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Friday, May 23, 2003
Poll Position II The younger brother of one of Inc magazine's staff writers is in the semifinals for Kansas City Idol. It's a regional competition in Kansas City based on American Idol, and the winner gets $1,000, studio time, and the opportunity to sing the national anthem at a major Kansas City sporting event. You can help the cause by voting online for Victor Jacob Gossage. Make with the clicky click. See You in the Funny Pages XIII Brian Merkel, the friend of a friend of mine, has been working on the technology side of the online comics project The Street for more than a year now. I haven't spent too much time with the series yet, but a recent email from a friend outlines some of the project's more interesting aspects. The Street is an online comic serial. Designed to progress through regular episodes, the navigation/story progression is what makes The Street unique to online comics and interactive storytelling. The reader is able to weave their way through the various story lines, experiencing them in any order they choose. I think I'm going to have to spend more time with this. From the In Box: Hardcore Logo IV Media Dietician Noah Pshaw emailed me the URL to the Kalsey Consulting Group's Button Maker. DIY, baby! Hardcore Logo IV Special thanks to Nate Rock of Crap Log for designing this cute little antipixel-style button for Media Diet.  I'll add it elsewhere in the template soon, but for now, feel free to snag it, use it on your site if you want to, and link to Media Diet. Or don't. The button will rock on regardless! Among the Literati XXXVII Elizabeth Ellen's piece in Uber today is one of the best things they've published in a long time. Guilting the Lilly Remember the $100 million endowment that heiress Ruth Lilly gave to Poetry Magazine? Word is that National City Bank mishandled the Lilly trusts, the endowment may be a full third smaller than initially planned due to downturns in the stock market, and the Poetry Foundation of Chicago, which publishes Poetry, is suing suing the bank. With all of the hubbub over how the Foundation didn't know how it would handle the endowment -- and how the gift could change the face of poetry publishing as we know it -- couldn't they have just been happy with the amount they were getting? If $100 million freaks you out, maybe $66 million is more your speed. Plugging the above two articles into Rob's Amazing Poetry Generator, I get the following two poetic takes on the situation: Poetic justice: Group sues bank unloaded most of Exactly. Thanks to Moby Lives. Join the Comics Club IV What's wrong with Free Comic Book Day? Plenty, says Michael David Sims in a recent Pop Matters column. I have never participated in Free Comic Book Day, and I've never read a comic book published specifically for Free Comic Book Day. Yet I couldn't agree with Sims much more. At base, Free Comic Book Day is a feel-good frivolity that may make retailers feel like they're doing something important for fans and the industry, but in the end does nothing to promote comic books to a wider, mainstream audience. Free Comic Book Day doesn't seem to have progressed beyond its efforts last year, and that's a shame. The organizers of Free Comic Book Day need to stop approaching the idea of the event as its been enacted and look at it in a new light. If we want to get non-comics readers into comic book shops, we need to get comic books out of the comic books shops and onto the streets, into bookstores and libraries, and better promoted in connection with licensed movies, cartoons, and other media activities. Otherwise, we're just preaching to the choir. I think efforts like Read a Comic Book in Public Day and the Free-Range Comic Book Project are much more interesting, even if they're smaller and less organized. Thanks to Bookslut. Business Media Reportage Goes Bust, Now Boom? IX Following the paths of other now-defunct magazines such as New Media, InternetWorld is morphing into an "electronic media franchise" that includes a weekly email newsletter and expanded Web services. Translation: It's folding. Thanks to Fucked Company. Anchormen, Aweigh! XXIV Tom left his guitar at home in JP last night, so the Anchormen couldn't practice. Instead, we repaired to the Model Cafe in Allston to hold a rare band meeting. We talked briefly about improving the band's bio sheet -- and where we want to send CD's for review (if you have suggestions of places you think would be Anchormen friendly, let me know). We also started discussing a mini-tour along the east coast this fall. Right now, it looks like we're going to try organizing a series of mini-tour swings through New York City, Philadelphia, DC, Baltimore, Providence, Northampton, and maybe as far afield as Raleigh/Chapel Hill and Richmond. If you have recommendations of places you think we