November, 2007
You are looking at posts that were written in the month of November in the year 2007.
forty funny pictures, one awful artist
Posted on November 29th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Badness, Stuff, Cartoons.
(via Making Light, via Yendi at LJ)
Progresive Boink's Forty Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings is a hilarious demolition job, leveling a target both deserving and inexplicably successful, allowing guilt-free pleasure in the invective:
The most important thing you need to know before reading about all the terrible things Rob Liefeld has drawn is that he has never seen or talked to a woman in his life and has no idea what they look like or how their bodies operate. If you asked Rob Liefeld to draw a diagram of the uterus he'd put on a pair of gauntlets and punch the shit out of your chalkboard. This is how the man operates, and though I know it sounds like a lot, you have to believe me. I don't want you looking at the stuff he's drawing and think he's a conscious adult male with a creative job who can and has influenced the minds of young artists. The man is a pair of blue jeans with a face. He has on a backwards cap, and when he turns it around, it's still backwards.
The examples truly need to be seen to fully comprehend the stupendous awfulness that for a time made Liefeld not just the most popular artist in comics but a pop culture celebrity. I am providing just a piece of a few panels here -- each of them is cut from a larger panel in the actual piece -- concentrating on amazing anatomical monstrosities. Comments in quotes are from the original piece; comments in italics are mine.
 "Also of note: the fingers of Stryfe’s left hand here all taper down in size from index to pinkie, you know, as fingers do." |
 Because manly superheroes wear their pants extra tight. |
 "Check out Spider-Man swinging in on a jungle vine. Jesus Christ Liefeld drew a dog’s hindquarters on him. Just straight-up a dog’s ass and legs." |
 Not actually supposed to be an emaciated calf. |
 "I'm not an expert on anthropomorphism and I'm the last person to consult when it comes to sexualizing an animal lady, but is the tail supposed to come out of the middle of the butt cheek like that?" |
 Not actually supposed to be an amputated leg (despite the sword). |
 "How many teeth are in a mouth? Like a billion, right? I’ll just draw a billion, all the same size and shape." |
 Not actually supposed to be a free-floating thigh... wait, I think it is supposed to be a thigh. How long is that thing?? |
And much more.
crooned with no irony whatsoever
Posted on November 29th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Badness, Lyrics.
"Thanks for taking me on a one-way trip to the sun."
--Englebert Humperdinck, "After the Lovin'" (written by Richie Adams and Alan Bernstein)
c'mon already
Posted on November 29th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.
Now that Pylon's fine debut album Gyrate has been re-released yet again, can we please get a cd reissue of their fantastic second album, Chomp?
hey that (kinda) sounds like
Posted on November 28th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
The opening of the Captain and Tennille version of "Shop Around" and the opening of XTC's "Me and the Wind".
cafe tacuba, the repost
Posted on November 26th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, Musicians.
(This is a combined version of the two posts I made on Cafe Tacuba at the beginning of the holiday weekend, just in case anyone who normally reads this didn't see them. I apologize to those of you seeing this twice, especially Martin.)
After last night's show at Hammerstein, I am as confirmed in my opinion as I can be: Café Tacuba (aka Café Tacvba) are the greatest rock band in the world: the most exhilarating combination of energy, invention, and breadth of style currently going. I can't imagine that the language difference is that big a barrier to their being better known in the states, but apparently it is. That and the fact that, for all their variety of form, they aren't trying to break or deconstruct any forms, which makes them of less interest to the indie press than weirder foreign-language stuff.
If you remain interested in where rock and roll is going, not just the underground stuff but the bands that play arenas, I urge you to try Café Tacuba. Robert L, you especially. Try Re first if you can, but try anything. Maybe it won't move you, but you should find out.
A few songs, chosen to represent Cafe Tacuba's entire career, and some of their breadth of style. Not all my favorites -- I like some of their styles more than others -- but all songs I love.
from Cafe Tacuba (1992)
Las Persianas
Rarotonga
three consecutive songs from Re (1994)
El Ciclon
El Borrego
Esa Noche
from Avalancha de Exitos (1996)
No Controles
from Yo Soy (1999)
Guerra
from Reves (1999)
3
from Cuatro Caminos (2003)
Eo
from SiNo (2007)
Volver a Comenzar
tacuba! - some evidence
Posted on November 22nd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, Musicians.
