On hold during a call at work today, and the muzak being played was The Doors The Unknown Soldier. I don’t quite know what to make of that. Was it a statement? Nostalgia? It was weird either way.
Archive for March, 2007
Florida State University hosted an “Evening with Bruce Campbell” last night in their Union Ballrooms. Mr. Campbell, best known for his role as “Ash” in the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness films is one of Hollywood’s finest and funniest B-Movie Actors. He spent the first part of the evening talking about Florida, quizzing and offering cash prizes to people who could answer his questions. He kept it light-hearted and funny and full of sarcasm. We were treated to a clip of his latest film, “My name is Bruce”, and lastly to an “anything goes” impromptu Q&A session about him. Thoroughly enjoyable, and while obviously not a seasoned public speaker, Mr. Campbell kept the whole thing fun and tongue-in-cheek.
He was at one point very serious and expressed modesty in regards to his films thanking the audience for the continued support of his films stating, “You guys are the “demographic”. You have all the power, give your money where you want to give it. You guys are the reason films like Bubba Ho-Tep get picked up and distributed. Independent films aren’t released, they escape. And thanks to your support and interest films like Bubba Ho-Tep are a success.”
Funny, irreverent, cynical and down to earth, Bruce Campbell is my favorite actor!
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In our country we teach our children to “JUST SAY NO!” But only to illegal drugs. Those drugs not produced by Pharmaceutical Conglomerates like GlaxoSmithKline or Pfizer. Those drugs not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. But do we spend any educational dollars on telling kids that they can find ways to live without “Prescription Drugs”? No, not really, and I guess that sort of message doesn’t garner much in the way of tax-deductible donations. I’m not saying there aren’t benefits to taking SOME of them, but my grandmother had a xanax dependency, I’ve had friends who have suffered the effects of SSRI’s, and I’ve known of doctors more than willing to throw a drug at a problem rather than try to solve it outright.
Then comes yesterday-This site has received spam comments before, and I have a great little plug-in that catches the spammers, it’s called Akismet and is free for download (if you’re using WordPress then you already have it), but yesterday it netted a large haul. 11 spam comments. Can you guess what they were selling? Drugs. Not illegal ones, like marijuana, no, legal ones, but still selling with all the vigor and hustle of a street-corner pusher-man trying his damnedest to move some rocks. Just for shit and giggles, I’ve included all eleven comments here, altered of course so I’m not giving any traffic to these “hustlers”, besides the stuff is easy enough to find, heck, walk into any Doctor’s office and ask for them by name! You have my blessing! Really!
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All this effort to sell pharmaceuticals, why? Don’t they sell well enough on their own? Or is it one of those instances where in an overcrowded marketplace you have newcomers with a dream of financial success, and armed with Anthony Robbins tapes, look at market conditions (profit vs. supply) and say, “Me, too!”
THAT must be it.
Even more ironic than the proliferation of Pharmaceutical spam in a country actively opposed to (illegal) drug use, is the fact that I get more spam for drugs than for porn. 
I am a fortunate human-being, fortunate to know and collaborate with a tireless and talented individual. A man who can never receive enough praise for his prodigious skills and knowledge. A man who helped me see a half-baked idea for a comic book called Hot Lunch realized. A man that I thoroughly enjoy working with due to his wit, ideas and principles, Michael-Gerard. I talk a lot about the work I do, I don’t, however, talk enough about the people I am graced to work with. Example? The comic featured at left was the product of four people. The wonderful Lauria Lovestrand-Trout did the interiors in subtle watercolors. Paolo Garcia came thru with some graff text. Michael and I scripted and drafted it together jam style, The result was Hot Lunch, What Price Tomorrow? #1 We’re currently at work building a place to show off the entire body from stem to stern, so you can have more ways to get a Hot Lunch!
Hitchcock was a big fan of it, and countless other story-tellers throughout history have used it as well. A “red-herring”, from a story-telling perspective, is the act of deliberately inserting a plot point into a story so as to set audiences to expect one outcome so that they are taken completely by surprise when the real plot emerges.
A good example is found in the film Psycho. (oops! Spoiler!) Janet Leigh’s character steals a bundle of cash from her employer and then leaves town, hiding the money within a newspaper in the trunk of her car. She makes an ill-fated decision to stay at the Bates Motel, where the plot takes an unforeseen NEW direction, and the money is promptly forgotten.
