Blog
Saturday March 29th 2008, 5:14 pm
WAR OF THE TAXMAN…
Well we picked up our tax papers the other day from the accountant and got the wonderful news, he says sarcastically, that we would have to pay additional taxes this year of a significant amount. We were quite shocked at this because our income was only slightly more than the previous year. The previous year we had overpaid and got a reimbursement. So we figured it would break even this year after all the quarter payments had been made. Nope. We pay. We thought this rather peculiar because our income was only slightly better in 2007. We went and looked at the tax brackets online and were quite pissed at what we found. As it turns out, we barely bumped into the next tax bracket, one of the middle class ones. So we moved from lower middle class to middle middle class. The next up would be upper middle class. So here is the rub. We literally have to pay 10% ADDITIONAL tax over what we paid the year before because of that little bump up. And it turns out that it is the ONLY bracket that increases the amount of tax by that much. If we had made it to the upper middle class the increase would not have been 20% but only 13% additional tax. And if we had made it even farther than that the percentage would be even less of an increase exponentially. So in essence the actual middle class get chopped heavily by the taxman more than any other category. Which leads to the title of this section. I had seen something not too long ago on one of political shows we watch about there being war waged on the middle class by the government in terms of the financial aspects of our country. This entails everything from affordable insurance to taxes. Don’t get me wrong I’m not complaining about our financial status. It could be far worse. We do pretty well. However the poor in our country are treated terribly in many ways. So the plight of the middle class pales in comparison on lot of levels. But after discovering that huge difference in the tax system percentages it causes one to pause and consider what actually is going on here. It is absolutely ridiculous to me that if you reach the upper levels of our society the exponential increase percentages in taxes get really small. Proving that the more money you have the better you are treated by the government. What boggles my mind, and I have yet to determine, is what the gain would be, to get such an increase of 10% when moved up slightly into a higher bracket is beyond me. What is the point of that other than just to keep the middle class down a bit and what purpose would that serve? The amount of money we would need to make to reach the next level in the tax system is literally almost $80,000 more to reach the upper middle class. So by bumping up just a little bit we moved into a bracket that raises the taxes an additional 10%. We are paying the same percentage of tax that someone who makes $79,000 more than we do. Doesn’t make much sense. So in essence after paying taxes this year we actually will have LESS money in our pocket than if I hadn’t had an increase in income. Bizarre. I can only imagine what it must feel like for someone who lives in poverty and then suddenly finds themselves making enough money to be considered middle class.
(and now for something fun) DOOMSDAY…
The movie. Went saw this today. Read many reviews from various sources before going. It seemed that people either hated it or loved it. I ended up in the loved it camp. I think some might not be getting what they are seeing. Is it an unabashed literal homage to post apocalyptic movies from the 70’s and 80’s such as Road Warrior or Escape From New York? Absolutely yes! But it doesn’t do it in a way that makes you feel the director is rehashing that stuff. It feels like he was truly wanting to make a movie that harkened to those absurd ideas. Now when I say absurd I mean it in the best possible sense. A lot of scenes in this film are truly over the top absurd and laugh out loud funny. But not funny because it’s absurd but funny because you/we are sort of in on the joke but without making us feel like we are watching a parody. A fine line to walk but this film does it beautifully. The entire car battle sequence is just amazingly entertaining in a very sadistically brutally funny way because it’s absurd in the most fun sense of the word. There is even a blatant product placement scene that is just laugh out funny. It plays as if the film makers know that since they have to have product placement to help pay for the movie that they’re gonna make you laugh about it. So if you are a fan of those previously mentioned films, and others of that older generation of B movie fun, I highly recommend this movie. It was obviously made with love for this genre. So ignore the nay sayers out there, who most likely like to piss in other people’s frosted flakes.
