John Battelle has some interesting insight on "conversational media." This is a better term than "user-created content." The simple explanation is that conversational media is any sort of media published on the internet that isn't expressly for commercial purposes. My current favorite example:
Singing skeleton marionette


Hee hee, he dances and so does the pair of legs behind him. This sort of video has been around for a long time- the dancing baby, the Star Wars kid, and innumerable videos of cats are all examples. The dancing baby was originally intended as a demo for some prefab animation software, but nobody knew it. Conversational media is different from viral marketing in that the content is purely for enjoyment. If you clicked on the link above (then you're a geek like me), you saw the rundown of big media companies and their attempts to get in on web 2.0 content distribution. Newscorp bought Myspace, much to the chagrin of Viacom, for a hefty sum of money. Google bought Youtube with a built-in bugged for the wave of infringement lawsuits from big media copyright holders.
It seems to me that the short-term value of these assets is the ad revenue that comes from multiple users navigating through several pages of content, seeing new ads with each new page. Meanwhile, consumers are blocking and skipping advertising more and more. In light of this apparently growing trend, the web advertising model starts to look short sighted, if not willfully ignorant of the user base. However, I see these conversational media outlets as a great investment for trend watching. When a company owns the media servers, they can search and compile all kinds of data on what's popular while it's still popular.
Movie sites are popping up on Myspace now in order to connect with the target audience for the majority of studio films, and networks are using Youtube to market programming to an audience that has largely tuned out in the hope of getting their attention again.
And I just realized that I don't really know where I'm going with this. It's been on my mind for a while, since I did a project on the subject last year.

It got cold here in a hurry this year, after a pleasantly warm Thanksgiving week. I think we're fighting nature's population cap by living here at this time of year, but until we get satellite powered ubiquitous wireless internet, we're not leaving our northern population centers for warmer weather. I have the heater in my apartment blowing full-blast whenever I'm there and awake, though the effective radius is the size of an Ewok's strike zone. Sometimes when I'm cold and impatient I sit on the vent to warm my mostly uninsulated bones. Oddly enough, though it was turned off, I thought I heard it this morning. I assumed it was the neighbors, but then I found it running despite the switch being off. Apparently, there's a thermometer failsafe so I don't freeze to death in my sleep, which was rather considerate of the designer. If the thing didn't run on a pencil sharpener motor I'd call it good design.

Some people I know don't read (old joke), but those of you who do may be interested in this site: Unsuggester. Enter a book you've read, and the site will give you a list of books that you are statistically unlikely to read, based on site members' reading lists. It seems to be heavily weighted by people with lists of nothing but Christian/inspirational books, or perhaps I'm just a heathen for reading John Steinbeck, Neil Gaiman, and Douglas Adams.

Tom Waits was on Letterman last night. If you're interested in turkey vultures, watch the first video. Otherwise, the song is in the second video.
Tom Waits on David Letterman - Pt1


Tom Waits on David Letterman - Pt2

I'm getting back to normal now, not missing the bus and getting used to the food here again. I never noticed how used to the food I was, that everything tasted the same to me after two years of eating the same four meal combinations in rotation. The Terri Dreams project is coming along nicely. My segment director made a rough mockup video with the storyboards timed to the music for reference. I worked a little more on the models and messed around with blend shapes to get the right motion. If nothing else, it fills my time with something fun and constructive.

After work on Friday I drove home to Fort Wayne to greet my brother and a dozen other students known collectively as the Cornerstones, a vocal group from Kenyon College. I say "vocal group," because (a.) I don't think I've ever heard Michael refer to them as a "choir;" and (b.) their arrival could be described as "vocal." Semantic issues were quickly forgotten as two minivans and a station wagon all bearing the Kenyon crest filled our driveway and a flock of students began to emerge. A series of them greeted me with a hearty handshake and a name- a nice gesture even in the dark where I couldn't see their faces very clearly. An indoor reintroduction and a group 180° allowed Mom to read their group shirts with nicknames emblazoned on the back, each an inside joke born of camaraderie and caffeine. Cornerstone custom is to perform unannounced in a public area the night before the scheduled performance. Fort Wayne is almost completely shut down at 10:00 PM, save for an area in the Jefferson Pointe mall by the theater that served as a performance space. Even in the cold they managed to attract spectators. Most people paused to listen for a few minutes before moving on to someplace warmer, but a few guys sat on the steps nearby and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the show. I found that this unscheduled performance fit with my research from my immersion in Chicago: more than one person walking to or from the theater wondered aloud if these were carollers for the holiday, despite a lack of seasonal music. In a near sphere of commercialism and carefully metered culture, the Cornerstones were something unscheduled and genuinely independent. This garnered some predictably strange looks from older movie patrons, while the highschoolers seemed more accepting of a deviation from the norm. The concert the next day was great as well. I recorded the show on my Dad's laptop with a cheapo microphone from Radio Shack. They didn't have the one I wanted, but the recording might still be okay. I'll do what I can over break.

I'm pretty tired tonight, as I couldn't get to sleep last night on account of a still-huge stack of comic books saved up over the last month while I was away. I just feel the need to update this blog before it gets to be a month between posts.

It's been strange being back this past week. I wasn't gone to Chicago for that long, not a semester, certainly, but I've had to readjust to life here. The bus comes twice an hour, not every eight minutes. With the exception of Thai Smile, the Asian food isn't as good. I'm not in constant line-of-sight range with a Borders, Barnes and Noble, or other bookstore. If I was at all employable I wouldn't still be in Muncie. I'm quite sure I could live in a big city now.

