Spring Holidaze: Memorial Day Celebrations (amid everything going to shit...)

Well, the computer woes are ongoing, but that's no biggie. It'll keep my blog postings erratic in the coming weeks, until we get 'em all sorted out, so bear with yours truly.

What a wacked Memorial Day weekend -- vets (including my family) losing info to a theft of a Veteran's Administration employee's laptop computer; seams splitting at every corner of the current Administration every time one tunes in, however fleetingly, to the news; the country's fragile fiscal situation tipping as the inevitable mass foreclosures begin, yielding a fresh wave of homeless citizens on the cusp of a new hurricane season; etc. etc.

And amid all this (in just the past week, mind you!), it's bittersweet at best to acknowledge the sacrifices of our own, given the squandering of those sacrifices and ill treatment of our vets on so many levels, from Vet benefits and hospitals on dire skids to the daily influx of Iraq War vets unsung, invisible, calculatedly kept as under wraps as the Iraq War dead. Sorry to be such a bummer, folks, but --
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OK, I'll play a little catch-up, from the benign to the malign.
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With summer cruising in now, I'll steer you first to Alex Ness's Pop Thought "summer session" with myself, B Clay Moore, Mike Grell, Tony Bedard, Tim Truman, Barbara Schulz, Jason Copland, Michael May, Jimmy Palmiotti, Dan Abnett, Joe Hilliard, and Josh Ortega. That'll brighten your mood a bit before I dash it to pieces anew, and it's waiting for you

here.

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I'm reeling from reading Alison Bechdel's momentous new autobiographical graphic novel Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, which I'll be writing up in depth here this week.

I dumb-lucked into it this past week at the local Brattleboro bookshop Everyone's Books -- according to them, the book streeted a week ago today, from publisher Houghton Mifflin -- and I devoured it in one full day's reading. Alison's intensely personal masterpiece is essential reading, a new high-water mark for her and for the medium.

Relevent to this very week, one of Alison's key chapters in her intimate saga of her family's 1970s trials and tribulations that so profoundly shaped Alison's existence is tied to the misfortunes of the Nixon presidency as the Watergate scandal brought the nation down 'round his ears. I couldn't help but wonder what familial apocalypses are taking place right now amid 2006's impending summer atrocities; in detailing her own life story with such lucidity and attention to the grander scope beyond "the narrow compass" of her father's (and her own) hometown, Alison makes explicit the uncanny ways in which familial implosions are tied to national upheavals, the threads in the great tapestry that includes us all.

More on Fun Home in the coming days...
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There's also vet indy cartoonist/self publisher James A. Owen's

Here, There Be Dragons

coming up from his Coppervale Studios and bigtime publisher Simon & Schuster this fall, with the advanced reading/review copies now out and James's site up and running (hence the link). James writes:

"The first Advance Reader Copies for booksellers and librarians and first dustjacket proofs were unveiled at the BEA in Washington D.C. The Jacket's gorgeous. They've got it on a nice heavy felt-finish stock - but the logo itself is embossed, and set in a gorgeous pearlescent foil map. Simon & Schuster is being very supportive of it; the 'Marketing' box on the back cover states that the initial print run will be 100,000 copies in hardcover, with a six-figure promotional budget.

As part of the ramp-up to the book release, we'll be announcing a National signing tour for this Fall, beginning with a launch party and gallery show of the original art in New York City. All Dragons-related announcements will be going up on the new site, although I will continue using my online livejournal as more of a personal sketchbook, showcasing works in progress."

Congrats, James! Can't wait to see it!

BTW, you can stay tuned to James at his

Coppervale live journal.

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And mention of Simon & Schuster immediately brings to mind Siegel and Shuster, creators of Superman.

Cartoonists, let's honor our veterans, too.

If there's a proper "Memorial Day" for comics fans, seems to me taking time to ponder the

plight of Joanne Siegel via her letters currently posted online,

concerning her late husband Jerry Siegel's relationship to his estranged son Michael Siegel is a necessity.

In the year DC and Warner are ramping up the world for the new Superman movie, the real-life ravages of that iconic character's wake on those who first breathed life into that red and blue costumed superhero, and the sad legacy of its impact on their lives and those of their families, deserves at least a moment of consideration from one and all.
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Well, as I mentioned above, I'm dazed at how apparent the splitting of American seams are this week. The inevitables are catching up with us as a nation from all corners, and anyone denying the tell-tale landmarks does so at their own risk.

Consider, for instance,

the suddenly soaring foreclosure rates here in the US of A,

one of the inevitabilities of the financial pocket-pool we've been playing to pretend all is well in the land of W. Bush economic la-la-land. The housing bubble gamble of refinance loans millions of homeowners embraced via low-interest, adjustable-rate mortgages is taking a terrible toll, and the msnbc report/analysis I've linked here (from Ron Mott) is required reading.

Mott reports, "RealtyTrac, an industry organization that maintains a nationwide database of foreclosures, says mortgage defaults between January and March of this year numbered 323,102 compared with 188,122 during the same period last year — an increase of 72 percent.

...Indianapolis leads the nation, with one out of every 69 homes in foreclosure. Atlanta follows closely at 1 in 70 homes. Then Dallas — where the Edwardses live — at 1 in 99. Memphis is fourth at 1 in 101. Denver rounds out the top five at 1 in 105. Experts say it's those popular variable-rate loans that are helping drive the surge in foreclosures around the country, allowing buyers to purchase more expensive houses than they could otherwise afford."

Of course, that's how President Bush and his 21st Century revisionism of Reagan's "Voodoo Economics" is plunging the US as a nation into the same dire straits, and he's pissing away more than one form of capital en route.

It's amazing the rapidity with which the chickens (and I'm not referring to avian flu pandemics) are coming home to roost.

Just a cursory glance at this week's breaking stories is sobering to even the most die-hard Iraq War supporter:

* The foreclosures bloom in the same week

that President Bush & Prime Minister Tony Blair finally fessed up,

with Bush in particular staggering many with his admission that his arrogant swagger in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- Bush's “wanted dead or alive” description of Osama bin Laden, his taunting “bring ’em on” challenge to Iraqi insurgents -- were ill-advised.

“In certain parts of the world, it was misinterpreted,” he said -- huh.

Misinterpreted.

No, I don't think so.

Having thus publicly nibbled more humble pie than we thought possible whilst deferring any real responsibility, Bush uncharacteristically acknowledged that Abu Ghraib is "the biggest mistake that's happened so far, at least from our country's involvement in Iraq." He then said those responsible had been dealt with -- again, deferring culpability (and typically ignoring Rumsfeld's role in all this madness).

Well, savor it, such as it is -- the dynamic duo still wear blinders.

"There is no question the Iraq war has created a sense of consternation here in America," Bush said, citing "daily images on television of innocent people dying" (to quote AP's Terence Hunt & Tom Raum report of Bush & Blair's conference). But note that's acknowledged as an annoyance and diversion at best -- Bush (and Hunt & Raum) continued, "It affects the mentality of Americans," ...But he said a more important question now is, "Can we win? That's what they want to know."

Oh, that's what we want to know.

It's still about Victory -- the great lie of Victory Culture.

This brings to mind two relevent quotes, one early Iraq War bon mot from Bush himself:

"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
- George W. Bush

"The masters of the underground citadel are committed to a 'war' they cannot bring to an end, with weapons whose ultimate effects they cannot control, for purposes they cannot accomplish."
- Lewis Mumford

* That was Thursday night. By Friday morning,

the unfolding scandal over the alleged slaying of Iraqi civilians by Marines in Haditha,

what may prove to be the My Lai of the Iraq War. With other similar cases pending investigation, Associated Press's Robert Reid says "...present the most serious challenge to U.S. handling of the Iraq war since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal..."

* Meanwhile, the

ongoing investigation by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald most recently culminated in the news that Vice President Dick Cheney "would be a logical government witness because he could authenticate notes he jotted on a July 6, 2003, New York Times opinion piece by a former U.S. ambassador critical of the Iraq war."

As any frequent reader of this blog knows, I've been advising one and all to keep tabs on Fitzgerald's work, but who would have thought that would be a minor news story this week?

* The Cheney news was dwarved by the turbulence in Washington D.C. over the Bush Administration's treatment of American citizens finally spilling into the seats of power -- and prompting the outcry our House Republican and Democratic leaders were incapable of mounting when it was "just" the rights of mere citizens on the chopping block. After five years of letting Bush and his cronies wipe their collective asses with our Constitutional rights, the muckamucks are squealing like pigs as the first ears are twisted as the ripples of the Jack Abramoff scandal spills into hallowed offices and their sacrosanct dwellings. "Sanctuary!" they cry, and we're all in Duck Soup.

Now, of course, it's a

very different scenario when its the FBI raid of House member’s office we're talking about.

Or, rather, they're talking about. It's almost comedic, the flashpoint and immediate shockwaves: “The Justice Department must immediately return the papers it unconstitutionally seized,” House Speaker Dennis Hastert (Republican, Illinois) and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, California) exclaimed in an atypical joint statement; adding, of course, that Rep. William Jefferson (Democrat, Louisiana) must cooperate with the Justice Department’s bribery investigation against him. Why the outcry? Can it be the K Street Republicans, seeing Democrat Jefferson thus treated, can at last see what's in store for them, too?

