Colour Me Amazed

The importing of the original Don't You Hate Pants? postings actually worked. This, of course, means that all links made previously to the blog will have been destroyed, but well...um, "my cat's breath smells like cat food."

A Distant Sound of Thunder

Just a reminder to those of you slavering for the release of the next in Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series that the fifth book, Wolves of the Calla, comes out today. Or at least, I bloody well hope it does. Unlike many other high profile, highly anticipated works (like say, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which we had for like a month before we could sell it), we haven't received our shipment yet. This is especially odd considering that the release date of November 4th has been advertised all over the place. Hopefully, ours is going to be in nice and early this morning.

For those of you interested in the specifics, this is going to be a thick fucker, weighing in at over 700 pages, for $52 Canadian ($35 US). ...and, if you haven't already clued in, unlike the other four in the series, this one is being released to the public as a hardcover original (co-published by Donald Grant and Simon & Schuster). The other four were all trade paperback originals, with a non-trade hardcover offered exlusively through Donald Grant. For comics fans, you should also note that this one's being illustrated by Bernie Wrightson.

Simplicity of Style

I've always stated that I wanted d-generation.ca to be simple, clean, and efficient. As many of you will remember, the initial design for the opening page was white with my "mission statement", followed by a simple navigation bar to the various areas of the site. In the last update, I streamlined that even further, through collapsing everything into the multi-purpose weblog, Don't You Hate Pants?

Personally, although I like each thing ordered in its own kind, -- "everything in its right place" and all that, it's the metaphysicist in me that earned a philosophy degree -- I always felt that having everything scattered about here and there was unnecessary clutter, and not the easiest to navigate. That's the intial reason why I switched to a one-stop blog. Yet, to me "everything in the same place" didn't quite work either, so I branched out and decided to embrace this Movable Type method of blogging.

The appeal, largely, of Movable Type was the categorisation it allows. Now, you can look up anything under the category of "comics" and be awed at the fact that there's nothing there, but eventually, you'll see everything of its kind with kind. ...and you've still got everything, all at once, on the main page.

Of course, there are compromises to be made with such "improvements". Namely, nothing is simple any more. It may look simple on your end, but the architecture housing this puppy is bloated and overcomplicated -- and that's after I pared down the useless bits I'd never touch.

Anyway, welcome to the new blog, same as the old blog. I'll still be tweaking things in the coming days, so expect some more changes.

in which d. emerson eddy loses what little sanity he has left

I'm fiddling around with Movable Type, and it's driving me batty. If all goes according to plan, Don't You Hate Pants? will soon get a new friendlier looking interface, provided, of course, I can manage to teach myself the new scripties for the template and whatnot. If not, you may hear about a frothing madman rampaging through Southern Ontario killing people who admit they know CSS and Perl sometime later in the week.

"The Room is on Fire as She's Fixing Her Hair

Like several thousand other white boys across North America, I picked up the latest Strokes album this week, after being thoroughly dejected and disappointed after finding out that the limited edition two-disc set of REM's "Best of..." release had been delayed a week. No REM fix for me for awhile, it would seem. I had planned on picking up the Strokes' Room on Fire anyway, but I was going to wait for a couple weeks until after I got my high fidelity jones out of the way first.

Now, after hearing the first single, "12:51", I was partially expecting something different. I knew that originally the Strokes had set out with this album being produced by Radiohead-producer, Nigel Goodrich, and despite that process being aborted, I was expecting something along the lines of the disparaty between Radiohead's Pablo Honey and The Bends. Instead of something different, we essentially get Is This It 2. Keep in mind, this isn't a bad thing.

This offering is a little more refined than the earlier disc, there's a larger "album" feel here than the last disc, but the overall sound and approach is still the same. The influences are still easy as hell to spot, with a blend of 60's and 70's rock with New Wave, so you'll see snippets of Hüsker Dü mixed with Iggy and the Stooges, some Peter Gabriel-era Genesis accompanied by the Cars clang. I suppose some people could make a game of it, deconstructing each song into their component parts of what strum came from which classic rock guitarist. I'd rather just listen to it at this point.

If I have any complaint at all, it's that -- due to the fact that the band focusses on getting to the heart of the song without any frills or extravagencies -- like Is This It, the album is too damn short, clocking in at just over half an hour.

The Shit's So Thick, You Could Stir it With a Stick

Just a reminder to everyone that REM's latest "Best of..." disc, In Time comes out today. I do like the one new song on it that they've been spinning as a single, "Bad Day", which sounds a bit like old REM before Bill Berry had to invoke the wrath of god on himself, nearly die, and leave the band to become a farmer. Still, this collection will contain most of the good stuff from their four phenomenal albums of the nineties, Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Monster, and New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Honestly, you could probably just repackage "Automatic..." in it's entirety as a best of disc. Personally, it was one of the best albums, if not the best album of the 90's, certainly of REM's career -- and that's saying something.

