The next generation, Part II

And speaking of offspring, here's Allie welcoming her new cousin, Ryan Sophia, into the family. Sure, things look all lovey-dovey in this photo, but whenever I picked up Ryan for a split second, Allie looked up at this new little girl in daddy's arms and demanded "Hold me! Hold me!"

Ryan is about four months old and tips the scales at about 15 pounds, which, to put things in perspective, is how much Allie weighed way back when we got her -- and she was nine months old at the time.

The next generation

The blog was neglected while I was in Ohio visiting my mom and brother for Thanksgiving, but while in the Buckeye State I managed to stop by Kent and see my old pal Jay Geldhof. Here's a picture of us, taken by Lurid Chief Wayne Harold...

We look old, gray and slightly dazed, don't we? Well, here's the reason for that...

That's Allie (left, mine) and Ivy (right, Jay's), our eerily energetic offspring. They manage to keep us young and make us old at the very same time. Spooky, eh?

Another one from the LIFE photo archive

As the caption says, "Nose of B-17 Flying Fortress bomber decorated w. cartoon character SUPERMAN, parked at US 8th Bomber Command airdrome in southern England."

Looks like a Jack Burnley swipe, but I'm not sure which issue. Anyone?

Life with Lewton

As everyone on the Interwebs has already mentioned, LIFE magazine has opened its entire photo archive as a searchable database. And here's what I found when I typed in the name "Val Lewton"...

According to the info with the photo (and there wasn't much), it was taken in September 1945 and shows "Film director Val Lewton (L) watching scenes with others in a film viewing room." Well, that's wrong right off the bat, because Lewton was a producer, not a director. (He is definitely the one on the left, though.)

I'm pretty sure that's director Mark Robson sitting next to him, and if this was September 1945, they're either watching ISLE OF THE DEAD (which opened that month) or BEDLAM (which opened the following May). Neither's my favorite Lewton/Robson film (I'd pick THE SEVENTH VICTIM in a heartbeat), but it's still a striking photo.

Finally! Part II

In the most inevitable meeting of a music critic and a piece of music in the history of man, Chuck Klosterman reviews the long (to say the least) awaited Guns N' Roses album, CHINESE DEMOCRACY.

Here's the opening paragraph:

"Reviewing Chinese Democracy is not like reviewing music. It's more like reviewing a unicorn. Should I primarily be blown away that it exists at all? Am I supposed to compare it to conventional horses? To a rhinoceros? Does its pre-existing mythology impact its actual value, or must it be examined inside a cultural vacuum, as if this creature is no more (or less) special than the remainder of the animal kingdom? I've been thinking about this record for 15 years; during that span, I've thought about this record more than I've thought about China, and maybe as much as I've thought about the principles of democracy. This is a little like when that grizzly bear finally ate Timothy Treadwell: Intellectually, he always knew it was coming. He had to. His very existence was built around that conclusion. But you still can't psychologically prepare for the bear who eats you alive, particularly if the bear wears cornrows."

Read the rest here.

Finally!

The long (long) awaited book by my fave author, James Ellroy, finally has a publication date: BLOOD'S A ROVER, the conclusion of his "Underworld USA" trilogy, will arrive in bookstores next fall.

Sure, it's a year away, but I've been waiting for this book since May of 2001, so I guess I can wait a little longer. Concluding the story begun in AMERICAN TABLOID and continued in THE COLD SIX THOUSAND, BLOOD'S A ROVER should be some piece of work. Here's what they have to say over at Sobel Weber Associates:

"There’s a horrific armored-car heist, replete with a stash of missing cash and mysterious emeralds. There’s J. Edgar Hoover and Howard Hughes moving into their psychopathic dotage. The FBI’s out to infiltrate two evil black-militant groups in L.A. The mob wants to plant lush hotel casinos in the Dominican Republic. There’s a voodoo vibe in Haiti, and, brother, it be bad gre-gre. Two rogue cops and a kid private eye are locked in a consuming fury to claim the Red Goddess Joan."

Don't let that eight-year gap between books fool you: Ellroy is no slouch. His novels are so intricate, so complexly constructed and so goddam epic they take your breath away. Ever see the movie L.A. CONFIDENTIAL? Think that was complicated? The book has plotlines and characters the movie never even hints at. His books are so dense, both in the the stories they tell and how they tell them, that for days after reading THE COLD SIX THOUSAND, my entire brain was wired to that simple-sentence structure he used for the 688-page book.

And hell, with a year or so to go before BLOOD'S A ROVER hits the stores, you've got plenty of time to plow through AMERICAN TABLOID and THE COLD SIX THOUSAND. If I were you, I'd shut off the computer and start now. You won't regret it.

Great news for us Cavs fans

From the latest edition of THE ONION...

NEW YORK—A happy, triumphant, and visibly relieved LeBron James accepted the 2009 NBA Championship trophy from commissioner David Stern at a small ceremony in New York Wednesday, just hours after the NBA announced that it would be canceling the remainder of the 2008–2009 season to give itself, and sports fans, a much-needed break.

Read the whole story here.

In praise of Acme

Any Chris Ware release is worth celebrating, but I thought ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY #19 was especially strong. Ware continues his ever-bleak exploration of the world of Rusty Brown, this time focusing on Rusty's dad, who it turns out, was a budding science fiction writer in his youth.

