Books

I read…a lot. Here’s where I ramble about books and printed media.

Consequences of an Overactive Imagination

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I don’t think I’ll ever cease to be amazed at how strongly the mind can react to things — and which things it chooses to react to.

I’ve always had an extremely active imagination, a quality which has both good and bad points. Growing up, I often retreated into my own little fantasy worlds instead of dealing with the real world around me, and that’s something that has never entirely ceased. While I’ve long since ceased hiding within myself as an escape from things I didn’t want to deal with or as a defense mechanism, I can’t say — and really, I wouldn’t want to — that I’ve ever ceased letting my imagination run away with me from time to time.

Walking down a hallway, someone might notice a small twitch of my hands from time to time, though it’s most likely they wouldn’t. Just a small gesture, perhaps just stretching my wrists a bit, nothing really worth paying attention to. Of course, that’s only because they can’t see the blast of power I just released careening down the hall, rushing past them, sweeping papers and debris in its wake as it crashes into the locked gate at the end, bursting it open with a horrendous shriek of tearing metal as the hinges shatter and fall to pieces.

People passing me on the streets at night never know of the creatures stalking them. Wingless batlike creatures the size of large dogs, walking on their forelegs, hind legs slung up and over their shoulders and terminating in wicked-looking claws. Needle-sharp teeth beneath an eyeless face, the cries of their sonar echoing from building to building as the pack converges on another unlucky derelict passed out in an alleyway. Curious how few rats this section of the city has.

Okay, perhaps it’s a little juvenile. Silly daydreams built on many years of fantasy and science-fiction novels. That doesn’t make these worlds any less fun to play in from time to time, however.

When I was younger, my fertile imagination would often get the better of me. Certain television shows would keep me up for nights. The Incredible Hulk — or the “crumbly hawk”, as I deemed him — was an especially potent terror for a time. I didn’t see Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller‘ video until long after it was released when I was only nine years old, and even into my early teen years, horror movies were a rarity.

I once tried to watch the sci-fi horror movie Lifeforce during one of HBO’s promotional free weekends after our family got cable, because of the naked lady at the beginning — but all puberty-driven fantasies were driven violently out of my head when she sucked the very life out of some poor hapless man, turning him into a horrible desiccated corpse before my very eyes, and I don’t think I slept well for a month afterwards.

Even the trailer for Gremlins was enough to give me nightmares when I saw it, and I never saw the movie in the theaters. I read the novelization to try to get an idea of how the movie was, and oh what a mistake that was. At one point in the story, the gremlin Stripe escapes from being studied by a teacher in the school’s science lab. While in the movie Stripe simply jabs the teacher with a single hypodermic needle, the book described seven or eight needles, maybe more, being stuck into the teacher’s face. It was literally years before I got the nerve to watch the movie (and then was somewhat chagrined to see how tame it was compared to the images I’d had seared into my brain when I read the book).

As I grew and began to be better able to separate the fantastical worlds inside my head from the real world around me, I started to develop a fondness for some of the more disturbing images that I hadn’t been able to cope with as a child. I started watching all the horror movies I’d heard about for years, but never been able to watch. Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Clive Barker, and other similar authors started appearing on my bookshelves. The Alien movies introduced me to the artwork of H.R. Giger. Discovering David Cronenberg‘s films led me to Naked Lunch, and then to the literary work of William S. Burroughs. My musical tastes, while never having been particularly mainstream, started skewing more towards the gothic and industrial genres. Black soon became the dominant color in my wardrobe.

Finally being able to explore and embrace this darker imagery helped me a lot through my teen years, and still does today. While I wasn’t always the happiest teenager around — I had more than my fair share of whiny, angsty moments — I never ended up succumbing to the depression that so many other people seem to. I’ve never been suicidal (in fact, quite the opposite, as I’m somewhat frightened of death, and have never found myself in a situation where suicide seemed like an even remotely good idea), and while there were certainly some stumbling blocks over the years, I think I’ve ended up becoming a fairly well-rounded and well-grounded adult (oh, lord, did I just admit that I’m an adult?).

I have my ups and downs, same as anyone else, of course, but on the whole, I’m a fairly chipper and easygoing guy (chipper…who talks like this?). That “dark side” is still there, of course, manifesting itself primarily through my tastes in music, movies, and an often bitterly bleak sense of humor, but rather than dominating my personality, it’s just another aspect — and, importantly, one not incompatible with a love of childlike (and sometimes childish) silliness (a double feature of Hellraiser and The Muppet Movie isn’t something I’d find particularly unusual, for instance).

