Originally posted at The Outbreak on Feb. 27th, 2005:

Last night my friend Ken threw himself a birthday party. And when I say he threw himself a birthday party, what I mean is that he did not fuck around. There was an open bar, a knife-throwing act, a ska band, an artsy marching band, burlesque dancers, and a happy-birthday-to-Ken strip show involving two of his friends that ended in an act that reminded me of nothing so much as George Costanza’s declaration to a Senegalese home-care aide of his acquaintance, “I want to dip my bald head in oil and rub it all over your body,” only in this case “oil” was replaced by chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and maybe some other stuff I couldn’t see from that distance. When Amy and I left the party, there was a man with a face tattoo on stage doing some sort of revival-tent speech (that, or the opening for the MC5’s Kick Out the Jams). As I said, Kenneth did not fuck around. What’s funny about all this is that this was not for his 20th or 21st or 25th or 30th birthday (hell, given his and my predelictions, I’d have understood if it was his 23rd), but his 27th. I now sort of feel I can’t ever have a birthday party again, because this would be pretty much impossible to top.

One thing I feel I discovered last night is that I truly can put away Guinness. I don’t think this makes me special or anything, but I know that for a lot of people (my grandfather, for instance), it’s just too heavy. It actually feels lighter than Pabst Blue Ribbon to me. I feel I am fortunate in this regard.

Another thing I discovered (or re-discovered) last night is that despite the fact that I work in the comics industry, I actually have one of the least ridiculous jobs of my high-school circle of friends. We count among our number a glass blower, a knife-thrower’s assistant, and an anti-capitalist zine archivist. Granted, Ken’s gig at a Fortune 500 company completely ruins the curve, but still.

Meanwhile the highlight of Amy’s night was when a gay man complimented her ass. I do this all the time–seriously, all the time–but I guess she reasoned that this fellow knows from asses. Fine, fine, anything that gets her to actually accept a compliment. Right now she is asleep with her head in my lap, so perhaps I’ll try subliminal messages to that effect.

We also saw the Gates last night, finally. Eh. It’s impressive, in the sense that most massive things are impressive, but they just look like dirty shower curtains to me, or something from the opening ceremony of the Olympics.

Amy and I fought quite a bit yesterday. Wish I knew why, but I was just in a rotten mood and I let her know it. Yuck. On the other hand the nice thing about being married is that it lessens the drama–what’re we gonna do, get divorced? Although, as Amy put it, there may be less drama but there’s also more irritation, as we’re stuck with each other. 99 times out of 100, though, that’s just fine with me.

Originally posted at The Outbreak on Mar. 2nd, 2005:

During the (surprisingly, and yet unsurprisingly, brief) period I wasn’t actively blogging, I ended up writing the occasional lengthy music-review missive to the members of the file-sharing listserv to which I belong. This meant that these people got personally subjected to my year-end music wrap-up. The bonus, though, was that they could actually download my favorite albums of ’04, because I uploaded them to our file-sharing server. Can’t do that for you all, but in my continuing quest to make a liar out of myself when I said this wasn’t going to be a music blog, here’s my favorites from the year that was. (I even made specific song recommendations

Originally posted at The Outbreak on Mar. 1st, 2005:

Courtesy of Eve and Dave, here’s a list of ten things I’ve done that you probably haven’t.

1. Visited Loch Ness

2. Won an award for Best Senior Essay in the Yale Film Studies department

3. Married my high-school sweetheart

4. Played Brad and emcee’d in the floor show of The Rocky Horror Picture Show

5. Had my writing called “so fucking smart” by Clive Barker

6. Attended, and helped to host, several Naked Parties

7. Burned my junior year religion textbooks

8. Gotten both a Star Wars and a Lord of the Rings tattoo (Rebel Alliance insignia on right bicep; emblem of the Kings of Gondor on left bicep)

9. Had “Happy Birthday” sung to me by the Dandy Warhols

10. Worn a “FRANKIE SAY RELAX” t-shirt on my honeymoon

Originally posted at The Outbreak on Mar. 7th, 2005:

All Killer, No Filler

I think we can all rest assured that there’s a particularly uncomfortable section of Hell reserved for Sum 41 because of how they ruined that phrase for the rest of us. And because of a wide array of other reasons.

