(1 statement made | Say something) Who Killed Arnold Stang? [28 Dec 2009|07:38am] calamityjon Sad to hear last week about the death of Arnold Stang, voice of Top Cat (among others). His lifestyle of wild sex, drugs and alcohol finally took its toll at 91.

(7 statements made | Say something) [27 Dec 2009|10:21am] quba My wife stood out in the cold for hours on Black Friday to get me this: Some people call it a Netbook, I call it a bellybuttontop. She and artiekgb conspired and decided that I wasn't getting it till Christmas day. I didn't mind so much, as I already had a full size lap top. I didn't realize how much this little thing would rule! It's got a full sized keyboard, it's more powerful than my laptop, and anything my laptop can do, the bellybuttontop can do better. And it fits right in my jeans pocket! It's a little uncomfortable having it there, but it fits just fine in a hoodie pocket. It downloads bittorrents and plays them, it plays video games, both Flash and regular. It's awesome. What did YOU get for Christmas?

(10 statements made | Say something) ...And for the record, Josie > Archie & His Pals > Josie & The Pussycats [23 Dec 2009|10:57am] calamityjon I've recently been reading some of the late Sixties' Archie Publications comics, specifically the early Josie series. I'm not particularly a fan of ... well, just about any teen comic, really, and the Archie family is no real exception. There's a period which begins in fits and starts around 1958, peaks around 1968, and which is gone, gone, gone by 1971 where Archie - if just for the quality of the art - was really notable, and those are what I've been lately perusing. Dan DeCarlo (and, eventually, the trio of Dan and his twin sons) was the artistic core of these books, the elder DeCarlo specifically being known for his energetic good girl art. Josie's the best of the endless teen comedies DeCarlo and the rest of the Archie Publications crew turned out during this period (for other publishers, even), and the one which received the best flourishes from DeCarlo ... So, flipping through 1968's Josie #38, I was delighted to come across this charming cameo in a story featuring the (unfortunately typical for the era) stereotypically ditzy blonde bombshell Melody and her anonymous cadre of dumbfounded admirers ... Did I mention that DeCarlo based the character Josie on his longtime wife? Thus I declare that this is adorable...

(Say something) [23 Dec 2009|08:22am] calamityjon Hey Jerks1! Still stuck at work with little or nothing to do? Here's some more time-killers from the best of the latter half of the year's worth of my Livejournal! I'm mostly looking for an excuse to once again show off my zombie makeup for a mass Thriller event ... A cartoon for my 10th wedding anniversary A little article on the Lois and Superman relationship. Watchmen Pizza FOLK FACTS! Which Muppet would you make out with? And, in case you somehow missed it, my picks for the best comics of the last decade. Hey, you know what I did on the way to work? Picking up breakfast at the supermarket, I also got a wheel of President brand "Wee Brie", tiny wedges of processed brie. I did this because I thought it was funny. Then I ate some. It's not funny anymore. MURRAY CRISSMUSS! 1I'm sorry, that was rude, I meant to say "Hey Jerk-ASSES"...

(14 statements made | Say something) GRUSS VOM KRAMPUS EVERYBODY! [23 Dec 2009|07:56am] calamityjon

(Say something) [22 Dec 2009|04:53pm] quba I forgot one thing about my mugging! Someone tried to help me not get mugged. A woman down the street said, "Quit beating up on that white boy!" And they said, "Get back in the house, Denise!" Okay, that last part didn't happen.

(2 statements made | Say something) Best of Me, 2009 ... [22 Dec 2009|08:52am] calamityjon Hey folks! Stuck at work for the holiday week? Me too! Want something to pass the mortal hours until the bell rings and you can get out of there? Well, you're in luck, it's time again for one of those damn summaries of the highlights of my Livejournal 2009! So, why not while away the hours with ... My Hourly Comic My Batman and Metamorpho cover Deadwood Valentines 25 Random Facts About Me The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Book of the Dead St.Factricks! Flip through the Super DC 1976 Calendar And, if you got a lot of time to kill, why not check out my Plethora of Eurovision 2009 posts? It's totally worth it, sort of, in a manner that's not at all worth it... And that'll take us through the end of June, enjoy yourself and there'll be more tomorrow, true believers!

