Links, hold the sausage

I'm sitting here in the Wayward coffeehouse while Otis is out at her book club. About 85% of the twenty or so people here are with a group whose table stand reads Steam Punk, 6:30 to 10:30. There have been a couple of brassy artifacts passed around, but the group actually looks like any generic activities club - no goggles, beaver hats, or spats to be seen. It's a little disappointing actually. I haven't made contact yet, but I am eavesdropping pretty good.

Although none of it is steam-punky, I wanted to share some stuff that has been cluttering up my bookmarks folder. The first is this lovely little movie that was apparently made as a student final project. It is a visual treat as well as a nice little slice of whimsy:

Machu Picchu Post from Machu Picchu Post Team on Vimeo.

The next selection is also artistic, but in a completely different idiom. Apparently, there is a new mash-up genre gaining popularity: re-making (usually clip-heavy) credit sequences for one pop culture icon for another pop culture icon. Here, take a look at Han Solo, p.i. to see what I mean:



Now, I wasn't kidding when I called this artistic. As stunned as you are by the sheer awesomeness of the juxtaposition, take a look at this side-by-side comparison with the original sequence and see how well the creator, TheCBVee, matched not just the visual feel of the credits, but the thematic and emotional elements as well.



Well played, sir.

As I mentioned in the last post, I spent last week impersonating an art student. Coincidentally, I tripped over this art school blog post while I was there. I have to say that I saw some of those students in the class, but I don't think I was much like this guy:

And finally, something from the wingnut file. While researching something real, I ran across this political commentator's rant against the pernicious influence on our culture of tobacco, alcohol, drugs... and dogs. Yes, the pet industry in its unholy alliance with child-scorning misfit "pet parenting" dog owners is a threat to our society that rivals crack cocaine. Mmmmmmm-kay. Need I say she is member of the GOP?

Finally - just as I finished typing that last sentence - a woman came in wearing a pith helmet with goggles up on the crown, a funky adventuress vest, and long, wide trousers. Yay, hardcore steampunk lady! Time for me to start writing that new GURPS campaign!

Traffic refuge/Comics class

So, I left the Pacific Northwest College of Art some time ago, but I haven't made it out of Clark County yet. Traffic is just misery, so I have taken refuge at a Krispy Kreme donut shop to wait out the storm a bit.*

(By the way, although I am not all that fond of donuts, KK is a pretty good place to hangout, at least here in The Couv. It is open until 10:00 pm, has a nice strong wi-fi signal, and sells coffee for a dime (some weird "depression-era prices" marketing scheme.)

For those who weren't completely in the loop, I have been attending a week-long class at PNCA called Graphic Novel Intensive. It is both a theory and a studio class; we have been doing readings and having lectures/group discussions, but we have also been producing our own work. In fact, the class work will be collected in an anthology that will be published through one of those Internet just-in-time printing places.

The real draw for me was that the visiting instructor for the course was Ellen Forney, whom I have gone on about before, and she did not disappoint in her high wattage lessons and demonstrations. Dan Duford, the PNCA staff instructor, brought an energetic and playful nature to the heavy lifting of class readings and exercises.

I've been messing about with comics analysis and criticism for some time, and it's starting to show; much of the theoretical material was old news for me, and based on the feedback to my exercises, my grasp of the language of comics is pretty well-developed by now. But as usual, my skill set seems to fill up with writing and, even more so, editing techniques; my actual graphic production still leaves a lot to be desired. But that was part of why I invested so much time (and took on double-duty with my teaching responsibilities) to be a part of the class: I wanted to explore the studio experience and dive into the creative process of comics.

So I played around with my drawing and even experimented a little bit with brushes. Usually, I know what I want to do, but I feel so limited in my talent that I abandon my ideas for something simpler to execute. I know this is chickening out; the wonderful cartoonist Donna Barr supposedly once said if you want to be a comics artist, first make 10,000 drawings. I have seen this in action, even: one of may favorite webcartoonists, Jeph Jacques, started out with stuff looking like this, and now does this. I guess I just have to decide if I really want to do this all myself, or if my destiny is to write and edit.

