U-District Artwalk.

by on August 23, 2009 at 1:58 am
Posted In: Test

Well I did the Art walk last night. I’d “done” it before doing illustration demonstrations over at the Dreaming. But this was the first time I actually walked and looked at the various displays. The first was some of the photography of my friend J Kovach, of Feral Sky Studios, at Gargoyles. The second was at Upper Playground, a new high end t-shirt shop, that was showing the works of Alex Pardee. Most of his work consisted of very bizarre surrealist cartoons, very well done though.

It was the first time I had ever checked out Upper Playground since it had first opened up a couple of months ago. It was crowded and lively and I got myself stuck in an unmoving line to see the exhibit. Just as I was beginning to get very annoyed I realized I was standing in the autograph line.

The really depressing thing is that between this and J’s opening is this is the closest thing I’ve gotten to going out for a night on the town.

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Ponyo

by on August 11, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Posted In: Test

Well I went and saw a sneak preview of Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo on the Cliff, or just Ponyo according to Disney marketers, and it was very much up to the master’s usual standards. It is very much going back to the simplicity of his works specifically for children like Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service.

Artistically it was amazing. All of the backgrounds were done in pastels which reminded me of the use of watercolor in Lilo and Stitch. The animated figures clashed against the background slightly but not enough for me to have had a problem with it. I can’t help wondering if they could have fixed that by running the cells through a special filter or something similar.

One small nitpick I had with it was after the spectacular entrance of Ponyo as a human child running on the backs of a tsunami in the shape of giant fish, the ending felt anticlimactic in comparison. That’s okay though. Miyazaki’s quiet meditative scenes are just as good as his spectacle’s.

If I had one real complaint it was that the closing theme left a nearly inextricable earworm.

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Rhapsodies on Amazon

by on May 28, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Posted In: Test

Well here’s a bit of exciting news Lulu, the print on demand service I do my collections on, just worked out a deal with Amazon which means Rhapsodies is now on Amazon which means better visibility!

So what are you waiting for, come get your copies of Where Do You Want Your Drummer?, AKA: Havana Sunset, What Happens on the Road, and my one experiment with science fiction, Sasha: Slower Than Light, today!

And even if you can’t buy today reviews and ratings are very much appreciated!

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Watchmen

by on March 3, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Posted In: Test

Well, I saw the movie adaptation of Watchmen at a special preview last night and I am happy to say it is I was not disappointed. I admit that I went into the theater with pretty low expectations so I’m afraid that any opinions I have are probably badly effected by the soft bigotry of low expectations. It’s interesting that none of my concerns were about how the director would treat the genre or willfully trample on the subject matter because it was originally a comic book. No, all of my concerns were based on how to cram all of that material into two hours, in my perfect world Watchmen would be a 12 episode HBO series. But anyway it was much better then all of my fears suggested. Yes it still felt like watching cliff-notes but I went in knowing that was unavoidable. Director Zack Snyder does a very good job lovingly recreating the most of the most memorable imagery in the book and throws in tons of minor little details that will award multiple viewings. Certainly there were several pragmatic changes to the story, but nothing really egregious. I suppose I could complain about how he increased the level of violence from the book and wonder about his obsession with slow motion shots but that would just be another example of me nitpicking. Instead I’ll dwell on the things I liked, such as the opening credits/expository montage done to Bob Dillon’s “Times They are a Changing“.

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Cristina Pato

by on November 13, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Posted In: Test

After I heard her nearly steal the show playing backup for Yo-Yo Mah on the Colbert Report. I had to check out more of her. See what you think.


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My Election Day Comedy of Errors

by on November 4, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Posted In: Test


In hindsight I definitely checked my precinct yesterday. It could have avoided my latest series of panic attack.

Anyway wanting to make this most important day feel special I had put on my leather jacket and headed to what had been my usual polling place for the last two years. I was very happy to see that where in the past I’d barely ever seen anymore then four voters at a time had what could pass as a crowd.

Now unfortunately my voter’s card is an old one that still has my last address on it. While a point of frustration, and something I’ve been trying to fix ever since i’ve moved to my new address, It has never been a problem. All I have to do is have my driver’s license and look up my precinct in the list. So you can imagine my surprise when I didn’t see my name on the list. The volunteer’s were nice enough, but in my state of agitation what they probably meant as being a soothing tone to me sounded damn patronizing. They asked if i wanted to fill out a provisional ballot but since I was pretty sure this was my fault, and since I was getting close to having a very public tantrum, I declined and left.

After I got home, I had a very frustrating hour surfing and making phone calls trying to figure out the solution to my mistake. After may busy signals, talking to several well meaning, overworked and clueless volunteers I finally found out my precinct number and that I had indeed gone to the wrong place.

So I set out again to vote. The correct place was at a community center that was even more crowded than the other place. After a short wait I got my turn to vote. The only open privacy booth was a sit down table where someone had swiped the chair. So the price of my civic duty is a slight kink in my back. But at least I now have it over with. And feeling good about it.

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