Take a Long Walk

San Diego Comic Con came and went. Unfortunately I didn't. Le sigh. I don't know what has been happening to me over the last couple of years that I hopelessly complicate short term plans. Right now I feel like a plane kept in the hangar too long, with nothing to show for flight time, just a couple of false starts. Things need to change for me.

Well aside from all the doom and gloom of missing one of my favorite weekends of the year, this just in more doom and gloom. Apparently Amy Winehouse decided to off herself rockstar style the same weekend some homicidal maniac goes on a rampage in Oslo. It is truly hard to wrap my mind around the true significance of a life suddenly being obliterated---all the unsaid goodbyes, the diaries left in cliffhangers, the routine hellos, comings and goings, erased. It's not enough to say a murder, a suicide, or even death is senseless. For the living death is the threshold of our most profound virginity. My most heartfelt best wishes go the survivors of these and other tragedies.

Okay so this weekend, instead of unplugging and taking a break out in the sun I swam through a bunch of old X-Men comics, and dug my feet in the dirt with Homestuck. I also flew through the entire Flight game, caught up with Octopus Pie, Vattu, and Bad Machinery, and beat Final Fight and Mazinger Z. I know, it kind of sounds productive. But it's not.

I spent a good long time pacing my apartment, realizing that all my life I've taken long walks to clear my mind, and how rare these days I make time for that. So I think I'm going to have to dedicate this next week to taking long walks, whenever I can get them in.

Before I forget Happy Birthday Emmy Cicierega and Natalie Tran. What a pair of angels those two. Okay, Monday approacheth. See you soon.

I'm not picking favorites, but . . .

you should know I've always had a thing against picking out favorites of anything. I think it has something to do with wanting to be diplomatic, unbiased, or fair. And maybe on an aesthetic level its more about enjoying variety, and finding the appreciation of a thing--or sets of things or all things--inexhaustible. But as infinite and temporary as favorites can be, there is a use in naming them--as much as there is a use for stating anything of a subjective nature that might change at any given moment. For now, I give you a list of favorites in no particular order:

1. Favorite Wild on E! host: Jules Asner, whom I just discovered is married to one of my favorite film makers, Steven Soderbergh. Jules, to me is the cuter version of Sandra Bullock, possesor of the girl-next-door charm, and I believe she was married to Ed Asner's kid. And everbody knows Ed Asner is socks! Her replacement, Brooke Burke has been known to steam up television sets the world over, and I congratulate Brooke on the great precedence she set for the show--but I could never forget the original flavor of Wild On.

2. Favorite Talk Soup host: I liked Hal, and the other long faced guy. But Aisha Tyler sold Talk Soup to me. All three hosts smiled suggestively at their own jokes, but Aisha was the only one who made me want to giggle like a school girl. Or maybe its just that I wanted to jump her bones at the same time.

3. Favorite way to spend a sunny afternoon: taking a nap in the breeze with my main squeeze

4. Favorite dessert: crumb cake with a scoop of jamoaca almond fudge ( I just thought this up right now)

5. Favorite squinty eyed, older white guy actor: Ed Asner. Jonathan Winters and Dom DeLuise were very close behind, but Edward Asner is such a great humanitarian as well as the voice of several of my favorite cartoon supporting characters like Roland Daggett from Batman: TAS and Cosgrove from Freakazoid. How can you front on that?

6. Favorite column from Wizard Magazine in the 90's: Palmer's Picks, but it's obvious that Letters to the Editor was a crowd-pleasing close second-place. Stab your eyes Pat McCallum you were just that funny.

7. Favorite aspect of Hero Illustrated (also in the 90's): The way the reviews were written you got the sense that these people really liked doing what they did--reading comics and getting the word out to the rest of us. Because of that I haven't been able to get Grisnoir: Julien Boisvert out of my head.

8. Favorite nostalgic 80's kids movie: Flight of the Navigator. I don't even know why right now. There's just something buried in my subconscious about how awesome that movie was. Or am I mixing it up with Mac and Me? Doh!

9. Favorite wikipedia like topical website: Television Tropes With entries like kick the dog and this outstanding pictorial example of talking is a free action, it boggles me why it doesn't make the rounds like urbandictionary or failblog.

10. Favorite Youtube celebrity: Community Channel, aka Natalie "Nat" Tyler Tran who for some reason is the only one I've watched more than 10 videos of. Sorry Happyslip I sort o' trailed off with you. David Choi and Kina Granis are doing good things, and a bunch more.

11. Favorite matching ensemble: A Corona t-shirt with matching boxers that I bought at Mervyn's some time ago. If you see me wearing these it means it's business time.

12. Favorite Nintendo game: T&C Surf Designs. This game was so fun to me for some reason despite being repetitive, grossly underchallenging, and full of absurdity. Time for me to load up FireNes and get a round in before I go to bed.

13. Favorite thing about today's Sunday Afternoon Noodle: It's 8:35pm and I'm still typing, despite having begun this on Tuesday of the past week. Definitely most procrastinated post.

14. Favorite highschool required reading book: Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Anne Burns. Grandpa Blakeslee made that book fun as hell. Plus he got himself some young woman lovin'. You go grampa.

15. Favorite episode of Cheers: the one where Sam was trying to figure out what song made Rebecca weak in the knees. Man I miss that show.

I watched Gran Torino and Without a Paddle this weekend. Those two movies have something in common, but I'm not telling. Ask me later. I'm hoping to squeeze in Time Bandits. I haven't drawn or tinkered in GIMP in a while. I'm hoping to soon. Also welcome back Alan Tew. Lines and Colors is a blog I just discovered, interestingly enough maintained by Charley Parker, the creator behind the first made for the web comic, Argon Zark!

And then there were 12, or was it 13?

The Ides of March, the auspicious day of Cesar's assassination, just 2 days before St. Patrick dies having expelled the snakes and paganism from Ireland. This is the twelfth Sunday of SAN's existence, and the 13th successive post.

Woo Hoo!

So I tried to watch Kite Runner, but my stream failed. Instead I caught up on Community Channel. Also a few weeks ago while watching Persepolis, somebody asked me about Communism--so in following up I decided to research the rise of Communism beginning with Lenin in Russia, which inevitably led to a tangent on Stalin, and then backward toward the Romanov dynasty, and lastly the Bolshevik Revolution. I've decided Communism is a lot like how Churchill described Russia's actions in October 1939: a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.

So here's other stuff in my cue: Time Bandits (1981), Caravaggio (1986), The History Channel's: Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked (2003). I'm reading: Charles Burns' Blackhole, Zot Book 1 (still), Anton Chekhov Stories (trans. by Pevear and Volokhonsky), Raymond Carver's Where I'm Calling From. And I just discovered Sinfest and Family Man (thanks to Kate Beaton). Other notables I haven't yet mentioned are: Hereville, The Adventure Book, Patches, and Daisy Owl.

I'd like to reinject some of the fun ideas back into SAN (not even optioned, the ramenu, and some of my doodles/cartoons) but my time has been short lately. So I'm still not even sure what a Sunday Afternoon Noodle should/could/might look like. For now, this is what I've got, and if ya want more, ya gotta ask for it! Does anybody hear me? Ha ha. Okay, I'm going to do my laundry. Leave a comment if anything hits you over the head. Peace-tro.


So Today's Video Hash is in honor of marching to the beat of a different drummer . . . .