GRABBINGSAND

In His Image Cuts, originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

Murfreesborough, TN

Wil Wheaton was this year’s keynote speaker at PAX ‘07, the annual Penny Arcade fan festival. He does what he has come to do best. He reminisces about the glory of arcades, a foundational component to his (and my) generation. He’s 35 now. So am I. And he goes on to say how video games, no matter how violent they might’ve been, did not lead to a life of crime. Instead, they were key to our social upbringing.

Arcades were to my generation what Xbox Live and World Of Warcraft are to this generation. They were social gathering places as much as anything else, and I really miss them. I miss the flickering neon on the walls, the wierd smelling smoke, the stained casino carpet, the Van Halen and Joan Jett on the jukebox and the times we had to choose between one more game of Tempest and a can of Coke from the vending machine. There was actually a time when you could get a cold can of Coke for a quarter. I would tell you how much we paid for movies, but I’ve made enough people cry this month.

Even to a vehement loather of Wesley Crusher like myself, the speech is incredibly good. At the end of the day, Wheaton is a mighty geek who relishes his geekery, and I applaud the brilliance of placing him in front of a massive and appreciative crowd — a crowd that cheers like hooligans at a soccer match when he makes an Oregon Trail reference.

Listen for yourself and see.

While I’ve been amused from time to time, I’ve never yet moved completely into the camp that adores XKCD as something more than just a decent webcomic. Until today …

Awesomeness achieved.

Vintage Ad #285: The Look You Want - When You Want It!, originally uploaded by jbcurio.

Today, the ’stache. Tomorrow, the pointy, pointy beard!

Thugs. Named Burt and Ernie. And an alien with blue skin. Put it all together and you’ve got a hell of a fight on your hands.

Our blue friend is Mikaal Tomas, the late 70s incarnation of DC Comics’ Starman. Call him “The Disco Starman” if you want. With the medallion, the low-neck costume and the awesome, permanently blow-dried hair, who would blame you? But watch out, ’cause he does indeed now that karate stuff.

Aw, yeah. “THOM!” That’s how you say “beatdown” in Disco Spaceman Talk. Bahlactus speaks it fluently.

(Images from DC Comics First Issue Special #12 (1976))

Over a year ago, I posted a link on MetaFilter to Project Rooftop. It’s sort of like Project Runway, only for comic book superheroes. Basically, up-and-coming artists offer their takes on well-established icons … like Black Canary here. Cute, eh? The only bad thing about Project Rooftop is how infrequently it updates.

Let’s talk about Mike Wieringo.

Wieringo’s name might not be too familiar to many of you, but he had quite a following in the comic book industry. Not only was he an incredibly good artist, but by all accounts he was a heck of a nice guy. Sadly, Mike (who signed his work “Ringo!”) suffered a fatal heart attack on August 12, 2007.

Even though the Journal-Constitution has nary a mention of his passing, Mike Wieringo made his home here in Atlanta. Actually, Mike lived in North Carolina, in spite of how much the comic book press wished initially that he lived here.

Newsarama has compiled six long pages of remembrances for Ringo from big and small names in the industry, written and drawn. More are sure to come.

Over the week to come, Project Rooftop will be taking submissions in tribute to Mike Wieringo. The Project Rooftop Project (?) will center around reinterpretations of Bart Allen, the most recent fallen Flash. Mike had much to say in his blog about Bart’s fate, a hero he drew and helped establish with Mark Waid under the earlier, teen-hero name of Impulse. With that kind of inspiration, the art to come should be something incredible.

The first was good. The second is just as good, maybe better. I’m talking about “Zero Punctuation,” a weekly series of mashed-up videos by Yahtzee Croshaw. They’re hosted at The Escapist. What are they? Well, basically, Yahtzee (who is British and lives in Australia) picks a video game (recent or not so) and gives it a review. Simple enough, you might say, but these reviews are all done in a kind of collage-y/cartoon-y style that swings wildly from photographic cut-and-paste to the kinds of stick figures that inhabit Ikea instructions. The combination works brilliantly. Blazing audibly over the visual spectacle is Yahtzee’s narration. After about fifteen seconds of said narration, you realize just why the series has the title it has. He doesn’t seem to breathe. Ever.

So far, he’s done a retrospective review of Psychonauts and a scathing review of the demo for Heavenly Sword(s). Even if you don’t think games are your thing, this is worth the looking. So go. Look.

(And if the two articles at The Escapist don’t provide enough entertainment, visit Yahtzee’s own blog, Fully Ramblomatic.)

My family and I spent yesterday afternoon atop Lookout Mountain, at Paynes Chapel Methodist Church. Nikki was there, of course. So was my brother. We’d ridden in the family car from Lane Funeral Home. The trip up the mountain would’ve taken maybe fifteen or so minutes on a usual day, but at processional speed, it was twice or more as long. As we progressed, we kept noticing other drivers, people coming from the other direction, pulling over and stopping while we passed. A red pickup. A BMW. A Coca-Cola truck. You don’t see those signs of respect too much anymore.

