Dinner

Tonight, President Obama heads to Gotham Bar and Grill on 12th Street between Fifth Avenue and University Place for a fundraising dinner with 45 supporters who contributed $35,800 apiece for the honor, including Caroline Kennedy, Jerry Seinfeld, and Susan Sarandon. They'll dine on Satur Farms beet salad, 28-day dry-aged prime Niman Ranch steak with marrow mustard custard, Paffenroth baby carrots, Vidalia onion rings and Bordelaise sauce, Migliorelli Farm Honeycrisp apple strudel, and chocolate pecan pie with cinnamon ice cream for dessert. I definitely wouldn't turn that meal down, though I'd want to pay less for it.

Right now, the area surrounding the restaurant is cordoned off with metal barricades along that block of 12th Street, and along Fifth and University from 11th Street to 13th Street. Many officers at every intersection. We've had this President in this neighborhood a few times before and it's never been like this. Understand, these barricades don't do anything other than making it harder to park along any of those streets, and people are doing that anyway. It's still possible to walk right past the Gotham Bar and Grill and people are still doing that too. It's not for reasons of security. It's about security theater. The NYPD wants to make sure we see those barricades there so that we'll know they're in charge of the situation. I assume they anticipate some kind of Occupy-themed protest and are sending a message of authority and control. No hijinx will be tolerated. It was exactly the same in lower Manhattan on November 17th in the midst of the protest march; everything was running smoothly and traffic and pedestrians were going about their business normally that evening, except for the massive police presence making sure you knew they were there and slowing everything down long after the march had gone past.

Still, it's an interesting location Obama's fundraisers have chosen. The intersection of 12th Street and University Place became notorious a couple of months ago. That's because the Gotham Bar and Grill is right across the street from this spot:

This has been a very strange year for my neighborhood. Just in the past four months we've had an earthquake, a flood, and a police riot, not to mention multiple protest marches and acts of civil disobedience. Part of me hopes it will be a bit quieter next year, but another part of me is glad I don't have to feel like I'm missing out on any of the excitement.

Update: photos from today here.

Pre-viral alert

Before everyone else on the Internet posts a link to them, I want credit for being the first person to tell you to look at these famous comic covers adapted by Kerry Callen.

Police action

The start is a bit of a shock, but watch the whole thing. You might not expect how it ends.

This took place on Friday afternoon, November 18. Video found on and further discussion at Boing Boing.

Update: more video from another vantage point here. The officer casually using pepper spray against nonviolent students as if he's treating his garden for aphids has been identified as a Lt. John Pike. Some folks are suggesting that in honor of his actions, the unnecessary use of pepper spray against peaceful protestors who pose no threat or resistance should be referred to as "Piking" and those who carry out such action be called "Pikers."

Utter bloody shambles

My birthmates Adam and Becca are both away on highly dangerous top-secret government missions requiring complete abandonment of their blogs for security reasons (I am forced to assume) so I'm all by myself for the birthday commemorative post this year. That being the case, I'd like to share a bit of personal archaeology and self-indulgence -- not specifically birthday-related, but instead a memory prompted by something Andrew Hickey mentioned a few days back.

On the evening of April 14, 1969 I was left alone in front of a television set. If we're being brutally honest that probably happened more often than my parents would have liked to admit, but on the other hand just look how I turned out. What I saw that particular night was so scary and inexplicable that it stayed with me…though it became so muddled as the years went by I began to wonder if I'd simply dreamed the whole thing. A supervillian or magician or mad scientist had kidnapped a quartet of rock musicians and turned them into robots. (Or had he built robot doubles to take their place while they remained in captivity? I wasn't sure.) I couldn't recall the rock group escaping and defeating their captor. I remembered something about the villain laughing as the show ended. Could the bad guy have won in the end? Surely that couldn't be right? For many years, I would remember bits of this at odd moments and wonder. Honestly, I would literally be lying awake in bed at night thinking what the hell was that?

As a teen, I wondered if this was some tv appearance by the Beatles, or if I was misremembering something from the movie Help!, but further investigation quickly proved that wrong. In my twenties, it seemed obvious that unfortunate quartet of abducted musicians must be the Monkees, and when the series aired as a marathon on cable I watched it closely. When nothing showed up matching my recollections, I became even more convinced it must all have been some kind of delusion on my part.

