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Saturday is International "Read Comics in Public Day"

Well, it seems that somebody has decided that on Saturday, those of us who read comics should make a special effort to be seen conspicuously reading comics in public.

here. But, really, here.

I have mixed feelings on this.

1) I'm lazy. The idea of going out in 100+ degree heat to read when I have at least two sofas and a lovely bed upon which I can read in relative peace seems unnecessary.

2) I can't shake the feeling this is going to wind up a little more embarrassing than interesting once the press notices people in Flash t-shirts reading comics. There's a certain ambassadorship you're taking on by participating, and I kind of wonder what a lot of readers will say when questioned.

3) It assumes that people will invade your privacy, even notice what you're doing, or feel its odd to be seen reading a comic.

4) I also already read comics in public, in the few instances when I read in public (which is usually when I'm on a work trip).

5) There was also a school of thought circa 2004 that what would really promote comics would be posters and commercials featuring known comic-loving celebrities reading their favorite titles, sort of like those library "READ" posters. This always seemed like a... bad idea. It always seemed a little like a desperate appeal for acceptance from nerds.

6) I'd think this will have a limited appeal to a certain segment of the population, as per generating interest. Maybe 13-25 year olds. I don't see my coworkers saying "gee, where IS the local comic shop?"

BUT

1) A lot of people don't even know that comic shops really exist in their neck of the woods or that they can buy comics online or buy eComics.

2) It also can't hurt to have adults seen reading comics who don't fit the stereotypes that, frankly, fit a pretty small sector of the comic audience.

3) If readers are out there with more than one type of comic with them, letting people see the diversity of content is a good idea.



It doesn't really matter if I'm reading a comic or a standard old book, its always interesting to see how many people will ask you "what are you reading?". I usually suspect that its far more to inform them about you than it is because they're looking for something new to read, but that doesn't mean it doesn't spark small conversations.

I still remember when I was reading a Jack Kirby "Losers" reprint and the hostess at the restaurant confessed her adoration for some pretty grim ultraviolent 90's era comics. It was kind of charming. And, by the way, people always are amazed to see someone actually reading a Superman comic. There's definitely an impression that Superman isn't really around anymore.

So while I have my reservations, I might be taking a comic along with me to the pool on Saturday.

I saw 22 of 25 "classic" sci-fi films from the list on iO9

i09 posted a list of "25 classic science fiction movies that everybody must watch"

I had not seen:

1) Primer - never heard of it, so I'm calling shenanigans on "classic" here
2) Children of Men - came out at an awkward time, and I've meant to see it. Not sure anyone would call it "classic", though.
3) Moon - is really new and gets very mixed reviews (sorry, Jamie, its true). I think calling it classic is a stretch, but it is directed by Zowie Bowie (look it up), so that give sit extra sci-fi pedigree, I guess.

Mostly, the list doesn't feel very "classic". Firstly, its incredibly sparse on vintage film. Yes, "Forbidden Planet", "Metropolis" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still" all still hold up remarkably well, and are instantly recognizable, but do we really need to jump from there to "Planet of the Apes"? You could fill the list with all kinds of stuff from the middle of the century. I mean: where the @#$% is Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, the most important sci-fi concepts of the 20th Century?

Not here, that's where.



And while I loved "District 9", its like time traveling to 1989 and declaring "Alien Nation" a sci-fi classic. And for goodness sake, Jamie is going to see "Inception" in the theater again this evening. Shouldn't something have had to make it to Blu-Ray before we declare it a "classic"? To use "classic", you need to point to more than classic tropes, you need to prove that the film endured and influenced other works.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

I'd include:

1) Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein - Look, Frankenstein is straight up science fiction. It might be scary, but so is "Alien".

2) Fahrenheit 451 - if we're going dystopian future, why not include the one about the future that's rapidly becoming our present?

3) Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind - You included ET, but not Close Encounters? That's just wrong. Also, Richard Dreyfus + potatoes gave me ammunition for dinner table antics for years.

4) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Nuclear powered submarine in the 19th Century.

