comics

As a follow-up to talking about Iron Man, here are some alternate designs for Iron Man from Project Rooftop: Iron Man Invincible Upgrade, and Part II

Some great designs!

One of the things we do at work, at lunch and otherwise, is talk about movies, old, new and forthcoming. We kibitz and argue and I get a lot out of it. I like talking about movies about people who care about them.

The one movie I am excited about that NOBODY else is is Speed Racer. I think it’s incredible looking. I suspect it’s going to massively flop, but I hope not. It reminds me a little bit of Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy—which I find to be awful, but was an interesting experiment. My hope is that Speed Racer will be more than just interesting.

I enjoyed Iron Man very much, despite being very sick when I saw it. I juiced myself up on cold medicine, grabbed a handful of cough drops and we saw it last weekend. I followed the Iron Man comic in the 1980s so I do have longstanding (holy cow, 20 years) interest in the character. I thought the casting was great, and the movie was fun. Good action, believable characterizations: the film worked. I think criticisms like those voiced by Matthew Baldwin are valid, and I think his superhero movie pet peeves are particularly apt.

Interestingly enough, the funniest things I’ve read about Iron Man are not about the movie, but come from the Again With The Comics blog, which dives into the decades of history of Iron Man to find the more wonderfully ridiculous aspects of the character and his rogue’s gallery. For example: Things You Won’t Be Seeing In IRON MAN: The Iron Mullet!, Things You Won’t Be Seeing In IRON MAN: the Iron Nose and lastly: Things You Won’t Be Seeing In IRON MAN: Obadiah Stane’s “Costume”

I think Lebowski might’ve looked pretty good in that! Well, maybe. I’m curious to see how the sequels might do. Oh, and one last AWTC post: Iron Man 2 Villain Suggestions. And though that is a funny post, Black Lama really is a character who is “other-dimensional counterpart of Gerald Ford,” Wikipedia confirms this.

The other two “big” movies I want to see this year are Wall-E and The Dark Knight. I’ve been a fan of Pixar animation for decades, and a Batman fan even longer.

Speaking of animation, I would be remiss if I did not bring to your attention a Bollywood/Disney computer animated film called Roadside Romeo, which I found via Cartoon Brew:

It looks truly bad, though I will admit that I’m not the intended audience. It does include a heaping dose of ‘tude. Though John Kricfalusi does not care for the Simpson’s, when I think of ‘tude, I think of Poochie.

I actually followed the Iron Man comic for a few years back in the mid-to-late 1980s, so I’m a fan. And it was a hot day, so I splurged on this collectible. A bit of fun, and the Slurpee was delicious.

Sinfest remains a favorite for me. By turns smart, ribald, dirty, funny, sexy, thoughtful, deep—it’s exactly what an online comic should be.

Several months ago I donated money to Dorothy, the super-duper-awesome cartoonist of Cat and Girl—she has this thing called “Donation Derby”:

Support my lavish lifestyle! Donate $5 or more and I’ll draw you a picture of how I spend it. Include your address and I’ll mail it to you.

The other day, my donation turned into a comic, and I got a copy in the US mail too! Yay!

Yes, I have mentioned Cat and Girl before, twice I think.

If you want a collection of Donation Derby comics, you can buy $8228.40 and a Metrocard.

Today I am 38 years old. I think it will be a lovely day.

Followed up on some emails from Geek Dinner the other night and I’m reminded that I have yet to transcribe my notes from BarCamp which is rapidly fading from memory.

Borrowed the collected DC: The New Frontier from Jukebox and enjoying it. Halfway through it. I enjoyed the animated movie version of it—wasn’t blown away, but it was well done. The comic seems to have a bit more nuance, but they’re pretty faithful to each other.

Many birthday wishes coming in via email and FaceBook, and I got calls from my folks yesterday, plus my parents-in-law too. I even got a text message from Tyler the other day, though the kids are on vacation out of the country and without cell phones (presumably to avoid horrendous international roaming and data charges) this week.

Oh! Gift, today I gave myself the gift of donating some money (a whole $20!) to the Obama Campaign. Why don’t you do the same? The guy is clearly the most qualified, level-headed, smart person among the three on offer at the moment. I like him a lot. So, really, donate!

Let’s get this day started, eh?

UPDATE

Previous birthday posts: Today is: National Corndog Day, also my Birthday and Useless Information About My B-Day

And I totally forgot: it’s Won’t You Wear a Sweater? Day

In honor of what would have been Mister Rogers’ 80th birthday on March 20, Mr. McFeely — aka David Newell, the public relations director for Family Communications, Inc. (the nonprofit company founded in 1971 by Fred Rogers) — has a special request.

“We’re asking everyone everywhere — from Pittsburgh to Paris — to wear their favorite sweater on that day,” he asks in his best speedy delivery voice. “It doesn’t have to have a zipper down the front like the one Mister Rogers wore on the program, it just has to be special to you.”

Back in 2000, at EduPoint when we played Quake III my handle was “JoeSweater.” I was even more identified with wearing a sweater then than I am now. I think I stole a red sweater from my Grandfather when I was maybe 13 and the habit has stuck. Today perhaps I’ll wear the red one.

Okay, now the day can begin.

Dave Stevens has died of leukemia. Remembrances all over the comics blogosphere this morning. Here are a few: THE BEAT, Mark Evanier, Rob Ullman, Drawn!.

