300 For Emo Kids

Hi. I know, it’s been a while, but I’m back from my year of wandering in the desert that is Facebook. Frankly, that place sucks. Nothing but Farmville updates, Mafia Wars, and reminders that I forgot someone’s birthday.

Besides, I was just waiting for the right bit of pop culture to come along and give me a reason to start blogging again, and oh, wait, here’s something that combines two of my favorite things to write about... a preview for a comic book movie: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

If you've read this blog at all, you know I love me some comic book adaptations, but this one’s not exactly your standard superhero fare — more like a romantic hipster animé-inspired Nintendo game brought to life. And despite the fact that the trailer begins just like every other Michael Cera movie you’ve ever seen, this is not your typical rom-com. Just watch it, you’ll see.

Buzz has been building for this movie in geek circles for a while now, enough to get me to hunt down the source graphic novels/manga books (which, of course, I totally dig). I recently read a review of an early screening that said, “This movie is so true to the feel of the comics, it’s like 300 for emo kids.” Needless to say, I will actually be going to the theater for this one. And that doesn’t happen much anymore, especially since the theater chains are quietly raising prices this weekend. Way to make people want to stay home with their Blu-Rays even more, idiots.

Graphic Information

In yet another victory for geek culture, comics have now become mainstream enough that the New York Times has added three different bestseller lists for “graphic books” — hardcover, softcover, and manga. I haven’t decided yet whether this is a good or a bad thing, or maybe just one more sign that America is always about 20 years behind Japan in everything pop culture.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

Hopefully, lots of moviegoers in March. Based on the trailer, this is looking like a note-perfect translation to screen of one of my favorite stories ever—the trick will be to get people to watch a film about characters they don’t know. All the superhero archetypes are there, and while Watchmen may not have the immediate name recognition as the superheroes we all grew up with, the footprint it left on pop culture is hard to measure (although Entertainment Weekly did a pretty good job). Suffice it to say, Watchmen is directly responsible for the current dark, “grown-up” tone of superhero stories, where heroes are real people who feel the effects and consequences of each and every one of their actions. Without it, the modern era of comic book movies—from Tim Burton’s take on Batman all the way through to The Dark Knight—may never have come to pass, and you can even argue that its influence spread even farther into sci-fi and fantasy, leading to the strong presence of geek culture that rules the entertainment world. By making comics acceptable for grownups, there suddenly emerged legions of adult fans who showed they were willing to pay good money if movies and TV took them and their interests seriously. Without those fans, we might never have seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer reborn on TV or Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy make it to film, not to mention projects like Lost, 300, and the upcoming Star Trek reboot. So after all that, you can understand why there’s a bit of weight of expectation surrounding this movie. Enjoy the trailer:

What A Year For A New Year

As a whole, I can’t say I’m sorry to see 2007 go. But at least it ended well. I had no problems traveling around the holidays, got to spend some quality time with the fam, slept a lot, ate a lot, and got some great Christmas presents. In fact, I’m using the biggest one to create this post. (Thanks, Mom and Dad and Christmas bonus check!)

As for the media/entertainment-type stuff, I’d say I did all right:

Raising Sand, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
El Corazón and Washington Square Serenade, Steve Earle
3D, Casey Driessen
The Song Remains The Same [Remastered and Expanded], Led Zeppelin
The Terror, Dan Simmons
The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, Alex Ross
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier, Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill
Lost: Season 3

Not too shabby. I also saw The Golden Compass while I was home, which was OK, but not amazing. I think I suffered from having read the book, because I sent the whole time comparing and not just watching the movie. As is usually the case, the book is better.

Holiday Road

With an extra day off, I had planned a big post to catch up on all the stuff that’s been occupying my free time lately, but instead I spent the weekend watching the Rapids beat LA in front of a sellout crowd, getting drunk, suffering a bad hangover, and best of all... working. Needless to say, I’m a little worn out from this long weekend, so no pretty pictures this time, just a list. I’m sure you’ll all survive.

