Discovery Phase

Michelle Yaoh as Captain Phillipa Georgiou

So, tonight Star Trek: Discovery premiered. First Trek on TV since 2005 and first to be distributed via internet (the first episode on over-the-air CBS in a "first one's free" strategy, behind the CBS Internet paywall thereafter). The leadup was a bit chaotic, with personnel changes and debut delays and a total prohibition on advance reviews of any kind. Expectations were ... let's say moderate.

In some ways, it didn't disappoint. Production values were off the scale. Visually striking, detailed, and I was especially geeking out over the sound effects in the background. Performances mostly good.

In other ways, it rankled, but in minor nitpicky fashions; continuity discrepancies between other Star Trek series, Treknological/scientific liberties that could've been avoided with more attentive writing, that sort of thing.

And in the most important ways, it left me ambivalent. I'll need to see how the story develops to form an opinion on the basic identity of the show and its fidelity to Star Trek ideals and its overall strengths. I think it's a failure of a pilot to leave that much ambivalence, but there's plenty of potential for redemption. What little has been reported about subsequent episodes suggests episode 3 begins a somewhat lighter tone as the titular ship and crew are introduced.

Things I liked:

• Michelle Yeoh as Captain Georgiou. Yeoh presents a complex character of ideals, confidence, compassion, and gravitas, and does it very well. (Spoiler: Too bad she doesn't survive episode 2, hopefully we'll see more of her in flashbacks.)
• Doug Jones as Lt. Cdr. Saru. Saru is an alien of a type we haven't seen before, and both his racial background and his individual demeanor are interesting. He comes from a planet where his species is/was livestock to another species, which is kind of fascinating, and as such his response to potential danger is most often to flee, instinctually preferring the flight aspect of fight-or-flight heavily. He's also caustic and a bit brazen, and he's a science officer, making him kind of a Spock/Bones hybrid character. Clever.
• Design. Mostly. As I said, the visuals are rather impressive and the care that went into graphics and background sound is admirable. There's a touch too much JJ-verse influence on the bridge of the Shenzhou (complete with occasional lens flare), but not enough to distract.
• The "feel" of the culture on Georgiou's  starship Shenzhou, which is laid-back yet professional, casual yet disciplined. Captain Georgiou would be fun to work for.
• Starfleet sideburns on the men. Yes! In your face, JJ Abrams.

Things that left me raising my eyebrow Spock-like in a skeptical-not-amused way:

• Our lead character, Commander Michael Burnham (Sonequah Martin-Green), is somewhat unlikable. This may well change, but in the pilot episodes she makes some decisions that are simply too contrary to what we're supposed to believe about her as a character to make her sympathetic. We're apparently supposed to be left thinking she was right and did what she did for good, sensible reasons, but it doesn't fly with me. (Spoiler: It may well have been logical to want to show immediate force when encountering Klingons to get them to respect you, making a kind of effort to speak to them on their cultural grounds, but (a) that's counter to what she's supposed to believe in; (b) she was raised in Vulcan culture and as such would expect to err on the side of pacifism; (c) she's supposed to have this awesome mentor-mentee bond with Georgiou that she completely betrays as if it's of no consequence; (d) the history she's basing her course of action on is from pre-KirShara reform days on Vulcan, which may not be strictly relevant, but does play into its ethics; and (e) it rather predictably would play right into the Klingons' hands, and though she wouldn't be aware of the specific Klingon machinations here, they already have a working theory that they were lured here for a confrontation and she is sufficiently forward-thinking [supposedly] to plot out a few moves ahead and realize engaging Klingons violently would be counterproductive to Federation interests. She thinks she was totally in the right, and I think we the audience are supposed to think that too, but really she just fucked up and betrayed her friend and mentor out of recklessness. The war may have started anyway, but her decidedly un-Vulcan bullheadedness did not help avert it.)
• James Frain as Sarek. I'm cool with using the Sarek character here, and he was written well enough, but Frain didn't fit the role. Frain is a fine actor, but he does not remotely evoke Mark Lenard (original portrayer of Sarek) in appearance, cadence, expression, really anything, nor does he bring anything new to the role to distinguish himself from Lenard (or Ben Cross, who played the role — badly — in the JJ movies). As my friend Mark pointed out as we were watching, it is rare for any actor to play a Vulcan well; we came up with only the Big Three Vulcan actors who've successfully pulled it off, not counting Zach Quinto's JJ-verse Spock — Lenard, Leonard Nimoy (obvs), and Tim Russ, who was in some ways channeling Nimoy. I added Gary Graham, whose Ambassador Soval became pretty decent by the end of Enterprise's run, and gave special dispensation to Jolene Blalock's T'Pol due to the writing she was given (mostly good, but often given "reasons" to be un-Vulcanlike) and Kim Catrall, who had the unenviable job of playing an atypical Vulcan pretending to be typical. Not one guest-Vulcan did it well. (Well, maybe Dame Judith Anderson in a rather small role. And Robin Curtis put in the effort.) Even Celia Lovsky's original T'Pau was a bit like your old grandma who's cantankerous and a bit racist but you tolerate it because she's old and will die soon. It's a difficult task, and not even the best actors are always up to the challenge. But with Sarek being such an important character, it's disappointing to have a subpar performance in the role.
• Burnham leaving the bridge during crisis to call home, even if it was to ask for specific info about dealing with Klingons. Paints her in a bad light, and besides, it's dramatically unnecessary. She could have known this bit of history already (might have actively sought it out much earlier given her Klingon-related trauma, and that could have been integrated as part of her flashback sequence).
• The reimagined look of the Klingons. I've read somewhere that the series will over time show us greater variation of the species than we've seen previously, but right now it just seems like the Klingons have a new look just because this time there was more money to spend.
• The music. The opening theme is quite forgettable save for the Alexander Courage fanfare and carries nothing of the splendor found in Jerry Goldsmith's, James Horner's, and Dennis McCarthy's respective themes. Maybe it'll grow on me. Also, the opening credits visuals are different — not bad different, I actually like the storyboardish style — but a little jarring, at least at first.