“All killer, no filler” is a good way to describe Daft Punk’s new record Human After All, as it turns out. I found this somewhat surprising based on the nature of their last album, Discovery. Now, as anyone who has listened to that album can tell you, the first four songs (“One More Time,” “Aerodynamic,” “Digital Love,” “Harder Better Faster Stronger”) comprise pretty much the best first-four-song sequence on any album whose first four songs are not called “Black Dog,” “Rock and Roll,” “The Battle of Evermore” and “Stairway to Heaven”–I defy you to find me a better suite of hands-in-the-air-there’s-a-party-over-there music on God’s Gray Earth. Unfortunately, the rest of Discovery can’t help but feel like a let-down by way of comparison. Out of the entire 14-song platter, I think around nine are worth listening to. (The others being “Something About Us,” “Voyager,” “Veridis Quo,” (especially) “Face to Face,” and, depending on what mood you’re in, either “Nightvision,” “High Life,” or “Short Circuit.”) And the five (or so) clunkers are real killers, man. That closing song, “Too Long”? Talk about truth in advertising!

So the first thing you notice is that Human After All is pretty much wall-to-wall rockin

Originally posted at The Outbreak on Mar. 24th, 2005:

I finally saw the third film in the Matrix trilogy, and I actually liked it. But I liked Reloaded too, so maybe that

Originally posted at The Outbreak on Mar. 21st, 2005:

As the type of person who, after the catastrophic failure of director Rob Bowman’s Elektra, thought to himself, “Dammit! Now Reign of Fire will never get the respect it deserves!”, I couldn’t have been happier with Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real, which aired earlier tonight on Animal Planet. It’s the latest “what if?” documentary Animal Planet has produced, this time breaking down how dragons “really” would have looked and acted had they actually existed. The special was remarkably well thought out, using the unusually uniform appearance of dragons in the mythologies of disparate cultures to create an unnervingly and delightfully plausible natural history for the creatures. It was all done in a mockumentary-style tone that, aside from one straightforward disclaimer at the beginning of the show and several implicit ones later on (after each commercial break), dropped the “what if?” tone and treated it like straight science. Apparently this was too much for some critics to process–read this, oh, I guess let’s call it a review, why not? from Linda Stasi at the NY Post; you can practically smell the wood burning as Stasi tries to plow through her own confusion, and hopefully the odor will distract you from how embarrassing it is that she expects you to be just as uncomprehending–but for the rest of us it was a fascinating way to while away 90 minutes on a Sunday evening. (Less than 90 minutes with the magic of TiVo at your command, of course.) The damn thing was even narrated by Patrick Stewart. About the only false note came in the appearance of some of the later dragon species, who had forelegs, hind legs, and wings, rather than the far more feasible hind legs/wings combo; it just kind of jumped out at me all of a sudden that this evolutionary quirk, which has no analogue that I can think of in all of non-insect biology (indeed, the show’s website resorts to fruit flies for justification), had gone completely unexplained and unremarked upon by the special, in a clear sacrifice of plausibility for artistic license. But other than that, all the questions you’d want answered (how does it fly? how does it breathe fire? how long did they last?) are answered in spectacular fashion, as are some you didn’t think to ask (they manage to account for variations in the descriptions of dragons between different cultures, and even link the creatures to sea serpent myths). If you are a nerd, and I’m assuming you are, this is great TV.

Welcome (back) to Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat, your source for free-form Collins as the fella says. Yes, I’m back.

