Newer Thought to Question Why

A fully-realised thought does not just plop out of the sky. It's not like a latter day Python-esque sketch where a man walking down a street is just suddenly struck by an albatross. Not even the more feasible streetcar. No, a fully-realised thought percolates. It transmutes. Is mused over. It's forgotten. Picked back up and forged into a working thesis. Ideas, ideas grow on trees, but they have to be worked upon to become a thought. Not merely a question, or a ponderance. ...but a real thought.

This is why I constantly have problems with "keeping up". I place strictures on what I consider to be a fully-realised thought with supporting, logical argumentation. It takes more time than the cookie-cutter nature of the quickening of culture through blogonomics. It has to be something larger, something that accurately shows a step-progression of logic, instead of giant leaps and the higgeldy-piggeldy nature of much online writing.

I'll have to think on this further.

If You Hate Something, Don't You Do It Too

The thread following Mike San Giacomo's asinine column this week has degraded from "everyone vs. Mike" in defence of iconic artwork to the typical name-calling back and forth that normally graces Newsarama threads. I guess I should be glad I stopped when I did.

2003 in Muisc: Song of the Year

It's All Right, Sooner or Later

This year it seems as though we've been at a loss for "anthems" that carry us through the summer, that we see everyone singing, and gets played again and again and again such that after about a week, you're already sick of it. Maybe I should be thankful that the record companies took the year off from pimping the "big" single, or else I'm willfully choosing to supress something since it was so goddamn awful. How often have that new Britney Spears song or Pink's "I'm Trouble" been played? Neither seem to have diffused through to public many repeated playings.

...and so, I'm left coming up with a favourite that probably hasn't been played on the radio.

•"21st Century Living" -- Matthew Good

From his debut solo album, Avalanche, "21st Century Living" is like a Rick Mercer rant set to music -- funny, relevant, biting, and catchy. Ringing in at just over three minutes, Good tackles "super-sizing" and "ambition".

"I'd like a super-size of death with a Coke."

A Portrait of Ignorance, Simply Drawn

There's this thread currently stemming from Mike San Giacomo's latest treading into the realms of blissful ignorance in regards to "realistic" and "simple" artwork. As you'll note in thread, I myself have a few things to say, which is odd since I rarely actually take part -- or read -- most of Newsarama. What's more interesting is Alan David Doane's response, Journey into Ignorance.

The Only Thing You Need to Buy This Week

Drawn & Quarterly Volume 5.

It's the only thing you need this week and it's the giant red and green covered anthology sporting a beauty from Dupuy and Berberian. The book is just gorgeous, featuring a story from the aforementioned Dupuy and Berberian, a new Paul story from Michel Rabagliati (if you didn't pick up Paul Has a Summer Job earlier this year, you seriously missed out on some great autobio comics), R. Sikoryak's adaptation of Wuthering Heights to the style of EC horror comics, and a sizeable retrospective of Albert Chartier's art and career. Plus a couple other things.

If you have no clue who any of the people above are, please, stick your head back in the sand now.

The Greatest of All Time?

Take a look at this. Occasionally I'll joke about a book being heavy enough that you could kill someone with it, I think you actually could if this one was thrown with enough force. Certainly the book itself -- or perhaps once you see your bill -- would be enough to knock you out.

Mind you, the above is just the right hand punch from a southpaw. Here's the left.

2003 in Music: Disappointment of the Year

Is This How it Ends?

When it comes to disappointments, like many years, 2003 was full of them. Jewel going further into a "pop" persona, taking on more and more aspects of her current female "counterparts" like Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera is disappointing, but I can't say I care too much about it. Resident-Select Bush continually lets down his country every minute he sits in office -- or sits on his ass anywhere else since he doesn't seem to be in office that much. Comic books can be downright depressing many weeks.

Given my bias when it comes to music, you might expect that I'd list one of the teenybopper crowd or the latest rap "sensation", but you have to have certain expectations if you're going to be disappointed. I expect a Justin Timberlake album to be mindless, bubblegum pop that I'm not going to like. Kind of hard for me to be disappointed by it. Likewise, when it comes to pure shit released in shiny plastic form that's not even fit to be used as a coaster, this year saw a doozy in Metallica's St. Anger album. Yet, there too, I expected it to be crap and it dutifully lived up to those expectations. Had it instead been something comparable to ...and justice for all, it would have been a pleasant surprise.