For all that, though, there are times when my imagination can still play games with me. What it latches onto now, though, aren’t the fantastical elements of horror movies. I can watch Freddy suck Johnny Depp down into his bed in a geyser of blood, watch Pinhead flay the flesh off of Frank’s recently resurrected body, or watch Jason skewer horny teenager after horny teenager without batting an eye — heck, I enjoy ever last little blood-soaked minute of it, and sleep soundly as soon as the movie is finished.

What gets me now are the real possibilities — and, more specifically, the really realistic situations, as redundant as that might sound. Kill Bill, for all the hype it got over its extreme amounts of blood and gore, didn’t bug me simply because it was so ridiculously over the top (in a good way) that I didn’t feel real. It may have been live action with real flesh and blood actors, but it felt like a comic book, and so my brain quite happily filed it away with all the rest of the blood and gore from all those silly horror movies.

It’s when it’s something that could conceivably really happen that I get the willies.

Pulp Fiction is a great film, and The Rock, while certainly not great, is a lot of fun. Those two films have one very important element in common, though: an adrenaline shot straight to the heart. I can’t watch either movie without cringing and turning away as the needle plunges into the character’s chest and into their heart — heck, I can’t even write this paragraph out without rubbing my own chest due to the sympathy pain I feel.

Last week Prairie and I watched Deliverance, which I’d never seen before. Just after the disastrous run through the rapids as the boats break apart and the men go tumbling over rocks and down the river, Burt Reynolds pulls himself up and out of the water onto a rock, revealing the compound fracture sending his legbone tearing through skin and muscle and jutting out the side. “Oh, God,” I said — if it was even formed into actual words — and immediately curled into a ball on my side, rubbing my calf as my oh-so-eager-to-oblige imagination sent spasms from my own suddenly shattered body up my leg.

Tonight — because I’m apparently a glutton for punishment — Misery was the movie of choice. Okay, I knew the hobbling was coming. Even without having read the book or seen the movie before (that I can remember, at least), that scene is so much a part of pop culture that it would be nearly impossible to really be taken by surprise when it comes up. That certainly didn’t make it any easier to watch, however. The sickening crunch of splintering bone as the sledgehammer pulverizes his ankle, and at thirty-one years of age, I’m curled in a ball on my bed.

Honestly, in some ways it’s as funny as it is exasperating. I can laugh at the absurdity of having such a strong reaction to these things even as I’m still trying to drive the residual twinges out of my ankles. I wouldn’t trade my imagination away for anything…but I’ll freely admit that there are times when I wish I could just turn it down a few notches.

Book of Blogs II

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Earlier this month, I linked to a project by Tvindy to collect and anthologize some of the better weblog posts by a number of contributing authors. I really liked the idea, and nominated a few entries for potential inclusion.

Tvindy’s hoping for a little more assistance in culling worthwhile posts, preferably posts chosen by regular readers of the participating weblogs, rather than solely author-nominated work.

As readers, are there any posts that stand out in your mind as particularly noteworthy, for whatever reason? They don’t have to be long, or serious, or anything in particular aside from standing out in one way or another. If so, toss ’em in the comments here — if you don’t want to dig through the archives yourself, just throw up whatever details you can remember, and I’ll track it down.

Not only will this help the project, but I’d be interested to see what — if anything — comes out of this.

iTunes “Conga Fury” by Juno Reactor from the album Bible of Dreams (1997, 8:06).

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince: July 16th, 2005

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It’s official, folks: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince will be released July 16th, 2005.

Retail price is \$29.99, but pre-ordering through Amazon currently gets you 40% off, just \$17.99! C’mon, click the links and send a penny or two my way, you know you want to! ;)

Mary Grand Pre will be illustrating the cover again, as she has for all prior books. It’s also apparently “a bit shorter” than Order of the Phoenix.

Year Six is on its way…

(via The Leaky Cauldron)

Quick Review: ‘Salem’s Lot

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Part of Prairie’s scheme to familiarize me with Stephen King’s work has included renting some of the many adaptations of his work to film. Quality varies, of course, but when they’re good, they’re good, and when they’re bad, it’s generally fun to look at the differences between the original story and the filmed version and see what went wrong.

This past weekend, we went with a recent TV miniseries version of ‘Salem’s Lot.

