Sunday went rather later than expected. I haven't even eaten dinner yet. I'm hoping I can retain something from this big schedule shift, though. Maybe I'll go to bed at 2am from now on.
Still a surprising lot of things on the last day of Comic-Con, which is usually pretty dead. I'll start writing about it properly in daylight. But for now, I must vegetate.
By the way, Linda, the violinist I posted video of Saturday, has a myspace.
Last night's tweets;
Many heroes are now on the trapeze.
Many places around town are a sith's.
Ate again at the amazing Pokez.
And my waiter sang along with The Smiths.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
The Fiddler has Come for Comic-Con
I was dead tired at Comic-Con at 4pm to-day and was making an effort to leave early but cool things just kept happening. Every day at this Con, I've filled up my camera's four gigabyte memory card with pictures and photos, most of which I'm really pleased to have gotten. I have a lot to write about, and I'll probably start with the big "Con reports" to-morrow or Monday. But first, since she was one of the greatest things I saw at the Con, I want to share this video of a fiddler called Linda, who was playing on the street outside the convention centre and was kind enough to let me take this video;
Watching her, it seems like she must have been playing that thing in her sleep at age 2. I mean, when she picks up that dollar, she goes right back into that complicated bit like a lightswitch. The precise and rapid movements of her tiny fingers juxtaposed with the traffic and oblivious people walking by seemed absolutely unreal.
Twitter Sonnet #43
The strange dizzy crayfish has crossed my path.
Comic-Con moved me fast for no reason.
I haplessly escaped all schemes of math.
For all nihoncha there is a season.
Johnny Depp but lightly graced Comic-Con.
This year the Harley Quinns are out in force.
They line with Torgos and wizards the lawn.
To Hall H has never been a smooth course.
Amanda Palmer's good at being still.
But I've discovered she's not really dead.
Found Haruhi on a high window sill.
Looking for lunch, found Gene Simmons instead.
Met a Delvian who knows symmetry.
And saw a great sanguine Ray Bradbury.
And Happy Birthday, Cryptess.
Watching her, it seems like she must have been playing that thing in her sleep at age 2. I mean, when she picks up that dollar, she goes right back into that complicated bit like a lightswitch. The precise and rapid movements of her tiny fingers juxtaposed with the traffic and oblivious people walking by seemed absolutely unreal.
Twitter Sonnet #43
The strange dizzy crayfish has crossed my path.
Comic-Con moved me fast for no reason.
I haplessly escaped all schemes of math.
For all nihoncha there is a season.
Johnny Depp but lightly graced Comic-Con.
This year the Harley Quinns are out in force.
They line with Torgos and wizards the lawn.
To Hall H has never been a smooth course.
Amanda Palmer's good at being still.
But I've discovered she's not really dead.
Found Haruhi on a high window sill.
Looking for lunch, found Gene Simmons instead.
Met a Delvian who knows symmetry.
And saw a great sanguine Ray Bradbury.
And Happy Birthday, Cryptess.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Wild Torgo
Who's the guy one least desires to see trying shuffle his way through the aisle, shoving against your knees?
It's cool, though. He takes care of the place while the master is away.
Last night's tweets;
Johnny Depp but lightly graced Comic-Con.
This year the Harley Quinns are out in force.
They line with Torgos and wizards the lawn.
To Hall H has never been a smooth course.
It's cool, though. He takes care of the place while the master is away.
Last night's tweets;
Johnny Depp but lightly graced Comic-Con.
This year the Harley Quinns are out in force.
They line with Torgos and wizards the lawn.
To Hall H has never been a smooth course.
Chilling in Sunlight
I have a sunburn for the first time since I was a kid.
If you listen carefully, you can hear the Super Mario Brothers underwater level theme coming from the stadium behind the convention centre. Which proves yet again that, if I dream it, it'll eventually happen.
That's the venue where I saw Morrissey last year.
And now, Mr. Terry Gilliam, who's got two legs;
Twitter Sonnet #42
I have eaten too many Ritz crackers.
Need to find another unsalted snack.
Generic pasta sauces seek backers.
It's only celebrity sauce I'll back.
I think I timed to-day's burrito wrong.
By drowsy lunch I was nearly beaten.
My work'll be out of time before long.
And now tweet 666--hail Lord Satan!
Brains are not packing styrofoam.
Nor are they purple pixie stick powder.
Brains hold true under your hairy scalp dome.
Good brains, when dead, become hot clam chowder.
There must never be another Jar Jar.
Yet James Cameron has made Avatar.
If you listen carefully, you can hear the Super Mario Brothers underwater level theme coming from the stadium behind the convention centre. Which proves yet again that, if I dream it, it'll eventually happen.
That's the venue where I saw Morrissey last year.
And now, Mr. Terry Gilliam, who's got two legs;
Twitter Sonnet #42
I have eaten too many Ritz crackers.
Need to find another unsalted snack.
Generic pasta sauces seek backers.
It's only celebrity sauce I'll back.
I think I timed to-day's burrito wrong.
By drowsy lunch I was nearly beaten.
My work'll be out of time before long.
And now tweet 666--hail Lord Satan!
Brains are not packing styrofoam.
Nor are they purple pixie stick powder.
Brains hold true under your hairy scalp dome.
Good brains, when dead, become hot clam chowder.
There must never be another Jar Jar.
Yet James Cameron has made Avatar.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Comic-Con Report; Totally Unrelated Crayfish Edition
On my way back from Comic-Con, a kid on his bike stopped and told me, "There's a scorpion on the trail. Around the bridge. Be careful."
"Thanks," I said, and walked on, but saw instead this;
A crayfish crossing the dry, dusty path to get from one part of the river to the other. I've seen them do this before, and it mystifies me every time.
I met with Cryptess downtown to-day--I haven't seen her in around five years, I think it's been, when I drove up to Seattle to bring her to Comic-Con. This year she took the train from Anaheim, and I helped her find her motel in Chula Vista. Or, well, I went with her in case my help was required.
My Comic-Con registration was processed remarkably fast--and a huge line formed after I finished. It was quite amazing. Now I'm going to try to get to sleep early enough to get into Hall H to-morrow. Updates here may be infrequent and/or brief during the Con, which ends Sunday, as I'll be spending all day there every day. I like to get my money's worth, what can I say.
Last night's tweets;
Brains are not packing styrofoam.
Nor are they purple pixie stick powder.
Brains hold true under your hairy scalp dome.
Good brains, when dead, become hot clam chowder.
"Thanks," I said, and walked on, but saw instead this;
A crayfish crossing the dry, dusty path to get from one part of the river to the other. I've seen them do this before, and it mystifies me every time.
I met with Cryptess downtown to-day--I haven't seen her in around five years, I think it's been, when I drove up to Seattle to bring her to Comic-Con. This year she took the train from Anaheim, and I helped her find her motel in Chula Vista. Or, well, I went with her in case my help was required.
My Comic-Con registration was processed remarkably fast--and a huge line formed after I finished. It was quite amazing. Now I'm going to try to get to sleep early enough to get into Hall H to-morrow. Updates here may be infrequent and/or brief during the Con, which ends Sunday, as I'll be spending all day there every day. I like to get my money's worth, what can I say.
Last night's tweets;
Brains are not packing styrofoam.
Nor are they purple pixie stick powder.
Brains hold true under your hairy scalp dome.
Good brains, when dead, become hot clam chowder.
