Posted by Allen on March 7, 2006 under Comic Books, Pop Culture | 
As much as I love the Internet and all of the little conveniences it offers us on a daily basis, those conveniences can sometimes rob us of some of the little pleasures of that long-ago era before Information Overload set in. Case in point: Most of the time when I order something online these days, I have the benefit of being able to track the shipment from the moment it leaves the warehouse to the moment it arrives on my doorstep. As groovy a technological advancement as that is, it means I rarely get the little thrill I got last night: coming home to see a package on my front porch that I’d completely forgetten was out there. (One of the advantages of taking the cheapest possible shipping method, of course, is that it offeres plenty of time to forget about the order.)
My boy Timmy B had gotten me an Amazon.com gift certificate for my birthday, but (somewhat unusually for me), I hadn’t found anything to spend it on until last week. I’d looked and looked, but nothing had come to mind. I was thinking about getting something about PHP or programming, but that didn’t seem awfully birthday-like, and I didn’t think Tim would’ve thought a book that might help my career was quite in the spirit of the gift certificate. So I finally decided to find a comics trade paperback or two to get (which I’m betting Tim had in mind to begin with)…
…and wound up with a Brian K. Vaughan-ucopia!
Arriving last night were Ex Machina, Volume 2: “Tag”; Y, the Last Man, Volume 3: “One Small Step” and Volume 4: “Safeword”, all written by Vaughan, who’s quickly become my current favorite comics writer (thanks to those series and the phenomenal Runaways). The earlier volums of both Y and Ex Machina were fantastic, so I have no reason to doubt these will be any different.
Vaughan’s something of my hero right now in comics because each of his projects is so different from the others and each is tremendously well-written. From the teenage superheroics of Runaways to the political intrigue (plus some superheroics) of Ex Machina to the speculative sci-fi of Y, The Last Man…even his run on Ultimate X-Men, all of it’s been quality. I’m not saying the guy can do no wrong, but he sure hasn’t done much wrong recently. I’m pretty sure that when I grow up, I want to be Brian K. Vaughan. Except that I think I’m already older than he is. And I like having hair. (I’m afraid there’s some unspoken requirement that all comics writers (or all the good ones, anyway) must be bald; I certainly need to look into that before I pursue that route much farther.)
I think I’m going to dig up my review for Ex Machina, Volume 1 and post that here tomorrow since Comicgeekz isn’t accessible to the public right now. So that’s something for y’all to look forward to.
Posted by Allen on March 6, 2006 under Movies, Pop Culture |
So apparently I underestimated just how badly Hollywood wanted to fellate itself.
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised. When all four of the acting awards went to the favorites, I should have realized that Crash would win Best Picture. Like I said yesterday, every year something bizarre and surprising happens; I thought Brokeback Mountain was such a lock that the surprise would have to come from one of the acting categories. That’s why I picked Amy Adams and Paul Giamatti to win. [1] Once Reese Witherspoon picked up her Oscar, I should have known that Brokeback wasn’t going to win.
And no, this wasn’t an anti-gay thing. This was the Academy voters, most of whom live and work in Los Angeles, responding to the big racial message movie which was set right there in Los Angeles: “Look at us! We’re sensitive! Here in L.A., we recognize that we have problems with racism! …please love us?”
(Maybe we’d love you more if you actually gave the best movie of the year the Best Picture Oscar, but hey.)
How’d I do with my picks? Pretty well overall, I thought: I missed Best Picture (I guess the Gay Cowboy Hype Train stopped a little short of the station) and both supporting acting awards, but nailed everything else.
Some random notes that occur to me twenty-four hours after the fact (haaaa ha ha hah…what do you mean, write these ideas down when I have them? are you insane?):
- We didn’t see (or, at least, I didn’t see) Jack Nicholson actually open the envelope before pronouncing Crash the winner of the Best Picture award. While I’m sure he did — I’m assuming someone would have noticed if he hadn’t — I immediately started conjuring up visions of Jack deciding he’d be goddamned if he let that movie about the queer cowboys take home that Best Picture Oscar and taking matters into his own hands. But surely someone would have caught on to that… right?
