THE OANS WOULD YOU LIKE YOU TO KNOW THAT BASTILLE DAY IS NO EXCUSE FOR SLACKING
I've been glued to NPR for the past two days listening to the Sotomayor hearings. Thus far they mostly consist of "YOU DARED TO BE ETHNIC. HOW DARE YOU ACKNOWLEDGE RACE AND ETHNICITY?", then a rebuttal from a more liberal Senator, lather, rinse, excoriate, essay another rebuttal, repeat.
Hey, flist, have any of you used Fancast with any degree of success? Due to a conversation with the_croupier about things scary I wanted to show him some clips from the sadly departed Night Gallery, but it never seems to work for me! What's wrooooooong?
HAPPY BASTILLE DAY, FRANCE!! Er...I mean Happy Fête Nationale!
July 4th is cool and all (even if most of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence didn't actually sign it until early August), but on July 14th? The French dressed up in style, decked themselves out in a spontaneous subversive appropriation of colors, and went and beat up on a symbol of oppression*. The Fourth of July, while impressive in a "Fuck you and the ships you sailed in on, this joint is now a republic" kind of way, cannot compare to a mob of French people dressed to the nines and artfully soiled.
Remember the Professional Witness guy from MAD TV? I totally want his take on the Storming of the Bastille.
One of the cool things about San Francisco is that we have French people (and Gallophiles and people who just want an excuse to drink and be merry) here who celebrate Bastille Day with street parties and French restaurants pulling out all the stops in an orgy of Escoffierian five-story terrines and mille-feuilles and braised endive in muscat sauce. There used to be the fun celebrations at the French cafés on Belden Place featuring lots of cute French guys running around being simultaneously snide and exhibiting an astonishingly suave degree of breviloquence when trying to game all female revelers in the vicinity.
I admit. I once fell for it. His name was Philip, he had dark curly hair, blue eyes, a smexalicious Parisian accent, and he was persistent. That's right: a Bastille Day party in San Francisco got me a hot Frenchman as a FWB. (It didn't work out, though. Philip was the gentleman who was with me the night I casually ate a giant spoonful of Scotch Bonnet salsa at Café de la Paz in Berkeley and promptly cried off all of my mascara in agony. Within twenty seconds I looked like Alice Cooper and Philip then asked me if my tears were due to an emotional outburst. Since my throat was currently trying to cope with the gustatory equivalent of being assaulted with a white phosphorus grenade followed by a lava chaser, I couldn't reply.)
Moving right along. Ahem.
This is the best response to Michael Jackson's death - and, as some wag over on ontd_political note, a fascinating circular commentary on the Participatory Panopticon:
Jay Smooth brings it:
There's also this aptly frustrated verbal beatdown on This Week in Blackness: Elon James White take on BET - warning for deliriously foul language and righteous rants:
There is no way this could be more awesome:
Including this choice quotage: "Debra Lee's dress is made of baby tears and the nightmares of our ancestors" and "I RAPE THE WATERMELON."
...BAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
This next is for jencendiary: apparently there are some of you who are unaware of the Mexican Institute for Sound?
Let me remedy that.
El Microfono:
That's an older track. Their new release, I assure you, is equally delectable.
I'm really enjoying Warren Ellis' pieces over at Rich Johnston's new site Bleeding Cool. They're not exactly coherent - they seem to be mostly synaptic ephemera tenuously connected by virtue of inhabiting the same pixelated field of internet aether - aka, paragraph juxtaposition - but it's the most entertaining things I've seen him produce about the medium in a long time.
Since he's writing about Jack Kirby today, this is by far my favorite quote:
"There should have been a name for what Jack Kirby did, a term for the style beyond “Kirby Style.” I mean, having a style named after you is great, but it implies to me that there was nothing to the man beyond his associated visual codes like Kirby Krackle or Kirby Dots (Hugo Pratt’s still wandering around a gallery of comics art in Switzerland - did Hugo Pratt ever “wander,” or did he stride purposefully? - and asking Paul Gravett how Eddie Campbell does the thing with the little dots, having apparently never before encountered zipatone/Letratone). Which is obviously not true.
I would have liked to see it get a name like Atom Style."
ATOM STYLE. That is perfect for Kirby - even if Atom Style already exists as a genre/classification of design.
