The United States hasn’t had a serious investment in NASA since the early 70s. Both Republicans and Democrats have never seen the spin off benefits which have been a boom to our economy. Well maybe a little bit of shock treatment might help NASA get some over due funding:
“Here’s one Olympic-style event that China is likely to win: landing the next humans on the moon. Chinese astronauts are on schedule to beat the United States back to the moon by two or three years, the head of NASA’s lunar exploration program said Wednesday. “If they keep on the path they’re on, they can” land before Americans do, said Rick Gilbreth, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems.
The goal of NASA’s Constellation program is to return astronauts to the moon by 2020, as proposed in President Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration. Gilbreth said the Chinese could accomplish that by 2017 or 2018. The Chinese lead will be even longer if the American schedule slips, as some space experts predict.”
Artist David Foox gives us his account of going to A-Kon which is the oldest continually running anime convention in North America which was held this weekend:
By the time Fanboy had requested we do an editorial/article on the Dallas A-Kon Event, I had already given the subject matter much thought. In fact, I had already drafted my overview of this fun day in my head. So putting it down on “paper”, so to speak, was quite easy.
We (and by “we” I mean Jessica (my wife) and I) arrived at the Adams Mark Hotel and found ourselves thrown in at the deep end of this pool of costumes, freaks, geeks, musicians, artists, and gamers. In hindsight, I try and imagine that space prior to the event and void of all the color and realize that it really is the people, art, and games that make this event successful. A dry, dead space with a good dose of desperation/depression was overcome by livery that only hardcore gaming geeks and artist nerds (of which I am proudly both btw) could muster up in good ‘ol DFW (editor’s note: DFW = Dallas/Fort Worth).
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 4, 2008 in Comic Books
I think I would have gotten even more into Spiderman as a kid had I known that he had a matching giant robot! This Japanese toy set is from 1978 and photographed by tOkKa.
I got a real kick out of this graphic poster from a subway in Tokyo I’d love to own a copy! Here’s a description of the artwork from the photographer who goes by the name TenguTech:
“It seems that too many Japanese do their makeup in the train. And Tokyo Metro train line want to discourage people from doing it. Must be a way to make use of all time available. ”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 4, 2008 in Videogames
I love the conceptual idea of taking Rubik’s Cube which is an analog game and turning it into a pixel representation of Pac-Man one of the early digital video games. This sculpture was designed by Omino71 who is an anonymous Italian artist.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 4, 2008 in Star Wars
Pouring a lightsaber out of a can just isn’t any fun! After all why go with a ready made lightsaber when you can do it yourself? Well industrious Star Wars fanboys can rejoice with this new lightsaber set allows you to create your own personalized Jedi experience:
“To be a Jedi, you must construct your own lightsaber. Finding the right crystals and metal pieces to forge your own weapon can be difficult, but the Star Wars Force FX Lightsaber Construction Set makes it easy for you. In just seconds, you can assemble 5 pieces, a blade, and some batteries to forge one of over 700 possible configurations of lightsaber! Use a variety of pommel, handle, and detail parts to create a personalized weapon that looks just like the ones that belong to Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker, or Obi-Wan Kenobi… or something totally new that’s uniquely you!”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 3, 2008 in Science, Tech
Recently I was wandering through on of my favorite local bookstores here in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and I came across a beautiful coffee table book which featured some delicious photos of vintage computers:
What blew me away about the book was the sharp design and the photographs by Mark Richards. What’s amazing to me about these artifacts is that theyshow just how fast everything has changed in the world of computers in the last few decades. If you look at an automobile from 1970 the industrial design may be a bit different, but what’s under the hood is pretty much the sam car that you’d see today. However with computers what would take up a room and require a team of experts to operate can now fit into a cell phone which can be operated by a child.
This is purrfect solution for making Kitty confetti! What makes this item special is the fact that the punched out paper is in the shape of Hello Kitty, which is a very nice touch to what might be just another cute collectable sporting a logo.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 2, 2008 in Animation
I think my favorite Bakshi story is from Howard Beckerman: According to Howard (and it’s hard for me to tell if this is just a legend or not) it seems that Ralph was borrowing mob money to finish an animated film which was way behind schedule. He would keep begging his animators to please finish the scene so he pay off his backers. But sadly the poor animators couldn’t pull of the deadline and the next day Ralph Bakshi showed up in the studio with a broken arm.
