If you’re not reading Boulet, why the #$%& not?!?!?
Especially since you can do it in English, French, or Korean!

Since Soon-ok’s retirement, there have been a lot of changes in our lives, almost all for the good.

First off, she’s happier, more relaxed, and more energized than I’ve seen her in ages.  She never wanted a job, much less a career, but took one to keep the family stabilized as my own career started careening wildly.  Without her we would not have squeezed by; without her my own career would have floundered completely.

So we owe her a big one, and she is more than entitled to her retirement.

Second, as she rightly deserves, she’s getting to do a lot of things she wanted to do, such as travel and renovate the house.  I’m glad for this, and more than happy to go with her and help her in the various projects.

But it plays havoc with my own productive schedule, and I find myself falling further and further behind.

To get caught up, I’m jettisoning a lot of things I used to do.  One of those things was keeping up with numerous comic strips.  I’ve been a fan of the art form since I was a little kid and first entranced with Dick Tracey and Little Orphan Annie and Buck Rogers and Pogo and Li’l Abner and Mr. Mum.  Each December I post my list of the ten funniest strips of the year; I want to keep doing that, but in recent years I’ve had to forgo the yearly overview of all the strips I track.

I’ve already dropped several strips that I felt had exhausted themselves and become repetitive.  Here are six I’m dropping simply because of time constraints; they’re still good and I still enjoy them but I have to jump through too many hoops make too many clicks to read them.

That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but every productive minute is precious now, and I’ve got to ration them like a stranded traveler in the desert rations his water.  If you read my previous post on the topic, you know what it feels like when I can’t write, so to squeeze out a few extra minutes, I’m giving up a lot of things I used to enjoy.

Feh, enough mawkish self-pity.  If you like comic strips / web comics and haven’t tried the following, give ‘em a look.  They’re all good.  (Descriptions courtesy JSOline)

Baby Blues by Rick Kirkman & Jerry Scott is an entertaining and poignant view of parenthood and childhood. Wanda and Darryl MacPherson spend the majority of their time chasing, refereeing and pleading with their three children.

Edge City by Terry & Patty Laban is a groundbreaking comic strip about a hip, Jewish-American family juggling relationships, careers, and tradition at the fast pace of modern life.

Mutts by Patrick McDonnell explores the special bond between animals and their guardians, and the endearing friendship of Earl, the dog, and Mooch the cat.

Safe Havens by Bill Holbrook is a comic strip that focuses mainly on Samantha and her group of friends, who met as toddlers at Safe Havens Day Care and are now young adults enrolled at Havens University.

Sally Forth by Francesco Marciuliano, Jim Keefe is a timely comic strip about a working mother, who juggles her mid-management job and finding enough quality time for her husband and daughter. Somehow, Sally manages to keep her sanity and sense of humor.

Zippy the Pinhead by Bill Griffith creates a reality all on its own with a unique cast of characters, including Griffy, Zippy’s foil; Zerbina, Zippy’s wife and their children, Fuelrod and Meltdown.

Forry Ackerman, Ray Harryhausen,
Ray Bradbury, and Julie Schwartz
[photo by Dave Truesdale]

…and now there are none.

They were truly legendary, the first fan boys to become more than fans, ur-geeks who went on to help shape modern culture to varying degrees throughout their long, productive lives.

I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Ray Harryhausen several times over the years, though never as long as I would have liked.  He was a charming and soft-spoken man, very gentlemanly and polite.  The kind of person you’d cast as a kindly old grandfather on a Disney Channel movie, not the kinda guy who gave us this…

…or this…

…or this…

My very first exposure to Ray Harryhausen occurred roughly around the same time I first encountered the work of Ray Bradbury.  Rain pre-empted a scheduled kindergarten trip, so to keep us quiet they screened a 16mm print of Harryhausen’s King Midas.

Yikes!  Not exactly kid fare, is it?  Not when you compare it with the Popeye and Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons that ran endlessly on local kiddee cartoon shows.

Yeah, cartoons had their scary moments, but they were cartoon-scary, more funny than frightening, certainly not real in the sense our families were real, and certainly comforting insofar as we’d seen dozens of Popeye and Bugs and Daffy cartoons so we knew nothing really bad was going to happen to them.

But Harryhausen’s animated version of the classic Greek myth (updated to fairy tale medieval Europe) was unsettling.  First off, we didn’t know these characters, so we had no idea if they were going to come through intact or not.  Secondly, they occupied some weird realm more real than cartoons but not yet fully in our own world.

That probably is the best explanation for Harryhausen’s unique hold on the imagination of millions of young boys and girls, even after he left his series of self-produced fairy tales to go on to provide special effects for major studio productions.

