It Was A Sunny Day In Palookaville

This may not be news to anyone but Stuart McLean's new book, Vinal Cafe Diaries, came out today, with a cover and interior illustrations by Seth. Seth, of Palookaville fame if you have no clue who I'm talking about. The book looks gorgeous, some really nice full page illustrations serving as subject breaks, along with phenomenal facsimile vintage advertisements/coupons on the inside cover.

I'm not sure if any of you know who McLean is, but he does a radio show on Sundays for the CBC called The Vinal Cafe, and has released several previous collections of his stories transcribed -- Home from the Vinal Cafe, Stories from the Vinal Cafe, and Vinal Cafe Unplugged, in addition to this one. He's truly a master Canadian storyteller and damn funny to boot, having won the Stephen Leacock award too many times to count. (Now, if you don't know who Leacock is, you've got problems.) I've only had a chance to flip through the book so far, but it looks like this one has the story about Dave alone in a hotel room with a duck, that honestly has to be read to be believed. That story alone will have you in stitches.

It's published by Penguin, ISBN: 0670044369. You know you want it.

To Crumble and Just Break Down

On a whim -- and because it was only twelve dollars -- I picked up Sevendust's latest album, Seasons. Now, I really liked their self-titled disc and their breakthrough Home. Yet, 2001's Animosity was such wank. It seemed like they were trying to go in all directions at once -- Staind whining, Korn angst, Slipknot rage -- like they were trying to be more and more "radio-friendly", losing something integral to their core, and releasing an album that didn't seem entirely sure what it wanted to be.

What impressed me about Home wasn't just how hard the album was, to the point where some songs were just downright crunchy, but that the whole album gelled into more or less a male fronted, harder version of Skunk Anasie or a latter day Faith No More. Animosity just sounded like nu-metal trash.

Anyway, Seasons continues the softer, gentler side of Sevendust, but it's a more cohesive product. There's an attempt at an album sound here. One that makes them sound like they're writing three minute versions of Dream Theater songs, which I'm not sure is a good thing. The songs on the album are decent, well-crafted, but they still lack the raw energy and power behind their earlier work.

An' Another Thing

I've been taking time out from steady rotation of Hawksley Workman's lover/fighter, A Perfect Circle's Thirteenth Step, and David Bowie's Reality lately to spin Dave Matthews' new solo disc, Some Devil. I'm impressed, actually. I kind of expected something more like Everyday, with an emphasis on guitars and pop stylings, instead, we've got an album that sounds a lot like a 60-minute version of "Crush" from Before these Crowded Streets. It's soft, melodic, and rather dark, sounding most of the time like Sting being backed up by U2, all of them on valium. I may put up a review proper in the coming days, but I just wanted to note that it's quite a good disc.

comments?

I've been running a forum for this site from about the same time d-generation went live originally, but I'm wondering if it's necessary. I know it only costs me peanuts, but if it's not being used, except for Logan, Alan, Nick, and I to talk to ourselves, what's the point?

I've noticed for awhile that webloggers out there are having a "comments" system embedded more and more in their pages. I'm coming from a situation where I was coding these bloody things myself rather than having an auto-enabled script -- I hand coded d.'s daily diatribes before blogging was vogue, back when the "live journals" were cumbersome, clunky beasts hosted on another's server -- which originally necessitated an alternate forum to post comments and such. Now, the question is, if I add a comments system and close down the forum, which comments system should I use?

I know that there are standalone scripts like fiz.box or haloscan that can be integrated into blogger's coding, or I could ante up and switch the entire thing over to Moveable Type -- mind you, that would cost more than what I currently pay for the forum. For those of you with comments systems, what do you think is the best?

It's The End of the World As We Know It

I think I've finally managed to fix the problem I've been having with the "new" site's archiving system and the RSS feed. You see, the "new" blogger has a default to create a subdirectory of /archives/, rather than previously just archiving the pages in the same directory as the main blog. Basically, I suppose this is to keep your main directory clear and relatively free of the archives that will build up of any given amount of time.