SPEAKING of Jack Kirby:
One panel from Mighty Avengers #27:
*flail*
Even though I don't give a crap about Dan Slott's writing and plotting in this book, that panel made me do the I See What You Did There and Approve of It Mightily nod.
Now I want KRRRRKLLL to be the sound effect for every single thing I do in my life henceforth - and I want an explosion of Kirby Krackle to accompany every dramatic moment. By "dramatic moment" I mean "every pedestrian and everyday activity that I engage in within a twenty-four hour period." I can see it now: I pick up the mug of tea, add a little hazelnut milk to it, poise myself to sip it, and a halo of KIRBY DOTS explodes around me. Brushing my teeth? A psychedelic spiral of Kirby Krackle as soon as brush meets dentition! Finish editing those Power Point slides at work? Victorious KIRBY Krackle artistically engulfs my cube as I ascend from my chair in a nimbus of glowing light and walk purposefully off to the office kitchen in a hopeless quest for gluten-free vegan donuts.
Casting news: Natalie Portman cast to play Jane Foster in Kenneth Branagh's Thor film.
Uh...okay!
But speaking of casting, now that Ryan Reynolds has been given the role of Hal Jordan, fandom of course goes on a fantasy casting spree for the rest of the Green Lantern film.
Particularly interesting suggestions:
- John Malkovich as Sinestro - other suggestions were Sean Bean (whut?), Hugh Laurie (WHUT?), Christopher Eccleston (intriguing!) and Gary Oldman (WHUT WHUT? NO.)
- Liam Neeson as Abin Sur - YES, AND I WILL ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTE.
- Anthony Hopkins and Judi Dench as the Guardians.
-Alan Rickman's voice as Salaak - I disagree here. As someone pointed out, Salaak's more the precise Rules Lawyer type who brooks no bullshit, and Rickman may be too sardonic.
- Wes Bentley as Black Hand - that's rather...inspired.
- Vin Diesel as Kilowog - I'm weighing in as a "NO" on this, but it's an interesting thought.
Diesel certainly has a deep enough voice, but honestly, I don't know if he has the range to play Kilowog.
Kevin Grevoux as Kilowog - hmmm.
Peter Jacobson as Tomar Re - also hmmm. I do see the point that he has the warmth of voice and personality to be Hal's Bestest Pal In Space while Hal learns the ropes, but I'm not totally sold on this choice. (Fair warning: I consider Tomar Re to be one of the GREATEST Green Lanterns to ever serve in the Corps, and I will crack ribs and gouge the eyeballs of anyone who says different. Don't push me.)
Jensen Eckles as Guy Gardner - NO, SOMEONE ACTUALLY SUGGESTED IT - GO READ THE THREAD.
President Obama as John Stewart - YES. If he'd only give up that stupid day job running the free world.
Ron Perlman as Kilowog - oh, TOTALLY!
Mads Mickelsen as Sinestro - yep, I can see this working very well.
Michael Clark Duncan for Kilowog - also a great choice.
Maggie Siff for Carol Ferris - YES PLZ.
Thoughts?
As the comics blog-o-sphere-o-rama continues to talk about Marvel Divas, I'd like to point something out: these are the kinds of fanboys who scare me the most:
At first glance? They seem well-spoken, reasonably groomed, clean (very important if you've had to endure unwashed fanboy gaping at you in shock because you're standing in line waiting to purchase Punisher: Circle of Blood in HARDBACK), and fairly rational. Then they open their mouths and start talking about Marvel Divas, and whatever credibility points they got from me for hating on Emma Frost is promptly lost. They actually don't seem to know any female comic readers, either, which makes me wonder what freakishly isolated subterranean bunker they've been living in for the past two decades. How do I know this? Their feed on YouTube wants to hear from female readers about Marvel Divas - and that's usually a chilling indice pointing to "You don't actually know any women in comics fandom, do you? Do you even READ what's on the comics internet if it's not written by Brian Cronin?"
(At least two of them seem to like Daniel Way's work on the Deadpool titles - and that's enough to make my eyes glaze over and feel like someone just sporked my liver. Although props for bothering to mention Joe Kelly!)
Wow. It must be soooo nice to be a straight white male in comics fandom. You can post videos on YouTube complaining about how Marvel Divas isn't cheesecakey enough or boast on your blog about a flame war you into with someone over Paul Dini and dismiss out of hand any mentions of Dini's occasional mistreatment of female characters (by, you know, having their hearts cut out.)
