Wednesday, February 18, 2009

A whole mess of stuff

Sorry about the lack of blogging. I was back at College Station again on Tuesday. Its been a busy week already.

Steven applies himself

After several months of working on his grad school applications, he's now hit "submit" on the form. He's applied to a serious Research 1 university or two, and these days, that's a lot more than merely filling out a bubble sheet with your GPA.

Here.

The League is actually very interested in seeking graduate education himself in the next few years, and so we're watching Steven with marked interest. We've both been rejected by good graduate schools and accepted by less-good graduate programs. And actually walked away from a graduate degree a few years back when we had a moment of clarity and realized we did not want the degree nor career path we were headed towards.

We hope to once again actually feel its okay to not tempt Steven and Lauren with distraction. But it occurs to us that its now all the more pressing that we get as much Steven and Lauren time as possible fit in as we may be losing them come the fall.

Hmmm. That seems like a poor option.

Nannerpuss

I @#$%ing love Nannerpuss.



That is all.

Keeping Exotic Animals

I was going to write something kind of mean about the events in Stamford where a woman was attacked by her friend's chimp.

Maybe because I was raised with extremely mild-mannered dogs, as well as animals that were just as happy to bite me as take a meal (see: Perry the Python), and gerbils, fish, turtles and whatever... I've always appreciated dogs in particular for their easy ability to fit into a human lifestyle thanks to their deeply embedded pack mentality.

If my cat, who I know loves me (if sleeping by your head and purring loudly isn't love, I don't want to be right), but occasionally goes nuts and does something dumb, like attack my foot or whatever... what on earth makes people think that keeping a 200lb chimp around the house isn't going to eventually end in disaster? Or the story or two that comes up every year of someone with more money and machismo than brains whose tiger escapes its backyard enclosure and mauls either the owner or some unsuspecting neighbor.

Human fear and ideas about justice almost invariably lead to the animals being put down for doing what animals do. Which is always marked down as "suddenly unpredictable", when that's pretty much what most animals are. If they weren't, we'd all have pumas and pandas in our houses.

I'll never know what possesses people to feel they can or should put others at risk for what seems to be vanity or misplaced belief that they're The Beastmaster. I strongly suspect it has something to do with how far we're removed from a world in which we have a legitimate fear of being eaten by wolves and bears.

Thanks to my Dudes

I have to give a shout out to both JMD and RHPT, who always send me good stuff via e-mail. I don't often post those items, but I am publicly saluting you.

Don't ever change.

Watchmen

Countdown to "media critics" freaking out about Watchmen.

As long as we're going to exploit good comics that KIDS SHOULD NOT READ, it kind of makes me wish they'd do:

Frank Miller and Sienkiewicz's Elektra
Miller's Ronin
Morrison's Invisibles
We3 (perhaps one of my favorite comics of all time, for reasons that would be obvious once you'd read it)
Preacher (which is brilliant stuff, but I would be really upset if my mother accidentally read an issue)
Promethea

What did I miss?

15 comments:

horus kemwer said...

I am morally certain (a) that Promethea will never be made into a movie, and (b) that a movie based on We3 is already in the works.

I secretly hope Ronin stays virgin until I stumble across a couple ten million so I can make it myself.

The League said...

Horus, I know you'd do it justice.

I am skeptical of We3 making it beyond pre-production, but we will see. And,yes, Promthea would be a terrible, terrible movie. It's a product of its author and utterly of its medium. It may be a bad choice. But to a much lesser degree I felt the same way about Watchmen, and someone did that...

tachyonshuggy said...

How about Rolcats?

http://rolcats.com/

Cal's Canadian Cave of Coolness said...

Walking Dead and Scalped are definately R-rated but awesome. Wertham is turning over in his grave LIKE HE SHOULD!

The League said...

Haven't read Scalped yet. I should pick up the first trade. But I do think Walking Dead would translate better to TV than as a film, if you could develop it over a few seasons like "Lost". I think you've got more to gain from the slow unravelling than just 2 hours of a movie. Maybe?

Anyway, I now love ROLcats as much as I love Nannerpuss. Lose part of your workday to the glorious struggle of the ROLcats, won't you...?

J.S. said...

WTF?!?! Nannerpuss is total nightmare fuel!!!! Why did you do that to me?!?! I can't get it out of my brain!!!!

NTT said...

The whole situation with Travis the chimp is sad all around but it boggles my mind that people think chimpanzees are safe. Chimps are like the human id, so similar except they don't have any limitations to their emotional behavior. It's so common knowledge that male chimpanzees are dangerously aggressive when they reach maturity; they rove in mob packs, practice infanticide, hunt monkey babies. These are vicious creatures.

My list:

Sandman. The first arc is extreme dark horror; the scene in the diner is chilling.

Love and Rockets.

American Flagg -- Especially don't give this to kids(!) although it is a seminal achievement by Chaykin on the future of media and culture.

Nexus. So utterly charming until its dark heart comes out and slices your soul.

Elfquest. The elves are cute until they do things that umm, adults do.

And I could go on and on.

Michael Corley said...

I think Chris Rock said (of the tiger eating Sigfried and/or Roy), "That tiger didn't go crazy, that tiger went TIGER!"... He was crazy when he was wearing a dress and riding on a bicycle.

The League said...

Michael, you know so little of science. Bicycles and dresses are pretty standard behavior for the Indian tiger.

On NTT's list:

Sandman could easily break down to a movie per graphic novel. I cannot imagine A Season of Mists as a film.

Love and Rockets? Its kind of surprising it hasn't been adapted somehow...

Just picked up my first American Flagg ever. Haven't read it yet. But it looks like pure, boiled down Chaykin-ness.

Still waiting for affordable Nexus collections.

Elfquest was actually one of the first non-Bugs Bunny comics I ever read. I'd be curious to check them out again. I distinctly remember making a point to make sure the folks didn't know what was in the comics.

horus kemwer said...

Actually, I'd not meant that Promethea would be a bad movie (although I think it would) but that it would never be made into a movie for other reasons. If another of Moore's ABC works were to be made into a film, I'd definitely pick TOP TEN, which rocked super hard.

Quadruple votes for American Flagg which I just re-read.

Anonymous said...

What about a Weeping Gorilla movie?

The League said...

Top 10 would be very interesting, but I see it as the world's most expensive cop show on TV. Otherwise, I'd be afraid you'd lose all the character arcs, etc... Like the cosmic mouse war in the one cop's mom's apartment. But, yes, I'd love to see the world they'd have to create of reality mixed with fantasy in every single shot. And then with these very grounded characters...

But nothing would be better than a Weeping Gorilla movie. Which would be either (a) silent, last 15 seconds, and have only a single shot with a few captions, (b) be a Koyanasqatsi-esque depiction of the world with occasional images of Weeping Gorilla superimposed, or (c) a pseudo-documentary on the creator of Weeping Gorilla, the mega corporation of Weeping Gorilla, and the realization that Weeping Gorilla is real, and he is us. Well, maybe he's RHPT.

Anonymous said...

Josh and I also 'heart' nannerpuss. We sang the song for 3days after the superbowl!

The League said...

Somehow Josh + Nannerpuss = total sense

Michael Corley said...

Regarding Sandman movie, I once heard an interview with Gainman where he said he gets a new script for Sandman, The MOVIE and each is worse than the last.