New Year, Marvel NOW!

I have already said that I have an affinity for Marvel comic books, so I may be biased.  When comparing DC's New 52 "reboot" with Marvel NOW!'s "non-reboot", Marvel wins hands down.

Good things were already happening at Marvel in 2012: Fear Itself (the 2011 event) was finally over. Hickman's run on Fantastic Four and FF were amazing!  Bendis ran Avengers for longer than any other writer in Marvel history, and he did amazing things with them.  Fraction's Iron Man was solid.  Defenders got resurrected with a bang and retired with a whimper (sorry Marvel, it wasn't all good).

The big event of the Marvel year was AvX, Avengers vs X-men, which sounded like a gimmick, and ended up being pretty damned good.  I especially liked when Black Panther slaps the science out of Tony Stark just as he was going to go all Civil-War-Serious on us again.  (Tony only gets to tear the world apart once a decade!)  Cyclops started sliding into madness years ago (in my opinion) and the Phoenix Force just made it so everyone else could see it.  AvX managed to hit the other books without making them slaves to the "big event" (which shows that maybe Marvel is learning from it's past mistakes.)  Wolverine reopening the school turned out to be a really fun ride and showed what an ensemble cast book could be like, in Wolverine and the X-men.  New Mutants had a great year (thanks Abnett and Lanning) especially the "Date with the Devil" issue #37--possibly the best single issue I read all year!

Marvel did get bought by Disney last year.  This still kind of creeps me out and makes me worry, but so far so good.
Marvel movies did great: Avengers anyone?

So 2012 was a good year for Marvel.
And then they announced Marvel NOW! (which has to have CAPS and an Exclamation Mark!) the new "not a reboot" of the Marvel line.  Uh Oh!, I thought to myself.  Marvel is going to do a DC-style New 52 (which I did not think turned out well for DC).
But so far, so good in my opinion.

Marvel moved all their most popular writers and artists around, giving them fresh books to work on.  This resulted in some really good endings to some of the existing story arcs.  Fantastic Four, Avengers, New Avengers, Iron Man, Spider-man all got interesting stories that their old teams wanted to tell before they left.

And NOW! the new Marvel NOW! issues have been coming out (with more promised for later).
Bendis is on X-men now.  He did my least favorite thing and did a time travel story where the 1960's teenager X-men meet the new screwed up X-men.  I didn't want to like it.  But it is turning out to be really great.
Matt Fraction has taken the Fantastic Four on an intergalactic road trip.  And put a replacement FF team on Earth to hold down the fort.  I can't wait to see what happens next.
Fraction and Aja have are also 7 issues into a new Hawkeye series that is one of the coolest things being published right now.  It is hard to describe, but a joy to read.
The new Thor series is good.
Avengers is going cosmic, Hickman style.
Spider-man just killed Peter Parker (again) and replaced him with Doc Octopus!  (Don't worry kids, it is the 50th anniversary of Spider-man this year.  I'm sure Peter will come back to us somehow.)
And there are still more NOW! titles that have not come out yet.  Fearless Defenders, an all Girl X-Men Team, Nova, and Guardians of the Galaxy!  I am Groot!

This could end up being a great year for Marvel Comics!  I think they are doing a lot of things right with their "not a reboot".  It's a great time to jump on and Marvel didn't throw all their history and continuity into the garbage.  I like it so far.  But maybe it's just me?

-- Jay

New Year, Old 52

I always seem to end up reading Marvel Comics.  Even as a kid.  But I always liked Batman and found Wonder Woman interesting but poorly written.  But it was Iron Man and Captain America that I would read over and over again.  I like the idea of Superman, but the actual Superman in the comics usually bored me.

As I got older, my tastes stayed the same.  I would dip into DC territory once in a while.  Hey Green Arrow got interesting for a bit.  Green Lantern got good for a while.  But mostly it was Batman that was worth reading.

So when DC announced the New 52 "reboot" of the DC Universe, I gave it a try.

I read dozens of their number 1's, and as the year went by I was reading fewer and fewer DC books.  I wanted to like Birds of Prey, but it went nowhere.  Flash has had great page layouts, but not a good plot to be seen.  Superman had all sorts of potential and just left me yawning.  Green Lantern (which I had been enjoying before the reboot) enslaved Hal Jordan to Sinestro and put me into blackest boredom.  Green Arrow just sucked... The only surprise was Wonder Woman, whose book has stayed very good all year by basically remaining independent from the rest of the DC Universe.  I am convince the Wonder Woman kissing Superman in Justice League is a different Wonder Woman than the daughter of Zeus who has been kicking ass in Hades and Olympus.

