So. We came across some Heritage Dr. Pepper in the store the other day and, being fans of Dr. Pepper – except for the whole corn syrup thing – picked up a bottle each. It certainly tasted great. I had some of mine for lunch, and most for dinner, Jen the reverse. The fun started that night when we tried to go to sleep. It took each of us about 1.5 hours of just laying there, staring at the ceiling, to fall asleep. Now, I don’t think it was just the caffeine. I’ve had caffeine with dinner before, and haven’t had that happen. I can’t say what it was. No idea, but it was weird.
And it got weirder. When I finally fell asleep (after meticulously analyzing completely bizarre angles on The Hangover for 1.5 hours or so), I dreamed that Community was not only a brilliant comedy, but also a seriously fucked up dystopian allusion. Like, after the ha-ha, at the end of each episode the watchers would get one more clue as to “what was really going on” a la Lost (which I have never seen, but I’m guessing it’s something like that, clue wise). What I remember is that the ha-ha portion of the show was some kind of a dream, projected by one of two people – we aren’t sure which – who are both from a tiny (<10 people) town in the middle of nowhere which was famous for something I can’t remember. The clue from the recent episode involved the brunette girl being a stand in for two geeky, glasses wearing twins from the school attended by one of our mysterious dreamers. The video portions of the clues were presented in grainy, retro style film (like those flashback scenes in The Game).
I wish I could remember more, because the imagery was so strong and subtle that I had to confirm with Jen in the morning (when I was wide awake), that Community did indeed NOT have weird dystopian clues at the end. Even now it still “feels” somewhat true. I love vivid dreams.
I think I’m gonna have to get some more of that beverage.
There’s a line in the fine print section that has me a little wary, about doling out your email and real name to their promotional partners and whatnot.
Anyway, no big loss and one less thing to (minorly) stress about.
Mighty Avengers 34: This issue came off horribly to me. The worst issue of Slott’s run, hands down. Part of it was the ugly art, I’m sure, but several story moments just felt sloppy and rush. I mean, is Thor REALLY gonna rush to Loki’s defense vs. the Avengers automatically? That just seems stupid, even given the appearance of reform Loki put on lately in Thor. The dialogue felt stilted in a lot of places too. Just really felt like a rush job overall.
Wolverine – Weapon X 11: The art was decent, but I really wasn’t feeling Wolverine’s characterization here. And I think there was some really irresponsible writing at one point. Wolverine basically picks a fight with a completely normal dude. The guy is not a bad guy in the least, and Wolverine picks a fight over music, then punches the guy clean through a window. Probably killing him. Seriously. Adamantium fists + your face = crushed skull. Super “hero” writing fail.
Ultimate Avengers 5: Ugh. They are still printing this. It just seems gratuitous and gross to me. Not gross in the sense of something disgusting – no wait, look at the origin of the Wasp in this issue… that was disgusting and unnecessary – but gross in the sense of too much. Overkill on the “we are so badass and teh awesome and we rock and oh god look we are ultimate Captain America is an asshole and you love him for it right. You love him!!! Right?” ARGH. Stop now.
Ultimate Other Avengers 1: [I forgot the exact title]. Also horribly written, but better than the above Ultimate book in the way only a Jeph Loeb book can be better than a Mark Millar book. No, I don’t know what that way is, but evidently it exists. Generally I expect them to be equally terribly written. I suppose the Millar title was better written in the sense that it was completely understandable… I just judge it worse because its more offensive. Both books were visually interesting but the “meh” is strong in their writing. Also, ultimate Mjollnir continues to come off silly and weak.