It started out rather promising, with a strong cast (Rob Lowe as Ben Mears, Donald Sutherland as Richard Straker, Rutger Hauer as Kurt Barlowe, and James Cromwell as Father Callahan), and the first half of the show was overall fairly well done — while there were definite alterations made, due both to moving the story to the small screen and updating it for a modern setting, most of them weren’t very troubling, and the tone of the film was dead on.

There were two definite “What??” moments in the first half, though. The film opened with a scene (Ben attacking Father Calahan and hospitalizing both of them after a fall out of a second-story window) that was not anywhere in the book, and had Prairie and I both quite confused, as it didn’t seem to make any sense for either of the characters — though we decided to give the film the benefit of the doubt, and see where things led, especially when the next few scenes covering Ben’s arrival in the town were handled quite well. Also, the doctor was combined with another character in the book, which ended up drastically changing his character for the worse. That bothered both of us, as he was one of the nicer characters in the book.

Other changes were more acceptable, though — various characters being combined, slight tweaks here and there — and most of what we noticed were differences in interpretation. For instance, we had each pictured Straker as far more slick and smooth, and very politely menacing, while Sutherland played him a little more wild. Still, the feel of the book was captured quite well, so even with the slight changes, things seemed to be going fairly well.

Then we hit the second half, and things suddenly starting going downhill. Mark, the boy hero of the book who survives in large part due to his childhood innocence and open acceptance of ghoulies, ghosties, and things that go bump in the night, is made far more cynical and something of a troublemaker, robbing his character of many of the qualities that allowed him to survive through the book. The changes made to the doctor’s character continued to eat away at our perception of him, making him far less sympathetic.

But the real crimes were in the sudden and drastic deviations from the plot of the book as the movie drew to a close. Ben’s encounter with Hubie Marsten in the old Marsten house is substantially changed, and ends up being nowhere near as creepy or effective as in the book. Susan’s death, one of the big moments for Ben in his struggle to deal with the situation, doesn’t happen when it should, instead being pushed into an absolutely ludicrously silly final confrontation near the end of the movie. Father Callahan goes from being a very interesting and ultimately tragic figure to being little more than evil and rather dumb. The vampire “dusting” effects are just silly — surely they could have found another way to distinguish their vampire deaths from those of other shows without having the vamps suddenly levitate towards the ceiling and explode into glitter. And Barlowe’s final moments are just laughable.

In the end, it was one of the more disappointing adaptations I’ve seen, simply because it seemed to start so well — to have it take such a drastic turn for the worse was more frustrating than if had simply been bad through and through from the start.

iTunes “Kiss, The” by Cure, The from the album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (1987, 6:14).

Mind Hacks

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Just added to my daily reads: Mind Hacks, the companion blog to Tom Stafford and Matt Webb’s book Mind Hacks, recently released by O’Reilly.

Full of fascinating brain play (literally), like this post on how we perceive our sleeping habits:

Our own perception of how much we slept during a night can be startlingly inaccurate. Dr Allison Harvey (now of UC Berkley) took insomniacs and measured how much they actually slept during the night. Despite the insomniacs reporting that they had only slept for two or three hours, they had in fact been asleep for an average of 7 hours – only 35 minutes less than a control group who didn’t have any problems sleeping.

This shows that insomniacs (and probably the rest of us) are very bad at judging the time it takes us to get to sleep, and the time we actually are asleep. It also suggests that worrying about sleep, and our beliefs about how we’ve slept, have a big role in the negative affects of what (we believe) is a sleepless night.

I’m looking forward to seeing what else pops up on their weblog, and I will definitely need to pick up the book as soon as I get a chance.

(via Boing Boing)

iTunes “This Hollowed Ground” by Legendary Pink Dots, The from the album From Here You’ll Watch the World Go By (1995, 3:04).

A Book of Blogs

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Thanks to Alicia, I just found out about this project of Tvindy’s:

With all the phenomenal writing that has appeared on our various blogs over the past several months, wouldn’t it be cool for us to get together and publish a physical anthology of our greatest posts?

The way I envision it is that several of us agree to participate and have a couple of their entries published in the anthology. Since most people (myself included) find it hard to evaluate their own work, we can make suggestions as to what the best entries of our fellow bloggers are and urge them to choose those. That should make for some interesting debates.

