Making Comics - Chapter 5 1/2 Is Finally Up!

Those of us who purchased Scott McCloud's excellent "Making Comics" have been anxiously awaiting "Chapter 5 1/2," the promised online supplement that goes into detail about webcomics. I learned today that it's finally up over at Scott's site.

Concrete Screen

Despite the web site's Star-Trekky promise of "transparent concrete", it’s basically just a slab of concrete with fiber optic cables embedded within.

Still pretty cool, though, and because the cables can transmit natural light as easily as a projected image, it's conceivable that it could be used to install “windows” in below-ground offices and apartements.

Hilarity Ensues

Boing-Boing pointed me to this story in USA Today about a three-year-old who went to extraordinary lengths to obtain a stuffed Sponge Bob Squarepants toy from a grabby machine, with somewhat predictable results. (Bonus points for the look on little Bobby's face as he is forced to extricate himself.)

Apparently this is not a unique occurrence. The various stories were all so similar, though, that I began to suspect Urban Legendry at work. I asked the Snopes-Dogg to check it out for me; but he says it's all legit.

I'd hope that store managers would start asking the grabby machine-guy to leave a spare key so that the local fire department wouldn't have to be called in every single time.

Just In Time For Halloween: The Monster Alphabet!

(Actually, this Flickr set was uploaded way back in August, but I just stumbled across it this week.)

I first encountered Ape Lad's work on the "700 Hoboes Project" but his "1 Hour Alphabets" (that's "B is for Blob" over to the left) are great! Check out the Superhero and Super-Villian alphabets, too!

Update: I've learned that the Monster Alphabet wasn't actually a one-hour alphabet. My mistake; I still think they're great. And look! T-SHIRTS!

A.R.G.gh!

Been playing/following "The Lost Experience" for the past week to keep myself distracted from stuff at home.

For those who don't know, TLE (as insiders/nerds call it) is an "Alternate Reality Game." It's a sort of roleplaying game where you become part of a huge group of people helping the main character reveal the "real truth," about The Hanso Foundation and some sort of project that THF's new director, Dr. Mittlewerk, is running.

Gameplay mostly revolves around solving puzzles to access photos, video and audio clips, and web sites to discover more of "the truth." The puzzles and clues to same are dispersed through instant messages and e-mails from in-game actors, podcasts, entries in various characters' blogs and, sometimes, advertisements in traditional media like this commercial for The Hanso Foundation's Life-Extension Project shown during a recent airing of Lost.

I've been interested in the concept of ARGs since the early days of Majestic and "The Beast" the game associated with the Spielberg movie A.I. but TLE is the first ARG I've ever actually followed and participated in.

I have to admit that it's sort of interesting to try to solve the puzzles and find new video clips and podcasts and such but there are times when new stuff is being released so quickly that you either have to devote several hours every day to finding and solving the new puzzles or "cheat" by looking at one of the many sites devoted to listing the clues and their solutions outright.

Once Robyn's home from the hospital I'll probably stop playing and just wait for all to be revealed at the end of Summer.

I Didn't Win The Contest

Goshdangit!

One of the guys in field service won.

I tied for second, which won me a $15 iTunes gift card. I've already downloaded "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," and am trying to figure out how to spend the other $14.01. I'm trying real hard to make my other 14 purchases fairly recent songs as I already have a good collection of 60s - 80s pop, and I've still got a case full of cassettes from about 1984 - 1990 to convert to mp3. Also, my nieces recently made it very clear to me that knowing who the White Stripes and Fall Out Boy are no longer qualifies me as hip, trendy, or "rad."

Current Contenders for My $14.01:

The B-Side Wins Again - DJ Spooky vs Dave Lombardo
Promiscuous - Nelly Furtado and some guy
Feel Good, Inc - The Gorillaz
16 Military Wives - The Decembrists
Gone Daddy Gone - Gnarls Barkley
Jesus Walks - Kanye West

Dang, I just spent a half-hour trolling iTunes for other songs. I previewed a whole bunch of bands I've heard mention of recently (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Walkmen, Death Cab for Cutie) and I don't know why, but they all just sound like Grateful Dead cover bands to me.

That's not a compliment.

Worst Songs of the 80s

So our company recently held a contest in which employees were encouraged to pick the 10 absolute worst songs of the 80s. I submitted my list this afternoon, and reprint it here for posterity.

In descending order of suckitude, my picks for the worst songs of the 80s are:

1. We Are the World – USA for Africa: Not just a horrible pop song, but also the beginning of the trend of saving the world through crass consumerism. “Spend $20 on this crappy album and we’ll give $1.00 to starving kids in Africa!” Call me crazy, but I’d bet that the starving kids in Africa would much prefer you sent them the $20. Or, you know, buy $20 worth of food and send it to them. Easily the worst song of the 80s with triple extra bonus points for being the grandfather of all those stupid yellow ribbons and rubber bracelets.

