GADZOOKS!

Circular bandsaws in flight? I see no possible way this can go wrong.

2011-05-30T23:42:00.000-07:00

In further proof that human beings are beautiful, fucked-up, crazy people, a man named Joerg has made a slingshot that shoot circular saws.

It's this kind of can-do ingenuity that assures me the human race would totally survive a zombie apocalypse. Joerg will lead the way.

Star Wars takes over The New York Times

2011-05-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

This is pretty freakin' rad:

Someone's done a mockup of the New York Times cover of Osama Bin Laden's death, except with a galactic spin.

I love the attention to details, down to the "Yoda" commenter who says, "Until body I see, believe it I will not." And the "Gearhutt" spammer!

New webcomic: UN/SAFE

2011-04-19T13:18:00.000-07:00

Huzzah for a new webcomic! "UN/SAFE" is the story of the Punk and the Artist, and the line between art and humanity. It's based on a real performance piece by Marina Abramović called Rhythm 0, which you can read about here. If you've never checked out Abramovic's work, you totally should: the woman is intense. As outlandish as the events of UN/SAFE may seem, bear in mind that Abramović actually did this.

From the Wikipedia article:
Abramović had placed upon a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use (a sign informed them) in any way that they chose. Some of these were objects that could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were a rose, a feather, honey, a whip, scissors, a scalpel, a gun and a single bullet. For six hours the artist allowed the audience members to manipulate her body and actions.
o___O Crazy, huh? When I read about the performance, my immediate mental reaction was, well, check out the story and you'll see. This is my response to Rhythm 0, how I think I would have reacted if I had been there on that night in 1974.

The comic's illustrated by the lovely Audrey Weaverling and the brave Devin Mohr (my niece!). They did a fantabulous job, I must say. This one's a shorty, just 8 pages long--we did the first 4 pages as a kind of little teaser, with the rest to appear on May 1st. So watch for that!

ETA:
OH MAN. Someone must be doing an art lecture on Abramovic right now, because this picture just popped up online:

That's a picture taking during the performance piece. You can see her bleeding and someone wrote on her stomach. Which FREAKS ME OUT, because I didn't see this picture before Audrey started drawing the project, and THIS is a panel from page 4 of the comic:

Stumptown Comics Fest 2011

2011-04-18T22:08:00.000-07:00

This last weekend was Stumptown Comics Fest 2011. Unfortunately I only went for a few hours both days due to a nasty case of food poisoning; also, I must confess that I'm not a fan of the decision to move the con from the Doubletree Hotel to the Oregon Convention Center. The OCC felt too big and impersonal and showy, like holding a wedding in a football stadium.

At the same time I recognize the necessity of the move: the Doubletree was simply not big enough anymore. I feel like Stumptown has reached its awkward teenage years as a con, where its feet and head are huge but its limbs haven't quite filled in yet. Right now the Convention Center is way too big a space, and that really killed the energy of the con. Hopefully that'll change in a couple of years as the con continues to grow.

On the bright side, I did get to introduce my niece and her girlfriend to DAR! So there's that.

Lesbians: The Next Generation

Oooooh ducky!

2011-04-12T23:06:00.000-07:00

WBC leads to to awesome charity drive.

2011-04-04T12:32:00.000-07:00

This is the best reaction that I've yet seen to the presence of the Westboro Baptist Church (except for the awesome SDCC counter-protest):

Well-played, sir.

Rocky Horror Batman

2011-03-28T01:21:00.000-07:00

The good and the bad: Dragon Age and the Akira movie

2011-03-25T14:09:00.000-07:00

The two Hawkes

First, the good news: Dragon Age II is out on a variety of platforms, and the RPG game is flying off the shelves. While the game's main plot is mostly pre-determined, following a whole lot of destiny hoo-ha, the player's choices can greatly affect their character's appearance, actions, and even their sexual orientation.

The game's creative team at Bioware have not only made it an option for the main character to be male or female, as pictured to the right, but they've also made it possible for male Hawkes to flirt with male team members, and female to flirt with female, leading to in-game romances.

It's a first for mainstream gaming: while the Mass Effect series allowed players to choose the gender of their main character and had female-female romances, male-male options were noticeably verboten, which is unsurprising given the historical stereotype of gamers as being single young white men punching at buttons in the half-light of basements, munching on Cheetos. But times have changed. 40% of gamers are now women, and the average age of a gamer has risen to 35.

One could cynically brush off the move as Bioware's effort to capitalize on this new market and that's definitely part of it; but more than that, it seems to be based on a genuine desire to make the game more inclusive. When a player predictably complained on the Bioware forums with an eye-crossingly privileged post, lead writer David Gaider brought the smackdown in a truly enlightened way:

And if there is any doubt why such an opinion might be met with hostility, it has to do with privilege. You can write it off as "political correctness" if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They're so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance. They don't see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what's everyone's fuss all about? That's the way it should be, any everyone else should be used to not getting what they want.

Freaking awesome.

On the less-awesome side, the script for a live-action version of the classic Akira has apparently been finished and been sent out to several actors for the parts of Kaneda and Tetsuo. Wanna guess what all of these actors have in common?

*facepalm*

First person that steps in this joint saying that "it's about finding the best actor for the part, regardless of race" gets punched in the mouth.

Racebending's got a campaign up. Go check it out.

NFL player is fluent in Netspeech.

2011-03-19T19:16:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't follow American football, the NFL is facing a lockout due to stalled negotiations between the players union and the NFL administrators over salary caps. Now, I don't care much about it either way--it's a bit like watching two high-end divorce lawyers squabble over who has to pick up the dinner check while the minimum-wage staff wait in vain for the table to open up--but I do have to comment on this bit of amazingness: Chris Cluwe, the punter for the Minnesota Vikings, has drawn helpful and humorous images to explain the situation from the players' perspectives.

The pictures are enough to get me on the players' side for the sake of comedy alone, but check out the top-right corner of the second picture!

*laughs forever*

When a player in the NFL is using it in common speech, that's when you know an Internet phrase has achieved cultural saturation and significance. Oxford Dictionary, get on this.

I believe I'll have the ponytail....

2011-03-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

Highly accurate if incomplete depictions of lesbian haircuts to the left, here. How they've overlooked dreads and/or the buzz cut is beyond me. Should read:

"the buzz cut"
Favored by Marines and dykes in on-the-go and fast-paced careers like mechanics and Jello wrestlers. Minimal effort required.

"dreadlocks"
For the discerning feminist-bookstore dyke. The dreads can also double as scarves, and food storage containers. Minimal effort required.

Smashing your brains out with a wedge of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.

2011-03-08T18:04:00.000-08:00

Alert, Douglas Adams fans: I am on a quest. I grew up reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- or, well, listening avidly to the BBC recordings. At work I am prone to shrieking, "ALRIGHT YOU SCUM, YOU VERMIN. WHADDYA WANT TO DRINK?" at bar customers. I'm lucky I live in Portland and this kind of behavior is thought of as a local quirk; if I tried that in Texas I'd probably get shot.

But I digress. The point is, I'm currently searching for a good Earth-variant cocktail recipe for a Pangalactic Gargleblaster, i.e. the drink invented by Zaphod Beeblebrox, the effects of which are described in the subject line of this post.

This is how Douglas Adams describes a PG in the book:

1. Take the juice from one bottle of that Ol' Janx Spirit.
2. Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V.
3. Allow three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into the mixture (it must be properly iced or the benzene is lost).
4. Allow four litres of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it.
5. Over the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qalactin Hypermint extract.
6. Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger.
7. Sprinkle Zamphuor.
8. Add an olive.
9. Drink . . . but . . . very carefully . . .

I've found several recipes online, but thus far they are either unsatisfactory or out of my reach. Many of them call for Everclear (in place of the Ol' Janx Spirit) but I don't have access to that; I was thinking that 151 would suffice, and that means I'd get to set it on fire, too. I feel like that could be a very important step.

The seawater, I was thinking of a mix of pineapple and sweet/sour mix. The mega-gin could be just plain gin, while Sprite or soda water could provide the bubbles of Fallian marsh gas. A float of Qalactin hypermint? I saw one recipe that called for creme de menthe, but given the other ingredients that sounds repulsive. Probably substitute a float of either Midori or Blue Curacao. The sprinkle of Zamphour could be grenadine.

I don't have any thoughts for the tooth of a Suntiger, other than to maybe soak an orange wedge in 151, light it on fire, too, and drop it in the drink.

So, my recipe would look like:

1 shot 151
1/2 shot gin
Float of Blue Curacao
Splash sprite
Splash pineapple juice
Splash sour mix
Pinch of grenadine
Orange wedge
Olive (?? I wouldn't, given that the rest of the recipe is pretty sweet-flavored, but the original from the book explicitly calls for it. Bleah. I hate olives.)

Pour 3/4 the shot of 151 into a cosmopolitan or a martini glass. Swirl it around. Light it on fire. Put the rest of the 151 in a small glass, drop the orange wedge in, and set it aside to soak.

Fill a mixer glass with ice. Pour in 1/2 shot of gin, sprite, pineapple juice, and sour. Shake well. Strain (carefully) into still-flaming 151. Pour 1/2 shot Blue Curacao over back of spoon. Garnish with the orange wedge, which will hopefully catch on fire when lit and (carefully) placed on rim. Olive???

Basically there's a lot of fire involved, which appeals to the pyro in my soul. I can't wait to try it out.

If anybody's got any suggestions, lemme know. Mixologists! Give me your mixers!

I wonder if anyone's ever done potty-training comic books...

2011-03-08T17:20:00.000-08:00

By bluejeanus on livejournal.

What I'm Watching Now:

2011-02-21T22:22:00.000-08:00

'Vampire Diaries,' Thursday 9 pm, CW. Yes, it's on the CW. Yes, the creator is Kevin Williamson of 'Dawson's Creek.' Yes, it's based on a YA horror novel series. Yes, it's another human-girl-falls-for-mysterious-and-pretty-stranger-who-turn-out-to-be-lacking-a-pulse in the vein (shut UP) of 'Twilight,' and was totally designed to bring in that crowd. (Shudder.) Yes, the first three episodes of the first season sucked BALLS. Like, MST3K levels of suck. There was a mysterious midday fog, guys. There was a creepy crow in a graveyard. It was painful.

So how the hell is this my favorite thing on TV right now? Let me count the ways:

The female characters. Main character Elena, her witch friend Bonnie, ditzy-cheerleader-turned-badass-vampire-heroine Caroline, villainess Katherine, sherrif Liz...the list goes on. It's one of the only shows with a near-even gender balance, and each of these women are complex, interesting people who move the plot. I'm particularly fond of the friendship between Elena, Bonnie, and Caroline. Gail Simone recently bemoaned the lack of female friendships in media, and she's right. Girls are hardly ever shown just being friends with each other and when they are, they're usually talking about guys (which is why I do like the Bechdel Test, for all its flaws).
The plotting. Shit goes DOWN. What other shows would spend a season developing, TVD whips through in the teaser of the season premiere. I haven't seen narrative development this tight since Aaron Sorkin gave up coke. (Or "gave up coke.")
The cast. Nina Dobrev has to play two completely opposite characters--warm Elena and vicious Katherine, Paul Wesley somehow makes a vampire seem like a genuinely nice guy, Ian Somerhalder is deliciously psychotic as Damon, and their supporting cast includes David Anders, one of my Very Favorites. (Native Oregonian, represeeeeeeent!)

The show does have some color issues--except for Bonnie, every character of color has been killed off or turned out to be evil, or both; there's also this weird thing where every witch is a black person, and almost every black person is a witch, and that reeks of Magical Ethnic Person stereotyping--but for the strong female presence, I give this show a huge rec. Also, the creators say they're gonna be bringing on a gay character, which fixes my other complaint about the series.

'Southland,' Tuesday 10 pm, TNT. I'm not exactly sure how to explain how this show sets itself apart from the billion-and-one other police procedurals. Somehow it feels a lot more realistic, an impression that has been backed up by praise from current and ex-cops on message boards. It also has John Cooper. Oh, John Cooper, you fabulous gay ex-Marine badass supercop. How I love you so.

Bonus round: LYDIA ADAMS AND HER SHOTGUN OF GREAT MOTHERFUCKING JUSTICE. I love the fact that the two toughest cops on this show are a gay man and a short black woman.

'Justified,' Wednesday 10 pm, FX. I've already talked about this one, but I feel it deserves another mention because last episode had a) the return of Boyd Crowder, albeit briefly, and that always results in great scenes between he and Raylan, b) the return of sniper Tim (though they TOTALLY ripped off my favorite--and really, the only good--scene from the 2006 version of Miami vice) and c) Timothy Olyphant in a brown Henley. Hello, tall and lanky. A sad lack of Rachel, tho...and I do have to say, for all that it's set in the South this show is pretty damn white without my favorite marshal.

Shows that I'm missing while they're away:
'Sons of Anarchy.' Shakespeare on motorcycles, y'all. I'm just sayin'.
'Misfits.' Curse you, British television, and your horribly-short season lengths.
'Primeval.' Ditto.

Shows I'm watching and wish I weren't:
'Glee.' Ugh. Chris Colfer, why can't you be in something else?
'Hawaii 5-0.' IT WAS THE FANFIC, OKAY? Fandom tells me there's an emotionally-shut-down, guilt-ridden military man to be had, and I need something to tide me over until Primeval's Captain Becker comes back. Also, Grace Park in a bikini. I'm just saying, a girl has needs.

Shows I'm not watching and wish I'd picked up a long time ago because now I have no IDEA what the fuck is going on:
'Fringe,' because apparently there is nothing else sci-fi/fantasy/horror on TV right now. Except 'Supernatural,' and I am not diving into that one again.

Drumming diary: Dazed & Confused, redux

2011-02-14T00:26:00.000-08:00

Whoof, it's been a while. January was a lousy month from drum-playing--combination of personal loss and illness. I'm trying to get back up on the horse.

I did manage to figure out what was wrong with the "Dazed & Confused" tab that I found online: a measure in the first verse needed to be 9/8 instead of 12/8. It's gonna be hella interesting to count, as it switches from 12/8 and 52 bpm to 4/4 and 190 for the extended bridge.

Verse 1 = 16 measures
Chorus 2 = 2 measures
Verse 2 = 8 measures
Chorus 2 = 2 measures
Bridge 1 = 19 measures
Bridge 2 = 78 measures (this is the 190 bpm part, so it just FLIES)
Chorus 3 = 1 measure
Verse 3 = 8 measures
Chorus 4 = 2 measures
Outro = 7 measures

That second bridge is going to kick my ass. BUT IT'LL BE FUN.

Justified

2011-02-13T18:53:00.000-08:00

Nestled in the warm embrace of cable, FX has become an unexpected source of gritty, high-quality dramas, a trend that began in 2002 with "The Shield." One of the most recent FX products is the series "Justified," which just started its second season on Wednesday nights.

Based on an Elmore Leonard story (and with Leonard on as executive producer), Justified follows the adventures of US Marshal Raylan Givens ("Deadwood" alum Timothy Olyphant, who was so great as Sherriff Bullock). In the first season Givens got shipped from the Miami office back to his native Kentucky following a shootout with a drug enforcer. Well, actually, it wasn't so much a shootout as an execution: Raylan walked up to the table, told the enforcer that he had thirty seconds to leave or Raylan would shoot him, then did just that when the dude tried to pull out his own gun.

Givens is a modern-day cowboy, with his steely eye, fast hand, and Stetson. Olyphant plays him with a deep well of barely-contained rage; in the first episode his ex-wife Winona (the great Natalie Zea) wryly and wearily tells him he's the angriest man she's ever known, and she ain't wrong. For her it's as exhausting as it is enticing, but for the viewer it's absolutely thrilling to sit there, waiting for this guy to go off again.

He's got ample opportunity for that, with the host of dangerous types waiting to welcome him back to the bosom of Kentucky. His father Arlo and former mining buddy Boyd Crowder are standouts; last season's arc dealt with the tangled web of meth that involved both those men. They've yet to make an appearance this season (besides a brief glimpse of Boyd) but we've already met the Big Bad for this year: Mags Bennett, a reefer-growing grocery store owner. When first we meet her she acts like a down-homesy little old lady (albeit with pot), but at the end of the episode she poisons a man in cold blood without dropping the aw-shucks veneer. The characters are always a strong point on this series, and I can't wait to see how the saga between Mz. Bennett and Raylan will play out.

The female characters are especially fun to watch, which is a delightful surprise given that it's essentially a modern-day cowboy story. The show's even managed to pass the Bechdel Test in more episodes than not. The premiere heavily featured Rachael Brooks (Erica Tazel), Raylan's fellow Marshal in the Kentucky office, who got a couple of great moments showing that she's just as much of a badass. I personally hope to see much more of Winona, Raylan's ex-wife: the two of them have crackling, rapid-fire chemistry.

If you've never caught the series, watch an episode and prepare to be sucked in by the sharp dialogue and interesting characters. And just because I'll use any excuse to post this clip, here's one of the greatest moments of Deadwood, or television, period.

Queer webcomics!

2011-01-31T21:45:00.000-08:00

A recent convo on LJ led me to believe I should make a rec post for queer webcomics. So here. we. go.

The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal. A cross-country journey of convenience between strangers is slowly turning into something else. SO. MUCH. LOVE. Double love for the non-white main character: Amal is so sweet and conflicted, a young man trying to figure things out and having to wrestle with an intersection of cultural, familial, and personal influences. TJ is still something of an enigma at this point but the crumbs that we've gotten -- his casual brushoff of the time he spent homeless broke my heart -- have kept me intrigued. There's a LOT of this posted, so set aside some time to catch up.

Rooster Tails. An autobiographical comic from a New Zealand transboy. I love how webcomics are opening up the world to all these different voices and personalities. Here's my favorite one:

DAR! An old standby and no longer being updated, but it's worth linking again just so everyone gets a chance to read it. Plus, Erika Moen is super-awesome! I've had the opportunity to meet her twice, and she was lovely both times. Oh, the benefits of living in Portland.

Teahouse. I don't usually go for yaoi, but this one is damn pretty. Also, sometimes you just want some SMUT, amirite? Me, I'm shipping Linneus/Argos. Crazy albinos with swords need love, too.

Oglaf. I'm counting this one as queer, but really, it's pretty much equal opportunity filth. My favorite is the queen. She's such a heinous bitch.

Alright, now show me yours! :D

The checkout stand: protecting your children from gay adoption and gynecologists

2011-01-31T15:04:00.000-08:00

Last night I was wandering through Fred Meyer and trying to run my brother's heels over with my shopping cart, as one does. He's something of a novice at the whole shopping thing, which means he got the wrong size of petit sirloin beef containers first time around and then he guided his cart towards an actual cashier stand instead of heading for the cold, blessedly human-free embrace of the U-scan checkout.

As we pulled up to the conveyor belt, we entered the Great Tunnel of Candy and Magazines. It's literally impossible not to look around -- I'm sure there have been extensive studies that led to both the Tunnel's strategic placement and the graphic design of every single magazine cover -- so I did my requisite shuddering at the National Enquirer's obsession with celebrity bodies ("BEST AND WORST BEACH BODIES," with helpful arrows pointing out the cellulite), flipped off In Touch ("LINDSAY TELLS ALL: 'I'M DATING TOM HARDY'"; hard money says they've never met) and stared in vague horror at OK! ("TEEN MOM JENELLE -- BEATING HER MOM -- SMOKING POT -- LOSING HER BABY FOREVER!"; the exclamation point makes it extra-classy).

Then my gaze wandered over to Cosmopolitan and stopped. There was a little black plastic flap over the cover. It didn't say anything on it, but after the recent news about an Oklahoma grocery store that censored a US Weekly cover showing Elton John, his male partner, and their brand new baby boy (pictured to the right in all its non-shocking glory) I recognized a "family shield." Glancing around, I ascertained that yes, every other Cosmo in the store had been similarly covered up.

Pulling the family shield away, I examined the magazine cover for myself. Mila Kunis stared back at me. God, she's hot. She was fully-clothed, though, so unless they're trying to keep her scorching image from damaging the heterosexuality of women everywhere, that wasn't why the family shield had been brought in.

I took a look at the headlines. "BAD GIRL SEX: 75 VERY NAUGHTY MOVES TO TRY ON A MAN." Well, that's very forthright. The family shield didn't even go high enough to cover that headline, though. "MILA KUNIS: THE ATTITUDE THAT MAKES HER EFFORTLESSLY SEXY." Yeah, right, effortless -- I'm sure it was totally effortless for the 500 stylists, makeup artists, lighting technicians, blotters, fanners, and Photoshop designers who put this image together, let alone whatever crazy diet and exercise regime Ms. Kunis puts herself through in order to look like she does. "GREAT GUY, LAME SEX?" Hah, we can't have men questioning themselves, too, can we?

My bet's on the little one down in the left-hand corner, though: "8 THINGS YOU MUST TELL YOUR GYNO." Everything else is pretty standard fare for the Great Magazine Tunnel, and certainly not anywhere as disturbing as Teen Mom punching out her mother, smoking pot, and losing her kid. But giving women important advice about their vaginas? Whoa, nelly that is just as destructive to society as two happy gay men showing off the new baby they have taken into their home!

Extreme Planet Makeover

2011-01-24T13:51:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting tool for sci-fi writers: NASA's website has a fun little interactive tool that allows you to change the age of a planet, its distance from a star, the type of star it's orbiting, and so forth.