* How vigorous the defense was is, of course, debated - some would have it that the citizenry went and curb stomped a bunch of dudes who were fumblingly incompetent.
Hey, flist, have any of you used Fancast with any degree of success? Due to a conversation with the_croupier about things scary I wanted to show him some clips from the sadly departed Night Gallery, but it never seems to work for me! What's wrooooooong?
HAPPY BASTILLE DAY, FRANCE!! Er...I mean Happy Fête Nationale!
July 4th is cool and all (even if most of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence didn't actually sign it until early August), but on July 14th? The French dressed up in style, decked themselves out in a spontaneous subversive appropriation of colors, and went and beat up on a symbol of oppression*. The Fourth of July, while impressive in a "Fuck you and the ships you sailed in on, this joint is now a republic" kind of way, cannot compare to a mob of French people dressed to the nines and artfully soiled.
Remember the Professional Witness guy from MAD TV? I totally want his take on the Storming of the Bastille.
One of the cool things about San Francisco is that we have French people (and Gallophiles and people who just want an excuse to drink and be merry) here who celebrate Bastille Day with street parties and French restaurants pulling out all the stops in an orgy of Escoffierian five-story terrines and mille-feuilles and braised endive in muscat sauce. There used to be the fun celebrations at the French cafés on Belden Place featuring lots of cute French guys running around being simultaneously snide and exhibiting an astonishingly suave degree of breviloquence when trying to game all female revelers in the vicinity.
I admit. I once fell for it. His name was Philip, he had dark curly hair, blue eyes, a smexalicious Parisian accent, and he was persistent. That's right: a Bastille Day party in San Francisco got me a hot Frenchman as a FWB. (It didn't work out, though. Philip was the gentleman who was with me the night I casually ate a giant spoonful of Scotch Bonnet salsa at Café de la Paz in Berkeley and promptly cried off all of my mascara in agony. Within twenty seconds I looked like Alice Cooper and Philip then asked me if my tears were due to an emotional outburst. Since my throat was currently trying to cope with the gustatory equivalent of being assaulted with a white phosphorus grenade followed by a lava chaser, I couldn't reply.)
Moving right along. Ahem.
This is the best response to Michael Jackson's death - and, as some wag over on ontd_political note, a fascinating circular commentary on the Participatory Panopticon:
Jay Smooth brings it:
Click to viewThere's also this aptly frustrated verbal beatdown on This Week in Blackness: Elon James White take on BET - warning for deliriously foul language and righteous rants:
There is no way this could be more awesome:
Including this choice quotage: "Debra Lee's dress is made of baby tears and the nightmares of our ancestors" and "I RAPE THE WATERMELON."
...BAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
This next is for jencendiary: apparently there are some of you who are unaware of the Mexican Institute for Sound?
Let me remedy that.
El Microfono:
That's an older track. Their new release, I assure you, is equally delectable.
I'm really enjoying Warren Ellis' pieces over at Rich Johnston's new site Bleeding Cool. They're not exactly coherent - they seem to be mostly synaptic ephemera tenuously connected by virtue of inhabiting the same pixelated field of internet aether - aka, paragraph juxtaposition - but it's the most entertaining things I've seen him produce about the medium in a long time.
Since he's writing about Jack Kirby today, this is by far my favorite quote:
"There should have been a name for what Jack Kirby did, a term for the style beyond “Kirby Style.” I mean, having a style named after you is great, but it implies to me that there was nothing to the man beyond his associated visual codes like Kirby Krackle or Kirby Dots (Hugo Pratt’s still wandering around a gallery of comics art in Switzerland - did Hugo Pratt ever “wander,” or did he stride purposefully? - and asking Paul Gravett how Eddie Campbell does the thing with the little dots, having apparently never before encountered zipatone/Letratone). Which is obviously not true.
I would have liked to see it get a name like Atom Style."
ATOM STYLE. That is perfect for Kirby - even if Atom Style already exists as a genre/classification of design.
SPEAKING of Jack Kirby:
One panel from Mighty Avengers #27:
*flail*
Even though I don't give a crap about Dan Slott's writing and plotting in this book, that panel made me do the I See What You Did There and Approve of It Mightily nod.
