Posted 9:45pm
pst, Saturday, January
29, 2005
Imminent
Threat
"The
President's expectation of all actions
military will be to pursue the disarmament
of the Iraqi regime. That's what
this is about. The reason war has
been brought upon us is because Saddam
Hussein refused to disarm. This did
not have to unfold this way. The
President gave Saddam Hussein every
opportunity to disarm the way other
nations have disarmed when they wanted
to disarm. And that meant complying
with the United Nations resolutions.
Saddam Hussein failed to avail himself
of that opportunity, and then, therefore,
he brought this upon himself. And
pursuance of this will now be done
through military operations, and
the President's only objective in
making determinations about which
military plans are best is what will
lead to the disarmament of the regime."
-
Ari Fleischer, White House press
briefing, 3/20/03
As of
this morning, there are 1429 American
soldiers killed in Iraq, nearly two
years after Bush declared "mission
accomplished".
Still
no weapons of mass destruction found.
The American
Family Association run by the
psycho Reverend Donald E. Wildmon
has been claiming that
Spongebob Squarepants promotes homosexuality
because Spongebob holds hands with
his male starfish pal.
Animator
John Martz at Robot
Johnny suggests the good Reverend
look back in time to the wholesome
cartoons of the 50's, where any number
of Warner Brother cartoon characters
got gussied up in drag and kissed same
sex characters.
Thank
God there are decent folk like the
Reverend John H. Thomas of the United
Church of Christ who are willing to
welcome Spongebob into their fold with open
arms. The UCC are an inclusive
ministry.
The universal
remote I wrote about a few posts ago
has been in operation for a week and
it works as advertised. Easy online
set-up on my PowerBook via the suppplied
USB cable only took about an hour,
including troubleshooting.
It's
controlling my plasma TV, VCR, DVD/laserdisc,
tuner/amp and my DirecTV/Tivo. No issues
or problems at all. I've gone from
four remotes on my coffee table to
one. Hallelujah.
The Self-portrait
Sketchbook I promised in my last post
will have to wait. I discovered I'm
out of server space. I had to delete
the old Sarge comic strip archive (sorry)
and I'm going to be yanking Furious
George offline soon. It's eating
about 80 MB of space because of the
video.
If you
want to save any of the media files
to your hard drive, now would
be the time to do it. It'll be gone
in a week.
Iron
and Wine have a fantastic new song, "The
Trapeze Swinger", on the "In
Good Company" soundtrack. since
I'm not really an MP3 blog and don't
wish to come under the scutiny of the
RIAA, I'll just point you here.
Yes.
Paul Giamatti got robbed. Jamie Foxx
will win in a walk for what is essentially,
a very good impersonation act.
::Permalink::
Posted 9:59pm
pst, Sunday, January 23,
2005
Uncool
I've
been looking at the mp3 blogger's
and critics' top ten album lists
for 2004 and I've determined, I'm
not cool.
After
reading about Arcade Fire all year,
I've tried and tried to get into
their stuff, but to no avail. It's
just not my thing. Same for Interpol
or Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. These
guys are everyone's favorite band,
but they don't do a thing for me.
Maybe
I'm just getting old. It was one
thing when I despised POD, Good Charlotte,
Maroon 5, System of a Down, etc.
Those bands legitimately sucked.
But these bands aren't awlful. The
Libertines, the Hives, Scissor Sisters,
Pedro the Lion... they just don't
get a rise out of me.
I
guess I'm just not cool enough to
like them.
Speaking
of overrated: the Garden State soundtrack.
An album of a bunch of old Shins material.
Now, I LOVE the Shins, but these tracks
have dust on them. If you want a cool
fucking soundtrack, try the SpongeBob
Squarepants disc. New material from
the Shins, Wilco and the Flaming Lips.
Only SpongeBob could get these bands
to contribute new stuff to his soundtrack.
Zach
Braff couldn't hold SpongeBob's jock.
As perfect
as Apple is, sometimes, their shit
goes wrong. A couple of weeks ago I
got an error message as I opened iTunes.
My data file had been corrupted.
Shit.
It didn't
mean that I had lost my songs, just
a shitload of my playlists. Those of
you with iPods know what kind of shit
that can mean. When iTunes finally
did open, it reverted to a playlist
that was months old. In other words,
songs I had deleted were still listed
and hundreds of songs I had added did
not appear.
Now,
the actual songs were still in my iTunes
Imported Music folder. But now I had
to figure out which ones were missing
from my library and re-add them. A
shitload of my playlists were gone,
so I had to recreate those, including
three massive mix folders. Took several
evenings to sort it all out.
