Tag: Alan David Doane

June Ramblin’: my Facebook follies

Speedy Alka-Seltzer with Buster Keaton?


The problem with Facebook: I had passed along some funny items. As it turns out, though, the original cover of Tails had been Photoshopped to remove the comma after the word cooking, this giving the post a whole new meaning. Read about it here.

The wife of a World War II soldier waited for more than 68 years for solid proof that her husband is either dead or alive. Then she learned the stunning truth in Normandy, France. Steve Hartman reports. A sad, maddening, and ultimately, touching story.

Mark Evanier tells The Ray Bradbury-Julius Schwartz-Al Feldstein Story, at the San Diego Comic-Con. Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4.
Also: Ray Bradbury: 1950s comics’ illustrated man.

The British sense of personal privacy is very different from the American one. Asking someone’s name, even implicitly by offering yours, is a premature violation of that privacy until some goodwill has already been established between you.

From Alan David Doane: Looking back, I have to say my over 18 years of parenting has been fascinating, a never-ending learning curve that I am sure will continue for the rest of my life.

There’s also a debate over whether the FDA should label genetically modified food. I don’t even know what the debate is, honestly. Is this something that needs discussion? Of course it should be labeled. Everything on food should be labeled. Also stuff about “gay” Oreos, among other topics.

John Lincoln Wright – a man of two musical careers.

How did the Euro start?

In 1955, John L. Black, Sr. started his job as a janitor for the Cincinnati public school system. He regularly put in 16-hour days to provide for his wife and eleven children…his son Samuel talks… about his father’s lasting legacy and the power of a look.

Redux Riding Hood is a 15-minute Oscar-nominated animated short from 1997, written by Dan O’Shannon, and starring Michael Richards, Mia Farrow, Lacey Chabert, Garrison Keillor, Adam West, Don Rickles, June Foray, Fabio, and Jim Cummings. It has never aired or been released on DVD. You can now watch it on director Steve Moore’s website, or on Samurai Frog’s.

The Making of Star Wars. Now, I REALLY want to read this book.

A great tool in snow removal.

Matt Cain of the San Francisco Giants pitched a perfect game against the Houston Astros on Thursday night. Cain struck out 14 batters in the Giants’ 10-0 victory. Here’s the box score.

Clinic Vignettes from a family practice physician.

Jaquandor finishes the first draft. I’m interested in the process, too.

June Foray wins her first Emmy…at the age of 94. As the Squirrel would say, Hokey smoke, Bullwinkle!

Cartoonists! You NEED This Chapbook!

The argument is: If you’re criticizing this show, which is for, by, and about girls/women, you’re a misogynist. Bullsh-t.

Here’s a rundown of the folks who hosted The Tonight Show between the time Jack Paar left and Johnny Carson took over.

Harry Belafonte on The Nat King Cole Show, back in 1957, singing a song I remember surprisingly well.

‘Mr. McFeely’ gives his take on viral Mister Rogers video

How Canadians Get Their TV

An obit of legendary Dick Beals — a star of radio, cartoons, and more commercials than just about anyone – Speedy Alka-Seltzer with Buster Keaton?

Yog(h)urt.

A mashup of cartoon and Kubrick.

Keep Calm and Carry On – a phrase I somehow all but missed. (Though, now that I see the graphic, it looks vaguely familiar…)

Not calm: Gilbert complains about gender cakes, as well he should. (Some NSFW language.)

New grandfather Steve Bissette’s essays on Tijuana Bibles and gay comics. To be VERY clear, grandpa Steve is adorable, but if you don’t know what the Tijuana bibles are, they are definitely NSFW AT ALL, and the latter post, “though non-explicit, may be offensive to some.”

And in the world of the truly bizarre: Jesus was crucified on a pyramid.
By aliens… The proof is on the Ohio flag.

GOOGLE ALERT

Dr. Green is the founding President of the Florida Nurse Practitioner Network.

The blogs as squirrel nuts

Ah, let’s see what kind of traffic I can drive here by talking about pornography!

Shooting Parrots wrote:

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve collected ‘interesting’ bits of information. I put that in quotes because by interesting, I mean interesting to me. I can’t speak for anyone else.

I collected them like a squirrel gathers nuts, tasty kernels of facts that I then bury away somewhere because I know they’ll come in handy one day.

But like the squirrel, too often I forget where I’ve buried them, or I remember only half the story, which can be worse.

That’s one of the reasons I keep this blog. If I record things somewhere that has its own search facility then I have a better than even chance of finding it again when I need it.

Absolutely. It’s the reason I write the blog for work and ESPECIALLY the blog for the New York State Data Center affiliates, not to mention my own.

This was my response:

I was saddened when someone I thought knew me quite well said recently, “You spend so much time on that blog, and you don’t get paid!” Which, of course, misses the point completely. I do get paid – in relationships, in therapy I don’t have to pay for and in a place to store my squirrel nuts.

Mr. Parrot replied:

You’re right, of course, Roger. If people only spent time on the web because they got paid, there wouldn’t be much of it other than Amazon, e-Bay, and porn!

Ah, let’s see what kind of traffic I can drive here by talking about pornography! PORNOGRAPHY! Nah. Truth is, I don’t even look at the numbers anymore – PORNOGRAPHY! – because, and I believe I’m merely paraphrasing Alan David Doane, I do this for me. Though I DO like comments…
***
And speaking of PORNOGRAPHY, some damn filter has been installed at my work computer. One of the blogs I visited regularly was tagged as PORNOGRAPHY, maybe because it occasionally has a woman not fully dressed. I appealed it, saying it was a personal blog, but not PORNOGRAPHY.

They wrote: “You submitted the following rating request to [company]:
Rate [site] as “34.Personals and Dating”
The request has been reviewed and rated as:
“41.Glamour/Society”

Which is hysterical.

