Perchance

I had a disturbing dream last night. I had dreams pretty much all last night, likely thanks to the holiday dairy intake catching up to me, but one of them stuck with me longer than a few minutes after waking, which is unusual.

In the dream, I was in a three storey apartment, on my way up the stairs from the bottom to leave via the front door, which was located in the middle storey. As I reached the second storey, I ran into my grandfather, who was coming down from the top story intended to leave himself.

This was shocking, because my dreamself knew Granddad was dead. The realization that I was talking to him regardless caused a tightening in my chest that made it difficult to explain what was causing the tightening in my chest. He helped me downstairs to the living room, where I eventually calmed down enough to ask him how he got there.

He didn't know. Thinking about it, he couldn't remember much at all. I didn't want to tell him he wasn't alive, so I did what I could to try and revive his memories. It took awhile.

Eventually, he realized that he was dead. He lay on his back on the floor and curled up into a ball. I tried to comfort him, but he grew increasingly agitated by the idea that he was a ghost. He bounced up and down, off the ceiling and the floor a few times.

Then he transformed into a white sock.

***

In my e-mail this morning was a mail forwarded from my father, informing me that my Aunt Kate--granddad's older sister, which I guess would actually make her a great-aunt...?--had passed away.

This put me in a reflective mood that I've almost completely destroyed by watching the first half hour of the Mike Judge film Idiocracy.

A

I do not want to go outside and you can't make me.

Not going to develop this year's holiday-inspired idea. Because everyone's in a bad enough mood without seeing Santa portrayed as the leader of a cult of elf-slaves who exiles Milton, one of his most devoted followers, and then tells Milt he'll only be allowed back at the North Pole if he hunts down and kills Santa's illegitimate daughter, who's a thief preparing to steal the Real Mona Lisa from an arms dealer art collector.

***

REBOOT TO THE HEAD

The ReBoot webcomic is done. As the writer put it, "Thank the User."

***

FOLEY'S BRIEF REVIEW OF WILL EISNER'S FRANK MILLER'S THE SPIRIT

If I had to use a single word to describe the film, it would be "excessive."

Some of the funny bits were actually reasonably funny.

The dialogue was stunningly awful.

The visuals were exactly what you'd expect, which is unfortunate, as I think many of the recycled Sin City visual tricks could be used to great effect if they were used in something other than a completely random fashion.

Pretty much every place and character name that wasn't established in Eisner's strip was a comic reference, to the point where those of us who know who Iger and Donenfeld refer to in the real world would inevitably be distracted from the film's barely-there story.

Terrible, terrible dialogue.

There were at least two Hot Dames that absolutely did not need to be in the film. Probably more like four, but at least two.

Eva Mendes has a nice butt, but I don't think it contributed as much to the film as Miller did, at least not judging by the screen time it got.

Gabriel Macht did what he could with what he had; Samuel L. Jackson was Samuel L. Jackson on a crack/steroids cocktail; the women all looked good and while none of them were overtly whores (at this point, having women who aren't prostitutes qualifies as restraint on Miller's part), none of them could resist The Spirit's machismo.

Miller's Spirit has the bizarre superpower of glowing-soled hightops.

At one point, completely out of the blue, The Spirit breaks the fourth wall to talk directly to the audience. Why this was deemed necessary when half the film's dialogue (which was god-awful) was in voice-over to begin with, I have no idea.

It was better than I expected, but that's not saying much, as I expected it to be pure, tortuous awfulness from beginning to end. Instead, the pure, tortuous awfulness was interspersed with humour, a lot of it extremely broad physical comedy, that worked in the context of the film. But, as Jay said after the film was over, "It's not Will Eisner's Spirit."

***

THE FUTURE OF COMICS (I)

In addition to being THe Future of Comics (I), Fiona Staples is just an all-around awesome person whose package arrived yesterday. Tiina loves the print.

A

It's beginning to look a lot like Cold, White Death

Final lettering revisions for ReBoot's last two installments are done. I and the creative team were skating perilously close to the weekly deadline pretty much from Day One, but we never actually missed one. It was a rocky road, but we appear to have reached our destination. Which means one less thing I've got to worry about over this next week (I'm saving my "Where's the next paycheque coming from?" freakout for Boxing Week.)

As is my somewhat sporadic tradition, I've come up with an idea for a Christmas-themed story. I don't know why I continue to do this--out of the eight or nine I've come up with over the years I've only ever used THE HOLIDAY MEN and, hopefully, The Christmas Spirit as the second or third Spooky Kids story.

