I noticed this SUV as I got on the freeway after work. We apparently kept pace with each other, because it was there on the off-ramp as well. It was then that I noticed something red on the back:
Yes, a plush Flash doll was jammed into the trailer hitch!
Here’s a photoblog flashback. This picture was taken in 1999, so I assume the project has long since been completed:
Something about the combination of “Hazard” and “Cannon Road” seemed…apropos. And somewhat ironic when considered in light of construction.
(I did find one Hazard Construction Company on Google. I assume this is them, since they’re based in the right county.)
A caption I always wanted to write. From “Crackers Don’t Matter,” one of Farscape’s more comedic episodes.
I’ve only seen these signs in Irvine. I suspect that says something about them:
Perhaps an important warning to drivers, but it’s not a well-designed road sign. There’s too much detail, for starters—detail you’re not going to see clearly zooming by at 35 M.P.H. Compare to the stick figures of the standard school crossing sign, or even to the bunny crossing sign.
More importantly, the cues chosen to identify senior citizens are temporary, in the sense that they’ll look dated not too long from now. Why a hat, for instance? Continue reading
A sign spotted in a parking garage the other day:
Next step: prove black is white—but be very careful at the next zebra crossing.
Everything you know is wrong!
Black is white, up is down
And short is long…
A while back I remarked that the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade died in part because the Sci-Fi channel had already committed to Farscape.
I was thinking about VR.5 recently. Had it survived into a second or third season, Anthony Stewart Head might not have been available for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Can you imagine anyone else as Giles? Of course, given the nature of the show (they killed off a regular about five episodes in, and pulled an “everything you know is wrong” moment near the end of the season), it’s entirely possible that Oliver wouldn’t have made it through season 2 anyway, and he still would have gotten the role as Giles.
![[Cover]](https://journal.kvibber.com/wp-content/uploads/2005/03/neverwhere11.jpg)
Also in comics news, the nine-part adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere begins in June.
The basic premise is this: In urban areas, we tend to tune out the homeless to the point where we don’t even see them. What if we really don’t see them? What if there’s another world, just slightly out of sync with this one, where the rules are all different. (JMS used a similar springboard for Midnight Nation, but took it in a completely different direction.) There’s poverty, and scavenging… but there’s also magic, and honor, and a society with its own strange codes. The story follows everyman Richard Mayhew as, through a simple act of kindness, he slips through the cracks from London Above to London Below. In order to get back, he has to help a mysterious girl named Door on her quest to find her family’s killers and honor their legacy…and escape the assassins tracking them both!
It’s hard to guess how well this will work. Neil Gaiman’s comics and prose are both fantastic (in every sense of the word). Comic book adaptations of his prose, though, haven’t been nearly as good. The writers have a tendency to preserve too much of the text, and it gets bogged down in narration. It happened with “Murder Mysteries,” with “Only the End of the World Again”, and with “The Price.”
Neverwhere has two advantages, though. It started life as a TV script (he only wrote the novel because he realized that budget limitations and producer interference would prevent them from doing the story “right”), and TV, like comics, is a visual medium. And with nine issues, there should be plenty of room to show, not tell, the story.