Things I cringed at, at least a little bit:

• The Klingon scenes. My late friend Scott was a big fan of all things Klingon, and I know others are too, but they were never among my favorite Trek cultures, so maybe that informs my relative lack of interest in the scenes on the Klingon ship; highly expository, and in subtitled Klingon spoken haltingly by actors through prosthetic teeth, these bits give important setup information for what's to come, but are just not compelling. One of the Klingons, Voq, is mildly interesting as an outcast wanting to prove his worth, but the rest are, to this point, kind of cardboard.
• The aforementioned scientific/accepted Trek-lore writing laziness:
  1. The Klingon fable played out by our villains involves a giant beacon that lights up bright as a star to signal all the heads of important Klingon houses to meet. Signaling across light-years with, well, light is a long-term proposition and completely ill-suited to bringing anyone to you within a handful of centuries. Yes, there were additional components to the signal that shook and vibrated the Shenzhou's superstructure, but the idea was that it was a literal beacon. The light from which was useless. Oops.
  2. Technological anachronisms. Holographic two-way transmissions, even in real-time across light-years? The "new" holographic communicator was used a couple of times in Deep Space Nine to reasonable effect, but here — 100-plus years earlier — the tech is way more elaborate and serves zero story purpose. In and of itself, it's fine, but as an anachronism that could have been easily avoided it takes me out of the flow of the story. And Klingons with a cloaking device. It wasn't called that and it was implied that it was unique or at least uncommon, but Klingons don't get cloaks until they trade with the Romulans for it later on.
  3. The mind-meldy conversation between Burnham and Sarek was bothersome not for its content (which was actually quite good), but for its utter non-believability and for exacerbating the real-time-holographic-transmission issue as it rendered that prior bit somewhat redundant. The only similar type of established telepathy with Vulcans is a psychic link between bonded sexual couples, and borrowing that and explaining it away with a "katra" mulligan (contrary to earlier uses of katra mulligans) was irksome and a little icky given Burnham's familial relationship with Sarek.
• The background bridge character that was ... a robot? Cyborg? Weird augmented alien with a full helmet display head? A refugee from Star Wars or the JJ-verse. In the words of V'Ger's probe, "this device serves no purpose."
• I'll swallow it, but the (understandable) retcon of using what becomes the Starfleet-wide delta insignia as the Starfleet-wide iconic image 15-20 years too early, in an era in which we know it is linked exclusively to the starship Enterprise, is a nitpicky nerd-gripe that I will have to explain somehow in my internal head-canon.
• And finally, too much emphasis on action and gee-whiz-neato look-what-we-can-do effects (which, as I said, look great) at the expense of theme and substance. In the absence of the full story and most of the regular characters, this is perhaps an unfair criticism and may change with context. Hopefully it will. But as a pilot it's odd to give this sort of thing short shrift.

Potential here is vast, and it's more solid as a production (even allowing for budget/tech inflation) than The Next Generation's pilot, but with Star Trek I always expect on some level to be, if not overwhelmed, satisfactorily whelmed; DS9's pilot was very good, Enterprise's had flaws but gave a fine foundation, Voyager's was...well, it was much better than what followed. But Discovery's jury is still out, at least until next week.

 

UPDATE: TrekMovie has a decent recap/review up now that's worth a look. It is spoiler-heavy, though, so beware.

Tagged Star Trek   |   Posted on September 25, 2017 at 4:21am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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What Dreams are Made Of

It's 4:00am and I can't sleep. Not an altogether unusual occurrence, but not a welcome one either. But not being asleep does mean I'm not enduring another of my subconscious Twilight Zone episode-style dreams.

I've been having a recurring dream of late—well, the actual dream isn't recurring, but the theme and premise is—in which my late mother shows up alive. My science-fiction- and comic-book-reared brain knows that in those genres, death isn't necessarily a permanent state—Spock came back thanks to the regenerative properties of Project Genesis, Buffy was magically brought back by the Scoobies, Captain Jack Harkness dies and comes back all the time. In comicdom, characters are killed off and brought back as marketing ploys with annoying frequency; we used to say there were two kinds of dead comic characters, just-for-now-dead and "Bucky-dead." (We used to say that, because after decades Marvel even resurrected Bucky Barnes as the Winter Soldier, so even Bucky isn't Bucky-dead anymore.) Captain America, the Human Torch, Batman, two different Robins (with a third only thought dead), Doc Ock, and Wolverine are just the most recent characters that come to mind that have come back from the great beyond no worse for wear. Oh, and Phil Coulson. Tahiti is a magical place.

