A DNAgents video

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Mark Evanier and Will Meugniot created the DNAgents 25 years ago. Here's a video by Meugniot about the comic book.
For those of you who have trouble downloading videos, and I know who you are, here's a link to a trade paperback collection.

Paul and Storm provide us a Halowe'en theme

Here's "Lame Monster Party." Enjoy!

Heeeeeere's Harlan!

Here are two parts (one, two) of an interview with noted SF writer Harlan Ellison from comicbookresources.com.
Interviews with Harlan Ellison are always interesting.

Indians pondering trade?

Good news! That Indians are considering trading for another mediocre hitter!
He'll fit right in with Franklin Gutierrez, Ben Francisco, Ryan Garko, Josh Barfield, David Delucci and about a dozen other guys they have acquired in recent years.
I bet if they complete the trade, the Indians' brass tells us what a great guy he is in the clubhouse. Just once, I'd love to hear Mark Shapiro say, "We know this guy we acquired is a real jerk. Everyone on the team is sure to hate him. But, boy can he hit!

Some people take mindless cyber drivel too seriously

Hall hath no fury like a woman scorned -- even online!

Thumbs up, thumb down

Needless to say, this guy didn't hitchhike from the crime scene.

(That may be the cleverest blog entry title I have yet written, if I do say so myself.)

There's tolls and there's tolls

I wonder how often this actually happens?

Eating cheaper may cost more

This story tells us that restaurants are having trouble getting customers to come out and eat.
This story tells us that restaurants may have to raise their prices because wholesale food prices are rising.
So, taken in combination, what do these articles tell us? If you have a favorite restaurant, go eat there soon. It may not be there long.
Here's the formula, for those of you who are arithmetically inclined: Higher prices+fewer customers=even fewer customers=even higher prices=yet fewer customers=a going out of business sale on used kitchen supplies.
Or, these stories may indicate we may have to get used to paying more for some menu items, especially things with beef in them, while other items are offered to entice us to buy the beef.
This is kind of an interesting companion to the above stories. It offers another option.
The story tells us that the owners of Bennigan's restaurant chain, in trying to emerge from bankruptcy, are returning to emphasizing appetizers and drinks, which they did years ago.
This may be a model for some restaurants in the next few years. Here are the key paragraphs:

Holsinger said Bennigan's was one of the most dominant casual dining brands in the early 1990s with 30 to 40 percent of its business coming from beer, wine and liquor sales. Those products typically sell for significantly more than they cost, helping a company boost its margins. Bennigan's was also well known for its appetizers and sandwiches.
But as the decade came to a close, that dominance eroded. The chain, he said, racked up large amounts of debt by expanding too quickly and tarnished its bar and grill image by adding pricier, lower-quality entrees to its menu to compete with other sit-down chains.

To sum up: the answer to the restaurant industry's conundrum may be really simple — beer. Either sell it to restore your profit margin or, if your eatery goes out of business, use it to drink yourself into a stupor.

Serial cereal blogging

Today, I had Coco Wheats for breakfast.
Then I went to work.
There was a good-bye breakfast at a restaurant for one of the folks with whom I work.
I was sent to take some pictures of the event.
When I got there, the folks all said, "You are staying for breakfast, right?"
So, naturally, I ordered two eggs, hash browns, bacon, toast and orange juice.
Then, I took the pictures.
Everyone was happy and I skipped lunch.
The end.

WAKY is online!

Now you (Yes you!) can listen to Louisville's greatest radio station, WAKY.
Well, it's actually kind of "Son of WAKY," because the original 79WAKY was on the AM dial and was a rock station back in the 1970s. Acording to the Web site to which I just linked, "for over 20 years, WAKY (790 AM) in Louisville, Kentucky was one of the most influential and highly-respected secondary market Top 40 stations in America."
They had some great personalities on the air, including our old friend Gary Burbank. Here are some of Garish's air checks from back in the days before he was on 700 WLW.
Now, some of the same DJs (not Burbank, sorry) play the same songs as they did then. Of course, neither the DJs nor the songs are getting any younger, so the new WAKY 103.5 is called an "oldies" station.
During two years on Louisville, I became a huge fan of the new WAKY. It still feels like an radio station should, with little sound effects and lots of funny jingles for stations IDs. One of my biggest regrets about having to move to Virginia is losing this wonderful station.
(My favorite WAKY jingle is the one that goes, "The fastest thing in the air ... WAKY.")
About two weeks ago, before they started streaming, I missed WAKY so much, I sent the station and e-mail through their Web site. I asked if they were going to be offering a web cast.
I received this response:
"We are working on going live, hopefully in the next few weeks. Please be patient and keep checking back for our “Listen Live” button."
True to their word, I check this evening and there it was. Now, 11 hours away and far, far out of the range of the WAKY transmitters in Elizabethtown, Ky., I can still listen in. And so can you.
So go listen in already!