Free Comic Book Day is like visiting my hometown

Binghamton and comic books, parts of “my ever present past.”

I always go to Free Comic Book Day, sometimes with my daughter, sometimes alone. This year, it will be on Saturday, May 5 at a comic book store near you (I hope). I go because I like seeing a busy comic book store, and I’m always treated like visiting royalty at a local proprietor’s shop. For those of you who don’t know, I worked a FantaCo, Albany’s first direct market comic book shop; the store was open from 1978-1998, and I worked there from 1980-1988. And I like getting something for free, although I ALWAYS buy something as well.

But it’s also a little sad. While there are good books out there, so much of it is…not. Even a comic nerd such as Alan David Doane recently noted: “My trouble with comics right now is that so very few appeal to me.”

This reminded me of my treks to my hometown of Binghamton, NY, some 150 miles away from Albany. When I was growing up, I rather loved it. It was a decent place to grow up. The population was about 75,000, with a vibrant downtown. Now it has about 47,000 people, with a downtown that seems to be hanging by a thread. I WANT it to do well, a lot, but it’s just not, for the most part.

When I went to college, they tore down a bunch of houses near my grandmother’s home to build “new” Route 17, which will eventually become Interstate 86. The road has made it easier to get THROUGH the city, but has hardly been a boon for having people stay IN the city. I go there for a family reunion, on my mother-in-law’s side, and I’ll see little signs of life, but it’s mostly moribund.

Binghamton and comic books, parts of, to quote Paul McCartney, “my ever-present past.”

BOOK REVIEW: Life Itself by Roger Ebert

“Most people choose to write a blog. I need to.”

Fairly early on in my reading of film critic Roger Ebert’s memoir, Life Itself, I decided that, if I were ever to write my own autobiography – not that I necessarily would – it should be modeled on this book. Organized thematically, with an overarching, but not strict, chronology, using short chapters (55 in 420 pages).

But I’m probably not going to write mine because I doubt I could be so descriptive. Ebert remembers things from his childhood that would have eluded me writing about mine. More importantly, though, he writes with incredible honesty. The very first line encapsulates the sensation: “I was born inside the movie of my life.” Yet, though known as probably the premiere movie critic of his time, he got the job “out of a clear blue sky,” and without much thought that it would be his life’s work.

Since I’ve started following him on various movie review TV programs, initially co-starring the late Gene Siskel back in the late 1970s, Roger Ebert has had a distinctive and intelligent voice when speaking about the cinema. But since just before the illness that has silenced his speaking voice, and turned him into what he described as looking like the 1925 version of Phantom of the Opera, his commentary on other aspects of life has proven to be extraordinary. And it all started with his blog:

“My blog became my voice, my outlet, my ‘social media’ in a way I couldn’t have imagined. Into it, I poured my regrets, desires, and memories…The comments were a form of feedback I’d never had before, and I gained a better and deeper understanding of my readers. I made ‘online friends’, a concept I scoffed at. Most people choose to write a blog. I need to.”

Ebert writes about family, growing up Catholic, race, and, naturally, a lot about writing. He explains how he collected places, in London, Venice, and elsewhere, that he would come back to again and again; now that he can’t visit physically, he can still experience them in his mind. Alcoholism – his mother’s and his own – is discussed thoroughly; 1979 marked the beginning of his sobriety.

He discusses several Hollywood legends, but my favorite chapters of those are about directors Martin Scorsese, whose first film is a touchstone for Ebert; and Werner Herzog, with whom he has a spiritual bond, though not in a theological sense. Perhaps not coincidentally, they are all about the same age.

Then there’s the chapter about Siskel, his TV partner, with whom he had a complicated but ultimately fraternal relationship of love and respect. It was Siskel’s agent who packaged them together, suggesting that they be seen together, which made their presence more distinctive.

Most HIGHLY recommended! (Great Christmas present.)
***
Reviews by Alan David Doane and Jaquandor.

Flashmob Fridays…and ME?

I feel like that guy who used to watch movies from 1915 through 1925, then went away from them for a score. Suddenly, he’s watching films that have SOUND! And COLOR!

There’s this comic book critic named Alan David Doane, who I’ve known since he used to come to FantaCo, the comic store I used to have something to do with for 8.5 years back in the 1980s. He asked me if I wanted to participate in something called Flashmob Fridays whereby “this batch of writers-about-comics…will converge in this space and weigh in with their thoughts on the comic chosen for review that week.” I actually participated once in the old iteration.

There are a lot of reasons NOT to do this. For instance, after voraciously reading comics for a couple of decades (1972-1992), I found my attraction to the medium had waned considerably. I had issues from 1992-1994 that I never even read before I sold the bulk of my collection in 1995 or 1996. I have picked up an odd issue or two, usually on Free Comic Book Day, but that is hardly representative.

So I feel like that guy who used to watch movies from 1915 through 1925, then went away from them for a score. Suddenly, he’s watching films that have SOUND! And COLOR! So he’ll either be awed by the new technology, even if it’s a lesser effort or, conversely, be annoyed/appalled by the changes.

Besides, I’m busy. Competing with the wife and now the daughter for computer time is difficult already; this will just make it worse.

So why do it? Maybe precisely because it IS scary. I’m not likely to climb a mountain or jump out of a plane. This is, perhaps, as dare devilish as I’m likely to get. Ah – the risk of public humiliation. And being slapped by ADD.

Also, Alan used the word interregnum. I LOVE that word. How the heck am I supposed to ignore THAT?

So look for #flashmobfridays on Twitter. I won’t participate EVERY week, but I’ll try to join in as often as time, and sanity, allow.

Ramblin' with Roger
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