Super Bowl 46 Predicted WITH SCIENCE!

As a long time New Yorker and occasional (says my tax forms) New Englander, many of you have been asking me* where my loyalties lie vis-à-vis next Sunday's Super Bowl. But I have to tell you, I can't let my heart decide such things. For me, it all comes down to science**:

 

 

*I mean "you" in the less frequently used sense of "no one in particular."

**And a suprisingly poor grasp of modern video editing software!

 

Means Testing Social Security

I know that as a Democrat I'm not supposed to say this, but shouldn't we be means testing Social Security?

At its heart, Social Security is an insurance program. (And a public option buy-in, at that.) But what other insurance program pays out, even if you don't need it?

That's like buying fire insurance and then getting a payout even if your house never burns down. Social Security is the only insurance program that pays out if things DON'T go badly for you. It's death insurance. It pays out if you, through no fault of your own, don't die.

How crazy is that?

People who are rich, don't need Social Security. The idea that we continue to give money to people who don't need it, in an era of deficits and debt, is just ridiculous. Heck! It'd be ridiculous in an era of surpluses.

Democrats are supposed to be the party that fights against income inequality. Democrats are supposed to be taking a stand against taking money from the working class and giving it to the rich.

Why do the 99% pay payroll taxes to give Social Security to the 1%?

 

The Plot of STAR TREK 2 should be...

Complete fanboy post. Apologies.

I'm sure this won't happen, but what I really want to see in STAR TREK 2 is:

Older Spock, realizing time won't rip apart if he tells the new crew about his timeline, spills about Khan. Khan, in this timeline, is still in suspended animation in his spaceship (The Botany Bay) drifting lost in space. So Kirk and crew decide to secure the ship before Khan can wake up, get crazy evil, kill Kirk's son and sort of briefly kill Spock.

(Older Spock's perspective allows us to trade not just on how big of a threat Khan was in his first appearance, but on the threat he turned into years later in Wrath of Khan.)

Meanwhile, the crew of a Klingon ship have also identified the Botany Bay, and they want to dissect Khan to learn more about genetic augmentation. The crew of the Klingon ship are sort of a Bizarro Enterprise, both in terms of casting (get Kal Pen to play a sword-wielding Klingon) and character/competency.

Basically, it's crew against crew in a tactical battle in the middle of a dangerous area of space, and the ticking time bomb is "What if Khan wakes up." Which of course he does, forcing the Enterprise and the Klingon crew to team up in the third act.

I figure the Klingons "beat" the Enterprise, "win" Khan, and then he wakes up, takes over their ship, kills half of them, and then the Enterprise have to work with the survivors to beat Khan.

STAR TREK 2 is in pre-production now, and will presumably not remotely resemble any of the above.

 

This Too Shall Pass

A man goes to see his priest. "Father," he says, "I just lost my job! I'm out of work and money is tight, and I don't know how I'll support my wife and child!"

The priest places a hand on his shoulder and smiles and says, "Remember, my son, this too shall pass."

"You're right," the man concedes, and he leaves.

A few weeks later, the man returns. "Father," he says, "I caught my wife cheating on me with another man! I think she's going to leave me!"

The priest places a hand on his shoulder and smiles and says, "Remember, my son, this too shall pass."

"You're right," the man concedes, and he leaves.

A few weeks later, the man returns. "Father," he says, "My wife has left me, and I've caught my son doing drugs! I worry that he will end up in jail or dead!"

The priest places a hand on his shoulder and smiles and says, "Remember, my son, this too shall pass."

"You're right," the man concedes, and he leaves.

A few weeks later, the man returns. "Father," he says, "You were right about everything! I've found a new job! My wife and I have reconciled, and our marriage is better than ever! My son has gone to rehab and has sworn never to do drugs again!"

The priest places a hand on his shoulder and smiles and says, "Remember, my son, this too shall pass."

 

Double Steak Day

FYI, this year Double Steak Day falls on December 18th. If you are not familiar with the Double Steak Day, I would encourage you to make your way over to DoubleSteakDay.com.

And there's new merchandise this year via Le Cafe Press, just in case you always wanted a Double Steak Day tote bag or a clock:

 

Digital Storefronts for Comics Retailers

Okay, this is pretty comics-nerdy. My apologies. This is largely in response to Brian Hibbs' latest Tilting at Windmills column at CBR. What you need to know is this:

DC Comics and other comic book publishers sell digital comics through a service called Comixology. You can buy comics through their website or an app. And starting right about now, Comixology is offering physical comic book stores the opportunity to host Comixology storefronts through their websites.

So you could go to the Comixology website and buy your digital comics, or you could go to your retailer's website and buy your comics there. But Hibbs doesn't like Comixology's terms.

Wait. What?

The whole idea of retailer portals for digital comics baffles me. It's essentially charity, right? "Buy a digital comic today, and a portion of the purchase price will help to feed a struggling retailer in St. Louis!"

I mean, seriously, what's the difference between this and creating a Red Cross branded Comixology portal? What extra value do I get buying digital comics through a retailer site besides the retailer's good will?

Hibbs' argument seems to boil down to "I'm pleased that you're giving me free money, but I'm angered that you're not giving me more of it!"

I understand Hibbs' plight. I know that retailers have their backs up against a wall. But if I've decided to buy digital comics, I want as few entities in the transaction chain as possible. Every extra link in that chain means more people who are splitting up my money, and that means they'll need more of my money to go around.

Digital comics prices are already artificially inflated to avoid stepping on print sales. This is just giving publishers one more reason to keep those prices artificially high.

Digital comics need to be half the price they are right now, at least. $1.99 or $0.99. Retailer portals are a step backwards. Retailers quibbling over how much of my money they should get is... um...

...a step backwards with quibbling.

 

The Death of Scarcity

In September, DC will begin releasing its entire line of comic books digitally “day-and-date.” That means that as soon as the comics hit stores, they’ll be available to buy online for download to your computer or portable device of choice. And because the expression is “day-and-date,” most people have been focused on the timeliness aspect. Fans who want to go digital won’t have to wait weeks or months to read the new stories. But that’s maybe the least interesting implication of day-and-date digital comics distribution.

What’s really interesting isn’t that all of DC’s comics will be available digitally the same day they’re released in print. What’s really interesting is that ALL of DC’s comics will be available digitally the same day they’re released in print.

Up till now, most comic book companies' digital offerings have been scattershot. Maybe a few titles day-and-date, a few others that are a few months behind, and then a random assortment of issues from older titles.

In contrast to “day-and-date,” we might call the current approach “if-ever.”

But starting in September, DC has made the commitment that every new comic they put out will be available online in digital format immediately and forever.

I’ll say it again: AND FOREVER. That means that from September on, as long as DC stays in business, a customer will be able to buy any comic they’ve ever put out (from September on) at any time for or less than the original cover price.

Since the mid-70s, comics have existed as a niche collector’s market. Scarcity and demand drove cost both for older comics and for the next big thing. The first appearance of Spider-Man is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The latest sold-out buzz book from Image might go for $100 on eBay.

In recent years, we’ve seen this change somewhat. Publishers have found a new revenue stream repackaging their older comics into collections and selling them through comic stores and book chains. But they can’t reprint everything, and they can’t print an infinite number of copies.

With the move to day-and-date, DC has effectively decoupled the content from the collectible forever. There’s no longer such a thing as an obscure, hard-to-find comic. Storylines never go out of print. And no comic will ever be under-ordered again.

DC can put out a war comic or a horror comic or a cowboy comic, and if it doesn’t sell enough copies in September, they can sell the exact same comic in October, in November, and in 2015. Comics that they couldn’t afford to keep in circulation as collections, comics that would become hard to find and potentially expensive to collect as back issues, will be available forever and instantaneously in digital format at cover price or below.

Reading habits will change. Ironically, day-and-date distribution means that there’s no need to buy every comic the Wednesday it comes out. Want to wait a week or two to hear what people are saying about the new Blackhawk title? It’ll still be there when you’re ready. Heck, want to wait a few months and buy a few issues at once for a meatier reading experience? All of those issues will still be available, and they might even be cheaper!

We saw a similar phenomenon, “trade-waiting,” rise up around collected editions, but the danger there was always “If the comics don’t sell well enough, who’s to say there’ll be a collection?” But with day-and-date, those comics will always be available.

The only real risk is cancellation. If you don’t buy the comic now, they’ll stop making new ones. But there’s even a novel solution to that! Imagine DC putting out a press release:

“Sales on Jonah Hex have been slumping. If sales don’t increase, we’re going to have to discontinue the book.”

Within minutes, everybody’s who’s been waiting to pick up new issues can log in and download the issues they’d been holding out on. They can also reach out to friends and followers on social media to sample their favorite comic. And it doesn’t matter whether new readers start reading from the beginning, the latest issue, or the greatest hits in between. It’s all new money contributing to DC’s bottom line.

While DC will still be operating a periodical business day-to-day, they’ll also be maintaining an infinitely extensible backlist. This is essential for comics, because most comics are such quick reads. To encourage long-term reading habits, you need a library of comics available to potential readers. Enjoy this issue of Superman? Here’s 20 more. Like Grant Morrison’s writing? Here are three more series he’s written.

Of course, the ultimate barrier to entry is cost. There seems to be a growing consensus that comic books, and digital comics in particular, need to cost 99 cents. It seems to be the magical number at which each purchase becomes an impulse buy. With infinite availability and an “impulse price,” comics could finally have a chance to go mainstream.

(Here “mainstream” means something your average person would download while waiting in line at the bank.)

For various reasons which I won’t get into today, it’s not practical to sell comics for 99 cents just yet. But DC is at least thinking about ways to make their digital comics more affordable. Though their new digital comics will still be $2.99 at launch, same as their print comics, they will be lowering the price to $1.99 after 30 days.

Twice the right price isn’t good, but it’s better than thrice! And it provides some interesting options for those of us who plan to make the transition to all-digital come September.

I will certainly be buying the big new series on or very near to “day-and-date.” That includes the new Justice League, Action Comics, Batman, etc. And there are a number of other titles that I’ll be picking up, here and there, throughout the month as the mood strikes me. For instance, I’ll probably sample Omac and Hex and Nightwing before the end of the month.

Based on what I enjoy the most, I’ll decide what I want to stay up-to-date on. What do I really, really want to read as soon as it’s available? For everything else, I’ll wait a month or even two or three, picking up a few at a time at the reduced price.

If, after a few months, I start hearing good things about a title I’m not buying, I’ll start at the beginning, rather than trying to jump on with the latest issue. If I like what I’ll see, I can either pick up a new issue every few weeks, like I’d do for any other series, or I can catch-up and start following the new releases.

If I find that I’m buying too many comics, I don’t need to drop any of them. I’ll just buy them less frequently. Instead of picking up the latest Aquaman every four weeks, I’ll pick it up once every six weeks. I may fall behind, but those later issues will always be there waiting for me, and they might even wind up being cheaper to boot!

That’s me in the short term. What really excites me though is the future. I’m thinking of the reader who discovers comics in ten years. For them, it’s all new and it’s all available instantly at the click of a button. They could spend the rest of their lives reading and loving comics, pouring through the best the industry has ever had to offer, and never, ever read a comic “day-and-date.”

 

GREEN LANTERN Could Have Shined Brighter

Get it? "Shined brighter"? Because it's about a lantern? That makes...

Oh, nevermind. Point being, GREEN LANTERN wasn't a great movie. A lot of people are coming out and saying "This proves that superheroes are done for in Hollywood!" or "This proves that B-list heroes can't carry a movie!" or "This proves that comic book types shouldn't muck around in filmmakers' business!"

To the last point: I certainly can't prove that Geoff Johns wasn't to blame for everything wrong with the new GL movie, but I can tell you that his GREEN LANTERN: SECRET ORIGIN trade is light years better than what we got in theaters last week. So you'll have to do the math for yourself.

In the meantime, here's a short list of what they could have done better to make GL really fly:

[Because he flies, get it?]

1. Let the audience discover the mythology along with Hal. You're setting up a universe where Hal Jordan is the first human to be a member of the Green Lantern Corps. Why on Earth Oa would you try to front load audiences with a bunch of hard to retain back story that you're going to have to re-exposit for the main character anyway 45 minutes in. It's bad storytelling AND it weakens the all-important connection between audience and protagonist.

[As a note, I'm restricting myself to non-fanboy criticisms. There are things that rubbed me the wrong way as a fan, but those aren't the things that make a movie good or bad. For example, why is Amanda Waller a scientist? And skinny? Why does Abin Sur's escape pod land on the beach? Why are there so many building on Oa, but everyone's always hanging around outside?]

2. Include a plot. There's so little happening in this movie! Now, I don't expect every movie to be THE DARK KNIGHT, but that was a movie with tons of characters, all with competing agendas that were themselves an expression of their characters. In GREEN LANTERN, Hal get a ring, feels sorry for himself, and then shows up for some fight scenes. Hector Hammond didn't so much has a masterplan as a list of places to show up for fight scenes. Parallax had a motivation (revenge, I guess?), but his plan basically amounted to: (a) show up, and (b) be a monster. The plot of GREEN LANTERN all boils down to "Will Hal Jordan accept his destiny?" He's the hero, right? I'm guessing the answer is yes.

[Although if Guy Gardner showed up 2/3 of the way through the movie, took the ring from him and told him to stop being such a wuss, that would be HILLARIOUS!]

3. Seriously. A plot! Please. There are plenty of ways to add a plot to the movie they put out. For example:

• Make a mystery of who killed Abin Sur, and make it something Hal Jordan has to figure out.
  
• Make Sinestro a bit of a bad guy, working to undermine or subvert the Corps. Again, something for Hal to look into and stop.
  
• Make Hal Jordan's family a part of the story, instead of just window dressing. Hal tries to maintain a relationship with his nephew while at odds with his brothers. Or something. And they could totally use the kid as bait in Act 3.
  
• Or make the financial troubles of Ferris Air an extended part of the movie. Maybe Hal uses his ring to try to promote the business? Would give a chance to see normal people reacting to the world's first superhero (?) in a more extended/less superficial way.
  
• Or have Amanda Waller know a lot more than Hal, and have Hal probe to discover her secrets.

Anything that pushes the story to be about more than: "I'm afraid!" "Now, I am no longer afraid!"

4. Earth and one other planet is NOT Epic. Shuttling back and forth between Earth and one other planet (where everybody is made of CG and all they do is stand outside in big crowds) does NOT entitle you to compare your movie to Star Wars. Star Wars featured a wide variety of aliens and environments spread out across a quest-style story. If you want to go cosmic, go cosmic! Set the story largely in space and have Hal Jordan visit multiple alien worlds and interact with characters from those worlds and get to know the other Green Lanterns as people lifeforms. Or don't! But then you need to use Oa better (perhaps more sparingly?) in the narrative. For instance: towards the end of the movie, Hal visits the Guardians to ask their permissions to defend the Earth from Parallax. And he needed their permission why? When you have a PLOT, you can ask "Does this scene serve the plot?" But when you have NO PLOT, you cannot ask "Does this scene serve the no plot?"