So I guess it's not surprising that my subconscious would generate a scenario like the one I was treated to lat night/this morning, that had both my mom and her husband returning because of some sort of time-dilation mumbo-jumbo during their travels, putting me in the awkward position of having to explain to them that I'd sold their house and depended on some of their money now, oh, and that this was going to seriously fuck up all the struggles I'd been going through with banks and fund managers to get control of their assets. In this dream scenario, I somehow also knew from the get-go that this was a short-term return, that the metaphysics of this mumbo-jumbo just meant I was going to have to go through them dying all over again, and in my mom's case, her finding out that their house was now owned by somebody else just prompted her to drink continually, berate me, and call me unprintable names.

Previous iterations of this dream-theme weren't so wholly unpleasant, in that in them I'm glad to see my mom again and then they veer into unpleasantness when the re-dying happens (it always happens, part of the theme). The details generally fade pretty quickly upon waking up, but the basic outlines remain.

I have, of course, been dealing with a great many entities and institutions since she passed away regarding assets and various executor-like things, most of which eventually got resolved after varying amounts of frustration and outrage. One remains unresolved, and as that item has been occupying a chunk of my waking time in recent weeks (lawyers and judges and probate, oh my) I guess my brain decided to use it as ready-material for REM movies.

Thanks a lot, brain.

Tagged Mom, Comics, dreams   |   Posted on July 21, 2017 at 4:59am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Right Angles are Our Friends

Thanks for doing this with me, Dad!

You might recall I posted some months ago about my comic-book collection and its steadily oozing expansion that threatens to consume a whole room in my home. As discussed then, I found some videos on the Interwebs from people that have built themselves some customized storage units and set out on a similar undertaking.

I drew up some "plans," which is a generous term; they were adequate, but not especially organized. I sought out the materials I would need. Then I left it alone for a while while other things came and went.

But last month I drove down to see my dad in Palm Springs, Home Depot gift cards in hand, thinking it would be fun to do this project with him and a good excuse to visit for a couple weeks. Which it was. Dad and I built four cabinets with three drawers each to house roughly 2,500-3,000 comics in total.

It was a learning experience as well as a good time; I've done a fair amount of tinkering and improvising things in my day, but never a start-from-scratch building project like this. We made some mistakes.

The workstation

First off, we bought wood that did not match my plans' specifications — I planned for half-inch thick boards, but I got wood planks that were slightly less than half an inch thick and did not make any corresponding adjustment to my specs. Thus, we made drawers that were ever-so-slightly narrower than spec and drawer housings that were not uniformly wide. So a number of them had to be "MacGyvered" to work properly by shimming the rails with whatever was handy (metal washers, wood scraps, cardboard).

Almost half an inch isn't actually half an inch. Multiplied enough and you need a quarter-inch of shim.

More annoyingly, I didn't think through a proper way to attach the front panels of the drawers. They were intended to overlay and extend beyond the face of the drawers by a half-inch on all sides, but every attempt to attach them was off-center and/or crooked. In order to get them all to fit, we ended up trimming a number of them rather than continue to try over and over to reposition them properly.

Also, though we had a fantastic table saw for the smaller pieces, we didn't have a good way to cut down the larger ones. We improvised something that seemed to work adequately, but then in the process of assembly realized that many of the pieces we cut were not cut straight; the bottom edge would end up being shorter than the top edge, that sort of thing. Not by a lot, and in and of themselves, the pieces worked fine, but in the overall assembly, there were enough weird angles and slight slants to things to cause frustrations and some funky weirdness to the finished product.

In the end, they are completely functional and, I think, more than adequately appealing. But as my dad said while trimming one of the crooked drawer fronts to make it fit alongside the two others in the unit, "at least when anyone looks closely at these they'll know they were home-made."

I'll eventually paint or stain them, but that's something for another day; I don't plan on staying in my current abode all that much longer, so that'll wait until I know what my new place will look like. Plus, I still have a ton of overflow; I'll want to build more of these then, too. With more attention to measurements and right angles.

Of course, now I have an elegant solution for how to position the front panels to attach them properly.
Maybe I'll find it worth the hassle to remove and reattach them later.

The sides of this drawer are cut at a not-quite-right angle, making the front attach with a bit of a warp.

Far, far better than the endless sprawl of cardboard boxes I was previously dealing with, but even when thinned out—the cardboard boxes on top plus a couple out of frame are slated for eBay—I still have 2½ cardboard longboxes and 4 shortboxes (center) full of comics and I can't seem to keep from buying more every month. More building to come!

Tagged Comics, Dad, Projects   |   Posted on April 26, 2017 at 10:32pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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WBC Fever

My dad remarked that my latest batch of Facebook and Twitter postings were incomprehensible without context, and I expect that's so. The context? The World Baseball Classic.

The WBC has only been around since 2006. It's an international tournament kind of like the World Cup, except soccer nerds have had the World Cup a lot longer than us baseball nerds have had the WBC, so it's a way bigger deal—also, the rest of the world loves their soccer, but most countries don't know much about baseball. The idea behind the WBC is to change all that and grow interest in baseball gobally.

