Day 1
Apologies for anyone who makes an attempt to visit this site and notices how neglected it is. I now have motivation to change that.
A new comic book publisher (probably shouldn’t go into anymore detail than that at this point) has offered me the opportunity to illustrate the first issue of one of its titles. I’ve always thought it’d be fun to draw comic books, with varying levels of interest over the years, but I don’t know if I really ever thought I’d do it.
Today I did something I’d imagined many times since I first thought about this line of work — I sat down with my script, read through it, made notes and started roughing out the page layouts. It seems kind of cheesy, but I had daydreamed about that moment many times whenever the thought of doing this as a job entered my head. The most consistent variation on the dream was that I’d walk down to the nearby Homy Inn and go through the new script over a few pints. That still might end up happening if this job works out, but today I took my first few trips through the story over lunch at Burger King and many free refills of Diet Coke.
I’m really excited about the story. When I got the script, I panicked and wondered what the work would be like if I thought it stunk. The bloom would be off that rose, and suddenly the dream would be pulled down into ugly reality. But I loved the story, and it’s going to be a lot of fun to draw. It was an exciting challenge to encode the writer’s words in multi-panel format, and tomorrow I’m going to spend some time doing some character designs before sending the roughs off to my editor.
So anyway, I hope to update this site on the progress to whatever extent I can. I think the best part of all of this goes back to a Christmas gift Sara gave me in 2005, also known as “The greatest Christmas present ever.” I had read an interview with Madman creator Michael Allred in which Allred talked about a spinner rack he had in his home. He had filled this spinner rack with a bunch of comics that had been influential to him in his artistic development. Once his first comic was published, he put that in the rack too. As he had more work published, that went in the rack as well. Eventually he noticed that he had filled the rack with his own comics and realized that he was living his dream.
Sara remembered that story, and surprised me at Christmas in ‘05 with a spinner rack that she had tracked down after many hours and phone calls. It was one huge supportive gesture out of many she’s made over the years as I’ve tried to make this whole “artist” thing work. So I’m going to be able to put a comic that I illustrated in that spinner rack, and I can’t say how excited I am to do that.
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September 4th, 2008
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Very flattering
A used copy of I’m All Boy And That’s a Fact is now selling for almost $60 on Amazon.com!
Meanwhile, even though we have left Wells Fargo (we had a card-cutting ceremony last week) and are very happy with our new bank, most of the hits to this site come from people searching for other complaints about Wells Fargo. Another poor soul recently commented about his problems with the bank on this post.
Just to warn you guys — when you go in to a branch to have them fix your problems, their bankers tend to ignore what you’re there for so they can try to sell you on a new savings account or try to refinance your home. It would be nice if someone told them during training that I would be much more inclined to want to stay with the bank and potentially purchase more products if they actually listened to what they were doing to drive me away in the first place. I flat-out told this to the banker who closed our accounts, and he still tried to get us to refinance our home.
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August 16th, 2008
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Ten years ago: The Football Anthems
Ten years ago, Three Lions ‘98 by Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds began its third and final week atop the British singles charts. Its predecessor, Three Lions, had been the official anthem for the England soccer team in the Euro 96 tournament. When the time came to name the official theme song for the 1998 World Cup, there were three contenders for the title; and receiving the honor of “official” theme ended up meaning absolutely nothing.
Comedian Keith Allen, Blur bassist Alex James and artist Damien Hirst formed Fat Les, who pitched their Vindaloo for official contention. The third was (How Does It Feel to Be) On Top of the World by England United — a supergroup of sorts consisting of members of Echo & the Bunnymen, Ocean Colour Scene and the Spice Girls. The England United song ended up getting the official honor.
