It happens, folks. Up against a deadline, got no time to urp up 500 words on flossing or suchlike. Instead, have the results of two minutes surfing on YouTube:
Is it just me?
Listening to NPR on the way to work, heard a story about the tip structure at restaurants – turns out some guy had noticed that the “suggested gratuity” on the ticket printed was a percentage of the post-tax total, not the pre-tax total, as he had done in his head. Who was to blame? INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM AHOY!
Sitting in the driver’s seat, I thought, “Uh, that would be a function of the processing software, no?”
After grilling Mastercard and the owner of the restaurant (who was shocked, shocked that this was happening), our intrepid truth-seeker found out… it was the processing software.
I swear to God, sometimes I think I’m the only guy tangentially involved in the industry who has ever made a spreadsheet.
Conversely, you gotta fill that air time somehow.
But enough of that. Here is a girl being eaten alive by pug-dogs. Enjoy.
This is how movies happen, people
From the LA Times: Thousands of Spiders Pour From Ship’s Cargo.
This is, of course, a recipe for a very profitable exploitation film. (or at least, it would be, if the box office failure of Snakes on A Plane hadn’t poisoned that particular well) It follows the lines of a classic Hollywood pitch: “It’s Kingdom of the Spiders … on a boat!”
Correspondent Professor Mortis suggests using Bill Cosby rather than the over-exposed Samuel L. Jackson: Cosby’s version of swearing would, at the very least, ensure the all-important PG-13 rating. I would also suggest Steven Seagal as a Buddhist scientist who hampers our hero by insisting that we try to communicate with the spiders. And we must have William Shatner for nostalgia value.
(Despite the title of that clip, I think blaming Shatner for the ridiculousness of the moments is, to quote Bobcat Goldthwaite, like blaming Ronald MacDonald for a bad cheeseburger)
But enough of this. Let’s have a pug dog saying, “Batman!” (He can be in the movie, too!)
Rumors may not have been rumors
So, without a show Saturday night, I found myself with two days off in a row, an oddity in my life as it stands now. So, of course, having convinced myself I was well enough for two grueling days of outdoor shooting and two days in the office, my body decided it was time for a complete collapse. My body can be a real jerk sometimes.
So I lost a fair portion of Saturday to fitful sleep, but awoke feeling somewhat better. Overall, the best way to describe weekend (besides urpy) is to state that as of Friday evening, I had 18 books checked out from the library. As of today, that number is 11, and I am better for it.
I finished 101 Sci-Fi Movies You Must See Before You Die. and (I suppose) unsurprisingly, I had seen most of them. Like the documentary Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, it serves mainly as a reminder of movies I haven’t seen yet that I really should, like the original Solaris or The Amphibian Man. There are some entries that are unapologetic, too, though they make good points about the much-reviled Signs and the personally-despised Starship Troopers. Though not I, Robot. I ain’t never gonna like I, Robot.
Also finished How to Survive a Horror Movie. It ran out of steam for me in the last quarter, but I feel that was largely me and certainly not the writing, which remains sharp and funny to the end. I think I had simply tired of the central joke and was ready for it to be over. That’s a danger for extended riffs.
The rest were from the world of graphic novels. Welcome to Tranquility, which is a great story set in a retirement community for super heroes and villains, written by Gail Simone, art by Neil Googe. I loved this book, and apparently it is coming back, but without Simone at the helm. Le sigh.
Next up was the first volume of Weapons of the Gods by Tony Wong. Chinese kung fu comics! I loved the Jademan translations during their brief American runs, and the genre is occasionally problematic. This is the culture that brought us novels like Heroes of the Marsh and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, thousands of pages long with hundred of characters. This shows in the comics, and there are at least three major cliffhangers in play by the time the volume ends.
Next up, a volume of Larry Marder’s Tales of the Beanworld, A Gift Comes! – I had forgotten just how beguiling Beanworld was. The expansion of the world beyond the process that is Beanworld doesn’t feel forced, but rightfully makes you miss the simplicity of the early world. If that doesn’t make sense to you you should be reading Beanworld.