It was four decades after the original airing before I found out what it really was: I had seen the ill-fated NBC broadcast of 33 & 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee, a legendary fiasco of television history. I'd remembered the plot pretty accurately, as it turns out, and watching it as an adult my confusion was easily explained: it really was as strange and hallucinatory as I'd remembered it. The difference was, now I utterly loved it. That something so chaotic and undisciplined and shambolic, something so unfiltered and utterly of its moment, could have found its way onto national television is remarkable. And as I've said elsewhere, some of the music on this show is just spectacular.

More discussion of 33 & 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee can be found here and here. Here's the finale of the program, featuring the Monkees joined by The Buddy Miles Express, Paul Arnold and The Moon Express, Brian Auger, Julie Driscoll and the Trinity in a jam session. This is one of my favorite tv musical performances, even if it took forty years to realize that. Just once, almost by accident, this aired on network television:

Forgetting to remember

I guess it's inevitable that Occupy Wall Street will give in to the pressure to issue a list of specific policy demands, but I still wish they wouldn't. A list of demands would turn a protest movement into a hostage situation. It risks becoming a form of blackmail. "Agree to this list of conditions or we'll never return this captured piece of property." And OWS isn't a hostage situation; it's about calling attention to a broken system, not trying to take advantage of the brokenness to achieve the wishes of a small group undemocratically. This is the kind of thing the banks and financial institutions have been doing that we're all so unhappy about.

Anyone reading this has got to be familiar with current Doctor Who, right? The banks and corporations are the Silence. You're supposed to forget they exist as soon as you look away, but they own our country and our government and our mass media. To follow this analogy down the most obvious path, the Occupy movement all around the world is like the Doctor and his team. For the past month they've been the ones making us notice what we're conditioned to ignore and forget, and telling us not to look away.

(Yes, I realize that analogy followed to its logical conclusion leads to the human race being conditioned to kill them all on sight, but I hadn't really thought that far ahead. There is such a thing as being too literal, okay?)

The people in Zuccotti Park aren't the ones doing the occupying. They're the ones protesting the occupation.

crossposted from Google+

The word from high

(click to enlargify)

Directions: 

Maxwell's is located at 1039 Washington Street in Hoboken, NJ (map) about a dozen blocks north of the Hoboken PATH station or four blocks south of the 14th Street Pier.

If you're attending NYCC, ferry service leaves for Hoboken every twenty minutes from 39th Street and 12th Avenue, directly behind the Javits Center. If you're not attending NYCC and aren't already in midtown Manhattan, PATH might be a better option.

Tickets are available at venues listed on the flyer. Sure to be the best $10 you could spend that weekend. Hope to see you there!

Update: In response to this post, there has been an outbreak of comics history over at Rip Jagger's Dojo. All passengers are advised to remain seated until comics history has come to a complete halt.

Another place you can find me not doing a whole lot

I know, I know, I know. I've neglected my homestead here and the place has gone to seed. The last thing I need is to be distracted by some shiny new hangout in another part of town. But they have pinball there! And a billiards table!

Anyway, I'm now on Google+ thanks to an invite from a friend who is infinitely cooler than I ever could be. However, I can strive to emulate him at least in some small way. So if you're there yourself, please feel free to look me up and circle me, or whatever the operative verb would be. And if you're not already on Google+ but would like to be, I surely have an invite or two to spare. Just let me know.

Things just haven't been propitious for any kind of longish writing lately, and the really brief posts I've done recently never felt to me like an appropriate use of the blogging form. I'm thinking that Google+ might be the best place for the one or two sentence updates and photos and YouTube videos, the lightweight stuff I haven't been sharing anyplace online mainly because I'm not on Twitter nor Facebook. I've avoided Twitter only because I fear the temptation of being sucked into it; I've avoided Facebook only because it is pure evil.* Maybe this can act as a substitute for both.

Let me emphasize that I'm not giving up blogging here. I love blogging here. Longer posts will appear whenever I feel like it. Could be next week. Or next month. Who says this isn't the astounding Estoreal Age of Delayed Gratification? Until then, face front, true believer!



* Yes yes yes, I know. Google may also be pure evil…but as far as I can tell, regular folks have more options to protect themselves against Google than they do with Facebook.

Children remember Sarah Jane

Recommended only if you're willing to risk a fair-sized lump in your throat. Here are comments left by young viewers in memory of Elisabeth Sladen on the BBC website:

CBBC - Newsround - What are your memories of Sarah Jane star?

