Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Now We Are An Art Blog

Shooting War - (Comic) Interesting stuff, based on the idea of division of power. Quick summary - Lefty political blogger is sent off to Iraq to report for a major news network, ends up showing the world "the truth," - Except it's smarter and subtler than that.

Sorta. It's not dealing with real characters or delivering any life-changing insights, but it does, briskly, admit that every side and character in the story is somewhat flawed and or fallible.

Genre-wise, um, it's the kind of thing I'd LIKE to see more of it comics, but it's also not really what I'm most interested in.

What I AM interested in is the art, which is collagey in a cool way. It slaps together traditional pencil drawings, photographs, diagrams and 'puter drawings the overall effect works sometimes, and doesn't work sometimes, but it's a valiant attempt to utilize mixed media.

The Confessions of Saint Augustine - (Book) Chapters 1 -3. Recommended by my friend Liz. This fifteen-hundred-odd year old book was recommended to me as STILL the most important set of writings on faith.

It's written as an open letter to God, which is an interesting idea. SA narrates his life story about moving from the fifth century version of sinner (He stole pears! And fed them to the pigs!) to man of God. The first three chapters give us Augustine as baby, youngster, and attention craved young man.

O says that you have to read it like Irvine Welsh - There are a lot of worthwhile insights here, but you have to seperate it from the intermnable praising. Example: "But you are life of the soul, life of lives. You live, oh life of my soul, because you are life itself, immutable." And so on and do on... Ad infinitum.

The book looks like it's gonna pick up soonish, though. In the next chapter he joins a cult!

RIP 2007 - From Jon Bogart's Brilliant Music Blog. Link

Marvel Team-Up 35

Countdown to Mystery

Pirates Vs. Ninjas II: Up The Ante

MIA - KALA (Album) I'm listening to this one over. And over. And over in my car. Our buddies at Rolling Stone called it the best album of the year and, heck, they might not be so super-hugely incredibly far off.

Warren Zevon - Stand in the Fire (Album)