Comic Apathy

Today is new comic book day. I don’t think there’s anything coming out that I’m particularly interested in though. It’s been like this for a while. The only regular series’ I’m following now are 100 Bullets (which has shifted into bi-monthly mode while the team does Batman), Vertigo Pop: Bangkok (the final issue of which is out this week or next), the Filth (which is up to issues 12 of 13, and is being delayed until next month some time), and Y: the Last Man, which is still monthly…..hmmm. I think that’s it. Grrl Scouts: Work Sucks is over, Zero Girl: Full Circle is over, I’m waiting for the final Bone trade paperback, 100% is over (after about a 9 month delay!), I’m not sure what Paul Pope is working on, although there’s supposedly some THB material coming out in August (yay!)…I picked up Hip Flask: Elephantmen #1 the other week, and it was interesting, but is the next issue really coming out next year? Pop Gun War is on who knows what sort of schedule…Cerebus is fast approaching it’s end, but I gave up feeding my money to Dave Sim long ago, but not soon enough. Although if I could find a used copy of Church & State II, I’d grab it. There’s some colelctions and graphic novels I might pick up, like Craig Thompson’s Blankets, which looks interesting, or the soft cover Jimmy Corrigan. Maybe Batman: Year One, which is actually really cheap. Hmm. Oh, and Mignola has been tied up working on the Hellboy film, so no new Hellboy for a while. Grim tidings. I need to find some new monthlies that are worth following. X-statix looks interesting, and I dig Mike Allred, but I’m cautious about picking up X-anything these days, despite how good I hear some of the titles are, and how good the movie was. I’ll have to dig around. Maybe I’ll try out the Losers, although my hopes aren’t too terribly high for that.

In the Studio

I hereby dub this day “Recording Day.” Me and Joey recorded a few improvised and rough songs, hopefully for inclusion on the final version of the Cactuses soundtrack. We did a few songs that he’s been working on, Prisoner of War, Payola, and Cast Iron Body, then did a couple instrumentals that I came up with, Spaghetti West and a very soundtrack-y piano piece with some quartal chords and jazz-y tones. Very fun. Then, when I got home, Timm was here with Rosie and Winston (and Josh just arrived), working on mastering a CD from winstons Vs-880 recorder. Supafly. Rosie’s working on some really nice art next to me at the moment, and the boys are all listening to songs on headphones. From now on, on July 27th-28th every year, everyone who can record music, MUST. Or else.

More later…

Captain Jack

Awwwwww!

Welcome Back, Mitch!

Mitch over at Nothing Nice to Say just UN-quit today. Good news.

What? Michael????

Stop the presses. Something reasonable has just been heard from the mouth of none other than Michael Jackson, self-proclaimed King of Pop and everyone-else-proclaimed King of Crazy Pop Star Nuttiness.

Check it out.

This is what a lot people have been trying to say all along. Instead of criminalizing file-sharing, find an economic solution. Take advantage of the fact that 60 million people (according to some estimates) want to download music over the internet. There must be a way that services like the Apple Music Store or other pay-for-play download services can offer a quality, reliable, and non-restricted method for distributing digital files that people will be willing to pay for. The fact that they’re competing against free services may seem insurmountable, until you consider how hard it can be to find a decent quality download without getting a bad rip, a spoofed file, or a mis-labeled song. Give the people what they want. Don’t lock them away for having the audacity to want your product.

Stuck by Cactuses

Sunday sucked so much ass.

Let me back up. So Joey’s movie premiered on Sunday in Modesto. Cactuses, which Joey did audio for (among many other things) and which me and Reed cameo’d in as musicians. 7pm on Sunday in Modesto. Modesto, a little 2 hour drive from Rohnert Park through the middle of nowhere on Highway 12, across a couple forks of the American River near Sacramento.

