Newly Digital: Professor Kalsey respectfully requests you submit your birth-of-computing memoir via the magic of Trackback.
Oh, you bet, Adam. But after the fine and sunny weekend.
[via the ever estimable Waxy.org]
Buy Comics Now
I’d be remiss in not noting both Fantagraphics‘ online plea for patronage and the P-I’s immediate front-page coverage.
I’ve also written a news story on this for Tablet and filed it, but, um, it ain’t up yet. I’ll be doing a follow-up for the print ish next week as well.
For those of you too lazy to follow the links, here’s the deal: Fantagraphics is hoping to raise an additional $80,000 over and above their usual monthly revenue. The money is needed in order to pay off some loans taken out a couple of years ago to make up some revenue lost when a former distributor went bust and stiffed the publisher for about $72 grand.
How do they hope to raise the money? By having you, the loyal, discriminating, intelligent lover of the superior comic product buy more than you normally would from America’s Least Businesslike Comic Company! Roughly, that is.
Anyway, that’s the deal. If you figure you might pick up a Fanta title sometime in the next five years, now’s the time to do it. Go to the website, pick yourself out somethin’ nice, and make with the credit card, baby.
OUR LIBRARY OPENS!
The Capitol Hill Branch of the Seattle Public Library opens today, finally, after a two-year construction process that sadly exactly coincided with the depths of the recession here. We might go have a look-see.
The Swains at the Little Red Hen, Greenlake
I neglected to blog our Thusday evening visit to Rosita’s and then the Little Red Hen in the seventies of Woodlawn, hard by Greenlake.
We had a couple of margaritas at Rosita’s along with dinner, and judging by the scope and scale of my hangover, they were much stronger than I thought they were at the time I consumed them.
The reason for venturing out of Capitol Hill into the uncharted Teva-and-Bjirkenstock reaches of furthest Greenlake, within eyeshot of the former Honey Bear, was dear former bandmate Barry Semple, formerly of the Bare Knuckle Boxers, The Hammerdowns, and occasionally also of Faith and Disease.
Barry is a precise, disciplined drummer who is also reliable as the sunrise, and this makes him an in-demand commodity in the Seattle music community. He’s been playing with the Souvenirs for some time as well, and that country gig landed him the one that saw him on the stage of the Little Red Hen with The Swains. Although the band mentioned their website onstage, I couldn’t raise it via Google; here are some tracks from a show on KEXP, without Barry, alas.
It was great to see Bear, and to hear this band; they play straight up honky-tonk country. In fact, the other big news of the night to me was the bar: it’s a straight-up honky tonk itself, apparently airdropped into the wilder reaches of our fair and Nader-lovin’ city from Concrete, or maybe Amarillo, circa 1972.
For me, this is great news. While it’s odd that I really enjoy seeing music in clubs where I’m likely to actually bump into the same rednecks that beat the crap out of me in high school, I vastly prefer the hipster-free vibe of a place like the Little Red Hen to the cooler-than-thou, let’s all stand around and frown scene that can develop at venues like the impeccably pedigreed Tractor Tavern.
Not to knock the Tractor – it’s a great place to play, and a great place to see a show. But it’s great to know about a joint that offers country music in its’ native environment, giant hats, dancing, torn red vinyl upholstery, and all.
No Lone Star, though, sorry to say.
Salam gets a gig
Salam’s story: The Guardian brings Salam of Where is Raed? aboard. Congrats, Salam!
Skot's "Holy War"
…
My swan is, I mourn, dead and ugly.
Gone. Eaten by the angry, traitorous
Shit that lives and lives not, for
The iMac is alive and not alive,
Canny and mechanical, and,
Finally, an abrasive on my tender cock.Fuck you, gentle iMac, you kicker
Of slight balls, thou eggbeater of
My goddamn fucking nuts. You siezed
Up like a chilly epileptic when I asked
For nothing but internet access,…
An excerpt from skot’s latest masterpiece of verse.
The Animatrix (Tablet SIFF Review)
The Animatrix
5/31, the Egyptian, 9:30 pm, limited availabliity
7/10
Segment, Director (notes)
1. The Second Renaissance Part 1*, Mahiro Maeda (both segments, limited previous US release credits)
2. The Second Renaissance Part 2*
3. Program, Yoshiaki Kawajiri (a Vampire Hunter D film, Bloodlust)
4. Beyond, Kouji Morimoto (animator on Kiki’s Delivery Service)
5. World Record, Takeshi Koike
6. Kid’s Story*, Shinichiro Watanabe (Vampire Hunter D, more)
7. Matriculated, Peter Chung (Aeon Flux)
8. A Detective Story, Shinichiro Watanabe (Vampire Hunter D, more)
9. Final Flight of the Osiris*, Andy Jones (animation supervisor or contributor to Final Fantasy, Titanic)
*Written by Matrix creators Joel and Andy Wachowski
The May 31 screening of all nine Animatrix shorts at the Egyptian is likely to be one of the most coveted tickets at SIFF this year, coming four days prior to the release date of the Animatrix DVD on June 3. The print I saw at the press screening was on film, which surprised and pleased me. On the whole, the shorts will appeal most strongly to hard-core Matrix fans; but there are works of genuine merit as animated short films in the mix.
The Miyazaki-esque Beyond and the previously-released hyper-realist CG work, The Final Flight of The Osiris, benefited most from the large-screen showing. Osiris was presented in February with Dreamcatcher and looks very much like the CG animated film Final Fantasy. That’s no accident, as the director, Andy Jones, was the animation supervisor for Final Fantasy. We learn how the denizens of Zion gain knowledge of the robot army that menaces them in Matrix Reloaded. While the film succeeds, I was still annoyed by the CGI synthespians. Why not just use real actors, instead of failing with these digital dolls as we’ve seen repeatedly over the last few years?
