Chewbacca Becomes American Citizen

Chewbacca shows joy at becoming American citizen.

According to Annabelle Garay of the Associated Press the large and hairy citizen of Kashyyk, who married a Texan, has decided to become a permanent citizen of the United States. Now if we can only get him to share the technical secrets of a bowcaster with us.

[Note: Garay's article erroneously credits Peter Mayhew (the actor who plays Chewbacca) with the role of the "Minotaur" in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. The correct name of the character is Minoton. This may seem like a minor point, but as the Minoton was a Minotaur Automaton it is worth noting. Besides the movie rules.]

Interesting Events in So Cal This Weekend

IGN Live

One of the leading pop-culture/geekdom websites is hosting a convention this weekend at the Anaheim Convention center. Tickets are cheap, you get to play with an Xbox 360, it's like a mini and public E3. In addition to all the video game events there will also be a PokerStars.com tournament where winners get to play Wil Wheaton.




For all you conservatives out there LA is hosting the Liberty Film Festival.



The two most interesting events seem to be:

SCREENWRITER'S PANEL DISCUSSION
"What Stories is Hollywood Not Telling?"
This exciting panel will feature screenwriters Andrew Klavan (Clint Eastwood's True Crime), screenwriter and blogger Roger L. Simon (Woody Allen's Scenes From a Mall), Craig Titley (Scooby-Doo, Steve Martin's Cheaper By The Dozen), Paul Guay (Jim Carrey's Liar, Liar), Burt Prelutsky (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, MASH), and Charlie Carner (Vanishing Point).

The program will feature a Q&A with the panelists

and

PANEL DISCUSSION ON THE BLACKLIST:
"Was Communism A Threat to Hollywood?"
Moderator: Film historian/journalist John Meroney
Panelists: Richard Schickel (TIME film critic, noted film historian), James Hirsen (best-selling author, Hollywood Nation), Ron Radosh (Red Star over Hollywood), Patrick Goldstein (LA Times film critic, columnist), Ed Rampell (author, Progressive Hollywood) and Jeff Britting of the Ayn Rand Institute (producer of the Oscar-nominated Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life). Authors Richard Schickel, Ron Radosh, James Hirsen, Ed Rampell and Jeff Britting will do book signings after the panel.

John Berendt discusses and signs The City of Falling Angels

According to Vroman's bookstore the details are:

Friday, October 21, 7p.m.

Located at All Saints Church, 132 N. Euclid Ave.

John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, moved to Venice, Italy in 1997, 3 days after the famous Fenice Opera House burned down. Finding a home among the natives, he observed extravagant characters and, “by the time the Fenice is rebuilt, [he’s] delivered an intriguing mosaic of modern life in Venice” (Publisher's Weekly).

For You Writer's Out There:

According to the LA Times:

WriteGirl Reading
Portrait of a Bookstore
4360 Tujunga Ave., Studio City



Members of the non-profit WriteGirl, which pairs women writer/mentors with female high school students, will read from the anthology "Nothing Held Back."

Oct. 22: 3 p.m. - 4 p.m.

Price: Free.

Information: 818-769-3853

This is just the tip of the iceburg. Man is it cool living in a big city.

Zypods...Or Why I am Sick to Death of My Collectible Game Addiction

According to the Wizkids Games website, they are about to come out with a new collectible miniatures game for children 8 and up.

There press release states:

ZYPODS HATCHES NEW 3D COLLECTABLE GAME!
October 7, 2005 (SEATTLE) — Get ready for fast, collectable action! WizKids Inc, creators of the runaway hit game Pirates of the Spanish Main, brings you Zypods, a 3D collectable action game! In Zypods, players combine the tops and bottoms of strange and colorful creatures to create the ultimate fighting team. Created for ages 8 and up, Zypods is easy to learn and quick to play.
“Zypods is a great way for kids to get into collectable games,” said Mike Samora, vice president of Sales and Marketing at WizKids Inc.. “There are 90 creatures to collect, giving players literally millions of combinations – and a game lasts less than thirty minutes, so kids can play it anywhere.” Lunchtime, riding in the car, and after school aren’t safe from the creatures in Zypods!