MOVIES
Just one, an oldie but goodie: Fistful of Dollars. I had never seen this groundbreaking Western from beginning to end, but spending all day on the couch yesterday gave me a chance to explore the free movie list in the OnDemand menu. When I saw they had a remastered widescreen version of Fistful, I couldn’t pass it up. The movie itself was decent, although I thought both Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa’s samurai masterpiece that inspired FOD) and Last Man Standing (a remake of FOD starring Bruce Willis set during Prohibition) were both a little better in providing motivation for the main character. On the other hand, Clint Eastwood was pretty bad-ass as the laconic but deadly gunslinger, but I kept getting distracted by Ennio Morricone’s eccentric spaghetti western score.

BOOKS
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke. Another re-read I pulled from my shelves recently. Here’s my original review. I didn’t get quite as caught up in the story this time, but that was partly because I was conciously reading slowly to appreciate the richness of the language. Clarke does some amazing things with her words, and more than once, I found myself longing for a return to the days of a more formal approach to the English language. There are some amazingly haunting passages in what is at times a dark and mysterious book, and the payoff was just as good the second time around. UPDATE: Happily, I’ve just discovered that Clarke has a collection of short stories, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, that take place in or are related to the world of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and that she is also at work on a sequel of sorts that follow some of the lesser characters from the novel. Looks like I’ll be making a trip to the bookstore tomorrow.

COMICS
The Losers: Complete Series. A gripping and epic international espionage story about an Army Special Forces unit that goes “ghost” after the government tries to kill them. Since everyone thinks they’re dead, they are able to work under the radar to unravel the twisted threads leading back to the mysterious man with CIA ties who set them up. Kinda like the A-Team, only people actually die, and they don’t build some kind of crazy tank thing at the end of every issue. For a story told in comic book form, it was heavily cinematic (both in scope and in the way artist Jock made use of the frames), so it was no surprise to me to find out that a movie is in the works.

The Walking Dead, Vol. 6. More great post-apocalyptic zombie stuff. This story gets crazier and and life just keeps getting harder for the rag-tag band of survivors, much like I would assume the world would be if it was overrun with shuffling brain-chompers.

Spike: Asylum. Buffy’s second-favorite vampire gets tricked into entering an asylum where they claim to be able to “cure” vampires and demons. Predictably, this is not the case, and Spike meets some other wrongly-imprisoned peeps and helps them get free, smashing a lot of stuff in the process. Good solid fun.

Star Wars: Legacy, Vol. 1. It’s 120 years after Return of the Jedi. The Empire has rebuilt itself and formed an alliance with a new order of Sith, who promptly betray the Imperials and take over the galaxy. Now the remains of the Empire, the Republic, and a new order of Jedi (including Luke Skywalker’s grandson, who has a rather rocky relationship with his Jedi heritage) must band together to fight the Dark Side once more. (Hey, I should write cover blurbs.)

MUSIC
Dinosaur Jr., Beyond. Awesome comeback album from the original lineup. J Mascis is a god.
Travis, The Boy with No Name. More mellow Brit rock, less politics than the last album. All good.
Bright Eyes, Cassadaga. Folky, rootsy, kinda mediocre.
Stars, Do You Trust Your Friends? Remixes and cover versions of Stars’ Set Yourself on Fire album, all created by (as the title implies) their friends in other bands.
Explosions in the Sky, How Strange, Innocence. More back catalog post-rock instrumentals from this Texas group.
William Parker & Hamid Drake, Piercing the Veil. Jazzy bass and percussion, with a slightly African slant. Maybe a little esoteric for my tastes. Dad, I’m sending this one your way.
Rush, Snakes & Arrows. Decent, but nowhere near their classic work. It might be time for these guys to coast on their greatest hits.
Adult Swim, Warm & Scratchy. A free mix from the Adult Swim website featuring bands like TV on the Radio and Asobi Seksu. One more reason to love Cartoon Network.

