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Far Sided

Promoting the release of the mammoth The Complete Far Side, Gary Larson is interviewed on NPR.  You can listen to the interview (and some web-only soundbytes) on their website.

It almost seems jokelike to hear Larson explain, when asked how he spends his time now that the comic strip is behind him, that he’s concentrating on his music.  I’m sure he’s a talented guitarist, but it seems like such a cliche answer…

Listening to Bob Edwards, however, describing his favourite Far Side panels directly to Gary Larson himself (punchline and all) is like listening to your father retell a joke he heard, but doesn’t quite get the delivery right.

That being said, what’s your favourite Far Side?  Mine’s the one in which an old lady sits in her house and one of her dogs says to the other: “Want to see something funny?  I’m going to stare at the closet and just growl.”

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Hey, laughing boy!  No more buwwets!

Yesterday I splurged and purchased not only the 4-disc Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set, but also the 3-disc Spongebob Squarepants Season 1 set.  It should be enough irreverrant animated goodness to last me well into… well, next week at least.

I can count the number of times I’ve seen Spongebob on TV on one hand, so the DVDs are turning out to be a real treat since I haven’t seen most of what’s on them.

But what really needs to be mentioned is the Looney Tunes set.  I knew which shorts were included in this batch, but I wasn’t fully aware of what extras were included.  I’m pleased to say that the site has far more extras than I was anticipating…

First off, many of the shorts include audio commentaries by animation historians Michael Barrier and Jerry Beck, animation director Greg Ford and voice artist Stan Freberg, all of whom really know their stuff.  In addition to the commentaries, several of the shorts have a music-only track to showcase the manic orchestrations of Carl Stalling.

There are also a couple of featurettes and a documentary called Irreverent Imagination on the chracters and themes of the shorts which feature interviews from the creators, their offspring, and contemporary filmmakers such as Joe Dante, the director of the I-can’t-believe-this-was-made Looney Tunes Back in Action and the Looneytunesian Gremlins movies.

But the real gem in the collection is The Boys from Termite Terrace, a documentary from 1975 hosted by John Canemaker and features interview clips with Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Bob Clampett.  Termite Terrace, is the affectionate nickname of the rundown building in which the Warner Brothers animation department was situated, and while the information isn’t new to people who’ve studied the history of Warner animation, it’s a thrill to see these masters talk about their craft.

Topping it all off is another documentary from the Cartoon Network about the “lost cartoons” of Warner Brothers, a posthumous introduction by Chuck Jones, still galleries, pencil tests, trailers, Mel Blanc recording session outtakes, and even more (seriously, these DVDs are oozing with added material).  It will take a while for me to get through everything, but it’s going to be fun.... Even just browsing the discs last night made me giddy.

Now, I just have to wait for Warner to release more sets, because there are clearly some important shorts missing from this batch.

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So Many Faces!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted some faces from my daily sketchbook journal.  Here are some of the characters I’ve seen around the city lately:

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Overheard on the Subway

“Chris Kattan is a genius.”

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Indiana Jones and the Bad Photoshop Work

Like most self-respecting geeks I purchased the Indiana Jones trilogy on DVD this week.  At first look, the packaging is great.  The box and the DVD cases appropriately reflect an old weathered globe-trotting Indiana Jones look to them (complete with Drew Struzan artwork).  The colours are deep, rich, warm colours.

But upon opening the cases, the magic disappears.  The actual discs themselves have photos of Harrison Ford that have clearly been put through a quick Photoshop filter to give them an artificial sketchy-painterly look as if to mirror the look of the Struzan paintings.  And they’re bright, soft, pastel colours that lose all the warmth and richness of the outer packaging.

The animated menus of the DVDs are even worse—film clips given the same cheap-looking filter are patched together along with some poor-looking 3D animation (For Raiders, an airplane, for Doom, a minecart, and for Crusade… the circus train?).  Apart from looking pretty cheap and fluffy and ruining the whole Indy feel that the outer packaging provided with its artwork and rich colours, these menus give away great scenes that someone new to the series wouldn’t otherwise be savvy to (Granted, if you’ve never seen an Indiana Jones movie before then you must’ve been living under a rock).

The official website tries to pan this filtered look off as a special feature, claiming that the ”digitally filtered classic Indy moments” harken back to nostalgic Pan-Am posters.  Well, I never once made that connection—they just end up looking like a cheap digital hodge podge of scenes from a movie franchise that should’ve been given a less frivolous-looking menu design.  (Why does Lucas’s other franchise have great DVD menus for his lesser films?)

Luckily though, the movies themselves are undeniably great and transcend all my pettiness and scrutiny. 

“You call him Dr. Jones, doll!”

Oh, and speaking of Drew Struzan, why don’t the bonus features of the DVDs include any promotional/concept artwork at all, such as these great pieces?

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The Ultimate Wordsearch

Okay, rank this up at the top of the list of “things that make the Internet cool”.  Amazon.com has now implemented a new search feature—no longer limited by title and author name, you can now search the full text of thousands of books word for word.

Giving it a go, I picked up the current book I’m reading, The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and looked for a unique passage.  Searching for the character name Miss Honoria Westphail, Amazon knows I’m looking for Mr. Holmes!