In any case, I did want to share my final product. I brought this from concept to thumbnails to final pencils to inks and then a bunch of Photoshopping (especially the lettering) in the last 24 hours. I'll post more in a substantive post with other scans, but for now, here's the house ad for a series based on a concept you might remember.

*I'm not going to post this right away because Otis thinks I am coming home tomorrow morning and I am going to surprise her.

Poesy

It was a bit of a game night around the townhouse last night. Johnbai came over with Ticket to Ride and Otis, he, and I spent a nice hour or so building railroads across Europe. Fruitloops came over to observe the tail end, and then we moved into the living room for some competitive poetry.

Y'see, in the relentless search to market every variation of those Magnetic Poetry tiles, which started as a simple novelty and then grew into an amalgamation of all kinds of speciality collections and related products, the public was once treated to the Magnetic Poetry Game. It came with two sets of conditions cards, an extensive set of tiles, a little refrigerator door to put the poetry on, and a set of ill-thought-out rules (score a point for each word in your poem?). In her gentle and non-competitive way*, Otis tossed away the rules and turned the whole deal into a series of writing exercises. Here they are.**

Otis led off, but her warm-up poem is lost to the fog of history. Johnbai went next; the cards said his poem had to be about flowers and had to begin with a word starting with "T":


Tender cat lick boy,
full of dream-time and chocolate,
wish for a
ticklish moon where
blue flowers storm through the sky.
Their ache is thunder and peace.

We all liked it, but didn't think it was about flowers. (So if we had been playing by the rules, Johnbai would have lost!)

Fruitloops went next. She had to do something about holidays and begin with a word starting with "C."


Clean together, soon
Crowded cheek kisses
Celebrate dark chocolate.
Remember life and family,
Blue butter angel.
It's a game,
Leave it
Calm.

I wonder if her own repetition of that initial C was deliberate or unconscious.

I went next; I had to say something about rain, and the first line of the poem had to be an exclamation.


It's too dry!

Clouds,
spread and sex the sky.
Sound of thunder, sing.

Water,
fly,
lick green hill,
clean that mountain,
kiss this ground.

I think I was influenced by our recent dry spell. The board came back to Otis. Her task was a curious concatenation: Begin a poem about "home town" with the word "journey."


The journey is a film
in my skin -- tender, cold
like a dark drive to the dog bed of home.

I leave this prisoner ground
tongue-faced and alone

With, that were done.

* O showed up during the poetry game, but chose not to participate the non-competition.
** Any editing during transcription is my fault; blame me if it ruins the poem.

Launching into an explanation

The other day, during a conversation with some pals including Johnbai, the subject of catapults came up, as it often does with D&D types and other geeks. The discussion created a bit of a disagreement in fact: I said that catapult properly referred to a device for throwing javelins and that a ballista threw rocks; Johnbai insisted that it was the other way around. (We did both agree that a trebuchet was the large, counter-weighted slinging device.) Since we are both brilliant men, this disconnect bothered me, so I have tracked down its cause: what I am using is more like Roman terminology, while Johnbai is using medieval nomenclature.

Roman artillery came in three major forms: the ballista, the onager, and the catapult, from heaviest to lightest. The onager looks the most like what most people think of when they hear the word catapult.

(click any picture to embiggen)

Notice that the throwing arm gets tension by its position in a twisted skein of cord/ cable / ligaments/ they-apparently-aren't-sure-precisely-what. These engines usually threw rocks at the walls of cities.

The ballista, which Johnbai envisions as a "giant crossbow," was actually the heaviest device in the Roman arsenal, and it usually threw rocks as well, but could reach much farther or hit much harder.

I guess this one was shooting directly at troops, since it has no elevation to speak of. It also uses the twisted-skein method for tension.