- And while we’re on the subject of Jack: I wonder who he had to pay off to get himself seated right next to Keira Knightley. I’m thinking his sitting there wasn’t a simple coincidence.
- I liked Jon Stewart as host, certainly far better than I did David Letterman or Chris Rock, for example. I know not everyone did, but to me he was what I expected: Jon Stewart a little watered down for the mass audience. He seemed pretty nervous at first, which is understandable when you think about the hundreds of millions of people watching him live, but even so, he still got off some classic lines: “Martin Scorcese, zero Oscars. Three 6 Mafia… one.”
- Speaking of the Three 6 Mafia, I was thinking that watching them perform “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp” was quite possibly the highlight of my Oscar-watching career… right up until they actually won Best Song, which topped the surreality of that moment several times over. (Which led, of course, to one of Stewart’s best lines of the night: “I think it just got a little easier out here for a pimp.”
- Did Jennifer Lopez lose a bet with her stylist? What the hell was that?
- On the other hand, Ben Affleck’s current Jen, Jennifer Garner, looked positively radiant. And can I just say… three cheers for nursing mommies! Hip hip… HOORAY! Hip hip…
- So let’s see… the acting awards tonight went to Dr. Doug Ross of “ER”; the female lead from The Mummy and The Mummy Returns; the chubby, gonzo hurricane chsser from Twister; and the star of the Legally Blonde movies. The writing awards? To the creator of “Walker, Texas Ranger” and… well, okay, it’s hard to make too much fun of Larry McMurty. But still: remember, kids… you’ve gotta start somewhere.
- Memoirs of a Geisha won Oscars for costume design, art direction and cinematography, all of which I could have predicted just from watching the trailer. So, based on the reviews I’ve read, we can assume that Geisa is a lavish, beautifully designed, gorgeously filmed visual carnival — yet still a shitty movie nonetheless. It’s like my daddy always used to tell me: you can’t polish a turd.
- Did someone forget to clue Dustin Hoffman in to the fact that the Oscars are considered kind of a formal event? I think you probably could’ve worn the jeans to the Independent Spirit Awards, Dusty, but they were a little cazh for the Oscars.
There’s more, including some vague notion that I was supposed to say something about the apoplectic caterpillars masquerading as Reese Witherspoon’s eyebrows, but it’s late and I’m tired. Next year I won’t have to worry about forgetting my snark because I’ve already decided to live blog the thing. Constantly updated snark and commentary! It’ll be beautiful. Almost as beautiful as Jennifer Garner’s bounteous breasts.
Posted by Allen on under Photography |
I sincerely hope that my children grow up to be musically inclined. Terry and I are going to encourage them both as much as we can to play any instruments they find interests them (without pushing music on them if they’re not interested, of course). They’ve got a good shot at having some talent: their mother sings and plays guitar very well, as did her father, and their dad… well, kind of hacks around at a variety of instruments without being all that great at any of them, but sure tries. Kelsey’s got fantastically long fingers which would be great for playing piano or guitar, or, more suiting her nature, the harp; Laurel’s going to be the drummer for some industrial metal band, I’m pretty sure.
Posted by Allen on under Writing |
I came across the following quote today in a new column from “Bablyon 5″ head honcho/Amazing Spider-Man writer J. Michael Straczynski at Newsarama, and I thought that a number of people who read this site might benefit from it as much as I’m sure I will. Much of it is “yeah, yeah, okay, I’ve heard that a million times before,” but maybe it’s the millionth-and-first time that will change some small but critical pathway in my/your brain and make it resonate in a new way.
Your only real competition…is with yourself, with your fears, your insecurities, your determination to learn what needs to be learned; your willingness to apply ass to chair and fingers to keyboard and Get It Done instead of Talking About It. Too many beginning writers leave their stories forever unfinished because as long as the work is incomplete…it can’t be judged. Write. Finish it. Write the next thing. Rinse, repeat. Learn as much as you can. Write as much as you can. Because the more you write, the better you will write. It’s no different than any other muscle. Exercise it, and it becomes stronger.