should play or bands you think we should play with, again, let me know. We'll see how this comes together! NetWork VI A new version of Meetup launched yesterday, and it looks like Scott and the team have added a nice set of new features -- as well as a subscription service to access premium features. Improvements include community-created Meetup agendas and personal notebooks, the ability to upload profile photos, printable Meetup fliers, and other tools. A six-month subscription costs $19, and a full year runs $29. I just signed up for a year and will kick the tires some. Huh. In signing up for a CD-swap Meetup just now, I got a server error. There might be some kinks to iron out still. Regardless, this looks like a solid step in the right direction for Meetup! Thursday, May 22, 2003
Corollary: Rock Shows of Note LXIV Lest I fall into this trap, I hesitate to say too much about this, but here goes: I asked a girl for her phone number last night. Big whoop, I know, but I am rarely so brave. It was such an interesting, awkward, and hopeful experience. I still have the matchbook in my pocket, I'm a bit twitterpated, and I'm geeking out about the rhetoric of love and seduction. Rock Shows of Note LXIV This isn't going to be a proper show review, but I had a blast at the Somerville Arts Council's Kimchee Records benefit for the arts at Johnny D's in Somerville last night. A blast. I wasn't planning to go, but a conference call I'd scheduled earlier in the evening fell through, and I suddenly had the night open. Even though I stayed out way too late, the show was awesome. 27, Blake Hazard, Seana Carmody, the Pee Wee Fist, Torrez, Tiger Saw, Rosa Chance Well, and Heidi Saperstein all played solid, short sets. And lots of friends were in attendance. The Somerville Arts Council puts on a good show. Thanks to everyone involved! Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Blogging About Blogging LX Microdoc News recently published a decent appraisal of the "dynamics of a blogosphere story." Tracking 45 stories over the last three months, the article takes a look at what one might call "collective journalism" or "distributed journalism," suggesting that individual blog posts and entries are not stories in and of themselves, but part of a larger, distributed story. Discussing how blogosphere stories get storied and develop, the piece gives somewhat short shrift to how such stories end. What is missing in this analysis -- and the larger blogging practice and process -- is a contextual sensemaking at the end of the cycle in which the atomic stories are drawn on to create and distribute a metastory outlining the overall discussion to date. As things stand, blogosphere stories don't necessarily end. They reach multiple ends, more often than not dissolving and drifting away as the trigger meme falls out of favor, out of the limelight, and off of the radar. That said, the writers' conclusion that "blog stories are understood and appreciated in aggregate and not in isolation" is worth paying attention to. How can we better connect and contextualize these collectively written stories? Thanks to Daypop. NetWork V Social networking software and Web services keep popping up like dandelions! Two new services take some of the best and worst features of existing tools such as Friendster, Ryze, Ecademy, and LinkedIn, indicating the range of approaches that can be taken to this sort of service -- and that the need for a unified way to bridge the disparate systems is increasingly important. Huminity is a free software program for the PC that mimics TheBrain. Instead of using the tool's tree-structured interactive maps to organize files and documents, Huminity can be used to track connections between people in your social and professional networks. Based on the work of John Nash, it appears that you can enter your existing "contact tree" and connect it with a global database of other people's contacts and connections. The possibilities of the mutual introductions and connection request flow that are available in LinkedIn are interesting -- especially if this evolves to the point where it's easy to connect individual contact management databases in a distributed way. If people can network their iTunes libraries, why isn't Now Contact able to do the same thing? Then there's Buddy Network, which I just signed up for. Somewhat like Friendster with a light Ecademy-like member news and blog aspect, I'm not totally sure whether another service like this is entirely necessary. Outside of wanting to be as widely accessible and active as possible, until I know more about who comprises the membership base -- and how they use the system -- I think I'll stick with Friendster and Ryze as my primary social network services. Now, how can we better bridge these wide-ranging systems? Duncan Work has been working on a software tool called NetDeva for