Justice League – Cry for Justice 7: I read this one because of all the stuff it supposedly sets up but wow, was it ever lame. The biggest kick in the balls (not the heart, where it’s supposed to hit) was the death of a child – made even worse by the fact that her dad wasn’t even around to fight for her. Also maybe made even worse because her babysitter left her alone during a disaster to go save other people? This was just plain stupid. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the writing in this series has been weak the whole way through, so there aren’t any surprises. Also, the way in which the villain was finally dealt with rang doubly weak because a) you build him up to be this crazy badass, you have him kill hundreds of thousands of people (include a freaking child, one of the few child supporting characters in DC canon right now (the only one?), then he’s done in by a simple arrow? REALLY? Super uber genius is lax in his own lair? Or something. The whole series was terrible. The plotting had some potential – I mean the IDEAS here are interesting, but the execution is one of the worst event (because really, it was an event, albeit a surprisingly self contained one) fails that I can remember. Reading this helps to understand why the last few issues of Justice League have been so oddly written & paced (same writer).
First Wave 1: This was actually an interesting read. I’m thinking it will do better in trades, as lots of pieces were missing. But still, any DC trade I think about picking up can’t be that bad.
Iron Man 24: The dreamscape thing didn’t work for me. Not enough of it matched up with how I would think Tony actually feels. Still, it was beautifully drawn, and now that part is finally over and we can move back to business. Having him forget the Civil War though? WEAK. I hope it comes back to him, because “I don’t remember that but I’m really sorry” would be a horrible way to do the coming interaction between Tony & everyone else. Oh, also having Steve Rogers Cap in uniform is really confusing, as he isn’t actually wearing the uniform anywhere else yet. I mean, he put it on to visit Tony in the hospital but not to hang out with the Avengers and plan the Siege stuff??
The cover is nice though.
Broken Trinity: Pandora’s Box 1: I don’t usually read Top Cow stuff, but I’ll skim the events sometimes. This one has some promise. The “13 artifacts” is an interesting take on the genesis, function and role of superpowers in that world and I’m curious to see where it will go.
So, Bethany pointed this contest out to me, and I’ve been waffling around debating doing it or not doing it, but I really can’t see any reason not to. I do happen to have a “completed” (depending on how you specifically define the word*, but I’m gonna just call it applicable for the time being) book sitting in the proverbial can that fits the criteria.
The next question of literary import for me is, I suppose, whether or not I should submit to these guys before trying to find an agent. It seems like it could go either way: having a deal will help you get an agent, and having an agent will help you get a deal. But – if that pub doesn’t take it, then the agent cannot resubmit, whereas maybe they could have submitted it to a more sympathetic party or something. Who knows.
I told myself the last pass was the last “last” pass but, seriously, right? Well, my wonderful beta reader #1 went through it with a pen capped with a bunch of dead angels (whether because they were worn out by all the frentic dancing or slain by the razor-wit of said pen-wielder I cannot say) and found lots more things that I should sharpen up. So I am. I’m hoping to be done by the end of the month. We shall see. I’ll probably put off entry into the contest above until close to the deadline, so I can be even closer to done with the pass. Just in case, you know? The relevant part for the competition – the 1st 20 pages you can potentially have an agent criticize – is “done” already, and then some.
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*By this I mean that I’m working through another editing pass – but when is that not the case?
I see a few of you. Go stats page! No pressure to say “hi” or anything -- although it definitely might make me smile a bit if you do.
In light of the digital foot traffic, I thought it might be a good time to post a general little summary of what it is I do here. Which, admittedly, isn’t too much.
I write most of my blog posts at night (although sometimes I’ll hit ‘post’ the next morning so I can double check it after some “sleep”). Because I have a day job that doesn’t pay me to blog, unfortunately. So there will usually only be one or two a week.
Most everything will have some tie to geek culture.
Lately I’ve been doing (usually brief) book reviews of everything I read. Once in a while I talk about comics. I used to do that more, but none of my (few) regular readers really cares much about comics, so it was even more of a self-dialogue than usual. I may do it more, or less in the future. We shall see.
Rarely do I talk politics -- other than to occasionally mock a politician -- usually done via twitter as it’s rare for one of them to be worth more than 140 characters -- but occasionally I will. Like during an election year.
I like music. I don’t have as much time for it as I used to, but I’ll still find a new (to me) band from time to time and push them a bit. And there’s always old favorites to trot out…
I play video games. Usually only one or two at a time. Currently it’s League of Legends (PC) and Mass Effect 2 (Xbox360) mostly, with a little City of Heroes (more when the new issue & xpack come out) and Magic online thrown in. Just in case you were curious.
