The Sun in the Metal Egg

Not much time to-day because I'm going with my family to dinner for my birthday.

I really liked the season finale of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. For the scene of John checking Cameron's nuclear power core alone. Everything about that scene--from her saying she wants to kill him to the unambiguously sexual imagery--easily the sexiest moment in Terminator history (though the blushing sex scene in the first film isn't much competition). I'm only disappointed that the way the episode ended suggested it's going to be a very long time before there's any opportunity of exploring their relationship.

Which is a shame because there's a lot of potential here--more than just the Christ figure making love to the Devil. You've got ground for exploring the fundamental value of love and dealing with Terminator's psychopathic subtext.

Anyway, I'm about out of time, so I'll leave you with this;

Twitter Sonnet #7

Dr. Pepper never does expire.
Some slow cars will not turn right on red lights.
My bologna's not named Oscar Mayer.
Julie Andrews looks quite good at great heights.
This town makes me want a quesadilla.
I'm still drinking the same Dr. Pepper.
No-one solves a problem like Maria.
Croissants currently not in this sector.
A bad metro maze led to a pawn shop.
And so now I am a thirty year-old.
Wonder when would be a good time to stop.
I can't say any fire has gone cold.
This is a job for fermented honey.
And yes I am The Red Easter Bunny.

Oh, Wow

I guess this is kind of old news, but I just saw this . . . and I am . . . awed.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Truth in False Depths

Last night's tweets;

This town makes me want a quesadilla.
I'm still drinking the same Dr. Pepper.
No-one solves a problem like Maria.
Croissants currently not in this sector.

I wasn't watching The Sound of Music, but the line fit and it kept up the Julie Andrews theme. Do tweets now influence life?

Twitter seems to be a bit buggy still--I've noticed a few of my tweets simply fail to post, and some tweets posted by people I'm following aren't showing up on my following list. I created my Twitter profile when Robyn Massachusetts invited me a year or two ago but Twitter only seems to have really exploded in the past couple months.

Just checking a moment ago, I see my following page has just utterly stopped posting tweets from the people I'm following. It'd be sort of exciting if the thing just sank to-day, if the fail whale were pulled down into the sea by a giant squid.

Gods, I miss the old submarine ride at Disneyland. The coolest part was where you dived to depths where light couldn't penetrate and saw a giant squid fighting a sperm whale. It always freaked me out when I was a kid--no haunted house could compare.

Last night I watched The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer with Rifftrax accompaniment. What an awful film. I remember seeing an interview with Jessica Alba on Dark Horizons where she was asked about the differences between working on the first Fantastic Four movie and Sin City and she said, of Fantastic Four, "It's very big and it's a huge movie for Fox and there's a lot of pressure that it does well. So it really couldn't be more different."

Rise of the Silver Surfer felt like it spent months going through a bureaucratic colon whose purpose was to smooth out any edge or trace of challenging material. It took the traditional story of superheroes torn between their desire for a normal life and the knowledge that their powers carry responsibility and takes it past the borders of mundane and beyond into vast, lifeless space. That the movie chooses to insult women by implying it's normal for Sue Storm to put her wedding at a higher priority than averting a danger to the lives of millions of people isn't particularly surprising, but that it also insults men by having Reed Richards feel shame for not agreeing with her takes the film to an extra stratosphere of phoney character motivations.

This is a movie about crossing and dotting nonexistent letters in the alphabet of the human soul. An awkward cut to Ben Grimm donning a hoodie during the climactic action sequence was so clearly there because someone said the audience would insist on knowing how Grimm got the hoodie when we saw him in later shots. Time was spent establishing dialogue between Johnny Storm and a young female military officer so perfunctorily and with a pay off so flaccid one wonders if the people behind the scenes even understand why people are ever interested in other people.

Obviously, I have my gripes about the Watchmen movie, but it was nice to see a film prove that a naked guy walking around isn't going to damage the souls of the viewing audience. Every time I saw the Silver Surfer's smooth crotch, it was like a sign that said, "Comic book fans are terrified of sex." Which I don't think is a fair statement. At least, I'd like to think it isn't.

Anyway, the Rifftrax was pretty funny.

Between the Legs of the Mind are the Genitals of the Heart

Last night's tweets;

Dr. Pepper never does expire.
Some slow cars will not turn right on red lights.
My bologna's not named Oscar Mayer.
Julie Andrews looks quite good at great heights.

I eat fake bologna, of course.

Last night Russell Brand twatted, "Right. I'm off to gargle with oestrogen till I become a gorgeous treble-gendered-cyborg - then we'll see who ought run the country. NIGHT. X" How am I just starting to hear about this guy?

Looks like Howard Stern's adopted Stephen Colbert's twitter verb "twat" (possibly only for past tense). So it is now Pervert Law. Something else to make it hard for normal people not to notice "twitter" already sounds dirty.

I listened to part of the Mary Poppins commentary last night. Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke both gushed about the matte paintings--they really are spectacular in that movie. Dick Van Dyke compared some of his antics in the film to Jim Carrey. "Someone told me Jim Carrey owes his whole career to this scene," he said during the "Jolly Holiday" sequence. He listed his own influences as Lou Costello and Charlie Chaplin.

Both he and Andrews agreed there was something Chaplin-esque about the way Mary walked and stood with her toes pointed out and a little up. Whenever a shot displayed Mary's feet, Van Dyke and/or Andrews would say, "Foot flexed!"

Karen Dotrice, who played one of the Banks' children, was also on the commentary and talked about how a lot of the effects on screen were just as amazing live, including the bottomless "carpet bag".

This morning I watched the season premiere of Hayate no Gotoku, which was dismally boring, and the third episode of Maria Holic, which is beautiful to look at. Akiyuki Shinbo brings the same unrelenting flood of intricate and decorative imagery he brought to Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, but it's kind of overwhelming in Maria Holic because the newer series doesn't have the Zetsubo information blitz to keep up. But I love Maria Holic's subversive gender themes--it seems to be going to and expanding on territory that hasn't really been exploited since Ranma 1/2.



