If we were to call for help...

A few years ago someone got in trouble over a fight at school. He was only five years old or so. The school asked him to write a short essay on what he did, why he did what he did and why he was sorry for what he did. So he did. And he signed the essay: Mothra.

Happy birthday to you, young Mothra! May you continue to fearlessly flap your wings towards the future...

Although it's not the birthday of the -original- Divine Moth, still in his egg in the picture above, now's as good a time as any to celebrate.

The music for this celebration comes from the same source as this posting's title: the Mothra song, originally performed by the Peanuts in 1961. Not many know the lyrics were in Malayan rather than Japanese.

Hear the songs here.

Stills from Mothra's first battle with Godzilla (along with the original Japanese trailer) reside here. Of course, there's the 90s version of the song from the Rebirth of Mothra trilogy, put together with some of the big moth's greatest hits below...

Ten years later they redid the song again...check it out below. Still trying to find the first 1961 version, but you can enjoy it yourself if you will only give -in- to the song and see the movies.

Mothra is something you’re not really supposed to think about. It's something you just believe in -- a giant Tinkerbell who, in this case, can shoot rays from her antennae.

Let yourself go and fly away to a place where large graceful things can bring beauty and Armageddon-time destruction at once.

Yes, I believe a giant moth can fly, that it can fight off fierce fiery attacks from giant radioactive creatures of the deep, as well, and that somehow it finds time to save the planet and its children. If you’re lucky you can get a ride when the day is done. If you don’t believe, well, you might be too old. Too bad...

Listen To Me!

The Neko Case posting below exposed me to some different ways of presenting music files to the blog -- legal ways, of course.

The link below will bring up an experiment I ran a couple of years ago with the Electroplankton music software for the Nintendo DS.

CAUTION: Laurie Anderson talked about "difficult listening music" in reference to tuneful works which might make you think. The thoughts engendered by listening to the following are probably less beneficial to the world at large.

Click this to hear my Electroplankton Experiment

More sophisticated use of the DS and Electroplankton can be found in the video below:



Or how about this use of the new Korg synthesizer software for the DS? Some might say it sucks...



...But not me!

BTW, both videos are the work of musician Jetdaisuke. More info here.

Their Dreams They Dreamed Awake

If I'm doing this right, by posting the following link to a free MP3, five dollars will be donated to the Best Friends Animal Society. That's the deal for all bloggers.

Download at... http://www.anti.com/media/download/708

The MP3 would be worth -your- while, regardless of the charity, as it's Neko Case's new single -- People Got A Lotta Nerve -- from her upcoming album "Middle Cyclone" which you can pre-order here. Very glad to literally hear she's got something new in the works as it's been a long time since the New Pornographers (their New Challengers came out two years ago?) or her solo stuff (Fox Confessor Brings the Flood was almost three years ago?). Hopefully she'll also make her way here for a show...!

The Spirit is Willing, but...

The recent film of “The Spirit” is not really a story, to paraphrase the character's creator Will Eisner, “for little boys.” In other words, it is not for comic book fans who expect to see a faithful rendering of the Eisner classic strip. They really ought to know better. How many films based on comic book properties made it to the screen without revision and revamping? When will they learn?

Nevertheless, this type of revamping is sacrilege in some quarters. Those aware of comic book history revere Eisner, not just as an artist and writer who created his own characters – most notably, The Spirit – but who put a lot of thought into the form of the stories he put to paper. The limitless possibilities he saw of how to put together a story in comic book pages makes his work one of the few inarguable cornerstones of the industry.

What many forget is that the form itself in Eisner’s work more often than not overshadowed substance. Moreover, when Eisner went for the substance later on in life, trying to tell the Big Story with capitals B and S, he became to me a boring preacher instead of a stimulating artist. (Think Sullivan trying to make "O Brother Where Art Thou" instead of "Ants in Their Pants 1939"...)

For the star of this story: Eisner himself never really fleshed out the Spirit as a full-blown character, but rather used him as a tailor’s dummy on which to design his latest fashion. Mysteries, comedies, westerns, science fiction, combat, and romance: all fictional genres eventually made their way into the Spirit’s life “story.” The only constants: he got beat up a lot, he generally met incredibly motivated and beautiful women, and he always wore a blue mask and a red tie.