If Colin Powell jumped off a bridge ...

(Not to beat a dead horse on this subject, but it's interesting.)

... lots of people would follow him all the way down.
Here's an article about why Powell's endorsement of Obama may be a really big deal and who might plunge off the proverbial bridge.
I guess we'll find out what happens in the exit polls.

Just in time for Halloween

On Oct. 29, the first issue of this series, "Legion of the Supernatural," is supposed to hit comic book stores. Seems like perfect timing, just two days before Halloween.
In case you don't want to click on that link, here's a few key sentences from Newsarama.com:

The upcoming series Legion of the Supernatural from IDW finds writer Rick Remender and artist Bret Blevins taking a motley assortment of monsters and putting them into a more heroic spotlight as they emerge as the last line of defense against an invading army of "starving inter-dimensional vampires". That's right, "starving inter-dimensional vampires" – Rick told us that himself.

Brat Blevins is a fantastic artist, and I am going to be there for the first issue. After that, I have no idea.
Blevins is heavily involved in the creation of the how-to magazine called "Draw!" He has contributed a lot of really interesting articles on figure drawing, among other things. Knowing a little bit about the way he works and thinks, I'm hoping I'll appreciate the new comic.
I don't know the first thing about the series' writer.
As a side-note, if you go look at the site for the comics company IDW Publishing, which is publishing "Legion of the Supernatural," you'll see the company has some of comics top talents. This includes John Byrne and Peter David. They making some top flight comics.
Byrne is getting to play in the Star Trek universe, and David's creator-owned "Fallen Angel" series is about to be joined by a comic version of the hero of his novels, Sir Apropos of Nothing, in a new series.
They also published a detective comic book, "Dead She Said," drawn by Bernie Wrightson and a pair of biographies about the presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama.
IDW is relatively new to the comics publishing scene, but it the company seems to have a lot of creative energy. At least, they are keeping me interested in what they are publishing.
(Boy, was that post link heavy. I guess it will give you lots of things to look at if you are reading this because you are bored.)

Wow.

This really surprised me.
After reading the article, I can't disagree with anything Colin Powell said.

When Quinn the Eskimo gets here, is everybody gonna jump for joy?

Is it finally time for the Browns to give up on Derek Anderson?
I have watched the entirety of the Browns' games against Cincinnati, New York and Washington D.C.
For almost all of the Cincinnati game and almost all of the Washington D.C. game, Anderson looked like a college quarterback playing in his first pro game wearing a blindfold.
Somehow, the the fourth quarters of both of those games, he stepped up and looked assertive and accurate.
For quite a while, I have been on the Anderson bandwagon, unlike many other Browns fans, mostly because they went 10-5 last year with him as the starting quarterback. No other Browns quarterback has been that good for a long time.
Until now, I have ignored the Cincinnati game in December where Anderson's inaccurate passing probably cost the Browns a chance for a win. But the past few games make me wonder if that was more than a one-game aberration.
Is he just really streaky? Is he inaccurate? Do his receivers run bad routes? Is the playbook too confusing?
Not being a football expert, I have no clue if there is something the coaching staff can correct with Anderson or the rest of the offense to make him play like he did last year.
The team around him seems poised for success. The Browns finally have a good offensive line that gives him lots of time to throw. They have a strong running game with Jamal Lewis and several other running backs who seem to get the job done week in and week out. The defense keeps getting better and better.
In any case, I'd hate to give up a quarterback with a big arm who won big the previous year. Most other years, 10-6 would have put the Browns in the playoffs.
But I am beginning to wonder if the Browns can afford to give Anderson much more time to figure himself out.
With the team at 2-4, it may be too late already.