I don't think I've ever seen something like this for a children's show before, but it's a very good thing for the BBC to present online. Not just in terms of paying tribute to one of their own or honoring a well-liked celebrity and respected actor, but in sending the message to kids that it's safe to acknowledge the fact of death and normal to feel upset when someone you like dies. Even if it's someone you only knew from watching television with your family.

As I said in a comment to cerebus660, describing Lis Sladen as best known for her role in Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures kind of misses the point: a lot of folks now in their forties and fifties, and still others who might not even be ten years old yet, know her best for being there during our childhood. It's not that a companion from Doctor Who is gone, but that we've lost a companion.

No cover no minimum

(via The Mary Sue)

Please forgive the extended absence. A bit longer before I'm up to blogging again, but this I had to share right away. I recommend viewing in fullscreen mode for the total effect.

P.S.: And now there's a sequel with 100% more Ian Anderson!

Totally called it

Me back in October:

NYCC may have to consider adding a fourth day, and making that extra day for industry and trade people, including librarians and teachers and press. For people who are working during the con, those early hours on Friday before the doors open to the public might end up being the only chance they have to see the rest of the con (as it was for me). And really, the definition of "professional industry person" is becoming so diffuse, it's not so elitist as it might once have been. It still rankles to make the suggestion. I come out sounding like the guy who's just got in, trying to pull the ladder up behind him. But it may have to happen.

According to the official NYCC blog today:

NYCC will take place over four days this October. New York Comic Con has experienced exponential growth since it was launched in 2006, and our expansion into a fourth day now will allow the show to accommodate even more attendees and provide additional programming and business opportunity for the artists, creators, and exhibitors who are the foundation of the show's success.

According to the blog, NYCC 2011 will be from Thursday, October 13 through Sunday, October 16. The show is open to the public all day Friday through Sunday, plus a limited number of four day tickets will be sold.  Thursday will feature academic programming beginning at noon, and the show floor will be open for professional hours and a new preview night on Thursday from 4 to 7 PM.

I don't think this will ease crowding at all on the other three days, but that isn't the purpose of this move. If folks who are working the convention or attending it as guests actually get to see the rest of it first, they'll be in a better mood -- it won't be quite so much like being herded through cattle pens and getting put on display -- and I think that will make the overall convention experience a tiny bit nicer for everyone. But maybe that's me trying to rationalize privilege as a universal virtue. I expect to be working behind a table (or two) again this year, so the extra day makes a huge difference for me.

One other surprise is that tickets go on sale February 7.

Crazy

(via PZ Myers)

For the man who has everything but

What do the above images have in common? Colorist Tom Ziuko.

I used to act as Macintosh troubleshooter/repairman/tutor for Tom about ten years ago, when he lived in a tiny closet-sized apartment near the U.N. building in midtown Manhattan. When I say this place was closet-sized, I mean it literally -- I know for a fact some people who read this blog have closets larger than that whole apartment. Tom shared the apartment with a three-legged cat; there wasn't enough room in that place for a fourth leg. Tom was one of the nicest people I ever worked for, and absolutely one of the sweetest and most generous people I encountered in the comics field.

When I was looking over Tom's published credits, I was surprised by just how many landmark comics series and cult favorites he was directly involved with. Among many others and in no particular order, Tom was colorist on such titles as Mazing Man, Amethyst, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Legends, Thriller, Phil Foglio's Angel and the Ape, and John Byrne's Superman reboot. My own favorite comics work of his is the 1985 Superman Annual by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons preceding their collaboration on Watchmen. Check out that link at the start of this paragraph for more of his credits.

In spite of all his ability and all this terrific work to his name, a health crisis has left Tom in financial peril. I've donated what I can, and the only other thing I have to offer is trying to raise awareness. The comic book business has been pretty hard on a lot of people who worked on comics I loved, and pretty hard on friends of mine who were employed by it. Tom is both of those, and you'll understand I get kinda tired of watching it happen. Read this post at Daniel Best's blog and see what you think.

Also, comics scripter and letterer Todd Klein offers a post about Tom that really captures the guy.

Thundersnow

Apparently this is a thing that happens.

