Archive for April, 2007

4 items.

Someone get me “Chicken Soup for the Balls”

April 24th, 2007 | by Thacher Cleveland
Posted In: General

I got my first request for a partial yesterday. Translation: an agent wanted to see more past my initial query letter. At least, I hope it’s that and not “I don’t look at anything without the first three chapters.” It’s hard to tell, as it was a form letter. Fingers are crossed, hopes are not too high. I hope.

We made an internet commercial for Free Comic Book Day at the ‘Star. It goes a little something like this:

Free Comic Book Day The Movie Courtesy of Dark Star Books

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I also designed a *tight* zombie T-shirt that we’re going to start selling on Free Comic Book Day. Some days, my job is just too much fun. We’re on the verge of doing some sort of podcasting show about comics and stuff, but it’s just a matter of getting the whole thing buckled down, which probably won’t happen until after FCBD.
I’m working on another comic script, although given the state of the first three chapters, I may go back and do some more editing on “Shadow of the Past.” Depressing, but every little bit helps. Even after all this time though, I’m so done with the thing. I kinda can’t stand looking at it or reading it or thinking about it, but I still want to make it the best book it can be.Again I find myself in the trap of looking at comic scripts and ideas and being *so* in to them, but having no way to make them because I have no artist. I do have a 12-page preview script ready for one of those projects, so I think it may be time to put up another ad on Digital Webbing M and see who bites.I’m so glad “Heroes” is back. It’s so, so good. So good that Marvel and DC should be ashamed *ashamed* of themselves that with 50 years of properties they couldn’t come close to something this good when it comes to fiction about people with super-powers. It’s just straight-up great story telling, with lots of neat twists and turns and no fear that they have to save a big mystery for some other time. They give you something to chew on *now.* That person? Oh yeah, they’ve got powers, and they’re willing to sit down and go “Yeah, this is what’s been going on,” or “So things used to be this way, but now they’re different, and I and want to change them because of this.” Unlike “Lost,” which I still love so dearly, but the mystery is played *so* close to the vest that eventually you get tired of trying to figure out. Even when someone is faced with people that can provide answers, they don’t ask them, or those people give some “I can’t talk about it” response. I have a feeling we’re going to see a very different “Lost” next season, especially given how much of what they did this season is different than what they actually had planned.Watched “Drive” last week. We watched our DVR’d 2-hour premiere last Monday and afterwards realized that they had been playing the next episode while we were watching the recorded one, and I hadn’t set the DVR to record all yet. I was mad, but this weeks episode still gave us enough back story and catch-up to still follow along. I still mourn the first season of “24″ which I never got around to finishing because I missed an episode halfway through, and I always worry that something like that will happen with some new show I want to watch. I’m obsessive, I can’t miss an episode and I hate watching things out of order.

“Drive” is just pure fun, though. A fresh premise, a mystery that will surely have resolution along the way, plots that are fun escapism, not sad drama why me escapism. Plus, it’s got Nathan Fillion, who I think is just a great actor and who Kenzie thinks is the hottest guy since…well, since me. He’s not as funny as he was on Firefly, but he’s still got that big balls swagger that exudes leading man.

Y’know, just like me.

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Your cat has no tail/soul

April 16th, 2007 | by Thacher Cleveland
Posted In: General

I’ve been told by Matt, webmaster supreme (with extra supreme), that the site is going to be moved to a new server, and we’ll be updating to the new version of WordPress. If there’s any big problems, that’s why. Given his expert stewardship, I don’t really have any worries.

So we got another new cat this weekend, as one of Kenzie’s friends needed a home for her cat, Fiver. The cute thing about Fiver is that she has no tail. Just straight up born without one. The bad thing is that wow, she’s angry. She was never like that for Nancy, apparently, so I’m sure it’s just adjusting to a new place and new people, as well as new cats. From the get go she holed up in Allie’s room, under the bed, Waco-style, hissing and spitting. She sent out the list of demands you’d expect, a helicopter waiting at the airport, a million in untraceable bearer bonds and release for her fellow comrades in arms. We sent a little toy cat under the bed to negotiate, but it was decapitated in seconds.

We ended up pulling the bed out from the wall and dropping a blanket on her so we could transport her to a cage, but in the process I ended up getting a claw *up my nostril.* I don’t know how it happened, but one minute I’m reaching down and the next I’ve got a claw in my septum. On the inside. It didn’t bleed that much, but wow, that’s a wake-up call.

