LONELYPOND PRESENTS

Christmas has come early: Shaun the Sheep (Aardman studios+hysterical) DVD FINALLY available in US of A.

The Disney Channel does not show these impeccable and wooly wonders of stop motion wildness often enough — you can catch one on Sundays at 5:25 p.m. usually — though I think they are the shortened version. It has won an International Emmy for Children and Young People in honor of which Aardman has posted a full episode on YouTube, but once again, here in the USA — can’t see it. Here’s the Emmy and international broadcast info — and the link for those of you not in the US.

Shaun the Sheep originally appeared in the 1995 Academy Award winning animated short film A Close Shave.

Mention it and suddenly it’s all over the web. Blog post with spoilers and pictures of the Legion Smallville style(and the visiting future villian reveal). But we have to wait ’til January…

WARNING: IF YOU HAVEN’T EVER READ THE LEGION OF SUPERHEROES THIS WILL MAKE NO SENSE SO CHECK OUT THE MOTHER GOOSE AND GRIMM CARTOON AND SKIP TO ANOTHER POST — poetry, Shakespeare, movies, weather, Disney, books, art — I’m sure you can find something.

The Legion Omnicon Blog with some comment and links and an i09 blog Legion roundup of “is there a future for the Legion and will it contain Geoff Johns(writing Smallville episode) or Keith Giffen or Paul Levitz.” I vote for Giffen or Levitz or whoever they vote for. They had some of the strongest runs on the Legion ever.

So maybe I can stop working on the blog entry nobly offering to put the rest of the things I do on hold(after Shakespeare this summer, of course) and revive the Legion. Jim Shooter’s version has been too over the top with sex and traumatic violence — tangent: did anyone see this Sunday’s Mother Goose and Grim; they do the groaner pun better than anyone else on the funny pages); plus Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl are the foundation of the Legion, along with Cosmic Boy, who has been too absent.

So while we’re on the Legion thing and since I will be shelving my why I’m such a comic geek and should get the reboot job post(and yes, I bought a Flight Ring and thought they should have offered a 10k gold version), here are my Legion thoughts and memories in no particular order…

The Great Darkness Saga is the reason I started collecting comics — I had to buy my brother’s copies because he wanted to keep them in the bag and I wanted to read them…do something of that caliber, with that level of echoing consequence without resorting to the easy and obvious. Giffen’s reboot five years into the Legion’s future was exquisite, entertaining, crudely drawn, sometimes brutal but great. Levitz’s run was phenomenal; Light Lass’s return to her lightning powers is a fantastic story. My favorite Legion characters/couples — and yes, if you’re not a Legion fan, you won’t realize everyone has a favorite couple: Dawnstar and Wildfire — Wildfire was missing from the current incarnation; it’s the future, have a character made of disembodied energy, it’s cool and a very interesting dramatic problem; Lightning Lass and Shrinking Violet, they earned their relationship the hard way, they really work together, just go with it; Brainiac and Supergirl — Brainy and DreamGirl started out ok but is way off the rails now, besides Nura and StarBoy worked and didn’t work excellently; Matter Eater Lad is essential as is the young Clark Kent — although Supergirl and the Legion combined well. As I said Cos is essential; I hadn’t really been missing Timber Wolf, but he fit with the Projectra storyline, Ultra Boy and Phantom Girl always rocked…

And enough nostalgia. The Legion starts out with three strong characters, goes from there and if you’re going to reboot, do it with good writers not just blasts from the pasts. Be brave, daring and visionary. Blow up Earth again if you must and make it a personal story, make it matter. Too often the Legion is just an army up against a stronger, differently limbed army. Do those three things and then I can be excited about the Legion again. I miss that. It came back, but started to slip away before Shooter’s return and now the thrill’s gone. I’m frankly glad not to see what else Shooter was going to have the villains paw.

I am looking forward to Smallville. And seeing what develops from there. And I’ll go back and reread Johns’ Legion of Three Worlds issues. I gave them a quick skim and liked more than dissed.

This is both crazy and cool: BBC News article about robots on stage in Japan, acting. I put robots in as police in our futuristic, Jetson’s inspired(Gayle and Rebecca frowned at the flying car request) Comedy of Errors three two years ago after half the cast of a Winter’s Tale quit, but they were made of silver spray painted cardboard with recorded voices. These interact. Like I said crazy + cool. Next we’ll be reading that one has made its way into a series pilot or reality TV show(Rhumba with the Roombas). Or maybe the Legion Of Superheroes will bring Computo along when they visit Smallville in January…

Have an excellent Thanksgiving; better give those robot butlers a raise, they might go into acting.