Hastert (himself reportedly a recipient of $100,000 from Abramoff’s and his tribal client) was quick to add, "We’re not trying to protect an individual, we’re trying to protect the separation of powers... That was true during Watergate, it was true during Bill Clinton,” apparently forgetting (or hoping we would) his own role & bombast in the Clinton impeachment trial over an affair with an intern.

* No sooner had that aired than we hear/read that

Bush ordered Jefferson's seized documents sealed to "cool Congressional anger."

Swift move, Fearless Leader -- prompting mere hours ago the news that

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI director Robert S. Mueller III are threatening to quit over the D.C. raid furor and Bush action.

According to today's The New York Times, Gonzalez was joined in raising the possibility of resignation by Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, who told associates that they had an obligation to protect evidence in a criminal case and would not be willing to follow a White House order to return the material to Congress.

Whew -- and that, my friends, is just the tip of the iceberg.

Don't forget, it's an election year.

Don't bury your head in the sand.

Honor the sacrifices of those who gave life, limbs and much more to defend our country -- with more imagination, wit and will than the jingoism of the war-mongers and despots would expect of us all.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, one and all.

Wednesday Morning Crabcake

I'm tired of this time vampire! Not the blog -- the slow-speed dial-up.

While in Burlington on Tuesday morning, I dealt with my email at my friend Joe's house in -- I timed it -- 14 minutes.

The same number of emails took over two hours to deal with once I was back home in Marlboro.

Indeed, Yahoo "updated" their email service on Friday morning, further complicating and slowing the process for those of us stuck with dial-up.

I'm working hard to change this, but it's most likely one to two years away, at best. One of the ongoing perverse ironies of this process is how every authority or utility that's a link in the chain immediately refers to websites, links, etc. that will "help," inevitably saying, "It'll just take a couple minutes," at which point I remind them it'll actually take many more minutes -- if the site I'm being referred to loads at all -- and that isn't a help.

I've written at length about the situation on our Marlboro Broadband Committee website, and fellow committee member Jim Mahoney has begun the topographical mapping process necessary to our first steps ahead. If you care to read a bit more about what's happening, visit

our committee website

and be sure to read my essay on our Verizon woes, if nothing else.

(Oh, ya, since I'm no longer able to access email on my office computer, thanks to Yahoo's upgrade, my blog cut-and-paste link template is out of reach just now -- hope the link works. If not, sorry. It's getting more complicated by the day around here.)

End of this morning's crabcake.
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Hmmmm, how to plug a friend's "semi-anonymous" new site that's worth a look?

Atomic Surgery

is (ahem) "the new blog that bridges the quantum gap between science and pop-culture. If you've enjoyed the pop-influenced reportage on all things dinosaurian and paleontological in Dr. Michael Ryan's

Palaeoblog

then you'll enjoy the molecularly scrambled take on Art & Science at Atomic Surgery. The site will shortly be posting some of the best pages from Gil Kane's comic adaptation of The Lost World. Don't miss it."

I won't! You shouldn't either.

Well, I guess that does the trick.

Again, hope the links work this morning. If not, I'll fix 'em tomorrow AM.
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Jean-Marc Lofficier sends me the following link for

this must-read diary on Kos.

In short, "A simple question, really:  what are Navy SEALS doing attending a Christian youth rally in Philadelphia earlier this month?"

Read it and weep. The militaristic theocracy is here.
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I know at least one of you out there has no problem with this escalating US government spying on its own citizens, but this is getting pretty fucking insane. The ghost of J. Edgar Hoover must be smiling, ectoplasmically tasting the increased reach 21st Century technology provides such covert operations.

It's impossible to keep up with the various shitstorms -- another time-vampire, really -- but I'm glad Tim Lucas forwarded me this from the Wired News security and privacy blog, providing further info on the ongoing NSA and phone company scandals :

WHY WE PUBLISHED THE AT&T DOCS

By Evan Hansen|  WIRED NEWS
02:00 AM May, 22, 2006

"A file detailing aspects of AT&T's alleged participation in the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic wiretap operation is sitting in a San Francisco courthouse. But the public cannot see it because, at AT&T's insistence, it remains under seal in court records.

The judge in the case has so far denied requests from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF, and several news organizations to unseal the documents and make them public.

AT&T claims information in the file is proprietary and that it would suffer severe harm if it were released.

Based on what we've seen, Wired News disagrees. In addition, we believe the public's right to know the full facts in this case outweighs AT&T's claims to secrecy.

As a result, we are publishing the complete text of a set of documents from the EFF's primary witness in the case, former AT&T employee and whistle-blower Mark Klein -- information obtained by investigative reporter Ryan Singel through an anonymous source close to the litigation. The documents, available on Wired News as of Monday, consist of 30 pages, with an affidavit attributed to Klein, eight pages of AT&T documents marked "proprietary," and several pages of news clippings and other public information related to government-surveillance issues.

The AT&T documents appear to be excerpted from material that was later filed in the lawsuit under seal. But we can't be entirely sure, because the protective order prevents us from comparing the two sets of documents.

This week, we are joining in efforts to bring this evidence to light in its entirety.

We are filing a motion to intervene in the case in order to request that the court unseal the evidence, joining other news and civil rights organizations that have already done so, including the EFF, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the Associated Press and Bloomberg.

Before publishing these documents we showed them to independent security experts, who agreed they pose no danger to AT&T. For example, they do not reveal sensitive information that hackers might use to attack the company's systems.

The court's gag order is very specific in barring only the EFF, its representatives and its technical experts from discussing and disseminating this information. The court explicitly rejected AT&T's motion to include Klein in the gag order and declined AT&T's request to force the EFF to return the documents."
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In the meantime, for different thrills and chills (the vicarious kind), there's The Last Broadcast cover art I'm working up -- which, coincidentally, I'm doing for the same DVD label releasing my amigo Marty Langford's new feature film!

For a peek at Marty's cover art and updated info on the upcoming Heretic DVD release of Marty's

Magdalena's Brain,

click on the title (y'know, five words back, above).

Marty adds, "the DVD master has been sent to the replication house and we couldn't be happier. The transfer is gorgeous, the extras are super-cool and the menu designs are striking. The best thing of all? We now have an FBI warning... we're legit."

Just as you should be kicking up a fuss at your local video store for Heretic's fall release of The Last Broadcast (with my cover painting and a way-cool minicomic insert I've got a hand in -- more on that later this spring) and Lance Weiler's new solo feature Head Trauma (featuring a faux Christian comic my son Dan and I drew which figures mightily in the narrative), Marty asks that you "be sure to get your copy [of Magdalena's Brain] reserved. Also, bombard Best Buy and Hollywood Video for the title, so they'll be sure to order extra copies when it's released! That’s July 25, 2006 in case you’ve forgotten."

Marty concludes, "Thanks to all who lifted a finger, picked up the phone, or nearly killed themselves for us.  We’ll never forget your efforts."
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Gotta run -- 90 minute drive north amid errands (including a food delivery to my ailing son Dan), CCS duties (and maybe a meeting around lunch), paying gig with a Dartmouth-Hitchcock "Psychiatry and Comics" presentation at 1 PM (I was up till 3 AM finishing the scans for the lecture -- and sorry, Heath, can't send it to you; dial-up, too much time and work, and you'd not have my notes and lecture, just images -- besides, I do enough for free!), CCS meeting at 3 PM, Dartmouth meeting at 5:15, and another CCS followup meeting after that -- then, 90 minutes home.

And to bed.

OK, If English is the Official Language, Let's Make Our Leaders Speak ENGLISH --

No time this morning for much of a post -- off to Morrisville for a lecture tonight. If you live in driving distance, come on over -- it's free, and it's at 6:30 at the Morristown Centennial Library, P.O. Box 727, Morrisville, Vt 05661-0727
(802) 888-3853.

See some of you there?
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That said, I'll report briefly that the Saturday Marlboro Elementary School cartooning workshops went well, and everyone seemed to really enjoy the drawing exercises. We all had great fun, and a few of the participants were drawing at a very high level -- so accomplished, in fact, that the afternoon session unexpectedly worked wonders with an exercise I invented for my CCS students, and that was a revelation.

We'll be doing another, if all goes well, in mid-August -- details to be posted here -- and these are highly-affordable workshops: $30 or less for a two hour+ cartooning workshop with yours truly, all funds going to MES's 8th grade class trip funds (I am donating my time and effort).
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I was pretty fried come Sunday, so no energy for blogging or computer work, period.

Part of my computer woes escalated when Yahoo! mail unexpectedly 'upgraded' services on Friday and -- made my email inoperable on my office iMac computer. Shit -- this is a real problem.

More on this later in the week. Suffice to say don't email me unless you have to, as email just got pushed to a back seat duty until time/money/upgrade of equipment changes that to a front burner.
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Marge and I stole away Sunday afternoon to catch a matinee of The DaVinci Code and hell, we had a fine time with it. I don't know what the critics are blathering about -- it's not up there with Ron Howard's best (Apollo 13), but to this non-reader of the Dan Brown bestseller it was lucid, entertaining, engaging, and a thoroughly enjoyable Sunday afternoon movie with my sweetie-pie.