The first half of the book in fact, is devoted to his story "The Seeing Eye Dogs of Mars," and what's impressive is how well it works as both science fiction and autobiography one step removed. In the second half of 19, we switch to "reality" and see a slice of William "W.K." Brown's early life. It's hopelessly depressing, of course, but it's also revealing in that we see small moments and big emotions that we've already experienced, transposed into his fiction.

There's been some debate over at the always contentious Comics Journal message boards that this issue is just Ware playing the same depressing note he's played in every ACME so far, but I think that criticism is off base. Sure, Ware's comics have a consistently dark outlook, but he's such a master of the form and (and I think this gets forgotten) a compelling writer his work remains consistently fascinating. With this issue, I think he's doing something different than he's done in the past, even within the current Rusty Brown storyline. It's almost like he's tying his "lighter" work in with his heavier stuff, linking the Rocket Sam one-pagers to the modern, down-to-Earth stories. It's great, but what's even better is that I'm sure next year, the next volume of ACME will do something entirely different. After all, he's done it before.

Look at #18, for instance. It left behind the entire Rusty Brown storyline and, instead focused on the one-legged woman at the florist shop (sorry, can't remember her name). I know some fans complained hey, where's my Rusty Brown chapter, but what they missed out on was one of the best comic books I've read in years, and one that put Ware's more diagrammatic style (for lack of a better term) to use in painting a complex, complicated portrait. Arguments over what does and what doesn't constitute a graphic novel mostly focus on length (Dave Sim claiming only his gargantuan CEREBUS was a true graphic novel), but I'd argue what Ware did in issue 19 was a novel too. Sure, it was a lot shorter than the thousands of pages of CEREBUS, but it was even more dense and fulfulling.

Have we really become so jaded that we're bored with someone as talented and revelatory as Chris Ware? C'mon, people! One of the best practitioners of the form ever to pick up a pen is working right now, and he's making consistently groundbreaking comic books. Enjoy them while they last.

The eternal debate

On the one hand, an article in Slate.com cites research that says, on the whole, religious people are nicer than nonreligious people.

On the other hand, there's this...

OK, this is the last political post for a while...

... but I just couldn't resist posting this. It's a painting called "The Morning After," and it seems to perfectly capture the sheepish regret, vague embarassment and eagerness to forget a coupling that went horribly, horribly wrong.

The artist behind it is Zina Saunders, and it's from THE PARTY'S OVER, a Blurb Press-published book that visually chronicles the McCain/Palin campaign. The book has plenty of other great paintings (I especially like Sarah on the dinosaur). You can see some (and order the book) here.

Oh, those Brits...

On the one hand, they publish a genuinely inspirational front page like this one, which ties into Keith Olbermann's comment last night that what we saw was something as potentially monumental as the moon landing...


... then, on the same newspaper's Web site, we get this combination of headlines and photos. Call me crazy, but I think the staff at the Sun is having a bit of a cheeky larf. Naughty, naughty!

It's 9:24 p.m. on Election Night 2008, and I'm calling this race

As I sit here and type this, Obama has been called the winner in enough states to give him 202 electoral votes, and California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington are still either voting or haven't been called yet. Those states alone give him 284, and that's assuming he loses Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Virginia -- not a likely scenario, but one that wouldn't stop him from getting to the White House. I'm proud to say that, unlike the last time we were voting for a president, my state of Ohio tipped things in the right direction. Meaning, of course, the left direction.

It's been quite a campaign and tonight, as everyone (safely) predicted, was an historic night. I'm feeling a lot of things, but mostly I'm feeling very, very relieved.

Congratulations, President Elect Obama. Any chance you could start early?

Oh, and Gov. Palin? You can feel free to fade back into obscurity now. Thanks.

On today -- of all days -- get away from the Web for a half hour and do your civic duty

And if you won't listen to me, maybe you'll listen to famed pin-up artist Gil Elvgren...


Could be a big day. A very big day. Don't you want to be a part of it?

PS: As you might have noticed, I've spared no expense* to put a nifty widget from the site fivethirtyeight.com on this site so you can keep up with the latest (and most accurate) poll results while never leaving the self-absorbed nostalgia of X-Ray Spex. Hell, maybe I should be president!**

By the way, I don't live in California, but if you happen to, I'd urge you to cast a strong vote against Proposition 8, which seeks to ban same-sex marriages. If your marriage (or your view of marriage) is so fragile that the very idea of two men or two women getting married "weakens" it, then the problem is yours, not theirs.

Honestly, I think (and hope) that in a couple decades, we're going to look back on issues like this with the same combination of bemusement and shame that we look back on the civil rights issues of the 1960s. It's simple: If your religious beliefs prohibit this sort of thing, then don't marry someone of the same sex. But don't try and impose those beliefs on anyone else. C'mon, people. It's the 21st century. Time to stop living like it's the dark ages.

* In other words, it was free.
** No, I shouldn't

Surprisingly funny

I'm not going to vote for the guy (big surprise, I know), but I have to admit, the senator from Arizona was pretty funny on last night's SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE.

He seemed relaxed, and he seemed to be having fun. If he'd shown more of this side during the actual campaign, maybe the race would've turned out differently (he said, crossing those fingers, hoping he knows how the race is going to turn out come Tuesday). Maybe it's because McCain wasn't stuck on stage with the actual Sarah Palin, and instead shared the skit with the faux Palin -- smarter and funnier than the original.