5. Sell us a movie first. Then toys. If you're old like me, you'll remember the old STAR WARS action figures from the original movies, where every background alien got its own figure. That was cool, because it allowed kids to recreate a lot of different scenes in the movies and to imagine new stories around all the minor characters. I can't help but feel that the makers of STAR WARS watched that movie and said, "Why are they building out all these different scenes and locations to introduce all of these action figures? Why not just feature them all in one scene where they stand together in a crowd?" I get that DC wants to introduce all this stuff to new audiences. But to invest such time and energy into detailing out what's essentially set decoration in the story strikes me as a misplaced priority.

Okay, I think that's all the NerdPlotRage I can manage for one post. I leave you with a quick round-up of links that mock the GREEN LANTERN:

1. Green Lantern in Four Panels
   
2. Green Lantern's History Explained
   
3. The Best Scenes from the Green Lantern movie

 

Nevermind

So, um...

I found my hard drive! Yay! Pretty great news, right? So great that you probably don't want to ask any additional que--

Right. Good question. Yes, well, as it turns out...

...THEY WERE ON MY HEAD THE ENTIRE TIME! I know, right? I was all like "where's my hard drive?" And you were all like, "Did you check to see if you were currently wearing them? Like, in the headal region?" And I was like, "Don't be ridiculous!"

And then you were all pointing to your heads, and miming sliding them down over your eyes, but I wasn't paying attention, because I was on the phone with Amtrak saying, "How could you have lost my beloved hard drive! Your probably stole them, didn't you!" Ha! That must have been pretty funny.

Good thing that I didn't offer a reward! You probably would have just taken a picture of me to collect the money!

Oh well. Fun's over, boys and girls! You can all go about your business now.

*Sigh*

Man, I haven't been this embarrassed since that time I forgot I left a pair of glasses in the side pocket of my backpack...

 

The Case Against Rachel Maddow

I watch the Rachel Maddow show, and I generally find her a genial, engaging commentator, but there are also times where she clearly bends the truth to fit her agenda. EVEN WHEN THE TRUTH ALREADY AGREES WITH HER!

Case in point, compare the percentages in the graph below (from her 11/16 show) to the size of the bars used.

 

 

In her segment tonight, Rachel wanted to demonstrate that Republican Presidents increase the debt far more (by percentage) that Democrats do. And the numbers bare her out.

But Rachel (and her staff) weren't content to stick to the pure numbers. Instead, they distorted the graph to make the disparity between Republicans and Democrats even larger.

The first distortion that you may notice is that the band covering "0 to 50%" is noticeably shorter than the higher bands. George W. Bush increased the debt by 77.4% vs. his father's 53.8%, but if you compare the size of their "stacks," you'd think that Bush had more than doubled his father's record!

Now, compare that to the Democrats (both admirably under 50%) and you'll see not only is the 0 to 50% band shorter, but Bill Clinton's stack in no way matches his percentage. Why is his 40.6 less than half the height of George Sr's 53.8%? Why is it a mere 25% of George W's 77.4%? Heck, why is it more than a hair's width off from Jimmy Carter's 41.5%?

Well, obviously it's because Team Maddow wanted to make a graphical point that exaggerated the difference between the Republicans and Democrats. Clinton's numbers have to be made extra tiny to make W's look extra big.

Here's my crude photoshop cut and paste to underscore my point:

 

 

Note that we can fit 7 of Jimmy Carter's stacks into one Reagan stack (41.3% times 7 = 186.1%?) and over 4 of Clinton's stacks into one W stack (40.6% times 4 = 77.4%)? Really?

Well, here's a graph especially for Team Maddow, because I understand that they like data:

 

 

 

Missing Hard Drive

Lost my portable hard drive over the weekend and with it, about a year's worth of writing, including about 100 pages of the novel I've been working on and the entirety of the most recent comic book pitch that I was working on. (Some of this I have in hard copy, but not most of it.)

Needless to say, if you happen to have found this website based on a URL you found in files on a hard drive you just found, I'd really like it back.

Or if anyone happens across a red and white portable hard drive that's just laying out discarded on the street somewhere...

I can be reached by email at harddriveless @ drewmelbourne.com. (Actually, you can put anything before the @ sign and it will get to me.)

Will go curl into a ball and cry now.

(In lieu of flowers, Drew would like the last year of his life back.)

 

Superman: Year One

Mentioned earlier today on Twitter that I picked up and read a copy of Superman: Year One. Per that tweet:

Just finished reading SUPERMAN: EARTH 1, which is interesting but also a failure on almost every level.

That probably deserves an explanation, right?

Well, I should preface this by saying that I recently got rid of my comic book collection. I was moving and really didn't want to drag around 5,000 comics I barely read. So I pawned them off on my brother, and have spent the last couple of months bulking up my graphic novel collection to compensate.

As a result, I've read a LOT of really great Superman stories recently. (And a few mediocre ones.) The best stuff is no surprise:

• Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow
  
• All-Star Superman
  
• Superman For All Seasons
  
• the recent Geoff Johns run
  
• Etc.

Anyway, I've been spending a lot of time reading about and thinking about Superman recently, and that may be part of the reason that Earth One rubbed me so completely the wrong way.

As I've observed before, one way that stupid people befuddle smart people is to say one thing that is stupid in two unrelated ways. It makes it very hard to form a coherent response.

Earth One isn't stupid, but it is doing two unrelated things: It's seeking to tell the Superman story in a serialized graphic novel format, and it's seeking to make Superman "relevant" to modern audiences.

I believe that one of those goals is a good one and one is a bad one. Can you guess which is which?

Let me take this in reverse order. First off, I think the idea of making Superman "relevant" is misguided. The problem with Superman isn't that he's a naive creation of a bygone age. It's that he's generally written through a cynical lens. Superman is just as relevant today as he's always been. It's just a matter of writing him as a man who's capable of getting angry, but who's in control of that anger.

Heck, today's world cries out for a hero who's capable of voicing our moral outrage while showing us a compassionate way forward.

It's clear from the way that JMS writes about Superman that he loves the character, but I'm not sure that he really understands the character. His Superman is young and, I apologize for saying this, "emo." And the core of his moral code is apparently the concept that if someone hits you, you need to hit them back, which -- call me a wimp -- strikes me as a bit thuggish.

Also, his Superman is super-smart for some reason, but never seems to do anything super-intelligent. That's neither here nor there, but I thought I'd mention it.

And all that's a problem. JMS presents a Clark Kent that doesn't really feel like Superman to me. I just don't buy it.

The other problem is with the format. Now, I'm all for telling Superman's story as a series of serialized graphic novels. It's actually something I've thought a lot about over the years.

If you think about DC's big graphic novel sellers (Sandman, Watchmen, Dark Knight) they're all self-contained stories. A serialized Superman saga, taking Superman from birth to death, could become a perennial best-seller of that magnitude.

But if you're going to do that, you need to really approach it as "This is the story of Superman's life." By contrast, Earth One feels throwaway, with a slight story that unnecessarily adds and complicates the classic story without adding much of note.

It reinvents Jimmy Olsen, but barely scratches his character. Lois is a similar cipher. JMS made a big deal of leveraging his experience in the newspaper business, but the Planet feels as generic as any depiction I've seen.

We don't get enough of Krypton or Smallville to really appreciate their loss. We get a villain with a questionable design and an unsatisfying origin...

Mostly, this just feels slight. If I'm going to read "The Superman Saga: Part One" (which this is and it isn't), I want to feel like I'm reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (or at least the first Scott Pilgrim). I want a substantial experience.

And this feels like an annual.

From the 90's.

Also, John Hamm should play Superman.

I'm just saying.

(Sorry if this is a little stream of consciousness, but I'm writing from a movie theater lobby. About to go see Paranormal Activity 2. Happy Halloween!)

 

New Email Address

Please note that my old email address, drewm@nyc.rr.com, doesn't work anymore. Spammers, I invite you to send many, many emails to that address.

Everyone else, if you need to get a hold of me, be advised that I only check the email address attached to this website about once a week. If you need to get a hold of me faster than that, you will need to intuit the super-secret, spam-proof new way to email Drew at drewmelbourne.com.

Hint, hint.

 

Last Day in New York

So today's the day that I finally cleaned out my New York apartment.

(Or, to be more accurate, I paid large men to do this work for me. This was money well spent. It took them two hours to do what it would have taken me weeks to do on my own.)

 

 

Pictures and recollections after the break...

 

 

I've lived in this building for just shy of ten years, so seeing it deconstructed before my eyes was a bit fantastical. As some of you will know, the comic I wrote a few year's back, ArchEnemies, was partially inspired by my years living in this apartment. We even did a series of shorts (not included in the trade) in which me and my apartment take center stage:

 

 

And here's the real living room, prepped for moving day:

 

 

And my room:

 

 

The other bedroom that was NOT blue:

 

 

And the other bedroom that WAS blue:

 

 

Long story. Involved an art school drop out and... um... well, some blue paint. Okay, it's a short story.

She also painted the bathroom blood red:

 

 

But she's not responsible for the additional grossness. That seems to have mostly grown while I was in Massachusetts. Is the official story.

View of the kitchen:

 

 

And my little brown stool:

 

 

I loved my stool. For a long time, it was the most functional piece of furniture in the apartment. (And early on, the only piece in the living room that actually belonged to me.)

Unfortunately, by the end, it was too sticky to bring with me. Poor little brown sticky stool.

As the large man began to take things out, I took some detail photos to document some of this history of the apartment. For instance:

 

 

If you think this door looks bad, you should see the other guy ('s liver).

Here are some cheap Bed, Bath & Beyond blinds after having been savaged by multiple cats:

 

 

And this is a good one:

 

 

Those holes are directly below where one roommate hung a dartboard. (He was not good at darts.)

My stuff was being taken out in stages, which meant that a lot of it sat on the various landings of the apartment building between trips:

 

 

And you thought your cube was cramped:

 

 

Walk into the light, furniture! Walk into the light!

 

 

But the real challenge was going to be the recliner:

 

 

That thing broke ten years ago, when we moved it in, trying to squeeze it down our narrow entry hall:

 

 

Ultimately, it was basically just that recliner left to move:

 

 

Honestly, I didn't think we'd ever get it out. But, as ever, large men succeeded where smaller men failed:

 

 

Finally, the living room too was empty:

 

 

In the end, I even think I'll miss the blue room, which had a sort of saintly glow in its final moments:

 

 

Just a few loose ends to tie up in New York. Then I'm a Massachusetter for good.

 

 

Could be worse. I could be this guy:

 

   

 

 

How to Eat Cereal

One of the ways in which I am horribly dysfunctional awesome is that I refuse to pour milk on my cereal. Instead, I drink my milk from a glass (shocking!) and eat my cereal dry from the bowl (the horror!). And though I stand at odds with 99% of the Earth's cereal-eating population in this regard, as well as tens of thousands of years of high-specialized, breakfast-related evolution, I'm pretty sure that I'm right on this and you're all wrong.

 

 

THE EVIDENCE
My long study of cereals leads me to believe that, deep down, no one really likes pouring milk on their cereal. How do I know this? Consider:

• Crispix. A cereal that's main selling point is that it "stays crispy in milk." Crispiness is a selling point! Sogginess? Not so much.  
  
   

  Their slogan might as well be, "Crispix: It's the next best thing to NOT pouring milk on your cereal."

• Rice Krispies. Not only do Rice Krispies have the word "Krisp" [sic] in their name, they are also one of a proud line of cereals with milk-related superpowers!
   
  
   

  As if to say: "Do you think it's stupid that you're deliberately making your rice less krispy? Well, at least you can console yourself with this crackling noise as your cereal becomes less delicious." Remember kids: that "pop" you hear is the sound of all your hopes and dreams bursting into naught.

• Cocoa Puffs. Here, they've given up on even trying to salvage the mushy cereal. This is just a cheap way to make chocolate milk.
   
  
   

  That's right! For the families that can't afford proper chocolate milk, General Mills presents... [drum roll] "Cocoa Puff Brand Chocolate Milk with Mushy Things You Need To Scoop Out With A Spoon!" Now, this approach I actually respect. It's sort of a modern day Stone Soup for a post-nutritional America.

But even if we set all that aside, I think that deep down we all know where this "milk on cereal" tradition must have really originated...

 
SECRET ORIGIN OF SOGGY CEREAL
Somewhere, long ago, lost to the annals of time*, there was some rich, powerful jerk who accidentally knocked his milk into his cereal, and he did it in front of some other rich, powerful jerk, and the first rich, powerful jerk was all like,

"I meant to do that. This is all the rage in Sumeria,"

and the other rich, powerful jerk was like,

"Pfft. We've been doing that for centuries in Phonecia,"

and the first jerk was like,

"Yeah, well, I think it's getting big again,"

and the second jerk was like,

"I knew that. I just like to let my cereal sit for a minute or two before I pour my drink all over it,"

and then he poured milk over his cereal too, and then they just sat together in silence and ate their terrible mushy cereal, and they pretended that it was the most awesome thing in the world even though their cereal hadn't been specially designed to stay crisp or krisp or make a noise or make their milk any awesomer by turning it brown with mushy things floating in it.

 

 

CLOSING ARGUMENTS
I maintain that if pouring a drink on your meal was EVER a good idea, it would be a good idea in more than this one narrow case. We would be pouring orange juice on our eggs or drinking chicken wings out of a bowl full of beer, or we'd be eating soft pretzels out of a bowl of lemonade or hot dogs out of a bowl of Pepsi.

But no. You know better. Deep down, you know its wrong. Deep down, you know I'm right. Be an adult! Eat your food with utensils, but drink your liquids from a glass! Embrace evolution! Don't be a slave to the mush! Keep your Crispix crispy the old fashioned way, and drink some Ovaltine if you need a chocolate fix!

Remember, evil can only succeed while good people do nothing. And by "evil," I mean "mushy cereal." And by "do nothing" I mean "eat it." And by "only succeed" I mean "seem like a good idea."

And by "good people," I mean, "Stop being such a sheep, yo! Pouring milk on your cereal is totally whack-to-the-double-hizzouse, for realz!"
 

---

[*As a note to all you worditricians out there: "annals of time" are among the worst possible places to store things you care about. In my experience, anything that's ever been stored in an annal of time has been lost. That's a 100% loss rate. Note that nothing has ever been FOUND in an annal of time. Lost, yes? "The Colonel's recipe was lost to the annals of time, but then a few months later, it was found to the annals of time. Huzzah!" Doesn't happen. Remember: annals are bad and time-related annals are the worst of all. Unless you're trying to dispose of something, like a body or some embarrassing vacation pictures. Then totally store them in a time annal.]

 

The Mosque Thing

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you hallowed ground:

 

 

(Image lifted from Google Maps.)

Yes, today we rant about the hue and cry over the so-called "World Trade Center Mosque." But first, a life lesson:

One of the things that frustrates me about morally repugnant idiots is that they tend to be wrong about a number of things at once. You see, if you're wrong about one thing, I can easily, clearly explain why you're wrong. If you're wrong about a number of things, I have to keep stopping my explanation to go off on all these little side tangents of stop-being-an-idiot-ness.