In terms of its curious subgenre, as a thriller, it was far more engaging and believable than conspiracy (or semi-occult conspiracy) opuses like The Ninth Gate, The Odessa File, The Osterman Weekend, etc., and as solid as Three Days of the Condor, Marathon Man, etc. and others of its ilk.

As I write this, I'm listening to a couple of radio critics crabbing about the film -- boring, too long, etc. Bullshit. It wasn't tedious, it was perfectly cast and coherent stem to stern, and only cheated (as these films do) a couple of times.

So, there ya go. And as for the controversy -- hoo-hah. It's great publicity, if nothing else!
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Saturday night Marge and I had a great evening with two other couples we rarely get to see socially. We ended up talking from 6 PM to midnight over a marvelous dinner the hosts had prepared, and the upshot of the evening was, "What can we do to make some difference in the upcoming election?"

That question has plagued many of us as we move into another election season.

I have a simple suggestion, one I am going to build on with this blog:

OK, the President and key GOP officials are pushing ENGLISH as the primary language of the good ol' U.S. of A.

Let's make ENGLISH stick for our politicians.

The last two elections were "won" (I use that term loosely) based in large part on the distortion and appropriation of English into an Orwellian perversion of the language (as in, the perversion of English Orwell the author predicted in his classic dystopian novel) -- and we've all allowed this to lead our national conversations, such as they are, on matters of life and death that impact upon each and every one of us.

Let's apply TRUE ENGLISH to all forms of political speech.

For instance, this morning I've heard repeated news pieces on how the Conservative Right is outraged at President Bush's ineffectual "stand" on immigration.

Let's be blunt:

Anyone who isn't finding our current President "far right" or "conservative" enough isn't truly a conservative.

That's (in plain English) extremism; radicalism; fanaticism.

Let's begin by defining the word CONSERVATIVE, and making it stick.
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Body Count for the ongoing Iraq War:

Current estimates place the civilian dead at 38,000 Iraqis dead minimum -- maximum of 42,000 Iraqis dead.
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More later this week -- I'll be out of the loop for the next day or two, so see you here Thursday, more than likely.

Saturday Morning Center for Cartoon Studies Sights & Sites!

I’m off for a heady day of one-man drawing and cartooning workshop sessions right here in Marlboro at the Elementary School.

This morning, I’ll be working for two hours with a group of K-4th Grade students, some of whom demonstrated their cartooning chops in kindergarten when I gave the school a copy of the color Vermont’s Haunts map a couple of years ago. When my amigo Joe Citro was in town, lecturing about VT spiritualism at the college, a pair of these kids presented Joe & I with their own color full-page ghost drawings, which were amazing and highly entertaining. I believe at least one of those young artists will be in this morning’s group, so big fun ahead!

This afternoon, I’ll be working with 5th Grade and up (including two adults who signed on) on a more comprehensive cartooning and comics workshop from 1:30 PM to 4 PM. I’ve got some cool exercises worked up, and that should be a lively session, too.

[Aside: Tonight, I’ll be jumping from that frying pan into the fire of an evening meeting and dinner with Michel and Linda Moyse as a Board member of the Center for Digital Art in Brattleboro, brainstorming our upcoming October CDA celebration of the student’s filmmaking/video creations and a showcase of the work of various CDA graduates who have gone on to work in video and film. I’ll be tuckered by tonight, no doubt about it.]

All of which puts me in mind of an overdue overview of CCS Year One, best communicated via the students themselves, I think.

So -- here ya go. Savor this series of snapshots of what’s been stewing at CCS, via the online venues emerging from that which James Sturm & Michelle Ollie hath founded.

Everyone is still transitioning from the heady Year One experience into their respective and collective summers, but some of the student websites are operational -- so with their permission, I’m posting a few links this morning. Take time this weekend to browse ‘em, and be sure to leave your comments here or with them, if you would.
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Andrew Arnold was, by everyone’s assessment, one of the anchors and inspirations of CCS Year One for all of us, and a click will take you to

Andrew’s site

for a sampler of his work (but there’s no way to put across his skill at the ping-pong table!).

With Andrew away, Alexis Frederick-Frost seems to be dominating the ping pong table, but he’s got some solid licks in via the drawing board, too, visible at

Alexis’s site.

Colleen Frakes has two sites open for view, with

Colleen’s CCS site

worth some exploration, though you should also check out

Colleen and Jon-Mikel Gates’s ‘Cowboy Orange’ blog

for more of Colleen and Jon’s art, photos from the CCS Year One experience, and mucho insights, comments and observations on same.

Sam Gaskin has two sites up and running: one for

Sam’s comics & art (with a little music)

and the other for

Sam’s music!

And here’s a one-two punch from two of the CCS Year One dynamos:

Sean Morgan’s website

just a finger click away from

Adam Staffaroni’s site!

Josie Whitmore has maintained her

personal site for Josie art and stuff

for some time -- take the time to explore at length, please -- but notes she’s revamping that soon, too. In the meantime, she is working on her CCS site for future launch, so that’ll be posted once Josie lets me know it’s ready for primetime viewing.
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There’s more to come, but that’s what the students involved “cleared” for posting on my site and here.

In the meantime, other CCS-related “new developments” are already peek-worthy on the internet:

James Sturm just alerted us to the work Kevin Huizenga is creating for the new CCS school brochure. Kevin' has a new blog and has posted a few of brochure's images there; as James notes, “the snowy drawing of the Colodny/South Main Street is stunning,” and indeed it is. For this and oh so much more, hop on over to

Kevin’s blog The Balloonist!

As I’ve mentioned before, CCS also has four summer workshop sessions in place, beginning in late June and continuing through the first week in August. For info, click on

this link and scroll down to the CCS summer program schedule at the bottom of the page.

Hope to see some of you there!

Now, the CCS workshops are primarily for those 16 years of age and older. For younger, budding cartoonists of all ages, New Hampshire cartooning whiz Marek Bennett has his own summer workshops cooking all summer throughout New Hampshire, and I urge those of you in that area to immediately check out what Marek’s up to! All the info, including the full summer calender, is now posted on

Marek Bennett’s NH comics workshops site,

which BTW is part of Marek’s own multi-faceted site -- all well worth checking out.

As I mentioned yesterday, Marge & I saw and quite enjoyed Dan Clowes & Terry Zwigoff’s new opus Art School Confidential this week. I can say with complete candor that CCS is light years away from the sort of ‘art school’ experience so eloquently satirized in their film -- which leads me, in my typically roundabout manner, to CCS honcho and cartoonist extraordinaire Robyn Chapman, who recently posted this -- which I, ‘dial-up only’ castaway that I am, cannot access -- to a

Dan Clowes on TV link

she says “is so good!” Taking her word for it (as I always, always do), I hereby share it with y’all and hope for the best.

See you in the funnies...

What's Up with the Dial Up This Morning?

I had something planned to share with y'all this morning, but due to either the weather or the vagaries of Sovernet (our server), I can't access my own email this morning for more than one email at a time. Having struggled through this nonsense enough today, I'm feeling lucky to get into the blog at all and will table my planned posts until the weekend or after.

So, local interest stories only this morning -- sorry!

This week has been an eventful one here, culminating in a Wednesday night five-town meeting of the minds in the Town Offices in Dummerston, VT about bringing DSL service to rural Windham County. Dummerston selectmen Tom Bodett (known to some of you for his Motel 6 commercials and appearances on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me) and Kevin Ryan organized the powwow, and Jim Mahoney and I were there on behalf of the Marlboro committee; there were folks from nearby Newfane, Brooline and Putney there, too. We'll be posting the meeting notes and other info and updates on

the Marlboro broadband committee site.

In the meantime, Jane Wilde and I continue working on the upcoming launch of the Bissette website, while I chip away at other duties and projects: the weekly drawing session with a Marlboro Elementary School student (who will remain unnamed here, to protect the innocent), ongoing work with the CCS students on our late spring DVD minicomic gig, the ongoing expansion/revisions to We Are Going to Eat You, and writing and editing chores in the hopes of getting two volumes of Green Mountain Cinema this summer.

I've also had prep work for this week's illustrated lecture on comics and graphic novels -- delivered Tuesday night to an architect's association in White River Jct., VT -- and more extensive prep work for two presentations next week: a presentation in Morrisville, VT's Morristown Centennial Library on Monday May 22 at 6:30 pm (802-888-3853), and a private presentation of a lecture on psychology/psychiatry and comics for a Dartmouth gathering on Wednesday. I hereby vow to feature EC's Psychoanalysis comic and Charles Schultz's famed "The Doctor is In" panel from Peanuts among other goodies, including Justin Green's confessional Binky Brown and the Holy Virgin Mary and others.

