The Diary of an Uncultured Philistine

I really enjoyed this. "Escape Artist," by Zoe Keating.

Jellaby 2 is currently on sale at Amazon.com! At $4, it's a total steal. Book 2 is likely going to drop out of print soon, so if you haven't already picked up a copy, I'd suggest you do so sooner rather than later.

"Sparrow Songs is a project in which filmmaker Alex Jablonski and cinematographer Michael Totten make and exhibit one short documentary per month, every month for one year."



I wanted to share this, and as usual, Twitter was frustrating me because I couldn't elaborate on how this made me feel. In addition to being beautifully shot and often veering into territory I never quite expect, this first episode surprised me, mostly because it seemed to be using the subject matter to talk more about these two people finding love and happiness together. I really liked that.

Some things I didn't think [spoilers of various things ahead]:

1.) I didn't think Deadwood had the capacity to shock me any further midway into its third season, but it did. Specifically, Dan's fight in the thoroughfare. That shit was crazy. Really enjoying the third season after a bit of a slump in the second. Having a clearly defined villain is really helping to keep things snappy.

2.) I didn't think Pluto would end as abruptly as it did. Some of the plot points and final character motivations seemed to be plucked out of thin air (BRAU 1589, anyone?). I suppose it also had to do with the fact that the emotional climax(es) all happens more or less before the final chapters, which is why I felt a little unsatisfied by the ending. Maybe it would make more sense for me to sit down and reread the entire run from start to finish, though. At any rate, complaining about the ending given how good everything was that came before it is kind of pointless (it's the same way with me and trying to argue how Miyazaki's movies don't really end very well either).

3.) I didn't think Don't Go Where I Can't Follow's ending could still affect me like it does. I'm not someone that ever gets emotional reading prose or comics -- I can acknowledge when something is supposed to be sad or whatever, but I never actually feel it when I'm reading (the opposite is true for me in the case of movies; when am I NOT a wibbling mess?), but Don't Go might be the only exception. That ending gets me every single time.

I know everyone on Twitter has probably seen this already, but I wanted to post this more for myself because I enjoyed it so damned much. A short film by Ramin Bahrani, voiced by Werner Herzog and music by Kjartan Sveinsson, he of Sigur Ros. I've been slowly making my way through Bahrani's films in the new year, and the one thing I truly love are the people in it. Never once do they feel like 'characters' that have been written by someone else. The guy is really, really good.

Happy Chinese New Year, ladies and dudes.

Something I'm working on that could arguably be related to Valentine's Day:



And after I posted that, I was reminded of this, courtesy of one Mr. Zdarsky:

( Perhaps you should shield the little one's eyes.Collapse )

This is pretty neat. A compilation of the trains and automobiles from Yasujiro Ozu's films (although surprisingly not from all of his films).



I had a bunch of documentaries about Ozu running in the background while I worked today. Fascinating stuff, and surprising to see how well loved he was by the people that worked with him (seeing his long-time cameraman break into tears talking about their friendship was surprisingly moving). One of the many things I would love to do would be to dig much deeper into Ozu's movies.

Oh man, what a great week for comics right now. First off:

Raina's SMILE is out now. Everyone needs to go pick up a copy. It is super special. Seriously.

Jen's comic actually exists in physical form. OMG so excited. I have a great story about the first time I ever read a draft of it, but I am saving that for when the book get its proper release.

Jake just finished inking Missile Mouse 2! The first book just came out, and it is super awesome too.

Hourly comics! So much new things to read, by some of my favourite cartoonists! Some faves so far, as of two days ago (and I know I'm missing a lot since then), in handy list form:

- John A.
- John C.
- Dharbin
- Ben H.
- Lucy K.
- Raina T.
- Tony C.
- Katie B.

It has been a GREAT week for comics. That is all.

- Hope Larson's Salamander Dream now available on the Kindle!

- The Torontoist interviews me

- And where my head is at today: I want to write a realistic, gritty "re-imagining" of Star Trek, where all the technology is supplied by Apple, all the uniforms are black turtlenecks, and the reason why there's no money in this universe is because the Internet eventually dropped the value of everything to zero, so everybody just thought "why even bother with money?"

Just sticking my head back in here to thank everyone for their kind words and support. And to share this totally awesome pinup that Tony Cliff did a while back, for a Jellaby project that sort of died on its feet (although it may still have legs, if I were to mix my metaphors). Looks best embiggened.



And dang. New Spoon album. So good.