Archive - Jan 30, 2009
Look Into My Eyes: You Are Feeling Sleepy... You Will Buy My Comic Book
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 30, 2009 - 22:09
Jacob Alvarez sent me a copy of his comic book Hypnospiral in the mail the other week and I wanted to give it a mention. It's a black and white book printed by Comixpress - the website has a few previews but otherwise is just a place to find out how to order the comic book. Alvarez is a competent artist and surely can continue to improve with more work. The book is full of short gag stories -- ideally suited to the webcomic first, books later model (as in build the fan base and than sell them books) so I strongly advise Alvarez to go the webcomic route. He's already got the website URL and it's a no-brainer today to get going online. All of the material in the book can easily be put online and surely would get much more exposure than the much, much fewer people who will buy or borrow the book at this point without having any idea if they'll like Hypnospiral or not.
As to the book itself, it shows promise although it was definitely a mixed bag in terms of its appeal to my sense of humor. My favorite of the book was the two-pager, "My Kingdom For A Theme Restaurant" and there was something funny about the monkey-staffed Civil War enactment at the end of the story "Ugly Pete: King of the Chimps". Maybe just seeing the simian charge on "Fort Sumner"? The only other thing to mention is that the cover makes the book seem like it's a horror comic -- it doesn't really telegraph that it's a gag comic.
It's a Muerto Man's Party
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 30, 2009 - 02:24
Oingo Boingo - my favorite band for a loong time. I always liked the Mexican folk art influenced design around the Dead Man's Party album and this video has bits of it too. Oingo Boingo was pretty big in California -- I was always unclear on why the rest of the world didn't fully appreciate the genius of the Elfman. In fact I guess to many people, I suppose Oingo Boingo is associated mainly with the Rodney Dangerfield movie Back to Class (or maybe the song they wrote for the Anthony Michael Hall movie Weird Science).Â
Very young Robert Downey Jr in this video (clipped from the Back to Class movie) - I just saw Iron Man on Vudu this week.  That guy is always interesting - what a good actor.  It's kind of cool he didn't kill himself with all of the drugs he took and we get to see some more work from him.
And hell might as well link to the Gong Show with an appearance by the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo - the precursor to the actual band Oingo Boingo. The Mystic Knights were more of a cabaret think, led by Danny Elfman's brother Richard.
It's Tricky with Penn and Teller
Submitted by Xaviar Xerexes on January 30, 2009 - 02:02
Holy crap - the video for RUN DMC's It's Tricky has Penn and Teller. I don't think I saw this at the time.
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I liked RUN DMC a lot for awhile.  I'm not sure if it was the first rap I really heard and liked -- I was 15 when their first album came out and that seems late to me but memory is a funny thing... I'll have to scan the memory cells a bit more..
