A bunch of Toy Matinee came up on my iPod today, and I decided to rectify my "no lowbies on Virtue" situation by making up an Illusion/Empathy Controller based on TM's song, "Queen of Misery" (which has peppy bouncy music and a rather depressing lyric, like most of their songs). ( Bouncing off the walls... )
Originating from a found photo album unearthed in a Venice Beach thrift shop, kozyndan were inspired to create imagined personae documenting the essence of these lost photographs. This clothbound hardcover is comprised solely of small, detailed graphite portraits, each piece captures the surreal humour and irreverence that has become a trademark of kozyndan's distinctive style of artwork.
Illuminating select portraits are short stories inspired and imagined by a community of artist friends and writers including Pasha Malla, Mark "frosty" McNeill, Ryan Sands, Mariko Tamaki, Maggie MacDonald, Nick Flanagan and Porous Walker.
Hardcover. 8.5 x 8.5 inches. 150 pages. Over 100 illustrations.
http://www.howtotrainyourdragon.com/ Watch the trailer. Movie looks like it could be super cute! I'm getting all sorts of Linguini vibes from the main kid, though, hmm. The viking chicks are too cute, really unclassically adorable which is great.
http://www.baidir.fr/ and get absolute GOOSEBUMPS. I guess it's going to be a series? I can't find much information on it, but I guess some guys from Gobelins is/was working on it. Sweeeeet. I'd like to know more
Also, I watched Monsters vs. Aliens with my nephew a couple days ago. While it really wasn't amazing, and the humans had wretched designs, I have to say that I really liked Susan's character development. She went from wanting nothing more in life than to be a blushing bride to suddenly wanting nothing more than to be a giant woman who fights robots. Like, it wasn't just a metaphor to be more self confident, she literally wanted to fight things and be huge and punch through steel. That was really fun And there was a bit in the movie where a couple at lovers lane sees a spaceship crash land, and I just loved how the roles were reversed in that scene. The girl was trying to get into the guys pants, and he was terrified of the spaceship and the girl wanted to go check it out. That was really great, I'm sure it went right over the heads of kids
SO. Is there anything amazing coming out any time soon? Princess And The Frog is looking better all the time, honestly! I really hope it does not suck I can already tell that Dr. Facillier is gonna be one of my fav disney villains
Coming down with a cold again. Symptoms include fatigue, nasalyness, stomach weirdness, malaise, head ache. I just want to sleeeeep.
I'm looking at seasonal retail jobs to fill up the time between thanksgiving and xmas to earn some money. But thinking about having to run around a retail store and help people and do a cash register and think about anything, and then trudge home in the middle of the night in darkest winter sounds like a really bad idea. I'm too tired to do anything.
This was NYC's newest indie comic show, and for a first-year con, it seemed like a success! It was held at the Brooklyn Lyceum, which is sort of like a rundown cathedral that sells muffins and puts on zine fests. The unisex bathrooms added to the punk rock vibe (but could become an issue if this show grows).
Raina and I were only there on Sunday, but everyone seemed in good spirits and excited about the future. People told me turnout had been a better on Saturday but that sales still seemed to be good overall.
It’s cool that friends like Allan Norico and Alisa Harris benefited from the smaller room and got to be among the stand-out cartoonist! We picked up both of their new books which are fantastic!
In a burst of nostalgia, I went and looked up my very first email address, to see if someone else had picked that account name since my long-ago departure.
Modulo the ISP I was with at the time being borged by another, it turns out that there is indeed someone else at oldaccountname@newISP. Good for them.
I am mildly disappointed that there doesn't appear to be any mention of oldaccountname@oldISP anywhere on the net, particularly since a trawl of my own archives indicates that I held onto it until 1998, way past when I started using Usenet. Ah well.
Dragon Age: Origins is a game I've been excited about for more than a year. I loved Baldur's Gate II, and its expansion, and I lost more time to Neverwinter Nights than I ought to admit. So a new single player fantasy RPG by this company, billed as the "spiritual heir to baldur's gate" (spiritual because this new one is their own IP, and not a D&D game - though the mechanics are very similar) got me all giddy with anticipation!