The final product would be a paperback, containing hopefully as many as fifty entries in no particular order. Each entry would identify the name (or pseudonym) of the author and the URL of her/his blog. We’d make a nice cover using combined artwork from various blogs, and there would be an introduction at the beginning explaining what the book was.

He’s got more thoughts on how to approach the project in his next three posts (make that four).

I think this sounds really good, and would love to contribute, if anything I have is deemed worthy of inclusion.

Taking a quick look at my recent Four Years post where I pulled out a lot of highlights, I’m thinking that the following posts would be most likely to work well:

If anyone else has any other nominations, though, I’d be glad to see them. Your views on the “best” posts as readers might be quite different than mine as author.

Versus

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What ever happened to concepts like tolerance and respect of others? Polite disagreement? Discussion as opposed to argument? Open minded acceptance of other people’s views, even if they differ from your own?

This may not be my most coherent or well-organized post, but a couple things popped up today that have been rumbling around in the back of my head, and I wanted to at least make a stab at getting some of them out.

Yesterday, I posted a link and excerpt from a story in the Seattle Times about a local Native American burial ground that has been uncovered due to construction on the Hood Canal bridge. The story caught my attention both for the archaeological significance of the find, and for the care and concern that the local tribes have for the spirituality of the site and their ancestors.

This morning, my post got a Trackback ping when Paul Myers of Pharyngula posted about the article. When I read his post, though, I was more than a little taken aback at what I felt to be the cavalier and rude tone he took in regard to the tribe’s religious beliefs.

There’s a fair bit of religious hokum in the article; goofy stuff such as the claim that pouring a concrete slab would trap the spirits forever (piling dirt and rocks on top of them doesn’t, apparently, nor does rotting into a smear), and spiritual advisors on site and ritual anointings to protect people from angry spirits. That’s all baloney….

The religious/spiritual crap cuts no ice with me….

It wasn’t that he didn’t agree with the spirituality of the tribe that bothered me (I don’t know Paul’s personal religious beliefs) — rather, it was the utter lack of respect in how he addressed it. It was the old stereotype of the scientist so convinced of the utter righteousness of the purely scientific world view that he’s utterly contemptuous of those fools who believe in any sort of higher power (see Ellie Arroway in Carl Sagan’s Contact, for example).

That bothered me, but I wasn’t quite sure how to start expressing it, so I just filed it away on the back burner to percolate for a little bit.

A couple of days ago, I’d posted a link on my linklog to a Gallup poll which showed that only one third of Americans believe that evidence supports Darwin’s theory of evolution, and had added the comment, “how depressing.” This morning, I got a comment on that post from Swami Prem that raised my eyebrows:

What’s depressing about this? There is no evidence that supports Darwin’s theories. No scientist has ever shown that there exists a link between humans and apes. Darwin’s theories are theories afterall.

Suddenly, I found myself coming dangerously close to stepping right into Paul’s shoes, and had to wait a while before responding to Prem’s comment. My first impulse was surprise and, quite honestly, a little bit of, “oh, here we go again…” — Prem and I have had strong disagreements in the past, and while I don’t believe that he’s at all unintelligent, his earlier espousal of viewpoints that are so diametrically opposed to my own strongly colored my initial reaction to this new comment.

After taking some time to let that roll around in my brain I did respond, and Prem’s responded to that. As yet, I haven’t taken it any further, both because I want to do my best to respond intelligently and because I’m somewhat stumped as to just how to start (I probably need to take some time to do a little research [this site looks like a good place to start] — as I’ve never progressed beyond attaining my high school diploma, and I was never that good in the sciences to begin with, I’m not entirely comfortable with trying to engage in a full-on creationism-vs.-Darwinism debate without a little brushing up [and actually, Paul would probably be far more qualified than I to tackle Prem’s question, judging by his obvious interest in both biology and evolution — just check out the links in his sidebar!]).

Anyway, both of these items have been bouncing around my head all day.

I think a lot of what’s been bothering me about the exchanges is that I try hard to be polite and respectful in my discussions with people, even when (and sometimes especially when) I disagree with them, and that seems to be a trait that has gone by the wayside far too often these days. Sure, I don’t always succeed — I’ll fly off the handle and rant and rave from time to time — but I do make an effort to keep those instances to a minimum.

Unfortunately, it seems that we’re living in a world where differences are all anybody sees anymore: us vs. them, me vs. you, religion vs. science, liberal vs. conservative, democrat vs. republican, urban vs. rural, red vs. blue, etc. Nobody’s actually listening to what anyone else has to say — we’re all so sure that we’re right and everyone else is wrong, too busy banging our shoes on the table to really listen to anyone else.