I watched On the Waterfront the other night. It's entertaining and intelligent, despite a heavy-handed tendency to beat the audience over the head with every possible symbolic reference the writer could think of. It works, though. I also devoted two nights to working through Gears of War with Scott on his Xbox. Despite the immaculate level of detail afforded by next-gen graphics processing, the game still operates under the same principles of the eight and sixteen bit games of the past two decades: run around, blow stuff up, wait for the talking heads to run through their script to give some semblance of plot, repeat. Beyond the graphics, there really isn't much to the game. Plot and narrative issues are hard for designers to work out, but they're also the cheapest problems to solve early in the production process. It's why the Halo series takes so long between games- the designers care deeply about creating a world for the player to work in. This is also why the first Halo was still on the best seller list when Halo 2 came out.

Well, I'm here in Chicago now, so all my blogging for the next three weeks will be over here.

Sepultura Refuse resist
Nobody has ever rocked this hard in a pokemon shirt. If there was ever proof that music is good for kids, this would be it.

Every now and then an opportunity comes along here at BSU that allows me to do what I came here for- production and interdisciplinary learning. I'm working on an animated short for a giant project here called The Terri Dreams. The site explains it, but it's basically a series of five dreams. My part in this is the beginning of the second dream, with two pairs of lips and the universe. Or something. The segment director has it all planned out and storyboarded, and it doesn't look too complicated. (DN article)

I'm getting close to my cultural immersion. The brain trust that designed the DS program way back when decided to require a big expensive trip to a foreign culture. Sharper minds have since refined this to mean any culture that can be justified through rhetorical study (or somesuch). I'll be going to Chicago to study the art and music culture, and blogging the whole deal on a separate blog from this one. While I still can't shake the notion that this is essentially buying a grade, I am looking forward to the trip, as it is something I've always wanted to do somehow. Chicago is revered in almost hushed tones in Fort Wayne- if someone garners enough local acclaim for their creative endeavors, the buzz starts that they're going to Chicago to make it big. It's how 18th-century immigrants used to talk about America. I'll post a link to the immersion blog in the next week or so, once I find a good template.

Why? Because nature hates me. It's not enough to fill the outdoor air with pollen anymore. I woke up last week to find this on my toothbrush. Thanks to my morning disposition and indoor plumbing, it won't happen again. Now I need a little "Keep Off" sign for my new toothbrush. This is what I get for living next to ever-encroaching nature.

Barring postal holiday delay, Wednesday is new comic day. The day when all misanthropic sons of Krypton fully and gladly expect to shell out between three and thirty dollars for the latest dead-tree serialized entertainments. Today, though, as Gerry and I pulled in to the lot at Alter Ego Comics and approached the door, we were halted by a sign on the door stating that the shop was closed on account of the owner's daughter being born. We stood there for a minute, staring blankly into the dark window of a shop known for being well-lit. Even the neon Superman logo was turned off. We just stood there for a good two minutes, like Jay and Silent Bob, waiting for someone to come let us in to buy our comics, eventually leaving to go eat dinner. I called later to see if the shop was open after 6:00, but no answer. (Yes, "Alter Ego" is the first name in the alphabetical list in my phone, meaning I can call to inquire about the next issue of, say, Ex Machina, easier than I can call my parents or any hypothetical woman my age.) While I'm happy for Jason, the owner and proud father, I do wonder what kind of strange fate finds the culmination of human gestation on the same Wednesday Joss Whedon's "Astonishing X-men" comes out. I was even going to buy the new Brian K. Vaughn graphic novel- the sort of higher-end purchase a newly christened father of two would appreciate. Divinity forbid I should have to wait until 11:00 tomorrow morning to get my comics.

I watched a documentary last night called "The Commedians of Comedy," about the tour of the same name. I got it because I like Patton Oswalt's stand up, and I wanted to see who else was on the tour. During some road footage, he talks to the camera in a group interview about starting out, and he said that in order to get really good at something, you have to immerse yourself in it for two years. This is encouraging, as my academic career is now in extra innings.

The Black Keys have a new CD out. It's really good. Pick it up if you like their stuff.

"Overweight people now outnumber the undernourished." Link
Should I be nervous?

Last night, under the fog of a head cold and in lieu of doing anything constructive, I watched the movie Brick. I haven't been this enthusiastic about a movie since Primer. It's a film noir set in a California high school, but it really isn't a teen movie. The dialogue is all based on the prose style of Dashiell Hammett, so the lines are all in short clipped sentences. It's tough to describe, but I'll probably buy this one, so hit me up some night if you're bored and want to see it.

I'm really out of it after taking some medicine last night. It's a good thing I don't drive to school.

Since I can't ever actually take a vacation from the warm glow of a computer, I've spent my holiday break searching for music videos. These are my favorites:

Hurra Torpedo- Total Eclipse of the Heart I hate this song like poison, but this version is one of the coolest/funniest performances I've seen online.

Smashing Pumpkins- Pug This is my favorite live performance video from the Pumpkins, and I've seen a lot of them. They did a similar version when I saw them at Purdue.

Motorhead- Ace of Spades Exactly how much rock is too much?

Yup, it's true.

I've been reading The Long Tail, a book about the new economy evident in the online marketplace. It takes a book to explain it if you aren't a digital storytelling student, but here's a good example: (link) The "long tail" comes from the sales graph (say, from iTMS) where online sales peak with the predictable popular hits, then drops off sharply with the less popular songs. The graph never quite hits zero, though, and those low sellers add up like mad after a while. Niche markets hold more sway than they used to. The aforelinked article shows this, where casual gamers make up an estimated %76 of total game sales. This figure is broken down further, but the vast majority of people aren't as committed to gaming as the people video games are marketed to. This is interesting to me, anyway.

It's new comic day today. I got some good ones, the standout being Doc Frankenstein, a comic written by the Wachowski brothers that hasn't come out in nearly a year.

