November 2007 « Wow Cool

Tiger Claw Elite Champions Performance

At long last I’ve managed to go through some more of my shots from the intense photo-overload in Florida last month. Some of my favorites are these from the Disney Martial Arts Festival night-time show performance by the Tiger Claw Elite Champions. Now I’m off to Raleigh-Durham in the morning for more martial arts action and to hopefully catch a Bryan Lee O’Malley’s book signing.

See the full set.

You can also watch the whole thing on YouTube.

More info at TigerClawElite.com.

The Stupid Pages 15 – Chattanooga Choo Choo

Not entirely true story of meeting Mark Martin and the famous Ben ‘Benny’ Burford at the restaurant at the Chattanooga Choo Choo.

Benny owns many drawings of mine, which I find bizarre. The unreadable caption in panel five should read – “Refuse to talk with their hands, probably think it’s “girly” – which is a nod to Mark Martin’s writing style.

– The Chattanooga Choo Choo, Marc Arsenault, November 29, 2007, 12:30AM

Happy Hollow, San Jose, CA

I dragged the fam and friends to the amazing Happy Hollow in San Jose, California today (OK… they dragged me). Despite being months behind on organizing photos, I had to pop these up right away. What a strange and wonderful place.

See the full set.

San Francisco Comic Book Shop Experiences Good and Bad

It was long past time I found a new place to buy books when in San Francisco…

My local crappy shop in Brooklyn closed up a couple years ago and I finally sucked it up to ride the F out to visit Alex at his excellent Rocketship, and now I’ve found a similar friend at my (third) home in the bay. Isotope – the Comic Book Lounge, worried me at first… I just Googled “San Francisco” and “Comic Book”, and there they were at the top. But why had I never heard of them? Unlike Rocketship I’d swear they don’t come up in the usual comic blogs of artist tours and the like. And the site contents weren’t all that convincing. “Who are these guys?” But we went and they were so super friendly and helpful (James and Kirsten). Clean store, good selection, lots of lounge space, and really cool artist decorated toilet seats.

My first bay area comic shop love has to always be my old employer Comic Relief (I was the zine buyer in the mid-90’s there… in between the renowned tenures of Josh Petrin and Janelle Hessig), but when in San Francisco, I’ve often found myself on Divisidero at Comix Experience… something I’ve come to dread. I still go up there for the excellent cheese shop and the cool antiques store… but going in to Comix Experience takes some effort.

I thought I would give it one more try, but, no, the same insufferable asshole is still behind the counter, and now I’ll probably never go again. Try Googling Asshole and “Comix Experience”, read down the links a little bit and you’ll find this ain’t just me talking. I have no idea who this jerk that Brian hired is, but he is a fucking retail nightmare. He is completely unhelpful, spends endless amounts of time on the phone, is ridiculously loud and belligerent, blathers on about his stupid opinions in a way that only Kevin Smith (barely) gets away with (as in, every other word is ‘fucking’… and I’ve witnessed this going on with little kids in the store), and if you have the nerve to whisper to someone on your cell phone in the store he asks you to leave. So yeah… this time, I just said, “you stupid ass”, and walked out. Never to return. Mr. Brian Hibbs, sir. Fire this stupid fucking asshole. I don’t care if he’s your brother or what, but you’re hurting more than just your own sales with this jerk.

flickr gets the goods – Schmap San Jose Guide

A photo of mine of the Winchester Mystery House is in something called the Schmap San Jose Guide. I’m in Santa Clara County, California now. If you’re going to be here, this may help you get around. My original photo set on flickr is here.

