Have you ever had that experience where something that has been entirely absent in your life for awhile suddenly begins to show up on your radar again? My evil American doppelganger at Progressive Ruin has finally dropped Flat Earth from his sidebar, despite some initial hesitation. Furthermore, The Comic Treadmill recently succumbed to year-end listmania, including a list devoted to noteworthy comic blogs that have since retired. My former comic blog is on that list. It’s nice to be remembered, especially since it’s been such a long time and so much has changed in comics and comics blogging since I quit.
Case in point, within minutes of stepping off of the plane in Vancouver my brother asked me if I was down with the O.Y.L. I had no idea what he was talking about. It turns out that O.Y.L. is what all the cool kids are calling One Year Later, a forthcoming DC comics stunt. Apparently, after the events of Infinity Crisis, comics set in the DC Universe will take place one year in the future with what actually happened during that year slowly being revealed. It’s appropriate then that this jarring gap in time is exactly how I feel about resuming my duties as a pseudo-comic blogger.
Although I still read the occassional comic blog over the past two years, without regular access to the internet, I’ve lost touch. I never realized just how difficult it would be to jump back in. In fact, immersing myself in that world once again is not dissimiliar to the peril one faces in jumping into the multi-title, continuity-driven multiverses of the average superhero comic after a brief break. In a way, the comics blogosphere has become a representation of the very comics it covers. Other then those few blogs that are entirely independent from the more community driven ones, the new reader would almost need a scorecard to determine who’s fighting who, how various discussions originated, which alternate Earth various blogs belong to, and most importantly, which of the multitudes of comic blogs available are worth my time.
Virgin Galactic and New Mexico have agreed to build a 225 million dollar spaceport so they can send tourists into outer space. They are planning to start flights in 2008, and it costs $200,000 to book a seat. Apparently, 38,000 people from 128 countries have already booked seats for the flight.
Let’s make it 38,000 and 1. I’m goin. That’s all there is to it. I just need someone to front me the money. There’s no way any of my friends will do it, because they all smell like class struggle.
So, here’s the deal, Corporate America. I don’t like you and you don’t like me, but if we work together, we can put me in outer space. I just need $200,000. I’ll be in the upper stratosphere and out of your way for awhile. What you do to the planet while I’m gone is your business. You wanna put on the funsuit and torpedo-fuck a third world country? Have at it. What happens on earth, stays on earth. I’ll wear whatever you want when I go up in the shuttle. You wanna paint your logos on my back like you do with prize fighters? I’m down with that.
I’m usually against this sort of thing, but my conscience and sense of social justice has it’s price. And this is it. This is outer fucking space we’re talking about here. I’ll even wear a jacket full of corporate brands made personally for me by a starving child if I have to. I’ll be all like, “Thank you for the jacket, Kenji. I’m sorry that your childhood was stolen from you by your manager’s baton and his cruel eyes. I promise I’ll shed a single tear for you and all mankind when I’m looking down on the planet.”
So that’s my plan, Corporate America. C’mon. I know you like me (in that way). I’ve seen the way you get mad when I fraternize with the working class. You’ve always had a thing for me, and I’ve always been a little attracted to your wealth and abundant lifestyle. You’re stylish, and I’m cute as a button. Let’s get together and make some delicious space music.
Call me.
For a while I have been reading about the BBE sonic maximizer. It is in a ton of studios and countless rigs. This morning I was reading online that they now have it in a stomp box format. After reading about the pedal I decided I actually needed some new guitar cables and headed off to the local music shop down the road. After paying for the cables I noticed that they had the pedal in stock. Needless to say I had no chance on this impulse buy.
When I got home I whipped out the other pedals I have and got to testing. When you place this pedal at the end of the signal chain it makes your chorus sweeter and your distortion fuller, it is fantastic with other effects. It is like it made all the other pedals go up a price range. If you normally eschew effects and prefer a straight guitar into amp tone I would still recommend this. It makes your axe sharper and screams delicious tone.
I can honestly say that this pedal is berserk. It makes the uke sound fuller, richer, sweeter all at the same time. It is a box full of the ghosts of dead rock stars – everyone that plays an electric stringed instrument should get one. It is the best pedal I have ever owned, and I will use it for all applications.
“C: What other titles did you work on while at Archie?
BB: I guess just about all except Katy Keene and Superduck. Thankfully.”
-From a fan interview with Bob Bolling.