When a Zypod is damaged, it cracks and a new, smaller Zypod hatches from inside – similar to a Russian nesting doll. Eventually, the Zypod reveals a small collectable figure – the most powerful in the game!

Zypods will be available wherever trading cards are sold. It launches in a test market in the Fall of 2005.

WizKids is a Seattle-based game developer and publisher dedicated to creating tabletop games driven by imagination. Its Mage Knight, MechWarrior and HeroClix CMGs have sold hundreds of millions of figures worldwide. For additional information, visit www.zypodsgame.com.

When I first read the description of the game, it sounded stupid. I thought that a gaming company had finally come up with a collectible game I wouldn't have to at minimum sample. Alas, I was wrong. Take a look at these images and you will see what I think looks like an interesting game. Remember, the images are of the "strip" surrounding one of the "cubes" (the Russian Doll like miniatures).

This is a picture of the "outer layer" of one of the miniatures, though it lacks the "attribute strips."






The above are images of strips which are on the "miniatures."

This is an image of the final layer, in this case the figure for Drake.

Is Sue Storm Another Devil In a Blue Dress?

Walter Mosley, the award winning Mystery and Science Fiction novelist, worked with Marvel to come up with the idea behind there upcoming Fantastic Four coffee table book. According the ICV this will be the first time that Marvel has produced on its own. ICV also mentioned that Maximum Fantastic Four will feature the entire first issue of Fantastic Four, but with each page of book containing a single panel of art.

This page would be four pages in Maximum Fantastic Four

The book will be available at amazon, local bookstores, and my local comic shop.

I personally think this is an awesome idea. While I am firmly rooted in the comic books are for entertainment school, I am also deeply appreciative when individuals take the time to display the genuine artistry of the comic medium. Those of you familar with my comments on Cathy Seipp's blog about Aristotle's purposes of poetry "to educate and delight" will not be surprised by this. I think too many "comicerati" focus on books that challenge us and forget how important the entertainment aspect of comics is. Yes some comics should challenge us, yes some should even challenge us in unexpected ways, but sometimes kids (and I) just want to see Batman solve the crime.

For those who have interest outside the artistic appreciation of the FF, I recommend the Fantastic Four Omnibus Volume 1 HC. It is much less expensive than the original issues and can be purchased at amazon, your local bookstore, or my local comic shop.

As I noted in this previous blog post, comic books often get short shrift when it comes to respect for the artistic value of their content. By blowing up the individual panels to coffee table book sized images readers will really be able to absorb what Jack Kirby accomplished on a regular basis. In the above linked post I compared Lichtenstein's work to that of Russ Heath (good short article here and good Comic Book Artist Interview Here)and Irv Novick to put the Pop Artist into perspective. I have always been one of those who hoped that Pop Art would have elevated people's opinion of comics as a medium, but it seems to have failed in this regard and in fact created an opposite effect. That effect being that comics are abandoning their core concepts (narrative and artistic norms) in an attempt to "become" art. But I think these "artiste" comics are often less artistic than the main stream.

People long for OTR

At a panel discussion last Friday sponsored by the American Cinema Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and interesting exchange regarding "scheduled" programming versus "on demand" programming took place. Essentially Rob Long and Cathy Seipp discussed different takes on the issue.

Rob Long argued for the advantages of the "on demand" technology offered by cable services and Apple's new video iPod, he also discussed the advantages of DVR technology. In essence, he discussed how great it is to be able to watch what you want when you want to watch it. This line of thinking has lead to DVD collections of old television shows, new television shows, and provides an alternate tracking system to Nielson for ratings. We can know what people want because they buy it, or they ask for it.

Cathy Seipp looked at the issue from a different angle. She argued for the virtues of scheduled programming. These are, according to Cathy, essentially two-fold. First, there is the comfort level of knowing you are going to watch something at 9pm on Tuesday night. This leads to the second virtue, chiefly the communal element. When a show is on at 9pm you can talk about it the next day with all your co-workers or friends as a shared experience. I would add to Cathy's two virtues a third, you can host "communal" events like an OC party or from when I was in college a 90120 party. The show itself can become an event.