Sunday October 28th 2007, 12:24 pm
DREAMS WEAVING…
I always tend to have dreams that are just plain boring ordinary slice of life type dreams and they usually don’t have me in them. It’s like I’m somebody else living another life having conversations with people I’ve never met or seen before. But they are SO vividly real that I often wake up thinking it’s a memory of something I did. Very boring to describe them but the feeling of it being so real is freaky. Every once in a while I will have a strange and surreal dream. When I have those I’m always me in them. The other night I dreamt that I was now a homicide detective investigating these murders that took a place in a city park somewhere. My partner and I are there to explain our findings to Rudy Guiliani. Yes, thee Rudy Guiliani thats running for president. Very bizarre because I never dream about famous people. Anyway, we are surveying the crime scene with him and the places where the bodies had been are marked by yellow police tape in the form of crosses that are laying on the ground in various places around the park. We proceed to tell mister Guiliani that all of the bodies seemed to be placed in cross like positions with their arms outstretched from east to west, with their heads and feet facing north and south. We are explaining that we are trying to understand what this means. As we are all walking along one of the murder sites to look at these tape crosses Rudy points out that we are under this tree, a sort of dead blackened tree, which has this very strange plastic like giant growth forming at the base of one side of the tree. We are standing on this giant growth which is bright yellow with greenish spots and it sounds like it is a shell or something, strong but sort of hollow as we step. Then Guiliani begins exclaiming loudly that he knows what this thing is and is amazed that we don’t know. He is shouting happily that this is a very very rare tomato and they are delicious. so we step down off it and he cuts it open on one side with a pocket knife revealing that is is indeed hollow, but there are all of these strange purple root like things hanging inside. Guilani reaches in and grabs some in one hand and lifts them out very gently. He then starts to cut into of the roots which appear to have this soft like texture, very easy to cut, while telling us that we have to try some of this right now. I’m standing there thinking this is very odd when my partner steps forward from behind me to try some this plant fruit and realize that I have never seen my partner’s face during this whole time in the park. He has short cropped blonde hair almost in a historical roman style and hazel eyes, wearing a charcoal grey suit and tie. He stands there chewing a piece of this root nodding his head in agreement to how good it tastes. At this point Guiliani hands me a slice and I say “what the hell, I’ll try it too”. I put the slice into my mouth and immediately think it tastes really familiar and I say “y’know, it tastes just like a beet, you know, the purple kind”. At this point Guilani, with his jacket off and rolled up shirt sleeves, says that his office is right around the corner, let’s go there and finish the briefing. As we walk up to this average looking city building that is sort of dark grey a big black door begins to open at main entrance when we approach. Opening the door for us is this little old woman with pure white hair dressed in long grey and black robes and shawls. As we enter and she turns I can see that she is only half a person in the literal sense. Her body is missing the entire right side of itself including her head, and as we walk past her into the room we see that the part of her body that is there is hollow with no insides except for hundreds of little squirming grey tentacles attached to the pink interior membranes of her skin. I’m seeing this very close up as I enter through the doorway. I’m startled by it but I can’t stop staring at this as I walk past in what seems like slow motion. I choose not say anything since my partner and Guiliani are walking in front of me into the room and act as if everything is absolutely normal. And that is where the dream ends,
PACKAGING IN MY NOSE…
We had some furniture delivered this week and it was packaged neatly and tightly into these perfectly conformed boxes with styrofoam and plastic and tie wraps and tape and…you get the point. PACKAGING IS EVIL, sometimes necessary, but it’s still evil. after we got everything out of their packaging it looked like a fucking bomb went off in our living room. The type of styrofoam used was the kind that is molded into shapes to fit corners and such and when it breaks you get hundreds of little tiny nodules that stick to fucking everything. Including the inside of your nose when it breaks to closely to your face and you happen to breath in at that same moment. It’s just awful and pisses me off. I know I’m sounding a little like a nut job but after we were done getting the packing materials off there was as much of that as there was furniture. It was utterly ridiculous. The boxes after being cut down filled up our entire recycle bin plus two giant trash bags and the styrofoam filled our entire trash bin plus two giant trash bags. Insanity. We’ve been finding leftover little nodules of styrofoam for days. They were even sticking to the walls of the house. It’s just evil.
Now that I’ve bored you even further with that…
WATSON I PRESUME…
I seem to love anything by Andi Watson. His quirky style of art manages to fit perfectly with the types of stories he likes to tell and I love them. I just recently finished reading Love Fights and feel the same about this book as i do his other work. An absolute joy and very inventive, very smart. It was quite obvious that he has a love of good superhero comics even though he is poking fun at the whole superhero concept because it is done in this very endearing manner. It comes across as respectful and never degrading to that genre with a perfectly executed superhero type plot mixed with a real slice of life quality to the other characters. if you haven’t read Watson’s work I highly recommend all of it. But I do think that Love Fights screams for a sequel.
