The five-day Black Death is finally tapering out; I got back to work yesterday, but it was from home. Sarafina caught the Death about 36 hours behind me so we sorta just mutually co-dissolved at 3QF for two days, which was about as much fun as you can possibly have when you're feeling that awful. Michael Douglas movies were involved.

Anyways, now I'm starting to feel back to rights, although there are still all sorts of things happening in my lungs that I'm not too thrilled about. Plus, at least one rash. WTF. I'm back in the office, digging out from under the work-pile, and presuming that I'm not going to get sick again for a while. At this point I'd damn well better be immune to everything up to and including the Hantavirus.

When I came in this morning and found that my co-worker Scott had moved his desk to a new larger cubicle down the way, I actually got to say (in context, mind you!) "I'm out of it for a little while and everybody gets delusions of grandeur." Mark another one on the list: achieved.

Posted by tederick at 10:44 AM in galaxy far & j-o-b & miscellaneous crap
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If this is true, it's the only thing since the announcement that PJ/F/Ph wouldn't be writing/directing that made me feel like that movie could actually be up to the standard. Of course, this would preclude Guillermo directing the 2 Deathly Hallows films (to be separately titled Harry Potter And, and The Deathly Hallows). Which sucks. I spent rather a lot of time on Friday fantasizing about that particular possibility. But still, this'll do just fine. And if it puts Cauron back in the h-pot director's chair, so much the better.

Media advisory: I will be neither hosting nor attending any Lost parties this Thursday. Catch up with y'all in the coming weeks.

Still feel like awful. Have had the most excruciating headache of my life for most of the last 36 hours, and painkillers don't even dent it. Wheeeeee!

Posted by tederick at 3:33 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & h-pot & pj's playground
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That's because I am sick. Dropped on me after dinner on Saturday, had completely waylaid me by 2 a.m. that night, and I spent all of today circling Neptune. (Neptune, however, notably features: chocolate cake, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and an adorable individual expounding upon metaphysical slipstream of my tea-making thinking process.) The big challenge was getting home on the TTC tonight with my senses amplified to the Daredevil level: the stunning electric shock of touching cold metal, the trip to the afterlife that is the sound of a subway car taking a turn too fast and shrieking like No-Name herself (there oughta be a law), and the bile-driving nausea of womens' perfume. (Honestly ladies: read the fucking memo.)

My head may split off and shoot around the room, like the screensaver on Sararina's DVD player. Except that the screen would be my room and the "DVD" logo would be my head. Oh, you get it. Stop picking on me! Following that, I will actually cough my lungs clean out of my body, and they will set up shop on the Danforth selling fine smoked meats and an assortment of cheeses. And then my muscles will liquefy and go Terminate someone.

I want my mother's Cherokee casserole, and I want it now.

Posted by tederick at 7:55 PM in miscellaneous crap
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Matty Price and I came together last night to talk Heath Ledger and the Oscars, and to prove that two white guys cannot be trusted to remember the name of the Three Six Mafia. But you knew that. Voila le podcast.

Posted by tederick at 9:34 AM in podcastery
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"Perhaps it was the light on your face, but I thought I recognised you from somewhere a long way down, somewhere at the bottom of the sea." - Lighthousekeeping

Did I get sent to work today with a Lazer Tag lunch box filled with a lunch that my girl made for me, and little notes and instructions that say things like "eat the carrots - you need vegetables"? Yes. Yes I did. And yet, she had me at "let's watch Pirates 1 and 3 but not 2." Sooner than that, even. Oh dusty world.

The TTC delay at Vic Park this morning (curses!!) got me thorugh the rest of Lighthousekeeping and out the other side, which is always a horrible feeling - "why didn't I bring more books???" I am now swinging back to H-pot for another Deathly Hallows re-read... this is, what? My fourth? It's in my head a lot these days, in near-Blu-Ray sharpness. I'm also reading a book about e.simulation design! Because I'm a nerd.

Here are some things I called my friend Erin while we were at lunch yesterday:"Gigantor," "Godzilla," "Monster Woman," "genetic disaster from a horror movie," and "something from out of the Deep." Isn't it nice when I express myself?

Now I'm listening to Return of the King and rather enjoying the look and feel of the day. My extended-hours cram session last night got me well ahead on a few things and I'm tackling a few more even as I type. Fabulous multi-screen multi-program multi-brain-lobe multi-tasking! I could teach a class.