The Stupid Pages 14 – The Big Telephones (6)

The Big Telephones by Jason Martin (1991)

Thou Shalt Not Question Stephen Fry

We were going to eat out tonight… after a trip to the book store… So… totally creeped out by the recent article in Harpers about toxic chemicals in your blood and a report on Trans fat that I read… I ventured out with the rest of the fam… and, even though it was a few more miles drive, I just had to take us to Knoxville’s La Costa, which promised a dedication to local and organic ingredients, and, as learned in many past brunch visits was pretty damn good. So… we’re sitting down and going over the menu. I look up and make eye contact with an incredibly tall person, who was leaving the restroom. I asked my wife if she’d noticed him. “Yeah, that’s the guy who asked them to bring in an extra table from outside”. Oh… did, uh, he have an English accent? So, for the length of our meal I marveled that Stephen Fry was inexplicably in Knoxville… eating dinner… just a few tables down from us. Jeeves. The voice of the Harry Potter books. The voice of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The librarian in MirrorMask. Deitrich in V for Vendetta. And Lord Snot in the Young Ones!

How? Why? In Knoxville, Tennessee?

Stephen Fry

I pretty much never ask for autographs. I asked Jack Kirby for his once. I absolutely never pose for pictures with celebs I meet. But this was Stephen Fry. The smartest man in Britain. And there he was in Knoxville. He graciously posed with us (It took two takes, maybe if we’d gone for three little boy and me might have looked better. This is seriously the worst photo of him ever), we gabbed a bit about his project of visiting all 50 states. I almost wished he was going somewhere next other than Savannah (he’d never been), so that I didn’t have to gush so much about how pretty it is. (It really is, and I felt for the presumably Knoxvillian folk he was dining with).

It’s no joke that Stephen Fry is smarter that the rest of us, and he has recently started doing a blog. You should read it. He seemed genuinely surprised that I even knew he did such a thing.

What is an OEM? – Tom Manning’s Spamtoons

I gleefully tracked the poetry of spam this past summer (or spoetry) in a couple of posts (Thing 1 | Thing 2). Now, Yale School of Art MFA candidate Tom Manning has gone one better and turned them into cartoons. See the results on the excellent (if far too infrequently updated) Design Observer.

Lance Hahn never paid to play

So, yeah, I’m always the last to know it seems. I heard from about the last person I would expect to hear from that Lance Hahn had died. That news disturbed me and colored these last few day more than I would have thought possible. I only knew Lance a little bit, but liked him an awful lot. About 13 years back when we were both shitworkers at MaximumRockNRoll, he was one of the few people I’d talk to a bunch around the MRR house. I guess most people knew Lance just through his music. He played two of the most memorable shows I ever saw. I caught Cringer at ABC No Rio with Citizen Fish (I think it was Cringer’s last tour) I was just blown away by the whole thing. They had changed a lot since that first awesomely sing-along-to-able (if a little goofy) 7″. It’s a show that people still talk about. There may have been many other J Church shows I was at, but the one at UC Berkeley, In some glorified hallway, called (I think, just) The Golden Bear, really stood out. A great night. In the years since everything has drifted to places none of us would have guessed. It seemed like every time I heard some news about Lance it was bad. (House burning down… things like that) He always seemed to be upbeat and just the epitome of the non-defeatist punk spirit that few of us can ever say we keep going like that.

There’s a memorial gathering for Lance tonight in Austin, more info on his site. His MySpace page is still weirdly out there also. Say hi.

Stupid Pages 13 – The Big Telephones (5)

The Big Telephones

The Big Telephones by Jason Martin, 1991

Sorry the engine has been rusty. I’ve been sick for a week and am still sorting through a massive photo dump from Florida. –Marc

The creeping death of the interweb

Google your 10 favorite obsessions. You’ll see it. Something has changed. Much is slipping away.

Stupid Pages 12 – The Big Telephones (4)

The Big Telephones

The Big Telephones by Jason Martin (1991)

Stupid Pages 11 – The Big Telephones (3)

Big Telephones 3

The Big Telephones by Jason Martin (1991)

Today is going to be a good day

TP Lawn

This was my neighbors lawn this morning. If anyone, I thought the guy two doors down who kept telling the trick-or-treaters to stay off his grass would be the one to get nailed. What must these guys have done that was so much worse? Maybe all it took was the hideous yellow SUV in their driveway (far to shocking to show here)… That was left wrapped in green cellophane.