There were a few sparks of interest on Earth 2, but I'm not sure that book will ever stick with any of those characters long enough to make it really interesting.

And there has been Batman.  Batman, especially the Synder/Capullo series, has been fantastic!  I can't say enough about how good Batman has been.  That maze of the Owls sequence will go down in comics history.

But that's it.  Batman and Wonder Woman.

DC said this was a great time to jump in.  DC said we didn't have to know all the back story to understand these characters.  But it didn't turn out to be true.  The "reboot" didn't reboot nearly enough for me.  And the end result was kind of a wash.  I back down to reading Batman and Wonder Woman again.  Sorry DC.  I tried.  Maybe it isn't you.  Maybe its me?

Thankfully, there is still Marvel and other comics companies.

-- Jay

I saw the new movie John Carter.  It was great.
I wrote a review over at LarsenGeekery.com (click to read it).

Just like when I was a kid reading the Edgar Rice Burroughs' books, Dejah Thoris, the Princess of Mars, steals the show.

I am delighted that Disney's horrible marketing haven't ruined the movie, but it was directed by a Pixar veteran.  And Pixar seems to be the only source of good Disney films these days (and Marvel I hope, looking ahead to The Avengers).

New 52 with not enough Reboot in it…

Everybody is talking about the DC Universe Reboot: The New 52.  Which is what they went to all this trouble for isn’t it?  To get us talking about DC comics and buying DC comics?  On those points, I think the New 52 Reboot has been very successful.  Everyone is talking and buying.

But how about on the Reboot part of this experiment?  How is that going?

DC claimed quite often and loudly that the New 52 would be the perfect place for new readers to jump on, because it was all “new” and there would not be a bunch of back story to explain and no pesky continuity issues that you already needed to know about to pick up the new books.

Having heard all that from DC, I kind of expected a real reboot—a starting over—a clean slate.  But I haven’t seen a lot of that yet, strangely enough.

Now, to be fair, I have only read a handful of the new books so far.  Justice League #1, Action Comics #1, Detective Comics #1, Green Arrow #1, and OMAC #1.  Some of the New 52 aren’t out yet, haven’t arrived in my mail box, or I have no intension of buying anyway.

We heard that this was going to be a world that was new to the whole “super powered people” concept.  Yet most of these books seemed to have started in the middle.  Batman has already been Batman for years.  Commissioner Gordon already has a Bat Signal on the roof.  Joker has been killing people for years.  Superman has been pissing off cops for quite a while already.  Green Arrow already has a whole support team stood up and battle tested.  The only book that really felt like I was there for the beginning of events was OMAC.  All the others felt like I was in at the middle and had to figure out who these people were and how they knew them already.  Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen are already buddies.  Yes, Superman can’t fly (yet), but Lex Luthor already hates Superman and we don’t know why.

This was a reboot.  We were supposed to get to see some of this stuff happen on the page.  Not get hints that these important relationships and motivations had already happened and we missed them.  It’s not like we can blame it on the 352 issues of Action Comics we hadn’t read already.  This is Issue #1, by Bristol Board and all that is holy.  This was our chance to get to see why Lex starts to hate Superman, (or for reboot’s sake, maybe Lex and Superdude would be best friends this time around) but no.  That key stuff has already happened and we didn’t get to see it.

I understand that DC probably didn’t want to do 52 origin stories right out of the gate.  But they didn’t leave us with much mystery about what will be different this time around.  They seemed more worried about reassuring longtime readers that all their favorite people and stuff was going to still be in the mix.  Don’t worry, Batman still has a bat cave, a bat mobile, bat-a-rangs, his butler might be a computer program (so they get points for that), but batman is still a dick and is already obsessed with Joker (who already has a long career in serial killing).  No formative experiences need appear on these pages.  Don’t worry fan boys!  No chance of genuine difference here.  New Batman is just like old Batman.  It’s almost like Batman never rebooted.

