Let’s see… coffee mugs, latte mugs, travel mugs… yep, that’s everything you need for college! (Found at Target earlier this week.)
Category: Entertainment
Now I want to know how I compare!
Subject found in my spam folder today:
Realistic Extra Income for the Average kelson
Really? Now I just have to know what income the average Kelson makes! More or less than the average Joe? And on what percentile do I fall? 😀
Arm Fall-Off Boy
Somehow I’d missed this one, though I’d seen people toss the name around (and assumed they were joking). But it seems that yes, the Legion of Super-Heroes did in fact once reject Arm Fall-Off Boy:
Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century #16, out next week.
Tori at Comic-Con!
I’d been trying to decide whether to pre-order Comic Book Tattoo (the graphic novel anthology based on Tori Amos songs) or pick it up at San Diego Comic-Con next month. Now I know.
Colleen Doran reports that Tori Amos will be signing the book on Saturday. Tickets for the signing — just 200 of them — will be given to people who purchase the book at the con (limited each day, so that they don’t all go on Wednesday).
She’ll also be on a panel on Saturday from 11:30–12:30. Here’s hoping DC doesn’t schedule a “What’s really happening with the Flash” panel at the same time, ’cause if they do, I’m skipping the Flash news. Someone’ll post it online. (Oh, wait…)
I am so looking forward to this…
B5 Script Series Shutting Down
I just got an email with the reminder that J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5 Script Book Series is going out of print at the end of the month. Monday, June 30 is the last day.
It’s hardly a surprise, since the series was always advertised as a limited edition.
The weird thing is that they’re also shutting down the related store, with all the quote merchandise, until August. Presumably that includes the Londo/G’Kar campaign signs as well.
Meanwhile, the companion series, Other Voices, with scripts and commentary by the other writers who worked on the show, just released the second book. (To give you an idea of just how much of B5 JMS wrote, his scripts take up 14 volumes. The others add up to just 3.) It’s been interesting to compare the different styles of commentary. Some wrote epics, some did Q&A or interview-style introductions, and David Gerrold simply wrote half a page about why he resisted writing “Believers,” and what he did when he realized exactly why they wanted him to write it.
I hate to admit it, but I’ve only just started reading the bonus volume of the original set last weekend (in between bouts of re-reading The Ringworld Throne and writing). After so many years wondering “what would have happened if Sinclair had stayed?” you’d think I’d be in a bigger hurry to find out. Okay, I was busy with the whole moving thing, and then unpacking, and then trying to catch up on a fan site, and then trying to launch a blog, and I keep getting sucked into comic forums…
I think I need to sleep more.
Comic Con = Cheapskates?
It’s long been a mystery to comic fans why the city of San Diego seems so uncomfortable with Comic-Con International. After all, with upwards of 100,000 people coming in for 4 days, renting hotel rooms, buying meals and drinks, and so on, we must be giving the city an annual boost of extra income, right?
Okay, there’s the usual love-hate relationship between any tourist destination and its clientele. Plus some people get freaked out by anyone in a costume. And sure, some attendees don’t understand basic concepts of hygiene, or bear an uncanny resemblance to the Comic Book Guy. But most of us are normal people (and shower every day). And besides, we’re bringing in all this business, right?
Well, maybe not. The New York Times writes, in an article about Hollywood’s uneasy relationship with the con, that the con is “decidedly low-rent.”
No. 33 on the official tip sheet* lists the grocery chain Ralph’s Market as an alternative to dining out. The Bio International Convention in San Diego, a gathering of the biotechnology industry, with one-sixth as many attendees, produces about double Comic-Con’s $41.5 million in economic impact on the city.
Yes, that’s right. A biotech conference brings the city 12 times as much per attendee as Comic-Con. The city puts up with 6 times the strain on their roads, public transportation, and other infrastructure, for only half the reward?
No wonder they don’t like us.
So here’s a mission for those of you going to San Diego this year: Head down to the reservations pavilion in the convention center lobby at least once, and make a reservation at a nearby restaurant. The Gaslamp District is right across the street from the convention center, so there’s plenty of good food to choose from. Be clean. Be polite. Don’t order the cheapest thing on the menu with a glass of water. Tip appropriately. Overall: make a good impression.
(via Comics Worth Reading)
*Not that I can find this “official” tip sheet anywhere. Plenty of unofficial tip sheets — heck, we wrote our own a few years ago — but no sign of an official one.
iPod on Random
Caught “Weird Al” Yankovic’s song, “She Drives Like Crazy” — appropriately enough, while on the freeway. I never used to understand why he did the funny voices in the song, until I remembered the Muppets music video of the original song (“She Drives Me Crazy”), with Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog…and suddenly the voices clicked into place.
It’s odd that the intro on the title track to “The Phantom of the Opera” (the Andrew Lloyd Webber show) sounds so much like the MIDI file I found in the mid-1990s. I don’t know if that’s a comment on the quality of my old sound card, or a comment on how many synthesizers were used in the original recording. Either way, whoever sequenced that MIDI file got the timing exactly right.