- On Sunday I was this close to finishing off my record. Then I realized my basement carpet was damp. Ha. The tribulations of going through MN winters, I suppose. But yep… just about done with her. She’ll be 21 tracks, running about 55 to 57 minutes. Just short of an hour. Self titled, because she will chronicle the section of my life that made me start doing this to begin with. So it’s sort-of a “birth of…” thing, if you will. But what… I’m gonna call it “The Birth Of…”?? C’mon, I’m an asshole but I’m not that pretentious. Other self news: I’m leaving for Memphis Monday for my new job. So I’m not sure I’ll be posting here much. Course, this could go the opposite direction and I could be so bored with what to do with myself that I’ll be posting several times a night in my hotel room. It’s looking like the release date should be in May; until then keep up with Black Lantern Music cause some really cool stuff is going to be coming out between now and then.
- Sooo… this is only the second time in history we’ve discovered a triple quasar. The easiest way to define a quasar is a “galactic seed, or nucleus”. With double-quasars, it’s believed to be a result of two galaxies colliding. In other words, there’s crazy shit going on out there… we’re not even specs of dust. We’re specs of dust on one side of an electron only. Here’s the article.
- Years before Rian Johnson scored a moderately mainstream hit movie in last year’s Looper, he directed Brick. A neo-Noir throwback to the crime, in over your head flicks and novels of the late 30′s and 40′s taking place in an American suburban high school. It strangely works very well. And I have a feeling it would have been taken more seriously if the film starred adults and not teenagers. Anyways, yesterday The Onion’s AV Club posted an article about the opening sequence of Brick.
“There’s also sorrow in the juxtaposition of a slow push into Gordon-Levitt’s face, half-hidden behind hands clasped together in a classic thinker’s pose, with inserts of the girl’s lifeless body at the edge of the water. It was during this back-and-forth, as the camera measures Gordon-Levitt by way of his non-reaction to shoes, hair, and odd-shaped bracelets, that I mentally wrote the note “Dear Dear Wendy: Sorry.” Until then, though, I couldn’t necessarily articulate what made this sequence of shots seem so powerful. Watching it again, I belatedly realized something: Gordon-Levitt’s eyeline never changes. We see him ostensibly looking at different details each time, but that’s never cued by eye movement. And then I realized something else, which I can’t believe I never noticed before: Those inserts aren’t from the angle at which he’s viewing them. From where he is, her feet should be at the top of the frame; instead, they’re at the bottom, shot from her other side. The other two shots are likewise reversed. You could call that an error, I suppose, but coupled with the fixed eyeline, what it suggests (and I think this is what I always responded to, unconsciously) is that Gordon-Levitt can’t process what he’s seeing.”
Let’s start with the big one then, eh? The one everyone — including the publisher — thought would be a good idea to spoil for themselves and everyone else going in (:sigh:)…
- BATMAN INCORPORATED #8.
This issue picks up right where the last one left off: with Damien Wayne suited up as Robin, Grayson and Gordon facing a mob of indoctrinated Leviathan, and Bruce trapped in a safe at the bottom of a pool atop Wayne Tower. If this scenario sounds familiar, it is… and Morrison played with the idea of Batman being trapped in a safe one too many times before last issue. See, Talia knows he’ll get out. Eventually. It’s just what he does. Her plan is to have him take enough to get out that he can’t stop what’s to transpire underneath him, in the corridors of his corporate headquarters. What does transpire is insane. I can’t believe — after all the time he’s spent molding him into such a likeable, cunning, loyal person — Morrison would have the gall to do this. The big moment is handled well, especially the art. This is some of the best art we’ve seen from Burnham on the title yet, at least those couple pages. It is brutal. It is colorful. It is shocking. But I have a sneaking suspicion Morrison is not done yet with that particular character. On top of the big moment, we’re getting imagery from all over M’s run from the past 7-ish years: the girl Ellie who Batman gave a job at Wayne Ent., the ouroboro symbol, the Dick/Damien double punch, Ninja Man-Bats, there’s even a bit of Black Glove. If you’re just interested in seeing the big moment though, and have not been following the run, please… just stick to Scott Snyder.
