was Gwen.

"They've killed off Captain America!"

Captain America A-Go-Go

I was having a cigarette while Hubert Humphrey tried to get the Minnesota Vikings to the Super Bowl on Madden 2007, when Gwen came in waving a VHS cassette.

"Check this gem I found at the Goodwill."

It was some old 60s Captain America movie, entitled Captain America A-Go-Go. It looked rather dubious. In order to avoid conflict with Hube's game, we took it into my bedroom to watch it. It was a trip.

The whole thing was Cap trying to fight bad guys while being surrounded by hot women in go-go boots and short skirts. He'd be chained to the wall, while they fondled him, or he'd beat the Red Skull, and they'd fondle him some more. There was no real dialogue, just some sketchy male narrator, and this music that sounded like some variation of "Tequila": lots of brass and guitar.

I was stunned. So was Gwen, only less so because she'd found this rare piece of Cap memorabilia.

"Hey, I'm gonna order out, you guys want anything?" It was Hube. "Hey, watcha watchin'?"

"Captain America A-Go-Go."

"No shit. I'm in this. Rewind back to the 33 minute mark."

We did. There was a young Hube, dressed as a French sailor, sitting at a table in some seedy bar with a stripper on his lap. He was watching with excitement while another woman danced in front of them. Then he made a half-hearted attempt to fight Cap when the Star Spangled Sentinel came in to do whatever. I don't really know why they were fighting, and neither did Hube.

"I needed the cash, so I just whatever the director said."

I looked at the box. It said 1961.

"Weren't you a senator back then?"

"Okay, I didn't need the cash."

Marvel Ultimate Alliance

Gwen, the Cappie, brought over her Gaystation 3 the other day, with this game called Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Now Gwen, being the obsessed Captain America fan that she is, bought the game for obvious reasons, and she looked hot that day, so I let her play it at my house.

I figured I'd get back to reading my book, Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls (did you know he was born on April Fools Day too?), but the game drew me in. The next thing I knew it was 2am, and Gwen was considering calling a cab.

"You can't call a cab now! We're about to take out Dr. Doom and the Masters of Evil. I got Spiderman all leveled up and ready to break fools off."

"Listen to yourself. It's already 2am! We've been playing since I came over at noon. I gotta stop."

"Forget her, we don't need her to win the game."

It was Queer Eye's Kyan. I forgot to mention he stopped by to see if I was exfoliating properly, and we let him try the game.

Cappie or Capper

I met this girl in a coffee shop recently named Gwen. She was hot, but of a very reserved, unrefined sort of hotness. She didn't dress particularly well, she wasn't all that well groomed, and she was listening to a big, bulky walkman with a pair of the cheap headphones that would have come packaged with it. But there was something there that I was drawn to. She was reading a Captain America comic, but that wasn't her alluring feature. No, it was the femininity she exuded while reading it: how she crossed her legs, tossed her hair back as it impeded her reading, or the way she sipped her beverage. I needed to introduce myself.

We hit it off quite well, and made plans to go see a movie. She picked it, Ringers, a documentary on Lord of the Rings people, and we had a great time. We were on the same page, both thinking the film utter crap. "I mean c'mon," she said, "they're acting as if the guy [Tolkien] was Tolstoy." That led us into a discussion on the famed Russian writer as I walked her home. All the while, I was trying to figure out how I would get her into some new clothes. The guy's sneakers, jeans that were a bit too loose, and the Captain America T-shirt that was three sizes too big, weren't doing anything for me. Maybe our next date would be to H&M.

She invited me up, and I couldn't decline. I was too enamored with this woman to leave her now. I was a bit uncomfortable, though, when I saw all the Captain America stuff in her living room. She offered me a seat, which I took, then gave me a cup of coffee. We chatted for a second, but I could tell she had something on her mind. I tried not to let the conversation go too far so she could say what she had to say, and she did after a few minutes. Actually, she didn't say anything, but handed me a movie script, and told me to read it while she got changed.

It was entitled "Captain America and the Damsel in Distress", and the entire plot was composed of a series of incidents where the Red Skull and various other baddies capture "Gwen the Reporter", tie her up, then Captain America saves her, and they do whatever. This had to be a joke, right? But I knew that it wasn't when she came out of her room dressed like Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday. I had to admit, it was the most stylish thing I'd seen her wear. The Captain America costume she threw me, though, wasn't: I don't look good in spandex.