Three Lions ‘98
It didn’t matter that Three Lions ‘98 had been passed up; it ended up winning the battle between the three songs, going to #1 and keeping its closest rival, Vindaloo, at #2. Vindaloo was catchy and funny, but its humor kept it from resonating as well as Three Lions. The lyrics to both versions of Three Lions weren’t entirely optimistic or sunny. Gareth Southgate’s saved penalty kick in the Euro 96 is forever immortalized by the opening seconds of Three Lions ‘98; one would maybe expect a positive play-by-play clip to be used in a rallying anthem. It was also a little embarrassing, as two of the four names it mentioned in the lyrics weren’t chosen for the World Cup lineup — including Paul “Gazza” Gascoigne, who was described as being “good as before.”
(more…)
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June 16th, 2008
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The Decapitator
A London graffiti artist removes the heads from large advertisements.
Flickr link
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June 10th, 2008
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Even more on Wells Fargo!
I deposited a check for $450 into my account on Saturday. It cleared on Monday. Then on Tuesday, they put a hold on $350 of that. Then on Wednesday, the hold cleared. Then on Thursday, a check I wrote cleared, leaving $4 in my account this morning. So this afternoon, they decided to put a hold back on the $350 until MAY 29, so my account is now overdrawn by $346.00.
This is why it’s a lot harder than it sounds to just leave Wells Fargo. I need to now go in and make a new deposit to get our balance back above zero. I’d love to just close the account right then, but they’re holding $350 of my money until May 29. I also have automatic deposits going in tomorrow and Tuesday.
Then what’s great is that they charge you $34 for being overdrawn, and then when you complain, they say they’ll remove half of the charges as a courtesy. So they still steal $17 from you.
We’ve been shopping around at different banks, and at least now we know where we want to go when we’re able to make a break.
read about previous Wells Fargo problems…
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May 22nd, 2008
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The first of 2008
I was mowing today and saw our yard’s very first garter snake of 2008.
I knew this moment was going to happen sooner or later, and we’re about a month after some people have seen their first snake of the year, but it’s a little disheartening because Sara and I have done so much work to snake-proof the yard. We know there’s going to be no way to truly rid our yard of all snakes, but our ambition has been to make the yard the most undesirable snake habitat it can be.
This has involved major weeding projects, total removal and transplant of flower gardens, and clearing out the cluttered vegetation between our garage and the neighbor’s fence — we filled 10 lawn bags in one day a few weeks ago. Last year, we encountered way more snakes than we would have hoped to, but we didn’t close on the house until the end of April and really weren’t living here full-time until late July. Taking over the home of an old hippie who moved out a year before we even bought the place gave snakes plenty of time to find cozy places to live without the hazard of running into people.
So the whole plan this year was to just get on top of the situation and keep at it so that we never fell behind. Snakes would wake up from their warm boulder of hibernating friends and siblings, crawl out to our lot, and think to themselves, “This isn’t nearly as inviting as I remember it,” and then move on somewhere else (preferably the country).
If there’s any bright spot to today’s sighting, it’s that the snake was very close to the boundary of our property, near a little bush I had yet to destroy (which offered ground cover) and very close to the gap between the garage and the neighbor’s fence. So if he was around in 2007, that would have been very friendly territory. He slithered away into the neighbor’s yard before I could get to him, so I hope he went and told all of his friends how our place has gotten all gentrified and boring.
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May 12th, 2008
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T-t-t Tasty Tasty
TheFullPint.com is beer news, reviews and discussion. And it makes me thirsty every time I visit it. The site has reviews of beers from all over, and the forum has discussion on beers, including a section just for home-brewers.
For beer lovers, it is a must-visit.
Some of the stuff goes way over my head, but even with my limited knowledge of the process and the vocabulary of beer crafting, there is plenty on the site that I’ve found useful, and at very least, interesting.
And again, it makes me thirsty.
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May 11th, 2008
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Watch out for Nebraska Furniture Mart!
At the risk of making this just a Consumer Complaint blog, I feel the need to share our recent experience with Nebraska Furniture Mart.
Sara and I were there last Saturday, initially just to help my mom pick out a new digital camera. But while we were there, we wandered over to the outdoor furniture department in the back of Mrs. B’s clearance center. Sara happened to notice a dining room set that was not only beautiful, but a bargain.