With Green Arrow they tried a little harder.  They lost the Robin Hood goatee and went for a Tony Stark disheveled look.  Goggles are always nice.  And they moved away from the tycoon that lost all his money and now fights for the common man thing.  Instead they went for billionaire playboy who should be running his hugely successful companies, but instead spends his time and resources building crime-fighting gadgets and fighting crime with his gadgets, kind of like Tony Stark.  They did change Ollie up a bit, but again we don’t get to see any of the formative experiences that made him go into crime fighting.  He is already in the middle of it and we are left to catch up.  We missed the beginning of the movie even though we were in our seats when the curtain went up.

OMAC, is the exception to this pattern so far.  OMAC starts with people we don’t know, gives us enough interaction to tell us what their basic relationships are and sets a series of mysterious events in motion.  And it is different enough from the original OMAC that they probably could have called it something else entirely.  I do enjoy the Kirby-style art work.  And where the old OMAC had a giant Mohawk for no reason.  The new OMAC seems to be actually employing his head-fin as some kind of antennae or energy grid of some kind.  How did some guy who used to work in the office get turned into OMAC?  And who is controlling him?  We don’t know.  There is a bunch of stuff we don’t know.  But we feel like we got to the story just as it was starting.  So OMAC feels successfully rebooted to me.  And I am curious to see what happens next.

But these other titles, not so much.  If these weren’t going to be real reboots, why did DC go to all the trouble?  Oh yeah, all those extra copies they are selling.  I wonder how many of the extra copies are just going into plastic bags in the hopes of big resale values at some point in the future?  If the percentage of investment copies being sold is high, that means DC will have failed in their attempt to get new readers.  But we will see what happens.

I give the New 52 Reboot (So Far) a C.

Rocket Raccoon knows Thunder when he hears it

That's not Thunder, Little Buddy, that's Thunder Echo!

Read my new Annihilators HC over the weekend.

I miss the Guardians of the Galaxy, personally.

But it is good to see Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning writing dialog for some of the most cosmic characters in the Marvel Universe.

But I really looking forward to the Rocket Raccoon and Groot reunion.

And it was definitely the most fun part of the book.

Rocket has gone mainstream and is working in the mail room of some huge corporation.

His best friend in the place is a shipping computer that looks a lot like the barcode scanners I work with every day.

He has some typical, BIG GUN MOMENTS!

But the best fun is when he is navigating the cubicles of Timely Corp and the unlikely rebels of the Forest Underground (talking mushrooms everybody).

I liked it, but I hope DnA find something more interesting for Rocket and Groot to do in the near future.

I give it a B

---

Annihilators HC: Written by DAN ABNETT & ANDY LANNING Penciled by TAN ENG HUAT & TIMOTHY GREEN II Covers by ALEX GARNER & SKOTTIE YOUNG

OK is NOT a BAD Thing

I saw Green Lantern. I saw the mostly bad reviews of Green Lantern.
I thought the reviews were unfair.
The reviewers seem to want Green Lantern the film to be as great as Lord of the Rings or more recently, Game of Thrones (excellent by the way, best TV show since Battlestar Galactica, No Really, it was that good).  But truly epic films are one in a thousand.  So many perfect things have to line up to get a truly unforgettable film in the can and on the screen, the odds are stacked against such a thing happening.  As a person who has managed multiple year-long, multi-person projects, I can tell you that you swing for the fences every project and try as hard as you can for perfection (or at least greatness) and if you are lucky you get a “good” product, a “solid” and “respectable” result from all your team’s efforts.  But epic greatness?  You aim for it, but you don’t get it.  Except for once in a while the gods smile, the fates are kind, the stars align, some mysterious thing happens (which you can’t explain or duplicate later) and one project out of hundreds turns out stellar, epic, wonderful and magical.

I hope that every movie I go to see is going to be the next miracle movie.  But I don’t expect them all to be EPIC.  I do expect that the movie making team tried for FANTASTIC.  I encourage them to try.  But I am happy with a GOOD movie.  And Green Lantern was a good movie.  It was a chili dog and fries movie.  It was a straight ahead fantasy action film.  And it delivered a good ride.  It was not fillet mignon and lobster.  But I don’t want surf and turf every meal.  Green Lantern was a plastic action figure.  It was not a Faberge Egg.  But plastic toys are fun to play with.  Who ever got to play with a Faberge Egg??  Give me LEGO and GI Joe any day.

