The question is, do I get it on the palm of my hand so I can show it to other people too, or just backwards on my forehead?
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Jon also introduced me to Dancer in the Dark. Jon likes to hurt me.
Almost exactly three years after I started Sad and Happy Movie Day, Jon and Amanda finally maneuvered me into actually watching Hotel Rwanda. We didn’t even have a happy movie to chase it with, but a couple episodes of Arrested Development made do.
I could have sworn that was Julia Sawalha playing the Red Cross worker, but IMDB says I am wrong. Dang. Oh, also the world is going to burn and we all deserve it.
Space Paris has robots with moustaches
Look why are you not reading The Fabian Society? If what we had in Space Paris meant anything you’d read The Fabian Society every day and even on days when he (Quintus) (or possibly Henry) doesn’t update you’d be all up in his archives reading the older stuff you missed. I know I already told you to read it back in 2006, but obviously you weren’t listening, and anyway since then he’s been developing the kind of effortless grace in prose that makes me stomp around in jealous anger. I am so angry that you are not reading The Goddamn Fabian Society! What! Yes! Don’t impose your human consistency on me! We already had this fight in Space Paris!
Start with Petra, Endless Frank, Fishbowls and Ptolemy I, and if you’re not hooked by the third one you’re doing it wrong.
Rock Band Wishlist
My phone has no ringtones and I’ve never owned a CD I didn’t rip, but the record industry has finally found a way to get even me to pay for songs I already own: Rock Band. At least the downloadable tracks have the value-add of being interactive at multiple levels. What they do not have, sadly, is a way to cater exclusively to my taste. Until now!
I put these together working on the three-songs-per-band model they’ve established on Live so far, and basically within the creators’ bent toward three- or four-piece groups and a fairly narrow definition of “rock.” Also with the fact that I don’t really know anything about music before 1998.
Semisonic:
- “Brand New Baby”
- “Closing Time” (well, I mean, come on)
- “Get a Grip”
Queen, although I know these are all impossible for one reason or another:
- “Bohemian Rhapsody”
- “Under Pressure”
- “Killer Queen”
Jimmy Eat World:
- “Lucky Denver Mint”
- “Sweetness”
- “Nightdrive”
Barenaked Ladies (man, this is hard):
- “Brian Wilson (live)”
- “Too Little Too Late”
- “Maybe You’re Right”
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists:
- “Me and Mia”
- “Counting Down the Hours”
- “La Costa Brava”
I know there are already a million Foo Fighters songs, but still:
- “Everlong”
- “Breakout”
- “All My Life”
The New Pornographers:
- “Mass Romantic”
- “Letter from an Occupant”
- “Sing Me Spanish Techno”
And, finally, U2 (yeah, I know they’re working on it):
- “Desire”
- “Mysterious Ways”
- “If God Will Send His Angels”
I invite you to eviscerate me in commentary, or post your own wishlists. Maria, for example: Prince? Lisa: TMBG? Someone: Beck or the Decemberists?
Update 1432 hrs: Andy suggests replacing “Sing Me Spanish Techno” with “The Bleeding Hearts Show,” and offers a Tragically Hip three-pack:
- “New Orleans Is Sinking”
- “38 Years Old”
- “Fireworks”
And Ken, inevitably, has a list with a lot more depth than mine:
Jamiroquai:
- “Canned Heat”
- “Alright”
- “Black Capricorn Day”
Smashing Pumpkins:
- “Cherub Rock”
- “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”
- “Today”
Guns N Roses:
- “Welcome to the Jungle”
- “Live and Let Die”
- “Nighttrain”
Pearl Jam:
- “Life Wasted”
- “Alive”
- “Rearviewmirror”
Talking Heads:
- “Psycho Killer”
- “Uh Oh, Love Comes to Town”
- “Take Me to the River”
Beck (most doesn’t translate well to guitar, bass and drums):
- “Loser”
- “E-Pro”
- “The New Pollution”
Spoon:
- “Don’t You Evah”
- “I Turn My Camera On”
- “Sister Jack”
Jimi Hendrix:
- “Spanish Castle Magic”
- “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)”
- “Fire”
Pink Floyd:
- “Comfortably Numb”
- “Money”
- “Arnold Layne”
Sublime:
- “Smoke Two Joints”
- “Santeria”
- “Pawn Shop”
And single songs:
- The Dandy Warhols – “Bohemian Like You”
- TV on the Radio – “Wolf Like Me”
- !!! – “Must Be the Moon”
- Arctic Monkeys – “I’ll Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”
- Styx – “Renegade”
And Scott put up a list for Bryan Scary and the Shredding Tears, who would be insanely fun (and REALLY HARD) to play in RB–not impossible, either, as Harmonix has been pretty good to indie rock:
- Flight of the Knife
- Imitation of the Sky
- Son of Stab
Dear the person responsible for rebranding “Super Tuesday” as “Tsunami Tuesday”
I want to kill you.