- AVENGERS #4-6
It’s a little hard to review these as a whole. In a way, each of these issues of Jonathan Hickman’s iteration of The Avengers are actually stand-alone tales; introductory type one-offs that detail the rise of some of his more obscure team members (with overarching threads weaving throughout). The first issue tells the wonderful, other-worldly story of Hyperion… a rather obscure character from Marvel’s back-catalog. This is apparently another version from another alternate Universe. Hickman has been quoted as saying this character is very important to the long, three-year plan he has for his run on the title. The second (#5) takes us back to Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men (ironically enough), which I actually just reread last month. Another big-scope, outer-space tale of an Iowa farm girl discovering sentient technology, putting it on, and becoming the first human member of an Imperial guard of an alien race. Another relative unknown from Marvel’s back issues that Hickman would apparently like to use in his run. Then we come to Tamera Devoux of number 6, a brand new character for Hickman’s story. We learn that Tamera was in a car crash and suffered amnesia, and lost her baby girl. The Universe herself has possessed her. When asked why, the Universe replies, “Because she is broken. Because she is dying. Just as I am.” The art on all three is handled by Adam Kubert, who I’m familiar with cause he opened Morrison’s Batman run back in 2006. He does wonderful work. But these covers are making me crave some Dustin Weaver Avengers stuff. Handled intelligently, as always from Hickman. And the end of 6 sees the “White Event” at hand. So things should pick back up here in 7.
“A privately-owned unmanned US space capsule arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, bringing to the space outpost food, scientific materials and other crucial equipment.
The capsule named Dragon was captured—with the help of a robotic arm – by NASA Expedition 34 Commander Kevin Ford and Flight Engineer Tom Marshburn, 5:31 am EST (1031 GMT), when the ISS was over northern Ukraine, US space officials said. The craft, owned by SpaceX corporation, will now be inspected via cameras, brought to the Earth-facing port of the ISS’s Harmony module and bolted into place by commands from mission control.“
- I have a shitload of comics to read. I AM EXCITE. I’ll have reviews up here this week. Also I hate how nobody gave a fuck about Morrison’s Batman for the past year until a major character got whacked, and now advanced orders for the next issue are selling out.
“Present Shock is a big concept with profound implications for culture, politics and business. A simple visualization (borrowed from Adrian Bejan’s theories of flow systems) is to think of time as a river flowing at a certain pace. Below a certain threshold, the movements of things on the river are fairly linear and predictable. You launch a barge in the river here and three days later you have drifted to there. This is historical progress as we have come to know it over the millennia But when the speed of the flow increases beyond that threshold, the river becomes turbulent, non-linear, unpredictable. Such is the state of time in 2012.
What does this mean? Rushkoff breaks up “presentism” into five symptoms or challenges and matches each with constructive solutions for pressing the pause button. The “aha-moment-per-page ratio in Present Shock is high. Once you identify these concepts for yourself, you will start to see them everywhere.”
- Artists Ryan Ottley and James Harren have a Tumblr where they release non-comic pieces of art they’ve been conjuring up. There seems to be themes, too. Like the other week they called ‘Shadow Week’. The site is called “THEBOG“. James just posted this, as winter is not over yet:
- More comic stores are refusing to sellOrson Scott Card’s new Superman book on account of his straight-forward, clear stance on gay rights and indeed lesbians, gays, and bisexuals as people too. I love that Mark Millar came out and said something to the tune of, “that’s the thing about free speech, it isn’t always something you’re going to agree with. But that doesn’t mean you ban someone, you threaten their livelihood.” Actually Mark, that’s the thing about Free Speech, you can sell or not sell whatever products you choose as dependent upon however you feel about said products, production methods, or producers themselves. And while we’re at it, work on your dialogue please.