And it's working. Slowly, of course, but getting there. Baseball has been huge in some places forever, of course; Japan, Latin America, the Caribbean, Taiwan to a lesser extent. But now there are respectable leagues popping up elsewhere too. The Korean Baseball Organization doesn't have the history, of course, but is now at about the level of quality that the Japanese pro leagues were at 20 or 30 years ago. The Australian league is fledgling, but has produced a Major Leaguer here and there. And the Netherlands are now an international power; great players have come from Aruba and Curacau for a while, but now they're coming out of Amsterdam too.

I, of course, am a Japanophile, and the primary reason I love the WBC is that it's really my only chance to see players from the NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) leagues do their thing.

I've paid some attention to NPB for a long time, but it's hard to follow from afar. When I went to Japan in 2003(? or was it '02?), one of my first stops was the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum at the Tokyo Dome. It's a lot less impressive than the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, of course, but it's still pretty keen and I got to learn more of the history of the NPB  leagues and players. I chose a team to adopt as My Team in Japan (I went with the Hanshin Tigers for several reasons) and went to a preseason game in Osaka. From then on I've tried to follow the leagues on the Internet, but it takes a lot of effort; my command of Japanese is rudimentary at best, and even less useful when trying to read it. I can decipher a box score well enough ("Timely Hit!") and identify most of the player names with the help of a Kanji dictionary, but I can't read a game story or the Nikkan Sports page except on the abbreviated English language site. And forget watching televised games, at least so far. Internet feeds of NPB action exist here and there, but are inaccessible overseas (e.g. here). Highlights make it to YouTube once in a while.

So when the WBC rolls around, I stay up through the night to watch Team Japan. Tokyo always hosts at least one round of the tournament (this year they had two), and Team Japan gets prime time there, so their games are at 2:00am here (3:00am after DST kicks in, as Japan ignores such foolishness). So I've Tweeted reactions to the six games I've watched in the wee hours from the Tokyo Dome the last couple of weeks since nobody was staying up all night with me to watch. :)

This year's team has a lot of new-to-me faces. Some of the old guard have retired or joined the American Major Leagues and opted not to play/were left off the team this year. But that's cool, as I'm getting to know the latest batch of stars. My new favorite NPB player is Hiroshima Carp second baseman Ryosuke Kikuchi. He's made numerous outstanding defensive plays in the tournament and I've looked up some of his Carp highlights. My kind of ballplayer.

 

 

The guy on Team Japan Major League scouts seem to have their eye on is Tetsudo Yamada, who had a huge second round; he's achieved what the Japanese call the Triple-Threes—.300 batting average, 30 home runs, and 30 stolen bases—two years running now. He's also a second baseman, so he's been the DH in the WBC. Yokohama BayStars outfielder Yoshitomo Tsutsugoh is popular over there, and it's easy to see why, but he doesn't fit the mold of the Japanese style that I like so much; he's a bulky, slow-by-Japanese-standards home-run hitter. He's like a more disciplined Greg Luzinski, if you will.

Anyway, the Tokyo rounds are over, and Team Japan is so far undefeated as they prepare for the semifinals in Los Angeles starting Monday. So no more 5am tweets about needing to pull Kazuhisa Makida off the mound because he's doing his best José Mesa impression, or making Phil Collins song puns for Tsu-tsu-Tsutsugoh. I do wish I'd been able to come up with a good joke linking Tokyo Giants catcher Seiji Kobayashi to the no-win scenario, though...

Tagged Baseball, WBC, Twitter   |   Posted on March 17, 2017 at 3:21am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Mere Mortals

Chez Pazienza

Last night I went out for a walk around my neighborhood. As is my custom when I do such things, I loaded up my phone with the latest podcasts I enjoy to keep me company and spent an hour or so listening to the Friday edition of "The Bob & Chez Show" (Afterparty edition). It wasn't a standout entry by any stretch, but it was still enjoyable to listen to Bob and Chez gab on about Trump, politics, the state of the world, and, naturally, Jordan Peele's sense of humor and whether the movie "Get Out" deserves its 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Later on, I was browsing through my Twitter feed and saw a post from Bob mourning the loss of Chez. I wasn't sure what to make of it—I could see a context where Bob was making a joke at Chez's expense in relation to some event that had happened that I wasn't aware of (like a death notice for some celebrity who was actually still with us), but what's the joke? Was it not a joke? Did Chez actually die??!

Turns out, Chez died.

The dude was my age. No idea what happened to him yet.* As far as I know, he wasn't ill, though he had a history of substance abuse that he'd overcome successfully. On his Friday show, I did notice that he was less involved than usual, keeping quiet while Bob talked rather than interject with frequency and wit, but assumed he was just tired or having a day, you know. And perhaps he was. No details on how he died have been made public, so he might have been fine and been the victim of a car accident or something. Not that it matters, I guess. Dude's still gone.

