What's the Big Idea?

I was flipping around the old boob tube again making my way through the block of "news" channels when I ran across a show that never fails to annoy me. It wasn't a news show because the odds of finding news on one of the 24 hour news channels is about one in three. But that's a complaint for another time.

The show in question is called: "The Big Idea With Donny Deutsch". The premise behind the show it that the host, Donny Deutsch, interviews celebrities and business people about their success and how they achieved it. Donny is a bit of a kiss ass especially with some of the more famous celebrities but that only bothers me in a minor way. Most interviewers are kiss asses otherwise they won't get other interviews.

No, what bothers me is that this show's main reason for being is supposedly to let us all in on the secrets to success so we too can emulate these smiling people who all have plenty of money in the bank and who float along on a happy cloud all day. Seriously, this show has some of the giddiest guests you've ever seen. Being that a lot of then were basic middle class people who hit it big you can understand their fits of giggles. Still, it's not the people themselves who bother me. It's the "advice". It's nearly all useless.

The show only shows you the ones who made it. Often the reason one person makes it and the other doesn't is just dumb luck. So when Donnie asks them how they made it we end up hearing such wonderful advice as, "You gotta pound the pavement" and "You gotta have a web site". Huh? That's it? That's what you got for us?

Donnie Deutsch is clearly a bright guy. He can ask some clear and precise questions. But he buys into the "everyone can succeed if they just try hard" story when life proves over and over that is not the case.

The guests come in three categories:

The Hollywood celebrity type who is one of the beautiful people and has managed to parlay that into a career in acting, singing, or whatever. When they are asked about their success they give useless answers that wouldn't help a single one of us non-beautiful people. Not one of them is as smart as Paul Newman who when asked what was the secret of his success said, "Dumb luck".

The business tycoon type who was born wealthy and gained even more money throughout his life so he thinks he's special and actually deservers all his riches. Donnie really kisses these guys' butts. No one ever says the secret to their success is to have wealthy parents. The lack of insight is astounding.

Joe or Jane middle class who came up with some product and hit it big. These people have smiles so wide they can't stop grinning. They're like the proverbial deer in the headlights. Everything went right for them and they're living the capitalist dream. They are all generally pretty nice but their advice is usually around the "go for your dream" level of banality. Donnie eats that stuff up.

I want to hear from the failures. At least some of the time. Dumb luck can be blinding and a lot of the people on this show can't see a thing. People can learn a lot of things by analyzing why the failed. Trying something and not succeeding will make a curious person wonder why and then try another way. I lot of knowledge can be gained by trying these various ways.

Meanwhile most people don't want to give luck credit for their success. People want to think they deserve success. That they are special. So they mythologize their rise to fame and fortune. That's what annoys me so much about this show. All the mythology masquerading as fact. Most of the advice should be followed by, "And you gotta get lucky"...

Alright, I was flipping the channel and landed on "The Big Idea" again just long enough to catch a "plan for making you first million in five years". Step one was "make a sacrifice". The women lived in a cheap $300 a month apartment (this was in 1988). That was her big sacrifice. Step two, and I love this, was to save $300,000 in two years. What the hell? Even with a $300 dollar apartment who can save 300 grand in two years? That means you're making 200 grand a year. And if you can do that you are well on your way to a million. This show is lunacy.

Comics I Bought: October 23, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got two new comics, a trade paperback, plus a hard cover collection:

Fear Agent - 24

Echo - 7

H.P Lovecraft's Haunt of Horror

Northlanders - Sven the Returned (TPB)

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

Love and Rockets: New Stories - 1 by The Hernandez Brothers

In the Eighties and Nineties "Love and Rockets" was printed at magazine size. Then it was relaunched in the new century at comic book size. Both of those formats were collected into various trade paperback after they were initially published. This new version of "Love and Rockets" weighs in at a hefty 100 pages and is printed in a nearly square trade paperback format.

"Love and Rockets" is one of those comics that never got me excited. I don't know why. Don't get me wrong, I like it. I've bought every issues since the late Eighties and recently purchased the big hardcover collection of Jamie Hernandez's L&R stories called "Locas" but whenever a new issue came out I'd pick it up and was never in a rush to read it. Maybe it was the format. Issues were few and far between and who could remember what the story was three or four months later?

