John Aston is conducting a little experiment over at Olde Town Comix: over the weekend he took pencil sketches drawn by a 5-year-old girl and applied professional inks to them. The results are interesting, to say the least. I think this kid's got a future in the business. She's already ahead of the Liefeld Anatomical Curve.
The lead-up to Devo’s first new album since 1990 was a lot more fun than the album, itself. Which isn’t really surprising. It’s rare for any artist to return to early triumphs and bring with them anything more than disappointment for their fans (The Godfather Part III, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, the last Indiana Jones movie, etc.)
That being said, I enjoyed Something for Everybody a lot more than I thought I would. I was one of those folks to take part in Devo, Inc.’s “song study,” a focus group formed to help Devo’s new corporate overlords determine the most consumer friendly version of the album. It was a lot of fun, even if the samples of the new songs left me a little underwhelmed. My favorite song on the original roster, What Us Work It, didn’t make the cut for the final CD.
Still, there’s a level of detail and craftsmanship on display on the album that’s impressive, even if some of the songs haven’t really stuck with me. There's an old-school '80s bounce to these tunes that never sounds like a nostalgic pose. Something for Everybody stays true to the band's original premise of social devolution, going so far to proclaim at the start of No Place Like Home that it's a "song of truth and beauty for you" with all the misguided sincerity of a machine.
My favorite track is Please Baby Please, which has a funky New Traditionalists kind of rhythm to it, not to mention the album's most searing guitar tracks. Human Rocket is also pretty cool and, while I dig the idea and execution of Don't Shoot (I'm a Man), I'm a little perplexed by the band's use of something as dated as "Don't Taze Me Bro" for the song's closing refrain.
Maybe my dissatisfaction is just lingering disappointment on my part: Devo has always been my patron saints of musical ethics, the rare example of a band smart enough to know when to quit. Too many bands stick around just long enough to make you resent them, but Devo got out with their legacy intact. I'm happy to see them back (and writing new music again that's NOT Dev 2.0) but worry that it's not going to end well.
That being said, Something for Everybody is still a fun little diversion, even if it falls a little shy of the precedents set by albums like Freedom of Choice and Q&A. If nothing else, I'm delighted to see Devo getting a little love after all these years.
A little note to all you southern G33k4L1F3R's out there: WSOC TV is reporting a possible/kinda/not really Bigfoot sighting in Burke County. Here's the gist:
The print is much larger than a human's foot, and some say it couldn’t be an animal. Its size and unexplained origin are fueling wild theories about a creature of lore making a real-life emergence in rural parts of Cleveland and Burke counties.
I just realized: I've got nothing to do this weekend. Who wants to get drunk and go sasquatch hunting with me? Dibs on the pelts, though ... I need them to reupholster my van.
Here's a neat blog post. It's in French, so there's a language barrier between me and the author that I'm unable to clear, but here's the gist: a presentation of 50 different interpretations of the Joker by different artists. Some of these are familiar, but there are more than a few that I've never seen before. Follow the link below to see the entire collection.
Part of the fun of geekdom is approaching silly issues with a grim sense of purpose usually reserved for undertakers. We're the people who will write essays explaining why it's possible/impossible for a character like Mr. Fantastic to exist in the real world, why there were klingons in the Neutral Zone in Star Trek II training simulator, or why a concept like midiclorians "undermines" the entire message of the Star Wars films. In other words, we can be assholes.
In that vein, here's an essay called Star Wars vs Star Trek – How Science Fiction Failed Us from the Geek Shui blog. Here's a clip:
In Star Wars power output is measured in Watts, which is something we are very familiar with. A watt is a measurement of the amount of work it takes to move an object one meter in one second against a force of one Newton (sorry for the science talk, but I had to show you why some people are just too serious about this stuff). Trek measures its power output in a unit called “dynes” which makes more sense since we are talking about a propulsion system. A dyne is the measure of how much force it takes to accelerate a mass of one gram over one centimeter per second every second. Brain hurt yet?
