News of the Right

This week I adopted two new pet obsessions – “Sorority Girls from Hell!!” (“DUNH dah dah DUNH dah dah HAHAHAHAHAH!!!”) and this cartoon form HijiNKS Ensue:

This is just one of the extensive BSG-based comics the guys at HE have come up with. The commentary that accompanies each is worth the visit every time. Also, if you need to get me a gift, the have this t-shirt (I’m a medium. I AM!):





A little late in the season, perhaps, but if they update it to “‘12″, I know which cancer-ridden president I’ll be voting for!

phaal

Today, GLAAD announced its nominees for the best in LGBTQ representation in all forms of media. According to Joe Palmer, the criteria for nomination are:

1) Fair, Accurate and Inclusive Representations: Rather than portraying the LGBT community in broad stereotypes, the project deals with the characters or themes in a fair, accurate, and multi-dimensional manner. (This is different than a “positive role model.”) Inclusive means that
the diversity of the LGBT community is represented. This includes economic, geographic, and political diversity, as well as people of color, seniors, differently abled, etc.

2) Boldness and Originality: The project breaks new ground by exploring LGBT subject matter in a way not traditionally explored, and handles the LGBT content in a fresh and original
manner. Is this project cutting-edge?

3) Impact: The project impacts society in a significant way. Does this project
dramatically increase the cultural dialogue about LGBT issues? Or, does this project reach an audience that is not regularly exposed to LGBT images and issues?

4) Overall Quality: The overall quality of the project is considered. A project which is of extremely high quality adds impact and significance to the images and issues portrayed. Fair, accurate and inclusive images can sometimes be weakened when they are part of a poor-quality project.

Of course, I went right to this category:

OUTSTANDING COMIC BOOK
The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames (Vertigo/DC Comics)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Drew Goddard, Jeph Loeb and Joss Whedon (Dark Horse Comics)
Final Crisis: Revelations by Greg Rucka (DC Comics)
Secret Six by Gail Simone (DC Comics)
Young Avengers Presents by Ed Brubaker, Brian Reed, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Paul Cornell, Kevin Grevioux and Matt Fraction (Marvel Comics)

I’ve never read The Alcoholic, so I can’t speak to that, but I’d cast my votes for either Final Crisis: Revelations (because it’s the most comprehensible and exciting of the whole Final Crisis extravaganza) or Secret Six (because I love Gail Simone). Buffy hasn’t been doing it for me the last few issues, so I can’t believe it’s a serious contender (Ooh! The ego!). And if GLAAD nomination refers to the chaste Young Avengers Presents with Wiccan (and a momentary appearance by his “boyfriend” Hulkling), which was a mess on so many levels, then they must really be desperate.

Of all the film nominated:

OUTSTANDING FILM – WIDE RELEASE
Brideshead Revisited (Miramax Films)
Milk (Focus Features)
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (Columbia Pictures)
RocknRolla (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (The Weinstein Company)

OUTSTANDING FILM – LIMITED RELEASE
The Edge of Heaven (Strand Releasing)
Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom (New Open Door Productions)
Save Me (First Run Features)
Shelter (Regent Releasing)
XXY (Film Movement)

I’ve seen two – Milk and Shelter. As much as I loved Milk, Shelter needs to win. I found it to be one of the most honest and moving gay love stories I’ve seen in years. No one died. No one was abused. No one got some random chick pregnant to prove he’s a real man. It avoided all the stereotypes rife in gay media like (dare I say it?) Noah’s ARC. Ugh! Terrible terrible terrible!

OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES
Brothers & Sisters (ABC)
The L Word (Showtime)
South of Nowhere (The N)
Torchwood (BBC America)
True Blood (HBO)

Go Brothers & Sisters!!!!!

For Down the Rabbit Hole Day I offer this:

speeding down the frontage road of 290 in a red convertible john mused my sister had a cock like a baked potato. he dangled precariously over the door. which reminds me, he diverged, you know how when you’re in cross country, they say you should run like you have a baked potato on your forehead?

no, i replied, a bus coming dangerously close to his head.

it helps you find the wall of pain. he was quiet for a second as he turned a corner. the first time i saw my sister’s cock was freshman year during recess.

