There is a rather robust argument over how we measure and define creativity. But what most schools have in common is one simple concept: ideas only count if we dosomething about them. That idea that you had while you were reading on the toilet? It means nothing if you don’t do anything about it.
Doing something is really hard, and most of the time it doesn’t turn out. It’s hard to get attention, and a lot of attention online can be negative. Also being creative means you spend a lot of time wondering if what you’re doing is even worth seeing. You’re sharing part of yourself with, well, everybody. And that’s a leap of faith.
But the most important thing to remember is that a creative person has no choice but to make something. It’s just who they are. For some reason they have something to communicate that cannot be shared the way that normal, everyday people do it. And communication is reciprocal. Shouting into the void is exhausting.
It’s why I’m happy to add Katelyn to our site, and I encourage people to visit hers. It’s a potpourri of confessional blog posts, photo shoots, music and poetry. Over time, I think she’ll find her voice and her message, I know it took a long time for us to figure out what we wanted to do. But just by making the site she got off the bleachers and got in the game.
Years ago, a co-worker was raving to me about television series The Walking Dead. As I had a bit of spare time I watched a few episodes, maybe even the first season. I remember thinking that it was quite good, but that fans who found it so original must have never seen a George Romero film.
Romero will always be linked to his Living Dead series. It seems lazy to reduce his work to those handful of films, but it’s hard to ignore that a cheap, black and white film changed American culture and fifty years later his ideas are more influential than ever. Everyone loves zombies. No one knows Romero.
Romero created the idea of the modern zombie, a relentless, often disfigured figure that exists only to hunt and eat. In the horror genre, the individual antagonist is often a larger than life figure with an outsized presence and personality, and often supernatural durability.
Romero’s zombies were the direct opposite, shambling, weakened and often ineffective, and therein laid their danger. Because they were so easily overcome, it was easy for characters to become overconfident when facing them, only for some critical factor to go wrong and now you were faced with a terrible death, or a loathsome disease. Romero’s zombies were deadly because they were endless. They could make a thousand mistakes. You could only make one.
Over time as others interpreted his ideas, the ghouls became more grisly, and the action became more frenetic and the spectacle became more over the top. Romero was neatly excised from his own creation, his last two films Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead were budgeted at $2 million dollars and $4 million dollars respectively, while The Walking Dead found it nearly impossible to make an hour-long television episode at $2.7 million a show. Often, the soul of his work was lost.
Why does this exist?
Great artists ask themselves this question all the time. Obviously entertainment is a business and the motive is profit, but an artist always has something to communicate, something that distinguishes their work from everyone else. Romero wasn’t satisfied with splatter, his work looked at humanity and found it lacking. His magnum opus Dawn of the Dead provides context for the entire series, the zombie plague is presented almost as punishment for the carnal nature of our existence. They are us, stripped of any illusion or pretense, just a raw desire to consume even if eating doesn’t seem particularly nourishing. Tellingly, the zombie still retains the basic desire for the trappings of its former lifestyle even if it doesn’t know why, or what it’s supposed to do once it gets there. We can laugh at the zombies wandering the mall, completely perplexed as to why they can’t leave, but eventually we have to face what force makes us want the latest phone, fashion, or car. The protagonists find themselves in the same situation. In one of my favorite shots, Gaylen Ross’s character sits in front of a mirror, wearing the finest clothes, the best makeup, and looking absolutely radiant – and she is utterly miserable.
In this moment, Romero tells us that our possessions are meaningless without feedback from that society, and it’s the interaction with people that means everything. In his next couple films of the series he explores an even darker idea, that the zombies are regaining their humanity as we lose ours, with their ignorance of class, race or any social hierarchy. They are not the deterioration of life as we know it, they are the evolution.
That idea has not gone over well. Audiences have preferred more vacuous zombie films. In another cruel injustice, Romero’s entire oeuvre has been reduced to his dead trilogy when he was capable of so much more.
