Moebius & Fat

Not much happening to put the wind in my sails these days but I've watched two good documentaries so I'll let that be my point of departure.

I used to be a big fan of comic books. I'm sure most people can say the same for some period in their childhood when they poured with awe over the latest heroics of Spider-Man or Batman or whoever happened to catch your younger self at just the right time and in just the right way to spark that magic flame of imagination. My history after that initial rush was somewhat inconsistent but I was fortunate enough to be turned on to some of the more sophisticated, or at least different, works of artists outside of the Marvel/DC style of comic via the phenomenon of the movie Heavy Metal when I was still in my early teenage years. The amount of detail and fantasy in the stories that made it into Heavy Metal, let alone the highly visible gore and sexuality, was quite a turn from the very sterilized or specific way these subjects were brought up in most other media. It defied almost every convention that I expected from exposure to traditional media and wrapped it all up in a visually striking art style.

There's been a lot of time between then and now but I still have fond memories of the vistas and the design of the characters. Imagine my surprise then when I find myself talking about documentaries at a post earth hour party with my landlord and having him hand me a documentary called "Moebius: Redux" he produced on the life and influence of Jean Giraud AKA Moebius, artist behind the original incarnation of Heavy Metal and apparently designer of the art in some of my favourite films. The film puts together interviews from Moebius himself and some individuals he worked closest with in his career including fellow french artist Phillipe Druillet and famed director Alejandro Jorodowski. Mostly I found it fascinating because, probably due to the language barrier, I never knew about the totally surreal and philosophical stories these artists were telling. Even flipping through panels today I'm amazed by how much these guys seemed to pack in to each frame. There was a quote in the movie about how the characters looked like they had a full history written all over their face from the very first panel and I would have to agree.

The next part was about how Moebius moved to movies which highlighted some interesting contributions to movies that I've appreciated the art style of for a while. The major ones were Ridley Scott's Alien, The Fifth Element and Blade Runner, although the documentary kind of implies that Scott cribbed the design from the world of Blade Runner from a story that Moebius did with the screen-writer for Alien. All interesting trivia and made me appreciate what all these artists have done.

The other documentary I watched was way less interesting but I had some time to kill tonight so I loaded up one of the free documentaries on CBC On Demand. Tonight's pick was "Morbidly Obese" on fat people who get gastronomic bypass surgery. There were some interesting aspects to it but everyone gets the surgery and has an awesome life after they lose their fat so I didn't really feel like there was much of a message aside from "when fat people get thin they are happier" and some prying the curtain back on the challenges these people face doing things the rest of us take for granted. Lots of bedsores and naked fat people and warm happy music when the fat people are less fat. Not really much there otherwise.

From gratuitous gore and breasts to bedsores.... the things I learn.... oi...

I had a terrifying flash of "old man syndrome" the other day when I was thinking about making a mix-cd. I remember the argument that High Fidelity brought up that the mix tape was an art and how hesitant people seemed to be about the concept of mix-cds once that medium was popular. But CDs are going bye bye in the face of flash media, ubiquitious internet access and wi-fi, so what's left for the personal mix of songs that you make for people?

I suppose the only functional option left is the podcast, but that strips out the package that you get when you deliver the mix. There's little room for art, it gets lost in some corner of your hard-drive you'll visit every few months...

I suppose that we've got a few years left until the CD is an anachronism but it's going to be a sad day when someone tells you they don't have any way to play your mix.

 

I've been seeing this favourite album meme crawling through facebook lately and it struck me that the art on most of these albums is really high quality. So I decided to do a collage of some of my favourite album covers from my collection regardless of the quality of the album. Some are tied to the album content, some are just esoteric.

While I'm Waiting for the Water to Boil...

I've had a number of issues on my mind since I last wrote that I could easily write several pages on but instead I'm going to start by saying that waking up with a hangover on a Wednesday and being unable to take a shower before work because your pipes have frozen is something no one should have to go through. Why was I hungover on a Wednesday? Well, as if St. Patrick's day wasn't enough of a reason we were also celebrating a friends birthday with green food colouring, Irish Whisky and hole-in-the wall bars filled with talented makers of Irish music. The morning was a sharp reminder that sometimes you have to borrow against your future comfort for the good of the moment.

That seems to be the theme of the past few days. After a weekend in which I fell into a feedback loop of boredom, I was lucky enough on Monday to leave the house with intentions of getting a coffee and working on a paper and ended up going for dinner with someone I really haven't had much more than a peripheral relationship with and very much enjoying the company and conversation. Unfortunately this was all at the cost of the time I needed to do my assignment so when all was said and done I had missed out on all but three hours of sleep. Tuesday, as mentioned, involved birthday cheer and St. Patrick's Day foolishness and spending all day cursing St. Patrick and his penchant for alcohol. Not to mention the realization that I have a week to write a research paper.