- Very interesting perspective here. Former ‘sex worker’, now journalist on what feminists get wrong when it comes to prostitution (from Guernica): WAGING WAR ON SEX WORKERS.
“I’ve been free in my writing to have that opinion. I’ve never been constrained by journalism in a formal way in which I have to hear both sides. I don’t even know who “both sides” would be on this issue. No, I’m not going to have a debate with you about how you feel about sex work. It has no impact on what happens tonight with the police in the streets. Our feelings alone don’t change what happens with the police, what happens in jail, what happens when someone tries to go to the welfare office, the unemployment office, or any kind of state agency where a criminal record comes up for prostitution. How we feel about the commodification of sexuality and violence doesn’t actually translate to those people’s lives. A lot of the debate is really academic and a waste of time.”
- The latest Watch Dogs video looks unbelievable. Too bad this is a PS4 game, cause I’ll probably wait to buy one of those ’til they go down in price. I still haven’t finished even 50% of Skyrim, and have Dishonored to get into. A new Playstation will guarantee one thing though, super outrageously cheap games on eBay and Craig’s List for the last system. Anyways, here’s that video:
- That Sioux Falls group Phantom Balance — I discussed them a couple posts ago — is releasing a new album called “Loser” tomorrow I believe. I’ll stream it here either tomorrow or later in the week.
- New How To Destory Angels (Trent Reznor’s latest band; his wife is the singer, and Atticus Ross co-producers/performs) is streaming. The new album is called “Welcome Oblivion” and will be released March 5th. 13 tracks at 65 minutes. On Columbia Records. Wikipedia’s labeling it as “post-industrial” and “electronica”.
- So I’m a regular reader of comics. At any given time I’ve got anywhere from 5-10 books on my pull list at the shop. But for some reason I have never read any Avengers stuff (I don’t read too much superhero stuff besides some classics and/or products of great writers). I was simultaneously trepidations and excited to jump into the deep end when I heard Jonathan Hickman (a writer who’s creator-owned work I follow) would be writing not one, but two, Avengers books. And though I firmly stand on the side of the “New Avengers/Illuminati”, I did catch up on the regular “Avengers” title last night. I read a lot of slightly negative things about the 2nd and 3rd issues of the book, which I don’t really understand because the quality is almost exactly the same as the first. But a lot of readers of comics — and your fanboys who don’t read comics — don’t have the best taste. Anyways I’m hoping these “Creators”, these spectacularly complex and borderline sympathetic villains, are revisited later on during Hickman’s run… perhaps reigniting the evolution of Mars and thus far surpassing Earth?
- An article on Wired is garnering quite a bit of views: Inside The Battle of Hoth. It basically takes a satirically serious look at the strategies employed by both the Empire and the Rebellion during the big first set-piece of Empire. But after reading this article, you’ll realize how inept and incoherent a military strategy the Empire employed in their best chance at wiping out 90% of the Rebellion with one stroke.
“It started with an interesting disease, I guess. I started writing it in film school, which means I took eight years to write it, on and off. I was sick with the flu, and I had this fever dream. I was obsessing over the physical nature of my illness, and how I had something in my body that had come from someone else’s body, and how that was a weirdly intimate thing, if you think about it that way.
So afterwards, I was trying to think about a character who might see disease as an intimate thing. I thought a celebrity-obsessed fan might reasonably want Angelina Jolie’s cold as a way of feeling physically connected to her in some way. And then it developed into a metaphor, which I thought was an interesting way of discussing that culture.”
- Seriously, Lars von Trier’s newest film is called “Nymphomaniac“? I swear, that guy just lives to push people’s buttons. Which is awesome. I still haven’t seen “Antichrist”… and to be honest I’m a little frightened by the disturbing imagery within. I mean, I’m sure I wouldn’t be fainting or anything like that (as has been reported); but I’m not so sure about my psychological tolerance for self-mutilation of the worst kind. I did however really, really like “Melancholia”, part two of his “Depression Trilogy” (“Antichrist” being part one). Maybe I’ll give this new one a watch at some point.
