Blog Heap o'Art of Links

My college newspaper advisor had saying, “Save now. Save Often.” It’s been my mantra ever since. That and having an external hard drive. [Video upl by pixarsuperfan10 on YouTube]

Lovelace had a talent for popularizing sexual attitudes and for being at the center of the storm when change was occurring. Never a deliberate trendsetter, she nonetheless had an impact on what became normal in our bedrooms. She’s also one of the most misunderstood icons of the 1970s.

Walt Disney Co., the world’s largest entertainment company, plans to co-produce “Iron Man 3” with Beijing film studio DMG Entertainment as collaborations between Hollywood and Chinese studios increase. [So, in the comics, originally, Tony Stark became Iron Man after he was wounded, held captive, and forced to work for the Communists of North Viet Nam. Now, Walt Disney is going to be making Iron Man 3 with the descendents of Mao in China. Sure. Right. I see. No problem.]

...that is a real problem. a lot of good bass parts are hypnotic. my problem is they tend to hypnotize the bass player. too. But, we are not alone. I remember an interview where BB King said he doesn't play and sing at the same time cuz he has 'stupid fingers....'

The real major expenses for publishers are the Manhattan offices and other perks, like hiring English lit majors at 80K a year to do proofreading any decent high school grad could perform for a few hundred bucks per book. (Also, an established author can easily crowd source a book's proofreading to a small group of fans. I was part of such an effort recently. We produced an almost perfect draft in less than 24 hours in terms of correcting basic text errors and continuity issues.) The big publishers are going to die. It's that simple. There is simply no reason for them to exist any more. Many small agencies will emerge from the wreckage and earn their keep with meaningful service with a low overhead. A home office in the suburbs is just as good as a Manhattan skyscraper for this purpose.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee took his first phone call of his new talk radio call-in show yesterday. From "Mike in San Francisco." Remember: the show is being positioned by the Cumulus Media Network as the conservative show with "more conversation, less confrontation." Or, as it is certainly being pushed in the anti-Rush Limbaugh media, the show for moderate Republicans that will Take Rush Out. RINO Radio, as we noted here last week. … In fact, "Mike from San Francisco" turned out after some digging to be one Mike McVay, the senior vice president of programming for… wait for it… the Cumulus Media Network. None of which was acknowledged on the air by either "Mike from San Francisco" or, more to the point, Mike Huckabee. … the entire venture has taken onto itself the image that it is about far more than just a talk radio show. It is about replacing Reagan conservatism — represented here by Rush Limbaugh — with RINO Radio. …

Jim Marshall, who helped shape the sound of rock ’n’ roll with his groundbreaking amplifier designs, died in a hospice Thursday morning, his family said. He was 88.

[Print newspaper advertising, 1950-2011 - chart]

Funny comparison pictures

Fairey “used a collage of scenes from the Arab Spring to Moscow to Occupy Wall Street as a backdrop, images he said shows the dramatic accumulation of these global protests,” TIME wrote… TIME selected a [single] dead-beat American credit-junkie to symbolize the brave souls who risked everything in their struggle for freedom…

The $2 million barrier has been broken, with Nicolas Cage’s CGC 9.0 copy of Action Comics #1 now holding the all time auction record.

One of the last of the founding fathers of comic books, writer/editor/artist/publisher Joe Simon, died yesterday at the age of 98… first editor at Marvel Comics… [co-created] Captain America with artist Jack Kirby… [and] Guardian and the Newsboy Legion, the Boy Commandos, and Manhunter… created the romance comic… one of a handful of creators without whom the American comic book field would not be as we know it today….

Sure, DC got flak from racists who said Uncle Sam had to be white. DC bravely answered that the spirit of America could manifest in any of its citizens, and all the major media news media agreed, giving DC publicity that no amount of money could buy. Until then, Marvel Comics had threatened to surpass DC, but DC's bold integration of its world pushed Marvel back into second place. … [Ummm….]

a new digital pen called "Inkling" which allows artists the ability to draw on paper while the pen and receiver captures the drawing. The receiver is then hooked up to your computer and you can import the drawing … pen tip looks like a ball point pen but has pressure sensitivity. You can even create virtual "layers" on your paper which are imported into real layers in your graphic application. [promo video]

[In the song] Cobwebs by… Loudon Wainwright III… Maynard G. Krebs… is blamed for starting the vogue of using the word 'like' as a quotative.