He brought the unreal to life in a way that was difficult to emulate with costumes and props.  He could create monsters that truly looked monstrous, not like a guy in a rubber suit, and bring them to life in a manner that easily achieved suspension of disbelief.

There was, for lack of a better word, charm to his creations, and he beguiled generations of audiences and fans.

As posted above, his trek began early in the days of science fiction fandom, when a handful of excitable young boys poured over the meager offerings on the newsstands and cinemas.  Ray H. was friends with Ray Bradbury and Forrest J Ackerman, and the trio grew up together in pre-WWII Los Angeles, fueling each others’ interests and desires in the realm of imaginative stories.

Just as Metropolis and Amazing Stories grabbed hold of young Forry Ackerman’s mind, so did King Kong with Ray Harryhausen.  There’s not enough time or space here to do full justice to the story (besides, that’s what the Internet is for); suffice it to say Ray & Ray & 4SJ ended up fulfilling at least some of the lofty dreams of their youth, and in doing so inspired and challenged many, many others (yrs trly included) to follow their dreams as well.

One closing story to demonstrate the friendship among the trio:  Following his work assisting Willis O’Brien on Mighty Joe Young, Harryhausen was offered the gig of providing the special effects for a new monster movie.  Ray H. read the script and quickly realized the core scene in the film — a scene where the monster, attracted by a foghorn, attacks a lighthouse in the mistaken belief it’s one of its kind — was lifted from Ray B.’s famous short story, “The Foghorn”.

Most people in Hollywood would have said nothing, a few would have notified their friend and let them handle it on their own.

Ray H. did something far, far smarter:  He suggested to the producers that they contact Ray Bradbury as a consultant on the sci-fi angle of the film.

They did, and so they walked into a perfect trap where if they denied they had lifted the story they would had demonstrated prior knowledge of Ray Bradbury and so would have lost any possible lawsuit…

So they bought the story from Ray B. and credited him in the movie…

R.I.P., Mr. Harryhausen, and thanx for all the wonderful memories and inspiration…

 ”What’s my motivation in this scene?”

Someone is wrong on the Internet…

Understand this:
Copyright does not exist so people can make money.[1]
Copyright exists so we the people — i.e., humanity at large — can enjoy the benefits of new discoveries, new inventions, new artistic expressions.
Thing is, it costs money to make those discoveries / inventions / expressions.  So to fund said benefits the government/s grant/s a limited time copyright to the innovator to solely control said discovery / invention / expression.
In practical terms, this means charge a fee for other people to use it.
All well and good, but the copyright holder doesn’t really own the discovery / invention / expression the way someone who owns a house owns it.  Rather, the owner is the public (as in public domain) and the innovator merely gets first crack at benefiting from it.

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Five reasons:

#1 — His name was Steele Savage.

#2 — He possessed an extraordinary
flair for the mythic and the legendary,
fully capturing the fantastic aspects while
at the same time grounding them with
a solidity that made them wholly
believable.

#3 — I mean seriously, can you find anybody
with a cooler name?  I think not.

#4 — While most famous for his mythical subjects,
he displayed a wide range and showed an inventive
approach to every genre and topic he tackled.

#5 — Did I mention his name was Steele Savage?

I’m arriving late to the party, I know, but dang, this is one great movie.

—–

And, yeah:
Opera.

It’s marketed as a musical because
marketing it as an opera would have
limited its audience appeal.

But still:
Opera.

(Yes, there are six or eight spoken lines in the film;
lotsa operas have brief spoken moments.)

—–

Almost everybody loves Les Miserables.  Those who don’t typically critcize it for being over the top.

Like I said:
Opera.

The whole bloody point of opera is to go completely,
totally, abso-&-#%ing-lutely over the top & in
yo face with glorious excess.

That’s why we opera fans love the medium.

—–

That being said, what makes Les Miserables great is less the music (some nice hummable bits & a couple of show stoppers) but the story.  And for that we can thank Monsieur Victor Hugo.

Hugo shows an incredible depth of understanding of the human heart, the human soul, the human condition.

He keeps everything focused, and even when one thinks he (and by extension, the film makers) is going far afield, it turns out there’s a purpose for the apparent diversion that ends up bringing the story back to the main thematic thread.

And what is that thread?

It’s the Old Testament vs the New Testament.

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When I got home I mixed a stiff one and

stood by the open window in the living room and

sipped it and

listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and

looked at the glare of the big angry city
hanging over the shoulder of the hills
through which the boulevard had been cut.

Far off the banshee wail
of police or fire sirens rose and fell,
never for very long completely silent.

Twenty four hours a day somebody is running,
somebody else is trying to catch him.

Out there in the night of a thousand crimes,

people were dying,

being maimed,

cut by flying glass,

crushed against steering wheels

or under heavy tires.