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs, all told.

Bouncing back a bit, but touching on both of the incidents that started all this rambling, I think the thing that frustrates me the most about the science vs. religion debate — and creationism vs. Darwinism in particular — is that in my mind, there is absolutely nothing that says that the two theories are incompatible. It’s never seemed to me as if it was an either/or equation — coming back to Carl Sagan’s book, and most pointedly the end of it (and if you haven’t read or don’t want to read the book, feel free to watch the movie — it’s one of the single most intelligent science-fiction films I’ve seen in my lifetime), why is it so hard for people to wrap their heads around the concept that it’s entirely possible that both Ellie Arroway and Palmer Joss are “right”?

I’ve always found it interesting that the most commonly known of the two creation stories in Genesis fairly accurately parallels the scientific view of the formation of the universe, our planet, and the life upon it. First space, then stars, then the earth, then oceans, then plants, then fish, then animals, then man. Two different ways of telling the same story — one measured in days and one measured in millennia, but the same story. Of course, this does hinge on the ability to accept the Bible without taking it literally (which is probably another subject for another time, but it’s probably fairly obvious that I don’t subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Bible), which trips up a lot of people.

Meh. I don’t know…and I think I’m starting to run out of steam. As I warned at the beginning of this, probably not the most coherent or well-organized post I’ve ever made here.

Had to get some of this out of my head, though.

Questions? Comments? Words of wisdom? Bring ’em on….

Lunar Eclipse tonight

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John reminded me that there’s a lunar eclipse tonight. If the skies stay as clear as they are right now, I may climb up to the roof of my apartment building and see if I can get any decent pictures.

In the meantime, I present this handy-dandy guide to eclipse terminology.

An eclipse of the moon occurs when the sun passes between the earth and the moon.

An eclipse of the sun occurs when the shadow of the earth falls on the sun.

An eclipse of the earth occurs when you put your hands over your eyes.

(Images from Tom Weller‘s seminal 1985 technical opus, Science Made Stupid)

iTunes “Fascination Street (Extended)” by Cure, The from the album Mixed Up (1990, 8:48).