Season of the Witch revealed that he was capable of a completely different sort of pacing, while The Crazies is a hidden gem of paranoia and tension that brings to mind Invasion of the Bodysnatchers. Martin, a film about a misanthrope that is convinced he is a vampire, is thought by many to be his greatest film, and to be honest, it may be his most genuinely frightening work, while Creepshow is an explosion of color and playfulness that hadn’t been seen previously. His next few films were more mainstream but still had his trademark depth as he explored themes of internal conflict. He also brought fans much beloved series Tales from the Darkside.
It is regrettable that when it comes to art, most work doesn’t get the praise it should until the artist passes away and we re-examine it. George Romero deserved more fame, and attention and praise than he got, and he certainly never made the money he should have. He did not get the ability to make the films that he wanted to, or was capable of, and now it’s too late to fix it.
I never met George Romero, but I spent a lot of time with him, hiding his video tapes and sneaking them in the basement when my parents weren’t around. It’s impossible to know how he influenced what I do or what I prefer to see. So in a very communal way, I will miss him. But the hardest pill to swallow is that more people won’t. They’ll see headline about the guy who directed Night of the Living Dead. They’ll make some sort of noise. And then they’ll move on.
June 17th, 2011 Washington [API] President Obama used an Autopen device to sign an extension of the Patriot Act into law last month, a move that has some members of Congress in a lather
The autopen is a commonly used device among the legislative community to generate mass copies of their own signature. Normally the autopen is not used to enact laws, but the President was on a European trip and did not want the bill to expire at midnight. At the time, the concern was a lapse in national security measure, and the Bush administration had already explored the legality of a Presidential signing in absentia. The opinion was released to the media to near universal indifference.
The signing prompted a letter from 21 House Republicans asking for Obama to resign the measure in person, since he has plenty of spare time at the moment.
“Mr. President, it is clear that assigning a surrogate the responsibility of signing bills passed by Congress is a debatable issue, and could be challenged in court,” the letter reads in part.
Oddly, these same Republicans are just fine with robosigning when it comes to the average mortgage.
MERS is an automated system that banks use to register mortgages instead of physically showing up at the register of deeds. Although it has nearly no actual employees, MERS handles 60% of all mortgages in this country. Recent investigation has shown that these mortgages were not audited, not filed properly and the signatures were robosigned by temporary employees who pretended to be vice presidents foreclosing on properties that no one had actually examined.
Marty Knollenberg, the Republican Chair of the Banking Committee had never heard of MERS until last month because he was busy examining Obama’s birth certificate as opposed to checking the system that regulates over 60 million mortgages.
Republican Darrell Issa who chairs the House Oversight Committee reviewed the evidence, decided not to subpoena the banks about their foreclosure process even though improperly filed mortgages undermine all contract law. He is more interested in pursuing government sponsored lending institutions and low-income homebuyers.
“You know what? F*** the middle class,” Issa said when questioned. “And you can quote me. No one cares about the middle class, I don’t understand why they don’t get it. I don’t know what else we can do to show our utter disdain for those people. I don’t like touching them anymore. Before I shake anyone’s hand, I ask them how much they make, because I can’t get the presence of broke off of my skin.”
“Only suckers pay taxes,” Knollenberg added. “Bank of America paid no taxes last year, after they received 20 billion in bailout money the year before, and they paid for it by kicking middleclass people out of their home by accident. That’s hustle.”
Oslo, Norway [AP] The world reels as the horror of suspect Anders Behring Breivik’s shooting spree is slowly uncovered, but police in Oslo were unable to make the press conference as they could not find a ride.
Downtown in Oslo a bomb rocked a government building killing seven and injuring fifteen. What no one could have anticipated is that the same perpetrator made his way to a youth camp and mercilessly slaughtered at least 85 people before being apprehended by the police. It is this detail that is nearly as troubling as the murders themselves.
The Associated Press reports that a SWAT team was dispatched to the island more than 50 minutes after shots fired were reported. They took a 20 minute drive to the lake because the emergency helicopter wasn’t on standby. They had trouble finding a boat, and when they did they overloaded it forcing them to return to shore and unpack, exhausting another 20 minutes to reach the crime scene several hundred yards offshore. Utoya Island is 24 miles (driving distance) away from the capital city of Oslo.
