jack_babalon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jack_babalon) wrote2006-12-21 01:16 pm
jack_babalon) wrote2006-12-21 01:16 pm
Entry tags:
Cannnnn You Dig It?
In a just a couple of hours i'll be sipping Jack & Cokes somewhere over the clouds and on my way to enjoy a sucker-free two weeks on holiday! Well, that or i'll have been taken down by over enthausiastic TSA agents who've somehow mistaken my bottle of cologne for some form of home made flame thrower. I believe the TSA base it's list of items forbidden for air travel by reviewing old episodes of Macgyver.
TSA Agent 1: "Well let's see here.... the passenger has three paperclips, a stamp, a bottle of mouthwash and the latest issue of Sports Illustrated."
TSA Agent 2: "My God man... he could kill us all!"
Incidentally, i'm still wondering how it is that I can't bring a can of shaving cream on board the plane but apparently if I was to turn my cell phone on mid-flight we'd all go careening into the ocean? Really, is that right? You mean to tell me it just takes a few maniacs armed with a couple of NoKia's to take down a plane?
Just curious, that's all.
Anyway, the real reason for this post was that I wanted to do a list of some of my favorite things from 2006 ( within the realm of pop culture). "Television, movies and comics" as the old Pop Will Eat Itself song goes. So, without further ado....
Favorite Comic Book: NEXTWAVE - Agents of H.A.T.E.
Writer: Warren Ellis (aka the Ambrose Bierce of the internet)
Artist: Stuart Immonen
Let me make something perfectly clear. I like super hero comic books. I'm not one of those guys who sticks their nose up in the air spouting off about the validity of 'Sequential Art as a medium' or about the virtues of 'Graphic Novels'. Sure I dig that comic books can be a lot more than 'capes' like Maus or Love & Rockets. But for me the superhero only really comes alive within the realm of the comic book.
Now that said, I have to admit it's a pretty stupid concept in and off itself. What would happen if Gods walked the earth from the time of post depression America? Most likely they wouldn't dress up in tights and, in the words of Grant Morrison,'Act like drunken sailors with a hollywood budget'.
But so what? I like reading about guys in tights beating the crap out of each other, probably for the same reason people like watching guys in tights beating the crap out of each other on WWF:RAW. It's the same thing really only comics have much better writers.
Nextwave is pure balls out superhero nonsense that never takes itself seriously. It has consistently given me plenty of laugh out loud moments from our heroes pondering why a giant dragon monster (Fin-Fang-Foom) would wear purple underwear, to The Captain @#$ explaining how another Captian,( America that is) kicked the crap out of him, left him in a dumpster and washed his mouth out with soap when ol' wing head discovered what it was he was a Captain of, to Machine Man's open hatred of humans (or 'fleshy ones' as he calls us).
A great read and probably the best comic you aren't reading.
Runners up: The Boys.
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Darick Robertson
No one hates superheros quite like Garth Ennis.
Superman:
Writer: Grant Morrison
Artists: Frank Quitley
Forget Superman Returns this is the real deal! Beautiful stories about America's own mythological Sun God. I would've made this number one if there was more than four issues shipped this year.
Favorite Book:World War Z
Author: Max Brooks
Let's face it, zombies are the shit right now. The new hotness,'the sex' ( as the kids say on myspace). There's probably never been a better time to be a roaming flesh eating corpse. From a slew of new flicks coming out, to the armies of the dead amassing at your local video store, from comic books to Robot Chicken ... it's obvious that while there's no more room in hell... Hollywood has it's doors wide open for the walking dead.
Which can suck for the real zombie afficando.
Quantity often comes at the cost of quality. For every 'Wildzero' or 'Shaun of the Dead' there seems to be a dozen cheap imitators lacking the necessary mixture of suspense, sociological collapse, post apocalyptic survivalism and terror that define the genre.
Max Brook's book however nails each and every one of those elements in WWZ, which documents the personal accounts of survivors of the 'zombie war'. These stories chronicle the rise of the living dead and how close the human race came to extinction. What I loved is the post-Katrina interpretation of our governments own response to a Night of the Living Dead scenario, from the U.S. Army's disastrous defeat at Yonkers to how various pharmaceutical companies tried to profit on a non-exsistent cure to 'zombisism'.
A sign of a good read for me is how quickly I go through it. I actually read this in about four days due mainly to the fact that I couldn't put it down. I've lent the book out to a few friends and not a one has been disappointed.
