Nostalgia

This made me laugh. I downloaded an OS9 emulator so I could view a Director projector from 1995 and it behaved exactly like an old computer would.

Airtrain Panorama

Here's the sun rising over Newark Airport yesterday morning. It's obliterating Midtown.

And happy birthday to me today. I will celebrate by teaching class.

Desert Art

I drove into Yucca Valley on Thursday around lunchtime. I stopped at the visitor's center for a map and directions to a sculpture park in Joshua Tree (the town, not the park). 

"Is there somewhere good around here?" I asked the super-friendly host. 

"We have an Applebee's," she said. "Do you know Applebee's?" 

I retreated to a place called Gonzo Tacos, which had delicious wasabi tacos. No Applebee's for me! 

Here are some photos of the sculpture park I went to in Joshua Tree. 

And here are the directions so you can get there. 

Joshua Tree

I could have done without the three-hour late flight from JFK to LAX. I could have done without the straggling out to the curb at 2:30 to wait for a SuperShuttle to Anaheim.

I was kind of charmed the 14-year-old sitting next to me. "Turn off your phone," said his dad. "Not until she asks me to," said the kid. "She just asked, didn't you hear the announcement?" "She didn't ask me personally yet."

Somehow it all worked out, and today I am in Joshua Tree.

Coloring Captain Pike

Back in the Stone Age, I colored a comic book series about Captain Pike's Enterprise, pre-Kirk. Star Trek aficionados before then knew Captain Pike then as the guy in a rolling box who blinked lights for yes or no.

(An aside: I ran into a neighbor of the penciler on a ferry to Gambia in 2011. "You make comics? Oh, do you know a guy named Patrick Zircher?")

When we made this comic, coloring was in a state of transition. It's painful sometimes to look back, because the colorist would paint guides, and the shading would be interpreted by a team of people, with varying results. Some of the people interpreting the guides and putting them into the digital files would be very, very good, and others you weren't quite sure why they had a job. Plus, due to the hectic pace, everyone (including the colorist) sometimes had to knock stuff out in a hurry.

We didn't do too badly with Early Voyages, and that's probably because it was never as late as the books down the hall. In my time as a Marvel (guide) colorist, I actually colored photocopies of faxes of pencils. I think it was on a book about Magneto. I remember puzzling over shapes and taking my best guess.

Eventually, everything went to one person doing the coloring on a single book, or a few people working together. I got pretty good results working just on guides with my friend Monica handling the digital end on an issue of Ultimate Spider-Man and on a Generation X issue, but that's because we knew each other, knew what the other expected, and both understood our roles. Back with Early Voyages, I have no idea who was doing the separations, as they were called then in a leftover term from pre-Photoshop. I imagine more than one person was doing them. (Actually, looking at the guides I just pulled out, they were going to Ireland to a house called Graphic Colorworks.) 

But really, whoever did these did a pretty good job. And then it looks like someone lost the film or the files to nine of the ten issues (and an eleventh colored by Matt Webb) that have just been reproduced in a beautifully designed hardcover from IDW. The first issue looks clean and then you see the screens.

I've tried scanning from comics too, and it's damn hard to get it to look right. I've gotten good results from duplicating layers, setting them to multiply, then using adjustment layers with eyedroppers to sample certain colors and bump them up a bit. But like the guys who did this hardcover I received from IDW today (thanks, IDW!), I can never quite get rid of the screens, or moire-looking patterns.

But I always liked Early Voyages. I'm glad it's back out there in the world, screens and all. 

Balthazar the Donkey

I found this stuffed donkey squished in the bottom of a box of summer clothes. I was surprised, because I was sure I'd thrown him away in a fit of culling.

The donkey is called Balthazar the Donkey. He was won at skee-ball in Coney Island in 1988. Not by me...by my date that evening. I didn't know him too well at the time, but he was a film buff who had, in fact, taken me and Daniel Johnston to see Bunuel's Simon of the Desert on our first meeting in 1986, back in Austin. I knew the skee-ball winner for several more years after this night, until I didn't right around the time he become well-known for his films. But that's a long and complicated story, hard to tell without some philosophical discussions, without getting to the bottom of people's motivations and egos and insecurities. I'm including my own in that.

He'd told me then that Balthazar was in a Bresson film. And then he'd probably explained the rest to me, but we went on the Wonder Wheel with a Hi8 video camera, then back to JC where we ate a pint of Chunky Monkey on my Fifth Street stoop, and I'd forgotten the details of Balthazar's namesake.

I looked them up last night. Balthazar belonged to a girl named Marie.

Ah. I get it. Twenty-six year later.

Spring Has Sprung

It's finally spring! I know this because the hippos have peeked out of their box. 

The Movie Review I Never Need to Read Again

I've read this review so many times I can't believe major critics are still writing it. People are PAID to write this shit over and over again.

It's so tiresome and cliched. You'd think by the time a critic got to the level of a major newspaper or serious magazine, they'd remember to look back at what they and their colleagues have written previously, and at least try a new approach.

Or maybe, like I did here with their recycled super hero movie review, they just copy-paste, and change a few details.

"I hate super heroes and super hero movies and things with computer graphics, and pretty much anything that might be liked by the filthy mainstream public, and I lost the coin toss with A.O. Scott and he kept my quarter too, so now I'm really pissed, and I had to go see your wretched movie about things that I have disdained since I learned I was accepted at an Ivy. 

Where Were You When I Needed You?

A sign in the Heights: