Happy Halloween Eve

Not just content to be terrifyingly headless, he's also got to have a flaming Jack O' Lantern. That Headless guy really knows how to turn it up a notch.

Halloween is tough when I think upon that which I'd like to post.

I do not find vampires frightening. If decades of cartoons and cartoonish post-Lugosi Dracula imitators didn't drain the idea of blood suckers of menace, then surely the post Anne Rice world of foppish emo-boys and the Xerox of a Xerox that's sprung since then, culminating in the glittering Foley's catalog models of Twilight, emasculating the horror of Dracula while simultaneously rewriting the narrative to suggest that the eternal damnation of being one of the undead was nothing but the modern day "bit by a radioactive spider".

Frankenstein is a tragedy, not horror. The most frightening thing about "The Mummy" is how dull the original movie is after the first ten minutes. Its tough to be scared of "Creature from the Black Lagoon" when its a movie that takes place almost entirely on sunny days in a nifty looking swimming whole, and Julie Adams' production value completely distracts you from the story.

The story of the Wolfman, however, is one I find intriguing, even if the original film starring Lon Chaney Jr. isn't going to hold up terribly well (especially the FX). Like Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, the concept itself explores the horror of the beast living inside, whether we put it there, its madness, or the beast was there all along. It doesn't matter.



Similarly, if I liked Paranormal Activity, it wasn't because of fine acting, but because it reminded me of a small budget version of "The Haunting", a movie in which There Is Something Out There, And it Is Evil, and It Is Going to Keep Coming Until We Are Dead.

There's nothing comforting about either evil, disembodied spirits or restless souls of the dead.



At least not in the laughable, let's-cheer-for-the-killer manner that's made franchises out of masked psychos. In the unknowable way that led to animism when turnip-eating peasants walked down the road in the dark and told themselves that the fear could only exist if there was, in fact, something out there.

I find it sad that I have no ghost stories of my own to share, and no other-worldly experience to relate for you to read at your desk (and shouldn't you be working?) on the day before Halloween. No tale of driving off and finding that a hook was hanging from my door handle, or that Jamie and I barely dodged sure doom if we hadn't left Make Out Point that one, eerie evening.



All of the stories I know are either made up, or are real and nobody wound up laughing at old Ichabod Crane as he fled from the Headless Horseman.

Even the one ghost story we thought we had when we were kids turned out to be a raccoon that had somehow gotten into a house that was for sale.

Instead, all I can relate is how I'm traveling, as I meet people, I'm making sure they don't ever have anything to worry about ever, ever again...

Jesus, people can be cruel. If it's not my build, its my personality.

But, ah... I think I've gone on enough for one post.

Happy Halloween, every body!


I dare you not to watch to the end

Houston

You won't hear me say it often, but I love Houston. If Austin is my tried and true lady, then Houston is the girl who is going to get me into trouble. Young, more money than brains, tarted up just enough to hide the scars and disguise the fact that all the drinking and cigarettes are causing her to decay in odd ways...

And like that girl who is nothing but trouble, you kind of love her all the more for it, even if she's probably going to mean your doom one of these days.

I was happy to consider Houston as a destination when we plotted our escape from Phoenix, but I had stipulations. Not in the suburbs. Nowhere that, when the storms blew in, our house would go beneath water, and hopefully in a place that had some trees.

This town has a lot to offer, and the change from burnt-out, post-80's-era decay to a usable downtown with places to live, sports, theater, what-have-you... I can see the appeal. If not for the 90% humidity year-round.

I'm staying in a phenomenal hotel near MinuteMaid Park, The Inn at the Ballpark. I have some questions about why they have, apparently, no parking. But I'm dealing with that. Someone else is going to pay the damn valet charge.

The waitress even expressed interest in the Jack Kirby war comic reprints I was reading. "Oh, comics," she said. "It's been a long time. I used to love 'Johnny the Homicidal Maniac'." I think I beamed a little too much.

Anyway, its raining and a front is coming in, and I'm downtown, which was where I always liked Houston best (although I'm not enamored with the George R. Brown Convention Center, which is what I can see from my window).

To UofH to see Michele in the AM. And then returning to Austin.

Comics and the Promise of the iTablet

Randy sent this article along.

The basic gist of the article is that some comic geek pondered how their iTunes and other iPhone apps work, thought about the page size of a comic, added a dash of kindle, and said "hey, this could be neat for comics!"

Yes. Indeed, it could be.

I like my iPod, but I'm not a full-blooded Apple Acolyte. In fact, I've become so bored with the "I'm a PC and I'm a Mac" ads, I now dread new ones, as it means the campaign will NOT DIE. And I'm writing this post on a MacBook somebody decided I needed somewhere along the way.

Part of why I've not been quick to run out and get an iPhone (aside from the fact that everyone I know with an iPhone gets terrible coverage and refuses to believe its their network and device, and not bad juju, evil forces at work, lead-lined walls, etc...), s that, really... I'm just not that interested in working on a tiny screen.