Other than that, random stuff. Maybe more leaning towards writing-oriented stuff lately, as I’m an aspiring writer armpit-deep in editing a book with hopes of someday seeing someone pay to read it.
Also, this amuses me more than it probably should:
And I’m ok with that. After all, even if it’s only me laughing at my jokes, someone is laughing.
I’m still dwelling on Bill’s death. Yes, a measly human was one of the most interesting aspects of a comic about gods. Usually I’m not particularly enthralled with supporting casts either, but JMS did such a great job on the Bill+Kelda thing. And then he died… I wonder if that’s what JMS had planned or just some random emotion-jerker that got shoehorned in?
Either way, I am extremely pleased that the current writer isn’t just letting that thread flounder away like so many other strands of gold lost to Limbo.
Here’s a scans_daily thread on the scenes from 607 (also where I copied the image below from). Unfortunately, I don’t feel like paying $50 a year to be able to comment, so I was unable to express my sentiment in that thread.
click to embiggen
So, here’s one for you Bill. *pours out goblet of absinthe*
You were brave enough to love a goddess, won her heart, then died to save her kinsman… most who probably didn’t think twice about you.
Hero.
Also, in this rare case, I’m actually hoping for an imminent comic resurrection.
The Vanishing Tower (Elric 4) &
The Bane of the Black Sword (Elric 5)
both by: Michael Moorcock
I haven’t even finished Bane yet, but I’m confident enough to write the review ahead of time.
Here’s how it goes: Elric is chasing some guy that wronged him a book or two ago, and in the process has various adventures – almost all of which are resolved rather abruptly by one deux ex machina or another. It’s very bizarre. I’m like, “Is there a story here?” Half the time it feels like a loosely padded outline that still waits for some hefty meat to be flung upon its bones.
It doesn’t really matter what Elric faces in each of the books. Everything is constant:
He inevitably fucks up someone he intended not to hurt
Things are spelled out so bluntly that you know Moorcock accidentally submitted portions of his outline instead of actual story. Gems like this: “There was an attraction between them which might be strong enough to throw both their destinies along wildly different paths than any the had guessed.” Which is the WHOLE explanation you get for why two certain people fall in love. I mean, I guess it’s love. It’s never actually named, but suddenly they are going to get married.
He is drug ever onward by “fate” or something. This is actually the only real interesting part to the series for me – wtf is running him around? His quest is basically the same as the reader’s. Why am I doing this? He wonders once in a while. WHY INDEED. Hopefully the next (and last) book in the series will answer this question. Then again, I know everything is tied up into the Eternal Warrior saga, so I may have to go digging there.
To be somewhat fair and gracious, each of these books is usually made up of 3 separate (and probably separately published at one point) … short stories? Novellas? Whatever, they’re about 60 pages and each, in today’s writing world, would be a separate 300 page-ish book. So, compression and all that. Maybe they were published in magazines, and had to be kept short? I mean, all the elements of good stories are there, I just don’t find them to be fleshed out.
When I say that someday I want to bring back “pulp fantasy” or “pulp sci-fi” this is notwhat I am talking about – think more along the lines of Saberhagen and Dick, respectively. I think it would be interesting to write a story in this style, maybe just as some kind of practice excercise… and you know, I think I totally would – IF my writing time weren’t so limited. Someday!
I think I mentioned this in a previous review, but I’m going to chalk up folks love of this series up to happy childhood memories. These books are laid out in such a way that I think they would appeal to kids in a way that actual kids books wouldn’t be – different levels of sex & violence, both of which young boys tend to dig, an adult main character, etc. Elric may also be one of the earliest anti-heroes (if he can even be called a hero in any sense), which may reserve him a special place in fantasy’s collective unconscious. His stories certainly read more like tragedy than fantasy to me (I think Moorcock may have said something about this in an interview… hmmm). Otherwise, I’m just missing something. Even as pulp, these books are contemporary with some of Philip Dick’s best stuff, so I refuse to believe that there wasn’t a contemporary in fantasy. Well, maybe there wasn’t? Yeahhhh, this is telling me that I really need to look into the history of fantasy as a genre at some point.