Then there's the day-long fund-raising drawing workshop I'm giving at the Marlboro Elementary School tomorrow (Saturday, May 20th), for which I've donated my time. Morning (10 AM to 12 noon) is for K thru 4th Grade students, the longer afternoon session (1:30 PM to 4 PM) is for 5th Grade and up, including two adults who've signed up. Should be high-octane and fun, and I've got some great exercises planned. If this works out, we'll do another later this summer with wider promotion; alas, I couldn't get any assistance or aides, so I'll be on my lonesome with the small group, which is fine.

I also managed to catch evening screenings of United 93 (brilliant piece of work, and among the most harrowing docudramas I've ever seen) and Art School Confidential (engaging, excellent and haunting; kudos to Clowes and Zwigoff!) this week, too. I was suffering cinematic withdrawal symptoms, and so badly needed my dose of colored-light-on-a-big-screen and sound-coming-at-me that I would have settled for anything, really. Two good pics in a row, though, was a treat.

For your Friday reading pleasure, though, and as a follow-up to my 1927 flood 'teaser' earlier this week (as the rain picks up and continues today, after two days of sporadic sunshine here in Marlboro), I'm posting the outline for my Green Mountain Cinema II silent movie coverage. This appeared, in truncated form (edited down from this draft), in a Montpelier newspaper and in the regional newsstand magazine Livin' hereabouts in 2005; I'm expanding this considerably for GMCII, to provide broader context for my 1927 flood article and Arthur Lennig's definitive coverage of the making of D.W. Griffith's classic Way Down East, among other goodies.

Enjoy!
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REEL ESTATE: How the Movies Came to Vermont, and Vermont Came to the Movies...

The early years of Vermont’s motion picture legacy are elusive. Many of these films no longer survive, the only evidence of their flickering existence found in newspapers, trade journals, books, the occasional photograph or promotional ad. But rest assured that films were indeed being made in Vermont before the coming of sound, laying bedrock for the film and video production of today.

The first Vermont films chronicled military maneuvers, most likely filmed at Fort Ethan Allen. Hand-cranked motion picture cameras accommodated about one minute’s worth of film, and the titles were self-explanatory: Cavalry Charge, Cavalry Horses at Play, Cavalry Musical Drill, Charge Through Intervals of Skirmishes, Fencing on Horseback, Troopers Hurdling, along with Wrestling, Bareback: 3rd Cavalry and Musical Drill: Troop A, Third Cavalry (all 1897).

The famed French cinema pioneers the Lumiere Brothers August and Louis opened a plant in Burlington by Lake Champlain in 1902; it was acquired by the Eastman Company, and abandoned in 1911. The following year, celebrated silent comedy mogul Mack Sennett formed the production company Keystone with two partners, one of whom was Adam Kessel, Jr., whose Kessel Park estate on the New York side of the lake reportedly housed guest stars like Charlie Chaplin. By then, Vermont had spawned two ‘movie stars’ of its own: Commodore Admiral George Dewy of Montpelier, and Wilson Alwyn Bentley, the “Snowflake Man” of Jericho.

Dewey was one of the great naval heroes of the 1898 Spanish-American war; eager to satisfy public demand for footage of Dewey, Albert E. Smith and James Stuart Blackton boarded the cruiser Olympia in September 1899 to ‘sneak’ shots of Dewey, and later filmed the Admiral in Washington, D.C.

The team then journeyed to Montpelier to visit the Admiral’s home -- only to be tossed out. Dewey later accepted an invitation from Smith and Blackton to travel to their Vitagraph studio in Flatbush, New York and appear in The Battle Cry of Peace (1915).

The humble Jericho man who made his mark in the world photographing snowflakes was visited by Pathe News in 1917. During this outdoor session (much to Bentley’s frustration, as he worked inside), the Pathe crew clumsily faked snowfall by tossing snow from a second-story window and hung cut-out paper models of snowflakes from wires to simulate microphotography of snow spiralling through the air.

Alas, this short film is all that remains of Bentley’s motion picture career, though he was visited again in 1921, this time by the Bray Studios of New York. Bentley demonstrated a firmer grasp of the principles of cinema than did his camera-toting visitors: when the filmmakers inquired whether it might be possible to film the crystallization process, Bentley suggested they film a snow crystal melting, then reverse the film to simulate the snowflake taking form. The short film, entitled Mysteries of the Snow, was exhibited at Burlington’s Majestic Theatre, where Bentley’s slides were occasionally exhibited on the big screen.

Heartbreak fueled the first features made in Vermont. A Vermont Romance (1915) was made by “The Vermont Progressive Party”, such as it was, set and shot in and around Burlington (and, perhaps, White River Junction). It soon faded from view, perhaps because it defied genre expectations, urging orphaned lasses to spurn the lovesick farmer down the road (even if he gives his last dollar in aid), find a rich man, and marry. It was resurrected and reportedly ‘restored’ by WCAX-TV for broadcast in 1965; a shortened version of this feature is in the collection of the Northeast Historic Film Museum in Buckport, Maine. A Vermont Romance is a most curious artifact, ending with an extended tour of an industrialized bakery (where the now-penniless farmer slaves away, working for the wealthy man who won the heroine’s heart), anticipating the industrial, educational, and promotional film industry which would soon emerge in various corners of the state.

Far more classical made-in-Vermont romances blossomed in Way Down East, The Offenders, and Insinuation (all 1921). In 1920, the silent era’s greatest director, David Wark Griffith was sorely in need of success to recharge his flagging career. He purchased the rights to the popular stage play Way Down East to craft a star vehicle for Lillian Gish, one of America’s most beloved actresses, and arrived in White River Junction with his cast and crew in March of that year. Gish’s country girl, previously wed to a rich city man who abandoned her with child (which soon died), restarts her life working at a New England farm, where the stout son of the farm’s stern patriarch falls for her; gossip, the return of her rich suitor, and despair drives the forlorn lass into a raging blizzard.

Intent on creating a spectacle unlike any ever seen, Griffith dared to place Gish afloat on a cake of ice in the thawing March waters. Of all silent Vermont films, Way Down East remains the best-known. Griffith’s sensitive direction, Gish’s heart-breaking performance, and the still-spectacular climax (wherein Richard Barthelmess rushes to rescue Gish before they are washed over the falls) won raves from critics and audiences alike, though the honorable Charles R. Cummings, publisher/editor of The Vermonter: The State Magazine, ridiculed the film’s portrait of the Vermont character.

Less renowned -- and sadly lost -- are the two features made in Randolph that same year, written, directed, produced by and starring an adventurous woman named Margery Wilson, who summered in Randolph. She’d appeared in films (including D.W. Griffith’s epic Intolerance) and turned down a marriage proposal from one of America’s leading movie stars, William S. Hart. Wilson chose Randolph as the ideal place to make her features, The Offenders (1921/24) and Insinuation (1921), which were both romances in the Way Down East tradition. Insinuation debuted at Randolph’s Chandler Music Hall before its road-show engagements.

By 1920, “Moving-Picture Machines” were available for sale to the public. Adventurous theater owners one-upped competitors by producing their own exclusive newsreels. Among these was the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro; when the Connecticut River washed a local bridge downstream in December, 1920, the unidentified Latchis cameraman filmed the spectacle. The footage was acquired (or appropriated) by the Selznick Weekly News and played nationally.

16mm film was introduced in 1923, opening the door for more regional filmmaking. These were, by and large, products of industry: quarries (the earliest, shot in the Barre quarries, dates from November, 1920), the sugaring firms (as early as 1926, shot by Harry Wendell Richardson for the St. Johnsbury-based Cary Maple Sugar Company), and more. There were home movies, many long-lost and never-to-be-recovered, though a few reside in the Northeast Historic Film Museum.

At least five cameramen in different corners of the state captured the November, 1927 flood on film. Two reels of flood footage have survived: about 10 minutes of 35mm footage sheltered at the Northeast Historic Film Museum, and 25 minutes currently housed at the University of Vermont Bailey/Howe Library Media Resources Department. Together, this archived footage present a remarkable snapshot of the natural disaster, demonstrating how active newsreel photographers (professional and amateur) had become in the most remote corners of the state.

The man who’d already shot some of the first industrial films in the state (for the maple sugar industry), Harry Wendell Richardson, shot footage along the northernmost portion of the state, showcasing the wake of the flood in Newport, Orleans, Coventry, and areas along the Clyde River; this reel is in the Northeast Historic Film Museum collection. The UVM footage, entitled Vermont Flood of 1927, is the most publicly available of all (on display at the new Vermont Historic Society Pavilion in Barre, Vermont; excerpts appear in the VPT video Vermont’s Great Flood), featuring the towns of Winooski, Bolton, Waterbury, Jonesville, Jeffersonville, Cambridge, Rutland, Proctor, Richmond, Hinesburg, and White River Junction, as well as bordering New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Four photographers are credited: Edward V. Hoyt, L.A. Norcott, “ex-Governor Proctor, of Proctor, Vt., and Ralph R. Eno of New York City.”

The silent era of Vermont filmmaking did not end with the ‘bang’ of the flood. After the arrival of sound, regional filmmakers were still using the silent film format; it was the most affordable of media, and was used throughout the 1930s.