* * * *


dressed in homemade bellbottoms and a patchwork shirt, addy would play her bongos by the trampoline on the playground. a blunt hung from her lips like soft cereal hung from gramma’s. she sang tunelessly her version of hotel california:

come and take a hit off my joi-oint
only ten dollars
(only ten dollar)
plus some change
you’ll be so high you won’t believe it
seniors there’s a bit of surcharge attached so it’ll be eleven dollars but hey! hello freshmen! first jump is free. yeah yeah, see you on the streets.

john and jeremy hung on the monkey bars, fascinated by addy’s balls and her business aplomb.what do you think of my sister? john asked jeremy.

she ’s ok, he noncommittally commented.

woooly steve popped up behind the boys. they could hear his felt cap itching. dark talon! he exclaimed. when wooly steve’s eyes got wide like that it meant he was in love. what about janice? john asked.

he shrugged.

i can’t believe my sister is your back-up hippie!

he shrugged again, like california. john went to addy for the lunch money she had bullied from him earlier. their mom would give her what-for if he fainted in english class. before john could beg, science teacher howard hesseman, his long hair rustling in the trees approached the siblings. i need one of you to show me your cock. he said without preamble. it’s for my afternoon class.

yeah. right. here ya go, addy said dropping her trousers. john stared. he was unsettled by the wave of jealousy he felt. how could his sister be better hung than he was? her cock was bulbous and long tapering down to a mushroom head. uncut. of course. there was no denying its resemblance to an idaho russet. herman hesseman snapped a few shots, then said, see ya in chemistry.


* * * *


i found out later mom’s was like an acorn squash. i stared incredulously. dad told me, john explained.

can you keep your eyes on the road, please? i asked, wondering how i could get addy’s phone number from him. and a stick of butter.

This is almost a “WTF?!” moment for me. I’m waaaay behind in what’s new in children’s literature, but I can’t believe that there wasn’t a book published in 2008 that could have won the Newbery over The Graveyard Book. And this is coming from a Neil Gaiman fan! The concept of the book – an orphaned baby taken in and raised by ghosts as one of their own – is solid and exciting, but its execution lacked the toothiness and strong characterization I’ve come to expect from Gaiman. No one, not even Bod, was treated to the depth they deserved. I wanted to be happy or sad or scared for these characters (especially Silas and Miss Lupescu), but I didn’t. Is that a fault on my part or Gaiman’s? Who knows? Good on him and all, but I found Coraline to be a much more satisfying read, and to the best of my knowledge it didn’t receive any awards (the up-coming feature film notwithstanding).

Mr. Gaiman’s response to the news (as eloquent as ever) is on his blog.

Is there a single nerd out there who is not watching the last nine (now seven) episodes of BSG? How will all of the subplots be tied up before it’s over? Who is Kara Thrace? Who made her new viper and sent her back to Galatica? Did she cause the end of Earth? Is Gaeta suffering from Short Man’s Complex or is he just a dick? Where has Ellen Tigh been? Is Earth going to be the final battleground for humanity when Cavill arrives? Why has Laura given up? She found Earth! It’s not like she’s at fault for it being destroyed contrary to what Richard Hatch thinks. It’s all terribly exciting and I’m looking forward to a satisfying dénouement so long as the writers don’t have a collective stroke a la David Kelly and put out crap for the end.

From my friend Kris, a timeline of events on Battlestar Galactica (because every good administrator goes ga-ga-apeshit over a good flowchart ). Click to ginormicize.

Given that there is more than likely going to be some form of time travel hijinks what should be added to this chart? Removed?

Photo via LATimes

Manhunter #38: The end. *single tear* A+

Secret Six #5: Bane is by and far becoming one of my favorite characters in this series. I know everyone thinks Deadpool is sexy and Catman has a great butt (he’s my number two, but not for his butt (Ragdoll is number three)), but Bane’s complexity makes everyone else look like the chorus line. He claims a moral superiority to his fellows and has a compassionate heart, but when he ripped Aaron’s neck apart, I was in love. A

Action Comics #873: Aaaah! “New Krypton”. Now I get it. I was disappointed that the main conflict of this arc – bringing the Kryptonians who murdered some Science Police officers to justice – wasn’t resolved, but now there’s a new Baddie on the solar block that will need to be dealt with eventually, which I find to be the greatest change to happen in the DCU in years. It’s easily worth years of stories and plots in the hands of a capable writer. Sadly, Kara got shafted again in terms of characterization. That poor girl hasn’t known a moment’s rest even since she died during Crisis on Infinite Earths. A-

Final Crisis #6: I’m hard-pressed to know if this was camp or kitsch or what. There
were the oddly out-of-place silver age super-science moments with the Inerton and Radion; and even more silver age “shouting my thoughts out so everyone knows what I’m doing in the panel” lines like “It might take the last of my magical energy but I think I can stop her!”. Then I counted FIVE plots to save the world going on all of which involve cosmic-level technology and evolution? And finally Brainiac 5’s warning about his sentence becoming meaningless ON PAGE ONE was at once incredibly precocious and ironically too late. As far as the image on the last page goes, how can ANYone take a death in the DCU to heart anymore? Said death will be undone as soon
as The Question sucks the Earth through the cosmic soup strainer and brings us to the Fifth World. Guaranteed. Last issue was so good, but this issue was an unreadable mess. Again. D+