Spring Cleaning

The windows are open, the sun is shining, and it’s time to clean out the clutter. In that spirit, here’s a bunch of stuff I’ve been meaning to review but just haven’t gotten around to:
iConcertCal. This plugin for iTunes has become one of my favorite technological advances of recent months. Install this puppy, enter the city where you live, and it will look at all the artists in your iTunes library and tell you when any of them are playing nearby. Unlike some other concert calendar plugins I’ve tried, this one actually covers all the major (and nearly all the minor) venues in Denver and Boulder. It’s also a timesaver, since I don’t have to go through and manually enter artists I’m interested in, and I no longer have to constantly browse multiple websites in search of shows to see. In the two days since I downloaded iConcertCal, it’s already led me to upcoming shows by Bloc Party and Rush (at Red Rocks!). Sweet.
The Wire: Season One. It’s taken me a while, but I finally started listening to everyone and their brother who have been telling me how amazing this HBO series is. You were right, OK? It’s a great show, and it’s eating up all my free time lately. I hope you’re happy.
Modest Mouse, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. Johnny Marr (formerly of The Smiths and The The) climbs on board for the latest (and poppiest) Modest Mouse album, and the result is a rollicking rock album that makes me want to dance every time I listen.
Citizen Kane. I picked this special edition up at Costco for the criminally low price of $8.99. It had been a long time since I had last seen this movie (universally accepted as one of the greatest films ever made), and this crisp restoration gave me a new appreciation for it. At first glance, the movie seems to be full of clichés (lighting, storytelling, camera moves), until you realize that in 1941, nobody else was doing this stuff. At the time, Orson Welles’ masterpiece was incredibly groundbreaking, and set the template for decades to come. (Apparently, the making-of documentary on the second disc is pretty good too, but I haven’t gotten around to watching that yet.)
Conan, Volumes 1 and 2, Dark Horse Comics. When I was a little kid, my dad used to tell me stories about Conan to put me to bed. I’m not sure what his source material was, but as far as I can remember, they always followed the same basic pattern (Conan comes to a village, a beautiful woman/village leader asks for his help from the monster/bandits/tyrant threatening the village, Conan defeats them, gets his reward, and continues on his way), and that since I was 4 or 5 years old at the time, they were about as G-rated as a Conan story can get. But thanks to Dad’s stories, interest in the barbarian’s adventures always stuck with me, and I’ve continued to read and watch Conan’s various incarnations through the years, mostly with differing levels of disappointment. So when I saw that Dark Horse was going begin adapting Robert E. Howard’s original stories in comic book form, I was a little skeptical. After all, Marvel Comics’s ongoing series in the 70’s and 80’s left a lot to be desired. But Kurt Busiek and Cary Nord have done a masterful job with this current incarnation, and have treated Conan rather faithfully to Howard’s original vision: A thief and a warrior, a lover of wine and women, at heart a bit of a country boy often confused by civilization, but never afraid to let his sword do the talking. More than any other version since Howard’s original stories, this series is truest to the spirit of Conan, and the gorgeous art only helps to make it an enjoyable read.
Hellboy: Blood & Iron. I’ve said before that Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy is one of the most underrated comic book movies ever made. Thankfully, a sequel is in the works, but until then, I’m happy to watch the latest in a series of animated movies from Cartoon Network starring the voices of nearly all the actors from the live action movie. For a “cartoon,” this movie (featuring a host of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and the goddess of death), is pretty damn creepy.
It’s Superman!, Tom de Haven. A reimagining of the Superman origin myth, set against the backdrop of 1930’s America (no “Metropolis” here, only real cities and cameos from plenty of historical figures). I’m not sure I agree with all of de Haven’s characterizations (Clark Kent as a intellectually “simple” farmboy?), but it was an interesting revisionist take on how Clark, Lois Lane, and Lex Luthor came together for the first time.

Lion’s Share

Pride of Baghdad, Brian K. Vaughn and Niko Henrichon. Damn. Every once in a while, I get lucky with an impulse buy that turns out to be so much better than I expect, and I wonder why I didn’t buy it sooner. This graphic novel has been out for a few months, and I’ve heard plenty of good things (not to mention Vaughn is one of my favorite writers in modern comics), but I just got around to picking it up today. The “based-on-a-true” story follows a group of lions (freed from the Baghdad Zoo by an American bomb) as they struggle to survive in the devastated city. The art is lush and cinematic, the writing is original and inventive (the lions serve as allegory for the people of Baghdad, but it’s handled with subtlety), and I’m kicking myself for not buying this sooner. Definitely worthy of a spot on my bookshelf.

Double Trouble

Two things taking up a lot of my time recently:Bloc Party, A Weekend in the City. An outstanding second effort from my favorite new English band. Darker and more dense than their debut, Silent Alarm, I’ve had this for two days and listened to it 7 times already. By far, the best album I've bought in the past 6 months.