A few songs, chosen to represent Cafe Tacuba's entire career, and some of their breadth of style. Not all my favorites -- I like some of their styles more than others -- but all songs I love.
from Cafe Tacuba (1992)
Las Persianas
Rarotonga
three consecutive songs from Re (1994)
El Ciclon
El Borrego
Esa Noche
from Avalancha de Exitos (1996)
No Controles
from Yo Soy (1999)
Guerra
from Reves (1999)
3
from Cuatro Caminos (2003)
Eo
from SiNo (2007)
Volver a Comenzar
tacuba!
Posted on November 21st, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Musicians.
After last night's show at Hammerstein, I am as confirmed in my opinion as I can be: Café Tacuba (aka Café Tacvba) are the greatest rock band in the world: the most exhilarating combination of energy, invention, and breadth of style currently going. I can't imagine that the language difference is that big a barrier to their being better known in the states, but apparently it is. That and the fact that, for all their variety of form, they aren't trying to break or deconstruct any forms, which makes them of less interest to the indie press than weirder foreign-language stuff.
If you remain interested in where rock and roll is going, not just the underground stuff but the bands that play arenas, I urge you to try Café Tacuba. Robert L, you especially. Try Re first if you can, but try anything. Maybe it won't move you, but you should find out.
puzzled regrets
Posted on November 19th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.
Why, when I was nineteen years old and obsessed with the strange avant-funk of the first, eponymous, 1983 Golden Palominos album, did no one tell me that I really needed to hear Miles Davis's On the Corner?
thinking about what you say
Posted on November 17th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness, Editing.
I proofread ad copy yesterday -- copy I was not allowed to edit -- that said their product supplied "one of the most sought-after needs".
I think one of the dangers of ad copy writing -- apart from the fact that this copy appeared to have been written by a tech person without assistance from someone learned in grammar and punctuation -- is that it is so full of exaggeration and stock phrasery that it's easy, when in a hurry, to overlook that you have said nothing at all, or, worse, said something ludicrous.
the joy of duty
Posted on November 14th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Boring Posts.
When I left work last night, I had worked 27 hours out of the preceding 36. I'm certainly not complaining; we can use the money, and I'm not breaking rocks. But it has taken me a while to properly wake.
The last two days are an intensified example of how busy my work life has been lately. I had not intended to fall silent here, but just when I started taking on freelance copy editing again to supplement my dwindling hours at the ad agency, the office work started picking up again. And I'm suddenly getting more freelance work than I had anticipated. Rains, pours. Because of assorted financial pressures in our life right now -- debts, Christmas travel, the need to move -- I'm not inclined to turn down the work until it's literally more than I can do.
The creative writing has to come first, and I'm barely making time for that. And I've become somewhat obsessed with photography (some of which I post at my my other weblog). And I'm trying to read a lot more fiction than I have in the last few years. (I've severely cut my online reading.) And of course I'm still completely in thrall to music.
So, well, I do intend to keep writing here. But it's likely to be pretty scattered. And honestly, I'm not nearly as good a writer on music as I wish I were (this is not a cry for reassurance), especially at describing the specifics that make music work for me. (Two recent posts at Pretty Goes With Pretty, about Slint's Spiderland and Drive Like Jehu's Yank Crime, are a great example of what I wish I could do: he told me specific musical things about those albums that I hadn't known.)
Feelings of inadequacy aside, I'm unlikely to ever entirely stop writing about music I love and trying to spread it around. Just not so much right now.
another contender
Posted on November 8th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.
Richard at the Existence Machine was right: I love Person Pitch, the 2007 solo album from Animal Collective co-leader Panda Bear. It's sonically beautiful, and it keeps opening up the louder I turn it; as with Feels, the tunes are memorable, and there are long hypnotic riffs, and it's alternately goofy and sublime. I see that Richard is also a little tired of people making Beach Boys comparisons, and says "The comparison is more conceptual, I think, than anything else. People are more reminded of the Beach Boys than really claiming that Animal Collective actually sound like them." That's probably true, and it's true of Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes, too, but there's still something in the sound that brings the comparison to people's ears before they start analyzing the music, I think. I hear the Incredible String Band in Animal Collective and Panda Bear's music as well, and that's also probably more a conceptual similarity than really sounding like them. As far as sound goes, has anyone compared this to Popul Vuh? The long meditative riffs with the echoey, otherworldly production sound more like Florian Fricke than Brian Wilson. I also hear the big hollow early Magnetic Fields sound in places, particularly on "Ponytail".