I found a bunch of unopened Dr. Pepper bottles in my closet. I opened one and it seems to taste okay. A google search found a lot of discussions online about whether or not soda actually does expire, and mostly the consensus seems to be it doesn't. It's been so long since I had the patience to finish a bottle of soda in one sitting . . .

Amino Acids in the Orchestra

Good news, everyone! For a mere seventy dollars you can have your very own 12 inch tall Captain Antilles figure! Yes, the striking Rebel officer seen briefly at the beginning of A New Hope and possible relative of the illustrious Wedge Antilles (that's common knowledge, right?) can now be yours. Physically!



That's Darth Vader moments after he'd delivered a rap to Luke decidedly different from the promise to collude in destroying the Emperor at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. It's conceivable Vader's motives have shifted or he's simply become more passive, weighted down by despair perhaps. But there are other things about The Return of the Jedi that are inarguably flaws.

Luke's Plan!

"Okay, first we'll give them our droids so they can deliver a message and keep my lightsabre safe while I'm captured. Leia, you go in and thaw out Han. I'm not going to help you in this stage because your real objective is to become Jabba's sex slave--I'm sure you don't mind. It has to be this way so that I can come in and somehow improvise killing the Rancor with a femur and a skull. Then, when we're about to be executed, we'll surprise our enemies by killing them all! They'll never see that coming! Ready? Break!"

Then of course there's the detour on Endor so the gang can chase down some speeder bikes and an Imperial Legion can be taken down by an army of teddy bears armed with sticks and stones. All this because the movie can't very well spend time fulfilling the relationship between Han and Leia rendered in the second film--Leia is so robbed in the third film. Not only do we side-step the implications of her captivity with Jabba and her new relationship with Han, we also avoid exploring what it means that a guy she'd made out with turned out to be her brother.

It's hard to say what Lucas' intensions were in making Luke and Leia siblings. One might speculate it was a quick solution to not having time or narrative drive to resolve the relationship the two seemed to have in the first movie so that Leia could move on to Han. But Lucas told John Williams to score the films with discernable themes for characters and concepts after the manner of Wagner's operas, so I sort of wonder if Lucas was inspired by the incestuous relationship in Die Walkure, which features a brother and sister falling in love without knowing they're related. That Siegfried, Oden's chosen hero, is the offspring of the incestuous relationship is also reminiscent of the hero Luke being the son of the evil Vader. That we learn in the prequel trilogy that Vader was conceived by the midichlorians is a bit reminiscent of Oden fathering Siegmund and Sieglinde.

Maybe someone ought to have pointed out to Lucas that Wagner got along just fine without micro organisms, but on the other hand, the Star Wars series is a fantasy story told in a Science Fiction environment. It can't be easy, in the planning stages, to know when there's too much of one or the other to unbalance the thing.

I don't hate Return of the Jedi. It's much more of a kid's movie, but I do pretty much like the resolution between Vader and Luke, I like the Emperor, and I like the space battles. And I love B-wings.



Yesterday had a lot of distractions, but it was a good day. There was a nice, long telephone conversation with Trisa, and I got some fresh flat bread.

Twitter Sonnet #6

Star Wars seemed fresh again for me to-night.
I sat with a grey cat on the back porch.
Was jumped by a pit-bull who didn't bite.
Wonder why a waste ghoul would need a torch.
Scotch is such a smart compliment to lunch.
A black cat got her pink collar removed.
My flat bread is stale and starting to crunch.
The cold air is quietly fog approved.
Human girls are sometimes hot as Twi'leks.
Red rings of death are nicer than blue screens.
Supermen are spotted by their cow licks.
David Lynch coffee's all about the beans.
Almost forgot to finish this sonnet.
To win at the poems you have to want it.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Tyrants

Last night's tweets;

Scotch is such a smart compliment to lunch.
A black cat got her pink collar removed.
My flat bread is stale and starting to crunch.
The cold air is quietly fog approved.

My sister's cat Saffy was wearing a collar yesterday and it was decided the collar was unnecessary, so now her neck is free once more.

I'm thinking I probably need a new mouse. I'm not touching it right now, but I can see the cursor slowly moving up and slightly to the left--now it's moving down. It's a laser mouse on a fifteen year old mouse pad, so that could be the problem. Maybe I oughta put a ouija board under it.

I watched The Empire Strikes Back last night. Still my favourite of the original trilogy, but I'm reflecting a bit on how kids tend to prefer Return of the Jedi while grown-ups like Empire. "It ends on a down note," as Dante said in Clerks, but I don't think it's just that adults are more used to disappointment. There's a subtler layering of character and theme in the second film--I've already blogged at length about this, so I won't retread it now, but even having analysed it to death the movie's still not, er, dead. What is it that makes Luke drop off into the abyss instead of going with Vader? Just youthful stubbornness? That's part of it. But the whole movie's about Vader, the hard man executing his subordinates left and right because he's already got everything figured out versus kids who make a lot of mistakes. We sympathise with them more because they're awkward, but the movie tells us to "unlearn what you have learned"--even the kids who don't know much can be tripped up by what they know as it clashes with what they don't know. "Only the shallow know themselves," as Oscar Wilde said. Han and Leia aren't lacking in insight with the barbs they throw at each other, but they fail to see why they're inclined to fight.

While I was at my parents' house yesterday, I watched a bit of The Wild One on TCM. I'd forgotten how good that movie is. I think I underestimated it the first time I watched it. It's also a movie about misfit kids and adults who've sold their soul. Marlon Brando's character parading around the trophy he stole is almost too big a metaphor for his simultaneous need to rebel against and be accepted by the world of adults. It's really Brando's performance that makes it work, and makes us feel like he cares far more about justice than the sheriff or any of the supposed figures of authority in town.

Looking at YouTube for some clips last night from the great, underappreciated film noir Nightmare Alley, I discovered the entire movie was online along with a lot of other great films in this playlist compiled by a user named utubesucks2008. If you're looking to watch some great, old movies and you can't afford to buy them and you don't have the means to download them in better quality, I can recommend several on this playlist, especially The Red Shoes, The Thief of Bagdad, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Out of the Past, and . . . well, there's just a lot of good movies on this list. The three Fred Astaire movies are all worth watching--Rita Hayworth's amazing in two of the Astaire movies listed. Leave Her to Heaven is another often overlooked great film noir, though if you watch it, I advise you to pretend the person the movie tells you is the villain is actually the hero. You'll enjoy it a lot more.