(30 statements made | Say something) [22 Dec 2009|09:04am] quba Last Sunday, walking from D&D to Artie's house for tacos, three guys walked up to me and tried to push me down a side street. One of them was wielding a gun, but as is my experience with criminals, guns are easy to get but bullets, now that's another story. Plus it looked really fake. I imagine if he pulled the trigger it would have made laser sounds or a flag would come out that said, "Boom". I didn't really want to go down the side street, so one of them hit me in the back of the head. I wasn't expecting it, so I went down. They pulled me up against the wall and started going in my pockets. So I ran four blocks before they caught up to me. They pushed me up against a fence and again went through my pockets. I had a bottle of Oxycontin, worth about five hundred dollars. I had thirty bucks in my inside jacket pocket. And I had my wedding ring, worth about four hundred dollars. They didn't get any of these things. All they got was Maggie's phone. They hit me two more times about the head for good measure, and we traded blows as the two other guys left. I bloodied his nose, but when I fell back in paragraph two I scraped my knee. I walked to Artie's house, called my wife, and Artie and I walked to the police station. They took us to a different police station, where Artie twatted: In the back of a cop car with @chezzo . Fear not, we are not under arrest. Stay tuned for details. #WhatanAdorableLittleCop The backseat of this cop car is weird. It's really low and made of hard molded plastic. Surfing porn on my cellphone, while sitting on a bench, in the police station on 24th and wolf. I'm in the waiting room, Sean's giving a statement to a youg (sic) detective with a serious South Philly accent. I just googled "cop porn" from my phone, at @graycexface 's suggestion.

(Say something) What to get for the man who kills everything. [21 Dec 2009|10:37am] calamityjon A new Heavy.com article by me, Holiday Gift-Giving Guide for the World's Worst Dictators. Check it out!

(3 statements made | Say something) Doodles 12/20 ... [21 Dec 2009|08:01am] calamityjon Loosening up before a marathon drawing session with pencil and colored marker on colored cardstock ...

(1 statement made | Say something) Canadians [21 Dec 2009|09:54am] bungeebot

(4 statements made | Say something) POW! [18 Dec 2009|09:46am] calamityjon

(5 statements made | Say something) #20-21, Best Comics of the Decade... [17 Dec 2009|08:40am] calamityjon Chicken with Plums Pantheon Books (Marjane Satrapi) 2006 Wikipedia Article I know, you’re probably asking “If you're going to pick a Marjane Satrapi book, why not pick Persepolis?” Well, I enjoyed Persepolis, and I think it’s a very important work, but I frankly found this relatively unacknowledged work (although it has a film version in the works, evidently) of artistry, love, loss and depression to be the tighter narrative and the more emotionally evocative. Mind you, I don't want to take anything away from Persepolis - or really any of Satrapi's work, which may vary in affect and quality but which is uniformly worth reading - but I also felt that it was very dependent on lessons learned from David B, where Chicken with Plums possesses much more of the independent voice of the author. Chicken With Plums Isaac The Pirate Comics Lit (Christophe Blain) 2003-present The very little-known French import has collected the first four chapters of Blain's piracy picaresque, a darkly funny and tumultuous story where the menace both to the deceptively eponymous Isaac is both ominously real in terms physical and moral. It's the illustrations which are the primary strength of the series, expressive chiaroscuro expanses where buildings seem to loom heavy with cat-scratch shadows and figures come up drenched from pools of darkness. The conclusion is still forthcoming, but so far it's one of the most impressive books I've come across this decade. Isaac the Pirate: To Exotic Lands Isaac the Pirate: The Capital So, my list was, in no particular order: All-Star Superman Asterios Polyp American Virgin The Book of Genesis The Complete Peanuts Daredevil Vol 2 Lone Wolf and Cub The Will Eisner Omnibus Homunculus Hellboy Epileptic The Golem's Mighty Swing Blankets David Boring Army@Love Plastic Man Popeye Scott Pilgrim Black Hole Chicken With Plums Isaac the Pirate I had to leave out at least a half-dozen books I'd have loved to included, but nonetheless, there's my list. You may now proceed to yell at me for having dumb choices...

