In the past month, sales are up! I suspect that due to The Force Awakens, my Imperial Navy Admiral T-shirt/Polo design is getting some extra attention. But at the same time, the "There are Four Lights" T-shirt has also had more sales than usual too.
As one of my many artsy sidelines, I've been tinkering over the last few years with some T-shirt designs on Spreadshirt. It's actually a rather interesting challenge to create fair use/dealing designs that still manage to play with pop culture memes and make me some pocket money too.
In the past month, sales are up! I suspect that due to The Force Awakens, my Imperial Navy Admiral T-shirt/Polo design is getting some extra attention. But at the same time, the "There are Four Lights" T-shirt has also had more sales than usual too.
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An update on my dissertation work: one of my chapters is on David Simon's acclaimed TV series The Wire, and I've been doing some background on his previous works leading up to the magnum opus. I'd already read Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets many years ago, and I'm currently making my way through The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, the follow-up co-written with Ed Burns.
The Corner spawned a 2000 HBO miniseries which was in many ways a prelude to The Wire. But among the advantages of going back to the original book -- such as finding incidents, dialogue, and general observations which didn't make it into the adaptation of The Corner, but instead found their way into The Wire's various seasons -- is its inclusion of a detailed map of the West Baltimore "corners" circa 1993. I've been dabbling with making (via Ortelius) a better version (work in progress above), since the only digital version I could find (see below) was pretty low-res, and couldn't be manipulated in ways that might come in handy later. (Also, making my own version of city maps helps sidestep some annoying copyright troubles with Google maps etc. were the dissertation ever published.) This is a bit of a dry run for a more ambitious map of locations from The Wire, as well as adapting some Batman and Zelda video game maps, since one of the recurring themes of the project will be the spatial aspects of new media epics. A few months back, my two-word entry for The Economist's regular caption competition was used for the title of an article on Kim Dotcom's bust and the FBI shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload. Well, now I've won the latest competition outright, bringing my grand total of words written for TE to eleven! This week's contest asked readers "to provide a pithy caption for a photo accompanying an article in our Business section. Both parties contesting America's presidential election are pouring money into tasteful, fair-minded campaign ads such as this one, showing an actor who looks like Paul Ryan tossing grandma off a cliff." My winning entry (posted under my TE online handle Vectorly) was: "Look, Grandma! You Can See Willie Horton from here!" For those who don't know (including some befuddled TE readers who posted after the results were announced), Willie Horton was a convicted murderer who, after being released from prison as part of a furlough program in Massachusetts in 1986, committed more violent crimes before being recaptured. When the then-governer of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis, ran for President as the Democratic nominee in 1988, a TV ad attacking Dukakis over the incident was run by supporters of George H. W. Bush. Media historians and industry operators still cite the Willie Horton ad as a milestone in negative campaigning (as well as race-baiting, as Horton was black and his mug shot was featured prominently in the ad). It is also considered one of the deciding factors in the election of Bush, Sr., who was never particularly popular with voters and had a problem with "the image thing." One first for Fan Expo Canada this year is an on-site wedding (of Amy and Rob Bridges -- congrats!), which had a superhero theme: the Green Lantern oath made it into the vows, naturally. Despite the presence of a platoon of Imperial stormtroopers and other costumed well-wishers, the wedding party itself was more traditionally attired. It's hard to say whether this equivocation represents a move toward or away from the mainstream -- whether Fan Expo is normalizing a themed wedding, or a traditional wedding is normalizing Fan Expo. My instinct is that it's the latter, especially judging by the increased middle-of-the-road press and marketing presence. CBC and CTV were here (either to cover as news or to promote), and press space on Saturday has been more limited than in previous years. "But you don't have to take my word