Ghost Wars of the 1950s

Er, Lord Vader, your helmet's on crooked.



I don't think I ever spotted that before. I've seen Star Wars something like eight billion times, like most guys my age. I watched it over and over again as a kid, plenty of times in high school, and more than a few times as an adult. Last night was one of those occasions where all of the previous viewings and exposure to different parodies just melted away and I got sucked in by the story.

My enjoyment is still heightened a bit by nostalgia, and not just for the movie itself. Different bits of the movie would take me back to playing certain Star Wars video games for hours a day, especially X-Wing, TIE Fighter and the Super Nintendo's Super Star Wars and Super Return of the Jedi (for some reason I didn't really play much of Super Empire Strikes Back). Normally these days if I want something like a fresh Star Wars viewing experience I watch Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, the movie from which Lucas borrowed much of the plot for the first Star Wars film. The Hidden Fortress is three hours long, but I tend to find myself compulsively watching it to the end whenever I put it in.

On the Criterion edition of The Hidden Fortress, there's an interview with George Lucas where, among other things, he talks about how artists are influenced by older stories and how, really, very few plots have actually been invented by mankind;



It's kind of funny Lucas refers to Leia as being more "stand and fight" than Princess Yuki. I actually think Yuki's a lot feistier.

My clues tweets from last night;

Star Wars seemed fresh again for me to-night.
I sat with a grey cat on the back porch.
Was jumped by a pit-bull who didn't bite.
Wonder why a waste ghoul would need a torch.

The dog was Tim's pit-bull, Cayden, who jumped up on me despite Tim's dad trying to restrain him. I'm definitely more of a cat person, but I'm starting to feel more affection for Cayden. Dogs just seem to want to express love all the time. It's not their fault they're smelly and sort of messy. It's like my relationship with charcoal--I once left an art class because the teacher insisted we work with charcoal and I was tired of getting it all over my hands. I had all the experience with charcoal I needed in high school art classes, I figured one oughta have license to be a little choosier in college. But that doesn't mean I think charcoal looks bad.

The last tweet was a reference to Fallout 3, which I played more of at Tim's house last night. I took some screenshots of my character, who's usually dressed like this;



But for friendlier areas, there's a lot of cool 50s clothes to wear.



I love this grey suit, which reminds me of Vertigo;




That's the Washington Monument in the background. I am really enjoying wandering around this game world, though I'm still not spending much time engaging in the game's dialogue, which is just not nearly as fun as it was in Fallout 2. Though I do sort of love the floating spherical robots roaming around, transmitting fireside chats by the post-apocalyptic U.S. president played by Malcolm McDowell. The guy completely fails at an American accent but, hey, he's Malcolm McDowell and that's good enough for me.

The Heart's Slinky Down the Stairwells of Aircraft Carriers

Twitter Sonnet #5

A slope shouldered man was young Bill Murray.
I pwned at parallel parking to-night.
Lately I don't feel much need for hurry.
But I want my manoeuvres to be tight.
Nicholas Cage has quite a long, sad face.
I see in cold mall lots, kid culture thrives.
Does buying bobbins have to be a race?
Kids quickly clump up in twos, threes, and fives.
I remembered too late to eat dinner.
Oddly dead was Denny's for Saturday.
For efficient sloth I am a winner.
I want to watch more decent anime.
I can't change my profile picture right now.
I guess this one's not so bad anyhow.

I added a bunch of people to my follow list on Twitter yesterday. Mostly I find them by looking at the follow lists of people I'm already following, though that's not always a sure-fire way to tell if the twitter profiles I'm looking at are genuine--someone needs to tell Ana Marie Cox that she's not following the real Keith Olbermann.

I'm still trying to decide if this Matt Chamberlain is the Matt Chamberlain who's been a drummer for David Bowie, Morrissey, Tori Amos, and many others. It doesn't look like he ever updates, so I guess it doesn't really matter, but if it is the same Chamberlain, it seems like he'd have potential for a lot of interesting tweets.

Every time I say or type twitter or tweet I feel like someone's grinding a lemon on my tongue, in case you're wondering.

I started following Russell Brand's twitter--the guy's really growing on me, especially after I heard him on The Howard Stern Show. Part 1 of the interview is here, but my favourite bit is at the beginning of part two (NSFW);



"A ticker-tape parade for nobody" is one of my favourite lines ever now.

Trying to think of what I wanted to do last night, I ended up Being Distracted. Every time I started to do one thing, I ended up dragging myself into another activity without even intending to. That's how I forgot to eat dinner until the wee hours. YouTube, in particular, is an insidious provocateur of mental detours. I ended up watching a bunch of "ghosts caught on camera" videos. I remember totally buying into these as a kid, so much so that they must have served the function of stories of the afterlife that satisfied children of older generations about death. I figure once I died I'd be spending eternity in some plain suburban American hallway in the form of double exposed footage or lens flares.

Now it seems American audiences are much too cynical for this sort of thing--modern shows like Ghost Hunters seem totally to lack commitment. The best new footage seems to be coming out of Japan and South Korea. What's sad is that it's not that people aren't as naive as they used to be, it's just that they're not as imaginative. People can only grasp normal folks dancing awkwardly with unskilled celebrities on Dancing with the Stars--a Fred Astaire would be meaningless to-day.

I started working on the next Venia's Travels script last night, and I got pretty far with it once I told myself it was time to stop and do something else. That's how you control your lousy attention span with The Force.

Loving the Alien

Last night's tweets;

Nicholas Cage has quite a long, sad face.
I see in cold mall lots, kid culture thrives.
Does buying bobbins have to be a race?
Kids quickly clump up in twos, threes, and fives.