The only problem is, you've got to make sure all of your "permalinks" are encoded in the proper fashion, that there actually is an "archives" subdirectory on your server, and that the archive URL is accurate, otherwise you'll wind up with an RSS feed that tries linking to things on your hard drive. That's never a good thing for an aggregator programme.

The Sad Last Stand of a Broken Man

"This is not The Greatest Song in the World, no.

This is just a tribute."
-- Tenacious D, Tribute

Of all of the "nostalgia" projects that Marvel could possibly put out -- say, regaining the license to Micronauts, maybe a new Alf comic, or resurrecting dead concepts like Rocket Raccoon -- the one that probably wouldn't pop immediately into anyone's head is a resurrection of the Marvel Cosmic. It started with the Infinity Abyss mini-series, then earlier this year with Marvel: The End, and now with the ongoing Thanos series. I guess Quesada must have a soft spot for Starlin's work, or something, because it doesn't seem to fit in with the current Marvel publishing scheme. Today's Marvel seems all about grounding the characters in some sense of "reality", getting them out of their costumes, and into a sort of more realistic approach to their storytelling -- going from just straight up, goody, coloured costumes to spinning the story through other genres (i.e. superhero as cop drama, superhero as legal thriller, superhero as sitcom, etc.)

The Cosmic Shakespearean Tragedy

Although often waxing Shakespearean monologues of woe, destruction, and hubris, the characters in Starlin's cosmic tales have always been appropriately larger-than-life. You won't see Gamorra settling down off the New Jersey turnpike earning a living as a stripper, giving us insight into the human condition, peeling away levels of her psyche with every fallen article of clothing, no. That would just be silly. Granted, someone writing fan fiction has probably already tapped that idea, but that's never been the approach that Starlin has given the cosmic characters. ...and you won't start seeing an alternate approach here either.

If you think of Richard III with a cast of aliens, gods, superheroes, and a giant purple madman in the title role, you'd come close to the nature of the arc of Starlin's Thanos. Up to this point, Thanos has largely been portrayed as an unrepentant villain -- with occasional flights of seeming heroism that usually amount to nothing more than doing the "good" thing in order to save his own purple hide. Now, aside from Thanos Quest and The Infinity Gauntlet, although I enjoyed the premises and the large landscape of the entire Marvel Universe Starlin set his epics against, my interest normally fizzled out before I reached the end. Although there were interesting things going on here and there, series like the other Infinity books, I never finished.

It has been some time since I read the initial offerings of the few, but if I remember correctly, I always found the execution to be entirely too bland and it's always going to end up back at the status quo. Nothing really changes, and Thanos himself ended up looking like nothing more than a pathetic failure. A Quixote tilting at windmills for his lady Death. Even if you take it as a character arc, intent on progressing Thanos himself, it fails because there's really no growth, just endless cycles of striving for power, attaining it, and then losing it again. I suppose there's probably a moral lesson in there somewhere, that those out to gaining power through negative means are destined to see it fall from their grasp, or from the perspective that those with the "disease to please" can never achieve anything of substance for themselves since they're doing nothing more than walking to the whims of another. ...but I think I'm attributing too much to a "cosmic adventure" comic book. Maybe that is the thematic character development that Starlin is trying to make explicit in this first issue of Thanos' new ongoing series, but it feels like all so much exposition.

As Thanos sits, sits on a barren desolate world that he himself destroyed, he waxes for the audience, "I have always been a monster, Adam Warlock. This I have accepted, even taken pride in. You cannot conceive of the misery I have left in my wake." (Thanos #1, pg. 6) Yet, Starlin hasn't the wit of Shakespeare, and what follows the villain's self-admission comes as nothing more than a recap, giving no further insight into the nature of the beast. No dramatic turn, no further character points, a simple retelling, not even coloured by the character's narration.