This story may not be true, although it’s a good reflection on just how hard it is to make an animated film — and Ralph was doing that in the late 70s and early 80s when it was very out of style and Disney was on the rocks. So it’s nice to see that Ralph’s work is being celebrated these days and there is a great book that’s out on him:
On a related note I discovered this great interview with Bakshi from 1982 when he had just finished the film Hey Good Lookin’ which was shot by Ira Gallen:
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 2, 2008 in Comic Books
Coco Wang is a comic book artist and animator from China, and he has an amazing collection of comics covering the earthquake. The stories are heartbreaking and touching at the same time, you can check them out here:
“Thousands of heart-breaking stories are happening 24 hours non-stop everyday, some are so sad that you can hardly bear, some are incredibly moving that you just can’t stop crying… I wanted to go to the front to help with all those people, some of my friends have already gone there, but I heard that the traffic needed to be kept totally clear for rescue transportation at the moment, people like me without knowledge of first-aid and experience of rescue operations going there now would cause choas and trouble… but I can’t just sit at home and do nothing, I have been crying my eyes out in the past three days, I have never felt more proud of my country and people… their love, courage and kindness rock me to my core! I have decided to tell these touching stories by drawing comics. I am going to send you comic strips almost everyday from now on, I hope you could know something about the earthquake in China, although you don’t have to do anything, but I hope you could feel our love and hope.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 2, 2008 in Pulp Fiction
There’s a great article by Charles McGrath at the New York Times on Ian Fleming the author of the James Bond books (his 100th birthday will be on Wednesday). I love how the article goes into detail on the difference between the print and film versions of the series:
“Albert R. Broccoli, a producer of the first 17 Bond films, could be said to be a co-creator of this other, meta-Bond. It was he or his writers who made a trademark of the “Bond. James Bond” line, for example, and who insisted on the “shaken, not stirred” business. Fleming’s Bond is not nearly so fussy about what he drinks, as long as there is plenty of it. He’s as apt to slug down bourbon as a martini. This Bond is also much more fetishistic about smoking than he is about drinking and makes a point of ordering his cigarettes (with three gold bands on the filter) from Morlands of Grosvenor Street. (In a pinch, though, he’ll also smoke Chesterfield kings by the carton, and it’s little short of miraculous that he can climb a flight of stairs, let alone swim for miles, as he so often does.) He likes fast automobiles but hates gizmos, except for the odd concealed knife, and wouldn’t get caught dead with the laser watches, ejector seats, tricked-out cars and exploding key chains the movie Bond has been kitted out with, not to mention that embarrassing jet pack.”
“A fire at Universal Studios has destroyed a set from “Back to the Future,” the King Kong exhibit and a video vault containing more than 40,000 videos and reels. Los Angeles County fire Captain Frank Reynoso says the blaze broke out just before dawn Sunday on a backlot stage at the 400-acre property. The fire has been contained.
Officials say the iconic courthouse square from “Back to the Future,” has been destroyed, and the famous clocktower that enabled star Michael J. Fox’s character to time travel has been damaged. NBC Universal President and Chief Operating Officer Ron Meyer says 40,000 to 50,000 videos and reels were damaged in the video vault, but there are duplicates in a different location.”
It’s amazing for me to think that My Neighbor Totoro is now twenty years old! I guess that’s a tribute to the staying power and quality of Hayao Miyazaki and the team at Studio Ghibli. So if you’d like to tip your hat to Totoro, here’s a cute way of doing it:
“This hat features Totoro’s face and toothy grin, along with perky ears which contain plastic to keep them upright. This is perfect for convention attendees who don’t want to go all-out on a costume or for folks who want a little extra cute for puttering around town.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 1, 2008 in Comic Books
I dread looking through the Marvel covers each week because there are so many uninspired heroic images of dudes in tights — but this cover for Omega #9 caught my eye right away. Firstly the graphic designer in me loves the hand lettering at the top, it’s very unslick but shows a great deal of charm. And then the illustration hits you: Our hero is having a bad time of it! Not only won’t his super powers out wit the robots, but there seem to be a few working class bubbas in the horde looking for a piece of Omega. The humor is great, the draftsmanship is good, and even the crude coloring technique adds to it all. Credit for the cover goes to Farel Dalrymple and Paul Hornschemeier — and Omega hits the stores this week on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008.