People were being

beaten,
robbed,
strangled,
raped, and
murdered.

People were hungry, sick; bored,
desperate with loneliness
or remorse
or fear,
angry,
cruel,
feverish,
shaken by sobs.

A city no worse than others,

a city rich and vigorous and full of pride,

a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.

It all depends on where you sit
and what your own private score is.

I didn’t have one.
I didn’t care.

I finished the drink
and went to bed.

My picks for the 10 funniest comic strips published/put on the Web in 2012.

Criteria:
#1 – Must be funny. (There were a lot of touching/poignant/inspiring/awesome strips this year but only the funny ones made the cut.)
#2 – Must be fresh. (Otherwise this list would consist of Peanuts re-runs.)
#3 – Must be family friendly. (Anything over the edge got cut even if it made me laugh.)
#4 – Must be fathomable. (i.e., punchlines that were the pay off of lengthy continuities, long-running gags, or required esoteric knowledge of the strip in question also got cut.)

Honorable Mention: Dilbert

We have all been there, the question is on which side of the desk.

Honorable Mention: Maria’s Day

It would be unfair to call this new strip by John Zakour and Scott Roberts a female version of Calvin And Hobbes; Maria’s pedigree goes back to Nancy and Little Lulu.

Honorable Mention: Cats With Hands

Indeed…

Honorable Mention: Baby Blues

Typically not among the most visually inventive strips on the market, this year Baby Blues delivers the groceries with a delightful sight gag.

Runner Up: Willy ‘n’ Ethel

It was hard to pick the best of a fine crop of Willy ‘n’ Ethel strips this year, but this one edged out several contenders.

Runner Up: Retail

Norm Feuti makes two entries on the finalists’ roster this year, in this case for keen insight into the world of retail sales.

Runner Up: Mr. Boffo

Joe Martin typically finishes well in the year end tally, but this year his three strips — despite sharp writing and clever set-ups — fell just shy of the winner’s circle.

Third Place: Gil

A relatively new strip on the funny pages, Gil started life a couple of years ago as a web comic by Norm Feuti.  The original version of Gil was funny but also somewhat bleak; what started out as a fun kid strip took a surprisingly somber turn when Gil’s divorced dad ended up in jail on assault charges (!).  Feuti retired the web comic at that point but successfully retooled it into a more light hearted print version keeping the same characters and basic situation.  Here Gil turns the tables on the strip’s bully by turning the other cheek.

Second Place: Coffee With Jesus

Another fairly new strip, Coffee With Jesus is astonishing because (a) it’s written from a surprisingly perceptive Christian POV (b) it turns Christ into a remarkably accessible character instead of a stick figure mouthing platitudes as is the case in most other comic strip appearances by the Messiah and (c) it’s really, really funny.  A clip strip with a regular cast of characters, it works best when you get familiar with the personalities involved, but this one is a stand alone jem.

Grand Prize Winner: Heavenly Nostrils

Dana Simpson won an Amazon / GoComics new talent contest several years ago with her strip Girl, but it’s taken all this time to refine it and hone it into something truly magical.  Heavenly Nostrils could be referred to as the other new female Calvin And Hobbes strip but that would be grossly unfair; these are their own characters and the unicorn herself, Marigold Heavenly Nostrils, is that rarest of creatures, the vain self-obsessed know-it-all smart-alec whom everybody loves.  (Another key difference is that unlike Hobbes, Marigold occupies the real world and interacts with the other human characters in the strip, including Phoebe‘s parents and classmates.)

VS

Most people think of YouTube as a breeding ground for bad karaoke, embarrassing wedding videos, epic skateboard fails, and cute li’l kitty cats, but it’s also a great resource for incredibly rare / otherwise impossible to find films and TV shows like Sun Ra’s Space Is The Place, the delightfully oddball Czech Western Lemonade Joe, tons of obscure Soviet / Eastern Bloc sci-fi like Ikarie XB1 (a.k.a. Voyage To The End Of The Universe), and otherwise forgotten British sci-fi anthologies & mini-series.

Among the latter Is Quatermass And The Pit, the third of the mini-series based on that character written by Nigel Kneale.[1]

Quatermass is one of the seminal characters in British in TV sci-fi, a forerunner of sorts of Dr Who.  The three original mini-series, broadcast live in the UK and never officially released in the US, were touted for years by British sci-fi fans as far superior to their cinematic versions.[2] Now, thanks to YouTube, it’s possible to see what the fuss was about and, in the case of the second and third serials, compare them to their film versions.

We’ll focus on Quatermass And The Pit as that is
generally regarded as the high water mark of the series.

sometimes a derelict Martian spacecraft hull
is just a derelict Martian spacecraft hull

Spoilericious After The Jump

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