We put her in the living room in a big cage so she could get used to us just being around, but all evening it was just straight growling with every breath, and a big hiss whenever one of the other cats walked by. Finally, we put her in the second bathroom off our bedroom so she could cool down, which she did, in the sink no less. Saturday night we left her in there, last night we let her roam around the bedroom while we slept. I half-expected to wake up blind and with my hamstrings cut, like I was in cat Hostel or something.

All carrying on aside, she has chilled the fuck out in the past 48 hours. A little while I ago I went in there and she let me pet her, with purring action. She still gets hissy when she hears Hollywood through the bedroom door, so she’s not ready for gen-pop just yet. Hollywood, of course, being young and dumb, wants to play with her. Delilah has actually come out of hiding and is spending actual time with us. I think it may be in a “hey, I may be a recluse but I’m not crazy” kind of gesture. Things may get more or less interesting on Thursday, as that’s when Hollywood has his balls removed. Maybe ti will chill the girls out to have him not racing around everywhere and trying to play/have his way with them.

I’m amused by the fact that we’re now the kind of people that are outnumbered by pets, and I’m the kind of person who writes about them.

Kenzie and I went to go see Grindhouse on Friday, and that is just a great set of films. Almost everyone at work thinks that Planet Terror was better than Death Proof, but they are just apples and oranges. PT is just balls out action and craziness, but DP (heh) is a better movie, I think, because it pulls such a great storytelling twist in the middle, something i didn’t even think was possible. Effortlessly, Tarantino puts you in one kind of movie, where you’re rooting for one side and then SHAZAM, it’s a new movie, new rules. On paper, I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. A lot of folks complain that it’s too long and there’s too much talking, but I think without the long dialog scenes you wouldn’t transition from one idea to the next. Like a conversation snake charmer, he weaves his words around you until you don’t realize your perceptions about the movie have changed like night and day.

Sopranos is back. The “season premiere” (I hesitate because 9 episodes do not a season make) was terrific, reestablishing our old friends with an acknowledgment of the large passage of time, letting these characters live and breathe, instead of just being in limbo. It’s the kind of thing I liked about the breaks in Buffy and Angel, and sort of find frustrating in Lost (I remember the episode where Sawyer couldn’t use nicknames for a week and Kenzie said “That’ll probably be the rest of the season.” Apparently so.) I love that this final arc of Sopranos is about getting old and changing of the guard, something that any long lived show has to adjust to.

Lost is getting better each week, although its interesting to read in Entertainment Weekly how much scrambling they’ve had to do this season in an attempt to save face. While the first set of episodes were pretty rocky, we’ve been doing a lot better this time around. I still would like to see more “what the hell is going on” being asked.

“Drive” is in the DVR. We’ll hopefully be watching it tonight. We’ve pretty much given up on “Idol,” but we may start watching “The Riches” shortly.

For the curious, I finally put something in the “About” page, located in the tab above here. Click on it for the fascinating story of my life.

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My so-called computer

April 5th, 2007 | by Thacher Cleveland
Posted In: General

So I put it to the grindstone and I think I finally fixed all the computer issues we’ve been having. With the new graphics card things were running smoother and looking prettier, but it was crashing a bunch more. Thinking it was a heat issue, I did some poking around and ended up installing a program that displays the temperature from the computers internal sensors, raising the CPU up so it has more airflow, removing the case so it can breathe better, and taking the second fan that was mounted on the side of the case and suspending it in so it’s blowing on the motherboard. It seems weird that I’d have to go to such extreme measures for a computer that isn’t super powerful, but they are delicate geniuses. The result, it is not pretty.

Boston Legal was back this week, and it was pretty good. Standard kind of plot, but the clips of Shatner from “The Defender” were used really well. Maybe it was just the sentimental trickery, but the result was pleasing, and shone some light on Shatner’s character, which often just gets lumped into the “he’s lovably crazy” category. I’m glad that, unlike the Practice, they’ve steered away from over-the-top life and death seriousness. It worked with the nun-killer story, but after that everyone at the firm got arrested for murder at some point, or was about to die, and it was built up so much that you thought they were SWAT operatives or something. Thus far, BL has steered away from that kind of hooey. The closest they ever came was the midget guy/Betty White series of stories. Well, there was the “Lincoln holds Shirley hostage” episode…hmmmm. I guess I’ll just say that they’re skating on thin ice, so they better watch out lest they end up at the bottom of the lake with Picket Fences, Practice and Boston Public.