To exposit or not to exposit? That's a bloody question

I've seen it many times before that a comic is lambasted for not telling the reader enough about the past history of a character that it's deemed unfriendly to new readers. Strangely enough, this criticism usually comes from longtime readers and not someone new to the material. Case in point, Crimson Dynamo. I've seen numerous reviews and comments about the series being difficult for people without a working knowledge of the previous incarnation of the character, since this new series doesn't say anything about it other than the name of the guy who designed it and wore the original armour. What does it matter? This new book isn't about him, it's about someone entirely new, who themselves have no clue who this guy was. Knowledge of the original creator has absolutely no bearing on the enjoyment of the new series.

Likewise, though, when a book does receive a detailed history of the character at hand, it too gets cut to shreds for "boring" old readers, and dumping too much exposition on their heads; information that they already know to boot. Jim Starlin is from the "old school" of comics writing, and as such, the first issue of Thanos is essentially an encapsulation of his prior history. Everything a reader might "need" to know about the character that happened before this point. Honestly, it isn't terribly exciting, but it gets the information across that will allow us a more "informed" view of what will come now that Thanos has apparently turned a new leaf.

The interesting thing is that no doubt, had Starlin not included this material, self-same critics would have been attacking it for turning Thanos on to a new path without giving us the information of what came previously to judge the repentant hero turn against. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, that really seems to hinge on whether or not the given critic happens to like the previous work, whether it's a currently popular writer/artist, whatever, that lends a bias to their critique.

In the best of all possible worlds, exposition is woven seamlessly into dialogue and action, but, honestly, very few seem to actually be able to do this. Starlin's tack is to make it explicit, have the characters come right out and say what has gone before, albeit with a slight turn of reflection. I think, had Thanos' recounting of his history been a little more peppered with questionable recollection -- the usual colour of an unreliable narrator -- , there might have been a greater hook to "listen" to what he's saying.

Excellent Birds

Where Starlin does go right, -- and I believe where he has always been great and the reason why he can bring me back every time he does a new project despite the fact that I never seem to wind up finishing them --, is as a draughtsman. His pages are always well-designed and easy to follow. In this first issue, he uses a fair amount of double-page spreads, that nicely enhance the "scope" of the cosmic nature of the book.

There's also an interesting design element on most of the pages that I think is part of the true appeal of the book. On most pages, there are little black boxes. As evidenced in the spread above, it's in the lower left hand corner. Like on the other pages, it makes very little sense. It's not a box for page number, there's no dialogue or caption, it's just a black box superimposed over the image. It's an alien image brought into the design, and makes you notice it because it feels so out of place, especially as it grows larger and larger on every subsequent page, eventually developing into three black panels. Then three black panels with a progression of opening eyes. Apparently, someone has been watching, and at Thanos' repentant surrender turn, screams a cryptic, "So it begins!" This, I suppose is the hook of the book, an unexplained set of devious eyes lending credence to the idea that something "bigger" may be happening. If you blink, you'll miss it.

So Weary. All the Time

Stormy Weather.

Billie Holiday or Eartha Kitt?

Many a man will go to his death with this question on his mind.

dead letters - dated March 13, 1998

I find these things in the darnedest of places, either crumpled up into a ball or folded, inserted in a book. Sometimes these were things that I was actually thinking at the time, sometimes they were real letters that saw a "final draft" and were delivered, sometimes they were just material that I was working on to put into a short story or something. This one I found when I started thinking about Harold Bloom's Stephen King rant and decided it was due time I re-read Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, -- it was folded up, coffee-stained, and hand-scribbled, inserted inside. I think this was an exercise, since I'd be damned if I could figure out a "who" here and I'm fairly certain I worked a lot of this material into my "relationship soliloquy" play, Throb. It's only slightly edited here and follows a similar theme and approach that I've worked into many monologues about asking someone out for a date. I would have been seventeen when I wrote this and some of this was just embarrassing.