The tracklisting is as such:

1. Man On The Moon
2. The Great Beyond
3. Bad Day
4. What's The Frequency, Kenneth?
5. All The Way To Reno
6. Losing My Religion
7. E-Bow The Letter
8. Orange Crush
9. Imitation Of Life
10. Daysleeper
11. Animal
12. The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite
13. Stand
14. Electrolite
15. All The Right Friends
16. Everybody Hurts
17. At My Most Beautiful
18. Nightswimming

For those keeping score, it's got a song from Dead Letter Office, two songs from Green, a song from Out of Time, four songs from Automatic for the People, one song from Monster, two songs from New Adventures in Hi-Fi, two songs from Up, two songs from Reveal, the soundtrack offering "The Great Beyond", and the two new songs "Bad Day" and "Animal". I know I'll be among the people disappointed not to see "Drive", "Radio Song", "Shiny Happy People", "Star Me Kitten", "Crush With Eyeliner", "Strange Currencies", "Wake-Up Bomb", "Leave", or "Bittersweet Me" to be included, but I guess that's to be expected in a single disc release from a phenomenal band.

Mind you, there will be a limited edition double-disc set, with more soundtrack offerings, demo versions, live versions, and such. It'd be worth it alone just to hear the version of "Star Me Kitten" with William Burroughs again.

AAAARRGH!

Anyone else been noticing that Blogger seems to be eating things more often lately?

The Many Modes of Maynard

If you've been reading me for any period of time, you probably know about my obsession with the band Tool, who I consider to be today's alt metal gods carrying on in the tradition of King Crimson and Pink Floyd. I also said previously that I'd talk a bit more about the Underworld soundtrack, and I'm still intent on doing so, but this isn't it. It's only part of it.

In recent years, Tool's frontman, Maynard James Keenan, has been spreading his wings with numerous projects, emerging somewhat like a sweeter Mike Patton (the manic genius and voice behind Faith No More, Tomahawk, and Mr. Bungle, among many, many more projects). His first separate product, showing his "feminine" side was A Perfect Circle, which showed us an increased range and vocal structure from Maynard, who already had sickly sweet melodies coupled with acid screams on Tool down to a science.

On the Underworld soundtrack, there's the debut of his new project, Puscifer. I don't know if this was just something he and Danny Lohner put together for the album or if it's going to be something completely new and independent, but damn is the song good. I'm certainly hoping this isn't just a one-off for the soundtrack. It's called "Rev 22:20" and is a nice little lounge number about being entranced by a woman and the joys of sex. This, of course, made all the more interesting given that Revelation 22:20 (I'm using the King James version, since it's what I have handy) reads, "He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." Seems as though Maynard was taking "come" to have its latter day meaning.

Invest in Wooden Caskets, in Guns, in Bodybags

Why is it that whenever I play one of the online games that Microsoft included standard with Windows XP that invariably the person I'm playing against always pulls out of the game -- be it hearts, checkers, backgammon, reversi, or spades -- a hand or move away from me winning the game? I don't do it when I'm about to lose, or if something shitty happens like missing a nil or receive the queen of spades. Is it some kind of fundamental inability to accept a loss among many English-speaking players? By ducking out of the game just before the end, you're intent on "saving face" through some bastardised version of a strategic retreat. Personally, it just makes you look like a shithead.

Overdrawn at the Blood Bank

So, I picked up the first issue of the new Vampirella Comics Magazine the other day...

If that sounds like a punchline to anyone else, you're not alone. Honestly, I never imagined picking up an issue of something like Vampirella myself, but this new launch as a magazine was supposed to bring Vampirella herself to a new level in comicdom. It was supposed to combine quality creators with the character, along with a more mature outlook that wouldn't embarrass any sensible reader. As you can tell by the cover, you're still going to be embarrassed if you take this puppy out in public. Tits and ass are still in full fore, unlike the revamp of Lady Death, this is just the old dog in refurbished clothes.

I suppose that my hesitations when looking over the solicitations a couple months ago, deciding whether to order this, were well deserved, even now to the point where the original cover painting by Mark Texeira has been enlarged and cropped to make the nearly nude Vampirella even larger on the cover. I guess I only have myself to blame. Now, I'm not intent on wholly bashing the entire magazine -- there are indeed some highlights -- but it seems as though the new sensibilities work against the choices for the cover and the content within -- much like the smutty Greg Horn covers on Emma Frost work against reading the more "wholesome" coming-of-age story within.

