From the desk of Mattyoung

(Image from Incognito #4)


Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips totally murdered Maggie The Mechanic.  How is the internet not exploding?

Nick Cave:

At the Glastonbury Festival... "Cave strolls on stage and announces, "We're gonna dedicate this set to the late, great … Farah Fawcett."   After what is surely the greatest Michael Jackson snub of the weekend, the Bad Seeds explode into action with their most visceral, confrontational sound since they started out as the Birthday Party..."


and


Achewood on Michael Jackson:

"Welcome to the only game in town."


Worth a look.
via The Beat. 

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A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope
Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III

If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2.

Consider: at the end of RotS, Bail Organan orders 3PO's memory wiped but not R2's. He wouldn't make the distinction casually. Both droids know that Yoda and Obi-Wan are alive and are plotting sedition with the Senator from Alderaan. They know that Amidala survived long enough to have twins and could easily deduce where they went. However, R2 must make an impassioned speech to the effect that he is far more use to them with his mind intact: he has observed Palpatine and Anakin at close quarters for many years, knows much that is useful and is one of the galaxy's top experts at hacking into other people's systems. Also he can lie through his teeth with a straight face. Organa, in immediate need of espionage resources, agrees.

For the next 20 years, as far as 3PO knows, he is the property of Captain Antilles, doing protocol duties on a diplomatic transport. He is vaguely aware of the existence of the princess but doesn't know much about her. Wherever 3PO goes, being as loud and obvious as he always is, his unobtrusive little counterpart goes with him. 3PO is R2's front man. ( Read more... )

While clearing out my bookmarks on this rainy summer night, I found some links of interest.
Including the one where I got the above pic on the creation of the old school Cylons for the new show, and Ron Moore answering questions about the finale.

Yeah, I'm so far behind the interwebs cycle.  MoCCA news later.

Hello internet,  how are you today? 

I’m much better since last we spoke, in large part because my thesis project is done.  Done and dead as Dillinger.  Long live the project, the project is dead (Not entirely true, it’ll be appearing serially on the web soon, but for right now I’m taking an important rest).

Here’s the cover (front and back wraparound):


It’s been two weeks tomorrow since I turned it in, and I hadn’t realized how quickly time has slipped by, but I suddenly realized that I’d gotten some very important support from people reading this journal and not saying how things ended would’ve been damn unsociable.

Of course, the conclusion is still pending.

I turned it in two weeks ago, on a Thursday which was also a day of the last week of classes for CCS, which means there’s a ton of graduation preparation and grading insanity that goes on and leaving my little project floating in the ether. (Not unsurprising since this whole affair has been more notions than factoids.)  I may have graduated, I may have not.  I’ll find out eventually, and I’m giving them until the end of the month before I start prodding for an answer.  I did drop some “eh, eh” questions at the graduation reception, but overall I’m unconcerned.

I’m vasselating between “Fuck them!  I have to survive on my merits!  I don’t need their overpriced piece of paper!” and “Y’know, as long as I’m being gouged monthly for the cost of that overblown piece of paper, I might as well actually get it.”

Right now, though, there’s a ton of work to be done (and work to be found) – projects piling up that I put off since mid-March because of S.P.A.C.E. and the graduation attempt mark II.  Despite how that sounds, it actually fills me with this huge sense of elation.  I can finally start tackling them after being stuck in the slow lane for so long!  There’s shit-tons to do, and I start… well, I’ve already started.  Hopefully, I will continue to with that same sense of urgency.

Next time: S.P.A.C.E… what happened with that?

The US Supreme Court Says:"It's all right to force your 13-year-old daughter, sister, or niece to strip down to her undies, shake out her training bra, and swear on her favorite teddy bear that she totally, double dutch swears she's not holding any ibuprofen.

Without calling anyone's parents."


See Ruth Bader Ginsberg talking about this case and others where differences of perspective come up:

"After Redding was searched and nothing was found, she was put in a chair outside the vice principal's office for over two hours, and her mother wasn't called," Ginsburg noted during oral arguments. "What was the reason for … putting her in that humiliating situation?"

