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My Momma Done Tol' Me When I Was in Knee Pants

My new e-friend Joyce asked me to pick a favourite song from the 70’s through to the 00’s. I upped the stakes by going back to the 30’s, and I thought I’d share with you:

30’s When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano – The Ink Spots
40’s At An Arabian House Party – Raymond Scott
50’s Day-O – Harry Belafonte (I couldn’t think of anything else)
60’s Let’s say….Across the Universe by The Beatles (special mentions: King Kong vs Godzilla main title a capella by Akira Ifukube OR anything from the Spider-Man cartoons composed by Ray Ellis.)
70’s Mahna Mahna by the Muppets? Hmmm.. or Truth Hits Everybody or Message In A Bottle by The Police. There’s so many good ones on Regatta de Blanc. Or how about Looking for Today by Black Sabbath?
80’s Not counting any Monty Python songs…Rags & Bones by NoMeansNo. Or Overkill by Men At Work.
90’s SO HARD to choose. 100 Years (Of Tears in the Wind) by Masters of Reality; End Titles from Miller’s Crossing (Carter Burwell); What Deaner Was Talkin’ About OR Buckingham Green by Ween; Isobel by Bjork; There are like five 10/10 songs on OK Computer; most of the songs off Queens of the Stone Age debut album.
00’s – I’ll keep it to one. I’m gonna say Rock Your Socks Off by Tenacious D.

or Hustle Rose by Metric.
OH CRAP. Subject to change – ask me again in 2010.

And now, a drawing of Bill Murray

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Immature Tomfoolery

My band practices in the nave of a new but classically gothic church, surrounded by depictions of the seven holy virtues in glorious stained glass. Oh no, wait. We practice above the office of an RV sales lot in Chilliwack. There’s actually a crusty guy who lives in a trailer on site, and he likes to bug us when we’re coming and going. Last week he tried to sell us a rusty old mic stand that was missing pieces. Merrick expressed interest but then he went into the space so I was left to deal with him. On M’s behalf I suggested ten bucks (rather generous, I thought). He said that was okay, but how about a six pack of beer? Now, I have never bought a six pack of beer in my life, so the next question was pretty natural: how much does a six pack of beer cost? The answer: about ten bucks. He offered to go get it (the beer) right away.

Right on, buddy.

The story gets more boring from there. So instead I’m going to switch gears and regale you all with some recently unearthed amusing memorabilia from my youth.

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There Will Be Buttons

sendak cthulhu button.jpg
That turned out okay. I especially like the pink on the tentacles. How much will you be able to make out at 1″ across? Hard to say.

So there is no such thing as karma. Prior to Zombiewalk, Lani, Selina and I went to Bazaar & Novelty to get makeup. I bought a makeup kit and some fake teeth, and they only charged me for the fake teeth. At the time I didn’t say anything because hey…free $13 makeup kit. But that was wrong! Wrong to do! So today I was in the neighborhood and I went in and paid them for the kit. They were, as one would expect, surprised that somebody would come in after the fact and make amends, if you will. They told me “you’ve got some good karma coming your way.” Of course, I don’t believe in karma (not cosmically, anyway–social karma maybe), and I told them so. And holy smokes was I ever proved right because not an hour later I went into Opus to look at frames, reached up to grab one on a shelf, knocked one of them down which landed on a much larger and more expensive model, and quite handedly destroyed the glass. Sorry, I’m not paying for that one. $20 is my limit, and I’m positive the one I wrecked was well over twice that.

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Rock Star Enough to Get Free Comics

Today I went to ComiCon, the monthly comic convention in the Heritage Hall on Main Street. I like it, and now that I’m getting closer to actualizing a comic, it’s become more important to me to see what’s going on. Michael T Gilbert, creator of Mr Monster, was very kind in offering advice. He showed me the tools of his trade (even let me try out his pen) and he liked the WWFJ characters that I showed him and his charming wife Janet (she writes for Uncle Scrooge and some manga). On his advice I’m going to draw a three or four page story of the WWFJ.