The vast majority of Archie comics I own are in the digest form. Reading them in this way, though convenient, is much like reading textbooks written after the war. Who knows what’s being cast aside by the victor in the retelling? Take a look at most any digest on the shelves these days and you’ll see that the material by Lucey, Schwartz and even Decarlo have all but disappeared, replaced by trendier, usually uglier, comics. The strangest experience in going through the older digests is when you come across a story that must have slipped through the cracks, one that makes almost no sense within the context of the overall Archie digest oeuvre. It’s like discovering a secret, sordid history. Ga Ga Over Gary, starring Betty’s big sister Polly, is one such animal.
Polly has just landed a date with the most popular boy in the whole junior class, only to find to her dismay that she had also promised to make little Betty’s doll a new dress for her class’ style show the next day. Drawn by renowned Little Archie artist Bob Bolling, Ga Ga Over Gary is illustrated and paced far different from just about any teenage comic I have ever read. The colours are all soft pastels, and the backgrounds are almost non-existent. Bolling draws teens completely unlike any other Archie artist, and it’s certainly a nice change of pace, especially in comparison to the standardization that crept into the line with the ascendancy of Decarlo’s popularity.
As for Polly, apparently she eventually left Riverdale to pursue a career as a TV news anchor somewhere on the West Coast. Thanks to the always invaluable Betty Cooper FAQ and fellow Archiephile Comics Worth Reading for that piece of information.
“The whole point isn’t to make it look realistic. I don’t think that films were ever meant to be just an exercise in technical virtuosity.” – Ray Harryhausen
Warrenzone has posted his latest film, the home invasion/killer bear opus The Precursor. I often find myself at odds with people who can’t appreciate a film that lacks a professional sheen. Horror, more then any other genre, relies almost entirely on emotion for its effect. While most horror films try to replicate reality in their costumes, special effects and other visual components, this isn’t always the best way to go. Sometimes a sense of unreality, even cheapness, creates a discomforting effect that is infinitely preferable to simply looking “good”. The rather slipshod make-up in Fulci’s Zombie is a great example of this. And if a horror film manages to create even one indelible image, well, that’s just something money can’t buy. To be sure, The Precursor isn’t perfect, but anything that can creep me out without the benefit of audio while sitting in the library in the middle of the day must have some merit.
For the past few years the one film I most hoped to see on DVD was the original King Kong. The low-grade copy I taped off of the CBC over a decade ago just wasn’t cutting it anymore. The DVD finally came out last month, and I snapped it up on the first day of its release. Aside from the film itself, there is a commentary track by Ray Harryhausen and archival audio clips from cast and crew, as well as a huge documentary produced in part by Peter Jackson. Quite possibly the most pleasant surprise in the set is the documentary chapter on the lost Spider Pit sequence.
In the original King Kong, a group of sailors are shook off of a log by King Kong and plummet to their deaths in a pit below. In the original cut of the film, a few of the sailors survive the fall only to be devoured by hideous monsters that live in the pit’s caves. This sequence was filmed, animated and completed in full. In fact, it was King Kong animator Willis O’Brien’s favourite part of the film. When the film was screened before a test audience it was discovered that the Spider Pit sequence was actually too good. The audience was so overwhelmed by the horror of the sequence that they could think or talk about hardly anything else for the remainder of the movie. In order to maintain the film’s pacing, producer Merian C. Cooper excised the sequence from the final cut. In the past, Cooper was known for burning film that was not used in the finished product and it is assumed that he did the same with Kong.
Side note for Billy : Cooper, a forceful, cocky, reckless obsessive, was the inspiration for the character of Carl Denham in the original King Kong. Knowing this, it’s not such a stretch to imagine Jack Black being chosen for the same role in the remake.
The documentary chapter on the Spider Pit sequence details this same story in brief. However, the real meat of this special feature is in Peter Jackson’s decision to recreate the sequence, not for any real reason, but just for fun. The featurette details the meticulous and nerdy examination of the few Spider Pit fragments still in existence, the dissection of 1930’s methods of model making, computer animators rediscovering a passion for stop-motion animation, Peter Jackson shooting live-action shots over weekends and dozens of other delights that kept me riveted throughout. All this was made concurrently with the actual filming of the remake, and with no actual guarantee that the Spider Sequence reproduction would be seen by anyone else.
All in all, it’s a fun, informative look at the pure joy of filmmaking and the disturbing amount of love and respect fans have for the King.