A nomadic female filmmaker named Margaret Cram Showalter wandered New England currying funding from local businesses to produce her rapid-fire “Movie Queen” featurettes. She shot and completed these silent featurettes in a little over a week, always using the same narrative, reaping whatever boxoffice the finished product earned at the local town hall or opera house before rushing off to another town to do it all over again. At least one Vermont-based “Movie Queen” film has survived, shot in Middlebury. There may be others.

Mack M. Derick of Orleans was the sole native son to continue filmmaking (sans sound). Derick was engaged by The State Publicity Department and various chambers of commerce to make Dot and Glen See Vermont (1932), chronicling the honeymoon travels of the (fictional) couple Dot (17-year-old Josie Pomeroy, now Josie Pomeroy Sherrer) and Glen (19-year-old Glendon Foster). Vermont film historian and archivist Richard W. Moulton presented excerpts from the film (with interviews with Dot and Glen, and clips from another Derick short, Model ‘A’ in the Mud) in the VPT video Vermont Memories Vol. 1 (1994). Derick carved out a living as a still photographer; his work graced many issues of Vermont Life.

There were a handful of silent feature films set, but not shot, in Vermont, such as The Street of Tears and Which Shall it Be? (both 1924). The first sound film set (but not shot) in Vermont was Drag (1929), which brought Way Down East co-star Richard Barthelmess "back to Vermont" as a small-town newspaper publisher. Hollywood continued to set films in Vermont, all filmed on studio sets, including Frank Capra’s humanist comedy Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and William Wellman’s retaliatory satire Nothing Sacred (1937).

With the notable exceptions of Mack Derick, the Movie Queen, and industrial and education films (including those made for the growing ski industry), regional filmmaking hibernated until Robert Flaherty’s arrival in the late 1940s. In 1954, Alfred Hitchcock came here to film his peculiar black comedy The Trouble with Harry (1955)...

...but that’s another story.
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[Special thanks to the folks at the Northeast Historic Film Museum, and to Joseph A. Citro, Richard W. Moulton, Arthur Lennig, Art Donahue, Roger Wiberg, Martha Day, Lori Holiff, and Cecile Starr.]

“LORD WARD of the State"

Dream:

Set up is a vaguely Dickensian orphanage or group home, kids from toddlers to young adults are the wards, myself included. Our master looks like John Neville, only haughtier and more arrogant in his bearing. He is an insufferable prig.

Meals are swill; treatment is brutal. The cellars are full of bodies.

As train pulls out for gathering, children/wards who have fallen on tracks (four or more) will be run over; we are being taken by force via train to a party and film-showing our master is hosting.

They show rich, ruling-class biopic Bertolucci film; cut off before ending as elite go to party, me and handful of others try to stick with film, though projected image goes on to walls too cluttered to view, and film shut off. We are incensed.

Furious, I confront our ward master, collar him and scream at him, including how he KILLED our fellow wards to make it to this gathering and the truncated showing of the Bertolucci film; now, I know I am to be hunted down.

Front doors covered by his peers; back doors by police; I find a glass cabinet entrance to a lower level apparently unguarded. Assuming it’s a trap, I hide in an inaccessable cupboard, determined to simply wait them out.
___

Later dream:

In a vast underground bunker facility, I'm assigned a coded badge and instructed to wear it at all times.

I am assigned to work with Kevin Bacon on a second 'hollow man' project (in reality, not a film). He walks naked with me (though we're both completely unconcerned with his nudity) alongside two decks of outsized anatomical texts, each with dimensional layered models of various human and animal anatomies. He moves from deck to deck, book to book, with a simple polevault-like flexible board, lifting himself into the air to leap from deck to deck, book to book.

I'm to select just one key text, and I ask Kevin which one he recommends. Walking again alongside me instead of polevaulting, he steers me to a huge, flat book with all the internal organs and structure molded in a pliable plastic material, capped with a 'visible man'-like cover, and says, "This is by far the best of them. Ya, work with this."

But I'm unsure of how to remove the top copy, much less cart it around, and no one answers my questions. I leave it in place, but tag it as my copy before moving on.

Running on Fumes

...but hey, the sun is out a bit, and that's a relief!

So, let's see: in reply to Mike Dobbs comment on yesterday's post: Mike, don't fret. I think there's a McDonald's on the Barre-Montpelier road, within five miles or so tops of the Capital dome. "You want we supersize your maple-tree suck?"

Note to my steadfast ink-slinging amigo Mark Martin: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Evelyn Beatrice Hall.

And you know I will.

Now, send that nickel to the ACLU, like you said you would.
___

Rick Veitch alerted me to the new issue of Mother Jones, which has an article by Eleanor Cooney on "The Politics of Horror," primarily discussing Joe Dante and Sam Hamm's Masters of Horror installment "Homecoming" as an election-year hour of television worthy of note. Having already steered this blog's readers to Tim Lucas's Video Watchblog post on the episode when it originally aired, and discussed "Homecoming" and its precursor J'Accuse at some length here before, I'll just say check out Cooney's article and be sure to pick up "Homecoming" when it's released on DVD this summer, if you haven't seen it already. An audacious and eventful landmark in TV horror, and loooooong overdue use of airtime to address the shit we've got ourselves into as a country.

Wet Weather in New England

It's been raining nonstop in Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire and parts of Massachusetts now for almost a full week, with flooding conditions in much of western NH and evacuations underway as I write this in a few riverside communities.

Last October brought some momentous flooding to NH and parts of VT, with towns like Alstead NH hit the hardest (including seven fatalities). Marge's work involves the Alstead school district, and she knew some of the folks nailed by that flooding; one family not only lost their home, but the land they'd built upon and owned -- all gone, washed away, cratered and valueless. It wasn't the kind of devastation New Orleans, Mississippi, and the Gulf States suffered under Katrina's fury, but it was as hard as we'd seen it hereabouts in years.

All of which brings me to today's post, which looks back at the most intense devastation flooding caused in Vermont in the 20th Century.

Here's a preview (a tease, really) of one of the feature articles I've written for Green Mountain Cinema Vol. 2, forthcoming this summer from Black Coat Press...
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Swept Away: Images of the 1927 Flood

The Northeast Historic Film Museum preserves precious images of the past, as does the University of Vermont’s (UVM) Bailey/Howe Library’s Media Resources Department. Their treasures include these startling -- and distinctively different -- motion-picture records of the infamous 1927 flood that hammered Vermont...
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Like many Vermonters, I grew up amid riverbanks, flood plains, and landmarks that had been reshaped by the infamous flood of 1927. I was hardly conscious of this as a lad. Though I loved science and geology, the ability to ‘read the landscape’ was a skill beyond me.

Still, there were glimmers: glib references to the flood by my parents, aunts, uncles, and other adults; the occasional mention by a teacher in the two-floor Duxbury schoolhouse; the occasional stolen glance at an ancient postcard or photograph; frequent visits, picnics, hikes and swims in and about the Waterbury Dam in Waterbury Center, which we were told was built in the wake of the flood. In the woods close to our home in Duxbury, my friends and I used to play around the partially-buried chasis of an ancient automobile amid a sprawl of what seemed to us to be old garbage; we would on occasion excavate some arcane bit of metal debris from the dirt, and wonder how it all got there. The flood was a mysterious, ominous event of unimaginable proportions, its history still buried in the soil, its ripples still spilling through time.

Many Vermont towns and villages bear similar landmarks; we all have our reference points. Though I spent most of my childhood traveling along, rafting, fishing, and playing in and around the Winooski River (where it flows between Waterbury and Duxbury), the most evident scar of that legendary flood presented itself every time I went to Bob’s Barbershop on Elm Street in Waterbury (Dad insisted on my brother Rick and I having crewcuts, so we went to Bob’s often). It seemed to me every time my father led me into Bob’s, I looked forward to seeing that evidence: a watermark, if you will, painted high above the sidewalk.

You can see that “watermark” still. If you drive into Waterbury heading east down South Main Street, just turn right on to Elm Street. Let your eyes wander up the second building on the right -- #3 Elm Street, the large brick building that is now Fisher Auto Parts, a Federated Auto Parts store -- and note the painted marker just above the sills of the second-story windows:

"High Water Mark: Nov. 3rd - 4th 1927"

As I used to say to myself, “Wow -- that must have been a lot of water!”

*****

It was the first week of November, 1927. Our own Calvin Coolidge was in the White House, it had been a productive summer yielding an abundant harvest, and there had been few frosts. There had, however, been a great deal of rain all through October, causing high water and some washouts. But there were no dire weather predictions, no flood warnings.

In an era long before the exhaustive weather ‘watch’ and forecasting we take for granted today, the first few drops of rain that began to fall on November 2nd from the cold front moving east harbored nothing more than an early winter shower.

But the rain fell steady throughout the early morning of the 3rd, until “the clouds lifted slightly,” Harold H. Chadwick recalled (in his article “Flood” in Vermont Life, Autumn 1952). “People left their homes to view the raging streams, curious to see what was going on... no one realized the danger... the rushing waters inspired awe but not alarm until about mid-day...” (Chadwick, pg. 8). The rain resumed that afternoon and it didn’t let up. The worst was yet to come as the sun faded, the rain fell, the rivers rose, and the waters became as all-consuming as the darkness.