Book Meme

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Hardback or Paperback?
Generally paperback — cheaper, smaller, and more convenient to schlep around with me. However, when I can afford it, there’s something quite satisfying about the heft of a good hardback edition. I’ve been picking up Neal Stephenson‘s latest books in hardback — something about a work of that length almost demands the hardback edition. Something of a measure of respect.
Highlight or Underline?
Neither, most of the time — I tend to be picky to the point of being anal about taking care of my books — but I have been known to scribble in the margins of a select few. My dad’s horrid about marking up his books, and there have been times when I’ve borrowed a book from him and then had to get my own copy just to be able to get through it.
Lewis or Tolkien?
Tolkien, though it’s close. Dad turned me on to C.S. Lewis‘ Space Trilogy series when I was much younger, and I tend to pick it up and re-read it about as often as I re-read The Lord of the Rings.
E.B. White or A.A. Milne?
In other words, Charlotte or Pooh? I’d definitely have to go with Pooh.
T.S. Eliot or e.e. cummings?
e.e. cummings, definitely — no offense to T.S. Eliot at all (as a long-time lover of musicals and having been in a professional children’s choir for ten years when I was younger, I do have all of Cats permanently embedded in my head, after all), but cummings has long been the only poetry I’ve ever really been able to get into.
Stephen King or Dean Koontz?
In the past, I definitely preferred Koontz — I felt that King tended to over-describe, while Koontz left more to the imagination, which always ends up scarier for me, as it let my brain choose things that would really get under my skin. However, the more I read of Koontz, the more apparent it became that he often just wrote the same story over and over and over again, and he lost some of his luster. Lately, Prairie’s been tossing a ton of King at me, and I’ve been enjoying it more than I initially thought I would. Call it a draw for the moment, leaning towards King.
Barnes & Noble or Borders?
Both are within easy walking distance of me, but B&N is just a touch closer than Borders (right across the street from where I work, in fact). Other than that, no real preference.
Waldenbooks or B. Dalton?
I haven’t seen either in years — no preference here.
Fantasy or Science Fiction?
Science Fiction, definitely, and then I go more for “hard” Sci-Fi rather than “pulp” Sci-Fi. Asimov is a long-time favorite, for instance, and I just turned Prairie on to Orson Scott Card‘s Ender’s Game. Fantasy often seems too restrictive of a genre to me — no matter how good the author is, there are always the same basic elements (swords and sorcery, wizards, trolls, goblins, etc.) (and yes, that’s a gross oversimplification, but in my view, not an entirely untrue one). Science Fiction by its very nature has the entire universe (or universes) to play with, and is limited only by the imagination of the author — and at times can even incorporate fantastic elements into it (such as Tad Williams‘ Otherland series, or Anne McCafferey‘s Pern books), giving you the best of both worlds.
Horror or Suspense?
When well written, both can be a lot of fun (and they’re not really all that seperate, are they?). No real preference here.
Bookmark or Dogear?
Bookmark, definitely — as I said above, I’m anal about the condition of my books.
Hemingway or Faulkner?
And here I start showing my ignorance of many of the “classics” of literature — I haven’t really read enough of either to have a preference.
Fitzgerald or Steinbeck?
Again, I haven’t really read enough of either to have a preference.
John Irving or John Updike?
Once more, I haven’t really read enough of either to have a preference.
Homer or Plato?
This is just starting to look bad now (I haven’t really read enough of either to have a preference).
Geoffrey Chaucer or Edmund Spenser?\
Whan that Aprille, with its shures sotes… (spelling mangled, I’m sure). I actually don’t know that I’ve read any Spenser, so it’d be Chaucer (after having to memorize the opening few stanzas of The Canterbury Tales in High School) by default.
Pen or Pencil?
On the off chance I do mark up a book…probably pen, for no reason other than that it’s what’s most likely to be close at hand. I’m honestly not sure if I even have a pencil in my apartment.
Looseleaf or Notebook?
Notebook, definitely. Helps keep things contained — I’m bad enough at cluttering things up without more loose sheets of paper fluttering around my apartment.
Alphabetize: By Author or By Title?
By author, of course. Last name, then first name. Multi-author collected works sorted by the primary editor’s name. I’ve occasionally toyed with the idea of sorting by genre also, but never got around to it. Heck, right now, I’d be happy to find a way to put up bookshelves just to get my books out of the boxes in my closet!
Dustjacket: On or Off?
Off, and and in the trash. They rarely do much good except as advertising while in the bookstore — once bought, they just slip around, make it slightly more difficult to hold on to the book, and are generally annoying. Besides, some hardbound books have some very nice binding, and it’s a shame to hide that.
Novella or Epic?
Either. I do have a fondness for big books, and often epics will catch my eye as I’m browsing bookshelves, but as long as the story’s good, I’m happy.
John Grisham or Scott Turow?
Does not having read either of these modern popular authors make up at all for all the classic authors listed above that I haven’t read?
J.K. Rowling or Lemony Snicket?
Not having read Snicket, Rowling gets this one by default (and I do really enjoy the Harry Potter series).
Fiction or Non-fiction?
Generally fiction, but I’m not averse to non-fiction — in fact, one of my favorite Asimov collections is a mix of short fiction and non-fiction scientific essays.
Historical Biography or Historical Romance?
Biography, of the two. Historical Fiction is a very fun genre, though, and can incorporate elements of both.
A Few Pages per Sitting or Finish at Least a Chapter?
Usually depends on how much time I have. If I’m settling down for an evening with a book, it’s not uncommon for me to finish the entire thing off. If I’m on the bus or on my lunch break, I’ll just get through as much as I can (though I do try to aim for chapter or section breaks).
Short Story or Creative Non-fiction Essay?
Short story. I’m a sucker for short story collections.
“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”?
Once upon a time (especially if the Brothers Grimm are involved).
Buy or borrow?
Buy. I love the concept of libraries, and they have their uses for research, but when it comes to reading for pleasure…well, they have this silly idea that they want their books back, which I have issues with. Reading a book once is rarely enough.
Book Reviews or Word of Mouth?
Of the two, word of mouth, though I often stumble upon stuff just by browsing (the old adage about judging a book by its cover notwithstanding, that’s often how I go about finding new things). Lately it’s definitely been word of mouth, as Prairie and I have been trading books back and forth.

(via Mike)

iTunes “Sinister Exaggerator” by Primus from the album Miscellaneous Debris (1992, 3:37).

