By Mark Frauenfelder at 3:35 pm Monday, Sep 1
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"Bad Toon Rising is a collection of drawings of well-known cartoon characters produced by amateur artists entirely from memory and without any reference materials whatsoever. We can all picture what Mickey Mouse or the Pink Panther look like in our minds, but getting that image down on paper is another matter! Never mind, we think that some of the worst drawings are the best."
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By Xeni Jardin at 2:45 am Monday, Sep 1
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I'm sitting inside a
trailer Prevost bus/RV belonging to an incredibly generous, satellite-dish-toting friend named
Wayne -- on the playa in Black Rock City, at Burning Man. It's 2:30AM. Most of the event has passed, but performance-explosions are going off all over the place, brightly illuminated art-cars are floating by in the sand, and people with el-wire woven into their hair and clothes are milling around in the middle of the night. The sky above is astonishingly clear. I can see the milky way. The Man has burned, as has the Temple of Honor, as has tons of propane, trash, wood, and just about everything else flammable you might imagine. I'm sleep-deprived, grimy, and covered in white alkaline dust. This was my first time out here, and while it's been a terrific adventure, I'm seriously looking forward to home and running water.
Here's one snapshot of an art-car; at left is a snapshot of the man just before the Burn. A few more of the photos I took out here will run with a forthcoming story in Wired News within the next couple of days. Oh,
Burningman Bingo? It was dead-on. I crossed off everything but the tofu pup wrapper and the deodorant rock.
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By Mark Frauenfelder at 2:41 am Monday, Sep 1
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The New York Times wrote a nice tribute to the late Jack "King" Kirby, the world's greatest comic book writer/artist.
There are elements of the "Star Wars" mythology in "Matrix." But the idea of a hero turning out to be the offspring of the most inconceivable evil, an immensely grim force that dominates out of pride, did not begin with George Lucas. In 1971 Kirby left Marvel after disagreements over rights to characters he had helped bring to life. After going to DC Comics, the home of Superman and Batman, Kirby hammered together a new vision: an expanse of planets and the gods that controlled them called the New Universe, which unfolded in the "New Gods," "Forever People" and "Mister Miracle" comics.
With the malevolent overlord, Darkseid — who turns out to be the father of Orion, a damaged warrior-hero who has to battle a barely sublimated streak of cruelty — Mr. Lucas's "Star Wars" archvillain, Darth Vader, can clearly be glimpsed.
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