It's tiring, and it usually ends with the morally repugnant idiot just as confused/wrong/repugnant as he/she/vommit was to begin with.

So let's start broadly:

First off, there's nothing wrong with being a Muslim in America, and American citizens who are Muslim enjoy all the same rights as Americans of other faiths (or, indeed, of no faith). I know this because our Founding Fathers said so, and they wrote it into the Bill of Rights, and as we all know the Founding Fathers were right about everything except slavery and women's rights and the Indians and poor people and the internet and a few other things.

But they got this one thing right.

So Muslim-Americans are just Americans like the rest of us, and they get to build buildings wherever they want, etc. Even on the site of a former Burlington Coat Factory.

Why do people care?

Well, it's 2.5 blocks from the World Trade Center site, and to this day, there's only ever been a mosque 4.5 blocks away. That means, with the building of this mosque, Muslim worship will have gotten nearly 50% closer to the site!

Just think about it: In another 10 years, they might build another Muslim worship site that's only 1.5 blocks away!

And again, why do people care?

Because it reminds people of 9/11. That's there argument. Sarah Palin says it "stabs the heart." That's right ladies and gentlemen: No mosque near the WTC site because Muslims make Sarah Palin sad.

I'd love to hear a series of questions like this:

• Q: How do you feel about Muslims living near the World Trade Center?

• Q: Would you put a ban on Muslims moving to southern Manhattan? Would you support relocating Muslims who already live there?

• Q: But you believe that certain religions should be allowed to worship in their own communities, and that other religions should have to leave their community and go somewhere else to worship?

• Q: Really?

Morally repugnant. And all this over a Burlington Coat Factory.

The only thing that stops this story from really depressing me is that I know that if people thought about it, really thought about it, they'd mostly all realize how stupid they're being.

Right?

 

New Comics Thing

Here's the first image for the new comic I'm putting together. The project is called Partners in Crime-Fighting, and this is the cover to issue one:

 

 
I'll be wondering around SDCC with the complete pitch this weekend.

 

Comic-Con 2010

Three quick updates:

• I will be at San Diego this weekend, Friday through Sunday. (This year's theme: "Return from the Wilderness*.")

• If you are trying to reach me, please be advised that my old Roadrunner account is being unplugged, but you can still reach me by using [anything] @ drewmelbourne.com.

• Obligatory third thing, because three things is funnier.

 
Annnnnnnd on a tenuously related note, for anyone who checks out this website from time to time, you will have noticed a dearth of updates. I'll occasionally go on a twitter-binge, but the truth is that I've been spending most of my time focused on:

1. New Comic Thing

2. Novel Thing

3. Job That Provides Health Care Thing

Now that #1 is in good shape and going out to publishers and #2 is humming along for an approximate 2017 2018 2019 release, I suspect there may be time for the occasional old school silliness like this.

 
*And a bonus Spotter's Guide: At the moment, I look something like this:

 

New Fedora

Be warned, mortals!

I have bought a new fedora.

And blogged to such effect, herein!

(Huzzah.)

 

Tape Noir

When passing through the Philadelphia Airport last month, I passed some pieces by Mark Khaisman that were super cool, including this one:

 

 

You can find more at his website. All equally awesome.

(And, yes, as a comics fan, my first thought was "Cool! The Question!")

 

New Word: Normalnoia

Whereas "paranoia" is defined as "the irrational belief that someone is out to get you"...

And "paranormal" is defined as "stuff that is totally NOT normal"...

"Normalnoia" is defined as "the perfectly rational belief that someone is out to get you".

As in "Ever since that serial killer moved in next door, he's had a real case of normalnoia."

Not to be confused with that old chestnut, "You're not paranoid if they're really out to get you." If they're out to get you, but there's no real reason to suspect it, you're still being paranoid. You're just paranoid and lucky.

You're only being normalnoid if (a) you think they're out to get you, and (b) they're out to get you, and (c) the reasons why they're out to get you are inherently obvious.

Another example: You may be normalnoid if you are a klansman dancing the funky chicken on stage at the NAACP Image Awards.

Mental health experts are still researching the possible existence of normalnoid schizophrenics -- people beset by a mental illness that causes them to hear voices in their head that precisely correspond to the thoughts that people are contemporaneously thinking about about them.

If you should encounter any of these normalnoid schizophrenics (or "X-Men" for short), please invite them to join your special school and train them to fight supervillains and/or intolerance.

And/or chicken-dancing klansmen.

 

Things I Would Post on Twitter...

...if it weren't down:

• This wknd office moving uptown; tomorrow I will climb tiny go-nowhere ladder in office hall to ceiling; terrified/excited.
  
• This Saturday National Drew Cleans Apt Day. To participate, exist as I get off butt and clean.
  
• Think @pennjillette wants to tax people living on poverty line at some rate as Bill Gates. WTF?
  
• Mmmmmmmmm, this is good soup!
  
• "So You Think You Can" is a trending topic! Yay! It's my favorite train-based reality comedy too!!!

 

New Word: Mancotting

Defined as "not buying stuff that sucks."

Not to be confused with boycotting ("not buying stuff on principle") or manicotti ("a delicious stuffed pasta").

Used in a sentence: "I will be mancotting AMC's fake IMAX screens from now on, not because I'm upset with their business practices, but because they're a major rip-off."

Mancotting is strictly superior to boycotting, because:

1. it indicates a harsh but essential understanding of the need for moral compromise in this sad, tumultuous world

2. it totally has the word "man" in it

 

Danger Hollow Sidewalk

Because I am a slave to my fast food overlords, I've recently taken to walking 12 minutes to the Wendy's on Broadway for lunch. Yes, this is the rare case when walking more is actually bad for you.

I walk down Prince Street to get there, where I recently discovered the Kidrobot store. (The website verges on pretentious, but the storefront is unapologetically nifty.)

I also discovered a peculiar series of signs labeled "DANGER HOLLOW SIDEWALK." Ha ha ha! Isn't that cute? "DANGER HOLL--" Wait? WHAT???

Where these signs are placed the sidewalk is half-metal, with trapdoors leading down to building basements (or possibly to the sewer). So I'm totally on board with identifying these areas as both "SIDEWALK" and "HOLLOW." The part that's still murky for me is the whole "DANGER" part.

And, in my experience, "DANGER" is a not-good thing to be murky about.

Now, despite the signs, plenty of people were walking on the metal part of the sidewalk, and they seemed to be doing so relatively untroubled. And thanks to some cautious testing, I can tell you that these hollow sidewalks felt plenty sturdy to me. I certainly didn't feel en"DANGER"ed.

Don't get me wrong. I can certainly envision some potential "DANGER"s of hollow sidewalks:

• Pianos dropped from a great height would be more likely to break through them.

• Sonic disrupter weapons might have an enhanced "echo effect" if targeted in their direction.

• Weepy poets might use the sidewalks as a ham-fisted metaphor to express the bitter soullessness of a world no longer capable of excepting honesty or beauty without cynicism.

All terrible. But what are the odds of any of these things actually happening? (Okay, aside from the poets. That's probably happened already.)

In other words, "Sign-schmign! I want to know what sort of DANGER I'm actually in!!!"

And I'm forced to conclude: None. Because if there was any real danger (and not just "DANGER"), then it would be spelled out:

• "DANGER DON'T JUMP UP AND DOWN ON THE HOLLOW SIDEWALK."

• "DANGER DON'T WEAR HIGH-STRENGTH ELECTROMAGNETS WHILE WALKING OVER METAL."

• "DANGER STEER CLEAR OF POETS."

In reality, the sign isn't so much pointing out a serious danger as it's pointing out a situation that, combined with a finite number of other situations that may or may not ever occur, might or might not result in some danger to someone, someday, maybe.

In the pantheon of signs, this one doesn't even rise to the level of "DANGER SLIPPERY WHEN WET." Rather, it's the sidewalk equivalent of a roadside sign that warns passing drivers:

• "DANGER EVENTS INVOLVING CARS."

(Unless I fall through a hollow sidewalk and die tomorrow, in which case, fair enough, I totally had that coming.)

 

STAR TREK's Triangular Sideburns

With JJ Abram's Star Trek revival just a few days away, the internet is awash in spoilers. I feel pretty confident that the only thing I don't know about the new movie is what "Scotty's little buddy" looks like. (Heck, I even know that Scotty has a "little buddy"!)

But everything else? Every other shock, twist, and revelation?

Ka-spoilered.

That said, I'm still really, really excited about this movie. Not because I have any particular attachment to Star Trek, but because I'm a huge, huge, HUGE fan of Mission: Impossible III.

No, seriously.

That said, it is also true that I am a massive geek, and I do have one massive geek bone to pick with JJ Abrams. (That sounded less icky in my head.) Now personally, I don't care about the angle of the ship's nacelles or how many digits should proceed the decimal in a Federation Star Date or even whether the insignia for the Reliant is the same as the insignia for the Enterprise.

(ANSWER KEY: 37º/5/NO!)

What I do care about (in a pretend-funny-outraged way) are the sideburns...

One of the more obscure pieces of Trek lore that I've picked up over the years is that everyone to ever serve on the Enterprise has had the exact same triangular sideburns.

Who's got two thumbs and crazy triangular sideburns? This guy:

 

 

(And also those other two guys, flanking.)

The original idea behind the sideburns, if I'm remembering correctly, was that Roddenbury wanted crazy futuristic hair for everyone, but his cast was all concerned with not looking stupid.

And so it was that out of this creative tension, an exciting new hairportunity presented itself! For theirs was a bold vision of the future, in which the interior angles of each sideburn would ever total 180 degrees!

*Ahem* Anyway...

I don't know whether the triangular sideburns in original Trek were real or not, but I remember seeing a clip on Access: Hollywood once where one of the guys from Voyager revealed that his were paste-ons.

So what's the contravery with triangular sideburns in the new movie? Well, we can clearly see that Zachary Quinto's Spock is rockin' the isosceles burns:

 

 

But what about Chris Pine's Kirk?

 

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

I haven't checked the full crew, but it appears that JJ has deemed triangular sideburns "too weird for humans." (Or possibly "too logical for humans?")

A contraversial position to be sure, but as this is the director of M:I:III we're talking about, I must concede to his better judgment...

 

My Newspaper Guy

I have a strange relationship with my newspaper guy. Which is to say that I have any relationship at all.

I should say that I have a natural aversion to RFIs (Recurring Forced Interactions), be they with receptionists, security guards, deli clerks, or guys who sell you newspapers. If I have to talk to you every day, it's going to start to wear on me after awhile, because -- even if you're the nicest person in the world (i.e. Jim Gillstein of Blue Ridge, North Dakota) -- there's going to come a day when I don't feel like talking.

And so there's this newspaper guy... Not a newspaper stand guy, mind you. He's just a guy who stands on the corner by my subway stop in the morning who sells newspapers. If this were the 1930's, he'd be a cute kid from Brooklyn with a brown beanie and a perplexing speech impediment.

And he doesn't speak very much English, but we seem to have come to an understanding. (That understanding being, when I give him money, he gives me a copy of The Daily News.) And it's gotten to the point where he will hand me a paper as soon as I walk up to him.

And it's a fine system when it works. I give him 50 cents. He gives me a newspaper. I go to work. Easy. No small talk, which as I've made clear earlier, is a plus.

But then there are the days that things don't go as planned. There are the days that he starts flagging me down when I'm half a block away to indicate that he's out of The Daily News. To be sure I understand him properly, I mouth the words "Wha Zuh?" He'll then continue to flap his arms until I cross over to the bodega across the street and get my paper there.

But if I'm running late, and I assume he's out of The Daily News, and cross the street preemptively, he'll get all flustered. Or if I come too late, and he's gone, he may growl at me the next morning, "Where you be? I save! Waited ten minutes!"

And I can't really respond to that because, as mentioned earlier, he speaks no English. Well, now that I'm thinking about it, I guess he knows the words "where," "you," "be," "I," "save," "waited," "ten," and "minutes."

Mainly, I don't like talking to people.

And heaven forbid I decide to not buy a newspaper on a particular day. Say, if I want to read a book instead. Or maybe I'm so drunk that the very thought of reading is going to make my eyes bleed. (Does that happen? I don't drink that much.) I'd have to sneak past him!

And he has eyes like a hawk. Once he chased after me with a paper (probably thinking I forgot). And if I pretend I have no money, he spots me the 50 cents.

The big jerk.

And so this morning I decided, if I ever want to stop buying the newspaper, I'm just going to have to move. Or leave my house at 3 in the morning. Or...

*shudder*

...have a conversation.

Stoopid RFIs.

 

I Appear to be Twittering

I blame Fienberg.

You can follow my outbursts via the feed in the left hand nav or directly at http://www.twitter.com/drewmelbourne.com.

If this goes well, I may consider starting a Facebook page. Or buying a VCR.

 

New Holiday: NSWGBITAKHAAB?

From the mind that brought you Double Steak Day comes the next great American holiday:

National Should We Go Back in Time and Kill Hitler as a Baby? Day
 

As you may or may not know, Adolf Hitler was born 120 days ago today. And what better way to acknowledge the birth of one of history's most horrific mass-murderers than with a holiday devoted to considering the ramifications of building a time machine, travelling back in time to the day of Hitler's birth, and suffocating him in his crib?

Consider the moral implications!
Is it ever right to kill a child, even if you know he's destined to one day commit genocide?

Consider the risks!
Is it possible that klling baby Hitler would lead to the rise of an even greater evil?

And for the love of all that's good, consider the paradoxes!
If you killed baby Hitler, adult Hitler would never have existed, so how would you have known to go back and kill him as a baby?

Ah, NSWGBITAKHAAB? Day! The only holiday that asks us to consider whether if, by snuffing out the life of an abhorent proto-dictator, we might inadvertantly tear a whole in the fabric of space-time that could destroy the entire universe*.

Take that, Arbor Day!

Songs, activities, and in-questionable-taste merchandise to follow.

 
(*Still totally worth it.)

 

Tale of Two Movies

We have an interesting study in contrasts before us. We're less than a month out from the release of two big Hollywood action franchise movies -- the Wolverine origin movie, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and the Trek franchise reboot simply titled Star Trek -- and fans have already gotten a chance to see both films. One under ideal circumstances, and one under circumstances that are...

...not.

And if you've been keeping up with the news (or even just the geek news), you know which is which.

While Paramount Pictures and Aint It Cool News managed to arrange a suprise premeire for a core of rabid Trek fans in Austin this week, Fox suffered the ignominy of a leaked workprint of their Wolverine movie which was missing some effects work (bad) and some scenes (worse) which were specifically shot to make the movie not suck or at least suck a little less (worst). And now the FBI has opened a criminal investigation (no, that's worst). Also, a writer for the Fox News website downloaded the pirated movie, said it was great, and encouraged other people to pirate movies before being publically fired and humiliated (no, no, this is definitely worstest).