The alleged killer left behind a 1,500 page manifesto decrying the spread of Islam and political correctness. His motive seems apparent, as Utoya is an island owned by the youth wing of the liberal Labor Party. Many of the victims were children of immigrants from Africa and Asia.
All of these facts were gleaned from interviews with subjects, as Norwegian police never made it to the press conference.
“I left my keys in the house,” Johan Bjerke, Norweigen police spokesman said on condition of anonymity. “Then when I found them, I realized they were my wife’s keys, so I had to look again. When I found my keys, I realized my motorcar was out of petrol. Perhaps I should have taken the subway, but I got a gascan and filled the tank.”
“I just want to assure the people of Norway, that they are perfectly safe, as long as they do not need emergency services in a timely fashion. We have an efficient and effective system, and very soon it will be quite nearly as good on weekends.”
Experts indicate that the timely administration of emergency services is one of the most fundamental ways to measure whether a government provides for the needs of its citizens, as even America has seen incidents similar to this occur in urban areas. Time will reveal the full nature of Norway’s response in this matter.
The Story:
This never ran.
I can’t blame our editors, but at the same time it was dominating the news and it is difficult as a satirist to simply ignore something that everyone is talking about. And even when the first details were coming out I found them preposterous. There has to be some medium ground between our aggressive, militarized police and the disorganized response here.
So I tried to write something that wasn’t too much in poor taste, but that had a joke in it. I never got to see if it worked.
The Update:
Everybody is a thug until they go to prison. After the first year they complain about everything. Breivik has complained about everything thing from the quality of his writing pens to having a Playstation 2 instead of a Playstation 3.
Right now he is suing for being kept in isolation.
Bucharest [AP] With Romania indicating that it is now bankrupt, new concerns about the European Union are surfacing, after initial surprise that Romania was actually in the EU. It is now becoming apparent that Romania was mismanaged, inherently corrupt, and shockingly inefficient, which put fears that they did not belong to rest. But IMF chief economist Oliver Blanchart and managing director Christine Lagarde are confident about Europe’s future.
“We got this,” Blanchart said and exchanged a fist bump with Lagarde.
Lagarde is relatively new in her position, as she succeeded Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Although she comes from a financial climate that has no idea how to reconcile worker’s rights and small business, the IMF is confident that Lagarde will not attempt to rape a hotel maid, and so her position is secure. She faces a large task. The European Union has been facing a series of collapses.
Recently, Germany has been forced to bail out Greece repeatedly, making them to accept an austerity package that included such terms as a six hour workday, and a mere eight weeks of vacation a year. Ireland had serious financial trouble earlier, which may have been forecast by its history of poverty. Italy is facing serious trouble, as somehow the European Union thought that the Italians would be able to maintain a budget. Hungary is facing serious problems this year, as they are involved with a series of legal actions from the Union. Things are so bad, that Iceland (who went bankrupt three years ago and was reduced to using sheep’s heads and fish as currency) has been having reservations about joining the group.
“The Union is going to be strong going forward,” Lagarde said. “As long as Germany is able to bail everyone out.”
“Our real problem is we keep letting broke countries into our Union,” Blanchart replied. “We’ve got to treat this like a club, and right now we’re letting in bow-legged girls, girls with stripper heels, girls that need to get a new weave, and its bringing the quality of the whole place down. We’ve got to find a way to bring the hot chicks back.”
Update:
So…… Largarde is facing a fraud trial in December.
Years ago, I got the chance to write for a satirical online paper called The Washington Fancy. It’s where I met Tom and a couple of other great writers and drove my editors nuts.
The Fancy was based a simple formula, one-concept articles that didn’t take up too much of your attention, and a light touch. But I have a different sort of wiring. I don’t relate as well to absurdist humor, I’ve liked biting satire. And I wanted to be different than everyone else. This led me to write vicious articles, that eventually stopped being comedy at all. I went so far off the reservation I lost the tribe completely.