PINCHED…
Also just read Space Pinchy from Tony Takezaki published by Darkhorse. It is a Japanese manga but unlike what you expect from manga in style. It’s fully rendered in gorgeous digital color mixed with what appears to be 3D graphics. It’s a collection of short stories with interweaving themes that wrap up at the end of the book. I really enjoyed it even though it is extremely sex obsessed in a sort of adolescent sense humor about it way. If you are one that is easily offended by sexual attitudes then don’t read this. However it is clear right away that the creator knows he is being ridiculous and therefore revels in it, making that sort of the point. It’s wild and full of crazy mad ideas on just about every page and a lot of fun if you just let yourself be taken on this surreal psycho ride.
MUSIC…
ipod on shuffle mode plus…
BLACK NASA–
BLACK NASA– deuce
BLONDE REDHEAD– melody of certain damaged lemons
FELIX DA HOUSECAT—virgo blaktro and the movie disco
HAWKWIND— independent days
HAWKWIND— spacebrock
HOLLY GOLIGHTLY & DAN MELCHIOR—desperate little town
HOLLY GOLIGHTLY & THE BROKE OFFS— you can’t buy a gun when you’re crying
VAST—april
GARBAGE—self made collection of b sides and mixes
THE CURE — self made collection of remixes and rare cuts
THE SISTERS OF MERCY — some girls wander by mistake
Saturday October 13th 2007, 12:06 pm
RED WINGS AND BLACK LEATHER…
Well, I’m 5 pages into the next project finally. So production has officially begun. I’m going to be trying different things here as it moves along (what else is new). I haven’t decided if it’s working yet. But thats how I like to play it. Just do it and see what happens. Anyway, things are off to a good start. Still have no idea when DC plans on making announcements but I think a lot of people have already figured out what this project is because there has been comments elsewhere in this regard.
BLACK AND WHITE GOODNESS…
When I was up in SF for the gallery event party I acquired some AIT/PLANET LAR books. Some were gifts, so thank you to the creators who gave me their work to check out. I’ve just finished reading them and they are…
FIRST MOON– by Jason McNamara and Tony Talbert— An interesting historical tale about early colonists to America but with a nice strange supernatural spooky twist that ties into a modern day family’s life. A really different concept based on familiar ideas making for a nicely executed story.
CONTINUITY– by Jason McNamara and Tony Talbert— This one is my favorite of the 2 books given to me by these guys. A really unusual story about a girl who is a little bit lost in her life, going down a not so good path. She finds that her dreams can somehow alter her waking reality in very dire ways and has caused this dystopian reality she now lives in, So in trying not to make things worse she decides she must stay awake. The result is a compelling read with characters that easily immerse you into their lives. As much as I liked Tony Talbert’s work in First Moon I think I like this better. His work here really gels with the story greatly. Nicely detailed and damn determined to TELL a story with his art.
WHITE DEATH — by Rob Morrison and Charlie Adlard— A well written character driven story about soldiers trying to cope with the situation they’ve been put in during a time of war. Adlard here uses a different style than what I’m accustomed to from him and it is very effective. However I think the printing is a little dark and sort of muddies up the details a bit in some places. Anyway, worth checking out.
ROCK BOTTOM — by Joe Casey and Charlie Adlard— I have to say that this is my favorite of the bunch. I’m not quite sure why, it just fits my sensibilities the most I think. Another character driven tale about a man who has come down with this strange and incurable disease that is slowly turning him to stone. This is in fact a wonderful metaphor of the character’s time in his life. He can’t seem to get past the bad decisions he has made and now lives in a rut. So as he turns to stone he must come to terms with himself. It becomes a very emotional story that pulls you into it dramatically and fully convinces of these character’s believability. Charlie Adlard’s art here is absolutely perfect for the story and again he uses a different style than what he is known for. This time to much greater impact. Deciding to leave the blacks out of his inks here is wise move and allows the reader to really enjoy the qualities of his drawing more, making for the art to have a real beauty to it. Perfectly suiting the beauty in the writing. A very nice balance of art and story.
These all represent the sort of comics we need to see more of. Great stuff overall. I recommend you check them out if you haven’t already.
MUSIQUE…
short list this time because i’ve been doing the ipod shuffle lately.