It's meant to be educational, but I can see how a writer might use it to construct new worlds. I built myself a lovely super-Earth, bathed in the red light of a Class M star about .38 AU away.

Mwahaha, I feel like God.

I call it Doliea 581 d. And yes, I am writing a story about it.

Next question becomes, what music do you listen to while you're playing God? Methinks some Sigur Ros would be more appropriate to world-building. Or maybe some Tchiakovsky.

What to do with Wonder Woman?

2011-01-20T14:24:00.000-08:00

Jezebel contributor Charlie Jane Anders discusses why we haven't seen any Wonder Woman projects in a while here. According to hir (I'm not positive on Charlie's gender) it all comes down to her origin story:

Why did the Amazons suddenly decide to break their policy of isolation to send one of their warriors to America? Because the Nazis threatened the whole globe, even the Amazons' secret island. Why on Earth is Diana dressed in American flag panties and a giant eagle? Because of some Amazon mumbo jumbo — but mostly to show solidarity with her allies in the fight against the Nazis.

Thus it gets a little tricky to transport WW to modern times while still managing to explain the combo of "Amazon-in-a-wearable-American-flag" thing. Anders has some suggestions:

1) Give her an iceberg of her own. Keep her origin in World War II and show her fighting the Nazis, only to get swept forward into this new, bewildering era at the end of the movie or TV pilot. Maybe in the 21st century, the Amazons are mysteriously gone, and she has to figure out why.

2) Give her a new reason to go to America and dress like that. Preferably some huge, terrible threat that only an Amazon warrior can overcome. Not some vague touchy-feely thing like, "people are being mean to each other." But some monstrous foe. And maybe we need an outsider to come and remind us of what America can be.

I added my own in the comments: 3. The Amazons don't send a champion out into the world--maybe globalization, environmental issues, and the march of "progress" brings the world to them. Diana leaves the crumbling colony in search of aid. You could either say that once upon a time she fought Nazis, and she's come to America in the hopes of using her old war ties to help the Amazons; or maybe this is actually their First Contact experience, and they dressed her like that after carefully studying what little they could find about American pop culture and coming to the conclusion that a short miniskirt, plunging neckline, and American flag apparel would help her fit in just fine. (Possibly they caught Ke$sha's appearance on SNL.)

Any way they go, one hopes that WW won't just pop up and remind us of "what America can be"--maybe, one hopes, she'll be amazed at the great strides that have been made since the 1950's (i.e. for blacks, gays, and yes, women).

Next Batman villians cast - and I am wary

2011-01-19T11:28:00.000-08:00

So the Hollywood press is now reporting that Anne Hathaway will be Selina Kyle and Tom Hardy will be Bane in Christopher Nolan's third and final entry in his "Batman" reboot.

Hm.

This "Shortpacked!" script describes my
feelings on Frank Miller perfectly.

As you might expect, I'm a big fan of Kyle and I'm thrilled to see someone rescue her from the crap heap that was the Halle Berry movie. However -- given Nolan's issues with female characters and the fact that he's basing a lot of his reboot on the writings of Frank Miller, I'm a little bit concerned that he's just going to make it worse. Berry's Catwoman strapped on that ridiculous outfit and slogged through even more ridiculous dialogue, yes, but she also had a personality and a job that didn't revolve around her tits. Frank Miller's version famously erased her independent cat burglar/bounty hunter origins and turned her into a dominatrix prostitute.

Still, I'm willing to give Nolan the benefit of the doubt on Selina Kyle. Anne Hathaway doesn't seem like the prostitute type, so he could very well be going in a different direction. Let's hope so.

The casting of Tom Hardy -- who played the forger Eames in Nolan's "Inception" -- presents a different problem. Now, I like Hardy a lot and when he was rumored to be involved in the project I crossed all my fingers and toes that they'd get him signed. (Also, apparently once you've acted in one of Christopher Nolan's movies and have proven to not be a complete asshat, you're going to act in all ze movies. For some reason I find that utterly charming.)

Taken individually, the choice of Bane as the villian in the third and final (?) Nolan film also makes sense. Bane is known as the only man who "broke the Bat" after he cracked Batman's spine in 1993, an event that's recent enough in comic book history that 20-something year old comic fans will remember it from their childhood with nostalgia. Yet Bane has an intriguing gray-area morality that actually had him working with Batman at times -- just like Selina Kyle. If they go with that characterization for them both, it'd make for a very interesting setup.

One problem. Or, well, uno problemo.

Bane is explicitly Hispanic. He was born on the fictional South American island Republic of Santa Prisca. He wears a wrestler's mask.

Tom Hardy? Yeah, Tom Hardy's pretty damn white.

Whitewashed casting stopped being cool when M. Night Shamayalan pulled that shit. It's not even the first time Nolan's done this, either: I'll give him the whitewashing of Ra's al Ghul in "Batman Begins," because who wants to see an Arabic terrorist blowing up Gotham? But Eric Roberts and Tom Wilkinson were both pretty damn white to be playing Mafia bosses.

Mr. Nolan, I raise a skeptical eyebrow at you.

Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine publishes "The Demon and Sister Roberta"

2011-01-18T20:01:00.000-08:00

My short story "The Demon and Sister Roberta" has been published in Issue 49 of Andromeda Spaceways In-Flight Magazine! Sweet. Here's a snippet:

She woke to find the demon there.

It was a woman -- or a girl, she barely looked eighteen -- with long, unruly black hair and surprisingly delicate features. She stood over Mr. Flats' bed, but her eyes were on Sister Roberta.

"Anybody ever tell you that you drool a lot in your sleep?" the demon asked. Mr. Flats didn't stir.

The Sister rose to her feet, quickly wiping the side of her mouth. She was not afraid. "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I command you to leave this man in peace

"Wow," said the demon. "Wow, are you serious with this?"

"Lord, have mercy -- "

"Oh my dog, you are serious." The demon sat down on the edge of the bed. The mattress bounced and Sister Roberta darted a glance at Mr. Flats, but he slept on peacefully.

You can buy a copy of the mag here. Please to be noting, it's published in Australia, so shipping might be a bit high. :/

2010 in Review: women and queers in the media

2011-01-18T17:21:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the spotty updates lately: some dreadful events unfolded in my personal life. I'm all right, but it will take a while for things to get back to normal.

Award season is upon us, what better time to look back at what 2010 had to offer us in the way of diversity in media.

2010

One year closer to the Mayans killing us all.

I think that's how that movie went.

The year started off promisingly, with Kathryn Bigelow taking home the Oscar for Best Director for the The Hurt Locker, something no woman had ever done before. I'm including a link to the video here just because I love to watch Barbara Streisand grind her teeth before finally making the announcement. Suck it Babs, you had your chance.

Before I go any further I also want to link to this flowchart, which overthinkingit.com put out this year.

Click for a larger version.

I lurve it.

You won't find Lisbeth Salander on that flowchart. That's because the prickly, bisexual, computer hacker heroine of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and its sequels defies your petty fucking flowchart. And she'll probably stab you with a bottle and ruin your credit for good measure. This year also brought us "Alice in Wonderland," "The Runaways," "Salt," "Easy A," "Black Swan," and "True Grit," all of which featured strong female heroines. "Let Me In" and "Kickass" deserve special notice: they focused on a man's emotional journey, but had strong female supporting characters who could really have carried their own films. Y'all already know my feelings on the women of "Inception" and Ree Dolly of "Winter's Bone." In all, a pretty damn good year for female characters.

However, there is still a huge dearth of queer representations in mainstream film. "Easy A" had that old trope of a "best gay" for the female lead; "Valentine's Day" included a gay male couple but then marginalized them in the film's advertisements and didn't even let them kiss onscreen. "The Runaways" did feature a lesbian relationship between the two female leads, as did "The Kids Are Alright," and "I Love You Phillip Morris" paired mainstream stars Ewan MacGregor and Jim Carrey as male lovers. But we also had Richard Chamberlain advising gay actors to stay in the closet for the sakes of their careers. And it's notable that all of the above roles were portrayed by straight actors and actresses, or at least no one who was out of the closet.

Things look rosier on the television side of things, especially for both queer representations and queer creators. For the first time since GLAAD began its Responsibility Index in 2005, all five major broadcast networks increased their representation of queer characters during the 2009-2010 TV season, with the CW leading the way. In the 2010-2011 TV season, queer characters represent about 3.9% of all characters on scripted TV series, when only three years ago that number hovered closer to 1%.

This was very apparent at the Golden Globes this last weekend. Glee, aka the "gayest show on television," took home several statuettes, with openly gay creator Ryan Murphy accepting for Best Show, recently-married lesbian Jane Lynch accepting the Best Supporting Actress globe, and the sweet little gay dude of my heaarrrrrrrrrrrt, Chris Colfer, making everyone cry with his Best Supporting Actor acceptance speech:

♥ He is my favorite. No apologies, deal wit' it. Colfer's also expressed interest in writing for film, which I hope he follows through on. We can clearly use some of that queer TV magic on the film screen.

Misfits: Like Heroes, minus the suck

2011-01-12T00:38:00.000-08:00

Who's spent the last 24 hours watching all of Misfits on Youtube? Oh yeah, this girl. (Also: ALL OF MISFITS. IS ON YTUBE. Go watch before someone at the channel figures it out.)

Misfits is a British sci-fi TV series about a group of 20-something delinquents performing community service for minor offenses. They're a real collection of winners:

The heroes you deserve.

Curtis, an ex-sprinter obsessed with his former glory, was arrested for cocaine possession; Alisha, a party girl, got nailed for drunk driving; Nathan, the very definition of a cheeky Irishman, absurdly got nabbed for stealing some pick 'n' mix (British candies); Kelly, my favorite, punched out another girl for insulting her; and Simon, my other favorite, is a complete mental case who tried to burn somebody's house down.

Not the best candidates for becoming superheroes, you'd agree.

And yet that's exactly what happens when a freak electrical storm descends on London, causing the Misfits and other denizens to exhibit superpowers.

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Wasn't it a solar eclipse last time? But Misfits--so far--succeeds where Heroes failed, creating characters that (while highly imperfect) remain coherent and sympathetic...well, most of the time. The quintet react pretty much how you'd expect a super-powered twenty-something delinquents to react if suddenly given the ability to, say, mind-control other people into being sexually interested in them. The storyline reminds me a lot of Marvel's The Runaways, in that the super-powered team of youngsters has little interest in being at all heroic--excepting the geeky Simon--and usually act in their own self-interests first.

Kelly is, as I mentioned, my favorite. I love how her default problem-solving technique is HIT IT WITH SOMETHING HARD UNTIL IT STOPS MOVING. Which, come to think of it, all the Misfits have a problematic defense mechanism. Nathan's is to mock everyone in a hundred-yard radius, Alisha makes the problem worse, Curtis assumes that someone else will fix it, and Simon switches on his inner serial killer.

In fact, most of the series' plot involves them hiding the bodies of people that they've accidentally killed.

The series is filled with darkly hilarious moments like that, and also some profundity about what it means to be a young person trying to find your way in the world. But mostly it's a delightful sendup of the superhero ethos. With great power...comes great fuckups.

George Takei is more awesome than you.

2010-12-15T01:00:00.000-08:00

Drumming diary: Good Times, Bad Times II

2010-12-06T19:28:00.000-08:00

HAH. HAH. HAHAHAHAHAHA.

I cannot even believe I managed to play that. I'm sweating all over the place, my feet itch, and my ears are hyper-sensitive from how loud I have to crank up my headphones to hear over the drums. BUT I CONQUERED THAT BITCH. HAH. *epic fistpump*

Ahem. Okay. Calming down.

HAH.

Okay, okay, so, I finally got the heel-toe double-tap technique down. It's still a little hard to switch from single taps to double and back--especially at 150 bpm--but I'll get there. It's all in the toes. From there its just managing to get the timing of the breaks right.

Now pardon me while I dance around my house.

Life on the Internet: The Social Network review (*1/2/**)

2010-12-06T16:36:00.000-08:00

Winter's Bone and Inception finally have some competition for my favorite movie of 2010. For anyone who hasn't seen The Social Network yet, you really must. Let me count the ways:

Aaron Sorkin script that assumes, nay, demands intelligence and attention to keep up.
Excellent direction by David Fincher, that master of alienation.
Oscar-worthy performances by Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, and Justin Timberlake. Yes, Justin Timberlake.
Trent Reznor wrote the buzzing, menacing score, which I am listening to right now. It's available for download at the price of $5. (Also, anyone who wants to catch the strange, lovely cover of "Creep" that was featured in the trailer, it was done by Scala.)
A prophecy of our modern lives, as provided by Timberlake's character Sean Parker, the erstwhile founder of Napster: "We lived in farms, then we lived in cities, and now we're gonna live on the internet!"

Sorkin and Fincher build their whole movie around that line, bending some facts to fit their thesis of how one little website has changed our world forever. Beginning in 2003, the film opens with Mark Zuckerberg getting dumped by his (fictional) girlfriend Erica. Spurned by her and the Harvard fraternities both, he seeks some way of re-inventing himself and winds up inventing Facebook instead. Along the way he gets pounded with lawsuits by fellow students, the Winklevoss twins, who claim that he stole the idea of a social-networking website from them, and his former best friend and first CFO Eduardo Saverin, who alleges that Mark shafted him out of his 30% share and co-founder status.

Obviously the great irony here is that the world's biggest social network was built by a completely socially inept misanthrope who severed his own personal bonds one by one on the path to that illustrious 500 million "friends." Jesse Eisenberg is fantastic as that misanthrope, all tics and blankness and motor-mouthed insults, with just the faintest quiver of sorrow underneath. He can see the relationships around him unraveling but is so swept up in his own genius that he can't figure out how to stop.

The film leaves ambiguous just how much validity lies in the lawsuits, or in the suits who are pressing them. Zuckerberg might have led on "the Winklevii" (as he dubs them) in order to develop his own website before theirs got off the ground; but then again, as Mark himself puts it in the film, "If somebody makes a chair he does not owe money to everyone in the history of the world who made a chair." The Saverin lawsuit is more one-sided: recently leaked emails and IMs show that not only did Zuckerberg and Parker shaft Saverin, the real-life version of events was even more cold-blooded than the movie depicts. Saverin eventually settled for an undisclosed sum, 5% of the company shares, and has been re-instated on the site as the co-founder.

Despite that victory it's hard not to feel for Eduardo, especially as played by the British-born Garfield. He has an innate likeability and humanity to him that, as the film progresses, actually becomes a burden. Eduardo never had a chance to understand or keep up with Facebook: he was too human. Facebook--and most social networking websites--have forever changed the way we relate to other human beings. It has brought the world closer together and made us more alone than ever before. Sorkin himself commented on Facebook in an interview: “I feel like social networking is to socializing what reality TV is to reality. In a way we’re performing for each other.”

That's what Mark was looking for: a way to present himself as something better, someone who could keep a girlfriend and make it into fraternities. Someone desirable. Sean Parker understood Facebook better than Mark himself; he's a walking performance, all self-invention and narcissism. But Eduardo, with his nice-but-not-too-nice suits, gentlemanly manners, and slightly-pathetic desire for an emotional connection with Mark (pathetic only in how impossible that wish turns out to be), is squarely a city-dweller in the land of the Internetites. He exists outside of the machine. He is just himself.

Which makes his betrayal all the much more effective and poignant. When he finally flips out, the first thing he does is smash Mark's laptop, forcing him to disconnect and--finally and possibly for the last time in Mark's life--have a real-life human interaction. Eduardo's anger is our anger, because there is that tiny, betrayed part in all of us who hungers for something that no blinking cursor can give us.

I would be remiss in my duties as a feminist if I did not mention the depiction of women in this film, or the lack thereof. Other than Erica, effectively played with intelligence and strength by Rooney Mara in the 5 minutes of screentime that she gets, the female characters are all one-dimensional, either there as (mostly Asian) arm candy or as lawyerly exposition devices. Other reviews have commented on this already, and Sorkin has defended himself in the media by saying that it accurately reflects the misogyny in tech culture.

I am actually inclined to accept Sorkin's defense, especially given his decent track record with female characters. (David Fincher is another story, but he wasn't the one writing the script.) Sorkin may have bent the truth, but there's only so much bending one can do in a culture of angry nerd boys who extoll the virtues of beautiful Asian women as the ultimate girlfriend, as Saverin does in the movie and Zuckerberg does in real life.

A Man's Castle: Paranormal Activity and the American Marriage

2010-12-05T15:32:00.000-08:00

(Note: this contains spoilers for both Paranormal Activity and its sequel.)

In 2007, an Israeli-born aspiring director and writer named Oren Peli set up a film shoot in his own home. Using a home video camera, two actors he hired for $500 off of Craigslist, and the barest outlines of a script, he shot a ghost (or demon, to be more accurate) story that kicked around Slamdance and some other LA horror festivals before it clawed its way up the ladder to Steven Spielberg's lap.

Released in 2009, Paranormal Activity cost just $15,000 to make, but went on to gross almost $200 million worldwide. For those keeping score, that officially makes it the most profitable movie of all time, in terms of return on investment. It spawned a sequel that appropriately came out around Halloween 2010. Shot in a similar manner, that one cost a cool $3 million and has so far made $166 million worldwide, still a gaping profit margin. There are rumblings of a third.

I find it difficult to believe that the simple storyline and setup can work for a longer franchise, but both films managed to be chilling and effective. And not only because of the things that go bump in the night: the films also portray the all-too human demons that plague American marriages. In both movies, the demonic possessions of women are heavily--if inadvertantly--aided by the callousness and carelessness of the women's husbands.

In PA1, Micah and Katie are "engaged to be engaged," but have been cohabitating for a while when the movie starts, long enough to settle into a marriage-like existence. When weird things start happening around the house, Micah insists on filming them, despite Katie's misgivings. This has happened to her--and her sister--before, when they were kids. Micah doesn't listen to her wishes, though, and starts challenging the dark force inhabiting their house. Katie calls in a paranormal expert; Micah scoffs at the idea and bullies her into not calling a demonologist on the expert's advice. He insists that he can fix this himself, saying, "This is my house, you're my girlfriend, I will handle it." He breaks promises to Katie and buys an Oujia board. Every move only escalates the problem until it manifests into full-on demonic possession. By that time, you're almost rooting for the demon to kill this douchebag. You'd be right.

In PA2, which acts as a prequel, concurrent movie, and sequel all at once, Katie's sister Kristi has just had a baby boy with her husband Dan, adding to their household that includes a daughter, Ali, from Don's previous relationship, a superstitious Hispanic nanny named Martine (magical non-white person alert), and a German Shepherd. When strange things start happening around their house, all the women in the house have strong reactions: Kristi recalls some childhood hauntings, Martine burns incense and chants to keep the demon at bay, Ali is at first excited but changes her mind once she does a little research. The dog worriedly stands guard over the baby.

All is for naught, though, because Dan is the kind of guy who will blame a supernaturally-slammed door on the wind and refuses to listen to any arguments to the contrary. No action is taken, as his opinion is apparently the only one that matters. Hell, even the (female) dog's agitated barking goes unheeded, except by the demon, who puts her in puppy hospital. When events finally escalate beyond Dan's ability to explain away, the solution Martine presents is horrifying: they will use a crucifix to transfer the demon to the next blood relative, Katie, thus setting the events of PA1 in motion. Ali protests, but Dan whips out a line that echoes Micah's--"It's my house, it's my wife and my son. This is my decision."

All of this becomes even more interesting once you consider the fact that neither PA1 nor 2 employed a conventional script. Instead they used "retro-scripting," in which the director laid out basic scenarios and plot developments then let the actors make up their own dialogue. Now, it is entirely possible that two separate directors instructed their lead actors to go the route of chest-thumping king of the house, but it's also possible that the actors went that way on their own. I tend to believe the latter: in both films there was a sense of hesitancy on the actors' parts before they committed to claiming dominance over their house and everyone (female) within it; once they had, then it was full-steam ahead. That says a lot about how engrained that kind of male dominance still is in our households and especially in our marriages.

Except then it backfires, in both cases, rather spectacularly. In PA1, Micah's taunting and the toxic energy around their marital squabbles allow the demon to worm its way into Katie's head. Her first act of possession is to kill Micah. She then saunters over to PA2 and the Reys' house, where she snaps Dan's neck like a twig and kills Kristi.

I hesitate to call this a feminist commentary, both because it's still an otherworldly force attempting to possess the bodies of women, and Kristi is about as innocent and powerless a victim as one can find. However, the movies subtly make the point that the demonic possession is almost beside the point: these women have already lost control over their lives and bodies to the men in their homes.

NaNoWriMo: DONE

2010-11-29T19:35:00.000-08:00

HAH.

I finished up, appropriately, with the end of the story.

There was a photograph resting on his pillow. Even from his place in the doorway Sam could see the two wolf eyes staring out at him and he stilled, standing where he was for a long moment before he finally eased the pack from his shoulder and crossed to his bed.

The picture was of a werewolf. Its face was an odd cross between a wolf and a gorilla, with thick round eye sockets and a long snout. Its eyes were green and stared up at the camera, alert but unafraid.

It was Sam. He didn't know how he could tell-- beside the obvious, because when the hell had David been hanging around with any other werewolves? Sam didn't remember him leaving to get his camera at any point during that last full moon, but his memory of that night was spotty at best.