So here comes writer/director Frank Miller with his film revisioning of Eisner’s character. Miller is a successful comic book writer/artist, who not only knew Eisner well (a book of their conversations on the art of comics was published a while back) but who also creates stories of style over substance. His Sin City stories probably claim the largest fame -- best known by those not comic book fans -- as Robert Rodriguez made them into a largely successful film a couple of years ago.

To Miller’s credit, this is not Sin City II, and “The Spirit” is not a shot-by-shot recreation of Eisner’s stories. He has created a stimulating amalgamation of his work and Eisner’s and for frustratingly long moments in this film, it successfully wows us with a campy piece of visually entertaining work. Where it bogs down is in the all-too-frequent scenes where tedious dialogue goes on and on and on and on without much in the way of something visually interesting to sustain us.

That is the crime here and the root of my frustration. The entertaining parts are extremely entertaining, but because of the bad parts and the extremely bad reviews, not many will know that Miller, like Eisner’s Gerhard Shnobble, knew how to fly in this film. He just did not fly often enough.

p.s. If you would like to learn more about Will Eisner’s The Spirit, to see what all the fuss is about, pick-up “The Best of The Spirit”. It’s a decent sampler of his work with the character. If you would like to see a more successful comic book re-imagining of Eisner’s character, check out both Darwyn Cooke’s excellent modernization and Alan Moore’s “The New Adventures of The Spirit”.

p.p.s. Of course, any book links above should be ignored if you live in the St. Louis area. You don't need any links because you can more-easily visit the friendly folks at Starclipper (see link to the right) who, if they do not already have the books in stock, will be glad to place your order.

And now, we fly off with an Eisner-drawn Shnobble...


BONUS REVIEW: Writer/artist (and Will Eisner fan) Kyle Baker weighs in on the movie.

Things I Read Today

Henning Nelms' "Magic and Showmanship: A Handbook for Conjurers":
"The Japanese define an artist as 'one who has the ability to do more and the will to refrain.' This definition covers showmanship as well. Showmanship adds glamor and drama. However, if we try to give any routine more importance than it will bear, we destroy the illusion and may reveal the secret."

***

William Gibson's "Spook Country":
"She was fascinated by how things worked in the world, and why people did them. When she wrote about things, her sense of them changed, and with it, her sense of herself."

***

Grant Morrison's "Final Crisis" (Issue #5):
"If your superheroes can't save you, maybe it's time to think of something that can. If it don't exist, think it up. Then make it real ...

Was there ever a word you tried to imagine? The sort of word that could remind you who you truly were inside? Maybe it's more than a word ... it's a face, a scent, a voice. Like a memory of a place where someone cared only for you. A name."

What Have You Done?

Twenty-eight years ago, when I heard a voice on the radio say "John Lennon is dead" ...

Instinctively I steered directly to my old job, to the student newspaper office at Illinois State, to see what I could find on the UPI wire machine and to help with whatever the staff was planning to run. There I met another friend who had the same idea. We were both townies, both still lived near after our respective college "careers," still kept in touch with the newspaper staff. Both of us puzzled at the emptiness of the front offices and the lack of activity in the production room, until the new editor came in. He guessed what we were there for, saying, "Yeah, we heard the news, but wanted to meet the printer's deadline."

1980 and things had changed before our eyes, those who came after had already chosen a new and unexpected path from our own. We would have run a special issue, "deadlines be damned," but these "kids" (three or four years our junior) were too young by birth to carry any unconditional love for Beatles. That's how it was in the those days: you were either old enough to remember seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan's show or you thought Paul McCartney was just the guy who had a band called Wings.

1980: To most of the disaffected youth we knew, Jimmy Carter gave peace a bad name in his failure to deal with pretty much everything, while Reagan picked up enough of those who still felt they had to care about something, coloring the campus world in hues far different from the post 60s era we tried fruitlessly to keep flowering. Hindsight shows a view of us being too busy with a culture we were too young for, that we never got around to making one pure of the past and unquestionably our own. What kind of youth movement revels in the past, instead of rejecting it? Or, is that the way it always appears to be from the outside?

Whatever the past, our future would be one without Lennon the man. His works, his words, his thoughts would continue and we could use whatever time was left to make some sense, something good with them.

So this is Christmas and what have you done?

Not done yet, John...

Leave your own memories here.


WAR IS OVER! (If You Want It) from Yoko Ono on Vimeo.

Following the Heard 2008 - the Finale

Let's see how this finale to the year stands up with the two previous parts...

