Texas Strangers #1 from Image comics on March 14.
Co-written with Antony "Mostly Black Bart" Johnston
Art by Mario "Deadeye" Boon
Color by Traci "Splendor" Hui
Diamond Order code: JAN071921
The cover looks like this:
Did i mention i once was nerdy enough to perform a magic show in 4th grade?
i am barely 100 pages in and I love this book. not just because it seems to be deeply researched or FULL of archival photos I have NEVER seen before. No i love this book because Houdini apparently spent his life, as I try to, collecting strange people to interact with and in some cases befriend.
It seems as though every other page has some throwaway comment about houdini meeting a women who not only was immune to poison and pain but had her life ended in a double murder suicide love triangle! THAT is a whole 'nother book right there. he was a fan of Lincoln, he was at a Big expo with Tesla, he was most likely recruited to be a spy! One time he told his wife he was gonna run and get some ice cream for their train ride As the train was pulling away he comes running up with a carton of ice cream for everyone on the train car and tips the porter a generous amount of money. it turns out he ran across a crap game and hit it huge! i wonder if the guys even knew it was Houdini? Or if there was even a crap game at all! Maybe he fought some crime and then used the profits to get ice cream?!?!?
Anyway the whole book is shaping up to be like that. Go read it.
I find that these albums are stuck in heavy rotation especially while I am writing or driving.
It's nice to have music that has a good beat, can deal with the existence of women and still have bite and sarcasm in it.
Of course that Roots album usually makes me want to drive over people or weep at how wrong the country has gone but what good album doesn't do that?
the checkout tracks?
I Gotcha from lupe
Losing My Way from JT
Here I come from them Roots and hell just pick a track on Jean grae's this week
So i was cleaning up the endless mess that is my spare room when i sumble on a box of stuff from college. Including some old addresses of some old friends. this of course prompted me to go google them up and see how much more successful they are than i am. i came up with this though:
this was especially odd as I had just uncovered this gem: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulyoo/175962356/
I Am Music
Last week I was hanging out with my favorite teenager watching an OC marathon of the first 6 episodes, when she reminded me that I promised I would make her a mix of sons she wanted. The problem was that she only wanted three songs and it offends me as a mixtape guy to waste a CD like that so I made her a mix with those three songs included. Now being the teen she is i knew she would ignore the rest of the mix if I didn't disperse the songs thru the disc forcing her to hear the whole thing. So I looked at the songs she wanted and came up with this mix called "Diary of a 16 year Old"
1.
- I start off with this little Instrumental to preface the next three song plus when you hear that opening guitar riff, you just know that something exciting is coming. It seems like that is the way of the teenager, the littlest things will set off the big adventures.
2. C'mon C'mon / The Von Bondies - the first of three songs she wanted. i first heard this song while playing Burnout 3. It is my favorite song to drive to at the moment. More interesting is that it is a look back at mistakes of youth and almost commanding you the listener to maybe examine them. i consider this song and the the last two songs a sort of framing element to the narrative of the mix.
3. Hollaback Girl / Gwen Stefani - 2nd of three songs requested. America's REAL favorite teen sings about not being easy and kicking ass to a cheer beat. To quote the Harajuku Queen "The shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S"
4.
Words And Guitar / Sleater-Kinney - Anyone remember being a teenager and not being able to express anything important without using some music as a reference point? Well the fine ladies sum it up quite nicely to a driving beat of...er words and guitars.
5.
Rebel Girl / Bikini Kill - when you are doing these kind of mixes I find it is always good to throw in a song or two specifically stating the message. What better than a song about a girl envying a girl who has the guts to be different in a conformative microculture of teenage America? This also intros the next section of "teen rebellion"
6.
Tattoo / Petra Haden - Nothing says rebellion better than rock and a tattoo, right? But me being me I had to subvert the whole thing because in truth being a teen ager is rarely about real rebellion so I put in this cover of the Who. It sounds like teen Enya rebelling but um, better.
7. Smells Like Teen Spirit / Tori Amos - no teenage girl is complete without proper angst. So Ms Amos finally gets onto a mix of mine with this quite anthem about choosing a proper deoderant.
8. I'm So Excited / Le Tigre - the third act of Teen Rebellion: SEX!!! Le Tigre's cover of this disco booty shaker is both true to the original and kinda awkward, much like the first time you actually have sex.