But a tablet. Yessir... a tablet.

On a tablet, I could be reading, watching video, and reading comics. Or, if Apple played its cards right... drawing them, too. I'm just saying.

We've seen the willingness of companies like Boom! to adapt to the digital format as Simon tried out Irredeemable last month for us. My guess is that with Marvel under Disney's ownership and DC having a new boss (put in place to expand DC's reach), they'll be following Boom! to the digital format. Marvel has put some of its product online, but there are no real report about how that's going (I assume not very wel, or they'd be talking about it a lot more), as well as releasing original online content.

In any case, what is not happening is the release of current comics via an online distribution format. If I have to guess as to a "why", it would be that the Big 2 are aware that this could severely injure the comic shops that are the only place carrying their product at the moment in the periodical format (collected editions actually do quite well at bookstores, etc...).

As a reader, I'd still like access to DC's backlog of comics, and can see myself paying for collected editions online, or numbered runs on a series of older comics. Perhaps more for recent or current comics. I can also see opportunity for indie comic creators, etc... to tie into the iTunes or iPhone App format to keep readers engaged and returning.

But mostly... big, glowing comic pages sounds like a darn good idea.

Galveston

I met with some good folks here at the UT Medical Branch Moody Library today, and it was interesting to see what their ideas, concerns, etc... are.

Digital Librarianship is different from the librarianship of the past, oh, 2000 years, and one can expect that by the time your grandkids are rolling their eyes at you over the Thanksgiving Protein-Turk-o-Form, they will wonder in amazement that people used to actually have to go to a big building with lots of books in it and not just think about whatever information they want to access. Also, bellbottoms will be in again.

Galveston itself was hit incredibly hard by Hurricane Ike last year, but being less populated and coming after the Katrina/ Rita one-two punch, and the press almost morbidly more interested in the 1900 storm, I am sort of wondering about the reconstruction of Texas's once prosperous gate to the southwest. Its clear that much of the city is not recovered, and while not exactly Omega-Man in effect, there just doesn't seem to be all that many people here at all.

In fact, I had lunch at a bistro in town, and before dinner this evening, I stopped at Target to pick a few things up, and ran into one of the waitresses in the aisle, four miles from the bistro (no, she didn't recognize me, but I wasn't wearing my tie and sport coat, either). And, truthfully, the Target felt sort of deserted anyway, before I started thinking maybe I'd seen everybody who lived in Galveston.

That said, there's still history in every corner of the place, with impressive Victorian houses on Broadway and large, old brick buildings which are likely 100 years old if they're a day, left over from Galveston's heyday as a port. But there's no doubt that the place is barely a whisper of the prosperity of 110 years ago.

I've suggested to Jamie that she and I take a few days and come back this spring. In addition to the beaches, there are museums, I'd like to take her on a tour of the Moody Mansion, and I think there's a place you can hire to take you up in a B-25, but I'd need to check the price on that. Oops. Just found the price. Never mind!

But there's still an airplane museum, and I know that Jamie would like nothing more than to spend a day looking at WWII vintage craft. Yessir.

Best Pet Costume Ever

sent by Randy

Movie Trailers

Texas Coast Trip

I'm traveling this week for work, visiting some universities on the Texas coast who are members of the organization I work for. I actually really like this part of the job, if you don't include the "being away from Jamie for several days" bit.

Spent yesterday driving to Corpus Christi, today presenting at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, then driving across the Gulf Plains to Galveston by way of GPS. I'm now in Galveston, where I'll be for two days meeting with UT Medical Branch and Texas A&M Galveston. Friday, I'll be visiting Univ. of Houston, and then home.

Texas is a big place, and I love that its geography and flora change every 30 minutes when you're driving at a good clip. I'd not driven up the coast, crossing bridges over bays, driving through towns with no seeming point in existing, watching the flat of the coast turn into the East Texas swamps of Brazoria and Angleton, and back into the coastal flats outside of Galveston.

I'm hoping UT El Paso joins up so I can do that drive again (there's a lot of changes between Austin and El Paso).

But I also like getting out and seeing people where they work and live. Its great when they come to conferences, etc... but I find they're a lot more relaxed and talkative in their own offices. Its kind of nice.

Anyway, it's going to be a good couple of days, pending any technical difficulties.

I'm also reading "Moby Dick" in spurts, and listening to "Dracula" as an audio book. This is my first reading, which i decided to do to get it checked off the list and do it in time for Halloween. I'll be honest, that's a pretty scary book, thus far. I'm finally beginning to see the appeal, and why its been imitated so often. But, man, have people screwed that thing up in all the plays, movies, adaptations that we've seen.

I can say I finally understand why adapatations seem to reverse the roles of Lucy and Mina now that I'm fairly far into the book. I always found that decision baffling.

Anyhow, its great to get out and about, but I also know I wasn't exactly cut out for the Willie Loman lifestyle.