The mass influx of denim-clad academic acolytes to this jerkwater burg signals the start of the Fall semester once again. I've seen a few people I know walking around, and I can't help but notice the looks I get suggesting that people had thought I graduated. Not yet, kids- I'll be leaching off the state until December. In the meantime, I have plenty of projects to keep my busy, many of which will be documented online.

The last couple of times I've been to Best Buy, I've noticed an alarming trend in the music section. The employees are getting agressive now. It used to be that they'd troll the aisles and make their presense known now and again, similar to sharks off the coast of Hawaii. For some reason, they're now in full-on South-African-great-white mode, aggressively pouncing on anything in or near their territory. The first time it happened, I was digging through the middle of the alphabet in the rock/pop section. A blueshirt came up to me and asked me if I needed help finding anything. I said no without looking up, thus upholding my end of the social contract to at least the minimal standard. He pressed the matter, asking me what I was looking for, and I said I didn't know. He then asked me what kind of music I'm into, as if the Metalica-fan circa '93 hair/beard combo wasn't at least a clue. I'm pretty good at blocking out people I don't want to deal with, but this one actually tripped my old "don't talk to strangers" reflex. I looked up at him, said "lots of kinds," and moved away from him.

The second incident in recent memory was a week ago. I was looking for the Metric album that got a good writeup in the New Yorker, when someone came up behind me and said "hey, how 'ya doing?" Students had been filtering back in all week, and I figured I would see somebody I knew in public at some point, so I stood up and turned around to see a complete (albeit cute and female) stranger standing there in a BSU shirt. It threw me off, as her nametag was partially concealed by her hair. The faux-familiarity seemed presumptuous, and I gave her a weird look, as I was genuinely thrown off by her manner. I walked out of the store a little mad about this. The guy at the independently-owned Villiage Green didn't bug me when I ultimately bought the CD I was looking for in the first place. I like owning physical media, but iTunes and Amazon don't take the piss out of me when I purchase online.

My first attempt at 3-D modeling in Second Life:


I had to fight it a bit because the shapes can only scale down so far, and the ability to make 2d shapes is conspicuously absent (a low poly-count is desirable, one would think), but I'm happy with the result so far. For those of you who haven't read Warren Ellis's early-career Transmetropolitan comic, the odd-shaped glasses are a prominent character feature of the protagonist. I'm not %100 happy with this yet, and I may just break down and pay the $.34 to upload a 2-D image of the glasses. Thus far, I'm really impressed with Second Life.

Oh, how I want a burrito now.

The new apartment is quite nice, though I'm not totally settled yet. I'm working more until the semester to finish a couple big things at work, so I'm usually tired when I get home and end up going to bed early in order to catch the first MITS bus I can in the morning. The bus isn't bad, and the human menagerie is entertaining enough. I'm lucky to be on a line that stops right by the building I work in.

I opened the door the other night to find a huge spider web across the top left corner, complete with a large spider. The little bugger had spun the entire thing in the span of a few hours since I had last opened the door. I cleared it away, but the web was back the next morning for me to walk through. This was a formidable spider, with exponentially more legs than me, so I waited until it turned around (thus exposing the belly) and then clobbered it.

One more thing- I tried out Second Life to see what the character creation options were like. Here's my avatar after some rudimentary tweaking:

I think I'm happy with it. Now I just have to make some clothing textures.

This is intentional, don't worry:
Read that last line carefully: why would the IRS need a copyright? I found this spam in the BSU question/comment e-mail account that I've been working in. I don't normally read spam, but this one caught my eye because it was funny. Also note the processing time of 6-9 days. I don't think the IRS can change a coffee filter that fast.

Like the Flannery O'Connor story I read and forgot in undergrad, I am currently a displaced person. See description: that's me, but not in Africa. My landlord needed me to get out when my lease expired right as my employment status solidified for next semester, so I've been scrambling around with the help of several friends and family to move out and find somewhere to live. My next apartment won't be available until August 5th, so I'm currently crashing at "Gerry's Pad," so named by the red LED persistence-of-vision clock that flashes at me from my vantage point on the fold-out sofa. We ate at MCL last night "for the experience." Also for the blue jello, if I'm honest. The manager in the buffet line complimented my grey Fender shirt, which was nice, as I imagine the employees get sick of the aggressively quaint decorum. It makes me wonder what "quaint" and "kitsch" will look like when I'm old. Will we have pictures from the good old days of two-dimensional Doom sprites and the Google logo from before Google bought the Catholic church in 2016? Instead of depression-era Coca-Cola ads on the wall, will we have current recession-era ads? It's probably not too far off. After dinner, Gerry and I compulsively stopped in Hot Topic to look at shirts for bands we've never heard of. I ought to write down a few names and ask the Wundergrad if he knows them, but that would require me to care about bands formed after 1997. Then we went to the bookstore and bought books, proving that we do read after all. He got the Superman Returns shooting script and I got a book of essays about "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg. Fun stuff.

I'm setting up a photoblog with a template that will allow for larger photos to be displayed. The template is simple, but I'm still having trouble with the formatting.

We left the pristine grounds of Chautauqua yesterday and drove straight on to Taco Bell in Cleveland for food served on cardboard by teenagers who were neither pretty nor talented- a sharp contrast to the previous week of watching children play Mozart's recognizable hits in the park while eating grilled veggie sandwiches. Before we left we attended a Q&A with Arlen Specter and Lee Hamilton, and the day before that a speech by Arthur Sulzberger Jr. They were all as interesting as one would expect, which means a lot coming from me, as I generally don't want to hear about any political issue not covered in a Metal Gear or Splinter Cell game.