But I’ve noticed some of the things I wrote about coming up in the news recently. And The Washington Fancy is no more I’m afraid. And many articles that were posted were censored (not a complaint, may I add). So the blog seemed like a great place to put this stuff, one dead site inside of another, I suppose.
After nearly four years it’s time for me to say goodbye.
Tom is doing great work right now, and I have a lot of stories in me that I can’t wait to share. But I was doing a lot of things at once, and I can’t keep all the balls in the air.
Also, in the back of my head, I’ve always wondered if this was sort of a failure.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always said that if we entertained one person for one moment then it justified every bit of work we did. And although we weren’t trying to write the Great American Novel, I think there’s some decent stuff on here. I also don’t want to minimize the great work of everyone who contributed, Tom, Jasmine, Arin, I’m proud of what we’ve done. We also got a lot more traffic then I ever thought we would. My advice to future bloggers is to write something about Pete Rose.
And along the way, I formed an incredible working relationship with Tom, and as a sort of solitary creative person to have Tom AND Jasmine is really amazing. I’m a high-energy, difficult person, and Tom is a deliberate, contemplative person and it just sort of clicked. You couldn’t imagine how many hours we spent putting things together, bouncing ideas off of each other and how many unfinished drafts there are on WordPress.
But its not quite what I wanted.
See it wasn’t supposed to be about me really. In the beginning, we wanted to establish a brand, but this blog was supposed to be for other people. In my head it was going to be a bazaar of sorts, a place where people who usually didn’t have an outlet for their creativity could do their thing under our umbrella. Aside from being kinda worksafe, and maintaining a level of writing competency we would stay out of the way and let people do their thing.
I knew a ton of people that I thought really had something special to share. I wanted a place where they could do it, and everyone could see the same spark I saw. In fact, I really wanted a female presence here.
In sort of poking around, I kept hearing about the lack of opportunities for women in a lot of creative contexts, and I understand being left out of the boy’s club. I saw a lot of films, comics, stories and blogs that didn’t have female voices included in the discussion, and when there were outlets for women, they were sort of homogeneous. I believe in diversity and I wanted a chance to show it.
It was a colossal flop.
I’d like to give you reasons for it, but I don’t know. Maybe people didn’t see any upside of doing it, especially with us. I know that actual creative output has been sort of devalued, it’s easier to play a video game, or watch television, or dick around on the Internet, than to actually make something, but to me a writer is a person that has to write, there is no choice on the matter. It doesn’t matter if anyone sees it, it’s just what they do. And I don’t see a lot of writers.
I can tell you I’ve been trying to get women to participate in this for years, and the overwhelming majority flaked out on me spectacularly. I still don’t know what I’ve learned from this, but it has affected how I feel about inclusion, I wish I could say it hasn’t.
Tom and Tom: Black Like You was supposed to be an inclusive site that welcomed everyone. We’re black, but we wrote a jokey preamble on being post-racial and moved on with it.
People thought it was a ‘black’ site and avoided it like the plague.
We might as well have put this up.
I eventually put a banner up that read ‘We Are All One’ out of desperation, and I got a better response. But for years, I got feedback that people didn’t want to read or participate with us because this was a ‘black’ site.
People that knew me personally. And my white wife.
Thought they weren’t welcome. That if something even had the word Black, they wanted nothing to do with it. The title of this site is a joke that references In Living Color, which I suppose is too black for those same people. But it sort of ate at us that this was happening.
Finally, this was supposed to be about satire, but satire presupposes that there is an established object of mockery or something that is inherently absurd. Right now there is a billionaire running for President that inherited all his money, ran most of his businesses into the ground through sheer incompetence, only succeeded by using public money to fund his enterprises, typically through illegal means and is supported by hate groups he refuses to denounce and roughly one in five Americans wants to give him the keys to the missile silos. I have the growing feeling that satire is pointless in this environment.