We were there, sitting under a tent in the stifling summer heat, to say goodbye to my grandmother.

My grandmother — Mamaw, I called her — was a constant presence in my childhood home. She lived with us and had done so since a few years before I arrived.

With a few very brief interruptions, my grandmother kept me out of daycare centers and away from random babysitters for most of my childhood. I didn’t always appreciate it at the time, though I’ve always seen the two or three weeks I spent at Joyland Daycare as among the darkest I’ve known even to this day.

My mother left early for work. My father worked third shift for several years, then landed a better, similar schedule to my mom’s. Either way, it was up to Mamaw to make sure I was out of bed, fed a decent breakfast and on the van to kindergarten at a nearby church school. When I advanced from kindergarten to first grade, my initial weeks were heavy with an embarrassment I’d never known. My elementary school was right behind our house. Our back yard butted up against a run-off creek and on the other side was the playground. Being so close, I didn’t need a bus. But naturally, my grandmother saw fit to walk me to school. She relented only after I convinced her that she could just as easily watch my progress from the kitchen window. Which she did.

During the summer, I’d go with Mamaw on her semi-weekly outings with friends and relatives. She didn’t drive, never learned how, but needed to go to the bank on a weekly basis. Usually, this meant that her brother would have to do the driving. Her brother was Roy. His wife was named Sara. Roy had one of those deep North Georgia mountain accents that sounded rusty from lack of use, but he never said too much. He didn’t have to speak. Sara spoke enough for both of them and did so loudly. She was hard-of-hearing and thought so must be everyone else. Both of them went along for the bank jaunts. I never minded too much, as any trip to the bank meant I’d get a sucker of my choice and maybe a stop my Kresge’s or K-Mart.

Mostly, I kept to myself. I went out and played in the yard with Hot Wheels cars, or in my driveway with a basketball. Mamaw made sure that I was never lacking in Kool-Aid when I came inside. Other days, I’d watch television, game shows mostly. It was then that I’d fulfill perhaps the most important job of my kidhood. There were two telephone lines running into our house. The main line was for my parents. The second line, installed when I was three or four by a fellow from church who worked for South Central Bell, was for my grandmother entirely. And it rang almost constantly. My job, if Mamaw was on the other side of the house, was to answer it.

On the other end of the line would be one of several usual suspects in a large cadre of older ladies. They would call Mamaw to do one of two things. They would either give a report on the current medical condition of someone in their immediate, extended or expanded family, or they would wait to hear a similar piece of citizen journalism from my grandmother. I can’t say that I knew all of these callers my their voice alone, but all of them knew me.

“Hello, Tommy?* S’your Mamaw ’round?”

For her vast network of inquisitive ladies, my grandmother was a one-woman Internet. To pay for my services as switchboard operator, Mamaw would make peanut butter cookies. The kind known by the telltale stamp of a fork in the middle.

She never worked, my grandmother. Never held a proper job. But I think she took to heart her position as family and community communicator. Once a fact was received, she had it surely and would send it on down the line, just as accurately as it was initially heard. While the calls got fewer and fewer over time, as each of those ladies vacated their spots on this earthly network, I doubt that Mamaw ever once forgot one of those facts or the names involved.

My Mamaw’s voice defied simple description. It’s been said that my Mom’s voice sounds a bit like honey, sweet but substantial. Sustaining. If I think about their voices side-by-side, I can hear a bit of my Mom in Mamaw, only Mamaw’s is bit higher in tone, quite a bit more tentative, less refined. Mamaw’s voice sounded far older than she ever was, which probably threw people for a loop in light of her mental dependability.

I’ve been thinking about that voice today. I want to remember it as much as possible.

There are other stories, but they’ll keep. As much as my grandmother loved to pass on a good report, she knew what to keep for later too.

* - To this day, when you enter a five-mile radius from my parent’s house, my name reverts to the shape it had when I was very small, and there is little to be done about it now.

The new Over The Rhine album is out today. The Trumpet Child. “Trouble” is track two. I’ve had it (legally!) since Saturday afternoon, but the weekend prevented me from listening and enjoying until today. I’ve loved this band for so long, maybe fifteen years by now, but I don’t think they’ve sounded ever so good as they do now. As always, they’re musically unclassifiable — though this album does have a sonic kinship to One From The Heart, right down to a very direct reference to Mr Tom Waits himself. Karin’s voice has rarely been so confident and strong. And lyrically, Linford Detweiller glides effortlessly from the sacred to the profane and back again, dipping by necessity into the political, tying it all together in the only way that makes sense.

Basically, its albums like this that make me miss writing music reviews. Because this review would glow.

Over The Rhine will be on tour soon, swinging through Atlanta in the middle of October with Rosie Thomas. To make their visit all the more tempting, they’ll be at Eddie’s Attic.

For now, just listen. Then buy if you feel the spirit move you.

If you came to make some trouble
Better make it good
Your sexy cocktail hour stubble
Is doing what it should
Looks may be sweet and subtle
I think it’s trouble honey
I think it’s good
If you came to make trouble
Make me a double honey
I think it’s good

Over The Rhine - “Trouble”