To-day I also twittered "I love you" because of this meme that asked everyone to post "I love you" in their twitter, blog, or facebook just once to-day. I saw a bunch of people twittering "I love you" because of it, only they included a link to the site with the statement. I didn't include the link because I think it's probably a purer experiment not to--I think, without explanation, most people probably take it as sad and/or creepy, something I think people apprehend intuitively when they post for the meme. I don't blame them--it might seem risky confessing your affection so casually, and we know a lot of people will take you as dishonest, delusional, or whoring for attention. But I still think the people who posted it meant it, as I did, possibly because all the people posting are artists of one kind or another. I think people who "sing their heart out to the infinite sea," as The Who song goes, do have to love that sea unconditionally.

I wanted to see a movie last night, but the only thing I really wanted to see was Coraline, and I only got the idea to see a movie long after its last showing of the day. So instead I went to see the new Alex Proyas movie, Knowing. I liked it.

I saw it mostly on the strength of Roger Ebert's review, even though I know that Ebert seems to have a massive love for Proyas that practically no other critic seems to share. He didn't just write a review for this movie, he continued with a blog entry (filled with spoilers) pondering the concepts of determinism and randomness that pervade the film. "As I watched these scenes, I became aware of synchronicity in my own life," writes Ebert at one point in the blog entry, and I was reminded of a quote from Oscar Wilde's preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray; "The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography." The best critics transcribe their personal experience of a work of art in a work which is itself another sort of work of art, because what a critic is doing is describing his or her impression of the work of art. Objectified subjectivity, as David Lynch said.

So, Ebert's reactions to some things about the movie that I thought might be a bit weak actually seemed fine to Ebert. A perfect example is a scene in the movie where Nicolas Cage's character, a scientist named Koestler, is showing one of his colleagues, Beckman, a fifty year old artefact that seems to have perfectly predicted hundreds of future occurrences. Beckman says his scientific mind can't accept what Koestler is showing him, and my immediate thought was "That's not a very scientific reaction". Koestler was presenting Beckman with evidence so overwhelming it ought to have been treated seriously by any actually scientific mind. So I thought the movie was presenting the false dichotomy between scientists and people of faith. But Ebert didn't have a problem with it, and on reflection I see how it could be seen as part of the movie's uniting theme of people resisting what they actually would be inclined believe due to a false correlation to past experiences, like Koestler's own resistance to believing in the possibility of predetermined destiny because of his estranged relationship with his pastor father.

The great thing about the movie, which Ebert perceived before I did, is that when we're wrong about things we've believed our whole lives, the truth isn't necessarily exactly the opposite of our beliefs, and even then we aren't definitely wrong. Belief is valuable for its own sake. Again, from Oscar Wilde; "No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style."

I'm completely astounded this movie is rated PG-13. I say that as someone who doesn't even believe in the ratings system--I think Pan's Labyrinth, which is rated R, is a perfectly fine children's movie. But the hypocrisy of the ratings continues to astound me, invariably reflecting society's desensitisation to violence while sexuality is taboo. Knowing features an amazing plane crash sequence with burning people running out of the wreckage and a subway disaster where human bodies explode like blood water balloons. But it's PG-13 because there's no nudity and the language isn't too bad.

I remember Steven Spielberg complaining about the episode of Heroes where Claire wakes up to find her body had been cut open and the inside of her chest was exposed. Spielberg felt this was a bit too much for prime time, but I didn't give it a moment's thought when I saw it. One wonders if Spielberg is aware of the contradiction present in the fact that thirty years ago he made a PG movie where a guy gets torn up by an airplane propeller and several guys have their heads graphically melted. This is why censorship is an inherently flawed practice--the limits are different for everyone, and the majority opinion is rarely consistent.

Anyway, Knowing looks like it's extremely expensive, though convincing special effects seem to have gotten a lot cheaper. It's still amazing the movie wasn't promoted more aggressively. I can't imagine the Nicholas Cage name drawing much of a crowd anymore--I think this is the six hundredth movie he's made in 2009.

There were a lot of wonderful visuals in the movie. My favourite being a scene that begins in an attic bedroom where the curved lines of a ceiling in the dark emphasise the glowing orange of fire through a circular window, and this is followed by the horrific imagery of a burning forest beyond and terrified animals running, burning, from the trees.

There are still some things I don't like about the movie, but they're minor. The only other Alex Proyas movies I've seen are The Crow and Dark City. I really didn't like The Crow, but I've changed a lot since I last watched it. Dark City didn't make a huge impression on me either, but I've been meaning to revisit it because Ebert loves it so much.

I watched the new Dollhouse last night, which I thought changed the show fundamentally because it cast some light on what motivated these people to become dolls--it's intriguing the sort of shame that would make people want to fully abdicate free will. The new Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was good, too. I loved what happened to Derek, and the revelation as to why Weaver seems to be at odds with the other terminators was very good.

Eye Circuits

The new red band trailer for Bruno's been released. I think I'm going to love this movie. Even more than Borat. Especially now that I know he pranks Ron Paul.

My tweets from last night;

A slope shouldered man was young Bill Murray.
I pwned at parallel parking to-night.
Lately I don't feel much need for hurry.
But I want my manoeuvres to be tight.

After I uploaded the new Venia's Travels last night, I went out to get a coffee and some groceries only to discover the Starbucks I know to be open the latest around here now closes earlier. So I took a chance and went to The Living Room, where I found a spot to park against all the odds of such an early hour and glided though a perfect 10 parallel park. I wished I'd brought my book, because I got a nice seat, too.

I continued with my Bill Murray mood by watching Meatballs last night, which I'd never seen before. I remember seeing an old Siskel and Ebert segment from the mid-1980s devoted to Bill Murray and his career up to that point where both critics seemed to agree that it was the fact that Bill Murray seemed slightly detached from his films, and seemed to be making fun of them with the audience, that made him great--much like Groucho Marx. And this was definitely evident in Meatballs, which would otherwise be a sort of limp teenage camping movie. Murray has standard scenes like reaching out to the strange kid and rallying the camp before the physical competitions with a rival camp, and all such scenes work precisely because Murray isn't committed to them. It's the strangest thing--Murray's like a dangerous animal; you're not quite sure what he's going to do or why. His rallying speech with the repeated line, which he begins to scream like a crazed reverend, "IT DOESN'T MATTER" approaches Heath Ledger Joker levels of psychopathic anarchy. I felt sort of bad for the woman playing his love interest, a quiet and reserved little actress named Kate Lynch who tries to smile and whose performance seems to consist of surviving Bill Murray. There's absolutely no chemistry between them, but that's somehow what makes it work, like everything else in the movie.

