Monthly Archives: July 2006

The Amazing Screw-On Head

Comics, TV

I don’t know what Mike Mignola is smoking, but I hope that The Powers That Be realize the importance of securing him an adequate supply. His latest project, The Amazing Screw On-Head, combines his distinctive visual style with a dash of cheerfully goofy anachronism and the kind of wry, ironic humor he only allowed himself flashes of on Hellboy.

The first episode is highly entertaining, and leads one to hope that it will get a chance to build an audience. (Given that we’re talking about Sci-Fi, the folks who gave Battlestar Galactica the time and space it needed to get its legs under it, and not the scum-sucking swine at Fox, who shot promising infant series like Firefly and The Tick in the head when they didn’t produce high returns instantly, the odds would seem good.)

The Chad Vader Conspiracy

Comics, Movies

This morning, Holly sent me a link to Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager. I fell in love with it immediately, of course: if features not only one of the best James Earl Jones impressions I’ve heard anywhere, but a charming acoustic version of the Imperial March to boot.

And then, about two-thirds of the way through, a character named Lloyd appeared, and I thought: “Whoa, that guy looks an awful lot like Rob Matsushita.” This being the age of the intarweb, it took me all of one click to reveal the credits and blurt, “Holy fuck, it is Rob Matsushita.”

(Rob Matsushita, for those of you playing at home, is one of my friend Seth’s best friends; after hearing about him secondhand for years, I finally got to meet him at Seth’s wedding in 2003, and to see for myself that he’s every bit as funny as his reputation led me to expect.)

The intertwingularity doesn’t stop there, though. According to his post about the experience of being involved in the making of Chad Vader, Rob has come to the attention of Dan Harmon, who co-created, with Rob Schrab, the ill-fated Heat Vision and Jack, which I’d just been telling Holly about. (He also had a hand in “Scud the Disposable Assassin“, one of the best — and certainly most surreal — comics you’ve never heard of.)

I’m going to curl up into a ball and reflect on the total connectedness of all things now.

(Wait, not quite. In the course of assembling this post I’ve discovered that there’s a fourth Scud book out, “The Yellow Horseman“, which finally wraps up the storyline left dangling for years. Great. In addition to messing with my head, these people are now actively costing me money. Bastards.)

Yup yup yup

TV

For almost as long as I can remember, first-contact stories have been among my favorite subgenre of science fiction. I’m not sure why, but I long suspected that it might have been a consequence of reading James P. Hogan’s Giants series at an impressionable age. Having recently been pointed at this bit of vintage Sesame Street, though, which I’d seen but long forgotten, I’ve been forced to wonder if I wasn’t in fact deeply imprinted at an even more impressionable age.

Uh huh uh huh uh huh.

Buy This Book

Biking

If you own a mountain bike and don’t intend for every last bit of its maintenance to be handled by your local bike shop, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Lennard Zinn’s Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance. In terms of “A-ha!” moments, to say nothing of damage likely spared to your components by the avoidance of stupid mistakes, it will pay for itself in a matter of hours.

It’s not just that Zinn’s explanations are detailed and his prose lucid, or that Todd Telander’s many excellent illustrations shed further light upon the subject, though all of these things are true. It also that pretty much every page makes clear how much Zinn loves the subject; how much of its lore he has absorbed over the years, to the point where understanding seems to seep from his very pores.

Orson Scott Card wrote that “the Maker is a part of what he makes.” Reading Zinn’s book, and surveying his handiwork, one glimpses just what that might mean in the real world.

I have felt the purifying flame…

Music

…of the Reverend Horton Heat, who played at the Blank Club last night. Throw Rag and Horror Pops opened, and put on quite the rousing show in their own right. (Random aside/rant: why is it that band sites seem to be something akin to a roach motel for the utter dregs of wretched, user-hostile, late-nineties interface excess? Useless “front” pages. Self-resizing windows. Flash. “The list is long, with not a lot of smiles.”)

At any rate, lessons learned about attending a show at the Blank Club:

  • Don’t forget the earplugs.
  • Dress in layers.
  • Wear comfortable shoes.

We had to leave a little early ’cause we were getting chilled. I think we’d both sort of expected the place to be a lot warmer than it ultimately was, just because that’s the usual result of packing warm bodies aplenty into a small space, even before you factor in the heat produced by the lights and other equipment. The Blank Club is pretty well ventilated, though. This is, on the whole, a good thing — if you’re properly prepared.