And it's great. I've been having a really good time playing it. It isn't without it's flaws, but the overall experience is good enough that I've been all too happy to overlook the frustrating bugs. The onion AV Club gave it an A though, which I'm not sure I agree with entirely. I wrote a big comment on that AV Club review. And here it is!
The bugs in this game are frustrating.
The two big ones are:
- Quests that don't register their completion can leave you running around an area in frustration after fighting, say, the hordes of bad guys in the Redcliffe castle mission, wondering what small thing you haven't yet done. Only looking on the internet led me to the conclusion that something had gone wrong on their end. Reloaded a save game, fought the battle again, and CLICK - cut scene. Also, it didn't help that while I was trying to figure out what was going on, the aggravating fight scene music kept playing! It's great and cinematic when actually fighting, but while running around in empty areas trying to figure out what to do, it sure adds to the frustration!
- cut scenes sometimes screw up, and you'll go through a cut scene, make one of the games (actually pretty interesting) moral choices, and then suddenly be watching the cut scene again. I chose a different choice the second time, and was then moved forward in the game as though I'd only chosen the first. Later, other characters alternated between acting as though I'd chosen A or B. It sort of took the wind out of that choice. This happened to me in the Redcliffe section, as well.
That said, The game has some very good things in its favour, too:
- the moral choices themselves feel more satisfying. I really like the game's system of having the choices affect the world itself, rather than some arbitrary slider of how good or evil you are. You make a choice, and your companions approve or disapprove, sure, but also you'll find that your future options in the game world have changed, too. It really adds to a sense of immersion.
- The combat's good. Not too simple, but not ridiculously complex either, and the tactics reward the learning curve that comes with understanding how they're interpreted by the game. After playing with the tactic programming for a while, I found my party members acting just how I needed, which was useful for adapting to harder fights and made the combat feel genuinely tactical rather than like a mashfest.
- Some of the characterization is great - Morrigan and Shale are both fun and interesting, and I like the way they fit into the game world, and the major events of the game, rather than just having discreet stories of their own. Some of the characterization is sort of lame, too though. (The voice acting also runs from very very good to characters who seem to change voice actors mid-dialogue, again, in the Redcliffe quest, which led me to have most of my doubts about the game. Maybe the people in charge of the Redcliffe quest
- The skill trees feel well balanced, and it's fun to play as a warrior or mage or rogue (except for some rogue dex issues that they've acknowledged and which are being fixed in an upcoming patch) and for the most part the specializations really give a different feel to your class when you get to that stage. And a couple of the specializations are tied to the game world in a fun way. In a lot of these games, specializations just add a couple generic skills. Extra damage, and such. In this, they add skills that tie into the story sometimes. "Blood magic" being a big one, and that sort of detail really adds to the feel that you're a part of the game.
- The game gets its title from a system where you can choose your "origin" - each of which is a different way to start the game. The origins are a couple hours, before merging with the main storyline, but which will affect the game further down the line, too. Every character has to go to the dawrven city to seek aid, for instance, but that visit has a very different tone if you are a dwarf noble who was falsely accused of killing her brother the heir to the throne and then exiled.
I would give it a B, or a B- (with it moving to an A after a bug patch or two for sure.) A lot of care and love went into the game, and despite the couple frustrating bugs above, I've put in a couple dozen hours since it's release and haven't lost interest yet!
Let's say -- just hypothetically -- that I'd been pondering for several months what a new novel should be about, because I want to keep writing these things, now I've started. And let's say -- entirely speculatively -- that I'd actually refined and defined a slew of "signature specifications" to the extent that I was able to start writing the new book, suddenly, last week. Let's call it The Book of Pim, but let's say absolutely nothing about it at this stage, because it's not my business to tell or yours to know, at this point, what this notional book will say or do. Let's just say one thing, though: that although the book is set in a far-off People's Republic whose real world cognate I've never been to, Manchester (a city I've only been to once) figures in it. Not the real Manchester, but the city I built in my imagination while listening to the records of Joy Division, Magazine, The Fall and The Passage. Let's watch an information film:
The man delivering this lecture about Manchester, The Fall and Mark E. Smith at an academic conference at the University of Salford is Dick Witts, an academic at the University of Edinburgh. He begins his lecture with a brilliant deconstruction of a BBC4 documentary about Manchester -- a film good in its way, but also typical of the reductive, revisionist and tediously "iconic" way such history gets reduced to successes, soundbites and the same old talking heads. Witts lists the 35 individual shots the documentary uses to establish its vision of Manchester in 1977, sourcing them in documentaries from 1946, 1955, 1967 and 1978, often as much about Salford and Ordsall as Manchester itself, and as much about urban regeneration as the urban decay it's intended to convey. Only 10% of the visual material intended to evoke the seventies, Witts shows, actually comes from the decade.