Posted by Allen on March 5, 2006 under Movies, Pop Culture |
Here we go, my official 2006 Oscar Predictions for the major award categories. Please note that these are not the movies that I necessarily think should win these awards, just those that I think will win.
Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain. I don’t think there’s any derailing the Gay Cowboy Hype Train at this point. Not only is the movie, by most accounts, apparently worthy of the praise it’s garnered, but it’s the kind of movie Hollywood thinks should win, the kind of movie that shows how socially conscious and forward-thinking they are. And in a year when there’s no Titanic, no Gladiator, no Chicago, no The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, no massive commercial hit of sufficient quality to give the award to… that counts for a lot.
Best Actor: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Capote. While Hoffman’s not quite into the body-of-work stage of his career yet, he’s close — he’s done work of exceptional quality for ten years without as much as a previous sniff at Oscar to show for it. Further, Hoffman’s an Actor’s Actor, which should help his chances since the Academy gave the award to a Movie Star last year (Jamie Foxx). That said, I won’t be the least little bit surprised if the Gay Cowboy Hype Train steamrolls through and drops Oscar into Heath Ledger’s lap instead.
Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line. I hope the other four nominees have practiced their fake “I’m so happy for Reese!” smiles.
Best Supporting Actor: Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man. Giamatti’s been criminally shafted out of a Best Actor nomination two years in a row, perhaps because “supporting actor” just seems to fit Giamatti better than “leading actor.” He’s the quintessential second-banana character actor and the Academy would do well to give him his props here. I’m not counting out George Clooney since this category is likely his best shot at a win out of his three nominations.
Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, Junebug. Just a bizarre hunch. I was starting to write up a paragraph explaining why the Academy wouldn’t give this award to such a complete unknown… and then I remembered that Anna Paquin won it for The Piano. From everything I’ve heard for almost a year, Adams’ performance in Junebug was absolutely charming and terrific. And since most years some award goes to someone completely unexpected (paging Adrien Brody!), I’m going to say the bizarre and shocking happens here.
Best Director: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain. Whether or not Lee deserves it for this particular movie (and I’m not saying he doesn’t), he damn sure deserves it for helming such a diverse array of movies over the last ten years and bringing quality to each of them: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; The Ice Storm; Sense and Sensibility; Eat Drink Man Woman; even Hulk was a valiant effort at doing something different with the superhero genre. Tonight he picks up the award he should’ve earned for Crouching Tiger five years ago.
Best Original Screenplay: Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco, Crash. Personally, I don’t agree with it — I thought the writing was heavy-handed, obvious and preachy and didn’t actually add anything to the dialogue about race relations — but, again, this is the kind of movie Hollywood loves to show off as proof that they’re Caring and Progressive and Not Shallow At All. And since Crash won’t be winning any of the other major awards its up for, this’ll have to be its one opportunity to let someone give a tearful, impassioned plea for improved race relations during the acceptance speech.
Best Adapted Screenplay: Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana, Brokeback Mountain. No contest. Even if the Gay Cowboy Hype Train weren’t barreling through L.A. tonight, McMurty and Ossana should get credit for taking an 18-page short story and turning it into such a complex, nuanced full-length screenplay.
Best Animated Feature: Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Because it’s Wallace and Gromit. C’mon.
Posted by Allen on under Photography |
You might have wondered just where the Monday Photo has been the last couple of months. (More likely you didn’t notice it was AWOL, but I’ll try not to take it personally.) Well, truth be told, our old camera died in early January. The old Nikon Coolpix 770, the camera we got shortly before Kelsey was born so that we could record her every waking breath, finally shit the bed after four years and tens of thousands photos. We weren’t surprised — neither of us thought the camera would last forever, and we were both impressed it lasted four years [1] — though we were a bit frustrated by being cameraless.
We’d been itching to replace the camera both because Terry and I both are into the amatuer photography thing but also because of the pain of knowing that there are entire weeks of our children’s lives left undocumented. Someday the girls might look back on the mammoth collection of pictures of their childhoods and wonder just what happened during the early months of 2006… and we won’t be able to tell them. The implications are tragic. Clearly, we couldn’t let this cameralessness stand.
