Posts from — March 2008

Too bad I didn’t get the chance to meet Prof. Shoji Yamada, who was trying to meet me before returning to Japan tomorrow.  Among other interesting projects, he has worked on data-mining faces in Ukiyo-e prints, which are then used to construct three-dimensional models.   Yes, the floating world is going to manifest itself in the virtual world.  Before we can blink an eye, we will be flying through Second Life in the company of crazed Kabuki performers and Yoshitoshi ghosts!

See “Data Mining Ukiyo-e Faces“

Muchos kudos to Joel Johnson, who not only saved from obscurity the original paste-up of Wally Wood’s 22 Panels that Always Work, but scanned it and made it available for the Universe. Way to be, Joel!

According to Larry Hama, (one of Wood’s assistants in the 70’s), Wood was always trying to kick himself to put less labor into the work! He had a framed motto on the wall, “Never draw anything you can copy, never copy anything you can trace, never trace anything you can cut out and paste up.” He hung the sheets with the panels on the wall of his studio to constantly remind himself to stop what he called “noodling.”

By the way, my introduction to Wood was via early Daredevil comics and Astonishing Tales. When I asked about Wood at the occasional comic book swap market held in Albuquerque (circa 1975), one of the dealers turned me on to Wood’s E.C. stuff and his zine called Witzend. It was a shock to hear of Wood’s suicide in 1981.

More on Wally Wood. Good luck trying to find a copy of his biography:

As the sunny day passes, I am reading one of the finest books ever written, The Star Diaries, written by my personal hero, Stanislaw Lem. When I pause to look at the news headlines, it is always a shock to see the self-righteous proclamations of our planet’s filthiest criminal scum served up alongside tidings of supposed religious niceness in the form of Easter rituals. Cannot people simply observe and enjoy the coming of a warmer season and the crossing of the Equinox without all this medievalist claptrap?

As the case may be, I would like to share the amusing testimony of Iridian delegate to the United Planets Congress, delivered during the Eighth Voyage of our intrepid hero, Ijon Tichy, as recorded in Lem’s fabulous book. The Iridian’s comments are made apropos of Earthlings being nominated for membership in the UP, and he provides evidence of the exact origins of the human race, including the truth behind their erroneous belief that humans are somehow the creation of a higher being.  In fact, we are told, life on Earth was not the result of divine plans, but rather was perpetrated as a cruel joke by the kitchen steward of a spaceship which happened to touch down on that barren and lifeless planet…

“Now here we are approached by creatures that have no inkling of the true odiousness of their existence, nor any knowledge of its cause! Now here they come knocking at the venerable door of this Worthy Assembly, and what then, pray, are we to tell them, all these abominoids, freaksnouts, clenchpoops, corpse-lovers, mothereaters and addlepates, wringing their alleged hands and falling to their alleged knees when they learn that in reality they belong to the subphylum ‘Artefacta,’ and that their supreme and perfect creator was some ship’s cook, who once poured out upon the rocks of a dead planet a bucket of fermented slops, for his own amusement imparting to the wretched source of life properties which later would make it the laughing stock of an entire Galaxy!”

Interesting article on BBC about an exhibition of Mainland Chinese comics. The curator of the show is Paul Gravett, probably London’s most famous comics aficionado, and author of Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics. What I want to know is, where is that hidden iceberg of Chinese Underground comix?

Reading the latest news about the haunted city hall of Middleborough, Massachusetts got me wondering about the state of the art for ghost busting. What self-respecting paranormal commando would be caught without and Electromagnetic Field detector, a decent digital recorder for Electronic Voice Phenomena, a camera for snapping Paranormal Orbs, a hand-held Infrared Thermometer, Geiger Counter, Night Vision Goggles, Barometer, Static Meter, Negative Ion Meter, and cryogenic storage device?

Well, I guess we’ve come a long way from holding hands in the dark! Madame Blavatsky should be proud.

Rediscovering this brilliant story from Mickey Rat Comics #3 (1980) by Robert Armstrong reminds me of how important [perhaps even CRITICAL] it was to my development. Not only did I discover the true meaning of street cred and artistic integrity, but I had confirmed for me one of the most profound truths of existence, namely:

this world is just too overloaded with no-taste maniacs!

Play it, Dizzy baby!

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I went to DrupalCon2008 expecting the usual 20 to 40 techie types in a room. Sort of a Modules Anonymous session, as Boris Mann of RainCity described it. What I didn’t expect was the crazy mad buzz of a thousand Drupalites in the moments before Dries Buytaert gave the keynote speech.

The mojo seems to be rising for Drupal these days!

Meanwhile, heading home on the subway not only was I surrounded by people toting boxed sets of Edward Tufte’s books on visualizing data, the young woman across from me was reading Astral Projection for Beginners. I kid you not! Some days, thankfully, are just strange…

The panel is slightly weird, the story is pretty darn weird, and the artwork by R. Crumb is beautiful! Especially the opening portrait of Dick with cosmic energy flowing around him. In any case, Crumb’s interpretation of the late SF writer’s mystical revelations makes for fascinating biography. Thanks to PKD Fans for posting the entire eight pages, and to SFSignal for their tireless efforts to keep us informed.

Went to see Melies Trip to the Moon, and Kubrick’s 2001 at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Sci Fi Movie Night, and was treated to the world premiere of a song about our Solar planets, all 11 of them! The song we heard was an amusingly catchy tune, and though I can’t link you to a recording of it, or confirm the singer’s name (Lisa Lyons?), at least you heard about the song on Yunchtime first!

Yes, it seems that after a struggle among themselves almost as ridiculous as the opening scene of Trip to the Moon, the astronomers of the world have accepted the fact that dwarf planets are still planets. This means that not only do we regain our recently demoted Pluto, but we bring Ceres and Eris into the tribe. Following this remarkable turn-around in nomenclature, 11-year old Maryn Smith of Great Falls, Montana, won the schoolkids’ contest to invent a nifty mnemonic to help us remember the names of the planets, and their sequence in distance from the sun. Okay, sure, Pluto occasionally loops closer to the sun than Neptune, but after a couple of drinks ‘Nine Palace Elephants’ and ‘Palace Nine Elephants’ could hardly make a difference, right?