Sleep tight.

by Cage The Elephant is my theme right now.

Sorry I've been out of communication range lately.  I'm trying to graduate cartoon school.  Again.  It feels almost a farcical as last time, except now it's getting serious.  It infects my every hour, it is everything I can talk about to others.  I'm even sick of myself.  Worst of all is the wonderful oasis of other projects just as soon as I pass this gall stone of a thing. 

The last km of a marathon is the worst. 

I just want to be done with this fucking beast I struggle with.  And the path is yet long to go. 

*Groan.*

I'll talk to you in a couple, less-dramatic days.

Why would they have changed this photo of a prom dress?  With a different photo of the same dress.

Look.  Seriously.  It's astounding.

The Seus Pg. 2

My drawing hand hurts from coloring an assignment and I really, really want one of these right now. 

The Sis.  Page 1:


Accompanied by an excellent writing post from matociquala:


If I don't finish at least double what the graduation committee requested done to turn in, I'll feel dirty if I graduate.  Right now I'm around a month away, and really starting to draw together what I have to show.  I want it all to be done.  It's no longer fun.

I've got this little bit of wordplay stuck in my head like a never-written Tom Waits song:  "Scarlett, with her little scarred-lip."

Got a great notion for an offshore comix logo that I'm not going to get drawn tonight.  Too damn slow.  Days like this, I can feel myself getting grey.

Kitten Looking Cute:



Until He Yawns:

The most education aspect of the entire Watchmen movie fiasco was, for me, the following:



Scott Kurtz did this whole series parodying Watchmen where syndicated characters fear a serial killer.  It wasn't bad, but what really struck me was this particular comic about Dagwood.

Syndicated strips are strange beasts. 

I've read "Blondie" since I was a little kid, but it was years and years before I realized... hell, before I realized it was titled "Blondie".  But I never really asked what the strip was about.  Why was this freakishly bombshell creature married to this slacker idiot?  What was the deal with the giant sandwiches (which I imitated in college in an unholy merging of salad bar, taco bar, sandwich bar, and, in one miserably failed experiment, cereal bar)?  Why was he always finding it so difficult to adjust to getting up for work?  Sleeping at work?  More naps?

I didn't know, but it didn't matter.  It didn't even occur to me to ask the question.  It was just how things had always been. 

Then it all snapped into focus.

The guy behind PvP, of all people, uncovered something long lost: there was once a concept behind Blondie.  A high concept.  A pitch.  It even had a surprising amount (okay... ANY) edge in the battling classes basis for their relationship.  A rich young thing marries a flapper girl named Blondie Boop-a-doop and is disowned by his family for marrying under his class.  Wow.  How about that.

It's like renting Pulp Fiction but only watching Bruce Willis' story.  There are all these things showing up (say a John Travolta hitman, Marsellus Wallace, or giant sandwiches, being unable to function at work, always late for his carpool which used to be a bus which used to be a streetcar...) that are imbued with significance but no signifiers.  Now I'm shown the rest of the movie.

And it just had never occurred to me.  With other strips, Peanuts or Garfield or Bloom County, the origins of the characters are pretty widely available.  Bloom County was topical, sarcastic, and ended when it ran out of gas.  In Garfield characters like Jon were intentionally sketched broadly and left open.  Blondie, on the other hand, is a comic so divorced from its own origins that were topical and specific that it can not go back to them without admitting how old it is.  So it is left, a machine going through motions without meaning; a broken-down train with a dead conductor, but a furnace still burning and wheels turning uselessly. 

Zombies.

Overall, the Ombudsmen series in PvP doesn't really cohere, but this one strip... It's actually perfect as satire.  Pitch perfect.  Funny, but with an actual hint of pathos about the pointlessness of Dagwood as realized by Dagwood.  Thanks, Scott Kurtz.

courtesy of zoetica via warren ellis.  Time to go out and fight the weekend in this spirit.

So rather than critique the movie, I will critique my costume:( See the before and the after... )</div>