December 2009
1 post
Syndicate Consolidation
At the beginning of 2008, the Syndicate Consumption Tumblog launched as a space to comment on my media diet, what I was reading, watching, listening to, even eating. Since March 2008, Syndicate Consumption cataloged hundreds of items. However, despite linking Syndicate Consumption from Syndicate Product Covert HQ, printing the web address on promo materials and in the zine masthead, many people...
November 2009
3 posts
Changes coming: Consolidated Consumption
Look for news concerning Syndicate Consumption at the end of November…
1 tag
BOOK(s): Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and...
It made sense to read these essay collections co-currently. Chabon and Waldman are married, were recently were profiled in the NY Times Styles section, and also named one among the “annoying literary lovebirds” by Gawker. There are so many reasons I should loathe them: their charming Craftsman-style house in Berkeley, their four hip kids, their literary fame and fortune, the fact that...
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Sequential Art Month for NaBloPoMo on SPCHQ!
For the fourth consecutive year, I’ll be participating in November’s National Blog Posting Month, a blogging alternative to National Novel Writing Month. Although there is no official theme for the month, SPCHQ’s unofficial theme will be SEQUENTIAL ART, a.k.a. comics.
So, please check Syndicate Product Covert HQ for all types of nifty information!
October 2009
15 posts
1 tag
The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment ~...
For this capsule review, I’m going to utilize “Radical Honesty”, a technique Jacobs tests out for 30 days in the course of his nine “experiments”: Mr. Jacobs, I did not enjoy this book at all. You have a smug, snickering writing style that perhaps is fine for an article in Esquire magazine from time to time (from whence the bulk of this book originated), but is...
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Sequential Art: The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror...
Various Writers and Artists, published by Bongo
For this year’s annual Halloween comic issue, Matt Groening turned the work over to a slew of indie comic artists, and the results are often amusing and disturbing, but still a lot of fun. Features Jeffrey Brown, John Vermilyea, Tim Hensley, and other faves from the Fantagraphics, Picturebox, and Kramers Ergot collectives.
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Sequential Art: Strange Tales
Various Writers and Artists, published by Marvel
Strange Tales is a 3 issue mini-series featuring indie comic artists’ takes on Marvel characters. Each oversize issue contains several self-contained stories by artists such as JamesKochalka, Dash Shaw, Johnny Ryan, Jim Rugg, and Tony Millionaire. The sole multi-part story running through all issues is Peter Bagge’s “The...
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Music: POPULAR SONGS ~ YO LA TENGO
It pains me to write this, but the latest release from YLT is kinda… boring. And derivative. Derivative as in echoes of the Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B” in “When It’s Dark”, and classic Motown in the opening of “If It’s True” (although there is some nice organ playing in there as well). The three epics that close the album - “More...
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MUSIC: NOBODY CAN DANCE ~ BIG STAR
My latest Big Star bender was inspired by listening to the Sound Opinions episode exploring their classic albums #1 Record and Radio City (listen to the show here). The Big Star discography is fairly small, so this collection of studio rehearsals and a live performance is a good addition to their studio work. (Still not sure if I’m going to pick up the recently-released Keep an Eye on the...
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Music: LEAN FORWARD ~ Bottle Rockets
A fair-to-middling effort from Festus, MO’s favorite sons, more mediocre than not. The album begins strongly with “The Long Way” and “Shame on Me”, but then tries too hard to achieve a chooglin’, Allman Brothers-esque groove, and stumbles hard. The Bottle Rockets fail when they try to be timely and topical, as on “Hard Times” and the dreadful...
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BOOK: Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My...
I found the first half or so of this memoir quite compelling, especially since Sellers’ believes (as do I), that 1970 was an awesome year to be born: “But a subtler factor - and I suppose that this part applies to most Gen-X kids, not just those born in 1970 - is that we have been blessed with a prosperous shuttle run through pop-culture history. We have the good fortune of being too...
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BOOK: Shadow of the Hedgemon ~ Orson Scott Card
Sorry OSC, I tried. I really did. Ender’s Game was interesting, Ender’s Shadow was even more compelling, but this novel about what happens to the members of Ender’s Dragon Army after the bugger war was a boring, boring, read. Full disclosure: I actually gave up halfway through and tracked down a summary of the rest of the action, which actually wasn’t much more action at...
3 tags
MUSIC: Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs
World Cafe Live, Philadelphia PA, 9/9/2009
Nice evening of 60s and 70s pop covers from a supersized Sweet (still floppy haired, though) and superskinny Hoffs (still with that Valley Girl accent), drawn mostly from their two UNDER THE COVERS albums, with “Divine Intervention” and “In Your Room” mixed in for variety. The highlight of the evening was a surprise performance of...