several years now, and it seems like the start of a fix. Basically, NetDeva is a near-open source profile management tool similar to Microsoft Passport (only more grassroots and personal) that can be used to maintain one profile for a multitude of online communities and -- I'm guessing -- social networking services. You control how much information is made available to other people based on how closely connected they are to you -- i.e. fewer degrees of separation can bring more personal information. Think about LinkedIn's request referral process, only automated based on your settings. As more of these services develop, it'll become increasingly important to bridge them. At the same time, it'd be interesting to study how much their memberships overlap. Are the same people all working the different systems? Are certain systems attracting different kinds of people? How do the systems' designs affect how people use the systems? At some point, this disperse, disconnected approach to social networking software -- online and offline -- will make less and less sense. Rather than move toward one meta social network service, let's start to find ways to connect what exists -- and better differentiate their memberships and modes and motivations of interaction. Corollary: Workaday World XXXI Mystery solved! My mom sent the cushion. Not as a replacement couch cushion, but as a cushion for the floor or a large pillow. We had talked about throw pillows and other things that would help me better lounge on the Big Blue Couch on Church Corner, and this was her solution. How funny! When she was at the Crate & Barrel in Boston, my mom even asked the store clerk if signing the gift card Kenny wouldn't be confusing. He said no: "We do that all the time." Seems like an odd thing to do when there's no indication on or in the package who the gift is actually from. Shouldn't the gift card be signed by the sender? I sure think so. Anyway, mystery solved. I don't have to return the cushion, and I can stop worrying about Kenny's friends and hosts, much less the damage he's done to their couches. The Movie I Watched Last Night LXVIII Super Troopers Well, it took me three sittings, but I finally made it through Super Troopers last night. Recommended to me by a friend in Austin, I wanted to make sure I paid attention to the whole thing, and I found that to be one of the biggest challenges I've faced in a long time. This movie is awful. One of the worst I've seen in a long time. Yet it does have its charm and moments of comedic clarity. The story of a Vermont state highway patrol office trying to combat being closed because of budget cuts -- and their rivalry with the local police department -- Super Troopers is in the end a delightfully anticlimactic "save the business" kind of movie. Save the school, save the golf course, why not save the police department? Outside of a couple of intertwining subplots -- including the Romeo and Juliet-like romance between two members of the rival departments and a catalytic drug smuggling conspiracy ("It's Afghanistanimation!") -- the movie is a string of loosely linked vignettes spotlighting arrests and their aftermath, pranks inside and between the two departments, and puerile humor. It's a silly film and totally a throw away. Watch this only if you have nothing else -- or better -- to do. And I mean nothing. Because I watched it three times so you don't have to. Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Mention Me! XLI Thanks to the Journal of the International Informatics Institute and Bells and Whistles for the link love. Books Worth a Look XIV These are the books I read in April 2003. Betty Boop's Sunday Best by Max Fleischer (Kitchen Sink, 1995) Collecting the complete color comics from 1934-1936, this volume even includes the earliest strips featuring actress Helen Kane, the Boop-Boop-a-Doop Girl. While Fleischer dropped the Kane conceit relatively quickly, the strip's Hollywood elements continued. Despite the Koko the Clown "Out of the Inkwell" anomaly, the storyline is relatively continuous, portraying page-long parables touching on fashion faux pas, affectionate appraisals, the foibles of fandom, liberated women, and challenging children. The recurring characters of the director, Aunt Tilly, Hunky, and Bubby contribute some consistency, but for the most part, the strip's cameo characters -- including Betty's many love interests, pretty boys all -- are relatively interchangeable. Bill Blackbeard's introductory essay adds some valuable cultural context to what might otherwise be mistaken as a one-joke wonder or Hollywood licensing deal, making the book a solid source of comic strip history. Pages: 112. Days to read: 2. Rating: Good. Cambridge by Anthony Mitchell Sammarco (Arcadia, 1999) While the more specific editions in Arcadia's Images of America series -- "The Great Boston Fire of 1872" is