1) Angry*The Bug
2) The World Is Gone Wrong*BB King
3) You Only Live Twice*The Postmarks
4) I-Tunes Song*Homeboy Sandman
5) Kyotei Daiski (Favorite Games Mix)*Omodaka
6) Transformer*Marnie Stern
7) Clampdown*The Clash
8) Limbo*KatJonBand
9) Parisian Goldfish*Flying Lotus
10) Cobrastyle*Robyn
11) Never Give You Up*Raphael Saadiq
12) Sandcastle Disco*Solange
13) Riddle Me This*Aaron Parks
14) Official*Q-Tip
15) Live Your Life*T.I.
16) Folks*Mighty Underdogs
17) Harps & Angels*Randy Newman
18) That's Not My Name*The Ting Tings
19) Golden Age*TV on the Radio
20) Stop This World*Ne-Yo

Where'd everybody go?

The day after thanksgiving ... across the street from where I've lived this last week...

Trouble with a Capital 'T'

My backyard for the holiday ... better not get used to this kind of life.

Getting Home

I got 'home' --the word -- on my phone ... thanks to the patient counsel of my godson. This post is the proof, so disregard my previous message. Home on the range. Give me a home. Almost home. Be it ever so humble...

Phone Good

I've noticed a consistent problem pattern while learning how to text message with my LG phone. It uses the T9Abc mode, the so-called predictive mode that gives you the most common result for your pattern of keypunching -- for example, when I press 4-3-5-5-6 the word “Hello” appears.

The accuracy of the mode is very impressive. I also appreciate that the mind gets some type of exercise during composition of the most innocuous phrases, as well, when the word you want does not appear. You just have to come up with another word. However, I really wish I could type the word “home” – you know, like when you want to say, “I’ll be home, soon.” “Home” – pressing 4-6-6-3 -- always comes out “good”. “I’ll be home, soon” becomes “I’ll be good, soon.” “Call me when you get home” becomes “Call me when you get good.” “Are you home?” becomes “Are you good?”

Moreover, if it had been around during the Sammy Sosa/Mark McGwire baseball battles it would have been extremely inaccurate. “Home run” becomes “Good run.” Or Dorothy would have been texting over and over "There's no place like good. There's no place like good. There's no place like good."

What would E.T. have done with this? “Phone home" becomes “Phone good.” Sounds more like an endorsement of AT&T by the Frankenstein monster… but perhaps that is what this somehow has all been leading up to, another form of advertisement. “Phone good.”

Et Stew, Brute?

Our second snow of the season means it is probably time to dust off the Crockpot again. The recipe to first strike my fancy this go-round is good old reliably-comfortable Beef Stew.

Not sure where the recipe came from, but it was handwritten off somewhere on the web before I had easy access to things like printers. If the original author finds it here, please let me know your identity so your due credit may be finally paid-off.

INGREDIENTS:
2 lbs. stew beef
¼ cup flour
1 tsp. paprika
4 lg. carrots
3 lg. potatoes
1 can condensed beef broth – 14.5 oz.
1 ½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. pepper
1/3 cup soy sauce
1 lg. onion
1 can tomato sauce – 8 oz.
1 small can mushrooms or a liberal amount of freshly sliced ones.

Cube up the potatoes -- after washing them -- and layer them in the bottom of the cooker, layer on top of that your sliced-up carrots. Cover that with the meat. Sprinkle the soy sauce, salt, paprika, pepper and flour next. Over that mixture spread out the onion which you’ve chopped. Then add the beef broth and tomato sauce. (If you’re using canned mushrooms, I usually put them last – if you’re using fresh mushrooms I usually put them on after the meat.)

Cover and cook on either the low setting from 7 to 8 hours or on the high setting from 4 to 5 hours.

Very different from my first stew made of Sunday pot roast leftovers when I was probably 7 or so years-old. Cubed up the roast beef and mixed it with the potatoes, carrots, and gravy, but realized there were not enough potatoes so I grabbed some from the bag in the pantry, cut them up and heated the mess together for my mother’s lunch.

People over 30 may realize what happened, may remember when potatoes in a bag usually came still covered with chunks of the earth in which they grew. Yes, I skipped the step of washing the potatoes first.

She took a bite, pulled a clump of dirt from her mouth, and told me about the pre-washing step. She also proceeded without complaint to clean out the bowl – except for the potatoes.