(On another note: I would never have tried a 54 yard field goal at the end of the game like Romeo Crennel decided. Phil Dawson's longest ever kick was 52. Anderson had gotten a little hot in the fourth quarter, and if not for Braylon Edwards' mis-reads and dropsies, the Browns may have been much closer to the goal line anyway. I'd have tried another throw on 4th and 10 — to anybody but Edwards. It was at least as good a gamble as a 54 yard field goal and kept open the potential for a win and not just a tie.)

What time is it, you ask?

Here is the definitive answer. Anything else is, well, untimely.
Set your watches and clocks to this, and you may still be late, but you'll know exactly how late.

I really miss comics by ...

Daniel Clowes.
(First in a series of however many I come up with.)

I got hooked on "Ghost World" in "Eightball" way before it ever became a movie. Somehow, Clowes' strangely eerie warped kinda 1950's art style sucked me in, but his storytelling that depicted personal isolation, depression and a strange detachment of the characters to the in which they lived was compelling.
"Ghost World," and "David Boring" were the most perfect examples of stories that were, on the surface, strange sort of stream-of-consciousness tales about people moving through a world over which they seemed to have to no control and living with a fair amount of frustration.
Below the surface, however, they were even more dreamlike and mysterious, with characters whose names spelled strange anagrams.
Harlan Ellison often quotes a saying which goes something like, "Establish enigmas, not answers." I think this is the strength of Clowes' work, for me anyway.
I read these things thinking, what are these people doing and why are they doing it? In some of his best works, I never really figure it out.
At any rate, since about the time "Ghost World" was made into a movie, it seems like Clowes has moved away from comics. He did, however, recently draw a cover for the "New Yorker" magazine, which fit in well with his usual themes.
The front page is above, and the second page shows the man having tea with the robot he has just built.
If I were to interpret the cover, from my lens of Clowes is all about detachment from people and real world around you, I'd say the idea is the man has no one to spend time with so he has to build a robot just to be able to enjoy his tea. He can only take solace in the companionship of a being created from his imagination that isn't even human.
Anyway, two pages in a national magazine is nice, but I'd sure love to see a 24th issue of "Eightball."

Abe Vigoda is ...

Yep. He's still alive.

I wonder if Abe Vigoda went over the rainbow to see Dorothy and Toto if the owners of the site will still maintain that he is alive. Given his amusement over the mis-reporting of his death, Abe might find that funny, too.

Vanity plates I have seen

The best one lately was a small car that was driving really fast past me on I-64. The plate read, "DAAAAANG."

A new DHP

Just in time for Haloween ... issue 15. The most notable story in here, if you only read one, appears to be "The Stain."

Mainstream this!

Every time I hear someone on TV use the phrase "mainstream media," I get the feeling what they really mean is, "Someone on another network who doesn't agree with me."
Next time you hear someone say "mainstream media," substitute my phrase and see if it adds any further context to what the person is saying.

I should provide some context: It also seems to me that people who complain about the "mainstream media" are using an outdated concept. Today, you can find news, or news-like programming, from about any perspective. As a result, the "mainstream" doesn't exist like it did 20 or 30 years ago.
Yet, with all this information out there, there are plenty of people who try to build up their credibility by saying they are telling you something that they say everyone else is ignoring.
Odds are, they aren't. They are just emphasizing something that agrees with their particular way of thinking.

Finally, the blackout Wendy's story

(OK, I know this is really late. But, a good story like this is timeless. Besides, with the power off for five days right after this happened, then the move and week without the Internet at our new house and then five more days in Washington DC, I can only blog so much. The picture is Izzy looking out the front door during the blackout week.)