a fine example -- are quite good, thge more general volumes are somewhat shallow given their scope. This edition takes on the entire city of Cambridge, illuminating images of historic homes, churches and chapels, as well as some of Cambridge's neighborhoods -- including Harvard Square, Central Square, and Cambridgeport. Sammarco also covers some notable Cantabrigians, transportation trends, and the roles universities played in the town's development. While the book does include a lot of long-lost landmarks, if Arcadia can publish an entire book about Harvard football or the Jimmy Fund, why not one about Central Square or Cambridgeport itself? Pages: 128. Days to read: 2. Rating: Fair. Cathedral Child by Lea Hernandez (Cyberosia, 2003) Originally to be published by the now-defunct and much-missed comics publisher Eclipse, later released as part of Image Comics' "no-line," and now reprinted in one volume by Somerville-based Cyberosia, Cathedral Child is a manga-styled missive that'd reputedly the first volume in a sequence called Texas Steampunk. While there are some steampunk elements present -- a sentient cathedral that communicates via pipe organ -- I found the comic to be slightly scattered. Part lifelong romance, part mystery, and part political powerplay, the story's ideas are important, but the sequence suffers from unclear characterization and too twisted a narrative thread. Hernandez's Author's Notes are helpful, but a comic shouldn't need footnotes to be forthright. That said, the vision is viable. It's the execution that could have been cleaner. Pages: 112. Days to read: 1. Rating: Fair. Chewing on Tinfoil by Joe Ollman (Insomniac Press, 2002) Joe's artwork isn't really my cup of tea, but the writing represented by the nine pieces collected here is quite impressive. Blending personal, almost semi-autobiographical stories ("Death Wears Inexpensive Loafers" and "C.O.P.S.") with mythic fables ("God"), the range of storytelling is quite wide. "Giant Strawberry Funland" stands out with its tale of family, love, hate, and responsibility. "God" is a silly bit of spiritual selfishness. "Cake" is a wonderful office mate update of an urban legend probably based on fact. And two pieces -- "Like Something Akin to the Sistine Chapel, but with Cows..." and "Fire Sale" -- really impressed me with their character studies and slice-of-life snapshots. Joe's drawing grew on me as the book progressed, and I'm sure his style will continue to gel as his writing -- which is already quite good -- continues to grow in maturity and motivation. Pages: 155. Days to read: 3. Rating: Fair. Everyone in Silico by Jim Munroe (Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002) It's always interesting to read someone's work after you've met them and spent some time talking about other topics. Jim's novel is very much a reflection and projection of his personality and interests. The anarchist former managing editor of Adbusters crams a lot of political, cultural, and scientific concepts into this novel, which is a good companion read to the work of Cory Doctorow. Everyone in Silico isn't hard sf -- but that doesn't mean that it's soft or easy. Jim's ideas of homegrown genetic engineering, subcultural self-organization, street-level marketing, and the economics and experience of a digital afterlife are fascinating and forward thinking. Down to details such as the tattoo that, when scanned, dials an encrypted phone number, Everyone in Silico's dystopian future is deftly and effectively outlined as the multilayered plot unfolds. Pages: 241. Days to read: 27. Rating: Excellent. The Great Boston Fire of 1872 by Anthony Mitchell Sammarco (Arcadia, 1997) Part of the consistently impressive Images of America series, this volume documents the commercial evolution of downtown Boston, an evolution that was perhaps hastened by the blaze, as well as the events that contributed to the fire's severity. The photographs capture lost residential neighborhoods that are now dominated by the city's financial district, and many long-gone landmarks are preserved for posterity in its pages. Some of the most effective images include lithographs of the fire itself and photographs of the aftermath and damage. While the staged shots of businessmen posing in front of their former workplaces strike me as somewhat odd, there's enough unadulterated wrack and ruin that the sheer devastation is carried across. What would the city be like today if the fire hadn't happened? What if downtown's slate hadn't been scraped clean by flame? Pages: 128. Days to read: 1. Rating: Good. The Maximortal by Rick Veitch (King Hell, 1996) Originally published as a seven-issue series by Stephen Bissette's company Tundra, this postmodern take on mythic superheroes has been overlooked by many folks in lieu of story cycles auch as the Watchmen and Miracleman. Veitch's approach, while much