It took me a while to try it, but I’m totally hooked on Coca-Cola Zero. Through some sort of black magic, its toxic mixture of aspartame and acesulfame-potassium closely approximates the taste of Coca-Cola Classic.
I can not imagine how much regular Coke I’ve drank over my lifetime, but I’m sure it would come frighteningly close to the amount of plain water I’ve had. My consumption reached its zenith living with the boys in St.Catherines, especially with Doug around, who’s the only person I’ve known to drink more of the stuff than me. Hell, we were practically swimming in it, hopped up like junkies, the local Avondale living off our addiction. We stuck strictly to bottles, considering it a better fix than cans, and would collect so many per week we needed a dedicated recycling bin.
We started to reevaluate once Doug’s dentist discovered the enamel on his teeth was disintegrating from his habit. That definitely shocked us out of our caffeinated stupor, and we slowed down after that, though not by much.
And even after moving, I continued drinking Coke in moderation until recently, when I realized the amount of sugar in each can was in direct opposition to my plans for healthy living. A difficult decision, let me tell you, but there’s no way to justify 14 teaspoons of sugar for a single drink. Not even bothering to consider Diet Coke, I had a rebound relationship with Diet Mountain Dew ENERGY!, but it was a brief affair, its taste unable to keep my interest. I was beginning to think I would have to abandon pop altogether.
So you can imagine why I love Coca-Cola Zero and its startling likeness to the Real Thing™. The differences are hardly noticeable, a little less sugary and a little more spicy, and it seems a lot more carbonated than the original. But even though it’s not exactly pitch-perfect, and I do worry about the long term effects of sugar alternatives like aspartame, it’s probably the best option short of quitting pop, which hardly seems like an option at all, if you ask me.
Despite my love of the original King Kong, my status as House puritan, and the fact that I have yet to see any of the Lord of the Rings movies, I am looking forward to watching Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake. He seems reverent enough to touch upon the original in a positive manner. My only confusion was when I discovered that his version was going to be twice the length of the original, a fact that I can’t even begin comprehend.
Last night I came across a special on the King Kong remake. Within a montage of scenes from the movie was a tiny clip of Ann Darrow speaking the line “Is this the moving picture ship?” It reminded me of this passage from the book The Making of King Kong by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner, concerning the hiring of Ruth Rose as one of the writers on the feature.
The producers knew they had the writer they needed when they read the opening line of dialogue : “Hey! Is this the moving picture ship?” She had thrown out several pages of explanation and in only seven words succeeded in getting the story under way!
The reuse of this particular line in the remake illustrates just how different the approach for each film seems to be. In the original King Kong, the “moving picture ship” line was the very first spoken dialogue in the film. With the line being transposed to Ann Darrow, who appears further into the movie, the purpose of the line as a quick and dirty piece of exposition seems as if it’s been rendered meaningless. I think it’s interesting that the placement of this one line may in fact symbolize everything that’s different from one film to the next.
The LA Times reported that some kid was busted for making exploding pens and leaving them on the street for hapless passersby to pick up. The pens were set to detonate when they were uncapped. The kid is now being held in juvey, but you know he’s destined for either Gitmo or an invisible rank in some elite C.I.A. explosives unit. Here’s a quote from the article in the LA Times about how the kid had a book on making explosives.
The books seized by investigators described explosive-making procedures but did not say how to rig a pen to detonate, Miller said. “Coming up with the idea was his doing,” he said.
When you show that kinda moxy/crazy, you either get punished huge or you get exploited by the government. There’s no good reason why this kid isn’t making James Bond style weaponry for the 007s of America.
Sepultura had great success as a thrash band and had a few great records under their belt. Then in 1996 the band decided to take a different approach to their new album. The sound for Roots was guttural, raw and tribal. It was a departure from what they had done in the past, and was a journey into the jungles of Brazil.
In order to achieve the new sound, beats were influenced by the indigenous music of Brazil. The guitars were outfitted with grittier, muddy, passive pickups – replacing the holy grail of thrash pickups, the EMG 81, and everyone played and sung around the groove of the song. When you listen to this record the rhythm is what drives it, it is a return to the bonfire and the banging of the drum.
With all of these influences front and centre the record still retains the heart and soul of the Sepultura sound. The result is a concept album that is enjoyed by even the most critical of fans. This record celebrated syncopated tribal rhythms that sounded heavy as hell without the need for breakneck speed. The worship of groove on this record went on to influence a great number of bands and albums to follow. This record added a color to the palate of metal, and people continue to paint with it. This album is voodoo magic
