Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

(With apologies to Walt Kelly and that Joe Traditional guy whose name is on all the good music)

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an’ Kalamazoo!
Nora’s freezin’ on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!

Don’t we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby Lilla boy, Louisville Lou?
Trolley Molly don’t love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!

I’m a fan of lots of obscure comics. Many of which have unsuccessful runs at movies, sometimes many times. Usually that’s because the offbeat, out-of-the-mainstream style of the narratives makes it a difficult sell as a box office hit. Sometimes, indies like Hellboy and Sin City slip through – with mixed results for their fans.

So I greet the news that one of my favorite indie heroes (warning – link is pop-up city) is making the jump to the big screen with cautious optimism.

Dimension Films has made a deal to turn the Michael Allred-created comicbook “Madman” into a live-action film produced by Robert Rodriguez.

I’m a big fan of Rodriguez’ work, and his style may match up nicely with Allred’s superhero. Even so, there are a million things that could go wrong – some of which include the movie never being made. Others of which include, say, the words “starring Jim Carrey” appearing on the poster. No, nothing has been reported yet. I just have my fears….

A couple of weeks ago I decided to reconnect with a small (very small) part of my childhood. I with my research material for my writing, I threw the latest issues of a couple of Archie comics – namely, Betty & Veronica and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Yes. I used to read Archie comics. And the store was, in fact, sold out of any Jughead or Archie-based titles.

What struck me about Sabrina was that it had been redesigned from the ground up. The artwork, for one thing, had become a stiff-at-the-knees mass-production manga style. Beyond that, the story had become shoujo. Any vestige of the Archie character I had found through shorts in the old Double Digest mags was gone. Sabrina now studies magic at an all-girls magic school in another dimension, where one of her aunts sits on the board. In addition, Sabrina has gotten involved in a plot to depose the current queen.

Wait. An Archie comic with an ongoing plot? What now?

The second thing that struck me was just how wooden the Betty & Veronica comic had become. They were never paragons of great literature, but Archie comics always provided corny jokes and tight sweaters with an earnest sincerity that was almost… inspiring. But the artwork was stiff and the dialogue even more vacuous than I’d remembered – or maybe it was the fact that I bought a full-size comic and not the digest size, and the artwork was always bad at this size. I really don’t know.

But I do know that the stories – which used to meet a minimum level of logical sense – were full of absurd, out-of-the-blue twists that existed for no other reason than to push through hackneyed puns that were too old for Archie in the ‘80’s.

Oh, but it gets better. It turns out that the redesign bug has struck all of Archie comics. Hard. The new style is… realistic? I guess?

Actually, you know what? It turns out that the new look manages somehow to be even more bland and generic than the old.

Actually, I’m glad I was never a huge fan of Archie. If I had been, this would probably upset me to no end. As it is, it just seems… stupid.

The happiest place on Earth ejects a jolly old soul.

The whole mess began when a group of excited children created a scene at Disney World after they confused 60-year old J.D. Worley with St. Nick himself.

The rotund, white bearded man graciously played along with the dreamy-eyed kids, and that, he says, sparked problems with the Orlando theme park management.

Someone apparently complained that a man in a red shirt and blue jeans was pretending to be Santa Claus and managers asked him to stop.

...

A Disney spokesman says the park was just trying to protect the magic of Santa.

Got eMusic? Rhapsody? Napster? Yahoo! Music? Sony Connect? Or – Goddess forbid – a Zune?

Do a search for “C. Glen Williams” or “Doctor Hu.” Right now, eMusic only has Doctor Hu and Yahoo! and the Zune only have Glen – but on all the others you should be able to find, listen to, and even download both Post-Millennial Heebie-Jeebies (my folk album) and The Illegal Rebirth of Deep Blue the Kid (my electronica album).

Or, if you’re still down with the plastic frisbees, you can order those here.

What? What about iTunes?

Coming soon.

No, really. Coming soon. To iTunes America, Canada, European Union, Japan, and Australia.

Ain’t technology grand?

I missed a week, but here’s the new Random 10! Here’s a set of lyrics. If you know the artist (or in some cases an artist) and the title, drop it in the comments!

1. “Three Small Words,” by Josie and the Pussycats (aka: Bif Naked) – It took six whole hours and five long days for all your lies to come undone.
2. “Bring It On Home,” by Led Zeppelin – I’ve got my ticket, I’ve got that load. Got up, gone higher, all aboard.
3. “My Baby Shot Me Down,” by Cher (or Nancy Sinatra) – After echoes from a gun, we both vowed that we’d be one. [multiple artists possible]
4. “1000 Oceans,” by Tori Amos – If that’s what it takes to sail you home.
5. “Mister Tambourine Man,” by Bob Dylan – Cast your dancing spell my way – I promise to go under it. [multiple artists possible]
6. “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” by Dean Martin – I’ll take your hat, your hair looks swell. [multiple artists – really. just pick one. I won’t accept “by any of the thousands of people who have done it.” give me a name]
7. “Killer Queen,” by Queen – Caviar and cigarettes, well-versed in etiquette.
8. “Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy,” by David Bowie and Bing Crosby – Ev’ry child must be made aware, ev’ry child must be made to care.
9. “Dig a Pony” by The Beatles [guessed by Fred] – You can syndicate any boat you row.
10. “Have a Cigar” by Pink Floyd [guessed by Thud] – Which one’s Pink?

Answers to previous 10’s will be posted soon.