Okay, I thought I read once about an interactive fiction game that begins with a single paragraph of description, which just repeats over and over–but gradually expands and changes as you take actions. It’s a fascinating idea, but I never got around to downloading it, and now I can’t find the right google-juju to summon it again. Anyone else heard of this?
Update 1357 hrs: Kevan to the rescue, with Andrew Plotkin’s The Space Under the Window and Aisle. bloody_peasants also suggests Shade and the One Room Game Competition.
Because obviously I’ve never ripped them off
I did that gag THREE YEARS AGO, THE ONION.
Brendan painstakingly imitates a Photoshop filter, third in a series
I will probably never love another episode of television as much as I love Battlestar Galactica, season 3, episode 9, “Unfinished Business.” And not just because it has images like this:
I’ve spent at least the last year and a half (actually, more like seven years, since my undergrad Drawing I class) being obsessed with this limited-tone art style. I called it “rotoscoping” once, and Lisa and Will jumped on me because there’s no animation involved, so I have to admit that it’s actually what people call “tracing.” But selective tracing.
As was likely very obvious to anyone in my family, and as I only realized yesterday, my playing around with tone is blatantly derived from my uncle John’s painting and wood engraving work, especially his portraits of my grandfather (which he often combines with layered collage). Mr. Olmos there has some features similar to his, like the disappearing eyes which Ian and I inherited. I hope I get to look that craggy eventually. Right now people are still asking me what my major is, despite the obvious gray in my hair.
I almost forgot to mention that this is the first thing I’ve ever inked with the brushes I bought in 2003, and although it was a lot slower than my usual pens, I completely get why cartoonists get so excited about it now. There’s a feeling of dynamic control over the line weight that you just can’t get with pens, even the brush pen with which I inked a lot of later Xorph strips. (Not that there are actually any distinct lines in the finished images below. Good.)
So I made a picture and it’s a wallpaper if you want it: the images below link to 1600×1200 and 1600×1000 (widescreen) jpegs. There’s also a browser-sized version if you just want to zoom in a bit.
PS Can Battlestar Galactica be back on now plz
Update 2008.01.26 0001 hrs: Naturally, UJ has a much more cogent post on the subject (the art, not Battlestar), along with one of the portraits I was talking about.
You are hereby ordered to waste your afternoon
Everybody should be reading Starslip Crisis, and if you’re not, you need to start. With the Spine of the Cosmos. Once you’re done with that–if you just want to get the stuff that majorly advances the plot–you can read about the Ars Ad Astra gala, the Starslip Catastrophe, the Battle of Cirbozoid, the subsequent Glorysong, the Shark Time Jump, the Battle of Terra and… well, just read everything from that onward, it’s pretty recent. Then get kind of put out that you have to wait until tomorrow for the next one. Then go back to the beginning and read all the other stuff in between, because you’ll see the way all the story arcs tag into each other in startling and funny ways.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever love Starslip like I loved Checkerboard Nightmare, but come on, it’s still in the top five comic strips ever made. Reading back through to do this roundup, I noticed that some of the random-seeming asides are actually jokes that have just taken years to pay off. That’s Arrested Development-level, man.