Then, finally, the first volume of Russ Manning’s Magnus, Robot Fighter 4000AD. Quite a title, and one of the favorites of my youth. An admitted attempt to re-invent Tarzan in a science-fiction setting, Magnus is trained from birth by an intelligent robot to be strong enough to smash robots with his bare hands. You see, in the year 4000, man has become too dependent on robots, and would be helpless in the face of rebellious metal men were it not for … wait for it… a robot fighter! Yeah, the stories are kinds simplistic, but these were definitely adventure comics for boys. And, I suppose, girls who liked men in shorts who could shatter steel with their bare hands.
Still in my possession: three works by Osamu Tesuka – the youthful mandate for more manga has some benefits for me, even if I gave DMC a try and found it not to my liking – more Batman and Jack Kirby. I heart my library.
Rumors of My Demise
Well, to get the obvious Monty Python reference out of the way, I’m not quite dead yet.
Two days of shooting video outside in the July heat was brutal. Spending those two days standing was less that salubrious, bum leg wise, and two days later I’m still using my cane.
I was at the Fort Bend Museum in Richmond, the county seat, covering their Summer hands-on history classes. School-age kids learning how things were done in the pre-Civil War days, when the white man started moving into Texas. The disjoint was often amusing, as when on the “Chore Day” section of the workshop, kids were washing clothes with scrub boards and a hand-driven wringer, then hanging the laundry on a clothesline. One stated simply that he would “hire a girl” to do this.
The lesson from the prior day Frontier Survival, hadn’t sunk in, ie, there is no girl to hire. You are miles away from anyone else, and it is on you to do this, and do it right. Carrying water from the well didn’t go over well, either. Half of it was spilled, necessitating more trips. Starting a fire with flint and steel was equally mystifying. “Why don’t you just use matches? My father would use lighter fluid.”
Well, hopefully the kids learned something that can be put to good use, later in life. Like when the dryer breaks down, or something. Or to keep an eye on the kid who kept asking during Chore Day when they were going to slaughter an animal.
Me, I learned to schedule inside stories in the Summer.
Speaking of history: I had heard an interview with Daniel Okent on NPR about his book, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, and immediately put a request for it into my local library. Picked it up Wednesday (part of an epic 10 books my library had processed for me- damn, my library rocks) and am thoroughly enjoying it. This is the kind of history book I love, examining the inter-connectedness of events that at first glance would seen unconnected, but which give rise to unexpected developments and consequences. James Burke’s appropriately-named Connections first turned me on to this view of history, and it changed the way I looked at events forever. Here, have a taste:
The series seems to have a strong presence on YouTube, and definitely deserves to be checked out. (well, actually no it doesn’t, and appears to be scrubbed out completely)
No show for me this weekend; the loss of revenue hurts, but my body will appreciate the chance to heal. Have a good one, folks.
Sick Day
I’ve managed to catch whatever stomach bug was messing up my wife’s life this last weekend – marriages are about sharing after all – and faced with the horror of two days outside shooting video while sick, I’ve elected to stay home today to… uh… get it out of my system. As it were.
Any hours this last weekend not spent fighting down nausea or doing the show while fighting down nausea were spent either playing with my new Tumblr toy or reading. While fighting down nausea.
It was my intent to sleep in this morning, but of course the sounds of Cat Rugby in hall at 6:30am scotched that. Got up, fed the horrid little creatures, and eventually went back to bed. After an hour, as usual, I had a dream that the doorbell rang. My subconscious is a jerk.
Well, on the weekend I did finally got around to Wonder Woman #600 and waaaah and boo hoo for the departure of writer Gail Simone. She left on a note that was both suitably bombastic and sentimental. Odd that the fan resentment that met the pin-up pages in Batman 700 is seemingly non-existent for the art pages here. Probably because these are loads better, and they’re the last we’re going to see of the one-piece bathing suit costume for a while.
Yeah, the reboot starts in this issue, too. It’s not hateable. I’m willing to see what’s going to happen, but it definitely has temporary written all over it.
Enough. I’m hungry. I hope that’s a good sign. Rest of you have a good Monday.
Yep, I Got Nothing
And now for some clippings from a fuzzy mind desperately trying to come up with a blog post, because he swore to himself that he would:
I find myself this morning not In The Groove, but In The Middle Of The Road. I suppose I could have gotten more sleep, but I got a fair amount. Turned off the alarm clock at one minute to buzzing, had my coffee, had my breakfast. Showered, went to work. Looks like finals are over,a nd the college is now between summer sessions, as I got a peach of parking place.
