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Star Wars movies…as read by cartoon voice actors

Well here’s something you don’t hear (or see) everyday: from Emerald City Comic Con 2012, some of animation’s most celebrated voice actors performing scenes from Star Wars movies in their famous cartoon character and various celebrity impersonation voices. The actors are Billy West, Tara Strong, Maurice LaMarche, John DiMaggio, Kevin Conroy, Jess Harnell and Rob Paulsen doing voices such as Batman, Fry and Bender (Futurama), Bubbles, Pinky (Pinky and the Brain), impersonations of William Shatner, Christopher Walken, Adam West, and more. It’s long, but it’s fun to watch in pieces, when you have a moment and would like a laugh. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBzRmWeC6Ds

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Happy Birthday Luna!

On this day in 2003, our giant schnauzer, registered with the AKC* as  ’Moonage Daydream” but whom we call Luna, was born. As a nine-year old dog, she’s officially a senior. Luckily, she still has spunk and fire and a spring in her step, although she sleeps more than she used to. And she can still roar and lunge like the protective beast she’s always been. To look at her is not to see an older dog. Except for one thing: her left ear:

Why is one ear standing on edge? Let me explain. Like all giant schnauzers, Luna was born with floppy ears.

In the United States, their ears are generally cropped before they are sold, unless you think to ask otherwise (we did not). However, cropped ears still don’t stand up, they’re just smaller. To make them stand, you need to tape them to popsicle sticks or otherwise do various unnatural things to make them stand up. This is not something that is particularly pleasant for the dog, and Luna hated it.

Had we understood about cropping, taping, and so on, we would have asked for her ears to be left uncropped. But even though her ears were cropped, that didn’t mean we had to make her miserable and tape them up. So for eight years, her ears flopped down.

Now she’s older, the cartilage is stiffening, and her left ear stands up as often as not, making her look pretty goofy. But then she’s our goofy “little” schnauzer, so it works. And all things considered, if a stiff ear is all she has to worry about, I think she’s in pretty fine shape.

Happy birthday Luna. There will be some extra treats for you tonight. And hopefully for many years still to come.

* In fact, the beginning of all registered names is the kennel at which the dog was born. So her full listed name is “Lionheart’s Moonage Daydream.”

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San Diego Comic Con badge resale

Just a quick geek culture service announcement. For those who don’t have Comic Con International (SDCC) badges, if you were hoping to get in on the returned badge resale, there will be 5000 single day badges going on sale in the near future. However, you’ll need to get a Member ID to purchase a badge, and the Member ID system is closing down on May 24th (tomorrow) at 5:30pm Pacific Time.

I’m guessing single day badges are probably most interesting to people who already live in Southern California and can drive to the San Diego Convention Center since by now every hotel room near SDCC has been purchased. However, San Diego is an absolutely gorgeous city, right on the Pacific Ocean, it’s large enough to have a “major city” vibe but small enough that it’s not nearly as sprawling as Los Angeles. You could do a lot worse than plan a San Diego vacation in a nice hotel further out on the shuttle route and include a day or two at SDCC as part of your summer fun.

Comic Con International has more details on their web site.

Good luck to anyone who who tries for badges!

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Writers don’t write men or women or dogs or salmon

One of my favorite writers, Greg Rucka, has a new novel called Alpha. For those not familiar with Greg Rucka, either in prose or comics, his specialty is realistically drawn, three-dimensional characters—many of which are female. In an industry that tends to focus completely on male characters, this is a novelty and a wonder to many.

So he took to io9.com and penned the essay Why I Write “Strong Female Characters.” It’s a wonderful essay, outlining not only his craft and journey but some wonderful philosophy that writers should take to heart. A short excerpt of why he makes sure his women are so well written:

Writers don’t write Men or Women or Dogs or Salmon. Writers write characters, and at our best, if we do it well and with care and with thought, we invest in those characters a spark of life, a realism and nuance that makes them believable and relatable. We seek to craft characters who inspire empathy, characters our audience will care for, and as a result, will care about what happens to them, and thus will share the journey we have charted. A story, after all, is the character’s journey.

The above may seem self-evident, so why are so many stories written with extremely weak or stereotypical female characters? When wondering on paper why so many writers are given a pass on their poorly drawn female characters, he opines:

It’s not that they don’t care, nor even that they don’t mind. More than any other reason, I think, it sadly comes down to this: it’s what they’ve come to expect. It is, as the saying goes, par for the course. Or to put it in a worse light, when we fail to demonstrate the appropriate respect, we’re living down to their worst expectations

Overall, this is an excellent essay, not short but worth the read. As is everything else by Greg Rucka.

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Why make it hard to buy music?

I complained about this before when I was trying to get an Eisenblume single. This time, I discovered (through a tweet by Laney Amplification) a Welsh reggae/metal/punk band called Skindred:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhQpKDwZKgI

I liked the music, and wanted to buy the album, “Union Black,” which has been out for about a year. I clicked the iTunes link in the video, and it took me to the UK iTunes Store. I couldn’t buy the album from there, and the album doesn’t exist in the USA store. Same issue with Amazon MP3—not allowed to buy it in my region. The album was for sale on Amazon’s UK store or a few other European retailers, if I was willing to pay about $25-$30 after shipping (which I’m not).

When will artists learn that it is imperative that they make their music available in every region in the world? Okay, so Skindred’s UK label has no US distribution. And apparently hasn’t been able to get any for a year. In that case, the band should make the album available over their own website, a bandcamp site, something. I went to Skindred’s site, wallet in hand, ready to pay them for their music. But they wouldn’t take my money.

I expect the major labels to be obsessed with regional restrictions and have draconian contracts that would tie a band’s hands. But a group on an indie label should reserve the right to distribute themselves in territories their labels don’t cover. I’m guessing that Skindred wants to have a label in the USA but their just losing all the sales that they could get from Americans who liked their previous records or who just discover them. The days in which not releasing in a territory built anticipation are over; now it just drives potential purchasers to The Torrentz and other means of free, regionless distribution. And it’s indie bands that need every single sale the most.

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I hear the roar of the big machines…two worlds and in between…

Make Good Art

Author Neil Gaiman gave the commencement address at the University of the Arts to the Class of 2012. His speech is 19 minutes of glorious words of experience and advice for anyone in any creative field. His thoughts aren’t just valuable for the young but for anyone in a freelance career, and I couldn’t recommend watching this more.

Edited to add a link to the text of the keynote address.

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