In-jokes delivered through classic comic panels

This one's for John:

(Jack Kirby, OMAC #5)
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And this one, too:

Just a reminder not to judge, buddy.
(John Buscema, Avengers #58)
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And finally, a present for Kathryn:

(Carmine Infantino, Spider-Woman #2)

I'm going to make it so you never sleep again

McSweeney's, as you may or may not know, has an Open Letters feature, in which readers can submit "Open letters to people or entities who are unlikely to respond." They have an extensive archive of hilarious letters to a variety of recipients, such as My 22-Year-Old Self, My Ability to Lose Interest in Things Easily, the Current Boyfriend of the Girl I'm in Love With, and many more. They even have An Open Letter to the Human Resources Department of the Superfriends from a science PhD at the University of British Columbia, but it's not that funny (scientists from UBC generally aren't).

Anyways, I was reading through a couple of the newer letters recently, and I came across one called An Open Letter to My Husband's Pillow, in which a woman addresses the pillow her husband has kept since college. It's a funny letter and I was amused right up until I got to this part:

Again, I tolerated you. We agreed to disagree about the fact that you were a vile, stained creature fouling up my bed.

But then something happened. I ate lunch with a co-worker who had just seen a special on the local news about dust mites. Sure, I'd heard of them. Microscopic bugs that eat your dead skin, right? They were gross and all, but here's the fact that sent me over the edge: By the time a pillow is two years old, 20 percent of its weight is made up of dust mites and their droppings.

In other words, Pillow: you were full of shit.

Naturally, I was (am) horrified by that 20 percent number and I went and looked it up. Unfortunately, I found several sources that back up the claim (although some suggest it's only 10% (what a relief)), and what's worse, at that last link I learned this as well:

"We secrete about 100 liters of sweat into a bed over a year. We do not wash our quilts and pillows, so they are an ideal place to find fungi"

That's from an article charmingly titled "Your Pillows Are Full of Fungus."

The dust mite thing also reminded me of this horrific little sequence from a Squee comic:

My pillow's in the washing machine right now, no joke.

A couple of comics reviews

I had a few thoughts I wanted to get out before this week's stuff shows up. Be warned, spoilers aplenty:

All Star Superman #2 - The big book last week was the second issue of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's run on DC's flagship character. This issue is a little quieter than the first, as it turns down the wonder a touch and adds some paranoia to the mix. Interestingly, the two issues so far have spent as much time, if not more, delving into the worlds inside the characters' heads as the wonder of the world outside. The first issue looked at Superman's reaction to his impending death, while this one focuses on Lois Lane's responses to learning Superman's secret identity.

How does a great investigative reporter react to having one of the biggest stories in the world handed to her? Here, it's by digging deeper, into both the story and her own reactions to it. In making Lois's initial response to Superman's confession be disbelief, Morrison references all those old Silver Age stories in which Lois's investigations into Superman's secret identity end with Superman making her look like an idiot. The fact that she thinks that Superman is setting her up for a joke is great, but also makes you think that hanging out with Superman must be a real pain in the ass, and you wonder how he has any friends.

After disbelief, Lois's reaction is disgust, as she thinks, "And you know what would be worse? What if he's telling the truth?" After all the years of hanging out with Clark Kent, she's repulsed by the idea that Superman might really be that dorky, even in the slightest way. As a friend of mine likes to say, "No one's that good an actor." This panel captures her disgust.

Her reaction seems shallow at first, but makes sense when you think about where she's coming from. She's Lois Lane, leading journalist, fashion plate, globetrotter. She dines with world leaders and collects Pulitzers. She's hot. She just wants someone in her own league, but she's caught wondering, "If you take away the superpowers, are you just left with a geek in a cape?"

A few pages earlier, as if to answer her question:

There he is, showing up to dinner in homemade Kryptonian D&D robes that he sewed himself. You have to wonder whether he's about to pull out a Kryptonian million sided die ("I'm +3 for strength, curiosity, and imagination, Lois"). I wrote that last sentence and looked up the panel to check the quote and I was surprised at how much the original line sounds like anRPG player listing off his stats to an uninterested audience.

I'm not sure if Morrison intended Superman to have geek undertones in this scene, and I when I first read it I thought that Quitely had failed in giving the robes the majestic quality the script likely called for. In the context of Lois's inner conflict throughout the issue, though, I have to wonder about Morrison's intentions here.

