A QUICK ARNIM ZOLA

A quick Arnim Zola while I work on a double page spread for Kaiju Jugoruma. Click it for the look!

EMAW 10 PAGE 31

I'm on fire, baby! I'm turning hot pants into cinder pants! Another day, another page.




I've had this thumbnailed out for a while, done as part of my long-awaited return to the Hard Grove. I walked in, and my ladies were all, "Business is about to pick up!" Then I went to town. And once the allergy attack from hells ditch passed, I went in and took names all out of bubblegum with thumbs!

Most likely, no page tomorrow, but I should have page 33 behind me by Saturday afternoon. Fingers at the cross. Station to station.

EMAW 10 PAGE 30

Another page that won't be as described. I imagine this will actually be page 27 or something. But it's the 30th done.

My all-too-common slothfulness and the worst (hopefully) allergy attack of my years took me ridiculously out of action this week. Jack was thankful.





In pop culture, the new Gnarls Barkley is ok. It's actually very ok, but it lacks that hook the first one had. I was really hoping for hits wazoo, and they gave us take it it's done. Which is fine. Pleasant enough.

New Portishead song? Machine Gun? Terrible. Terrible. Awful. Horrible. Lousy. So disappointing.

New Atlas Sound? So far, I'd say it was less arbitrary than Deerhunter's Cryptograms, but not nearly as great as Fluorescent Grey. Falls between.

Children of Men. If you look past the magic problem solved through magic (which is really only a problem in the final scene), this was awesome. Not better than Y tu Mama Tambien, but maybe more explicit in telling a different movie in the background from the one in the foreground.

Slings and Arrows. The West Wing of Canadian Shakespeare Festival tv shows. Full of passionately explicating subtext, something I'm a sucker for. Made me want to get my Shakespeare on again.

Obama speech. Speaking of West Wing, Marcos emailed Kenny and I and said, "I think Leo just handed Obama a napkin." Possibly the best political speech of my lifetime.

Jeff Noon's Vurt. Psychadelipunk? Whatever. Future virtual reality drugs, Brave New Worlds, British club scenesters, incest. Nice, light sci-fi.

EMAW 10 PAGE 29

This is the 29th page of EMAW 10, but it's probably page 25 (or somewhere around there, I'll figure it out). This page also featured a conflict of cartooning between drawing what would work "best" vs. drawing something that would try something different. That thing didn't work so well. So, I tried to modify it. Now I need to let it sit there for a bit.

EMAW 10 PAGE 28

I'm gonna try to get this up before all the bloggers start talking about Pennsylvania.

Ok. I thought I had 30 pages done. I don't know what I based this number on, but I based it. For free. Either way, it's the 12th page in my 100 Pages in 143 Days challenge. Not that impressive, I know.





Listening to Nine Inch Nails Ghosts I-IV.

Click the link to check out this crazy project (whether you care about NIN or not). 9 songs and a 40-page pdf for free. Buy 36 tracks and a pdf for $5. $10 is the download and 2 cds. $75 is two cds, a multitrack audio dvd (all creative commonsed for your interactivity), a bluray dvd AND the free download. $300 was the fabric slip-cased, signed and numbered, four lp, 4 book, + everything else above, limited-edition set.

The $300 dollar set has sold out of its 2500 print run. In one day. Do some quick math on that.

So, how is it? It's pretty good. Honestly, I've wanted Reznor to put out instrumentally for a long time. It protects us from the words, the words that sometimes make us feel sad at Reznor. Words like "Starfuckers, Incorporated." Words like "Flyentology." Words like whatever he said on his last two albums.

It's not the follow up to The Downward Spiral that never happened. It's not the mythical jungle album that was supposedly being made after A Perfect Drug when Reznor discovered Halo. It's more like a tribute to the electronic producers of the late nineties and late seventies: Aphex Twin, Brian Eno, Autechre, The Orb, Trent Reznor, Alan Moulder, Flood, King Crimson.

It's laid back, if not entirely ambient. It's more listenable than background music. It drifts in and out of having recognizable NIN sounds and things that you could never pinpoint as Reznor. 18 Ghosts II is playing right now, and if you asked me, I'd say it was peak-period Orb, maybe playing with some NIN guitar effects from a Downward Spiral track that more closely resembled Bowie's Low.

Then 19 Ghosts III kicks in with a much more familiar industrial sound (like from Closer) but more subdued.

I will definitely have to listen to this a few more times.

TWENTY FOUR MORE HOURS?

I wonder what I can produce in the next 24 hours. These four second drafts are all complete. I might add a couple pages at the end (Action Thing now clocking 11). And I've got thumbs for three regular pages of things to do.

Let's start the clock at 3PM and see where we get.