- Robin Hanson over at Overcoming Bias posted an excellent little piece about why certain movies do better than others, the relationship between consuming fiction and our lives, and the status of known achievement:
“There’s an apt old curse, “May you live in interesting times.” Which highlights the fact that while we like stories with drama, we don’t actually want drama in our lives. If you ignore the very end, and the fact that the characters are very high status artists, Amour is quite realistic and by far the drama most likely to actually be experienced by many of you. Which is why most folks don’t like it, because they don’t actually want to see realistic ordinary drama.
Amour is about a women who gets sick and then dies. I was stuck by the fact that what most bothered her and her husband were the insults to her pride. They could mostly handle the pain, the drudgery, and the loss of opportunity. But the loss of status, oh that stung.“
- Alright so the news that JJ Abrams is directing the new Star Wars movie has lit up the Internet. I know it’s redundant, but I’ll be quick about it (I hope). Here’s my take:
JJ Abrams, from a visual standpoint, is a hack. There’s just no two ways around it. He’s the directorial equivalent of a girl (or a guy I suppose) who tries way, way too hard. And any little amount of attractiveness that might exist under all that makeup (lens flares) and spray tan (odd angles w/ no context) and accessories (shaky cam cause shit’s just too intense), ceases to be. I watched his Star Trek once; I couldn’t get through it. It’s honestly that off putting to me what he does with the camera. Which is unfortunate because I’m sure he’s a very capable writer. He has a pretty good knack for high-concepts that end up being as simple or as complex as the viewer wants them to be. But, like that chick at the bar, all that gets buried under these kitschy gimmicks. All that being said, I think he can and probably will make a damn entertaining Star Wars flick. The trick will end up being getting out of his own way. Let things speak for themselves, there’s no need to cover up what’s happening on screen with all that makeup and spray tan. Especially not when it comes to such a legendary property. If the guy can find some way to be a subtle version of himself — I know that’s a bit of an oxymoron — I think Ep. 7 could be really cool. And really, hard not to do better than the prequels.
“People kept saying that the knife fight of the 2016 campaign in America was “unprecedented” but it really wasn’t. They said Rand Paul would never get a second term, but George W Bush did. People called me cynical for saying that Paul would take the second election regardless of the six women who were shot dead while trying to cross to Canada for abortions – before Canada put their own limits on abortion provision. Canada’s the only country Rand Paul ever travels to! He took all the drones out of Southeast Asia and floated every one of them along the US-Mexico border! (Going against his own “policy” of 2012 – what a bloody shock.)
How were people surprised? The only thing Rand Paul ever did that surprised me was using a thermobaric bomb on Islamabad instead of a tactical nuclear device. In some ways, the Paul Doctrine worked: a reunited India, the Afghan Spring, all that. President Paul claimed to have “solved foreign policy by ending foreign policy”.”
- COFFFFEEE!! It’s been a minute since I’ve been here.
- Last night I had this amazing dream about my wife and I. It kinda felt like a second honeymoon. We were in this very 21st Century, borderline futuristic city… like Tokyo looking. Except it wasn’t Tokyo because there was an abundance of white people and everyone spoke with a vague European accent. Let’s just call it 2064 Kiev. But we were frolicking through this city from a home-base of this beautiful penthouse. We went to see this band play in an underground club. Somehow we got to dancing at the side of the stage then the band invited us up to dance on stage and sing backup for the rest of the show. After the show we went back to our place and got up onto the roof. There was a small, traditional movie theater across the alley from us. Even with the neons of the city the stars burned bright. I found a piece of wood we used to walk across and get onto the theater roof. We made our way inside and found the projection room. We dug through reels and reels of film until we found an old, dusty copy of Inglorious Basterds (so yes, this must be a future occurrence). I put it on the 35mm projector and got it working. We brewed up some popcorn and watched the film all by ourselves in this tiny, historic theater. Balcony and all. When it was over we put the reels back how they were and darted out to the rooftop. The sun was just coming up.