F. E. Hartwell, U.S. Weather Bureau meteorologist stationed in Burlington, Vermont, wrote, “Consideration must be given to the fact that October was a wet month in Vermont. The total rainfall was about 50 per cent above normal and well distributed throughout the four-week period. Consequently the ground became soaked so full of water that by the end of the month all rainfall was running off as surface water, with practically none entering the ground. This was the condition when the phenomenal (for New England) rainfall of November 2, 3 and 4 occured.... practically all of it flowed immediately into the river systems of the state without the retarding process of first soaking into the ground and running off more gradually as would have been the case if this rain had followed a dry month instead of a wet one” (Hartwell quoted from R. E. Atwood, Stories and Pictures of The Vermont Flood: November, 1927, 1928, pg. 3).

And still it fell, swelling the brooks, streams, rivers, and lakes.

These soon spilled over their banks, and the waters crept up over pastures and roads, over streets and sidewalks, over steps and porches and door sills.

It lifted bridges from their moorings and houses from their foundations, and still it rained. It bore away everything in its path, and still the torrential downpour continued.

The water rose -- and rose -- and rose -- still, it rained.

The water was a force in and of itself. Every river in the state swallowed its banks and spilled over, but the Winooski River -- arising near Lower Cabot, swelling southest between Barre and Montpelier, and continuing northwest past Waterbury to Lake Champlain just north of Burlington -- savaged its hapless neighbors with unimaginable force. R.E. Atwood wrote, “As if drunk with its new-found power, it staggered and roared its crooked way down the valley, ripping out trees, tearing away houses, barns, bridges, and gathering live stock and even human beings into its awful arms, until, spent with its Herculean effort, it passed mutteringly out into Lake Champlain” (Atwood, pg. 4).

For three days, every river -- the Connecticut, the Missisquoi, Lamoille, Wells, White River, Black River, the Clyde, Otter Creek, the West River, etc. -- and every brook, stream, river, and body of water in the state (and those nearby, including the Hoosac River in Massachusetts) matched or vied with the Winooski in destructive force. Flash floods further carved out the hills and valleys, needing no names, taking no prisoners, and leaving nothing behind, save the scars of their passing.

Thus, November 2nd, 3rd, and 4th forever marked Vermont and its people.

*****

In hindsight, the details still astound: over five inches of rain drenched ninety percent of the Green Mountain State and parts of Northern Massachusetts within thirty hours. Before it let up, over half the state was awash with six to nine inches or more of rain. Though all parts of the region were affected, the Winooski River basin -- the most populated area of the state -- was the hardest hit. It was a storm unlike any in Vermont’s recorded history since the flood of 1869, and it changed the region forever.

Before the waters receded, the resulting flood claimed eight-four human lives (including that of Vermont’s Lieutenant Governor S. Hollister Jackson, who abandoned his stalled car mere yards from his home and tried to wade across Potash Brook to safety, only to be swept away; his body was recovered almost a mile down Potash Brook). The deluge killed thousands of livestock as it swept away almost seven hundred farms; it demolished almost two hundred homes and over two hundred factories; washed away over a thousand bridges; and ultimately devastated the area to the tune of over 30 million dollars (1927 currency), with four million dollars alone due to the extensive damage to railroads.

And then came winter. Cleanup, repair, and reconstruction were difficult once the snow blanketed all and the ground froze (thankfully late that winter, allowing for extensive repairs to be completed, particularly to the railroads; Central Vermont’s first passenger train traveled the reconstructed line by February 4th, 1928; see Chadwick, pg. 13). The back-breaking work continued well into the spring of ‘28.

For many, recovery and healing took much, much longer.

Vermont was already a financially impoverished state, its populace getting by on modest incomes at best; the flood was an enormous setback, not to mention a hell of a precursor to the Depression. But the surviving Vermonters rallied, helped one another, and endured; all worked hard to put it behind them. President Calvin Coolidge dispatched Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover to the state as his personal representative in mid-November; after his tour of the devastation, Hoover commented, “I have seen Vermont at her worst, but I have also seen Vermonters at their best” (quoted from Chadwick, Ibid.). Vermont Governor John E. Weeks issued a statement which declared the flood “the greatest disaster in the history of our beautiful state.” Noting the devastation, Weeks wrote, “It was indeed a hopeless situation to meet with winter hovering in the offing. But Vermonters are not those to be daunted or broken by hopelessness. With unbelievable courage our people started to reconstruct and rehabilitate and not for a moment did they yield to a spirit of demoralization” (as published in Atwood, pg. 1).

In the wake of the flood, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed three flood retention reservoirs (and their accompanying dams) along the hard-hit Winooski River Basin (East Orange, Wrightsville, and Waterbury) in hopes of preventing similar flooding in the future. Subsequently, New England and Vermont weathered other powerful storms (including the floods of 1936 and 1947, the hurricanes of 1938 and 1950), prompting the building of more reservoirs and dams, “but no event has approached the Flood of 1927 for areal extent,” according to the

National Weather Service.

Many towns, large and small, still sport ‘high water marks’ for the 1927 flood on key public buildings, still-visible testimonials to the disaster. There are also many still photographs, archived in many local historical societies, countless home collections and scrapbooks, and a few even committed to postcards of the time. Immediately after the waters had receded, the U.S. federal government commissioned a “flyover” of the Winooski River, the White and Black Rivers, and the Lamoille River, and their respective basins to document the extensive flood damage. They accumulated ninety aerial photographs, sixty-eight of which are now displayed on the University of Vermont’s Landscape Change website (go

to this site,

which offers literally thousands of flood images along with the aerial views cited).

But another visible testimonial remains: rare motion picture footage of the flood.
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[End of preview/tease -- The rest awaits you in Green Mountain Cinema II, heavily illustrated, coming this summer!]
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Tuesday Morning Factoid:

Vermont is the only state that the capital, Montpelier, does not have a McDonalds.

Website Work, CCS Momentousness, Monday Morning Quiz and It's All Coming Back to Our Cyborg Vice

* The site is coming together! My impatience means we'll (Jane Wilde and I) will be launching in June with just the tip of the iceberg, but I'm excited nonetheless.

* I've got to keep this short, as I'm heading north to White River Junction and today's key Center for Cartoon Studies faculty meeting. It's a lengthy year-end assessment and prep-for-Year Two session, and it'll be good to finally sit down with my Year One fellow instructors (whom I rarely get to see, socially or scholastically, living as I do almost 90 minutes away), though we're all eager to engage with our new faculty members for 2006-7. More on this tomorrow...

* After the faculty meeting, I'm meeting with a group of the Year One students to pull together the team working on a special project: a mini-comic for one of the Halloween season's upcoming DVD releases. Mum's the word until the-powers-that-be at the DVD company and the filmmakers themselves decide it's cool to announce the title (for which I'm also painting the DVD cover art), but needless to say I'm really looking forward to the whirlwind effort to complete this little gem ASAP. This group has a lot of talents, skills and enthusiasm to bring to such ventures, and that and the hard work necessary is all it takes -- more later!

* While my retirement from the comics industry stands, it's becoming increasingly possible to apply my skills in the medium I love far away from the plantation of what most folks consider "comics," this latest project being just one example. I'm enjoying drawing again as I haven't in years, and where it'll all lead, I've no idea -- but it won't be back to DC, over to Marvel, or in the stockade of the industry I left behind in '99.

Lest some of you groan, bear in mind the 21st Century's fertile soil lays well beyond their spent acreage (for me, anyway), and I've cast my fortunes in part with CCS as long as the two of us stand. As it goes, so it goes.

* A Monday Morning Quiz, compliments of my Bennington College compadre Brad Verter, who sent

this

my way this weekend. Let's see how well you score; country bumpkin that I am, I still did pretty well; extensive parenting experience helped telling the toy from the -- uh, toy.

* This news broke over the weekend, and sets a compelling spin on recent events. Hand-written evidence...

what do you know,

the shit's getting mighty deep

An excerpt (from Kevin Drawbaugh's article):

"The U.S. prosecutor in the CIA leak case has told a court he plans to use as evidence a newspaper article with notes that he says were hand-written by Vice President Dick Cheney referring to Valerie Plame shortly before she was exposed as a CIA operative.

The notes show Cheney and his former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were "acutely focused" on the July 6, 2003, article written by Plame's husband, Bush administration critic and former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, said Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in the pre-trial filing made on Friday.

A Cheney spokeswoman said the matter is a court proceeding and referred a request for comment to Fitzgerald's office.

Fitzgerald said the notes show that Cheney and Libby were focused on Wilson and "on the assertions made in his article, and on responding to those assertions."

The article asked whether the administration manipulated intelligence in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In the article, Wilson wrote he went to Niger in 2002 at the CIA's request to check out reports that the African nation had sold uranium yellowcake to Iraq in the late 1990s. The processed ore can be used to make a nuclear weapon.