And more than anything, Green Lantern the Movie gave me what I can honestly say is the thing I get the most enjoyment from in a movie: ANTICIPATION.  For about a year I got the solid joy of wondering how good the Green Lantern Movie was going to be.  Would the special effects be convincing?  Which plot points from the comics would they keep?  Which characters would they highlight?  How would they pronounce "OA"?  How silly would the little blue Guardians look?  Would they make radical changes to the mythos or the characters?  I enjoyed all of that speculation and anticipation.  A Lot.

And then, the movie was good.  It was fun to see what had been worked on so hard by so many people.  And then it was over.  Thanks, Green Lantern Team!  In brightest projector, in blackest theater, no popcorn shall escape my sight!  I had a fun time playing with the plastic action figure they presented.  I even hope they make a sequel.  Fighting Sinestro will make for a much better plot than fighting Parallax anyway.

I see no reason to give the film bad reviews.  It wasn’t an epic masterpiece for the history books.  So what?  But it was not a BAD movie.

And now?  The anticipation turns to Captain America: The First Avenger coming in July.  Will the shield look stupid?  Will the Red Skull be scary or just silly?  Hugo Weaving is always cool, so I have high hopes for Red Skull, the movie version.  But it might not be a great movie.  It might just be OK.  And I am okay with that.  Avengers, Assemble!

What'ch Lookin' At?

I have seen the new X-Men: First Class Movie.
It was fun.  It had X-Men in it.  It was in the 60s.  It was a prequel.

I liked the movie.  It wasn’t a great movie.  But superhero movies seldom are.
It was not a bad movie.  I could watch this thing 10 times before feeling as abused as the Transformer movies have left me feeling.

As with most things X-Men, there are too many characters to do justice to any of them.  And the best comics and movies usually focus on 1, 2 or 3 characters and give us time to get to know them and what drives them to do what they do.  There are so many X-Men and Others in this movie that we don’t know why they do the things that they do.

The groovy 60s aren’t nearly groovy enough in this film, in my opinion.  And the female characters get treated like crap.  Emma Frost is one of the strongest characters in comics, but in the film she comes across as just psychic arm-candy.  Even the CIA agent starts off strong, but she ends up wishy-washy and lovelorn.

Add to that the fact that this is a prequel: so the film has all the problems that prequels always have.  The script gets hemmed in by the fact that the end point is already known to everyone.  So there can be no “real” surprises, just cleaver reveals and sideways winks.

The biggest disappointment for me personally, was The Helmet.  Magneto has always had this helmet that protects him from psychics, psychics like is old best friend Charles Xavier.  So where did he get the psychic-nullifying helmet?  Well, when the movie gets rolling, Shaw (the bad guy) has it.  And he introduces its origins simply by saying, “The Russians made this.”  That’s it?  The Russians who are shown to be bumbling idiots throughout the film are the genesis of this masterful piece of technology?  Really?  They might as well have said it was magic: half of a pair, which includes a spear.  (Spear and Magic Helmet…get it?  Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny?  No?)

But with all that said and done, let me restate for the record: X-Men: First Class was a fun film and I enjoyed it.  And that is all you can expect.  It was not a great film, but very few films are.  I liked it.  And I will watch it again when it comes out on DVD or whatever space-aged technology we are using to watch films on in the future.  Go see it.  You’ll like it.

And now we wait for Green Lantern, Captain America and Cowboys and Aliens.  There are a lot of comic book movies this summer.  Gotta like that!

The Best Comic Ever Written by a 6 Year Old

I met Ethan Nicolle, who draws Axe Cop, at Stumptown.  He was drawing a bad guy with a chain saw, and we all know we need more chain saws.  Unfortunately, Malachai Nicolle, who is 6 wasn't at the show.  But these brothers are producing an insanely funny series of wild comics.
You can check out online issues and the hilarious, Ask Axe Cop, at http://axecop.com/
Ethan was nice enough to sign some books for me.

That's Ethan, the Artist, on the left, and Malachi, the author, on the right.

It would not be much of a stretch to say that ALL the Best Comics writers and artists are the ones that still let their inner 6 year old out to play on a regular basis.  The Nicolle Brothers are doing that in a more overt way, and the results are a joy to read.
It is strangely liberating to know that there do not need to be so many rules when it comes to plotting a comic.  Why shouldn't T-Rex wear sunglasses and have Gatling guns for arms?  And how do you defeat the entire US Army?  You steal them while they are asleep.