Anyways, the book is a great character study. Quitely's art is even better than last issue. My main criticism of him then was that drawing women remains his weak point, but he finally seems to have gotten that sorted out, as his Lois Lane in this issue actually resembles a proper human being. The only panel that fails in this issue (and it's kind of a critical one) is where Lois looks into the secret room. By the context, one can determine that the room was meant to be creepy, and the sewing machine should have looked like a torture device or something, but none of that really comes across.

Also, on Morrison's part, while the tour through the Fortress is meant to recall similar scenes from the Silver Age, it seems a little sparse comparatively. I kept wanting to see more of Morrison's inventiveness. In doing so, however, I suppose you risk the story becoming more about a catalogue of gadgets than the characters therein.

My nitpicks are minor, and this issue has me looking forward to more.

Green Lantern #7 - I was looking forward to this series when it started up, but the first few issues showed that the only reason I was sticking around was because of Carlos Pacheco’s art, and when he took issues off so did I. I believe this issue is Pacheco’s last, and I believe it’ll be mine as well. Pacheco’s art in this issue shines, as always, with characteristically dynamic figure work, innovative angles, and detailed backgrounds.

The story is serviceable: Mongul’s son comes to Earth to carry out his father’s plans of conquest, and Green Lantern charges in to stop him because of Mongul’s role in destroying Coast City. For some ridiculous reason he brings the powerless Green Arrow for backup to fight a villain that regularly takes on Superman. For his weapon of conquest, Geoff Johns has Mongul Jr. use the black mercy plants first seen in Alan Moore’s classic “For the Man who has Everything.” Including the plants is a nice nod to Moore’s story, but at the same time makes comparisons between the two stories inevitable, and Johns does not have the depth of game to compete. Both the dialogue and the plot failed to engage me.

Johns’s efforts to make the Corps seem like a police force by having them use police terminology strikes me as a great way to take a cosmic organization and make it seem mundane. The characters are flat, and for the most part their interaction seems forced. I’m troubled by a strikingly relevant exchange towards the beginning of the issue in which Green Lantern reveals that his ring records everything he does:

This is our hero? I'm troubled that the rabid, left wing liberal Green Arrow has nothing to say about Green Lantern's police state tendencies. Also, I’m wondering if Johns will have other characters address or counter the utter wrongness Green Lantern’s statement at some point. However, I’m bored enough with this title in general that I won’t be around to find out.

I picked up Planetary #24 last week, as well, but the issue was mainly a big infodump, so I don't have much to say about it. I read an interview with Bryan Hitch today at The Pulse in which he said that he's behind on pencilling The Ultimates, and I thought, "That's going to rile some feathers." But while people freak out whenever The Ultimates, or any number of other comics, ships late, every issue of Planetary gets treated like a present. I'm not leaning one way or the other, I just thought the difference was odd.

I don't approve of IQ tests unless they show I'm really smart

I did this intelligence test yesterday and found out that I am one smart motherfucker. The site has a bunch of hoo-ha on it about Mensa and being a genius, but nothing on the site suggests that it's an official Mensa test, and I crossed the "genius" mark way too easily for me to put much weight on the results. It's a tough little test, and it makes you think. Go try it and see if you can beat this, bitches:

(I got 24 of them right, but in the interests of fairness I'm not counting the one that I had to look up the spelling for.)
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This person made a list of their top 65 music videos of 2005, and included most for download. I didn't watch more than a couple (even I don't have that much time) but the person making the list describes their top video, "Glosoli" by Sigur Ros, as "a life-changing experience 'on par with losing your virginity or seeing Garden State for the first time'". I wouldn't quite go that far (although I am wondering whether I blinked at the wrong time and missed something important in Garden State), but the video is kind of entertaining.
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And finally, something I read in a guide for job interviews:
No tranquilizers? Next you'll be telling me that downing that fifth of Jack beforehand is a bad idea too. Thanks for the tip, but why don't I stick with my methods and you go with yours?

News flash!

This just in: 24 is a really entertaining TV show! You heard it here first.

I blame the lack of updates here over the past couple of days on the fact that I've been watching DVDs of the first season. Every episode ends with a goddamn cliffhanger, which means I never watch just one show in a sitting. I've watched nine episodes since the day before yesterday, and I still have a few open hours before I go to bed tonight. I can't imagine what the experience of having to wait a whole week to find out what happens next must have been like for people watching first airings. I've been giving people Y the Last Man to read lately, and no one appreciates how much impact the cliffhangers in the first ten issues had when you knew the next issue wasn't out for a month. At the same time, though, I think having to wait adds something to the experience of the story, and collecting the story changes that experience.
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I also blame my lack of blog updates on how I've arranged my day. On my list of things to do I always put "blogging" right under "job hunting." However, I am usually so demoralized by the process of looking through job postings that I want to just go to sleep.