(Not long ago, I purchased a few dozen comicbook trade paperbacks at the HeroesCon in Charlotte, N.C. I'm reading all of them.)
Ugh. It's not often than I've got no interest in finishing a comic, but Captain America: The Chosen has simply defeated me. I'm half way through the trade paperback edition and pretty sure I won't go any further.
I was looking forward to this book, too. David Morrell is a terrific writer. Best known as the author of First Blood, he also penned the novelizations to the two Rambo sequels and made them much more visceral and gritty than their screen counterparts. (I'm also a fan of his short story Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity, which is worth searching out.)
Naturally, I was excited about seeing Morrell working on a Captain America story. It seemed like a golden opportunity for a kick-ass action piece. Instead, The Chosen is a slow, ponderous tale about a psychic Captain America guiding a U.S. soldier through some hairy situations in the Middle East. Cap spends the first three issues in a coma, communicating via telepathy and ... you know what? Fuck it. This book is a tedious disappointment. I'm a fan of what Marvel has done over the last decade, but Captain America: The Chosen gives credence to just about every complaint some fans have had about the inconsistency of celebrity writers, the vacant nature of "decompressed" storytelling and pretentious ideas.
Here's something billed as a "working" Lee Enfield sniper rifle ... made of Lego blocks. While it's not exactly equipped for wetwork in Afghanistan, your kubrock figures might have reason to lose sleep. From the website:
This rifle has a sniper scope, bi-pod stand and 2 8-round magazines. The stand is collapsible and detachable and clips onto the front of the barrel. When it collapses the legs are parallel with the barrel.
The sniper scope looks authentic, but when you aim with it you actually look through a small hole underneath the scope, as I couldn't make the actual scope hollow.
There's nothing like the rush of spending money you don't have on something you don't need.
I bought my first video game of 2010 yesterday. It's the "game of the year" edition of Batman: Arkham Asylum, a game I already own. The new edition has a few additional challenge levels (something I don't care all that much about) but also includes a 3-D version of the game. It's the first 3-D video game I've ever played.
The graphics were, of course, retrofitted for 3-D and not initially designed to be seen in this format. It works well for the game play, but the cut scenes suffer a little from quick editing. Whenever there's a scene chance your eyes are forced to re-focus on whatever imagery you're looking at ... and this animation wasn't created with that kind of balance in mind. So expect the picture to briefly go in and out of focus whenever the camera changes positions.
For the game, though, this isn't really an issue since you've got control of it's movement (which is anchored to Batman's movement.) While it's certainly nice to look at, the 3-D never gets much better than the average View-Master reel. Batman is often pretty blurry because he's always in the foreground, but what's exciting is that 3-D offers a possible solution to a long-standing problem I've had with video games since the 1980s: false depth of vision. You can only do so much with shading and forced perspective to create the illusion of depth in a video game, and 3-D might be the "push" to finally trick your eyes into believing what they're seeing.
The 3-D in Batman: Arkham Asylum an interesting first step, but we've got a ways to go before this problem is permanently solved. In the meantime, enjoy the 3-D of Arkham Asylum for what it is: a novelty transposed to an already fun game.
Not to brag, but I walked out of the 2010 HeroesCon in Charlotte, N.C., with in INSANE amount of trade paperbacks. Because of scheduling conflicts I wasn't able to attend the weekend convention until the final day, and found that rumours I'd heard for years were true: dealers slash their prices during the show's final hours. In the end, I stopped shopping when I couldn't carry any more books. When faced with hundreds of TBPs and hardbacks at $3 a pop, I went a little crazy.
I have a lot of reading to do and don't anticipate finishing this stack of books until next year's HeroesCon. In the meantime I plan to write about these books. First up: Thrillkiller, by Howard Chaykin and Dan Brereton.
Despite the presence of some genuine talent on the title page, Thrillkilleris a pretty typical Elseworlds story. This line of books eventually ran out of steam because they became predictable and formulaic: the goal was to put characters as far from their origins as possible (communist Russia, the Civil War, etc.) and quickly work them toward their status quo.