Besides that, though, the picture had something about it, some invisible power... the same power that had been in that picture of Mary, standing in the back doorway of the house.

Sam knew that he'd never done anything to deserve that kind of power, but he wouldn't question it.

So, yeah, the end of the story but not the end of me WRITING this story. I'm serious when I say that I've probably got another 30,000-40,000 words to go yet before this is a real novel. I've the basics of the story laid out, though, so it'll just be a process of stitching them all together.

As far as NaNoWriMo goes... I really enjoyed it. I'm great at working to a deadline, so that was a great motivator. I might start seeking out other contests and challenges--maybe not 50,000 words in 30 days, because WHOO BOY. But perhaps something else along those lines.

NaNoWriMo: Sam's body

2010-11-27T12:08:00.000-08:00

4777 words to go.

This is from late in the novel, I think near the end of the second act. I tend to bounce around a lot when I'm writing, like flinging droplets of ink on a piece of paper then going back and expanding from those initial points. This is after Sam and Mary and David have started sleeping together.

Sometimes it felt like there were two Sams. One of them was a white-trash thief with nowhere else to go and no one. He'd lived an ugly life, had ugly things done to him, and he'd die an ugly death. The other lived in a nice house with a new GED on the wall and was thinking about college someday, was loving Mary and David, was loved, was hot.

He'd never been hot before, not the way they made him. His body had never been something that he liked: he was shorter than most dudes and scarred up pretty bad. He didn't know shit about fashionable men's clothing or how to work out and eat right, and his hair was probably starting to grow permanent hat-head. He was too skinny in the chest and too chunky around the waist and he had blackheads permanently embedded across his nose... Sam had long lists of things that were wrong with him.

All of which were completely aside from the fact that he spent about half the month either working up to or coming down from the full moon and at the mercy of some truly haywire hormones that left him raw and nervous or shaky and sick.

Or that he spent one whole night as something else, something hairy and dangerous and wild, and he could never remember any of it through the haze of drugs.

It did no good to whine about things he couldn't change, though. Mostly he just tried not to think about it that much.

When he was with Mary and David, though, all that seemed to drop away. They made his body feel good in ways that he hadn't even known were possible, and they made him feel good about his body. They liked him despite his flaws-- or maybe they didn't even see them, somehow, because Mary loved to run her hands over his back and David waxed poetic about his mouth.

Sometimes Sam imagined that they were physically changing him, drawing over the old Sam with their lips and fingers.

Sam's emotional arc is learning to take control of his life instead of being terrified all the time and just blindly letting things happen to him. A big part of that process is gaining some measure of control over his own body, something that he's never really felt that he had before. He's still a werewolf, he can't change that, but he can change the way that he treats that condition, learning to accept it and himself rather than letting himself be drugged into a haze and not even remembering what happens when he wolfs out.

Despite my jumping-around style of writing, I've got pretty much the whole first act of the story written. It clocks in at 22,500, which means a full rough draft of the novel will be about 90,000. So, even after this I'll have a lot of work to do. I'm actually really looking forward to it.

Drumming diary: The double-tap, and manpris

2010-11-24T14:29:00.000-08:00

I'm still hard at work on Good Times, Bad Times: I've got the movements down, I've just got to get my speed up. Towards that end, I'm trying to learn the single-pedal-double-tap. I've previously mentioned that John Bonham never used a double bass pedal; he emplyed a technique in which the drummer rocks hir foot on the pedal, hitting first with the heel then the toe.*

This creates a double-tap on the kick perfect for playing the "e-a" of a triplet (1-e-a-&-e-a-2-e-a-&-e-a). When you really get going, it sounds like a horse galloping. Supposedly this is going to send my speed on the kick through the roof. Cool. On the downside, whoa nelly my calves and shins. This one is going to take some getting used to.

On another note, I think I've discovered why some drummers wear, ahem, manpris. (Capri pants for men.) Today I sat down, having muffled the hell out of my kick in order to keep from driving the neighbors (more) insane, and started playing the hell-toe technique whilst wearing a pair of sweatpants with a fairly loose leg. The mallet struck the kit on my heel-hit, rebounded, and immediately caught in the hem of my pantleg, preventing any attempt at the toe-hit. This has happened a couple of times while playing the kick with single hits, but never with the consistency of a heel-toe double-tap. It's a fairly rock-genre technique, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of those guys and girls in shorts, or at least rolling up their pant legs, as I did.

The More You Know. ~~~*

* I actually had a well-meaning friend of mine tell me that it was toe-then-heel. I don't know if other drummers do it this way but ho man, that so does not work for me. Having my foot arched up off the pedal when I'm hitting with the toe causes the mallet to come flying back and nail me in the top of the foot. YMMV.

NaNoWriMo: Day 21

2010-11-21T15:45:00.000-08:00

Whew. I can't believe I'm still on track for my work count; one of the other bartenders quit so I've been working 36 hours for the last two weeks, plus training some new people. Besides not having a lot of time to write I've been pretty much exhausted. I'm fairly introverted and having to be in constant conversation/supervision with another person sucks the life straight out of me.

BUT. I am, in fact, on track to finish. And somehow I'm still really liking my book! I feel like I'm doing a good job at making Sam a sympathetic protagonist--he's prickly and kind of hates the entire world and oh yeah, he's a thief, but he also feeds the neighbor's neglected dog and plays peek-a-boo with his girlfriend's son, who has fetal alcohol syndrome. He secretly really wants kids of his own but he's a) worried that his own physical abuse (and implied sexual abuse) as a kid would make him a bad dad and b) a werewolf.

Augh, now all I can think about is the future story wherein Mary is pregnant with David's kid, but Sam names their little baby girl Lily and whenever he wolfs out he's like, "GET AWAY FROM THE BABY. MY BABY. GRRRRR." Even Mary's demon is kind of impressed, and stops trying to kill Sam on a monthly basis.

BUT THAT IS NOT ACTUALLY IN THIS STORY, GODDAMMIT.

14-year-old is way more eloquent than you

2010-11-16T02:46:00.001-08:00

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, a teacher was recently suspended for disciplining a student who had used hate speech against gays. The teacher is fighting the decision.

This is Graeme Taylor, who is a 14 year old student, speaking in support of the teacher. He is gay. I want him to run for president.

NaNoWriMo: wrong word counts?

2010-11-13T18:19:00.000-08:00

Has anyone else doing NaNoWriMo noticed that the word widgets don't update properly with your word count? Like, for instance, I'm at 21,688 right now. Yet this is what the widgets read:

Obviously that's not a big deal right now, but that makes me nervous for the end of the month. Am I doing something wrong? Did I screw something up in the updating process?

ETA: Wait, now it's working. Nevermind. I guess there's just a delay.

NaNoWriMo: A WILD BOB APPEARS.

2010-11-12T12:16:00.000-08:00

And now Bob Bryar from My Chem has made an appearance in my NaNo.

The kitchen manager came out in his apron and Sam twitched, staring. The guy was big and blond. He wore a thick black hoodie with the sleeves rolled up; his forearms were covered in prison tattoos.

He was also a werewolf.

Sam didn't know how he knew, exactly, there wasn't any particular smell or physical feature that showed in their human forms, but he knew right away. The cook could tell about him, too, if the quick double-take was anything to go by.

Sam almost walked out right then...except then he'd have to go back home and explain to Dave and Mary why he still couldn't find a job. He held his ground, trying not to crinkle his liquor permit in his fingers. The kitchen manager didn't say anything, just looked at Mr. Eldritch.

"This' Sam Owen," Mr. Eldritch said, gesturing between them. "Sam, this is Bob the kitchen manager. Sam's gonna be bartending for us."

"Cool," Bob said, his flame and knife-scarred scarred hands tucked in the front pockets of his apron.

He's a minor character, but symbolically very important: due to the horrific way he was turned, Sam is terrified of other werewolves (and therefore terrified of himself). His tentative friendship with Bob represents his personal journey towards self-acceptance.

You know, METAPHORS 'N' SYMBOLISM 'N' SHIT.

This week has not been good for NaNoing. One of the other bartenders at work quit, so I'm holding down, oh, 33 hours? When I asked for 25? Yeah. No good. I didn't write a lick all yesterday and stayed up until 3am last night cranking out yesterday's word count. Now I've got......2.5 hours before I've got to leave for work. And I still have yet to cook a single dinner for myself this week. I've been surviving on nuts and yogurt and pears. Soooooo hunnnnngryyyyyy.

NaNoWriMo: Mary's demon

2010-11-10T16:54:00.000-08:00

A little interlude in which Mary explains how she came to be semi-consensually possessed by a demon:

"How did you get that?" he asked Mary.

Her expression turned guarded. "David never told you?"

"He told me what it was and how not to piss it off. He didn't tell me how you got it."

She sighed, shifting in place a little. Her knee knocked into his. "When I was a girl, I had dreadful dreams. I'd dream that I was dead and rotting in a coffin, that I had murdered my entire family with a knife, things like that. They went on for two years, until one day a woman came to the door. She told my parents that she was a nun, but she had no habit. When she saw me, she laughed and acted like she knew me.

"That's the first time I heard the voice. The voice knew her. I could feel it, too--it hated her, but it was happy to see her, too. I think maybe it loved her."

"Bullshit," the demon's voice growled, making Sam jump.

Mary didn't bat an eyelash. "She'd been following this one demon for a very long time. She kept finding it and exorcising it, but it kept coming back. Some of the people it had possessed died during the exorcism. That's why it had chosen me--the nun didn't want to see a child die and the demon knew that.

"But the demon didn't want to go back to Hell, either. It was tired. They were both so very tired, and I think maybe she had come to love the demon back, in a way." She paused a moment as if waiting for a response; when the demon remained silent, she went on. "So she spoke to my parents and then they offered the demon a deal. It could stay in me so long as it didn't actively harm me or let harm come to me. In exchange the nun would not try to exorcise it, nor would she prevent it from seeking another host after I die."

Sam listened to the whole story in silence. "What happens if the nun dies?" he asked.

Mary smiled a little, faintly. "It wasn't a nun, Sam."

I think the demon might have a New Yawk accent. Why, I have no idea. But that's the joy of magical realism! Nothing has to make sense! \o/

Also, in my head Mary now looks like Christina Hendricks.

ALSO, also--apparently I have something about demons and women named Mary and threesomes. (People who know me from the Supernatural fandom will get that reference.)

NaNoWriMo: Day 9

2010-11-10T12:59:00.000-08:00

Just realized that I haven't had sexytiems with myself in days. T'would appear that NaNo has completely wiped out my sex drive. I've never been happier to be asexual, man; if I actually had a romantic partner, I would feel so bad for that person right now.

I also have not shaved my legs in two weeks. I strongly doubt that there will be any leg-shaving at all in the month of November.

Aaaaaaand, that's your TMI post for the day! Ta-ta, gotta get through another 700 words in--shit, three hours.

NaNoWriMo: Days 4-6

2010-11-07T01:13:00.000-07:00

Consolidating a bit--I've broken 10,000 words, which is amazing. I just keep imagining the Red Leader from Star Wars: "Stay on target...stay on target..."

I had one of those delightful moments yesterday wherein I discovered an idea that my brain had already put in place. Do you ever get those? It feels like there's some other part of me that's someplace just ahead, laying down track to connect my thoughts together in such a perfect line, it's hard to believe that I hadn't consciously laid it out that way to begin with. Of course David can steal people's souls with his photographs (though not really; it's more that he can take their feelings out of them, and he's very careful only to take bad things out of people who need them taken). Of course the demon that lives inside Mary keeps him from taking photographs of her; that's the only way their marriage ever worked in the first place. Of course that all ties in with the theme of self-acceptance, and how so often, emotional intimacy means letting someone else see all the gross, weird things inside ourselves, all the neuroses and baggage and, yes, the demons and wolves.

Well done, brain, well done indeed!

Another point of some amusement is how many people that I know in real life are finding their way into the story. Hello, David. Hi, ~~Nikki~~ Molly. Sarah, yay! This only gets awkward in David's case, as I have to write him having
a)sex
b)in a threesome
c)that involves both a man and a woman. (Pretty sure Real Life David is straight.)

Yyyyyyyeah, that's probably a standard hazard when you're friends with a writer.

NaNoWriMo: Day 2

2010-11-03T00:04:00.000-07:00

I don't even know. I guess I have something for strong human women holding werewolf dudes by the back of their necks. *hands*

It helps if the strong human women are possessed by semi-friendly demons who are contractually obligated to help the woman (and the plot).

NaNoWriMo: Heeeeeeeere's JOHNNY

2010-11-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

I wonder if anyone's ever submitted an entire novel of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" for NaNoWriMo. Someone's got to have tried that, right? I'd guess that they've got ways of preventing it, though. More's the pity.

On the subject of my NaNo: I'm kind of in love with it right now. We're in the honeymoon phase, I think, where it's all flowers and intimacy and figuring out the character voices. In particular I adore Sam, which is handy given that he's the main character. He's just such an angry, adorable little fucker. Witness:

"At least I didn't choke," Sam muttered.

"What?"

"Sometimes in fights I don't do anything, I just stand there. I didn't this time." Because of the moon, the voice inside his head whispered. You could never do that on your own.

"And you think the fact that you did this time is a good thing? I just picked you up from jail, dude. Maybe violence isn't something to aspire to. Just a thought."

Sam bristled. "What, I should let people walk all over me?"

"No, but I think there's a big difference between defending yourself and breaking a guy's nose for sleeping with your girlfriend. There are other ways of solving that." Sam scoffed and David shot him a frown, his brows knit together. "You think I'm wrong?"

"I think," Sam said, "I think you live in nice fucking house in a nice fucking part of town. I think you have a rich daddy who likes you and you've never had to really work for anything. So no, I don't think you know shit."

They drove on in silence. Sam stared out the window at the houses and yards passing them by.

"You know, Sam," David said after a while, "sometimes you make it real hard to like you."

"Yeah, well, ditto," Sam shot back without turning.

AWWWW, SAMMY, look at your precious little >:( face. You hate everyone in the world, don't you, bb? Don't you? N'awwww. (This snippet is made more amusing by the fact that David is pretty much the easiest person in the world to like. He's like a slightly less randy version of Jack Harkness.) (Very slightly.)

Today's "A Softer World Comic"

2010-11-02T12:50:00.001-07:00

NaNoWriMo: Day 1

2010-11-02T12:21:00.000-07:00

I've never done National Novel Writing Month before, but I've always wanted to. For those who don't know, NaNoWriMo is where you try to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. From midnight Nov 1st to Nov 30th, people all across the globe become hermits, pounding out the word count to the tune of 1,667 words a day.

I'm doing pretty well so far --

My novel is tentatively called "Nature Boy," a magical realism urban fairytale about a young werewolf cat burglar who falls in love with the married couple whose house he broke into (though he kind of falls in love with the house first). The wife has two voices and the husband takes pictures in his sleep that become famous works of art. Without knowing about the burglary, they fall in love back. AND THEN POLYAMORY.

Drumming diary: Good Times, Bad Times

2010-10-31T21:21:00.000-07:00

This week, on Rachel learns the Zep...

After a necessary hiatus, I've gotten back to work on "Good Times, Bad Times." The muscle memory had faded a bit, but it's returning. Really, the only part that's giving me any trouble is this one:

C=Crash, R=Ride cymbal, T=high tom, S=Snare, FT=Floor tom, Bd=Bass drum, Hf=Hi-hat pedal played with the foot.

That's a long string of triplets played pretty exclusively with the feet. The hands are involved, but it's mostly half notes played on the hi-hat pedal with the left foot (1+2+3+4+) with triplet beats on the kick with the right foot (-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea, with the - representing the half notes played with the left foot). Bonham loved his triplets. He was also known for his speedy foot, and thus had no compunction about throwing, what, 10 triplets in a row on the kick?

Incidentally, this track was the first one on their debut album, and thus was the world's introduction to Led Zeppelin, and John Bonham. Everyone who knew anything about drumming stood up to pay attention. Even the drummer who influenced his technique, Carmine Appice of Vanilla Fudge, played his kick triplets with a double-kick drum setup; but Bonzo did it solo.

I'm not that fast yet, so whenever I'm sitting down or even just standing still, I'm playing triplets with my feet. I'll catch up to you yet, Bonzo. You and your little dog, too.

Why I don't support the injunction against DADT.

2010-10-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

I joined the Army when I was 17, a couple of months after 9/11. At first I was in the reserves as a PFC, but then I received an ROTC scholarship and went to college to train for the officer ranks.

I'm also queer. I was active in the GLBTA and there were some nights when I would attend both an Army training session and a queer pride fundraiser in the same night.

I know firsthand the damage that DADT does to individual soldiers, unit cohesion, and the Armed Forces in general. It requires queer soldiers to either limit their social contact with their comrades to the point that they never have to lie about their personal lives, or it compromises their honor. It removes skilled technicians from the ranks at a time when we are fighting two wars and desperately need them.

DADT is wrong by every standard we could apply: constitutionally, morally, and functionally.

But placing an injunction against it that slaps the whole system down is not the right way to go about ending DADT. I know the military. If there isn't a very detailed manual telling them how to deal with a situation then they just...won't. And there will be situations to deal with: the soldiers around me in the cadet ranks were tolerant to the point that several knew about me and chose not to say anything, but enlisted combat units? Those are the guys who either didn't have the IQ for Armor or actually wanted to be enlisted Infantry. In the words of Joe, an enlisted Infantry soldier I spoke to a couple months ago on the subject, "We're the kind of pricks who'd shoot a fag."

Basically, if this injunction stands, we will see dead queer soldiers. We will hear rumors of beatings and abuses, but the chaos of such an abrupt change would leave queer soldiers with no proper channels to make a complaint. We will see a spike in friendly fire. We will essentially have thrown them in there with no safety net, no protections, and no way to defend themselves. Then we'll get the regulations and support network--but it will be reactionary and too late for some.

We need to do this the right way. We need to give the military time to set up proper support that can ease the transition--and that's key, making it a transition. An injuction in federal court that ends DADT so abruptly is not good for the Armed Forces and it's definitely not good for queer soldiers.

Fighting hate with laughter

2010-10-09T14:54:00.000-07:00

I think of all the It Gets Better videos thus far, this one is my favorite: a bunch of queer comedians got together at the Gotham City Comedy Club for a night of laughter and encouragement.

This is a great runner-up, though: a cop and a Marine, in uniform, in love.

Drumming diary: ~The Process~

2010-10-05T15:25:00.000-07:00

I have a very specific process by which I learn how to play a new song on the drums. My specific process, let me show it to you in glorious MS Paint flowchart:

Click for larger view

Bullying and the It Gets Better Project

2010-10-04T16:36:00.000-07:00

I don't know what is sadder about this interview: the fact that the father seems so horribly guilt-ridden, or that he keeps accidentally referring to his deceased son in the present-tense.

On the subject of bullying, Dan Savage has started the It Gets Better Project on Youtube, in which queer adults record video messages aimed at their teenage counterparts, encouraging them to hang in there in hopes of a better life. I'm not too familiar with Dan Savage's politics and I know he's done or said some things in the past that ticked people off; however, I very much like the project itself, and wish that I had a camera so that I could contribute. I especially liked Sarah Silverman's message:

So true.

If you feel like submitting something, please do! My socially-isolated, miserable past teenaged self thanks you and would have been very much encouraged by something like this as a kid.

Because whore means exactly what we all think it means.

2010-09-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

Indie band The Like recently gave an interview in which they disparaged Lady Gaga for dressing like a "whore," and insisted that they were much better than that. Which, first of all:

"The Like" lead singer Z Berg

I don't think I've ever seen Lady Gaga's nipples. If I had, however, I'm pretty damn sure that Lady Gaga would have WANTED me to see her nipples.

But more importantly than their sour grapes and hypocrisy, it bears repeating that it is never okay to shame other artists or other women for not expressing their sexuality in a way--within morality--that falls in line with our own choices and how we present ourselves.

I could get snippy here about how The Like look and act like they stepped straight out of a softcore American Apparel ad, all doe eyes and long hair and coy smiles and really short skirts; but that is how they choose to dress and IT IS VALID. It is a valid aesthetic to shoot for, and it will help sell their albums just as Lady Gaga's brash, alien-queen outfits help sell HER albums. And there is nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with using one's sexuality to sell a product...so long as one acknowledges it then doesn't turn around and criticize someone else for doing the exact same thing, just in a different way.

Seriously, ladies, stop tearing each other down. I don't listen to either of your albums, but there are precious few female success stories in the industry.

Drumming diary: Dazed & Confused...yeah, no

2010-09-23T22:24:00.000-07:00

This week, on Rachel Learns the Zep...

There's nothing quite like starting to learn a new song and thinking, one-third of the way through, "HOLY JESUS WHAT HAVE I DONE???"

I'mmmmmm notgonnabelearning "Dazed & Confused" anytime soon. If my drumming abilites were a twelve-step program, it'd be about a ten, and I'm on six. It was the triplets in conjunction with 12/8 time that did me in--plus, I'm not entirely certain that the tab I've got is accurate. There's this part where--shit, it's hard to explain if you've never played rock drumming. But okay, though...there's this particular pattern to songs that you KNOW, that can learn to find in any rock or blues song and maybe somebody changes it up to be interesting but you don't take this EXACT pattern of crash-snare bass-bass-snare and move it ONE BEAT UP for TWELVE MEASURES, so that the crash happens on 4 instead of 1 and the snare happens on 1 and 3 instead of 2 and 4 where it BELONGS, DAMMIT. That is just WRONG. That is a WRONG TAB, and I hate wrong tabs!