Buried Treasure

The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman

Nobody Owens, more-familiarly known as "Bod", finds life in the graveyard – and finds life good. The graveyard is his whole world; where he plays with friends, where he sleeps in his adopted family’s home, where he learns what he needs to survive. His friends and family are the buried dead of the graveyard whose spirits live on eternally.

Orphaned as a toddler by a mysterious man named Jack, Bod grows up among the spirits and other beings (most especially his guardian, Silas) who watch over Bod, teach him their ways and, as best they can, the ways of the world outside the iron fence. Too soon for all concerned, the ways of that outside world intrude in a dangerous way and Bod must learn his final lesson from the spirits: how to live.

Author Neil Gaiman (Coraline and Stardust, among others) wrote this Young Adult fiction as a take on Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”. Being more familiar with the Disney cartoon than the actual stories, I do not find too many exact, one-to-one, characterizations here -- and that is not a bad thing at all. Sure, “Jack” is Shere Khan the Tiger, Silas is most-likely Bagheera, while Bod is, of course, Mowgli – but in the end, it does not matter.

Here is what matters:

Silas said, "Out there, the man who killed your family is, I believe, still looking for you, still intends to kill you."

Bod shrugged. "So?" he said. "It's only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead."

"Yes," Silas hesitated. "They are. And they are, for the most part, done with the world. You are not. You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished."

An exciting and clever book, nevertheless "The Graveyard Book" really won me over with its great heart and honesty. There is no sugarcoating the terror, and the trickster Bod often falls over his own faults. His foibles are not necessarily well-intentioned ones, either.

It is a book in which the experience of reading it winds up like life itself. At the end of our own time, many most likely do not want an end. We would want to keep going or sometimes would even want to start over. I felt a strong urge to start re-reading “The Graveyard Book” again at the end of the final page. If not for the fact it also makes me want to get out there and live even more. No time for someone else’s stories -- live your own.

I Believe I Can...

All too many mornings begin with this sad sad sight on my floor.
However, this morning marked the first time I noticed the label on the Kapla Blocks box behind him. What is most essential for this toy to learn: flying or falling? When will he learn what he needs to learn?

Another shot (or two) of the good life

Haven't been to a ritzy Clayton restaurant in a while, and with these prices it will be an even longer while before I go again. At least the beverage cost remains reasonable...and it was in celebration of a wonderful birthday. Priceless in many ways.

The Best -We- Can

Photographer David Katz created a flickr stream of his behind-the-scenes shots of Obama and family going through election night this past Tuesday. More on all this later, but in the meantime check out the President-elect's new government site change.gov ...

Just Plain Crosseyed

Still waiting three hours after arrival, but I know I'm next through the door... and after that I will not be able to take anymore pictures. Poll worker seen above tells of the seniors living here in the center who were up in the lobby at 3:30 a.m. in hopes for being first in line. They ended up waiting just as long as I have so far before casting their vote. Hope they're sleeping, now. I know I'm off to work after this is over.

Crosseyed & A Little Pained

Still waiting ...

Bi-State WUSTL Red bus has come through several times now -- the driver giving us the thumbs-up with her horn. Somebody was discovered to have a birthday today and the "Happy Birthday" song was taken up loudly by most of the couple hundred people in line. One little girl goes down the line with her Batman trick-or-treat bag, offering her own treats to thank people for their patience. Somebody waits in their parked car, blasting Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" and many of the better singers in line take up the song as well. The poll workers had come out earlier to remove some campaign signs placed past the 25-feet-from-the-poll rule. No one says anything about the song possibly breaking the same etiquette.

Crosseyed & Painless

After an hour ... still waiting ...

Polling place opened 30 minutes late, but still troubled. Group-mind pretty together, with good-humored grousing about as ugly as it gets. Only one person gave up, promising to come back later. Talking Heads' "Crosseyed & Painless" remains the morning theme song moving through my mind -- probably because of the chorus "Still waiting, still waiting, still waiting..."

Face the Magic

Behind all of the main faces above smiles street performer Masaji Terasawa, known more familiarly at the annual Missouri Botanical Garden as "The Candyman".

For me, most of the magicians I've seen make me spend most of the entertaining time trying to figure out how they do what they do. Not so with The Candyman. His magic is subtle, sewn so tightly within the fabric of his entertainment you don't even think about it being there. He's not trying to wow, just trying to smile. Like comparing Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Kelly always looks like he's trying too hard to entertain, while Astaire doesn't seem to care about anything but the clouds beneath his feet.