Witts then goes on to set the scene much better than the Factory documentary, showing a transition in 70s Manchester from Modernist glass-concrete-and-steel redevelopment to Postmodernist restoration, pedestrianisation and heritage-orientation. He also displaces the cliché about the Sex Pistols gigs at the Lesser Free Trade Hall sparking Manchester post-punk, pointing out that the experimentation of Van der Graaf Generator, the "basic" rock of The Worst, and the radical localism of the folk scene also played their part.
The lecture continues without a single mention of Witts' own group The Passage. And it's at this point that I can reveal that The Passage is the only Manchester group I still listen to, and that the vision of the city conjured in Passage songs, especially the early ones, is what's informing the book I'm now -- hypothetically -- writing. Sure, sure, The Fall is an endlessly fascinating group, and Mark E. Smith is perhaps Britain's greatest living poet. But for me, personally, Dick Witts -- the modest, acute music lecturer at the podium -- is much more important and much more fascinating. I could write a book about why my book will contain echoes (transmuted to a far eastern People's Republic) of the dark, schematic Mancunian landscapes Witts' lyrics evoked across four Passage albums and several EPs and radio sessions. But for now I'll just write a couple of paragraphs.
The Manchester landscape of Passage songs is one of personal scenarios of love, hope and lust played out against a backdrop of politics noir, an environment poised between Blade Runner and The Threepenny Opera. This Manchester is presided over by "Mr Terror, Chief of Police", a Methodist police chief called Anderton whose motivations are religio-fascistic. Anderton is real, a policeman-puritan who claimed to take counsel directly from God and believed AIDS to be a punishment for the immorality of homosexuals. Anything that didn't contribute to Anderton's definition of "a good and useful life" was within his remit to quash. He may sound like the sacrificial Christian copper in The Wicker Man, but woe betide artists trying to pillory him in fiction: when David Britton portrayed Anderton as "Lord Horror" in a 1989 satirical graphic novel, the book was banned and Britton sent to prison for several months.
Anderton in Passage songs is described in Old Testament terms as a layer of "snares" and "traps". He plays a similar role -- authoritarian hate figure -- as The Dictator Hall plays in my own first album, The Happy Family's The Man on Your Street. Over music sinister, twinkling, thunderous, complex, modular and modern -- music which, like an operetta, keeps sweeping the same motifs into new combinations and contexts -- a series of schematic terms define life: FEAR POWER LOVE, the transition from midnight to a new dawn, fire and ice, bodies and minds, drugs illegal-forbidden and legal-compulsory, seconds, hours and days, the provinces and, beyond them, the chilly, distant capital LON DON, almost Chinese in its distant, imperial brutality.
The Passage website and above all the LTM re-releases might give you a glimpse of why this band, this man, wunderbar, ich glaube, n'est-ce pas? continue to mean so much to me. They took subversion and avant garde experimentation further than anyone else in the early 80s, and Dick Witts was simply more intelligent than any other British songwriter at the time, his wordplay more serious and more witty, his politics more radical and advanced. It's not particularly surprising that BBC documentaries (even BBC4 documentaries) gloss over The Passage, and not particularly surprising that Witts himself tends to as well. But important parts of my imagination got lit up by Witts' vision the way other people (including Witts himself) were illuminated by Morrissey or Mark E Smith, and I have a feeling that those parts are now flexing and stretching and, one day soon, will see the dawn.
