JOURNAL: Bowler

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  • Ocularus Repairum! 2001-12-09 18:50:18 Today I join the ranks of those who wear glasses. I couldn't help smiling the entire day. I walked out of Pearle Express and could read signs that were probably an eighth of a mile away on the buildings across the giant parking lot. The sun was blinding, as I normally wear sunglasses everywhere, but I squinted and kept on smiling, thinking "I can see *everything*!!!" It was truly a magical day today. I haven't been that happy in a long time.

    Then I went and ruined it by watching the Bears lose to Green Bay. Hey Jim Miller: when it's 4th down with 3 yards to go, you're down by 10 points and there's only 8 minutes on the clock, YOU DON'T GO LONG WITH ALL 3 OF YOUR WIDE OUTS. JUST GET THE F'N FIRST DOWN. Way to blow it, Bears. Now I have to listen to Jim the Green Bay fan at work on Monday. AGAIN. Not only is this a loss to Green Bay, but it's the second loss this season to GB, and like the 12th loss in a row over the past 6 years. Stupid lousy rivalry. It's only a rivalry if we get to taunt back. Even if we win the next 12 meetings straight, Green Bay still gets to point at the scoreboard until we're all tied up at 12-12. In the year 2008.

    Then I went and ruined it further by trying to put Christmas lights up on the little wee tree in front of the house. Here's the thing with small trees: Circumferance. I bought 5 strings of lights thinking that would be more than enough to cover the entire tree. Lo, and behold (where the hell did that phrase come from, anyway?), I was only able to make it two and a half times around the tree, and the damn thing is so tall that even with my 10 foot long pole and stepladder, I was only able to get about 4 feet to the top of the tree with the top of the first strand. It looks miserable, and I had to laugh at its patheticness.

    Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown :)

    Oh, and I promise to put interesting anime or AMV related stuff in these posts soon. Honest. 
  • My Kingdom for a Hand Grenade. 2001-12-09 00:58:19 Or at least Broadband. Unfortunately my kingdom isn't worth squat.

    How is it I live in the 3rd largest city in Illinois and no one will support broadband here? If anyone knows of a Broadband provider for Aurora Il, please send them to my house. I'd like a word with them.

    Thank you. 
  • Tannenbaum oh Tannenbaum 2001-12-08 01:11:06 So we put up the X-mas tree today. I hate doing it (Liz loves it), but it sure does make the house look great when it's done.

    I got to thinking today about X-mas, and for awhile I was really down on it. Not for everyone else's "the holidays are so depressing" reasons, but mainy because my wife is the only person who sticks to my list when it comes to giving me gifts. Now, I know your internal dialogue is saying "Bowler, you selfish prick!" But consider that what you don't know is that I'm a fairly generous gift giver when it comes to Christmas. I may forget your birthday, but I give great Christmas gifts.

    I thought about how silly it is for me to go out and buy everyone else the stuff on their list (and then some), only to get shirts from Kohl's in return. If you don't have a Kohl's in your area, be grateful. You won't receive those $8 denim oxford shirts you didn't ask for. So when I get right down to it, I spend about five to eight hundred dollars on people during the holidays, and I get shirts from Kohls for my money. I know everyone reading this is going to think I'm some kind of Scrooge for thinking this way, but I find it somewhat amusing.

    I propose that next Christmas, we all go out and just buy ourselves what we've been wanting all year long, wrap them, and then give them to ourselves on Christmas morning ;) That sure would kill the magic.


    My right hand is really scaring me right now. It's practically useless. I must've pinched a nerve moving some of the X-mas decorations, and now it's numb from the mid-forearm down. The muscles in my forearm have gone so sore, it's becoming impossible for me to type. This kind of thing scares me because right now I couldn't hold a pencil if you paid me, and people frequently pay me to do so. I know it'll be gone come morning (as it usually is), but one of these days it might not, like my wife's friend Linda the musician, who had to have expensive therapy to get the feeling back in her arm. 
  • DK2 = Diddy Kong 2?!?! 2001-12-07 02:57:06 So I read MCWagner's journal entry (hiya MC!) and remembered that I just picked up two (count 'em) at the famous Chicago Comics next to The Alley over by Belmont.