So where Paramount was able to release their movie in a controlled way to fan raves, Fox lost control and was met by apathy and even antipathy by their target audience. And the FBI thing. And the guy getting fired.

One is tempted to invoke karma to explain what's happened. Good things happen for good movies. Bad things happen for bad movies. And there might be a little bit of truth to that. Maybe Wolverine got leaked because someone connected to the picture was upset how it was turning out. (In this case, criminally upset.) Maybe the fact that Star Trek didn't leak (despite being in the can for months) is a testament to how everyone who worked on the film was so devoted to it, and to how jealously they guarded it.

But let's be real here. In the grand scheme of things, bad things happen to good people just as often as they do to bad people. Here we have examples of everything going right for one picture, and everything going wrong for the other, but it could just have easily gone the other way.

Someone could have been so proud of Trek that they leaked it early. Folks could have been so embarrassed by Wolverine that they kept it under wraps till it premeired.

Ultimately, though, a controlled release of a crappy movie is still going to go over crappily. Leak a great movie, and it's only going to build fan excitement.

And let's not forget that no one has seen a completed version of Wolverine yet. The buzz seems to be that it's mediocre to bad, but with the reshoots they completed since that workprint was made (and with the effects finished off and with last minute editing), the film may actually turn out slightly okay. It could happen.

And maybe Trek is only so-so, and the buzz is a byproduct of Paramount's savy rollout. Maybe "two star movie" + "Leonard Nimoy comes by to introduce the movie" equals "slobber, slobber, fan joy".

But probably not.

As you may know, I'm a big comics fan and a big Trek fan. At this point, I will probably be seeing Star Trek on Imax on opening night, and I will probably not be seeing Wolverine until it's free on the HBO. If then.

There's one last contrast to be made between these two films. Star Trek was shot during the writer's strike at the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008. There was plenty of time for reshoots, and I was even hoping for them, not having heard any of the buzz yet, because writer's weren't available during filming to do on set rewrites, because of the strike.

But even with all that time, they didn't need to do reshoots, because they managed to get it right the first time.

Wolverine was apparently beset by difficulties from the beginning, not the least of which was a sub-par script. It's good that they kept working to make it better, but there's only so much that you can do to polish a... um... wolverine.

So today's life lesson is this: If you do it right the first time, you can rest on your laurels. If you have to clean up after your failures, you invite mockery, no matter what the end result.

Call it "The Inverse Tortoise-Hare Law."

Or maybe it's this: Marvel is screwed, because the way they structured their deal with Fox, they are never getting the film rights for the X-Men back, and Fox is going to keep putting out crappy X-Men films for ever and ever.

If I had to think up a new word to describe this phenomenon, I would call it being "Watchmened."

Or maybe it's this: It's April 8th, and it's currently snowing outside my window. When it comes down to it, anything can happen, so the best anyone can do is (a) not be a jerk and (b) have a sense of humor about it.

"What? My terrible movie has been leaked and the FBI is investigating and someone has already lost their job over all this? ZANY!"

 

New Word: Spreecoys

Defined as "Items bought in a drug store to deflect attention from the what you were really after."

For use in a sentence such as "When the clerk rang up her customer's items (condoms, jumbo box of Cheez-its, extra-strength toilet paper, extra-strength acne cream, extra-strength stool softener, tampons) she couldn't tell which item was the real purchase and which were his spreecoys."

 

New Word: Shoequilibrium

Defined as "The feeling of satisfaction you achieve when one of your shoe laces comes untied, and so you retie it, but then your other lace, which didn't come untied, just feels less tied than your newly retied lace, so you have to bend down, untie, and retie that lace too, but then finally, when you're done, you feel this sense of ease and comfort wash over you, because you know for certain that both of your shoe laces are adequately and equally well tied."

For use in a sentence such as "The barefoot man will never known true shoequilibrium."

 

Just Brutal

Wow. Jon Stewart just crushed Jim Cramer into a fine paste.

Click here for the full, unedited beatdown.

 

Links and Bits

This week:

• Watchmen
  
• Survivor
  
• Spider-Man
  
• Cat
  
• Twitter
  
• Batman

• After seeing Zack Snyder's Watchmen, I'm really interested in reading the screenplay that David Hayter wrote for the Paul Greengrass version. Or this cartoon:

 

 

• "Coach" and Tyson from this season's Survivor are David Brent and Gareth Keegan from the original Office.

 

 

Assistant to the coach.

• Spider-man is awesome. Spider-man with a giant robot is awesomer:

 

 

• This cat is coming to get you:

 

 

• I refuse to tweet.

• I have no idea what's happening in panel two of this preview page from Morrison and Quitely's upcoming Batman and Robin comic:

 

 

If I had to guess, I'd say Batman has built a new Bat-hovercraft that glides on laundry detergent. You laugh, but remember that Morrison was the one who decided that Lex Luthor draws on his eyebrows with a sharpie.

 

Wizards, Monsters, and Ugandans

 

 

Since the BBC revived my favorite childhood show in aught-five, I’ve found myself watching more and more British television. Some of it’s been great (Spaced, Jekyll), some of it’s been uneven (Life on Mars, Torchwood), and some of it’s been a bit of a mess (Hex, Robin Hood).

I also caught one episode of The Graham Norton Show. Never again.

Recently, I had the chance to watch three new-ish BBC series that should be making their way to American television sets soon: Merlin, Moses Jones, and Being Human.

So what was great and what was dreck? And which of these shows is my favorite new TV show of the last year?

 

 

Merlin stars Doctor Who vet Colin Morgan as the eponymous wizard in a version of the Arthur legend that can be entirely encapsulated in three words: “Smallville meets Camelot.” It’s the sort of show that drives my sister crazy for all the seemingly arbitrary departures from the classic versions of the characters: Buffy’s Anthony Stewart Head plays a noticeably not-dead King Uther who hates magic and has trapped a John Hurt-sounding dragon beneath Camelot. Guinevere is a servant girl who pines for Merlin, and Lancelot is that guy from Heroes who did too much Heroin.

For all its weird reimaginings, Merlin is a fun bit of puffery, and it gets a bit better as it goes on. But like the BBC’s Robin Hood series, it feels trapped by its own formula (there are secrets that must never get out and so, of course, they don’t) and like Robin Hood, it never produces a moment as emotionally powerful as the ones we find in a good episode of new Who.

The first season of Merlin ran thirteen episodes and should be debuting soon on NBC. A second season has been commissioned by the BBC and it should show up on UK sets sometime later in 2009 or early 2010.

 

 

I’ll be honest. The main reason that I tracked down Moses Jones was that it features Matt Smith in a supporting role. (Matt Smith was recently tapped to take over the Doctor Who franchise in 2010.) Well, despite Smith’s prominence in the advertising, his role in the series is fairly minor.

But that’s hardly a knock on the production, which is first rate.

Moses Jones is a three-part crime drama written by British playwright Joe Penhall, centering on London’s Ugandan immigrant community. Doctor Who vet Shaun Parkes stars as detective Moses Jones, a Londoner of Ugandan descent who must reconnect with his roots to solve a bizarre murder. It’s a dark, moody piece with some great performances, including Shaun Parkes as Moses and Oz’s Eamonn Walker as Solomon, the series’ token tortured tough guy Ugandan band leader.

(Such a cliché! We get it, okay? Tough guy Ugandan band leaders have it rough. Play us a different song, already!)

TTTGUBLs aside, the one real fault of the piece is that it overplays the fear of the immigrant community. Without giving too much away, the villains of the piece cow their enemies for much of the series with little more than a hammer and a scowl. And, yes, they do some rather gruesome things with that hammer, but it takes entirely too long for the community to realize they have the numbers to stand up against their oppressors.

In one scene, two of the villains come looking for a witness who’s been put up at an upscale hotel. She’s safely locked away in her room, within arm’s reach of a telephone, but she’s so terrified of the villains (who haven’t even found her yet!) that she goes running out pass them into the hallway, desperate to get away. Cue chase.

Despite such lapses in logic, everything comes together in a satisfying way in the end, and everyone who deserves a comeuppance gets one. Which is not to say that it’s an all-together happy ending.

Not perfect, but worth watching for the acting performances alone. And Matt Smith does okay for himself with his limited screen time. Still trying to get my hands on a series called Party Animals, which I’m told is a better reflection of his abilities.

Moses Jones will presumably make it to BBC America eventually, but there’s been no official word just yet.

 

 

The best of the lot, for my two cents, is Being Human. This series was created and head writer’d by Toby Whitehouse who wrote the episode of new Who that brought back K-9 and Sarah Jane Smith.

Admittedly, the premise for Being Human sounds a bit like the set-up to a bad joke (or an even badder sit-com). To wit:

A vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost live together under one roof.

I know. But it’s not daft, I swear. The characters are fully realized, the mythology is well-thought out, the performances are all solid to great, and the scripts are funny when they’re meant to be funny and serious when they’re meant to be serious.

There are some “adult moments” in the series, so it’s not appropriate for the little ones, but unlike, oh, I don’t know… season one of Torchwood... these moments never feel awkward or forced. Instead, you get the real sense that you’re watching television created by grown-ups for grown-ups.

Odd, I know.

A number of roles were recast between the pilot and the first episode of the regular series, with all of the changes for the better. They kept Doctor Who vet Russel Tovey as George the Werewolf and added Doctor Who vet Lenora Crichlow as Annie the Ghost and only-guy-in-England-never-to-have-appeared-in-Doctor-Who Aidan Turner as Mitchell the Vampire.

The three co-stars share the screen brilliantly. Even Mitchell, who is explicitly “the cool one,” never overshadows the others when they’re all together. On other shows, there’s usually a character who’s less interesting than everyone else. You know, the character who gets you shouting at the television every time he gets his own sub-plot. “Get back to the characters I actually like, you stoopid teevee!”

(I’m looking at you, Heroes and/or Lost and/or Laverne & Shirley.)

Anyway, that’s never a problem here. All three protagonists’ journeys are equally compelling, and you get the sense that any of the three could be spun-off into his/her/its own series without losing an ounce of awesome.

The first season is six episodes, with a satisfying beginning, middle, and end. Except for a climax that’s ever too slightly drawn out in episode six (how many times can the same group of people enter and leave a single room?), the entire thing holds together quite well. Definitely my favorite piece of Brit TV since new Who premiered four years ago, and my favorite piece of TV period of the last year.

BBC America will be running the first season later this year. The BBC recently picked up the series for a second season, which should air in the UK sometime in 2010.

 

Candy-tastrophes

 

 

Let's face it. It's hard to argue with a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, on account of:

1. they're awesome
   
2. they combine chocolate (awesome) and peanut butter (also awesome, and boo to anyone/Europeans who say otherwise)
   
3. chocolate and peanut butter are by definition foods and not human beings with the capacity for reasoning, so any argument would be very one-sided, and you'd probably feel pretty stupid throughout, and this would undermine your performance, and you'd probably lose all kinds of points from the judges on technical grounds, just because they think you're a big bully, but you're totally not, 'cause let's be honest, that little cup-thing has been asking for it

Wait. Where was I? Oh right...

To summarize: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups = YAY!

And because the Peanut Butter Cup is so great (nee awesome) in it's original form, I'm going to let slide all the kooky varieties, including "crunchy," "white chocolate," "dark chocolate," "big," "cookie," "...and jelly," and even "egg."

For the sake of time, I will also stipulate that Reese's Pieces are also awesome (though I've learned from personal experience that you need to sound that out slowly), as is the Reese's NUTRAGEOUS! bar, as is most-assuredly the Reese's Puffs breakfast cereal.

 

 

(An excellent source of calcium! Boxes don't lie!)

But they should have stopped there. They could have hung up their half-peanut-butter, half-chocolate chef's hats with pride after all that and retired happily to a half-peanut-butter, half-chocolate retirement village in half-peanut-butter, half-chocolate-Florida.

But recently, new horrible concoctions have been emerging from Reese's laboratory. To wit:

 

 

The Reese's Fast Break bar, so named because its inventor had mere seconds to memorize the ingredients to a Snicker's bar before the dogs broke their chains and he had to make a fast break for it.

 

Or the Reese's Whipps bar, which tastes an awful lot like a Three Musketeers bar, if the Three Musketeers bar came in nothing-flavored. Mmmmmmm, nothing! No, I didn't think it could happen, but someone has finally created a candy bar that makes me think, "Wow! I'd rather be eating a Three Musketeers bar right now."

The less said about ReeseSticks or Reese's Crispity-Crunchity bar (sorry, Crispy Crunchy bar), the better.

 

Honestly, it's like they're not even trying to be original anymore. It's like the great Hershey overlords threatened Reese's with huge layoffs if they didn't start rolling out new products, so they all ran down to the grocery store in a mad scramble to see what the kids were eating nowadays.

These have to be the worst conceived candy bars since Hershey rolled out the Take 5 way back in ought-four. Ah, the Take 5! The only candy bar audacious enough to mix the delicious tastes of chocolate, caramel, whole pretzels, peanuts, and peanut butter, and have the temerity to list peanuts and peanut butter as two different ingredients.

 

You might as well list the ingredients as chocolate, caramel, whole pretzels, salt on whole pretzels, and peanut products.

Mmmmmmmmmm, peanut products.

Must... go... eat... badness...

 

Liz Lemon on Relationships

From this past Thursday's episode of 30 Rock:

LIZ: And meeting someone new? Augh. All the nodding and smiling and sibling listing. And what's the upside? It works and you have to have a bunch of sex?

JACK: Lemon, what do you want? Do you want to be alone for the rest of your life?

LIZ: No! I just wish I could start a relationship about 12 years in, when you really don't have to try anymore, and you can just sit around together and goof on TV shows, and then go to bed without anybody trying any funny business.

 

Random Picture Round-Up

And here's a random sampling of random pictures I've taken with my random cell phone. With limited comment:

 

 

Pretty!

 

 

Hipster vandals strike again!

 

 

This stinks.

 

 

Portrait of a Fartist as a Young Man.

 

 

Exciting changes at the Empire State Building! When they're finished, the ESB will transform into a giant robot. Take that, monkeys!

 

 

Based on informal polling, I have determined that North is the least popular direction to face atop the Empire State Building (or ESBtor, as our new mechanical overlord is now known).

 

 

If your building is dirty, don't wash it! Just paint it red. (and by "your," I of course mean "mine.")

 

 

And for the love of all that's good and decent, resist the urge to remove the electrical tape and plug the cord into the outlet. You might... accidentally... power... something.

 

Bench or Tomb?!?

Hey, kids! It's time for another exciting edition of the game that everybody's playing...

BENCH OR TOMB?!?

This week's edition is sponsored by Trinity Church Cemetery. Yes, Trinity Church Cemetery: The only church cemetery within spitting distance of the surprisingly anatomically detailed Wall Street bull statue. (Google this at your own hazard.)

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd moving on. Here's this week's entry:

 

 

Think you've got it?

Well, if you guessed "bench"...

 

 

...you too would be sitting on Alexander Hamilton's gardener!