So what began as assistance for camera shopping turned into a big purchase day, as we bought this table and six chairs for the dining room and another table and chair set for the kitchen.
Wednesday delivery time came, and when the delivery guys were ready to go, the table was a lot smaller than I remembered it. I checked the picture I took in the store, and it had two leaves that were now missing. The delivery guys didn’t have them. They called in to the dispatch, and they had no idea where they were. The person I spoke with said she would try very hard to find them, and she’d call me back before 9pm. But she told me, as we bought this from the clearance center, we bought it “as is.” I reminded her that though we bought it as is, it wasn’t delivered as we bought it.
Around 8:30, she called back, but it was for the follow-up survey. She didn’t realize that she was calling the person she told several hours earlier that she’d be working hard to find the leaves. When I brought that up again, she was a little flustered and then said they had their best guy working on it for four hours and he couldn’t find them. She said they would be willing to come pick it up AT NO CHARGE TO US and refund us, as if that was some kind of generous offer. Alternately, she said she could knock off $80.
This table is small without the leaves. It’s a little table with six chairs sitting around it. It’s not big enough for a dining room table and it’s not big enough for six chairs. So with $80 taken off, it becomes a too-small table that we’d have to put somewhere else and replace with an actual dining room table, so that option was clearly not going to work. I didn’t want to give up on the table yet, for two reasons: it’s an awesome table and chair set that looks amazing in the dining room, and I had trouble comprehending how they could just lose two table leaves and have no idea where they are. So I asked if we could hold off on the pickup in the hopes that the leaves would turn up.
I called back today asking if there was any sign of the leaves. The customer service representative said that our account was set up for a return, apparently meaning that NFM had already given up on any chance of finding the leaves. I scheduled the return and then asked if there was a manager or supervisor I could speak to. She asked if I could just tell her what I had to say.
I explained that this was very, very frustrating for us. We had already found a home for our old table and chair set and moved them out of the house, so we were now worse off than before we bought the new set. And now I was going to have to take off more time from work to be home for their open-ended day-long delivery system. I explained that this made us not want to shop with Nebraska Furniture Mart, because we have no confidence that we’ll actually get what we order, and we feel pretty screwed over by the whole process. I didn’t raise my voice or cop an attitude in the slightest — just tried to get across how frustrating this whole situation had been.
She closed by saying “Well, I could give you a $50 letter that you could use toward another purchase, but you just said you don’t want to shop here anymore so I guess there’s no point in that.”
What kind of awesome customer service is that?
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May 2nd, 2008
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Sony BMG: Software pirates!
A French software company believes that Sony BMG may be pirating up to 47% of its software!
PointDev, a French software company that makes Windows administration tools, received a call from a Sony BMG IT employee for support. After Sony BMG supplied a pirated license code for Ideal Migration, one of PointDev’s products, the software maker was able to mandate a seizure of Sony BMG’s assets. The subsequent raid revealed that software was illegally installed on four of Sony BMG’s servers. The Business Software Alliance, however, believes that up to 47 percent of the software installed on Sony BMG’s computers could be pirated.
These are some pretty serious—not to mention ironic—allegations against a company that’s gone so far as to install malware on consumers’ computers in the name of preventing piracy.
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March 31st, 2008
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Exciting Wolfman news
Regular readers of this site know that I only post werewolf news when it’s good news. So now, for the first time, I have werewolf news.
I’m probably one of the last people to learn this, but there’s a remake of The Wolfman in the works, and it stars Benicio del Toro. I am very excited about this, but not just because there’s a remake happening.
Every modern werewolf movie seems intent on making a guy change into something that looks basically like a big wolf. That’s not cool! A GUY who looks like a WOLF is cool.
Here is an Entertainment Weekly interview with Rick Baker about the process of turning Benny into the wolf. I would’ve added a “So … you got it right this time, huh?” to the list of questions.
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March 24th, 2008
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