Or I will be soon–I’ve got a whole bunch of pop-cultural posts to copy over from The Outbreak to here first, methinks, since as those of you who’ve been reading it are now probably aware, there isn’t going to be much blogging of that sort going on chez Outbreak anymore. Well, not for a really long while. Getting overrun by zombies will do that.

So yes, please continue to check out The Outbreak, the world’s first autobigraphical horror blog, chronicling the life of me and my friends and family during a major zombie infestation.

And stick around here for movies, music, books, television, personal stuff, plugging projects that me and my friends are working on–pretty much everything but comics news & criticism and political bloviation. So it’s sort of like the inverse (converse? I was not a math person) of the way ADDTF used to be, but I’m guessing you don’t need another fellow telling you what he thought of Countdown to Infinite Crisis right now, do ya?

So please bear with me and pardon our appearance as I tinker with the blogroll and various and sundry other features–we’re working harder to serve you better!

I’m the one-man army, Ason

I’ve never been tooken out

I keep MCs lookin’ out

I drop science like girls be droppin’ babies

Enough to make a nigga go crazy

Energy buildin’, takin’ all types of medicines

Your ass thought you were better than

Ason, I keep planets in orbit

While I be comin’ with deeper and more shit

Enough to make ya break ya shake ya ass

‘Cause I create rhymes good as a tasty cake

Mix

This style, I’m mastered in

Niggas catchin’ headaches, what? what? You need aspirin?

This type of pain you couldn’t even kill with Midol

Fuck around get sprayed with Lysol

In your face like a can of mace, baby

Is it burnin’? Well, fuck it, now you`re learnin’

How

I don’t even like your motherfuckin’ profile

Give me my fuckin’ shit–chk-chk-blaow

Not seen and heard, no one knows

You forget, niggas be quiet as kept

Now you know nothin’

Before you knew a whole fuckin’ lot

Your ass don’t wanna get shot

A lot of MCs came to my showdown

And watch me put your fuckin’ ass low down

As you can go

Below zero

Without a doubt I’ve never been tooken out

By a nigga who couldn’t figure

Yo by a nigga who couldn’t figure

Yo by a nigga who couldn’t figure (Brooklyn Zoo)

How to pull a fuckin’ gun trigger

I said get the fuck outta here

Nigga wanna get too close, to the utmost

But I got stacks that’ll attack any wack host

Introducin’–yo fuck that nigga’s name

My hip hop drops on your head like rain

And when it rain it pours

‘Cause my rhyme’s hardcore

That’s why I give you more of the raw

Talent that I got will rizock the spot

MCs I’ll be burnin’, burnin’ hot

Whoa-ho-ho

Get me like slow-mo with the flow

If I move too quick, oh, you just won’t know

I’m homicidal when you enter the target

Nigga get up, act like a pig tryin’ to hog shit

So I take yo ass out quick

The mics, I’ve had it my nigga, you can suck my dick

If you wanna step to my motherfuckin’ rep

Chk-chk-blaow blaow blaow blown to death

You got shot ’cause you knock knock knock

“Who’s there?” Another motherfuckin’ hard rock

Slackin’ on your mackin’ ’cause raw’s what you lack

You wanna react? Bring it on back

Shame on you when you step through to

The Ol’ Dirty Bastard

Brooklyn Zoo

Shame on you when you step through to

The Ol’ Dirty Bastard

Brooklyn Zoo

Brooklyn Zoo

Shame on you when you step through to

The Ol’ Dirty Bastard

Brooklyn Zoo

Shame on you when you step through to

The Ol’ Dirty Bastard

Brooklyn Zoo

Shame on you when you step through to

The Ol’ Dirty Bastard

Brooklyn Zoo

What

My nigga

Muni was on the air, playing a Chuck Berry song, when the new general manager summoned Chernoff to his office after hearing the opening riffs.

“Why are we playing this nigger music?” Coughlin demanded to know.

Chernoff couldn’t believe what he’d just heard and asked his boss to repeat the question. He did so without hesitation, and Chernoff, still reeling, asked that he convey his feelings to Scott Muni directly. Mark retrieved Scottso and marched him back into the office. Coughlin asked the question again, without rephrasing.

