It's only funny 'cause it's true. Welcome back to the MCU, Spider-Man!
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Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).
Mac Sabbath is your new Master of Reality
I have lots of complicated feelings when it comes to tribute bands. On one hand, people want to hear stuff they like, and that's entirely respectable. On the other, my belief in creativity and originality wavers when I see tribute bands selling out venues and going on tour just for pretending to be another band (seriously, have you seen how many professional Beatles cover bands there are out there? And that's to say nothing of Bad Fish). On the third hand, as a musician, I completely understand the impulse to get together with your friends and play some music that you enjoy and also make money while you're at it.
And then there the Weird Tribute Bands, towards whom I have absolutely no misgivings (obviously; I play in an all-male post-rock Lady Gaga tribute band, who the hell am I to judge?). Bands like Mini KISS (all members have dwarfism) and Lez Zeppelin (all female). And now, there's something even better:
Mac Sabbath, the world's first and only (so far) McDonald's-themed Black Sabbath tribute band.
You know what they say: nothing can kill the Grimace.
The First Ever Photograph of a Human
Here's some fun weird history for your Friday enjoyment!
From Wikipedia:
"Boulevard du Temple", taken by Louis Daguerre in late 1838 or early 1839 in Paris, was the first photograph of a person. The image shows a street, but because exposure time was over ten minutes, the traffic was moving too much to appear. The exception is the man at the bottom left, who stood still getting his boots polished long enough to show.
My ARISIA Convention Schedule
I'll be at the Arisia sci-fi / fantasy convention in Boston this coming weekend, speaking on a few panels and generally hanging around. I've never been to Arisia before, nor have I ever been on any convention panels, so I'm doubly excited (and very much hoping that I don't say anything too stupid).
Anyway, here's where you can find me. Come say hi!
- Neurodiversity in SF/F
Saturday, 11:30am-12:45pm in Marina 2 (2E)
How are autistic and other neurodiverse characters presented in SF/F? What works handle this subject well, and which do not? Who are some neurodiverse authors whom we should all be reading? And how, as a genre, do we move beyond stories only focused on a “cure”?
—with Don Sakers, David G. Shaw, and JoSelle Vanderhooft
DC Comics on the Small Screen: 2015 Edition
Saturday, 5:30-6:45pm in Marina 2 (2E)
For all of DC’s much-disdained recent lack of creative success on the big screen, they’ve put together a string of received cartoons going back over twenty years ranging from episodic (Batman) to serialized (Young Justice) to goofy (Teen Titans Go). They’ve also launched multiple TV series, including Arrow, The Flash, and Constantine, even as their actual comics have become a pit of creative despair. We’ll discuss DC’s success (and occasional flop) over the years on television.
—with Nomi S. Burstein, George Claxton, Jaime Garmendia, Dan Toland
Behind the Bristol Board: Comics as a Profession
Saturday, 7-8:15pm in Marina 4 (2E)
If you’re a comics fan, odds are you’ve thought about what it’s like to actually work in the comics industry. This panel will feature working professionals explaining the ins-and-outs of everything from writing and drawing, to editing and publishing. It’s everything you ever wanted to know about being a comics pro, but were afraid to ask.
—with Ken Gale, Bettina Kurkoski, Alisa Kwitney Sheckley, Mercy E Van Vlack
Superman and Religion
Sunday, 11:30am-12:45pm in Burroughs (3E)
Superman remains an enigmatic figure in American mythology. Created by two Jewish kids from Cleveland, perhaps as a metaphor for Jewish assimilation, Superman also represents a Christlike figure in many stories, and the screenwriter of Man of Steel consulted, among other sources, the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh. Does the wide cast of Superman’s religious influences render him a defender-of-all-faiths? Can any religion claim him as one of their own? Come explore this thorny issue with Arisia 2015.
—with Michael A. Burstein, Ken Gale, Alex Jarvis, Daniel Miller
Story Autopsy
Sunday, 2:30-3:45pm in Alcott (3W)
Our group of panelists takes a few well-known works of genre fiction and picks them apart to show you how they work, why they work, and in some cases point out the parts that don’t work at all. If you don’t like spoilers this is probably not the panel for you.