I always feel bad for the indie comics people. They went to all that trouble to print up their dreams, come to the ComiCon, and lay it all out, and I don’t even have the common decency to throw money at them. Even the ones that aren’t that good I have to admire, because they’ve put so much love and effort and time into it (that’s more than me). But I can’t possibly support them all. I was walking past the Critical Hit Comics table (good name, by the way) and the fellow began to give me the hard sell on their comic Outnumbered. I certainly listened and flipped through the books but I just got laid off and I’m going to be spending a lot of money in the next week or two, but I thought geez, this guy is a good salesman. The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets needs a guy like him. Anyone who reads my blog knows that self-promo is my achilles heel. So I thanked him and moved on. On the way back he called out “You know, you look a lot like Toren” as if I would know who Toren was if I wasn’t Toren, which of course I was and am. So it turns out the guy (Kevin Leeson) is a big Thickets fan and he is excited there’s a new album in the works, and he just handed me all the comics he was trying to sell me. So there you go, if you’re going to become a musician do it for the right reasons – free comics. I am in turn going to be good enough to read them (and plug them on my blog. Oh look! Done).

Oh and Brian Fukushima was there. We talked about kobolds. Ironically I am going to miss the next Vancouver Comics Jam because I’ll be at CampyCon. Wait…that isn’t ironic at all.

Almost lastly, there seems to be a local collective of girl comic artist called The Radar Friends. I like that. Okay that’s more than enough plugs. Soon I’ll do another I’m Drawing A Children’s Book Diary entry. But not right now.

On another (Slackademics) note, whose interested in learning how to read music, for free? Because Stephane will teach.

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"Not Now, Madeline!"

Last night they played the first four Trek films on Space. I must have seen Star Trek IV twenty times but here are a few new observations:

At the beginning of the movie, the Klingon ambassador is in the council chambers, exasperated by the Federation’s lack of diligence in dealing with Kirk’s “rogue” ways. The ambassador leaves in a huff, declaring that “there can be no peace while Kirk lives” and there is a brouhaha from the crowd. I never noticed it until last night, but it sounds like somebody in the background yells out “YOU POMPOUS ASS!” I thought it was just one of those things that you can’t really tell what it is so you just associate it with some random phrase, but it turns out I’m not the only one. From that point on in the film every chance we got we’d yell out “you pompous ass!” Thanks for the reference on that, Stewie.

They should have made a spinoff sitcom about the people at PlexiCorp. “Not now, Madeline!” is my favourite line from the film. We could see all the office hijinx that Dr Nichols and his employees get up to while designing and manufacturing transparent aluminum. Furthermore, Stewie pointed out that that would be an amazingly subtle Trek geekery to make a PlexiCorp t-shirt and go to Star Trek cons wearing that and an “I quit smoking” button. I think I smell my Hallowe’en costume.

The punk on the bus who gets some hot Vulcan nerve pinchery is played by Kirk Thatcher. Not only was he an actor in the film, but he composed and performed the “I Hate You” song that he was listening to on the bus. If you look at his imdb page you’ll see he’s a bit of an 80’s renaissance man. He was a creature technician on Return of the Jedi, has screenplay credit on Muppet Treasure Island, and other stuff. Here’s an interview with him at IGN where he takes credit for the “hello, computer” joke, and writing and speaking all the questions the Vulcan computer asks Spock at the beginning of the film.

NOW THAT’S INTERESTING!

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Three Quick Things

The most interesting thing I’ve listened to in a long time is this podcast of Quirks & Quarks, in which they talk about the biological programming of happiness, our desire to get it, and how it’s impossible to hang on to for any length of time. I really recommend you listen to it. General site is http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/podcast.html

Here’s a CBC video article on the Zombiewalk I partook in. I heard about the car-hitting-zombies incident days after the event. I’m glad I wasn’t on camera because those people look like idiots. (I’m not saying they are – though they might be, I don’t know.)

Thirdly, Steve Irwin, the “crocodile hunter” has died as he lived – by a dangerous animal. He was stabbed in the heart by a stingray barb. Just thought you should know. He was no David Attenborough but I admired him to some extent.

Bonus thing: Here’s an awesome quote from a recent John K blog entry:

I can’t even figure out why Nickelodeon or Film Roman or these places have live artists on staff. Why not just do what South Park does? Put the models in the computer and just copy and paste them over and over again. Why torture creative artists? I think the studios like to pretend that something creative is going on, so they hire artists then tell them not to ever make art. But dress retro so we can feel like we’re wacky.