“They came for him on October 23, 2008. Eight medical staff, corrections officers, and guards took William Coleman out of his solitary cell, down a bright hall, and into a medical examination room. The officers stood guard outside while a medical internist told Coleman to get on the vinyl-covered examination table. They were going to feed him. Coleman told them he did not want to be fed. But they weren’t asking for his consent; he had no choice.
It had been more than a year since Coleman had chewed anything.
He’s not suicidal; he’s in prison for something he says he didn’t do. Like 2.2 million people incarcerated in prisons and jails in the U.S., his body is not his own. The only way for him to protest his conviction, to exercise his first amendment rights, he says, is to stop eating solid food.”
“In 1956, with the guiding support of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, the U.S. Department of State sent the nation’s finest jazz musicians abroad as goodwill representatives in a conscious effort to symbolize America’s commitment to freedom. The Jazz Ambassadors program was launched at the bitterest point in the Cold War to bring the best of American culture to the rest of the world. The program not only focused on Iron Curtain nations but also the Third World, where many developing countries were exploring Marxism as a possible political identity. The first Jazz Ambassador was trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and two years later Brubeck joined the ranks that would eventually include Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Benny Goodman and Miles Davis. These musicians reached audiences in the millions, not only performing but also meeting with heads of state as well as thousands of everyday citizens through the international language of music.”
I can’t help but think this would never be something we’d invest in today’s world. Even with a surplus.
- I’m super digging the idea of Brian Wood writing an all female X-Men team. I haven’t been dedicated (“cared” is probably what I really mean) to an on-going X-Men book since Joss Whedon’s Astonishing, so perhaps Brian and amazing artist Olivier Coipel can bring mutants back into my life. And let’s be real… the females of the X-Verse are in a lot of ways more interesting and rounded than the men. At least when they’re written well and not drawn as pieces of meat for drooling, way too old fanboys.
- Local (to me) rap group Atmosphere recently announced a new “Welcome to MN” tour. But that’s not what I wanna share. What I wanna share is the song they’ve created with each of the opening acts on the tour, it’s called “It Ain’t The Prettiest”:
- An article discussing what may happen to comic books should the government employ censorship to them. The article goes on to talk about the 1954 “psychology” book Seduction of the Innocent, a travesty of human creation that delves into — in the book’s words — “the influence on comic books on today’s youth.” The release of the book and subsequent hearings in the Senate ended in sweeping censorship across the spectrum of the art form and a decline for the business economically (until the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko era began). Here’s to hoping Mr. Biden and whoever he’s talking to about gun violence don’t touch comics.
- The idea that the military enlists (generally) the poor, uneducated, or generally lost to their ranks is nothing new. A recent article at Slate talks about a fee one could pay to essentially wave enlistment to the Civil War. “Such famous Americans,” notes the article, “as Grover Cleveland and John D. Rockefeller took advantage of [the] provision.” The substitute fee was $300, or about 5 grand in today’s terms.
- Also on Slate: Brilliant Life and Tragic Death of Aaron Swartz. Swartz was something of an internet pioneer, with credits including work on RSS, Markdown, Reddit, and even Creative Commons.
“Hanging over his death is, of course, his persecution at the hands of U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz. People commit suicide because they suffer from depression, which he did, not because they’re being railroaded by the U.S. Attorney, which he was. His crime was breaking into a random closet at MIT and mass downloading academic journal articles from JSTOR. Obviously if you get caught trespassing, you’re going to face some legal consequences. But not a federal case with talk of million dollar penalties and decades-long jail sentences.”
Another excellent article, sort of a sequel to that last one, is THIS ONE. It discusses whether or not Swartz’ death will make the open-access market more mainstream. Wikipedia calls open access “the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewedscholarly journal articles. OA is also increasingly being provided to theses, scholarly monographs and book chapters.”