Posted by tederick at 10:50 AM in books & h-pot & j-o-b & jedi antics
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"...as plate after plate of fluffy poached eggs, cartilaginous peameal, and lakes of sunshiney goo continued to pile up over time, I realized that if I don't start catalogueing these excursions in some formal manner, a great field of human knowledge would be lost. Hence, the Benedict Chronicles..."

Illicit bennies are like other illicit activities: the more inappropriate your taking the time out to do it, the better it tastes. Mmm naughty. This was certainly the case with Noon, a sleepy little breakfast place just north of the Annex on Bathurst, which shocks the world by serving bennies all day all the time - and any place you can get a benny to satisfy that insta-craving on a weekday morning is, IMHO, worth its weight in golden hollandaise.

So, on the advice of my ravishingly beautiful brunch-mate, we sought out Noon while the workaday world went about its merry business. The benny costs $12, which is a bit of a stunner - that's high for any such meal as far as I'm concerned, and the value didn't quite hit the quality on this one. But again, it was exactly where I needed it exactly when I needed it. So who's complaining about a couple extra bucks?

Innovation alert: the Noon's eggs benedict is, like the one at the Last Temptation, served on a croissant. Unlike LT, however, Noon gets it right. The croissant is split open and served open-faced, lightly toasted and pleasingly buttery. That's good.

The hollandaise was marginally over-citrused and the eggs were marginally under-cooked. The home fries, too, looked goddamn gorgeous but didn't really come together in terms of flavour. I didn't bother much with the salad because I just wasn't feeling it. So, pretty much, the croissant and the accessibility saves this meal - it's a base-hit as a benedict, but I'm still giving it three stars out of four. Hell, I can taste the croissant just thinking about it right now.

Noon is located at 1088 Bathurst Street West in Toronto, just south of Dupont. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 9:35 AM in the benedict chroncicles
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Let's try to assuage some of the crappery of the past couple of days by enjoying another peek at that fabboo Hellboy trailer.

Feel better? I do. Honestly it's been a pretty up and down time so far this week. A big part of that was the degree to which the Heath Ledger thing really shook me - not something I'm too happy about, given that I don't usually go in for much of that celebrity culture jazz. Nor did I really realize I was a particularly big fan, until yesterday. I guess I was just enjoying the process of seeing this guy get really good - and he really, really was. And now this. Anyways I'm sure we'll cover in greater detail in the inevitable Mamo; and then hopefully, a bit of rest. It's a nasty bit of business made nastier by a world that put 200 photographers outside his apartment to snap shots of a body bag being wheeled out the front door.

Ledger was only a tiny corner of the various stormy muck that kept my brain swirling into the wee hours last night; I think I finally fell asleep around 3:30, processing visceral sensations of dread that I haven't given much mind to since I was about fifteen years old. There's a longer story there, but it's not all mine to tell, so I'll leave it off. Suffice to say: ups. And downs. The way of the world.

I did, I must say, have a truly wonderful morning.

I stayed late at work to get a few things off my plate that needed getting, and then I came home and did one of the extremely long, extremely hot showers of which I am becoming increasingly fond. Now I'm caught between hanging things on my wall, watching a thing, or just getting into bed for a good long alpha wave. Oh who am I kidding we all know where I'll end up.

Posted by tederick at 8:30 PM in miscellaneous crap & movies & youtubery
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Heath Ledger found dead in New York?!?!

Uhhhhhhhh....

Posted by tederick at 5:16 PM in batman!
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Who has my copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (book)? Cuz one of you does, and I want it back.

Oscar nominations are the usual list of toldjaso's, likesay Cate Blanchett getting nominated for Elizabeth and I'm Not There, Johnny picking up his Sweeney nomination, and Ellen Page getting the inevitable actress nod. My feeling of Atonement dread was nicely lessened by the lack of a director nom; the Juno support is heartening, and it'll be hilarious to watch There Will Be Blood get so utterly snubbed on wins versus the number of nominations it actually got. How Golden Compass stole a visual effects nomination will be a mystery to me until the end of time.