Subject Status; Setsuled, Trompe
AT 1AM ON WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, SETSULED ATTEMPTED TO FALL ASLEEP IN A BID TO COMMENCE SOMETHING APPROACHING EIGHT HOURS OF NOCTURNAL SLUMBER.
WHAT FOLLOWED IS SUBJECT TO REVIEW BY VARIOUS INTERNAL AGENCIES, THE DETAILS OF SETSULED'S ENDEAVOUR DEEMED TOO FANTASTICAL BY FRONTAL LOBE ADMINISTRATIVE BUREAUS.
JAGGED CLUMPS OF HOURS, THREE BY THREE, A BATTERY ACID STACCATO GARNISHED WITH DESPERATE CONJURATIONS OF SHEEP WHO SOMEHOW BORE STEEL WOOL, SUNLIGHT GLINTING OFF THEIR CROME FACES ACTING AS A METRONOME SPIKE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. SUPER MARIO BROTHERS UNDERWATER LEVEL THEME BUT WITH SUPER MARIO LAND SUBMERSIBLE, THE WHOLE EPISODE SQUISHED INTO THE UPPER LEFT HAND CORNER OF CONSCIOUSNESS TO MAKE ROOM FOR IMAGES PRODUCED FROM HALF REMEMBERED CONVERSATIONS REGARDING ROBIN QUIVERS' BRA AND STAMPEDEING OSTRICHES.
THE AFTERNOON OF JULY 22 WOULD SEE SETSULED AT COMIC-CON PREVIEW NIGHT.
AS OF 8AM, THE STATUS OF SETSULED'S RESTEDNESS REMAINED UNKNOWN . . .
WHAT FOLLOWED IS SUBJECT TO REVIEW BY VARIOUS INTERNAL AGENCIES, THE DETAILS OF SETSULED'S ENDEAVOUR DEEMED TOO FANTASTICAL BY FRONTAL LOBE ADMINISTRATIVE BUREAUS.
JAGGED CLUMPS OF HOURS, THREE BY THREE, A BATTERY ACID STACCATO GARNISHED WITH DESPERATE CONJURATIONS OF SHEEP WHO SOMEHOW BORE STEEL WOOL, SUNLIGHT GLINTING OFF THEIR CROME FACES ACTING AS A METRONOME SPIKE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. SUPER MARIO BROTHERS UNDERWATER LEVEL THEME BUT WITH SUPER MARIO LAND SUBMERSIBLE, THE WHOLE EPISODE SQUISHED INTO THE UPPER LEFT HAND CORNER OF CONSCIOUSNESS TO MAKE ROOM FOR IMAGES PRODUCED FROM HALF REMEMBERED CONVERSATIONS REGARDING ROBIN QUIVERS' BRA AND STAMPEDEING OSTRICHES.
THE AFTERNOON OF JULY 22 WOULD SEE SETSULED AT COMIC-CON PREVIEW NIGHT.
AS OF 8AM, THE STATUS OF SETSULED'S RESTEDNESS REMAINED UNKNOWN . . .
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Venia and the Nymphomaniac Nymphs
Yes, I did decide to update Venia's Travels to-night so I won't have to worry about it during Comic-Con. Unfortunately, the new chapter features a lot of beautiful naked women. Try not to take it personally.
The Human Skull is Not a Fruit Rollup
Last night's tweets;
I think I timed to-day's burrito wrong.
By drowsy lunch I was nearly beaten.
My work'll be out of time before long.
And now tweet 666--hail Lord Satan!
To-day barely even feels real--my alarm woke me up at noon, when I was in the middle of a deep sleep. Hopefully to-morrow will be easier. I've been working on my comic all day, and I'll probably upload chapter 30 to-night or to-morrow morning. Maybe.
So tired. What else can I say? It's all tired, all the time for Setsuled at this moment.
Listened to Howard Stern while inking and colouring the past couple days. Sunday I listened to the round table critics commentary on Seven Samurai again. What a great movie. The third critic, whose name I can't remember, focused on how the film is about blurring of the lines in social strata, who Kikuchiyo is the perfect example as a "a circle who wants to become a triangle", referencing the standard Heihachi makes. I love Kikuchiyo.
The new commentary is so much better than the Michael Jeck commentary from the first Criterion release of the film, but the Jeck commentary isn't really a terrible commentary. Here's a nice clip from it;
Forcing thoughts into concrete form is almost painful right now. I'd feel happier to let them float as contented wisps.
I think I timed to-day's burrito wrong.
By drowsy lunch I was nearly beaten.
My work'll be out of time before long.
And now tweet 666--hail Lord Satan!
To-day barely even feels real--my alarm woke me up at noon, when I was in the middle of a deep sleep. Hopefully to-morrow will be easier. I've been working on my comic all day, and I'll probably upload chapter 30 to-night or to-morrow morning. Maybe.
So tired. What else can I say? It's all tired, all the time for Setsuled at this moment.
Listened to Howard Stern while inking and colouring the past couple days. Sunday I listened to the round table critics commentary on Seven Samurai again. What a great movie. The third critic, whose name I can't remember, focused on how the film is about blurring of the lines in social strata, who Kikuchiyo is the perfect example as a "a circle who wants to become a triangle", referencing the standard Heihachi makes. I love Kikuchiyo.
The new commentary is so much better than the Michael Jeck commentary from the first Criterion release of the film, but the Jeck commentary isn't really a terrible commentary. Here's a nice clip from it;
Forcing thoughts into concrete form is almost painful right now. I'd feel happier to let them float as contented wisps.
Monday, July 20, 2009
"Who's Got the Sweetest Disposition? One Guess--That's Who. Who Never, Ever Starts an Argument . . ."
There's a video online of Yutaka Yamamoto now apologising for the "Endless Eight" Haruhi Suzumiya story arc. Yamamoto used to work for Kyoto animation, the studio that produces The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, but left before the new season began. I find this video fascinating for several reasons--for one thing, judging by comments on the video that are in both Japanese and English, I think this is illustrative of the fact that Japanese and English speaking fans are drawing closer together.
Now, it should be noted that Yamamoto was never in charge of Haruhi Suzumiya--that was Tatsuya Ishihara in the first season. But, as lousy as it was of the guy video taping to upload the video in spite of Yamamoto's specific request for people not to share what he was saying on the internet, Yamamoto really had no business apologising. Whatever he might think of what's happening, a lot of people put a lot of hard work into these new episodes and people who might otherwise go along for the ride and try to be open to the experience can very likely be shut down by a statement like this from someone seen as in charge. Doing something like "Endless Eight" is bold, and people are frightened of boldness, and otaku are typically terrified of boldness. Audiences are delicate, sensitive, whiney little creampuffs and if the artist doesn't exude confidence, the audience isn't usually going to supply it. It's not even that they're not bold people in their daily lives, it's just that they expect art to expect very little from them.
And let me just reiterate, too, how much I love "Endless Eight" and how much more I love it with each instalment--the feeling it gives of motionlessness, the desperate need to figure out some way to change this lack of motion without having a clear idea of what the root problem is--the end of each instalment where Kyon stands up as Haruhi walks out of the restaurant and he racks his brain, trying to think of some clue in something that Haruhi has said--that he can't find it, even after having gone through the same cycle over 50,000 times according to Nagato, the alien character. It's a wonderful story that transmutes the concept of feelings that can't be addressed because of a fundamental inability to directly communicate.