As I was looking through job listings today, I came across one for a "Bending press operator" at a metal fabrication plant. If I'm not mistaken, you might also call that position a "Bender."


Needless to say, I didn't apply. Everyone knows that job's going to be taken over by robots soon.
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Between sessions of job hunting and watching 24, I came across this trailer for the upcoming adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly. The movie is directed by Richard Linklater in the same animation over live actors style that he used in Waking Life. The trailer has been out for ages, and I know I've seen it before, but for some reason it really struck a chord with me when I watched it today. Go take a look.
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And finally, while I'm talking about Philip K. Dick, here is a link to a six page story by Robert Crumb called "The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick." It's an interesting piece in which Crumb provides images to go along with Dick's words from an interview. Take a look if you're a fan of the two men.

(via BoingBoing)

Links to other people's creativity

That "draw Batgirl" meme I mentioned yesterday has been going crazy. When I first looked at it, they had maybe two or three dozen Batgirl drawings up. They're now pushing what looks to be about six hundred.

Two things I like about this meme are that despite mention on plenty of outside websites, the participants (so far) are almost entirely on Livejournal, making the meme seem like a community event, and that people are participating regardless of artistic ability. Everyone's just having fun with it.

I've looked at all of them that are up so far, and these links lead to three more good ones: 1, 2, 3.
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I mentioned Nora Ephron yesterday, which reminded me later of this video clip, which I originally saw described as "The Shining as directed by Nora Ephron." It's funny, and slightly twisted.
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I don't know if I've ever posted this before, but I stumbled across another old link I had to the trailer for that Seinfeld documentary Comedian. This is one of my favourite trailers for one of my favourite movies. I must have watched this trailer twenty or thirty times just in the first few weeks when it went online, and it still makes me laugh. The movie is great too, with all sorts of interesting ideas on art and being an artist. I may talk about the film another day, for now, just enjoy the trailer.
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And finally, here's a link to a short 3D animated film of a monk engaged in some of that crazy kung fu action I was talking about yesterday. The short is called Supermoine and it's ridiculously violent, but it that funny way. Worth a watch.

(via Drawn!)

Three movies

A "draw Batgirl" meme is circulating over at Livejournal today. Andi Watson, Steve Rolston, and Bryan Lee O'Malley have contributed, along with the several dozen other people listed here. The drawings show that everyone's having fun with it, and other than the two by the artists mentioned above, I also really liked this one and this one.

Go take a look.
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Sometimes I hate living with so many people. I came down yesterday morning, and when I went to make breakfast I found that someone had taken three of my eggs. Not a huge deal on its own, but this happens all the time. Now I have to track down who did it. If I lived with just one roommate, I'd be able to say, "Listen, stop eating my food or I'm going to smother you in your sleep." As it is, with this many people in the house, I don't know who I should be smothering.
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I watched three movies on Wednesday, which, I guess, is what you do when you're out of work. I'd signed all three DVDs- Steamboy, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and House of Flying Daggers- out from the library a week before, and all three were due that day. Cue marathon movie watching.

Requesting DVDs from the library can be confusing because the waiting lists are so long, that by the time you get the movie you can't remember why you wanted to see it. For example, I'd seen House of Flying Daggers before, and I can't think why I would have wanted to see it again. I liked the movie, though, and it was as entertaining the second time through as the first time. The movie has a great rhythm to it, with dialogue scenes punctuated by crazy kung fu action scenes. Story- kung fu- story- kung fu. It's a structure that other film makers would do well to emulate. Yeah, I'm looking at you Nora Ephron. However, the fight scenes aren't just kicking, punching, and wicked backflips. As in the best action movies, the fights in HOFD serve to move the story forward, and involve character development other than showing the audience what a complete badass Takeshi Kaneshiro is.

I originally thought that Yimou Zhang's movies were more about the spectacle than the story, reasoning that if you removed the spectacle, the stories in both the movies I've seen of his, HOFD and Hero, are kind of weak. I believed that the movies had just enough of a story to lead the viewer from pretty picture to pretty picture. This thinking misses the point that the movies are an amalgam of all those elements, and that the colours, the amazing natural settings, and the fight scenes all contribute to the story as much as the dialogue does.