The catapult was the smallest siege engine, with perhaps a little more accuracy:


You can see why Johnbai would think of this as a ballista; it does bear a superficial resemblance to a big crossbow, but notice that the arms don't receive tension from being bent: they are also situated in twisted skeins. Anyway, this is the first thing that comes into my mind when I hear the word catapult; somehow this "proper" Roman use of the term has ingrained itself in my consciousness, and that was the source of our terminological discord.

Five hundred years after Rome fell, siege engines were still in use, but some of the names had changed. Catapult had become a more general term for all sort of throwing devices; the mid-range weapon of choice for this type was the mangonel, its equine nickname echoing the Roman weapon named after a wild ass:


Ballista in the medieval period no longer referred to a heavy siege engine for throwing rocks, but to the overgrown crossbow so popular in D&D campaigns:


Notice the change here: this machine gets it tension from bending a bow in the same manner as a standard crossbow, not from the twisted-skein method. This is what really distinguishes it from the Roman catapult.

Of course, when Johnbai was DM for the D&D campaign that ended with the Great Grelsch Insurrection, he was never specific as to whether the siege weapons employed by the Thieves' Guild Navy to attack the fortress were powered by the twisted-skein or bent-bow method, so we'll never know if they were Roman catapults or medieval ballistas.

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Credit where credit is due: the information and illustrations for this piece came from this book, which, according to some paperwork inside, has been in my possession for over 37 years. Oy vey.

What if #1

Back in junior year of high school - that would make this 1973 or '74 - we sons of Regis were given the push to start applying to colleges. Lots of letters went out to the Ivy League and to "good, small liberal art colleges" (as our guidance counselor called schools of a certain kind and caliber). I dutifully followed suit, but threw a wild card into the mix: I sent a letter of inquiry (since I could not find an application form) to the University of Iceland at Reykjavik.

I can't now recall what prompted this action. I had always had some fondness for the island nation, with its storied Viking past, its legendary linguistic protectionism, its phone-book-by-first-name, and its oldest currently-seated parliamentary body (the Althing, founded 930 CE). Perhaps we had just been reading the Elder Eddas or something; at any rate, I thought it was a good idea to consider leaving Brooklyn for a course of higher education in an isolated and insular nation-state located on a volcanic island in the North Atlantic.

So, off went the letter, and, a few weeks later, back came the reply. Even in the formal academic English, the message was unmistakable: thanks, but no thanks, and don't call us, we'll call you. There was some explanation of the difference between European and American higher education (they wouldn't consider me for admission until I had completed two years of college) but one other point came through loud and clear: the language of instruction was Icelandic. The first year of admission, I would take Icelandic History and Icelandic; after that, I was on my own. The school clearly had no structured international student program, and displayed little interest in starting one with me.

Despite this warm welcome, I decided not to pursue my admissions process. Or perhaps after a few years, I just forgot. I did complete an associate's degree in 1978, but moved to Portland, Oregon to begin building my ultimately checkered work history instead of sending my transcript to Reykjavik. As it does, life happened, and here I am.*

But I did make it to Iceland, and even to the university. In summer of 2001, I took an extended vacation in Europe, and had the travel agent get me a weekend junket to Reykjavik while I was staying in England; I think I flew in on a Thursday night and stayed until Sunday. While I was enjoying the cosmopolitan delights of the city, I made sure to pay a visit to the university. It seemed very much like any other university, not an especially magical place, and I noticed when I was in the bookstore buying a T-shirt that about 75% of the textbooks were in English. I guess times changed at Háskóli Íslands.

Occasionally, I wonder what would have become of me had I pursued this educational plan, but the variables are so vast that I cannot even begin to reckon how different my life might have been. Perhaps it is enough for me to remember that, as a youth, I was the type of person who thought that initiating such an endeavor was perfectly reasonable and to never lose that sense of what is possible.

*For what it's worth, I did get accepted to a good, small liberal arts college, Reed, but chose instead to go to a crappy, small, private community college, Mercy.

When I so informed him, the guidance counselor looked at me and held one hand high over his head. "This," he said, "is Mount Olympus, and here is Reed." He put his other hand down around his shins. "And here is Mercy."