I know that this is probably going to seem a little strange. In this age of instantaneous contact through various electronic means, who actually receives anything in the mail aside from bills and solicitations for credit cards, music and video clubs, or a gym? Let alone a hand-written letter from someone you haven't seen in a matter of months and is probably the last person you'd naturally expect to have heard from again. For all I know, you could very well have forgotten that I existed and may be somewhat unnerved reading these words. This is a terrible way to open a letter, but if you find this either creepy or inappropriate, please allow me to apologise now.

And now I'm beginning to second-guess myself. I want to write the right words, or rather the right combination of words, but all I seem to be doing is rambling and dancing around the point I haven't even alluded to and am already apologising for. If this were a conversation, I'd probably be stammering, if anything even managed to pass my lips other than a squeak or some inane triviality. What is it about women that turns most men's intelligence and eloquence into seeming incoherence?

I wanted to do this back in December, before you left for greener pastures, but my brain got the better of me. I have an incredibly hard time being selfish, I always have to factor in all extenuating circumstances and repercussions anything might have on the other person. I can't just wantonly inflict myself on another human being. I don't exactly know why, it's just not something I can do. In this case, I began asking myself, "Is this right?", and I began thinking about things like our relative stages in education -- you nearing the end of your and me being somewhere in the middle -- or something trivial like age difference. I only ended up tying myself into one big Gordian know of "maybe". And so, conflicted, I said goodbye and let you walk away.
We do so many stupid things in our lives and spend the rest of it thinking on all that was and all that could have been.
By now, probably back about the first paragraph in truth, you've got an idea of what I want to say. What I want to ask. I was hoping that I could actually do this in person, or via telephone, but seeing that I'm not about to scour the city, you're not listed in the phone book, and I think showing up on your doorstep like a lost puppy is going too far, I set about writing you this letter. Again, I apologise if I've made any undue transgression, but I didn't want to sit around wondering or hoping that we might just happen to cross paths. I'm never that lucky.
What I wanted to ask is both as simple and as complicated as this: would you like to go out for a drink or coffee? Maybe a set of white wall tires? I've never been any good at this sort of thing, and knowing my luck you've probably either moved and thus not reading this, or happily ensconsed in someone else, or simply not interested. I know that I don't have much to offer, other than intelligent conversation and a gentle heart, but I figured I might as well ask.
The ball, they say, is in your court. If I don't hear from you, I wish you the best and to have a good life.
unsigned.

Nothing Has Changed, Everything Has Changed

Well, the first of October's season premiere's have come and gone, specifically for Smallville and Angel. Maybe in order to properly enjoy television, I need to be almost falling asleep, but I quite enjoyed both first episodes.

Last season, Smallville ended on a note with Clark donning the red Kryptonite ring -- thus turning him "evil" -- and running away to Metropolis, and Lex awakening on his honeymoon jet to an empty plane and the approach of lots and lots of water. The third season open "three months later", and, honestly, I don't know if there are different writers or they've just finally come into their own, but there is a definite different feel to the show. I know that "status quo" will be reinstated in a couple episodes and we'll be back to fighting Kryptonite mutants every week, but ever since last season, there's been more of an edge and more of a continuing through line to the series.

Highlights of the first episode of season three are actually an appearance by Rutger Hauer as Morgan Edge, even though he doesn't do much more than tempt Clark and look menacing, and the decidedly surreal survival experience of Lex on a desert island talking to some "Louis" that magically appeared and has been helping him. Seems as though Lex is on the road to being a box of fruit loops or a nutbar -- maybe an Oh Henry?.

...and with Angel. Well, the past two seasons have been disappointing. It seemed as though there were some interesting plot points here and there, but the writers weren't willing to do the work in order to get to the grand revelations. With the new "scenario" being that the group are now in charge of the LA branch of the evil law firm, Wolfram & Hart, I had my reservations.