2. I Just Called to Say I Love You – Stevie Wonder: Billboard #1 Hit, Winner of the Oscar for Best Song (it was originally written for the soundtrack to the Gene Wilder comedy “The Woman in Red.”), and a big steaming pile of complete and utter “Hallmark Hall of Fame” treacle-sweet tripe. I can think of only one song by Mr. Wonder that was worse than this: the “Huxtable Sample Jam” (aka “Jammin’ on the One”) from his guest shot on The Cosby Show. Please, Stevie, you wrote Superstition, you wrote Higher Ground, did you really need that check from Cos, or did you owe him a favor?

3. Working for the Weekend – Loverboy: “You want a piece of my heart / you better start from the start.” Wow, Loverboy, that’s deep. Loverboy is a Canadian band, and when I consider that the CBC’s Canadian Content Regulations would have forced countless rockers in the Great White North to endure this song on high rotation, I am grateful to have lived out the 80s in the USA.

4. Africa – Toto: I don’t know which irks me more, this song’s limp, whiny melody, or its clunky pretentious lyrics. “I know that I must do what’s right / sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.” CLUN-KY! Hey Toto, you go right ahead and bless the rains down in Africa, I won’t stop you. Hey, here’s $20, take a couple of those starving kids out for a burger while you’re there.

5. Heartbeat – Don Johnson: This one seems to lean dangerously close to novelty-song territory, until you remember that DJ really and truly believed that he had a chance as a pop star. Must’ve been all that time with Phil Collins and Glen Frey on the Miami Vice set. A poor song sung by a poor singer, but at least it wasn’t a duet with Phillip Michael Thomas.

6. Dancing in the Streets – Mick Jagger & David Bowie: Ah, what better way to celebrate the influence of black music on modern rock and roll than to let two pasty British guys completely muck up a Martha and the Vandellas hit? Double-secret bonus embarrassment points for the music video, which featured multiple shots of Mssrs. Bowie and Jagger’s leather-wrapped fannies, and at least one shot of the two of them coming perilously close to tongue-kissing each other.

7. Mr. Roboto – Styx: Concept albums are always tricky, as proved by Dennis DeYoung’s rock-opera Kilroy Was Here. Although the album did go Platinum and spawned two hit singles (Mr. Roboto and Don’t Let it End) members of the band later admitted that they never fully understood what the concept actually was, the tour was a financial disaster, and Mr. Roboto became a joke well before the decade ended. An embarrassing and pretentious misstep by the band who previously gave us gems like The Grand Illusion, and Angry Young Man.

8. We Didn’t Start the Fire – Billy Joel: Hey Billy, REM already recorded this song back in 1987. They called it, It’s the End of the World as We Know It, and it was a whole lot better. I read that Billy wrote We Didn’t Start the Fire because of his interest in history and a desire to be a history teacher. Interestingly, the amount of time most high school history teachers today are given to cover the 20th century makes a three-minute pop song the ideal lecture. Just not this one, please.

9. We Built This City – Starship: Although many critics have picked this for the worst song of the 1980s, I can’t go quite that far. It’s hypocritical crap, for sure; a so-called anti-commercial anthem that, in one critic’s words “reeks of '80s corporate-rock commercialism. It's a real reflection of what practically killed rock music in the '80s.” But it’s still somewhat listen-able and Grace Slick does a fair job on the vocals. The fact that Starship descends from rock royalty Jefferson Airplane may explain why others have been as savage as they have; after all, We Built This City is a long, long way from White Rabbit.

10. My Red Joystick – Lou Reed: Okay, Lou makes the list mostly for personal reasons. Back in 1989 I saw him perform at Merriweather Post Pavillion. About a half-hour into his set we were rocking out to a good mix of his classic hits (Lisa Says, Rock and Roll) and tracks from his then-current album, New York, when Lou threw this clunker at us. Like many of his songs My Red Joystick makes great reading, but it just doesn’t work as rock and roll. Happily, he played Walk on the Wild Side for his encore and we all sang along with the doo-doo-doo’s and went home happy.

Honorable Mentions (songs that were either not quite bad enough to make the top-ten, or such easy targets that I just felt sorry for them) In No Particular Order of Badness:

1. You Dropped a Bomb on Me – Gap Band
2. The Heart of Rock-n-Roll – Huey Lewis and the News
3. Dancing on the Ceiling – Lionel Richie
4. One Night in Bangkok – Murray Head
5. Walk the Dinosaur – Was (Not Was)
6. Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car – Billy Ocean
7. Party All the Time – Eddie Murphy
8. Kiss Me Deadly – Lita Ford
9. This Song’s Just Six Words Long … I mean, Got My Mind Set of You – George Harrison
10. Urgent - Foreigner

That Parkour Thing

Jumping once again onto the "day-late" bandwagon; I've been checking out some of the Parkour footage available on the 'net.

Parkour, for those even less up-to-date than I, is basically a combination of running, freestyle gymnastics, and a Jackie Chan movie. The emphasis in this rather well-done Russian video, seems to be mostly on the Jackie Chan. Or, considering the choice of soundtrack, the Brothers Wachowski.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I've known about Parkour for at least as long as Ray has.

Final thought: the Russian video was, for me, the perfect chaser to William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, which I just re-read a few days ago. Not so much because of the running and the jumping as for the post-industrial setting and the (non-Matrix-y parts of) soundtrack.