I can't find that Siskel and Ebert segment on YouTube anymore, but Gene Siskel mentions Murray's detachment from the movies he's in in their review of Ghostbusters. I don't exactly agree that Murray seems detached from Ghostbusters. In that movie, I think he's genuinely reacting to the ghosts, but he reacts to them in the way he'd react to the movies he was in before--here, he does sell his commitment to the story, it's just that his character is very cool.

I love how much time Siskel and Ebert would spend talking about a movie back then. In the last years of Ebert and Roeper, there were so many commercials that the show had become barely more than sound bites. Even when I watch tapes I made of different shows as recently as 1996, there are less than half the commercials there seem to be on television nowadays--TiVo and watching television shows on the internet might have emerged partly because of this, as much as the increasing number of commercials may be a response to TiVo and internet. It's a bit of a chicken and the egg question, but both things are probably exacerbated by the other.

I've heard Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper are working on a new show. I hope it'll be an internet show that knows how to take its time. Here's an internet critical show I've watched a few times and like;



Even with the fast talking, the guy still spends more time on one game (or, in this case, the nature of webcomics and webcomic communities) than Ebert and Roeper were allotted for one movie.

Venia Explains It All

A new Venia's Travels is online. Come for the gratuitous nudity, stay for the talking heads.

Choosing Olives

Looking at Brent Spiner's Wikipedia entry, I discovered that Fiona Apple's sister is named Maude Maggart. I love that name.

Brent Spiner's Twitter page is pretty interesting. He seems to be using it to tell about his fictional(?) experiences at an asylum. Or something.

From my Twitter page, I present;

Twitter Sonnet #4

My favourite Pokemon is Purin.
Might want to see new Ghostbusters movie.
Thinking again of Children of Hurin.
My absinthe is protected from UV.
Vacuum can't quite get the dust from the floor.
Mall parking garage was dark and empty.
Image search yields few shots of night time moor.
By the bank there is a big fallen tree.
Spaghetti won't fit in stomach with bread.
Up late but I can't seem to sleep past noon.
I hate how dark pencils have softer lead.
On this cloudy night I can't see the moon.
Sort of sick last night from puttanesca.
Woken by lawnmower loud like cessna.

I think this is my favourite one so far.

Looking over David Lynch's twitter page, I see a little while ago he twittered, "Works of art consist of objectifying subjectivity." Perfectly said.

I find myself wishing William S. Burroughs were alive and twittering. I bet his twitter would be one of the most brilliant things in the world.

I think it was the puttanesca sauce that made me feel sick. It was like there was a big lead weight in my stomach. I feel better this morning, but I still got a bit nauseous when I did crunches. I can't blow those off, though--my stomach feels like a paper lantern when I skip crunches.

This Francis Ford Coppola brand puttanesca sauce is normally really good, so I'm a little reluctant to throw it out without knowing for sure if it's the cause. Maybe it's because I've otherwise cut so far back on sodium lately. I had a martini a couple nights ago, I only had one olive in it, and it was almost too much. I heard a story about how Jennifer Aniston takes the olives out of her martinis because she feels the sodium makes her eyes puffy. Which is pretty ridiculous, but it is amazing how much sodium is in those things--like 20 percent of the daily recommended sodium intake per olive on most brands I look at. I've been using garlic stuffed olives lately which are only 5% per olive, but it still seems like a lot. To think I use to put no less than three olives in my martinis.

I need to finish colouring the next Venia's Travels to-day. Paint Shop Pro 8 is pretty resource hungry, but otherwise I'm having no problem with it. A lot of the functions have been re-categorised, which makes me wonder how decisions like that get made. Who decided the "blur" function is better kept under "adjust" than under "image"? Was there anyone out there saying to themselves, "Fucking finally!"

How Monopoly Money got to be the World's Strongest Currency

I wonder what political motivation John McCain could possibly have for seeking a pardon for Jack Johnson right now. Maybe I'm being a little too liberal here, but it seems to me a pardon implies some actual guilt on the part of Johnson. The White House apologising for convicting a black man for loving a white woman would seem more appropriate. But surely there are some more pressing issues right now that make John McCain spending his energy on a crusade about a 1913 conviction seem badly timed?

Last night's tweets;

Vacuum can't quite get the dust from the floor.
Mall parking garage was dark and empty.
Image search yields few shots of night time moor.
By the bank there is a big fallen tree.

I know it was a Tuesday night and everything but the mall was the emptiest I can remember seeing it since I went there on the morning of 9/11. I've heard a lot of big stores are going to start disappearing. I certainly can't imagine Starbucks maintaining all its locations--though the Starbucks was crowded yesterday.

This morning I read the new Sirenia Digest. Its first story, Caitlin's "A CANVAS FOR INCOHERENT ARTS" was a nice exploration of tension and the mystery of human interaction through the vehicle of fetishism. I was reminded of David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock, but I was also reminded of one of the things that prose fiction can do that visual media like film really can't take advantage of, which is absolute darkness. The peculiar mix of searching, fear, and comfort created by a completely lightless environment just can't be communicated better than with prose. A blank, black screen with maybe the sound of someone breathing can be effective for short bursts, but inevitably it removes the viewer from the film if prolonged.

The second story in the digest is Sonya Taaffe's "Till Human Voices Wake Us", which is a story I'd already read in her Singing Innocence and Experience collection, but it was nice seeing it again.

Last night I looked into upgrading my copy of Paint Shop Pro. I'd heard that after Corel bought the series, they'd essentially sabotaged it by simply adding increasingly bloated interfaces without actually improving any programme functions, so I installed version 8.1, the second to last version before Corel's acquisition. It runs a little slower, but I think I can manage--images do seem to look better when resized with 8. Hentai Kid recommended a programme called Gimp to me, which I'll probably try along with PhotoShop when I have more time to learn a new interface. I haven't tried using PhotoShop in years, but I remember finding it a bit clunky. Maybe it's improved.