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BOOK: Sandman Slim ~ Richard Kadrey
I was expecting to enjoy this “supernatural urban noir” novel about escapee from hell (literally) James Stark and his revenge on those who banished him there 11 years prior, as it had the William Gibson blurb of approval on the back cover. However, even with the dirty Los Angeles setting, the interesting juxtapositions of the real and the supernatural worlds existing alongside each...
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Movie: PUSH
2009, Directed by Paul McGuigan
An unfortunate muddled mess of a science fiction film, re-treading the “mutants vs. normals” yet again. The unusual Hong Kong setting and the amazingly compelling Dakota Fanning made it tolerable. Side Note to the Entertainment Powers That Be: Please do not let Dakota Fanning disintegrate into a skank. She’s got so much presence, dare I say...
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Movie: GHOST TOWN
2008, Directed by David Koepp
Poster tagline: “He sees dead people. And they annoy him.” Ricky Gervais played his character well, a droll, finicky dentist who temporarily dies during a colonoscopy, gaining the power to interact with the deceased. As a fellow introvert, I found this to be a charming little movie that deserved a bigger audience, even if it did fall into the tired...
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BOOK: I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times...
Very compelling read about a scene I knew little about: stand-up comedy in Los Angeles in the 70s, which was fairly insane. This “golden era” ended after the strike against The Comedy Store in 1979, with comedians protesting for compensated performances as opposed to the unpaid “workshop” in which they had been working for years. This book is a solid investigation of the...
3 tags
Periodical/Sequential Art: The Comics Journal #299
The main feature in TCJ #299 is an epic length, meticulously researched, and expertly written article about one of the greatest comic projects never published, The Someday Funnies, collected and curated by Michel Choquette over the span of nearly a decade. Because Choquette saved almost every document related to the project (down to phone messages, carbon copies of letters, etc.), it’s a...
Catching up.
No, I did not spend September in a media blackout, but a bit of a blog-writing blackout, hence the lack of posts for the past five or so weeks. Hoping to get caught up soon.
September 2009
0 posts
1 tag
MUSIC: UNDER THE COVERS, VOLS. 1 & 2 ~ MATTHEW...
Two collections of pop covers, more hits than misses. Sweet and Hoffs are the perfect combination for this project, and they really sound like they’re having a lot of fun doing it. Love their versions of “And Your Bird Can Sing”, “Everybody Knows this is Nowhere”, and “The Kids Are Alright” on Vol. 1; “Second Hand News”, “All the Young...
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BOOK: GEEKTASTIC ~ EDITED BY HOLLY BLACK AND CECIL...
Subtitle: Stories from the Nerd Herd
(Note: In this case, “Nerd Herd” has nothing to do with the television show Chuck.)
Fun, fantastic short story collection by a group of YA authors including MT Anderson, Garth Nix, and Scott Westerfeld. The stories are largely girl-centric tales about geeky pursuits like role playing games, science, academic bowl teams, MMORPGs, Rocky Horror, and...
August 2009
16 posts
1 tag
Book: THE BIG REWIND: A MEMOIR BROUGHT TO YOU BY...
Nathan Rabin’s memoir was constructed a bit different than what I expected, but still completely compelling. THE BIG REWIND one of my favorite reads of 2009. With so many writers (both paper and blog-based) coming from positions of privilege, with unlimited access to capital resources, it’s great to read the story of someone who came about this “writing” thing (finally...
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Movie: AMERICAN SWING
2008, Directed by Mathew Kaufman and Jon Hart
Holy fuck, dude. The 70s were strange. Like really strange.
I still have a difficult time comprehending that people (straight, gay, whatever) regularly would drop trou and just have sex with random strangers back then. For me, my adolescence hit the same time AIDS did. The idea that people regularly had sex without asking for complete previous...
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Sequential Art: Oishinbo: A la Carte
(Volumes include Japanese Cuisine; Sake; Ramen and Goyza; Fish, Sushi, and Sashimi; and the forthcoming Vegetables; Pub Food; and Rice)
Reading manga in the U.S. can be an expensive habit for multi- (and multi-multi-multi-) book series. For example, I started reading NANA but gave up around book 6; it’s now up to book 20. At $10/book, it’s not a cheap read. So, except for the...
Book: CARTWHEELS IN A SARI: A MEMOIR OF GROWING UP...
A good summary of this memoir can be found in Tamm’s recent Washington Post essay “In Cults, a Darker Side of 60s Rebellion”. This was an amazing read (and unlike many people today, I do not use the word “amazing” lightly), an account of twenty-five years of worshiping Guru Sri Chinmoy until one day Tamm just Wakes Up (after a few failed attempts). When you are born...