The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard. I’ve always been and always will be a comic book reader, but as I’ve gotten older, my tastes have turned away from traditional superhero stories. Most of what I like to read (Fables, Y: The Last Man, Rex Mundi) is more adult fare, often dealing with an alternate history or apocalyptic scenario, some sort of twist on reality as we know it. Recently, I’ve been hearing some praise for The Walking Dead, so I picked up the first four collections at the library. Borrowing heavily from various influences (28 Days Later, The Stand, Dawn of the Dead), the storyline follows a Kentucky policeman named Rick Grimes who awakens from a coma to find that the country is overrun by zombies. As he adjusts to the new world order, Rick heads to Atlanta to search for his wife’s family and joins with a group of survivors as they struggle to find a safe haven. With some striking black-and-white art, the authors are able to tell a compelling story of the survivors’ struggle to retain their humanity while doing what they must to keep themselves alive.

Lazy Sunday

Other than making a triumphant return to the racquetball court this morning, I didn't do much this weekend except watch movies and read comic books. After a very long 4-day week at work, it was nice to just chill and leave a Mike-shaped dent in the couch. Here's how I passed the time:

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

The Matador

Fables Vol. 8: Wolves

Glacial Period

Angel: Spotlight

Spike vs. Dracula

Ultimate Iron Man Vol. 1

Ultimate X-Men Vol. 11: The Most Dangerous Game

Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 13: Hobgoblin

Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 14: Warriors

Yeah, I'm a nerd. But I enjoyed my weekend anyway.

Behold the Right Hand of Doom

If you pay any attention to the "What's Keeping Me busy" lists on the right side of my blog, you may have noticed I've been reading a lot of graphic novels and paperback collections of comic books lately. This is largely due to the happy discovery I made a few months back that the Indianapolis Public Library has a rather extensive collection (check out 741.5 for you Dewey Decimal nerds out there) of classic comics (lately I've read some older Justice League of America, Thor, and Superman) as well as plenty of more current stuff (100 Bullets, Y: The Last Man, Fables, Alan Moore's ABC stories). Like any library, there's a few annoying gaps in some of the more popular series, but they've still got enough to have kept me devouring 8-10 books at a time for the past few months. Yesterday, while looking for something else, I discovered that there are also some comic collections to be found in the Young Adult section, including, strangely enough, Mike Mignola's Hellboy. You may recognize the name from the recent movie starring Selma Blair and Ron Perlman as the titular red demon. Having ripped through a couple of collections yesterday afternoon, I picked up the DVD later in the day to see how the movie compared.

The comic itself is pretty great stuff. The drawings are dark, angular and heavy on the black ink, setting the perfect tone for a book that deals with the occult and folk legends. Mignola is obviously influenced by Jack Kirby in his art and H.P. Lovecraft in his writing, but as he explains in some of his collections, he often begins a Hellboy story by drawing on one of Europe's many folk or fairy tales, such as Eastern Europe's vampires, Ireland's Fair Folk, Russia's Baba Yaga, and stories of various Catholic saints. Having an interest in folklore myself, I found myself enjoying these stories. So I absorbed as much of the comic as possible and then watched the movie. I had already seen it once in the theater and enjoyed it, but had no knowledge of the source material at that point. In terms of Hellboy's origin, the movie stays pretty faithful. Hellboy (The Beast of Revelations fame) was summoned to our dimension in 1946 by a reincarnated Rasputin (working with the Nazis) to unlock a dimensional door with his magical stone right hand and usher in seven ancient demons who will begin the Apocalypse. But instead, Hellboy is saved from the Nazis and raised by a kindly professor who founded the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. HB eventually chooses to fight evil, becoming the BPRD's top agent and protecting the very world he was intended to end. The bulk of the movie takes place 58 years after Hellboy first appears, when Rasputin and several of his immortal Nazi henchmen once again try to use Hellboy to unleash the Apocalypse. The plot is loosely based on Mignola's first HB miniseries, Seeds of Destruction, but goes a bit more into Indiana Jones/X-Files territory than the comic ever does. This is mostly in order to sustain a two hour movie and never feels unnecessary or forced. I did have a few gripes: Hellboy himself spews a few too many cheesy lines for my taste, and the introduction of a human "liason" to ease the audience into Hellboy's character seems a little unnecessary, but by and large it's an entertaining movie, and fairly well-done as far as comic book adaptations go. Not a bad day's entertainment for $13 and a trip to the library.

