reach, grasp, taste

"People often think that editors are there to read things and tell people “no.” Saying..."

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:24:53 -0700

“People often think that editors are there to read things and tell people “no.” Saying “no” is a tiny part of the job. Editors are first and foremost there to ship the product without getting sued. They order the raw materials—words, sounds, images—mill them to approved tolerances, and ship. No one wrote a book called Editors: Get Real and Ship or suggested that publishers use agile; they don’t live in a “culture” of shipping, any more than we live in a culture of breathing. It’s just that not shipping would kill the organism. This is not to imply that you hit every sub-deadline, that certain projects don’t fail, that things don’t suck. I failed plenty, myself. It just means that you ship. If it’s too hard to ship or you don’t want to deal with it, you quit or get fired.”

- Real Editors Ship (Ftrain.com)

Partway through the series, I kinda thought Scott was me when I...

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:58:19 -0700

Partway through the series, I kinda thought Scott was me when I started the series, and Gideon was me when I finished the series. You were talking about Envy before, and that’s one weird thing about this book; I realized I identified with Envy more than anyone else. So I had to bring her back. I’ve kind of gone through that same arc; I moved away and kind of became a big deal. (via ‘Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour’ Arrives for Bryan Lee O’Malley [Interview] - ComicsAlliance | Comics culture, news, humor, commentary, and reviews) —A really excellent interview with Bryan Lee O’Malley by Laura Hudson.

Today’s Comic Book Covers Reimagined in the Silver Age -...

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:32:42 -0700

Today’s Comic Book Covers Reimagined in the Silver Age - ComicsAlliance —Oh, Chris Sims.

Wendy Melvoin is fresh from high school. She is a wearing a...

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:02:27 -0700

Wendy Melvoin is fresh from high school. She is a wearing a V-necked sleeveless top, and patterned shorts. She is playing the first chords of a new song on her purple guitar, opening chords that she wrote, a circular motif with a chorus effect. Wendy is eighteen-nineteen and she has the high cheekbones and diffident confidence of a Hollywood upbringing. She half-smiles at the faces that crowd close to the low club stage. This is Wendy’s first gig with the new band, and the song she is playing is “Purple Rain,” and nobody in the audience has ever heard “Purple Rain” before because this is the night that Prince and the Revolution record the song. (via Purple Exegetics | HiLobrow)

Most people understand the importance of facial expressions in...

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:31:56 -0700

Most people understand the importance of facial expressions in cartooning, but if there’s anything that’s routinely neglected, it’s hands. It’s a shame too, since hands are the second thing we instinctively look at when a person is speaking to us. We use our hands in a variety of ways to accentuate our point; if we actively restrict ourselves from gesturing at all, natural speech actually become rather difficult. This goes beyond dialogue, too: hand gestures lead us to what’s important, and they’re the most frequent body part to indicate action and interaction with the environment, as well as other characters. Hands dominate the focus on what’s important in a scene, and to neglect this is to neglect a pivotal tool in storytelling. (via Drawing Hands: Augmenting an Idea • Indistinguishable From Magic)

Die Doraus und die Marianas - Fred from Jupiter - NDW - 1982...

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 23:22:12 -0700

Die Doraus und die Marianas - Fred from Jupiter - NDW - 1982 (via NewVaveGermany80) I’ve been looking for this song since I heard somebody DJ it at the Cooler in, I want to say, 1996. There exists an English-language single. I MUST FIND THIS. (Song starts about 15 sec. into video…)

Loretta Lynn - Fist City (via kkiilljjooy) —And she sings...

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:00:23 -0700

Loretta Lynn - Fist City (via kkiilljjooy) —And she sings the entire thing with a great big smile on her face. The equivalent of saying “Bless your heart…” Not enough people sing this song at karaoke.

"Among the unexpected aspects of nursing diagnoses is that they cannot share language with medical..."

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 20:50:08 -0700

“Among the unexpected aspects of nursing diagnoses is that they cannot share language with medical diagnoses, even though they are occasionally discussing exactly the same issue. For example, a nurse cannot diagnose a patient with dehydration, but can diagnose that patient with “fluid volume deficit.” This is odd to me.”

- On becoming a nurse: The nurse’s role —This blog is always fascinating.

stationtostation-nyc: near Junction Blvd. station, Queens (7...

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:54:56 -0700

stationtostation-nyc:

near Junction Blvd. station, Queens (7 line)

One of my favorites.

sashafrerejones: Wire, “The Art of Stopping,” from “Send...

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:48:47 -0700

sashafrerejones:

Wire, “The Art of Stopping,” from “Send Ultimate,” 2010 (originally 2003).

Or: how to look at 1977 from a very different angle.

"He was able to avoid detection not because he kept a poker face, they said, but apparently because..."