Even a single star
can cheer me deep into
night colored dark(ness)

curing mal de Baudelaire (note to self, be wary of half remembered Beau — actual name of brother, though it is technically a French adj.– books) with Edna St. Vincent Millay–and voila, French: Fontaine, Je Ne Boirai Pas De Ton Eau!

N.B. Just realized part of the reason French is leaking out is probably because I’m mulling over Moliere — if anyone has a good book on French Farces of the theatrical sort, please suggest it.

something in French the theme;following(tweets)someone touring Paris, FTW has Paris, random lyrics appear en francais-time for Fleurs de Mal

Yep, I actually took a day off — shocking, yes. Curled up with two Saturdays(delivered on Mondays) worth of the FT weekend. Very nice. Especially this week’s which also had the virtue of being almost timely. Then I followed up with the Big Bang Theory — very funny, especially when Facebook informed Leonard he had a girlfriend. The show is doing a good job of mixing up the characters used for humor focus, although we could use a Raj episode, and the surgical resident dating Leonard seems to work. I do miss Leslie Winkel stomping through spitting out the word “Dumbass” in Sheldon’s direction though. Then Gayle watched Top Gear — I always thought the things I didn’t do well in the car were me, but apparently no American cars do certain things well so new goal, drive a European car sometime.

Last week’s Slow Lane column discussed the Alexander technique, one of those simple things that make so much sense — it’s an acting technique; you usually find it mentioned in books that discuss Rolfing and bodywork, but I believe there are a few books by dancers that focus solely on it. The idea is to free up your voice by freeing up your posture and it makes sense. I have never done a full class, but I have tried to adopt a few of the basics.

This week, we had two of my FT writer triumvirate turning in excellently useful stuff. Stefan Stern had lunch with Tom Peters who humbly explained he was paid a lot of money to tell people things they already knew and his job was basically just to push them into the end zone. Very quick, practical read. And at the end of the article, Stern listed his topfive modern thinkers on management worth reading — Drucker, previously mentioned here, was one as was Gary Hamel, suggested to me by friend Sally at McGraw-Hill UK after my “yuck business speak” rant.

And Sarah Hemming now has me on a pantomine kick with my favorite interview yet, if only because Susie McKenna is the first person I’ve read about in my Hemming led tour of London theatre that I’d actually like to follow around, roll up my sleeves and learn by doing things with. The only trouble is I have no actual visual memory files for a pantomime — it’s not something easy to find in America. I have some imagined combinations of Ian McKellan and my grandmother’s housedresses and PG Wodehouse characters describing people as pantomime aunts (I think, will reference, any excuse to pull out the Wodehouse). Must check out the Hackney website and see if they have previous year video — which is of course nothing like being in an audience, but would still give me a feel. It sounds very like my sort of thing — a fast moving and very organized chaos of comedy.

And the Last Digital Business page threw off a comment about how Londoners had 37 words for clouds and I am going to need to find them. And the weekend’s big book review topic was weather, Gayle loves weather books and The Wrong Kind Of Snow sounds like fun (to read about, not shovel).

And now I must rescue my tea. Happy Tuesday.

O.K, you can think about this for awhile as I’m not planning to start ’til after the holiday, but which would you prefer — new Hat Hair or new Blink Kitty Love? Crazy crushing band or neon blue hair with dreams of world domination?

Right, quick insomniac stream of conciousness TV and multi media notes:

SMALLVILLE: still not great Lois writing, but some great Lois and Clark moments in the Doomsday meets Chloe wedding disaster. Great use of limited special effects, much heightening of drama. Erica Durance and Tom Welling do good work and fit in well together at the farm, there’s a nice feel. The return of Kristin Kreuk as Lana Lang got me in trouble — if you’re going to come back, come back in style — and she did. Wow. And with the “Did the Archer believe you?” message, the intrigue vibe came with her. Some beautiful moments — excellent visuals by the director — and the last sequence was breathtaking and beautiful and actually made me want to watch the next episode (but no joy there ’til Jan. 15th); don’t take any kryptonite cookies and avoid Kristin Kreuk in black leather or anything resembling it, that’s my advice.

iCarly — downloaded iWin a Date, which is another of my favorite episodes…Gibby’s great fun. Also watched iWon’t Tell (I think that’s the title) and realized that Miranda Cosgrove is a master of the comic meltdown rant, a core iCarly concept. Between iCarly’s “Random Dancing” segments and True Jackson’s “Dance Party” have decided I need an actual stereo with speakers I can control remotely from any room downstairs. More dancing always good. True Jackson continues funny, but they keep throwing in these “I’m only a teen in way over my head moments” and I just don’t like them.