—with M. L. Brennan, James L. Cambias, John P. Murphy, Ian Randal Strock
The Medium and the Message
Sunday, 5:30-6:45pm in Hale (3W)
A story can be told in a multitude of formats. Anything from short stories and epic poems to graphic novels and screenplays can be used to convey a narrative. How do the various formats compare? Do certain genres work well in one but not another? What about translations from one medium to another? How can you tell which works best for your story?
—with Heather Albano, Alexander Feinman, John G. McDaid
Writing and Racial Identity
Monday, 1-2:15pm in Hale (3W)
What does your race have to do with what you write? Depending on your race, are certain topics forbidden to you? Obligatory? None of the above? If your race matters, how do you know what it is? By what people see when they look at you, or by what you know of your genetic background? By your cultural upbringing? By what you write?
—with John Chu, Mark Oshiro, Victor Raymond
If "It's All In Your Head," And Your Head Is A Part Of Your Body...Doesn't That Make It Physical?
I read an article by a man named Ronald Chase, a neurobiologist (and apparently gastropod sex expert?) who made the decision to pursue his field instead of going to law school after his brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia:
"I began to believe that mental illnesses—at least the major disorders like schizophrenia—are not in the mind but, rather, in the brain. I reasoned that no nonphysical thing, a mind, could possibly govern a physical thing like the brain, and it was the brain that mattered, because it controls behavior. The mind, I concluded, must be an aspect of the brain’s function."
This got me thinking about the differences between mental and physical health. I thought about the 24-year-old woman who was recently found to have been living without a cerebellum, and my friend's token "crazy ex" in college whose irrational behavior towards the end of their relationship was found to be literally caused by a benign tumor in her brain that was putting pressure on the part of the brain that controls reasoning. As much as we like to think of our personalities and intelligence and higher processes in general to be something ethereal or mystical, the truth is that we are all organic machines, and our brains aren't that different from computers — or, for that matter, any other organ in our bodies. The difference between depression and Irritable Bowel Syndrome is really just about which part of your body the problem exists in (one makes you feel like shit, and one makes you literally shit?).
Read More"The World Is, Generally and On Balance, A Better Place To Live This Year Than It Was Last Year"
...according to this uplifting article by Ramez Naan, anyway, but also according to Spider Jerusalem, my favorite fictional anti-authoritarian druggie bastard liberal journalist of all time, whose voice and opinion are clearly superior to any non-fictional persons real or dead (other than Warren Ellis or Hunter S. Thompson).
So before you pop that bottle of bubbly, here's one of my favorite short comic book stories of all time—about winters, futures, and totally sweet snowblaster guns. Happy new year!
Legal-y things: Transmetropolitan was written by Warren Ellis with art by Darick Robertson. I did a quick & simple Google search for these page images, but it was originally published by in "Vertigo: Winter's Edge #3" and later re-printed in Transmetropolitan Vol. 4: "The New Scum". And you really need to read Transmet if you haven't yet.
Also, thanks to Jenna Scherer for reminding me of my own annual posting of this delightful message.
JRR Tolkien's Top 10 Tips For Writers
I feel like I'm supposed to make a snarky comment about Peter Jackson* in order to contextualize this, but the truth is, I haven't even seen The Desolation of Smaug or Battle of the Five Armies yet, because I found An Unexpected Journey to be little more than an overlong cut-scene from a corny Tolkien-themed Disney ride. But anyway, this is still fun!
*For the record, I was even skeptical when Jackson was first announced as the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, because he was one of my favorite go-to directors for my frequent Horrible & Horribly Offensive B-Movie nights back in high school. Don't get me wrong, Beautiful Dreamers and The Frighteners are both pretty fantastic — but Meet the Feebles? Dead-Alive? Bad Taste? Let's just say that he's better telling someone else's story than his own.
Although, he did give us this:
Glenn Beck's Grim n' Gritty Ninja Santa Claus Reboot
Obviously I talk a lot about mental health and the fair treatment of human beings on my website; as such, it would be unfair for me to make light of the "rare neurological condition" with which pundit Glenn Beck has been recently diagnosed.