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:12:47 -0700

“He was able to avoid detection not because he kept a poker face, they said, but apparently because he hummed and lip-synched to Lady Gaga songs to make it appear that he was using the classified computer’s CD player to listen to music.”

- Loophole May Have Aided Theft of Classified Data - NYTimes.com

agrammar: Things I Listened to This Weekend: Number Six of Six:...

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:33:52 -0700

agrammar:

Things I Listened to This Weekend: Number Six of Six: The Mekons — “Where Were You?”

Just to finish this YouTube run off on a high and weighty note, here is one remarkable single from 1978, about which there is not a ton that wants explaining or decoding: it seems to blurt out a simple feeling with great passion and then just stop.

I can imagine someone saying it’s stalkery, actually. I don’t know if it really gives us enough information to be firm either way, and somehow it sounds too ardent and self-righteous for me to think of it as creepy in that particular way — but I can see how someone might.

And maybe that’s the thing. I’m always taken with the way the bass rumbles and blurts, just like the song does — the way it’s all reckless and too forthright and not sensibly in control of its feelings. So maybe that’s exactly the thing, or exactly the reason I feel pleasantly exhausted after listening to it.

A great, great, great record. Also the source of the riff from Boredoms’ “Super Roots 7”!

letterheady: Stunning Fantasia-inspired letterhead used in 1942...

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 07:22:37 -0700

letterheady:

Stunning Fantasia-inspired letterhead used in 1942 by RKO, Walt Disney Studios’ distributors at the time.

Walt Disney’s Fantasia, 1942 | Source

This whole blog is amazing.

Comics’ relationship with cinema is complex. While it has become...

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 19:20:32 -0700

Comics’ relationship with cinema is complex. While it has become rote to hear creators compare comics to everything from pop songs to television to theater in recent years, film is probably the dominant influence on comics, if only because both employ editing from moment-to-moment and image-to-image. The comic as film pitch complaint that is common these days is valid ( there are so many comics that barely exist as comics), but it maybe ignores the closeness of the media to each other. The problem isn’t that comics is influenced by film, it’s that comics aren’t influenced by the medium but influenced by films. So ripping off the plot of a scifi film du jour is common rather than working out why John Woo times his action scenes the way he does. (via Emma Peel Sessions 39 – “Have you seen the Lady From Shanghai? Orson Welles… that one makes no sense.” « supervillain.)

"With his party having won 6 of the City Council’s 15 seats, Mr. Gnarr needed a coalition partner,..."

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 20:57:05 -0700

“With his party having won 6 of the City Council’s 15 seats, Mr. Gnarr needed a coalition partner, but ruled out any party whose members had not seen all five seasons of The Wire.”

- The Saturday Profile - Icelander’s Campaign Is a Joke, Until He’s Elected - Biography - NYTimes.com (via thedailything)

unsustainable: Family Fodder — “Savoir Faire” Auto-reblog for...

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 21:01:10 -0700

unsustainable:

Family Fodder — “Savoir Faire”

Auto-reblog for one of my favorite songs of all time. Like, top ten ever, probably.

An immediate use of one of the most interesting techniques...

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:58:31 -0700

An immediate use of one of the most interesting techniques Quitely showcased in his last go on B&R — the blacking in of shapes around the panel borders. Here, in a full-bleed panel, it creates an organic frame for the picture while maintaining the effectiveness of an opening splash. Beyond that, though, it places you much deeper “inside” the comic than a more typically bordered shot would. While your run-of-the-mill panel borders simply block in the picture, the shapes Quitely uses here to outline his image are also part of the image itself. The unorthodox framing creates not only a great sense of depth and dimensionality, but also an increased tension between the panel’s elements, an expanded sense of their spacial relationships to one another. Not to mention the circular-ish shape of the picture, which, when coupled with the arrangement of the figures and the angle of the staircase, encourages the eye to kind of spiral in on the central figure of Jim Gordon. And then when you get there, the Commissioner’s bizarro-Hamlet pose is pretty stellar. (via DEATH TO THE UNIVERSE) —excellent panel-by-panel analysis of the entire Frank Quitely sequence in Batman #700!

5-Second Films | Gentleman Caller

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 09:37:53 -0700

5-Second Films | Gentleman Caller:

It’s really eight seconds long including the credits. But definitely worth it.

maura: Finally, the World Cup tribute video to “World Cup...

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:59:19 -0700

maura:

Finally, the World Cup tribute video to “World Cup Fever” we’ve all been waiting for!

YESSSS. Best song ever written about the World Cup, and there actually are a bunch of other candidates. Air Miami go!

Let’s Make Lentil Salad! (by featherbed) —I really...

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 20:29:34 -0700

Let’s Make Lentil Salad! (by featherbed) —I really really really want Laura Park to do an entire cookbook.