I was going to write about this new idea, but typing the last paragraph, I just remembered I've got something important to do re: The H-Men. So maybe I'll pick that up tomorrow. Or not at all. It's pretty bleak, which is in keeping with my standard mood round this time of year, but not necessarily something I ought to be inflicting on the world.

If I don't get back to blogging for a bit, I hope everyone reading has a joy-filled X-Mas or equivalent winter-themed holiday of their choice. Beware mmistletoe hanging in unusual places.

A

No. No no no no no no no no no no.

I did not just chip a tooth a week and a bit before Christmas. I DID NOT.

And if I did, I absolutely, positively did NOT chip it on a #*%&ing hot dog bun.

***

ANDREW WATCHES

"The Satanic Rites of Dracula". 1971 Hammer Horror film, which pretty much says everything necessary, doesn't it? How one could go wrong with a title like that, I'll never know, but while there were some bits that really pleased me (Peter Cushing just oozes cool), it was ultimately kind of a pointless exercise (why that suprises me, I don't know--I guess I sort of romanticize Hammer Horror stuff and the reality almost always lets me down.) Personally, I like the original title--"Dracula is Alive and Well and Living in West London"--better, but I guess Christopher Lee objected to having a comedy title on what is absolutely not a comedy film. It doesn't even make it into the so bad it's good category (unfortunately.) The plot revolves around a Dracula-led conspiracy to destroy the world via Satanic ritual and a powerful strain of the Black Plague and naked women. All the Satanic cult's henchmen dressed exactly the same, in a brown wooly vest over black pants and shirt. After the first couple of encounters, I reckon everyone who needed to know would be able to pick out a Satanist at a range of half a mile...

"Southland Tales". Richard Kelly does his best David Lynch imitation with an end of the world...I'm leery of calling it a story, as it reads more like a series of barely connected events that kinda tie up but kinda don't in the end. Maybe if I read the three gaphic novels that are supposed to precede the movie (which starts with Chapter IV) I'd be better able to figure out just what the hell happened and why Justin Timberlake lip-syncing a Killers song in the middle of the film is the critical element of the thing. Lots and lots of voice-over, which I don't mind in theory, but which got tedious after about twenty minutes--OK, there's a lot of exposition needed to make some kind of sense of the world he'd created, but I've got to think more of it could've been dealt with in actual dialogue. And the opening voiceover monologue surprisingly does lean heavily on the graphic novels (written by Kelly and illustrated by Brett Weldele), with numerous images from the books appearing. Apparently it's supposed to be a comedy (albeit a black one), but the only thing consistently amusing to me was Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's performance as a self-absorbed, highly strung movie star.

***

ANDREW READS

"Let Me In/Let The Right One In", by Jonathan Ajvide Lindqvist. As I sit here thinking about it, I can't escape the fact that a similar set-up was used as the foundation of an episode of the Highlander television series, but looking beyond that, Let The Right One In is pretty good vampire story, and that's coming from someone who's a pretty hard sell when it comes to vampires. Not genre-redefining, as the film festival PR for the movie would've had you believe, but still good. Oskar, a bullied, pudgy kid from a broken hom who's right on the edge of breaking under social pressures at school befriends a stange girl, while a killer stalks the city, affecting the lives of various characters, most of whom live in the same apartment complex as the pudgy kid. I'm torn as to whether I like the book better than the film, which was pretty good. The book has a few story threads and subplots that the film didn't, including some history of the strange girl, Eli, and the old man who lives with her (his paedophilia's spelled out loud and clear in the book.) In fact, the old guy is given substantially more to do in the book, which leads to some of the grimmer scenes that I really wouldn't have minded seeing on film but which are, admittedly, tangential to the main thrust of the story, which is the relationship between Oskar and Eli. There are at least two revelations about Eli in the book that I missed in the film (possibly because I wasn't paying close enough attention--I was pretty flustered that day), and a third that explicitly rules out one of my favourite readings of the movie. If you've any interest in non-romantic vampires, this is worth a look--I don't recognize the name of the person quoted on the cover calling the book "Anne Ricean", but it really couldn't be farther from the truth.

***

MARV WOLFMAN ON HEROES VOLUME 3 FINALE

Funnily enough, he didn't zero in on the thing that really bugged me, which was the offhanded way in which "Hiro's stuck in the past" was dealt with. I'm as ready to suspend my disbelief as the next guy, but come on...

A

"Might be time to lay off the pills a little, Foley..."

A few minutes ago Diego Simone, long-suffering ReBoot artist sent me pencils for three of the last four pages for the weekly webcomic, which got him a reply of "This is great, but I really need the inks/colours for page 39 like, RIGHT NOW, because the letterer needs to have them done, like, RIGHT NOW."