Here are a few more pictures from the past few days:

Things old people like:
High waistlines
Sitting
Ice cream
Walking slowly and looking around
Paying attention to anyone who happens to be talking
Large glasses
T-shirts with buttons
Flowers, both fresh and as floral print on wallpaper and clothing
Breakfast
Eating together (any meal)
Nodding at things
Where they used to live
Their grown children and each offspring’s marital state and vocation
The term “Digital Storytelling”
Church at any hour of the day, any day of the week

Things old people don’t like:
The internet
My brother and I until they find out that we still read books, then we’re “very nice”
Poor restaurant service
Restaurant service that reminds them of previous poor service
Rain
Hot weather
When people take their scooter parking, even when they clearly have reserved scooter parking

This much has been clear, so far, here at Chautauqua. As for me, I’ve enjoyed the past couple of days. Today I took a watercolor class with a room full of flower painting geriatrics, a guy who makes charts, and a landscape architect guy from Florida. Turns out I still have my layout and design chops, even if my brush technique is a little shaky. Last night I went to an opera for the first time if my life. Now, I enjoy the theatre and the musical as much as and perhaps more than the average heterosexual male, and I’m not entirely sworn off opera for the rest of my life, but damnation The Marriage of Figaro is long: three and a half hours with intermissions (plural) and enough time between relevant plot points to work out a Thursday NYT crossword. Superman Returns moves like an episode of Robot Chicken by comparison. On the other hand, the performers were all amazingly talented, and getting to hear the famous prologue piece live complete with a real harpsichord made me giddy. I also went to the ballet, which was quite enjoyable. The highlight of the evening was a huge group performance of Ravel’s Bolero done in a cool Spanish style. Apparently this was the world premiere of this particular arrangement mixed with this particular choreography, for what that’s worth. More harmonica class tomorrow, and I might have time to drive to a comic shop to buy 52. All this high-class living is giving me the shakes for some good-ole low culture like I’m used to. I make a habit of re-dumbening a bit at the end of the day with a little Mario Kart DS, just to keep my center.
Curiously, I seem to be in social demand in Indiana during the one week in several months I happen to leave. For those who have asked, I’ll be back on Monday definitely, and maybe Saturday or Sunday, depending on whether or not I go to Chicago. In short: you know me and concrete plans, so I’ll see you when I see you.

I sat down here in the library to get a strong wi-fi signal so I could upload pictures I took last night and as I was checking Penny Arcade (a tri-weekly staple of life), an old lady walked by and paused to express amusement that I was reading a comic strip on the internet. Imagine that- humor has endured well after the twilight of the rotary phone. Her grandson rolled his eyes and ushered her on to the books, most likely concious of the sort of humor that can be found in webcomics.

The harmonica class was a strange sort of fun. The instructor used the time to painstakingly explain the scale we were to practice, as well as several other topics. I'd summarize them here, but playing my new harmonica has been an exercise in oxygen depravation.

I took a walk last night and took some pictures with my door lens. I also stood for a while under the trees at dusk and watched the bats fly by overhead and in some cases right past me at close range.



































































After spending most of my life far removed from anything nautical, I felt compelled to photograph the heck out of the lake and the boats, as these things only exist to me in Tom Waits songs. For all I know, the Edmund Fitzgerald is sitting at the bottom of this lake next to the Lusitania and a giant kracken. I'd totally believe that if someone told me it was true.

After a drive across the intrusively placed state of Ohio, I am currently sitting in a preposterously quaint hotel on the grounds of Chautauqua (shuh-TAW-kwah), a town devoted to arts and humanities of every stripe. My initial impression is it’s kind of like Austin, TX for the black-socks-with-shorts crowd. The main parking lot has a handicap section the nearly the size of Fenway’s outfield, if that tells you anything. I’ll be here for a week with my mom and brother, going to art galleries and attending seminars that look interesting. Notable enough to plan ahead for are a series of classes to learn the harmonica and a basic watercolor class. I never learned watercolor properly, but I’ve messed around with ink washes and gouache. As for the harmonica, I think we’re doing it just because we can.

Being here is a bit like scuba diving while dependent on a tank of oxygen. I’m cut off from my natural environment; and iron lung made of PS2 games, high-end Adobe products, and at least three months of comic books within arm’s reach at almost all times. For life support, I have my iPod (currently playing Velvet Underground); Mom’s DS with Mario Kart, Advance Wars, Brain Age, and some kind of surgery game I have to try at some point; Mom’s laptop with a spotty wi-fi signal from somewhere nearby; and the vague prospect of a comic shop in a town nearby where I can purchase 52 on Wednesday. I also have a few books along, and I plan to work on school-related things too.

Blogger currently is sort of loading as of this sentence, but a while ago I got Wikipedia to load to look up the Spanish-American war for an aborted old-people joke- just assume it would be funny if you knew what I was talking about. Hopefully this will post correctly. I should be able to upload photos of this place when I’m in better proximity to the library. For now, you’ll have to take my word for it that the room we’re staying in is floor-to-ceiling floral print. The flowers outnumber the resident population of Monaco.

Kal-L, I believe.
One of the Medici, probably. I don't remember. Michael and I saw this in Chicago.
If you don't know Yoda, don't read this blog.
Thanks to Michelle, I have two pleasant looking monkies.
One of Gerry's old Zorro comics.

I saw an idea for cheap fisheye photography on the internet last week, and on a trip to wallyworld I decided to test this method. A one-way peep hole with the inside end removed makes for a cheap way to deform a subject. I made a stand for the lens with green floral wire, a cheap and versatile material I discovered in undergrad when my friends used it for sculpy clay armature understructure. The original faq I found has comments and links to other methods of mounting the lens to the camera. If I can find a cheap lenscap or filter, I'll try to make a mount for it. The images are all orange due to the light in my apartment, and PS couldn't do much to change the saturated orange.