So all the reasons I wanted to do this feel stupid, honestly. I still have stories to tell, but I’m doing to do them differently, less publicly. There are stray things I wanted to do here to wrap up, and I may get to them, but it’s not a priority.
But the thing I want to leave every one of you with is a thank you. Whether you liked us or you didn’t, I appreciate your time, it’s the most irreplaceable asset we have, and you gave me some of yours and that means a lot. You also gave us great feedback, which is the only way an artist can get better, and you helped me get better.
Goodbye, and one way or another, I hope to see you again.
I really did mean to continue this for the Chrismahanukwanzakah season.
I failed you, and I’m sorry. If you’re the winter season gifting type, hopefully you remembered my winter recommendations from last year. But if not, just remember: it is never too late to give the gift of toasty buns.
(There was a great joke here about the record-breaking warm Christmas we had, but now Snowzilla has hit, the sarcasm gets a little lost.)
With that said, I’d like to usher in:
Totally Worth It: Winter Season Survival Edition Part II: Electric Skincare Boogaloo
There’s a super long article about lotion in the works, but first, let’s talk soap.
– Kirk’s Original Cocoa Castile Soap
That’s right, talkin’ ’bout soap, son!
Long hot showers and harsh soaps are murder on your skin.
You could take a quick shower. You could use tepid or cold water. Or… you could switch to a gentle, moisturizing soap. I mean technically you should probably do all three. But forget that noise. Guess which one I’m going with.
It’s moisturizing and it smells nice. It’s hypoallergenic, SLS-free, and vegan. It’s natural. Seriously though, it has five ingredients (coconut soap, water, vegetable glycerin, coconut oil, natural fragrance).
Normally you’d be paying a high price for an all natural soap (for example: Dr. Bronners at $4 – $5 a pop).
I get this stuff at Family Dollar at $3.33 for three ($1.11 per bar).
Here’s the deal: I’ve had a terrible time with lip balms and developed a reaction to commonly used fragrance(s) linalool and/or limonene.
The worst thing about this is that most people use lip balm in winter when their skin is already dry and irritated. And when your lips are painful and cracking, what are you going to do? Slather on more lip balm, of course! Which then causes more irritation. Such a vicious cycle.
For many, it’s a problem that develops over time, after months of using a product, so “new lip balm” isn’t the first thing to come to mind.
If you think you might be having a reaction, your best bet is to use hypoallergenic, one-ingredient products like 100% shea butter or Vaseline.
If it’s a reaction, your lips will start to heal. Once they’re healed you can start
trying other lip products, narrow down what it is that doesn’t agree with you, and avoid it. Linalool, limonene, and peppermint oil are common ingredients… and common irritants.
That is what happened to me. After some 6+ months of using EOS, over the last few weeks my lips started getting increasingly irritated, dry, cracking, and developed little white dots (milia). Everything cleared up within a couple days of switching to Vaseline.
– Shea butter is very, very unlikely to cause any kind of reaction. It is absorbed by the skin and is healing – in fact, it helps heal scarring and burns. On the down side, it’s super greasy, wears off very quickly, and has a mild nutty smell.
– Vaseline / Petroleum jelly is hypoallergenic, it tends to get a bad rap, but the fact is, it is inert and /can not/ be absorbed by your body. It is also greasy but not as much as Shea butter, is longer wearing, and has no smell at all.
I stuck with these for the past year and have finally started using other lip balms. Here are mini-reviews and recommendations.
– Jack Black is a really nice balm, probably the best I’ve tried. It’s not greasy, doesn’t leave a sticky feeling, and offers SPF 25 protection. However, it costs at least twice as much as other balms (and /many/ more times for petroleum jelly), and SPF is a non-issue when you’re putting it on before bed. I think it’s worth it for daytime use, as long as you don’t loose your balm all the time and go through an average of two a week, like Tom does.
I got “Grapefruit & Ginger” flavor. It smells great, like citrus with a hint of ginger. Warning: the taste is 110% grapefruit, scientifically proven to be the worst fruit.
– Burt’s Bees is moisturizing and feels smooth, slightly greasy. It lasts longer than Shea Butter but wears off quicker than the others. Vanilla Bean is the only one I know is free of linalool and limonene.