(10 statements made | Say something) La Neige! [17 Dec 2009|03:44pm] manningkrull It snowed in Paris this morning! That doesn't happen very often at all, and when it does, it's usually just flurries that barely dust the ground for a couple hours and then they're gone. The fact that we actually got two inches or so is pretty remarkable! So I took some pictures after walking Marjorie to work. ( More! )

(6 statements made | Say something) #17 - #19 [15 Dec 2009|08:20am] calamityjon Popeye Fantagraphics (E.C.Segar) 2006 Wikipedia Article Of the classic comic strip reprint editions which were spurred by Fantagraphics’ lovely Complete Peanuts set, there’s probably none so welcome nor needed as much as the titanic Popeye volumes (of which four of the planned six have so far been released, meaning that lining them up allows the spines to spell “POPE” across your bookshelf). Picking up in the thick of Elzie Segar’s Thimble Theater strip, the series starts with Popeye’s debut and subsequent explosive popularity. Popeye – who’s only enjoyed a handful of increasingly scarce and incomplete reprints in the past – represents a kind of comic strip which doesn’t really exist in America any more, but which still enjoys popularity around the world; the comic adventure. Absurd and cartoonish, the threats were still dire and the villains still ominous, and the action was brutal even if the outcome was all but predecided – while European comics and manga still produce copious volumes in the genre, America has really been without any highly visible, mainstream character of this type since Richie Rich ceased regular publication, and since Donald Duck went into permanent reprint. Having the Popeye volumes available are more than just great comics, it’s tangible American pop history. Popeye Vol.1 Popeye Vol.2 Popeye Vol.3 Popeye Vol.4 Scott Pilgrim Oni Press (Bryan Lee O'Malley) 2004-ongoing Wikipedia Article Bryan Lee O’Malley’s action-adventure romance benefits greatly from its manga influences, but melds them seamlessly with a contemporary, regional wit in a fast-paced and heart-filled story. Picking this as one of the best books of the last ten years is a tricky thing to defend, since – on the face of it, with video game style battles capping each issue – it’s a fairly frivolous story. O’Malley has his bonafides, though, and there’s no arguing that his characters suffer, cheer, laugh, love and weep with great conviction. He has his fans, but more than that he earned his fans, and while that may sound like an argument along the lines that, owing to its popularity, Harry Potter ought to be considered one of the best books of the last decade, it is reasonable to suggest that something which so rapidly approaches the iconic is at least given due consideration. The highest acclaim you can give Scott Pilgrim is that it’s fun, touching and strikes chords immediately with its audience, and that’s very high praise. Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life Scott Pilgrim vs The World Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together Scott Pilgrim vs The Universe Black Hole Pantheon (Charles Burns) 2005 Wikipedia Article Charles Burns’ ominous and oppressively dark tale of isolation and longing took ten years to finish, and the conclusion was well worth the wait. The tale of disassociated teens striving to stake their own claims to encroaching adulthood, love and lust, masked under a body-bending STD colloquially called “The Bug”, is captivating on every level. Possibly moreso than the story, in fact, the lush, thickly inked artwork is engrossing, and practically hypnotic, and exercises an inexorable pull on the reader. Incredibly satisfying and serious story which pushes comics further into the realm of serious literature. Black Hole

(8 statements made | Say something) The Dead Sexy Inc. — The Simple Things [14 Dec 2009|09:48pm] manningkrull Hey hey, check out my cameo in the new video by The Dead Sexy Inc — The Simple Things! I linked up this video on Facebook the other day when it was posted there, but I had to wait 'til it appeared on YouTube to be able to embed it here on LiveJournal. Complicated! Anyway, I'd mentioned here back in June that my friend Alexis (Dead Sexy's drummer) had asked me to appear briefly in a new video, and this is it! For those of you who're new to my blog, I used to live with Alexis and his girlfriend Lada in my previous apartment in Paris. The video was shot in three different cities: Alexis' scenes are in Paris, Emmanuel's scenes are in Berlin (where he lives now), and Stephane's scenes were shot in Tokyo, where Dead Sexy have played a few times and where they apparently have a bit of a following. My cameo is about half a second long, and it's at 1:40 if you're impatient. Since June, I've been crossing my fingers that my amazing shoes would be visible! They are not. There's also a surprise cameo by Lada from 2:34 to 2:40! And here's a fun piece of trivia: When the whole group is suddenly playing together at 3:06, they're rocking in the same Paris parking garage where I played Père Noël in Toxic Zonic's video for Can't Stand Christmas last year. One last thing, I just helped Dead Sexy set up a new online store, so if you like their music, get yourself a cd or something! Kamikaze is a fantastic album and totally great for the gym, I've found.

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