The Golden Age Project
Fri 2/5/2010
Yikes, this has not been the best year of blogging for me, so far... I actually have a lot of stuff to post, I've just been so busy lately I haven't had the chance!
The main thing that has been keeping me occupied over the past few weeks was the CCS Golden Age Project. Each year, the first year students are given two weeks to create a 32 page comic book, written, drawn and colored in the style of the "Golden Age" of comics (this year we tried to stay as close to 1952 as possible). There were four groups, which each had to try and please their individual editors, which were as follows:
- Crime Comics edited by Steve Bissette
- Western Comics edited by Jason Lutes
- Romance Comics edited by Robyn Chapman
- Super Hero Comics edited by Paul Karasik
Now, you might be saying, "Huh? Alec's not on that list. What's the big deal?" Well, Paul was only in town for about 4 days, for his visiting artist lecture (which was REALLY great), so I acted as an assistant editor for his group for the rest of the project (though he still did most of the heavy lifting via email and some awesome video Skype sessions).
Our team did an amazing job with the project, creating "Ear Shot" a super hero with super hearing and his sidekick "Sonar." A lot of midnight oil was burned on this project. It was inspiring seeing how hard all of the students were working, and to see it all come together on the last day. All of the groups did a great job and should be very proud of their work.
I'm going to try and post again soon, but for now, I have to go watch Pinball 101 again, so I can brush up on my pinball moves before the big trip to FUNSPOT tomorrow, which is a reward for finishing up the Golden Age Project. A whole day of Pinball? Awwww yeah!
The Best Pinball Movie EVER MADE.
Wed 1/27/2010
There is more pinball in the OPENING CREDITS of TILT than in the entire 111 minute running time of Tommy.
TILT is the the story of a 14 year-old girl (played by a 13 year-old Brooke Shields) who is REALLY, REALLY good at Pinball. Without giving too much of the plot away, she hits the road with an aspiring rock and roll musician and they hustle people of their hard earned dollars... by PLAYING PINBALL. Eventually (of course) she has to face the world's greatest pinball player... "THE WHALE."
Not once does this movie shy away from showing you what's happening on the playfield. When a player steps up to a machine, the camera cuts straight to the silver ball being smacked off the flippers, hitting drop targets, going through spinners, being bounced off of jet bumpers and the like. In short, it's exactly what you'd WANT in a pinball movie! It even has a pinball themed rock song, "Pinball, That's All" which is played like THREE TIMES.
Now, maybe this is just because it was a movie about pinball, but TILT gives off the impression that in the late 1970s there were pinball machines EVERYWHERE. Most of the movie takes place in a string of bars, and every one of them has like 5 pinball machines (also there were apparently a lot more people DANCING in the 70s too). It gives you the feeling that if you walked into a bar in 1979 and there WASN'T a pinball machine you would instantly think "Ugh! What's WRONG with this place?!" Oh, what happened to those halcyon days of olde?!
Really, the only downsides to this movie are 1) the HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE acting, which is painful to watch, but I'm sure will get easier and funnier with repeated viewings, and 2) the extremely creepy set-up of having this prepubescent girl running away from home to play pinball with a 25 year-old, male rock and roll singer. Not only do they share a hotel room each night, but she is constantly being hit on by other pinball players, all of whom are GROWN MEN. It is WAY creepy.
If When they remake this movie, hopefully they'll cast the rock and roll singer as a WOMAN, so it can be more like a buddy movie. You know, two sisters out on the road, sticking it to the man! You'd probably have to still have it set in the 1970s, when pinball was readily available everywhere...
Anyway, I found the soundtrack on ebay for $5, so I sent away for it, mostly for the sick cover art (I don't even have a turntable). It arrived today, and on a whim, I thought I'd check if "Pinball, That's All" was available on iTunes. I put "pinball" in the search field of the iTunes store, and LO AND BEHOLD, I came across two compilation albums of "HOT PINBALL ROCK" (!!!?!)
I used an Xmas iTunes card to download Volume I and Volume II. It's pretty amazing stuff. Songs about not having a quarter to play pinball, songs about being frustrated with the pinball machine, songs about having a good pinball game, songs about specific pinball playfields, being obsessed with pinball, etc. etc. etc. There's even a song about the TILT movie! These are songs by MY PEOPLE, you know?
But then, as I was looking up the URLs to link these albums, I discovered that these songs were originally released as 7" records that came free with issues of MULTIBALL MAGAZINE (???!) A zine about pinball?! Oh man! I've only begun my research, which lead me to a page from 2004 which says that issue #22 was out after a three year lapse... Twenty-two issues???! And it looks like the IPRC has more than HALF of them! Well, I know what my next pinball mission is, for sure!
Sorry if I'm alienating any of you readers with all this pinball talk... I promise I'll write some stuff about comics one of these days. Until then, go see if you can find a pinball machine in your neighborhood and play a few rounds. Hopefully you'll see why I'm so HOOKED!
Oakland "Winter Term"
Fri 1/22/2010
Every year at Oberlin, they gave us the entire month of January to work on whatever project we were interested in, whether it was related to our studies or not. Or at least they did when I went there, and I hope they still do, because it was one of my favorite things about that school. This free month was called "Winter Term" and I used it to draw comics, build furniture, make music and do all sorts of other things that I loved to do, things that made me a better person, but that I just couldn't seem to make time for during the hectic hustle and bustle of the school year.
Well, I spent about three weeks in Oakland with Claire this January, and it felt kind of like a Winter Term of olde! I couldn't very well bring my gigantic Basewood pages with me to the west coast, so I was able to finally work on some projects that never get my full attention, but deserve it nonetheless.
I did a ton of scripting on my big "Isle of Elsi" story, which I hope to have all ready to go once Basewood is complete, I worked on the pencils for a 9-page comic set in the same universe for the Elfworld 2 anthology, I even met up with a bunch of bay-area cartoonists one night and just drew in my sketchbook! I wrote some bad poetry, I read some GOOD poetry, plus a small stack of other books that I have been meaning to get to for ages. I also went on a bunch of adventures with Claire!
If a picture is in fact worth a thousand words, then I'll save you about a million words here, and just link you to the Flickr set I uploaded from my time in Oakland. If you don't want to click through the whole thing, here are some of the main points of interest:
- Claire made me the most amazing christmas gift EVER (pictured above!)
- We did some cool self-guided walking tours of San Francisco
- We built some planter boxes for Claire's garden
- We went and played some pinball at the newly expanded Pacific Pinball Museum (OF COURSE)
- Claire took me down to San Jose to see the Winchester Mystery House which was totally nuts!
- Oh, there was also a huge Pinball Exhibit at the San Francisco airport on my way out of town. It even had one of the FIRST pinball machines ever built, from 1880 (?!)
As I mentioned in my last post, I'm back in White River Junction now, and trying to get back into the swing of things. I just had a seriously hectic and busy week, trying to send out my back log of Phase 7 orders, answering a ton of mail and emails, getting ready to do my taxes, and doing a bunch of extra teaching too. We're working on this super intense project at CCS for the next two weeks and the students are working like the badass new gods that they are, so I have to try and keep up!
I better dive back in... I'm not sure what I'll have to share when I resurface, but I'll try to make it something worthwhile!
-- Alec