The fact that Tim tells me that posters on anime forums are losing their minds over it only makes me love it more, I have to say. Tim says they're accusing Kyoto Animation of "trolling", which is yet another example of the word's apparent new misappropriation to mean anything someone doesn't like. A troll used to mean someone who went to a forum with the explicit intention of causing discord. Haruhi Suzumiya does it just by existing, and as I've been called a troll for the same reason, I have to say Kyoto Animation definitely has my sympathies.
My tweets from last night;
I have eaten too many Ritz crackers.
Need to find another unsalted snack.
Generic pasta sauces seek backers.
It's only celebrity sauce I'll back.
Picked up some more unsalted peanuts to-day as well as some citrus blossom honey--that stuff's great, it tastes sort of like marmalade. Mixed with hot chai tea it tastes a bit like mead.
Now, it should be noted that Yamamoto was never in charge of Haruhi Suzumiya--that was Tatsuya Ishihara in the first season. But, as lousy as it was of the guy video taping to upload the video in spite of Yamamoto's specific request for people not to share what he was saying on the internet, Yamamoto really had no business apologising. Whatever he might think of what's happening, a lot of people put a lot of hard work into these new episodes and people who might otherwise go along for the ride and try to be open to the experience can very likely be shut down by a statement like this from someone seen as in charge. Doing something like "Endless Eight" is bold, and people are frightened of boldness, and otaku are typically terrified of boldness. Audiences are delicate, sensitive, whiney little creampuffs and if the artist doesn't exude confidence, the audience isn't usually going to supply it. It's not even that they're not bold people in their daily lives, it's just that they expect art to expect very little from them.
And let me just reiterate, too, how much I love "Endless Eight" and how much more I love it with each instalment--the feeling it gives of motionlessness, the desperate need to figure out some way to change this lack of motion without having a clear idea of what the root problem is--the end of each instalment where Kyon stands up as Haruhi walks out of the restaurant and he racks his brain, trying to think of some clue in something that Haruhi has said--that he can't find it, even after having gone through the same cycle over 50,000 times according to Nagato, the alien character. It's a wonderful story that transmutes the concept of feelings that can't be addressed because of a fundamental inability to directly communicate.
The fact that Tim tells me that posters on anime forums are losing their minds over it only makes me love it more, I have to say. Tim says they're accusing Kyoto Animation of "trolling", which is yet another example of the word's apparent new misappropriation to mean anything someone doesn't like. A troll used to mean someone who went to a forum with the explicit intention of causing discord. Haruhi Suzumiya does it just by existing, and as I've been called a troll for the same reason, I have to say Kyoto Animation definitely has my sympathies.
My tweets from last night;
I have eaten too many Ritz crackers.
Need to find another unsalted snack.
Generic pasta sauces seek backers.
It's only celebrity sauce I'll back.
Picked up some more unsalted peanuts to-day as well as some citrus blossom honey--that stuff's great, it tastes sort of like marmalade. Mixed with hot chai tea it tastes a bit like mead.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Feedback Loop
All is well in Angel's little fake city.
I'm up to the eleventh episode of Angel, and it's still basically superior to Buffy, mostly, I think, because it holds together better. It has a more consistent set of rules--there's no unspoken prohibition against the use of guns, is the main thing. And you get more of an impression of the general hell a world of killer demons would create.
The introduction of Wesley and the departure of Doyle creates a better dynamic for the lead characters, too, though I do like Doyle. Joss Whedon, in Doyle's Wikipedia entry, is quoted as saying, "He was a very popular character, but the mesh was very difficult in ways that made it hard to write. Glenn had a kind of intensity that was kind of like David [Boreanaz's], and David already has that." But, of course, the clear problem I think most people could see from those nine episodes was that Glenn Quinn had the intensity Boreanaz didn't have and never had. Both Buffy and Angel were notoriously plagued by bland leads, and it's never more apparent than in the Angel episode where Buffy guest stars and the episode hangs on a chemistry between the two actors that has less life than a desk's romance with gum. But it's easier to forget when Glenn Quinn's not around. It's a shame Quinn died without ever getting the lead role he seemed built for.
The Buffy/Angel dialogue algorithm is starting to leave me a bit cold. I think it goes "neutral statement, dumb joke, fisticuffs, dumb joke, serious statement, bigger serious statement, bigger serious statement, really dumb joke, fisticuffs, serious statement, dumb joke, serious statement, end credits." I don't really mind it so much except it kind of exhausts me after a little bit. I suppose Comic-Con will be a nice break from watching the show, since I don't see how I'll have time.
Twitter Sonnet #41
No trash can is ever truly empty.
Tall spiders supervise waste disposal.
They have me take outside bags from my tea.
Cat pace cars monitor the proposal.
Feline suits withhold sleep in a briefcase.
Someone's got to negotiate with them.
My lack of REM is infecting the base.
Let Keith David or Wilford Brimley in.
Cops won't find the alien on the streets.
It's found in the heart of Saturday night.
It's safe on set to love in city tweets.
With David Tomlinson we fly a kite.
The safest moé's Jessica Rabbit.
But The Shadow knows your darker habit.
I listened to David Bowie's Diamond Dogs walking back from Tim's last night. It's a good idea to get in touch with David Bowie now and then. I ended up listening to The Bell Jar audiobook while colouring--I got to the part where Esther and Betsy are seeing a movie, right before they get sick, and Esther talks about how it became clear that the nice girl in the movie was going to end up with the nice guy and the sexy girl wasn't going to end up with anybody. I always thought this was funny, and kind of a comment on American society's disapproval for women who enjoyed sex. Of course, it also mirrors Esther's relationship with Buddy, who she begins to hate after she finds out he's by no means a virgin, even though he'd made her feel as though she were the "sexy" one in their relationship.
Last night, though, I got to thinking about what the filmmakers' intentions were with the movie Esther was watching. Is the idea to condemn girls for being sexy, or to comfort girls who don't believe they could ever be sexy? I suppose it all depends on perspective. Though even if the latter were the case, the suggestion would still be that women should be punished for a certain amount of sexual expressiveness. Of course, the real point of the movie may have been the importance of regulating nuclear power, for all I know. I don't know what movie she was watching, and people will often see the story they need, want, or are compelled to see in what they're watching.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Nothing's More Real than Fantasy Gold
What do you suppose Alfred Hitchcock would make of this?
Those guys look like they're praying. Maybe every day they have to kneel and pray facing the wiener.
I ended up not walking to Tim's yesterday because I couldn't get him on the phone--I'm walking there to-day. So I ended up just working on my comic yesterday--I've got four pages finished and I've already pencilled one to-day. I'll ink it when I get back from Tim's, so I'm not doing so bad. It's a shame I don't have Howard Stern to listen to while I ink and colour though, and no new DVD commentaries. I'll probably end up listening to The Bell Jar again. I do have a lot of Lenny Bruce to listen to, too.
I signed on to World of Warcraft very briefly last night looking for Tim. I found an item I'd put up for auction on Monday had sold for 150 gold. It was some kind of leather cuirass much weaker than what I'm wearing but Tim told me it was very valuable because it was the sort people used for "twinking", a concept Tim explained to me but which I still completely don't comprehend. It had something to do with "level brackets". Anyway, that's a hell of a lot of gold for something I have no use for. If this were Warcraft II, I could build some farms now. Maybe even a watchtower.
It's too bad I can't make money like that from my old shirts in real life.
My tweets from last night;
Feline suits withhold sleep in a briefcase.
Someone's got to negotiate with them.
My lack of REM is infecting the base.
Let Keith David or Wilford Brimley in.
Little reference to John Carpenter's The Thing for the ultra hip out there.