As shitty
(how many times can I use "shit")
as this was, I actually was pleased
with the results. The corrupt data
file forced me into doing some iTunes
clean-up and housekeeping.
It also
got me to subscribe to .mac to back-up
all my data and sync all my info. Funny
that Apple's fuck-up end up putting
more money in their coffers from my
.mac subscription fee.
Coming
sometime this week: The Self-portrait
Sketchbook... along with an explanation
of what that means. Stay tuned....
Looks
like I've maxed out on my server space,
so I had to dump the Sarge archive.
Had a good run, but it's time to move
on.
Redesigned
the Photologue and
added the picture above. Now the jpegs
are a bit bigger. Hope you like the
new format.
Johnny
Carson, rest in peace. You were a true
gentleman.
::Permalink::
Posted 10:17pm
pst, Sunday, January 16,
2005
Blogs,
and the bloggers that love
them
It's
odd how blogs have taken over as
a way of getting information. Thanks
to Jason Zada's blog,
I may have found an universal remote
that will finally work for my sustem.
I've
got four remotes now, controlling
a plasma TV, TIVO/DirecTV tuner,
receiver, DVD player and VCR. My
wife has got the hang of it, but
try to explain it to a guest and
we're in for a twenty minute discussion.
In
a post last
week, Jason raved about his new universal
remote, a LogiTech
Harmony 688. It sounded like
he had the same set-up I do, so I
looked into it. I asked him a couple
of questions through his comments
link and he confirmed the features
I was looking for.
Unfortunately,
my wife didn't like the price, $250.
I had previously spent $200 on a
Sony remote that I ended up returning
because it wouldn't work on half
my equipment. Even the Good Guys
technician who came to install my
TV couldn't program it, so back to
the store it went.
But
then, thanks to the comments area,
Jason pointed me to the same remote
for a hundred bucks less at Amazon.
My wife still wasn't happier with
the new price, but at least we'll
get rid of the remote morass on our
coffee table.
I
love the blogosphere.
Speaking
of Jason Zada's blog, it's odd how
I came upon it in the first place.
I had posted my portfolio online
a couple of years ago. One day, I
get an e-mail from an art director
in Italy who wrote to tell me how
much he liked my work.
Visiting
his links led me to Liz Warren Zada's ColorblindTV
blog. She also was an art
director in San Francisco. I think
this may have been the first "blog" I
ever visited. It felt very voyeuristic,
almost like reading her diary. It's
odd, because I had essentially been
publishing a blog without knowing
it since 1996 at the Laughing Drunk
site.
Her
site led me to her husband Jason's
blog. After Liz had got pregnant,
her updates became infrequent and
I began reading Jason's site more.
I linked to his site. After leaving
a comment on one of his posts, a
few months later, I discovered he
was linking to my blog.
On
one of his photo posts, he put up
some pictures from a Giants game
he went to the night before. I recognized
one of the people. Apparently we
had friends in common. A casual acquaintence
also happens to be his partner at
his agency EVB.
Not only that, but a writer I worked
with briefly works there as well.
Small world.
Jason
keeps a list of blogs he visits on
his site. I have been on the front
page of links for a year now, but
since he added a slew of new links,
I have migrated lower in the list.
I suspect my link will soon find
its way onto the second page... a
slight blow to my linkage ego.
I
also throw huge props to all the
political bloggers up there in the
left hand column. They've provided
me with an invaluable resource during
the election year and I continue
to visit them on a daily basis to
see how Bush is fucking up the country
every day.
Fight
the Right!
By
the way, the picture at the top of
this post has nothing to do with
this blog update. Just an attempt
to keep this page (and the Photologue)
fresh with new photography.
Added
a bunch of new blogger links in the
left hand column this update, most
of them belonging to animators.
::Permalink::
Posted 11:01pm
pst, Sunday, January
9, 2005
Will
Eisner, 1917-2005
On
January 3, 2005 at 87 years of age, Will
Eisner passed away. Here's his
obituary in the New York Times.
Eisner
was the creator of the comic book
graphic novel. As a writer and artist,
he was a leading proponent of the
thought that above all, comics were
Art.
He
inspired many generations of artists
to tell their stories through sequential
storytelling. I first became aware
of his work in the 80's. As a kid,
I was too busy reading X-Men and
the Fantastic Four to be bothered
with serious issues.
When
I finally dove into his work in the
last few years, it was only because
I was interested in his method of
graphic storytelling. Eventually,
I bought a copy of one of his sketchbooks
and was totally blown away. It was
the artistic equivilent of discovering
the Beatles.
He
attended some of the shows I had
been to, but as a non-fan, I never
sought him out. It's a mistake I
will regret for the rest of my life.