There are also a number of nice tinted balms out there.
Universally flattering color: check
– Clinique’s Black Honey is a cult favorite for good reason, with a gorgeous, universally flattering color. It’s twice as much as Jack Black, and has a slight tackiness, but did I mention that color? It’s also pretty long lasting. The color is nicely build-able and can be (carefully) applied without a mirror.
– Palladio Herb Infused Tinted Balm is smooth and “slippery” feeling without being greasy. It’s not as long lasting but it feels really nice. “Sangria” is a rich, warm red that looks similar to Cliniques Black Honey for a fraction of the price.
– Revlon Just Bitten Balm Stain is a longer-lasting option, which I’ve never had a reaction to, but does contain limonene and peppermint oil (another irritant), so I haven’t used it consistently since this problem arose. It’s not as moisturizing, but it’s stain leaves an all-day color after the balm has worn off. I found this to need a mirror, it’s too pigmented to wing it.
Ironically I still liked and recommend the two balms that caused me such problems: EOS Evolution of Smooth and Maybelline Baby Lips. EOS is natural, feels great, and is long-lasting. Baby Lips are a slippery feeling tinted balm, much like the Palladio, but with a huge selection of colors. They’re both good balms if you’re not sensitive to those ingredients.
This is sort of a perfect storm. (See what I did there!) Looking at the John Ostrander Suicide Squad run, Slipknot doesn’t appear beyond what I’ve already scanned, so if these articles are supposed to serve as introductions to characters that are going to appear in the movies you haven’t really gotten a lot to go on.
Also, this is a taste of Firestorm, a character that I always liked but that never had the impact in DC that he could have. Right now the character appears on the surprisingly entertaining Legends of Tomorrow on the CW, and they have done a great job adapting the character from the comic.
It all comes together here, in Fury of Firestorm issue 28 written by comics legend Gerry Conway and Joey Cavalieri. Its also a bad comic which is not the fault of penciler Rafael Kayanan or anyone responsible for the art.
You see Firestorm is a combination of two people: Professor Martin Stein, an insufferable prat, and basketball player Ronnie Raymond, an unlikable jackass. Legends of Tomorrow has done a great job capturing the essence of their conflict, but making them watchable, but in Fury it is nearly impossible to root for the protagonist of the book because he’s so annoying.
Also this issue pits a guy with near god-like power over the building blocks of the universe against a guy that’s good with ropes.
This is why we can’t act like comics are some sort of holy text that can’t be changed for any other medium. Because sometimes an idiot with his head on fire fights a guy that ties knots.
Let’s skip the horrible soap opera of this book and get straight to the fight.
The Professor immediately does his shtick of freaking out and babbling about the obvious. You’re being choked and you need to something. Thanks Professor. What I need during a life or death emergency is a old guy in my head screaming useless information at me.
For all the people that complain about pointlessly revealing female comic costumes, here is one of the male entries. For some reason Slipknot has giant holes that expose his chest but has heavy armor on his forearms and shins. Ye Gods.
Now the girl he was with has superpowers and goes to help but…
She ends up getting kidnapped. Meanwhile Firestorm finds out that he has no idea what to do when people dodge his blasts, and despite being an athlete immediately gets gassed like Bob Sapp after the first 30 seconds.
Losing track of him Firestorm is for another surprise.
It gets worse. For all of us.
After being thoroughly beaten by a guy with the emblem of a rope across his face, the Professor chimes in with more useless panic. Did you know that if you fall off of a building you’ll probably die?
The Professor keeps talking. At this point I’m rooting Firestorm to die.
Finally Slipknot realizes that taking on a job where he attacks a demi-god might be a bad idea.
Slipknot is easily defeated. Honestly Slipknot is sort of a loser in the comics and his chances of survival in the movie aren’t very high, which is why Suicide Squad is so compelling. With a lineup of third tier villains that no one cares about things can get very unpredictable, but hopefully you have a little more context for him now.