I started listening to the podcast when it was "The Bob & Elvis Show," back in the aughts, then when Elvis quit, Bob recruited Chez to take his place. I liked Elvis and figured the new guy wouldn't be nearly as good, but Chez was even better. Funny with snark and cynicism that was somehow uplifting, even when he'd say that Trump was going to kill us all. Of course, it helps that Chez had my political sensibilities and nerdly interests, and as contemporaries his pop-culture references usually landed squarely. (My favorite line of his from recent shows was in reference to the Trump press conference a couple weeks ago or whenever it was, when Trump responded to a question about meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus by asking the reporter to set up such a meeting for him. Chez said, "He figures all black people are like fucking Aquaman." I laughed loudly, despite my presence sitting in public at the Wayward wearing my earbuds, imagining John Lewis sending out concentric telepathic circles summoning fellow black people from the sea to aid him in battle against Paul Ryan.)

I came to look forward to each week's trifecta of Bob & Chez podcasts as a highlight of my news/politics consumption, and would be disproportionately annoyed when my podcast software was late in making an episode available. I enjoyed the few Twitter back-and-forths I had with Chez about the show, and was absurdly pleased that he ran with the metaphor of the Trump presidency being "less of a news cycle and more of that 'Battlestar Galactica' episode where the Cylons attack every 33 minutes," which I shared with him after I saw it tweeted from the Atlantic's Matt Ford, in both his columns at the Daily Banter and on the podcast.

I never met Chez Pazienza, I only knew him through his writing and commentary and those few interactions on social media. But Chez was someone that made my political awareness more informed and more full of wit, and he was personable and friendly and willing to interact on social media, and I'm stunned that he's gone. Heartfelt condolences to his fiancee, his daughters, and Bob Cesca, his partner in podcasts. If someone as far removed as I am misses Chez, I can't imagine what it's like for the people that he was actually close to. Godspeed, sir.

* Update 2/27/17: Turns out Chez backslid into his heroin habit, which is a shame on a number of levels, not the least of which is all of the work he did to get clean years ago. His editor at the Daily Banter gave some details today in a candid obituary and Bob discussed it a little bit on the Stephanie Miller Show today. Goddamnit, Chez. Sigh.

Tagged Chez, Politics   |   Posted on February 26, 2017 at 10:34pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Apply Pressure

If it's Monday, it must be time for another letter to Congress.

That's the way it is here in Trumpistan—every day there's a new outrage. So, gotta make our voices heard, especially since I didn't participate in the airport demonstration or the downtown rally last night. I sent the same one to all three of my reps, and by all means, feel free to crib for your own letters to Congress (though if you do, don't copy me verbatim, if it starts to look like a form letter it'll have less credence).

January 30, 2017

Dear Sen. Maria Cantwell :
Dear Sen. Patty Murray :
Dear Rep. Pramila Jayapal :

Hi. Me again. I know, this is starting to become a ritual.

Today's plea regards the upcoming votes on cabinet nominees. Please, for the sake of all humanity, oppose with vigor the confirmations of Betsy DeVos, Jeff Sessions, Scott Pruitt, Tom Price, ... you know what? Every remaining Trump cabinet appointee is horrendous. They ALL need to be denied.

Perhaps more importantly, it has become crystal clear that the president is being controlled by Steve Bannon, a man no one elected to anything. This neo-Nazi is writing presidential executive orders and directing policy, taking advantage of Mr. Trump's obvious intellectual and psychological deficiencies to pursue an agenda of bigotry and mayhem. (He has said -- out loud! -- that his goal is to "destroy the state.") Steve Bannon needs to be denied as well. I don't know offhand what authority Congress can bring to bear on someone with a "White House adviser" title, but somehow, some way, he has to be removed from his position of influence.

The Trump Administration has been in power for just a week-and-a-half and the damage has been mind-boggling. Trump and Bannon's disregard for civil norms, policy procedure, legal review, and basic decency—not to mention the Constitution—must not be allowed to continue, lest the chaos of these last few days turn into complete and utter disaster in the next few months, let alone four years. And I haven't even mentioned the brazen, naked corruption happening with the president, his staff, and his cabinet nominees! The number of outrageous things this administration represents is almost infinite.

I'd say focus on the top of the food chain and "simply" impeach Mr. Trump, but I know the Speaker and most of his fellow House Republicans aren't likely to entertain that notion, at least not yet. So until that course becomes feasible, please: Give no quarter.

Oppose these horrid cabinet nominees. Find a way to remove Steve Bannon. Support the judiciary when Trump and his people break the law, as they did with the Muslim immigration ban (and let's not mice words, that's what it's intended to be).

Protect us.

Sincerely,

Mr. Tim Harrison
Seattle, WA 98103

Tagged Dystopia, President VonClownstick, Congress   |   Posted on January 30, 2017 at 4:31pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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The Occupation Begins

Well, here we are. Day One of the Trumpocalypse. For two-and-a-half months we've been anticipating this day with anxiety of epic proportions. Just what are we in for now? And will we survive it?

