"Turn it down, hipster"

No writing tonight, and no writing update, but I leave you with this. The Death Wish trailer re-cut for our modern times. For those who are faint of heart, it contains swearing.

My favorite line: "No, it's a right-now coat!"

This Is How Michael Caine Speaks

This video is helping me to get through a day when I 1)am sick and 2)can't seem to get warm. I'm not sure what The Trip is, but I think I need to find out.

Also, we have early numbers from my daily writing/torture session.

Daily word count: 1,125

Monthly word count: 11,738

Novel word count: 83,239

What sort of day was it?

It was the sort of day where only one thing will make me feel better: looking at photos of female cosplayers!*

You are welcome.

If memory serves, the contents of this site are safe for work.

Because I never met a meme I didn't like

From my defunct blog:

I found this on Karen Healey's LiveJournal. I decided I wanted to play along.

Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile."
• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity. (NB: until I get bored.)
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.

Here are Karen's questions to me:

1. What was the best movie you saw this year?

Hands down, the best movie I've seen so far this year was The Hurt Locker, Katherine Bigelow's film about a bomb disposal unit in Iraq. Beautifully acted, gorgeously shot and a powerful script. As near perfect a movie as I've seen in quite some time.

2. Who do you count as family that you're not actually related to?

A childhood friend with whom I grew up, Aaron Billingsley. No matter how long we go without contacting one another, we always fall back into a very easy relationship. In a lot of ways, my relationship with him is easier than my relationship with my actual family.

3. Who do you most admire?

That's a good question. I don't know if I have an answer. I'm afraid I'm too cynical to admire anyone, but if I can think of someone, I'll edit this post and add it.

4. What's your wildest ambition?

That I might be able to support my family with my writing.

5. How have you been awesome lately?

I feel like I'm finally taking my life and my career seriously.

Quotes on comics

Another post poached from my other, now defunct, site:

Apparently I only have the strength to occasionally show up here and point to something of interest I found on the Internet. So be it for the time being, I guess. Someday I'll get enough sleep and have the energy to make real posts. Someday.

For now, I stumbled upon the site Quotes on Comics, which is exactly what you might imagine. Here's one of my favorites, and one that resonates for some reason:

"Breaking into comics is like breaking into a high-tech military compound. The first thing they do after discovering you got in is go seal up your entrance so no one can ever break in that way again."

Devin Grayson

Brief bits of business

Oh, bullet points, how I've missed you!

• A reminder that the eight-page Dalton short story by Todd Demong and myself is still up at Myspace/DHP. If you haven't already, please read it and let me know what you think of it. Thanks.

• Núria, my partner in crime on Gear School has posted some new photos over on the blog dedicated to that book. And let me say once again that Spain is overflowing with beautiful people.

• This seems like a good time to remind folks that I am accessible in other places on the Internet. I can be found on myspace, though I am never on there anymore; facebook (where, besides a personal profile, I also have a group page and a page devoted to this blog); twitter; flickr; and photos I take with my phone can be seen on twitpic. So many ways to enjoy the spectacle that is me.

And after that bit of egotism, I must go shower.

Things I'm thinking about that are most likely unrelated to one another.

Item 1: I have what I suspect is an annoying habit. Well, more than one certainly but just one that relevant to the discussion here. I don't like to talk about projects in any detail until they have actually come to fruition. On the other hand, I like to mention when I have finished my end of a project. This coyness on my part may very well be infuriating for the reader. For that I apologize.

However! I just finished writing an eight-page script for an unspecified project and I sent it of to Todd Demong. When he's done drawing it we are going to see about entering it into an on-line comics competition. This is something that Todd and I have talked about doing together for going on five ears now. It's nice to finally start writing it; to start seeing it come alive. If this project moves forward from this point, I will definitely write about it in more detail in this space.

I should mention that collectors of the original 100 Girls comics series may find a clue to what project I'm talking about in the letters columns contained therein. There.

