* Today sees the release of the new album Barking from my favorite band, Underworld. To celebrate, why not watch the “haha, that’s a great idea”-inducing video for the album’s highlight, “Always Loved a Film,” and then buy the whole thing for a measly $3.99 by entering the code PICKDEAL? (Via Andy Khouri.)
* Today on Robot 6: Read a new Dave Kiersh comic for free, then buy it for eight bucks. Kiersh is your undiscovered favorite cartoonist. He’s like the emotional content of an M83 single in comics form.
* The annual Small Press Expo was held in Bethesda, Maryland this past weekend; it’s one of my favorite comic cons, I tend to like it more every year, but this year I was kept from attending by entirely pleasant exigent circumstances so I’m jonesing for good in-depth con reports. So far the best of the bunch comes from Barry and Leon at Secret Acres; it features a game of “guess the prominent critic” that had me laughing out loud. I also enjoyed this effusive, personal report from Rob McMonigal. Unfortunately it sounds like my much hoped for Critics Roundtable Smackdown never materialized. If and when I’m able to participate in one of these again I promise you I’ll son everyone else so hard they’ll call it Father’s Day. (Not true)
* Jeepers creepers, comics sales flatlined in August. In the comment thread Marc-Oliver Frisch points out that basically all of DC Comics’ heavy hitters missed the month entirely, but even still; and that’s its own problem right there, too.
* Tom Spurgeon points out that you can buy a boatload of great individual-issue comic books via Drawn & Quarterly’s big sale. Every year I’m tempted anew to run the table on Chester Brown’s Underwater and every year I wimp out for one reason or another.
* Here’s a really solid, really focused, process- and influence-oriented interview of the great cartoonist Jason by Tim O’Shea.
* Do you want to read William S. Burroughs writing about Led Zeppelin and interviewing, in his own unique way, Jimmy Page? Of course you do. As with everything Burroughs wrote it’s even better when you imagine him saying it in that rustling-mausoleum-door voice of his:
The Led Zeppelin show depends heavily on volume, repetition and drums. It bears some resemblance to the trance music found in Morocco, which is magical in origin and purpose–that is, concerned with the evocation and control of spiritual forces. In Morocco, musicians are also magicians. Gnaoua music is used to drive out evil spirits. The music of Joujouka evokes the God Pan, Pan God of Panic, representing the real magical forces that sweep away the spurious. It is to be remembered that the origin of all the arts–music, painting and writing–is magical and evocative; and that magic is always used to obtain some definite result. In the Led Zeppelin concert, the result aimed at would seem to be the creation of energy in the performers and in the audience. For such magic to succeed, it must tap the sources of magical energy, and this can be dangerous.
That is like porn to me.
* The Mindless Ones’ review thereof reminds me: I’ve been meaning to say that Batman & Robin #14 from Grant Morrison and Frazer Irving is the single best Batman issue I’ve ever read. I mean, this thing simply could not be more of what I’m looking for from Batman comics.
* Nitsuh Abebe’s review of the new self-titled Interpol album for Pitchfork makes for a useful counterpoint to my own in that we basically agree on everything except whether or not it all works.
* Damn–now that’s how you pan a comic book.
* Real Life Horror #1: I don’t think I realized the extent to which other countries are pursuing legal action against the United States’ torture policies. (Via Andrew Sullivan.)
* Real Life Horror #2: The government may do the kindness of filing criminal charges against American citizen/probable terrorist fuckwit Anwar al-Awlaki before assassinating him, or it may not. Who knows? This element of edge-of-your-seat suspense is part of the fun of living in America today.
* Real Life Horror #3: Discover Blog del Narco, a ground-level no-nonsense chronicler of the prohibition- and human-depravity-fueled drug war currently ravaging Mexico. The picture that accompanies this post made my heart crumple; not safe for people who have a really hard time with cruelty. (Via Spencer Ackerman.)
* More Silver Surfer art from Frank Santoro.
* I’m straight-up impressed by the design of this Bryan Hitch Spider-Man cover. Swirly!
* I’m digging the oddly ethereal kaiju art of Sean Edward. (Via Monster Brains.)
* I have no brief with Robert Rodriguez’s Machete–the trailers look fun, most Rodriguez movies have struck me as inert collections of things that work better as pullquotes from your description of the movie to your friends than as parts of a movie proper, I’ll see it if and when I work through the long list of other more interesting movies I’ve negelected–but this promotional photograph of star Michelle Rodriguez nonetheless felt like something I needed to bring to your attention.
It may be how to pan a comic, but I honestly couldn’t read it because of all the flashing images surrounding the text. Madness.
Every time I’ve tried to load your site for the past week and a half it’s just about crashed my browser – I don’t know why, but it takes a good ten minutes to properly load right and for the computer to stop chittering.
David: Man, if you think Tom’s layout is too shitty to deal with, what the heck are you doing HERE? 🙂
Tim: Oh, that was that video post I did. Pretty much crushed any connection that wasn’t absurdly fast. Because my blog interface is so shitty I couldn’t even hide them behind a jump. I just bit the bullet and moved the videos themselves to a backdated post to get them off the front page–that seems to have done the trick.