for it." As Levar Burton pointed out in his Q&A session, it's important for people to see themselves represented in popular culture -- whether it's African-Americans (viz. Uhura on the original Star Trek), the disabled (viz. Geordi LaForge on TNG), and so on. And clearly part of the "and so on" are those to whom costumed superheroes or fictional space travellers have meaning. Burton's presence made this all-encompassing nature clear, as his iconic roles on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Reading Rainbow made clear. One would guess that the Trekkies would have been the majority of those who came out to see Burton, but despite the two shows being very different, there was a lot of overlap -- many fans of both in attendance. One even said he got into Reading Rainbow after getting into Star Trek. In fact, it seemed from where I was sitting that the Reading Rainbow crowd was more hard-core. When, after a number of predictable Star Trek questions ("What was your favourite TNG episode, Levar?"), someone asked about Reading Rainbow, the guy behind us blurted out, "Finally, a Reading Rainbow question!" If you have enough alma maters* you start to pick up some weird connections with fellow students, past, present, and future. One elementary school classmate of mine, for example, is now a famous porn star.** And my (first) university, McGill (Class of '04), has had more than its share of famous alumni, from Wilfrid Laurier to Leonard Cohen, and of course, the incomparable William Shatner. My high school, De la Salle College "Oaklands", on the other hand, once counted Keanu Reaves as its most famous former student (though he didn't graduate there). But how the sands of time have shifted! It seems that Gerry Donoghue, aka Gerry Dee, may be ascending the ranks, thanks to a new TV show based on his experiences teaching at Del. Human Target as seen in DC's Vertigo series The Human Target – aka Christopher Chance – is a comic-book character who is part bodyguard, part private detective, using his skills at martial arts and impersonation to protect the targets of assassins. Fittingly, the character of Christopher Chance has had a number of different incarnations both in comics and on television in its nearly forty-year history. Chance first appeared in Action Comics #419 (December 1972). Created by Len Wein and Carmine Infantino (co-creator of Barbara Gordon/Batgirl), Chance appeared as a dapper hero, in the mode of pre-superhero comics sleuths. In Human Target's "Action-Plus" segments following the main Superman story, Christopher Chance would disguise himself as people whose lives were threatened. Chance appeared regularly in Action Comics until 1974. In the late 1970s, Human Target moved to The Brave and The Bold and Detective Comics, titles which predominantly featured Batman. This was appropriate, as Christopher Chance's quick wits and skills at mimicry more resembled those of the Dark Knight than the Man of Steel. Chance even impersonated Bruce Wayne in a 1982 Batman story arc. Tim Roth stars in Fox TV's Lie to Me. In recent TV detective shows, whether the people investigating are police officers, lab technicians, or medical specialists, "People may lie, but the evidence never does" is a common maxim. Fox TV's new procedural drama Lie To Me, created by Samuel Baum, turns this formula around – people's lies are treated as evidence. Tim Roth leads Lie To Me's cast Lie To Me's protagonist is Dr. Cal Lightman, founder of a private-investigator firm that specializes in catching liars through scientific observation. Lightman, a cantankerous but brilliant man, is played by veteran actor Tim Roth with the requisite gusto, although so far the character has been a bit thinly written. The abrasive oddball professional with a dysfunctional home life, after all, is a mainstay of the TV detective genre, from Columbo to House. Kelli Williams plays Dr. Gillian Foster, who heads up the sub-plot investigations in various episodes, as well as acting as Dr. Lightman's second-in-command. Foster brings some warmth and balance to the team, opposite Lightman's lack of social graces, and she is noticeably similar to the second-banana role Williams took on the short-lived series Medical Investigation (2004-2005). Dr. Foster is not without her own problems, however, and hopefully early hints about her troubled marriage will bear dramatic fruit in subsequent episodes. Rounding out the cast are newcomers Brendan Hines and Monica Raymund. Hines plays Eli Loker, a member of Lightman's team who is brutally honest (and thereby provides comic relief). Raymund is Lightman's newest recruit, a savant at spotting liars who still has a way to go in honing her analytical skills. |
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