That's it for this week! Join us again next week, when we'll visiting a local park built on top of an ancient Indian burial ground.

 

Breaking Into Television

I originally had other plans for my Sunday, but then I decided that I'd rather smash apart my old school, super-not-flatscreen 40" TV into little pieces.

(Well, okay, the old girl died on me, and I couldn't countenance another week of seeing it sit all sad in the middle of my living room blocking my view of the more modest 30" TV that now takes its place.)

The smashing actually serves a utilitarian purpose. Despite the rumors, I don't have (a) super-strength or (b) a garbage/TV shoot in my apartment or (c) any immediately available "hey, you're big and strapping and have minimal social obligations, so why don't you come over to my apartment purely for the purpose of helping me carry absurdly large televisions down to the curb with me" friends.

So I smashed, and I documented, and away we go:

 

 

Here's a pretty crappy picture of my TV, pre-smashy smash, followed by a picture with Ninja in front for scale. (Technically, the obstructed-view Lysol can is there for scale. The cat is there because she is wayward and appears where she's not meant to appear.)

Step One involved unscrewing some screws and prying the case in half. This exposes the wiggity-wampity inside.

(I'm not an A/V man, so I may be getting some of the technical terms wrong here.)

 

 

Here, I'm separating the two halves. Then I've separating the front half into two halves.

 

 

Weird Discovery: When I bashed off the end of the wiggity-wampity, a gas escaped. This is one of three ways that I may die unexpectedly over the next few days.

With the wiggity-wampity removed, I wrapped up the big glass part (which turned out to be far more three-dimensional than I'd originally expected). Then I smashed it with a hammer.

I used a second towel when I saw that I was hammering through the first towel. Then I ripped it open to view what was left.

What was left was, not surprisingly, broken glass. When I saw Penn Gillete do the same trick, what was left was a Rolex, but hey...

 

 

I spent a lot of time scooping out glass into double-lined force-flex trash bags in storage boxes. Found a frame and a metal mesh screen inside the glass.

And some white powder, which was hopefully not asbestos. Or anthrax.

(That would be Unexpected Death Source #2, by the way. And Unexpected Death Source #3, for those interested, is "stray shard of glass that works its way up my foot and into my heart, like in Lord of the Rings, except with feet and glass".)

 

 

Here's what was left at the end. Turns out that despite all of my smashing and my scooping and my double-lined, force-flex trash bagging, what remained of the main screen was still too heavy to carry. I ultimately had to wrap it back up in that flower blanket you see there, tie it up with rope and toboggan it down the six floors to the curb.

Joke's on me, though. Trash pick up isn't till Tuesday this week, because of Veteran's Day. So I've got a weird flower toboggan downstairs that the super's going to be pissed over, and three quarters of a TV still up here in my kitchen that's no doubt going to confuse my roommate when she comes in at 3 this morning.

Stoopid Veterans*.

 
*Is something that someone should never say to veterans because they are awesome.

 

Halloween Flashback

For those who were wondering, here's me in my Shaun of the Dead get up for Halloween:

 

 

And here's me trying (in vain) to do my best Simon Pegg expression, with a Simon Pegg headshot, side by side for comparison:

 

 

Which is which?!?

 

Countdown to a Novel (Revisions)

I've still got a long way to go with the novel I'm writing (Percival Gynt and the Conspiracy of Days), but in commemoration of the first day of NaNoWriMo, I wanted to toss up something writery.

(Fun Fact #312: writer's get to make up their own words.)

Here's a quick set of questions I put together to help guide me through the ongoing editing/revision process:

• Are the characters consistent? engaging? distinct?

• Are the plot points clear? Are the individual moments clear?

• Is the exposition too heavy-handed? Does it stop the narrative in its tracks?

• Is the plot too slow paced?

• Is the description too flower/over the top? Is there anything jarring about the prose style? Are the shifts in tone jarring?

• Are any of the elements too derivative?

• Do any of the emotional moments fall flat or feel forced?

• Is any of the foreshadowing too jarring or too vague to be valuable?

• Are there clear stakes? Does the plot seem to wander too much?

• Who likes cookies?

(Fun Fact #313: the best writers always know who likes the cookies.)

 

Countdown to Halloween (Designs)

When executing the perfect Halloween ensemble, prep work is essential. Step one is always "order a cricket bat off e-bay." (Check.) Step two is "blueprints."

And so:

 

 

And when you put it all together, you get this:

 

 

Special thanks to PGIEC (Pretty Girl of Indeterminate Eye Color) for the use of her research materials.

 

Gazebo Quest '08

Here are the pictures from Gazebo Quest '08...

 

 

The heretofore assumed mythical gazebo is located at the Bristol Station stop on the SEPTA R7 line. (Near a statue of some civil war looking dude.)

 

 

And here it is.

 

 

If you squint, I'm sure you can read all the interesting historical details in the first picture. For those whose eye sight isn't quite so good, check out the second picture. If you squint, you'll see a ducky.

 

 

Easier to read. Please note that I did not fish, swim, dog, skateboard, or alcoholic beverage at the gazebo, but I did loiter. (Please don't arrest me, Bristol Borough Delaware Canal Lagoon Park Rangers.)

 

 

Now, I'm not 100% sure that this is a gazebo. I think most gazebos are white and made of wood.

 

 

This might be, like, a Colonial Star Temple. (Did the Colonials have Star Temples? I can't remember.)

Now, about the gazebo Star Temple... In the middle of the floor, is this:

 

 

...which I think is a picture of William Penn killing Indians. Around this circle a series of inscribed stones:

 

 

The first two said "Washington Crossing the Delaware" and "Penn's Barge." So apparently they're commemorating specific moments.

 

 

Then they go a little weird. Yes, that's "Ship Shield," "Log College," and (seriously?!?) "Towns End Apple."

 

 

I feel like this last one actually explains the rest of them, but I couldn't read it on the day, and it's not any clearer in the picture.

I make this out to read "Ring Bait, 1515, Granny Psvillign, Sasulla."

Ah, yes. Now everything makes sense.

 

Countdown to Halloween (Weapons)

One of the great things about Halloween is that it's the only day of the year where you're allowed to carry a weapon (say a trident) around with you on the street, and nobody thinks it's weird. Nobody says, "Hey, why is that dude carrying a trident onto the 6 train?"

This year, I'm finally putting together my long-planned Shaun of the Dead costume. Here is the cricket bat I bought off of eBay that I could use to bludgeon you to death:

 

 

So... you know... don't get on my bad side on October 31st...

 

The Question John McCain Can't Answer

After watching Chris Wallace skip the obvious follow-up questions on Fox News Sunday earlier today, I feel the need to put forward the following obvious elephant-in-the-room question:

Senator McCain, your vice-presidential candidate has said on multiple occasions that Senator Obama "pals around with terrorists." That's "terrorists," plural, implying that he has multiple associations with terrorists, when we know in fact that she is only referring to former radical Bill Ayers. She is deliberately misstating the truth to create a false impression about Senator Obama. In so-called robocalls to voters, your campaign has said that Senator Obama "has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers." And while this is, as you've pointed out, factually accurate, you neglect to inform voters that he worked with Bill Ayers on a Republican-organized board of directors. The calls are deliberately phrased to mislead. They are deliberately phrased to make it sound like Senator Obama has conspired with a terrorist to commit terrorism, and you've approved of these calls at a time when you know that fringe elements are coming to your rallies and shouting words like "Treason!" and "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" You are playing games with the truth while American citizens, however ignorant, however uninformed, are spewing hate and contemplating murder. You have attacked an American hero, congressman John Lewis, for drawing attention to these dangerous games, and you have called on Senator Obama to repudiate this American hero's words. My question for you, Mister McCain, is when will you repudiate your own heinous actions and the actions of your vice-presidential candidate and of your campaign?

My guess is that his answer would be, "It's a tough campaign. None of this would have happened if Barack Obama agreed to participate in 10 joint town hall appearances." So, to pin him down:

Senator McCain, on being told that Barack Obama "pals around with terrorists," do you think that an uninformed voter would be more likely to conclude that Barack Obama knows a single terrorist or many terrorists?

And:

Senator McCain, on being told that Barack Obama "worked" with a domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, do you think that an uninformed voter would be more likely to conclude that Barack Obama worked with him on a board of directors to reform the Chicago public schools or worked with him to commit terrorism?

He either lies and says the statements would not be misleading, or he admits the truth, or he says he's not sure, admitting unconscionable negligence.

Someone with a microphone please find him and ask him these questions.

 

Week Off (Thursday)

My internet has slowed to a crawl on my laptop, so I've taken to updating my website using my telephone. These troubles are partially the reason for the abbreviated update yesterday.

(Also, I managed a bit of writing. I finished a few more pages of my novel.)

I'm submitting this info from the road. I'm on my way to Bristol in search of a mythical gazebo.

More details if I find it.

Update: Success! More details and pictures to follow.

Update: Failure! Problems with computer. Pushing this to live on Saturday, 10/11.

 

Week Off (Wednesday)

Freudian Slip of the Day: "Across this country, this is the agenda I've set before my fellow prisoners." - John McCain, 2:33 EST

More later...

 

Week Off (Tuesday)

Off work all this week. Today, I'm going to try to get some cleaning done around the apartment. I also need to get rid of some old furniture that I'm planning on replacing.

And, if I'm lucky (i.e. not lazy), I may get some work done on the novel this evening...

In the meantime, here's a round-up of things I meant to blog about recently, but did not:

1.
For those wondering what the title of the next Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, means, it means the same thing as "Modicrum of Consolation." Another alternate title for the movie would be "Who Gives a Flying F--"

2.
Submitted for your approval. I call this one "Yeah, Cats."

 

 

3.
Sign on train:

 

 

You may say I'm quibbling, but I take issue with the fact that this sign is labeled "danger." Really, it should be labeled "good advice." See, if the sign was really describing danger, it would tell you what would happen if you got off the moving train. For instance, if the concern was that the train often passes tanks of water filled with sharks, the sign might read "Danger: Sharks." See, in the revised version, the sign tells you the SOURCE of the danger.

That's why I think that this sign should be relabeled "Danger: The Conductor Sometimes Opens The Doors While The Train Is Still Moving Because He's A Nasty Old Buzzard."

Moving on.

4.
One more sign:

 

 

For those with less than 2000/20 vision, the sign reads: "SAUSAGE MUFFIN WITH EGG 2 FOR $3.00 LIMIT 4 PER CUSTOMER, PER VISIT."

Now, as you can probably tell, this isn't official McDonald's signage. Clearly, this is the work of an aggrieved assistant manager with some time on his hands and a working copy of Print Shop Pro.

But I have to ask... Was hypothetical assistant manager being duly cautious in establishing the "LIMIT 4 PER CUSTOMER, PER VISIT." rule or was he forced to add the rule after an anarchic, aborted trial period?

In my head, I'm imagining that the guy from the Monopoly game showed up and said to himself, "2 for $3.00? Why that deal is too good to pass up! I shall take 50 million of them!"

And the hypothetical assistant manager, ever the clever Nellie, simply smiled and said, "Not a problem, Mister Monopoly. But I will need you to purchase those muffins as 12.5 million separate transactions."

5.
On MSNBC right now, President Bush is speaking to, um... I think a furniture warehouse...

I specifically tuned in this hour, because Chuck Todd was supposed to anchor an hour of debate preview chatter. My conclusion? George Bush doesn't like Chuck Todd.

 

Week Off (Monday)

As the year runs down, I find myself with several days of vacation that I need to burn through, so I've decided to take the week off.

I may go down to Philly later in the week, but I don't have specific plans, which I believe qualifies this as a tentative "staycation." Queue "staycation" jokes:

• His disgruntled wife nailed a NO STAYCANY sign to the front yard.
  
• The landlord was no thrilled with his new tennants that he demanded that they staycate the premises immediately.
  
• She knew her son wasn't doing drugs. She'd recognize that staycant expression anywhere.

Okay. Out of my system now. Promise.

This week I'm working off a to do list that I jotted down last night. The big accomplishments for Day One were "Buy Cat Food" and "Clean Litter Box." Huzzah!

I also watched a midday showing of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. One sentence review: "Why is Michael Cera cheating on Juno?"

Also also, I got a chance to watch John McCain's new stump speech on the C-SPAN. Mostly obnoxious drivel, but he got in a (seemingly) fair shot about Obama saying that he wouldn't raise taxes when running for state senate and then raising taxes on the folks making $40-some-thousand.

Assuming that's true, it does underscore the reality that Obama is unlikely to be able to do everything he wants and still keep taxes down. What's more likely (and non-surprising) is that he'll have to make compromises, pick and choose his priorities, respond to crises, and ultimately only fulfill X percentage of his campaign promises.

That's just how the world works. I'd rather that a politician go back on a campaign pledge than honor it and in so doing screw over the country. After all, there's a reason McCain's slogan isn't "Tax Cuts First."

And why is everybody so obsessed with tax cuts these days? We've already lowered tax cuts significantly since the 90s, and it hasn't helped the economy. And at the same time, we're throwing a way a trillion on Iraq, a trillion on the Wall Street bailout, we're not spending nearly enough to rebuild New Orleans after Katrina, there's still a hole in Southern Manhattan...

Obama has a solid lead in the polls right now, which you think would make me feel less anxious, but it actually makes me feel more so. ("More so" is not meant literally, as I would also feel "more so" anxious if he were tied or behind.)

Anyway, looking forward to the debate tomorrow.

More updates throughout the week. Coming up on my "to do" list: working on the novel; throwing out some old furniture; and if I have the time, I may just take a day trip to that gazebo on the lake along the Amtrack tracks to Trenton.

 

Fun with iTunes

I've long been resistant to partaking in the eye-toons, partially because I had visions of this:

 

 

But mostly because it required you to submit your credit card information even if you only wanted to download something that was already free (like that prequel to that Wes Anderson movie where the girl from the Star Wars prequels was apparently naked but that's not why I wanted to see it, get your mind out of the gutter).

But if there's one man who can get me to hand over my sooper-secret identity-theftable type information, it's Mr. Joss Whedon. I wrote about Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog last month, and by now I'm sure everybody knows about it and knows it's on the eye-toons for $3.99 (or $5.97 if you want to click more buttons).

Needless to say, it's awesome, and well worth your time. It's also, after a lot of comedy in the first two acts, a surprising downer in the end. (But in a good way.)

Sound familiar?

Also up at the eye-toons is the first part of the weird floaty flash animation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's Watchmen. This is a weird fusion of those flat 60s Marvel cartoons and... Um...

 

 

Well, basically it's just that.

Except they go to all the trouble to animate it and score it, and they just have one guy read all the parts, which is especially unnerving when they intro Silk Spectre.

I'm comfortable with audio books, where the reader is clearly telling the entire story, but this is not that. Instead, it comes across as "Voice-O the Great, Master of All Voices Except For The Ones That He Ca--OH, SHUT UP SHUT UP AND JUST BE HAPPY WITH YOUR COMIC!"