When I'd start reading a new issue I'd slowly get into it and enjoy myself. "Love and Rockets" is good stuff and that would always shine through when I read it. It would just always be on the bottom of the pile of stuff I had to read because I knew I'd have to refresh myself on what was going on.

So I like this new format. It gives me a big chunk of "Love and Rockets" to read. I like the variety of stories in it too. We get a forty eight page story (broken up into two parts to lead off and finish the book) from Jamie Hernandez about a group of female super heroes (not your usual super hero story). And a bunch of stories from Gilbert Hernandez that are of varying lengths. Some featuring familiar characters and some not.

This isn't really a review of the work itself. If you are not aware of "Love and Rockets" and the talents of The Hernandez Brothers by now then where the hell have you been? No, this is more about the format. "Love and Rockets" was one of the first comics to be "written for the trades" and that is probably why I never got excited to see a new issue come out but this new and larger format has gotten me excited. I really liked it. I enjoyed the variety of stories and the fact that one of them was a large chunk. Mixing the different lengths works for me. Plus these are two high quality cartoonists.

So if you've fallen off the "Love and Rockets" bandwagon because of the amount of time between issues or what to try it out for the first time "Love and Rockets: New Stories - 1" is a great place to jump on.

En plein air

I discovered something new today. Drawing out doors when it's windy out is not easy. I headed down to good old NYC to sit in Bryant Park for one more afternoon before it got too cold out. I hadn't been able to get down there since the end of July when the weather was warm and toasty. Of course I was worried about it being too warm then. How a few short months changes things (he says as if no one else has ever noticed the seasons).

Since I work at home that means some days I just have to get out of the house. One of the ways to do that is to take the bus into Manhattan and hit the park that I used to spend my mornings and lunch times at when I was working in the city. Bryant Park. It's up on 40th-42nd streets between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Not a big park by Central Park standards but I like it. It has tables and chairs so I can sit and draw. Most parks only have benches.

So I hit the park on Saturday. It was uglier than usual. The park not the Saturday. They are in the process of setting up "The Pond" in the middle of the park. That's basically a big hockey rink that people can skate on in the winter. Since giant tents come along with the pond the park is essentially cut in half. The view from north to south is blocked. I was a little disappointed. I was never a fan of "The Pond". I don't skate. But winter is coming and it gives people something to do.

I walked around the park a little to find a good seat. My usual shady section of the park which is so nice in July was too chilly this October day. Plus it was right behind the tents and had the ugliest view. So I walked over to the open side of the park and found a good spot near the 42nd Street- Sixth Avenue entrance. I sat down to draw. And I did.

I was having a good time except when the wind was blowing. It was warm enough out in the sunshine (around 60 F) but the wind was whipping. It gusted often and long. If I were just sitting there doing nothing it would have been okay but trying to draw in that wind was awful. I had to hold the page down as best I could with my left hand as I drew with my right. It was like drawing on a tiny sliver of paper.

One thing that especially stood out as I was sitting is that a lot of tourists visit Bryant Park. Maybe it's because the park is so close to 42nd Street or maybe it's because the library with its famous lion statues are on the Fifth Avenue side of the park. I don't know. But I'd guess at least half of the thousand people in the park today were tourists. You can tell because they are the ones looking at everything, taking pictures, and speaking in languages I don't understand.

My drawing day was shortened because of that wind. I pulled out a couple of pieces of paper but they proved impossible to hold still so I changed to my sketch book. Only my piece of blotter paper was in danger of escaping my grasp when using my sketch book. Still the wind would try to turn the pages as I drew. En plein air season is over for me. This is football weather. Go Giants!

Comics I Bought: October 16, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic plus a trade paperback collection:

StormWatch: Post Human Division - 15

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers Omnibus (Bunche recommends it!)