The monster in Cloverfield is a giant space beetle from under the sea. That's fine. It's possible that the writer's strike has actually cured me (and North America) of our collective TV addiction; that's fine too. I haven't watched a TV show, or played the Wii, more than once so far in 2008. There's just so much other stuff to do. And this is winter: can you imagine if the doors got blown open and we could all go outside and play soccer, sit at cafés, or read comics in the park? Television itself might cease to exist for ever more.

Posted by tederick at 9:24 AM in books & movies & tv & wii
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God damn, they couldn't have done that better if they'd actually made him out of squid. Yeah, that's the key to the Dead Man's Chest hanging from his tentacle.

Posted by tederick at 11:56 AM in pirates & toys!
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Still going, never slowing, never swaying, with an even stride and an amused sense of determination. I was a bit delayed into work this morning, grabbed myself some breakfast across the street and was about halfway into the leap across McCowan to the office, when I caught sight of myself and thought "yeah. This is all right."

A lot of things happened over the weekend - too much to go into - but one of them is that thanks to Sarafina's Found Footage festival DVD, I fell completely ass-over-teakettle in love with Jack Rebney, the world's angriest RV salesman.

There is actually plenty more where that came from, and when he's done with the swearing he just starts gibbering about the fern and the dock. I love this man. I want to hang out with him, buy him a beer maybe, before he has a heart attack so enormous it actually concaves time itself. But then again all this shit was recorded in '88, so I might be twenty years too late.

Oh Jack Rebney. If you met Stanley (and W. W. Wooderson), who would win in a fight?

Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen. I oughta have my project work out the door by the fifteenth of Feb or so, and I just came up with the hilarious irrelevant detail that will make the comic I'm writing for Sasha leap above its own premise and become a thing that people will talk about for years. Things are developing, in all the corners, and I'm chipmunking merrily away. Otherwise, it's all just slaying dragons and drinking tea. How are you, Internet?

Postscript: My friend Alison's initials are ARR. That's awesome. Her boyfriend's last name starts with H, so if she marries him, her initials will be ARRH. That's even better. I'm so jealous! It seems like everyone's got a pirate ship story right now, except me.

"They were like Cobra. Only in band form." - me re: The Misfits

Posted by tederick at 11:13 AM in jedi antics & pirates & youtubery
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That's it, I'm calling it: Angel Season Six is better than Buffy Season Eight. Brian Lynch just baked my noodle but good. And maybe stop reading now if you don't want to be spoiled for After the Fall #3.

OK, maybe it's too soon to be making judgments like this - ATF has its nice contained dozen-issue spread, so it's already starting to advertise its beginning-middle-and-end-ness in a way that 50-issue Buffy couldn't possibly get at yet. But still. This fucking creepy-ass Lynch guy is some kind of damn genius, he is. Having Angel reveal he isn't a vampire any more at the end of the third issue is a gorgeous bit of long con, especially given the wagga wagga of Gunn being all vamped up in issue 1. Jesus, this issue was just so gorramned solid. Angel challenging all of the lords to a Capital Cities of Heaven-style bash-out for control of Hell-A? Right on.

It gets a bit icky when I try to figure out how much is the Joss and how much is the Lynch. I'm choosing to go whole-hog on Lynch for this one because salient details like vamps being in a constant state of half-sun half-moon torment is ingenius, yes, but ingenius in the Betta George sort of way, not the true-blue Whedon. I could be wrong. When all this is done I'm gonna want a whole lot more info on where it all came from. Damn I'm impressed.

Posted by tederick at 1:07 PM in comix & joss
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I would totally get that tattooed. (Or, tattoed.)

Posted by tederick at 10:49 AM in photoblog & scars
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Huh, I apparently completely wiped out the categories database on Tederick.com at some point in the last 24 hours. (Got it back.) Might have been because I was trying to import October 2005 into Movable Type, or it might have been some other gallfuck thing. Who knows. But it means I lost something lovely I started writing last night when I got home... one of those things you can only write at 2 in the morning when you're jumped up on B-52 coffee. Alack.

Now I'm looking for that song on my iPod and contemplating the many coffees I am not having.

I have plenty of things to do, but mostly right now I'd like to be under my tent-like sheets in my quiet house, playing tic tac toe. These are January things. Why doesn't January's task list agree?

Hey, found the song.

Posted by tederick at 12:32 PM in miscellaneous crap & tederickdotcomdotcom
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(I know based on the previous entry that this might seem like a thinly veiled manner of advising the world that The Void Has Returned. It hasn't. Things are actually pretty grapefruitlike right now. I mean... well, obviously. Where have you been? I am subtle... like a fox!)

