People who "hike" in Kurdistan.

http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-11-05/article/34055?headline=Hikers-With-Connections-to-UC-Berkeley-Charged-with-Espionage-in-Iran

I mean, seriously guys: the "hiking" thing might sound plausible if they were hiking in Santa Cruz. Nobody fucking "hikes" in a terrorist shit hole near the border of a fruitcake Shiite theocracy unless they're being paid to do so by alphabet soup government agencies.

I took a week off from my artwork leading up to Halloween, so I'd have time to work on my costume, and I'm just now cleaning up and scanning some of the pieces I've drawn since then. What's up above is a Where the Wild Things Are illo for katie_can_draw, one of the commissions from the Multiple Sclerosis benefit a month back and of which I'm now halfway through. Hope to have everyone's in the mail by the end of November.

So, speaking of Where the Wild Things are, Kate and I finally got around to seeing it last week. That it's a weird film pretty much goes without saying, and that it's arguably not a film for kids almost goes equally as much without saying - mind you, it's not a movie I'd avoid taking a kid to see (although the children in the audience when we saw it were thoroughly bored about halfway through), it's just very much a recreation of a child's perspective and logic clearly written by and for adults.

The most insightful review I've seen of the film so far comes from the infamously eponymous Vern, who notes rather adroitly that it's a miracle that this film could be made the way it was made, rather than some 3-D musical abortion where Max brings the Wild Things back to the real world, and they have wacky misadventures at the mall to the tune of a Smashmouth song and there's a looney-tunes chase scene and a stirring farewell at the end, with some tacked-on teaser about Where the Wild Things Are 2: Wild Things In Space. I mean, honestly, that is legitimately amazing, and you do have to admire it in that respect, if nothing else.

I will say this: I went into the movie hoping to love it, and I definitely did love it, but it was certainly nothing I expected. I'm disinclined to extrapolate at all on the film, because I think that going in with any preconception as to the qualities of the thing will diminish what it a truly immersive film.

However, I also say with certainty that the last ninety seconds comprise possibly the single most touching moment I've ever seen committed to film...

Hey, cartoonists! Holmes, of the truly excellent vintage comic strip site Barnacle Press, needs your help! I know that all of us who are familiar with BP love the site (and are all big fans of Everett True!) and I have a feeling that those of you seeing it for the first time are going to fall in love. BP does a great service for fans of classic cartooning, and now they could use some help with a very fun project (which is both on a very tight deadline and nonexistent budget).

Here's the deal: Barnacle Press has a really neat project coming out, for which they need 45 spot illustrations. And they can't pay. And they need it by this upcoming Monday. But trust me when I say that it is a very awesome project - I had to turn it down just because of the amount of work currently on my plate, although I may try to find the time to do one or two myself, depending on the response.

The drawings do not need to be complex, just small spots based on information which Holmes will provide you. If you're interested, drop him a line at holmes -at- barnaclepress.com, and spread the word!

It is 1980. I'm in college. I'm taking a drama class. The class is taught by a guy in the drama department. When he's not teaching drama, he designs sets for the productions of whatever play the school is doing. Which means, in addition to attending classes, the class is required to attend all productions, so that they may then praise the instructor's work the following Monday.

I suffer through well-mounted, boring-as-all-get-out productions of The Shadow Box, The Country Wife and What the Butler Saw. The last production of the semester is an adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.

( Read more... )

Tags: xmas

As the title suggests, "Blood of the Father, Heart of Steel" is about, well, searching for fathers and steeling your heart. What does it mean to be a man? Are you a man when you kill your father, or when you find him? Does a father hold you back or complete you? Does a father make his son a man by nurturing him or making him fight on his own? And, in a moment of truth, can a man act? Is that what it means to be a man? Can you steel your heart enough to act? And, where do our notions of manhood, or action, come from?

( Read more... )

Tags: venture bros

In particular, this kind:
http://www.thelocal.se/21842.html

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I blame Disney for marketing A Christmas Carol during the Halloween season. Sam (8) has gotten interested in scary movies, but he's gotten them all mixed up in his head, which is easy enough, I guess, since he hasn't seen any of them.

It all began with a commercial for Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights, which featured a 20-something guy walking into a deserted, decrepit theater lobby. He's menaced by the doll from Saw, then Chucky from Child's Play, then finally a guy in a pig mask, also from Saw. The pig-mask guy has a blade that shoots out from his sleeve and the commercial ends with the pig-mask guy (presumably) slashing the throat of the 20-something guy.

( Read more... )

Tags: sam

Is it a Chud? A mole? Who knows....he wants to scratch your back, though...

My religion: Every morning, think of the tie I want to wear, reach into a dark closet to the rack of fifty(-ish) ties, and pull one out. If it's the one I wanted, it is an Awesome Day and I am the Chosen One. Today is an Awesome Day. Black with gray flowers. Amen.

Tags: fashion, stupidity

Those of you who checked out my photos from the D-Day beaches in Normandy the other day might recall my mentioning a place called the Pointe du Hoc, and how I didn't take any pictures there because it was pouring rain. Well, Marjorie's dad sent me his pictures from the whole weekend, including some from the Pointe du Hoc, and there's this great, ridiculous one of me, Marjorie, and Jenny in a huge hole left by an Allied bomb in 1944. We're all wearing identical windbreakers; they were promotional items from M's dad's company, which he brought to protect us all against Normandy's notoriously rainy Autumn weather.

Haha, I wish you could feel the wind and rain we were studiously ignoring in order to have fun out there. I'd brought my good umbrella but the second I opened the thing it immediately turned inside out and broke! At least in the bomb hole there was a little less wind. Immediately after this was taken, Marjorie an I climbed out of the hole as fast as we could, stranding Jenny; the sides were a lot steeper than they look here, not to mention slippery with mud. I think she's still there.

In other news, I have a bunch of fun new stuff up on Cool Stuff in Paris:

Recent articles:

• An unfinished statue of the Virgin Mary, buried for eight centuries
• Saint Denis, the decapitated guy you'll see all over Paris
• L'Hôtel de Ville — a great place for an execution!

Recent blog posts:

• And the award for Parisian bar most likely to keep all their neon letters in good working order goes to...
• Hidden in plain sight: fake windows painted onto a building in Beaubourg
• Monsters in the Jardin des Tuileries
• Beautiful Russian nesting dolls at Peterhof

I've also created a LiveJournal syndication of the Cool Stuff in Paris blog if you'd like to add it. It's here: coolstuffparis. It's not ideal in that it seems to only update every 24 hours or so, rather than in real time, but it's still a good way to keep up with my Cool Stuff blog if you don't feel like following it on Blogspot or adding it to your rss reader.

How're you?

Tags: cool stuff in paris, france, history, normandy, photography, travel