...
Everyone got the giggles out now? Okay. Because he's also working on a new gritty action-adventure book/movie about an immortal warrior called Santa Claus who roams the — desert? tundra? — protecting the wee Baby Jesus, presumably from the legions of Hellish MainstreamLiberalMedia Spawn.
(but like no really why are there camels and also snow?)
Here's what Beck himself had to say about it:
My Santa, the Immortal is a very different guy. He starts out right before the birth of Christ, and he is up in the mountains. And he is a warrior. He has lost his wife, and he’s a sad individual. And he’s got a son who loves dearly, and he lives up in the mountains, and he hunts for food.
He eventually is hired by three wise men because he can negotiate, because nobody is going to rip them off, and he knows how to get the very best gifts. And so he negotiates with gold, frankincense, and myrrh and then has to go protect that gold, frankincense, and myrrh and then through a series of events is left there to protect the Christ child, never interacting, just watching.
He doesn’t know who he is, and he goes darker and darker in his whole life as he watches this boy grow, but he’s always touched by him, but he doesn’t realize it until the Sermon on the Mount. [. . .]
He makes a pact. Little does he know in that pact he has now become immortal, because as he watches the crucifixion from afar and cannot get close to it, cannot stop it, he feels he fails again. He runs off before the resurrection. A thousand years pass until he meets another little boy, a little boy that happens to grow up to be what we know as Saint Nicholas...
Beck does ultimately go on to make some salient points about mythology — how Santa Claus as we currently know him has in fact evolved over the years, an amalgamation of multiple cultural incarnations filtered through the veil of Clement Clarke Moore and years of Coca-Cola ads. As such, this badass eternal ninja warrior version of the man in red is just Beck's contribution to the ongoing memetic traditions of the Santa Claus, in the same way that Greek and Norse mythology (and, of course, comic book superheroes) has changed and been re-appropriated over time. It's a high aspiration, sure, to deem yourself The One To Revolutionize The Santa Claus Myth For Future Generations, but then, I guess he can't be blamed for trying. After all, my friend Aisha did put out that fantastic controversial piece last year about Penguin Santa Claus, which I thought was a great idea (and which Glenn Beck surprisingly didn't say anything stupid about?) — so I guess that change has got to start somewhere, right?
Then again, Glenn Beck's last attempt at a Christmas revolution featured him and — ah, you're right, I'm sorry. Rare neurological condition and all that. It's not polite to laugh.
Tauntaun + Baked Potato = BAKED POTAUNTAUNS
I thought they smelled good on the outside!
It’s an age-old story: A loyal Tauntaun sacrifices itself to provide life-saving warmth for a future Jedi in its steamy entrails.
Now recreate the legend at your own dinner table. The Tauntaun—faithfully played by the baked potato on your plate—serves himself up to a young Jedi master, aka a lump of butter frozen into a Luke-like shape using the included freezer mold. Reenact the fateful moment when Han eviscerates the beast: slice open your erstwhile companion and insert Luke inside.
Add some salt, a sprinkle of The Force (or sour cream), and enjoy your mouthwatering dinner.
This is incredible. It's like all the misogyny and police shootings and CIA torture and climate change and other things making me horribly, horribly depressed have all been wiped away like clean white snow on Hoth's frozen tundra!
The Baked Potauntaun Team is currently trying to raise $75,000 on IndieGoGo. As of this posting, they have....$700. But I have faith! Because who doesn't want a Baked Potauntaun?! Plus, that Luke Butter Mold and Lightsaber Butter Knife would go great with my Han Solo in Carbonite ice cube trays. So, ya know, if you're looking for a Christmas gift for that special me...
Performances, Publications, Panels, and More!
There's lots going on at Camp Thom Dunn (is there ever not?); and so, I interrupt your regularly scheduled weird nerd pop culture discoveries & progressive political rantings to, ya know, talk about myself for a minute.
