Sunday, May 4, 2003

How Do You Poach an Egg?

How the hell should I know? Why don't you go Ask Mr. Breakfast?

• Posted at 11:29 PM · LINK

Sid Vicious Speaks

Salon has posted the first of several excerpts from Sidney Blumenthal's new book, The Clinton Wars. Blumenthal was as much an "insider" in the administration of Bill Clinton as anyone besides (maybe) Hillary and his book appears to be generally sympathetic to Clinton and hostile to Ken Starr and the whole investigation. If you hate Clinton, that makes him an "apologist." If you don't, it makes him a valuable contributor to history. I am inclined to skew — guardedly and with some reservations — towards the latter viewpoint. I don't believe any book, pro-Clinton or con, can give the whole, unvarnished truth about anything, but Blumenthal was a lot closer to the action than anyone else who's who've written about those events. His book is already (surprise, surprise) under attack...but I'll be interested to read it. And to see if any of those who call it a "pack of lies" find anything that is provably wrong.

• Posted at 9:15 PM · LINK

You Never Forget Your First One

This Thursday, early in the AM, Cinemax is running a rarely-seen Jerry Lewis movie called Don't Give Up The Ship which holds a great many memories for me. I've written a rambling piece that explains why, and posted it over in NOTES from me.

• Posted at 2:48 PM · LINK

Herrrre's...Johnny's House!

A gent named Jim Pruett purchased the home in which Johnny Carson lived as a child and is now auctioning it off on eBay. If you don't want to spring for the whole house (bidding starts at $150,000), you can bid on a piece of plaster or wood from the place.

• Posted at 12:37 PM · LINK

Funnybook Fundamentals

I don't think much of most books about how to write and/or draw comic books. Some have been spectacularly narrow in their viewpoints, either because the author lacked even a basic range of experience or was only interested in getting new people to work the way his company then preferred. It's like if a book on how to cook chicken spoke only of frying and didn't mention that maybe there are other methods, one of which might better serve your interests and skills. Avoidance of this tunnel-vision is one reason that I like the new series of books that my pal Nat Gertler is issuing, publishing comic book scripts for all the world to see.

Another is that in the celebration of the art form, the contribution of writers is too often misperceived or just plain ignored. Yet another is that in his recently-released second volume, he has a script of mine — a plot, actually, for an issue of Groo the Wanderer. This book is called Panel Two, and it's the follow-up to (you guessed it) Panel One, which is also quite wonderful. I suspect a wanna-be comic book writer could learn more from these books than all the others ever issued on the subject. There are intros that explain a lot of the process but the true education comes from seeing how different people do it, and that no one form or approach is "correct." Here's a link to a page that will tell you more about them...or you can just rush to your nearby comic shop and plunk down cash.

I do not recommend trying to make one's career in the comic book business these days. It is not a healthy field in which to invest the kind of creative energy and passion that is usually required to break into a new line of work, and I think it will get worse before it gets better. But if you're dead-set determined to write comic books, Nat's books will show you how. Or better still, they'll allow you to teach yourself.

• Posted at 10:49 AM · LINK

More on Movable Type

I think (note the emphasis) I now have this weblog configured the way I want it. And since I'm getting e-mails asking how I liked Movable Type, I thought I'd answer here: I like it fine. Weblog software is a little different from the kind of software one employs to craft a plain, ol' website. For those who don't know, you design a normal site on your computer and then upload its finished pages to the server. With weblog software, you design templates — pages with everything on them except the daily postings — and insert codes where the postings are to go. You upload the templates and then as you write your entries, they go into an online database which constructs the web pages as per the templates. Any time I feel like writing an entry, I can pop up a little window on my desktop, compose that entry (as I'm doing now), hit "post and publish" and — POOF! — it's up on the website. Movable Type inserts the date and builds the archive pages and handles the removal of old messages from the main page as they scroll off. There's more to it than that, of course, but not much.

Constructing the page and getting all the codes formatted was an interesting challenge. The documentation for Movable Type is not as clear as I might have liked but the folks over on its Support Forum are sharp and helpful, and they told me how to do that which I could not figure out on my own. So far, the software has performed without error so I'm happy. Will I remain happy with it? Tune in here for future messages — and not just ones about Movable Type. If there are future messages here about anything, then I'm probably quite happy with Movable Type.

• Posted at 1:59 AM · LINK