One of the few amusing things about the election results is the general consensus of the nerdosphere on social media that the 45th president is basically Gul Dukat, the principal villain on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It is remarkably fitting; Dukat even made the claim that he was sending his people into the ruinous clutches of a hostile foreign power in order to "make Cardassia strong again" (he may as well have said "great"). Gul Dukat is a narcissistic, autocratic, brutal oppressor who fools people with smarmy charm, all the while believing fervently that he's the hero, and that true victory is not vanquishing your enemies but "to make your enemies see they were wrong to oppose you in the first place. To force them to acknowledge your greatness." He was even a cult leader for a time. There are at least ten Dukat Twitter accounts that conflate the Cardassian dictator with Mr. Trump. The best is Joe Sondow's @realRealDukat, that copies tweets from @realDonaldTrump with small edits to substitute Dukat for Trump and other DS9 terms for real-life ones:

Though Dukat was eventually deposed and his successor ultimately defected to the good guys, by the end the planet Cardassia Prime was war-ravaged and in utter ruins. May fact play out better than fiction.

The analogy isn't perfect—Gul Dukat is smart and has a knack for oratory, while Trump can't properly read or string together consecutive coherent sentences. But we'll call that artistic license.

With all this in mind, here's my latest sketchbook entry.

Tagged President VonClownstick, Star Trek, Gul Dukat, Twitter   |   Posted on January 20, 2017 at 4:44am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Help Congress Help Us

Since the election, I've written four letters to my congressional representatives. I'm quite sure there will be many more to follow, because the stakes have never been higher for our Republic. My prior letters urged opposition to Trump cabinet nominees and support of investigation of and appropriate action for the Russian attack on our election. This one is about the Affordable Care Act as it faces catastrophic maiming if not outright repeal by the Republican leadership.

I have added a link on the right sidebar (not visible if you're reading this on your phone, maybe if you tilt it over to landscape mode) under "Be Heard" that I invite everyone to take advantage of. It'll take you to to a site that will find your Senators and Representative based on your zip code, then give you a ready-to-go form that will send them email or, for a nominal fee, printed snail-mail letters. They don't have to be long, they don't have to be especially eloquent, they just need to convey your opinion on a particular issue. Take advantage of this tool! Write often! (And check out Indivisble as well for helpful pointers on what to say.)

January 8, 2017

Dear Representative Jayapal:
Dear Senator Cantwell:
Dear Senator Murray:

Firstly, thank you for your advocacy and efforts thus far regarding public health matters in general and the Affordable Care Act in particular. The ACA has been a godsend to the American people, even those who haven't recognized it as such; I myself have returned to the ranks of the insured thanks in large part to the ACA.

The Republican goal of repealing the ACA is astonishing—or rather, it would be if the Republican party bore any resemblance to its former self—and I implore you to continue to oppose them in their efforts to strip us all of this newfound ability to get care.

What Congressional Republicans are trying to do would be criminal under broader context and should be stopped. Consequences of repealing the ACA without substituting any comparable alternative are predictbale, because we've seen them already. For the most fortunate Americans, they will be forced into lesser insurance coverage for more money. For the rest of us, it could mean the choice between financial ruin and death.

Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, and their respective posses are either indifferent to the fact that their agenda will bankrupt and/or kill thousands of Americans, or they are deliberately planning it. That makes them, if they succeed, guilty of negligent homicide or premeditated murder, all so they can enact a kind of atavistic revenge fantasy against a soon-to-be-former President that they detest.

If there is a legitimate reason for the GOP's repeal effort outside of (a) empowering the insurance industry to make greater profits on the backs of Americas who can't afford it and (b) giving a giant middle-finger salute to President Obama, I don't see it. It certainly has no basis in serving the interests of the American people.

Keep up the good work, and please—remind your Republican colleagues that they are supposed to be PUBLIC SERVANTS, not officious-looking hit-men.

Tim Harrison
Seattle, WA

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick   |   Posted on January 7, 2017 at 11:12pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Now What? New Year's Goals, Predictions, and Semi-Resolutions

Congratulations. If you're reading this, you've survived the unwelcome boil and ambitious killing spree that was 2016. I know, I know, it wasn't all bad; it only seems like it thanks to the plethora of public-figure and closer-to-home death and the election of a narcissistic marshmallow turd. But there were moments of good here and there sprinkled among the nightmares.

But all that's over now and it's time to engage in that cultural ritual of promising to be better at X, Y, and Z—the "New Year's Resolution"—and to show off our awesome precognitive powers and predict events of the coming Solar orbit, knowing full well that we will most likely not succeed in either resolving or predicting.

I've already blown one semi-resolution, which was to avoid "lost days" in 2017. I know revise the goal to be "keep lost days to less than 5%." A "lost day" is a manifestation of the screwed-up brain chemistry that prompts me to be gloomy and lethargic and generally wallowy (better known as clinical depression and colloquially referred to in these parts as The Black Hole), one that results in literally staying in bed all day rather than get up and engage in some facet of actual life. I've had a number of these lost days in the weeks since the election, both for the macro reasons of the impending Trumpification of America and micro reasons of personal discontent (of course, ascribing reasons to them so casually is a gross oversimplification, but I think one has to be "one of us" to really get that). Once in a while I suppose they can be helpful in riding out a Black Hole episode, but they can also be self-feeding parasites if too frequent.