The offending section. Okay, you see on the first line, about halfway through, how there's a break? There's the "groove" of a song, and then there's a "break," where the song changes up and throws in some crash or toms or something. In this case it goes CRASH CRASH CRASH then some patterns on the toms. Lather, rinse, repeat. The break isn't the problem, though: it's the fact that when we come out the other side of the break, at the end of the second measure on the second line, we go into this pattern that is just...WRONG. They've got the crash on 4! and the snare on 1! WRONG.

SO. We're switching to "Good Times, Bad Times" instead and setting "D&C" back a few weeks. Or months. We'll see.

Movie: Winter's Bone (/)

2010-09-23T15:14:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to see this one for a long time; fortunately the Fox Tower 10 theater downtown has been playing it for a month and seems likely to continue given the strong buzz around the film. It won the grand jury prize at Sundance and is easily the best film I've seen all year, or in recent memory.

Winter's Bone is the story of 17-year-old Ree Dolly, played by the 19-year-old Jennifer Lawrence. Abandoned by her father physically and by her mother mentally, Ree is raising her younger siblings on her own in the hard-scrabble Missouri backwoods. When her convict father goes missing and puts their house up for bond, she has to track him down through the terrifying, meth-infested veins of her own distant relatives in order to keep the shreds of her family together. It's film noir, Deliverance-style.

The people she encounters are more terrifying than any creepy-crawly movie monster that I've ever seen, all the more so because of their basis in reality. John Hawkes from Deadwood is particularly effective as Teardrop, Ree's uncle who's a violent wife-abuser and a crank dealer but is also the only person willing to help her. When you first meet him he scares you shitless; but as Ree digs deeper in her search, she overturns so many scarier people--like her great-aunt Merab, played by the pinch-mouthed Dale Dickey--that when Teardrop appears again at a crucial moment and "stands" for Ree, you want to hug the bastard.

Ree (Lawrence)

Set direction also deserves praise. Every inch of their lives rings true to me, from the trampoline set up in the backyard to the trash in the yards to the way Ree summons her siblings into the kitchen to watch her cook deer stew so that they'll know how, down the road. I grew up as a middle-class household surrounded by rural poverty. I have seen homes like theirs; I have known girls like Ree, who defy any explanation of how they grew up tall and straight among such crooked, strangled surroundings. For despite all the obstacles she faces, Ree has a self-possession far beyond her years. Lawrence turns in an amazing performance, watchful and fierce and determined. It doesn't hurt that she's gorgeous, too.

The film also has the glorious, rare quality of having both a strong female lead and a gifted female director, Debra Grank, behind the camera. One, I imagine, is tied to the other, or both are symbiotic. I'm not saying that it's impossible for any male directors to have strong heroines but when people defend, say, Christopher Nolan's clear lack in that department, they're quick to point out that he's writing from a man's perspective. So if we want to see complex, independent female characters with autonomy and emotional depths, we'd better support our female directors--since apparently we're not allowed to expect that out of men. (And yet Kathryn Bigelow earns glowing praise and the first female directing Oscar for a nearly all-male war film. Funny how that works.)

Don't wait to see this film. Get it now in theaters, then again on DVD. It's amazing.

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Drumming diary: Your Time Is Gonna Come

2010-09-20T14:34:00.000-07:00

This week, on Rachel Learns the Zep...

Well, that was relatively painless, especially after the uphill slog that was Whole Lotta Love.

I still find myself longing for a different kit. Athena -- my jazz-fushion forest green PDP MX Series -- has served me well over the years, but if I'm going to continue in this Zeppelin vein, I should really get something that gives me a better BOOM for my buck.

<-----The noble and valiant Athena, who I got for $475 off Craigslist, complete with hardware, cymbals, and throne. I KNOW. I felt like a thief in the night.

Ideally I'd want to go with something similar to Bonham's kit, or at least something a bit more straight-rock. Nice big floor tom, maybe some kind of kick mount so I can finally get my heavyass 20" ride cymbal on a stand that isn't about to fall over at the first stiff breeze.

I have a mental list of everything I'd buy if I had the money:
--Lasik eye surgery
--Jaw surgery so my jaw wouldn't crack every bloody time I try to eat a sandwich, and also that my teeth would finally meet in front
--a gun
--a car, any car, sweet Jesus
--NEW KIT

So, yeah. It's on the list, but my eyes and oral health are a bit higher on the DEFCON levels right now.

In keeping with the helpful pattern of easier song-harder song-easier song-harder song, I'm thinking I might do Dazed and Confused next. For those who can't read drum notation, that would be a (much) harder song. It's got a tempo jump in the middle, going from 52 bpm to 190, multiple triplet-oriented fills (Bonham loves his triplets), and is gonna be very tricky to count out.

Yes, I DO mind if you fuck around in my attic!

2010-09-13T00:05:00.000-07:00

Silken tresses fluttering in the ----- SHWACK

2010-09-09T20:32:00.000-07:00

NY Mag's Vulture has a fluffy piece about the fashion choices of recent female action heroines. On the surface it's pretty meaningless, but they do address a pet peeve of mine: women fighting with their goddamn hair in their goddamn faces. (Never watch an Army movie with me. I will sit there the entire time grousing about flyaway hairs and trousers untucked from boots. Female soldiers do not wear ponytails, dammit, it's high-and-tight or a tight bun!)

I have hair all the way down my back. There is nothing more annoying than having it slip free and fall in my face, and I'm not even doing battle with ravening zombies/slathering aliens/killer robots on a daily basis. (Woe.)

I guarantee you that the first thing any real-life woman would do when facing battle with a baddie is tie back and/or hack off her hair. Yet these movie heroines are doing backflips and firing guns and riding helicopters with their long locks fluttering free in the breeze. I keep waiting for one of their silken tresses to get stuck in a rotator blade.

But maybe that's the point. Mass media insists that long hair is sexy, and dangerous woman are usually sexified (as if in order to make up for the fact that she can kick a man's ass--don't worry, dudes, you can still imagine her sucking your dick!). It's sexy becuase it's vulnerable, because it would be totally and completely impractical in an actual fight. It's a way of declawing them.

(Vulture's 100% right about Milla Jovovich, too. Hotcha.)

The "VS." is what gets me every time

2010-08-31T23:46:00.000-07:00

Here in Portland there's a station called 94.7 KNRK--"Alternative Portland," which in my opinion is kind of a redundancy; Portland is pretty damn "alternative" on its own--and on Saturday nights you can catch Squid's Modern Mix, which features mashups of modern songs with classics.

This is how I discovered such amazing things as:

Jimi Hendrix vs. Muse: "The Blackout Cries Mary"
The Rolling Stones vs. the Dandy Warhols: "Sympathy for the Warhols"

Both of which are FUCKING AMAZING.

Drumming diary: Whole Lotta Love

2010-08-31T20:10:00.000-07:00

This week, on Rachel Learns the Zep...

Apologies for the long absence: I have been preoccupied with beating a legion of centaur-riding, flaming-chainsaw-wielding Betty White clones into submission. Or struggling through "Whole Lotta Love." Whichever sounds more impressive.

(<-----I love Portland.)

Anyway, I have emerged mostly victorious from the battle with WLL. It doesn't sound perfect, but it's about as good as it's gonna get, considering the giant, 36-measure drum solo in the middle and the fact that they go merrily skipping off count towards the end. GDIT, Zeppelin, hold a beat!

(From my notes ------------------->)

Next I'm learning "Your Time is Gonna Come," which is one of my favorite Zep songs, and not just 'cause I'm the vengeful type. It's an odd tune, incorporating an old-time church organ, an out-of-tune Fender, and some steel guitar lessons, along with some sweet harmonizing.

It's also one of the least-heard Zeppelin songs: they only played it once, and then not in full, at a show in Tokyo in 1971.

But oh, how epic it is.

The drum part calls for a second floor tom, so I'll have to squish both of those down to one as I have yet get my hands on the cashola for some new equipment. It looks like there's a fairly reputable notation available online, so thank god for small favors and wish me luck.

This song has been on repeat for the last two hours.

2010-08-22T20:39:00.000-07:00

Addendum to The Deep Freeze: Imaginary Women

2010-08-19T14:54:00.000-07:00

Several different blogs have picked up my post about Christopher Nolan's woman problems. Which is exciting! And a little bizarre! At least, the post on OhNoTheyDidnt felt a little bizarre. o_O

Response has been all over the map, but a couple of readers took issue with my reading of some female characters. Specifically, they contend that Mrs. Jankis from Memento and Mal from Inception should not be counted as female characters because, as NerdGirl puts it:

But the film's established that memories are unreliable in dreams, so the remembered Moll (sic) isn't her either. She's a shattered reflection of the women Cobb loved. All that remains are the fond memories to torture him and the projection of his guilt who wants him to suffer – because he feels he deserves it. Which, come on – he does.

To which I respond, fair enough. Both of these female characters were (for the most part) memories and mental constructions in the minds of male characters. Perhaps that deserves a category separate from the Madonnas, Whores*, Antagonists, and Dead Wives that populate Christopher Nolan's films: Imaginary Women.

Unfortunately, I can't understand why the readers feel these could be used as a defense of Nolan. Far from it: these constructed women have absolutely no autonomy or agency. They literally do not exist outside of the minds of men. They aren't even real women! Natalie, the femme fatale from Memento, is IMO a stronger female character than Mal or Mrs. Jankis: she's manipulative and hard-edged, yes, but she is clearly a resourceful, intelligent survivor. And she's a real woman. So that puts her one-up on the other two.

And while we're on the subject of Inception...whoo boy. And people say I'm critical.

(*NerdGirl also took issue with me dismissing a female character in Insomnia as "a whore." I didn't. I said that she represented the "Whore" side of the classic Madonna-Whore complex that permeates so many of our media products, as based on the fact that the character spends about half her screentime coming onto one man or another and is given very little else to do. I just want to be clear on that point; I would never bandy about such a female-negative term in a non-academic sense.)

Because nothing says enlightenment like a whiny, rich white woman who ditches her loving husband to learn from the wise, mystical natives

2010-08-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

I have issues with Eat, Pray, Love. Fortunately, I am not alone. In fact, some people have enough issues to fill a BINGO card! Behold!

Credit to Dodai Stewart and Sadie Stein

MY WIFE IS DEEEEEEAD

2010-08-07T14:42:00.001-07:00

Haha, well, I'm not the only one who's talking about Chris Nolan's lady troubles.

By tenshinofushigi.

Twit-fiction

2010-08-03T21:42:00.000-07:00

Another one of my Twitter stories has been featured on Thaumatrope! Woot!

The Deep Freeze: Christopher Nolan's woman problem

2010-07-31T17:51:00.000-07:00

fridge, v. to kill off a female character solely for the purpose of giving the story's main male hero a reason to angst. Coined by Gail Simone in response to a storyline in The Green Lantern in which the hero's girlfriend is killed and literally stuffed in his refrigerator. In 1999, Simone started a website, Women in Refrigerators, that lists all of the comic book women who have been fridged.

Unless you've been living under a rock lately, you've heard of director Christopher Nolan's new movie Inception. It's a long-generating story, one that he's been working on for over a decade, biding his time and building up enough of a reputation in Hollywood that he could get the backing for his dazzling mindfuck of a pet project.

And build up a reputation he has: Nolan has had a string of hits, both financially and critically. On the review-aggregating site Rotten Tomatoes, not one of his films rates below a 75%. His last movie, The Dark Knight, grossed over 1 billion dollars worldwide. There are precious few filmmakers in Hollywood who have so successfully balanced artistic achievements with the culture of spectacle, not so much infusing blockbusters with a decent story as crafting intricate scripts that just so happen to have blockbuster potential.

It's a goddamn shame, then, that he feels the need to fridge the hell out of his women.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, THIS POST CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ALMOST EVERY CHRISTOPHER NOLAN MOVIE EVER MADE. Also, I am not a scientist or a professional researcher.

Don't get me wrong: I love Christopher Nolan's movies. Memento is one of my favorites. I own The Dark Knight. Next week I will see Inception for the third time in theaters. But there's always a lingering icky feeling after the credits roll, when I watch the actors' names rise from the bottom of the screen and try to remember whether any of the women listed did anything important other than die. More often than not, the answer is a resounding no. And when they do live, they're usually evil.

Don't believe me? Let's have a look.

CASE STUDY: Memento (2000)
The movie that made us all sit up and go, "Christopher WHO?" A crackerjack film noir told in reverse about an amnesiac named Leonard (Guy Pearce) who's looking for the man who killed his wife...or is he?

The women:
Natalie (Carrie-Ann Moss). A bartender who Leonard meets on his search through the underbelly. By turns helpful and treacherous, Natalie ultimately manipulates Leonard for her own purposes, using his disability to kill off or maim those who are threatening her. She's undeniably shady, but just how bad she is depends on your interpretation of the movie's events. Alive, antagonist.

Mrs. Jankis (Harriet Sansom Harris). Apparently she has no first name. Leonard repeats the story of the Jankis' several times: Sammy Jankis has the same brain damage as Leonard, but his wife doubts whether or not he's faking it, so she decides to test him. She asks him to give her an insulin shot, then another one in a few minutes after his memory has erased the first. Surprise, surprise, he wasn't faking, and she dies. This is the first instance of a wife dying due to her husband's actions. Dead.

Leonard's Wife (Jorja Fox). No, seriously, Leonard's Wife is her official credit. She didn't get a fucking name either. Oy. Anyway, she actually sort of dies twice in the movie, once when she and Leonard are first attacked; she survives the attack, but Leonard doesn't remember that, and the loss drives him through most of the film. It's revealed at the end, though, that she was actually the one with the insulin, and Leonard invented Sammy Jankis and his wife in order not to deal with the guilt. So really we get two dead-because-of-her-husband-wives for the price of one. Dead.

CONCLUSIONS: Two dead, unnamed wives inadvertantly killed by their husbands' conditions; one femme fatale. We're off to a bangup start. Movie also fails the Bechdel Test: at no point in the movie do two women even speak to each other.

The Bechdel Test: a litmus test developed by writer Alison Bechdel in 1985 to gauge the agency and autonomy of a story's characters. The test has three parts: 1) Are there two female characters who 2) talk to each other 3) about something other than a man?

CASE STUDY: Insomnia (2002)
Detective Frank Dormer (Al Pacino) hunts for serial killer Walter Finch (Robin Williams) in Alaska with the assistance of a local cop named Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank). After he accidentally shoots his partner and covers it up, though, he and the killer wind up morally entangled, and Ellie gets suspicious.

The women
Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank). Here's a good one: Burr practically salivates over Dormer at the film's outset, telling him that he's her idol, but she's also the only one sharp enough to catch the mistakes that Dormer made in his cover-up. Despite getting no backup from the rest of the local cops, who call her "Nancy Drew," she solves the mystery on her own and is the only one left standing as the credits roll. Technically she's an antagonist for the main character, but she's a principled one with plenty of agency. Alive, antagonist.

Kay Connell (Crystal Lowe). Every serial killer story needs a naked, beaten female victim, and teenaged Kay Connell fits the bill. She's already dead before the opening credits, so we only glimpse her in flashbacks and as a bloated corpse on a morgue slab. (I couldn't find any pictures of her that weren't naked and mutilated, so I didn't put one up.) Dead.

Tanya (Katherine Isabelle). Kay's "best friend," who was sleeping with Kay's boyfriend. Portrayed as a callow Lolita who comes onto Dormer and doesn't really care about her dead friend. Alive, but a Whore.

Madonna-Whore complex: a psychological condition in which men divide women into ultra-"pure" Madonnas who can never be sullied with sexual intimacy, and dirty, dirty Whores who can never possibly be wives or mothers. As in men's minds, so in culture. For example: every single Taylor Swift video, ever.

The hotel manager (Maura Tierney). According to IMDB, she's "Rachel Clements," but I don't recall her ever being called by her name in the film. She's shown to be hard-working and professional, but is also deeply compassionate. When the sleepless Dormer is coming unglued, she listens to his desperate confession and advises him. This is the first instance of another motif in Nolan's films: women acting as the conscience of men. Which, hey, it's still using a woman as a secondary prop to a man's emotional arc, but at least she isn't evil. Alive, good.

CONCLUSIONS: Not so bad. We have two strong, principled, professional women, though one of them is technically an antagonist. We've also got a dead, mutilated teenager and a Whore, but...it kinda balances out? No on the Bechdel Test: no two women speak to each other through the whole movie.

CASE STUDY: Batman Begins (2005)
Taking over the Batman franchise, Nolan took him back to his roots for an origin story, detailing how Bruce Wayne trained himself into a crime-busting machine.

The ~~women~~ woman
Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes). As the one woman in Batman Begins, Rachel is brave and smart. As the only ADA with the figurative nads to stand up to the crime syndicate, she's an invaluable ally to Batman and Jim Gordon. She's also another "conscience woman," directing Bruce away from vengeance after his parents are gunned down. (Which, by the way, isn't it funny how much Bruce flashes back to his dead father? While never seeming to give a thought to his dead mother? Yes, I thought that was funny, too.) Rachel does need to be saved an awful lot. Alive, good.

CONCLUSIONS: No chance at the Bechdel test, but Rachel is still a fairly good female character...

CASE STUDY: The Dark Knight
Nolan's second entry in his revival of the Batman movies.

The women
Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal): ...d'oh! Now, obviously the Batman franchise is based on pre-existing material, so Nolan can't 100% be blamed for this one. But still, every comic book director picks and chooses which canon to use from the books, and this is what Nolan chose. (God help us if he ever tries his hand at Catwoman.) ETA: I've been informed in the comments that Rachel Dawes was NOT in the comics and that her movie character was not based on any recognizable pre-existing Batman character. So Nolan created a woman and introduced her into the Batman universe solely for the purpose of killing her off. Not only does her death provide angst for Bruce Wayne, it turns Harvey Dent evil and Jim Gordon borderline-suicidal. Wow, screw fridging, that's like a deep freeze! Dead.

Detective Andrea Ramirez (Monique Gabriela Curnen): Shown to be Jim Gordon's strong right hand, despite the fact that she's a rookie. She ultimately betrays them all to the crime syndicate, gets Rachel killed, and almost gets Jim Gordon's family killed. Alive, antagonist.

Barbara Gordon (Melinda McGraw): Exists in the movie solely to be Gordon's wife, mother of his children, and a Madonna. The only time she's ever seen outside their home is when she and her children are taken hostage by Two-Face; she puts up absolutely no fight even when the dude has a gun to her son's head. (And while we're on the subject of Gordon's family: Gordon's son is "Jim Gordon, Jr." but guess what his daughter's credited as? "Jim Gordon's Daughter." That's right, she gets no name, and it's made explicit in the movie that she's not her father's favorite. Nice.) Alive, but a Madonna.

ETA: I totally forgot about Judge Surrilo! You know, the female judge who was willing to preside over Dent's prosecution of all the mobsters at once. You know--the one who gets blown up. Yeah, that one. Dead.

CONCLUSIONS: All the women are either dead, evil, or a Madonna. The film sort of passes the Bechdel test in that Ramirez calls Barbara Gordon to warn her that she should leave the house; but that's done at Two-face's gunpoint, so it's sketchy at best. Apparently the only way to get women to talk to each other in Nolan movies is to point a gun at them.

CASE STUDY: The Prestige
Two rival magicians, Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Borden (Christian Bale), duke it out in turn-of-the-century England.

The women
Julia (Piper Perabo). Angier's wife. Drowns--half-naked and bound, onstage--during a botched magic trick; the messup was possibly Borden's fault, and her death incites the antipathy between the two. The manner of her death is of some importance: there's a strong undercurrent through the movie about the sacrifices that magicians make for their craft, and it's understood that women are a necessary sacrifice. See below. Dead.

Sarah (Rebecca Hall). Borden's wife. Hangs herself in despair because of what she believes is her husband's fickle nature and unfaithfulness. What she doesn't realize is that she's actually married one of two twin brothers; they never tell anyone the truth because it would mean exposing their best magic trick. So basically Borden watches his wife sink into depression and alcohol abuse rather than tell her the truth, all for the sake of his career. Lovely. Dead.

Olivia (Scarlett Johansson). She is first Angier's assistant; Angier sends her to spy on and sleep with Borden, and she switches sides in disgust. She's a good accomplice, particularly for Borden who she helps revolutionize his career. They fall in love, but she also becomes disgusted by his fickleness. Again, the twins can't be bothered to tell her the truth. Despite being traded like a pawn between the men, she has a fair amount of agency and independence. One could argue that she's a Whore, but given her sympathy for the dead Sarah and her decision to leave Borden, I think that she avoids that trap. Alive, good.

CONCLUSIONS: Two dead wives, twice the manpain. (Or well, triple, if you count the twins separately.) This story, too, was an adaptation; but, again, Nolan chose to take this project on. Something about dead wives really appeals to him. Sarah and Olivia do speak to each other once, but only so that Sarah can object to Olivia calling her husband "Freddie," so it's definitely about a man.

CASE STUDY: Inception, 2010
A team of extractors led by Dom Cobb (Leonardo Dicaprio) invades the mind of an energy magnate, but they're dogged by a shade from Cobb's past, Mal (Marion Cotillard).