Highly, highly recommended.
Favorite Movie: A Scanner Darkly
Director: Richard Linklater.
This little gem went mostly under the radar during the summer of the Pirate. While I do find it interesting that America found it could identify more with a Captain Sparrow than Superman says a lot about our national zeitgeist under the Bush Administration, 'A Scanner Darkly' taps the vein of a country now in year 20 in it's on going war on drugs.
Based on the Philip K Dick novel of the same name, the movie takes place 'seven years in the future' and follows Bob Archer, a drug dealer who is being narced on by ... himself!?!?. The movie stays true to the novel with a few extra twists here and there, but never losing the feel of the original story.
"Hustlers of the world. There is one mark you cannot beat. The mark inside." William Burroughs wrote almost fifty years ago and it's as true now as it will be seven years in the future.
Plus one sign of a good sci-fi movie is in how "Keanu Proof" it is.
Favorite CD: The Audience Is Listening.
Artist: CUT CHEMIST
To be honest this is the album I was hoping the new DJ Shadow would be.
Instead of a bunch of pseudo Hiffy whatever mixed in with some grandiose sound bites we get some new takes on trip-hop, hip-hop, bebop, tribal fusion, funk and surf scratched, mixed and beat matched by one of the best turntablists in the business.
From the get up and move '(My 1st) Big Break' to the sitar meets samba 'The Garden' and the laid back, twist one up, groove of 'Spoon'. This CD has been a delight from first track to last and will be the album i'll end my year on.
Favorite TV Show: Heroes
Now let me qualify this one real quick. My favorite was actually the first season of the new Dr.Who but that came out in 2005. Next up would be Battle Star Galactica and Deadwood, both of which also, came out in previous years.
But don't get me wrong Heroes fucking rocks!!!
The series has a slow build and to be honest if I just saw the first episode I would've shrugged it off as 'Ehhh'. But like any good Superhero comic, it's all in the build up. To be honest there must be something like a gazillion reviews, blogs, fansites and what not (just for the lovable time traveling 'Hiro') that anything i'm going to say here is redundant.
I look forward to picking up the first season on DVD.
Okay, if you've made it this far, thanks for reading.
My next reports will be dispatched from sunny Orlando, Fl.
Ciao for the niao dahlinks
xx00xx
TSA Agent 1: "Well let's see here.... the passenger has three paperclips, a stamp, a bottle of mouthwash and the latest issue of Sports Illustrated."
TSA Agent 2: "My God man... he could kill us all!"
Incidentally, i'm still wondering how it is that I can't bring a can of shaving cream on board the plane but apparently if I was to turn my cell phone on mid-flight we'd all go careening into the ocean? Really, is that right? You mean to tell me it just takes a few maniacs armed with a couple of NoKia's to take down a plane?
Just curious, that's all.
Anyway, the real reason for this post was that I wanted to do a list of some of my favorite things from 2006 ( within the realm of pop culture). "Television, movies and comics" as the old Pop Will Eat Itself song goes. So, without further ado....
Favorite Comic Book: NEXTWAVE - Agents of H.A.T.E.
Writer: Warren Ellis (aka the Ambrose Bierce of the internet)
Artist: Stuart Immonen
Let me make something perfectly clear. I like super hero comic books. I'm not one of those guys who sticks their nose up in the air spouting off about the validity of 'Sequential Art as a medium' or about the virtues of 'Graphic Novels'. Sure I dig that comic books can be a lot more than 'capes' like Maus or Love & Rockets. But for me the superhero only really comes alive within the realm of the comic book.
Now that said, I have to admit it's a pretty stupid concept in and off itself. What would happen if Gods walked the earth from the time of post depression America? Most likely they wouldn't dress up in tights and, in the words of Grant Morrison,'Act like drunken sailors with a hollywood budget'.
But so what? I like reading about guys in tights beating the crap out of each other, probably for the same reason people like watching guys in tights beating the crap out of each other on WWF:RAW. It's the same thing really only comics have much better writers.
Nextwave is pure balls out superhero nonsense that never takes itself seriously. It has consistently given me plenty of laugh out loud moments from our heroes pondering why a giant dragon monster (Fin-Fang-Foom) would wear purple underwear, to The Captain @#$ explaining how another Captian,( America that is) kicked the crap out of him, left him in a dumpster and washed his mouth out with soap when ol' wing head discovered what it was he was a Captain of, to Machine Man's open hatred of humans (or 'fleshy ones' as he calls us).