But before any of that I have ice to defeat and a spot between to blankets that needs me to lie in it for a while.

It's also become pretty clear that I get some pretty foolish ideas into my mind when it comes to the opposite sex. I'm still trying to figure out whether this is a bad thing that I should stop with the sobering brick of reality.

Trekkies (Trekkers?)

For the past few weeks I've been craving knowledge. Part of is is because I'm back in school and being forced to read and write about topics at someone else's behest; part of it is because a full time job has left the time in between work and sleep a wasteland of poorly spent time. Having recognized that my life has become significantly more bland and sedentary I've been trying to try to do something meaningful whenever possible.

Tonight I watched the documentary "Trekkies". Hopefully those of you reading have not immediately jumped to a conclusion about the quality of the film based on the title. I must admit first off that Star Trek was an important part of my childhood. Almost every night my dad would sit down to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation and we would all join him. We would lose ourselves in the adventures of Picard and Riker and Data and all the rest. I still remember when how strange it was when we knew the next episode would be the last. After so many years it instilled in me a real sense of loss when the final credits rolled and we were left asking "what now?" Deep Space Nine lost be before the peak of the show and Voyager did not even come close to repeating what I loved about TNG so I drifted away from Star Trek and sci-fi in general. Perhaps it was the family bond that TNG represented in our household that no other incarnation of the Star Trek franchise was able to latch onto or perhaps it was just a young boy looking for something more solid to believe in than spaceships and aliens. Whatever the reason Star Trek moved on and I did not.

Coming into the world of Trekkies for me was like returning to a childhood haunt and finding that it has been turned into a church or a circus. Star Trek fanatics have always gotten a hard time from popular opinion. Even Rocky Horror fans seem like they have less baggage then a person walking down the street in a Klingon outfit. At least the person dressed as Dr. Frank N. Futer has a sense of humor about their outfit. The same cannot be said of all Trek fans. It is this bias that Trekkies probes with astounding results. Even from the introduction we know Trekkies are not fans like any would could imagine. The director, Roger Nygard, delves deeply into the impact, both positive and negative, that Star Trek has had on people around the world. Some of the first fans we see are those that we would "expect" including a trio dressed as an ambassador party of blue aliens and a man dressed in a Trek uniform with bright red lipstick (we learn later that he is dressed as the unseen wife of a minor character from a single episode). We are then introduced to the interviewer, Denise Corsby, whom fans may recognize as Tasha Yar from the early TNG episodes. It is at this point when it becomes obvious that there is more to the fans then our first impressions would allow.

The balanced presentation of even the most ridiculous characters in the film is a testament to the quality of the documentarian. A often returned to character in the movie is a dentist and his family of Star Trek fans. He has designed his dental office around a Star Trek theme. His family, a wife and two kids, are always portrayed with their uniforms on whether it is at home, at the grocery store or at work. Regardless, his staff seems to be accepting of their Federation work uniforms and his clients seem to be OK with his Star Trek office. We are shown a kid who is a second generation fan after his father who at first comes off as a goof and a nerd but who, at the age of 14, has already produced impressively detailed 3D models of scenes from a Star Trek movie he and his friends are producing. We hear stories from the cast of the various Trek shows that range from laughable to disturbing to tear jerking. One of these stories is from James Doohan, AKA Scotty. He tells us of a girl who sent us a letter. A suicide letter. Fearing for the girl, he invited her to a convention he was speaking at and to subsequent conventions where he talked to her. Years later she contacted him again to tell him that she had just received a masters degree in electronic engineering.

It is these details that Trekkies shines. Few of the characters have been consumed by their obsession and even those that seem the most removed from reality have jobs and kids and lives outside Star Trek. It is hard to look down on a woman with hundreds of photos of Brent Spiner when I can recall the names and works of hundreds of different musicians and actors. I used to follow every single, every side project every charity that Pearl Jam was connected with. I still have vinyls of their albums that have never touched a record player. Star Trek holds a much stronger claim to combatting social issues the Pearl Jam ever did and through their stories they introduced generations of children to important social issues from racism to poverty to dealing with the loss of loved ones. Maybe most of us did not go past tuning in every week but the lessons being taught were universal and the importance of children being involved in a show that teaches such universal lessons should not be understated.

"For the hour you are on I forget the body that I am in." This is what a woman, so paralyzed she needed an interpreter to decipher the frail mumblings from her lips, told John de Lancie (Q). Star Trek fans, like the fans of anything else range from the obsessive stalkers to those who take their love for the show on a personal level. Anyone who was a fan of Star Trek during their childhood should check out Trekkies if not for nostalgia, because it is an exceptionally well done documentary. There is a lot to laugh at, marvel at and be embarrassed for but all of it is thought provoking.