The women
Mal. Let's get the obvious one out of the way: the dead wife. And not only is she dead, we actually see her die four times over, both in dreams and in real life. Twice are suicide, once she's shot by her husband, and once she's shot by the movie's other woman. Her madness and eventual real-life suicide were her husband's fault. After her death she haunts his subconscious and is the film's femme fatale and villain. Plus, most of the time she's she's not even real. Besides the few flashbacks where she's crazy and suicidal, she spends most of the movie as a goddamn projection of Cobb's memory of her, laced with his guilt and self-loathing. She has absolutely no autonomy of her own. It's like Chris Nolan's worst hits, all wrapped up in one admittedly-gorgeous Frenchwoman. Very dead, antagonist.

Ariadne (Ellen Page). Curiously, the film that has the worst representation of women also has the best female character that Nolan can offer to date. Ariadne is described as an ever better architect than Cobb was, she's the only teammember who calls him on his emotionally-disturbed shit, yet she is a constant support and guide for him. She's the supreme example of woman-as-conscience, persistently pushing Cobb to face his demons. Ultimately she's the one who completes the job they were hired to do, by shooting shade-Mal and literally drop-kicking Fischer out of Limbo. As the newest teammember, she's a stand-in for the audience, asking all the questions we're wondering; though Cobb is the main character, we're meant to identify with level-headed Ariadne. However, she is still a prop to Cobb's emotional and physical journey. We do see her "die" at one point, stabbed by Mal no less. On the scale of Christopher Nolan movies, she's pretty damn good, but he's still got a long way to go. Alive.

CONCLUSIONS: A decidedly mixed bag. The very best and worst, packed into one. It also comes closest to passing the Bechdel test: Ariadne and Mal talk, but Mal is technically a projection of Cobb's mind and their conversation was subtextually about Cobb. So it's debatable.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS.

+ Going through the IMDB database, I counted up the number of named characters in the above movies. (Although as we've seen, "named" is a fairly relative term -- "Gordon's Daughter" and "Leonard's Wife," for example.) There were 94 names roles for all of Nolan's major films. (I'll confess I haven't seen Following or Doodlebug. If someone has, please chime in.) (ETA: Somebody did chime in! Ryan Meray reports: "In Following, the only woman in the film dies. Also fails the Bechdel test.") Even being generous with what constitutes a name, only 23 of those roles belonged to women.

+ Of those 23, only 17 had speaking roles (more than one line).

+ Of those 17, only 9 were alive at the end of the movie.

+ Of those 9, 5 were antagonists, Whores, or Madonnas.

+ That just leaves the hotel manager in Insomnia (who apparently has a name -- I was generous there), Rachel Dawes in Batman Begins, Olivia in The Prestige, and Ariadne in Inception. One of them dies in a later film, and one "dies" in a dream, one is almost a Whore, and one barely has a name.

+ Of the 6 women who are wives in Chris Nolan movies, only Barbara Gordon survives her movie. Of the other 5, 4 commit suicide.

+ Of the 8 women who die, 6 are inarguably cases of fridging. Remember, "fridging" means killing a woman off solely to give the main male hero a reason to angst. The two wives in Memento match this profile to a T, as do the two wives in The Prestige, Mal in Inception, and Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight.

But fridging is obviously only part of a larger problem in Nolan's cinescape. Recent studies have shown that women get only about 30% of the speaking roles in films and tv shows, despite making up half the population. In Nolan movies, only 23% of the named roles are women. I haven't the wherewithal to examine the percentage of speaking roles that belong to women, but I'm guessing that it's not many.

Again, let me be clear that I am a fan of Nolan. I belive he's a visionary. But speaking as a woman who watches his movies, I find myself longing to see someone like me onscreen, who doesn't die horribly. I want to believe that he is better than this. I want to believe that he just hasn't been challenged on it yet.

Consider this your gauntlet, Mr. Nolan.

Thaumatrope twit-fic

2010-07-30T13:31:00.000-07:00

My 140-character story about the Big Bad Wolf has been published by Thaumatrope, a Twitter magazine for Sci-fi, Fantasy, and Horror fiction! Check it out!

Inception's plot, summarized in handy graphic

2010-07-27T21:12:00.000-07:00

Credit to dehahs on deviantart. I love it when the universe of a work is rich and deep enough to inspire creativity in others. Judging from the amount of fanart and fanfiction that I've seen already on the Interwebs, Inception is definitely one of those works.

San Diego Comic-con: the Nerd-Herd rideth

2010-07-27T10:42:00.000-07:00

Through the infinite kindness of friends, I was able to get a) a free all-weekend pass to the San Diego Comic-con, and b) a free place to stay while down there. All I had to pay for was the plane ticket, transportation and food, which, I'm still living on ramen for the rest of the month, but ENOUGH OF THAT REAL-LIFE WHINING. To the con report!

FRIDAY
I missed Thursday night, unfortunately, and thus didn't catch Tron, The Walking Dead, or the Avengers panels. Boo. My plane landed around noon and I got to the con at 1:30 or so. After picking up my pass I went straight to get in line for "The Joss Whedon Experience," which started at 3:00; but when I got there the line was so long that it wrapped from one end of the convention hall to the other. Security told me point-blank that I wouldn't get it. This was my first brush with The Doom Ballroom. A warning to future con-goers: if you're seeing any show in Ballroom 20, get in line three hours in advance. I never tried to see anything in Hall H, but I suspect it comes with the same warning.

Suffering that early defeat, I wandered out onto the exhibition hall and immediately regretted that life decision. It was terrifying! I've always had a problem with crowds but HOLY JESUS, this was bad. Honestly the biggest problem wasn't even the sheer number of people, it was that people would stop to take pictures of the Halo soldiers squad, or the Slave Leias, or a Big Daddy from Bioshock, and the clumps of picture-takers would swell like tumors as more people stopped to see what the excitement was about. I had decided at the last minute not to take my digital camera with me as I haven't got the money to buy an SD card and thus wouldn't have been able to take many pictures anyhow. I had planned to buy a disposable camera; but at the con I resolved against even that, and instead put my head down and slogged through the crowds. If you want some better pictures than I could have took, here's a good set.

I headed back upstairs for more panels, dropping in on the "Spotlight on Stan Lee" for some batshit ramblings--most disorganized panel I saw, but charming in its own way--including Stan Lee's history of writing "romance stories" and how he got his start as an office bitch in his wife's cousin's publishing company. An interesting tidbit to me was the details of how the Comics Code got started: it was all really due to Dr. Frederic Wortham, a psychiatrist who wrote about the harmful effects that comic-book violence and sex had on children, and was quoted as saying, "If I should meet an unruly youngster in a dark alley. I prefer it to be one who has not seen Bonnie and Clyde." Dude was really scared of kids.

I slipped out of that panel halfway through and rather abruptly ran into Zachary Quinto, aka Spock in the new Star Trek, rather randomly hanging out in the hall taking pictures with fans and signing autographs. He was unexpectedly tall, but just as good-looking. Probably sensing the oncoming nerd-herd of fanboys and girls, security whisked him away before I could get any closer. The security down there was kind of ruthlessly effecient, yo.

I continued on to "Graphic Novels: The Personal Touch," with Gabrielle Bell, Howard Cruse, and Jillian Tamaki. It mostly told me stuff that I already knew. I left some samples of A Teenager's Guide and Nevermore with the panelists, then left the con to forage for food. The surrounding restaurants were, surprise surprise, ridiculously pricey. The Gaslamp District was full of steakhouses and lobster houses and the like; if you're at SDCC and trying to eat cheap, be prepared to walk a ways up 5th Street (the street that the convention hall lets you out onto). If you go up far enough there's pizza by the slice and a Subway, or if you get all the way up to Broadway then take a left and walk two blocks, you'll find Horton Plaza, a big mall with plenty more options including a Panera where I ate a very good breakfast on Monday. Basically, bring good shoes and expect to walk a ways for your cheaper lunch.

Heading back to the con, I went straight to get in line for the "Girls Gone Genre" panel, which was the best life decision I made at the con. GREAT panel, featuring women from many different sides of the entertainment business: Felicia Day, Kathryn Immonen, Laeta Kalogridis, Marti Noxon, Melissa Rosenberg, and Gail Simone. Annalee Newitz, the EIC of I09, moderated. They talked a bit about being women in their respective fields, and had very different reports. Marti Noxon called Joss Whedon "a bigger woman than I am," and had a very positive, even sheltered experience writing on his shows; Melissa Rosenberg definitely had met some resistance and was usually the only woman and least-paid member of a staff. A very interesting comment that several of them made was that they were not taken seriously if they were at all "glamorous." If they showed up in a dress their opinions were brushed aside; but if they wore sweats and didn't wash their hair, they'd be listened to in the writing room or wherever they needed to convince men to hear them.

Kathryn Immonen gave Marvel credit for several initiatives that had brought in more female writers, and scoffed at accusations of "stunt casting" on the creative teams of books. Laeta Kalogridis was once fired from Bionic for "not writing women well," and was replaced by a male writer; yet Jim Cameron is her biggest mentor and ally. Gail Simone initially passed on Wonder Woman because she didn't want to be the chick writing a chick book, but she says now that she doesn't write for one or the other, she just tries to write good stories. They all agreed that the idea of writing specifically for female or male readership is pretty ridiculous. Kathryn Immonen reported that in certain sections of the comic book industry, "female readers" are synonymous with "non-readers," and Melissa Rosenberg reported that it's always a shock to movie studios every time that a product is driven by women, like somehow they forget that women exist in between those peaks of involvement. On the subject of a Wonder Woman movie (they were all frothing at the mouth for one), Laeta said that while movie studios want a star to drive up box office, that's a mistake: superhero movies don't need star because the character is the star. Melissa is launching her own production company called "Tall Girl Productions," geared towards female-friendly projects.

After the panel was over, there was a huge giveaway of books and sweatshirts for Marti Noxon's next project I Am Number 4. (I tried to read the book that it's apparently based on, but it was pretty bad. Concept was cool, but the prose was awful. Here's hoping she can translate it better to a different medium.) The hoodie giveaway was a nightmare: all the boxes were stacked at the back of the room in one location, which created a huge tumor of panel-goers all trying to get a shirt. After watching in horror for a bit, I took action and climbed up on top of the box mountain, ripping them open and throwing hoodies out into the crowd. It was kind of awesome, the best part of which was when Gail Simone--in an elegant dress and hair do-dad--elbowed her way through for a hoodie. I said I'd trade one for a hug; she obliged and I told her she was an inspiration. She asked what I was inspired to do and I said "write comic books!" and we engaged the High-Five before I returned to Hoodie Mountain.

(It should be noted that the entire time I was waiting for and in this panel, my friends Kristen and Lauren were waiting for the True Blood panel in the Doom Ballroom. After waiting in line for 2.5 hours, they didn't get in. SERIOUSLY. Ballroom of DOOOOOOOOOM.)

After getting dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe with some of the boys from the Dark Horse booth, Kristen, Lauren and I headed back (passing director Edgar Wright on the way) for "Worst Cartoons Ever." And dear God, they were so bad. This is a long-running panel, so if anyone goes again, DO NOT MISS IT. Aside from old crowd favorites like Mighty Mr. Titan, there was this one...the one with the monkey. That's all I can call it. The title was actually something like Experimental Animation, and Jeff Beck, who was emceeing the panel, said it would give Guillermo Del Toro nightmares. He wasn't kidding. It was the creepiest shit I've seen all year. Everytime you thought the creep factor was at 10, it went to 11. I can only hope that they show it again next con, because the crowd freaking loved it, even as we were cringing backwards in our seats.

SATURDAY
I started off Saturday bright and early with the "Marvel Comics Writers Unite!" Which was actually something of an accident on my part, but turned out to be an awesome accident because Matt Fraction! Does anyone else out there know the awesomeness of Matt Fraction? I will confess I walked away with something of a boycrush. Dammit, he had scruffy hair and snarky wit and a skinny black tie and nerd spectacles and big leather bracelets on both his wrists and spent the entire panel staring at the table in front of him rather than making eye contact with the audience, even when he was being witty and fanboying the other panelists. He also mentioned having a daughter and how much that has affected his desire to write strong female characters, because he knows that he and his wife will raise her to be an independent thinker and if he writes exploitative crap he'll have to answer for it one day. In other words, precious! I wanted to put him in my pocket and take him home with me. I'm only human, dammit! Gonna have to look up his stuff now.

Next was "Spotlight on Gerard Way," which was kinda underwhelming. Besides Way, Scott Allie and Gabriel Ba were on hand, but no one really had too many new projects that they could talk about. Way called himself lame and said that he couldn't talk about the movie at all. They did confirm that Killjoys is coming out next year for sure, as is Way's album with his band. There was a cute moment when a little boy in the audience presented Way with little Lego versions of The Umbrella Academy characters, and he admitted that he gets so shy when people do that or when they cosplay his characters. They all wanted to see someone do a Spaceboy cosplay. The umbrella represents protection, Way wants to see Gary Oldman as Hargreeves and Jared Leto as Kraken, he and his wife had a geekout over Joss Whedon the night before, and if Gerard ever wrote The X-Men, he could only do it if the cover read The Motherf'ing X-Men.

After that panel ended I braved another trip into the exhibition hall to visit Artist's Alley and try to network a bit, then swung by the Dark Horse booth to check up on my peeps. It was super-crowded so I jetted, but I was told later that during the Gerard Way signing that transpired shortly after I left, one girl was so excited to see him that she spontaneously started bleeding from the nose and mouth. The Dark Horse peeps did their best to take care of her, but she apparently had to lie down on the floor of their booth for a while. Which, whoa. Also later that day, someone got stabbed with a pen. There were all sorts of rumors about this flying around the con, including an inter-fandom argument between zombie-lovers and Harry Potter fen in which someone's eye got gouged out, but the truth is that two grown men got into an argument during the Resident Evil panel about one sitting too close to the other, and one of them stabbed the other near the eye with a pen. I can't even qualify that with a joke.

ANYWAY. Kristen, Lauren, and I went to the "Queer Press Grant Roundup Panel." The folks behind Prism Comics are giving out $2,000 to encourage LGBT comic book creators. I'm totally going to try for this! This is exactly what I need.

After that I warily headed toward the Doom Ballroom. Miraculously, there wasn't a line for once and I slipped into the end of the Fringe panel. I don't watch the show but the cast seemed absolutely charming, especially Joshua Jackson. Whenever someone asked them a question, they would respond and then someone on the cast would come up with a trivia question; if someone in the audience got it right, they got a free shirt; if they got it wrong, they got a free shirt anyway. One of the questions pertained to the secret ingredient of some kind of compound used on the show, and Joshua Jackson was all, "Hey, I've got a great hint for this!" before taking a sip of water and leaning close to the mic to burble it between his lips. The audience member guessed marijuana and Jackson chirped, "You win a t-shirt! And a five to fifteen year prison sentence!" Like I said, charming. I should really watch that show.

The next panel in the Doom Ballroom was "The Vampire Diaries," which I do watch and was thoroughly excited for. Most of the cast was there, and were hilarious. For some reason I didn't take notes on this one, so I'm relying solely on memory. Nina Dobrev and Paul Wesley were gorgeous and immaculate while Ian Somerhalder looked like he'd just had sex in a broom closet. Which, come to think of it, Matt Davis kind of did, too. Make of that what you will. Davis and Steve R. McQueen sat at the end of the table and spent most of the panel snickering at the others, particulary at any comments that could remotely be construed as dirty. Writer Julie Plec described them as "Beavis and Butthead." Somerhalder said he hates playing scenes in which Damon is being a good guy; he doesn't know what to do with himself (which probably works for Damon). McQueen wants a girlfriend who doesn't die. They confirmed that we'd be seeing werewolves then played an exclusive sneak peek at next season, which mostly consisted of people stabbing each other and Damon telling Stefan that he kissed Elena and Damon making out with Katherine (OR ELENA?) and then Katherine telling Damon that she didn't love him, then her telling Stefan that she DID, and Stefan telling her that he hates her and then her GUT-STABBING STEFAN, and H'OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS, IT IS ON. SHIT IS GONNA GO DOWN AND KNOWING THIS SHOW, THAT'S ALL FROM THE SEASON-OPENING TEASER.

Ahem. Annnnnyway.

Next up the girls and I went to "Gays in Comics: Year 23!" As a quick aside, I've heard that Westboro was protesting the con; apparently they did it Wednesday, the first official day of the con, so I missed them. I'm strangely regretful about that. From the sound of it, the counter-protests were awesome. Most of this panel was devoted to talking about developments and the expanding roles of gay characters. An audience member came up with the best question of the night: do people feel like it's important for gay characters in comics to actually come out and say "I'm gay," or is it enough for it to be strongly implied? Some of the panelists (the straight ones, actually, not that I don't feel like this could be a valid viewpoint) felt that it's not important for us to know right away that a character's gay, and that a person's sexuality shouldn't be their defining characteristic; Howard Cruse, the godfather of gay comics, though, raised the excellent point that the default assumption for all characters--and for society at large--is that everyone's heterosexual, and for us to be able to find one another requires some identification. I fall into the latter camp, but I acknowledge the former as the ideal scenario. We shouldn't have to identify ourselves becuase it shouldn't have to matter; but until it stops mattering to the Westboro Baptist Church, we're going to need to speak up if only so that we can find and support one another. That's my .02 cents.

SUNDAY
Got up bright and early to brave the Doom Ballroom with Lauren for Glee. We spent probably two hours in line, and got in at the end of American Dad, which I really wasn't too happy about. I had always known that Seth MacFarlane was something of a smug prick, but wow. He's a monumental smug prick. He and the other panelists started making fun of the people who were coming up to ask questions. One guy had a monotone and MacFarlane asked him if anyone had ever told him he had a robotic voice, then answered the question in a robot monotone. I'd feel worse for the fans if they weren't a bunch of pricks, too: as we were hanging out in line a guy in a makeshift 300 costume walked by and one of the American Dad fans yelled sarcastically, "Yo, way for half-assing your costume, dude!" It was like a bunch of frat boys invading a Magic: The Gathering party. I wanted to summon the Nerd-Herd Security Squad and have them thrown out.

Flip that whole vibe around and that was the "Glee" panel. Ryan Murphy was there, as was Chris Colfer, Amber Riley, Heather Morris, Kevin McHale, Jenna Ushkowitz, and Naya Rivera. (No Mark Salling, though he was scheduled. Alas! Hope he didn't get sick or something.) Before the cast came out they rolled a highlight reel of season 1; the crowd loved all of it, but especially Burt Hummel's anti-"fag" speech. Everyone kept bursting into spontaneous applause and yelling, "That's right!" and "I love you, Mr. Hummel!" The cast were lovely. Chris Colfer was wearing a Transformers t-shirt and told us that he felt right at home as he is "a huge, awkward nerd" himself; he'd love to do "Time Warp" on the show, and Ryan Murphy teased us with the possibility of a Rocky Horror episode. Jenna is a Vampire Diaries fan as well and was in an actual glee club in high school. I want to be Amber Riley's friend in real life. They have the post-Super Bowl timeslot and will be doing some kind of tribute episode there. Oprah was scarier for them to meet than Obama. Next season will be more intimate with the characters and at some point we'll be seeing Mercedes go to church and taking Kurt along. Chris got veeeeeery nervous, all wide-eyed Bambi, so apparently that was the first time he was hearing about that one, too. I spent the whole panel waiting in line to ask a question: I thanked Ryan Murphy and Chris Colfer for their work then waved a threatening fist at the panel and demanded a boyfriend for Kurt. They promised that we'd see one soon but didn't give specifics, the buggers.

After that was over, we barely had time to eat lunch before the con started shutting down. Kristen, Lauren and I parted ways and I wound up sticking around the Dark Horse booth to help break everything down (usually they throw out everyone without an 'exhibitor' pass, but they had an extra one at the booth and so for the latter half of the day I was 'Brian'). My primary function was putting boxes back together and loading things up. It was long, exhausting work, but actually a lot of fun for me and my "must-be-helpful" instincts. The exhibition hall was almost nice without all the people packed in there. I wound up getting a Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Panel to Panel book that had a page torn out and was gonna be thrown away. One of the ladies organizing the company dinner invited me along and I wound up going to a very nice steakhouse/lobster restaurant right across from the convention center with about half of Dark Horse. Most excellent food, and marvelous company. Unfortunately I had to leave them before the party got into full steam, but such is the way of it.

In all, a fun but exhausting weekend. By the end of it, everyone was desperate to get home to their own beds, and Oregon water. Walking away from it, I'm most excited for the Vampire Diaries season premiere. SHIT'S GOING DOWN.

Review: Inception (spoilers)

2010-07-21T11:47:00.001-07:00

I'm not going to bother with a full review for the movie -- short version: awesome, you should check it out for the whole dream sequence in the hotel if nothing else; I also happen to think that while this was ostensibly Chris Nolan's baby and Leo Dicaprio was the star, it's Joseph Gordon-Levitt whose career will benefit most -- in favor of trying to figure out the ending.

In case that didn't tip you off OH DEAR GOD THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS POST THE HUMANITEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

I have seen three options postulated in the after-movie discussions. There are the obvious two: either Dom (Dicaprio) woke up all the way and is finally back with his kids in real life ("the top fell eventually" theory), or he never came back up from Limbo after Ariadne left him down there and the whole sequence of him going to rejoin his kids is his own fantasy ("the top stayed spinning" theory). After I got home and went online, I saw a third theory: that Dom never woke up from his first time in Limbo with Mal, and everything in the movie was a dream.