In other news, it's good to be a comic geek right now. The last panel of Astonishing X-men #15 made me (quite literally) jump out of bed and dance around for what it referenced, and hopefully everybody else who reads this issue will get the meaning. Gerry and I purchased our advance tickets for the first showing of Superman Returns next week, so we're all ready to go.

This week saw the similarly abrupt arrival and exeunt of a small orange cat at Gerry's apartment. From what I gather, Monday evening three excitable undergrads presented him with a year-old cat wrapped in a light blue sweater and a smattering of cat supplies purchased so recently the receipt ink was scarcely dry. Essentially, an all-in-one cat care kit, presented with the sincere hope that said cat might live with Gerry. Gerry, being the probable exclusive caregiver, was incredulous to the idea, though the girls made promises to stop by often to help with care and feeding of the feline presently hiding under the bed for lack of a say in the matter. If there is a common factor to any of Gerry's few questionable decisions, it is my consort, so he called me to come see the cat. They had coaxed it back to the couch when I arrived, where it was shedding by the bale from the stress of being lugged around campus by such an excitable gaggle, all the while quietly praising the management of their apartment complex for a rule against cats. Yadda yadda, Gerry got a cat. Ever wonder what happens when you introduce an unpredictable element into a controlled environment? Gerry's expression while watching the cat was often that of a Swiss engineer surveying a room full of children fingerpainting- open befuddlement at the random behaviors and quiet amusement. I got to play the role of the cool uncle who only shows up long enough to spoil the cat rotten with attention, never once having to put up with the nighttime quirks when the cat couldn't sleep. The aforementioned girls put up fliers in the village and the owner claimed him, confirming his gender for us. Though they were grateful, they failed to offer any recompense for the expenses of boarding a cat. The term "schmucks" has been suggested more than once. Curiously, the cat is missed. Of course I miss the little bugger, because I didn't do much to care for him aside from checking in once and helping with some basic cat knowledge gained from caring for June at USF. Gerry freely admits to being attached to the cat, having tentatively dubbed him "Streaky" after Supergirl's cat circa 1960. This was a good little cat- he sat on our laps and greeted people like a dog.

I just saw Everthus the Deadbeats play an outdoor show- good stuff as always. They travel with a rubbermaid bin full of various noise makers that the crowd can play along with, and one stalwart fan always shows up with a skillet and spoon. The act before them was one guy dressed in black with a cape and large sunglasses. He sang along with some sort of old background music CD and danced around. It was funny, then annoying, then ultimately cool. At one point he danced out to the middle of the road to dance in front of an alpha-male stereotype driving a convertible. The guy looked pretty confused, as most people would, and the crowd loved it. The Belle Ends were conspicuously absent, as this was supposed to be their big comeback show.

Those of you who are in or near Muncie ought to plan to head down to Villiage Green Records in the villiage next Friday, June 9th at 6PM. Everthus the Deadbeats will be playing a CD realease show with The Belle Ends. All-ages, so tall people won't have any trouble seeing over the crowd.

I thought about reviewing The Da Vinci Code and X-Men here, but I wasn't particularly blown away by either. Da Vinci Code follows a pretty standard formula for the sake of having a plot, which often gets in the way of the more interesting parts about architecture and symbolism. I would rather see a re-edit with most of the plot crap removed, save for Sir Ian McKellen's scenes. Most expository dialogue is accompanied by short vignettes of historic events. Someone mentions the crusades, and suddenly a huge, lavish depiction of the crusades comes up to remind the audience what it probably looked like. While I normally love big fx shots, I thought these scenes were tedious and tacked on to keep the average person's attention until the next time someone pointed a gun at someone else. Yes, academics pack heat in this movie. Are Ivy league tenured faculty normally strapped when travelling abroad? I mean, aside from Indiana Jones, whose movies are easily comparable and superior to this movie, as they can take an absurd premise and actually have fun with it. No such fun is found in this movie, not even in the foundation of the Louvre, a building that has been dug up and remodeled so many times in the last thousand years or so one wonders how there could be any mystery left in it.

X-Men wasn't really great, or terrible, which is probably the worst way to tackle the Dark Phoenix story, perhaps the most signifigant story in the Marvel U. I really don't have much to say about it, except that too many characters and no real plot was the reason I stopped reading X-Men when I was 15. The film effectively sinks the franchise, despite the box office gross, which is just as well. I'm ready for Superman Returns.

Star Wars Unaltered!
It's about bloody time! The special editions were a cool exercise in CGI compositing, and it was great to see the trilogy on the big screen (best valentines day date ever, back in the day), but I strongly prefer the original trilogy as it first appeared. The added elements were mostly just distracting, and now everything that blows up in the SW universe has that weird ring effect. Also, the second image in the article clearly shows Han shooting Greedo because he had it coming, not in self-defense because Greedo couldn't draw a bead on a seated target over the space of a table. For that, I'd like to thank Kevin Smith, who gave us the phrase "that's the worst idea since Greedo shoots first." Gerry said this would never happen. :)

Thanks to Michael for the link.

There should be a restaurant here.

True to personal form, I took an academically ill-advised trip on the eve of finals this past weekend. In undergrad I saw the Smashing Pumpkins at the end of two semesters, studying in the car. This time I visited my brother at Kenyon College to go to the senior send-off weekend celebration. The headline act was Talib Kweli (in a rare flyover state performance), and a slew of Kenyon bands. I was fortunate to see Potato Famine in their last performance together. It was a great set- Fields of Athenry, one by Flogging Molly, and a great Irish style version of Freebird as a finale; all complete with two violins and a flute player. Talib Kweli was great too- The songs I really wanted to hear, Old School, Roll Off Me, and Get By were great. It was funny, though, because the jubilant crowd was nearly all academic geeks and trust fund hippies, and nearly all white.