X-Infernus #2: I have a horrible premonition that Marvel is setting up Pixie to be “Magik Lite”, and as much as I like her character, I don’t love her as much as I love Illyana. Putting Pixie in a position to be the next X-enchantress will make her “Magik Zero”, a disservice to both women. That aside, the action and stakes (saving Illyana and Pixie’s souls) are ratcheted up a notch. A

First, from extrafuerte is a man-on-wolf little red riding hood (a theme making its way through my life of late) t-shirt:

Then there is The Atlas of True Names. Imagine the whole world known by what their names mean and not by how they are pronounced by the modern tongue. The Himalayas, for instance, would be called “House of Winter” because “hima” means “winter”, and “-alaya” means “house, abode”. It’s a brilliant piece of work and would look great next to my copy of the Map of Humanity.





No real gift-giving holidays are coming up soon, but it doesn’t hurt to plan ahead.

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
– Galileo Galilei

With any sort of luck, extremist Christianity is gasping its last, though if what I saw on January 4, 2009 at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY is any indication, they’re definitely going down fighting, even if it’s through a fog of self-deception and pitiable myopia. Dedicated to the beliefs that a.) the Earth was created in six days, b.) the Earth is a mere 6,000 years old, c.) Noah’s flood was a worldwide disaster and d.) dinosaurs roamed Eden alongside Adam and Eve, the Creation Museum was a have-to-go side trip on my way back to Texas after two weeks at home with my family. Why did I go? To make fun of it? To know what is being said? To satisfy my curiosity? To know the enemy? To see if I’m missing out on something? Ostensibly, this was a side-vacation to see the ever-adorable Jonathan Riggs, but why this place to meet up?

Ever Adorable. Amen.



down the rabbit hole

From the Buffalo Beast comes The 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2008. Targets this ywar include Barack Obama, Michelle Bachman, Tita Tequila, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, and You:

43. You

Charges: You think it’s your patriotic duty to spend money you don’t have on crap you don’t need. You think Hillary lost because of sexism, when it’s actually because she’s just a bad liar. You think Iraq is better off now than before we invaded, and don’t understand why they’re so ungrateful. You think Tim Russert was a great journalist. You’re hopping mad about an auto industry bailout that cost a squirt of piss compared to a Wall Street heist of galactic dimensions, due to a housing crash you somehow have blamed on minorities. It took you six years to figure out what a tool Bush is, but you think Obama will make it all better. You deem it hunky dory that we conduct national policy debates via 8-second clips from “The View.” You think God zapped humans into existence a few thousand years ago, although your appendix and wisdom teeth disagree. You like watching vicious assholes insult each other on TV. You support gun rights, because firing one gives you a chubby. You cuddle falsehoods and resent enlightenment. You think the fact that 43% of whites could stomach voting for an incredibly charismatic and eloquent light-skinned black guy who was raised by white people means racism is over. You think progressive taxation is socialism. 1 in 100 of you are in jail, and you think it should be more. You are shallow, inconsiderate, afraid, brand-conscious, sedentary, and totally self-obsessed. You are American.

Exhibit A: You’re more upset by Miley Cyrus’s glamour shots than the fact that you are a grown adult who is upset about Miley Cyrus.

Sentence: Invaded and occupied by Canada; all military units busy overseas without enough fuel to get back.

Last year, You were ranked #9, so even though one could call this progress, it’s still sad that You still haven’t pulled yourself all the way together.

Robert Langridge’s Kirby Alphabet has been making the rounds through the comics bolgosphere and finally got down this way. It’s not as charmingly grisly as Edward Gorey’s The Ghastlycrumb Tinies, nor as fresh as Neil Gaiman’s
The Dangerous Alphabet, but it’s cute. I’m happy Etrigan was included (but how could he not have been?).

–Thanks to Andy Mangels!

immanent vs. imminent

X-Men Noir #2: Noir is dead. No matter how many times someone tries to resurrect it by pulling together the most superficial elements of the idiom, it remains corpse-like, as well it should. What made noir noir was the freshness of the cinema combined with a dramatic flair for hyper-realistic sensationalism. Making a comic book black and white, and peppering sentences with “dame” doesn’t capture the essence of the movement. X-Men Noir is… well, it’s just dreadful, which I saw in the first issue and yet came back to read the second, thinking I was missing something. Nope, I got it right the first time. The art is muddy. The dialogue is clunky. And the story is so dull that it put my cats to sleep. But worse than all that is the X-Men don’t fit into this story at all. I could see Captain America maybe being better suited for this “other wheres, other whens” iteration (I’m kidding; no one write that up!) but here the story always comes back to “these are the X-Men and they will go mutie on your ass”. There’s no urgency when they see their ends coming, because I know they’re going to fight back and prevail. I don’t feel the grittiness, the hard-heartedness nor the angst that should come with a good noir story. I wish I could say, “Nice try” but my real message to the creators would be “Pencils down, now!” F