I'd never even heard of it before, but it's happening as I write this. In all the fearsome Pennsylvania winters of my childhood, I never heard thunder or saw lightning during a blizzard…but we just had both a few minutes ago. Awesome. And such a heavy metal name, too. This is better than Hanukkah and Christmas and the Going Forth of Wadjet rolled into one.

Heimdall

The following is posted here so as to spare myself the trouble of retyping it in lots of other places and I can just direct people here. Especially non-comics people who are trying to make sense of the contradictory and sometimes very foolish things being said on this topic. I'm far from an expert, so if you spot any mistakes please give a shout in the comments.

A few random points about this:

Yes, a character whose nickname is "the White God" is being played by someone whose skin color is not what Westerners colloquially refer to as "white." Why, that's almost as unthinkable as a Hellene referring to the Furies as "the kind hearted ones" or someone calling a very large man "Shorty."

Brown-skinned people were not unknown to the Vikings; they raided Iberia and encountered Moors. And funnily enough, Norse mythology itself features two races of gods -- the Aesir and the Vanir -- fighting and then joining forces. (Something like the Avengers/Defenders War.) There's a line in one poem that seems to say Heimdall was originally a member of the Vanir who crossed over to join the Aesir. So the notion of Heimdall being a different race is not completely unheard of.

In Marvel folklore, discrepancies between the depiction of gods in the pages of Thor and in standard Norse myth -- Marvel's Thor not having red hair, for instance -- were long ago rationalized by the explanation that the comics characters are not the Aesir and Vanir et al but their successors, reborn after the fall of Asgard at Ragnarok. Subsequent writers have probably fiddled with that explanation. (However, that thing some people are saying about "they're actually shapeshifting space aliens who took the form of Norse gods" is something else altogether and not considered to apply here.) The point is, historical considerations about what the Norse would have had in mind for Heimdall as noted above aren't strictly relevant.

Thor comic co-creator Jack Kirby also created the first African superhero, the Black Panther. After that, he tried to make sure all his comic series were racially integrated. He even wrote and drew an African-American romance comic that was never published. When he was working on Thor, I bet if you had asked him "Hey Jack, why aren't there any Black gods in Asgard?" he'd have told you "Sure there are!" and introduced one in the next issue.

And most importantly, Jack Kirby nearly died fighting the Nazis…and if you ever told him that something in a movie made out of his Thor comics was going to cause irritation and annoyance to a bunch of ignorant bigoted white supremacist assholes, he would have been delighted. He would have said "Tell me what pissed them off and I'll do it twice as much!"

Its origin and purpose still a total mystery

It's full of stars!

I can't believe this is actually real, but apparently it is. I want one but I'm afraid of what might happen if my action figures evolve to become sentient tool-using creatures. And then one day the Monolith tells me "All these toys are yours, except the ones on the top shelf of the left bookcase. Attempt no landing there." No, the danger is just too great.

(via John Gruber)

Days of miracle and wonder

Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson looks out the Cupola window bay of the International Space Station at Earth, about 350 kilometers below, sometime in September 2010. More information here and here.

Don't forget that we live in a time when this is a real thing that actually happens.

(Link courtesy Mark Bourne, whose blog Open the Pod Bay Doors, HAL is always a source of great edification and information.)

Something to think about

"I see the Christian Science church already has its Christmas tree up."

"Yeah…and you notice, it's always a Christmas tree. Never a Science tree."

Costumed character

From Brooklyn to Beijing, and Into a Caldron:

Mr. Cabo favors the kind of dress inspired by turn-of-the century Chinese aristocrats: a long, black silk tunic with a mandarin collar that opens to the side and a black trilby over a black do-rag bearing Chinese characters for "dragon" and "trust." On his feet he wears black Dr. Martens boots.

One early Sunday morning, while commuting to work by subway, he explained his look. His attire communicates his respect for Chinese culture, he said, but it also has a more practical function. Because angry Chinese parents do not knock before barging into his office, when they see him behind his desk in the fashions of yesteryear they are momentarily flabbergasted.

"It gives me time to think," Mr. Cabo said as he walked through the crowd. At 6-foot-3, he appeared nearly a head taller than almost everyone around him. "Plus, they’re going to stare at me anyway," he said.

Recently, a 4-year-old started crying in fright at the sight of him. "I’m a little afraid to talk to you, because you’re black," a parent said to Mr. Cabo, who speaks fluent Mandarin.

From the New York Times, November 3, 2010.