A renowned political cartoonist whose drawings expressed Syrians' frustrated hopes for change was grabbed after he left his studio early Thursday and beaten by masked gunmen who broke his hands and dumped him on a road outside Damascus. One of Syria's most famous artists, Ali Ferzat, 60, earned international recognition and the respect of many Arabs with stinging caricatures that infuriated dictators including Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi and, particularly in recent months, Syria's autocratic Assad family. He lay badly bruised in a hospital bed Thursday evening with his hands swathed in bandages, a stark reminder that no Syrian remains immune to a brutal crackdown on a five-month anti-government uprising. Ferzat remembers the gunmen telling him that "this is just a warning,"

An Archive of Superman newspaper strips, and other interesting comic book stuff. … Superman daily strips began appearing in newspapers across the country on January 16, 1939. … A long time ago I set myself the task of assembling a collection of each one of these daily strips, and while I have many individual strips I have been lucky enough to have put together a near complete set of the Superman daily newspaper strips from mid 1959 through the end of the run in April 1966. I have created this web site, proudly, so that these strips can be read and enjoyed by Superman fans for the first time in 50 years.

Likely inspired by the Chinese art of paper-cutting, these highly-detailed false lashes by Taiwanese designer Ting yu Wang incorporates designs, animals, and sometimes even a whole scene that will fit atop your eyelids.

I discovered a sort of superheroish first issue from an unnamed company that I associated with monster titles that I generally passed over. … The book was Fantastic Four number one, and as I said, that was fifty years ago. I nearly missed it: a week or two later I fell across Fantastic Four number two; the book was bi-monthly back then and I doubt I would have bothered with it had I not read and loved the first issue. … —Mike Gold

When you first began Bone, did you ever expect the comic to become as big as it is? Oh no, my big hope was just that I'd be able to pay for my print run. When I first started, my best hope was just to make it through the first year because I had promised my wife that if it didn't work out in the first year — if I didn't have some reason to believe it would make money — I would actually give it up and go back to my day job as an animator. So I'm very grateful it worked out.

Alex Steinweiss, the man who invented the album cover in 1939, has died at the age of 94.

It's no secret that comics sales are declining. The numbers of readers are declining, the numbers of stores are declining, the amount of cash being made is declining. It happened once before when comics were sold only on the newsstand, back in the Neolithic Era for you who are too young to remember. What saved it then was the Direct Market but that's now killing it; the market is constricting and the numbers of readers are finite. What may save it this time is going digital — comics here on the web. The reason is this is where the eyeballs are. — John Ostrander

Oh Scotty, Montgomery Scott, Master of Transporter Controls. How we loved you. They didn't let you command the ship very often, but we know that's because Kirk knew you were the fuckin' balls and so he bitch-rapped you like McCartney did to Pete Best who was too good-looking and so he got Ringo Starr who was not. Although he did bang Barbara Bach. …

Rob Grill, the longtime lead singer and a very nearly original member of the Grass Roots, the immensely popular rock group of the 1960s and afterward, died on Monday in Tavares, Fla. He was 67. … complications of a head injury he sustained in a fall last month …

Consumers who illegally download copyrighted films, music or television shows might see their Internet speed slowed or access restricted under an industry anti-piracy effort announced on Thursday. U.S. Internet service providers, including Verizon Communications Inc, Comcast Corp, Time Warner Cable Inc, Cablevision Systems Corp and AT&T Inc agreed to alert customers, up to six times, when it appears their account is used for illegal downloading. Warnings will come as e-mails or pop-up messages. [Just another pretense for the IPs to throttle access]

Kevin Dunn, who has starred as Shia LaBeouf's father in all three Transformers films, had trouble watching his hometown take its lumps. "You know you're watching a popcorn movie, but it kind of hurts to see those buildings go," he says. "It was shocking. The Wrigley Building takes a hit. The Jewelers Building gets totally destroyed. Wow, those Decepticons didn't leave any brick unturned." … Says Dunn with a laugh: "I hope it doesn't hurt the Chicago psyche to know that we are becoming the go-to place for movie destruction."