A great read and probably the best comic you aren't reading.
Runners up: The Boys.
Writer: Garth Ennis
Artist: Darick Robertson
No one hates superheros quite like Garth Ennis.
Superman:
Writer: Grant Morrison
Artists: Frank Quitley
Forget Superman Returns this is the real deal! Beautiful stories about America's own mythological Sun God. I would've made this number one if there was more than four issues shipped this year.
Favorite Book:World War Z
Author: Max Brooks
Let's face it, zombies are the shit right now. The new hotness,'the sex' ( as the kids say on myspace). There's probably never been a better time to be a roaming flesh eating corpse. From a slew of new flicks coming out, to the armies of the dead amassing at your local video store, from comic books to Robot Chicken ... it's obvious that while there's no more room in hell... Hollywood has it's doors wide open for the walking dead.
Which can suck for the real zombie afficando.
Quantity often comes at the cost of quality. For every 'Wildzero' or 'Shaun of the Dead' there seems to be a dozen cheap imitators lacking the necessary mixture of suspense, sociological collapse, post apocalyptic survivalism and terror that define the genre.
Max Brook's book however nails each and every one of those elements in WWZ, which documents the personal accounts of survivors of the 'zombie war'. These stories chronicle the rise of the living dead and how close the human race came to extinction. What I loved is the post-Katrina interpretation of our governments own response to a Night of the Living Dead scenario, from the U.S. Army's disastrous defeat at Yonkers to how various pharmaceutical companies tried to profit on a non-exsistent cure to 'zombisism'.
A sign of a good read for me is how quickly I go through it. I actually read this in about four days due mainly to the fact that I couldn't put it down. I've lent the book out to a few friends and not a one has been disappointed.
Highly, highly recommended.
Favorite Movie: A Scanner Darkly
Director: Richard Linklater.
This little gem went mostly under the radar during the summer of the Pirate. While I do find it interesting that America found it could identify more with a Captain Sparrow than Superman says a lot about our national zeitgeist under the Bush Administration, 'A Scanner Darkly' taps the vein of a country now in year 20 in it's on going war on drugs.
Based on the Philip K Dick novel of the same name, the movie takes place 'seven years in the future' and follows Bob Archer, a drug dealer who is being narced on by ... himself!?!?. The movie stays true to the novel with a few extra twists here and there, but never losing the feel of the original story.
"Hustlers of the world. There is one mark you cannot beat. The mark inside." William Burroughs wrote almost fifty years ago and it's as true now as it will be seven years in the future.
Plus one sign of a good sci-fi movie is in how "Keanu Proof" it is.
Favorite CD: The Audience Is Listening.
Artist: CUT CHEMIST
To be honest this is the album I was hoping the new DJ Shadow would be.
Instead of a bunch of pseudo Hiffy whatever mixed in with some grandiose sound bites we get some new takes on trip-hop, hip-hop, bebop, tribal fusion, funk and surf scratched, mixed and beat matched by one of the best turntablists in the business.
From the get up and move '(My 1st) Big Break' to the sitar meets samba 'The Garden' and the laid back, twist one up, groove of 'Spoon'. This CD has been a delight from first track to last and will be the album i'll end my year on.
Favorite TV Show: Heroes
Now let me qualify this one real quick. My favorite was actually the first season of the new Dr.Who but that came out in 2005. Next up would be Battle Star Galactica and Deadwood, both of which also, came out in previous years.
But don't get me wrong Heroes fucking rocks!!!
The series has a slow build and to be honest if I just saw the first episode I would've shrugged it off as 'Ehhh'. But like any good Superhero comic, it's all in the build up. To be honest there must be something like a gazillion reviews, blogs, fansites and what not (just for the lovable time traveling 'Hiro') that anything i'm going to say here is redundant.
I look forward to picking up the first season on DVD.
Okay, if you've made it this far, thanks for reading.
My next reports will be dispatched from sunny Orlando, Fl.
Ciao for the niao dahlinks
xx00xx
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Totally unrelated, because I know how much you appreciate that...
*chanting kid voice* I got you THE present, I got you THE present, I got you THE present...
Have fun. Be safe. Enjoy the nothinging!
Oh, and Happy Solsticing!
xxx