darker and desperate, is well worth reading. Representing a Superman-like alien and a clueless and confused -- but caring -- Kent-like victims family, Veitch's origin story is more dire and dangerous. His inclusion of such historical and literary figures as Sherlock Holmes, Siegel and Shuster, Robert Oppenheimer, and Albert Einstein adds a layer of neo-fictional nuance but slightly confuses matters. In the end, it is the Carlos Castenada-inspired character El Guano who plays a role in the Maximortal's momentary taming. Veitch's Afterword further explodes the icon of Nietzsche's Superman. It's not quite Cavalier and Clay, but the Maximortal deserves further attention and analysis. Pages: 190. Days to read: 1. Rating: Good. Overbite by Dave Cooper (Fantagraphics, 2003) Ostensibly the sixth issue of Cooper's comic book Weasel, this beautifully produced coffee table book of "drawings and paintings of mostly pillowy girls" also served as the catalog for the Overbite show at Tin Man Alley in Philadelphia. Featuring an introduction by David Cross, the book collects more than 60 oil on canvas and multimedia pieces produced in 2002. The book is one of the most lovely comic-related art books I've ever seen, and Cooper's status as a fine artist as well as a cartoonist is ably secured. His concept of what is beautiful and erotic is extremely intriguing and clever, and the lush -- and luscious -- paintings comprising this volume are sweet eye candy indeed. Amazing yet slightly disturbing. Good girl art gone bad? Pages: 48. Days to read: 1. Rating: Excellent. Revolt of the Masscult by Chris Lehmann (Prickly Paradigm, 2003) Similar to the Open Pamphlet Series, the Prickly Paradigm batch of booklets is a worthy group of lefty intellectual and political texts. This volume, written by deputy editor of the Washington Post Book World and contributor to the Baffler Lehmann, looks at the lapses of mass culture. Lehmann contends that mass culture is a construct that is inadequately captured by the pop culture palliatives. Analyzing and critiquing relatively recent activities of Jonathan Franzen, Oprah Winfrey, and David Eggers, Lehmann suggests that popular advocacy of masscult productions does more harm than good. But despite his namedropping of such sociologists and cultural critics as Dwight Macdonald, Edward Shils, and Herbert Gans, the slim book's almost 80 pages don't give Lehmann the room necessary to fully state his case -- as indicated by his doubtful dismissal of Henry Jenkins. Regardless, Lehmann's look at popcult promotion and partnerships is cause for consideration. Pages: 79. Days to read: 7. Rating: Good. Super Flat Times by Matthew Derby (Bay Books, 2003) These 21 stories written by the associate fiction editor of 3rd Bed paint an amazingly pristine portrait of a world much like that envisioned by Ben Marcus. These lost histories of a fractured future flabbergasted by population control, food bans ("Joy of Eating" is a standout story.), sound-based weaponry, languishing and lamentable love, the use of air as a sound- and memory-recording medium (similar to Marcus' use of water, this idea is used to best effect in "Home Recordings."), family life, living phones, and other aspects of Derby's densely developed world. I am such a big fan of this new school of literary, postmodern sf. I don't know if Derby or Marcus consider themselves sf authors, but they're not too far afield from the new wave fabulists. Wonderful. Pages: 196. Days to read: 4. Rating: Excellent. Newspaper Capers One of my small joys in life is misreading newspaper headlines. Over lunch just now, I misread an item in the Boston Globe as Perkins School for the Blind's Handball Ensemble It took me awhile to figure out what it really said, and I caught myself asking questions like "Can blind people even play handball?" and "Why do they call it an ensemble?" instead of just rereading the item. Because I enjoy misreading so much, I poked around a little online to see what I could learn about it. Cognitive psychologists at Boston University contend that "questions concerning the role of sentence context in the process of visual word recognition continue to be some of the most contentious in the field of cognitive psychology." There are multiple models of visual word recognition. Studies of response times consider concepts such as frequency, letter confusability, and what is termed neighborhood size. Complete texts are less apt to be misread than lists of words. And something as specific as repetition blindness merits widespread research. Fascinating! And here I thought it was just funny. Kinda like misheard lyrics. Rest in Peace Henry "Hank" Boucher, who lived across the street from me on Church Corner in Cambridge, passed away Sunday. There was a memorial flier taped to the lamp post on the corner this morning. I never formally met Hank, but he was very much a part of my daily life in Cambridge. Friends with the minister of the First Baptist Church, Hank was often seen in one of three places: sitting on the Baptist church steps facing the flowering tree, leaning against the wall of the Sts. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church on the opposite corner, or sitting in his car while it ran, parked on the side of Magazine Street. He ran his car daily, often going for short drives to keep it running. And if he was hanging out on the corner, he usually had a paper cup of coffee. Sometimes the minister of the Baptist church would join him. I'd usually spot Hank while sitting in my kitchen window looking out on the street, but we never got beyond nodding neighbors when passing on the street. I never really met Hank. I didn't know him at all. But his death saddens me. I'm going to miss him. Monday, May 19, 2003
Mention Me! XL Thanks to Marm0t and Gregory Blake for their comments on Friday's Anchormen show. And, yes, even though Gregory doesn't really mention the Anks, both of them were there. Who do you think they are? Jayson Blair? [Added later] This made me smile: I regret that the only conversation I've had with Mr. Heath Row was while I was intoxicated at a party in Austin. We did talk a bit about punk rock shows, I think... it's too bad I remember very little of it. That's OK, Andre Torrez. I don't remember meeting you either. Corollary: Music to My Ears XXXV Dr. Frank's made another new song available online: "Institutionalized Misogyny." He's also selling an eight-track CD of songs recorded in his bedroom: Eight Little Songs. "These CDs were originally intended to be sold only at shows," Dr. Frank says. "But there have been a lot of requests for mail order from people who couldn't make to the shows." Why, that describes me exactly. I missed both his New York City and Cambridge shows. Grr. He says my CD is in the mail. Corollary: Anchormen, Aweigh! XXIII The Stuff@Night writeup is also online. If only the Anks were so widely written about every time we played! Corollary: Geocache Me If You Can II After making my Fort Washington post earlier today, I was talking to a friend who also works in the Scotch & Sirloin building about how cool it'd be if there were a directory of all of the blue historical marker signs in Cambridge. Well, there is. And it features photographs of all of the markers. There's even a marker showing where Meig's Experimental Railway -- a monorail! -- was located. Another handy resource is the site's list of markers that have gone missing -- removed or vandalized. What a wonderful service! The Cambridge Historical Commission also offers its own directory of historical markers. The commission's list is more wide ranging, including the granite tombstone markers put in in the late 1800s, the cast-iron markers installed in the '30s, the history stations erected in 1976, and the North Cambridge signs, which were slated for installation last year. Now I have to collect them all! Sheesh. Comics and Controversy III The American Family Association is targeting the Make-a-Wish Foundation for receiving funds raised at the recent Pittsburgh Comicon. Because the convention featured models, including former Playboy Playmates who were fully clothed, along with the usual booths selling comics, games, and fantasy art, as well as Playboy back issues, the AFA contends that the Pittsburgh Comicon was a "porn convention" including "pornographic programs." In the past, the AFA has boycotted Disney, called for decreased funding of the NEA, and vehemently opposed homosexuality. The AFA has also boycotted Kmart, "one of the largest distributors of pornography in America." More accomplishments mentioned in their 1994 annual report paint a pretty complete picture of where the organization stands. What I'd like to see is where the AFA's funding comes from. Especially the money they used to publish their anti-pornography comic book. Thanks to Bookslut. Geocache Me If You Can II I found my first cache yesterday! What a neat thing. With the cache located in a part of town that I haven't spent too much time in, I enjoyed walking through the remnants of Cambridgeport's industrial section -- past a row of old cottages that once housed soap factory employees, I'm told -- and to a location that creatively combines Geocaching and local history.    The cache was located exactly where it was supposed to be, which makes me more confident in the accuracy of my Geko, and I wish the park actually had bench seating within the enclosure. I would have lingered longer to read Ray Raphael's A People's History of the American Revolution in the sun.    