As of today, July 1, the historic United Media is officially shutterinig its Madison Avenue doors. "Peanuts" and "Dilbert" recently took their fortunes to Universal Uclick in Kansas City, and then, early this year, the other shoe dropped: United Media announced that come June, it would outsource its newspaper features to Universal, ceasing to operate as a full-service syndicate and developer of talent. The Madison Avenue castle is dead. Long live the queen.

A healthy democracy needs a free and diverse press — but Americans today have access to more sources of news and opinion than ever before: more broadcast networks than before, cable networks, satellite TV and radio, the Internet. Any diversity argument for NPR and PBS is now a sad joke.

James Arness, a real-life World War II hero who came home to create television's ultimate lawman in Marshal Matt Dillon, died today at his entwood, Calif., home. He was 88.

Musician Gil Scott-Heron, who helped lay the groundwork for rap by fusing minimalistic percussion, political expression and spoken-word poetry on songs such as "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" but saw his brilliance undermined by a years-long drug addiction, died Friday at age 62.

The Walt Disney company has withdrawn its application to trademark the term 'SEAL Team 6', on its toys, games and a TV show... said it was withdrawing its application with the US Patent and Trademark Office "out of deference to the Navy's application" for these trademarks… [All the massive criticism and mocking had nothing to do with it. Micky, Goofy, and Donald going after Osama bin Beagleboy seemed like such a good idea at the time?]

The DC Universe has gone through so many needlessly confusing transformations a roadmap to the place would give M.C. Escher vertigo.

Amazon announced that eBooks are now the most popular sales format on Amazon.com, outselling the joint sales of hardback and paperback books. Since April 1, 2011, for every 100 print books Amazon has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle editions. It took Amazon just about four years to make that statement come true, and it represents the tipping point.

Noted illustrator and sometime comics artist Jeffrey Catherine Jones died yesterday of complications from emphysema.... In one of the highest compliments imaginable, illustrator Frank Frazetta called Jones "the greatest living painter."...

I badly want there to be a Wonder Woman movie, a film that captures the character's playfulness, her code of honor, her proud sexuality, and her plain old fashioned badassery. But it's incredibly difficult to imagine any Hollywood project capturing that mix....

Disney's planned remake of The Beatles' Yellow Submarine has been shelved. Oscar-winning director Robert Zemeckis had been planning a 3D performance-capture remake of the band's 1968 psychedelic classic. Hollywoodreporter.com has quoted sources as saying that the decision to pull the project is the result of the disastrous opening of the Zemeckis-produced Mars Needs Moms film. [Well, at least SOME good can come out of Mars Needs Moms bombing!]

The highest-graded copy of Amazing Fantasy #15, featuring the debut of Spider-Man from Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, has sold in a private transaction for $1.1 million. This is by far the highest price paid for a Silver Age comic book, and is an almost one billion percent increase from the 12¢ cover price.

Jerry in Fl comments on arloandjanis.com: I've had my eyes open for old Mark Twain books for years and last week, after looking at so many old books that I was getting dizzy and had to sit down, I found two 1897, excellent condition (and signed by the way) books. I had never known that he wrote a fictional book about Joan of Arc. I'm almost afraid to handle them....

Discovery's astronauts got a special greeting in advance of their space station departure. Actor William Shatner, who played Capt. James T. Kirk on the original "Star Trek" television series and movies, paid tribute to Discovery's voyages over the decades. "Space, the final frontier," Shatner said in a prerecorded message. "These have been the voyages of the space shuttle Discovery. Her 30-year mission: to seek out new science, to build new outposts, to bring nations together on the final frontier, to boldly go and do what no spacecraft has done before." Shatner's words were followed by Monday morning's wake-up music, "Theme from Star Trek."