Then I thought, heck, if I can Google myself, does this mean I can Amazon myself, too?  Turns out I can!  A quick search for John Martz Font informs me that Musings on Human Metamorphoses by Timothy Leary credits me for one of my fonts.  Ha!

No psychadelic LSD trip is complete without proper typography, let me tell you!

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Tokyo Doll

I just got back from the Tokyo Doll exhibit at the Design Exchange.  It’s an exhibit showcasing Japanese toys and dolls as art.  All I can say is that I’m living in the wrong country.  These are definitely some of the coolest-looking dolls (hard to call most of them toys, and they’re far too playful to be just sculptures) I’ve ever seen, and if I didn’t know any better I’d swear that Japan was actually on another planet.

My favourites included the work of Jin Arakawa, Masakazu Inoue, and the wooden robots designed by Take-G Toys. (Sorry I couldn’t find any links, but you can see their work within the Tokyo Doll site).

I found myself swooning over the small plastic “capsule toys” that are sold in vending machines in Japan.  A search for them brought me to Magic Pony, a site devoted to selling such bizarre figures!  If I wasn’t so broke I’d probably waste a lot of money there�

The exhibit runs until sunday, so if you’re in Toronto, check it out.

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Mister Misery

Elliott Smith committed suicide yesterday.  He was 34.  I didn’t know much about Elliott other than I knew he wasn’t happy.  Every time I saw him in concert I could tell that not only did he not want to be there, but I was pretty sure he didn’t want to be anywhere.

With song titles like “Everything Means Nothing to Me” and “Bottle Up and Explode” and lyrics so sad they’d put Morrissey to shame, he was definitely one of my favourite songwriters.  Whenever I was having a bad day I could always put in one of his CDs and know that at least I didn’t have it as bad as this guy.

i waited for a bus
to separate the both of us
and take me off far away from you
‘cos my feelings never change a bit
i always feel like shit
i don’t know why i guess that i “just do”

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Whacked Waxworks

I once visited a wax museum in Niagara Falls, and it was creepy, but none of sculptures were lifelike enough to truly gives me the willies.  Granted at the time, I didn’t really know who Ronald Reagan, the Pope, and Cher really were.

But there’s something about this Britney Spears statue at Madam Tussaud’s that’s undeniably frightening.  Is it how realistic it looks?  The way it actually breathes in time with the music?

No, I think it’s knowing that some lonely sculptor actually made this by hand, dressed it in clothes, and posed it like this.  That ain’t right, is it?

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Drool!

Brian Taylor’s Rustboy is now a gorgeous self-published coffee-table book.  Drool!  I must have it!

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Strong Enough for a Man

For what is supposed to be “the first network for men”, am I the only one who finds the logo for the recently-branded SpikeTV a little feminine?

It looks like a logo for a brand of tampon (and not a particularly comfortable one at that).

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Creativity the Key to Success

According to Richard Florida, the success of a city’s economic development is not technology and industry—it’s creativity.

The article doesn’t explain exactly how the gay and bohemian indexes prove to be indicators of economic health, but I know that I myself choose to live in Toronto not just for the employment opportunities, but for the culture of a big diverse, happenin’, energetic city.  So in that sense, I can see how creativity at least keeps me pumping dollars into the economy.

But as much as I want to believe that creativity is the key to a successful city, without knowing more I have to think it’s pretty idealistic.  After all, should we really trust a society of hippies?

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Mummy’s Boy

An animated version of my friend Jay Stephens‘s character Tutenstein has been in the works for a while now, and is finally premiering in November, saturday mornings on NBC.

According to Jay, early November was the traditional ancient Egyptian celebration of Ka-Her-Ka,the autumn festival celebrating the death and resurrection of the mummy god Osiris.  How perfect!

Check out Jay’s site for some concept artwork.

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Cinema del Artie

In a New York Times article, Art Spiegelman points out what it is about comics as a visual storytelling medium that appeals to me:

“I get narcissistically centered in my work. Film, theater and certainly television require large groups of people working together. At their purest, comics can be made by one, even if multiphrenic person.”

Apart from his uneducated take on mental illness (Artie, schizophrenia is not multiple personality disorder, nor is ‘schizo’ a prefix meaning ‘two’), I can’t help but share the same feeling on comics.

Comics are incredibly cinematic, yet more personal than any film can ever be because one single person does the writing, the costuming, the set decoration, the special effects, the directing, the acting… It’s what appeals to me most about cartooning as an artform—the control.

I also like how he compares cartoon speech balloons to haikus, in their economy of words.  However, he fails to mention that unlike a haiku, speech bubbles have accompanying illustrations that, as the saying goes, are worth 1000 words (that no doubt exceed any syllabic limitations).

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Superhero Haiku

Art Spiegelman’s comments on comics being like haiku in the previous entry influenced me to write some!  Behold my brilliant poetry:

Superman
His planet blew up.
But luckily for Kal-El,
His dad planned ahead.

Wonder Woman
She must not forget
Exactly where she parks her
Invisible jet.

Maus
I never liked cats.
Reading this book tells me why.
They are all Nazis.

Batman
Na na na na na
Na na na na na na na
Na na na! Batman!

Professor X
With such mind power
Can’t he use telepathy
To make his legs move?

Magneto
I bet he sure hates
The airport security’s
Metal detector

Now it’s your turn!

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