Remember, before it was weird motion thing, Watchmen used to be the greatest graphic novel of all time. Would you like an action figure with that, Mr. Moore?

 

 

If you're willing to tell them your sooper-secrets, part one is free.

 

Apartment Across the Hall

I don't know if I should be happy that they're removing the hazardous lead from my neighbor's apartment or concerned that it's there in the first place:

 

 

I think I've settled on "upset that Superman now has an unobstructed view into my apartment from the street."

 

OCD Criminal

Photographic evidence that there is an extremely patient criminal on the loose in New York's subway tunnels:

 

 

From the Spring Street stop on the 6.

 

 

Please be on the look at for a shifty, fastidious youth with an oversized two-dimensional purple right arm.

 

Created on Phone

Still playing with this entry. Apparently, I can update my webpage from my phone (which is pretty cool, if not particularly necessary).

I knew there was a reason I bought the same phone that Gossip Girl's Blair Waldorf owns.

This must be what it feels like to be a tool twitter.

 
I kid...

 

The Month That Was

Here's a quick list of highlights from the month of June (in reverse chronological order):

• First Draft, First Chapter, New Novel
  
• Couch or Trike? (Couch)
• Obama Flip-Flops on Lunch Order
  
• Reality Game: Gift of the Magi
  
• June Shirt of the Month

 

Looking Forward

We're nearing the end of this 30 day experiment, which means it's time to start looking forward. As mentioned previously, one of the purposes of the daily updates has been to get myself back into the habit of writing regularly. (And, for that matter, into the habit of completing things, even if they are just these tiny little bits of nothing.)

I'm sitting here now, alone in my apartment. Old roommates moved out last Sunday. New roommate moving in on Sunday. Still wearing pants for some reason. New couch coming sometime next week.

(Sorry trike-fans.)

On Monday, I'm running the first chapter of Percival Gynt and the Conspiracy of Days, the sci-fi fantasy mystery quest novel that I'm currently about 50 pages into, and which looks like it will probably run about 500 pages in first draft.

So I have a few different goals for July, some of which I discussed earlier this week. One is to write every day (though not always here). I'd like to make some more headway with the novel, and hopefully decide between the many different comics projects I have in proto-proto development.

One of my problems has always been that I like coming up with new ideas a lot more than I like executing them. Which makes sense, of course, and I suppose it may well be everybody's problem. After all, new ideas are all shiny and abstract and, in that they are not well thought out yet, they are devoid of flaws. Those flaws come out in the work. The gaps in logic. The unreconcilable contradictions. The shallow assumptions that seem clever till you crack them open.

Of course, there's something wonderful about opening up an idea, finding those flaws, and then finding the virtue in them. Because a flaw isn't always a flaw. Sometimes the flaw is a mystery that simply needs the right solution.

As an example, in putting together the backstory for a Dungeons & Dragons game I'll be running soon, I determined that a particular town had plotted a rebellion against the evil overlords some three generations back. The evil overlords had caught wind and slaughtered most of the townsfolk, including every male except their puppet bureaucrat. They also locked down the town so that no one new could enter.

Seemed like a good idea, shows the brutality of the evil overlords. Shows the dangers of rebellion. But how, three generations ago, with no men save one in town and none more coming, did the population manage to rebuild itself?

And, no, it didn't involve the puppet bureaucrat sowing his wild oats. I can't give away the answer, and you wouldn't be able to guess it without additional backstory about the world, but suffice it to say, it's a thing of beauty.

Now, sometimes you bang your head against the wall and you bang your head against the wall, and all you do is make a mess on the wall. That'll happen. But sometimes, the smear of blood makes a pretty picture you come up with a brilliant idea that makes it all worth while.

But you have to give yourself the space you need to create. You need to keep at it, even when it gets hard. You never know when the next bit of inspiration will come.

 

Couch or Trike

At this point, it doesn't look like I'm going to be heading out to San Diego this year. As much as I enjoy the con, it doesn't make much sense to go all the way out there if I don't have: (a) a book to promote, or (b) a book to pitch.

And, to be honest, I'd rather spend a week working on new material than a week explaining why there is no new material.

And while I will miss being at the con, there's one definite upside to my decision. I've saved myself a big chunk of cash.

But what do I do with this cash chunk? That is an excellent question, my most theoretical inquisitor. An excellent question with only two possible answers...

COUCH OR TRIKE?!?

As the ancients have struggled to answer this vexing question, so struggle I now. Also, with word order.

Let us begin by considering the couch:

 

 

With the old roommates moving out and the new roommates moving in, now is an excellent time to buy grown-up looking furniture. I'd also like to paint my apartment, but let's not get crazy all at once.

Buying a little couch would be a good first step.

Let's look at the pros and cons:

PROs

1. brown is the color of adults
   
2. excellent for sitting
   
3. 99% sure it will fit in my apartment*

(*I have a narrow front hall.)

CONs

1. brown also color of doodoo
   
2. adults are like children, but with broken dreams
   
3. 1% sure it will not fit in my apartment*

(*Seriously, it's very narrow.)

But what about the trike?

 

 

A quick confession: I never learned how to ride a bike when I was a kid, but up until I was age 4 I really enjoyed this little red tricycle that my parents bought me. I think it would be fun to have a man-trike.

Let's weigh the pros and cons:

PROs

1. excellent opportunity to say "man-trike" frequently
   
2. whimsy
   
3. reduces carbon footprint

CONs

1. may attract bullies
   
2. 'inconvenient truth': I am not 4
3. 1% sure it will not fit in my apartment*

(*Ibid.)

So which do I choose? Wow, this is just like The Lady and the Tiger!

I'm probably going to make my decision over the next few days, but if you'd like to weigh in, please send me an email at this fake looking email address:

CouchOrTrike@drewmelbourne.com

I will run the funniest emails in a future column probably not read your email.

 

Writing Muscles

What day is it? Is it the 30th yet? No?

*sigh*

When I decided to do this whole "update the site every day" thing, lo those many weeks ago, I knew it was going to be a challenge. Despite the occasional success, I've never been a very disciplined writer. I'm more of a spurter, frankly, inclined to long periods of not writing followed by quick bursts of productivity.

(I'm told productivity comes out with a little club soda.)

So the goal was never to be brilliant or funny or even all that interesting each and every night. ("Now he tells me.") The goal has simply been to keep going. To find the time and the space and the presence of mind to write something new every night, even if the writing itself isn't all that revelatory.

The thought process goes: "The more you use your writing muscles, the stronger they become." I'm told that if you keep exercising, it becomes easier over time. So it is with writing. You need to establish routines, force yourself to stick to them, and hopefully eventually they become second nature. Or at least third or fourth nature. Anywhere in the top five would be good for me.

Obviously, writing more regularly improves productivity. It should also improve quality overall. If you believe the adage that every writer has a thousand bad pages in them (or ten thousand or a million) then the more writing you do, the quicker you get through to the good stuff.

Furthermore, if you keep pumping out work as quick as you can, you're bound to turn out something that's at least a little brilliant eventually, if only by accident.

All of which is to say, "I'm sorry. I was mostly asleep when I wrote yesterday's update." And I mean the kind of sleep where you wake up, and you've just written two paragraphs that make absolutely no sense.

I probably should have kept all that in, if only for the sake of demonstration. You'll just have to take my word for it now. I was very tired and ready for beddy.

I think about people like Ze Frank, who posted a new video blog every day for a year, or even those bloggers who update their sites several times a day, and I don't know how any of them do it.

Come July 1st, I'm going to be totally burnt, and I'm just posting nonsense most nights.

Still, I'll have accomplished something. And sometimes that's enough. Just put one foot in front of the other, and start walking.

And now that I'm within sight of achieving one arbitrary goal, it's time to start thinking about the next one. Now that I've proven that I can consistently find hours of the day each day to write (usually right around midnight, as it turns out), what do I do with that time?

Looking forward, my goal with July is to narrow in on one comic book project that I really want to move forward with, and to get another X pages done on my novel. "Which project" and "how many pages" = "X" are details still to be determined.

Then again, if I'm feeling particularly masochistic, maybe my goal will simply be to update my website twice a day!

Maybe not.

One week to go.

 

Fleeting Moments

Old roommates are out of the apartment today. New roommate moving in next week. So for this whole week we've got right here, for the first time ever, I have my own apartment. Here I am, a man in my thirties, finally living on my own.

Well, on my own with a cat.

Well, on my own with a cat for approximately seven days.

But that means no time to waste! Do you hear that, world? No time! Drew Melbourne's week of independence is now! No-Pants Tuesdays commence on Tuesday!

And sadly end on Tuesday too. (Alas, poor No-Pants Tuesday, we hardly new ye.)

And while I'm making exciting life-related announcements, here's a big one. Starting on July 1st:

Mandatory. Pants. Tuesdays.

*sigh*

 

Behold My Giant Ninja

Cat's been scratching a sore spot on her back for the last few weeks, and every time it starts to heal the scratching just make it worse. Solution?

 

 
 
I hate you, Drew Melbourne.
 
 

 

The shirt doesn't actually cover the sore spot, but gosh if the burning hatred it engenders in my cat doesn't distract her from scratching.

And, for those who were wondering, yes, they were out of little kitty Mets jerseys. I checked those first.

 

Internet Piracy

Ahoy! From time to time, in the circles message boards I travel in surf through, the question of internet piracy comes up. We all know that internet piracy is illegal in the United States, but is it immoral?

As someone who's actually produced work that's been torrented, I feel like I'm in a good position to discuss the ethical concerns underlying the internet piracy debate.

That's right: Tonight, DrewMelbourne.com is Ethical Concerns Central! Boo-yah!!!

First off, legal definitions aside, piracy is not theft. The people who are always shouting out "Piracy is theft!" are the same people who think that if they try really hard, they can give 110%. It's a nice idea, but it's simply not true.

That's not to say that piracy is ethical, but the criteria by which it is potentially non-ethical are largely separate from the criteria by which theft is definitely non-ethical.

I count three arguments to be made against piracy:

1. Direct Loss of Income. This is the simplest of the three arguments to make. If you're downloading something for free that you would otherwise pay money for, then you're denying income to people who should otherwise expect to be compensated for their work.

   But where do we draw the line? Is checking out a book from the library immoral? Taping a song off the radio? Borrowing a friend's hat?

   An argument can be made that file sharing is only illegal because it does what people have always done fairly, but it does it on a macro-scale. The counter-argument, which I think has some validity, is that the micro-exceptions are only acceptable because of their micronicity.

   The fair way to address this argument would be to compensate the creators in some way. Buy the book AND download the PDF. Download the TV show AND buy the DVD.

   Or just send a check to everyone involved with the work, made out for the exact amount they would have made off of the actual physical product. (The math on this gets tricky.)

2. Creator Distribution Rights. Copyright laws were originally drafted to ensure that creators could profit financially from their work. There was no high-minded purpose behind these laws, except that Edward the Funny needed to make money off of his jokes in order to eat, so that he could keep entertaining the King*.

   (*May not have actually happened that way.)

   Today, though, some recognize a moral right beyond that pragmatic necessity: the right of creators to control the distribution of their work. Should creators have the right to determine the methods by which their work is distributed? Should creators have the right to deny distribution all together?

   Could Edward the Funny demand that his best joke never be told?

   There's a competing argument that "art should be free." And by "free" here, I don't necessarily mean "free of charge." But art should always be available. Artists, under this view, don't have the right to "take their work back" once it has been released, because once it's been released it belongs to the world.

   Ultimately, this tension is resolved in copyright law by dictating that all copyrights must eventually expire. Creators profit off their work (or don't), die, and 100 years later the original books are free online and Alan Moore has written League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

   As we've discussed previously, when creators choose to distribue their work for financial gain, that decision needs to be respected. But if they choose to NOT distribute their work, they're playing from a weaker ethical hand.

   Again, the question is simple: "Are creators being fairly compensated for their work?"

   Based on my evaluation of rules 1 and 2, it's looking like file sharing is ethical if and only if: (a) the work is publically available through separate, legal means of distribution, and (b) the consumer purchases an additional "legal copy" through such legal distribution channels.

   But there's a third dimension to this discussion:

3. Secondary Loss of Income. The reality of most modern file sharing technology is that you're not JUST downloading a file, you're also re-distributing it. As you download from Faceless Source X, others are downloading from Faceless Source U.

   Unless you're part of a small, closed network, there's simply no way for you to know how many of the people who are downloading from you are going to fairly compensate the creators for their work.

   Reason suggests that most won't.

   The question, oh most ethical Pirate O' The Seven Internets, is whether you give a rat's ass. Seriously.

   If a restaurant pays the wait staff in tips, that presents an opportunity for waiters not to declare their full income and skimp on their taxes. The restaurant isn't responsible for the waitstaff's unethical behavior. Providing a framework in which someone else can choose to do something immoral is not the same as doing that immoral thing yourself.

   That said, if you have a reasonable expectations that others will exploit your actions to do something immoral, you probably have done something immoral. You don't lay out steak knives for a serial killer.

THE VERDICT:
If you're illegally downloading work from the internet and you're not compensating the creators at comperable market value, it's immoral. If you're illegally downloading work from the internet and you are compensating the creators, it's only slightly immoral.

But if you're illegally downloading work from the internet and you're compensating the creators for every copy you've downloaded or that anyone has downloaded from you or that anyone has downloaded from them, then you are beyond, beyond repproach...

...and very, very broke.

 

Book in the Onion Box

Here's an indication of how underwhelming the world is in comparison with how whelming we might like it to be...

The other day I was heading home from work, and I picked up a copy of The Onion from one of those plastic bin things that they have on street corners that are probably called something but that I don't know the name thereof, so I'm just going to call them Onion Boxes.

Anyway, inside the Onion Box, sitting on the pile of free fake newspapers was a blue book. I was curious enough to take the blue book out and take a look at it, and even take a picture for you, my humble mother audience:

 

 

I can also tell you this, from my cursory examination of the book interior (not pictured): The book was full of charts and prices for books with obscure names like "Philatelic Catalog of Brazil".

Also the end pages at the end were kind of sticky.

Now, someone else coming across a blue book in an Onion Box might think to him/herself, "Yay! Free book. Now, if only I knew what gender I am!"

Me, I've seen the Bourne Ad Infinitum, so I know that blue books in Onion Boxes are actually clues left by secret agents for other secret agents to tell them where the next action sequence will take place.

I realized as I stood there, out in the open, taking pictures of the book, flipping to the sticky pages in the back, trying to unstick them, that if I wasn't careful, a motorcycle might drive off a roof and land on me and then explode while the hero leaps to safety.

So I put the book back where I found it.

And, I'll be honest. I didn't know what "Philatelic" meant, but I was kinda hoping it would mean something cool, like "nerve gas" or "CIA black sites" or "ninja sex kittens."

When I got home, I opened up a can Wiki-hoop Ass on that adjective, and apparently "Philatelic" just means "stamps something something."

And "Philatelic Literature" means "books about stamps and stuff, I guess." And "Priced Guide of Philatelic Literature" means "yes, people actually pay money for blah blah blah is there a new Battlestar on tonight?"