The power kicked off somewhere around 11:30 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 14.
The wind was howling, but there were no tornadoes or lightning strikes to make me think something really bad was happening.
Apparently, Louisville wasn’t prepared for 80 mile per hour winds, either.
With no power, there was no TV and no Internet. The one radio that had batteries was working, but it was Sunday afternoon so many of the stations were on auto pilot and didn’t carry live news.
As a result, I had no idea how serious it really was until later.
By calling the power company on my cell phone, I learned that a steadily climbing number of people had lost electricity.
Hallie, Izzy and I had to eat at supper time and, with no power decided to go to a restaurant. Unfortunately, everyone else in Kentuckiana decided to do the same thing.
We passed Culver’s, which was full but had power. We passed lots of empty places that were empty and dark. We passed a Wendy’s that was full of people and cars and decided to keep going.
My bright idea was to go across the river to Indiana, thinking that they were on a different power grid, and maybe weren’t hit so hard.
I was wrong. Everything was out along I-65.
All we could find was a packed Wendy’s along Lewis and Clark Parkway in Clarksville.
We pulled into the parking lot, which was full. We decided to avoid the also-full drive through lanes. They were packed with cars out of the parking lot and into the access road.
Hallie parked, and I ran inside. What I saw was something I had never seen before.
The line stretched through the little maze of handrails and back toward Wendy’s front windows. It actually curled a little, turning back toward the main enterance, which is where I got in line.
As I recall, it was about 5:50 p.m. or so when I got in line. Seeing how long it was, I almost didn’t, but I figured no place else would have a shorter line and by the time we left to find someplace else, I might as well have waited in line. I almost went back out to the car to tell Hallie how long the line was, but I decided against it when a few people cane in behind me. With a line this long, I didn’t want to fall even a few people behind.
Needless to say, I was hungry and cranky and I didn’t want to stand in close quarters with a bunch of people. But, there was no other choice, so I waited.
There are only so many ways to amuse one’s self while standing in a line like that. I decided to observe the people around me.
There was one family sitting at a table and eating their supper. I imagined that with a line like that, they probably felt really conspicuous and maybe a little guilty as the people waiting slowly moved past them. I watched as the couple’s daughter picked all the cheese off her cheeseburger and refused the rest. Normally, it wouldn’t make an impression, but I almost asked to take the remaining sandwich off her hands and eat it. It seemed like not eating available food in a crisis like that (It may not have been a crisis, but it seemed rather urgent anyway.) should be punished. Then I realized I should just relax about it. I was overly cranky from being hungry, excited and trapped in along like with a bunch of people, this was a five-year-old and the power would probably come back soon, anyway.
I continued to stand in line watching the clock tick. It was now after 6 p.m. I guesstimated I’d probably be out of the line by 6:15 p.m. or so.
Human nature is certainly interesting. An old woman got her tray and walked past me with it. She had waited in the Godawful line for who knows how long at that point. What did she order? Not a bunch of food. Not anything that seemed like comfort food. Not even anything filling. She carried on her tray a baked potato and a small Frosty.
All I could think of was, “She waited all that time for that?” I also thought she could have gotten the heck out of the way so someone else who really wanted food could eat.
I continued to watch as people came in and out. By this time, I was about halfway through the line, but not up to the handrail maze yet.
An old man, helped by a woman who looked like maybe she was his daughter, got another strange order. He ordered a plain hamburger and a cup of water. Now why on earth did he wait that long for that? And, take up a valuable position in line that I could have been using? He could have had peanut butter and jelly at home, for crying out loud. The power had only been off a few hours. The jelly couldn’t have gone bad yet.
There was one person behind the counter who was talking to the customer waiting in line. She was a somewhat middle-aged woman who was running around doing her best to keep everything moving. It was slow going anyway, but she was certainly working hard.
Every so often, she would holler to the patrons thanking them for waiting and promising to take their orders as soon as possible.
As I got closer to those precious handrails, people began moving past me to get to the bathroom. Back and forth they were walking, and I had to make a hole for them to get through. I started wondering how many of them washed their hands for one; and for two how many of them were sick and because I was confined in here at close range with this many people, would they get me sick, too?
The line kept moving a little faster. By now, it was 6:15 p.m. or thereabout. A man was talking to the couple behind me, saying how the people at this Wendy’s hated him because he always had problems with his order, and by golly he always let them know about it. He started bringing the food back when it was wrong, even if he had to drive all the way back from home to do it. The manager knew him and didn’t like him, he bragged.
I started to internally roll my eyes when he said he intended to stand there after he got his six hamburgers and check every one to make sure they were right. If they weren’t, line or no line, he’d make them give him new ones that were right.
Obviously, I didn’t think too highly of him at that point.
He got up to order shortly thereafter, and I saw why he always got his orders wrong.
First, he placed his order in a rambling, stammering start and stop fashion that was almost incoherent. I had no idea what he wanted on which hamburgers when he was done. Then, the clerk, who I think was the assistant manager, repeated the order back. No, that wasn’t right. The customer went through the whole thing again, contradicting what he said before and what the manager read back to him.
If I hadn’t been in a long line for almost a half-hour, the whole thing would have been funny.
So, they seemed to get everything straightened out, but I didn’t think they had agreed on the order so much as agreed to stop discussing it until the burgers came out.
So, it took a little while for his six hamburgers to come out. When they did, there was some confusion behind the counter as to what went where. I saw this as a bad sign.
They got everything straight and handed him the bag. As promised, he took them out of the bag one by one and laid them in two piles on top of the handrail.
By the end, five of them were right (Hooray! The over-under was four.) but one had the wrong combination of condiments.
He paused, and looked back to the counter for a long while. It was pregnant pause, because I think some of the folks in line would have been happy to give him a makeshift cesarean section right there in line if he followed through on his promise.
He turned to his friends in line and smiled and said, “Well, they got one wrong, like I knew they would. But, I won’t hold up the whole line to get it fixed.”
I think he just wanted someone to know the Clarksville Wendy’s had screwed him over again, but he was such a big, magnanimous person he would suffer so the line would keep moving.
Good choice.
Finally, I was up to order. It was about 6:20 p.m. I ordered for Hallie and me and moved back out of the way to wait for my food.
While I was waiting, a teenager who had been eating in the restaurant came up to the front of the line and asked for refills on his pop. Now, ordinarily, this would be no big deal. But it seemed to me that if he had any common courtesy he’d just shut up and eat his ice and get a damn drink when he got home. He looked kind of sheepish about it, like he realized at that moment he was about a popular as a nerd at a homecoming dance.
The Wendy’s staff handled it very well. They refilled his drinks quickly. When he left the line, the problem was solved and quickly forgotten.
I got my food and took what they gave me. It could have been a rat burger and deep fried cat litter and I probably wouldn’t have noticed.
When I got back out to the car, it was 6:25 p.m. Thirty-five minutes in line at a Wendy’s. One the way to the car, I realized that Hallie had to play with Izzy in the car for 35 minutes while I was in line. I wondered if they both would be ready to kill when I got out there, but everyone was happy to have food. Hallie fed Izzy while I was waiting in line.
Then, we proceeded to spend the five days in the dark.
It was Friday afternoon that power came back on. All I can say is thank God for gas water heaters. For five days, showers were our best luxury.