The spider in my bathroom last night;
Those guys look like they're praying. Maybe every day they have to kneel and pray facing the wiener.
I ended up not walking to Tim's yesterday because I couldn't get him on the phone--I'm walking there to-day. So I ended up just working on my comic yesterday--I've got four pages finished and I've already pencilled one to-day. I'll ink it when I get back from Tim's, so I'm not doing so bad. It's a shame I don't have Howard Stern to listen to while I ink and colour though, and no new DVD commentaries. I'll probably end up listening to The Bell Jar again. I do have a lot of Lenny Bruce to listen to, too.
I signed on to World of Warcraft very briefly last night looking for Tim. I found an item I'd put up for auction on Monday had sold for 150 gold. It was some kind of leather cuirass much weaker than what I'm wearing but Tim told me it was very valuable because it was the sort people used for "twinking", a concept Tim explained to me but which I still completely don't comprehend. It had something to do with "level brackets". Anyway, that's a hell of a lot of gold for something I have no use for. If this were Warcraft II, I could build some farms now. Maybe even a watchtower.
It's too bad I can't make money like that from my old shirts in real life.
My tweets from last night;
Feline suits withhold sleep in a briefcase.
Someone's got to negotiate with them.
My lack of REM is infecting the base.
Let Keith David or Wilford Brimley in.
Little reference to John Carpenter's The Thing for the ultra hip out there.
The spider in my bathroom last night;
Friday, July 17, 2009
Endless Eight
Last night's tweets;
No trash can is ever truly empty.
Tall spiders supervise waste disposal.
They have me take outside bags from my tea.
Cat pace cars monitor the proposal.
Even less sleep to-day than yesterday. Lots of noises around the house starting at the crack of dawn, which would be about an hour after I fell asleep. So I drew half a page, but I think I'll save the rest for to-morrow, maybe walk to Tim's to-night, then try to get to sleep early.
New Haruhi Suzumiya this morning--still in the time loop plot. Of course, the interesting thing is looking for the differences in each episode, one of the biggest being the different animation studios employed for each episode--it's an illuminating look at how different studios work, and I have a suspicion each studio was instructed not to look at the others' work;
It adds to the eeriness of the story arc, the feeling that everything's the same but not quite. This latest one focused more on Koizumi for some reason--not giving him any more lines of dialogue, or even fundamentally changing his reactions to things. He just has more animation, his clothes stand out a bit more. It's an interesting exploration of camera created POV, too-Haruhi Suzumiya's a shounen series, so there's always going to be a lot of shots focusing on attractive female bodies, but, I think it was the second episode in the cycle ramped that it up slightly. Another episode played around with high contrast lighting a bit more. This newest one goes from an overt dread in the previous episode to seemingly making the characters comfortable with this dread. It's strong and disturbing deja vu for the characters, but they seem to have somehow become comfortable with it.
And, of course, each time one looks for clues as to how Kyon is supposed to finally break the cycle. There's some suggestion that he needs to express affection for Haruhi, maybe ask her on a date. But my prediction is that Kyon simply needs to do his summer homework--every episode ends with Kyon figuring he'll just avoid the schoolwork since he's stuck in a time loop anyway. I'm kind of hoping I'm wrong with this prediction. But I love the whole atmosphere of inertia, anyway.
And it's produced the only anime fan vids I can remember liking;
No trash can is ever truly empty.
Tall spiders supervise waste disposal.
They have me take outside bags from my tea.
Cat pace cars monitor the proposal.
Even less sleep to-day than yesterday. Lots of noises around the house starting at the crack of dawn, which would be about an hour after I fell asleep. So I drew half a page, but I think I'll save the rest for to-morrow, maybe walk to Tim's to-night, then try to get to sleep early.
New Haruhi Suzumiya this morning--still in the time loop plot. Of course, the interesting thing is looking for the differences in each episode, one of the biggest being the different animation studios employed for each episode--it's an illuminating look at how different studios work, and I have a suspicion each studio was instructed not to look at the others' work;
It adds to the eeriness of the story arc, the feeling that everything's the same but not quite. This latest one focused more on Koizumi for some reason--not giving him any more lines of dialogue, or even fundamentally changing his reactions to things. He just has more animation, his clothes stand out a bit more. It's an interesting exploration of camera created POV, too-Haruhi Suzumiya's a shounen series, so there's always going to be a lot of shots focusing on attractive female bodies, but, I think it was the second episode in the cycle ramped that it up slightly. Another episode played around with high contrast lighting a bit more. This newest one goes from an overt dread in the previous episode to seemingly making the characters comfortable with this dread. It's strong and disturbing deja vu for the characters, but they seem to have somehow become comfortable with it.
And, of course, each time one looks for clues as to how Kyon is supposed to finally break the cycle. There's some suggestion that he needs to express affection for Haruhi, maybe ask her on a date. But my prediction is that Kyon simply needs to do his summer homework--every episode ends with Kyon figuring he'll just avoid the schoolwork since he's stuck in a time loop anyway. I'm kind of hoping I'm wrong with this prediction. But I love the whole atmosphere of inertia, anyway.
And it's produced the only anime fan vids I can remember liking;
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Welcome to the Blog of Bitter Dwarves and Sugary Lesbians
Der Sonnet des Nibelungen
The big box is the one that won't open.
Good cheese is quite impossible to slice.
Don't submit any requests to Oden.
Your boxes and cheeses aren't worth his price.
Don't pair up Thor with Florence Nightingale.
Yoghurt's all the mana anyone needs.
Valkyries suck at delivering mail.
Every one her mark she always exceeds.
Fenrir's massacring morning papers.
Still just Michael Jackson news anyway.
My energy at three sharply tapers.
Though if Freya wanted me I'd make way.
Good ash trees are too rare around this town.
Signal from Yggdrasil often goes down.
I don't think I got enough sleep last night. It's the kind of thing I can't tell until I start drawing. Moving sluggishly to-day--I'll stop moving and it takes me five minutes to realise I stopped moving. Must . . . press . . . on . . . too much . . . to do . . .
Let's see how many of you can figure out what's going on in this video;
That's the opening from Maria Holic, a series I'm enjoying even more on the second viewing. Somehow, the Japanese company that produced the series has managed to crack down on some above the board U.S. fan distribution of it, including a curious set of videos on YouTube that I can't view--a message displays telling me that the videos aren't viewable in my country due to copyright. I hope this means these bozos are actually planning on distributing Maria Holic in the U.S., but I suspect it's far too cool for U.S. anime distributors, who always seem to be finding new ways to be out of touch with the anime fan base here. Though what, exactly, the point is of having unsubbed YouTube clips viewable in Japan but not in the U.S. is completely beyond me.
Last night I watched "Hush", one of the legendary Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes. I still think it was pretty good, and it was nice to have Tara introduced finally. It's weird how much she seems like a female Kirk Cobain early on. It'll be really nice for Willow to have something to do besides being nauseating. It's weird--and I remember feeling the same way when I watched the show through the first time--Willow could not deliver a bad line for me in the first three seasons. Somehow, everything she said was cool. But in the fourth season, it was like she became too conscious (or rather the writers became too conscious) of her cuteness and it spoiled. She began saying things like "poop head", things that are beneath even Warwick Davis' Willow (get it? 'cause he's a dwarf? Not many things are literally beneath him? It's gold, I tell you). I am glad she didn't sleep with A-Rod, like Willow Palin.