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BOOKS: RIPPED: HOW THE WIRED GENERATION...
While Greg Kot is one of my favorite current rock critics, his new book RIPPED: HOW THE WIRED GENERATION REVOLUTIONIZED MUSIC is mildly disappointing. Instead of examining in-depth about the mp3/file sharing/future of digital music distribution, it provides a weak overview of selected events over the past ten years. There’s discussion of the original Napster and other file sharing services,...
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Movie: DISTRICT 9
2009, Directed by Neil Blomkamp
The most intelligent political science fiction I’ve seen since the cancellation of TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES. This movie was smart, complex, and completely human under the exoskeletons. (How can you not feel awful watching alien (“prawn”) “Christopher Johnson” explain to his son that they wouldn’t be going back...
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Movie: CAPRICA
2009, Directed by Jeffrey Reiner
As Bender Bending Rodriguez would say, “Hey baby, wanna kill all humans?”
If the introductory film is any indication, CAPRICA will hopefully address many unanswered questions from BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, such as “How and when did the Cylons become sentient?” and “Where did the Cylons’ idea of “one god” come...
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Book: Penguin By Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005 ~...
The design history of Penguin paperbacks (and Pelican plus additional imprints) from the beginning, in full color with hundreds of covers spanning all eras and lines. Incredibly inspiring, even if it only includes a small percentage of everything the company has published. It’s going to be where I turn when I’m stuck for zine cover designs. (Fair warning: expect a 30s-era Penguin cover...
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BOOK: SHELF DISCOVERY ~ LIZZIE SKURNICK
Subtitle: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading: A Reading Memoir (Also features contributions from Meg Cabot (The Princess Diaries), Laura Lippman (Tess Monaghan series), Cecily von Ziegesar (Gossip Girl), and Jennifer Weiner)
Read my appreciation at SPCHQ: My (and a lot of other people’s) Back Pages
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BOOK: WHY IS MY MOTHER GETTING A TATTOO? ~ Jancee...
Subtitle: And Other Questions I Wish I Never Had To Ask
Harmless collection of personal essays from a child of a surprisingly functional family, despite how she tries to portray them. Kind of “meh” overall, proving Tolstoy’s famous opening line about fucked up families being infinitely more interesting to read about.
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TV: IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA
Yet another show I managed to miss in “real time”, but catching up on via DVD. This show is so incredibly wrong in so many ways, yet I find myself laughing at all the incorrectness. I haven’t seen such a self-absorbed group of characters on television since Seinfeld, although Dennis, Charlie, Mac, and Sweet Dee are infinitely more depraved. Plus, as a local it’s fun to try...
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TV: BONES
Yes, it’s been on for years and years, but I’ve recently just started watching the daily reruns of the show on TNT. I’ve read how some people enjoy watching the endless episodes of Law & Order on cable even if they know what happens at the end, and I finally understand the appeal, somewhat. Now, I haven’t seen many episodes of BONES before, but I take comfort in the...
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Movie: KNOWING
2009, Directed by Alex Proyas
It’s well known that I’ll follow Nicolas Cage to hell and back - he gets a lifetime pass from me. I like his enthusiasm for any character he takes on, no matter how mediocre or downright awful. He rips and chews right through both good and bad roles, even making “meh” movies somewhat enjoyable. However, even the over-emoting of Nicholas Cage...
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MOVIE: JULIE & JULIA
2009, Directed by Nora Ephron
Finally, a movie directed by Nora Ephron that didn’t make my metaphorical testicles shrivel up and take metaphorical refuge inside my body.
It was a complete joy to watch this movie, something I rarely ever say. The performances were perfect, even Amy Adams’ “Julie”, who had been described in reviews as the “weaker” half of the...
July 2009
13 posts
1 tag
Sequential Art: MOME Vol. 15
Enjoyed the continuing adventures of The World’s Least Favorite Rock Band in Gilbert Shelton & Pic’s “Last Gig in Shnagrig”, Noah Van Sciver’s historical “The True Tale of the Denver Spider-Man”, the simple pleasures of “Living Like a Pig” by Robert Goodin, and the extra mini bound into the back of the issue, Max’s “The...
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Sequential Art: RESURRECTION
Marc Guggenheim, story; Justin Greenwood, art.
There have been many stories in many media (film, print, comic, etc.) about hostile alien invasions, but few have asked the question “What happens to us, as a civilization, when they leave after many years of occupation?” RESURRECTION is not just a post-apocalyptic story, it’s also post-occupation, and it’s very compelling....