Disney: Bolt’s getting good and neutral tweets on Twitter; the “Harper Knows” Wizards of Waverly Place(Flash does not approve of Wizards; for her Selena Gomez is always the villanous Mikayla, we think) episode was actually fun — between that show and the Big Bang Theory there will be so much embrace your inner and outer geek going on that I dread to see what shows filter out of the next iteration of inspiration based on that premise.

Anything else? Hmmm, have Spirited Away on loan, must watch sometime this week and see if anime love lingers post Howl’s Moving Castle.

All right, I’m done and too tired to link. Google, Ask or Yahoo…you’ll find it. Good night all. Enjoy your Monday(yes, even if it requires large amounts of lasagna).

Oh, A Middleman update(I’ll link for fellow Middleman lovers) — apparently Natalie Morales has been signed for a pilot of something scifi Star trek spoofy and here’s a blog containing interviews about the future (or not) of the Middleman. Kevin Sorbo’s in there too –oddly, I just iPwatched the episode he appeared in…tomorrow, maybe episode 11????? The DVD set should come with a bonus CD of the show’s music to soothe the no season 2 heartbreak.

Well, when I have something to tell everyone — real or imagined– in my internet universe, it involves pinging it across four services, then adding it manually to the original movie blog and linkedin, although I should be able to ping to linkedin, but I don’t want to spend that much time at either site figuring it out. That’s a lot of pinging plus –not to mention the original upload to myToons and the I should do it soon upload to YouTube…it’s an internet broadband slogfest. I’ve given up the group e-mail at least, so that’s a little less typing.

And did I have anything else to say? Thanks to one of my Twitter follows, spent the evening listening to Blondfire/Astaire and the like on last.fm. One of my favorite songs was in French; must look into a film festival in Quebec (or perhaps Cannes — they have shorts); so much of what I turn out involves no dialogue, just music and comedy, so an international film festival might be the ticket.

Had too much to do this weekend, but finished SPCA holiday auction article and posted new animation so feeling of accomplishment and money eventually due in my bank account for the article. I also sent an e-mail of resignation to my editor. I’m giving up freelancing as of the beginning of the year(yes, breaking news, you heard it here after twitter).

Not only did
1. I get an offer to direct a what I hope will be hysterical version of Moliere’s The Miser in the spring, which will push my Taming of The Shrew preparation up to February or so as now May will be presenting the Miser month, not find and dust off my small but necessary pile of Shakespeare essentials month, but

2. there’s also the completed first draft of a really cool mystery I wrote this summer while under the influence of the Hardy Boys, Chet Gecko (who is Chet Gecko? read Give My Regrets to Broadway and laugh, laugh, laugh) and the nieces and nephews. I’m disappointed that I haven’t found the time to type it into the computer — an essential part of the transformation process. I don’t feel guilty or that I’ve been procrastinating as I have had legitimate distractions, I’m just disappointed. I’d like to see how the next draft turns out, especially as I might be dumping a character — still undecided. Hence need for a newer, better version of the story…and updating my laptop so I can work without the distraction of internet access(yes, you.) And then,

3. well, I tend to obsess and put everything else on hold while doing something and freelancing is neither an effective nor lucrative use of my time — not that lucrative is a make or break point(if I had an accountant he or she would have been sobbing for years; if I had an agent, well, he or she’d probably be making a decent living — creating I can do, selling not so much).

Right, plus there’s my fiendish plan for PROJECT PYE, which I think met with Calvin approval and finishing Jabberwocky (anyone know how you say that en francais?) and the myToons and website redesign.

At the moment, I need a good book and a week off…this may just be possible; keep your fingers crossed. Immediately, I am going to dash off some quick TV reviews and then curl up with LAST Saturday’s FT weekend…or a Chet Gecko (good late night reading).