Anyway, I'm hoping now that I've matured into a marginally more benevolent person, I'll be able to dig some of the ultra syrupy Willow/Tara scenes. After all, I actually truly love this;
The big box is the one that won't open.
Good cheese is quite impossible to slice.
Don't submit any requests to Oden.
Your boxes and cheeses aren't worth his price.
Don't pair up Thor with Florence Nightingale.
Yoghurt's all the mana anyone needs.
Valkyries suck at delivering mail.
Every one her mark she always exceeds.
Fenrir's massacring morning papers.
Still just Michael Jackson news anyway.
My energy at three sharply tapers.
Though if Freya wanted me I'd make way.
Good ash trees are too rare around this town.
Signal from Yggdrasil often goes down.
I don't think I got enough sleep last night. It's the kind of thing I can't tell until I start drawing. Moving sluggishly to-day--I'll stop moving and it takes me five minutes to realise I stopped moving. Must . . . press . . . on . . . too much . . . to do . . .
Let's see how many of you can figure out what's going on in this video;
That's the opening from Maria Holic, a series I'm enjoying even more on the second viewing. Somehow, the Japanese company that produced the series has managed to crack down on some above the board U.S. fan distribution of it, including a curious set of videos on YouTube that I can't view--a message displays telling me that the videos aren't viewable in my country due to copyright. I hope this means these bozos are actually planning on distributing Maria Holic in the U.S., but I suspect it's far too cool for U.S. anime distributors, who always seem to be finding new ways to be out of touch with the anime fan base here. Though what, exactly, the point is of having unsubbed YouTube clips viewable in Japan but not in the U.S. is completely beyond me.
Last night I watched "Hush", one of the legendary Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes. I still think it was pretty good, and it was nice to have Tara introduced finally. It's weird how much she seems like a female Kirk Cobain early on. It'll be really nice for Willow to have something to do besides being nauseating. It's weird--and I remember feeling the same way when I watched the show through the first time--Willow could not deliver a bad line for me in the first three seasons. Somehow, everything she said was cool. But in the fourth season, it was like she became too conscious (or rather the writers became too conscious) of her cuteness and it spoiled. She began saying things like "poop head", things that are beneath even Warwick Davis' Willow (get it? 'cause he's a dwarf? Not many things are literally beneath him? It's gold, I tell you). I am glad she didn't sleep with A-Rod, like Willow Palin.
Anyway, I'm hoping now that I've matured into a marginally more benevolent person, I'll be able to dig some of the ultra syrupy Willow/Tara scenes. After all, I actually truly love this;
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Perdition, Girls, and the Spider Bystanders
Last night's tweets;
Don't pair up Thor with Florence Nightingale.
Yoghurt's all the mana anyone needs.
Valkyries suck at delivering mail.
Every one her mark she always exceeds.
I think the story in this next sonnet is shaping up to be "Norse Mythological Figures Assimilating Into Modern Culture". And valkyries really aren't great at delivering mail--they're too busy with their melodic, full-throated laughter and killing.
Here are actually two spiders, one from last night and one from the night before, in one epic film;
That's two blockbuster tracks off the Ranma 1/2 soundtrack, going out to all you early 90s anime fans out there.
On Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, I watched the 1981 BBC adaptation of The Winter's Tale with breakfast. I'd never read the play. I enjoyed it, though I can see why it's not counted amongst Shakespeare's greatest. It's intriguingly schizophrenic, and I wondered if it was one of the plays where Shakespeare might have actually been only one of a group of playwrights. The first half of the play feels like a variation on Oedipus Rex, with a few roles shuffled about and exaggerated, with the focus placed on the stubborn and paranoid king of Sicilia. He's sort of a King Lear character. Though he retains his throne, he exhibits Lear's jealousy early on, but it's his friends and family who become exiles, rather than the king himself.
There's a psychological credibility to the king's inability to believe his wife's innocence and to quickly and harshly condemn those who would act as her advocates--the strength of his love for her provoking an equally boundless and senseless passion in retaliation to the slightest possible threat to their relationship. Actually, the impression I had was that the king had himself begun to loose interest in his wife, couldn't believe that he would, so he blamed his wife and his brother. The affectionate conversations at the beginning of the play do seem oddly forced and over the top, and at the end of the play the idea of time's toll on affection is directly referred to by the King and another character.
Or, it may be an even more fascinating a statement on the contradictions that make human behaviour so inscrutable--it's possible Leontes loved his wife too much and not enough.
The second half of the play unexpectedly veers into romance and comedy, with Leontes' daughter, Perdita, having been, Oedipus-like, abandoned as a baby by the king's order, becoming sixteen years later the subject of the play. I actually enjoyed this portion a great deal more, though there's less to say about it--much of the dialogue is given to a robber named Autolycus and a slow witted shepherd, and their story is told alongside a tale of hidden identities involving Perdita and her love for the disguised prince of Bohemia, whose father, King Polixenes, is also disguised. A lot of familiar elements here for Shakespeare, the point this time apparently being the juxtaposition of family, romance, deception, and the truth of fundamental motivations revealed when no-one has to worry about the identities they're attached to.
I fully expected the end of the play to be tragic, with the King of Sicilia having an incestuous affair with his daughter (ala Oedipus) and lots of people dying--which is apparently what happened in the source material Shakespeare drew from. Instead, there's an extremely odd happy ending. I'm not sure the tragic ending would have really added anything, so maybe this is one instance where it's okay to let the audience feel good. What the hell, we deserve it.
It was a good production--Jeremy Kemp was fine as the King of Sicilia, though my favourites were Rikki Fulton as Autolycus and Robert Stephens as Polixenes, who had a sort of Oscar Wilde quality that added an unobtrusive flavour to a character who's otherwise there almost solely to serve the plot. But this was my favourite exchange in the play;
PERDITA
[To POLIXENES] Sir, welcome:
It is my father's will I should take on me
The hostess-ship o' the day.
To CAMILLO
You're welcome, sir.
Give me those flowers there, Dorcas. Reverend sirs,
For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming and savour all the winter long:
Grace and remembrance be to you both,
And welcome to our shearing!
POLIXENES
Shepherdess,
A fair one are you--well you fit our ages
With flowers of winter.
PERDITA
Sir, the year growing ancient,
Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter, the fairest
flowers o' the season
Are our carnations and streak'd gillyvors,
Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not
To get slips of them.
POLIXENES
Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?
PERDITA
For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.
POLIXENES
Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean
But nature makes that mean: so, over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race: this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature.
PERDITA
So it is.
POLIXENES
Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,
And do not call them bastards.
Don't pair up Thor with Florence Nightingale.
Yoghurt's all the mana anyone needs.
Valkyries suck at delivering mail.
Every one her mark she always exceeds.
I think the story in this next sonnet is shaping up to be "Norse Mythological Figures Assimilating Into Modern Culture". And valkyries really aren't great at delivering mail--they're too busy with their melodic, full-throated laughter and killing.
Here are actually two spiders, one from last night and one from the night before, in one epic film;
That's two blockbuster tracks off the Ranma 1/2 soundtrack, going out to all you early 90s anime fans out there.
On Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, I watched the 1981 BBC adaptation of The Winter's Tale with breakfast. I'd never read the play. I enjoyed it, though I can see why it's not counted amongst Shakespeare's greatest. It's intriguingly schizophrenic, and I wondered if it was one of the plays where Shakespeare might have actually been only one of a group of playwrights. The first half of the play feels like a variation on Oedipus Rex, with a few roles shuffled about and exaggerated, with the focus placed on the stubborn and paranoid king of Sicilia. He's sort of a King Lear character. Though he retains his throne, he exhibits Lear's jealousy early on, but it's his friends and family who become exiles, rather than the king himself.