I don't know if the following is bad form in terms of sharing spoilers with non-Geocachers, but I'm really glad that my first successful cache was located where it was. Within eyeshot of the new Simmons Hall at MIT, which was just featured in this weekend's New York Times Magazine (written up by local literati Pagan Kennedy, no less!), the Fort Washington Historic District is the only surviving physical remnant of the Revolutionary War in Cambridge. While it's appreciated that the city has preserved the site of Fort Washington, Cambridge could do much more with historical signage. Some sort of explanatory marker -- beyond the small plaques on the pillars near the main entrance gate to the park -- would be nice. Also, word is that the fort was just one of many fortified embankments that crossed cambridge, many ridging Dana Hill. More historical markers to look for! Digesting the Daily XIV Recent editions of the Daily Northwestern, the student newspaper of my alma mater, featured several media-, technology-, and activism-related items that might be of interest to Media Dieticians. Comix Revolution to offer free comics Owner hopes participation in national Free Comic Book Day will draw new readers to Davis Street store (May 1, 2003) Full disclosure: I went to college with Comix Revolution's owner Jim Mortensen. Together, we founded and ran the Northwestern University Comic Book Interest Group (or something like that), a student club that hosted on-campus talks by Gary Carlson and Chris Ecker, Larry Marder, and Scott McCloud before we got frustrated that the other members only wanted to buy and sell back issues. Errors, writers' lack of interest obvious in Daily and nyou (May 2, 2003) Former Daily nyou editor and Forum editor Pete Mortensen writes in to air dirty laundry and sour grapes about his time editing the nyou section -- and to set Dan Eder, the writer who penned the piece on Free Comic Book Day, straight on the event, comics, and global culture. Were it not for Mortensen's -- curious whether he's related to Jim! -- sour grapes, his corrections and commentary would be welcome and well-intended, but as it is, his letter comes across as a crying jag. All Mortensen needed was a trigger and a target to vent frustrations that have little to do with the particular story in question. Interesting that it's comic books that set him off. Straw. Back. You do the math? Cats gone wild It was like the start of a bad porn flick. An innocent young journalist wandered through the long hallways of the Omni Orrington Hotel in Evanston. The only noise? A cleaning cart creaking ever so slowly past the dim lights and empty rooms. At the end of the hall, the door to the "Playboy Suite" slid open. The reporter was being "interviewed" by a former Playmate and professional Playboy photographer. "Can I record this?" was about to take on a whole new meaning. (May 8, 2003) If you work for a college newspaper and would like to sign me up for a complimentary subscription, please feel free to do so. My address is in the grey bar over on the left. Anchormen, Aweigh! XXIII Thanks to everyone who came out to the Anchormen's CD release party and Handstand Command anniversary smell-ebration Friday night at the Milky Way! The other bands -- including the Operators, Asian Babe Alert, and the Reaganauts -- all played really well, and the crowd was awesome. How did the Anks do? Well, we made more money than we ever have before. We sold a lot of the new record. We drank a lot of beer. And we didn't really play that many songs in the end. Sorry for the short set. But isn't that the way it should be? Quality, not quantity. Less is more. (Except when it comes to the money and beer, natch.) Thanks to our fellow Handstand Commandos. Thanks to BJ and the Milky Way. Thanks to the Phoenix, Globe, and Stuff@Night for the nice press. Thanks to Dan the '80s hardcore fan who came just to see the Reaganauts. Thanks to Tom and Steve for hosting the after party. And thank you for doing whatever it is that you do. Keep up the good work. As if the new record and bang-up show isn't enough, we also recently redesigned our Web site. Check it out when you have half a mo. Music to My Ears XL I just downloaded and installed iTunes 4 so I can access Apple's still new and much-lauded Music Store. It's a pretty amazing thing. Apple's credit card processing is temporarily unavailable, but as soon as I'm able to get my account sorted, I'm going to download Frank Sinatra's "I've Got You Under My Skin" for 99 cents. The song's been stuck in my head for the last week or so, and it's high time I actually listen to it. The Free-Range Comic Book Project XXVI This is an installment of Media Diet's Free-Range Comic Book Project. Dark Image #1 (Image/Malibu, March 1993). Writers: Brandon Choi, Sam Kieth, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and Bill Messner-Loebs. Artists: Sam Kieth, Jim Lee, and Rob Liefeld. Location: On the Green Line between Park Street and Haymarket. For more information on this project, please refer to this Media Diet entry. |
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