The best film of the set is Beyond, in which a glitch in the Matrix’s rendering software creates a haunted house that is gleefully explored by some Japanese kids. Director Kouji Morimoto, who worked on Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, creates an affecting, beautifully imagined and visualized vignette of urban Japanese life.
With the good comes the mundane and the bad, and this set is no exception. It came as a surprise to me that the film that stood out as at least ill-advised and at worst lawsuit bait had been scripted by the Wachowskis. Kid’s Story directly equates teen suicide with joining the rebellion against the Matrix. I winced, and so will others, until one day we read about it in the paper. I have no idea what they were thinking.
I could go on, but SIFF has requested pre-release reviews remain capsules, so I’ll hold my peace for now. All in all, no surprises, and film snobs might have a better time elsewhere. Matrix geeks, however, won’t care what film snobs think, and so it ever shall be.
Originally written for and posted to the Tablet SIFF Reviews board.
(I’ll be writing a longer review of the films for Cinescape as well.)
American Splendor (Tablet SIFF Review)
American Splendor
Dir: Shri Sprinter Berman & Robert Pulcini
USA, 2003 : 100 minutes
Wed. 6/04 @ 7:00 pm Egyptian Theatre & Mon 6/9 @9:30 Pacific Place Cinemas
RATING: 9/10
Paul Giamatti’s spectacular portrayal of comic book author Harvey Pekar amazes. When Giamatti’s Pekar leaves the green room for Letterman’s stage the mid-80’s, the filmmakers pan to a monitor showing the real Pekar’s actual appearance. It’s hard to recognize that we’re looking at two different men. Giamatti, who is also seen onscreen with the real Pekar circa 2002, manages to inhabit both the Pekar we first saw on Late Night and the expressively drawn versions seen in Pekar’s comics, drawn by different artists.
He slouches, he slumps, his eyes bulge. He is really Harvey. Except he’s not. The thoughtful, funny script has a ball playing with this, just as Pekar does in his books. I can’t do the film justice here. Go see it. Giamatti’s performance is only one of many things about the film that made it a wonderful moviegoing experience.
(Another reviewer on the Tablet blog was not as enthused about the film, put off by Pekar’s incessant, whining self-pity. A possible difference is that I’m a comic-book geek who’s long loved Pekar’s work. If anything, the film lightens Pekar’s comic-book portrayal by several shades of depressive, misanthropic black.)
Originally written for and posted to the Tablet SIFF Reviews board.
—
Additionally, I’ve been looking forward to the film since I had heard about it last year, and was very encouraged when it won some awards at Sundance earlier this year. I confess to having eagerly enjoyed the non-sequitir appearances by Harvey on the Letterman show in the 1980’s, and have vivid recollections of his final appearance.
An interesting aspect of seeing it now, in the blog era, is that to one extent or another, Pekar’s been blogging his own life for damn near twenty-five years now. And making damn fine literature out of it, too. A particular difference of his execution versus mine, in blogland, is that there’s serious structural work, conscious literary creation of a character named Harvey Pekar, in his comics.
Whereas here, I’m speaking in a very unselfconscious first person voice, actively seeking to present the words here in my own, actual personal manner, only occasionally seeking careful literary control. I suppose this may be a part of what Anne and others chew on in the great “is blogging journalism” debate, from another angle.
Here’s a corollary question: is American Splendor, the comic book, journalism? What about the movie?
(I looked and looked for a website for the film – but couldn’t come up with one!)
Tablet online SIFF reviews
SIFF Reviews: Tablet’s online reviews, to which I am a contributor. Unfortunately, it’s a bulletin-board style site without permalinks, so I’ll be reposting my reviews here as well.
Tablet also ran my profile on Jamie Hook and his film, The Naked Proof, this week, as well as a review of a Canadian film I saw for them, Marion Bridge. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have the new issue’s content online quite yet, so I can’t link.
Rereading the pieces, I was underwhelmed. The Marion Bridge review was 150 words, which is a tough length for film, for me, and since I was of two minds on the film, I felt the review was scattered. also, the format required a numeric rating scale, 1 to 10, and I didn’t know if one should use the scale like an averaged scale, where 5 would be average, or like grades, where 7 or 8 would be average. I decided if they wanted grades, they’d have used grades. I gave it a five, but it seems like everyone else was thinking the other way, as 8 is the average score other reviewers offered. Stupid symbolic ratings.
The Hook piece was OK, but felt very choppy to me, and unfortunately was marred by an editing goof in which one of two dates for the film was partially removed, leaving the impression that the film was playing in two theaters on one day. Ah well, them’s the breaks. Hopefully there won’t be a long line of distraught Jamie Hook and Charles Mudede fans waiting at the wrong cinema come opening night.
Tussin Up returns
The Tussin-Up Web Archive is now restored, withh nearly-complete functionality (the guestbook hasn’t been brought back yet). Gallery also is hosting all my photos now, but there’s some sort of issue with album grouping, which makes it harder to apply changes to a broad selection of albums easily.
Therefore the Tussin albums have a grey-blue background for now and display some needless Galler nav-chrome.
I also implemented rollovers in the top frame, for fun. Just to see what comes out of ImageReady, I did it all automagically and, man, that’s some needlessly complex code, lemme tell ya. It works, though, so what-evah.