Now, I don't want to say that stamp collecting is boring.

[awkward silence]

So, um, have I mentioned that I went to the midnight release party for D&D, 4th Edition last night? That's right. I now have a copy of The Player's Handbook in hand. How awesome am I?

[more awkward silence -- which is to say "more silence which is awkward," and not to suggest "silence which may or may not be directly related to previous silences, but which entails a degree of awkwardness more intense than the awkwardnesses related to any previous silences."]

Anyway, I checked this morning, and if you're missing a blue book about whatever it was I was just talking about before I stopped caring, it's still there waiting for you in the Onion Box.

Please don't make your motorcycle explode on my face.

 

30 in 30

Today I'm embarking on an ambitious (for me) new project. Every day this month, I'm going to update this website with new content. That's 30 updates over 30 days, or roughly 30 more updates that you saw in the month of May.

And what kind content can you expect? I'm glad you asked, implied interlocutor. Here's a quick overview...

 
Politics: Expect some wonky pro-Obama nattering! Who doesn't love nattering? With the Democratic Primary almost finished, and the General Election just beginning, there's plenty to discuss, both serious and silly.

Comics: You all know how much I love comics, and there's a lot going on right now. Final Crisis #1 came out this past Wednesday, Secret Invasion is in full gear, All-Star Superman is winding down, and I think Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam is going to come out someday. Probably.

Movies: I love me some Iron Man movie. I'd probably read the comic too, if it starred Robert Downey, Jr. And we've got plenty of other awesome movies coming this Summer. As you all know, I've been covering movies for a long time, so you're gonna wanna hear what I have to say about the latest hits (and misses)!

Games: The new edition of Dungeons & Dragons is coming out later this week, and I've been devouring the preview material. There are plenty of big changes, some great and some not so great (I'm lookin' at you, lack of gnomish hooked-hammer!), and I'll be offering a full review later on this month.

Humor: Me like jokes.

Doodles: Me also like the doodling.

T-Shirts: Earlier this year, I started creating a "T-Shirt of the Month." The June shirt will be debuting later this month, but in the meantime, there's still time to buy a "Zap Obama Pow" shirt from CafePress.com.

Fiction: Some folks may wander what I've been up to over the course of the past year, since ArchEnemies came out. Well, later this month, I'll be sharing some of the new (non-bloggy) things I've been working on, including an excerpt from my sci-fi fantasy mystery quest novel in progress, Percival Gynt and the Conspiracy of Days.

Life: My two roommates are moving out at the end of June, so there's likely to be some hecticnessism here on the homefront. Will I be able to pay the rent on July 1st? Find out here first.

 
So there you have it! If you like politics, movies, comics, roleplaying games, things that are funny, doodles, wearing t-shirts, sci-fi fantasy mystery quest novels, and/or me, you're in for a great month! Alternatively, if you want to lay odds on the first day I miss an update...

Well, I've got my money on the 11th.

 

Judd Apatow Hates Women

Okay, not really. But I just saw Forgetting Sarah Marshall last night (better than Superbad, about as good as Knocked Up, probably not as good as 40 Year Old Virgin, a little bit better than Muppets Take Manhattan), and I have to agree with the accepted wisdom that Apatow-productions are locked into the rigid mindset that guys are funny and women aren't.

As Knocked Up's Katherine Heigl pointed out last year:

It was hard for me to love [Knocked Up] because it's a little sexist... It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as goofy, fun-loving guys.

Zing! But here at DrewMelbourne.com, we're not whiners. We're problems solvers!

And so I offer up this potential solution to address the Apatowista's Achilles' Girlfriends' Heel:

As he has with so many of his old Freaks and Geeks cast, Judd Apatow needs to kick start Linda Cardellini's (post-Scooby Doo) film career by helping her write and produce her own rated-R comedy about a funny, female slacker and the men who just don't get her until the end of the movie, when they do.

Call it Sarah Marshall Forgets To Call You Back.

I recommend Kristin Wiig as the best friend. And, if absolutely necessary, they could maybe find a part for Paul Rudd as the jerky ex-boyfriend.

Tomorrow, we solve global warming.

 

Idol Shocker

This just in: We have found David Cook's hairline. Repeat: We have found David Cook's hairline.

 

 
As of yet, we've had no reaction from MODAM.

 

World Eats Jimmy

[NOTE: the following digression includes spoilers for the first and second season of the BBC sit-com, Love Soup.]

Love Soup is a show that I discovered in re-runs on BBC America. At the time, there were only six episodes made, all shot and broadcast in the UK way back in '05. For those who aren't familiar with the program (which I would assume is most of you), Love Soup is a sort of a screw ball comedy in which the two quirky-yet-fated lovers never actually meet.

What initially caught my attention was that the male lead was an American. And not only an American, but Michael Landes, the Dick York of Jimmy Olsons.

...and the show has an easy charm to it, filtering Woody Allen neuroses through a distinctly British sensibility. Landes and the female lead, Tasmin Grieg, are funny, engaging actors who manage a suprising amount of chemistry, given that they're never on screen together, nor do they share any storylines whatsoever.

Well, technically, they're on screen together once, at the very end of the first season. They're in the same movie theater, watching the same awful movie, but they don't meet, and I suppose the point of the whole series is that they might never meet.

Which brings us to season two, the source of my current ennui. Now, for a long time, it didn't appear that season two was going to happen at all. It's been a few years, and Landes is back in the US, where he's been working steadily on "things that aren't Love Soup", including guest turns on My Boys and Boston Legal. As far as I knew, the show was done.

Then, a couple days ago, I discovered that not only is Love Soup coming back, it is back, with new episodes already airing in the UK. The catch? Landes is gone. The show which used to be an hour long, following two main characters in two different stories is now half an hour long, following just Tasmin Grieg in just one different story.

So they've taken a concept that is, at it's heart, hopeful: "You may never find them, but there is someone out there for you, and you need to keep looking for them." and it's turned it into something very, very sad: "You can look all you want. You're never going to find him."

And if that's not sad enough on its face, I just found out that part way through season two, we learn what happened to the Landes character. No, he's not off in America, guesting on David E. Kelley shows. He's dead. Landes' character dies of a heart attack, just a few hours before he would have finally met Grieg's character.

"No. Really. You're never, never going to find him."

I haven't seen the second season yet, as it's only just running in the UK, and at this point, I don't know if I can manage it. By all accounts, it's still smart and funny and quirky as ever. It's just...

I can handle futility. Futility is my bread and butter. But this verges on sadistic.

I suppose there's always a place for hope, though. While googling the story, I came across a fan site where one viewer speculated that the whole revelation was really a Three's Company style misunderstanding, and that Landes' character would be back in time for season three.

Wishful thinking, obviously. But isn't that the point?

I guess the lesson is that they can kill hope, but they can't kill hope.

So let me know if Jimmy Olson comes back from the dead. I'll be watching Doctor Who.

 

Wisdom from the Princeton Review: Witnesses of Galilee

Here now is the second installment of my irregular series, "Passages Pulled at Random from an 1881 Compilation of Essays from the 19th Century Liturgical Journal called The Princeton Review."

This week, we excerpt from Yale professor George Fisher's "The Historical Proofs of Christianity":

Now who were the original witnesses of the miracles of Jesus? As Cardinal Newman has said, they were far from a dull or ignorant race. The inhabitants of a maritime and border country (as Gaililee was); engaged, moreover, in commerce; composed of natives of various countries, and, therefore, from the nature of the case, acquainted with more than one language, have necesarily their intellects sharpened and their minds considerably enlarged, and are of all men least disposed to acquiesce in marvellous tales. Such a people must have examined before they suffered themselves to be excited in the degree which the evangelists describe."

Case closed! See ya next time.

 

Chris Cornell covers David Cook

Let's see if this works:

 

 
After listening to the complete song, I get the distinct impression that the kid is his son. Dirty deadbeat liar.

On Wednesday's American Idol, Mr. David "Eat That, Archuleta" Cook (the singer of the song that Chris Cornell enjoyed so much that he stole a time machine and travelled back in time to record it a year earlier) compared his enormous forehead to a Marvel supervillain's. He didn't specify which one, but perhaps he meant:

 

 
If so, we should expect Billie Jean's baby to come out something like this:

 

 
I think. "Michael Jackson + American Idol + Sound Garden + Marvel Comics" gives me a little bit of a headache.

Seacrest out.

 

Television Ad

"It's 3 AM, and a phone is ringing in the White House. It's a little girl, and she wants to read the President a poem. Who do you want answering that phone?"

Hillary Clinton. Ready on Day One.

 

This Week on Idol

My friend Daniel does Idol recaps for Zap2it.com. This week, I'm helping him out by sharing my own insightful commentary:

For a second week in a row, the contestants covered classic Beatles songs. And, okay, some of the performances were all right, but...

WHERE ARE MY RINGO SONGS???

Top 11 and no one covers "Octopus's Garden?" No "Yellow Submarine?" No "Shining Time Station Jamboree?"

Mister Seacrest, you still a chance to make this right, sir!

You've stretched it to two weeks already. Come on!

BEATLES WEEK 3: RINGO-A-GO-GO

(Quick, somebody tell me: Did Ringo write more than two songs?)

Thank you, and goodnight.

 

Chutzpah

I just want to take a moment to assure all you Obama supporters out there that if I'm elected president, there may still be a place on the ticket for Barack Obama.

To further reassure you that all is not lost, I have compiled a short list of other potential presidents who are also willing to appease you by letting Barack Obama be their VP. They include:

my mom
your mom
my boss
my roommate
that guy I buy stamps from
my cat
Steve
gorilla with Hitler's brain
everyone else
Hillary Clinton

So fear not, Obamalama Ding Dongs! Even if your candidate loses the Democratic primary this year, you may still see him serving as Vice-President under me, someone I know, a cute little kitten, a Nazi, Hillary Clinton, or some other candidate with a 0% mathematical chance of winning the Democratic nomination.

(Go Barack.)

 

Our February Mantra

I am a kinetic kill vehicle.

I am a kinetic kill vehicle.

I am a kinetic kill vehicle.

 

Mark Tatulli: Cartoonist, Stalker

Apparently cartoonist Mark Tatulli has been stalking me. Here is proof, in comic strip form:

As you may or may not know, my cat is named Ninja, and she was indeed found in a shoebox.

(And, like the boy in the comic strip, I also often have a bad hair cut.)

I am currently considering my legal options.

For those who are curious, the above strip is the February 7th edition of Mark Tatulli's Liō, a fun strip and well worth your time.

 

Wisdom from The Princeton Review: Intellligent Will-Power

Some of you will know that by day I work for the test prep company, The Princeton Review. It recently came to my attention that in the 19th Century, there was an unrelated journal with the same name. I managed to find an 1881 compilation of articles on eBay, and I'll be sharing excerpts now and then, chosen via stichomancy.

This week's passage comes from Dr. M. Stuart Phelps' July 1881 article entitled Anthropomorphism:

Setting aside the crude materialism which has no place in the discussion of the evolution of the concept of God, the agnostic can show us no primitive religion in which there was not the worship of a Being supposed to be capable of apprehending that worship. As the formulated concept of abstract space comes to the child only after years of patient study, so may the formulated concept of an infinite, intelligent, personal God have come only at a comparatively late stage in the education of the race. But the thing itself was in the human heart from the outset. Embedded in ignorance, overgrown by superstition, distorted by all the puerilities of heathen fancy, this faith in the intelligence of deity was still the invariable logical antecedent of every act of worship and of prayer. That worship and that prayer presupposed the receptivity of God, and that receptivity could only be the act of an intelligent will-power.

It was written in the 1800s, so it must be true!

 

Close Enough

Here.

 

Soooper Doooper Tooosday

Today's the day that over 20 U.S. states (and American Samoa) have their primaries. If you live in one of those 20+ U.S. states (and/or American Samoa), please vote. And if you vote, we here at DrewMelbourne.com encourage you to vote for Barack Obama.

Why?

First, he's received the endorsement of Aint-It-Cool-News chief, Harry Knowles.

Second, do not talk about Fight Club.

Yesterday, I had the chance to attend a small rally for Obama at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, where he was also endorsed by Bobby DeNiro.

After the rally, I was fortunate enough to arrange a quick interview with Da Bam, which I've transcribed for you below:

Interviewer: Thank you for running for President!

Mister Obama: Thank you!

We also shook hands.

I would have conducted a longer interview, but the secret service were eying me suspiciously, and a small Dominican woman was stepping on my foot.

Seriously, though, Barack Obama is awesome.

To find out more about the Obama campaign, to contribute, or to volunteer, go to BarackObama.com.

 

Shoetastrophe

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But I am now gellin'. As of 7:48 pm EST on January the 19th, I am no longer a human being. I am a half-human, half-massive tool abomination. Behold my shame...

But I have to tell you, they are extremely compellin'.

Next week, I plan to apply Head On directly to my forehead.

Life is no longer worth living.

 

What do these people have in common?

...myself, a felon, Magellan, Helen McMellon.

Find out next week!!!

 

Fired up

Ready to go.

 

Merry Wonkmas

A sad (but true) story:

The other day, I was trying to explain to my mother just how excited I am about the upcoming Iowa Caucus. (I'm a bit of a wonk as it turns out, and I really enjoy watching live CSPAN coverage of bizarre political events.)

My exact words were, "This is going to be great. The Iowa Caucuses are just like Christmas for me."

My mom shook her head as she responded, "You know, this is Christmas."

So, in case there's any doubt, I would like to state for the record, that Christmas is also just like Christmas for me.

 

Vandal Genius

Here's a bit of genius pop art currently exhibiting at the 103rd stop on the 6 line:

Heh, heh. "Die, yacht, die!"

The ad itself is clever, effectively juxtaposing two levels of reality to relate an overarching idea. The graffiti unifies and subverts the two images, at once transforming the ad into sequential art and rewriting the rules of the form.

Mind you, the dialog needs some work. I mean, would a yacht really say "Oh, Oh!" as its being laser beamed by a giant floating head? No, it would say "Yeargh!!! My AFT!"

 

My New Cat

After the last cat didn't work out so well, I decided to take a few years off from cat-having, but here we go again:

 

 

This is Ninja. Awwwww. But look, Ninja used to be even cuter:

 

 

With product placement! Do the Dew!

But lets go even cuter. Here's Ninja with an ex-roommate's cat:

 

 

Less cute when you know the bigger cat used to crap in my shower all the time, but still pretty gosh-darned cute!

 

Bad Bread

Here's a loaf of bread I "found" in my apartment:

 

 

The sad part is that I didn't find it "under the couch" or "behind a cupboard" or even "under something." It was just sitting there on the living room floor next to the TV for three weeks.

In my defense, part 1:
There were some really interesting programs on TV.

In my defense, part 2:
It totally wasn't me that left the bread there.

In my defense, part 3:
LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!!!