Now let’s take into account, the recent events within the Marvel Comics Universe, most notably-Captain America’s death/murder/assasination. I’ll admit I fell into the trap yesterday and responded with outrage to it, then subsequently went to the comic book store yesterday evening. I was played, and easily, too. Along with the rest of Amerika. That’s right, we all got played. Anybody remember the “Death of Superman”? Over ten years ago, DC Comics pulled the same BS and murdered one of their icons. The resulting national attention of the (fictional) death of one of our country’s most recognized icons ended up meaning big bucks for DC Comics and, by default, parent company Time-Warner Inc. The same is happening here, with Stephen Colbert talking about it on cable television and even Variety publishing the obituary of Steve Rogers (aka. Captain America).
But I was talking about red-herrings. I was, wasn’t I? Yes, Marvel Comics has a trump card, a way to get the genie back in the bottle, or a way to get Spider-Man back behind the mask. Maybe it should be seen as more of a safety net. You see, three years ago, Marvel Comics, or its writers more specifically, revealed to the world that one of its “Heroes”, the Scarlet Witch, had the ability to “alter reality”. She did so and attacked her friends and colleagues, killing some of them. Two years ago the heroes confronted her about it which resulted in her “rewriting reality” again (actually twice over). Last year the fallout of her actions led the heroes of the Marvel Comics Universe into Civil War culminating in the past week’s event where Captain America was murdered. The Scarlet Witch is still in play, in hiding, but still there, waiting in the wings until the powers-that-be at Marvel Comics decide it’s time to fix things.
Yes. I am outraged at the “murder” of Captain America, but not because he’s gone. I’m mad because it’s only a matter of time before he is resurrected and all the pieces are put back into place. On the surface and publicly, Steve Rogers was murdered in the name of “good story”, less directly and even less publicly he has been murdered in the names of things such as “god-almighty dollar” and “units shipped” and “profits expanded”. I shouldn’t be disgusted, I know, it’s the nature of the beast, but to cheapen Captain America in this way… I don’t know, I’d like to think there’s a better story to tell, or a better way to tell it. But then, that’s me.
They killed Captain America?!? What? Who? Why?
um, read it for yourself, I think I need to collect myself….
IN the meantime someone find me Joe Quesada and “bring him to me cause I want to look him in the eye and tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is. Hallelujah. Holy shit. Where’s the Tylenol?”
I heard about Little Mosque on the Prairie through NPR, initially. Then my friend Michael Gerard found the episodes online. A primetime offering from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, it is a show about a small community of Muslims living in rural Canada. While not exceptional, the show is cute, but for someone like myself who knows not the first thing about Muslims or Islam, save those things fed to me by Amerikan media, I find it very educational.
The U.S. Military has found in recent years that by broadcasting Sesame Street in places such as Afghanistan, a window of comparison can be opened between diverse cultures with little or no understanding of one another. I feel the same can be said of Little Mosque. Fear can be a powerful weapon, no one will argue that, but fear is often generated by unknowns. If we are told explicitly what we should fear, it is lessened by our knowledge of it. But when we fear something without any knowledge of it, imagination can paint a scarier picture than anything detailed. The first episode of the show is a good example. A (white) man unwittingly enters the new mosque of the fictional town of Mercy. Upon being confronted by praying Muslims, he panics, fearing that he has stumbled upon a terrorist cell in his backyard. So goes the rest of the shows, highlighting and scrutinizing both the similarities and differences between Muslims and other faiths. But it does it comically!! There are extremists on both sides.
One of the Muslim characters sees the Western holiday of Halloween as evil, until his “traditional” clothing is mistaken for a terrorist costume and he is complimented on his “authenticity” and given candy. While not being overly original or tremendously well written the show does two things that no other show does:
1) Little Mosque features primarily Muslim characters. They are not walk-ons, or secondary. The show is about Muslims.
2) It attempts to educate on those incongruities which make all of us (descendants of white, christian, and otherwise non-Muslim upbringing) question and wonder about those peoples of the Muslim faith. Things like when does Ramadan start (there is no set date like Christmas), why do the women keep their hair covered,etc.,etc.
If we had a show like this in Amerika, I feel it could go a long way towards dispelling a lot of our ignorance towards Muslims. We might even find some common ground.
My friend, Chris Klotschkow, left town over a month ago. I’ve known him almost seven years now and I was sad to see him go. But I couldn’t fault his reasons or the opportunity he stumbled into. He’s one of the few people I have known that can debate on level with me, and our conversations were always interesting.
Case in point; this “doodle” from my sketchbook drawn the night before he left town for good.