This is one of my favourite title sequences for a movie--better than the movie itself, unfortunately;

The Groundhog's Latest Press Conference

Last night's tweets;

My favourite Pokemon is Purin.
Might want to see new Ghostbusters movie.
Thinking again of Children of Hurin.
My absinthe is protected from UV.

I'd really like to look forward to Ghostbusters III, which is apparently definitely in development. It can't be worse than the second (I'd like to think) and the screenwriters coming from the American version of The Office would seem to be a good sign, though I've only seen the first two seasons of that show. It's going to have to be a very different animal from the first film, though. One of the best things about the first movie is the beginning that established these guys in a world that feels real--the beginning of Stripes is great for the same reason, but the strangeness of the latter portion of Stripes isn't quite as interesting as the strangeness in Ghostbusters, in my opinion.

But I'm speaking as a fan of the 1980s cartoon series, which the new Ghostbusters video game, which reunites the original cast of the movie, seems to resemble. The cartoon series' head writer, J. Michael Straczynski, wrote the screenplay for the recent Clint Eastwood movie Changeling staring Angelina Jolie, so he'd actually be kind of a get now for Ghostbusters III. It's funny how the wheel turns.

They were talking about Bill Murray movies on The Howard Stern Show yesterday, and Stern talked about not enjoying Murray's performance in Caddyshack. I kind of agree--the great thing about Murray's performances is that you're always kind of laughing with him, even when he's playing a complete asshole. Which is incredibly useful when you want to get an audience interested in a character before they start learning some lessons. It's potential for a good arc, but the caricature he plays in Caddyshack just doesn't have that. Though, on the other hand, I still think Bill Murray's the best thing about Caddyshack.

Stern named Groundhog Day as one of his favourite Bill Murray movies, which put me in the mood to watch it again while eating dinner last night. I remember in the DVD commentary Harold Ramis talking about Danny Rubin, the screenwriter, only agreeing to allow Ramis to make the movie because Ramis promised to refrain from adding a sequence at the beginning before Phil gets stuck in the time loop. Ramis quickly went back on his word, and it's not hard to see why since avoiding Phil first discovering his predicament would've missed a great deal of potential for comedy, not to mention the character arc that really makes the movie work. But it's interesting to think about Rubin's idea for the film and how it would have started, with Phil having been forced to re-live the same day already for years. With the filmmakers carefully plotting how such a guy might act before starting, watching him onscreen might have been like studying an alien--you'd wonder if he's crazy, maybe psychic. It might have been a bit like David Cronenberg's underappreciated film Spider.

I stopped following the Something Awful forum discussions about me yesterday. They just didn't seem worth my time--there's more being said than I have time to read, anyway, which is actually why I'm not very good at following forums even when it's not all about me. I got a hit from the twitter page of the author, apparently, of the talking owls comic I made reference to, who prefaced the link with the comment, "This just in: hard-core comics full of rape and violence are superior to my silly little comics about talking owls and cats and crap." It gave me enough of a peek at the logic at work--apparently me saying other people considered the talking owls comic superior meant I was saying my comic was superior. For the record, I have no idea how good the talking owl comic is, I only glanced at it. But I kind of like the idea of hatred for me spilling out of Something Awful and into the general internet--kids, if you're reading, and you hate me, be sure to spread the word.

Almost Forgot About This

Twitter Sonnet #3

Dollhouse might be Vertigo the series.
Jefferson Memorial has mutants.
Half pencilled page is all Friday carries.
Winter length wrought by team of consultants.
I have stayed up past planned time yet again.
Pea soup slipped out of the can like Play-Doh.
Saw Tim but came back to draw after ten.
I think there are some sylphs I'd like to know.
Better burrito to-day at new place.
Folks at Something Awful think I'm creepy.
Need to find a spot for my guitar case.
Why don't I go to bed when I'm sleepy?
The cat in my dream could only say "cat".
I saw two yellow dogs, happy and fat.

I'm a Creep

Last night's tweets;

Better burrito to-day at new place.
Folks at Something Awful think I'm creepy.
Need to find a spot for my guitar case.
Why don't I go to bed when I'm sleepy?

I have achieved infamy. More infamy, I mean. First there was this Something Awful thread that started out with people talking about how the writing in my comics is good but the artwork could be better. Then there was this thread where people spent all day hating my work, personality, and face. The consensus there seems to be that I'm very creepy and batshit insane.

The people at Something Awful seem to have extremely high blood pressure. I couldn't find any statement neutral enough to avoid pissing a lot of people off, which was why I enjoyed reading the second thread a little more. People there dropped the thin pretence of constructive criticism and gave in to the reckless hate underneath. People feverishly discussed and re-posted artwork they considered morally reprehensible, adding violent jokes of their own while using icons featuring Nathan Explosion with his eyes gouged out or dismembered cartoon characters. I was urged to respect realism by people who pointed to comics of talking cats and owls as examples of superior works.

It seemed like some people in the first discussion were trying to come up with some intelligent commentary, but it was like flashes of a cigarette lighter in the middle of the desert at night. Even people who were trying to be thoughtful were basing their criticisms on things people made up about my comic and had gained steam--at some point someone referred to Gerounet as Venia's uncle and now it seems to be canon. A lot of people seem to be uncomfortable with drawings of vaginas and they seem to equate them with violence against women--pages depicting consensual sex have been shown as examples of rape scenes. No one seems to mind the penises. Sometimes I wondered if I was looking at a rectory forum.

Last I checked, the first conversation had gotten into the well worn argument that because someone's work has featured rape on multiple occasions it means he's a misogynist. Which I guess means I also really like killing people and I must love fire since I've shown it on multiple occasions. I'm sure there are people who mean well, but I just don't have time to keep repeating myself because people can't be bothered to read more carefully. But I guess I'm flattered to be the focus of so many confused and insecure people. I'm glad I could stave off the demons for them for another day.