What was particularly interesting about the conversation was that while the examples I used were about television shows, and the panel was about public television, the conversation was about both television and radio. Cathy was lamenting the loss of Old Time Radio shows on Los Angeles radio stations and how she liked to listen to them at pre-known times when driving across town. It was also interesting that I agreed with both whole-heartedly. It was great this summer to be able to watch the first two seasons of the OC in rapid succession because we could get the full narrative rather rapidly. But it is also fun to watch the show as planned, I actually feel the tension of episode endings. I have to wait 'til next week, or as it is now until after baseball (this is as it should be).

After discovering that Cathy was an OTR fan, I decided to ask her what kind of OTR she enjoyed and I was surprised and delighted by her answer. I had expected her to be a fellow geek traveller and quickly say she liked Superman, Green Hornet, the Shadow, and The Lone Ranger. She didn't, but the shows she named sounded great and expanded my desire for OTR products. She mentioned Jack Benny and Eddie Cantor. If memory serves, she has in the past mentioned Fred Allen as well. In addition to the links above, where you can purchase OTR files, you can find streaming broadcasts here though the list hasn't been updated recently and contains some out of date schedule info (for example KCSN no longer plays OTR near as I can tell).

Just who are the Cinerati?

Thanks to Cinerati member, David N. Scott for this one.

Naturally this game is obviously based on that machine of machines...MODOK, the Mobile Organism Designed Only for Killing.

The Cinerati are obviously the: Constructs Intended for Nocturnal Exploration, Rational Assassination and Thorough Infiltration.

Number One is:

Fritz is:

Rob is:

Underfüt is:

Logan 5 is:

If you want to see who David N. Scott and Burgandy Skies are click here.

Mutants to Return to Minority Status at Marvel

I remember reading, it may be apocryphal, that Stan Lee created the idea of a "mutant origin" in comic books because he was tired of coming up with individual origins for each and every superhero he created. Regardless of the truth of this statement, in the past forty years the Marvel universe has seen a significant population increase in its mutant minority. Whole nations in the marvelverse are populated with them, or at least they were.

According to ICV2, and you already have a sense of this if you have been reading House of M, there will be a 95% reduction in the mutant population in the Marvel universe. To "non-fans" that might seem drastic, it might even seem like something that would upset this "curmudgeony" comic collector. Well it is drastic, but it isn't particularly upsetting.

One of the most compelling elements of early mutant stories was that they paralleled the civil rights struggle. Mutants were a persecuted minority. X-men like Cyclops and Jean Grey were hated for their "freak powers," while Iron Man and Thor were adored for theirs. At first, that might seem absurd. Both sets of individuals have powers (okay Iron Man has technology technically, but you get the point) so why aren't they feared equally? When I was younger it didn't make any sense at all. It wasn't until I really thought about the X-men/Civil Rights parallel that it became clearer. Sure I had always "known" what the undertones of the X-stories were, but I hadn't asked the same "why" about our own society. Why would people be hated just because of the color of their skin, their gender, religion, you name it? That didn't make sense either. So why do people hate the X-men and not Power Pack? Because they do, and they do so without reasons. Are there evil mutants? Sure, but Rhino isn't a mutant and he is powerful and evil so why not hate all superheroes?

This compelling element had been diluted in recent years by the explosion of characters. No longer were mutants a persecuted minority, they had become a persecuted "seeming" majority. The pathos was lost in the commonality, but all that is about to change.

Joe Quesada, the Editor in Chief at Marvel has been adamant that "As long as [he] am EIC [he is] not bringing any of these (characters) back." He also "pointed out that the effects of the 95% reduction in the number of mutants in the Marvel Universe would be reflected through the line -- Wolverine will be the only mutant in The New Avengers."

Addressing the curmudgeon in me Quesada stated, "The idea behind House of M and Decimation is to scale back the number and role of mutants in the current Marvel Universe to something similar to the Silver Age Marvel Universe."