No, what disappoints me is when an artist/musician that I generally enjoy, produces something that is not necessarily downright awful, but something that fails to challenge me. Something that fails to grab my attention. Something that I perceive to be beneath the artist's ability. Something that I expected to be good, but is merely...okay.

In those terms, the greatest contributor to a disappointment is:

The Strokes -- Room on Fire

Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy the album, but after Is this It?, Room on Fire sets nothing of the sort and is certainly not IT. Basically, they took the safe route that too many pre-packaged (and I'm not calling The Strokes "pre-packaged", just comparing them to such "artists") bands do and essentially produced Is this It? 2. It's treading water and not breaking any new ground. Sure it sounds good, but we've already heard it a couple of years ago. A band can surely survive for years doing this, just look at The Ramones or Bruce Springsteen, creating the same album over and again. It justs gets stale after awhile.

There are many things to like about the album, many of the songs are nice, concise radio-friendly lo-fi gems, but they're all essentially patterned the same as Is this It? Particularly something like "I Can't Win" which seems to bear almost identical structure and phrasings as "Last Nite". It's still a good song, but you've pretty much heard it before.

There is some promise in the slightly different sounds of "12:51" and "Under Control" that hint at something new to come, but again, I say that Room on Fire is The Strokes treading water. I expect broader and greater things from them.

There are of course other albums that I was disappointed by and liked considerably less than Room on Fire, but it's the one I expected more from. Two other albums that stick out as disappointments that ultimately I decided I could write off without paying much more attention are as below:

Finger Eleven -- self-titled

This fourth release from the band (stop screaming already, I know that this is the third "Finger Eleven" album, but they did release an album previously when they were known as the "Rainbow Butt Monkeys") furthered them into a "kinder, gentler" nu-metal trappings and further away from their initial influences of Our Lady Peace and Tool. Maybe it's just the constant playings of "One Thing" these days, but it seems to me that they abandoned giving the music their own sound and just decided to blatantly follow Staind into nu-metal balladeering oblivion.

Linkin Park -- Meteora

Like The Strokes' sophomore album, Linkin Park too essentially repeats themselves from Hybrid Theory to make Meteora. The only difference is that I can't say that I've listened to this album again after the first week or so, and don't even remotely miss listening to it. That, and I still consider most of their lyrics trite and distant. Maybe angry, angsty music just doesn't have its edge with me that it used to. I also think that they ruined the kickass intro from "Somewhere I Belong" by attaching a song to it.

2003 in Music: Preamble

These Precious Things

Instead of waiting until January, I've decided to start posting entries about this year's volley of albums now, and dole them out over the coming days and weeks at no regular interval. As you should know by now, if you've been reading my ramblings with any regularity, I generally gravitate toward alternative, rock, metal. Those sorts of things in nice broad strokes, so if you're expecting some sort of retrospective on what's come out this year in good jazz, or country, or hip hop, you'll have to look somewhere else. Everything I'll be sticking up here will be things that I usually bought myself since I happen to like the artist in question -- or unlike many people these days, bought it for "that song" regardless of whether or not I liked the band.

My only criterion -- which is purely subjective -- is that I had some sort of experience, emotional or otherwise, with it, and do not purport in any way, shape, or form that any lists contained herein are the complete and objective truth, and that if you don't agree with me, you're an absolutely brainless, mouth-breathing heathen. Well, maybe you are anyway, but it's not necessarily because you disagree with me.

Okay, yes, it is because you don't agree with me. You mouth-breathing heathen. No, it isn't. Er...maybe.

Feel No Shame For What You Are

There is no objective qualification for what passes as the "best" in art -- even in capital "A" art that hangs on walls in museums -- despite what may near universally be accepted as some of the greatest. After all, there's probably someone out there who thinks the Mona Lisa is a piece of trash. In similar terms, for the life of me I can't figure out why people like Michael Bay are continually allowed to make films or why everyone isn't humming a Jeff Buckley tune, yet Bad Boys II is likely to do some large sales this holiday season on DVD and it's highly unlikely that Sketches for my Sweetheart the Drunk is going to somehow topple whatever happens to be #1 on this week's Billboard chart -- especially considering that it was released more than a few years ago.