TWO STARS
Addendum: I think my “read as a child” theory is a good one. Here’s Neil Gaiman thanking Moorcock, and saying that he read Stormbringer when he was 9. This makes sense, I think, as being a 9 year old and reading that – especially at a time when there may not have been much fantasy out there – double especially children’s fantasy – I can see that making a big dent in your headspace. Moorcock does have a ton of good ideas in the Elric books. I’m mostly sad that he didn’t flesh them out the way author’s do these days – maybe that was due to publishing restrictions, time constraints, etc.
I was spoiled, I suspect, growing up in a time when I could grab stuff like the Sword of Shannara (or Saberhagen’s sword books, or Zelazny’s Amber stuff, McCaffrey’s Pern stuff, Ursula K. LegGuin’s Earthsea stuff, etc.) off the shelf of my school library in 6th or 7th grade. Lots of good stuff was written in the late 70s. True, the Elric stuff was first collected in the 70s (I think) – but most of it was written before that – late 60s, early 70s.
Kids these days. With their Harry Potter’s and whatever that compass series is called, and who knows how many other well written, imaginative kids fantasy series. Lucky bastards!
Of course, that doesn’t mean they should stop reading the stuff I read, or the stuff Gaiman read :).
Ahem. Anyway. So! I’ve always been somewhat of an evangelist -- but not in the religious sense (although I did go through a phase that could be said to approximate that O.o). I’ve always been maybe a little too motivated (at least internally) about sharing the music & books that I enjoy with others. Not so much TV & movies -- I just don’t care enough. But music and books… those are two things I’m way into.
I’m sure some of it is born of the standard loner desire to have others to actually enjoy your interests with -- people you can shoot the shit with about your favorite bands or books and know they won’t be out in the cold. But, there’s at least a touch of genuine altruism in there. If I really enjoy something, I want to share that in the hopes that it will make someone’s day the way it made mine.
NOW. I couldn’t tell you what the exact breakdown is between the two, but I’d wager it’s pretty close to 50/50. If you’ve known me long I’ve probably tried to turn you on to some band or another, or maybe even a book. The funny thing is, for all the time invested, I don’t think I’ve succeeded much. I’ve had the most headway with music I guess, but I can only think of one or two instances where someone has read a book on my recommendation. I’m not sure that says anything about me so much as I tend to hang out with people with very different reading tastes than myself. Which does get lonely I admit, moreso than differing tastes in music.
So maybe that’s why I still blog about books and music (and anything I can’t find someone to yak about with really)? Talking to the air beats talking to nothing, or so I’ve heard.
In light of all this, I decided to make a nice, compressed list of things that I enjoy recommending to folks, just in case anyone ever happens to be open to that kind of thing. Not complete of course, but a nice cross-section.
Some of these are my “favorite” things to one degree or another, others are just things that I enjoy talking about, or think deserve more exposure.
Books:
The Illuminatus Trilogy -- The only book(s) I still re-read every 18 months or so. Probably too weird for most people. If you like weirdness, drugs, sex and a little violence and more weirdness…
The Dune series, particularly if you can make it through to my favorites -- books 4-6: God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse Dune. Most sci-fi fans read Dune, but for some reason they stop there. This baffles me as Dune, really, is not even the strongest book of the series (for me). It’s the most simple, direct and “sci-fi-ish” though, so maybe that’s what does it. After that, shit just goes off the rails in a way that a lot of casual sci-fi fans might miss, or be pushed back by.
Atlas Shrugged & The Fountainhead -- The closest thing to classics I will touch. No, I don’t agree completely with Rand’s Objectivism, but I still find the books enjoyable reading and great conversational fodder (when I’ve recently read them, I forget things FAST).