He comes from a distant place. He's not like anyone else around him, and though he tries to fit in to a certain degree he is always apart. He's assumed to have special powers and abilities because of his alien heritage. He wears a distinctive outfit for psychological advantage, to evoke a specific response in the people he deals with. I don't say that Paul Cabo is heroic…but he may have more to tell us about what it would feel like to be a costumed hero in real life than you'll find in Watchmen or the works of Ellis or Millar.

(And if only he were an ex-hitman instead of a former Starbucks manager, the whole story would be like a sequel to Ghost Dog.)

Birthday honors

As ever, birthday greetings on this unusually fine day to Adam at The Blue Meanies Are Coming! and Becca at No Smoking in the Skull Cave. May the birthday elves leave every gift you want underneath the birthday tree...while birthday revelers dressed in their traditional costumes as Katy Perry, James Carville, and Helen Reddy knock on your door to offer you birthday candy and treats…and in the evening, birthday fireworks light up the skies and make your neighbors gasp in surprise and cheer the anniversary of your birth. Or however you do the whole birthday thing where you are.

How interesting that two of my favorite bloggers just happen to have birthdays on the same day. I mean, what are the odds?

For me, it's the day I apologize yet again to my mother for having caused her inconvenience one day many years ago. But as she points out, she didn't have anything better to do that day.

Lost weekend

photo by Rich Johnston

I feel a bit funny here without my initials -- they've been with me so long -- but it was time to let them go. They served their purpose, and I was getting uncomfortable with people actually calling me "Rab" (or sometimes, strangely, "Rob") in real life. It's time people know me not merely as an acronym but as the fellow who edited that book, and then that other book, and then wrote a book, and that comic that never came out and another one that did a long time ago.

Anyway, so yeah…NYCC 2010 went by in a blur of about ninety million people. That's the figure they announced, right? I'm prepared to believe it. For the first time, I feel like I missed a convention while actually attending it, mainly because the crowds kept you from walking the show floor freely. Most of my time wound up spent behind the Sequart table, plus an excursion to the world premiere screening of Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods on Saturday evening and helping out at the Q&A session for the film at the con the following day. If you were there at the convention panel, did you notice how the lights went off when they showed clips from the film and back on when they were done? That was me. Pushing the light switch.

I still maintain a table can be the best way to see a convention -- just stand there and let everyone come to you -- but this time it didn't work as well. I hate to say this, it really goes against the grain philosophically to sound elitist…but NYCC may have to consider adding a fourth day, and making that extra day for industry and trade people, including librarians and teachers and press. For people who are working during the con, those early hours on Friday before the doors open to the public might end up being the only chance they have to see the rest of the con (as it was for me). And really, the definition of "professional industry person" is becoming so diffuse, it's not so elitist as it might once have been. It still rankles to make the suggestion. I come out sounding like the guy who's just got in, trying to pull the ladder up behind him. But it may have to happen.

Overall, Sequart had a really good con, including the aforementioned film debut. The company launched two books at the con, my own Minutes to Midnight: Twelve Essays on Watchmen and a pre-release convention beta edition of the Gotham City 14 Miles anthology. Both sold out during the con. The Watchmen book sold out before the first day was over. The copies that Sequart expected to last the entire three days of the con went in less than a day. Finally we had to reserve two copies as display copies marked "sold out, please order online" so that prospective customers would have something to pick up and flip through at the table. And we did have people saying they'd come looking for the Sequart table specifically because they'd heard of this book and wanted to buy it. Amazing.

One factor that may have fed demand was a curious gap or omission I noticed at the con. Last year NYCC took place just before the Watchmen film opened, so the merchandise was everywhere. Toys, costumes, the works. This time, virtually no new Watchmen merchandise to be found. One costume merchant was selling Rorschach-style fedoras, with accompanying mask; you could find action figures at a steep discount. Not much else. Surely people didn't stop liking Watchmen just because the movie came and went? Having liked it for 25 years already? But that's how media marketing works. This time, because no one had any motive to generate false demand for it, Sequart had the market cornered for people who genuinely still wanted to know about Watchmen.

(If you're also one of those folks, Minutes to Midnight is not yet listed on Amazon but is now available on Lulu. I'll be sure to mention it when the Amazon link arrives.)

At the con, we also worked out what my next two projects for Sequart are going to be, so I've got a nicely packed schedule over the next several months. More as this story develops…