Wilson said he concluded on his tip that it was unlikely such a transaction ever took place. Later, the alleged African uranium connection was cited by the war's backers as evidence that Iraq had developed or had tried to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Shortly after Wilson's article appeared, the identity of Plame, his wife, as a covert CIA operative was leaked to journalists. Fitzgerald is probing who blew Plame's cover.

The copy of the article where Fitzgerald said Cheney made his notes ask if it is ordinary for former ambassadors to travel for the government to check out reports. "Or did his wife send him on a junket?" asks one notation...."

As Peter Yost's article (the first linked above) elaborates,
"Cheney's notes on the margins of Wilson's opinion column in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, reflect "the contemporaneous reaction of the vice president," Fitzgerald said in the court filing late Friday."

Keep your eye and ear on Fitzgerald.

Have a great Monday.

Building a Better Site

Though the old

comicon.com site

has served me well over the years, it has been frustrating in many ways. From the beginning, text only was all I could update or alter, which immediately compromises a cartoonist/artist's venue. So the new site is going to feature lots of material you've never seen before, including -- well, you'll see.

Still, it's a work in progress. Jane Wilde has accomodated my wish to build a multi-tier site, with many sections affording info/art/photos from the various elements of my life, career and interests. The initial launch will be skeletal, quite crude design-wise, with cumulative refinement and expansion of each section to follow in the coming weeks and months. I'm very much learning as we go, and if anything have too much material to post over the coming years.

Among other things, there will be a gallery of unpublished art, an expansive bibliography, a section on script & thumbnails to completed page archives, and much more from the comics part of my life. This, too, will grow in time, and some of this material will be presented as 'lessons' (making them applicable to my CCS efforts, natch), which I hope will prove of interest to more than a few of you.

Though I'm not putting any of my short stories online, I'll be archiving some of the 'best' of my published writing efforts and some the pieces I've written for this blog (illustrated!), and much you've never had access to before.

For those of you with high-speed access, I'm sure the site will look archaic at best. Much as I'd love to include more interactive material, the hard reality is we here in Marlboro are still trapped in a dial-up age of internet, and that will limit what I'm capable of doing online for some time to come.

Would you expect anything else from the dinosaur who did Tyrant?

More later...
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Hail to the Chief

The USDA on Iraq: Everything's Coming Up Rosy

(Department of Agriculture employees have been instructed to praise, with a straight face mind you, Bush's handling of the Iraq war. They even are instructed to keep a record of how they've complied with the order, so the department can report back to the White House on how successful they've been.)

By Al Kamen
Monday, May 8, 2006

Career appointees at the Department of Agriculture were stunned last week to receive e-mailed instructions that include Bush administration "talking points" -- saying things such as "President Bush has a clear strategy for victory in Iraq" -- in every speech they give for the department.

"The President has requested that all members of his cabinet and sub-cabinet incorporate message points on the Global War on Terror into speeches, including specific examples of what each agency is doing to aid the reconstruction of Iraq," the May 2 e-mail from USDA speechwriter Heather Vaughn began..." etc. etc. etc.

Who needs Paul Joseph Goebbels when you've got Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propoganda Karl Rove in the White House?

Now we know what reshuffling Rove a month or so ago was all about...

Mummified Babes, Graveside Homophobes, Political Asylum, and More...

A Friday morning of odds and ends, just to set you up for the weekend.

I'm astounded (as are justice officials) at the government's own investigative body (the Office of Professional Responsibility) finding they've been stonewalled by the White House in their investigation of the NSA warrantless surveillance program, but I won't rant about that. Keep an eye on this one, folks -- if this doesn't prove this President has absolutely no check on his power, what does?

But enough on that -- we've other fish to fry and babies to dry this morning.

FYI, a reminder: I'll be posting at odd times in the coming week or so, as more time goes into a deadline project and the website launch.

Here's something to settle your breakfast, and remind the Curtis Harrington fans out there of Who Slew Auntie Roo. From amigo Joe Citro comes news of Concord, New Hampshire police horrified to discover "Family Heirloom Is Mummified Baby,"
a news item from April 24, 2006:

CONCORD, N.H. -- A family heirloom is not going over well with police.

The mummified body of a baby

kept by a Concord, N.H., family has drawn attention from investigators.... The current keeper of the baby, Charles Peavey, said the tiny mummy has been passed down in his family for many years. Concord police recently got word of the remains and they took them in for testing. A forensic anthropologist will examine the tiny corpse. Peavey said the mummy belonged to his great-great uncle, who was born in Ashland in 1850. The family estimated that the mummy is 90 years old. It was discovered among the uncle's possessions in 1947 in Manchester...

Every home should have one!

Meanwhile, Mark Martin (who will soon face me like a man!) sends this May 1st link about

the ACLU is fighting the good fight

for those folks I wrote about last month who've been protesting at the funerals of soldiers in states supporting gay rights and civil unions, or, uh, something like that. Associated Press Writer Roger Alford writes from Frankfort, KY that "...portions of a new Kentucky law intended to prevent protesters from disrupting funerals for soldiers killed in Iraq are unconstitutional, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a federal lawsuit filed Monday.The ACLU argues that sections of the law go too far in limiting freedom of speech and expression. Members of the Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church have protested at military funerals in several states. The church claims the soldiers' deaths are a sign of God punishing America for tolerating homosexuality..." That's the thing about freedom of speech: in its defense, one must stand up for free speech one often doesn't personally share or sanction. Anyone have followup info on this case history, I'm curious to know more -- thanks, Mark, for the update.

While some of us might think these Baptists might benefit from a little detour to the local psych ward,

that privilege is being reserved for antiwar protestors.

As Jean-Marc wrote when he emailed me the above link, "Ready for your daily injection, Mr Ivan Bissettonovich?" Boot me up, Dr. Vesuvius.

There, that'll settle your breakfast.

More later -- have a great weekend!

The Jobby Hits the Fan

Well, will this be enough to tip the scales at last?

NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls

By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY [note: with John Diamond contributions]

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: The NSA record collection program

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.

The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated Monday by President Bush to become the director of the CIA, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. In that post, Hayden would have overseen the agency's domestic call-tracking program. Hayden declined to comment about the program.

The NSA's domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database.

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States."

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

Don Weber, a senior spokesman for the NSA, declined to discuss the agency's operations. "Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide," he said. "However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."

The White House would not discuss the domestic call-tracking program. "There is no domestic surveillance without court approval," said Dana Perino, deputy press secretary, referring to actual eavesdropping.

She added that all national intelligence activities undertaken by the federal government "are lawful, necessary and required for the pursuit of al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists." All government-sponsored intelligence activities "are carefully reviewed and monitored," Perino said. She also noted that "all appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on the intelligence efforts of the United States."

The government is collecting "external" data on domestic phone calls but is not intercepting "internals," a term for the actual content of the communication, according to a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the program. This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it's been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for "social network analysis," the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together...

Etc. -- read the full USA Today story and weep.

But dig the final paragraphs:

One company differs

One major telecommunications company declined to participate in the program: Qwest.

According to sources familiar with the events, Qwest's CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA's assertion that Qwest didn't need a court order — or approval under FISA — to proceed. Adding to the tension, Qwest was unclear about who, exactly, would have access to its customers' information and how that information might be used.

Financial implications were also a concern, the sources said. Carriers that illegally divulge calling information can be subjected to heavy fines. The NSA was asking Qwest to turn over millions of records. The fines, in the aggregate, could have been substantial.

The NSA told Qwest that other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database, the sources said. As a matter of practice, the NSA regularly shares its information — known as "product" in intelligence circles — with other intelligence groups. Even so, Qwest's lawyers were troubled by the expansiveness of the NSA request, the sources said.

The NSA, which needed Qwest's participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard.

Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest's patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest's refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.

In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

In June 2002, Nacchio resigned amid allegations that he had misled investors about Qwest's financial health. But Qwest's legal questions about the NSA request remained.

Unable to reach agreement, Nacchio's successor, Richard Notebaert, finally pulled the plug on the NSA talks in late 2004, the sources said.

No comment from me -- you all know how outrageous I find all of this.

Land of the free?

My ass -- and your ass, too.

Check Yesterday's Post

For you early morning risers and readers, check yesterday afternoon's postings, in case you missed them. Though I'm determined to post daily, it won't necessarily be my morning ritual for the summer, in part due to the text I'm prepping for the Bissette Website, which leads me to --

Finally, the Website is Close to Launch!

It's been a long haul, complicated by my commitment to CCS and the lack of ability to load illos from home (you don't need me to bitch about lack of high-speed access this early in the day, do you?), but at last Jane Wilde and I are in the final stages of the initial website launch. Once it's up, I'll be adding material weekly to get it to where I want/need it to be, but it'll be a start, and one with a fair amount of eye-candy, too.

The key features -- including an extensive bibliography -- will take some time to pull together, but I'm still sure even the diehard Bissettaholics out there will find some eye-opening 'new' stuff in view on the site, never seen before anywhere else. Of course, in the best of all worlds, I'd also be able to regularly post new art, photos, etc. on the site (and on this blog), but alas, that's still a remote and far-away option. It'll be a big step up, though, from the long-defunct comicon.com site, which has been impossible to update since February of 2005; no sour grapes, though, as all that Rick Veitch & Steve Conley created did bring many of us into the internet era, as did Jack Venooker's all-too-brief but energized The Kingdom discussion board, home to the missed-by-some Swamp.