I had a nice big smile on my face when I saw James Marsters receive second billing in the credits -- guess he really is in for the long haul, this is a good thing -- and there were some really nice moments of hilarity, including the opening teaser with Angel being flanked by his firm showing up after a rescue, Fred's inability to answer a phone, Gunn's bizarre transformation, the "...then should I call you 'Wesle'?" crack, nice snide cynical remarks here and there that have been missing from the writing for a while, not to forget Harmony and her reaction at the appearance of "blondie bear". Maybe Joss is just paying attention to Angel again?

Oprah

This is kind of a pet peeve of mine, and I apologise if I just go off on a rant here, but...

Yesterday, we received the second book in Oprah Winfrey's resurrected book club. Like the first, as it came in from Simon & Schuster, instead of actually telling us what the book was on any of the boxes, or even on the invoice, it's listed as "OPRAH BOOK CLUB BOOK TWO". Like with Steinbeck's East of Eden, it completely saddens me that the fact that it has been selected as part of Oprah's book shindig overshadows the work itself. I know sticking her silly little sticker on the book will increase the book's sales, but come on. The first time around, the "Oprah" edition of Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance didn't come in as "OPRAH BOOK CLUB BOOK N", it came in as Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance. We're a fairly intelligent bunch operating our bookstores, if you told us that Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country was the next selected for the book club, we know what to bloody do with it.

Snakes in the Grass

I know you probably don't care, and won't have a clue what I'm talking about anyway, but on Thursday, we're having our provincial elections here in Ontario to elect our new premier. For the past eight years, we've been under the jackboot heel of the Progressive Conservatives (I sure as hell didn't vote for them, but apparently there are a large number of idiots populating the province) who've done as much as they possibly could to privatise social services and tear things like health care, education, and electricity to tiny little shreds.

What really irks me isn't necessarily all the crap that they've foisted upon the Ontario people, sure it contributes to my near pathological disgust of the Tories, but the sheer arrogance and ignorance inherent in their very being makes me want to wretch. Just lately, Ernie Eves -- currently our premier and a Tory -- mentioned that if the Liberals are elected that our hydro bills will go up. You can read about it for yourself here, although that link will decay in a few weeks.

Anyway, what he's not telling you, is that several months ago, during the beginning of the summer, due to the deregulation of prices and privatisation of hydro, many people were being shut off -- almost immediately -- when they failed to pay their now exorbitant electric bills. Now, I'm not one who would disagree with the idea that those utilising a service in the private sector don't deserve to have that service terminated if they fail to meet their fiscal agreements, but something like electricity is supposed to be public here and we never should have been in the situation in the first place. The problem only started there, though. In order to be a smiley gladhand and try to sweep this under the rug, Eves decided to put a cap on energy prices at something like 40 cents a kilowat, when it actually started skyrocketing higher and higher. Sure, it's a quick fix that allowed our air conditioners and refrigerators to keep running during the summer, despite an increased drain on the power grid, but there's the little problem of who's paying for the overage? If the actual price is something around five dollars a kilowat -- and honestly, when he placed the cap on prices, the amount per was getting ridiculously out of hand and much higher than the set price --, who's paying the remaining $4.60?

It's still us, we just haven't been hit with it yet. It's been rerouted through creative accounting by the Conservative government, as if we're not supposed to notice the giant elephant being hidden under a doily. It doesn't matter who gets elected on Thursday -- PC, Liberal, New Democrat, Marijuana, Green, Gorilla Grodd -- we're still going to get hit with an increase in hydro bills in order to fix the mess that Eves created serveral months ago. I don't know if he's just deluded, or what, but it's like he fails to see the amount of crap that he's caused.

On a related note, apparently being tenth in terms of education and health care is a good thing, and that a $4.5 billion dollar deficit is balancing the books. I guess the Conservatives were aiming for a deficit, and that the substantial "growth" they keep talking about in health care and education is "negative" growth, causing us to spiral down to being the worst in the country. I mean, if we're tenth, we're fucking last -- there are only TEN provinces and the territories are never included in the rankings.