Ahoy mates, and let the parrrrrty begin! Talk Like a Pirate Day be upon us, at long last, and folk like me get to let our inner pirate out o’ the brig. Fer those of ye what don’t talk like pirates nigh every day, today be the day to learn! Ye best not practice with yer customers or yer boss, tho—some would as soon have ye walk the plank, as it takes a bit o’ humor to get into the spirit.
…speakin’ o’ spirits, where be the rum?
I was going to write a review of last night’s Tori Amos concert at the Greek Theater, but I realized I already wrote most of it about the Concert at Royce Hall back in April.
We got tickets for this one because it was a new tour, and we figured there was a chance it would be a different type of concert. Eventually it became clear from her newsletter that it was going to be the same type of show—just her, a piano, two organs and a synthesizer—but hey, we liked the last one, and we already had the tickets!
As it turned out, it was the same type of show, but a very different selection of songs. I tried to write down everything I remembered her playing last night, and compared it to the list from the last concert, and there are only 5 songs in common, all from the new album!
Some of the interesting bits: Continue reading
You know that new site selling JMS’ Babylon 5 scripts?
Within 48 hours, fans subscribing to the announcement list filled up the database. The remark in that message is a variation on a line JMS would use when he told stories about trying to get a big enough room for B5 events at conventions: “My people are coming.” (He eventually managed to get that line into an episode of the show.) Con staff would constantly underestimate the draw for B5 panels.
I’m also reminded of a joke David Kemper made at a Farscape panel last year: “You guys probably don’t know this, but we have obsessive fans.”
‘A‘a fresh? Hmm, that makes me think of something more like this:
(Image courtesy of the US Geological Survey)
No thanks, I think I’ll stick with the mild salsa on this one.
Edit: For the benefit of out-of-state readers, the sign’s for a restaurant called Baja Fresh.
Okay, read the last two titles together: The 40 Year Old Virgin, Unwanted Woman. It seems like the second line might explain the first…
(On a side note, this is the second post with pictures from my new camera phone. The image quality is pathetic compared to the good camera—640×480 vs. 5 megapixels—but it’s a lot more convenient to carry around, and quite adequate for this type of photo. And it’s much better than the expendable camera was, especially at the end of its life.)
It’s less than a week to Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19). Dougal Campbell has a WordPress plugin to piratify yer blog.
Arrr, I be thinkin’ about it!
I think all of Warren Ellis’ crop of new series have launched at this point. I’ve picked up the first issues of Fell, Desolation Jones, and Jack Cross.
Ellis is one of a few writers whose name will get me to at least look at a new book. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don’t. His superhero stuff doesn’t appeal much to me, with the exception of Planetary, which is on my must-read list on those rare occasions that a new issue comes out. (Others include Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon, and Joe Straczynski. Heck, Joss actually managed to get me to pick up an X-Men book!)
Desolation Jones tells the story of an British ex-secret agent living in exile in Los Angeles. In fact, there’s an entire community of ex-spooks living in L.A., an open prison that the city’s normal residents don’t even know about. Jones underwent an experiment, the “desolation test,” that left him both enhanced and destroyed. Many of the people he knows underwent similar experiments. There’s a man who only needs to eat four times a year—but ends up chewing through entire herds of cattle when he does. A woman whose pheromones trigger fear and revulsion, and literally has to beg Jones to spend an hour with her just to stave off the loneliness. Despite the background, the book is more hard-boiled detective than thriller. And the characters are well-drawn, both literally and figuratively. Issue #1 had me interested enough to check out issue #2 (despite some of the less savory aspects of the story). Issue #2 had me hooked.
Jack Cross is pretty much a straight-forward thriller, with an ex-agent brought back into action, a conspiracy within government agencies, etc. I’m just barely curious enough to look at #2, but it’ll have to be really interesting to get me to keep going.
Fell just came out last week, and breaks from the other books in several ways. First, it’s designed to have a complete story in each issue. Second, it’s designed to be cheap. By telling a highly-compressed story in 16 pages, with text pages filling in the rest, it keeps the cost down below the magic $2 mark (if just barely). As for the actual content—it’s another detective story, this time about a quirky police officer with an excellent intuition, Richard Fell, who ends up in a hellhole city called Snowtown. As promised, there’s a complete story, but there are also hints of something larger. Eveyone Fell meets is disturbed in one way or another. And the book is so full of story, I didn’t even notice it was 2/3 the length of a typical comic. Definitely good enough to check out the next issue!