Ben – who I’m not linking here because he does not, to my knowledge, have a blog – contacts me via Facebook to inform me that ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’ is finally being released on DVD. W00t! I thought they would never pull it off! I thought licensing the music was too expensive! But there it is!

Wait just a son-of-a-goldurn minute…

As you’ve probably guessed, there will be music substitutions when the set comes out, but the studio has been spending a lot of time with a music supervisor to ensure that the replaced songs fit the show. Hugh Wilson, creator of the series, has heard some of the replaced music and thought Fox did a good job.

blink. blink.

Yeah, see, the reason they said before that they didn’t want to release it was because it was expensive to license all the music, and fans wouldn’t accept music replacement. As much as I love the characters that made up the cast of WKRP, the music is part of the show, too. The music was part of the rock station environment and served to make the show feel grounded in reality.

Even so, TVShowsOnDVD hopes fans will keep “an open mind” about buying the show on DVD. But we return to the stifling effects of current copyright law – can we truly say that WKRP has been released as long as the original, carefully-selected soundtrack has to be replaced?

It looks like the Wii is the clear winner this holiday. For those of you keeping score, here’s the death rattle.

Sony’s response? “We feel very confident that the PlayStation fan is going to wait until they can get a PlayStation 3…If they do pick up a Wii, it’s as more of a novelty,” says Sony spokesman Dave Karraker.

Sony has been mercilessly mocked – and rightfully so – for the way they’ve handled the entire PS3 roll-out. Beyond anti-consumer tactics that included crippling DRM, they’ve been skewered in comics for their idea that under-production was a fast track to popularity, this very blog (which, I should point out, is usually not a gaming blog) has commented on the way they seemed unprepared for their own system’s launch, and this none-too-subtle article at I-Mockery includes at least one comment on Sony’s decision not to bundle any games with the system (while Nintendo includes a selection of sports games with the Wii).

Here’s another Christmas morning scenario for you: “Timmy, Santa worked very hard scouring eBay to bring you this Playstation 3, but unfortunately he couldn’t bring you any games to play on it. I know what you’re thinking. That’s okay, because you’ll be able to play your old PS2 games on it in the meantime, except that Mommy—I mean, Santa sold, uhh, stole them when he dropped this off! The bastard! And I know you’re feeling weak now, dear, but Santa had to take your blood too. Santa has habits. Bad habits.”

Apparently, there’s a limit to how far you can push consumers as a whole – and Sony has found it. Golly. It’s almost… inspiring.

Seriously – it’s kinda sad when it becomes apparent that a corporation is surviving off of the fact that it was already massive and not off of any new business plans or great advancements. But only sad in a “gee, that’s kinda lousy” and not sad in a “here, have $600 of my money, you obviously need it” way. Such, apparently is the story of Sony. In case you missed it, here’s a quick rundown courtesy of monkeydew.

There were the ill-conceived ‘fake’ PSP graffiti ads, the ‘White is Coming’ European PSP ads which featured a white woman grasping the face of a black man that were accused of having racist undertones. Then last year’s awful ‘Portable Nuts’campaign failed to ignite public interest in the machine in the territory where the PSP had performed the strongest, North America. The spots featured animated squirrels talking like gangsters and trying to sell consumers the idea of the PSP as being a portable equivalents of what gamers have in their home since the PSP is supposedly very close to the PS2 architecturally.

Like to eat nuts at home? Well with a PSP, you can take your nuts on the road, ‘portable nuts’ get it?

And, as the same entry reports, Sony’s latest marketing scheme has blown up in its face. Apparently, Sony has been posting fake virals from PSP “fans” on services like YouTube. The lousy production quality and “let’s-make-fools-of-ourselves” attitudes of the people in the videos match nicely with the typical virals that populate those sites, but beyond that they are almost painfully obvious shills.

So, let’s see. The UMD movies failed to get off the ground. Blu-Ray appears more and more to be a failure (don’t cry, Sony – HDDVD doesn’t seem to be doing that well, either) – and while the system is going for massive prices on eBay, it really appears that Nintendo is poised to win the next-gen console wars by reasonable pricing and doing better at meeting demand. Meanwhile, their marketing department has gone completely insane.

How is Sony making money these days?

I’m a huge fan of Firefly and the subsequent movie, Serenity. I think it provides a rich universe and engaging characters with fun writing and relationships.

I’m not that much of a fan of MMORPG’s. My brother even tried to get me started on WoW once, but I didn’t manage it. For one thing, it’s difficult to get me to accept that there are games out there that you have to purchase, and then pay a monthly fee to continue playing. If the client came free with subscription, it would be easier for me – but if I buy a game, I usually want to be able to play it in some capacity without buying a further subscription.

Even so, Wired is reporting that Fox has just licensed an MMORPG to be created based on Whedon’s space cowboy series. Which makes me conflicted.

Part of me says, “Awesome! The universe continues in an expansive interactive environment!”

Part of me says, “Wait. Fox didn’t seem to think Firefly was worth their time in the first run, they didn’t support the movie, and wasn’t The CW in talks to restart the series? So how does Fox deciding they can monetize their share in the brand effect further movies and/or series?”

Part of me says, “Shiny! A chance to create a character in a Whedonverse and help build the story!”

And part of me is grumbling and kicking the dirt, going, ”$50 bucks for the game client, I’ll probably have to boot into Windows to play it, and then pay $20 a month… razzafrakkin’...”

So. In short, I have too many personalities.