Night’s Dawn trilogy -- Absolutely brilliant “hard” sci-fi. The best written in the last 20 years (ie about the bounds of my sci-fi reading lifetime) IMHO. Just, just brilliant really. Lot’s of pages, lots of text, so you’ve got to have a love of the long works to enjoy this but man is it worth it. I’ve re-read these a few times as well. I’ve bought the entire series maybe 3 times as I’ve moved and lost (then re-found) older copies and even given the entire series to a friend once. He has not yet read it. Some “science” hero he is ;p.
Mistborn trilogy -- One of the best new fantasy series that I’ve had the pleasure of stumbling across. A far cry from the simplistic lands of Tolkien this series asks a couple of interesting questions: What if the bad guy (Sauron analogue) won? What if the bad guy winning wasn’t the worst that could have happened?
Serious fantasy fans already have their minds made up about the Wheel of Time series and the Song of Fire and Ice. I say both are must reads, but the latter may appeal more to non fantasy fans.
Bands:
Starflyer 59 -- The old stuff at least, I can’t really get behind the last 3 or 4 albums. If you’re reading this post you probably know me (?sadly? in 6 years of blogging I haven’t picked up any non friend/family readers), so you’ve probably heard of and heard these guys. I’m just putting them here (and at the top) for the sake of completion and history -- them being the first band that made me want to share music with others and all.
Gaslight Anthem -- Awesome (but with room to grow) modern rock and roll. I’ve extolled their virtues on a number of blog posts, so if you haven’t checked them out by now (at least to decide that you don’t like them), you probably don’t think very highly of my opinion, at minimum.
Airborne Toxic Event - Another band I’ve pushed a bit on this blog. A little like the National in genre/sound, but a bit more energetic.
The Crush & Death on Wednesday -- two long defunct bands, both of which I really loved and tried to share with others. The Crush is alt/punk/rock in the grand Twin Cities tradition and DoW is rockabilly/rock/punk a la nothing quite like it at the time. Both bands that I think had enough commercial appeal to blow up (but never did), and enough chops and genuine flavor to appeal to the rest.
Elvis Costello -- the early stuff mostly. Hard to try and describe a guy who’s worn so damn many shirts. His first 4 albums are where most of it is at, although there are many, many later tracks that I love as well -- I just don’t find the complete albums as enjoyable to listen to. Here’s a video of one of my favorite EC classics. The video is from the year I was born…. which is crazy.
Joe Christmas -- another favorite dead band of mine that never really got any kind of recognition. Sadly, the singer’s later bands well, sucked.
Hum -- Yep, another dead band. Post shoegazer droney wall of distortiony awesomesauce. Albums 3 & 4 should be on any alt music aficionado’s shelf (or iPod) IMHO.
Morphine -- What is it with dead bands? Well, not many had a dude playing 2 saxs at once and another on two string slide bass. Don’t let that scare you off though :). The saxophonist (?) is only playing one in the vid below, sorry. Ahh, found one, second vid has the double sax action.
The National -- NOT a dead band! A band a certain Science Hero turned me on to that is chock full of awesome nuggets. Not even sure what to call the sound other than some flavor of indie.
Tiger Army -- Pyschobilly! Like, faster rockabilly basically. Except they’ve got a groovy little goth theme going on with songs about beautiful death and violence and the like. Here’s one of their mellower songs:
TV on the Radio -- Another not dead band. One of the pinnacles of alt/indie “rock” at the moment I think, quality and creativeness wise. Past Arcade Fire imho, by quite a bit. Not that there’s any reason to compare the two BUT I keep hearing references (still) to AF as “it”. TVotR is also “it”. QUITE.
Here’s an older one of theirs:
Let’s call that enough for this post. Hopefully this was interesting to someone. If you’ve got the time, and you haven’t already formed an opinion about a given band, at least check out the various song videos. Good for background noise if nothing else.
Even though I was impatient enough to move over to the hardcovers, I still went into this expecting to be finally bored by the series. I mean, 10/11 books is a lot for a series, you know? That’s a lot of investment into characters, story, etc. for no “big” payoff. Lots of little ones, but no big ones.