Other goals for the year may include:

• Put more effort into strengthening/maintaining my social circle. It's taken some pretty big hits over the last several years and I prefer it doesn't take any more; the kind of efforts I'm thinking of wouldn't necessarily have made a lick of difference in those hits, but that's no reason not to try solidifying some other areas.
• Spend more money. I don't mean spend recklessly or frivolously, I just mean override my well-honed instinct for thrift every now and again. It's (somewhat) less necessary than it used to be, and though it still pays to be smart about it, indulge in a dinner out and don't worry about making up for it later...occasionally.
• Enjoy where I live more. I'm in this spectacular city/region and I don't get out in it often enough.(Related to "lost days.")
• Blog more frequently — say, weekly on average. There's certainly enough going on in the world that warrants attention, and I consume tons of pop-culture to opine on. Like, this week I read the first volume of the Brian K. Vaughan/Cliff Chiang comic Paper Girls, which is fantastic. Also the first volume of They're Not Like Us, which I didn't really care for.
• Keep up with the sketching. Fill, let's say, two sketchbooks this year.
• Build the cabinets I spoke of last month. Four modular units of three drawers each, and if those go smoothly and relatively quickly and don't run into unforeseen expense, make two or four more for expansion.
• Assuming the estate issues I've been dealing with for the last 15 months proceed at a reasonable pace and the means thus become available, upgrade my housing security. Market permitting, of course.
• Go somewhere that isn't southern California. For fun. Vancouver, maybe, or DC if the stink of orange marshmallow turd is out of town. (I'd say Tokyo, but I'm not affording that this year.)

As for my powers of prognostication, let's see...

• Fully half of the Trump cabinet will get confirmed even though they're completely unqualified, and before the end of the year Republican congressional leaders will be criticizing them for ineptitude and/or corruption without irony.
• Spider-Man: Homecoming will be terrific. Justice League will suck. Wonder Woman and Star Wars will both be OK.
• The Seattle Mariners will cruise to a division title on the strength of Rookie of the Year Mitch Haniger and slugging 1B Dan Vogelbach.
• OR The Seattle Mariners will wallow in mediocrity for another season thanks to the inexperience and poor showing from their entire outfield.

I'm afraid to make more political prognostications except to say it's gonna be a shitstorm full of lawsuits, corruption charges, and diplomatic damage-control.

How about everyone else? Goals? Predictions?

Tagged The Black Hole, Baseball, Goals   |   Posted on January 2, 2017 at 1:16am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Let's See if I Remember How to Do This

I used to draw. All the time as a kid, less so as an adult, sporadically in recent years. Not at all in ... well, I'm not sure. Months, anyway, and then just one or two things. For whatever reason, I was inspired to pick up the sketchbook again a few weeks back, and doodled some. And it sucked. Like anything else, drawing is a use-it-or-lose-it kind of thing, and I had nothing. I was hearing the Toby Ziegler line from "Enemies," when he and Sam are choking on a puff assignment, about how his and Sam's talent couldn't have gone far. "Somewhere in this building is our talent."

Anyway, it took a few attempts, but I got to a point that was ... less bad ... and I turned out this:

 Not terrible, but not up to standard, either, but I figured, hey, better is better. Don't know what's going on with Superman's left eye. And the likeness on the other ... well, still. Progress.

Couple more mixed-result pages over a week or so, and I started to feel a bit more in the groove, turning out a page of Morena Baccarins. Pretty OK, especially the one on the right.

 Keeping with the theme of Pretty Women on TV, I went back to Rosario Dawson. First one on the page (top right — I'm left-handed, so I start on the right) isn't quite right, something in the jaw; it looks more like Jessica Biel or someone else. But the next one — THAT'S MORE LIKE IT. I'M BACK, BABY!

 OK, the bottom one was a step back, some issues with the tones. Her eyes are not that baggy. But I still like it.

Next up in the TV Crush lineup is Ming-Na Wen:

 The larger one here gave me fits, and I'm not completely pleased with it. Proportions are a bitch sometimes and I still don't think I have the eyeline quite right. But in general, solid.

Now I'm feeling pretty confident, and I go to the old standby: figure drawing with a bit of T&A.

 I've always been more partial to the T than the A, but that last one still turned out really well. The one on the bottom I'll finish later.

Tagged Sketches   |   Posted on December 22, 2016 at 5:09am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Exceeding Capacity

I started collecting comics when I was around ten years old. I organized them, tried to keep them in shape, and struggled to find a way to pile them on shelves that didn't warp them or leave them vulnerable to fading and discoloring or random cat frenzies knocking them over and denting them. Eventually, I learned about the existence of longboxes and bought one, but that soon was outgrown and I improvised other boxes that became ugly and unwieldy.

A couple years later my mom was having our kitchen remodeled, so there were carpenters and other workmen in the house a lot, and one day Mom asked them if they could build some kind of cabinet for my mass of comics. (She did this without any prompting from me, too, which is the sort of thing I try to remember about her rather than the ugly alcoholic stuff that came much later.) So they did, and it was OK, but not really ideal -- just kind of a deep shelf unit turned on its end -- and after a time I maxed it out anyway, so one day Mom again said, "why don't we have them make a better one," and I sketched out what would be better. And by the time we moved into a new house not too long after that, I had a pair of long wooden drawer cabinet things that doubled as furniture and storage.

Those things are great, and I still have them today. They held most of my collection for years, with only a couple of longboxes supplementing, but as needed I would get another box and tuck it away somewhere.

My overflow now exceeds what fits in the cabinets.