Now I want KRRRRKLLL to be the sound effect for every single thing I do in my life henceforth - and I want an explosion of Kirby Krackle to accompany every dramatic moment. By "dramatic moment" I mean "every pedestrian and everyday activity that I engage in within a twenty-four hour period." I can see it now: I pick up the mug of tea, add a little hazelnut milk to it, poise myself to sip it, and a halo of KIRBY DOTS explodes around me. Brushing my teeth? A psychedelic spiral of Kirby Krackle as soon as brush meets dentition! Finish editing those Power Point slides at work? Victorious KIRBY Krackle artistically engulfs my cube as I ascend from my chair in a nimbus of glowing light and walk purposefully off to the office kitchen in a hopeless quest for gluten-free vegan donuts.
Casting news: Natalie Portman cast to play Jane Foster in Kenneth Branagh's Thor film.
Uh...okay!
But speaking of casting, now that Ryan Reynolds has been given the role of Hal Jordan, fandom of course goes on a fantasy casting spree for the rest of the Green Lantern film.
Particularly interesting suggestions:
- John Malkovich as Sinestro - other suggestions were Sean Bean (whut?), Hugh Laurie (WHUT?), Christopher Eccleston (intriguing!) and Gary Oldman (WHUT WHUT? NO.)
- Liam Neeson as Abin Sur - YES, AND I WILL ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTE.
- Anthony Hopkins and Judi Dench as the Guardians.
-Alan Rickman's voice as Salaak - I disagree here. As someone pointed out, Salaak's more the precise Rules Lawyer type who brooks no bullshit, and Rickman may be too sardonic.
- Wes Bentley as Black Hand - that's rather...inspired.
- Vin Diesel as Kilowog - I'm weighing in as a "NO" on this, but it's an interesting thought.
Diesel certainly has a deep enough voice, but honestly, I don't know if he has the range to play Kilowog.
Kevin Grevoux as Kilowog - hmmm.
Peter Jacobson as Tomar Re - also hmmm. I do see the point that he has the warmth of voice and personality to be Hal's Bestest Pal In Space while Hal learns the ropes, but I'm not totally sold on this choice. (Fair warning: I consider Tomar Re to be one of the GREATEST Green Lanterns to ever serve in the Corps, and I will crack ribs and gouge the eyeballs of anyone who says different. Don't push me.)
Jensen Eckles as Guy Gardner - NO, SOMEONE ACTUALLY SUGGESTED IT - GO READ THE THREAD.
President Obama as John Stewart - YES. If he'd only give up that stupid day job running the free world.
Ron Perlman as Kilowog - oh, TOTALLY!
Mads Mickelsen as Sinestro - yep, I can see this working very well.
Michael Clark Duncan for Kilowog - also a great choice.
Maggie Siff for Carol Ferris - YES PLZ.
Thoughts?
As the comics blog-o-sphere-o-rama continues to talk about Marvel Divas, I'd like to point something out: these are the kinds of fanboys who scare me the most:
At first glance? They seem well-spoken, reasonably groomed, clean (very important if you've had to endure unwashed fanboy gaping at you in shock because you're standing in line waiting to purchase Punisher: Circle of Blood in HARDBACK), and fairly rational. Then they open their mouths and start talking about Marvel Divas, and whatever credibility points they got from me for hating on Emma Frost is promptly lost. They actually don't seem to know any female comic readers, either, which makes me wonder what freakishly isolated subterranean bunker they've been living in for the past two decades. How do I know this? Their feed on YouTube wants to hear from female readers about Marvel Divas - and that's usually a chilling indice pointing to "You don't actually know any women in comics fandom, do you? Do you even READ what's on the comics internet if it's not written by Brian Cronin?"
(At least two of them seem to like Daniel Way's work on the Deadpool titles - and that's enough to make my eyes glaze over and feel like someone just sporked my liver. Although props for bothering to mention Joe Kelly!)
Wow. It must be soooo nice to be a straight white male in comics fandom. You can post videos on YouTube complaining about how Marvel Divas isn't cheesecakey enough or boast on your blog about a flame war you into with someone over Paul Dini and dismiss out of hand any mentions of Dini's occasional mistreatment of female characters (by, you know, having their hearts cut out.)
* How vigorous the defense was is, of course, debated - some would have it that the citizenry went and curb stomped a bunch of dudes who were fumblingly incompetent.