“Counterculture icon Emily the Strange is on the road to the big screen, with Dark Horse Entertainment president Mike Richardson coming on board to produce a feature film that would tell the origin of the gothic figure and her four mysterious cats.
Skateboarder Rob Reger created the character among a multitude of designs he was printing up for stickers, T-shirts and skateboards in Santa Cruz in the early 1990s. The Emily design took off, with Reger’s company, Cosmic Debris, going on to become a multimillion dollar business with toeholds in fashion, books and comics, toys, school supplies, and accessories. The character, often seen with four cats, has also become a figure for female empowerment and anti-conformity. Reger has remained the creative director behind the character and is one of several artists who work on “Emily.”
“Emily’s” connection with Richardson comes from the comic book line Dark Horse publishes. The company began publishing the title in 2005, with “Emily the Strange #1: Chairman of the Bored,” which was followed by several other popular miniseries. ”
Posted by Michael Pinto on May 31, 2008 in Star Trek
The music of Alexander Courage set the mood for every Star Trek TV series and movie to come — the tone is clearly that of a swashbuckling naval adventure set in the stars. This is amazing when you think about the fact that that approach was so out of style by the 60s, and yet Courage manages to reinvent it. And if I do say so, the music holds up rather well — it doesn’t feel dated, it’s a real classic is every sense of the word (it’s also important to note that he did this before Kubrick used classical music in 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968). Alexander, thank you for being a special part of the soundtrack of my childhood:
“His most famous work is undoubtedly the “Star Trek” theme, which he composed, arranged and conducted in a week in 1965. “I have to confess to the world that I am not a science fiction fan,” Courage said in an interview for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation’s Archive of American Television in 2000. “Never have been. I think it’s just marvelous malarkey. … So you write some, you hope, marvelous malarkey music that goes with it.”
Courage said the tune, with its ringing fanfare, eerie soprano part and swooping orchestration, was inspired by an arrangement of the song “Beyond the Blue Horizon” he heard as a youngster. “Little did I know when I wrote that first A-flat for the flute that it was going to go down in history, somehow,” Courage said. “It’s a very strange feeling.”
Courage said he also mouthed the “whooshing” sound heard as the starship Enterprise zooms through the opening credits of the TV show.”
Posted by Michael Pinto on May 31, 2008 in Videogames
It’s berry good news! In 1988 Ralston Cereals (yes the pet food folks!) produced the Nintendo Cereal System. The box featured fruity-flavoured Marios on one side and Zelda berry-flavored boomerangs, keys, and shields. Each box also featured a sticker of a Nintendo character and a set of trading cards. You have wonder why with all of those goodies they bothered to even have cereal in the box?
I’m sorry but I grew up hating Kiss! They always seemed just a little too manufactured to me, as opposed to say Led Zeppelin which was a “real band”. Although decades later I’ve learned to accepted the campyness of the 70s into my heart, even including * cough * disco. And so it was with this in mind that the Kiss edition of the Bearbricks designer toys caught my eye. It manages to turn the Kiss stage personas of The Demon, Starchild, Space Ace, and The Catman into something iconic and collectable.
Posted by Michael Pinto on May 29, 2008 in Star Wars
Star Wars Adventures In ABC was published in 1984 by Buena Vista Records and included a audio tape with a 4 page read along book. Another book and cassette tape set in this same series was Star Wars: Adventures in Colors and Shapes which featured C-3PO and R2-D2 try to help Han Solo and Chewbacca repair the Millennium Falcon. The ABC book featured a different item from the Star Wars universe to illustrate each letter of the alphabet — starting with “A is for AT-AT”:
The Grand Space Voyage (Bolshoe kosmicheskoe puteshestvie) was shot in 1974 in the Soviet Union by director Valentin Selivanov. The plot of the film follows two boys and a girl who are sent into space for a heroic adventure and a light dash of romance. The look of this film reminds me a great deal of Gerry & Sylvia Anderson’s UFO TV series. By the way the little girl in the film is Mila Berlinskaya, who went on to become a world-famous classical pianist who now lives in France (she sings that song too).