- As previously mentioned, my play True Believers is now available for purchase through Indie Theater Now, and you should totally go buy it, because it only costs $1.29, so why the hell not? (I'm also considering making the script available through Amazon's self-publishing portal, if there's demand for it, even though I do have some ethical issues with Amazon as a company. But dammit if they're not cheap and convenient)
- I will be returning to rock the Mortified Boston Christmas show on Friday, December 19 at Oberon in Harvard Square. Tickets are $15 and they're going fast, so hurry up if you want to see me play some really, really, really bad and embarrassing songs I wrote in high school! Which obviously you do.
- My words will grace the stage for the third consecutive year in the Boston One-Minute Play Festival (#OMPF). The festival is the brainchild of Dominic D'Andrea, who produces these little bursts in most major cities across the country. It's a fun night — as writers, we're not really given any prompts other than "60 seconds, one page, MAX," so it's neat to see what kind of thematic patterns emerge through that. It's a neat way to gauge the temperature of a city, and the topics that consume its collective consciousness. My two scripts will be directed by Stephanie LeBolt and Hatem Adell, and they'll be performed on Monday and Tuesday, January 5 & 6, at Boston Playwrights Theater.
- I'm also excited to announce that I'll be featured on a whole bunch of panels this year at Arisia, Boston's largest and most diverse science fiction & fantasy convention, January 17 — 20 at the Westin Boston Waterfront. Here's where you can find me (when I'm not at the bar or in bed, I mean):
- Neurodiversity in SF/F — Saturday @ 11:30am in Marina 2
- DC Comics on the Small Screen — Saturday @ 5:30pm in Marina 2
- Behind the Bristol boards: Comics as Profession — Saturday @ 7pm in Marina 4
- We Know (Philip K.) Dick — Sunday @ 10am in Marina 2
- Superman & Religion — Sunday @ 11:30am in Burroughs
- Story Autopsy — Sunday @ 2:30pm in Alcott
- The Medium & The Message — Sunday @ 5:30pm in Hale
- Writing & Racial Identity — Monday @ 1pm in Hale
- AND SPEAKING OF COMICS! I have 2 more comics coming out through Grayhaven Press — one is a story in their Science Fiction anthology, and the other is a super villain story featured in their "You Are Not Alone" anti-bullying anthology. Both comics will feature art by my buddy Dave Ganjamie, and he and I particularly pumped to actually have some comics going on, after talking about it for the last couple of years. I'm not sure when these comics will actually be published, as I'm currently working on the scripts, but of course, and let you know and link to 'em when they are.
Oh yeah, and then after all that stuff's done, I'm getting married, but ya know, that's a minor event.
Brighten Your Day With Reverse-Nude Photography
Trevor Christensen is a Utah-based photographer who had the brilliant idea to take nude photographs. As in, he himself would be nude, and he would photograph people (with their permission, obvi). Hilarity ensues.
From the artist's statement:
As a photographer I’m deeply interested in the experience subjects have during portrait shoots. When I guide subjects through the process of making their photo, I seek to create a calm, comfortable environment where they can be at ease in front of the camera. Despite my best efforts, subjects often feel a sense of vulnerability during the process. No matter the scenario, this power imbalance seems like an almost inescapable part of the experience.
The photographer/subject paradigm is one of inequality. Nude Portraits is about leveling the playing field in an unorthodox way. Instead of focusing on bringing the subject to a place of ease, where I am, this project brings me to a place of vulnerability.
This vulnerability is achieved by making portraits without clothing. These are nude portraits in the sense that I, the photographer, am nude, while the subject is not.
Take a look below. And oh, fair warning — totally safe for work.
This Is What Black People Need To Do If They Want Authority Figures To Treat Them With Respect
Compare with...
And yet, we don't see this...
All comics (which are separate, but thematically connected) written and drawn by Matt Borrs.
Legal Experts Explain Why The Ferguson Grand Jury Was Set Up For Failure
Presented without comment, because it's self-explanatory.
The Secret 9/11 Subtext of Anna Kendrick's Pitch Perfect; or, the Barden Bellas were an Inside Job
OPEN YOUR ACA-EYES, SHEEPLE.
So Anyway, Here's That Song That Charlie Manson Cut With The Beach Boys
In celebration of his upcoming nuptials, I thought I'd remind you of my personal favorite piece of weird Charles Manson history (not that I have like, a running list but...ugh, whatever).