Proponents of the third "all a dream" theory point out that a lot of the "waking world" sequences did seem a little far-fetched and unreal--particularly the way the Kobal engineering goons in Mombasa seemed to pursue Dom much like the projections of a subconscious mind (something that Dom's projection of Mal points out). However, I find this theory to be both improbable and narratively unsatisfying. Dom was not present for every sequence in the movie: Arthur (Gordon-Levitt) teaching Ariadne (Ellen Page), for example, or Yusuf and Arthur's solo time in their dream-worlds fighting off multiple attackers. And while he had knowledge of those events, we actually saw them as an audience, which would imply that Dom had to have seen them, too. From a narrative standpoint, yes, logically the whole thing could have been a dream, but then what would have been the point of making the movie at all? And what would have been the point of watching it, if all the characters in it are just projections and the whole plot merely the whim of a trapped mind? Like I said, unsatisfying.

So I think it comes down to whether the top stayed up or fell down after the screen went dark. The whole point of the movie was to question reality, so obviously Nolan wrote it to be open-ended, giving hints in either direction. Let's take a look:

The top fell down theory

The top wobbled a bit at the end. Usually when it spun in a dream, it stayed perfectly still, spinning in place forever.
We saw the kids' faces at the end, something that we pointedly never saw in the dreams.
"Ariadne" comes from Greek mythology. She was the daughter of Minos and helped Theseus kill the minotaur and escape from the labyrinthe, a highly symbolic role given her relationship with Dom.

The top stayed spinning theory

We did not actually SEE the top fall down, and Dom didn't stick around to watch, either, despite being visibly nervous about how familiar everything felt.
And anyway, Dom's totem is spectacularly unreliable. First of all, it was Mal's totem to begin with, and second, he showed it and explained how it worked to multiple people. I realize that was to exposit how the thing worked and why he kept spinning it all the time, but seriously, now.
The kids were in the exact same position that we always saw them out the back deck, wearing the same clothes and appearing not to have aged. It was never mentioned how long Dom had been away from them, but in the real world when he spoke to them on the phone from Japan, they sounded older.
Why was Miles waiting for Dom in LAX? Wasn't he just in Paris? Admittedly Dom could have called to tell Miles about the possibility of his homecoming, but still. Seemed kind of convenient.

After I watched the movie the first time, I was adamant that the top wobbled and that he was awake. (Well, actually first I yelled "Sonofabitch!" rather loudly when the screen went black, getting laughs from people around me.) Having watched it twice now, though, I'm convinced that Dom was still dreaming at the end, mostly due to the kids.

If you have other items of evidence to add to the list, comment below.

One last thing, just one: has there ever been a Christopher Nolan film in which a woman wasn't fridged (i.e. killed off in order to give the main male hero a reason to angst)? Think about it. Batman Begins: the mother dies. The Dark Knight: the girlfriend dies. Memento: the wife dies. The Prestige: the wife dies, THEN the girlfriend dies. Insomnia: teenaged serial killing victim dies. And now Inception: the wife dies, four(?) times.

STOP MAKING ME FEEL ICKY FOR LIKING YOUR MOVIES, CHRISTOPHER NOLAN!

Drumming diary: First band practice

2010-07-08T18:09:00.001-07:00

Well, that was discouraging.

Drumming diary: Joining the Delegation

2010-07-06T20:49:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the long break on my drumming diary, but many things have been afoot. I appear to have joined a blues band, Get Down Jones and the Delegation. It's a long-running band fronted by a guy named Barney who's well-respected in the Portland blues scene.

You can listen to some tracks on the site there. I didn't play on any of them, but I'm currently learning them all in order to start playing gigs with the band ASAP.

The first gig being this weekend. Yikes. Pardon me while I return to frantically scribbling down cheat beat sheets, heh.

Fortunately their style of blues is fairly easy to play and groove-heavy. Once you get the groove down, you can settle into it and let your body swing and twist to the beat. It's like dancing, with little stutter-steps and dips on the break measures. 3 and a break. 3 and a break.

I'm working on "Built For Comfort" right now and twisting around some of the breaks to be more imaginative. One of them I've replaced with a bit of Panic! At the Disco's Northern Downpour; another, I've thrown in a quick skip of Led Zeppelin. Unabashed thievery is the musician's friend.

New hormone potentially erases lesbianism and other masculine behavior in fetuses

2010-07-01T15:48:00.000-07:00

This is some of the most terrifying news that I've heard in a while: an endocrinologist in New York named Maria New has for several years been encouraging pregnant women to take a steriod called dexamethasone, ostensibly to prevent congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). CAH can mess up a kid's adrenal glands and require lifetime steriod treatment, as well as cause ambiguous genitalia in girls. One might think that studying ways to prevent this condition might not be so controversial, and yet:

The challenge here is . . . to see what could be done to restore this baby to
the normal female appearance which would be compatible with her parents
presenting her as a girl, with her eventually becoming somebody's wife, and
having normal sexual development, and becoming a mother. And she has all the
machinery for motherhood, and therefore nothing should stop that, if we can
repair her surgically and help her psychologically to continue to grow and
develop as a girl. -New, 2001

Gender-related behaviors, namely childhood play, peer association, career and
leisure time preferences in adolescence and adulthood, maternalism, aggression,
and sexual orientation become masculinized in 46,XX girls and women with 21OHD
deficiency [CAH]. These abnormalities have been attributed to the effects of
excessive prenatal androgen levels on the sexual differentiation of the brain
and later on behavior . . . We anticipate that prenatal dexamethasone therapy
will reduce the well-documented behavioral masculinization. -New and colleague Saroj Nimkam, 2010

I don't know what's scarier, the possibility that the treatment doesn't work -- as testified to by some of the women who took the steroid during pregnancy and whose children now suffer birth abnormalities -- or the possibility that it does.

If this steriod was actually effective in altering the physical appearance, behavior, and sexual orientation of a girl fetus, I could easily see a groundswell of support building for its widespread usage, among the same people who abhor fetal stem cell research. Because experimenting on babies is totally legit as long as it supports their cultural agenda. Gotta make girl babies more GIRLY, and eager to make more babies.

Comics: Swallow Me Whole */**

2010-07-01T13:57:00.000-07:00

Title: Swallow Me Whole
Author: Nate Powell

Winner of the 2009 Eisner for Best New Graphic Novel, Swallow Me Whole has been marketed as Young Adult, and I'm exceedingly grateful for that. It might seem like an obvious choice given the ages of its teenaged protagonists, step-siblings Ruth and Perry, but the novel deals pretty heavily with serious mental illness. Speaking as someone who's been close to these issues in the past, I wish that I had had a book like this as a teenager, and that there were more of its kind.

Ruth and Perry dwell in an importantly-ordinary, Christian-leaning community, and have an importantly-ordinary family. Their interior lives are far from ordinary, however: serious-minded Ruth is obsessed with insects and hallucinates talking swarms of cicadas; awkward Perry sees a wizard balanced on the end of his eraser who urges him to draw. The delusions seem to run in the family, as their dying grandmother reveals to Ruth that she's had visions, too, that led to a lifetime of painting strange, ghostlike flying blobs with gaping mouths.

Memaw's deterioration hangs over the story even as Ruth and Perry grow up before our eyes and stretch their arms toward adulthood. Aside from each other, they don't get much help with their visions and visitors. Ruth does wind up on medication after going into a fugue state at school that's at first is mistaken for drug use, but when Perry nervously reveals the source of his wizard drawings to a family doctor, though, his concerns are brushed aside as "stress." It becomes an increasingly difficult struggle for these two to just get through the day, and for one of them that struggle careens downhill.

Powell carefully allows us to see Ruth and Perry's hallucinations, but to experience them as well. His use of unconventional and sometimes confusing panel sizes and placement detaches us, finger by gripping finger, from reality and makes it painfully clear how difficult it can be to live with mental illness. It seems easy to say that a tiny talking wizard is absurd and fantastical; but as the teens' problems are misunderstood, misdiagnosed, and even encouraged by their delusional grandmother, one can see the solid ground of their lives falling out from underneath Ruth and Perry, until they float through the dark swirl of Powell's artwork.

The ending, which I shan't spoil here, drives this point home. Something happens that makes us question whether Ruth's delusions were real after all. It throws the reader into a level of ambiguity and uncertainty that mimics, but likely cannot even come close to, the experience of living with an altered mind.

These are not the comic artists that you're looking for.

2010-06-23T16:45:00.001-07:00

A word to the wise: do not ever, ever, ever post on Craigslist looking for a comic book artist.

I had been advised to do so by a well-meaning editor friend at Dark Horse; unfortunately, I doubt he's ever had to do that himself.

The response I got was overwhelmingly hostile. People told me point-blank that any ad that didn't offer compensation -- "no pay" -- would be flagged immediately by angry members of the Craigslist forums. Which, I understand that the economy has people down, but one might hope that CL would recognize what was going on and not just let people flag ads for removal because they're irritated about the lack of offered money.

Apparently that's not happening. So save yourself the time, the harassment, and the headache, and don't do it.

Movie: Toy Story 3 (and short: Day and Night) */**

2010-06-20T23:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I drove my 12-year-old niece and her friend to see Toy Story 3, with some trepidation. My niece is right on that shaky age when she is just old enough to pretend that she doesn't really like such kid fare, but she'll still let her aunt drag her out to see it. She also has multiple Twilight posters, and is adamantly Team Edward.

I will pause while some readers shudder.

Fortunately Toy Story 3 was a bit less offensive to my pro-choice, pro-ethical-slut, feminist sensibilities. First, as with all Pixar films, we were treated to a short: this one was called Day and Night, a clip of which you can see here. In it, two odd, blob-like beings who represent the opposite extremes of, you guessed it, day and night encounter, fear, and eventually befriend one another. Using the broadcast of a Wayne Dyer speech, the short drives home a message of tolerance and acceptance, insisting that the unknown (representated as being anything different from ourselves, implicitly identified as race, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, etc.) need not be something to fear, just as Day and Night find commonality in a single moment when sunrise and sunset intersect. I was deeply pleased to see Pixar aim such a blunt message of acceptance at children, and can only hope that it sinks in with this whole generation of younglings.

As for the movie itself, it did have rather odd monotheistic undertones. Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and cowgirl Jessie return for a bittersweet installment: their 0wner Andy has all grown up and is preparing to go away to college, literally setting childish things aside. Some of the living toys prepare themselves for Attic Mode, in which they wait among the dust in the hopes that some day Andy will have kids and will pass them along to be played with. There's a mixup, though, and instead of the attic the toys wind donated to a daycare center, where they're threatened by both rambunctious toddlers and the sinister Care-Bear-knockoff Sir Lotsa Love.

The aforementioned monotheistic themes lurk in the toys' devotion to Andy. Woody encourages the others to spend years, even decades, in the attic waiting and hoping for the day that Andy will have use of them again; they all speak of him as the only source of hope or joy in the universe, and fall astray only after they mistakenly believe that he has abandoned them; Lotsa even asks, "Where is your ~~God~~ kid now?" at a dicey juncture. If The Chronicles of Narnia is a metaphor for the Christian God, full of self-sacrifice and forgiveness, then Toy Story 3 is the tale of an Old Testament God, asking for sacrifice and (hopefully, but not guaranteed) revealing itself as benevolent in the end.

I suppose how one feels about these underlying God-themes depends a lot on one's world view. They didn't bother me so much. I was too busy detecting whether or not the film passed the Bechdel Test (it did) and the Mohr Test (it didn't), and attempting to keep my teenaged niece and her friend from seeing me tear up at a kid's film. (Oh, what. Shut up. I dare you to watch the sequence in the landfill and NOT choke up.)

Another point of interest was the character of Ken (as in, a Ken doll). Inclined towards flowery cursive hand-writing and obsessed with clothes, Ken is first introduced as a low-level and disrespected flunky to the villain Lotsa; however, he eventually switches allegiance to the good guys due to his love for a delightfully-assertive Barbie (even after she tortures him for information -- by ripping up all his best outfits). Prone to wearing his girlfriend's scarves and being gooey with his emotions, Ken breaks a lot of heteronormative rules, yet winds up co-leading the toys of the daycare center towards a more egalitarian lifestyle after Lotsa is out of the picture. It's a character refreshingly free of stereotypes, and I can only hope my young nephew goes to see the movie sometime himself.

In all, a well-made film with some tolerant messages. I liked it.

Art Imitates Life?: actress Romola Garai on misogyny

2010-06-15T12:53:00.000-07:00

The recent film The Killer Inside Me, starring Casey Affleck as a 1950's West Texas deputy sherrif who's secretly a psychotic killer, has generated a great deal of controversy due to several scenes of graphic violence.

Need I even add that the violence in question is perpetrated on women?

Critics have variously praised the film, condemned it, defended the violence as essential to the storyline, and questioned whether it was worth the storyline. No one, however, has rivaled the critical response of one Romola Garai. An actress who you most likely know as the teenaged Briony Tallis of Atonement, Garai provides her own examination of The Killer, of cinema in general, and society at large. It is startlingly insightful:

It is also a misogynistic film – but why shouldn't it be? I would argue
that something dark is lurking between the sexes and that it is seeping out into
cinema. [...] Isn't cinema simply responding to a fear of – and desire to punish
– women, especially materially successful or sexually active women?

The world has changed quickly and, for some men, there is anger,
confusion and frustration at that change – a feeling of displacement and
uselessness that is driving a wedge between the sexes. It isn't a predicament I
feel much sympathy for but I believe it exists and should be allowed to be
expressed.

I'm not sure whether I agree with her or not -- after all, life often imitates art, and our cultural palate is formed by the media we devour -- but she raises interesting points.

Drumming diary: How Rachel got her groove back.

2010-06-11T20:39:00.000-07:00

As anyone who has ever tried on skinny jeans knows -- my personal verdict: a full-body muffintop, ugh -- finding one's personal style is a lot of trial-and-error. The same holds true in drumming.

Through the process of learning other people's songs, I've played a variety of styles and have come to realize that I really, really hate playing pop-punk. Or punk. Just, that whole vein of music. I hate it. Well, wait, I don't hate the music, I hate PLAYING it. I never feel like I'm settling into a nice groove with punk, and me likey a nice groove. (Pop) Punk is all frenetic and wild and I can see how that would be fun for others, but for me, ugh, I hate it.

Me, I think I'm a fairly solid blues-rock drummer. This gives me joy! I have found my style! Hooray!

Of course, this means that I've given up trying to learn I'm Not Okay. Boo. I hate not finishing things that I start.

But hooray! A style! Now to learn EVERY BLUES-ROCK SONG IN EXISTENCE! Starting with the entire Led Zeppelin repetoire, heh.

Mama, don't let your girls grow up to be cowboys.

2010-06-10T12:03:00.000-07:00

You know what I really want?

I want there to have been at least ONE WOMAN on this list.

I have this whole dissertation about why all of our classic heroes these days are anti-heroes, and how that relates to Vietnam -- specifically, the massacre at My Lai 4 -- and how the American dream has a desperate need to parody itself in order to reaffirm that no, really, we are the good guys, despite all the evidence and dead Vietnamese civilians to the contrary.

The short version says that, well, all our classic heroes these days are anti-heroes. To not have ONE woman on that list is either a strong indication of the list-maker's bias, or our ongoing inability as a culture to see women as something to be admired, something heroic.

I mean, hello, STARBUCK??? If they're going to put Mal on there, then where the hell is Kara Frakking Thrace?

Here is a list of our demands. Meet them or the goat gets it.

2010-06-07T12:20:00.000-07:00

Recently, comic book artist Hope Larson performed an informal survey of 198 comics-reading girls and young women to get a snapshot of their reading practices, and what they believe the comic book industry could do to encourage more female readership, especially among teens and tweens (as this age bracket is most likely to pick up comics). She presented her findings in the form of a list of demands:

1. More and better female characters, especially protagonists. Girls want to see strong, in-control, kick-ass women calling the shots.
2. A welcoming atmosphere in local comic stores is key. Many respondents reported feeling uncomfortable in comic stores. They were stared at, talked down to, and
generally treated without respect.
3. Pink, sparkly cutesy comics about boyfriends, ponies, cupcakes and shopping are widely reviled. Condescend to female readers at your peril, writers and comic publishers.
4. The hypersexualization/objectification of female superheroines makes female readers uncomfortable, and sexual violence as a plot point has got to stop.
5. Girls need good stories in a variety of genres.
6. Most girls don’t even know comics exist, or that they would enjoy them. Publishers need to advertise in mainstream media and comic shops need to reach out to girls.
7. Make comics for boys and girls. Comics with dual male and female protagonists. Comics with large casts that offer something for everyone.
8. Use licensed properties to lure new readers into comics.
9. Availability is a problem. Get more comics into schools. Get more comics into libraries—especially school libraries. Get more comics into bookstores, especially large chains.
10. There need to be more women creating comics and working in the industry as editors and publishers.

Emphasis mine, on the points that I feel are most salient. The first two are content issues, and I think any change in content will be dependent on number 10, and an increase in the number of women actually writing comics. I've been dipping my toes into the world of independent comics, and I've noticed that the further one gets up the foodchain -- from webcomic creators to the larger independent houses to the Majors -- the fewer women one meets.

Which in turn is dependent on number 6, and the lack of female readership. With few girls and women interested in reading comics, it stands to reason that not many would be interested in creating them, either.

Which, of course, is in turn largely dependent on content.

It's a vicious cycle, friends.

If comic book publishing houses want to court the female market, I would strongly suggest that they actively recruit women to work on their writing and editorial staff. There are a few determined souls out here (*raises hand*) who long to wade in and lay about them with the Righteous Club Of Gender Equality, Or At Least Not Fridging Half the Female Characters.

But then again, maybe that's exactly what they DON'T want.

The Mohr test

2010-06-05T19:13:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about the Bechdel Test today, and how in certain circles it's become shorthand for how to evaluate a given media product's treatment of female characters. The test:

1. It has to have at least two women in it
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides a man.

This sounds simple -- but you'd be amazed. For instance, the film Nine, despite having nine women, does not pass. The Dark Knight does, barely. The novel Boneshaker, which I just reviewed, passes. The comic book Preacher (ugh) passes. None of the original Star Wars films pass. None of The Lord of the Rings trilogy pass, in either film or book form.

Now, try to think of a single movie, novel, comic book, or TV show, even one, in which there are 1. Less than two men, 2. who never talk to each other, 3. about anything other than a woman.

The Bechedel test might seem simplistic: obviously a story can be female-negative but still pass these requirements, and vice versa. But it is a fast and easy way to evaluate a story's attitudes towards female presence, community, and independence.

And then I started thinking about A Single Man, that recent Oscar-bait movie starring Colin Firth as a gay man who's lost his partner to a car accident. Some members of the queer community flocked to the movie but I avoided it like the plague: I have no desire to watch yet another queer character (SPOILER ALERT) be sad and miserable and alone and then die at the end of the movie.

In fact, I'm hard-pressed to think of one movie or TV show in which an openly-queer (or even just heavily-subtexted queer) character has a happy ending, or at least doesn't frickin' DIE. The only one that comes to mind is the movie Shelter. Jury's still out on Kurt Hummel of the TV show Glee.

So I'm thinking that we need a Bechdel test for queer characters. (Really, we need one for characters of color, too, but I would not at all presume to make one. I am not the moral authority of racial issues, dear God.) The test would go something like this:

1. If there are ten characters in a story, then at least one of them is a queer person
2. Who is actually shown to be queer (they kiss someone of the same sex, or are mentioned as having a significant other, or anything that shows they're not a Will&Grace-neutered version of "gay")
3. And isn't thematically punished for being queer.

We'll call it the Mohr test, unless someone can think of something better.

Book: Boneshaker (*1/2/**)

2010-06-05T14:54:00.000-07:00

Title: Boneshaker
Author: Cherie Priest

I'll confess I haven't read straight prose in a while. As a child, my mother worked out a deal wherein I couldn't start reading until after I'd done my chores for the day; she knew that once I started, nothing could draw my attention away until I had gulped down the entire book. I can't exactly remember when I stopped reading like that -- probably around college, when all of my reading time was devoured by scholarly texts.

Whilst trolling the hallowed, color-coded rooms of Powell's, I picked up the book Boneshaker on the basis of its interesting cover: a dirty-faced, dark-haired woman wearing a pair of goggles with multiple lenses stares solemnly up at the sky. In one lens, we see the reflection of an airship. The whole thing seems to be done in oil paints, adding to the sense of grubbiness. In the upper-right hand corner of the cover, Scott Westerfield recommends the book with the description "A steampunk-zombie-airship adventure."

I will pause and let you absorb that.

Then I will add my own shrieking description: STEAMPUNK ZOMBIE AIRSHIP ALTERNATE-HISTORY MYSTERY-ADVENTURE STARRING A STRONG FEMALE PROTAGONIST SET IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!

It's as if someone looked into my soul and gently inquired if it would like to read a book again.