Muni and Chernoff looked hopelessly at each other. Scott merely said, “You keep stepping in shit, don’t you? Do you realize what would happen to us if what you just said became public? You can’t be serious.” He turned on his heel and headed back to the studio.

“I feel like some Motown, Fats,” he told his engineer upon arriving. “Pull out some Supremes, Temptations, and Four Tops.” Those groups comprised the next few sets on the air.

–Richard Neer, FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio

God bless America
Land that I love
Stand beside her
And guide her
Through the night with a light from above
From the mountains
To the prairies
To the oceans
White with foam
God bless America
My home sweet home

—–
As he followed her inside Mother Abagail’s house he thought it would be better, much better, if they did break down and spread. Postpone organization as long as possible. It was organization that always seemed to cause the problems. When the cells began to clump together and grow dark. You didn’t have to give the cops guns until the cops couldn’t remember the names…the faces…

Fran lit a kerosene lamp and it made a soft yellow glow. Peter looked up at them quietly, already sleepy. He had played hard. Fran slipped him into a nightshirt.

All any of us can buy is time, Stu thought. Peter’s lifetime, his children’s lifetimes, maybe the lifetimes of my great-grandchildren. Until the year 2100, maybe, surely no longer than that. Maybe not that long. Time enough for poor old Mother Earth to recycle herself a little. A season of rest.

“What?” she asked, and he realized he had murmured it aloud.

“A season of rest,” he repeated.

“What does that mean?”

“Everything,” he said, and took her hand.

Looking down at Peter he thought: Maybe if we tell him what happened, he’ll tell his own children. Warn them. Dear children, the toys are death–they’re flashburns and radiation sickness, and black, choking plague. These toys are dangerous; the devil in men’s brains guided the hands of God when they were made. Don’t play with these toys, dear children, please, not ever. Not ever again. Please…please learn the lesson. Let this empty world be your copybook.

“Frannie,” he said, and turned her around so he could look into her eyes.

“What, Stuart?”

“Do you think…do you think people ever learn anything?”

She opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, fell silent. The kerosene lamp flickered. Her eyes seemed very blue.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. She seemed unpleased with her answer; she struggled to say something more; to illuminate her first response; and could only say it again:

I don’t know.

–Stephen King, The Stand

Well, I

Links in recent posts have been fixed; thanks to Eve Tushnet for pointing out their various malfunctions. This is what I get for writing posts in MS Word so that they won’t get wiped out if Mozilla crashes for some reason.

How’s this for a debut issue of the Comics Journal’s new format? An enormous essay by Dirk Deppey outlining the tremendous contributions NuMarvel made to mainstream comics during its halcyon days, another enormous essay tearing every aspect of the “X-Men Reloaded” initiative (save Astonishing X-Men) a new one, 36 pages of Alex Toth comics, a review of Fantagraphics’ big Will Elder book by Bill Sherman, reviews of revisionist-superhero books Demo, Smax, and Planet of the Capes by Tom Spurgeon, and a brave leap into the legal minefields with a reprinting of Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder’s infamous “Goodman Goes Playboy”? That’s worth your ten bucks, don’t’cha think?

The post of the week is undoubtedly Eve Tushnet

Our top story today: At long last, Eve Tushnet reviews New X-Men. My response can be found right here.