See, once upon a time, just a year before the fully-public crazy and the murder and stuff, Charlie Manson was shacking up with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. Sure, they shared some concubines, but more importantly, they made music together.
That's right, the Beach Boys collaborated with one of the most notorious Neo-Nazi cultist murderers in American history.
Read MoreHow Ferguson Showed Us The Truth About Police
Written/drawn/narrated by Molly Crabapple for Fusion. Presented without comment.
God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut would have been 92 years old today, Veterans Day 2014 — which is particularly ironic because although Vonnegut was a veteran himself, his anti-war sentiments were anything but subtle ("I'll be damned if it was worth it," he once wrote in a letter to home when he was deployed). Admittedly, he may have been biased, seeing as how he was held as a POW in World War II during the bombing of Dresden, which inspired his psuedo-autobiographical-time-travel-alien-abduction novel Slaughterhouse-Five. That's the power of science fiction, kids: when a personal experience is so traumatic that you struggle for years to find a way to write about it, just add some Tralfamadorians and some non-linear structure, and somehow through all that fantastical dressing, you will find the heart of the story that you were otherwise too close to and too scared to find...
Read MoreWTF Is Wrong With America: A Handy Infographic
Yeahhhhhhhhhhh this pretty much sums it up. Happy post-election day.
Some Zombie Contingency Plans, the One About Anamaria Marquez, and More Scary Stories
It's Witching Season once again, which means it's time to engage into the centuries-old practice of SPOOKY STORIES! WOOHOO! Here are a few personal favorites that I thought I would share...
Read MoreOn Superheroes, Death, and the Cycle of Eternal Return
There was a great piece on NPR the other day where Glen Weldon tried to explain to a curious friend the convoluted insanity of superhero comic book continuity — how the intrinsic nature of the genre's cyclical storytelling patterns is both endlessly frustrating but also part of its charm.
Or, as the saying goes — Comics, Everybody!
This weird cynicism towards death even seeps into the stories themselves. I recall a great issue of X-Factor where Siryn learned about the death of her father, the X-Man Banshee. She just laughed and laughed and laughed, which everyone around her found, well, pretty insensitive. "Come on, you guys," she explained. "We're superheroes! He's dead for now, sure, but he'll be back. I'm not worried about it." It made the rest of the team uncomfortable and concerned for mental well-being, but personally, I thought it was a pretty shockingly accurate depiction of mourning and the different ways that people learn to cope — particularly in a world where no one stays dead (except for Uncle Ben...so far).
There have been some great superhero death stories over the years (Ed Brubaker's Captain America comes to mind), and there have also been some great stories deconstructing the cyclical nature of superhero deaths (Grant Morrison's runs on both Batman and New X-Men...and also Flex Mentallo, and to a certain degree All-Star Superman and...yeah Grant's really into that, huh?). Weldon is correct to use the Asgardian "Ragnarok" to describe this phenomenon, and not just because of Thor. There's a longstanding tradition of death and resurrection in Western storytelling — Jesus being the obvious example, but really, nearly every major epic hero throughout history has had to undergo some kind of death or Underworld trial, and of course, the cycle of death and return also reflects the ever-changing seasons, and the orbit of the Earth, and so on. If we're running on the belief that superheroes are modern (corporate-owned) mythology, well, then the ubiquity of death makes perfect sense.
That being said, it's a particularly weird thing when it comes to narrative devices — death ups the stakes in any story, but at the same time, the promise of resurrection (no matter how much the company insists that this one will stick) robs the story of those stakes, and it turns death into a rote plot device, just another stage in the story. Death in comics is never "The End," which is either incredibly screwed-up, or a touching perspective on how our loved ones might live on in real life. But when death is just another phase in your story, I think that makes it harder to approach with the appropriate gravitas.
Meanwhile, "Death of [Superhero]" comics continue to sell incredibly well, and as long as people keep buyin' 'em, publishers will keep on killin' 'em and bringin' 'em back. Which, on a meta-reading level, means that comic book readers are trapped in the same endless cycle as the characters they read about, alternating between disillusionment and infatuation with the genre they grew up with. And we're stuck in it just the same.