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MUSIC: NEKO CASE
Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia PA, 7/29/2009
Another awesome show from Neko & Company. Both Neko and Kelly Hogan’s voices were pitch perfect, as always. They even dressed appropriately for the this highly refined venue - a chic little black dress for Neko, and a black/white cocktail dress for Kelly. Unfortunately, most of the audience looked extremely sloppy. The...
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Sequential Art: LOST AT SEA ~ Bryan Lee O'Malley
“I guess I never have any answers. Just the same pointless question, over and over, every day: why am I so fucked up why am I so fucked up why am I so fucked up why am I so fucked up. Maybe that’s just mental. Maybe I should stop. Maybe I already have.”
What a lovely short story. And if my soul is every stolen or sold, I too hope it is placed in a cat.
(Preview here.)
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Book: STARSHIP TROOPERS ~ Robert A. Heinlein
Okay, now I understand why purists of this novel absolutely hated, hated, hated the 1997 movie version, described by a friend as “90210 in space”. It’s also understandable why it’s on the recommended reading lists for the military academies and the U.S. Navy’s Navy Reading program (an interesting list which also includes Ender’s Game). It’s incredibly...
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Movie: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
2009, Directed by David Yates
Book Six of the HP series is probably the most difficult to adapt to screen, because it is largely expository. Screenwriter Steve Kloves did an admirable job with the script, but the ending was too abrupt as opposed to the novel - it really needed about 10 or 15 more minutes for better closure (and as a lead-in for the final two films). Still, quite enjoyable and...
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TELEVISION: BETTER OFF TED
Tuesday 9PM, ABC
BETTER OFF TED is incredibly over-the-top smart, amusing, often politically incorrect, and breaks the fourth wall regularly. However, the largest shock about it is that BETTER OFF TED was actually picked up for the fall season, despite only running a handful of episodes in the spring, and burning off the remaining this summer. You can now catch some of the episodes on Hulu,...
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WatchDiscovery of the dripping Acid Goo (or, “assgoo”) at the Veridian Dynamics offices in “Better Off Ted”
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Book: THE DISCOMFORT ZONE - A PERSONAL HISTORY ~...
Brain pan cleaner after THE STRAIN. Interesting enough essays, if not just a little self-absorbed. (Although, the book is subtitled “A Personal History”, so it was to be expected.) Particularly enjoyed the essay “Two Ponies”, where Franzen writes about how Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip Peanuts affected his childhood. (He also contributed an essay to The Complete...
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Book: THE STRAIN ~ Guillermo del Toro and Chuck...
Horror is a genre that I rarely read. Just as I like smart science fiction stories that take time to develop their plot, the horror literature I’ve enjoyed has similar structure. I don’t like print splatter any more than screen splatter. What is terrifying is the horror of knowing something is wrong, but not knowing exactly what that is. It’s terrifying when that horror takes on...
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Book/Sequential Art: THE COMICS JOURNAL #298
The centerpiece in this issue is a long interview with the twin brother Brazilian comic creators, Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon. It’s interesting that neither of them is designated as the “writer” or “artist” - they both script and draw, sometimes bothcollaborating on one task. I particularly enjoyed the discussion about their self-publishing zine/minicomics history in...
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Music: FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE
Sellersville Theater, Sellersville PA, 7/3/2009
Every time I see FoW live, I fall in love with them just a little bit more, if that’s even possible.
Nice acoustic set from Fountains of Wayne (which includes blond, bespectacled hometown boy Chris Collingwood) in a small setting (200 seats). Lots of fan favorites (Radiation Vibe, Red Dragon Tattoo, Bright Future in Sales, Joe Rey, Hey Julie,...
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Music: FARM ~ Dinosaur Jr.
Read about how Dinosaur Jr.’s new album makes me wistfully grungy.
June 2009
18 posts
1 tag
Sequential Art: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic ~...
Although I read (and then immediately re-read) FUN HOME a few months ago, it’s taken me a while to post about it, not for lack of trying. Alison Bechdel’s FUN HOME is an impressively illustrated amalgam of biography (Bechtel’s father), autobiographical self-discovery, and family history, presented in shades of black and blue. This should be used in literature or art classes as a...
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Food: Trader Joe's Tortilla Chips with an Identity...
When talking about food products from Trader Joe’s, I have an annoying tic of describing everything as either: (a) fucking awesome, or (b) like crack. Occasionally a product comes along that is both (a) and (b). Tortilla Chips with an Identity Crisis - besides having a great name - are like fucking awesome crack. They’re made with corn, potato, and brown rice flour, producing a unique...