SOLACE—nagari
THE DONNAS — bitchin’
ELECTRIC SIX — switzerland
DEBBIE HARRY —necessary evil
HUMAN LEAGUE — reproduction remastered
HUMAN LEAGUE — travelogue remastered
HOLLY GOLIGHTLY — the good things
FRONT 242 — pulse
Saturday September 15th 2007, 5:51 pm
HOLYBATGALLERY…
There is going to be a month long rotating gallery feature of the original art to my Batman work focusing mostly on the recent arc. This display will be held at The Isotope Comics Lounge in San Fransisco with an opening party to be held on saturday september 29th from 8pm to midnight. Come by and hang with us and let’s have us party!!! details can be found at…
WWW.ISOTOPECOMICS.COM
TEZUKAGOD…
Our trip to see the Osamu Tezuka exhibit last week at the Asian Art Museum in San Fransisco was brilliant. The exhibit was astounding. The amount of work that was produced by him was overwhelming. An absolute inspiration to see so many original pages from across his career. One thing that was a very nice surprise was that they didn’t let Astro Boy (Mighty Atom) out weigh his other, less famous, works to americans. There was a good representation of material that hasn’t had proper translation here in the states. Fortunately Vertical seems to be intent on changing that by bringing over more of the less mainstream oriented material, like they have done with Buddha. They are publishing several of his single novel length books over this next year. That makes me very happy. I’m not sure if Viz will have anything else come out other than the end of Phoenix. The pleasure of seeing so much original art from the master japanese comics was a genuine high for me and I probably will never have such an opportunity again. Since I had never seen original manga art before I was surprised by how small of a drawing size a lot of it was done. Which astounded me even more when seeing the precision of the tiniest details. If any of you haven’t read Tezuka’s works or are just familiar with Astro Boy I highly recommend that you pick up some his more ambitious works like Adolf, Buddha, or Phoenix.
OTHER PLEASURES AND TREASURES….
The Asian Art Museum offers quite a lot of beautiful art and historical artifacts from a multitude of cultures. I was very amazed at how big and extensive this museum is. There are giant tapestries dating back to times older than our nation itself, statuary and sculptures from all of Asia. Full japanese armor and plenty of other beautifully decorated objects of daily use from the histories of those varied lands and cultures. One of the most interesting things I noticed was even though all of this material was from asian origins there was a very distinct difference in styles, materials and palettes from one culture to another. Very fascinating and thought provoking.
We also went to Japan town. That was interesting as well with several shops purely dedicated to merchandise that was japanese specific. That area of the city was much smaller than I thought it would be. The next day we went to China town which is much much bigger than I thought it would be. An endless array of shops and interesting little restaurants where I bought a mah jong set. So I will be learning to play that soon.
LEONARD IS YOUR MAN…
just finished watching the film I’m Your Man. It’s about the songs of Leonard Cohen featuring performances by some very talented artists doing their renditions of his music. The film was intermixed with some insightful interviews with the artists sharing their feelings and influences from his songs along with interludes of Leonard himself sharing bits about his life. It’s a really good film and worth watching even if you are not familiar with his music (and if you’re not, shame on you). I’d say the only draw back to the performances given here is there are 3 that include Rufus Wainwright whose music and vocal style I can’t stand on a good day. So I really didn’t care for his renditions at all and couldn’t understand why there were 3 by him, overshadowing much better artists. Other than that you really should see this film if you haven’t already. His music and lyrical wit by far surpasses many of his peers. Truly one of the greatest song writers ever.
HIS INFERNAL MAJESTY…
Venus Doom, the new album by HIM is arriving this tuesday to a store near you. This is definitely one of best bands to come along in a very long while and the new material is amazing, as to be expected. My copies of the special and limited editions are already shipped and should arrive on my doorstep possibly the day before the official release date. CANNOT WAIT!!! I’m also purchasing my tickets to see them in SF in november at the Warfield.
A JESUS SURPRISE…
when looking for tickets for the HIM show I came across event ads for Jesus And Mary Chain to be playing 2 dates in october at the Filmore. These guys are one of the all time greatest and its awesome to see them back and working on a new album after many many years. I must go see them as well.