Disney turning Bloom County 3-D

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You know, much as I’d like to get excited about the prospect of a Bloom County feature film, given Disney‘s track record over the past few years (nearly anything without Pixar‘s involvement is a waste of time — Pirates of the Caribbean and Lilo and Stitch are the only exceptions I can think of, and even Lilo, while enjoyable, isn’t quite up to the standards Disney used to have), the news that their first foray into 3-D animation without Pixar’s involvement will be a Bloom County film doesn’t thrill me.

Miramax Films will co-finance and distribute computer-animated family films starting with “Opus,” adapted from the popular “Bloom County” comic strip, the company said Thursday.

Miramax will release some of the films under its Dimension banner and produce them in conjunction with Wild Brain Inc., a San Francisco-based animated film company perhaps best known for creating the nasty toe fungus in commercials for the prescription drug Lamisil.

Now, while I don’t know anything about Wild Brain (or their nasty toe fungus), the fact that the movie will be under the Disney subsidiary Miramax does give some hope that the end result won’t be as Disney-fied as might otherwise be the case (after all, Miramax does distribute a lot of movies I enjoy, including many of Kevin Smith‘s works). So maybe it won’t be all bad, right? But then the article goes on…

The deal envisions lower budget feature films consistent with Miramax’s independent studio status. Films will cost about half of the bigger budget movies produced by Pixar Animation Studios or DreamWorks SKG.

“What you spend doesn’t necessarily reflect on how good the movie is,” said Jim Miller, Wild Brain chairman.

Well, sure Jim, that’s quite true — there are many, many examples of low-budget films whose quality far outshines the big-budget extravaganzas foisted upon us by the movie studios each summer. However, that said, “low-budget” isn’t really a term I tend to associate with CGI. Still, I will easily admit that I know jack squat about the costs involved in CGI. Maybe it is possible to create a quality feature length CGI film on 1/2 the budget of a Pixar film (though given how good Pixar’s films are, and how successful, I’d hesitate to consider calling their work too expensive).

I’m also having a little difficulty trying to envision the Bloom County universe as a fully three-dimensional rendered world. I keep trying to picture Opus, Bill, and the rest of the critters as 3-D models, and stumbling. On top of that, there are the human characters — Milo, Binkley, Steve, Cutter John, Oliver — and human animation is getting better, but will it be good enough to actually realize the characters I’ve grown up with?

But beyond the quality of the animation and the talent of the animators, there’s this little thing called the script that someone’s got to worry about, and when dealing with a property as well-known and loved as Bloom County, that’s got to be very important consideration.

The choice of subject for the first film reflects Miramax’s eclectic tastes and could prove to be a hard sell, especially to younger audiences.

The character of Opus is a rotund penguin with a cynical world view – far from the heartwarming characters at the center of such films as “Finding Nemo.”

“We agree that it’s a challenge,” Miller said. “How do you take the essence of those characters, who are a little cynical, and move them into a story that can reach adults at the ‘Bloom County’ level and children at their level? We think we have a terrific story.”

The challenge has been given to screenwriter Craig Mazin, whose credits include “Scary Movie 3.” “Bloom County” is written by Berkeley Breathed.

And therein lies my real fear.

So far, I’ve only ever seen two properties that I ever felt could really bridge the gap between children’s entertainment and adult entertainment in a way that successfully appealed to both age groups without pandering to either: The Muppets (with the original television show and the first movie being the high points) and Animaniacs. All too often, either something ends up being watered down too much in order to aim at the children, and the adults have to sit through mind-numbingly asinine shows to appease their children, or the humor is aimed so much at the adult level that parents aren’t comfortable allowing younger children to watch.

Combining the two is a very tricky business, often requiring a level of subtlety that I just don’t see much these days. Rather than going for obvious “adult” or “juvenile” humor (which, admittedly, these days seems all too similar, usually revolving around toilet humor, with the only real difference being whether or not there’s a sexual overtone), it seems to require more thought to the humor — more intelligent jokes, more puns, veiled references…done well (as both the Muppets and Animaniacs did), it can be incredibly enjoyable for both age groups. Done poorly, and nobody enjoys it as much as they should.

Of course, as with all things, there will be no real way to know until it comes out, which should be sometime in 2006. Until then, though…well, I won’t be holding my breath. And if all else fails, there is a lot of Bloom County in print that is just as funny to me now as it was when it came out (sometimes funnier, as I’ve grown older and more able to understand some of the humor).

iTunes “Attached” by Orbital from the album Snivilisation (1994, 12:25).