I remember seeing The Rocketeer graphic novel in the mid-1980s and being astounded with the intricacy and delicacy of the design and artwork. Dave was a consummate artist and he, and his work, will be missed.

Today is catch-up and do stuff day.

First, enjoy some Sinfest!

Also, know that the truly twisted (and rarely safe for work) online comic Perry Bible Fellowship has a book coming out soon, with the enigmatic title The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories: A Collection of The Comic Strips of The Perry Bible Fellowship: Check it out.

Also in the realm of online comics: this Wondermark—#338 made me laugh.

MAS blogged about a book: The Most Dangerous Places in the World. It sounds pretty good.

Leah’s in Palm Desert and has soft feet and is funny and photographs duckies, not necessarily in that order.

Kicking it old school I say… ONWARD.

Don’t use oxygen and smoke, please.

Thomas PM Barnett, a great Powerpointer, mentions that Al Gore has his Nobel Prize because of his PPTs (actually Keynote, but same difference, presentation software).

Read/Write Web has good thoughts on Microsoft’s playing catch-up with Google on a number of web tools. I like competitor for Google. It means we’ll keep getting innovation. And don’t count our Yahoo. They are building a lot of stuff these days.

The cartoon where Jesus, Mohammed, and the unseen Barmaid talk are usually good. Like this one: Snake.

Free To Play notes a study that says of the time kids ages 2 to 17 play games, 91% of it is on free games.

WebKit now has an implementation of a local SQL database (via John Gruber). That’s odd, and cool. It seems to be what Google Gears is trying to do, or what Flash does with its Local Shared Objects. All of these kick the butt of mere cookies for storage. The real thing they allow is to allow web applications to work without an internet connection. What’s WebKit? It’s the engine inside Safari and KDE browsers. This local storage thing is being discussed with great enthusiasm these days seems like. It’s still a great time to be working on web stuff.

Last night Leah and I visited a bookstore after dinner and I looked at a book called Beautiful Code. It’s got a chapter by Douglas Crockford. I’ve not bought it yet, but it’s been added to my “to read” list. I’ve been trying to write my JavaScript according to his code conventions.

To start with, a random screenshot from a video from 1989:

I enjoy his music very much. He got his name from a vision of Oral Roberts:

May 25, 1980, while overlooking his religious center which was in financial difficulty:

“’I felt an overwhelming holy presence all around me. When I opened my eyes, there He stood … some 900 feet tall, looking at me … He stood a full 300 feet taller than the 600-foot-tall City of Faith. There I was face to face with Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God. I have only seen Jesus once before, but here I was face to face with the King of kings. He reached down, put his Hands under the City of Faith, lifted it, and said to me, “See how easy it is for Me to lift it!”’”

“Oral recalled that his eyes filled with tears, and Jesus assured him that He would speak to the ministry’s partners and that the City of Faith would be finished.”

On to Misc, or, continuing the misc!

Ubuntu has a new version out—7.10. A few weeks ago, our houseguests brought with them a sad, cheap Wal-Mart laptop that would neither boot nor behave. I installed Ubuntu (6) for them and it’s given them what they wanted, a basic email and photos and web browsing machine. I have been impressed and as my Windows 2003 Server machine gets lamer (remember that?) it makes me think seriously about converting it to Linux. There are several apps I would miss: FileZilla, TextPad, Paint.NET, iTunes. We’ll see. I’m not really a zealot about open source, but I’ve been following Mark Pilgrim’s posts about switching to Linux and it has me intrigued. And it was great to install an OS on an x86 Machine and not have to dig around in boxes for stupid Activation Keys and do Windows Activation. It might be great for me too.

MAS read a book about SuperFoods, and the list he posted has me interested. Here’s the Cliff’s Notes:

1. Beans
2. Blueberries
3. Broccoli
4. Oats
5. Oranges
6. Pumpkin
7. Wild Salmon
8. Soy
9. Spinach
10. Tea
11. Tomatoes
12. Turkey
13. Walnuts
14. Yogurt

And what’s this? An obscure fact about “protocol relative links”—cool! Http-https transitions and relative URLs, via Simon Willison.

The Harold and Kumar sequel might be called Harold and Kumar go to Guantanamo Bay. That’s as crazy as the first movie was. Harold and Kumar is a dumb movie I really like.

“Guilty Pleasure” movies have been a topic at work of late… two I really like that are not necessarily great movies are Necessary Roughness and Under Siege.

Yes, San Diego Voice and Viewpoint’s website is still under construction. Yes, it’s sad when newspapers, even niche ones, don’t have websites. What year is it again?

Oh, the thing that powers the avatars on my site and over on Leah’s site is called Gravatar. They got bought by WordPress.

I got the new Cat and Girl book in the mail! See, look, here’s proof I got it:

Buy one!

Dave Segovia is reintroducing himself. He’s a heck of a character. Drop by his blog and say “Hi!”

Over on BlogHer, Laura Scott mentioned leahpeah’s recent posting about uncomfortable subjects and readership.

David Foster speaks about a basic question cancer warriors have about why they would get cancer if they did everything right. He’s got the same kind of cancer my Mom has. Here’s a quote:

But they are beating up themselves and their lifestyle for no reason. It is true that some behaviors—like smoking cigarettes—cause cancer. But many—if not most—cancers have nothing to do with how healthily you live your life or how many vegetables you eat or vitamins you take.

And lastly, the estimable Jeffrey Zeldman points to the A List Apart Web Survey Results, which make for some interesting reading.

Have a great weekend!