Work-wise, there are some ripples in the water, mostly in terms of what I might be doing at the day-job, vs. what I am trying to be doing at the night-job. I spent another two long days in training this week - this time it was training training, fun! - but it didn't leave much of a hair's breadth for anything that wasn't directly related to Work Things Of Work Consequence. I want to write something for Sasha to draw, but it hasn't happened yet; I've made sixty pages of notes on Snapdragon, but I haven't incorporated them yet; I feel generally dusty. About the only constructive thing I've done in the last ten days is manage to clear all the crap off my old PC, mere seconds away from its total system failure. You heard it here first: Sabre is dead. Long live Queen Molly.

The anxieties around these quibbles are not improved by the fact that things are about to get harder.

I've had a pretty exhilarating couple of months. Closed a terrific year; fell in love. Everything's spinning now, much faster than before; we're in the faster water, closer to the middle. Big drenching sprays of happy, and a whole lot of dizzy. I'm content, and overwhelmed only in my fortune and the occasional tendency for so much other stuff to be going on that I can lose sight of the simple circle at the core. That happened a bit over the past few days. But this morning, I was sitting in class, kind of moping... and I spied Sera peeking out of my cuff, and I looked around the world, and I breathed. And it was fine.

Anyone wanna watch World's End?

Posted by tederick at 6:14 PM in comix & j-o-b & pirates & poetical
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Maybe they'll find Indy IV on their quest to save the world from aliens.

Sorry about the nobloggatry. Something's not working right inside these days. Or maybe I'm just too busy. Or somethin'.

Posted by tederick at 6:43 AM in movies & tederickdotcomdotcom
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Posted by tederick at 9:07 PM in j-o-b & photoblog
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Forthcoming Indy IV has given plenty of new opportunity for the sculptors of the world to prove that nobody in the world can sculpt Harrison Ford's face.

I like how the one on the top left looks like James LeGros. Maybe I'll buy it and call it my James LeGros Failed Raiders of the Lost Ark Audition action figure.

Posted by tederick at 1:25 PM in dr. jones & toys!
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After the movie, there was much merriment with all the various YouTube-related remixes of things related to, but not limited to, The Last Unicorn. And then four hours of not being able to get that song out of my head.

Today started in a colourful whirlwind of chocolate fountains and knit heart-shaped pirate skulls, and then turned into a minor mid-afternoon frenzy wherein I tried, and failed, to do any of the six miscellaneous tasks assigned me by the Powers That Be. In the eveningtimes Matty Price and I drove out to Bloor West Village to go to the Yellow Griffin, which in the three years since I was last there with Kate, has started serving 35 different gourmet hamburgers. I had one with Stilton, walnuts, and roast garlic. It was, perhaps, the best hamburger I've ever eaten. We recorded a fuck-the-Golden-Globes Mamo at an extremely noisy Starbucks, and whisked home on the rainy Lakeshore.

High on the cravings list right now:

• Almond butter (bought some, so this craving is all but dead)
• A Piece of the Action (every time I catch it on WBS I end up watching it for like an hour)
• Brian K. Vaughan's Logan
• A sinfully large, and entirely emotionally-associational, tub of this post's eponymous fruit.

Posted by tederick at 10:13 PM in foodin' & movies & pirates & podcastery & zam!
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"...as plate after plate of fluffy poached eggs, cartilaginous peameal, and lakes of sunshiney goo continued to pile up over time, I realized that if I don't start catalogueing these excursions in some formal manner, a great field of human knowledge would be lost. Hence, the Benedict Chronicles..."

Get ready for a wild and rollicking good time here, Internet, because the Concord Café does not serve an eggs benedict. They serve an eggs florentine, which is so entirely not the point of this series, and is in its way the benny equivalent of your strange cousin who comes to family Christmas and announces he's a vegan. Have you ever wanted to hit a man because of diet? I have.

No, seriously, florentines are fine. They're not usually my bag, but in this case I was advised that the hollandaise that the Concord serves on their florentine is in fact spicy, so I thought to myself, "that's worth looking at." I ponied up to a table with my stunningly attractive brunch-mate, and hit eggs florentine for $7.95, with a cup of coffee that was definitely above-average.