I have to say, I think this series has had some of the slowest buildup to the real “big bads” of anything I’ve ever read, save maybe a few comic runs. Sure there is HUGE ohmygodimgonnadiewe’realldead drama every single book BUT there’s been a shadowy villain group on the outskirts of things that we are just now starting to see. Curious to see where it’s going, but I hope he has the series planned as a finite series. Not big on the run ons.
So, the book itself – it did not bore, which was nice. I ripped through it in a day. His pacing is not quite Dan Brown-ish (in franticness or poorly written-ness), but things still tend to happen pretty fast and make it hard to put down once I got just a little way in.
It’s quite hard to review this series without giving spoilers, hence some of my generic statements… I will say though that this is the book with the pyrrhic victory ending. Almost everyone gets fucked in one manner or another and several strong supporting characters take serious hits. It did indeed make me a bit sad for them.
There was only one thing that really annoyed me, which was what seemed to be an ongoing subplot about headaches…. I’m guessing it will be picked up next book, but it was mentioned a few times, then just not. I think he should have either kept it bubbling just a wee bit more or not mentioned it at all.
On a series note – what happened to the other holy sword? Am I missing something? Didn’t one go to Karrinin the last book?? Two books ago maybe? And what about the other floater. Seems like they should have been at least mentioned.
Evidently there are some short stories running around that fill in some gaps, need to track those down.
I want it now.
To speak at you, and you at me
only
speak of my issues please only please,
and instantly; my needs.
I can’t help but wish I
had prepared myself in youth with patience and
OH. I had it; gonenow
and OH. PS disregard those texts I was
drunk.
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Oh wait, this was actually supposed to be a post about how I paid $16 for a cd that was $13 on Amazon because I’d rather have it now than two weeks later (free shipping). And some kind of internal debate as to how much *NOW* was worth. $3 at least, evidently. Hopefully a nice illustration of why brick & mortar record stores should not go away.
Of course, I’m sure I could have downloaded it to my phone even faster, but assume I’m still living in the realm of wanting physical cds. Because I am. If I spend money on a cd, I want the damn plastic. I’ve gotten more liberal in my attitudes towards computer games -- I’ve purchased one or two of those with no packaging -- but the packaging rarely brings anything to the table save waste in that arena.
but then, you know, the blog title just sounded like some kind of title of something somewhat literary, so I went with it.
The album in question was David Bazan’s new one. David Bazan, formerly of Pedro the Lion and, lately, formerly a Christian -- for which I find him even more fascinating. That link was running at dead hampster speed last night, with each page taking 5mins to load (no joke), but it is still worth reading.
I’ll post a review once I’ve processed it, probably take a few days. Until then, here are two Pedro songs:
Mighty Avengers 34: This issue came off horribly to me. The worst issue of Slott’s run, hands down. Part of it was the ugly art, I’m sure, but several story moments just felt sloppy and rush. I mean, is Thor REALLY gonna rush to Loki’s defense vs. the Avengers automatically? That just seems stupid, even given the appearance of reform Loki put on lately in Thor. The dialogue felt stilted in a lot of places too. Just really felt like a rush job overall.
Iron Man 24: The dreamscape thing didn’t work for me. Not enough of it matched up with how I would think Tony actually feels. Still, it was beautifully drawn, and now that part is finally over and we can move back to business. Having him forget the Civil War though? WEAK. I hope it comes back to him, because “I don’t remember that but I’m really sorry” would be a horrible way to do the coming interaction between Tony & everyone else. Oh, also having Steve Rogers Cap in uniform is really confusing, as he isn’t actually wearing the uniform anywhere else yet. I mean, he put it on to visit Tony in the hospital but not to hang out with the Avengers and plan the Siege stuff??
The Vanishing Tower (Elric 4) & 
Things are spelled out so bluntly that you know Moorcock accidentally submitted portions of his outline instead of actual story. Gems like this: “There was an attraction between them which might be strong enough to throw both their destinies along wildly different paths than any the had guessed.” Which is the WHOLE explanation you get for why two certain people fall in love. I mean, I guess it’s love. It’s never actually named, but suddenly they are going to get married.