Everything’s good, but not great. Pretty much pain-free, except for the usual aches and pains of age overtaking an injured body. “Love Plus One” by Haircut 100 on Slacker kind of points this up. Nice, but not exceptional.
Yeah, you knew this day was coming. So did I. Nothing to talk about, nothing to really complain about.
Well, I did finally break down get a Tumblr site. Yeah, yippee, sez you. It’s kinda fun, and I appreciate the fact that the Tumblr dashboard has a timeline of the Tumblr blogs I follow. One of them, Comic Book Cheesecake, is celebrating their birthday by posting all their favorite comic girl art and cosplay photos, so I am either going to have a heart attack or get fired for the borderline NSFW pics. That’s about as exciting as this day will likely get.
And there is a very large part of me that considers this a good thing.
X is playing on Slacker now. That’s another good thing. But it’s followed by Yello’s Oh Yeah, which is a pity. I love Yello, and that “Oh Yeah” is the only song to ever get airplay is, to me, a great tragedy. Is it Ferris Bueller I blame for this? I believe so. And it segues into Nena’s “99 Red Balloons”, which goes to show you that no matter how bad it gets, the 80s will always find a way to make it worse.
I should tell you now: I’ve got a two-day shoot coming up next week, and I will very likely go silent over those days. Lucky, lucky you. Julian Cope, kindly sing us out with “World Shut Your Mouth”…
My Summer Reading is a Bit Beat Up
As I mentioned on the Twitter earlier this week, thanks to my local library, I am finally getting to handle one of those expensive Absolute DC editions, in this case Batman: The Long Halloween, and this thing in drop-dead gorgeous. Huge, at almost 13 x 9 and two inches thick, and the printing is flawless, the art running all the way to the edge of the page. The Absolutes seem to run anywhere from $75-$100 when new, which means I am likely never ever going to own one, but damn. If you’re going to lay down a number of Franklins to own a book, it should look this good.
So it sort of saddens me to see this noble beast the worse for wear. Way back when, after I had finished carving up the brontosaurus for the evening meal, I could look in the back of a library book, at the card in the little manila pocket glued to the back cover, a card bearing the due date, and see how many people had checked out the book. Or at least how many had on that particular card – who knew how many cards had been used in that book, but had run out of room and had to be replaced?
In the current modern of the library, that’s not possible – it’s all RFID chips and black magic. That’s a fabulous leap forward and I love it. I love being able to step up to a self check-out kiosk and be on my way in seconds. But it also means I have to ponder how many people have handled a book, without the possibility of ever knowing the answer.
The Long Halloween‘s very size works against it. The other great books currently in my loving care, a couple of the Fantagraphic’s E.C Segar’s Popeye, have a similar problem: at a daunting 14 1/2 x 10 inches, they’re an odd, ungainly size, and their once sharp corners are now blunted and bent. The spines are similarly cracked, and wobble slightly as the book is opened. Again, the modern library has to take a little of the blame for this; self check-in is the norm, with the patron depositing the books one-by-one through a night deposit-style chute. I can only assume there is scanner similar to the one at the self check-out, reading the RFID chip and amending the database. It’s convenient and fast, and once again, I love it… but it’s got to be rough on big books like these, especially when it’s repeated over and over again.
There’s really no point to complaining about this; the wear and tear on library books is entropy at work, an unavoidable fact of life, and the alternative – no lending libraries at all – is unthinkable. I’m considering mending the one torn page I’ve found thus far in Long Halloween, as even my usual fumble-thumbed attempt at repair will be better than the sure loss of that page at some point.
Added bonus: checking Amazon for the dimensions of the Popeye books finds them to be surprisingly affordable. Now if I could just get family and friends to start looking at that darned wish list…
Motion Control Sickness
Yeah, I’m about a week late embedding this, but I find it hilarious, and it distills perfectly my feeling about the newly announced motion controls for game consoles: motion control is nice and natural for some games, but for the most part publishers are shoehorning motion control onto games that don’t reward it, like the current fad for 3-D in movies that were not intended for same. Like nailing a homemade wooden spoiler onto a car thinking a) it looks badass, and b) you will get better gas mileage, when neither is true.
Please note: not my car.
I should just shut up and let Yahtzee speak breathlessly:
Or at least I would if I could get WordPress to embed a video from that site, so go go gadget Tumblr blog!
drfreex.com 