There's a psychological credibility to the king's inability to believe his wife's innocence and to quickly and harshly condemn those who would act as her advocates--the strength of his love for her provoking an equally boundless and senseless passion in retaliation to the slightest possible threat to their relationship. Actually, the impression I had was that the king had himself begun to loose interest in his wife, couldn't believe that he would, so he blamed his wife and his brother. The affectionate conversations at the beginning of the play do seem oddly forced and over the top, and at the end of the play the idea of time's toll on affection is directly referred to by the King and another character.
Or, it may be an even more fascinating a statement on the contradictions that make human behaviour so inscrutable--it's possible Leontes loved his wife too much and not enough.
The second half of the play unexpectedly veers into romance and comedy, with Leontes' daughter, Perdita, having been, Oedipus-like, abandoned as a baby by the king's order, becoming sixteen years later the subject of the play. I actually enjoyed this portion a great deal more, though there's less to say about it--much of the dialogue is given to a robber named Autolycus and a slow witted shepherd, and their story is told alongside a tale of hidden identities involving Perdita and her love for the disguised prince of Bohemia, whose father, King Polixenes, is also disguised. A lot of familiar elements here for Shakespeare, the point this time apparently being the juxtaposition of family, romance, deception, and the truth of fundamental motivations revealed when no-one has to worry about the identities they're attached to.
I fully expected the end of the play to be tragic, with the King of Sicilia having an incestuous affair with his daughter (ala Oedipus) and lots of people dying--which is apparently what happened in the source material Shakespeare drew from. Instead, there's an extremely odd happy ending. I'm not sure the tragic ending would have really added anything, so maybe this is one instance where it's okay to let the audience feel good. What the hell, we deserve it.
It was a good production--Jeremy Kemp was fine as the King of Sicilia, though my favourites were Rikki Fulton as Autolycus and Robert Stephens as Polixenes, who had a sort of Oscar Wilde quality that added an unobtrusive flavour to a character who's otherwise there almost solely to serve the plot. But this was my favourite exchange in the play;
PERDITA
[To POLIXENES] Sir, welcome:
It is my father's will I should take on me
The hostess-ship o' the day.
To CAMILLO
You're welcome, sir.
Give me those flowers there, Dorcas. Reverend sirs,
For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming and savour all the winter long:
Grace and remembrance be to you both,
And welcome to our shearing!
POLIXENES
Shepherdess,
A fair one are you--well you fit our ages
With flowers of winter.
PERDITA
Sir, the year growing ancient,
Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter, the fairest
flowers o' the season
Are our carnations and streak'd gillyvors,
Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our rustic garden's barren; and I care not
To get slips of them.
POLIXENES
Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?
PERDITA
For I have heard it said
There is an art which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.
POLIXENES
Say there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean
But nature makes that mean: so, over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race: this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is nature.
PERDITA
So it is.
POLIXENES
Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,
And do not call them bastards.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
The Good Cheese is the Cheese You Know
Last night's tweets;
The big box is the one that won't open.
Good cheese is quite impossible to slice.
Don't submit any requests to Oden.
Your boxes and cheeses aren't worth his price.
My last tweet was retweeted by AllTheCheeses, which apparently republishes every tweet that includes the word "cheeses" (plural). It is with solemn reverence I accept this honour.
Before anyone gets too excited, I was only talking about those little Babybell cheeses that come in the red wax. They are good.
I finally had a chance to go to the movies yesterday--I went with my sister to see Bruno, which I enjoyed, though not as much as I thought I was going to. Maybe it's just that it was impossible for it to live up to the expectations it generated--Bruno's interview with the terrorist leader wasn't nearly as interesting as I'd hoped, though it was fascinating in itself to see this guy talking to Bruno. I guess it should come as no surprise that a terrorist would come off as an exceptionally focused man.
Ron Paul, on the other hand, seemed spacey as usual, which maybe actually speaks well for him. What struck me most about that segment was how oblivious Paul seemed, and how he began calling Bruno a "queer" when most people would have figured filming was still going on (as Roger Ebert pointed out in his review). And for the first time I actually started to seriously think maybe Ron Paul is dumb enough to have not known about the racist newsletters he published for around fifteen years. The way he lets his trend-slave people lead him around now is maybe the way he let radical right wingers lead him around in the past.
It's nice to see audiences comfortable with the amount of sexuality portrayed onscreen in this movie. Bruno's interviews with Christian counsellors committed to turning gay men straight turns out to be less fascinating for explorations of their ingrained homophobia as it is for an exploration of their misogyny--the second guy goes on and on about how women talk too much, never get to the point, and seem silly--as though to say, "Yes, I get it, women are horrible." All the undersized lederhosen and exercise bike dildos in the world could not make Bruno seem more deeply disturbed these guys.
Later in the evening, I reached level 30 in World of Warcraft. Yatta. My sister apparently got a job at the Anaheim BlizzCon next month--she's going to run a shuffleboard game. She hasn't found out if she gets to dress up yet.
The big box is the one that won't open.
Good cheese is quite impossible to slice.
Don't submit any requests to Oden.
Your boxes and cheeses aren't worth his price.
My last tweet was retweeted by AllTheCheeses, which apparently republishes every tweet that includes the word "cheeses" (plural). It is with solemn reverence I accept this honour.
Before anyone gets too excited, I was only talking about those little Babybell cheeses that come in the red wax. They are good.
I finally had a chance to go to the movies yesterday--I went with my sister to see Bruno, which I enjoyed, though not as much as I thought I was going to. Maybe it's just that it was impossible for it to live up to the expectations it generated--Bruno's interview with the terrorist leader wasn't nearly as interesting as I'd hoped, though it was fascinating in itself to see this guy talking to Bruno. I guess it should come as no surprise that a terrorist would come off as an exceptionally focused man.
Ron Paul, on the other hand, seemed spacey as usual, which maybe actually speaks well for him. What struck me most about that segment was how oblivious Paul seemed, and how he began calling Bruno a "queer" when most people would have figured filming was still going on (as Roger Ebert pointed out in his review). And for the first time I actually started to seriously think maybe Ron Paul is dumb enough to have not known about the racist newsletters he published for around fifteen years. The way he lets his trend-slave people lead him around now is maybe the way he let radical right wingers lead him around in the past.
It's nice to see audiences comfortable with the amount of sexuality portrayed onscreen in this movie. Bruno's interviews with Christian counsellors committed to turning gay men straight turns out to be less fascinating for explorations of their ingrained homophobia as it is for an exploration of their misogyny--the second guy goes on and on about how women talk too much, never get to the point, and seem silly--as though to say, "Yes, I get it, women are horrible." All the undersized lederhosen and exercise bike dildos in the world could not make Bruno seem more deeply disturbed these guys.
Later in the evening, I reached level 30 in World of Warcraft. Yatta. My sister apparently got a job at the Anaheim BlizzCon next month--she's going to run a shuffleboard game. She hasn't found out if she gets to dress up yet.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Yes, But What is It REALLY?
Twitter Sonnet #39
No-one knows a cure for delinquency.
No-one in Second Life speaks English now.
Schwarzenegger's on E.T.'s frequency.
Deanna Troi was a real tranquil frau.
The day's already lain its plans for you.
Calmly and quietly without complaint.
So quit trying to decide what to do.
The house is built, all you decide is paint.
