Thursday, November 16, 2006

Green Green

Over on the Wizard site, there's a brief interview with Howard Chaykin about his work with master comic book illustrator Gil Kane. It's worth a read for anyone interested in Gil's work but I was amused by this line...

I was never a big fan of Joe Giella's inking on him, but I loved what his green did on him, as well as Murphy Anderson's.

Obviously, that sentence doesn't make any sense. It would have, however, if the editor/transcriber had been aware that the person who replaced Joe Giella as Gil's inker was named Sid Greene. I have a hunch that's what Howard actually said.

• Posted at 11:47 AM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Ellen Knickmeyer on how things are going in Iraq. In case you don't have time to read the whole thing, I'll summarize: They're bad. People are dying at an alarming rate. And no matter what we do, it's not going to get better. There. I just saved you five minutes of depressing reading.

• Posted at 9:43 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Where were you on New Year's Eve, 1996? I was on Las Vegas Boulevard, crammed in among seventy-seven trillion people who gathered to watch the Hacienda Hotel get blown up and brought down. With me was a lady friend of mine who'd danced in the Lance Burton show when it was in the Hacienda's showroom. She hated the place and wanted to be present for its demise.

It took us a long time to make our way through the crowds to get to our vantage point for the implosion. It took even longer to make our way back down The Strip...and in between, we experienced the awesome pleasure of inhaling about four tons of dust from the demolition. Still, it was almost worth it for the fireworks display that preceded the nuking of the Hacienda. (Very typical of Las Vegas. On New Year's Eve, that street is naturally packed with folks partying and celebrating and even — you may be shocked to hear of this going on that night in that city — drinking. No "added attractions" were needed to draw a mob...but someone decided too much was not enough so they wanted to also blow up a hotel...plus, they set off something like a half million bucks worth of fireworks. If you like excess, Vegas is your place.)

I wrote about that evening in this article which you can read elsewhere on this site. And then you can come back here and play today's clip, which is six minutes of someone's home movies from that night. You won't experience the thrill of the fireworks display, which had to be seen live to be believed and appreciated. But you also won't have to breathe powdered hotel or have drunks melt your windbreaker with their breath.

• Posted at 1:25 AM · LINK

Listen In

We've already told you (a couple of times) that Shokus Video is a great place to look for copies of old TV shows, as well as a fine service for transferring your old home movies to DVD format. Now, my pal Stuart Shostak is branching out and building his media supremacy into the challenging world of Internet Radio. He won't be officially launching his online network until early next year but there are already some preview shows available online at Shokus Radio. The kind of programming he has planned will appeal to the kind of person who comes to this weblog, and I've agreed to be a frequent guest on the channel. It doesn't cost anything to listen so hop on over and see what's playing at the moment. This schedule page will tell you what that is and there's a place somewhere there you can click and begin enjoying Shokus Internet Radio.

• Posted at 1:23 AM · LINK