I also got to meet Michael's friends, eat at the deli, and get schooled at Super Smash Brothers- karmic retribution for the DS Halo parties, I guess. I also lost a milk drinking race to Michael's roommate that had warranted a detour to a second dining hall after brunch. It wasn't even close. I had a little more than half done when I heard his cup hit the table- "like pouring it down the sink."

All in all, a fun weekend. I have finals to finish this week and end of year parties to attend. Charlie Don't Surf is playing at the Heorot with some band from Italy tonight, and tomorrow Tool has a new CD out. All this and Free Comic Day next Saturday? I'll be busier than a labradoodle watching tennis.

This is a post about comic books, so if you skip it, I won't blame you.

This was originally an e-mail rant about big events in comic books I sent Gerry. It's long enough that I decided to put it here too.

I’ve seen Marvel fall into this pattern before, where they keep trying to one-up themselves by building event on top of event. I think the staff gets locked into that because they feel like they’re pushing themselves creatively when they upset the status quo. Also, crossovers inflate sales, which keeps the executives happy. This is unfortunate because (we keep saying this!) the major strength at Marvel is the individual books. Some of their best stuff is coming from minds like Whedon, Way, and Brubaker- all more or less standalone storylines. Also, the reason people like Bendis is because of his work on Ultimate Spider-Man and Alias- two staunchly continuity-independent books. I think they got lucky in the past with the first Secret War, the Dark Phoenix saga, and a few other big events, and they’re still trying to create their “Crisis”- the big continuity shattering event to define everything for years to come.

The problem is, they either don’t do enough to resonate throughout the universe (any X-book crossover circa 95), or they go nuts and have to backpedal just to get all their writers and fans on the same page (Onslaught, Heroes Reborn, House of M). Either way, nothing as of yet has really stuck. I think this may be because the Marvel Universe is organized well enough that they don’t need to reboot the universe like DC. The only real chaos for Marvel comes from their big events, whereas DC uses events to simplify things. And the universe chugs along.

To what end, though? A big event will generate sales among the fanboys who know enough to keep it all straight, but the highly coveted new reader will skip it entirely, and the casual reader in Borders may only flip through it if the cover looks good. If I was to act as Virgil to a new reader, I would dissuade them from reading Crisis or Civil War until the trades come out, and start them on Captain America and Astonishing X-men. Or Alias, or Ultimate Spider-Man, or a slew of other self-contained comics with easily accessible characters.

Speaking of comics, Infinite Crisis wraps up this week with #7 and the largest hero-villain battle ever, no hyperbole. The Villains United special this week set it all up, with nearly every hero and villain ending up in Metropolis after a worldwide prison break. Considering how free Geoff Johns has been with killing off characters in this series, and considering that Doomsday, Bane, Solomon Grundy, and a noticably more psychotic than usual Bizarro are all there, the issue is going to be incredible.


Go watch C for Cookie. You'll be glad you did.

I am basically familiar with the Protestant work ethic, but where in this philosophy does it say that labor must be performed at 9:45 in the morning? This morning I had just rolled out of bed and commenced to relieving myself when I heard a knock at the door, followed by the door opening and the heralding of a maintenance man come to paint my water heater closet. I had worked out with the landlady that the guy could come today. I should note that we spoke on the phone at 2:00 in the afternoon on Monday, when this sounded sensible. I ended up getting dressed in the kitchen and scurrying out the door. Presently, the fellow is whitewashing my WC where the leaking water left spots on the wall. His hat did not suggest fealty to Jefferson Davis like the last guy, which I appreciate. He had better not touch my comics.

In other news, the Google Blog just announced the release of a free 3-D app, Google Sketch-Up. It doesn't appear to do much, so I'm excited to see what I can do with it. Simple open-ended apps are great for creativity sometimes. Also, there's a pretty strong rumor that Google will be making a free word processor online soon- basically MS Word in a web browser for free.

The Smashing Pumpkins website is back up after being down for a few years. There's also a new SP guitar book on Amazon, so I hope my neighbors don't mind hearing the opening riff from the song Siva for days on end this summer.

Legal Animatics
One possible place for my skills to pay the bills. Cracker got to get paid, son.

I found this article on Slashdot, about how computer design software has weakened drawing skills in the current crop of art students. It's kind of reassuring to know that I'm not alone in thinking that, and also that there are others with my same problem. When I started pursuing art in a serious manner my approach was from a musical and theatrical/technical background. These parlayed well into computer animation, given my inclination toward using a computer for creative pursuits. Traditional drawing has been frustrating to me for years. In undergrad it was a hurdle; an obstacle between me and what I saw as the land of pixels and honey. I wouldn't say that my work is "uninspired," but I do wonder how much better I could be if I would develop my fundamentals more. I've kept a couple of sketchbooks going for the past couple of years to keep my design skills up, and also because drawing frustrates me, hence I must be doing something right.

Since I arrived at Ball State, I've noticed a glaring lack of realism and figural work from the art department here. Many of the senior exhibitions feature work with human figures, but often the rendering and proportions are sophomoric at best. Not that I can do better, or even as well, but I know what craftsmanship looks like. I've seen great work from my friends in years past, and I am often disappointed with what I see here. Are computer programs to blame, then? Many traditional artists I've known have written digital media off as "cheating," as a quick and dirty way to achieve eye-candy. As ready as I am to argue for the virtue of digital art, I also recognize that most of it is cheap and forgettable. I cringe every time I see a lens flare effect in a professionally produced comic book, but I am enamored with Ben Templesmith's purely digital art in Fell.

So in defense of digital art, here are the artists that I think give legitimacy to the medium as an art form:

Alessandro Bavari: A fantastic Italian artist, and the nicest guy ever I met in Italy.

Dave Devries: He came to Ball State last year and gave a demo on digital painting. I'm still finding new uses for the techniques he imparted to us.

