Neil Gaiman, Here I Come...

Prepping and packing this morning for tomorrow night's trip, which will eventually deposit me on Friday morning on Neil Gaiman's doorstep (with Hank Wagner, co-author with Chris Golden of the St. Martin's Press book on Neil and his work). It's still kind of amazing how all this fell together, but I'm really looking forward to seeing Neil again after so long.

Alas, I cannot bring Neil a Coffee Zombee mug, because -- he cannot drink coffee! My last visit to Neil's US home, ostensibly to do an interview with him forThe Comics Journal (which was deep-sixed by TCJ despite our successful attempt to find a sponsor to get us together -- a long story for another time), was plagued by Neil suffering a major pain-in-the-neck, and I don't mean me. Turned out he suffered from a negative reaction to caffeine! Ah, the '90s...

It's been about ten years since we were face-to-face -- he was working on the whole Princess Mononoke English-language dubbing script at that time, and we roomed together at Necon. We've stayed in touch, but I miss the lad.

I'm sure he's a crispy critter from all his travel and constant workload, but shit, I've seen Neil in crispier condition. Another story, another time.

Soooooooooooooo -- winding down the blog for the week -- I'll be back on Tuesday AM, unless I'm able to steal computer time at Neil's -- let me touch on a few things.

* As of this AM, Tim "Doc Ersatz" Viereck and I have rebooted the interview I began with Doc back in the late winter/early spring here on the blog. We're winding down on our Johnson State College 'daze' (where my first-ever comic, Abyss, was funded by Doc) and then we'll be getting into his fascinating years at Dino DeLaurentiis Studios in North Carolina (where he worked behind the scenes on David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive, and King Kong Lives, among other films), Douglas Trumbull's complex in Massachusetts (working on the historic Universal Back to the Future ride), and much, much more. I reckon we'll have more to post, with pix, by December, so prepare for a trip down someone else's memory lane around the time the snow might be flying.

Johnson State College campus memories and oh so much more, coming soon...

* Speaking of other people's memory lanes,

Center for Cartoon Studies pioneer class alumni Adam Staffaroni is posting photos and narrative of his summer 2007 trip to the great Northwest over on I Know Joe Kimpel

(which is still your one-stop shopping site for all things CCS-related in terms of comics, etc.). Check it out! I'll be having breakfast with Adam this morning -- we're working on a project -- so I'll find out more, but keep an eye on the Joe Kimpel blog for Adam's Saga!

* Today, my Drawing Workshop class at CCS begins a three-session workshop on character design and model sheet design with

the amazing Kaori Hamura, who lives here in Vermont

and is now into her second year of working with CCS, sharing her animation industry insider knowledge of creating characters and getting down the essentials.

Here's a little more one-stop info about Kaori and her career; enjoy visiting the links and seeing her work online.

* Speaking of workshops, CCS is still basking in the glow of Lynda Barry's visit last week.

More personal responses to Lynda Barry's CCS workshop -- with photos! -- awaits you here,

and we're all working on something special following her visit. More on that another time.

* Well, the fall sales season at the Antiques Mall in nearby Quechee, VT's famed

Quechee Gorge Village

is winding down. I've been restocking the booth big-time the past week or so, including original art (Cayetano 'Cat' Garza art, original art packaged with Colleen Frakes Xeric-Award winning comic, etc.), more CCS comics (all signed!), collectible comics from the '40s to the '90s, DVDs of all genres with a lot of rare and recently-released cult titles (almost all factory-sealed and brand new) including the Alejandro Jodorowsky classics El Topo and The Holy Mountain, books, a ton of Bissette collectibles (all signed) and much, much more.

Going...going...gone! This one-of-a-kind Bissette Coffee Zombee mug is now in some happy coffee-drinking collector's home, available exclusively at Dealer booth #653 in the Quechee Gorge Village Antique Mall!

I've now racked over 800 items in that rather wee booth since April of this year, with strong sales throughout the summer and fall. All earnings from the CCS artist community's work goes to the artists, save for the $1 markup to help cover a portion of the monthly booth rental fee. Marge and I had a pleasant Saturday painting new ceramic pieces at the White River Junction

Tip Top Pottery studio,

so I'm placing some new Bissette one-of-a-kind original works in the booth next week -- including the first in a series of dinosaur pottery pieces to accompany the Coffee Zombee mugs I've been doing. I'll post photos of the new work here next week.

So, if you're in the area before Christmas, visit the booth -- dealer #653 -- in the Antiques Mall in Quechee Gorge Village. You won't be disappointed, and be sure to pick up lots of CCS goodies!

* There's a fat batch of new trailers with commentary over at my fave online entertainment Trailers from Hell!

If you haven't been there since my last post of the link, give yourself an hour or more today to visit 'em and catch up -- if you're at the office, wait till the weekend, Bunkie. No need to lose your job over From Hell It Came or Suspiria previews!


* And in the big bad world:

Followup on the current estimated cost of the wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), essential context for spend-and-borrow-to-wage-war President Bush's ongoing vetoes and verbal abuse of Democrats in recent weeks.

"The $1.6 trillion figure, for the period from 2002 to 2008, translates into a cost of $20,900 for a family of four, the report said...," to also followup on that rather expansive span I cited yesterday. Again, I'm not sure where some come up with the $43,000 per household pricetag, but I'm sure you'll agree the estimated $20,900 is daunting enough. We're all like Br'er Rabbit: "Oh, please, puh-leez don't throw us to those bloated-budget Democrats, Br'er Bush!"