Entertain me

Got the Super Bowl on in the background as I write this. The commericals seem pretty lame this year. And am I the only one who thought the Stones looked like a bunch of old men pretending to be rock stars? I mean, Mick can still move, but Keith and Ronnie shaking their hips just makes me feel sad. Charlie Watts still appears to be the coolest man alive, though. I don't think I've ever seen that dude break a sweat. Anyway, in between Big Ben's turnovers, I'll catch y'all up on a few things that I've been enjoying lately.

Fables
OK, this may be a little tough to explain, but I'll give it a shot. Fables is an absolutely genius comic book created by a guy named Bill Willingham. The basic idea is that all the fairy tales that we know and love exist. Any fairy tale kingdom from the Brothers Grimm, Mother Goose, or any story that's ever been made into a Disney movie is out there somewhere (sort of like Shrek in a way, but much darker and sexier). But some as-yet-unknown-to-me evil force called The Adversary gathered armies of all the fairy tale monsters and started conquering all these kingdoms. So the characters became refugees, and fled to the real world, where they established a hidden community called Fabletown in New York City for the human "Fables", and a farm in upstate New York for the non-humans. The series mainly follows the exploits of Bigby Wolf (of Red Riding Hood fame—get it? Big B[ad] Wolf?), now Sheriff of Fabletown, and Snow White, the deputy mayor, as they try to keep the communities together under the constant threat of invasion by The Adversary. It's such a fresh idea, and with an almost unlimited supply of characters and backstory to mine, it's easy for Willingham to continually provide an interesting twist on well-known folklore. There are currently 6 paperback collections of the ongoing series, and I just finished #4 this afternoon. I can't wait to read #'s 5 and 6.

Brokeback Mountain
Strip away all the hype and controversy around this movie, and you have a very familiar story: two people in love who have a lot of obstacles keeping them apart. The only reason it's any different this time is that the two people in love are both guys. But this film proves itself worthy of the hype, and what makes it worthwhile is two things. One, it's superbly acted, all the more so considering there were probably 1,000 total words of dialogue in the movie. Incredible performances from a lot of actors, but Heath Ledger was undoubtedly the standout. And two, as with all Ang Lee movies, Brokeback is visually stunning. Montana has probably never looked so beautiful, but Lee is even able to find the beauty in a dingy apartment kitchen. Regardless of the gender of the romantic leads, it's totally deserving of its Oscar noms.

Andrew Bird, Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production Of Eggs.
Gorgeous, catchy alt rock from a classically trained violinist who's into jazz and European folk, and has also performed with alt-swing outfit Squirrel Nut Zippers. How's that for a resumé? My brother Jeff gave me this album around Thanksgiving, but I'm just coming to appreciate it now. It's been on heavy rotation this past week. There's a definite Radiohead influence here, and some songs owe a debt to Cake as well, but Bird makes it a distinct sound of his own, and he certainly can turn a lyrical phrase. Perfect music for a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Well, as a fellow Miami alum, it's nice to see Ben get a ring. But, man, what a yawner of a game.

It's OK. Judge a book by its cover. It keeps Chip Kidd in business.

I had a pleasant surprise today when someone at work told me that Chip Kidd would be speaking at the Herron School of Design tonight. Kidd is the name in book cover design, and as close as it gets to a professional "hero" for me. He has worked for Alfred A. Knopf Publishing for 20 years, and after designing for such diverse authors as David Sedaris, James Ellroy, Augusten Burroghs and Cormac McCarthy, you probably have at least one of his covers on your bookshelf. Being a bit of a superhero/comic freak, Kidd has also designed hardcover collections of Charles Schultz's Peanuts and DC Comics's icons, and as I learned tonight, revamped the Superman and Batman logos for DC's new line of All-Star comics. And finally, Kidd is also the author of a novel, The Cheese Monkeys, a vaguely autobiographical account of his experience in design classes at Penn State and one of the only books I've ever read where the design takes an active role in how you read the book.

