i m N s h o

A couple of years ago, I took a class in "storytelling". We spent a lot of time with Scott Adams Understanding Comics , discussing the elements of comics and how they apply to storytelling, especially as it relates to online and other media. Chief among the concepts we discussed was that of comics as "sequential art"… images in juxtaposition that gain meaning due to that juxtaposition. Since the frames in a comic are static, the "action" in the comic takes place between the frames (the action in frame A leads to the action in frame B leads to the action in frame C, etc.) So there's a connection implied between juxtaposed images. Imagine my surprise on seeing the front page of today's LA Times. Above the scorched earth image of the latest So Cal wildfire, we have the announcement that John Roberts has been confirmed as the new Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Sure, the picture actually goes with the "Fire still out of control" artic

Success always breeds imitators. So it's no surprise that the fall TV season is full of Lost clones, right? I'm not sure what I'm most amused by here… the fact that all of them have gone with a single-word, declamatory title: Surface, Threshold, Invasion, Supernatural or maybe it's the way some of them tried SO hard to distance themselves from the whole "Sci-Fi" label. Maybe it's just that, for all their attempts to ride on Lost's popularity, none of them are really doing anything new or original. Supernatural seems to be the most fun, so far, and the one I'm most likely to keep watching. It's got that whole painfully-hip "McG does the WB" vibe going for it (you know, too witty for its own good, everyone's WAY too good looking for real life, that sort of thing). With the mixture of "looking for dad/solving the mystery of mom's death" and the monster-of-the-week format, this one's firmly in the X-Files/ Night St

What a relief! After everybody seemed to be falling all over themselves the past couple of weeks to "accept responsibility" for the Hurricane Katrina/New Orleans debacle, it's almost refreshing to hear that Mike Brown isn't willing to jump on that bandwagon. FEMA's Brown puts blame on Louisiana officials "My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional," he said in his opening testimony. The best part of this article may be the revelation that he's still on FEMA's payroll as a consultant "to assess what's wrong". The fallacy in that statement's so obvious, I don't even need to mock it! Way to go, Mike. Good to see a guy that really knows how to pass the buck in full stride.  

If you're commenting on my blog lately, I have to apologize for the inconvenience of the "word verification" step that's been added to it. Turns out the spammers have yet another outlet for their pointless attempts to get us clicking on their crap… comment spam. It's not a new thing, judging by the articles in the Blogger Help section, but I've just started experiencing it this month. Rather than have to police my blog daily for moronic attempts to sell the latest miracle drug/free credit/get rich scheme to unsuspecting Internet users (who the hell clicks on this shit enough to make it profitable, is what I want to know) I've enabled word verification for comments on my blog, to keep the spammers software out of my blog. So, my apologies for the inconvenience. But at least you won't have to filter through the spam to read my blog, right?  

When I was in high school, I remember sitting in countless Lit classes discussing classic novels and stories, trying to determine what the writer was "trying to say" in each of them. I understand that the goal was to try and develop "critical thinking" skills and teach you to analyze and understand what you're reading, but I kept coming back to the thought that maybe the writer was just, you know, trying to tell a story. I felt about the same when I read the Entertainment Weekly review of Just Like Heaven and found it discussing whether the movie was a metaphor for the Terry Schiavo case. First off, I think that's giving the movie credit for much deeper meaning than it could possibly support (although, in checking Rotten Tomatoes , EW isn't the only one to see the politics in this movie). And I'm left wondering if that means I should dislike the movie for its politics, or simply for its lame second act. I guess this is where I should warn you that