 

Meet Your Meals

Big Double Steak Day news today. Yes, as promised yesterday, we have mascots:

This is a neat bit of symmetry. I conceived the DSX2 mascots a few weeks go, but didn't have time to "flesh them out." (It's after 1 AM as I type this, so I'm not sure if that's a pun or not.) "Cows named Lunch and Dinner" was about as far as I'd gotten.

The art above comes from the first ever DSX2 holiday card. It's provided by some dude named Pete, who I've never met, and who was never actually told about Lunch (the mascot, not the meal) and Dinner (ibid). Apparently he just thought (as I did) that it's not DSX2 without cute, cuddly, soon-to-be-consumed livestock.

Thanks for the card "dude named Pete"!

So there you have it! Lunch and Dinner, mascots for your consumption.

That wraps up the post-DSX2 wrap-up for this year, except to say that next year's festivities will be held on December 14th.

Check this space next Fall for T-shirts, gift cards, and any other swag that we can think up.

Happy Holidays!

 

The (Double Steak) Day After

So yesterday was Double Steak Day. And here's one of my steaks:

I know it kind of looks like a clod of dirt with a sprig in it, but trust me, that's a steak.

I'm happy to report that this year's DSX2 was an unqualified success! I believe that this is the first year that "People I've Never Met" have joined in on the holiday. (And even "Girlfriends of People I've Never Met"!)

But more on that tomorrow!

For those who like to keep track of these things, the picture up above comes from last night's dinner at Uncle Jack's on 9th Avenue, a 10 ounce filet mignon.

I ate lunch at Pizzeria Uno's. Not my first choice, but I'm no snob. A steak's a steak. I ordered a 7 ounce filet mignon (not pictured) and a giant heated-up peanut butter cup (not pictured) covered in ice cream (not pictured) and (not pictured) syrup (not pictured).

The steak was also good.

Tomorrow: The DSX2 Mascots!

 

Eat-a-Can-of-Soup Day

A few months back, one of my co-workers gave me a can of soup, because I eat like a 5 year old, and she didn't want me to die of malnutrition. But, because I eat like a 5 year old and the can of soup had green stuff in it, I just smiled politely and left the soup to collect dust on my desk.

But now I'm declaring October 5th (or so) as "Eat-a-Can-of-Soup Day". As you may know, I re-entered the working world about a year ago, so the whole EaCoSD thing is sort of a celebration of day jobs and humility in general.

Here's this year's soup in before and after form:

 

 

 

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, crow.

 

Delta is Change

Meant to write something about this a while back:

Delta is currently running an ad campaign in New York that uses the slogan "Delta is Change" and highlights all sorts of new changey things they're doing to (presumably) make them a less crappy airline than they used to be.

Now, I'm no advertising genius, but does anyone else think it's a little sad when major corporations are cribbing their marketing campaigns from a Wikipedia disambiguation page?

I predict the next Delta Air Lines slogan will be "Delta is Landform Where the Mouth of a River Flows into an Ocean, Sea, Desert, Estuary, Lake or Another River."
 

 

My Bathroom Senses

At work, they have these individual, closet-type bathrooms all lined along a central hallway. And the lights are motion-activated, except when they're not.

The light in one of the bathrooms was out for several days last week, so if you closed the door behind you it was basically pitch black. The bathroom with the burnt out light was also the closest and most convenient bathroom, though, and I found myself accidentally wandering in several times over the course of the week.

The first time or two, I just shook my head and headed off to a different tiny closet-bathroom. But then I had an epiphany:

You know how if you lose one sense, all your other senses become that much more powerful? Like, a deaf person can see 25% better, etc. (I vaguely remember reading that somewhere, so it must be true.) Well, what if the same thing is true with bathrooms?

If I can teach myself to pee in the pitch black, then all of my non-vision pee-related senses should increase proportionately. That means that everytime I'm in a bathroom, my senses of hearing, touch, smell, and taste would be enhanced!

And, um, who doesn't want to hear, touch, smell, and taste more stuff in a... um...

Okay, maybe I haven't thought this through yet.

 

Why Does Verizon Hate My Hoohahs?

So I bought a new phone the other day. And, being me, I had to buy the one with all the latest bells and whistles and doodads and hoohahs.

(Though, in my defense, I was also this close to buying a phone that's only discernible feature is that you could sit it in a glass of beer at parties, and it would still ring.)

So this phone (picture pending) came with a chip and a kit and a brochure and they were all shoved (because Verizon hates me) in this "adorable" little shopping bag with transparent sides.

Transparent sides or, as we call them in the old country, "Mugger Windows."

Let me go out on a limb and say that no shopping bag should ever be transparent. And if you absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely had to pick one shopping back to be the exception to the rule, you wouldn't make it the one full of high-priced electronic hoohahs.

If you had to make that choice, maybe you'd make the Dollar Store shopping bag transparent. Because nothing says "I am too pitiful to rob!" like a transparent bag full of plastic spider rings.

In fact, I'd be much happier if the Verizon folks had packed my hoohas in a brown trashbag and labeled it with a black Sharpee™ to read, "A DOLLAR WORTH OF SPIDER RINGS!!!"

For the records (and because I know that my mother occasionally reads this site), let me just point out that I was not mugged for my phone, my kit, my chip, my brochure, my doodads, or my hoohahs.

Or my many, many spider rings.

 

 

(Shut up. You know they're awesome.)
 

 

My Cube

Because I have taken a week off from work to enjoy the holiday, and because I frequently worry that I might miss my job during my absence, I have posted a video of my beloved cubespace here for you and I to enjoy together:
 

 
Please note that the video ends with a slow zoom on two paperclips hanging from a pushpin. (This may be hard to make out at the current resolution.) I recently discovered that if you hook paperclips together in this way, you can hang a sheet of paper from a pushpin without actually having to puncture the paper.

That was a very exciting day for me.

Someone help me, please.

 

MySpaceitti

I never gave an update on how Double Steak Day went. Suffice it to say that it was awesome, and I made myself sick, and I won't want to do it again for another year.

Also, I'm hereby fiatting that Peter Luger Steakhouse, New York's preeminent steak place, is no longer an acceptable Double Steak Day destination.

Why? Because they serve your entire table steak on one big plate, and it's really hard to tell whether you've eaten exactly one steak. I may have accidentally eaten two and a quarter steaks on Double Steak Day. Some of my friends may have only eaten one and seven eighths steaks.

It's all very against the spirit of the holiday.

And while I couldn't take pictures of the two-ish steaks I ate, because my camera phone crapped out on me at an inconvenient time, I can share the following with you.

This picture is of graphitti found on the base of a flag pole in the Bronx, where I was waiting for a ride to steak number uno:

So if you come across Benil(?), Nikka, Prudity(?), Matthew, Kathy C, Casey or Kelby on MySpace, you should totally hit them up.

 

Slogan Squatting

For anyone who's looking for a new Reality Game, I bring you "Slogan Squatting." Here's how it's played:

Come up with a slogan or catch phrase that could be used to market a specific product. Basically, anything they advertise on TV is fair game. We're talking about shoes, fast food, cars, etc.

Then just keep using the slogan/phrase until it catches on. Be sure to document the creation of the slogan/phrase, preferably in blog form.

For instance, I have quoined the phrase, "I'm Kingin' it! You in?™" which obviously means, "I'm going to Burger King? Do you want anything?"

So everytime I'm going to Burger King, I call someone up and use my catch phrase.

It's only a matter of time before the King knocks down my door with a big bag of money in hand, begging for the rights to my slogan. I'll be rich, I tell you. Rich!

Please note that slogan squatting isn't actually meant to work. It's just a funny thing to do.

That said, if someone does successfully slogan squat a catch phrase, I want 10%.

 

Non-update Update

As the bard writes, it's been a long December. I survived a computer crash, lost a roommate, recruited some artists, got a new roommate, got a new cat, ate two steaks, cleaned up after the new cat when he defiled my shower, and played a game called "Who on this subway car doesn't own their own pants?"

All that, plus a few new installments of Think Like Tomorrow.

Oh. And this morning, on my train ride to work, a creepy German guy said "Gesundheit!" when I coughed.

There will be details and pictures (though none of the creepy German or the cat defilation or, sadly, the man who did not own his pants) to come.

Stay tuned.

And, yes, I know defilation isn't a word... yet.

 

An Announcement

Henceforth, I decree that websites names shall be pronounced as follows:

"http://www.archenemiesonline.com/"

will be pronounced

" H - T - T - P - colon - backslash - backslash again - wuh - wuh - wuh - period - archenemiesonline - period again - C - O - M - optional slash"

Go forth and spread the word/pronunciation.

 

I Remain Neutral on the Kitten Question

I started a new day job today. (Well, yesterday, now.) I'm back working with The Princeton Review for a while. Hopefully this won't slow down any of my comics work, but I figured it would be a good idea to have a steady income and health care and a 9-6 workday to keep me from sleeping till 2 in the afternoon.

If I understand the employee handbook correctly, I'm supposed to tell you that my views on stuff are not necessarily their views on stuff. For instance: I like kittens and rainbows. But does The Princeton Review like kittens and rainbows?

Maybe. Maybe not. I can't speak for them.

(I make jokes, but I work with really good people. I'm 99.9% sure they all like kittens and at least 84.7% sure they dig the rainbows.)

 

The Recent Conspiracy

May have an artist for a comic I'm developing called WE ARE THE CONSPIRACY. I've been calling it an absurdist drama because, in my experience, audiences like funny dramas more than they like serious comedies. And because it's absurd.

This is the project that I submitted in script form to Oni (as mentioned in a recent ATR interview). I threw it on their enormous Slushpile of Death at San Diego. It takes them a few months to get through the whole pile, so I'm putting together sample pages as a contingency.

If Oni passes, I'll have art to use as I pitch to other companies. And if Oni takes to the book, we'll already be on our way.

More details as I've got 'em.

 

Boldly Going Over the Same Ground

Earlier today, comic book writing badass Warren Ellis observed that BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is the last of the "spaceship shows" on television. We were apparently operating out of the same headspace this weekend, because I was in the process of compiling the following...

I'm not a trekker. I don't speak Klingon. I don't know all the names of all the episodes of all the various serieszes. I don't own any STAR TREK paraphanlia.

(Heck, I don't even know how to spell "paraphanalia.")

But I'll cop to being a geek in the broad sense, and I'll cop to watching a lot of ST:NG and the early seasons of ST:DS9 as a kid/teen/earlier today.

And like the diehard Trekkers I was disappointed to see STAR TREK jump the Trakolian Blood Shark a few years back. Six series (I may be counting the animated cartoon) and eleven movies later (I may also be counting FREE ENTERPRISE), the STAR TREK juggernaut apparently ran out of gas.

Or dilythium. Which I'm probably also misspelling.

(I'm making a list now: paraphanalia, dilythium. When I get to ten, I'm buying a dictionary. And a nerd.)

Here are my presumably unoriginal thoughts about why STAR TREK went wrong:

The first STAR TREK was a bunch of people on a space ship exploring the universe. Great.

The second STAR TREK was a different bunch of people on a space ship exploring the universe. Fair enough.

The third STAR TREK was a different bunch of people on a space station, just kind of hanging out and then later fighting a war. Progress!

Then the fourth STAR TREK was about a different bunch of people on a space ship exploring the universe.

And the fifth STAR TREK was about...

And I know I left out the cartoon just there, but you can imagine that it was probably drawings of people on a space ship exploring the universe.

STAR TREK isn't just a sci-fi series. (Or a series of series even.) It's not just a universe. It's a whole freakin' genre unto itself: the "bunch of people on a space ship (or maybe a space station)" genre.

Warren Ellis calls them "spaceship shows." I call them all STAR TREK.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is a STAR TREK show. FIREFLY was a STAR TREK show. FARSCAPE, ANDROMEDA, BABYLON 5, all the way back to BUCK ROGERS and freakin' BLAKE 7? STAR TREK, STAR TREK, STAR TREK, STAR TREK, and freakin' STAR TREK.

Yes, there were differences. I'll get to them in a minute. But they all had that one big idea in common:

In the future, all the interesting stuff will happen on spaceships. Most of the time, these will be military spaceships, but sometimes the spaceships will be fleeing the military (FIREFLY, BLAKE 7) and sometimes they'll be trying to rebuild the military (ANDROMEDA).

In 2006, we have doctors and lawyers and police officers and precocious teenagers and entire offices full of wacky but lovable weirdos. But in the future?

Just dudes on spaceships.

Over the years I’ve given a lot of thought to how to do STAR TREK differently. How to create a STAR TREK show that defies the genre. How to create a STAR TREK show that’s accessible to a larger audience.

Let's play "See if you can spot the flaw in my thinking!"

Back when ST:NG was still on the air, I thought: “They should do a show about a small exploratory ship traveling through uncharted space. They could call it STAR TREK… TRAVELER!”

As it turns out, not a great idea.

Other ideas the seemed good at first included a show set in the future, with the heroes of the Enterprise X rebuilding the Federation (ala ANDROMEDA), and a show set at the dawn of the Federation called STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT (ala ENTERPRISE or, you know, STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT).

And, sure, any one of those ideas could have made for a good show. (Could have, but didn’t.) But ultimately I was just repackaging the same idea: STAR TREK on a smaller ship. STAR TREK on a more advanced ship. STAR TREK on a more primitive ship.

Ooh, here’s an idea: a bunch of people explore the universe in a spaceship that transforms into a giant robot!

What?

Here’s the thing: TV shows, and stories in general, are about people. Not spaceships. Or so I'm told.

And that brings me to “Across the Universe.” It’s a STAR TREK story in the loosest sense. It's set in that sort of "spaceship universe," but it's not a spaceship show.

It's a people show... with a spaceship thrown in here and there.

If I were a television executive in charge of “saving STAR TREK,” I’d turn “Across the Universe” into a TV show. But I’m a comic book writer, so I’m putting together a pitch for an OGN.

Hopefully folks will like it.

More on what "Across the Universe" actually IS to follow. Right now it's at the very early script stage, but I hope to have a full pitch ready in the next month or two (or, let's be honest, decade).

And before I get any emails, yes, I realize that people tell all sorts of stories about the future that aren’t set exclusively on spaceships and that these stories typically appear in “books” and that these books can be found in “book stores” or on the “amazon dotcom.”

Bonus points for you! You're very clever, and you're "oh-so-literate." Now come over hear so I can beat you to death with your library card!

 

This Week's To Do List

1. finish up the formatting on the new extras for the AE trade
2. finish up the outline for "Across the Universe"
3. call up as many temp agencies as possible and beg for work
4. try not to eat too much or use too much electricity

 

San Diego Signing

I'm leaving for California tomorrow. I'll be in LA for a few days, and then in San Diego late next week for Comic-Con. I'll be signing copies of ARCHENEMIES (at least three) at the Dark Horse booth on Saturday, from 11am till Frank Miller kicks me out (somewhere between 11:45 and noon).

If you stop by with a copy of AE #4, I promise to tell you several weird ARCHENEMIES secrets including "who would have starred in ARCHENEMIES if it had gotten picked up as a Marvel title in 2003."

 

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