Boneshaker is the story of Briar Wilkes, a hard-bitten woman in her mid-thirties, and her 16-year-old son Zeke, who live in the Outskirts, an area that has grown up around the ruin of Seattle. The year is 1880, the Civil War has been dragging on for 12 years due to small nudges of historical happenstance (it's mentioned that Stonewall Jackson didn't die at Chancellorsville), and as a result Washington is still an isolated territory instead of a proper state. Unscrupulous prospectors have been seeking gold in the Klondike and building giant drills to get under the ice. One of these drills was Dr. Blue's Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine; its creator, Leviticus Blue, was (is?) an inventor of the kinds of gadgets one expects in a steampunk story.

Except something went horribly wrong with the engine -- or horribly right. 16 years back, it went haywire all through the underground of downtown Seattle, tearing up several bank vaults and caving in streets and buildings. Worse yet, though, it tapped into some secret underground vein of poisonous gas, which the characters call the Blight. The Blight turns people into "rotters," mindless undead who feel no pain and desire only to eat. A 200-foot wall was built to hold in this plague, and the Outskirts grew up around it.

In the aftermath Dr. Blue had disappeared, along with any hope of knowing his intentions. In his absence, much of the city's wrath has fallen on Blue's wife and child -- Briar and Zeke.

As the story opens, the ostracized Zeke has decided to go in search of proof that his father was innocent and that the whole thing was an accident. His quest takes him inside the Wall. The even-more ostracized Briar follows after him. On the way they encounter air pirates, an Indian princess who's handy with knives, hordes of the undead, and the sinister Dr. Minnericht, a crazy inventor and criminal overlord who bears some resemblence to Briar's dead(?) husband Levi.

The book's a little slow to get going, spending a hair too much time describing Briar and Zeke's miserable, poverty-stricken existence in the Outskirts. Once they get inside the Wall, though, Priest moves the narrative along at a brisk if zig-zagging pace. There are a lot of different players inside the Wall, all with motivations so crosswise to each other as to form a web into which Briar and Zeke both tumble. Minnericht is the spider at the center drawing them in.

Throughout the book, I had some difficulty picturing the environment through which the characters moved -- but methinks this was a deliberate move on Priest's part, as the interior of the Wall is filled with soupy Blight gas on top of the infamous greyness of Seattle's weather, and much of the action happens underground in tunnels that branch throughout the ruined city. All the characters wear masks to protect them from the Blight gas, and the descriptions might unsettle the claustrophobic among us.

I would complain that some of the characters in the story are underdeveloped, but I'm too delighted at the realization that all the underdeveloped characters are men, while the strong, fleshed-out ones are women: Lucy the mama-bear bar owner with her mechanical arms built to replace the flesh-and-bone ones that she lost to the rotters; Ms Angeline the aforementioned Indian princess who has her own vendetta against Minnericht; and above all, Briar Blue Wilkes.

Oh, Briar. I love her beyond words. Stubborn and strong and weary and unflappable and determined, Briar's as prickly as her name: she holds the world at arm's length, including her son. It's not out of lack of love...rather, because of it. Briar has many burdens, and the story is a process of peeling them slowly from her white-knuckled clutches. It isn't until the last pages that the final, crucial one is revealed, and her character wholly makes sense; but trust me, the wait is worth it. Zeke's a delight, too, brave and stupid in the way of young men, with his mother's stubborn spirit. He's a soul full of questions, and some of the answers he gets aren't too dandy; but he handles himself well in the end, and you get the sense that's just what Briar desperately needs.

In closing, there's a scene on page 382 that had me cackling with glee. In it, Lucy, Miss Angeline, and Briar meet. One woman has just killed dozens of rotters, one just cut a man's throat, and one just led a full-scale militia attack.

Lucy had found or fixed her crossbow, and it was affixed to her arm, ready to fire. She aimed it back at Angeline before she realized who she was. Then she brought it down and said, "Miz Angeline, what are -- ?" Finally, she saw Briar, and she almost laughed when she spoke the rest. "Ain't this a pairing? I swear and be damned. We don't have too many women down here inside the walls, but I sure wouldn't mess with the ones we've got."

Highly recommend this book, despite some flaws. I coulda done with more resolution at the end, but hey, that's what sequels are for. (And to the fandomites out there: check out the back cover for a laugh, there's a quote from one Cassandra Clare.)

Drumming diary: I'm Not Okay

2010-06-02T11:59:00.000-07:00

I thought that I'd be learning "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones this week, but couldn't find an accurate beat sheet for that song, so I went with "I'm Not Okay" by My Chemical Romance instead.

Drum notation can be extremely difficult to work out. It's not like the guitar or bass or piano, where there's a specific melody to follow and thus some kind of formula based on the rules of music theory: with the drums, you only have the meter and the count. Within the space of a given measure all kinds of shit can be going down and you've got to a) pick apart where each hit happens in each measure and b) figure out what hit goes on what. It's tough, thankless work, so there are plenty of screwy tabs out there. Before attempting to play any song, I strongly recommend listening to it and reading along with the tab, noting the times of all major song changes (new chorus, etc), and determining whether the tab looks like the song you're hearing.

Sometimes, of course, even this process doesn't clear the waters completely. For instance, are the staccato 1&2&3&4& hits that start at :08 in "Paint It Black" on the snare, or a tom? It's difficult to say, especially given as every drummer will tune hir kit differently. Maybe sie likes the toms just as high and tight as the snare. Maybe hir floor tom sounds like a bass. It can be hard to discern even to the most highly-trained ear. Not helpful is the fact that musicians or their labels will often go after websites that offer tabs, claiming copyright infringement. Which, seriously, fuck those guys.

SO. Rant aside, I've tracked down what I think is a fairly accurate tab of "I'm Not Okay." I did modify it slightly so that it only ran two pages long and I can fit it onto my music stand. The drummer is Matt Pelissier. Tempo is 180 bpm, which makes it the fastest thing I've ever tried to play. The song itself is fairly simple, minus the way it jumps between quarter notes and eighth notes; the challenge will be the speed.

Comics: 30 Days of Night (-/****)

2010-06-01T22:46:00.000-07:00

Title: 30 Days of Night
Writer: Steve Niles
Artist: Ben Templesmith

This one's gonna be short: I got through about two dozen pages of 30 Days before I called it quits. It was well-written, the story concept was awesome -- I have a not-so-secret fondness for stories in which ancient myth and modern reality collide, and authors find new ways to imagine how creatures like vampires might exist in the world -- but I could just not get into the art. Templesmith has a very unique, abstract style that also put me off Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse; while I appreciate the attempt at something other than the typical, I felt supremely distanced from the sketchy, blurred representations of people as they smushed and oozed their way through the wash of their snowy environments.

Ah, well, I tried. Sending it back and moving on.

Listening to: NIN, "Closer"
Playing: My Chemical Romance, "I'm Not Okay"
Reading: Runaways

To anyone who thinks the Internet is a waste of time...

2010-05-27T21:29:00.000-07:00

AskMetaFilter is a site that allows users to ask questions of the Great Internet Abyss, and hopefully get something approaching a useful response. Usually the questions range from Why is my lawnmower suddenly racing? to Liberal hipster dude thinking about attending BSU, will I hate it?

A week ago, though, the user 'fake' showed up with a different kind of problem.

Help me help my friend in DC.

My friend and former student K arrived in DC yesterday, along with a friend. She came over on some kind of travel exchange program put together by a Russian travel agency called 'XXXXX'. They paid about 3K for this program.

The program promised a job offer in advance, but didn't deliver. They said they would send one via email, but failed there, too.

Her contact in the USA barely speaks English, doesn't answer her calls but does answer mine. He has asked her and her friend to meet in NYC tonight around midnight, with promises of hostess work in a lounge. Yes, I know how horrific that sounds- that's why I am working all possible angles here.

She is not going to NYC but I need some help handling and understanding how to handle this- I have a friend helping them with a cheap hotel for the night, but that's all at the moment. I am presently driving to LA and could fly her and her friend to meet me there on Saturday, but couldn't house them indefinitely. I will be monitoring this thread over the next hour.

Other users immediately recognized the signs of a human trafficking case, and the thread became a real-time desperate race to convince the two young women not to meet with their sketchy contact in New York. Consulate, State Department, and local PD phone numbers were bandied about, investigations were made into the legitimacy of the supposed 'lounge' (HIGHLY sketchy strip club), and when the girls got on an NYC-bound bus despite their friend's pleas not to go, local MetaFilter users descended on the station in a last-ditch effort to intercept them and save them from a life of forced prostitution.

And, incredibly, it worked.

There have been studies recently about how the semi-anonymous nature of the Internet often leads to a dehumanized view of other users. (A conclusion that most Internet users would greet with a resounding, "DUH.") But in this instance, MetaFilter users went to great lengths and were willing to risk their own welfare in an effort to save complete strangers.

Me, I don't believe that the Internet is a great devil, or a great savior. There is no nebulous mass consciousness that has any particular personality or inclination towards this or that behavior, no idle whim that demands we troll the IMDB message boards or vandalise Wikipedia articles or bend our bytes only for the powers of good. It is whatever it's used to be. We're all still people in here: meaningless, often; occasionally magnificent.

ETA: Mother Jones has picked up the story and has a more detailed account, including interviews with the MetaFilter user who intercepted the girls.

Movie: The Obvious Child (/)

2010-05-26T23:32:00.000-07:00

Stop. Think of five stories that you know, in American film, television, comics, novels, or other forms of media, that depict a woman wrestling with the decision of whether or not to have an abortion.

Now try to think of any, among those five, in which the woman went through with it.

NOW try to think of any, if there are any remaining, in which that act is depicted as a good thing. As something that is probably the right decision, given the woman's economic, mental, and emotional state.

I couldn't, until I watched the short film "Obvious Child."

(PS My five were Miranda on Sex and the City, Dolores of the Wally Lamb novel She's Come Undone, the titular character in the movie Juno, Mary from the movie Saved!, and Alison from the movie Knocked Up. In only one, She's Come Undone, did the woman go through with the procedure, after being pressured into it by her asshole boyfriend, and she deeply regretted it later.)

Obvious Child was written and directed by Gillian Robespierre. It's a romantic comedy, and that right there came as a jolt. There is a cultural expectation engrained inside me that says abortion must be a weighty topic: men kill each other over it, supreme court candidates are made and broken on the litmus of their support, and fathers blow their daughters' brains out when the girl wants to abort their own incest baby. Yet it's not in Obvious Child. It's a fact of life, depicted in 20 minutes and 51 seconds of charm and humor.

As a society, America is pro-choice by law, but not by culture. The narratives that we tell firmly support a pro-life agenda; the stories we tell might be pro-choice, but there's only one obvious right choice. Hell, there's even a TV tropes section devoted to the subject. It's called "Good Girls Avoid Abortion." Gag. We may not be forcing pregnant women into back alleys to stick a wire hanger between their legs, but we are still shaming the hell out of them.

There's no shame in Obvious Child. Donna (Jenny Slate), a 20-something New Yorker, discovers that her boyfriend has been cheating on her; during the therapuetic binge that follows, she hooks up with a scruffy but sweet guy named Peter (Chris McHenry). A split condom and 5 and a half weeks later, Donna finds herself pregnant and in need of "a date with a vacuum." She and Peter happen to meet on her way to the clinic, and what results is both the most awkward and most awesome meet-cutes that I've ever seen. At no point is Donna's decision to have an abortion called into question; I actually just started to type a sentence that justified her decision, but really, it requires no justification. It's her choice.

It might seem weird to qualify a short-film romantic comedy as "Important." But until we are pro-choice by culture, until we tell stories that embrace abortion as a right option, our laws will forever be tenuous and constantly threatened.

Representations of women in comics

2010-05-21T12:07:00.000-07:00

I'm putting this up as much for my own later reference as for others: a good article in Jezebel that refutes much of the bullshit defenses for why women in superhero comics always have their tits and asses hanging out of their costumes.

"[G]o through your favorite DC heroes. Now, think of your favorite DC
heroes that don't wear pants. How many of those pantsless heroes are women?
Think about Superman for a second: what if he started going without pants? Would
you think that was weird? Superman doesn't need pants, after all, he's
invulnerable. You would think it was weird, obviously, and why? Because it would
seem a little gay to you to look at a guy's naked legs while you're reading your
comics. Because you sexualize naked legs."

Their only weakness is a rainy day. Or ray guns.

2010-05-20T12:56:00.001-07:00

I, for one, had no idea that we were opening up Olympic competition to space aliens from the planet Gay.

I think I speak for most of planet Earth when I say: WHAT IN THE SWEET BURNING HELL ARE THOSE THINGS? AND HOW DO WE KILL THEM?

Drumming diary: Live for the good days, live through the bad

2010-05-19T17:12:00.000-07:00

When I was in the Army, I did a lot of stupid shit to my body. I was young and anxious to prove myself, wanting to show everyone how awesome I was so that they could report back to me on the subject. This led to all kinds of over-drinking, over-working, and picking up Cadet Holgien.

Cadet Holgien was the biggest guy in my ROTC battalion. He was 220 pounds of craggy-jawed muscle; he was the kind of guy that you expect had camo PJs as a kid. One day we were learning casuality carries -- fireman's, piggy-back, two-man throne -- and had to practice picking up "the wounded" and carrying them the length of a football field.

I, being the gung-ho idiot that I was, decided to prove my mettle by picking up Holgien in a fireman's carry. This screwed up my shoulder something fierce: I pushed a ligament out of the groove of bone it's supposed to rest in. Then I exacerbated it more with pushups, oh the endless pushups. The campus docs injected me with cortizone, but I didn't give myself the proper time to rest. Between that and the Morton's Nueroma in my foot, my days in the service were numbered.

But goddamn if I didn't carry Holgien to the end zone.

The point of this little anecdote -- and hush, I do so have one -- is that sometimes, when something's come out of its groove, trying to force the issue is just going to make things worse, and then you wind up sore and irritated.

Drumming, as with all things, has its good days and its bad days -- days when you sit at the throne and can't keep a groove to save your life. Your muscle memory fails you completely, your limbs won't obey your commands, and your toms appear to have inexplicably shifted two inches, causing you to smack your knuckles right on the metal rim.

This...is one of those days.

It has, I'm pretty convinced, nothing to do with skill. I suppose the more muscle memory you have the harder it is to lose it, but when your internal beat goes haywire it's not something that you can just power through.

So I stopped trying to play anything specific and switched to basic practices -- flams, paradiddles, triplets, open rolls, that sorta thing. I don't know if it's a sign that I'm getting older or what, but I'm much gentler with myself than I was as a kid or a young adult.

Be gentle with yourself. You're gonna fuck up and you're gonna have days where it Just Doesn't Work. Accept that, and roll with it.

Drumming diary: I don't have a staircase handy

2010-05-16T23:58:00.001-07:00

Working away on "When the Levees Break." The biggest thing tripping me are the breaks in the bottom half of the song. John Bonham likes his triplets.

At 70 bpm, it's one of the slowest songs I've ever played, right down there with "Violet Hill." Some of the counting gets tricky, though: the groove goes 1----2---a--&a4, and then the breaks build off of that with 1e&-2---a-e&a4 then 1e&-2---a-e&a4-&a and so on, skipping between the bass and snare while the hi-hat just drives and drives relentlessly.

The one break that throws me every time, though, is the one with triplet on the kick. I seriously don't know how Bonham did those with just one bass pedal. I've got a double pedal and it's still difficult to count out 1-&-2-&ea3ea&ea4ea between my feet. I do it earlier in the song, circling between the snare, high tom, and floor tom, but to do that between the hi-hat and kick? I keep getting muddled. My feet aren't accustomed to moving that fast.

I guess it's time to do some more feet exercises. Here, you can do them with me. Sit with your feet flat on the floor. Now, without moving your heels, tap the toes of each foot, right-left-right-left. It sounds simple, but do that for five minutes without whimpering and you get a cookie.

No matter how much I try, of course, what I play is never going to match what the song sounds like. That's because Zeppelin recorded the song in a stairwell. Bonham had his kit set up in the hallway and was playing the song; the mixer overheard it and decided to use the natural dynamics, so they wound up putting Bonham at the bottom of the stairs and the mics at the top. That's how they got that big, echoing sound to the song, and that's also why Zeppelin hardly ever played "When the Levee Breaks" live at their shows.

What you hear every time you listen to that song is a one-of-a-kind sound, that can never be properly duplicated, even by the goddamn people that made it.

That's rock and roll.

Avalanche artists

2010-05-15T15:21:00.000-07:00

Potential Disney Heroines, via avalanchesoftware.blogspot.com

I would also submit as potential(ly terrible/hilarious) Disney heroines:
- Joan of Arc; "Voices to Guide Me"
- Cordelia from King Lear; "My Poppa and Me"
- Pocahontas ---- oh, wait.

While you're checking out Avalanche's other Disney Heroines, have a peek at their Homeless Robots and War Machines sections. Delightful!

Drumming diary: Drum girls

2010-05-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

I'm copying this from a previous post on my private journal, because I would like as many female readers to see it as possible.

I wanted to focus this entry not on my own drumming, though, but on what it's like being a female drummer.

I ran across this article that says more girls than ever are learning to drum (yay!), but that only about 5-10% of the pop music instrument market are women (boo!). Of all the instruments, drums are probably one of the least played by women (I don't have any evidence to back this up, just personal observation from looking around at bands and talking to people). This is actually a big part of the reason that I chose to start playing the drums: let it never be said that I am not a contrary creature. >:)

Setting aside any issues about gender conditioning or growing disparities in income between men and women (drum kits ain't cheap, yo), there are valid physical reasons why so few women choose to drum. It's an unfortunate truth that on the whole, women are smaller and have less muscle mass than men, and if there's one instrument that needs both size and strength to play, it's the drums. The drumming industry might be taking steps to entice more women, but its salespeople, teachers, and manufacturers are still unequipped to address the needs of female drummers. So, we gots to look after ourselves.

The biggest issue I've come across is the drums themselves. They are manufactured to assume a male form, with the height and longer reach of a man. The standard size of a rock-music bass drum, for instance, is 22"x18" (meaning, 22 inches in diameter and 18 inches in length). These days they often come with tom mounts on top, which would be very handy...except that puts the toms (the smaller drums that aren't the snare) up too high for me to play without hitching my shoulders way up. I'm on the hunt now for a 20" diameter kick, or even an 18". It'll take some tuning and muffling to get the same BOOM, but I've got to be able to bring everything down lower and within my reach. I'm doing that with my entire kit, actually, struggling to bring everything in closer than it was all built to do. I'm thinking I'll also need to get a smaller snare, maybe a 13" or 12" instead of my current 14".

Another point to be very aware of is wrist strength. Woman have weaker wrists than men, period. You can get stronger wrists than you currently have, but you'll never get as strong as a man doing the same exercises. Conventional drumming techniques rely a lot on the wrist and forearms. Do whatever you got to do to get around that, but if you're taking lessons bear in mind that the way your instructor's telling you to drum might not work for you long-term.

Basically, the standard model of a drummer does not apply, and you've got to find your own way to make things work for you. Keep at it and good luck!

BONUS: Can't support female drummers until everyone knows who they are! Tell me in the comments about a badass female drummer that you know of! I'll start out: Kim Schifino from the New York punk cabaret indie duo Matt & Kim. They won Breakthrough Video at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards for their video Lessons Learned (WARNING: NUDITY AND A TWIST ENDING) in which they basically walk down a street in New York taking their clothes off. Also check out an interview here. Their songwriting process is very interesting to me.

It doesn't hurt that she's totally hot and tattooed, neither. For more info check out their website. http://www.mattandkimmusic.com/

Drumming diary: When the Levee Breaks

2010-05-12T14:06:00.001-07:00

There has been a tragic lack of music on this blog thus far, so I've decided to start posting my drumming diary here.

I've been drumming for almost two years at the moment. I started on the advice of a therapist, who thought that it might help if I started hitting things on a regular basis. Since your mom wasn't available, I went with the drums. (*hi-hat sizzle*) Thank you, I'm here all night, and so's your sister.

Please to be noting that I am by no means an expert on drumming. Before two years ago, I had never known a damn thing about percussion, and I still know very little about music theory. I would eventually like to play in a band, so if anyone's in SE Portland and wans a jam partner, shoot me an email.

Previously on the drumming diary, I've learned:

"Back in Black" by AC/DC
"Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution" by AC/DC
"Northern Downpour" by Panic! At the Disco
"Creep" by Radiohead (my favorite to play)
"Supermassive Black Hole" by Muse
"Violet Hill" by Coldplay
"Mr. Brightside" by The Killers
"Beautiful Day" by U2
"Fix You" by Coldplay

Obviously all well-known songs; I'd love to learn something more obscure, but those are the drumming tabs that I can find online, and that says nothing about their accuracy. (As I discovered when the "Rock and Roll" one had a screwed-up second bridge.)

I'm currently learning "When the Levee Breaks" by Led Zeppelin. Drummer is John Bonham, who was notable for both the drums and drinking, eventually drowning in his own vomit in 1980 after allegedly downing forty shots of vodka. Forty shots! Jesus. I like to imagine that after his death, Bonham's liver punched its way out of his coffin to seek bloody revenge on the Smirnoff company.

At the time that "WtLB" was recorded, Bonham's kit consisted of a 14x10 high tom, two floor toms (16x16 and 18x16), a 26x14 bass drum, a 14x6.5 snare, a couple of timpani's for good measure, and a single bass pedal. Bonham is notable for the speed of his right foot: using that one pedal, Bonham played fills and breaks that would take almost anyone else (myself included) a double-pedal to play. "WtLB" has a number of those moments, including a five-triplet fill on the kick in the back half of the song.