9. Dancing Machine / The Jackson 5 - Act Three"Let's fall in love" I tried to capture the feeling and length of the average teen romance in the next 4 songs. Go to a party, hook up, fall into truly epic love, then something dumb and usually peer driven breaks you up. Besides can you really say you don't like this song?
10. I Don't Think We've Met / Nikka Costa - the hook up! i love Nikka Costa she should really be bigger and hotter than all the current teen sensations. She has funky funky beats and everything she sings sounds...hot. It like you are 16 and all you can hear are your hormones telling you "All the cool kids are doing it!"
11. Gigantic / Pixies - I am going to behonest and say that I think I know what this song is about but I could be completely wrong. When I first heard it I thought it was about the teenage girl's side of falling for an older man as told by her best friend watching from afar. I have a friend who believes it is about a white girl having sex with a black guy. I have another friend who says that it is all about naughty sex. Pick one and it still works here.
12. Buddy Holly / Weezer - the world never understands our special love. this leads to fear and fear leads to hatred and hatred leads to getting the crap beat out of you for looking like Buddy Holly and having the nerve to date Mary Tyler Moore. Better we die then let them tear our love asunder, right?
13. Put It Back Together / Fatboy Slim - Uh, that would be a no. but now we get to look back longingly on the love lost and wonder why it can be reformed. Wash rinse repeat until college where you discover the joys of non-committed sex. But that is a whole different mix.
14. We Used to Be Friends / The Dandy Warhols - the 3rd song. Speaking of college, this songs weirdly melancholy lyrics combined with it's catchy refrain makes this the sorta thing you hum to yourself upon seeing an old flame with a new flame and realizing that you are much better off.
15. Lonely Generation / Julia Darling - honestly even as a teenager i knew that part of being one was the whining about how no one gets our generation. So here is an anthem for that.
16. Dan Evans Theme / Rusty Andrews - this has been a quality Dan Evans Production!
SO i got this place I go to well as often as possible. I write there, I read comics there, I eat many meals there. It is in Hollywood, so a fair amount of Hollywood types land there
There is this guy who is also a regular and we argue about shit occasionally and get along well enough but it's not like we really know each other. So one day i am running my mouth about Veronica Mars and he mentions he hasn't finished watching it. He says that someone said he should watch it because it was like BRICK
Well one of the few things I love more than Veronica Mars is BRICK and I start talking about it like I made the movie. At some point I ask him what he thought of BRICK and he says
"Well I wrote and directed it...So, you know, I am biased"
You wish you had camera on me at that moment
At this point, I figure I am all the way in a very deep hole I might as well get comfy so I just do something I never usually do and I just start gushing about BRICK...
LIKE A TEENAGE GIRL BACKSTAGE AT A JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE CONCERT
"OMG I love the casting, in fact we wanted Nora and I think a few others from your cast for a show I did..."
"So, like, at the end of the movie does she really say "Motherfucker?"
He actually looked pretty pleased about me figuring that out. Hell, I talked about the pictures in the drama dressing room and anything else, that ever crossed my mind. Worse I was in such an embarrassed state I couldn't remember the names of anything and I must have sounded like Johnny McPoser
Still, it was kinda cool. the guy is totally laidback and he answered every asinine thing I hit him with. he talked about how no one wanted him to direct the movie and his next project Finally i remembered what I wanted to say fromt he very beginning of the conversation. I told him about San Diego Comicon and the VM panel where Rob Thomas was talking about BRICK. It turns out that he had the same sort of conversations with his friends about the VM/Brick similarities and had just recently watched the movie. So the whole thing came full circle.
So all i can say about the civic duty that is taking up a portion of my life right now is that
- I am on a 3 week criminal case
- Presided over by Judge Ito
- and so far, something interesting has happened EVERYDAY!
Man wait til I tell you about the Jury selection process!!!
So after...6 years I think, Affordablehost was finally able to erase the entire contents of my blog. Every story, anecdote, thought has been wiped out by an unexplained server problem that corrupted not only my data but apparently had been making corrupt backups.
Goodbye 24 recaps and celeb stories and the ever humourous tale of how i got my xbox.
Sigh.
Stupid Internerd.