Except that the second drawbridge over the river, and hour and a half into the drive, less that half and hour from Modesto, was out. For hours. With no alternate route nearby. I drove for an hour and a half just to sit in completely stopped traffic in front of a malfunctioning drawbridge for another hour, at which point i decided to just give up and go home, since there was no sign of the bridge problem being fixed. At which point I hit rush hour traffic coming home on 80. So I ended up driving almost 200 miles, taking about 6 hours out of my day. For nothing. I missed the movie, missed seeing Joey, got absolutely nothing out of the trip except frustration and exhaustion.

Anyways…

I forgot to tell you guys about Jack Sparrow. No, not that Jack Sparrow. The sparrow that Emily’s roommates found, and which we have subsequently adopted and named Jack Sparrow. He’s a baby, and he is super-tame now. He eats formula from and eye-dropper, and isn’t the least bit timid about people. He landed on Tara’s lip the other day! He’s a cute little fucker, and he’s part of our household now. I’ll post pictures. He rocks.

More later…

DVDx

I downloaded DVDx from sourceforge.net last night, and tried it out…looks like I’ve finally found a useful, non-hardcore-geek oriented DVD rip/conversion program. It’s a one step process to rip and encode to .avi or .mpg, and it automatically sets bitrate to fit on a VCD or other specified media size. It takes a while (about 4 hours to rip all 2 hours of Charade at VCD quality), but looks great for something you could leave running over night. I’ve checked quality really briefly, but I’m gonna watch my rip when I get home tonight and see what the final verdict is. Looks promising though. DVD piracy…er….backup, here I come.

The Hunt

Long time, no blogging. Anyways…I’ve been busy. Me and Emily have been looking for houses/apartments/townhouses/whatever. So that’s been annoying and time-consuming, but kinda fun in an odd sort of way. It looks like our household will be the two of us, Keith, and Michelle (not Covell, but Swift…Emily’s ex-roommate). I still need to figure out what Timm is planning on doing, and whether we’ll need to stay at our current place for a while yet. Hmmm….

I just picked up Bjork’s Volumen Plus DVD, and a couple of CD’s (yay! payday!). It’ll be nice to have those Bjork videos, finally. I was thinking of getting the Cowboy Bebop Movie as well, but I’ll think I’ll wait till it’s cheaper or used.

Me and Joey have been screwing around and trying to get the Quattro to work on his new computer. We finally got it to work, after having some trouble with Cubase, so it looks like we might have something reliable to record with, once we start working on our music project(s). We even found new Quattro drivers, so I might be able to get it working on my computer also. That would be nice…it’d mean the money I paid for it hadn’t gone completely to waste.

I got to watch the trailer for Joey’s movie, Cactuses, while I was over there this weekend. It looks really, really cool, and I can’t wait to see it at the premiere this weekend. The trailer I saw was a pretty rough 6 minute trailer, so I have high expectations for the finished project now. And I have a cameo, so that’ll be fun….

More later….

FMTM, Baby!

I just made plans for July 25th. I’ll be at the Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco, watching From Monument to Masses, ?-ziq, HIM, and some other band. Rawk! That’ll give me a chance to pick up the new FMTM album that’s out now. They’re actually playing tonight at Gilman Street, but it looks like I’ll be staying in and watching Adaptation and Punch Drunk Love.

100 Bullets #46 came out this week, and it’s the last issue before the series goes bi-monthly (allowing the team to do a run on Batman at the same time). Some of the plot-thickening that happened in that issue was pretty interesting. I think we’ve got a clearer idea of what Sheperd is up to now, but I’m not really clear on what the situation between Lono and Loop is at the moment. Is Lono still planning on killing Loop at the end of the issue? Does he, in fact, kill him? Is that the meaning of the dead bird in the last panel? If I know anything about 100 Bullets, it’s that you can never count on anything being true unless it’s shown explicitly. And even then, as is the case with Lono, you might be wrong. Good stuff…Although Risso’s artwork is looking a little more cartoon-y and exaggerated in this storyline. Looking at Lono in the first few issues, and looking at him now, he’s become a hulking, cartoon brute, rather than the larger framed, muscular powerhouse.

More later…