Item 2: I can become obsessive about things. Those who know e well may not be surprised by this. Authors and film makers, books, movies, television shows. I can watch certain films again and again. I can listen to certain songs endlessly on repeat. A couple of years ago, I found some videos by the band Ok Go and, for a few months, I had to watch those videos at least once every day.

And now these. A pair of videos by the band The Decemberists. A band I've paid very little attention to before now. I even have one of their albums, but it never grabbed my attention. But a week or so ago, I was on youtube and stumbled across the video for "O Valencia", and quickly followed it up with the video for "Sixteen Military Wives". And I've been watching them compulsively ever since. I don't even feel the need to watch any other of The Decemberists videos. I just need to watch these two over and over again. Soon the spell will be broken and I'll leave them behind and move on to some new obsession. And I won't even remember what it was that appealed to me so strongly about these little gems. But for now, here they are. Let's watch together, shall we?

And a bit of useless trivia. In the video for "Sixteen Military Wives", Ezra Holbrook, songwriter and lead singer of one of my favorite local bands, Dr. Theopolis, shows up at the 4:10 mark. He's sitting behind the drum and wearing a light blue sweater vest. Perhaps that fact will enhance your enjoyment of this video as it did mine.

EDIT: It was pointed out to me by two faithful readers that the video of "O Valencia" I chose wouldn't play. That has now been fixed.

Looks like fun!

This is the best thing I've seen on the Internet in quite a while. Via the excellent Boing Boing.

Oh, I obsess over this...

The Price is (Exactly) Right.

A month of silence and then, BAM, two posts in one night. And this one, God help me, is about The Price is Right. There was a time in my life when I watch this show compulsively. For a few years there in the late '90s I watched it every day. If there was a TV nearby, I was watching folks come on down. So you'll understand why this video piqued my interest. These are the final moments of the Showcase Showdown. (I'm going to assume you've never watched the show and write a quick rundown of this segment.) Two contestants are each shown a bunch of fabulous prizes, they each guess what they think their showcase is worth. Normally people are within, say, a thousand dollars of the actual price. If they guess within $100 dollars of the price (without going over) they win both showcases. This happens fairly rarely. What the man in the video does is something that no one else in the history of the show has ever done: he guesses the price of his showcase exactly.



Somewhere, Bob Barker is seething that it was Drew Carey and not him that hosted this episode.

You can say that again...

Whether you are a Republican or Democrat, this little video might prove instructive. How many new ideas were presented in the debates? Not many, apparently. Via one of my new on-line obsessions, 236.com, I give you Synchronized Presidential Debating:

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

The first line of defense

This is the kind of thing we get up to 'round these parts. When the sun becomes distant and weak, and the temperature begins to drop past the point that will support human life, we build honking great air canons that fire pumpkins with enough velocity to destroy derelict automobiles. We are simple folk. With access to air compressors and orange squash.

This video comes from the Statesman Journal, the paper for which my wife works. It was produced by Chris Hagan. I dare you to watch it and not smile.

I wanted to embed the video here, but the Statesman's embed code is broken beyond my ability to fix it. Instead I will direct you to the video on their site and drive up their hit count.

44%?

Obviously, there's been a mistake in their calculations:

44%

Garfield minus Garfield

Oh, this is... this is brilliance.

The website Garfield minus Garfield posits that by removing Garfield from his eponymous comic strip you get a much better comic strip about the mental decay of Jon Arbuckle. I dare you not to read it compuslively.

My hat of infinite enigmas

And to wash the awful taste of politics out of our mouths, here is a funny cartoon about one of my favorite comics writers, Alan Moore.

I found this on Eddie Campbell's blog and he, apparently, found it on Neil Gailman's (why don't I have a link to Gaiman's blog on the page?).

Your new favorite band

I ran across this time-waster meme at my buddy Greg's blog. Credit where it's due: he found it on Sara Ryan's blog. Anyway, here's my effort:



I picture Silver (EP) as an emo band, but still, you know, peppy.

Here's how to generate your own:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.