Spicy hollandaise? Genius! In this case the spice was achieved by fortifying it with chipotle, resulting in that kind of hot that starts mild and then slowly grows on the tongue to a zesty mid-scorch. Quite satisfying and very effective. Almost makes up for the complete and utter lack of peameal bacon, anywhere in my meal.

The eggs themselves were goddamned gorgeous on this thing - cooked straight to that "opening a vein with a straight razor" gooeyness, without going over into congealy grossitude, or under into runny oblivion. These were some damned satisfyingly perfect yolks running this way and that on my plate. Add to that the first, I think, ever side salad that I've enjoyed as much as the meal itself, and I'd say that for a non-benny, the Concord's florentine is a pretty damn good benny. Giving it three and a half, out of generosity and a lack of quarter-eggs.

The Concord Café is located at 937 Bloor Street West in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 4:48 PM in the benedict chroncicles
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I don't know what I'd do if they ever figured out I can sneak onto Tederick.com through the One Zone. Cry a lot, probably. I don't use it often, but there's something strangely reassuring in knowing my domain is immune to the Zone's security measures. Like being Spider-Man.

The thing about my drafting process is (and this will come as no surprise to anyone who's ever heard me, y'know, talk) is my stunning capacity to overwrite. So the process of revising the first five issues of Snapdragon (happening even now!) is really just one of pulling a whole bunch of extraneous lines and bits of business and even whole panels and pages clean out of the comic. I'm really one for saying something three times when it only needs to be said once. But it does mean I get to work lovely new ideas into the stew once the page count has been loosened up somewhat. This might come in handy on Terra.

I've had almost no time for writing for the last little while; feels like I've had almost no time for anything. This week was pretty damned rough, workwise. As advertised, January and February will be stunningly, stupidly busy - eight solid weeks of block-booked meetings (and sometimes double- and even triple-booked), an endless chain of tightly-wound deliverables, and two major projects that I am personally getting out the door, along with the half-dozen others I have my paint-stained fingers all mucked up in. It's gonna be exhausting, and my mood has not been terrific on the subject. It's just so damned dim and shady these days, I haven't been to yoga in a month, and I'm seriously contemplating joining a gym. Who the fuck am I?

Off-hours, however, remain tip-top. Last night me and Sarafina went to see The Savages, but before the movie had even started we decided we didn't really want to see The Savages. So we left. I'm quite happy about that; we went and had sushi and talked about ideas, and the plan change also later gave opportunity to conquer Superbad at long last. It was very pretty and otherwise not at all worthy of six separate attempts to see it (of course). Still, can't say fairer than watching movies in the dead of night with the girl. It does a spectacular job of disconnecting my mind from the web of intrigue that is my Outlook calendar.

Twelve pages of revision left, then Fight Club.

Posted by tederick at 6:09 PM in j-o-b & movies & the process
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All right, I've had it; reading The Rum Diary all week has pretty much destroyed any ability on my part to not be fantasizing constantly about getting the hell out of this town and spending several aimless weeks knocking around some anonymous beach in Dominica in the near and immediate future. Fifteen-degree Tuesdays notwithstanding, I have had it with this cold weather shite. I want to be wearing minimal, loose clothing (if clothing at all). I want to wake up covered in sand-flies. I want to watch the sun rise and only then begin considering finding a bed. Oooh, I like that last part most of all.

Speaking of The Rum Diary, I had the best rum evah last night. We went to Scaramouche for my dad's birthday, and after dinner I ordered a shot of a 15-year-old Demerara rum from Guyana... and holy sweet fucking crap, it tasted like cream mixed with vanilla. Enough of this cheap LCBO shit I've been pumping through my veins - I gotta get me some of that. Although I admit the allure would be greatly enhanced if I was buying it myself somewhere on or near the aforementioned beach.

OK, enough griping. As far as "happiness is": walking hand-in-hand before sunrise, and finding a Lobster Johnson in my bag that I hadn't read yet, have pretty much already made my day.

"The monkeys don't speak, but they move like ninjas."

Posted by tederick at 9:02 AM in books & the rum diaries
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Apparently, being in class all day makes me hungry, with "hungry" in this case being substituted for something else. This certainly explains the entirety of teen boy culture, anyway. Thank goodness for text messages.