The Greek myths never grabbed me as much as the Norse, so I wasn't swayed. After getting my associate's, I finished my bachelor's twenty-four years later at the oldest distance education institution in the country and then took a master's from a regional, comprehensive public university. So it goes.

Report from Client Exile

Otis has a busy morning working, so I have hied myself to one of my favorite spots: The Green Bean.

I love to plug this place - it's a cool little non-profit coffeehouse that supports a bunch of worthwhile local causes. Nice work, even if their parent organization loves the jebus. There's a particularly happy energy in here this morning, with some study group (talking about electricity and cells?) that just left, a bunch of people working on laptops, some kids - just lots of activity and plenty of sunshine streaming through the big windows.

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Of course, the big deal right now is that yesterday was the last day of the regular school year, which ended with the Cascadia graduation ceremony at 7:00 last night in beautiful Lynnwood. So, counting today, there are 107 days until the first day of fall quarter. Wow! That's a lot! In point of fact, it is not quite so golden as it might otherwise be. In an attempt to get a handle on my summer, I (of course) made a spreadsheet. Here's the chart (click to embiggen):

Lots of things, small and large, floating around these 15 weeks. For example, I need to post my grades by Tuesday, and I'm luckier than many of my colleagues in that my grading is actually finished; I also have a six-hour planning retreat on Monday. I've picked up two classes for the eight-week summer session, and I will probably have a half-dozen half-day working meetings of the Program Review committee in July and August, plus some report-writing time. The required pre-fall days start two weeks before the quarter, and I'll likely have to go to some meetings to plan those, too.

I'm not complaining at all, mind you; I have a long list of personal projects to work on, and I fully expect to have plenty of time to dig into all of them, as well as enjoying the lake every day and some occasional weekend trips. We may even see the return of Summer Humpday dinners in some form! Let's face it, 107 is a big number no matter how you slice it up.

So here's to a full, full summer!

Coffee shop blogging, old style

Now this is the way to do café society when it's all summery like this: outdoors on a busy city street, letting life stream by and around. I'm down the street from the townhouse at Peaks, giving them yet another chance. The wi-fi seems strong today but my iced coffee is more tepid than cool, so it's still a mixed result at best.

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My days of regularly photoblogging my coffee stops aren't so long ago, but a few times recently I have found myself slipping into reveries of times long past. The most acute was occasioned by my seeing a movie trailer for the remake of The Taking of Pelham 123. This caused me to seek out the some clips from the original on YouTube, and that's what led me in search of lost time.

You see, the original book and movie of Pelham 123 came out at exactly the right period in my life to be deeply influential and important: that is, when I was sixteen or so, immersed in old-school pulp adventures, stumbling-to-maturity comic books, Humphrey Bogart movies, and Raymond Chandler novels. Crime as metaphor, heroes vs. villains, the antihero, battered morality, and flawed ethics were themes I and my like-minded pals grabbed, swallowed, inhaled, and sweat. It was a period of time when traditional narratives were becoming problematized for us, when it seemed the world, like television, was no longer merely black and white.

Compounding Pelham 123's appeal as an example of our chosen genre was its setting: New York City, in the subways. This was my world; my high school years saw me on the BMT and the IRT (transfer at 14th Street/Union Square) for over two hours each weekday, and as much or more on the weekends, looking for diversion. The City was in bad shape in the seventies, a mean drunk in the middle of bender, dirty, dangerous, and broke. Simultaneously thrilled and appalled by our home, we responded to stories that wallowed in its degeneracy. This story, and its contemporary, Report to the Commissioner, captured that fatalistic edge while still providing us with enough "good guy" energy to keep us from spinning off into nihilism.

All this was happening in during a time when I was discovering, sometimes in very indirect ways, who I was, and what I valued, and what was important. And once again encountering The Taking of Pelham 123, while it was only one small piece of that mosaic, puts me in mind of that whole growth experience.