I watched the pilot episode of Twin Peaks last night, the one that came in the new gold collector's set. You can tell this one has David Lynch's approval from the lack of scene selection. And it's also beautiful, very high resolution even though what I acquired is only the regular DVD edition. I broke my VHS edition by accidentally closing my car trunk on it in 1998 or 1999 and figured I'd just replace it with the DVD edition when it came out. Little did I know it would take a decade. But even having not watching it in so long--except for an inferior bootleg copy a couple years ago--didn't dispel the millions of times I watched it in high school. Lynch is always better fresh, but it is still great to watch.

Barrels for Thimbles

Last night's tweets;

I have stayed up past planned time yet again.
Pea soup slipped out of the can like Play-Doh.
Saw Tim but came back to draw after ten.
I think there are some sylphs I'd like to know.

The last line doesn't really mean anything, but I bet sylphs are interesting to know.

It doesn't seem like a good thing that the cans of pea soup I've been getting tend to fall out of the can maintaining a distinct can shape. Possibly it's a side effect of these "no salt added" cans of soup. But they're so good. I had a can of Amy's minestrone about a week ago with the standard 40% or so daily recommended sodium content, and it just tasted like salt water.

I watched the new Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles with breakfast yesterday. Not a terribly interesting episode. I know Sarah's in a kind of weird place emotionally, and the sensitivity of the moment may have clouded her judgement, but, ladies, if you want to show a guy you have a possibly cancerous lump in your breast and you don't plan on making out with him, it's probably best to tell him what you're doing when you put his hand on your chest.

Spent way too much time to-day on the Something Awful forum. I kind of got to the point that arguing with people who think they have objective reasons for not liking my work but actually don't kind of does a disservice to people who like my work, so I think I'll try and leave it alone for now. Anyway, I have a lot yet to do to-day and it's already six fucking thirty . . .

The Right Heads

I want to respond to a couple more things said about my comic on the Something Awful forum.

I stand by my assertion that a lot of the problems people seem to be specifically pointing out about my comic are a matter of taste. When it comes to the concept of talking heads--in other words, groups of panels that tend to feature nothing but a character's head and what they're saying--I really don't mind the criticism. I know the degree to which I use talking heads goes against the grain, but I'm using them to "excess" on purpose. Instead of cramming a lot of dialogue into a couple panels, I like thinking of paragraph breaks as moments where a character gets maybe a new facial expression or demonstrates that he or she is maintaining the same expression.

As for the idea that I need to shift viewer position more often during pure dialogue sequences, this gets in the way of the aesthetic idea most dear to me, particularly with Venia's Travels, that the story should be told from the point of view of only a couple characters, and consistently. In this case, the whole comic's told from Venia's perspective, and one of the ways I maintain this is through eyeline--when a character's talking to Venia, they seem to be looking at the viewer. When Venia's talking, she seems to be looking off panel, and her backgrounds tend to be more minimalist.

A poster named "angryblackguy" attempted to actually recolour some of my work to demonstrate to me how it ought to be done properly, and with all due respect to Angry Black Guy, I actually prefer my own colouring;



To my mind, Angry Black Guy's take, which is the bottom image, makes Venia look older and distributes the light source oddly. It's a matter of taste, I'm sure, because he probably doesn't see it that way. He also says the even spacing of the eyes is a mark of an amateur, but is something I'd again have to label a matter of taste. I've been drawing people since I was small, I've experimented with all different placements and sizes of eyes, and this currently happens to be what I like best for several characters in the current comic.

He concludes by saying, "People will scrutinize your flaws more than your good work. Either fix the flaws or remove them altogether."

To which I'd reply that if I did that, I wouldn't be drawing at all, since practically everything I do is considered a flaw by someone. A lot of the flaws pointed out in this discussion--my lettering, my talking heads--are things people have volunteered compliments on in the past. I think my art's flawed but I need it to tell my story. In short, I'm doing my best, but if someone wants to do a better job for me, they're welcome to.

Vampire Horse of a Different Colour

A sudden boost in hits alerted me to the fact that my comics are being discussed on the Something Awful forum to-day, which I love--and I hesitate to acknowledge I've read--because I instantly get a boatload of critique with no mind for sparing my feelings. I feel a weird glee at all the people talking about how much better my artwork could be. Though the fact that it's accompanied by positive comments regarding my writing probably does a lot to soothe my ego.

But I actually wanted to get involved with this discussion. The trouble is, apparently it costs money or something to register at the Something Awful forums, and I can't afford it right now. I'm not going to knock the forum for it--it actually seems to've created an abnormally civil atmosphere for an internet forum. I see rmg is involved in the discussion, and if you could refer people on the forum to this post, rmg, I'd greatly appreciate it.

To people wondering about how I draw the comic, as one person guessed, I do indeed pencil and ink on paper and colour on the computer--I use a shareware version of Paint Shop Pro 5 I've had since 1998. As for quality of the artwork, partly I think it's a matter of taste, but I've always been dissatisfied with it myself, particularly when I see gorgeous comics like The Phoenix Requiem. Though, on the other hand, I do dislike the airbrushed look of a lot of modern comics colouring. Matter of taste, again.

Someone criticised the panels that feature blank, solid colour backgrounds--For one thing, I personally rather like them because they allow me potential to express energy and mood in another way, but they're also something borne of necessity. I work on 9x12 pieces of sketchbook paper with 0.5 millimetre tip pens. I don't have the resources to obtain a better set up, and if I did, working with larger pages would slow me down and I think the pace at which I produce the comic is an important component to the flow--my philosophy on art and writing is greatly influenced by Jack Kerouac, though I do a lot more editing than he really believed in.

That being said--to the person who wished Boschen and Nesuko would be redone with better art--I would have absolutely no objection to any artist who wishes to do this, provided none of the writing, blocking, or scenery was modified without consulting me. I'd also suggest attention to facial expressions is the single most important thing as far as art for my comics goes.

A poster named Reiley commented; "The coloring is elementary at best, as details like highlights and shadows in the hair seem to be applied arbitrarily and do not accurately describe the roundness of the head nor the shape and volume of hair, and the two-step shadow gradient under brown-hair's chin and only under her chin stands out as being particularly odd."