Kidd's talk tonight was pretty enjoyable, especially since Indy is pretty starved for appearances by designers (or important artists of any sort). My friend Michael (who's also my boss) and I grabbed this rare chance to get our collective design nerd on, and it gave me my first chance to see the inside of Herron's new digs on IUPUI's campus. Pretty sweet, and a far cry from the old Army barracks where I began my collegiate art classes. As a speaker, Kidd was everything I expected from a well-known art director: he was witty, self-deprecating, a little nerdy, and an arrogant bastard who managed to offend most of the audience at one point or another, but still had us all laughing most of the time. He was alternately instructive and dishy about subjects like the diva-ness of certain authors (I won't name names, but she recently switched topics from vampires to Jesus), and I was happy to hear that book publishing is not all that different from magazine publishing in terms of the cause of their headaches. Despite his rock star status, Kidd is the #2 art director at Knopf and has no desire to be #1 and take on all the administrative duties and direct flak involved. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who feels that way. But most of all, I enjoyed seeing some of his current work, and I came away feeling refreshed and wanting to try new things at work. Not a bad evening.

If you'd like to learn more about Chip Kidd, Jason Santa Maria has a similar post. Only with less rambling and more information. And nicer design.

Save some time for me

Busy, busy, busy. Between work, going to Chicago last weekend, and getting ready to host Thanksgiving, leisure time's been at a premium lately. I haven't even watched last night's extended Lost episode yet! However, I can't completely ignore pop culture. Here's what I've been occupied with lately:

Holiday movies. I feel like I've hardly seen any movies in the theater lately, mainly due to lack of interest in anything out there. I mean, I see more 50 Cent than I ever need to in the 20 minutes of MTV I watch each month. However, my moviegoing frequency is due for an upswing now that the holiday season has arrived. Harry Potter, Walk the Line, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang are just a few of the earliest group of movies on my list. Luckily, with 5 days of Thanksgiving vacation rapidly approaching, hopefully I'll get to catch a few of what seems to be a promising crop of holiday films. And with event pictures like King Kong and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe looming on the horizon, I have a feeling there will be plenty of reviews in my near future.

Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. OK, I admit it. I am way late to the party on this one. This is arguably the most influential comic of the last 25 years, andhere I am getting around to reading it 20 years after it was published. After hearing how great this book is for decades and reading Entertainment Weekly's recent article on the far-flung influence Watchmen has had on popular culture as a whole, I finally got around to checking the collected series out of the library. Well, I'm on board. Alan Moore is a god. It is worth every bit of hype it gets, and I haven't even finished it. Aside from setting the template for pretty much every superhero comic written since 1985, it's also a great story, and one of the first to really examine what drives a man or woman to put on a mask and risk having the crap kicked out of them every night. Much like Moore's equally excellent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, once I got around to reading Watchmen, I regretted having waited so long.

"Perfect Situation", Weezer. When I first picked up Weezer's latest, Make Believe, I was a little underwhelmed. It just seemed a little too bland and harmless. But lately, Weezer's made frequent appearances on my iPod, and it's led me to reconsider some of the hidden pleasures on the new disc. "Perfect Situation" happens to be one of them. There's something about this track that hits me the right way. And they made a great video featuring Elisha Cuthbert as the band's orginal lead singer. My only question is, what did No Doubt do to earn this not-so-subtle jab?

Star Wars Battlefront II for the XBox. And finally, the real reason my free time has been so scarce. This game managed to incorporate more strategy and depth while retaining all the "blast the stormtroopers, Ewoks, Jawas, and pretty much anything else that moves" of the original. Totally addictive.

Too pooped to pop

Long days at work lately = tired Mikey. Once I feel up to it, I'll have plenty to report. I'm reading some good graphic novels: Queen & Country: Operation Broken Ground and Y: The Last Man Vol. 1, I'll have my take on the new Weezer, Spoon, and Dave Matthews Band discs, and most likely I'll be able to report on my trip to Chicago this weekend to see Doves. I just learned via their news blog that their lead singer, Jimi, was under doctor's orders to rest his voice, so this will be their first show back from several weeks break. That could be good for this show, or completely disastrous. Here's hoping he's fully recovered, for this show as well as for the future of the band.