So dial up One Jillion BC on your Laser Portal Gun and jump to Axe Cop, hurry before the genius writing this stuff grows up.
-------------------------------------
Echoes:
Signed copy of Axe Cop #1, Bad Guy Earth, from Dark Horse Comics.
Picture of the brothers from the back of the same issue.

Listening to: Plastic Beach

The new Gorillaz album is out, Plastic Beach.
I love the Gorillaz first 2 albums, so I had high hopes for this one.
Especially since they made it sound like they might never do another album.
Well it has been 5 years, and the virtual band of comic characters has done it again.
I don't think Plastic Beach is a catchy as the previous albums, but it is more cohesive.
The Gorillaz combination of post-punk pop music, rap and DJ loop magic isn't as unique as it once was, but these guys are still very, very good at what they do.

Plastic Beach is definitely worth a listen.
I give it 4 out of 5 stars and a big thumbs up.

Saw Avatar on the BIG Screen

Evelyn took us all to see Avatar on the big IMAX 3-D screen at the Pacific Science Center.
The visuals are stunning. The action is non stop. The plot is a little cliched, but don't let that stop you. After all, the plot to Star Wars is cliched, that hasn't stopped us from loving it all these years.
With the 3-D going and all the aerial shots, I was actually getting kind of air sick. But wow! The visuals are fantastic. I wished I could stop the film and look around some more. I especially liked the forest at night, it was like being at the bottom of the ocean.
I am kind of looking forward to see this film again without the giant IMAX and the 3-D because it was a little overwhelming and disorienting. I'd like a chance to see some of details of the design a little better because every shot was packed with intriguing details.

Thanks Evelyn--We had a great time.

Listening To: DEVO at the Moore

One of my favorite bands from the late 70’s and early 80’s was DEVO.
I especially liked their first 3 albums, Q: Are We Not Men?, Duty Now for the Future, and Freedom of Choice. DEVO had a homemade punk sensibility with a sarcastic sense of humor. And nobody, I mean nobody, sounded like DEVO in those days. I saw them 5 times from 1979 to 1981 and loved every single show.
Then they traded in their guitars for synthesizers and their punk edge for a cartoony cuteness which wasn’t as appealing to me. I missed the old DEVO. (Now don’t get me wrong, I like synthesizers. I just thought DEVO was at their best when the number of guitars on stage balanced the number of keyboards.)

So I was intrigued when I heard that DEVO was touring their Q: Are We Not Men? and Freedom of Choice albums on a limited tour this year. I mean, they guys are all 10 to 14 years older than me, and I’m not sure I could get up on stage and rock like that. But I thought, maybe Marc and Jerry are thinking that they wanted to get out there and rock it one more time before they qualified for Medicare. My wife bought me tickets and my daughter Chani and I trekked down to Seattle to see if DEVO had devolved beyond recognition or whether they still had some gas in the old tank.

Reggie Watts started the show. He is a mad man with a loop machine and stream of consciousness humor. He has to be seen to be believed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs7LSgxoj64&feature=related
Reggie kept asking the crowd, “Who is this Steve O guy, anyway?”

Finally, the Spud boys themselves took to the stage. They had gray and thinning hair. There was a bit of pudge on the bellies. But they came out in the classic yellow radiation suits from the 1970s and 3D glasses, strapped on their guitars and started to rock. They played the entire Q: Are We Not Men? A: We are DEVO album in order. They tore off the yellow suits during Jocko Homo and continued the show in black tees, black shorts and knee pads. For an encore they did Smart Patrol/Mister DNA from Duty Now for the Future and Gates of Steel from Freedom of Choice.

The crowd was mostly over 30, well okay 40. But there was a good percentage of younger fans. And Chani is only 14, so she brought the average age down a bit. There was a guy across the isle from me that looked like Santa with a long gray beard dancing in the isle and singing along with all the lyrics. Everyone was on their feet, dancing and having a great time.

Tonight DEVO is performing the Freedom of Choice album, but I can’t afford two concerts in the same week. Tickets were $55 bucks and T-shirts cost $30 more. It was a bit more than the $10 dollars I spent to see them the first time in L.A. But the show was fun and it brought back a lot of good memories.