So on Friday night, we bopped down to our local Best Buy and got the new camera — we stayed in the Coolpix family, going with the Coolpix 4600. It’s not a sensational camera by any means (in fact, it’s pretty much bottom-of-the-line for the Coolpix family, and that’s saying something), though it’s still a decent upgrade over the old one. With the 512Mb memory card we got for it, we can store almost a thousand pictures on disk (at 1600×1200, which is the highest resolution we usually need) before having to download them off the camera, and it has better video capabilities and more color and lighting options. We know it’s not The Camera — both of us desperately want a digital SLR — but it’s a fine camera and will get us through until we can drop the money necessary to make photography the more serious hobby we both want it to be.
So in celebration of our newcamerahood, I give you the following picture of Laurel. Terry had put some gunk in Laurel’s hair yesterday to try to keep the static electricity in it to a minimum, and then had put her hair in a little topknot to keep it out of her face while we went to Kids Playground (which was an insane amount of fun for both girls). Afterwards we went to Terry’s mom’s house, where Laurel decided she didn’t need to keep her hair restrained any longer. The combination of hair gunk, static electricity, ponytail removal and extrememly active toddler resulted in the following work of beauty:
Look for the Monday Photo to resume tomorrow!
Posted by Allen on March 3, 2006 under Pop Culture |
I don’t have the proper words for these commercials. Just go watch and enjoy. (Totally safe for work!)
(Via Brian, via copyranter.)
Posted by Allen on March 2, 2006 under Writing |
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much of my writing I would consider “art” versus how much I would consider “craft.” How, I wonder to myself, do my percentages of inspiration versus perspiration play out? (And yes, these are the kinds of things I set my brain working on so that I don’t have to actually, y’know, write anything.)
My fear is that I’m all craft, no art. I don’t say that to dismiss the importance of craft — in fact, depending on exactly what’s being written and for what purpose, the craft can be even more important than the art. And I know I’m good at the craft. I communicate well via the written (or typed) word. I like to think it’s one of the things I do best. But I don’t want to think that there’s no art behind the craft, that there’s no soul in what I’m writing. And too often, I’m afraid that’s true.
I think it’s related to my ongoing struggles with figuring out exactly what it is I’m supposed to be writing. No, wait, that’s not true; I do know exactly what I’m supposed to be writing. The ongoing struggle is with the fact that I tend to work on what I think I’m supposed to be writing moreso than on what I want to be writing. When I write something that my brain tells me to write rather than when my heart tells me to (ref. aborted YA novel from last fall), I can’t really pretend to be very surprised when my heart’s not really in it, can I?
(The terrible truly thing: I keep having to come to the same conclusion about my passions every few months or so. Staying on point is, apparently, not one of my areas of strength. I think I need one of those reminder bracelets to tell me to keep focused on the things I actually want to write. Anyway.)
I discussed this point with a friend of mine, and she told me that she didn’t really think about her writing in these terms at all. The art grew naturally out of the craft, essentially, and I can certainly see that, even if it hasn’t proven true for me; perhaps I just never stick with anything long enough to let the art truly emerge. But the most important thing she said to me pointed out something I always, always overlook when I’m writing: she tries to focus on her writing as “play.” “Play” is something I so rarely allow myself to do when writing — my perfectionism seems to have robbed me of the ability to just loosen up, to have fun while I’m writing.
And it should be fun for me, shouldn’t it? My writing doesn’t have to support my family. No one (other than me) is pressuring me. There’s no reason to make it this Big Tortured Thing, which of course is exactly what I do every single time I look at a blank document. I’m not saying that I shouldn’t take the writing seriously, but clearly I don’t need to be taking it quite so seriously if it’s crippling my ability to write at all.
Writers in the audience… you have any opinions on the relationships between art, craft and/or play? Do you have fun when you write or is it a chore to be gotten through to get to the shiny finished product on the other side?
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