X-Men #505: Matt Fraction seems to be having a hard time getting a hold of the X-characters and what they do. He has the mayor of San Francisco down pat (like her!) but his other plotlines – Angel and Beast tracking down geniuses to recreate the mutant race; Colossus tracking down something to hit; X-23 doing something to someone that involves their blood – are more about the prey than the X-Men themselves. This isn’t necessarily a bad storytelling technique, but when the whole issue is out of focus this way it’s just… well, boring. He also seems to be dropping transitional moments down a Claremont Hole. For example, the Beast is in a meeting with Cyclops, Emma and the mayor as the issue opens, then is off cornering a genius several pages later with Dr. Nemesis and Angel in tow. It reads like there are two Beasts on two separate missions- one in the mayor’s office who is doing fuck-all and is completely superfluous to the scene, then one who’s in charge of genius-tracking. Hopefully, Faction will work these problem spots out soon. C

Madame Xanadu #7: Good art. Good story, but beyond that, I can’t think of anything to say to recommend (or condemn) this story arc. It’s competently done and full of plot, but that’s about it. C+

Superman #683: I so desperately want someone to take Alura over their knee and spank the bejeezus out of her, I’m thinking of baking a red velvet bundt cake with a strawberry glaze and calling it “Alura Over Someone’s Knee Cake”. After that, I’m going to bake two cupcakes and call them “Kal-El Needs to STFU and Step up to the Plate” (white with a jelly center) and “Kara is Still Krazy” (pork-flavored). At least the JLA knows which side they’re on and are willing to make a stand for justice. I get that Kal and Kara are conflicted, but they’ve got to see that Alura was beyond negotiating three or four issues ago before she went all Idi Amin. This isn’t an attack on their characters, but a question as to why this hasn’t come to a head sooner. Nevertheless, this is the chapter I’ve been waiting for – action galore! A

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight #21: “Bored now.” D

Kick-Ass #5: After taking its good sweet time coming out, the latest issue of Kick-Ass was well worth the wait. Millar’s wheels are finally out of the mud and rolling down the highway at least 15 MPH over the speed limit. Normally I complain about Millar’s inability to maintain the flow of his stories – they’re too slow, too loud, too full of Millar, what have you – but this time around he manages to balance the action with his characters’ development. Kick-Ass and Red Mist driving around Dodge “on patrol” is a spot-on budding bromance scene out of a summer blockbuster (no doubt the reason it was written this way) cemented by their then answering a desperate call for help. A guilty pleasure even now, Kick-Ass makes my dog bark. A

patois vs. cant vs. shibboleth

This Winter Break i ate a lot of food that is not normally in my diet. A few days ago, my body staged a mini-coup to get me to stop eating, but until I had already had a hand in consuming this:

The pizza is a large pepperoni and mushroom from Two Friends Italian Market; the wings (from top center: Regular Hot, Hot BBQ, 24 Karat Gold, Jalapeno Teriyaki, Spicy Peanut and Shanghai Red) and deep fried pretzels are from Eli’s Tavern – still the best place for wings in the world as far as I’m concerned. Keep in mind this was for two of us – my brother and I, not a party as one might suspect. This was the latest in a long series of dietary abuses that had me in bed for over a day. Ah, but what a way to go! Sadly, I didn’t get a picture of the “Best Reuben in Erie” at McGarrey’s Oakwood Cafe. Next year.

I was overcome by traditional values this holiday and decided to bake cookies with my nephew and brother. This is them decorating the sugar cookies we rolled and cut out:





For a kid who doesn’t like to get messy, he got pretty messy. Oddly, he didn’t like any of the cookies we made (to eat), though he liked making them. Oh! And we made Venom gingerbread men. (Dominic’s favorite villain):





All-in-all, it was a wonderful holiday, but next year I’m going to add an all-you-can-eat salad joint to my list of places to go. It’s sad when a man can’t gorge himself of heavily sauced and deep-fried foods to his heart’s content anymore.

With .4 seconds left in 2008, The World Clock shows us the year in toto: what we’ve done, what we’ve lost, how we’ve grown (lord, how we’ve grown!), and how sick we’ve been.

HAPPY 2009, ALL!! (Make it a better one than 2008, or else!)

Fred Guerra’s January calendar starts the new year in the right way. See who can be on your desktop after the wrinkle!

click for the calendar