On their website, http://www.clubdevo.com/, the band says they are working on a new album for 2010 and a full tour for next year. So if you are a DEVO devotee, check them out if they come to your town.

Star Trek Redo is worth a Review

I will admit to being a Star Trek fan. I grew up on the original series which was in reruns when I discovered it at 8 years old. I was a huge Mr. Spock fan. I admit that once I was old enough to own a VCR, a Sony Betamax, I spent the next year recording every single episode. I rode that rollercoaster that was Star Trek films. Some of them sucked. Some were pretty good. I watched every episode of Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise—even when they were not very good episodes, it was fun to visit the Federation again. But it has been a long time since we had really good Star Trek and I was beginning to resign myself to that fact.

So it was with some trepidation that I waited for the latest Star Trek movie to come out. I avoided the hype and the behind the scenes websites. I just waited for the film. And when it finally came out I took my wife and kids and got in line with a lot of other people and sat down and watched.

WOW! I felt like a teenage again watching this movie. The action was great. The actors were better than the original cast. The writers came up with a fairly clever way of keeping everything we know about classic Star Trek and still restarting the franchise in a way that will let them tell new stories without having to bend over backwards to keep the continuity in place. Did I say, WOW!? I wanted to go right back in and watch it again.

If you have never watched Star Trek, this would be a great place to start. If you are an old fan, even a disillusioned fan, go see this film—it will respark the Trek flame. As soon as I can, I am going to find a way to see it again. The ships looked right. The old shuttle craft were back—gotta love that. The characters were right on without seeming to be imitations. In some ways the characters felt more genuine than the originals. It was funny without being slapstick. It was intense without being melodramatic. I really think this film is going to restart the Star Trek franchise the way the Dark Knight films have restarted Batman.

Did I say, WOW!?

Listening To: Kula Shaker

If you love rock 'n' roll, you must like these guys.


And a Link for those who can't see the video: Video Link

These Brits are terrific. Just plain groovy. I haven't heard a bad track yet.
Here is their website: http://www.kulashaker.co.uk/

Reading: Little Brother

Review of the novel Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

1984 by George Orwell is a classic political and sociological novel. Orwell’s book was meant as a warning. Unfortunately too many political leaders have used it as an operations manual. But at least we have words like “Orwellian” and “double-speak” to use to describe the actions of groups who want to put us all under surveillance and use twisted language to tell us that losing our privacy means being free.

If there is any justice in the world, Little Brother, the new novel by Cory Doctorow, will be just as influential as Orwell’s classic. Little Brother is set in San Francisco in the very near future after a terrorist attack on the Oakland Bay Bridge, and follows the adventures and misadventures of high school student Marcus, known online as w1n5t0n (pronounced “Winston”). Marcus and his friends get swept up in a Homeland Security dragnet and are held and interrogated as terrorist suspects.

Unlike Winston in 1984, Marcus’s attempts to fight back and subvert the system are a little more effective. But I don’t want to give away the plot.

Doctorow tackles all the tough issues of post-911 America, surveillance, security, the Bill of Rights, Constitutional authority, extraordinary rendition, and much more. Marcus and his friends, teachers, parents are all very real characters that have to make hard decisions in the face of real terrorism and real fear. There are no clichéd heroes and villains in this book, just people making decisions, hard decisions.

Little Brother should be required reading for citizens young and old. It is gritty, harsh, funny, scary, and heart rending but above all hopeful.

Read It! You can download it for free at Doctorow’s website. Or buy it.

The Last Supper

The last season of Battlestar Galactica has kicked off with a bang.
They are advertising the last season with a BSG version of the Last Supper by Da Vinci.
Pompous? Yes. Arrogant? Maybe. But then again, maybe not.
Galactica so far has been the best thing on television. I hope they can wrap it up with the same quality drama they have delivered so far.
I’ll take BSG over the Da Vinci Code any day. In fact I’ll take BSG over the bible any day. BSG sets us up for a big Good versus Evil fight and then proceeds to demonstrate that there are no good guys and there are no bad guys. There are just people, all of them flawed, all of them trying to do the best they can.
If you haven’t watched the show, don’t start watching now. Go get the first 3 seasons on DVD and get caught up.
If you have been watching, hang on to your fraking ass, it looks like it is going to be a rocky road to the final credits. And we might find out that WE are the final Cylon…

Listening To: The Decemberists

I've been listening to this fun band from Portland OR for a few years now, and I still love 'em.