Lots of interesting things at Tim O’Neil’s blog. First, his wife Anne explains her thoughts on Phoebe Gloeckner’s photo-based cover for the Comics Journal (read all about it, or at least a debate about it, here. I think a lot of this debate revolves around three misunderstandings: One, Anne’s misunderstanding of how Phoebe has been working lately, i.e. doing autobio with photographs rather than cartooning. If we were to use Occam’s Razor would explain the presence of a photo on a Journal cover she herself designed a lot more readily than the assertion that she’s suddenly gone all wobbly and is no longer the astute examiner of gender and sexuality that we’ve long known her to be. Anne herself says she’s only read probably ten pages worth of Phoebe’s work, so that probably helps explain why she’d conclude that, in Tim’s words, “Gloeckner is OK with defining her public persona and critical importance in direct proportion to her physical appearance in a notoriously male-dominated field.” (It doesn’t really explain why Tim, who has read a great deal of her work I think, would think that, but hey.) As Anne alternately puts it, “dude, if a guy did a picture on the cover and I called him vain, would you feel the need to defend him to everyone on the web?” Well, of course I would, if I felt that this analysis arose from a misapprehension about the guy’s work which if corrected would explain the picture on the cover pretty handily.

Second, Tim’s misunderstanding of what I was getting at with my first post on the subject–which of coures was not a post on the subject at all, but a link round-up that mentioned the subject in passing. All I meant by my two-sentence response to his wife’s concerns about the cover is that, since Phoebe is an autobio cartoonist, we can expect to see her physical self on the cover of any publication in which her work is the lead story due to the nature of her work, not due to the publication’s or her own exploitation of her gender or attractiveness. The confusion arose here because I didn’t add the bit about how she’s now using photography, so it sounded like my point was to patronizingly say “you do know she does autobiography, don’t you, dear?”, whereas what I was actually saying was “there’s a perfectly harmless explanation for all of this, honest–don’t lose faith in Phoebe!”

The third misunderstanding was Tim and Anne’s shared belief that my posts were “an insult to [Anne].” Heck no! The more debate around here, the merrier; I really do think the whole thing sprung from my incomplete description of Phoebe’s recent working methods in that little two-sentence link, anyway, so it’s much ado about nothing. Nor did anything “touch a nerve” with me, nor does my being “a guy” have anything to do with it, nor do I think a familiarity with or ignorance of feminist thought enters into it at all either (my wife and I are feminists ourselves, and we have the subscriptions to Bitch and Bust, the dogeared copies of The Beauty Myth, Reviving Ophelia, and Against Our Will, and the years of dealing with body dysmorphia and eating disorders to prove it, but in the end I think Phoebe’s credentials speak for themselves in terms of how we should interpret intentionally problematic or open-ended aspects of her work). Long story short, the reason I got all feisty was Tim’s Br’er Rabbit impression: “Please, Br’er Sean, whatever you do, don’t start a flame war with me!” There are better ways to avoid making things unnecessarily hostile and personal than calling a fellow out by name, invoking the flame war concept, and telling him what a patronizing ass he’s being, all without linking to the original piece so that readers can view what’s going on for themselves. (Particulary when there

Thanks to everyone who wrote in answering my Bruce-Jones-Hulk-run question. Turns out Marvel will be publishing issues that wrap up the whole massive conspiracy storyline. Hooray for good publishing decisions!

Alan David Doane–or The Doaner, as I think I shall call him from now on–has been writing his hinder off about Paul Hornschemeier, the intriguing Scott Pilgrim,, good supercomics he dug as a kid, all kindsa stuff. He also praises Marvel for its excellent trilogy of Grant Morrison New X-Men hardcovers. Hooray once again for good publishing decisions!

Finally, I was really impressed by a couple of posts at Brian Hibbs’s blog: Brian’s even-handed assessment of Identity Crisis being one, and co-blogger Jeff Lester’s review roundup (including thoughts on Astonishing X-Men, Avengers, Planetary, Powers, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Ultimate Nightmare, and especially Craig Thompson’s powerful Carnet de Voyage) being the other. Hooray for good blogging!

JAMES STURM IN JOURNAL SEXPLOITATION SHOCKER!

Ha ha, no. Tim, you’re right: I can’t

[n]ame another autobiographical or semi-autobiographical cartoonist [other than Phoebe Gloeckner] who had a photo cover on the Journal.

However, I also cannot name another autobiographical or semi-autobiographical cartoonist who is now working primarily with photographs.