I remember I'd requested the next movie I watched Wednesday right after reading the latest Harry Potter book, so I was on bit of a Harry Potter kick just then. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is the second in the Harry Potter for Illiterates film series, and is adequately entertaining. The adult actors are excellent, as usual, being that they are the best that money can buy; although Richard Harris is curiously wooden as Dumbledore. The standout, as always, is Alan Rickman chewing the scenery as Professor Snape. The movie offers up little that is new, but overall is a pleasant enough way to spend three hours. One of the scenes that sticks out in my mind is the bit in the forest where the boys are surrounded and then chased by spiders, which thoroughly creeped me out.

The third movie, and my favourite of the bunch, was Katsuhiro Otomo's Steamboy. I'd read middling reviews of this movie, so I was reluctant when I sat down to watch it, but I thought it was great from the get go. The movie is Otomo's first full length animated feature film since 1988's Akira, although he did write the screenplay for the 2001 adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis. Steamboy is set in Victorian England, but with science fiction elements; it's steampunk, but a little lighter on the punk. In the world of the movie, inventors have harnessed steam in order to create advanced technologies: flying machines, battle suits, submersibles, all powered by steam, but designed with a Victorian aesthetic.

By putting sci-fi in a Victorian setting, this movie is already pushing two of my major nerd buttons. Add in an earnest boy inventor as the hero, and you're pushing my childhood geek buttons too. The movie is innovative in the design of the various steam-powered machines the inventors create, and innovative in terms of visual storytelling, as well. The scene where the main character falls through rings of steam on his inoperative flying machine, or the frozen explosion at the end are among the many, many inventive visuals. The movie uses subtle visual metaphors, as well, as when a steam engine that can run on roads rather than tracks (the "steam automotive") first plows past a horse and wagon and then outpaces a train going full speed.

Otomo uses the movie to discuss ideas of science and whether all progress is good progress. I've done some work on ideas of technology in this period and the years leading into WWI, and this movie gestures towards the disillusionment in the West when the industrial efficiency that was supposed to save mankind and create utopia was instead used to efficiently kill tens of thousands on the battlefield. Otomo hints at this darker future as his characters quarrel over the uses of technology in the late 1800s.

The characters in the movie make less of an impression than the ideas and the visuals, as I can't remember much about any of them. However, the lack of depth in this area may not be an oversight, as Otomo states in an interview on the DVD that he doesn't think animation can tell human stories as well as live action. His statements explain why his both his manga and his anime focus more on big ideas than on individual character development.

"Left a good job in the city/ Working for the man every night and day"

Robin's bluff gets called, big time. That's gotta smart. Sorry pal, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
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Today's title is a little misleading; it wasn't exactly a good job, and I didn't really leave it either. Not voluntarily at least.

On my last day at work before my Christmas holidays, my manager came in forty-five minutes before the end of the day and told us we'd be closing for Christmas on the 23rd, and that we wouldn't be opening back up. Happy Holidays! The signs had been obvious for weeks, but the store going under was still a surprise. Ebay consignment, it turns out, is a hard sell in Canada.

All of which means I am now unemployed. Being laid off is a mixed blessing, though, because I really needed a boot in the ass to go look for a better paying job. And I've got enough going on in my days that I don't mind being out of work too much, aside from the whole "no income" thing, which admittedly is a pretty significant drawback.

So now I'm combing the employment websites and sending out resumes, a process I despise. It's getting easier as I go, though, and I'm always amused by the weird job titles I run across. So far I've seen "Morning Show Host," "Inpatient Staff Pharmacist" (which I kept misreading as "Impatient Staff Pharmacist"), and "Robot Programmer." Even better than that last one, I saw a posting for a Laser Programmer. Apparently Dr. Evil is conducting interviews in Mississauga.
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I was going to put up some photos of my trip back to Vancouver, but I realized that I had a few from when I went back in October that I hadn't posted yet, so those go up first. These are all from the flight back:

This is just after takeoff; that's the Fraser River emptying into the Pacific.

Have you seen Rivers and Tides? It's a documentary about an artist, and he says that this winding shape shows up all over in nature.

Couldn't tell you where this is.

I liked the colours on this one.

A single star just as we begin our descent into Toronto.

I started growing a beard over the holidays...

...or did I?

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On The Daily Show last night, John Stewart mentioned that he's hosting the Oscars this year, which is good news for the ceremonies and, even better, good news for The Daily Show. Stewart hosting also means that I'll be watching the ceremonies in full for the second time ever, and for the second year in a row. Three hours, once a year? That's a TV series I can commit to watching.
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Also, in case you haven't seen it already, Crooks and Liars has a link up to David Letterman taking a little bit of the wind out of Bill O'Reilly. Here's a direct link to the clip, directly from O'Reilly's own site. I was amused, you may be too.
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Back to writing applications, more substantial posts soon.