Ben Templesmith: The digital artist of the comic Fell. His drawings are surreal, but each panel pops in a way that few digital artists are capable of.

Tim Bradstreet: He mixes photography, digital, and traditional skill to create some of my favorite contemporary illustration work.

Conspicuously absent (to me at least) is the webcomic Penny Arcade. They're at the top of my list of great web cartoonists, but their art is more "form follows function," rather than producing individual independent works.

Quick link: The Simpsons Movie trailer

Just links and no actual content pertaining to me? This is called the Gerry method. :)

Sunday, Bloody Sunday by U2 remixed with Dubya doing the vocals. Pure ineffable genius.

Star Wars TV series confirmed

"It would cover the 20 years in the life of Luke Skywalker growing up that remains a mystery to most film-goers."

Hmm... this sounds so familiar. An adopted farmboy with paternal issues who is destined for greatness hangs out with his friends in the middle of nowhere and eventually meets an old person who tells him of his future. Perhaps the planet Coruscant is so close you almost don't need a spaceship to get there.

How will this work, exactly? Luke doesn't know anything about the Force when he meets Obi-Wan, and the Empire is barely a presence on Tatooine until the death star plans end up there. On the other hand, Tatooine is a planet run by the hutts, and Luke did a lot of racing in his youth, so this could make for some good TV. The events leading up to his friend Biggs going to the Imperial academy and then defecting to the Alliance could be great, but that would be seasons 4-5, at least.

< /shameless_geek >

The once steel tough fabric of a Union man Was sold and Bartered away Fed to money wolves in the Reagan years, Caught in a drift in greedy nineties days So inside this song is our rally cry

chorus: Your dreams are in danger, and "We Must Rise" Our time has come we are under the gun "It's Do or Die"

Its not a rebel cry of some socialist Scheme to push for human rights Just the facts an obvious mentioned on the Behalf of the working man, for his family and his livelihood

-Do or Die, DKM

First off, happy birthday to my brother from me over on this side of the pond. He's over in Scotland this week, ensuring a little less anarchy in the UK. I look forward to a massive blog post.

I got a new hot water heater this week. The old one leaked a bit off and on until a few days ago when I woke up to the sound of running water. I thought it was just the normal sound of the person above me getting ready, but there were none of the accompanying elephantine stomping sounds her Nimitz-class feet make. On the floor in the closet there was a puddle with actual ripples in it as the water drained. First things first, I moved every comic book in the room to the top shelf of the bedroom closet. It occurred to me to turn off the water completely, turn off the hot water heater valve and power, then turn the water back on. I drained what water I could with the shower, but there was still a pretty good size puddle on the carpet. I lysoled (it's a verb now) the hell out of the area to avoid mildew, so now the carpet smells like dusty wet apples. I bought some "shop towels," which are essentially thicker than average blue paper towels towels in a really manly package. No flowers, bears, or platitudes- just blue. These worked to an extent, and the area is nearly dry now.

The maintenance guys came to inspect the problem in the morning. He turned on the water and said "yup, it's leaking." Brilliant. I'm the one with 92% of a masters, he's the one in the confederate ballcap- one of us is the expert and it's not me. Yadda yadda, now I have warm water.

Off to Scotty's now, for a black bean burger and Guinness with Gerry and Michelle, who are both more Irish than I am in their own ways.

"And finally I'm going to thank all the booksellers of the world. Remember, "Brokeback Mountain" was a book before it was a movie. From the humblest paperback exchange to the masters of the great bookshops of the world. All are contributors to the survival of the culture of the book. A wonderful culture, which we mustn't lose. Thank you." - from Larry McMurtry's oscar acceptance speech

This speech and Robert Altman's speech are the two that have stuck with me from the oscars. I didn't see most of the big nominees, mostly due to my schedule. I was happy to see Nick Park and Aardman studios get the win for best animated feature. On the other hand, Batman Begins got snubbed- a best adapted screenplay nod would've been nice, as this is the first Batman movie to get the character right, as well as tell the origin story effectively enough to warrant repeat viewing. That, and for whatever reason, Star Wars Ep. III wasn't in the best FX category. It was good to see WETA win, though.

I saw this on the Onion A.V. Club- set your mp3 player to random and list the first five songs that come up without skipping any, then comment on each. I used my iPod, which only has a small portion of the music on my computer at work, hence no Smashing Pumpkins bootlegs or Muncie music.

Lonely- Tom Waits
A Tom Waits song all about being alone in a room full of people- of course it resonates with me. It's not my favorite on the album, though, that would be either Virginia Avenue or I Hope that I Don't Fall in Love With You.

Get Out of My House- The Streets
Gad, what a weird song. It's a hard one to explain without describing the whole album. I bought the CD for another song after hearing it in a friend's car, and ended up liking the whole thing.

Breathe- The Prodigy
Kind of a guilty pleasure, like all of the music I liked in high school. I used to listen to it at speech meets. Ahh, bass-boosted nostalgia.

Better Man- Pearl Jam
Classic. If you're under 30, you may remember why. The band is still going strong, though their intensity dropped off after their third album.

Bouree- Jethro Tull
A short, all-instrumental flute rock interlude. The album is a little inconsistent, due to the strength of the songs Aqualung, Cross-Eyed Mary, and Hymn 43. They rock beyond my comprehension, and I suspect their may be even more rock happening beyond the human hearing range in each song.

Since moving here, I've found that this area lacks many the resources that I enjoyed in Fort Wayne, such as access to independent and foreign films. There's a theater that shows a few independent movies, but most of the really interesting releases never make it this far into no man's land. I've subscribed to Netflix in order to fill this void. So far, my movie cue consists of a couple classic movies (Young Mr. Lincoln, Once Upon a Time in America), a few favorites (Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark), and a few oddities (Primer, Oldboy). There is quite a bit of catching up to do, and if anyone would like to recommend a good movie, feel free. Netflix offers an RSS feed of my cue, and if I can figure it out, I plan to put the list in the sidebar here so that it updates automatically. Because I can.

