Good luck with your Fourierism.
God help me, but in spite (or perhaps because) of it all, I adore Metropolitan.
Cue Nelson-esque “Haw-haw.”
Since the criticism began in late November, Planned Parenthood said, its card sales have risen, prompting extra card printings. The organization also is selling T-shirts with the words “Choice on Earth.” —via CNN.
It’s an ill wind blows no one any good.
A distracting thought, occasioned by having caught a repeat of first-season <em>Xena</em> on Oxygen earlier in the evening; also, an amusing <em>Buffy</em> link that involves calculus and matrix theory, courtesy the fine folks at Whedonesque.com.
The phrase, “A mighty princess, forged in the heat of battle,” is probably going to end up being one of the most important contributions of the ’90s to our on-going popular culture.
And, as promised: Vampire Population Ecology.
The truth is out there.
E, Nev. —The truth about Area 51 has finally been laid bare.
—via the irrepressible Daze Reader. (Hey. People Magazine did name Rumsfeld the sexiest Cabinet member...)
Better late than never.
A friend from South Africa passes this bit of old news along.
Desperately seeking perspective.
It’s when you’re chuckling mordantly over an English translation of a Russian tabloid article outing (as secretly straight) one half of a Europop faux-lesbian teen idol duo (currently on the verge of a phonetic American breakthrough) that you realize—
Well, I’m not sure what. But I think in the end it’s more funny than anything else.
Now that’s Homeland Security.
Via MetaFilter, the stirring tale of the Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency (1868-1975). (Includes an all-too-brief overview of long-forgotten Agency-inspired television programs.)
Fret not at the irresponsibility of the current administration in neglecting so grave a threat to our homeland: this agency emeritus is recruting. Find out how you might fit in.
The fruits of Serendip.
In the course of looking for a snarky quote on Lessing’s Canopus in Argos: Archives for an earlier squib (not that I’ve read it myself, mind; though I enjoyed The Good Terrorist lo these many years ago, I’ve yet to go through a serious Lessing phase, much as I haven’t gone through the Russians, or Dick; anyway, Canopus is famously held to be monumentally turgid in some circles, and I’m getting rather off-topic here) I stumbled over an interview with Thomas Disch, in which I learned the following (we join a conversation on his kids’ books already in progress):
TD: Yes, and others. And others still in the works. I’ll tell you one of my favorite ideas that I haven’t found a taker for yet—maybe there’s a publisher out there who wants me to write it for them—a book specifically for young girls titled So You Want To Be The Pope. It would resemble a career guide, explaining that, well, yes, nowadays girls aren’t yet allowed to be the Pope, but so many other barriers have fallen: so here is your plan for how to set about becoming the first female Pope. A perfectly serious book on the subject, that would talk about the history of the papacy. . . [laughs]
DH: I can see why some publishers might be a little wary.
TD: . . .and talk to a sensible, ambitious, idealistic young girl who would want to be the Pope. I think it would be a wonderful book.
Well, hell. I’d buy it in a heartbeat. —Until then, we should maybe add it to the Invisible Library..?
When you least expect it.
“You think so?” said Jenn.
“Eighty-five per cent,” I said, after a moment, and then the guy on stage we were talking about did this thing with his eyes and I knew. “Ninety-five,” I said, since it’s always a good thing to leave some room for error, even if (especially if) you’re known for this sort of thing.
See, when my birthday rolled around last year Jenn got me Mink Car and the McSweeney’s with They Might Be Giants doing the soundtrack and tickets to the show which would be at the Crystal Ballroom the very night I would turn 33. (Actually, I turned 33 at 11:11 AM EDT, but that’s neither here nor there.) —Unfortunately, due to some understandable delays in air travel, they didn’t make the show, and so the show was postponed until this past Friday. (And if it weren’t too late to urge you to go see They Might Be Giants in a ballroom where you can dance on air I’d do it—when they do “Clap Your Hands” off the new album and everybody starts pogoing in synch you get some amazing height, like off a trampoline or something, wow.)
