OSX

I’m at SSU’s 24 hour lab right now, posting to my blog from a Mac for the first time. I’ve been a PC user pretty much as long as I’ve been using computers, but Macs are a’ight in my book. And I have to say, fonts look fan-fucking-tastic in OSX. I was reading something about the text rendering engine in OSX that was supposed to make text look super-crisp and clean, and goddamn, does it ever. Whew!

Anyways, I’m just here leeching bandwidth by downloading videos and mp3′s, and Emily’s downloading anime music videos, of course. We didn’t go to either of the shows last night, unfortunately, but we did hang out at Alyssa’s birthday party, just as it was winding down, so that was fun. Some drunk guys were dancing badly to ‘Beat It,’ and one of them kept changing the speed on the record player, and the other ones would speed up or slow down their dancing accordingly. Then I made everyone listen to Surfer Rosa. Good times.

I watched the first episode of Six Feet Under today. I can see what the hype is all about. It’s a fun show. We’re going to have to rent the rest of them now!

More Later…

Cex vs. FMTM?

So, I have a dilemma tonight. From Monument to Masses is playing at the 40th Street Warehouse in Oakland tonight. They are a fantastic band, and they’re playing at a super-cool venue (the first one I saw them at last year, actually, the night that a cop totaled my Mom’s car while I was driving home, a few days after my car’s engine had died). Also, Cex is playing somewhere in San Francisco tonight. He is the self-proclaimed “#1 Entertainer,” and he works hard to earn this title. I’ve only seen him play once before, and it was incredible. I’m leaning waaaay more toward FMTM, but there’s this magging doubt that’s saying “Go See Cex!!” in the back of my mind. Why couldn’t they both be playing in Oakland tonight? We could show hop! Damn, yo!

Anyhow…I don’t know why, but I keep picking up copies of “The Filth.” Actually, I guess I do know why. It’s intriguing, but consistently falls just short of being coherent enough to be really enjoyable. It’s floating on this borderline between Great Ideas and Poor Execution, but I keep hoping that the next issue will tip that balance, and everything will make sense. It hasn’t happened yet, and I’ve read the first 7 issues, so I feel like I’m in too deep to give up. Only 6 issues to go, and I’m hoping the ending will tie things together and make it all worthwhile, so I can go back and read it and really absorb it. But then I fear that it’ll just keeping plugging along with it’s super-compressed storylines and mish-mashed storytelling and garish colors, and end up a colossal waste of time and money. We’ll see. but hey, the covers are awesome. That’s one thing I love about it.

It reminds me of Automatic Kafka though. At first, the issues were hard to follow and make sense of. Characters, scenes, and relationships seemed loosely developed, and transitions and motivations weren’t always clear. But now that I’ve just gone back and read through the first 7 issues again, I managed to pick up on more of the actual plot and characters. I think it’ll read really well as a collection, rather than monthly. Something about the pace of 22 confusing pages a month is working against it, while reading it straight through gives you a much better thread to follow through it.

Ramble ramble. I need to get someone else to read 100 Bullets with me, so we can talk theories and re-cap and clear things up for each other. Any takers? Any of my three or so readers want to join in the fun?

More later…

Happiness…

Happiness is: not getting tear-gassed by riot cops.
Frustration is: having to be out on the streets protesting an illegal war in the first place

Happiness is: getting invited to your parent’s house for a free hot meal
Frustration is: being an hour late and having nothing but 1 chicken ka-bob and some potatoes to split with your girlfriend.

Happiness is: finding a shitload of Hellboy comics in the .50 cent bin at your local comic store.
Frustration is: ending up with parts 1-3 of 4 of one storyline, part 1 of 2 of a second storyline, and part 2 of 2 of a third storyline.

Anyhow. later….

Forget the Pledge

Recently listening to:
Mr. Lif – Emergency Ration EP
Outkast – “Bombs Over Baghdad”
Sigur Ros – ()

It’s been hard getting my thoughts together well enough to actually post here lately. I spent last night with Emily, flipping between Cartoon Network and CNN, drinking wine coolers and fighting off a headache. We’re planning on going to the protest on Saturday in SF. We wanted to go today, but decided against it for various reasons. So Saturday it is. I would’ve liked to be one of the ones linking arms in an intersection this morning, but it’ll have to wait.