Last Wednesday I went to the student center to see Dr. Brian Greene speak about string theory. He did a great job explaining it without the insanely complex math involved, and explained where his research may lead. The basic idea is that subatomic particles are made of little strings and shapes that vibrate, and the vibration patterns are what determine what the particle is. The size of these, as near as anyone can tell, is 10 to the -35 meters. Pretty darn small. He also talked about the possibility of other dimensions- not in a sci-fi sense, but in terms of an experiment to be performed in Geneva in the next few years. Fascinating stuff, even to a non-physicist.

Something else of note: there's a new British TV series called "The IT Crowd" about IT workers in the basement of an office building. It's pretty funny, and the network has made it available on Google video: link, and a link to the proper episode order: link

"Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair." -John Steinbeck

This is from his acceptance speech for the 1962 Nobel prize in literature. It resonates with me, hence it goes here for digital posterity.

First off, here's an embedded Google text ad from the spam folder section of my gmail account:




Spam, bacon, sausage and spam, if I'm not mistaken. Google ads work by scanning the page for any word that matches the meta tag words in their ad database. As a result, the overzealous ad script found "spam" (used as a negative term here) and served up an ad for MRE-grade meat-based spam fajitas in a quantity that could satisfy the Supreme Court, provided that Stevens declines, citing seniority over canned meat (see Marbury v. Hormel). The option of extra salsa is proposed and left to the discretion of the court.

School keeps me pretty busy. I'm working on a research paper about the portrayal of banks in the movie The Grapes of Wrath. I'm enjoying the research, oddly enough. It's a history paper, so everything is based in fact- no theory at all. The great depression was a more volatile time than I thought it was, and the writing from the era is really interesting. Tomorrow night I'm going to hear Dr. Brian Greene speak in the student center. He writes books about space and time, and people say that he was really interesting the last time he was here.

Also tomorrow- Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-men #13 arrives in my pull file at Alter Ego. Shortly thereafter it will be read on my couch, re-read, flipped through, and passed on to Gerry to sit in his pile of my comics for six months until he has time to read it.

I'm not actually dead, though the prospect loomed unnervingly close in the past two weeks when I had the flu and then a pretty bad sore throat. I couldn't talk, but it took me a few days to realize this, as I don't talk much. I came down with the flu during the last DS Halo fragfest- cold sweats, nausea, headache, the works. I still managed to win four out of five rounds either by myself or with the help of Michelle. The last round the kill count was set at 25, and the level was huge for four people, and all I could think was "I can't go home to bed until this is over." I couldn't even see straight when I shotgunned my 25th kill in the back of the head. I got home, walked into the kitchen, and threw up for the first time in four years. The last time I vomited was when I got sick and had to postpone getting my wisdom teeth removed, thus missing seeing Zwan in Columbus, Ohio- right across from the Ohio State University.

So, I'm feeling better now. Still coughing a bit, much to the joy of my lumbering brick-footed upstairs neighbor. The parents have provided much in the way of medicine and food during this, and I'm gradually eating all of it like Pac-Man.

The semester is going pretty well. I had blocked out all kinds of time to work on my various projects, and recently I've spent this time sleeping and trying to stay at least minimally current with classes.

Two excerpts from Sweeney Todd:

"Mrs Mooney has a pie shop.
Does a business, but I notice something weird,
lately all her neighbor's cats have disappeared."

"There's a hole in the world like a great black pit,
and the vermin of the world inhabit it,
and its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit
and it goes by the name of London. "


Why? Because I just read a rumor that Tim Burton will direct a movie musical version. I don't know who else out there is familiar with this particular work, but it's my favorite musical. Link to the story. It says that Johnny Depp is somehow attached, which sounds a bit odd. The titular character is an older man, at least in his mid-fifties or even early sixties. Aint it cool predicts an official announcement in a few weeks.

Most news blog sites have lists of notable events, memes, and novelties that made an impact on various factions of society in 2005. The compulsion to code and quantify such ephemera is not lost on me, and while I can't really explain this, I recall Nick Hornby explaining the phenomena of lists in his novel High Fidelity. Anyway, here is my list of things I enjoyed in 2005.

Comics:
I met Geoff Johns.
Fell- supercompressed Ellis
Loveless- Azzarello's take on Leone's western style
Infinite Crisis- I knew I'd have to read and cross-reference a lot in grad school, but not this much.
Astonishing X-men

Movies:
Serenity
Revenge of the Sith
Batman Begins
The Aristocrats
Corpse Bride
Back to the Future marathon viewing
Batman and Robin/ Superman IV double feature night
Zatoichi

Music:
the Black Keys in Indy
Spookie Daly Pride in Indy
the Tomkats at the Heorot
Charlie Don't Surf in the basement next door
Jethro Tull in my headphones
the faint prospect of a Smashing Pumpkins reunion

Academia:
more animation
a foray into true non-linear storytelling
met a slew of new students, most of whom I hold in extremely high regard
worked on a documentary, didn't actually see any ghosts
got straight A's for the first time in my life
the Fickle Peach- a great place for out of class discussion, pool, and fooseball

Consumables:
macaroni and cheese is still roughly 40 percent of my diet
spicy noodle bowls
far too much atrium food
Boddingtons- it's always nice to name-drop my favorite beer and get approving nods from worldly types
Guiness- the old standby
La fin du Monde- gotta love a beer named "the end of the world"
the brat burger at the Ram
avgolomeno soup from Michelle
pretty much anything I ever ate at Mark and Sarah's place