    I wish I could say I loved it.

    ==MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW FOR FIRST ISSUE OF DARK KNIGHT 2==

    ==STOP READING THIS POST IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT YET==

    ==YOU WERE WARNED==

    First off, let me state that I'm his biggest fanboy. I'm not proud of it, mind you, but he's the only guy in comics that I follow anymore. And he's getting OLD. If anyone drew Superman the way he did when he was getting his ass handed to him by Batman (for the second time?!?! we saw this already, and even the kryptonite arrow for chrissakes), they'd be fired. I don't know if it was for dynamic effect (since Batman was very nicely drawn), but I hated it. It looked more like scribbles than "mashed potato face." It worries me that he's getting by on name and not on content.

    And it's just not as shocking as the first one was. "The Naked News" isn't shocking because it's here already. I've seen it online. It's not as perverse as the one depicted in DK2, mind you, but it's out there. So's the hacker news networks. Maybe this is supposed to be a more contemporary take on things, but I just thought that the original had so much more foresight.

    Speaking of foresight, this thing seems played out already. I, more than anyone, want a surprise ending, but we can already see from the first book where this story is going. At the end of the first RotDK the ride had only just begun. We were just climbing the first hill. This one seems like I've already taken the big loops, and the rest is all laid out in front of me.

    And shame on Lynn Varley. My favorite colorist in the world because she still used traditional media, and she goes all digital on us. What the hell was with the color?!?! I loved the photoshop radial blurs, mind you, but bring back the watercolor!! You can still do Photoshop radial blurs over the watercolor!! What happened to the rich flesh tones? The soft, subtle colors? Remeber the original? Remember 300? Those were works of art! This is...rushed.

    But things I loved? The kid is back. Carrie rules. She was my favorite in the first series, and I hope she can be just as cool. The Flash. I have *never* -ever- thought The Flash was a good character until Wednesday when I read the story. "Kids these days. They don't understand the difference between OLD and CLASSIC." Brilliant line, and a brilliant character. "I'll show you faster than a speeding bullet." F'n A that's just wonderful dialogue. Love it Love it Love it.

    Makes me wish I had applied for the test to work on the new JLA cartoon. I might still do it. 
  • Survey Sez! 2001-12-07 00:06:02 I'm crossposting this from the Forum New Videos entry I made just minutes ago. It seems that this journal thing is getting hits (59 or thereabouts so far?)

    I had some questions that I wanted anime fans (die-hard to newbie) to give me their opinions about. I'm very interested in what people think about these questions, as I've been giving them a bit of thought lately.

    Please email me and tell me what you think!

    --Questions Follow--

    When I was working on Animaniacs, a studio in Japan (TMS) got the lion's share of the good eps to work on. They also did some of the best Batman eps (Clayface Part 2 for instance). Now, they did everything they could to make the animation look just like it was supposed to (Warner Bros. house style), but the TMS house style just rubbed off on every drawing. It was magnificent, and to this day, I could tell you if TMS did the ep just by looking at the footage.

    First question: Is the work that TMS did on Animaniacs or Batman considered anime? Although it was designed by Americans for Americans, it was animated and directed by Japanese, and has a definitively Japanese pace.

    Another work of TMS's comes to mind: CyberSix (or whatever that show that was on last season was called with the woman who looked like Carmen Sandiego in black). It's based off of a French graphic novel by the same name. The characters in the show are designed very tightly around the designs from the novel. TMS picked up the rights to it, and created the series. It wasn't billed as anime in the states, but I remember seeing the advertisement for it in Animation Magazine as a TMS property.

    Second question: Is the series CyberSix (or whatever it's called) considered Anime? It was designed and executed by the Japanese for the world audience, but doesn't look like anime.

    Lastly, I wanted to pose a hypothetical situation. What if a team of Japanese animation developers came to the United States (England, Canada, any Western Nation will do), and formed a company? They hired American employees (or whatever the local Western population was) to work on the series, and designed the series to fit into the American culture.

    Third question: Would something that the Japanese came to the West to create for Westerners and had Westerners do the work on be considered anime, especially if it looked just like and had the pacing of anime? 
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