A compelling argument for rebuilding came in the three weekends after the fire, when Smith and co-owner Steve Peace and their employees spent time at the drive-in cleaning up - and visiting with members of the public who stopped by, looking to reminisce about 60 years of outdoor cinema. "People just kept coming by, telling us about coming out here, and their parents and their grandparents coming out here," Smith said. "They bought out the rest of our sodas and chips and candy, and they told us their stories, and we told them our stories. "Before the fire, we didn't know what people thought about the Admiral Twin," he said, "but I have been absolutely humbled by the warmth and generosity of the people of Tulsa."

I think the recording industry is a culture-gutting abomination, and that the entire outfit ought to be torched like Rome during a Nero violin recital. Whatever figure the jury arrives at, the artists Mr. Tenenbaum loves will never see a cent of it; after over a century of treating most artists like sharecroppers, "the industry" takes the droit de seigneur approach to windfall profit…. Music is so much more than the music industry, and for the sake of music — the transmission of it, the longevity of the worthwhile stuff — I hope the industry which treats one of humankind's most powerful communication devices and repositories of memory like so much chattel withers and dies.

As I told CNN on April 22, 2004, "My great fear, and why I felt I had to be distanced from Michael … was that he would not live long. My fear was that Michael's life would be cut short. When you have no ingredients of a healthy life, when you are totally detached from that which is normal, and when you are a super-celebrity you, God forbid, end up like Janis Joplin like Elvis… Michael is headed in that direction."

There's no doubt the film and TV industries need to find a way to protect their copyrighted programming on the Web. But the strategy unveiled Wednesday by Time Warner and Comcast falls short of the ideal solution.

Interview with Kevin Dunn on Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.

A Brooklyn special education student who won a national essay contest and was made the title character of a Superman comic got his first peek at the book Tuesday.

…eight people face accusations that they illegally posted [Dungeons & Dragons'] newest handbook for download on the Internet… Another case is against Mike Becker of Bartlesville, Okla…

ad-libbed and experimental style that would come to make his reputation, including video effects, superimpositions, reverse polarities and scanning, and quick blackouts. He was also noted for abstraction and carefully timed non sequitur gags and for carefully allowing the so-called fourth wall to be breached. Kovacs' cameras commonly showed his viewers activity beyond the boundaries of the show set—including crew members and, on occasion, outside the studio itself. Kovacs also liked talking to the off-camera crew and even introduced segments from the studio control room. Ernie frequently made use of accidents and happenstance, incorporating the unexpected into his shows....

She's the only person to go all the way to court when sued by the recording industry over music file-sharing -- and this week, she'll be fighting back again.... a federal judge decided last September that he made a mistake in telling jurors that the companies didn't have to prove that anyone downloaded the songs she had allegedly made available....

Louis Dobbs... CNN anchor and managing editor for Lou Dobbs Tonight. He is an editorial columnist and syndicated radio show host....

Comedy Central says it's bringing the animated comedy "Futurama" back from past cancellation for 26 new half-hour episodes... more than six years after ending its four-season run on... Fox ....

Twisted pair cables were first used in telephone systems by Alexander Graham Bell in 1881

Neal Adams and Dennis O'Neil, 1969—1983 ... an acclaimed, but short-lived series of stories....

Novelist JD Salinger takes legal action to block a book billed as a follow-up to his classic book The Catcher in the Rye.

[Photo]

R.H. Donnelley Corp., the publisher of 600 directories including telephone Yellow Pages, sought bankruptcy protection from creditors to reduce debt by about $6.4 billion amid mounting losses.

A graffiti vandal who was convicted last year, after his work was posted on YouTube, was charged Tuesday with five new felony vandalism charges. Authorities allege that Cyrus Yazdani, 25, caused more than $14,000 in damage between last Dec. 22 and March 31 on the 7th Street and Cesar Chavez bridges and in the 4200 block of South Broadway.

Director Mike Judge's new animated television series "The Goode Family" is a send-up of a clan of environmentalists who live by the words "What would Al Gore do?" Gerald and Helen Goode want nothing more than to minimize their carbon footprint. They feed their dog, Che, only veggies (much to the pet's dismay) and Mr. Goode dutifully separates sheets of toilet paper when his wife accidentally buys two-ply. And, of course, the family drives a hybrid.

The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the troops. They enjoyed each other's company and decided to meet on a regular basis.