Now, this is just a guess, but my hunch is that these two phenomena are connected.

Her piece in Comics Journal’s Winter 2004 Special, her piece for my interview with her (originally intended for the A&F Quarterly and ultimately published here), her piece in L.A. Weekly, and yes, the comic of which the Journal’s cover is the first panel–all photoromances. That’s what I was getting at with my “pat and condescending” post of the other day–any Phoebe Gloeckner cover is going to feature an image of Phoebe Gloeckner (or at least her quasi-autobiographical manque, Minnie Goetze) as a function of her work, not her gender. This cover features a photo, as per her wishes, because her work lately is in photographs. As a wise man once wrote, ’nuff said. I mean, should she abandon photographs when putting the cover together, because it might remind someone of Mademoiselle? Who’s bringing baggage to the table now?

But hey, if you wanna work yourself into a high dudgeon about how “tone-deaf and easily misinterpreted” the image is, ignoring Gloeckner’s decades of examining the issues of feminism, femininity, sexism, sexuality, autobiography, self-image, and self-representation with an acuity unrivalled by pretty much anyone ever, and proceed to inisit you don’t mean to cause trouble but you still feel behooved to call a fellow out by name for trying to point out that there may be a simpler, slightly less preposterous explanation for the photo cover than “Phoebe’s gone Cosmo” and then go into a whole thing about how this fellow is a lockstep defender of the artist who can never truly know the world of the woman–well, in the words of Marc Bolan, “rock on, rock on, yeah.”

Whatever happened to Fay Wray?

That delicate, satin-draped frame

As it clung to her thigh

How I started to cry

‘Cuz I wanted to be dressed just the same

–Tim Curry, “Don’t Dream It”

Alan David Doane talks about, and with, cartoonist Paul Hornschemeier, who one hopes will be as alarmingly prolific as his plans would dictate.

Tim O’Neil (and his wife) talk about Phoebe Gloeckner and her photo on the cover of the Comics Journal. (Tim, tell your wife that Phoebe’s an autobiographical cartoonist, so any cover would have a picture of her, photo or no. It has little to do with her gender and lots to do with her work.)

Brian Michael Bendis talks about his panel schedule at WizardWorld Chicago, hinting that big things are in the offing. Aren’t they usually? Man, I am like a hooked fish with this guy.

David Welsh talks about the preview pages for Bendis & David Finch’s Avengers #501, with several quotes-of-the-day all rolled into one post. It seems safe to say David has not been hooked in as has yours truly.

Ed Brubaker talks about the strangely anemic sales of Sleeper Season Two #1. This book really is as good as you’ve heard, by the way.

Marc-Oliver Frisch also talks Sleeper (and Seaguy, and Ex Machina) sales. Interesting analysis.

Mark Millar talks about his Spider-Man run in very ambitious turns. My brief flip-through of issue number four has me intrigued, so we’ll see how the first trade holds up.

NeilAlien briefly talks numbers, pointing out that Robert Kirkman’s zombie book The Walking Dead is selling double the copies of Robert Kirkman’s superhero book Invincible. Does this say something? I think it might say something.

Marc Mason talks about Tom Spurgeon talking about AiT/Planet Lar, and says Tom’s likely the best writer about comics today. Marc’s right.

Jog the Blog talks about Warren Ellis talking about Dan Clowes, and about Jason’s new book, You Can’t Get There From Here. (From the ridiculous to the sublime, then?)

Heidi MacDonald talks about Graeme McMillan (not a permalink, inexcusably) having Luke Cage and Iron Fist talk about Alan David Doane and Chris Allen talking about Geoff Johns (who is also talked about by a solo Alan David Doane). Got all that?

Fans of great comics writing will be pleased to hear that Jordan Raphael & Tom Spurgeon’s Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book is now available in paperback. The good people at Amazon will sell it to you if you click here, y’know. Tell ’em Smilin’ Sean sent ya!