Primarily, the new sensibilities are twofold. The first is that the book has now embraced and magazine format, and as such, is going to showcase more than just comics, and more than just Vampirella material. The second, is that quality creators are being enticed into doing Vampirella stories, rather than just the usual run-of-the-mill T&A artists.

To satisfy the first criterion, there are interviews in this issue with Alan Moore and Mark Wheatley. Both are incredibly brief -- totaling seven pages in all -- but they attempt to broaden outward from just Vampirella. Alan Moore talks briefly about the upcoming re-release of his novel, Voice of the Fire, as well as Top Shelf's forthcoming volumes of The Mirror of Love and Lost Girls. Personally, this is the piece that got my attention in the first place, but at a scant four pages of text, it amounts to little more than a promo for Moore's forthcoming work. If you were thinking of picking this up just for the Moore interview, that would be a bad call; read it in the store and leave it on the racks. I can honestly say that the interview with Moore is at odds with everything else in the book. Being Alan Moore, this history of the beginnings of his novel are quite interesting, even though whoever copy-edited it left a major gaffe -- with "pneumonic" being used instead of "mnemonic", a nice little malapropism. This kind of thing actually runs through the non-comics segments, with typos and misused words prevalent, it drags the book further away from being "professional". The Wheatley interview is a nice promo for his new Frankenstein Mobster book, although there is no great insight into its production or anything else, just the standard song and dance. There is, however, a brief snippet of a "Frankenstein Mobster meets Vampirella" strip, that apparently in order to read we must go to the Vampirella website. Personally, I'm more interested in that than the other text pieces that I'll discuss below.

In addition to the interviews with the two comics creators, there are also brief text pieces -- and large images -- of the new Vampirella model, Kitana Baker, and one with convention nut who dresses up like Vampirella, Diana Knight. Both are little more than printed soundbytes, appearing vacuous, and only reinforcing that the pieces are only there for the pictures of nearly naked girls. I'm not even going to start on how many problems I have with this sort of thing -- if you want softcore porn, just buy softcore porn, there's plenty of it available. Things like this truthfully don't titillate, they just serve as an outlet for people who possibly can't regularly buy the true adult flesh rags, like say, children and teenagers. ...and honestly, as I said of the cover, it works against those of us buying it for the Moore or Wheatley interviews, or even the horror fans who this mag seems to be targeting.

That target actually becomes apparent in the "reviews" section. I use sneer quotes since most of the capsules aren't really reviews, but rewritten promotional material, especially the comics review section, which doesn't actually review anything, it just puts together some quotes from the horror comics' creators from other interviews, uncredited, and text pieces in the books themselves.

Of the second criterion, there are two comics stories: a black and white tale both written and illustrated by Steve Lieber, and the other in colour, written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, with art by Gabriel Rearte and Meth.

The former from Lieber seems to be exactly in line with the new sensibility of bringing back some "class" to Vampirella. The story, "The Killing Floor", is your typical rote horror yarn you'd expect from a book like Creepy or Eerie, with our protagonist and her hapless male friend crashing a cult intent on raising the dead with the years of blood that has seeped beneath the killing floor of an abattoir. It's nothing particularly ground-breaking or enlightening, but it's a solid genre piece, well illustrated and written. The emphasis isn't here to showcase Vampirella's assets, it's to tell a succinct horror yarn, and as such Lieber performs admirably.

The other comic, "Vampirella Must Die", is exactly what many have come to hate about the "bad girl" fetish of comic books. It's bad. Very bad. The intent here seems to be cheesecake, mixed with "humorous" lampoons of superhero cliches and conventions, and the result is a bad Image comic book, particularly a Rob Liefeld helmed Image book, along the lines of Glory and whoever the other "Maximum Press" heroine was...Avengelyne? It's fails miserably at being worthwhile, made even worse from the promise that this will be the magazine's first serial.

I guess with that in mind, I'm given even less reason to return for the next issue.

Another Skeleton Song Stuck in my Head All Night

finally clued in to what the new Sevendust album reminds me of the most. The last time around, I said that it sounded like they were writing three-minute versions of Dream Theater material. There still is that hint of the same sound -- being a three-minute radio-friendly art metal band, but an analogue more apt bound into my head. They sound a lot like 5150-era Van Halen back when Sammy Hagar was still their lead singer. There isn't that clang of keyboards that Van Halen toyed with for that album, but the song structure and approach isn't too far off. Provided, of course, Hagar was screaming about "I'll fuck up your face and never look back" instead of love coming walking in, but there you go.