But we weren’t talking about They Might Be Giants; we were talking about the opening act. Who were this guy with a guitar and this other guy, and they could sing and did some killer Everly-esque harmonizing and some physical comedy and if reviewers tend to say they do a Barenaked Ladies–Phish kind of thing, I’m afraid I’ll have to bow to their judgment; I don’t know from either referenced band. But I can tell you about snarky comedy that veers close to wet sentiment but skates the thin edge and comes back, and how if you’ve got the stones to do a rearrangement of “Don’t Let’s Start” when you’re opening for Johns Linnell and Flansburgh, you’d damn well better be able to pull it off like these guys did.
But it wasn’t even that we were talking about. “You think he’s the guy from Buffy,” said Jenn.
“Yeah,” I said. “The one without the guitar, I mean.”
And you know what?
Delightful things.
I’ve been a crab lately. I have, it’s true. Admit it. You didn’t want to say anything, but when I was out of sight you’d roll your eyes (lovingly, perhaps, but they would roll); out of earshot, and you’d sigh concernedly. (How expressive it can be: the sigh.)
But enough of all that! Enough of Ann Coulter and WorldCom and the appalling stupidity of Bush and co. Enough of disingenuous attempts to distract us by carping shrilly against judgments we all know are right (if rather touchingly petty in the bigger picture). Enough of worrying about the Mouse, for once. Or its cohorts and fellow-travelers. —Begone, the lot of you! Piss off! I want to be delighted.
And so: Dean Allen. For this, yes; a self-indulgent comic gem. But also because he pointed me to this.
Utah Phillips. Because even though my dad says Dick Cheney’s the right man for the job, I know Utah would still hit him right where it counts.
Stupid CSS tricks. —Also, stupidly glorious mathematical stunts I haven’t a hope in hell of ever understanding, but can just about manage to stand in stunned awe of.
Angela Carter. (How the hell did I manage to get this far without reading her?)
The Museum of Jurassic Technology, which is worth braving LA traffic for. Seriously. It is. You won’t believe me, you’ll be sitting there, stop-and-go, bullets of sunlight ricocheting off the chrome and glass all around you, cursing my name, you’ll pull off the highway and find the street corner and maybe five minutes later after parking and walking back you’ll stand in front of that unassuming little storefront and you’ll scoff, yeah, right, no fuckin’ way, Kip, you’re off your knob, but you’re there, you might as well go in, you’ve come all this way, so you punch the buzzer with an annoyed finger and then the door opens and in you step to the coolth of it and the darkness and—oh, oh my God—
The look on Jenn’s face, yesterday, when she showed me her first fan mail for title= Dicebox ::”>Dicebox, which is having some nice things said about it, here, and here, and over here. She’d told Chris it was okay to link to her, because he had before, and then there was this whole domain name fuckup (that, astonishingly enough, did not involve Verisign), and so to make sure people could find her again, she told him he could link again. (She’s been quite chary with the whole linking and promoting thing so far. “I want to have a full chapter done,” she says. “It can wait.” Maddening, perhaps, to impatient husbands like me, but it’s her call.) —Thing is, Scott McCloud saw Chris had linked to it, and so he assumed it was okay to let loose the hounds of hype. And even though Jenn says “He shouldn’t have done it! He was supposed to wait till I was ready!” she’s grinning like mad and she’s—I swear on anything you hold holy, a Bible, a Crowley biography, the Ifa oracle, whatever—she’s glowing. Little sparkles of light crackling off her. She got her first piece of unsolicited fanmail, you see…
—And while we’re on the subject of Scott McCloud, I’m also finding it inordinately amusing to say: “A search engine stole my eyeball!”
Paging Laura Miller.
Someone want (kindly but firmly) to explain to Ms. Miller and Salon’s crack team of copyeditors that Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore are not one and the same? —Though props nonetheless for attempting to recognize Dave Gibbons’ and David Lloyd’s respective work on Watchmen and V for Vendetta by crediting the (incorrect, but) scripter as a “co-author.” (Of course, I’m just assuming that’s what she meant by “co-author.” It could be that somehow the idea’d been gotten that Moore and Gaiman worked together on those books… “Stephen Sondheim, co-author of Jesus Christ Superstar—”
(Anyway.)