We also have news this morning about the Blackwater investigations: "A Blackwater Worldwide spokeswoman says the company supports "stringent accountability" for any wrongdoing in the wake of a New York Times report that federal investors have found that the shooting deaths of at least 14 Iraqi civilians by Blackwater guards in Baghdad nearly two months ago violated rules of deadly force..."

Aaaaaaaand, the Associated Press reports: "The Justice Department has reopened a long-dormant inquiry into the government's warrantless wiretapping program, a major policy shift only days into the tenure of Attorney General Michael Mukasey." Good news, that.

Now if only our elected officials wouldn't let AT&T and Verizon et al off the hook for selling us all down the river in this illegal spying program.

Have a great Wednesday, one and all...

Mansters!

Judge Michael Mukasey, muddled on waterboarding. It's not "simulated drowning," folks, it's slow suffocation: water does enter the lungs, and it is torture, and has been for centuries.

I caught Rendition and Saw IV this week, the mainstream one-two punch of Hollywood state-of-the-art torture pix. Rendition represents that mainstream at last engaging directly with the political, cultural and international reality of our most horrific debasement of the ideals "we" (meaning our President and his Administration and supporters) continue to profess, while Saw IV is the latest installment in the most prominent 'torture' horror franchise, the genre that provided the only mainstream theatrical vehicle previously available for mirroring/exploring/exploiting that public debasement of the American ideal (the worthy documentaries on the subject have only landed limited urban and alternative theatrical distribution).

It seems worth mentioning the timing of both -- along with the Tuesday DVD release of the much-reviled, sight unseen, Captivity, which was blistered off the stage due to its billboard ads alone -- coincidentally hitting screens in uncanny conjunction with the very week real-life torture was again foremost in American news headlines. No surprise, either, that Rendition is the better film, and that Saw IV is a muddle. But I have to say that Saw IV is the more accurate mirror of America today.

Tobin Bell as a purely imaginary, fictional torture activist in the Saw series from Lionsgate

Yes, Saw IV's messiness is a factor of sequelitis, but it's hard not to equate its utter confusion (which was not characteristic of the prior three Saw films) with the reprehensible denial and 'debate' associated with

Michael B. Mukasey's nomination for attorney general devolving into another Bush Administration square-dance around the ol' torture circuit.

This is a vile new low -- not Saw IV, but the spectacle of Mukasey's equivocation (understandable, perhaps, in strict legal terms, but in the context of yet another Bush-appointee, an inevitably loaded equivocation), and the reaction from President Bush and Fox News and all the apologists, supporters and scumpuppies,

as if the word meant anything other than it does as defined by international law: "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."

That's the fucking law, President Bush, as defined by the United Nation's Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, December 10, 1984.

Anyone claiming otherwise is pissing up a rope. Period.

Just worth noting, I thought, that Bush and

the toadying Heritage Foundation (how can anyone applaud and cheer him on?)

and all the Bushies and acolytes and war-mongering assholes that constitute so much of our Disunited States of American were so punctual about confirming Saw IV, not so much despite but because of its many flaws, as a strangely accurate, immediate mirror of our collective cultural madness, still in the thrall of the maddest Presidency of them all.

________________________

The Manster -- the movie manster. Not real. Not in my pants.

The spam "Ashamed of your size? Manster will help! ggw" has been popping up (pun intended) in the spam can throughout the past month: "Get Bigger p e n 1 s tonight! veery weal gripe.aerial bleed adult." was the enigmatic message. Wait, here's more: " Ashamed of your size? Manster will help! ekjgoodx," "Manster is your new weapon. ka" (what's that, spam for rapists?) and "Manster is your reality, Dreams are not! fzuh". Ya, Fzuh!

Me, I only need the manster I was born with -- and, of course, the movie Manster!

Here's the Japanese one-sheet poster for the original release of the Japanese/American weirdo classic Sôtô no Satsujinki (The Two-Headed Devilish Homicide)/The Manster (1962), released in some markets as The Split -- here's that release's one-sheet, below, which I'd love to have on my wall!

This wasn't the first two-headed humanoid movie monster -- in animated cartoons, the Fleischer Brothers's Technicolor featurette Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor (1936) featured a two-headed giant, and a live-action double-domed cyclops enhanced The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962), played by The McKeever Twins, Mike and Marlin -- but it did make a major impression on genre fans, even if (like me) they first 'met' the manster in the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland #28. Its American double-billing with Georges Franju's jewel Les Yeux Sans Visage/Eyes Without a Face, presented stateside under the title The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus, only added the the mystique of The Manster, forever linking them in my generation's mind.

Hmmm, there's also a 1939 cartoon entitled Two-Headed Giant, which I've never seen, and of course the 1970s offered American-International Pictures's pair of Manster drive-in successors, The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant (1971) and The Thing With Two Heads (1972). Then there's Bruce Robinson's savvy post-modern satiric revamp, How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989). But I'm rambling... hey, it's my rant.

Anyhoot, these manster emails are amusing in the short term, if only for bringing back unbidden flash-memories of The Manster whenever I purge the email each and every morning -- which is the sweetest unintended laugh unwanted spam has given since the mini-torrent of Christian online dating services.

Hey, you takes your chuckles where you can find 'em.

Have a great Friday... and a good weekend. It's really feeling like autumn here, and we're prepping for winter, so it'll be a busy weekend for us.