5) War of the Worlds - Steven Spielberg is an amazing guy, but his remake doesn't hold a candle to the 1950's original (or the terrifying radio drama that caused all that hubbub in 1938).

6) The Time Machine - I don't love this movie, but even I'll agree it should have been included

7) Things to Come - Straight up, if you want to use the words "science fiction" and "classic" and "list" in the title of your article, this has to be on it. The fact that this wasn't on the list tells me Charlie Jane Anders needs to get herself to a video store.

8) The Fantastic Voyage - If Raquel Welch in a white lycra suit cannot get you to watch a movie about people miniaturized and placed inside a dude to laser out a blocked artery... I cannot help you.

9) Godzilla (and its many sequels) - Man mucking with forces beyond his understanding creates 30-story, atomic flame spewing (yet adorable) bi-pedal engine of destruction. There is nothing not awesome or classic about our buddy Gojira.

10) About half of the Ray Harryhausen Catalog - When he wasn't making swashbuckling monster movies, he was making movies about giant monsters that would eat you alive in your car. 20 Million Miles to Earth is pretty darn good.

11) Omega Man - Seemingly missing the point of the original novel, which was remade with the novel's title but yet another ending, this riff on I am Legend is a wild ride of a post-catastrophe zombiefied world in which Charlton Heston is the last sane man on Earth. As it should be.

12) Marooned - This movie is totally depressing, but it is also fiction about actual science. And unlike Moon, it will be watched long after the last hipster has hung up their skinny pants and ironic sunglasses.

13) When Worlds Collide - This movie has been imitated so much, I have no idea if people even know about the original.

14) Them! - The original Atomic Age cautionary tale. Also: Aliens totally ripped this movie off.

15) A Clockwork Orange - This is technically sci-fi. It happens in the future and uses technology that does not yet exist.

16) Buck Rogers - There aren't any straight up Buck Rogers movies. I'm only aware of the serials.

17) Flash Gordon - The Star Wars to Buck Rogers' Star Trek, Flash Gordon is far more fantasy than sci-fi, but its impossible to ignore the influence of Flash Gordon.

18) Akira - Lately its become trendy to bag on Akira. @#$% those guys. Akira is @#$%ing amazing. I don't care if, like all anme from the era, it totally falls apart in the 3rd act.


Anyway, I could go on.

A very partial list of classics I haven't seen:

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Destination Moon
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Rocketship X-M
Donovan's Brain


More recent sci-fi films that I think will endure?

Donnie Darko
28 Days Later
Idiocracy
Total Recall (because I love Total Recall)
Jurassic Park
12 Monkeys
The Abyss


There are also films that are cinematic favorites that seem to have been ignored as they're not American:

Alphaville
Stalker
Solaris
La Jetee
City of Lost Children
Delicatessen
Until the End of the World
Wings of Desire

So what do you think?

Why Waco?

Tomorrow I'm headed for Waco again. It seems I've not really explained why I'm going to Waco so often, or why I travel for business.

I work with a multi-university digital library consortium. All of our members provide different resources, and our friends at Baylor provide an excellent training facility at the edge of campus where we show staff from our member institutions how to use software provided by my group.

Its exactly that interesting. And when I'm traveling elsewhere, its to visit colleagues at various universities and see what they're up to and figure out how we can better support each other. So I might be visiting Texas A&M Kingsville one day, and then drive down to visit UT Brownsville the next.

I get to see a lot of Texas and listen to audio books. Its not bad. I just wind up drinking a lot of gas station coffee and eating in a lot of hotel restaurants.

And I wear a tie sometimes, which I still find funny at age 35. But ties inspire a lot more confidence than t-shirts with "The Flash" emblazoned on the front.


a staple of my work attire

Because I work in a basement in an office with a window whose blinds we keep closed, and I work amongst librarians, a people who seemingly have no dress code, the wide array of superhero t-shirts isn't really a big deal. Most people are polite and don't even ask about the superheroes poking out from behind my button down shirts. And when they do, it usually ends with "I'm sorry, you know... I don't really want to know."