I've come to a rather startling decision, and that decision is: off coffee!! Or at least, hella less coffee. I have been feeling increasing quantities of crappy for the past couple of weeks while downing my perennial Starbuckses; and as per back in the fourth year at York, they're not so much waking me up as putting me in a coma. It's time for a change. It's time for large, flavoursome mint teas. Mmmmm. Sure, I slept through the afternoon, but at least my insides don't hurt.

I got Banacek in the mail today. I am particularly looking forward to episode 8, "The Two Million Clams of Captain Jack." (Jack: so many clams!) I also got Oldboy on Blu-Ray, which leads to today's nicest phrase (and current Facebook status): Blu-Ray hammer fight. Sure, I can't buy Zodiac (yet). But who cares?

Strongly suspecting I need to locate a Rubik's Magic and figure out what the deal was with that thing. There could be e.learning implications.

Posted by tederick at 5:53 PM in foodin' & j-o-b & shinybludisks & toys! & tv
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Rancor:

• Muscled forearms


• Stands upright


• Has OT "cool" factor

Acklay:

• Hard carapace


• Stabby feet


• High-pitched girlish scream.

Posted by tederick at 1:58 PM in galaxy far
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Last night Sarafina and I ordered a metric fuckload of sushi, and played Nintendo. Guess what? I actually still have some game on a classic Nintendo controller. This reverses last week's disappointment when I tried to play Super Mario 3 on the Wii and failed utterly. Turns out, the Wiimote is just a really, really shitty approximation of the classic controller. All the sense memory was gone. Back on the original system, my fingers knew what they were doing long before my brain even had to get involved. There's a metaphor in there somewhere, but I'm too tired and stinky to figure it out right now. I feel like Han Solo, what with the boots and sense of malcontent. I could do with a long, hot shower.

Three days after the Warner Brothers announcement, I have to work actively hard not to refer to the other side of the war as "chumps." That's the problem with this dog-ugly war: it has turned home theatre enthusiasts into a bunch of smug pricks on par with, or possibly even smugly prickier, than Mac addicts. I do not want this! The Digital Bits is largely unreadable now, what with Bill Hunt having turned into such a miserable, conceited fascist. I just want some nice programming and a hot cup of cocoa. I want Serenity and King Kong in Blu-Ray. I don't want a fucking subculture to grow out of this thing. If you're all into home theatre now, are you even a movie fan at all? Is it just technophilia in a demi-aesthetic cloak? If you had a really pretty Blu-Ray test pattern would you be just as happy as if you had Star Wars?

Two Star Wars refs in a single post. I'm backsliding. That's it: I'm going home and throwing out all my toys.

Incidentally, there is a small piece of my soul missing, and it is in a very good place. Otherwise, I am finding the season physically challenging as per the usual. My chest is tight. I haven't been to yoga in a damn long time. It's going to be fifteen degrees or thereabouts in Toronto tomorrow and if so, I am certainly going for a bike ride even if I have to do so after dark. In the meantime I've gotta do something to break out of the crusty shell of scar tissue and stale air that currently surrounds me. I could do with a nice breeze.

"It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going." - The Rum Diary

Posted by tederick at 4:09 PM in galaxy far & i hate mac & shinybludisks & wii
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On the other hand, my life is also quite frequently awesome. Big fancy glowing this-is-my-life awesome. Ain't quite all the way there yet but, man howdy, there are sunbeams peaking through.

You know that thing where you want to write a thing and then it's not quite there when you actually go to do it? I'm having that a lot lately. In one sense it's good because it feels like there's a half-dozen things waiting to pop (like dough!), and when they do pop I think they'll be good cookies. (Did I just fuck up a metaphor?) In the other sense, though, one of my key goals is to get to a point where I can just sit down and write no matter what. Like if I was writing Nancy Drew novels during the war or something - "thou shalt turn out sixty pages by Friday, Ms. Keene, or we'll replace you with another equally-anonymous ghost writer." I'm less interested in the spurts of stupendousness right now, and more curious about what it's like to have enough tricks in the toolkit that I can summon the wind whenever I need it.

I'm at the Starbucks at Festival Hall right now, in pursuit of that selfsame wind. There's a fucking crazy old dude dressed like a Swiss mountain climber who keeps endlessly putting on and taking off the various tchatchkes (sp?) of climbing gear that he has arrayed around his vest and liederhosen (sp, again? why the fuck do I use words I don't know how to spell?). It's possible that when he finishes putting on his greatcoat, he's going to do a triple flip up to the third level by summoning the power of the Almighty. No wait - he opted for the stairs. No wait - now he's doing step aerobics. What the fuck am I doing here.