Tuesday September 04th 2007, 5:33 pm
WELL…
yep it has certainly been too long since I last blogged. I know I suck. But it is entirely blamed on something else, or rather Directly Company oriented. I’m talking about the absolute dreaded deadline of doom. Basically said company decided to schedule the Batman issues every 2 weeks to make up for another artist being late, at my expense, even though I wasn’t done with my SCHEDULED work and everyone involved knew what my pace is. I always do my best to work as diligently as I can. I didn’t find this out about the shipping until I was half way through the 3rd installment when I came back from con. And the way I found out was when I got lettering proofs for the first 2 issues back to back. So very kind of them to inform me so eloquently. So instead of being an ass about it I decided to not take any weekends off and work everyday until I was finished by a certain time. What a nightmare it turned into. It ended up with me working over a month, with the last day being a 24 hour work day, without time off. You would think I could crash after that, but nope. I needed to do the next Crossing Midnight cover before that ended up being late. So it turns out everything in my life needed to cease in order to get this stuff done in time and it still might ship late because we are so on the wire with this. And that is why there have been no blogs for so long. That is if anyone really cares about what I have to say in these things anyway. So there you have it. My website obligations have already gone to shit. But next time this happens, and it probably will because the companies are shit for planning properly, I’m not going to be a nice guy and help them with such a bone-head decision on their part. That was pure hell and made me not very pleasant to be around, just ask my wife. Enough with this longwinded pity party!!!
The second issue of my Batman arc arrived a short time ago with very positive reviews overall. Just yesterday I went over the final color corrections for the final installment and I think it will fit perfectly as the ending chapter. The overall effect of this arc needed to have this building up to a crescendo feeling and I think it does that pretty well. The 3 issues have a real sense of progression to them with the first being medium on a scale and the final being at the highest. Hopefully most of you will agree when you see it. That this story has this feeling of slowly burning and ramping up.
SIDES…
I just recently finished reading THE OTHER SIDE published by vertigo, between sleep and work. What a great read that was. I’m not a big fan of war stories unless they offer something different than the usual stuff. This one certainly did. I was at first compelled to check this out because of the amazing Cameron Stewart. I love his work. But as I got into the story I was really impressed with how well it was written by Jason Aaron. Very intense, and hard to take at times, but a story like this should be. Cameron drew the hell out of this book, stunning. The combination of Jason’s thought provoking writing and Cameron’s extremely detailed art (that doesn’t forget the emotions of the scenes) made for a powerfully emotional impact. The ending just hits you very hard and haunts you for quite sometime afterward, which is very appropriate. When you see the content you’ll know what I mean by that. Great stuff.
TRADES…
Volume one of the old Tangent comics stuff has come out and some of you may not know that I was a contributor to some of that material. I worked on the Tangent Universe version of Green Lantern one shot, with James Robinson as the writer. This was one of the early experiments I did in regards to shifting styles on a story. The issue was written as an anthology with bridging sequences and normally this sort of thing will have several artists working on the individual stories and maybe one artist for the bridging sequences. For some reason that I have never discovered the editor wanted just one artist for the whole anthology. I thought this was an odd and intriguing idea, so I decided to tackle it as if each story was drawn by a different artist but actually it would be all my work. This was an interesting challenge to me and I hadn’t really considered this sort of thing very much before. I was surprised by the results and how much it really looked and felt like a true anthology when it was all finished. This really opened my eyes early on to the possibilities of where I could take things and led me down the path I went on with other projects. Anyway, if any of you are so inclined, pick this up if you like superhero stuff. It was fun.
MUSIC…
GOD SPEED YOU BLACK EMPEROR—lift your skinny fists like antennas to heaven
KILLING JOKE —brighter than a thousand suns
MOTORHEAD—another perfect day (expanded edition)
THE GOSSIP—e.p.
THE MISSION —god’s own medicine (remastered and expanded)
THE MISSION— the first chapter (remastered and expanded)
THE MISSION —children (remastered and expanded)
THE MISSION —god is a bullet (u.s. version)
MOBY with DEBBIE HARRY—new york, new york e.p. single
KLAXONS—myths of the near future
FOREIGNER—double vision
VCR—power destiny
SKYE—mind how you go
69 EYES —angels
SIA—colour the small one
OLD CROW MEDICINE SHOW—big iron world
NINA SIMONE—remixed and reimagined
FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM — mourning sun
VENUS DOOM IS COMING!!!