Thrillkiller is no different. Set in the early 1960s, it puts Batman and his cast in a setting highly reminiscent of a James Ellroy novel. Here, Robin and Batgirl are quasi-beatnik vigilantes fighting against crooked cops. Batman comes along later, as do an assortment of sometimes "real life" interpretations of Batman's rogues gallery. Unfortunately, neither the characters nor plot points are defined in anything but the broadest of strokes. Oh, and it has a lesbian Joker. Which really isn't as interesting as it ought to be.
I love Howard Chaykin but can tell when he's not entirely invested in a story. This is a by-the-numbers Elseworlds book that doesn't have much to offer besides some dazzling art from Brereton. Panel-by-panel, this is some great work from Brereton. I just wish Chaykin had provided him better scripts.
Here's a random sketch: Popeye by Terry Austin. I suspect that many people who have sketches from Terry have a similar sketch — Popeye seems to have become his convention "signature sketch."
Here's something I recently found tucked away in the pages of a scrapbook: my ticket stubs to Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection. Again, I'm not sure how I manage to keep this stuff.
NOTE: I went to the same theater yesterday where I saw Alien 3 back in 1992. The matinee price was $7.50 ... more than twice what it was in 1992.
Here's a little something from way back in the G33K4L1F3 vaults: an autographed photo of actress Stacy Dorning.
Dorning is probably best known to American audiences as the star of The Adventures of Black Beauty, which got some airplay on Nikleodeon in the 1980s. She was also on an episode of Space: 1999, and you don't get much geekier than that.
I received this photo thanks to my next-door neighbor from when I lived in England. My neighbor was a retired stage actress and seemed to know everybody.
She was also long-time friends with actor Robert Dorning, who I got to meet backstage at a London theater. He was a really nice guy.
Anyway, his daughter Stacy was on a sitcom called Keep it in the Family at the time (there's a clip above.) Keep it in the Family later hit American televisions as Too Close for Comfort, responsible for giving the world Jim J Bullock.
I think I was nine years old when I got this photo from her in the mail. These days, if actresses were sending me half-naked photos of themselves I'd simply chalk it up to being a super stud. At age nine, though, I was content to be impressed that Dorning had dated the guy who played C-3PO.
"G33K4L1F3 turned into a Danzig/Powerman 5000 fan page so gradually that I didn't even notice."
This is a flyer from a Jan. 1997 Danzig concert in Greenville, N.C. It was a great show — not only did Danzig open his set with Mother (has he ever done that before or since?) but I was also introduced to Powerman 5000 that night.
I'm not sure whatever became of the club, which was called Characters. Nightclubs don't usually stay open very long, and this flyer shows they had a very ... eclectic roster for that month.
With a tip of the hat to mc chris,I've launched the stupidest blog ever: The Daily Fett. It's pretty much what you might think ... a Boba Fett themed photo or story posted every day. Today's the day of launch, so there's a grand total of ONE photo posted ... but be patient. And please spread the word.
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kind of rhythm to it, not to mention the album's most searing guitar tracks. Human Rocket is also pretty cool and, while I dig the idea and execution of Don't Shoot (I'm a Man), I'm a little perplexed by the band's use of something as dated as "Don't Taze Me Bro" for the song's closing refrain.
and Q&A
. If nothing else, I'm delighted to see Devo getting a little love after all these years.
has simply defeated me. I'm half way through the trade paperback edition and pretty sure I won't go any further.
, he also penned the novelizations to the two Rambo sequels and made them much more visceral and gritty than their screen counterparts. (I'm also a fan of his short story Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity, which is worth searching out.)
, a game I already own. The new edition has a few additional challenge levels (something I don't care all that much about) but also includes a 3-D version of the game. It's the first 3-D video game I've ever played.
is a pretty typical Elseworlds story. This line of books eventually ran out of steam because they became predictable and formulaic: the goal was to put characters as far from their origins as possible (communist Russia, the Civil War, etc.) and quickly work them toward their status quo.
and Alien Resurrection
. Again, I'm not sure how I manage to keep this stuff.