Every area within a university is slightly different. Engineers sort of operate one way, liberal arts folks another, and while there are many stereotypes about librarians which I see confirmed, they are a varied bunch. But it is truly amazing that they can all agree that you should stop making that racket, because people are trying to read.

Library science is an interesting field. Its basically all about making sure as much information is available as possible, and as easy to find as possible. So your average employee at a research library is sort of like Google, only with glasses and sweater sets. My job falls into the twilight world of how universities are figuring out how to use technology to bring research data not just to other scholars, but to the world, leveraging the technologies that are out there, but managing information about those resources and insuring the integrity of that material. So... you know, wacky times.

We tend to keep our eyes on the eBook industry, the struggles of print journals, integrity of electronic publication, long-term storage concepts, and lots of things that people are still trying to figure out now that you can distribute anything you want via the internet. Its just a matter of making sure people find it.

Anyhow, that's why I'm going to Waco. Also, I might try to go to the Dr. Pepper Museum.

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

source

I once watched "Pump Up The Volume" and talked about it, and then Ransom talked about that

So, thanks to Ransom!

Two years ago I did a post on the 1990 movie "Pump Up the Volume" starring Christian Slater and Young-Ryan-Mind-Boggler: Samantha Mathis-circa-1990.

Anyhow, Sunday was the 20th Anniversary of "Pump Up the Volume" and Ransom wrote a very nice post pointing to my column. And now I'm linking back to ChronSnob, and the cycle is complete.

Steanso ends old blog, starts new blog

After a lengthy hiatus, my brother and one of the heads on this multi-headed hydra of bloggers with which I've been associated, has shut down operations at The Adventures of Steanso.

Steanso provided a nigh-daily-dose of personal journal and political observation from a Texas Dem's perspective.

I knew, of course, that the blog was on indefinite hiatus and might shut down, and today he kind of at least put it out there that it looked like he was done.

However, he's not quite done with the internets yet. It looks like he's started a new blog to share his musical stylings.

http://logmagsubtrans.blogspot.com/

Sure, the URL reads a bit like a Craigslist person-to-person ad for somebody with a very particular lifestyle, but its short for: Logician Magician Transmission Submission

You can go there now to listen to the first tune he's posted to the site.

Yes, I watched "Piranha 3D"

I sort of missed out on horror movies growing up, and I have only vague recollections of watching the original Piranha on VHS circa 1982 or so at a friend's house. As near as I can recall, people were attacked by, and eaten by, small fish.

The movie didn't leave much of an impact on me, and despite having an absolutely amazing cover to the VHS box, I never saw Piranha 2: The Spawning.


Yes, they are flying. And, no, I can't really get my head around how many great ideas are going on here.

It should be noted that Piranha 2: The Spawning was Avatar creator James Cameron's second directorial effort.

I have no idea how much Piranha 3D has in common with its forebears, but SimonUK - master of anything with beheadings - indicated to me after the movie that it gave several nods to the original. And as there are only so many things that can really occur in a story in which fish surprise and then eat people, I assume the plots are largely similar.


now just imagine how crazy Elizabeth Shue would look here IN 3D!!!

This movie features the my-she's-held-up-remarkably-well Elizabeth Shue, she of Adventures in Babysitting and Adventures in Nicholas Cage Sitting (aka: Leaving Las Vegas) fame. Shue doesn't act much these days, and I think she lives in Arizona, which is where our story takes place.

Lake Havasu is not terribly well known to folks east of New Mexico, but as a reference point for us Texans, its sort of the South Padre of the Arizona/ California region, where college kids on Spring Break go to booze it up on the water. The movie fictionalizes Havasu as "Lake Victoria", but its pretty clear exactly where the action takes place.

In case it matters: an earthquake opens a pathway to an underground lake, sealed off from the outside world for millions of years, where our beasties have been eating presumably each other, becoming super-jerk fish.

But, of course, none of that is as important to the movie as 3D blood-splattered mayhem once the fish discover people, which happens before the credits, you'll be happy to know.