Nostalgia has been commodified along with so much else in our culture; we package and sell the memories of our youth and even those bygone days that we never experienced. But it would do us well to remember that the word nostalgia contains the root form of "pain" as well as that of "home"; it is not an emotion to take lightly, and it brings with it much more than fondness and warmth. For as I remember the young man who was captivated by a certain crime drama, I realize that never again will I be as open to the world, as impressed with new-to-me ideas, and as constantly surprised every day to find out that the world might not be exactly as I thought it was the day before. With age comes a certain amount of weariness and dullness; I can cultivate my wonder and practice my curiosity, but the eyes of a sixteen-year-old have a special quality as magic as X-ray Specs, and as young-at-heart as I remain, I will never see the world through those eyes again.

I am now about the same age as Walter Matthau was when he made the movie.

Echoes of unuttered words

That sounds like such a fun ride I don’t care where I sit.

In a jocular exchange about the next day's carpooling, a pal sent me an email containing nothing but that line. A weird sensation suddenly struck me; sort of a faux-deja vu. It was as if I knew I had never seen or heard the sentence before, but I felt as if I ought to have done.

I could faintly hear Bette Davis's voice and realized that there were some echoes of this classic line from All About Eve:



But that wasn't quite it. The line wasn't that diabolical; it was more mischievous. Then I heard Olympia Dukakis as Clairee in Steel Magnolias:



This was more like it. Like this exchange, the new line hints a little at schadenfreude, and the anticipation of some small misfortune occurring to someone else, or perhaps the expectation of a minor villain being served comeuppance.

If nothing else, it signifies enthusiasm for an impending event that might not be entirely innocent, but isn't mean, either.

So I took the line and heard it in the voice (and the North Texas accent) of my great and good friend Gweekers; it suited her perfectly and sensation was complete.

That sounds like such a fun ride I don’t care where I sit.

A great one-liner waiting for its context. Thanks, RF.

June is busting out all over! *

Well, I guess the calendar gave up on spring and decided to jump right into summer. It was 81 yesterday and 82 today, and they predict more of the same for the next few days. I'm not complaining at all; it's like I'm getting the same weather as Otis in Maui, except without the island breezes. Or the beach. Or the ocean. Well, a lot of stuff is missing, actually. But the weather is pretty darn close to the same! Hello, June!

I really should be in bed instead of posting this, but May was the month that saw the shuttering of the site, and I guess I wanted to make sure I was here on June 1 to declare it re-opened. NatDog sussed it out: she said the other day, "I knew you were working on something else, because you sure haven't been blogging." Well, I have been, and I still am, working on other stuff, but I'm back blogging, too.

So much is going on that makes me want to write stuff. Good things: blessings and satisfactions and achievements and options. Not-so-good things: challenges and struggles and disappointments and choices. Threads in the rich tapestry of life, as the Jesuits who taught me in high school were wont to say, threads which I would love to start sharing again.

I had dinner with my pal A-Wo tonight, and we were reflecting on that tapestry, particularly on how some things in life today are so different - my G1 Android® GooglePhone® is a marvel, without a doubt - while some things - like the decrepit restaurant booth we were sitting in - would have been instantly recognizable even fifty years earlier. The discussion put me in mind of a line from Messner-Loebs and Fujitake's overlooked classic from 1987, The Dragons of Summer. The bureaucrat-hero, commenting on life in a future filled with all kinds of technological advances, says

Oddly enough, the ordinary things of life - eyeglasses, neckties, danishes, poverty - seem to stay the same through time, while complex things like transportation change constantly. They call it Thompson's Law.

Well, I can't find any record of that law, but we have arrived at the future and it seems to be in effect. I don't even notice that the classroom I teach in is wired to the hilt and puts the most extensive network of knowledge in history right at my fingertips, yet I am still wearing sandals and T-shirts that I could have worn to high school. I don't know what to do with this understanding yet, but somehow I can't shake the feeling that I could find wisdom in it if I looked long enough.

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* Oh, and for all of you who were disappointed I was didn't take the easy way with that title, here's a picture of Otis from Hawaii. Makalapua!