A little thing, really—
Does it ever bother anyone else that, in television commercials, when they go to swipe a credit card through a reader, which is something all of us have done (or so I am presuming; presuming, that is, an audience comprised almost wholly of those with little pieces of plastic in their pockets with magnetic strips on them that can be swiped through devices connected to modems that will transfer bits of information across phone lines and thus signify to a merchant whether you can pay for whatever it is you’re paying for)—you ever notice how they always run the cards through right-side up, so you can see the logo? Which, since the stripe is near the top of the card, is actually upside down, from a utilitarian point of view?
Does this bother anyone else out there? —It’s just me, isn’t it.
A thought.
Perhaps studying the manner in which sites like this one utterly fail to be convincing will help us to develop a better Turing test.
(Go. Look. See if you see what I mean. Then read this, and see if we’re right.)
PS: Don’t give her your email, whatever you do.
The power of the internet.
So. Early Wednesday morning I get this email Chris Staros, Brett Warnock’s better half over at Top Shelf Comics, had sent to various and sundry fans and industry types. Top Shelf’s book trade distributor had just announced they were filing for Chapter 11, which meant (even though they were good guys, and downright necessary in an industry pretty much controlled by one distributor) that the $80,000 Top Shelf had been hoping to see, they probably wouldn’t, which (in turn) meant that Top Shelf was in serious trouble. Staros was basically asking that everyone who could buy a Top Shelf book or three directly from them, to provide what they call an infusion of cash and keep the wheels turning and the fires lit and all that. And believe me, there are books on the Top Shelf list I want to order. So Jenn and I sit down and tick off a couple of things (mostly, we need to get the Strangehaven collections, but I wouldn’t mind a couple of the Hey, Mister books we don’t have yet), and I thought maybe I’d mention something here and maybe try to write up a squib for Plastic.com—you know, get the word out to the 20-some-odd people I can reach.
Well.
Thursday night, I get this email from Chris Staros (whose better half, you know, is Brett Warnock). Seems—thanks to mentions in such places as Neil Gaiman’s journal, and Warren Ellis’s world-shaking forum—Top Shelf comics had gone from out of business to more business they could handle in, like, 12 hours.
Twelve. Not even a single goddamn day.
Staros counsels patience, as they work diligently to fill the sudden flood of orders; but if you haven’t, go anyway and pitch in. Us, we’ll be ordering stuff probably this weekend, so Chris, Brett: be patient yourselves. And congratufuckinlations. Couldn’t happen to a nicer couple of comics publishers.
Just once.
I don’t know, maybe I’m behind the times, and you know, I don’t wanna hear about your “I don’t wanna think about it, it’s all too much, I’m overloaded” crap, just sit there and read this, for God’s sake, and then when you’re done go pick up your socks and put them back on.
Just once, just once I want to hear this done live. Where’s that schedule—
Couldn’t happen to a nicer Painter of Light.™
Run, don’t walk! It’s “Kick Thomas Kinkade Day” at Salon! Not just one, but two hatchet jobs!
Hey—it’s a dirty job...
An amusing factoid about yours truly.
Yes, it’s been a while. I could say the same about you, you know. Have you written? Have you called? No, you have not. It’s been hectic, you say. Yes, I’ve heard it before. And how, exactly, is that novel coming along? Or was it a screenplay? I forget.
I, at least, intend to make some sort of amends. I hereby offer up for your amusement, delectation and derision the following bit of autobiographical trivia: one of my all-time favorite movies is, yes, Joe Versus the Volcano. Go: find a copy (the video store will have it in stock, I guarantee), settle down, watch it. Better yet: pick up Rushmore and do a double feature; not that I’ve done it myself, but watching Joe again last night put me in mind of Wes Anderson and his loopily earnest mode of storytelling. Joe never quite manages Anderson’s lilting gravitas, but it’s still an interesting light by which to view the earlier flick, I think. That lack is probably what keeps Joe from being truly great.
—Hey. I said it was one of my favorites. I never said I thought it was one of the best.