Quests well begun is mostly levelled up.
There's no business like big bean burritos.
It's second to tequila in your cup.
Mark the merry massacred mosquitoes.
A transvestite and a mislaid letter
Might make Oedipus Rex even better.
Last night Tim ran my World of Warcraft undead warrior through some really tough place in the southern Barrens and I got a nice new axe called "Corpsemaker". I also found some cornbread--"I hope it's not that lousy Nostromo cornbread," I told Tim. I almost said, "They didn't have cornbread in the Middle Ages!" but then I found a blunderbuss.
I miss the blunderbuss in American McGee's Alice. I wish I could get my copy of that game working again . . . I've been meaning to re-read the Alice books again in preparation for the Tim Burton movie. Well, it's a flimsy excuse, really--I love those books, and the movie looks like it's going to resemble them as much as Ghostbusters resembles Hamlet.
Which reminds me, it looks like there's going to be a discussion panel at Comic-Con called "Was Bram Stoker the Joss Whedon of His Day?" I can answer that one for you right now;
No. No he wasn't.
He was the Bram Stoker of his day. Sure they had a thing or two in common--vampires, yes, though perhaps more saliently they put spins on older gothic conventions. But if you're judging an artist by his resemblance to what's come before, one could as easily say Oscar Wilde was the Whedon of his day, Shakespeare was the Whedon of his day, and Roger Cormen was the Whedon of his day. There are no original story ideas, really, and such similarities really only serve to illustrate patterns of audience reaction to art. Or, I suspect, in this case the similarities are discussed to impart some value to one or the other for people desperate for justification in honouring one while most think more highly of the other.
You know what, nevermind, people really are cattle, it's necessary. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. Alfred Hitchcock said actors were cattle, and he had a high regard for several of them.
No-one knows a cure for delinquency.
No-one in Second Life speaks English now.
Schwarzenegger's on E.T.'s frequency.
Deanna Troi was a real tranquil frau.
The day's already lain its plans for you.
Calmly and quietly without complaint.
So quit trying to decide what to do.
The house is built, all you decide is paint.
Quests well begun is mostly levelled up.
There's no business like big bean burritos.
It's second to tequila in your cup.
Mark the merry massacred mosquitoes.
A transvestite and a mislaid letter
Might make Oedipus Rex even better.
Last night Tim ran my World of Warcraft undead warrior through some really tough place in the southern Barrens and I got a nice new axe called "Corpsemaker". I also found some cornbread--"I hope it's not that lousy Nostromo cornbread," I told Tim. I almost said, "They didn't have cornbread in the Middle Ages!" but then I found a blunderbuss.
I miss the blunderbuss in American McGee's Alice. I wish I could get my copy of that game working again . . . I've been meaning to re-read the Alice books again in preparation for the Tim Burton movie. Well, it's a flimsy excuse, really--I love those books, and the movie looks like it's going to resemble them as much as Ghostbusters resembles Hamlet.
Which reminds me, it looks like there's going to be a discussion panel at Comic-Con called "Was Bram Stoker the Joss Whedon of His Day?" I can answer that one for you right now;
No. No he wasn't.
He was the Bram Stoker of his day. Sure they had a thing or two in common--vampires, yes, though perhaps more saliently they put spins on older gothic conventions. But if you're judging an artist by his resemblance to what's come before, one could as easily say Oscar Wilde was the Whedon of his day, Shakespeare was the Whedon of his day, and Roger Cormen was the Whedon of his day. There are no original story ideas, really, and such similarities really only serve to illustrate patterns of audience reaction to art. Or, I suspect, in this case the similarities are discussed to impart some value to one or the other for people desperate for justification in honouring one while most think more highly of the other.
You know what, nevermind, people really are cattle, it's necessary. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. Alfred Hitchcock said actors were cattle, and he had a high regard for several of them.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
I am a Rogue Tetris Block
A picture of the moon I took as I was walking home from Tim's house on Friday.
Last night's tweets;
The day's already lain its plans for you.
Calmly and quietly without complaint.
So quit trying to decide what to do.
The house is built, all you decide is paint.
The Comic-Con's programming schedule's now its web site, and it looks like I'll be spending practically all day in Hall H on the 23rd, the first official day of the Con. I'd camp a spot in the room just for Terry Gilliam, but I'm certainly interested in seeing Tim Burton discuss Alice in Wonderland--though, in terms of articulate directors, Gilliam and Burton are kind of at opposite ends of the spectrum, Gilliam being extraordinarily articulate, while Burton usually seems like he wishes someone would cut his tongue out to remove the pressure. I'd certainly like to see what James Cameron has to show, too. Looks like I'll have to sit through the Twilight panel, though. Maybe there'll be some teenage girls I can seduce with body glitter and blank stares.
It's interesting that practically all of the really big panels are on Thursday. Anyone hoping to get in to Hall H is going to need to get there early, too early really to pick up a pass first, which means everyone must get their passes on Wednesday, preview night, which you can only do if you bought the full, four day pass. So if you have to work on Wednesday, or you only bought a pass for Thursday, you're out of luck. On the one hand, I can see the rationale as it would encourage people to buy the four day pass, but the schedule's only just been released and the organisers must have known passes would be sold out long before this. Meanwhile, practically nothing's going on on Saturday--well, nothing "big". I'll certainly want to see Ray Bradbury that day. It's with some pleasure I see that, after years of headliner treatment, Zack Snyder and his Watchmen pastiche have been relegated to sharing a panel with Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy upstairs on Saturday night in Room6BCF. I like Hamill and Conroy, but nonetheless--HAHAHAHAHA! YOU SUCK, SNYDER, YOU SUCK AND EVERYONE KNOWS NOW.
Otherwise, let's see . . . I'll want to see the live Rifftrax performance, I'll probably want to check out Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku's Dollhouse panel (hopefully the fact that I'm one of five people who like the show will be reflected in crowd size), and I'm going to have a hard time choosing between seeing Henry Selick and Neil Gaiman on the Coraline panel or seeing Brian Henson, Rockne O'Bannon, Ben Browder, and Claudia Black on the Farscape anniversary panel. I'll probably definitely see Amanda Palmer's CBLDF live figure drawing something-or-other--it's nice knowing I'll be able to catch at least one AFP performance (of sorts) since I can't drive across town to see her and Gaiman perform at The Casbah. I've been to The Casbah, and it's a cosy little venue, making it all the more irritating that the show's happening during Comic-Con.
All in all, it's looking like a pretty good Comic-Con. Even Sunday looks worthwhile, with the American Dad panel. Maybe this is just an indicator of American Dad's tiny following. Patrick Stewart's the shit on that show, folks.
I feel like these past few days are probably the last where I won't be really busy as I work to get ahead on my comic before the Con, which has oddly been a lot of pressure. I ended up doing practically nothing yesterday, starting a bunch of things without finishing any. I finally gave up and started writing the script for chapter 30. I felt a lot better afterwards, and ended up watching Planet Terror and drinking tequila. It's such a shame Robert Rodriguez lost out on directing The Princess of Mars. Maybe he wouldn't have kept the nudity, either, but he'd probably be more likely to keep it than Andrew Stanton. As much as I do love WALL-E, the guy's just not the right fit for this material. But then again, we don't really live in a world that would accept an all nude, Sci-Fi blockbuster, do we? Which is all kinds of sad.