Video Link
eMusic.com Link

Listening To: Dogs Die in Hot Cars

Sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks. And this old dog still likes to discover new music. But as an old dog, I have been around the block enough times to know that you can’t always trust the marketing campaigns of the major record labels. And this old dog does not have deep pockets, so I can’t afford to buy every indi album that has an interesting cover. That would be barking up the wrong tree most of the time.

Have I run the dog thing into the ground yet?

Anyway, my subscription to eMusic.com is an important way that I can discover new music without spending a ton of cash. Many times I discover a new band that is new and energetic and ready to take off. Sometimes I discover mature acts that somehow I never heard before. And I also enjoy finding historical records that I missed out on. All of which is fun and exciting. But sometimes I discover bands that sound great, but have already broken up and then the discovery is kind of bitter sweet.

This is the case with Dogs Die in Hot Cars, a British band that really caught my ear a few months ago. Not only do they have an incredibly strange name, which has the advantage of being technically true but difficult to use as a noun, but they also sound very much like a reincarnation of XTC, one of the greatest quirky bands from the UK ever to make records. And DDIHC (which is hard to abbreviate also) doesn’t just copy XTC, they manage to echo the best of XTC and still sound very much original.

They, the Dogs (who must have gotten into a hot car despite their own warnings), have an EP, Man Bites Man , and an album, Please Describe Yourself. Both of which are worth starting an eMusic.com subscription for. And according to information I have found on the web, the band broke up while working on their second album. It is a shame to get all excited about a fabulous group, just to find out that they have already disbanded. But I will have to keep my eyes open for the names, Craig Macintosh, Gary Smith, Lee Worrall, Ruth Quigley, and Laurence Davey, cross my fingers and hope these talented Brits will get involved in future recording projects. In the meanwhile I will have to console myself with another listen to “I Love You Cause I Have To.” Because I have to, love them that is. And if you are a Brit Pop fan or an XTC fan (that means you Steve-O) then you should love the Dogs who died in their hot car too.

Listening To: Stuart Davis, Something Simple

The Mighty Stu has a new album out on his new record company, Majeski Media.

Something Simple is Stuart's 10th ablbum and includes the song "Already Free" which is the closing track to the Owen Wilson film Drill Bit Taylor. I haven't seen the movie, but the song is great. Hopefully this will get Stuart some extra attention.

The album is a typical Stuart romp through the playground of the soul, with songs about love, religion, fear, addiction and his newest family member.

There is also a remake of his classic Universe Communion complete with string orchestra.

Not as quirky and edgy as some of his earlier albums, but then I think Stuart has been mellowing into family life and fatherhood, and I think he and his record company may have been looking for something more accessible for new listeners. But there is still lots of energy and the twisted mystic lyrics his fans have come to expect.

Check out Stu's new web site and pick up a copy of Something Simple.

Listening To: Saul Williams

Saul Williams has a new album out: The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!

You can download it for $5 bucks at: http://niggytardust.com/saulwilliams/menu

Rock on, Brother!

Reading: Mainspring by Jay Lake

Mainspring is my introduction to Jay Lake, and I found it to be an uplifting and enjoyable read. Mainspring is the story of a young clockmaker, Hethor, who lives on an Earth that is literally a clockwork earth. You can look into the sky and see the great brass gears that guide the Earth on its orbit around the lantern of the sun. It is an allegorical and metaphorical tale of growing up and discovering our place in a wide world that we did not make or set in motion. Lake has a delightful ability to conjure up those old Victorian novels of exploration and the steam-driven gadgetry of Jules Vern. I found his tour of the clockwork earth and Hethor’s discoveries of himself to be enchanting and fun. There are airships and savages, magic and miracles, as Hethor tries to find a way to rewind the mainspring keeping the Earth spinning.

I read a few reviews this morning; and many of them criticize the author for not delivering more answers about the nature of the world. But I feel Lake properly sets course by the strength of the questions being explored. Hethor discovers much about the world and himself by trusting in his questions, and the reader can discover much as well.

Mainspring is a lovely little fairly tale adventure that does not require thousands of pages or multiple volumes to cast its spell. If you have a spare evening or two, pick up Mainspring.