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

Angel "After the Fall" Volume 1 by Joss Whedon, Brian Lynch and Franco Urru

I was a fan of the both the "Buffy" and "Angel" TV shows. I've been picking up the new Dark Horse "Buffy Season Eight" comic but not the IDW "Angel - After the Fall" (Season Five) one. Four bucks for one of IDW's monthlies is too much money for me to spend on a single comic. I'll wait and pay the same to get it in hardcover. With a lot of extras in the collection too.

So I've finally purchased the hardcover collection and given it a read. In the last episode of the TV show Angel and his gang of heroes left us with a cliff hanger as a whole gaggle of monsters and demons were loosed on them and the city of Los Angeles. In the beginning of this series we discover that a little time has passed since we last saw our heroes and all of the city of Los Angeles and its residents now reside in hell. All sorts of monsters run the place and the human's are enslaved by them.

We are slowly introduced to the old gang from the TV show and shown how they are adapting to their new surroundings. Angel is trying to save as many people as he can from a lot of different demons and their harsh rule. And somehow the fact the L.A. is now in hell is all Angel's fault. That story hasn't quite been revealed yet.

The main problem with this book is the art. It's not horrible. Most of the likenesses are good which can be a problem in a book based on actors but generally isn't here. It's the storytelling. It's too confusing. Following what the hell is going on is a chore. The coloring doesn't help either. It just makes things murkier. Not clearer. I'm also not a fan of the sort of shapeless monsters the artist draws. They are clearly not his strong suit and that's a problem in a book where all the villains are monsters.

Though I enjoyed reading about the further adventures of Angel and the gang this is certainly a flawed series. I'll probably pick up the second volume but it isn't good enough to recommend to someone who is not an Angel fan. I'd say it's an Angel fan only pick up.

Tin Man

Alright. I'm a mint fan. As a mint fan I've been disappointed with the tins of Altoids mints that I have purchased over the last few years. As I've stated before they've been curiously weak. But being a mint fan I tried a couple of the new flavors that I saw in the store. Creme de Menthe, which tastes like the original but is artificially flavored, and Spearmint. I enjoyed both of them as they were strong and I will be getting some more. That brings me to the eternal question. What to do with an empty Altoids tin?

I'm a fan of boxes, tins, and containers because you can put things in them. That beats having things hang around willy-nilly getting all mixed up with each other. Altoids tins are particularly cool little boxes too. Hinged and metal they are a far cry from the disposable plastic and cardboard of other mints and candies. The only problem is that they are really too small to do anything with.

Sure I have a few tins lying around with small art supplies in them like spare pen tips, little erasers or some such but most of my tins have been thrown into the recycle bin over the years. I've even seen Altoids tins made into iPod cases but I've never had any inclination to do that. I've never found much use for those empty tins.

So now I'm going to try out a new idea for those empty tins. I'm going to paint them. Not the outsides but the inside metal bottom. I only came up with this idea because in my eternal quest for drawing tools I noticed that Sharpie sells oil based markers that are made for drawing on any surface including metal. I've never seen these particular Sharpies in any store so I never knew of them but I just put an order in with an art supply web site.

I'm not even sure what I'll paint on the inside bottom of these boxes. They should be secretive though. That would be cool. I mean, who would look at the bottom of an empty Altoids tin? If I were a member of some secret society, cult, religion, or political party we could all have secret symbols painted on the inside of tins that we only showed to each other to establish our bona fides. How cool would that be? The tins even squeak a little as you open them adding drama to the whole scene. If you want it to be really secret than throw some mints on top of the painting.

People would be more likely to use the tins as frames though. You could open the tin like a book and set it on a shelf so that the picture on the inside bottom is showing. That might make a nice objet d'art but I like the secret society symbols better.

If this were, like, 1841 I could paint nuddie pictures in the tins. Men with fancy facial hair and pipes would show each other their tin collections as they sat in each others dens and giggled because their wives didn't know what the tins really were. Nothing like getting one over on the wife to get you through the day. Of course the internet has the nuddie picture market all sewn up now so that's out the window.

My new paint markers arrive this week and I have a couple of empty tins lying around. I'm still throwing ideas against the wall but I'm going to have to figure out something. There has to be some use for these stupid things. And, yeah I know, college kids put their weed in them. That doesn't help me so you don't need to tell me your college weed stories.