Send back the Architects of Carthege / Take down the flag / forget the pledge…
-Les Savy Fav

Up to Date!

So I’m finally up to date on 100 Bullets. After reading the Counterfifth Detective trade paperback, I decided to just pick up the monthly issues that had come out since then, rather than waiting another 6 months or more for the next collection. And i set up a subscription at my local comic shop, so I’ll be getting the monthlies from now on (along with Automatic Kafka, Y – the Last Man, and 100%). I’m still reading through all the “solo” stories from issues 37-42, but as soon as I finish 42, I’m current.

100 Bullets is a great series…every piece of it fits together perfectly. Most ongoing series’, you can read each month’s installment and come away with a little more plot and not too much else. With 100 Bullets, there’s plot, of course, but there are at least 4 or 5 times each issue when I just have to stop and appreciate a little trick that Risso just pulled, or the attention to detail in an establishing shot, or a turn of phrase from Azarello. This book is consistently impressive on every level. It just couldn’t work if any of the creative team left.

More later…

Tablets

I got to play around with Emily’s Wacom tablet last night. First time I’d ever used one, and it was really hard to get used to at first. I kind of figured it out though. It’s pretty fun in Flash, where it’ll smooth or straighten as desired, but you have to be really deliberate. I started doing a vector trace of an Audrey Hepburn image that’s looking kinda nice. It might go online eventually. I did that while a bunch of us were watching Grave of the Fireflies, which was hardcore depressing. Glad I had something else to do to semi-distract me.

I also did some page-test pencil doodles for some Desert Planet story ideas…turned out very cool, even for a rough sketch. I’ll scan that at some point. I want to do some more of that sort of sketching to get the planning stages of Desert Planet underway. Still don’t have a character design though…hehe.

Slide Show

Hi folks, been a while. Just got back from Reed and Aaron’s Madagascar slide show, which was incredible! Had to convince Emily to come along, since she wasn’t feeling so well earlier, but we were both super glad we came. Zae’s birthday was earlier, too, and hanging out at the Funky Monkey (a generic Chucky Cheese that serves beer, surprisingly) was interesting. I ended up leaving early after Erin, Timm, and Fonda cut out to go to a gallery opening. I felt kind of sorry for Melanie, since most of her other friends had flaked, apparently, and I was the last non-family person her age there. Ah well.

Me and Timm officially have a show set up on May 2nd for Car Stereo Destroys Michael Bolton Tape, our electronic noise project. We’re planning on just playing pre-arranged tracks on our laptops while we do something completely unrelated on stage, like arrange flowers or make cookies. Should be fun.

Me and Reed and Joey have plans….once Reed and Joey get settled in their new place, we’re gonna hunt for a rehearsal studio in SR somewhere, and I’m finally gonna buy myself a drum kit, and we’re all gonna start a band. Rawk!!!! I’m excited about the drums already….it’ll be a few months though, probably…

More later…

Goddamn You, IE.

Hmm….just noticed that IE5 omits the scrollbar on this page. Not good. Should be easy to fix though. I ran the w3c validator last night, and I’m still a looooooooong way from valid XHTML 1.0 markup, so that’ll be my next project here. If any of my millions of readers have browser quirks, I’m sure they’ll be kind enough to submit them to me, via the e-mail address at left.

Started a sketch last night, but the proportions are screwy. I’ll come back to it, maybe tonight, and play with it some. Or maybe I’ll just restart it. Hmmm…

The new 100 Bullets collection is supposedly out this week. As if I wasn’t broke enough.

More later…

Version 2.0!

OK, website, version 2 is live! still haven’t figured out why my desktops aren’t showing up…I’ll figure that out later though. But i like this look…cleaner, kinda minimal, easier to read, and works in a wider variety of browsers. still not prefect in all of them, but, eh, that’s the nature of the beast. I think I”m gonna go see how they validate now.

More later…