Does Whatever a Spider-Phone Can

I haven't done a lot of phone interviews of late since I lost the ability to connect my tape recorder to my telephone. A while ago we decided to ditch our old phone which was being leased from our local crown company in order to save a little cash, especially since we were told that they upgraded to a new model and that they wouldn't even service ours if it was broken. So, we bought ourselves a new phone. One which, unfortunately, could not hook up to my micro casette recorder like the old one could. As a result, I ended up doing a lot less phone interviews than I used to. Not a huge deal since most people prefer to do them by e-mail anyway, but one place where I did notice it was with my regular monthly phone call to Keith Giffen - or lack thereof.

Along with this blog and my website I run The Daily Dispatch, a Keith Giffen newslist. I haven't given it the kind of TLC it requires in a while, but one of the things I used to do for Giffen fans was call him up and chat for a while about everything under the sun. It was something I looked forward to, too. Keith is a fun guy to talk to and he was always good for zinger or two over the course of a 30 to 60 minute chat. Anyway, that's probably what I missed the most about ditching that old phone in favour of the new one.

I actually did go out and buy a new phone, but I screwed up and bought yet another one that didn't satisfy my technological needs. Didn't hook up at all but cheap enough to not bother taking it back. Various reasons contributed to my not searching out another more compatible one, and I eventually just gave up.

Which leads us to now.

I was at a Winners store a couple of days ago when I spotted this phone among the many and varied toys they had lying around (they also had a cool set of classic mod Barbie tumblers that any parent with daughters would give a second look, but cost just a little too much for my tastes). I initially rolled my eyes at the silliness of the thing but when I noticed that it could actually hook into my recorder, and was pretty cheap to boot, I couldn't resist but pick it up. If it was only ever used for calling Keith, the purchase would still be justified based solely on the price of it. I also appreciate the irony that I purchased a Spider-Man phone to do comic book interviews. There's a certain poetry to it, don't you think?

So, I'm happy to say that I'm back in the phone interviewing business. I'm hoping to call Keith this week so if you're a Giffen fan you should probably be watching the newslist for a new update from the horse's mouth. We'll see what else comes of it in the coming months. I'm hoping to have some fun with it.

mike