If you like Buffy and you haven’t been reading the Buffy comic…shame, shame, shame. It’s incredibly good. And if you love Whedon, and you don’t read his first issue of Runaways, also out this week (with Buffy #2), then double shame. It’s better than his X-men, and way more like a Whedon-style story than his X-Men ones. Top marks, people. Top marks. Not much else supergreat this week in comics. Avengers: The Intiative is a better comic than a superfluous Avengers title should be, and Scalped continues to be consistently good. Omega Flight #1 was good, but it suffers from that whole “Is the first issue of this team’s book, but the team doesn’t even show up because we need to stretch the story out more for *drama* rather than have all the folks we announced were going to be in it, much less have on the cover, actually be in the book, they show up issue #3-ish” thing that just drives me nuts in first issues. We already know the premise before we even buy the book, give me that *plus* something new in the first issue or I’m bored. There’s too many good comics being made today for one to survive with a boring first issue.

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PCI-whatnow?

April 1st, 2007 | by Thacher Cleveland
Posted In: General

I can’t help it, but I find this news story extremely funny. Oh, schadenfreude, my old friend.

Kenzie and I had a day out, mostly engaging in capitalistic practices. We came very closet o buying a whole new computer, but decided that we couldn’t afford it, mainly because we can’t afford it. However, I think we’re resolved to getting a new one at some point in the relatively near future. We did end up buying more RAM for the old one, and a new video card that we may end up taking back. This computer has been twitchy ever since we put in the new video card (which everyone is startled that I only paid $12 for. eBay is a wonderful thing), but and extra 512 MB of RAM seems to have helped. There used to be a time when my computer hardware knowledge was top of the pops. I was nearly laughed out of the store when I asked for a 256 MB DIMM chip, stating that the lowest that they had was 512, and those weren’t even on *sale,* the DIMM2s were on sale. When looking for a video card they barely had any AGP cards, which I thought was odd, and when I asked it was “Oh, well, everything now is on PCI-express, that’s the new best standard.” I hadn’t ever even heard of such a thing.

We don’t even really *need* a superbadass computer, it’s just that this one has been clunking along for quite some time now, and I’ve put ridiculous amounts of money into fixing problems and upgrading. Now that I think of it, the motherboard probably isn’t more than 3 years old, but I guess that’s a lifetime, y’know? I mean, it doesn’t even have PCI-Express, and just takes DIMMs. What the hell, man?

I’m also contemplating getting parts and making one myself. I may not be very handy, but can do computer hardware. Software, ick. Hardware? I’m listening.

Lost went from the ridiculous to the sublime this week. It was so damn boring at the start, with those two Johnny-come-latelys taking center stage, but soon after the “inserting them into the past stuff” portion was over (so boring we were wondering what was re-shot and what was old) it was fairly good, and I found myself laughing my ass off once I realized what their final fate was. Clever of them to build up these two as characters the audience wouldn’t like just so they could have fun in this episode.

Ugly Betty was great as well. I love the Mark-Amanda team-ups, because they’re the worst villains since Dirk Dastardly and Muttly. It was nice to see a softer side of him, and go from him being a jerk to being a more sympathetic jerk. There are definitely part of the show that seem like they are just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, but they do it so well I don’t really mind. Weird swerves new directions keep a show fresh. Y’know, as long as they don’t bring in the Applewhites.

I’m pissed that Chris got voted off Idol. We didn’t watch it, but Kenzie’s mom told us when she gave us our entries in the Luther family Idol pool (everyone puts in $20 and gets a randomly selected person, if your person wins it all, you get the pot, which right now is $140). Kenzie got Sanjia, which is hilariously awful, and I got Melinda Doolittle, which a lot of folks think is good, but I don’t really think she’ll win. Then again, we don’t really give a crap this season, so it’s kind of moot.

We watched the Departed on PPV last night and holy shit, was that a great movie. Even Kenzie really enjoyed it, and she hates crime movies. Nods all around, especially to Mark Wahlberg and DiCaprio. I’m going to take back some of the things I’ve said about you, Leo.

Long work week this week, and I’m looking forward to having nothing to do tomorrow but watch Allie, as she’s on spring break this week. It’ll be nice to have her around all day, and not have to break up my day by going and getting her from school. Her mom and stepdad spend the weekend in Illinois, checking out the town they’re moving to, which is 20 minutes outside of St. Louis and only 6 hours away. Not bad at all, really. I did 5 hours in the car all the time as a kid going back and forth to the Old Home, and this will just be get on 70, drive 6 hours, take an exit.

Tomorrow is work day. A little writing, a little online shopping, a little Photoshopping for work (Dark Star t-shirts!). I’ll leave you with this, a little thing I did for our Harry Potter pre-sale ad.

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