This is a horror movie that isn't going to pull any punches with the gore even though you half expect the actors to do a take to the camera during a few scenes. Its comedy by familiarity with the genre, with characters established for the sole purpose of a bloody comeuppance, and knowing underwater POV shots, letting you know pretty much anyone with a toe in the water is going to get it.

Its also a surprising return to heaps and heaps of nudity in a horror movie, which was more or less part and parcel of the genre during its heyday (and there is a whole genre of water borne horror + boobs). Anyhow, the movie does not forget its in 3D at any point, and there's at least one swimming scene where you can almost hear the gears working in the director's head.


again, in 3D. Yes, this is a still from the movie. There's a whole lot of this in the movie.

This is not going to be a movie for everyone, as even I got a little queasy during the climactic "oh, the undergrads are over THERE" sequence.* But its also not torture porn. Its much more along the lines of a creative crew gleefully thinking up new and interesting ways that a fish is going to do you in. Obviously, your mileage will vary. I will say, Jamie (who does not watch horror movies) was cackling next to me, so... there you have it.

As an added bonus, it seems like pretty much everyone that director Alexandre Aja called up to participate had nothing going on that weekend, because the movie has a curiously great couple of cameos and a remarkable supporting cast. In addition to the lovely Ms. Shue, there's also Ving Rhames, Jerry O'Connell, and more. But the cameos by Christopher Lloyd and Richard Dreyfus are just gold.


as Jason pointed out, once Eli Roth showed up as a party promoter, we all knew exactly how awful things were about to get for the Spring Breakers.

Sadly, one of the biggest laughs of the movie came during the trailers. They showed the trailer for "Devil", which, when the screen proudly stated "from the mind of M. Night Shayamalan", received a collective groan, which then received a collective burst of laughter.

At any rate, if you're looking for a capital S "Summer Movie" relishing old school plot with a wink and a nod, you could do far worse than Piranha 3D.



*I also almost barfed in my popcorn bin during Dead Alive, in between laughing so hard I was crying.

I am unironically sad to hear The Star Hustler has passed

My friends, I am sorry to report that The Star Hustler, Jack Horkheimer himself, has merged with the infinite.

In high school my weekend evenings usually ended the same way every week. I'd take my girlfriend home, go home and watch an awful movie or two on USA Up All Night or MST3K, then watch the PBS show "The Star Hustler", just before PBS signed off for the night.



If you've stayed up really really late, like, ever... especially in the 1990's, its likely you've seen "The Star Hustler". It was a Green Screened thing from some Florida affiliate, with a middle aged guy in a Members Only jacket or wide array or sweaters (which I found odd, because he was in Florida), and he talked about astronomy. And he @#$%ing loved astronomy.

I began to think of Jack Horkheimer as a sort of excitable sandman, the person who eased me off to slumberland with tales of stars I was never going to actually step outside to see, because I lived in the suburbs near a large street light, and then in the middle of the city. And I often pondered what an amazing life this guy had as scientist by day, and enthusiast for his own field by night. Plus, he got to get green screened, and that was neat.

He also ruined me for the one astronomy class I dropped in college. My professor was interesting in that he was a genius and had Turrets that made him do this odd "b-kok" sound every once in a while but he was nowhere as engaging as Jack Horkheimer, and had none of the knack for teaching young minds. Nor, I suspect, the Members Only jacket or collection of sweaters.

So, I salute thee, Jack Horkheimer, and bid you godspeed. Sure, I found your show because the title "Star Hustler"* sounded like it might contain boob when I was 14 or so and was staying up too late. But I was actually interested in what you had to say. the world is poorer without you in it, walking across the green-screened cosmos.

And if there's any justice, you're up there among the stars right now.

a PDF download on the show (thanks to Jeff S.!)





*Apparently in 1997, the show changed names to The Star Gazer as someone pointed out that the program did, indeed, sound like it might be a soft-core sci-fi program.

Its the Birthday of The Admiral

All hail The Admiral, pater familias of Clan Steans.

Today is his birthday. I got him a present and everything.

Happy b-day to the man who has put up with 35 years of asinine nonsense from his second, last, and most disappointing child. As far as we know. The man travels a lot on business.