Comics I Bought: October 9, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got 2 new comics plus a hard cover collection:

Rex Mundi Vol 2 - 14

Walking Dead - 53

The Immortal Iron Fist Vol 3 - "The Book of the Iron Fist" (HC)

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

Herbie Archives Volume 1 By Richard E. Hughes (writing as Shane O'Shea) and Ogden Whitney

I've known about the comic book "Herbie" for a couple of decades now but this is the first chance I've had to read almost all of this volume. Herbie first appeared in the late Fifties and had his own comic in the early Sixties. I've always heard it described as the quirkiest, craziest, funniest comic that no one has ever heard of. Since it wasn't published by Marvel, DC, Disney, Archie or any other comic book company that is still around today Herbie faded into obscurity with only occasional mentions, reprints, and a couple of attempts at revivals in the Nineties.

I'm glad to finally get a chance to read these "Herbie" issues because they are as good as their reputation. It's hard to describe exactly how wacky and funny they are. Herbie is a kid described by his father as a "Little fat nothing" yet Herbie has all sorts of adventures and superpowers. Only Herbie goes on these adventures and uses his superpowers in a rather matter of fact manner. Oddly Herbie is kind of the straight man in the zany world around him.

You name the superpower and Herbie has got it or can get it through one of his lollipops. He can time travel too. There is no drama in these adventures because Herbie can do anything. Though sometimes he takes the long way around. The long way always ends up being funnier. Herbie can talk to animals too.

All sorts of pop culture and political figures from the time appear. Herbie goes on missions for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Their first ladies (along with every grown women he meets) have a crush on Herbie. He plays with the Beatles, hangs out with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, takes meetings with Nikita Khrushchev, and tangles with Mao Tse Dung. Plus he kicks the Loch Ness Monster's ass. Description does these stories no good.

They type of humor in "Herbie" is hard to explain. It's full of strangeness, non sequiturs, and bizarre visuals. It's the kind of humor where the writer and artist were trying to crack themselves up. They weren't worrying about everyone else "getting it". Clearly they were marching to the beat of their own drum.

It's a shame that Dark Horse, who published this volume, only had the original printed comics to make this volume from. I guess that because the original publisher is long out of business there were no stats, printing plates, or original art to shoot from. Though perfectly readable this volume isn't as nicely printed as other archive collections. The source material just isn't there.

"Herbie" is the funniest comic I have read in a long time and anyone who is a fan of humor strips will love it. It deserves it's reputation as a classic.

Focus Now

I got new camera this week. It's a Nikon Coolpix S60. My other cameras are still good, I bought them both three years ago, but it was the small size and touch screen shooting that sold me this one.

My Pentax Optio 750Z is my older (2005) pocket size camera. Even when I got it it would be considered a little big for a pocket sized camera but it has a swivel LCD screen and that is what sold it to me. I love swivel LCD screens. Plus it is really no bigger than the pocket sized film camera that I carried for years. "Pocket sized" as a concept has gotten smaller.

The new Coolpix S60 is truly a pocket sized camera. It is probably about half the size of the Optio 750Z. It's also much more of a point and shoot as it doesn't offer all of the controls over the camera's shutter speed and aperture as the Optio 750Z (or my completely non-pocketable Nikon Coolpix 8800 also from 2005).

What the Coolpix S60 does offer is touch screen shooting. The whole back of the camera is a touch screen. You go through all of your settings not by turning dials or pushing buttons to scroll through menus but by pressing your finger (or stylus) to the virtual touch screen buttons.

What is really cool is that you focus and set the auto-exposure by pressing on the touch screen. If your subject is off center there is no more centering him, autofocusing, and then recomposing with him off center. Instead you compose any way you like and then press your finger where you want the camera to focus and read the light. That's cool. Only the shutter button is mechanical.

The drawback to this kind of shooting is that the camera is small and slippery. The touch screen and polished exterior leave little for my big old hands to grip. Constantly poking around the back of a camera, that I found a bit of a struggle just to hold on to, takes a bit of care. And the lens is in the upper left hand corner (as you shoot) of the camera and my fingers very easily got in the way.