I was hit with death anxiety again today while at work. This is the second time that it’s happened to me. Physically I get overcome by a tight feeling in my chest and become clammy. I feel my heart almost miss a beat. Emotionally I feel as if an imminent doom is about to befall me. Some wave of dread just envelopes me for a moment. I suppose death only seems so imminent to me because it’s part of what my career is about preventing. It’s always hanging over someone’s head and people like me have to be there to save them. I’ve seen so many people hurt, sick, and dead. Almost all the time there’s no problem with it. It’s time like tonight though where it all just catches up with me as if it had been hunting me down. When I’m into the work it doesn’t bother me like that. I get nervous but I don’t feel so incredibly bad. When that man was brought in off of the helicopter her was naked. There were IVs in him, blood everywhere, an A-line in his leg, an IO in his femur, an endotrachial tube down his throat, but I just did what I was trained to do. I was upset when he didn’t make it. It loomed in my mind for a few days. I still can’t forget when we called time of death.
All of this makes me feel like I should have all my affairs in order. I feel like maybe I should have everything straightened out with people just to make sure that everything is on the level. The very idea itself is criteria for suicide risk. That’s probably because how strong the sense of death is in a persons mind. It’s not like it’s out for me, but who knows what could happen. I even feel scared writing this for fear that something would happen. Sometimes thoughts of my loved ones slip into my head. What if something happened to them? It’s one thing to imagine, but once you know all the details about what goes on during some kind of emergency you can really get worked up. I’ve worried a lot about my boyfriend driving so fast that I wanted him to promise me that he’d slow down. Sometimes I can see myself being with my parents when they go. The sudden thought of that has made me cry a few times already, especially since I’ve been repairing the relationship I have with my Dad. It’s made me regret some of the bad relationships I’ve had with people. It makes me wish I could set everything right. You only live once as far as we really know, so it’s better to live a good one. My birthday is soon, and even though I’m only in my 20s I feel like I’m so beyond my years. Before I know it I’ll be in my 30s, then my 40’s, then who knows what. I’ve got to make it count. Their lives aren’t the only ones on the line.
Hello! Everyone and their mother emailed me asking about the lineart for the Mike/Amber Smoochy-Smoochy strip. Well, you can have it! But you'll have to fight each other for it first. That's right, it's auction time.
As usual, it's on 12"x18" art paper, was rendered in blue pencil and Copic brush marker, and comes to you rolled in a mailing tube. Add it to your collection! Or start one. I'm not fussy.
Auction ends in 5 days.
So, like, even back before I started getting all the Batman guys from DC Universe Classics, I kinda coveted their Robin. It was my favorite Robin design ever! It kinda helps that Tim Drake's One-Year-Later-through-Batman-RIP outfit was based on hisNew Batman Adventures look, sure. You know me and my Bruce Timm designs. I liked that the green is dropped and he's just a red, black, and yellow guy. But the comic takes it a bit further and draws him closer thematically to Batman's motif. He's got a scalloped cape, for instance. And those little tufts on his gloves. And, oh, hey, pockets on his belt! He's like a mini-Batman with red. It kinda makes sense, don't it?
I passed it up at the time because I wasn't collectingDCUC, but I am now! So, yay, an excuse to get him. And the fun thing is, BigBadToyStore still had him in stock for non-secondary-market prices! (they don't seem to any more) And so I was just a day or so away from just going ahead with the whole thing and ordering him when I found that damn Robin at our local Target. Just sitting there on the shelf. What? Okay. Well. I guess miracles do happen.
Robin joins my Batman in punching villains now. Sometimes he even gets the punching! (Okay, most of the time. He's only second behind the Riddler.) The toy comes with a few accessories. He's got his martial arts staff that Tim Drake likes to carry around and two Batarangs. (Robinorangs? Birdorangs?) I kinda wish he could store the -rangs in some of his pockets. But no, they'll probably just get lost. I prefer the staff. He also comes with a stand, as he's not part of the "build-a-figure" deal.
I'm grateful that there's a smaller, teenager-sized body-type for Robin to be. It just wouldn't do, being the size of everyone else. Plus, y'know, I guess it'd come in handy for the rest of the Teen Titans.
Anyway, speaking of Power Rangers, you know how they all wore color-coded outfits when they were in their civilian identities? Red Ranger wore red, Pink ranger wore pink, etc? Robin totally did that in the very early comics, I noticed, as I've been reading through my Batman Chronicles collections. Dick Grayson is always in a yellow collared shirt under a red sweater and green pants. Wow, that's a bit conspicuous. Batman probably color-coded his civvies, too, but blue and gray formal wear is a lot less outlandish.
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amused
relieved
The lecture continues without a single mention of Witts' own group 
FUCK