To which I'd respond, two dimensional cartoon art invariably employs an impressionist take on the three dimensional world. That's why we still have anime in a world where cgi exists. I make creative decisions regarding the lighting and shape that don't always correspond to reality, partly based on my aesthetic ideals and needs for a particular scene, and partly based on my imperfect conception of the world. In a way, I think the value of art is in transcribing the artist's delusions for all to see. It's one of the things that sets us apart from cameras--though cameras are certainly capable of rendering a point of view.

But, again, I know I'm not the best artist on the internet. As for the difference between the shadows under Venia's and Wircelia's chins, I will say that it seemed to me it'd be slightly darker under Venia's chin because there's more hair framing her face than Wircelia's. That doesn't mean I'm "right", it's just how I see things, and I don't think anyone's "wrong" for disliking it.

Anyway, if anyone from the forum finds their way here, thank you for reading, I appreciate the comments, and I'm glad if you enjoyed my work.

Tweets of last night;

Dollhouse might be Vertigo the series.
Jefferson Memorial has mutants.
Half pencilled page is all Friday carries.
Winter length wrought by team of consultants.

I think the groundhog is outsourcing--this after he took a bailout. The mutants in the Jefferson Memorial is a Fallout 3 reference because I was playing it at Tim's house last night.

Dollhouse as Vertigo is a discussion I've sort of already had elsewhere--last night's episode isn't as good as the sixth episode with Patton Oswalt, but it was a fun jumbling of the playing field, actually. Still rooting for this show.

But I'd much rather talk about something the excellent Ana Marie Cox twittered a few minutes ago; "An article bemoaning the movies with less-than-evil vampires, because that's obv the first step to them WINNING: http://is.gd/pj7C ?"

This is a National Review article, so it's an insight into the right-wing position on romantic vampire media. It's rather impressive when someone's xenophobia carries over to fictional creatures, but the general thrust of Tony Woodlief's argument is that we can't forget that people are good and vampires are evil. I wish I could direct him and anyone reading this to Peter Straub's excellent introduction to this edition of Dracula because Straub discussed far more eloquently the Victorian fear of sexuality that inhabits the book than I ever could. Tony Woodlief's article tosses aside the whole idea that there was anything having to do with sexual hangups in the Victorian psyche without even beginning to support his argument, never mind the book's clear view of Jonathon Harker's infidelity with the vampire women, or the novel's reflection of a Victorian xenophobia that regarded Eastern Europe as sexually amoral.

I've never read Twilight and I haven't seen the movie--though I hear it's soon to be Rifftraxed and I'm looking forward to it with great eagerness. But it sounds like Woodlief's criticism of the book is merely a retread of the old argument against the romanticism of the "bad boy". Heaven forbid kids grow up thinking some bad people are redeemable--but Woodlief also misses the point that the bad boys in fluff tend to be anything but. They wear leather jackets and are a bit sullen maybe, but usually the world around the standard bad boy goes out of its way to act stupid whenever he's around, thereby giving the reader and/or avatar protagonist the position of being the only one who can see how good the boy is on the inside. Actual bad boys usually have the actual world against them, so these works of fiction aren't going to do a great deal to lobotomise young girls who aren't lobotomised already.

Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Naked Lesbian Horseback Riding in Burning Valhalla

And here it is;

Twitter Sonnet #2

Desktop currently is "The Nymphaeum".
I've been thinking about women all day.
Lunch burrito boring to the atom.
Wonder where when you need them are the fey?
DVD-ROM is a bit off its game.
Japanese for sleepy is "nemui".
Saw two kittens, one feral and one tame.
Louie's better than Huey or Dewey.
One Yankovic night for every Wagner.
Thursday was an important day for bread.
Earth-like planets bear bodies of water.
Had hardly any trouble getting fed.
Cartoon last night; sex slave saved by girl prince.
Coffee's a daily dose of liquid sense.

I listened to "Weird Al" Yankovic most of the night last night after a solid day of Wagner the day before. Though I did listen to Bowie's "Heroes" once in the afternoon and Lodger twice.

I actually just got Lodger. Back when I was in my Bowie obsessive period, I held off getting Lodger in the vague idea of keeping one album fresh for a rainy day. It's a good album--and exactly what I'd expected in a lot of ways. Less extreme than the other two in the Berlin trilogy, and more theoretical. The songs on Low and "Heroes" seem more driven, Lodger seems more about working through ideas and telling stories.

I watched the final episode of Revolutionary Girl Utena last night. Though the Lynch influence had dropped off significantly, the show did, like most anime series of the past decade, fall under the spell of Evangelion influence, featuring a character speared from all directions by sharp objects, psychoanalytical internal monologues, black and white sketchy animation, and rampant symbolic imagery. Though in that last respect I was reminded of the Wagner operas I've been listening to lately--people doing outrageously big things that seem to have some relationship to internal drama. Everything is a decadent symbol for the artist's impression of the heart of a conflict--we see the sex slave Rose Bride, Himemiya, pierced by swords because she kills the one who tried to save her, people sleeping in coffins because they can't face life, and so on. It's all very beautiful, but sort of cold, too.

I'm having a bit of a tie problem right now;



Some remnants of the two jobs I've had where I had to wear a tie every day. Now I don't have a good place for them. I guess I'd better go look for a proper hanger.

Has everyone read the story of Miley Cyrus getting snubbed by Radiohead and her plans to "ruin them" in response? On the one hand, aside from being a plastic, shallow pop star, Cyrus is probably just a kid wanting to see her favourite band, so I feel a little bad. On the other hand--guess what, Miley? You're not someone legitimate artists are particularly interested in meeting. Here's the line money, grease, and aggressive ad campaigns can't breach. It's hard enough to find it nowadays . . .

I've kind of lost enthusiasm for Soul Eater, so I've been rewatching His and Her Circumstances the past couple days with breakfast. I can tell when a genuinely talented director is at work, and Hideaki Anno is a genuinely talented director. It's a wonderful thing to see.