Hurray! Travis Mays returns to UT!

I used to think this guy was the bee's knees.

Folks trickling in from Jim D's site: I welcome you and apologize in advance.

I also apologize for all the type-o's. My mum's a teacher, and she'd be sad if she thought you believed I cannot spell.

For those of you who don't know Jim, I went to college with Jim D. This is a photograph of Jim in his swankier college days.

Superman #204 hit the stands yesterday, and I can't encourage Loyal Leaguers enough to get on board Superman with this issue.

Holy cats.

I had been very excited by the previews DC had posted on their website, but the preview doesn't actually show what's in #204. Sure, the dialogue is the same for the first two pages, but it's actually different art. It's a greater establishing shot. I'm kind of curious to know what happened and if the art will turn up again... But who cares. Superman #204 rocked my socks off in a way the other two (very nicely done) relaunches have failed to do.



Brian Azzarello is better known for his crime-fiction, and the story will be the largest "whodunit?" in comics in a long time. Indeed, while Superman was lending a hand to Kyle Rayner Green Lantern a million miles from home, something happened back on Earth. Superman returned to discover that about 1 million people were missing. Just gone. Among the missing was Lois Lane, intrepid reporter for The Daily Planet and wife to Superman.

Anyway, the story has almost no action. It's a huge prelude of things to come. But the art is phenomenal, and the writing is excellent.

You can wait 18 months for the collection to be released, or you can jump on-board now. I know what I'd do.

Speaking of Green Lanterns... Looks like Hal Jordan will officially be DC's boy in green once again. I like John Stewart, myself... But that's mostly based on only the cartoon of Justice League and a brief run called Cosmic Odyssey and a few good issues of Joe Kelley's JLA. We'll see what happens.

An old co-worker of mine was just accepted to the Cannes Film Festival...

Karen Skloss and I worked together at the Instructional Media Lab (now the FIC) at the University of Texas. She was lead editor and cinematographer on a few of our projects while I was there. I knew she had talent, but I am ashamed to now admit we got into a row or two over editing decisions. Clearly, she is now more in the right than I. Karen, wherever you are, I am sorry i wanted that pan shot cut.

Karen is an A+ kind of person, and I am thrilled to hear about her success.

Irony of ironies... Karen is not a grad student in the RTF department. She's a Fine Arts grad.

UT RTF let's one more slip away....

Further proof that we are two nations separated by a common language... just read the headline my friends.

The article is very interesting, too. Thanks to my wife for the link.

Today is the 4th Anniversary of my wedding to Jamie McBride Steans.

We got married on a lovely Friday afternoon in South Austin under the watchful eye of many of our friends and loved ones and some random friends of my parents. Jamie was amazingly lovely, and the whole thing mostly went off without a hitch.

Here's to four great years of me being the luckiest guy on earth.

Everyone wants to be naked and famous.

I got a post-card in my mail-slot at work today for some sort of drama camp being held at my employing university. It looks like it's for middle-school or high-school aged kids, and is designed to aloow them to try out their acting chops in an environment other than the annual Christmas Pageant (I, myself, am a three-time veteran narrator of the Christmas Pageant. I was not allowed to narrate anymore after I flubbed the phrase "Prince of Peace" during the horrid production of "The Christmas Alphabet". There are a lot of letters after P, and X wasn't even included, so it wasn't much of a play. But I sure saw those angry stares from the parents when I screwed up "Prince of Peace". Which made me start laughing. Which made my brother start laughing. Which made Todd start laughing. Which didn't help with the angry stares. And I thought Christmas was supposed to be merry...).

At any rate, the post card shows about five kids of varying ethnicities pulled from some pay-per-photo website. They might be singing. They might be yelling. I can't tell. I kind of don't like kids, so I didn't pay too much attention. What caught my eye was the phrase, "Where every child is a star!" Parents: That is physically impossible. Not every child is a star. The world if full of us chorus type people. And if your kid stinks, your kid stinks. furthermore, Parents: just because your kid is an obnoxious lout, doesn't make them the next Katherine Hepburn. Trust me. And, no... there's no such thing as precociousness. It's almost invariably obnoxiousness through the filter of parent's doting eyes. And then it becomes obnoxiousness which receives positive reinforcement, making it all the worse for the chorus kids.

Can little kids be good actors? Sure. I guess. And so can chimps and dogs. Even Dolphins can act, if you've seen Flipper.

But the point is, not EVERY child is going to be a star. A lot of kids will go to camp and end up way back in the chorus, or play "shopkeep #5" in an atrocious rendition of Hello, Dolly! (I am actually reminded of a former co-worker of mine who told me her 5th grade class performed MacBeth. I said "God, that must have been awful for your parents!" and she said "No, we were really good." To which I said "You were 10. Whether you knew it or not, the best you could do is memorize your lines." To which she insisted "well, we were in the gifted class." To which I said "Weren't we all. It sounds like a freaking nightmare. I pity your parents." To which she said "Well, kids at my school were probably smarter than at your school. This was in Philadelphia." Which pretty much went against everything I ever knew about Philadelphia, but I let it drop.)

Now there's nothing wrong with kids doing drama, or adults doing drama. And I don't want that confusion to play out here. But the point is: iWhere Every Child Is a Star!

Which got me thinking about Reality TV. It's fairly easy to see the connection and if you see where I'm going, stop reading now. Reality TV is the long-awaited dream of all of us untalented chorus people. It's the final resting place of the morbidly un-cast to be famous for being famous, to let dignity and due process fly to the wind. It casts off any preconceptions about skill, or working for years before getting a break, or having talent. It's your chance to fulfill the highschool popularity contest of being universally known and loved just for existing.

But, like everything else, this stardom is fleeting. Just the length of the season of the show, and then someone even nutsier comes along on a show you never heard of before. But by then you've got an agent, you've ditched your girlfriend and moved to LA to have a go at making it in the movies (which, honestly... you know jack-shit about...). You get a role in a commercial playing a pre-scripted version of yourself (who is kind of an ass, but it's hyperbole for TV, right...?) and then... VH1 calls to ask you about how bitter you are because you're not in the next Spielberg picture the way you hoped... and can they put you on camera to talk about it? Well, says you agent, it would be good for your exposure (which is limited to the local bar right now). So, yeah, go ahead. 15% of blood money is better than 15% of nothing.

And forget about the kids who go to LA and are starring in movies like "The Sopornos 18" a year or two of bad decision making after their arrival. Or the sea of people who don't happen to have fathers and mothers who can get them a job... Or the demeaning role of "chubby girl #2" or the best story they have is that it turns out Alan Thicke can be a real moody bastard on set...

We want our kids to be famous. We want them to be known and harassed and stalked and photographed and adored... screw it if their only skill is showing their teeth when they smile...

And if they do become a star, they decide you abused them and sue you for all you've got once they turn twenty-one and meet a coke-head stripper looking for a handout. Hell, if the story is horrific enough, you can get on VH1 and talk about with out without a 15% representation fee. And, hey... that makes you semi-famous, right..?