Reading: Buffy #10 is terrific. Just terrific. Not what I expected at all but this one does, actually, feel more like an episode of the show than any of the prior issues. There's the sack-of-hammers approach to storytelling that Joss used in issue #5, i.e. I Have An Idea And Here Is My Idea Fully Expressed (With Pictures!), and then there's this - using casual plotting and almost a seeming indifference to quietly explain the whole fucking thing. And by "the whole fucking thing," I not only mean this eensy weensy seasonal arc that's taking shape, but also really the meaning of Buffy, and the meaning of life. Plus, so many threads tied up. Thank you for that.

I'm making solid progress on Snapdragon, still not quite at the "this thing earns its own argument" stage, but closer to the "I can believe that someone, someday, might want to read this" stage. And there's a few other things queued up behind it, so at least I've got something to think about.

"Any unstable reality field is potentially dangerous, even cataclysmic." - Willow

Posted by tederick at 12:57 PM in comix & joss & the process
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Warner,

and New Line,

and 70%,

aaaaaaaand we're out.

Posted by tederick at 10:55 AM in shinybludisks
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Ugh. Real life sucks sometimes.

I have a tiny but deep cut on my left middle finger. The result is that there is a really gorgeous blood stain on the "e" key of my nice white keyboard at home, along with a supporting horizontal smear along the top of my screen where I use my middle finger to push it open in the morning. OK, to everyone else, this seems gross. To me, it's proof I exist.

Matty Price and I recorded the year-in-review Mamo last night; you may enlisten by enclicking this enlink. Large tracts of it will come as very little surprise to anyone who is, oh I don't know, reading this blog right now, but I do find it entertaining that my partner and I have ended up on opposite sides of this divisive format war dealie. In fact, I'm feeling very much like a man on my own in the cold lately: Chris went HD-DVD, and so did my uncle. I am the Sole Blu.

I am going to have to start re-cracking Snapdragon tonight or tomorrow. I've let it - and everything - slide for a really, really long time. (Have you seen Extreme Steve lately? No, neither have I.) I also have a new funnybook in mind that I might try to draft out for Sasha to draw, and at least one script idea that it is officially well past time I got started on. Let's make it a productive January, rather than an oh-god-I-wish-I-was-dead January like usual.

On a more meat-and-potatoes-and-bedroom-windows level, there is a very wide gulf between the things I am doing, and the things I would like to be doing. But I can see the other side from here.

Posted by tederick at 1:00 PM in blood & podcastery & shinybludisks & the process
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Ah, the first work day of the new year. It's like a firestorm of Out Of Office Assistants any time I try to do anything.

How was everyone's New Year's? Mine was brilliant. I mean, this might actually have to re-qualify how I feel about the whole holiday. New Year's Eve can actually be not disappointing. Sarafina and I (hey, there it is) went to the Skin Tight show at the Gladstone with Alex and Theo, and... well I guess it's been a few years since I've gone to one of those things, but they pretty much cranked it out of the park this time. Mark was hosting, and he killed it. Killed it. Plus there was this girl from Los Angeles who did a number to GNR's "Night Train" - I mean, who the fuck chooses "Night Train?" Those in the know, that's who. And Mark's Robert Plant dealie was just phenomenal. So yeah: red curtains and eleven dollar martinis. My kind of New Year's. I was so happy by midnight I actually started dancing. Those who are, again, "in the know," will see the significance in that.

New Year's Day involved not a lot of sleeping, some banana bread, and a decent amount of Super Mario 3, so that worked out pretty well too. Last night I passed out around 7, woke up at 11, did some emailin' and phone callin', was asleep again at midnight and slept until 7:30. So far, 2008's my kind of year.

Hey, shit, I'm about to have to fend off the lady whose cubicle I stole. And I left my cane-sword at home! Good thing I built the trebuchet. Also: this cubicle is, without exaggeration, currently lousy with rum. The fight will go well.

While I'm off doing that, here's what Neil Gaiman said for 2008 well-wishes, in lieu of what I wanted to say:

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art - write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."

Thanks Neil.

Posted by tederick at 9:17 AM in j-o-b & jedi antics
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