He was a storytelling giant.
At
least I can take comfort in having
his library of works available to
me at any time. Rest in peace.
As
of January 8, 2005, 1353 U.S. troops
in killed Iraq, still no WMD found.
Remember
what Rumsfeld said? We know where
they are... "in the area around
Tikrit".
Where
are they?
Why?
Not enough people are asking why.
Quick
plug for "In Good Company".
I saw it at an early screening last
week and it's pretty good. It may
very well likely make my top ten
films list for 2004 (it was released
in New York and Los Angeles a couple
weeks ago for Oscar consideration).
Paul
Weitz made his directorial debut
with "American Pie", a
fun, harmless teen sex comedy. Then
followed that up with the fantastic
adaptation of "About A Boy".
Now in his third film, he tackles
corporate politics. Talk about growth
from a director.
Opens
wide this Friday.
Got
a hold of some bad meatloaf last
week. Have you ever spent four hours
vomitting before? Not pleasant. I
woke up a few minutes here and there,
but ended up sleeping the entire
next day.
I've
decided not to do a Top Ten TV show
list for 2004. It's always the same
shows: Curb Your Enthusiasm, 24,
Survivor.
Look
for my Top Ten movie list in the
next few weeks as I try to catch
up on the year end releases.
::Permalink::
Posted 10:00am
pst, Saturday, January
1, 2005
New
Year = New Look, Top Ten Albums
Happy
New Year.
So
here we are again. The third redesign
in as many years. Familiarity breeds
contempt and so on and so forth.
Kept the general layout the same,
but redesigned the masthead and changed
the background image.
Added
subject headers, a few new links
and removed a couple of dead ones.
I also added a
"Recent Reads"
area in the upper righthand column
for recent interesting sites I've stumbled
onto.
Time
for my obligatory Top Ten lists.
The film list will have to wait until
I get a bit more time to catch up
on the backlogue of supposedly worthy
films. But here's the first list,
top ten albums. I should mention,
while I provided links to purchase
these albums at Amazon, most are
available at the iTunes Music Store
as well.
Disappointments:
Rufus
Wainwright - Want
Two
A good album, but not a great one.
Anything less than greatness is a failure
coming from this genius. Rufus's worst,
which is still pretty darn good. So
buy it anyway.
The
Blue Nile - High
We waited 9 years for this?
Badly
Drawn Boy - One
Plus One Is One
Rufus disease. A solid album from an
artist I expect greatness from.
Honorable
Mentions:
Brian
Wilson - Smile At
last!
Sam
Phillips - A
Boot and a Shoe
Thank God for Sam Phillips. Every
two years, we're fortunate to get
a new album. She grows with each
release and takes us along for the
ride.
The Beautiful South - Golddiggas,
Headnodders & Pholk Songs
A brilliant collection of cover versions.
And their selections run the gamut:
the Ramones, Rufus Wainwright, ELO,
Blue Oyster Cult(!). They bring gravitas
to Travolta and John's Grease classic, "You're
the One That I Want". Import
only at this time.
Top
Ten Albums 2004:
10.
Green Day - American
Idiot
Shame on POD, Sum 41 and Good Charlotte...
the original is back and they remind
us how much you suck ass.
9.
The Thrills - Let's
Bottle Bohemia
They've ditched the beach vibe for
horns and expose the artifice of life
in L.A. Amazing, considering they're
from Scotland.
8.
Rogue Wave - Out
of the Shadow
Heir to the Shins. Originally released
independently, this got a proper release
this year.
7.
Glenn Tilbrook - Transatlantic
Ping Pong
If you can't have Squeeze back, you
can at least get Glenn.
6.
Wilco - A
Ghost Is Born
Not as good as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,
but then again, is that even possible?
5.
The Finn Brothers - Everyone
Is Here
Another solid power pop album.
4.
David Holmes - Ocean's
12
When a score can make a movie better,
you know it's done it's job.
3.
Jon Brion - Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I was playing this in the office when
the woman in the next space said the
soundtrack made her want to cry. I
had the same reaction. A great score
from a great film.
2.
Ed Harcourt - Strangers
I was standing in line for a show at
the Fillmore about three years ago.
Someone asked who I was waiting in
line for. When I replied, "Neil
Finn", the person told me I should
have said "Ed Harcourt",
who was opening. I'm starting to agree
with her. Just another great pop album
from Harcourt. Currently only available
as an import, but scheduled to be released
domestically in February.
1.
Jon Brion - I
Heart Huckabees
While we wait for a full album of songs
from Brion, we have to make due with
this disc. Five new Brion songs along
with a sprightly, shimmering score.
See #3 & 4.
::Permalink::