Invisible Hands ... the end

Invisible Hands Part 5

And tomorrow, part 6 ...

Inivisible Hands Part 4

Invisible Hands Part 3

Inivisible Hands Part 2

"Invisible Hands" Part one

Richard Sala is one of my favorite cartoonists. I had no idea, but he did an animated feature for "Liquid Television" on MTV (Remember that show? Yes, it was that long ago!) called "Invisible Hands." Here is part one! The total show is 12 minutes long.

Since this aired, he has refined his style a little bit, but he still moves around the horror, monster, mystery and pulp genres with a cleverness that is unmatched. Everything new I find by him, I buy, no questions asked. His art has gotten a little more clean and simple, which is a good thing. If you do an Amazon search, you'll find quite a few goodies.

Here's his Web site. Is there anything cooler than the front page?

On, yeah. Here's the cartoon. I am going to post all six parts, one a day.

(By the way, I didn't forget about the 35 minute Wendy's story from my week without electricity. I am still finishing the story. It should keep. It's not terribly time sensitive, especially since I couldn't post it the day it happened.)

They didn't save the Fortress of Solitude, but ...

.. fans did raise $100,000 to fix the home in Cincinnati in which Superman was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Here's the story.

Earliest reference describes Christ as 'magician'

Is this the first century equivalent of a coffee mug that says "I (heart) Jesus?"

This is a very interesting story, nonetheless.

Here's a sort of companion piece addressing if Jesus walked on water or ice.

Some words from Ray Bradbury

Here's a really nice story about Ray Bradbury's appearance at the Baltimore comic convention. i wish I had been there.