Now, though, things are out of control again. I occasionally put some comics on eBay and try to thin the mass some, but the incoming stuff always outnumbers the outflow of eBay dumps (and really, I should just put a lot of the chaff in some bundles and sell it for pennies if I really want to make space), and my library room is in a constant state of disarray. I've cleaned it up some of late and tried to organize, but the conclusion is that, since I can't seem to muster up the will to sell off half my collection, I need more of what my mom suggested for me during her kitchen remodel.

But I'm a grown-ass man now (allegedly; I mean, this is about thousands of comic books) and I don't need to hire contractors to build things, I can do it myself. So I will.

I used The Google and determined that, as expected, my mom was not the only person to conceive of such things and others have built similar units and documented them. One fellow even recorded some of his construction work at the time as well as the finished product. I'm going to come up with something that is a kind of cross between what my mom had made from my teenage sketches and what this "cougarcomics" fellow has done.

I'm putting this up here mostly as a reminder to myself and as a public declaration of intent so I won't blow it off; I don't know when I'll get to it, in some ways I think I should start right away because I have time and I tend to have less work in the winter than the rest of the year. On the other hand, sometime in the next year or so (?) I intend on moving, and do I want to move even more heavy wood furniture than I already have? Maybe better to wait until I'm in a new place. But, who knows, it might take longer to find a place to move to, and in the meantime the problem continues, and when I do move, I'll have a lot of stuff still in these crappy cardboard boxes that could get dropped or dented or whathaveyou. So ... probably ought to do it sooner.

 

Tagged Comics, Projects, Mom   |   Posted on December 4, 2016 at 9:58pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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American Idiots

The Trumpsterfire nightmare is going to be worse than we imagined, and I don't think our collective imagination was all that restrained. We're just three weeks into the transition period, and in that short span of time, President-Elect VonClownstick has said and done too many outrageous and insulting and downright frightening things to keep track of.

There's a lot of stupid distracting bullshit he's spewed through his Twitter account, but let's look at the real "highlights" of our PEOTUS in these three weeks:

• Settled a lawsuit for fraud, paying $25,000,000 to make the suit go away and prevent a conviction (and walking away with an estimated $150,000,000 in fraudulent gains)
• Either directly or indirectly intimidated his alleged rape victim into dropping her lawsuit against him
• Appointed a white-nationalist propagandist, Stephen Bannon, to the post of chief White House strategist and senior counselor
• Began filling out his cabinet nominations with people who are, to a person, unqualified for their designated departments; horrifying contenders for remaining positions include Joe Arpio for Homeland Security, Myron Ebell for EPA, Harold Hamm for Energy, Jan Brewer or Sarah Palin for Interior, John Bolton for State(!!), Rudy Guliani for State or National Intelligence, the list goes on.
• Declared that the concept of "conflict of interest" does not apply to him, despite the plethora of conflicts he will have, a notable few of which include a financial interest in the Dakota Pipeline project, real estate holdings the world over, and a Washington, DC, hotel that he will not be allowed to lease once he's inaugurated but plans to continue operating anyway
• Discussed policy with world leaders on unsecured communications lines with no preparation or briefing, the exact thing he threatened to jail Hillary Clinton for
• Took credit for "saving" a factory from moving to Mexico even though the factory had never had any intention of doing so
• Objected to recount efforts in states where he won by a thread, claiming that we should respect and accept the result form election night and insulting the parties seeking an audit, then almost immediately thereafter made a baseless claim that "millions of people voted illegally" and accused three states in which he lost of harboring "serious voter fraud"
• Continued to refuse to disclose his tax returns, presumably to continue hiding all of his debt to foreign banks and governments as well as his general avoidance of paying taxes and the true value of his net worth
• Interviewed a candidate for Secretary of State who is serving two years probation for the crime of leaking classified information, precisely what he accused and threatened to jail Hillary Clinton over

The twitter rants insulting the Hamilton cast and declaring flag-burning should be punishable by loss if citizenship  and maligning the New York Times and other journalism outlets are windows into this man's psyche, but ultimately distractions form the real problems. 

The incoming administration is shaping up to be the most massive collection of incompetence and ignorance to ever occupy the White House, coupled with the most corrupt chief executive in the nation's history.

Be aware. Be vigilant. Be active. The Senate can thwart at least some of his appalling cabinet nominations, so let your senators know you won't support them if they support Jeff Sessions or Tom Price. (Or Ben Carson or Elaine Chao or Betsy DeVos or ...) Support organizations that will be extremely busy in the coming years such as the ACLU, who will undoubtedly be swamped with cases against cabinet secretaries and other officials who don't respect the Bill of Rights. Make your voices heard by local officials as well, support efforts to keep localities relatively safe from official thuggery. Intervene if/when you see unofficial thuggery, as the election of this weasel has emboldened those among us who would oppress and terrorize minorities and disadvantaged persons. Write to newspapers. Hold journalists accountable for their behavior if and when they fail to report or spin any of these atrocities as somehow normal. If you can afford it, support journalism and civil rights causes financially. 

Oh, and don't get sick, as efforts to strip you of your healthcare will be aggressive and venomous.

We're in for a rough ride.

 

Tagged President VonClownstick, Politics   |   Posted on November 29, 2016 at 10:27pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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