The song has one of the most distinctive grooves I've ever heard, for the all the fact that it's extremely simple. But therein lies the appeal: anyone who says they've never rocked the fuck out to AC/DC is a filthy liar, and that's about as simple as drums gets. It's also a LONG groove, with one measure being repeated up to 19 times. All drumming has trance-like qualities, but this song especially so. It's almost a shock when it's time for a break, like the snare's pop is my alarm clock.

Reading: "The Walking Dead" by Robert Kirkman
Listening to: This
Playing: This

Why I don't read mainstream superhero comics. (Or David Sim.)

2010-05-08T11:32:00.000-07:00

Items 1-5, as provided by Cracked. I prefer not to smack my forehead on a regular basis.

Which is not to say that independent comics are a field of posies through which people of all genders, races, and sexualities skip hand-in-hand (and possibly stop to buy the world a Coke). Why, David Sim, writer of Cerebus the Aardvark and winner of the 1994 Eisner for Best Graphic Album, has repeatedly espoused the view that a "feminist/homosexualist axis" is leading to the downfall of America, that men are superior creative "lights," and women are inferior un-creative "voids" that leech off the men and steal their light until they are completely emasculated, i.e. gay.

In 1996, a year after Sim wrote the essay "Reads" that basically claimed women have no souls, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund gave him a "Defender of Liberty" award. Defend us, oh Sim, from the soulless ladies and gay men.

A Softer World speaks the truth

2010-05-05T12:13:00.001-07:00

Reading: Transmetropolitan (/)

2010-05-04T18:22:00.000-07:00

Title: Transmetropolitan
Writer: Warren Ellis
Artist: Darick Robertson
Letterer: Clem Robins

I figure I should start a ratings system for these things. Four stars (****) is the highest, zero (-) is the lowest.

I'm also going to break my own rule here and post about a series before finishing all current issues. Transmetropolitan finished its run in 2002, and the rest of the series is waiting for me at the library; but I find that I just cannot contain myself. I want to leap onto tall buildings and hold this book up to the sky like Moses. I want to accost random people on the street and force them to read its pages. I want to get a three-eyed smiley face tattooed on my butt.

In case you haven't picked up on it yet, I really, really, really like this series.

I think a fair chunk of that adoration springs from a childhood spent reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The two works share a wry, cynical view of the world tempered by a weary kind of love; mankind, they seem to say, would be a wonderful thing if we weren't such a bunch of apes.

The protagonist of Transmetropolitan is Spider Jerusalem, a futuristic journalist who looks and acts like Hunter S. Thompson by way of Ford Prefect. He lives in a cluttered, filthy metropolis that's over-populated, over-stimulated, and under-informed. Jerusalem aims to fix the last of those problems with biting commentary that, surprise surprise, could just as easily be aimed at our current version of America.

Dystopian narratives are a dime a dozen, but writer Warren Ellis really put the work into this one and it shows. At first glance it's an imaginative playground, fun but harmless, until Ellis starts to pick it apart in his newspaper columns, examining each piece of the puzzle until we can trace its roots back to our own social triumphs and failures.

As our tour guide, Jerusalem is a misanthrope full of cigarette smoke, drugs, and cheap coffee who nonetheless is one of the last kind souls around. Driven to find "The Truth," he often champions the weak, the poor, those who this society (and ours) has neither the time nor the inclination to care about. No one is safe from Jerusalem's barbs (the name is obviously meant to evoke some kind of religious prophet, a situation that Jerusalem would probably both hate and love). He despises abusive authority figures most of all, and police brutality is a common thread, as is the incompetence or outright evil of our political leaders. Much of the main plot is driven by Spider Jerusalem's public duels with presidential candidate The Smiler. Jerusalem amasses enemies like a figurine collector, each more treasured than the last; but fate demands that sooner or later, it'll catch up to him.

Transmetropolitan is beautifully, wonderfully, refreshingly free of some modern prejudices. When a (beautiful, professional, Asian) woman turns down Jerusalem's advances by explaining that she's a lesbian, Jerusalem's only response is a rueful, "Oh, well," then some self-abuse of his dick (and not the way you think). As others have noted, Ellis is -- be still my heart -- a well-respected gay-positive figure in the world of comic books, and it shows in his work. (Apparently Ellis also created a gay superhero couple, Midnighter and Apollo. I've never been that big on superheros -- generally BECAUSE I knew there would be few queer- or female-positive storylines to be had in that line of comics -- but I'm gonna have to check it out.) If racism, homophobia, and sexism were bullets, Ellis would be like Neo in the Matrix, bending and twisting to dodge those motherfuckers. If any of them have scored a hit yet, I haven't noticed.

Nothing is done casually in Transmetropolitan. Everything has meaning, even (especially) the acts of violence that Ellis uses sparingly and gives actual weight to. I read thought in every single panel of every single page, and that is a rare thing indeed.

My absolute favorite parts of the series, though, okay, the things that have me all gleeful: Channon Yarrow and Yelena Rossini, the two assistants that Spider's newspaper provides for him. Admittedly, Channon's introduction is as a stripper and Yelena's is as a monosyllabic sourpuss; but we go on to discover that Channon was stripping her way through journalism school and is also a physical badass, and Yelena is just as whip-sharp as Spider Jerusalem. They both start out hating him, but come around to being his only loyal allies, while still having their own lives and goals. And best of all, they're shown to be friends with each other, frequenting male strip clubs, laughing as they run through the rain, and beating the shit out of small-time journos who try to stiff them out of payment for an interview with Jerusalem. Individually they are great, refreshing female characters; together, they are awesomeness personified.

I've read through the first four collected volumes and the first issue of volume five. I almost don't want to read further; I want to always imagine Spider, Channon, and Yelena cooped up in their apartment together, Spider spitting his prophet-poison from high above the city while Yelena rolls her eyes and Channon beats the crap out of some assassin out to get Spider.

Don't kill my dreams, man.

Listening to: "Souretsu" by Shiina Ringo
Reading: Volume 5 of this
Playing: "When the Levees Break" by Zep

ATGTSTZA: Chapter 2

2010-05-02T18:01:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to announce the arrival of Chapter 2 of A Teenager's Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse. In this 13-page chapter, The Miracle family ponder recent events, and Max meets the girl of his dreams. Too bad she seems to hate everything in the entire world, including him. Oh, and there's that decapitated zombie running around. Good times!

This chapter was illustrated by the lovely Ms. Alyssa Gnall, badass zombie killah and all-around good sport.

Go check it out! And do tell me how y'all like using the SmackJeeves site. Pros? Cons? Preferences?

Reading: The Umbrella Academy (*/**)

2010-04-26T11:02:00.000-07:00

Title: The Umbrella Academy, Apocalypse Suite & Dallas
Writer: Gerard Way
Artist: Gabriel Ba
Letterist: Nate Piekos
Colors: Dave Stewart

From the very first panel of "The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite" -- in which a hulking pro wrestler delivers a flying elbow slam to his opponent...a giant squid -- it's clear that we're in for something different. TUA was the toast of the 2008 Eisners, where Dave Stewart won Best Colorist (for his work on this and other Dark Horse properties), James Jean won for his cover art (on this and Fables), and Way and Ba won the coveted Best Limited Series award.

I can't remember the last time I saw a comic so gleefully leap into the realm of WTF. Just when you think you've got a handle on the rules and reality of this alternate Earth, Way flips you the bird and goes skipping off among the treetops of insanity like one of those Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon weirdos. Real-world events such as Vietnam are referenced, but with the addendum that the Viet Cong were a bunch of vampires. (A slightly sketchy choice; more on that later.) I will confess that I am a complete sucker for alternate history fiction, but the series has much more to recommend it.

Underneath all the craziness, TUA is a deconstruction of the superhero mythology with its roots firmly dug into Watchmen: a group of extraordinary children of mysterious origins are groomed to be a superhero team by a neglectful, meglomaniacal entrepeneur and grow up to be a group of very screwed up adults, each with their own issues and nueroses. Their powers are as unusual as the world they inhabit. My two favorites, Allison ne Rumor and Klaus ne Seance, battle villians by lying and communicating with the dead, respectively. Their adversaries range from a rampaging Lincoln monument to a past/future version of themselves. (It's a long story.)

Occasionally Way's flights of fancy trip and crash. 90% of Dallas is excellently written, but the cutaways to a random playboy, John Perseus, stick out like an inexplicable thumb. They have no effect on the rest of the story; apparently they set up a future plotline in series 3, but if so, there's no cliffhanger for it and thus Perseus is just kinda hanging out in the wind. (Bleah, bad image, sorry.) But when TUA works, it's all kinds of nummy, crazy fun.

I would give the series an unadultered recommedation -- were it not for one thing. Well, two things, but Way seems aware of his issues vis-a-vis female characters, and that was partly fixed at the end of Dallas. A bigger, more problematic issue looms in the very setup of the series: 43 women in random locations around the world give birth at the same time, Professor Hargreeves travels far and wide to gather up as many of the children as possible...

Aaaaaaaaand they're all white.

At least, all of the ones that Hargreeves found are white. It's not that non-white people don't exist in the UA world, it's just that none of them get to be main characters. No, instead they get to be vampires, i.e. inhuman and bloodthirsty.

Mr. Way, I raise a skeptical Spock eyebrow at you. *Spocks out*

Does it pass the Bechdel test: Yes

Max & Kara: ~This magic moment~

2010-04-24T22:07:00.000-07:00

This makes me grin so hard:

This isn't from Chapter 2 per se, but Alyssa, the artist who's taken over drawing Chapter 2, did this as an extra little bit. It's Max and Kara, eyeing each other as nervous, awkward teenagers are wont to do. ♥___♥ Hearts in my eyes, people! They are so precious. I love Kara's little facepaint.

Comics: Preacher (*/****)

2010-04-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

Title: Preacher
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Steve Dillon
Letterer: Clem Robins
Colorists: Matt Hollingsworth and Pamela Rambo

I have spent the last three weeks plodding through the Preacher series - or, well, I spent one week plodding through a few issues, one week skimming the rest, and the last one trying to decide what the hell I was going to say about it.

After much thought, my feelings can be summarized as such: no seriously, can we just pack all the main characters (and most of the minor ones, too) into a crate and drop a nuke on them? Never have I ever read so much of a story in which I not only didn't care about the supposed protagonists, I came to actively dislike them as the story progressed. The only one of 'em worth a damn was Cassidy, and look how that turned out.

The technical specs can't be blamed: Dillon occasionally wrestles with the dreaded Same Face Syndrome -- he's overly fond of furrowed brows, all of the lawmen have the same squinty-eyed sneer, and Lori is Tulip with one eye -- but other than that his work is solid. Letterist Clem Robins was excellent, and the comic looks pretty damn gorgeous. The story and the characters are another matter.

The first time we meet Reverend Jesse Custer, he's drunkenly staggering through town, insulting members of his flock before collapsing in a pool of his own vomit. Throughout the series he's shown to be extremely violent, breaking limbs and permanently disfiguring people with little provocation. Early on, Custer gets possessed by an angel/demon hybrid called Genesis; when he questions an errant angel about why, the angel admits that they don't know anything because God has left His post in Heaven. Which...causes Jesse to basically declare war on God. And that's our hero.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for an anti-hero marathon of epic proportions. It's just that Ennis then inserts The Hero into the narrative: John Wayne, the anti-anti-hero, appears as Jesse's spiritual advisor. It's unclear whether he's a stand-in for the spirit possessing Jesse, a representation of Jesse's murdered father, or some other kind of manifestation. I think we're supposed to look at Jesse as a new John Wayne -- he even rides off into the sunset with a girl on a horse at the end -- but the juxtaposition between them has the opposite effect. Jesse's swift decision to blame God makes very little sense at that point in the narrative, and doesn't until much, much later when his super-religious, batshit-crazy family appears. And then it comes across as the psychopathic flailings of an abuse-twisted soul, acting out against his abusers and their belief system.

Of course then the series goes on to justify Jesse's vendetta against God, turning the Almighty into a love-needy kid with an ant farm, poking us tunnels or burning us with a magnifying glass at His whim. Which, again: could have been a compelling and interesting story. But by then, Ennis had lost me. Through his possession Jesse winds up with powers that rival God's, and he wields them just as haphazardly, with as little regard for consequences.

If this is our alternative to both God and The Duke, then we're screwed.

I do give Preacher credit for a few things, most notably the character of Tulip O'Hare, Jesse's gun-toting girlfriend. Tulip is a crack shot, can hold her own in a fight, and rails against Jesse's old-fashioned chivalry, particularly when he tries to leave her behind for her own protection. Tulip has a startling amount of agency for a female comic book character, let alone one in a psuedo-Western, and the series never punishes her for her independence, abilities, or her healthy sexuality. Jesse even refrains from the temptation of using his mind-whammy abilities for sexual favors from Tulip, a moral stance that I commend Ennis for taking; tragically few male writers would have recognized that as outright rape. Preacher has several other strong female characters and manages to pass the Bechdel Test on occasion. The series also takes on racism, particularly in the "Salvation" arc, and manages to condemn it without coming across as, ahem, preachy. It acknowledges that there are degrees to prejudice, while never excusing it in any form. Deputy Cindy Dagget, Jesse's ally in Salvation, looks a bit like Grace Jones and is full boss; I woulda read a whole series based on her.

I wish I could say that this precious bloom of progressive thought extends to all parts of the comic. Unfortunately, Ennis' slavvish devotion to the Western ideal of masculinity and to the good ole boy friendship between Jesse and Cassidy, an Irish vampire, translates into bountiful amounts of homophobia. "Faggots" abound; John Wayne even gets one in when Jesse's having a crisis of the soul. In one issue a tough-ass cop takes on New York City's toughest criminals with ruthless effeciency, until he figures out that he's a repressed homosexual. Then he quits the force, despite being well-respected and universally admired by his peers, because obviously faggots can't be cops.

Somewhere, John Cooper of the tv show Southland is rolling his eyes so hard and doesn't even know why.

Despite all my misgivings, I kept trying to slog through the series. I really shouldn't have -- just thinking about the pages of violence and gore leave me with a queasy stomach. And this is a girl who loves zombie movies. It's my firm belief, though, that violence should serve a purpose in a narrative; otherwise I might as well watch an autopsy video. Considered by some to be the bloodiest comic ever, the violence in Preacher is plentiful, lovingly detailed, and utterly ridiculous. Bullets blow massive holes in their targets, faces are cut off, and horses are cut in half with a band saw. Volume 4: Ancient History is literally page after page of gruesome killings. It was like reading the script for a three-hour long snuff film.

And what did I get at the end of all that slogging? What slam-bang ending awaited my long-suffering readership? A completely pointless climax and a quite-literal deus ex machina. Jessie's possession by Genesis amounts to exactly nothing, he sacrifices himself but is immediately revived for a happy ending, and God is killed because -- oh, who knows. After all that sound and fury, Preacher had nothing even resembling a point. I calmly and firmly set the book aside.

There's still a dent where it hit the wall.

The nine volumes sat on my living room floor for a week while I pondered how to qualify my distaste for a such a universally-acclaimed series, until my buddy Charles dropped by to visit. Prodding the pile of slick tradebacks with his foot, Friend Charles correctly picked up volume 1 based solely on the cover (so pat yourself on the back, cover artist Glenn Fabry) and started to read the first few pages. And dear readers, cleans the palatte like an ironic audio rendition. All of the angels (whom Friend Charles identified as James Maynard Keenan fans) suddenly had the twangy Southern accents while Jesse and his friends developed posh British dialects, complete with interjections of "I say!"

The reading left me in stitches, but it also helped me get a handle on what bugs me the most about the Preacher series: if it's meant to be a top-to-bottom examination of "America" (the idea, not the reality), then Ennis seems to believe, like Sarah Palin, that the True America is small-town and Southern - not those big-city intellectual Commie faggots. (Curious, as Ennis himself hails from Northern Ireland. I would speculate that underneath all the xenophobic Americana mystique is a critical satire of said mystique, but that's probably too complex a read for the material.) Perhaps this attitude was avante garde when Ennis wrote the series in the politically-correct, Clinton-era 90's; these days, though, the idea of ultra-violent vigilante Southern justice makes one's head spin with images of bloodthirsty Teabaggers.

Now obviously Ennis can't be held responsible for predicting where the culture wars would lead us in a post-boom, post-9/11, "post-racism" world. But the fact remains: 10 years after he completed the series, the American mystique ain't what it used to be, Pilgrim, and neither is Preacher.

File under: sad but true

2010-04-07T14:26:00.000-07:00

This Too Shall Pass

2010-04-04T14:17:00.000-07:00

It's surprising how much of a comfort this video has become for me.

Even more interesting to me is the Making Of process. The lead singer sounds incredibly creative on many different levels.

Updates on Nevermore and ATG

2010-03-23T14:41:00.000-07:00

Spring again, thank god. No more winter darkness.

I have found a different artist to work on Chapter 2 of ATG, Alyssa; we're working on pencil sketches at the moment. Alyssa's style is radically different from Sienna's, much more comic bookish. I think it'll fit the tone better. She's also doing some awesome little family portraits and titles for the project. I'll share those on the SmackJeeves site as soon as I get them organized.

I've also gotten together with Kristen Ridley, a buddy of mine from college, to start working on a 9-page teaser for Nevermore. For those not playing along at home, here's a summary of Nevermore:

Nevermore is the story of Kim Conrad, a God-fearin', gun-totin' lesbian
badass who never met a woman she didn't want to bang and is quite handy with
blunt instruments. Her best buddy in the whole world is Josh Crosby; they're
raising Josh's son Taylor after the death of Josh's wife. Their semi-quiet life
gets torn apart, though, by the arrival of the mysterious Grey People. Suddenly,
whole buildings are disappearing into thin air, Josh is transformed into a
heroin addict who doesn't recognize Kim, and Taylor's nowhere to be found. And
what's with all the Edgar Allan Poe references?

The lesbian in question is actually based on Kim Ridley, Kristen's wife. They were dating while we were all in college; I actually take a wee bit of credit in getting them together, as I was first in our group of friends to meet Kim, who'd just transferred. Y'see, she and I were both in film school together, so I was riding through that section of campus on my bike when I passed this orange-haired girl dressed all in black. I immediately pulled a U-turn to ask if she'd be at the BarbeQueer that afternoon; that's how obviously lesbian Kim is. :)

Anyway, over the course of the conversation I asked her if she'd met Kristen yet. I think Kristen had neon blue hair at the time, so it seemed like a natural fit. And it was! They started dating shortly thereafter, and when same-sex marriage was legal for that short time in Cali, they got hitched.

The two of them are some of my favorite people in the world, but beyond that I really feel Kim deserves her own comic book superheroine. This one time in the middle of film class, I told her about a dream I'd had the night before in which she, Kristen, and I had tried to stop a kidnapping and almost been killed because we were unarmed. Kim looked at me and responded, "I have three knives on me right now." The 'you silly fool' was entirely silent.

Kristen's already done a little bit of crossover art.

Insta-bookmark: Duotrope's Digest

2010-03-13T00:38:00.000-08:00

A friend recently linked me to Duotrope's Digest, which is an index of writing magazines, what they take, what they pay, and various other information that would be invaluable to freelance writers.

I'm going to start tearing up their horror listings like a chainsaw through coeds.

Note to self: "no cheese"

2010-02-15T15:02:00.000-08:00

I think this is from Nevermore. I can picture Poe saying it aloud to someone. Real fatalistic guy, that Poe.

"Life is a maze, full of narrow, dark paths and blind turns and dead ends. You wander aimlessly for a while, just long enough to lose the entrance for good. Then you get smart and start drawing on the labyrinthe walls, little Xs over the ways you've already gone. You're sure that there's cheese in here somewhere, or at least a way out, so you go through all the paths one by one. Each leads to a dead end, but you don't get discouraged. Your feet get tired but you don't stop. You eliminate them one by one, carefully following each to its end before moving on to the next.

A long time goes by and your feet ache with walking. There aren't that many paths left to try, and there's this wriggling thing inside your head, growing like larvae. Doubt. Fear. You meet dead end after dead end. You're getting desperate. You start to run, not even bothering to mark the walls anymore. You know the maze well by now, you can see it in your mind. You know. You know the truth now but you're too afraid to admit it to yourself.

Finally you come to the last passage, the last path you've never tried. You turn the corner with tears in your eyes and your feet going out from under you, and you crumple against the blank wall at its end.

And it's only after all that time, all those wasted years and careful plans that came to nothing, that you realize there is no exit to the maze, and there is no cheese either."

ATGTSTZA: Chapter 1 posted!

2010-02-13T14:54:00.000-08:00

I'm very happy to announce that Chapter 1 of A Teenager's Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse is now online. I've put it up at SmackJeeves.com, a hosting site for webcomics; it's a fairly basic yet usable site. The only drawbacks I've found to it thus far is the fact that people have to create a SmackJeeves username and profile in order to "Favorite" a comic and be counted as Fans. It'd be nice if folks could do that with an OpenID or just as a Guest. Ah, well, can't have everything. I do like their premade templates especially the Sleep Cable one I selected for ATG. Depending on how well this one goes and the feedback I get, I might use them for other comics in the future.

There does seem to be quite a bit of yaoi over there...

*****

On the subject of webcomics, I've come across Harvey the Gay Android and found it charming. It hasn't been updated recently, but maybe with some encouragement the author will return hir attentions.