I will agree that it can be argued that some piece of music, or painting, or architecture, can be more proficiently produced than others -- that there is a "right" way and a "wrong" way, as it were, to do say an Impressionistic painting. Even there, though, the likes and dislikes of a particular technique is still purely subjective. Something could be line perfect Art Deco, but that doesn't matter a whit if the person viewing it doesn't happen to like the style. Just try convincing a teenybopper that Otis Redding was a genius.

Recently, amongst the comics blogsphere, a "discussion" erupted over the "best" superhero cover of the past decade, starting with Alan David Doane, bouncing to Laura Gjovaag, back to Doane, then to the Johnny Bacardi show, up to Doane, Gjovaag again, then with John Jakala chiming in.

Basically, their propositions for "best" cover are as follows:

• Alan David Doane initially proposed that Seth's cover to the "Marvel Benefit Issue" of Coober Skeeber was the "best". 
• Laura Gjovaag then countered, initially assuming that the Coober Skeeber cover was a joke, and threw out the idea that her two covers of Aquaman with fish were better.
• Johnny Bacardi didn't offer up anything for what he thought was "best", but did say that Doane's offering wasn't it.
• Finally, John Jakala countered Doane's proposition as well. Then, tongue firmly planted in cheek, offered that the Liefeld pin-up was better than everything.

Now, I know that I have a penchant for doing up listy type things that proclaim the "best of..." each year, and I may call people idiots if they pass up the latest issue of Forlorn Funnies -- because, honestly, you'd have to be mentally deficient not to be reading it -- but I usually qualify it with the fact that this is my opinion, and I don't stand as the arbiter of good taste. If you want to go ahead and continue reading a piece of shit that Geoff Johns happens to put out every month and proclaim it as "great", that's your prerogative. Just as I'm going to, when you do, tell you that you're an idiot for doing so. Same as you'll tell me I'm an idiot for not liking it.

Besides, nothing can beat Dave McKean (even if technically, Sandman isn't a superhero title), Chris Bachalo, Bill Sienkiewicz, or John Totleben. Okay, yes, I'm being facetious, but they sure look good, don't they?

I Am The Walrus

Much to Jason Marcy's dismay and the befuddlement of comics readers across North America, Ron Rege, Jr. can publish material. I know, it shocks me too, given how awful his artwork looks and how ridiculous his stories usually are -- I mean, at least Tom Hart and many of his Hutch Owen strips are funny -- that people continue to publish his work, but there it is. I meant to post this weeks ago when the actual magazine came out, but in the second issue of the new Canadian magazine, The Walrus -- think a cross between Harper's and The New Yorker only produced by Canadians -- the back page sports an incomprehensible piece of crap from Rege.

The magazine itself can be perused here, although thankfully Rege's contribution, Parallel Universe is not.

Not Just For Comic Geeks Anymore

Apparently the 80's nostalgia craze has gone beyond just retro music and the boy's toys adapted for comic book use -- i.e. properties like Transformers or GI Joe, in case you happen to be dense -- and has embraced updating the "girly" stuff as well. You can read an article on it here. Now the female and gay demographics won't have to feel left out when buying completely inconsequential dusted off crap.

The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers

From Dirk Deppey's indictment of the direct market:

"It may well be obvious to outside observers that the Direct Market has crawled so far up its own ass you can see its head coming out its own mouth..."

out on my feet

Is it me, or does it seem like every December I pull up my stakes and disappear until January? It seems as though every year December marks the beginning of a kind of fugue state where I'm operating primarily for work or school, and everything else kind of just falls by the wayside. There's little time for extraneous thought and diversion.

Anyway, after seeing all this ads in recent comics for the "Spider-Man ISP", I decided to check out the browser. It's a skin that operates using a browser called Phaseout -- another freeware, open source browser like Mozilla, only this time operating in a Flash environment. It's pretty neat, actually, with some increased functionality over Mozilla, although ease-of-use the first time isn't exactly 100%. It's fairly small as well, although it looks like it uses up more system resources than any of the Mozilla-based browsers. You can check it out yourself here.