Things said to me as Kingpin at San Diego Comic-Con 2023
Cosplaying as Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin, is one of my favorites. In part it’s because it gets more response from people on the job – people working at the Convention Center. Often people of color. But I also get misidentified in interesting ways too! Here are a few quotes said to me this year.
You look sharp!
Mr. Freeze!
Lex Luthor
That diamond though!
WWMMD
I feel like it was in this speech by Bruce Sterling where I was first exposed to the notion that it was the digital thing that was the more real thing. Reality is digital and the actual stuff Is secondary. As to the outside world being scary and intimidating, yes. But at times like that I ask WWMMD? And Mad Max would travel the wasteland, getting in adventures, eating lizards, and toppling tyrants. Because who the hell else is going to do it?
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Oceanside Harbor this morning was pretty fun.
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ONLY SURFING
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First up today: coffee; then shoring up CBLDF patch; adding Robby the Robot; (both on my tote bag; then, having regained sewing confidence: fixing broken strap for handplane.
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“What do you know about art, kid?”
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The quarter mile buoy used to be my favorite part at my former favorite place: La Jolla Cove. My notions of favorite place have changed but I still love it.
Music!!!!!
I’ve been tinkering and updating my website lately. And catching up with my RSS feeds. And here’s my friend gRegor with a post I might have an opinion about. He wrote:
Recommendations are always welcome! What are some of your favorite albums of 2023?
Also I was looking at when I met gRegor and it was in the innocent pre-pandemic days of December 2019. We were so innocent then.
Here’s a photo:
Anyway, as to his post–he alludes to Pablo’s 1000 albums in 1000 days project. Ambitious! In his own he writes:
I’m keeping it simple for now, so not going to commit to 1000 albums or posting about each one I listen to, but I am sure I will share some of the high/lowlights.
Recommendations are always welcome! What are some of your favorite albums of 2023?
One of the things I do is that every year I start a new playlist with songs I’ve discovered or are in heavy rotation. It might be things that I hear on the radio (yes, I listen to the radio). It might be music that appears in media–an example of that was when I heard Jidenna’s Long Live the Chief in Luke Cage. It might be from music history videos from Trash Theory, this year Wet Leg’s Chaise Longue meets that criteria (see CHAISE LONGUE or: How Wet Leg Buttered The Indie World’s Muffin). So it’s not so much albums that I listen to as I use adding a song to my playlist as a potential starting point to see their other music or other music related to their era.
Some standouts from this year:
- Sarah Shook and the Disarmers has impressed me as a brutally frank country artist that puts me in the mind of the best of Dwight Yoakam
- Stew & The Negro Problem‘s Florida is not a new one but the refrain of “Florida / Florida you kill me” guts me every time. Selected lyrics: “Cali gave us The Beach Boys and Charles Manson / Oklahoma gave us Leon Russell and Hanson”
- Kitty is an artist I’ve been following a long time. “Baby Pink” is great – it came out in 2020. I also have “Thanks Kathryn Obvious” which is low-fi rap and includes the line “I just came for the fries with the carne asada:
- Another one Trash Theory turned me onto is The Tourists’ cover of “I only want to be with you” which I had somehow never heard. It’s the band The Eurythmics were before they were The Eurythmics
- And in songs from my youth that I forgot existed but love dearly: Translator’s “Everywhere That I’m Not” is an absolute fave. The earnestness of the refrain gets me. It’s all about longing, which was what my teen years were all about.
- Lana Del Rey’s “Not All Who Wander Are Lost” is another sad song that hits me hard. Who doesn’t appreciate pop stars who quote Tolkien anyway?
- In the obsessive category: “Down To Earth” by Peter Gabriel from the WALL-E soundtrack went on super heavy rotation for me a few months ago. The movie and its themes of planetary recovery and the chance for humanity to fix its damn problems gets to me. Managing to be hopeful as it does it is infectious to me. And yes, I’m using the word infectious deliberately. Here’s to hope! 2023 fee fie phō fun so far. I reserve the right to add (or more rarely, remove) to this playlist:
Militant Angeleno is moving and upgrading!
All good things may or may not come to an end. After 16 years, the Militant is making his last post on This Here Blog Site…Because he has recently purchased his own domain and has set up a brand-spankin’ new WordPress blog site! So, no, The Militant isn’t calling it quits, he’s just moving. He’s had it with this Blogger.com platform and its very user-unfriendly formatting. But history-loving archivist he is, he will keep this site up as The Militant Archives and continue to link to this one when and where appropriate. Some important posts will be updated and migrated to the new site as time permits though.
In the meantime, you can find The Militant at his new website: militantangeleno.com! See you or see you there!
Exciting! I haven’t mentioned The Militant in a few years but I still read via RSS.
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