Ontology Next One

Happy Birthday Terry Gilliam, Roy Thomas, Marjane Satrapi, and mmmmmmmm Scarlett Johansson!!!

I love shouting out birthdays, especially for people I admire. In honor of these four people I will be listening to Scarlett Johansson's debut album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, watching Brazil, and hunting down: 1) an english scanlation of Persepolis 2) all four parts of Roy Thomas & Gil Kane's Ring of the Nibelung. I have a feeling these last two tasks will be something of a biting off more than chewing--which I have been doing a lot of lately.

Hyacinth and Pompeii are on the backburner now while I try to reinvest some time in the pen and paper arts. Not to mention the "dead tree" books I have in my grasp: Where I'm Calling From and The Comedians. Also not to mention the three other audio books I picked up: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris, History of the Millenium by Dave Barry, and Animal Farm by George Orwell. In addition, not to mention Gary Spencer Millidge's Comic Book Design, and movies: The Strangers, Time Bandits, Vengeance is Mine, etc.

I have, however, recently found the time to watch The Fourth Kind (BLECHHH), and simultaneously read Jojo's Bizarre Adventures and Fist of the Northstar manga scanlations alternately with watching JBA prequel OVA's and Fist of the Northstar TV anime. Its quite an enlightening juxtaposition. Comparatively the Northstar manga is drawn so much more conservatively, with beautiful execution of figure rendering, narrative form, and layout, while the Jojo manga struggles for consistency while occasionally hitting a definitively shocking turn of brilliance. By large, however, the Jojo manga is uintentionally hilarious, probably in part to the translations. It is ironic to me that the Northstar tv anime and movie ended up so ridiculously overexaggerated, while the Jojo ova's ended up tightening up the imagery and plot. I have yet to reach the 3rd generation arc, so I'm not really sure if the manga improves.

Man, and I usually avoid manga like I avoid kids with glow sticks in ther mouths.

I am scaling back my twitter obsession. The tangents I come upon following everybody's links is dizzying. I'm feeling way past my center here, if you hadn't noticed. So what's your Sunday looking like? Me? I'm going to steal some sleep, get up and have some coffee, and possibly take a long walk full of meditation and ontological discovery. That's the plan at least. Take it easy y'all.