Here's some footage of Tim's cat, Charlie, I took on Friday night;
The music is Robert Schumann's "Traumerei" with lyrics supplied by Kafuka Fuura of Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei. I forgot to mention what a fantastic day Friday was for anime--both a new Haruhi Suzumiya and the season premiere of Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei had finally been subtitled. I was very happy to see the new stuff maintains the fantastic quality of the previous seasons.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Delinquency as Disease
Last night's tweets;
No-one knows a cure for delinquency.
No-one in Second Life speaks English now.
Schwarzenegger's on E.T.'s frequency.
Deanna Troi was a real tranquil frau.
I watched Kenji Mizoguchi's 1936 film, Osaka Elegy last night. Like his Sisters of the Gion, another of his films from the era, this one demonstrates how women are pinioned by a network of society's subtle mechanisms in 1930s Japan. It's a melodramatic tale of a young woman who's gradually forced into being a sort of high class prostitute as the pressure of her father's debts leds her to become the mistress of two wealthy men.
The movie stars a young Isuzu Yamada, who somewhat resembles a young Joan Crawford, and, combined with the film's plot, I couldn't help thinking of Crawford's string of "shopgirl" movies in the 1930s, which typically featured Crawford as a poor, working class woman who faces the dilemma of exchanging her virtue for a more comfortable lifestyle. But the steps shown in Osaka Elegy down the path of social disgrace are considerably more credible, despite cumulatively amounting to a melodrama. Because each step is believable, the brutal conclusion works like the end of a good film noir--Yamada's character is no femme fatale, she's more like the poor schmuck noir lead who tried to do the right thing but just had one too many turns of bad luck with her riskier decisions.
Yamada would later become a Kurosawa regular, her most memorable performance perhaps being the Lady Macbeth character is Throne of Blood, Kurosawa's adaptation of Macbeth. But Osaka Elegy also features a far more prominent Kurosawa regular, Takashi Shimura, in a tiny role as a police detective. Maybe it's the weight of the later movies preceding him for me, but even in such a brief role, I couldn't help noticing what a presence he already was onscreen. He doesn't even get a single close-up, but he managed to communicate so much from a distance.
I walked to Tim's yesterday and I think I'm still a bit tired from it. The DMV's lagged on sending me my car registration, so I'm walking everywhere. One of the reasons I went to the zoo on Thursday was that was my last day with a motor vehicle. Here're a few more clips from that trip;
The music's "Madiana" by Josephine Baker.
No-one knows a cure for delinquency.
No-one in Second Life speaks English now.
Schwarzenegger's on E.T.'s frequency.
Deanna Troi was a real tranquil frau.
I watched Kenji Mizoguchi's 1936 film, Osaka Elegy last night. Like his Sisters of the Gion, another of his films from the era, this one demonstrates how women are pinioned by a network of society's subtle mechanisms in 1930s Japan. It's a melodramatic tale of a young woman who's gradually forced into being a sort of high class prostitute as the pressure of her father's debts leds her to become the mistress of two wealthy men.
The movie stars a young Isuzu Yamada, who somewhat resembles a young Joan Crawford, and, combined with the film's plot, I couldn't help thinking of Crawford's string of "shopgirl" movies in the 1930s, which typically featured Crawford as a poor, working class woman who faces the dilemma of exchanging her virtue for a more comfortable lifestyle. But the steps shown in Osaka Elegy down the path of social disgrace are considerably more credible, despite cumulatively amounting to a melodrama. Because each step is believable, the brutal conclusion works like the end of a good film noir--Yamada's character is no femme fatale, she's more like the poor schmuck noir lead who tried to do the right thing but just had one too many turns of bad luck with her riskier decisions.
Yamada would later become a Kurosawa regular, her most memorable performance perhaps being the Lady Macbeth character is Throne of Blood, Kurosawa's adaptation of Macbeth. But Osaka Elegy also features a far more prominent Kurosawa regular, Takashi Shimura, in a tiny role as a police detective. Maybe it's the weight of the later movies preceding him for me, but even in such a brief role, I couldn't help noticing what a presence he already was onscreen. He doesn't even get a single close-up, but he managed to communicate so much from a distance.
I walked to Tim's yesterday and I think I'm still a bit tired from it. The DMV's lagged on sending me my car registration, so I'm walking everywhere. One of the reasons I went to the zoo on Thursday was that was my last day with a motor vehicle. Here're a few more clips from that trip;
The music's "Madiana" by Josephine Baker.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Can't You Think of a Question for the Ourang Outang?
The music in that one is "Light of Green" by Nakagawa Koutarou from the Code Geass soundtrack. I was finally able to get to the zoo yesterday because I'd somehow finished the last two pages of the new Venia's Travels on Wednesday night, and the zoo finally has decent hours for people like me during the summer.
I got a lot more pictures and video than I'm posting now--I may post more to-morrow.
These hyenas really seemed to want to go somewhere and do something. The music's Bernard Herrmann from the Psycho soundtrack.
This was already late in the day--the zoo was closing at 9pm and I'd gotten there at around 6pm, but the time really flew by.
Camels.
A kind of tree kangaroo. He'd been sulking with his back turned until the moment I took the photo.
The zoo's doing something called "Elephant Odyssey" right now, but this topiary elephant is the only elephant I managed to see. I did see a hippo, though;
The kids were particularly annoying here--they clearly didn't care at all about the hippopotamus, and were just bored out of their annoying little skulls. The music's one of the variations on Yukino Miyazawa's theme by Shiro Sagisu from the His and Her Circumstances soundtrack.
Slumbering gila monster. The glare on the glass in the reptile house made it just about impossible to get good pictures.
These snakes had plans, I could tell;
The music's "Grey Clouds" by Franz Liszt, which I got off the Eyes Wide Shut soundtrack.
This might as well be video--this turtle did not move a muscle.
View of Balboa Park from inside the zoo.
A pig of some kind.
Twitter Sonnet #38
All centaurs are more human than satyrs.
Neither of them ought to be sawed in half.
In dreams dwell the advocates for waiters.
Who are real humans in the final math.
Italian album takes twenty seeds.
Now deluged by sundry contributions.
Every earnest, hidden muppet has needs.
But they skip the bukkake ablutions.
There's no rain holds a candle to whiskey.
But the Roo cannot to-night be consoled.
Camera weary at dusk is the monkey.
But no-one in this house has yet been sold.
The convenient vehicle is too tall.
Teacup totem ladders too quickly fall.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Venia's Fancy Footwork
The new Venia's Travels is online. I'm pitching this one as Alfred Hitchcock meets Alice in Wonderland. It may distress foot fetishists.
I went to the zoo to-day and took a lot of pictures and video, most of which I will probably post to-morrow, but I wanted to post this peacock right now. It was wandering around in the middle of the road and didn't mind me walking right up--it was so much like my hippogriff dream.
The music's Bernard Herrmann from the Vertigo soundtrack. I doubt I'll be keeping any of the native sound on these videos as you mostly just hear people screaming--children, mainly, but an alarming number of adults.
There's an intriguing new website promoting Caitlin R. Kiernan's next book, in case you're wondering.
I went to the zoo to-day and took a lot of pictures and video, most of which I will probably post to-morrow, but I wanted to post this peacock right now. It was wandering around in the middle of the road and didn't mind me walking right up--it was so much like my hippogriff dream.
The music's Bernard Herrmann from the Vertigo soundtrack. I doubt I'll be keeping any of the native sound on these videos as you mostly just hear people screaming--children, mainly, but an alarming number of adults.
There's an intriguing new website promoting Caitlin R. Kiernan's next book, in case you're wondering.