My solution to all of this was my mini tripod. I have this small metal tripod with what can only be described as "bendy" legs. I bought it last year to try out as it is quite small and pocketable but I never liked it. The "Home position" of the legs is all of them straight down under the tripod head. You have to bend the metal legs out to make it into a tripod. Getting all the legs at the same angle to level the camera isn't easy. I quickly went back to using my much bigger "mini" tripod that is designed more like a full sized one and not in any way pocketable.

Yet is was that "Home" position on the bendy tripod that was the solution to my "small and slippery" problem. I screwed the tripod onto the bottom of the Coolpix S60 and used it like a handle. The bendy tripod is only about five inches tall when in the home position so it's the perfect size. I won't be carrying the little tripod with me all the time but it's easy enough to slip into my pocket or bag when I need it.

I had to adjust to there being no swivel LCD when shooting the Coolpix S60. I'm used to "Shooting from the waist" with my cameras. That's when you swivel the LCD so it faces up and lower the camera to waist level. I shoot looking down into the LCD. Having to hold the camera near eye level to shoot is an adjustment for me.

The biggest problem I have with the camera is that it's no iPod Touch. I have all of my photos on my iPod touch and it's a joy to look at photos on that machine. The software on the iPod Touch is a dream. Looking at, changing between, zooming in, and recomposing while viewing photos on the iPod Touch is smooth and easy. Not so with the Coolpix S60 software. Looking at the photos on the touch screen was a bit frustrating. The interface is slow and not precise. It's even worse than looking at the photos on a regular digital camera with regular buttons. Nikon has to improve that part of the software.

Overall this touch screen shooting has got me excited. I've been bored with photography for a little while now and this something new has piqued my interest. Now I've got to go and actually look at how some of the pictures I took turned out.

Comics I Bought: October 2, 2008

I'm back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic plus two hard cover collections:

Savage Dragon - 138

Conan Volume 6 "The Hand of Nergal"

"The Alcoholic" by Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel

And now for a review of something I've read recently.

Creepy Archives Volume 1 by Various

I never picked up many issues of Creepy back when it was published. It ceased publication in the early Eighties when I was in high school. I had picked up an issue or two but they weren't very good. Creepy and its sister magazine Eerie were long past their heydays by then. But to this day I have friends who have issues from the magazine's heyday (the early Sixties and then a resurgence in the early Seventies) and they love them. So when I saw that this archive volume was coming out I put it on my wish list.

Creepy was a black and white magazine first published in 1964 that carried on the horror comic tradition of the EC comics of the 1950's. And they did it well. The stories are all short, about seven pages a piece, and have a twist ending. That's a standard length for Horror, Sci-Fi, or Monster comics of the day and is a formula that's hard to pull off. You need a lot of story ideas. Creepy does it well. They are very well crafted stories that are aimed at adults so there is no holding your hand or lessons to be learned. Bad guys are bad and get their violent comeuppance and good guys better watch out because bad things happen to good people too. Some twist endings you'll see coming but the ride is still fun.

And the artwork is stunningly good. Al Williamson, Reed Crandall, Gray Morrow, and Joe Orlando are just a few of the famous names who handle the art chores and I don't think I've ever seen better work from any of them. The book was and is published in black and white and the artists use a large vocabulary of techniques, from the grand traditions of illustration and adventure comic strips, that today's artists just don't practice anymore. It's great great stuff that gives the stories a richness that makes them better than the sum of their parts.

And one final thing. Since these were originally printed at magazine size I'm glad to see the archive is printed at that large size too. Too often magazine size comics are reprinted in the smaller comic book size. That ruins the art. The recent Savage Sword of Conan reprints are really bad. I was going to pick them up until I saw the horrible job done on them. Full size is the way to go.

All in all I was really blown away by this volume. I knew from friends who love this stuff that it was good but it exceeded my expectations. The art is really what made it. The stories are so well drawn and without compromise that it's a joy to read them. Pick this one up.