But this'll be my site, sans "you can't do that/you shouldn't do that" encumbrances or deferments, for better or worse. The design on the initial launch will be crude, mind you -- I'm no web designer, and Jane Wilde's skills are more technical than artistic -- but it'll be a beginning, as I've said. More later on that...

Copenhagen Followup

I'm prepping a bunch of followup material on our trip to Copenhagen, including writeups of the books I picked up there. Marge also took four rolls of photos, which we'll find some way to share with you -- but in the meantime, I'll post links (as they emerge) from my friends in Copenhagen. First up, appropriately enough, is Arni Gunnarsson -- the man who suggested I come to Komiks.dk's event, and proposed that to the organizers; thanks, Arni! -- who has just posted his writeup of Leah Moore & John Reppion's series Wildgirl

here.

Arni's also hoping to create an online gallery for everyone's photos, so that may be how you see ours, too. Updates as they emerge, promise! But in the meantime, I'll have some writeups here (and full reviews at Paneltopanel.net) over the next couple of weeks.

Just Kos

A couple of end-of-April Daily Kos articles worth a read, which I meant to post sooner -- links suggested by/compliments of my old friend Jean-Marc Lofficier,

here

and

here.

Give 'em a look-see, and ponder...

Hey, Marge just called me upstairs to check out the young female wild turkey on our front lawn. She (the turkey, not Marge) scratched around, then hunkered down to nest a bit by our front garden.

Which brings to mind --

Did You Survive the Bird Flu TV Movie???

OhmyGawd did you?? I've missed all the reports of hysteria, dread and death somehow.

This was my fave numbskull news item of the week thus far (hey, the week is young):

Experts fear bird flu movie may spur panic

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A film about a fictional bird flu pandemic that will air on television on Tuesday has experts worried it will panic some people and convince others that legitimate warnings are mere hype.

But the same experts are taking advantage of publicity surrounding the made-for-television movie to stress what they see as the need for individuals, businesses and local officials to do what they can to prepare.

The Health and Human Services Department issued "talking points" to staff who may get questions about the movie, Pennsylvania is rolling out a new Web site and telephone line to coincide with the release, and the Trust for America's Health held a briefing to try to sort fact from fiction.

Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America features scenes with actors wearing spacesuit-like protective gear, a terrified populace and an ending scene in which most residents of an African village lie dead.

"I am not happy," said Mike Osterholm, a University of Minnesota public health expert who has been warning about and consulting on the threat of an influenza pandemic. "I worry that this could very well be portrayed by many as ultimate example of sensationalism," Osterholm told reporters in a telephone briefing on Monday.

The H5N1 avian flu virus has been found in birds in more than 48 countries. It has killed 115 people out of 207 sick enough to be treated at hospitals.

Bird flu only rarely infects people now, but scientists agree it could evolve into a form that transmits directly from person to person. If it did, it could infect hundreds of million of people within a few weeks or months.

Note, with that last sentence, how the story turns, fanning the very flames it is claiming to be "concerned" about fanning. This shift in content and tenor continues:

RAISING AWARENESS

Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt has been holding meetings in the 50 states and territories to convince businesses, educators and individuals to prepare for a pandemic that could throw 40 percent of the workforce out of action for weeks on end.

"While the movie does serve to raise awareness about avian and pandemic flu, we hope it will inspire preparation -- not panic," the HHS talking points read.

Yes, and The Day After brought the threat of nuclear war to an end, and Rene Cardona Jr.'s Survive warned us all about the dangers of crashing in the Andes, saving countless lives since 1976.

Hey, did Rene direct Fatal Contact? Oh, no, wait, that was Beaks, with Chris Atkins. Where's Rene when Rumsfeld needs him?

Continuing:

Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Calvin Johnson and state Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff announced the launch of

their Web site

to coincide with the TV film.

OK, you know what to do! Quick -- "Put The Mask on now... put The Mask on now..."

Oh, sorry. Continuing:

"It is our hope that this movie will draw people to more reliable sources for information such as the Department of Health's 1-877-PA-HEALTH line and the Web site we've launched today," Johnson said in a statement.

The entertainment industry does not have a pristine record on medical matters. A Mayo Clinic neurologist reported on Monday that motion pictures inaccurately represent the coma.

Hmmm, what are they saying?

You mean I shouldn't accept Warning Sign, Outbreak or The Ebola Syndrome as documentaries? Y'mean, Fatal Contact is (palm slap to the skull) fiction??

Gee, President Bush seemed pretty taken with The Crazies, judging from one of his press conferences a few months ago.

Oh, sorry, Mayo clinic neurologist, didn't mean to interrupt you --

"Generally, there is a pattern of inaccuracy. It's an enormous caricature," Dr. Eelco Wijdicks said in a statement. Most films great exaggerate how often patients recover completely from extended comas, Wijdicks said.

Then again, most films haven't the cajones to name a character Dr. Eelco or Dr. Wijdicks, either.

A film based on Richard Preston's novel The Hot Zone similarly exaggerated the effects and spread of the Ebola virus.

Wasn't that the film that caused, like, nationwide panic, including mass hysteria, traffic jams and accidents and a reported attempted suicide?

Oh, wait, no, that was the 1938 Halloween War of the Worlds radio broadcast. That's right. Sorry.

What the fuck?

Coincidentally, Steve Perry just sent this along to me as an email forward.

It urges the recipient to "PASS THIS ON SO IT CAN BE KNOWN" (caps from the letter, followed by, uh, seven exclamation marks -- must be a comicbook writer was the source).

Do you know that 'bird flu' was discovered in Vietnam 9 years ago?

Do you know that barely 100 people have died from it throughout the whole world in all that time?

Do you know that it was the Americans who alerted us to the efficacy of the human antiviral TAMIFLU as a preventative?

Do you know that TAMIFLU barely alleviates some symptoms of the 'common' flu?

Do you know that its efficacy against the common flu is questioned by a very large part of the scientific community?

Do you know that against a SUPPOSED mutant virus such as H5N1, TAMIFLU barely alleviates the illness?

Do you know that to date Avian Flu affects birds only?

Do you know who markets TAMIFLU?

ROCHE LABORATORIES !

Do you know who sold the marketing rights for TAMIFLU to ROCHE LABORATORIES in 1996?

GILEAD SCIENCES INC.

Do you know who was the then president of GILEAD SCIENCES INC. and remains a major shareholder?

DONALD RUMSFELD, the present Secretary of Defense of the USA!

Do you know that the base of TAMIFLU is crushed aniseed?

Do you know who controls 90% of the world's production of this tree?
ROCHE.

Do you know that sales of TAMIFLU were over $254 million in 2004 and more than $1000 million in 2005?

Do you know how many more millions ROCHE and GILEAD can earn in the coming months if this business of "Bird Flu" fear and panic continues?

So the summary of the story is as follows:

Bush's friends decide that the medicine TAMIFLU is the solution for a pandemic that has not yet occurred and that has caused a hundred deaths worldwide in 9 years.

This medicine doesn't so much as cure the common flu.

In normal conditions the virus does not affect humans.

Rumsfeld sells the marketing rights for TAMIFLU to ROCHE for which they pay him a fortune.

Roche acquires 90% of the global production of crushed aniseed, the base for the antivirus.

The governments of the entire world are threatened by a "possible" pandemic and then buy industrial quantities of the product from Roche.

So we end up paying for medicine while Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush continue to spread pandemic fear in order to do their business...along with their other big one...oil.

ARE WE CRAZY?!? OR ARE WE IDIOTS?!?

Hmmm, they forgot the TV movie in their chronology.

Nice to know Rummy and his cronies might be channeling either William Castle's ghost or at least Aaron Spelling's residual energies amid their Tamiflu conspiracy circle. If you can't rally the populace into a good lather pushing that well-worn fear button, nothing like the equivalent of an ABC Movie of the Week to do it for you.

Anyhoot, exploitation and TV movie buff that I am, I'd welcome a comment here from anyone who saw the film -- or better yet, a videocassette or DVD recording of Fatal Contact just to check it out.

In the meantime, where did I put that old video of Beaks...?

Josie's Site!

Completely by accident, Leah Moore found, like, me on

this website,

which she visits for reasons to do with the comforts of knitting hats. It turns out it's Josie's site, and she's one of my students at the Center for Cartoon Studies. Cool! Check it out (howdy, Josie!).

The Link I Forgot

When I posted mention of Stephen Colbert's historic Press Club turn, I forgot to post a link to easy-read access of a transcript, which is

here.

I've received a bunch of emails (and one comment) taking me to task for saying this was mere court jesterism -- hey, having seen the video, Colbert was amazing, and it was a ballsy and immensely gratifying spectacle. But it's not going to change anyone's behavior in the White House, and that's what's necessary... but then again, apparently no one, save the neocon pundits (remember the Harriet Myers nomination debacle?), seem capable of shaking this White House.

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