Which got me the reply of "I sent you that page, but here it is again."

I figured we were facing a repeat of Tuesday, when a page had been lost between his sending it and my gmail account, and was seriously considering looking at alternate e-mail otions, until I looked at my Sent Mail list...and discovered I actually had gotten the page, looked at it, and forwarded it to equally long-suffering letterer Ed Brisson and the comic's writer. And I had and have no memory of doing that. Looking at the timeline, I realize all of this happened sometime after me taking a SleepMD pill last night, which I can only hope at least contributed to this piece of lost time.

Mind you, I do keep seeing images of grey aliens every time I close my eyes. Maybe that's related...

Anyway, the important thing is, we've got five pages to go and then my part on the ReBoot project is basically done. And that'll be me unemployed in any creative capacity, and just in time for Christmas, from the looks of it.

***

On the upside, I'm feeling more energized about writing right now than I have in some time. The screenplay's ticking along at a regrettably glacial pace, but I'm also working on a new proposal for a project with Nick Johnson, and I've been thinking of taking another shot at finding a story to go along with the characters from OLD DOGS. When writing up the idea to show Hollywood Manager, I came up with a new twist to the scenario I hadn't considered before that might just pull the thing into a workable shape.

***

I had an idea a bit like this one a couple years back. It was called SAME SH*T, DIFFERENT GALAXY, and was a workplace sitcom about the janitorial staff on a starship, the bridge crew of which were the stars of a reality television show. I even got the Future of Comics (I) Fiona Staples to do some character designs for a possible animated version. I don't know why I never went much of anywhere with the idea, but it just...never happened. Which is for the best, apparently. One FOOL'S ERRAND in this life is enough for me.

A

Can you feel the fire burning within you? Can you feel it?

If this turns out to be an act of god, I will laugh and laugh.

Arguable Points

Arguable Points
There are few things that I like better than a good argument. But finding a good one in general and online in particular isn't easy.

I believe it's during one of the roughly half a dozen quintannual (if that's actually a word--I don't feel like looking it up, but it feels like something that should mean "occurring every five years", which is how I mean it even if that's not what the word really means, assuming it even exists, which I don't really) Monty Python retrospective presentations that Terry Jones talks about his and John Cleese's dynamic during arguments. According to Jones, when angered, Cleese's voice would deepen and he'd withdraw somewhat--basically keep the anger he was likely feeling under control and to some degree hidden. On the other hand, when Jones got angry, his Welsh background would show through--his voice would become higher, more obviously agitated. And, paraphrasing (my recollection of) Jones, when one side of a discussion becomes angry, they've lost the argument.

I tend to agree with this theory. At a minimum, the point at which I lose my temper is the point at which, whatever the result, I cannot feel that I won an argument. Even if I'm subsequently able to convince the other person/people I'm in the right, I didn't win, because at some point I let the merits of my argument go in favour of focusing on something other than the merits of the opposing argument.

I once knew a girl--OK, dated a girl--OK, was engaged to a girl who took any disagreement with her position as a personal attack. Her primary strategy when it came to arguing was not to present the merits of her position or challenge the merits of those who disagreed. Instead, she would personally attack the party making the argument. An argument with her might start along these lines:

HER: I believe that the Albertan conservatives are the best political party in the province because they want to balance the budget.*
ME: I disagree. While balancing the budget is a noble endeavour, the way the conservatives want to do it is by gutting healthcare and unilaterally cutting teachers' agreed-upon salaries, among other things I find objectionable.
HER: You've got a small penis.

I dislike having arguments I know I absolutely cannot win. I'm open to being proven wrong, and have altered my position on occasion, when someone presented me with an argument I had no choice but to acknowledge was superior to my own. Jay Bardyla at Happy Harbor's perspective on certain elements of the comics industry have forced me to reevaluate some beliefs I held prior to discussing them with him. I don't see the point in arguing with someone who isn't likewise able to accept at least the possibility that they're wrong . Unless I'm feeling like a bastard that day, and think I can sneak a semi-win by getting the opposition riled up.

Anyway. This train of thought was inspired in part by continuing back difficulties which have me in a bleak frame of mind, but mostly by the comments thread in response to a post by Valerie D'Orazio about the Australian Simpsons Child Porn Case, which would probably have put me in a bleak frame of mind even if I'd started reading it in a good mood. I'm tempted to weigh in with another reply, but at this point I feel like both sides' points have been made and I'd only be stirring the pot.

I spent a good portion of my late teens and twenties baiting people. It was fun at the time, but that time has passed. I'll save my energy for a good argument, and hope one comes along soon.

A